Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [62]
“I wanted to speak to you for a moment before I fetch my wife,” Nicholas said. “I must tell you that I’m completely on board with talking to you and with having the project featured in this film if it comes to it. But Allie’s going to take some convincing. I thought I’d give you a heads-up.”
“I see. Can you give me some idea…?”
“She’s rather private,” he said. “She’s from Argentina and she’s self-conscious about her English. Frankly, I think she speaks it perfectly well, but there you have it. Plus…” He tipped his fingers beneath his chin and looked thoughtful for a moment before saying, “She’s protective of me, as well. There’s that.”
Deborah smiled. “This film isn’t an exposé or anything, Mr. Fairclough. Although, to be honest it could turn into that if you’re enslaving recovering addicts for your own purposes. I suppose I should ask if you need protecting for some reason?”
She’d meant it lightheartedly, but she couldn’t help noting how seriously he took the question. He appeared to be tossing round a few possibilities, and she found this detail rather telling. He finally said, “Here’s what I think it is. She worries that I’ll be disappointed in some way. And she worries where disappointment will lead me. She wouldn’t say that, but one has a way of knowing these things about one’s wife. After a bit of time together. If you know what I mean.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Two years last March.”
“You’re quite close then.”
“We are indeed, I’m pleased to say. Let me fetch her to meet you. You don’t look all that frightening, do you.”
He sprang up from his chair and left her in the drawing room. Deborah looked around. Whoever had decorated it had an artistic flair that she could well appreciate. The furniture reflected the period from which the house had come, but it managed to remain secondary to the features of the room. Aside from the fireplace, the most notable of these were columns: slender poles surmounted with capitals that were bowls carved with birds and fruits and leaves. They stood at the sides of the bay windows, they formed the ends of the inglenook’s benches, they held up a shelf that ran round the room just beneath the frieze. The restoration of this room alone must have cost a fortune, Deborah reckoned. She wondered where a reformed drug addict had managed to come up with such a sum.
Her gaze went to the bay window. From there it fell upon the table and the coffee service that sat upon it, waiting for someone’s use. The fan of magazines next to this caught her attention, and she idly fingered through them. Architecture, interior design, gardening. And then she came to one that caused her hand to stop abruptly. Conception, this one was called.
Deborah had seen it often enough during the endless appointments she’d had with specialists before receiving the disheartening diagnosis that had sunk her dreams, but she’d never looked through it. It had seemed too much like tempting fate. She picked it up now, however. There might well be, she thought, a form of sisterhood between Nicholas Fairclough’s wife and herself, and this could be useful.
Quickly, she flipped through it. It consisted of the types of articles one might expect in a magazine of such a name. Appropriate diets during pregnancy, antenatal vitamins and supplements, postpartum depression and related problems, midwives, breast-feeding. All of it was here. But in the back was something curious. A number of pages had been torn out.
Footsteps came along the corridor, and Deborah replaced the magazine on the table. She got to her feet and turned as she heard Nicholas Fairclough