The Cinderella Factor Read online

  Thank God for Anne Marie.

  ‘I’m coming now,’ said Jo.

  She turned to George. ‘Where’s Patrick?’

  ‘He went to Lacombe.’

  Her shoulders sagged. ‘So he’s taken the Mercedes?’

  ‘No, he walked.’

  Her head came up. ‘Then I need the keys. Now.’

  The Morrisons tried to stop her.

  Wait for Patrick, they said. At least call him on his mobile, they said. But Jo was too distraught. All she would say was that it was all her fault and she had to go now. All they could do was press a small bag of Mrs Morrison’s scones into her hand, along with a couple of bottles of water.

  As soon as she’d gone they phoned Patrick.

  ‘Jo’s gone. It’s someone called Mark,’ said George.

  Patrick swore, long and hard.

  Mrs Morrison took the telephone from her husband. ‘Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Jo was hardly making sense, poor lass.’

  ‘If she wanted me, she’d have called me.’

  ‘You didn’t see her. She was really shocked. Crying and trying not to let it show, and frantic with it.’

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ said Patrick.

  Mrs Morrison didn’t answer that. ‘I reckon something really bad has happened. I think you ought to get after her. She needs you, Patrick.’

  Patrick thought. ‘Okay. Here’s what you do. Find out what number called her this morning. Call it back. Don’t mention Jo, act stupid, but find out the address. That’s a starting point.’

  ‘George can do that,’ said Mrs Morrison. ‘Acting stupid comes naturally to him. Oh, and she took the car.’

  It was a nightmare drive through the winding lanes. Once she backed herself up a farm track and had to go right into the farmyard before she could turn round. She put on the brakes and drummed her hands on the wheel in frustration. That was when she realised her face was wet with crying.

  Jo took hold of herself.

  ‘This has to stop. You’ll never convince Jacques that Carol is a manipulative harpy if you go in gibbering. Deep breaths, Jo. Deep breaths. Mark depends on you.’

  She made herself take a long draught of mineral water. She even managed a mouthful or two of scone and felt immediately better. Then she switched on the engine again and let the Mercedes coast gently back to the winding lane. She didn’t lose her way again.

  The smallholding was deserted when she arrived. There was a shiny red car outside, with the label of a well-known car hire firm on the windscreen. The Greys’, presumably.

  When Jo went into the little farmhouse that had been so welcoming it was a shambles. No one about, but plenty of evidence of some major activity—maybe even a fight. A chair had fallen backwards and just been left to lie. There were papers all over the scrubbed wooden table. And it looked as if someone had picked up a soft sports bag and flung it at the wall. Its contents were scattered over every bit of furniture in the place. It looked violent.

  ‘Oh, Lord. Brian!’ said Jo, alarmed.

  She pelted out into the field behind the house, scanning the landscape. The goats were gone, too, she noticed, though probably that didn’t mean anything. There was nobody on the horizon. She could not think of what to do next.

  And then, toiling up the lane, she saw Anne Marie. She rushed to meet her.

  ‘What’s happened? Where are they? Is Mark all right?’

  ‘I need some water. Let’s go inside.’ Anne Marie put a hand to her side.

  Suddenly Jo had a wholly new source of alarm. ‘Are you all right?’

  Anne Marie tried to laugh, but it broke in the middle. ‘I have a stitch. I am not about to give birth. Let’s get out of the sun and I’ll tell you everything.’

  Carol and Brian had arrived, bringing a lawyer and some impressive-sounding threats, at mid-morning. Jacques had started off being reasonable, but Anne Marie had seen that Mark was terrified.

  ‘That is not like Mark,’ she said, pouring her second glass of water.

  ‘No,’ agreed Jo. Tears pricked her eyes. She dashed them away with the back of her hand.

  ‘So I told him to go into the office and telephone you quickly before any decisions were taken. Only, being Mark, he did more than that.’

  Jo looked up. ‘He ran away?’

  Anne Marie blotted her forehead. ‘Put sugar in the hire car petrol tank, we think. Let the goats out. While Jacques was chasing them, then he ran away.’

  ‘Sugar! I wouldn’t have thought of that.’

  Anne Marie shrugged. ‘When he didn’t come back the Greys started to go after him. They couldn’t get their car to start. Brian said it was sugar. Now we are waiting for the hire company’s mechanic to come.’

  ‘The Greys have gone after him on foot?’

  Anne Marie shook her head. ‘Their lawyer gave them a lift to town. They will be back. With an order that says Mark is a delinquent and has to be restrained, I think.’

  She began to cry.

  ‘This is awful,’ said Jo. ‘Worse than I thought. What on earth can I do?’

  But at that point she didn’t have to do anything. The door to the lane banged back and Carol Grey stormed in. She had scratches on her arms, twiggy bits in her hair and one of the straps of her smart high-heeled sandals was broken. When she saw Jo, she stopped dead and hissed, like a bad-tempered cobra.

  ‘You,’ she said with loathing. ‘I might have known you’d be at the bottom of this. You great moronic lump.’

  And from the shadowy entrance to the garden a cool voice said quietly, ‘Mrs Carol Grey, I presume?’

  Jo yelped and swung round on her seat, staring into the shadows as if she could not believe it.

  Patrick Burns strolled into the room.

  ‘How long have you been there?’ gasped Jo.

  He was not looking at her. ‘Jo told me what a thoroughly unpleasant person you are,’ he remarked, in a light, social voice.

  That voice would, thought Jo, have frozen her to the marrow if she were Carol.

  ‘You know, I thought she was exaggerating? I was wrong. She didn’t tell me the half of it.’

  Carol bared her teeth at him. ‘And who might you be?’

  ‘Call me a friend of the dispossessed young,’ Patrick said.

  Carol did not understand that. But it sounded impressive, and even vaguely official. Jo saw her hesitate, look at Patrick with half recognition.

  She said, ‘I’m Mark Seldon’s legal guardian. I know my rights.’

  ‘Somehow I doubt both those statements. Now, I think,’ said Patrick, sitting down opposite her and giving her the sweetest possible smile, ‘that you are a bully who manages to convince people that you know better than they do.’

  Oh, he was clever, thought Jo. Even if he had overheard her discussion with Anne Marie, he could only have half the facts. Yet he had summed up Carol Grey in a heartbeat.

  ‘I think you enter into unlawful contracts to care for children the authorities don’t know about. In fact, I’d be surprised if Jo’s mother ever knew what happened to her daughter.’

  Jo’s head reared up. What was he talking about?

  Carol said, ‘You’re crazy.’ But she sounded scared.

  ‘Who was it, Mrs Grey? Who put Jo into your so-called care? Not her mother. I’d put good money on it.’

  ‘She was a student. Her parents did the right thing for the unwanted brat,’ blustered Carol. But her eyes shifted from side to side and the viperish antagonism had gone out of her.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think anyone would believe that—including those controlling grandparents. Not if they knew how you’d mistreated the children in your care.’ He flicked through the papers on the table with evident disdain. ‘I think that if the authorities knew what you’d done, you would probably be prosecuted. Certainly you would not be allowed to foster any more children—even privately.’

  Carol stared at him, her painted lips working. No sound came out.

  ‘
I think,’ said Patrick charmingly, ‘that it’s time the authorities knew. And I’m the man to tell them.’ He did look at Jo then. His face was quite expressionless. ‘With the evidence of Mark’s ill treatment and Jo’s sworn statement.’

  Carol made a sound that was hardly human, somewhere between a groan and a roar, and jumped for Jo.

  Patrick moved so fast Jo hardly saw him. He flung the big kitchen table aside as if it were made of paper and got Carol into a solid arm lock.

  ‘That will help, too,’ he said.

  Carol began to scream abuse.

  By the time Brian and Jacques returned she had calmed down somewhat. She also knew she was beaten.

  ‘No point in sticking around here,’ she said sullenly to her exhausted husband. ‘Stupid little cow has got big money on her side. Call for a cab and let’s go.’

  Jacques looked truly appalled. It had never occurred to him that pleasant, sensible Mrs Grey could be such a monster, he said.

  ‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ said Patrick. He was looking at Jo now, but his eyes were still empty. ‘You can think you know everything there is to know about someone, but you’ve only seen one side of them. Dodgy things, people. Trusting them is dangerous.’

  That’s for me, thought Jo. He’s saying he trusted me and I didn’t trust him back. And he’s right.

  Her face twisted with regret. But she could not say anything in front of the Sauveterres. It was too personal. Too painful. Even if it meant that she never told him how sorry she was, she could not do it here.

  Patrick made himself at home in the simple kitchen. The Sauveterres thought he was wonderful. So, too, did Mark when he came back at last, and Patrick congratulated him on his enterprise. So did the well-tipped car hire mechanic when he came to tow away the Greys’ devastated machine.

  Only Jo sat there, silent and out of the general buzz, lost in her own miserable thoughts. She had had a night of total happiness. And then she had destroyed everything by her own silly, impulsive actions.

  At last Patrick moved. ‘Time we were going,’ he said to Jo, pleasantly.

  She stood up. ‘You mean—you want me to drive the Mercedes back to the château?’

  He frowned. ‘You haven’t been listening at all, have you? No, I will send someone for it tomorrow. You and I are going back in the Bugatti.’

  She stared. ‘You mean—you still want me to come back with you?’

  His mouth twisted. ‘Of course.’

  ‘But—I didn’t trust you.’

  He looked right at her then. Into her. His eyes wide and golden and utterly naked.

  ‘But I trusted you,’ he said simply. ‘Now, let’s go home.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  AS IF in a dream, Jo went out to the car with him. She hugged Anne Marie and Mark. She did not look at Jacques. He’d meant well, but he was too conventional to see the truth of things. He was not Patrick.

  The open-topped Bugatti was the favourite of her charges. Or maybe her former charges. She said cautiously, ‘Have I still got a job?’

  Patrick started the stately car, waving like some old-world maharajah as they pulled away from the smallholding. ‘If you want one.’

  ‘I do,’ said Jo fervently.

  ‘Good.’

  He knew the roads better than she did. He did not lose his way once.

  Eventually, Jo summoned up her courage and said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Mark.’

  ‘So am I.’

  So he hadn’t forgiven her. Her shoulders slumped. ‘I know I should have. But I was never sure—’

  ‘That I’d keep your secret?’ he finished for her savagely. ‘You don’t have much faith in me, do you, Jo?’

  ‘I had faith in Jacques Sauveterre,’ she flashed. ‘You see where that got us.’

  ‘I,’ said Patrick between his teeth, ‘am not Jacques.’

  Her momentary temper dissipated. ‘I know. I know. I’m sorry. I should have trusted you.’

  ‘You certainly should have. Do you know that I’ve had horrible sleepless nights worrying about that bloody boyfriend of yours?’ he said furiously. ‘If I’d known it was your foster brother you were concerned about, I wouldn’t have worried.’

  ‘You were jealous?’ said Jo, fascinated at the thought.

  ‘I thought you were deranged,’ Patrick corrected coldly. ‘An emotional masochist. Worrying about a guy who’d dumped you at the first opportunity.’

  Jo didn’t believe him. ‘You were jealous,’ she said with satisfaction.

  He relented. ‘All right, I was jealous. A first for me. I don’t like it. Don’t let it happen again.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘From now on,’ said Patrick firmly, ‘you’re mine. Got that?’

  Jo opened her mouth on an indignant retort, met his eyes and closed it again, stunned. It could not be Patrick looking at her with such fierce protectiveness. It could not.

  She swallowed and looked down at her brown fingers.

  ‘Seriously?’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘Seriously.’

  He smiled across at her. The tenderness was still there. And something else.

  ‘Where do you want to go, my lady? Paris? Venice? The mountains of the moon?’

  She did not recognise him in this mood. ‘Wherever you want to go, I suppose,’ she said helplessly.

  ‘You’ll leave it to me?’ His smile grew. ‘Excellent. Then we shall go to my favourite place.’

  They drove sedately through a small town, drowsing in the afternoon sun, watched only by a couple of wide-eyed children. Patrick waved to them graciously.

  They went at a gentle pace along back roads. The Bugatti was higher off the road than the modern car, and Jo could see farther over the quiet countryside than she was used to. In spite of this change of perspective she was almost certain that they were going back to the château. She looked sideways at Patrick and decided not to ask.

  Instead she said gravely, ‘Patrick, what did you mean when you said that to Carol about my mother?’

  ‘Ah.’ He slid the car into a small passing place and stopped the engine. ‘I’m sorry about that. I should have told you first. But it was only a suspicion until she confirmed it.’

  Jo was bewildered. ‘Have you been digging up stuff about my birth parents?’ She was angry. ‘I told you I didn’t want—’

  Patrick took both her hands and held them strongly. ‘No, my love. No. Of course I wouldn’t do anything like that.’

  ‘But you must have been spying on me?’

  ‘Well—in a way—’

  ‘That’s despicable,’ Jo interrupted hotly. ‘Snooping through my past—’

  ‘Jo, listen. It has nothing to do with your past. I looked at your children’s book.’

  She was utterly confounded. ‘What?’

  He gave her hands a little shake. ‘The Furry Purry Tiger. Remember? I was looking at it this morning. You said it was all that you had of your own except your birth certificate and your passport. Well, I read it this morning.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Jo, I know about books. It was never properly published. The only snooping I did was on the Internet, to check with the second-hand book traders. Their back catalogue confirms it. The Furry Purry Tiger is all yours. Your mother wrote it for you. Probably illustrated it and had it privately printed for you.’

  Jo’s eyes widened and widened. ‘How can you tell?’

  His eyes were tender. ‘Does it matter? It’s the truth. Do you still not want to find her?’

  She swallowed. ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Can we drive on now, please?’

  He scanned her face worriedly. But when she motioned him to start the car again, he did.

  ‘I wouldn’t really have spied on you,’ he told the road.

  She didn’t answer.

  He gave a despairing laugh. ‘Jo, please talk to me. I don’t know where I am here. Is this about my being so much older than you?’
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br />   She snorted.

  ‘I’ll take that as a no,’ said Patrick, sounding a little happier. ‘Because I was your employer when last night happened, then? Because you were still in my power to some extent and I should have been more—restrained?’

  ‘Not a gentleman,’ muttered Jo.

  ‘Yes, okay. Not a gentleman, if you like. You can’t have thought I’d sack you if you didn’t come across? Can you?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Did you feel…’ he hesitated, sounding sick ‘…harassed?’

  ‘I didn’t feel in the least harassed,’ Jo said furiously. ‘What sort of wimp do you think I am, Patrick Burns? Did it seem to you that last night I felt harassed? Did it?’

  His mouth tilted. ‘Not at the time,’ he admitted. ‘I had some bad moments when you ran away this morning, though.’

  Jo swung round on her seat and inspected his expression, to see if this was some obscure mockery. But his face was perfectly serious.

  ‘I didn’t run away,’ she protested. ‘I was trying to protect my own.’

  ‘I know. But, you see, I thought after last night I was your own, too. Why didn’t I get a share of the action?’

  ‘You did,’ said Jo. She dwelled pleasurably on the thought of Carol’s face when she’d realised that Patrick had bested her. ‘It was wonderful.’

  He sent her a sideways look. ‘Not unwarranted interference? Not spying on you?’

  ‘No.’ Jo swung round in the seat and beamed at him. ‘Not spying at all.’

  ‘Well, thank God for that.’ He sounded as if he meant it. ‘So, don’t let me find out about your next disaster from the Morrisons. We’re on the same side, remember? From now on your battles are my battles. And vice versa.’

  It sounded like heaven. Suddenly, the road was blurring in front of her eyes. She sniffed and rubbed her nose hard.

  She found a crisp laundered handkerchief being pushed into her grubby paw as the car slowed.

  ‘You are the love of my life,’ Patrick said softly.

  Jo mopped at the corners of her eyes. ‘I’m sorry for being difficult. I’ve been on my own for so long, you see. And I was responsible for Mark being here in France. I know I—’ She stopped as the enormity of his words sunk in. ‘What did you say?’