Free The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine

about the kidnap, something she knew she could only do when she was paying for the call. When I'd poured myself a glass of wine and drunk about a third of it, I got the phone book and looked up Ivor Tesham. I didn't expect him to be there, I thought he'd be ex-directory, but there he was: I. H. Tesham, 140b Old Pye Street, SW1. Finding him had been quick. Bracing myself to dial that number took longer. The adrenaline had gone back to wherever it came from, so I drank some more wine, took a deep breath, and dialed the number. Of course I was fairly confident he wouldn't be there, not on Saturday night, and I preferred to think of him getting the message I'd leave and feeling he'd perhaps have to phone me. He answered.
    Not with his number or his name, not with “Hello” but a simple cool, “Yes?”
    I took a deep breath. “Mr. Tesham,” I said, “my name is Jane Atherton. Hebe was my friend. I have been with her husband all day and now I'm at home I thought you might want to talk to me. I mean, I know you arranged for Hebe to be picked up last night. I thought there might be things you wanted to know.”
    Silence. It endured so long that I thought for one moment that she might have made it up. She was a fantasist. Maybe she had some other lover, some
ordinary
man, but to make me envious had told me it was this glamorous MP. The pearls were fake, she'd bought them herself at some cheap place.
    “Mr. Tesham?”
    At last he spoke. “I think you must have been her alibi.”
    “Yes.”
    “A rare occurrence for me, but I am at a loss for words.”
    “I don't mean to upset you,” I said, remembering what Mrs. Furnal had advised about compassion. It doesn't come naturally to me.
    He laughed. It was a laugh without amusement. “What are you going to do?”
    “I don't understand,” I said.
    “Really? Let me be more explicit. Do you have information you want to pass on to the—er, the authorities? Mr. Furnal? Perhaps you'd be good enough to tell me.”
    I didn't know what he meant. Did he think I was threatening him? My excitement died and the tears I couldn't shed when Gerry was crying pricked my eyelids now. A cold drop ran down my cheek. I could cry for myself.
    “I'm not going to tell anyone,” I said. “I don't know anything to tell anyone. All I know is that you sent a car that was meant to pick Hebe up last night.”
    “Ah,” he said. “I think you've confused things, Miss Atherton.
A
car picked Hebe up last night, but it had nothing to dowith me. The two men inside it intended to abduct her. Does that clear things up for you?”
    It was he who confused me. He made me feel the way good-looking sophisticated men always do, even when I can only hear them. I said, “Yes, thank you,” and to that I added, “I'm sorry.”
    I really cried then. Great tearing sobs. I'd made a fool of myself. On a high all day, I had dropped down into the depths in the space of the three minutes the call lasted. Why I should have remembered at this point how Hebe had humiliated me, I don't know. Unless it was because he had done the same. Back into my mind came her kindly suggestions that such and such a boring man, some colleague of Gerry's, their next-door neighbor who lived with his mother, the elderly widower who was my boss at the library, might be persuaded to fancy me. That was what led to me inventing Callum. I started wondering if she had liked going about with me because seeing us together pointed up her beauty by contrast to me. So I cried and drank some more wine and went to bed, only to get up again when the phone rang.
    Mummy, of course. Was it my friend all that stuff on the news was about? The girl who lived in that rather squalid house in the middle of nowhere?
    “That's a bit rich from someone who lives in Ongar,” I said.
    “Please don't start by being rude to me, Jane. I've been ringing and ringing you all day. The least you can do is tell me if this thing on the television is true.”
    So I told her what my