42
Oliver Fox had now told Mrs. Skorbatova all about the difficulties he had got himself into in the days when he had been Oliver Fox, and she had gazed at him throughout without saying a word. She was obviously interested, though; particularly, it seemed to him, in the parts that involved his smiling his smile, and brushing aside the lock of hair that from time to time fell into his smiling brown eyes. And above all in the parts where he recounted how negatively so many people reacted to the very mention of the name Oliver Fox. Each time it made her smile in her turn and raise her eyebrows, and sometimes lightly slap his hand.
Now Mrs. Toppler’s hand was on his other arm. “You’re a genius, Dr. Wilfred!” she said. “No one else has been able to get a toot out of her! How did you do it? You don’t speak Russian, do you?”
“No,” said Dr. Wilfred. “I just tell her…” He turned back to Mrs. Skorbatova and whispered in her ear. “Mrs. Toppler wants to know what I tell you to make you laugh,” he said. “But that’s our little secret. The fact that I’m Oliver Fox.” Mrs. Skorbatova laughed again, and gave him a little punch on his arm.
“This is what we need to replace Christian,” said Mrs. Toppler. “Someone like you, who can get along with people. Even with an ice princess who can’t speak English, but who just happens to be married to one of the richest men in the world. You seem to be able to do anything! And stay so calm about it all! Look at me. I’m in such a state! Can’t eat, can’t think — and all I’ve got to say is these two pages! ‘Our guest of honor tonight needs no introduction…’ Whereas you…”
She stopped and looked around.
“Your lecture!” she said. “The script of your lecture! Where is it?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “My lecture.”
“You hadn’t forgotten about it?”
“Of course not,” he said, though in fact just for the moment he had, under the pressure of events.
“So where is it?” she said in alarm. “The script — the text — the words?”
He shrugged. “Inside my head.”
“You’ve learned it by heart?”
“No, I thought I’d just make it up as I went along.”
She gazed at him.
“It’ll be fresher that way,” he said. “More spontaneous. I’ll take myself by surprise.”
“I’ve sat next to a whole slew of guests of honor since this place opened,” she said. “But I’ve never met one like you. Well, if you can make things up as you go along, so can I! And here’s an idea I’ve just had, straight out of the oven and onto the table, still bubbling…”
She put her hand on his arm and began to murmur something that he had to bend close to hear.
* * *
Nikki watched Oliver Fox leaning with his head lowered and then sitting back in surprise. And in one of those eureka moments that the real Dr. Norman Wilfred, she knew, had devoted his life to bringing some order to, she understood why Oliver Fox was so astonished, and why Mrs. Toppler was now waiting so attentively for his response.
Not possible, though! No, no, no! Not possible!
But it was possible. Anything was possible. In the last twenty-four hours that horrible trickster with the modestly surprised look on his face had proved it over and over again.
This was her flash of insight: that Mrs. Toppler had just invited Mr. Oliver Fox to become the next director of the Fred Toppler Foundation.
Her flash of insight was followed by a second flash. Of anger. At Oliver Fox, at Mrs. Toppler, at herself. And at last she knew how to explain to Mrs. Toppler.
The passport. She would simply show Mrs. Toppler the passport. The passport would say it all, just as it had to her.
43
“Suitcase,” said Annuka Vos into her phone, very loudly and clearly. She was standing in the floodlit garden of the villa, to make sure her words got through with a minimum of interference. “Stolen. Has been. Suitcase. Mine. Yes…? Oh, for heaven’s sake! There must be someone in the Greek police who can speak English better than this!
“Yes, but this is the fifth time I’ve phoned you! Fifth! Five! Phoned! Five times! Oh, never mind …
“Busy — yes — I know you are … An event — yes — I know…! I know, I know! Big event! I know! But I have been traveling all day and I have no clean clothes to change into. Clean clothes! None! No toothbrush! Brush for teeth — no, none! No nightdress! Dress for night! Not got it!
“Stolen — yes! And for the fifth time, the name of the person who stole it is Evers, E-V-E-R-S. Georgina Francesca Evers … Yes, because it’s in her passport … Her passport was in her handbag … Not my handbag—her handbag! Not stolen, no, not the handbag! Left behind when she fled! Fled! F-L-E-D! Ran! Left! Went! Oh, let it go, it doesn’t matter …
“Yes, because I found it under the lounger … The lounger … Forget it … Also in the bag were her money and her credit cards, so she won’t have gone far. It can’t be very difficult to find her … And she’ll be easy to spot because she’s wearing a mosquito net … Mosquito … M-O-S-Q … Hello? You haven’t hung up on me?”
* * *
Georgie was not, in fact, all that easy to spot, even dressed from head to foot in mosquito netting, because she was hiding behind a clump of broom. It was true, though, that she hadn’t gone far. She had started picking her way down the track, but in bare feet it was like walking on broken glass, and it was plain that she would be permanently lamed long before she reached any possible destination. Also she was frightened of somehow missing Oliver when he at last arrived. Not that she had any great desire, now that she had discovered he was expecting her to share their week together with the cleaning woman, ever to see him again, except perhaps, once she had recovered some shoes, to kick him in the balls. But Oliver and whatever vehicle he eventually arrived in seemed to be her only hope of ever getting away from this horrible house and its horrible occupant. So she had picked her painful way back to the villa, and sat down to wait on the dry, stony ground behind the clump of broom opposite. She was so close to the villa, in fact, that she could see the woman standing in the garden, shouting into her phone again. She could even hear some of the words. “Suitcase … stolen … five … passport … handbag…”
Her passport, yes, and her handbag. That was another reason for staying until Oliver got here.
The woman went back into the villa and slammed the door. The garden lighting went out, and the first faint dusting of stars appeared overhead. The ground that Georgie was sitting on became harder and harder. The emptiness of her stomach became more and more painfully noticeable. Ants spread through every part of her mosquito netting.
And then, at last, she heard the distant whine of an engine laboring uphill in low gear. At each turn in the road it grew louder. A spill of moving light appeared on the track below her, then two blinding beams, rocking and dipping over the potholes. She struggled to her feet, so stiff that she could scarcely manage it.
She hesitated for a moment as the taxi stopped in front of her, uncertain whether she was going to throw her arms around Oliver as she had once so longed to, or whether she was going to stick with her revised plan of inflicting some kind of painful injury on him as best she could in bare feet, or whether she was going to embrace him first and then kick him.
As Oliver got out of the taxi the garden of the villa lit up like fairyland once again, and it wasn’t Oliver. It was Wilfred. Of course. Wilfred back yet again. She might have guessed from the soapy look on his face when he went that she hadn’t really managed to get rid of him.