‘Lukey love you, Daddy,’ his son said.
Despite the stench that hung around the boy, Knight blew the talc off Luke’s cheeks and kissed him. ‘Daddy loves you too, son.’ Then he kissed Isabel so hard on the cheek that she laughed.
‘A change and a shower is in order for Luke,’ he said, and put both his children down. ‘Isabel, shower too.’
A few minutes later, after dealing with the soiled nappy, they were in the big stall shower in Knight’s master bath, splashing and playing. Knight got out his mobile just as Luke picked up a sponge cricket bat and whacked his sister over the head with it.
‘Daddy!’ Isabel complained.
‘Clonk him back,’ Knight said.
He glanced at the clock. It was past eight. None of the nanny services he’d used in the past would be open. He punched in his mother’s number.
She answered on the third ring, sounding wrung-out, ‘Peter, tell me it’s just a nightmare and that I’ll wake up soon.’
‘I’m so sorry, Amanda.’
She broke down in muffled sobs for several moments, and then said, ‘I’m feeling worse than I did when your father died. I think I’m feeling as you must have with Kate.’
Knight felt stinging tears well in his eyes, and a dreadful hollowness in his chest. ‘And still often do, Mother.’
He heard her blow her nose, and then say: ‘Tell me what you know, what you’ve found out.’
Knight knew his mother would not rest until he’d told her, so he did, rapidly and in broad strokes. She’d gasped and protested violently when he’d described Cronus’s letter and the accusations regarding Marshall, and now she wept when he told her of Guilder’s confession and his exoneration of her late fiancé.
‘I knew it couldn’t be true,’ Knight said. ‘Denton was an honest man, a great man with an even greater heart.’
‘He was,’ his mother said, choking.
‘Everywhere I went today, people talked about his generosity and spirit.’
‘Tell me,’ Amanda said. ‘Please, Peter, I need to hear these things.’
Knight told her about Michael Lancer’s despair over Marshall’s death and how he’d called the financier a mentor, a friend, and one of the guiding visionaries behind the London Olympics.
‘Even James Daring, that guy at the British Museum with the television show,’ Knight said. ‘He said that without Denton’s support, the show and his new exhibit about the ancient Olympics would never have got off the ground. He said he was going to thank Denton publicly tonight at the opening reception.’
There was a pause on the line. ‘James Daring said that?’
‘He did,’ Knight said, hoping that his mother would take comfort from it.
Instead, she snapped, ‘Then he’s a bald-faced liar!’
Knight startled. ‘What?’
‘Denton did give Daring some of the seed money to start his television show,’ Amanda allowed. ‘But he most certainly did not support his new exhibit. In fact, they had a big fight over the tenor of the display, which Denton told me was slanted heavily against the modern Olympics.’
‘It’s true,’ Knight said. ‘I saw the same thing.’
‘Denton was furious,’ his mother told him. ‘He refused to give Daring any more money, and they parted badly.’
Definitely not what Daring told me, Knight thought, and then asked, ‘When was this?’
‘Two, maybe three months ago,’ Amanda replied. ‘We’d just got back from Crete and …’
She began to choke again. ‘We didn’t know it, but Crete was our honeymoon, Peter. I’ll always think of it that way,’ she said, and broke down.
Knight listened for several agonising moments, and then said, ‘Mother, is anyone there with you?’
‘No,’ she said in a very small voice. ‘Can you come, Peter?’
Knight felt horrible. ‘Mother, I desperately want to, but I’ve lost another nanny and …’
She snorted in disbelief. ‘Another one?’
‘She just up and quit on me half an hour ago,’ Knight complained. ‘I’ve got to work every day of the Olympics, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve used every nanny agency in the city, and now I’m afraid that none of them will send anyone over.’
There was a long silence on the phone that prompted Knight to say, ‘Mother?’
‘I’m here,’ Amanda said, sounding as composed as she’d been since she’d learned of Marshall’s death. ‘Let me look into it.’
‘No,’ he protested. ‘You’re not …’
‘It will give me something to do besides work,’ she insisted. ‘I need something to do that’s outside myself and the company, Peter, or I think I’ll turn mad, or to drink, or to sleeping pills and I can’t stand the thought of any of those options.’
Chapter 31
AT THAT SAME moment, inside the British Museum, upstairs in the reception hall outside his new exhibit about the ancient Olympics, Dr James Daring felt like dancing to his good fortune as he roamed triumphantly among the crowd of London’s high and mighty gathered to see his work.
It has been a good night. No, a great night!
Indeed, the museum curator had received high praise from the critics who’d come to see the installation. They’d called it audacious and convincing, a reinterpretation of the ancient Olympics that managed to comment in a completely relevant way about the state of the modern Games.
Even better, several impressed patrons had told him that they wanted to sponsor and buy advertising on Secrets of the Past.
What did that dead arsehole Sir Denton Marshall know? Daring thought caustically. Absolutely nothing.
Feeling vindicated, basking in the glow of a job well done, a job that had gone better than according to plan, Daring went to the bar and ordered another vodka Martini to celebrate his exhibit – and more.
Much more.
Indeed, after getting the cocktail – and fretting sympathetically yet again with one of the Museum’s big bene factors about Marshall’s shocking and horrible passing – Daring eagerly cast his attention about the reception.
Where was she?
The television star looked until he spotted a delightfully feline woman. Her hair was ginger-coloured and swept above her pale shoulders, which were bared in a stunning grey cocktail dress that highlighted her crazy emerald eyes. Daring had a thing for redheads with sparkling green eyes.
She did rather look like his sister in several respects, the curator thought. The way she tilted her head when she was amused, like now, as she held a long-stemmed champagne glass and flirted with a man much older than her. He looked familiar. Who was he?
No matter, Daring thought, looking again at Petra. She was saucy, audacious, a freak. The curator felt a thrill go through him. Look at her handling that man, making what were obviously scripted moves seem effortless in their spontaneity. Saucy. Audacious. Freak.
Petra seemed to hear his thoughts.
She turned from her conversation, spotted Daring across the crowd, and flashed him an expression so filled with hunger and promise that he shuddered as if in anticipation of great pleasure. After letting her gaze linger on him for a moment longer, Petra batted her eyelids and returned her attention to the other man. She put her hand on his chest, laughed again, and then excused herself.
Petra angled her way towards Daring, never once looking at him. She got another drink and moved back to the dessert table, where Daring joined her, trying to seem interested in the crème brûlée.