Suddenly sensitive, I put a hand to his arm again and said, "You know about Sally, don"t you? You know..."
He nodded. "She was too much of a risk for them," he said. "For him, his family, the people he works with in MI whatever it is. MI5? MI6?"
Military Intelligence...
"She was trying to blackmail him," I said.
"That figures," said Charlie. "Will and his folks are well-regarded enough that she could cause a lot of damage if she spoke to the Press."
"About what?" I asked. I put my hand to my spinning head, as if I could physically suppress all the thoughts bouncing around inside my skull.
"The Cabal," said Charlie. "The Cabal and Sally Fielding."
Sally Fielding had been the youngest daughter from another land-owning English family. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she had always been one to push the boundaries. Cambridge had given her new boundaries, and new opportunities to push.
"She latched onto Ethan," said Charlie. "Tall, blond, Hollywood good looks, built like an American football player... what is it, a quarterback? It was somebody"s birthday, a party. Ethan was always surrounded by the girls, and he had one hanging onto his arm when Sally spotted him. She just went up to him, leaned up to kiss him on the cheek and whispered something in his ear and that was it."
"What did she whisper?"
Charlie shrugged. "I"ve no idea. A promise? A joke? I really don"t know, but from that point on Ethan was hers for the taking. They were inseparable for the next week. I don"t think he went to college at all that week. I don"t think they left his room."
"So what happened?"
"Will happened. We had this thing. The three of us..."
"The Cabal."
"That"s what Sally called us. We used to party. None of us was interested in serious relationships back then. We just wanted a bit of fun. And there was plenty to be had. A girl would be with me one day, then with Will or Ethan. Kind of pa.s.s the parcel. That"s what Will said once. "Time to pa.s.s the parcel"."
It all sounded a bit seedy, but they were young men at college... it was hardly shocking, other than it was my big brother we were talking about.
"So Will kind of a.s.sumed that would be the case with Sally, too."
"But Ethan didn"t want to pa.s.s?"
Charlie shook his head. "I don"t think it was love or anything, but he was certainly having a lot of fun. So no, he didn"t want to pa.s.s her on."
"So...?"
"So Will took what he wanted. He always gets what he wants, didn"t you realize that? You"re just another challenge, another box to tick. Just like Sally was."
I ignored the jibe. "What happened?"
"Another party," said Charlie. "She was there, hanging onto Ethan like she"d been superglued. And Will just went up, kissed her on the cheek and whispered something in her ear just like she"d done with Ethan. She looked at him, then at Ethan and me, and she said, "Really? He said that?""
"Said what?"
"That we liked to party. All of us. Together. That Ethan had said she"d be up for it."
"And she was?"
"Not at first," said Charlie. "She went off. Vanished for a couple of days. I only found out later that she"d shut herself away in her flat and Will had gone there and persuaded her."
"To...?"
"He had this place. A small house in Cambridge, owned by the family. We took her there. He had a room. Kitted out. Chains, a rack. Iron loops set in the floor and walls. Floggers and whips, and big wooden paddles."
I almost stopped him there. I didn"t need to know more. Ethan...? Will...? Charlie? The man I"d lived with for a year... I knew he liked it rough, but...
"I tried to stop them. I said to her she didn"t have to do this, it was okay, just a bit of fun, we could all go for a drink and a laugh if she wanted. But... but there was something in her eyes. She"d found something. Something new to her, a new thrill, a new way to break through the boundaries that had stifled her all her life. She just took my face in her hands and kissed me hard, and then... things kind of happened, we got carried away..."
He had been looking away as he spoke, but now he peered into my eyes, as if seeking forgiveness for what he was about to tell me.
"She wanted to do it," he said. "She rushed into that room, like a child in a playroom full of new toys. Will told her how it would be, he gave her a safe word. As soon as she said that word she would be released, no questions asked. I stood in the doorway and watched. He went to her, took her chin in his hand"
He"d done that to me... held me like that!
"and said to her, "Just choose a safe word. Say it to me now, once, so we all know what it is." So she said, "Cabal. That"s my safe word. You three: the Cabal.""
Charlie paused then for so long that I thought that was all he was going to tell me. "She never said it," he finally continued. "She was there for more than two weeks, and she refused to use the safe word. We kept her there in chains and we whipped her and abused her. We did everything... had her in every way we could imagine. Over and over and over again."
"And she didn"t want to stop?" I was shocked. My heart was pounding. It was hard to imagine that these three men had done something like this. Hard to see what was wrong or right about a situation so far from my experience.
"She was reported missing," said Charlie. "Her family. There was a big police hunt and Ethan and I wanted to set her free, but... but Will insisted that we should honor the agreement. He said she was in control and we were duty-bound to honor her wishes."
I shook my head, struggling to take it all in.
"Have you heard of the Stockholm Syndrome?" asked Charlie. "It"s when someone who"s been kidnapped or taken hostage becomes emotionally and psychologically attached to their captor. There was a newspaper heiress in the "70s who was kidnapped and then a couple of months later she carried out an armed robbery with the gang that had taken her."
"Patty Hearst," I said. I remembered her getting an official pardon from President Clinton just before he left office. Her defense that she was suffering Stockholm Syndrome hadn"t stopped her being imprisoned for years, but it had finally earned her the pardon. "Are you saying Sally was like Patty Hearst? She became, what, brainwashed?"
"I don"t know," said Charlie. "All I know is that she never used that safe word and so Will wouldn"t let us set her free."
"So what happened?"
"We were raided. The police and some security guys hired by the Fielding family. We were arrested, locked up, threatened with all kinds of charges: abduction, aggravated a.s.sault, rape... I forget all the terms they threw at us. We could have been locked away for years, and our families would have been scandalized!"
"But you weren"t..."
He shook his head.
"The power of the Bentinck-Stanleys," he said. "They rolled up, their lawyers argued our corner, favors were called in, influence applied... All charges were dropped. Sally refused to testify. She said it was all consensual, which I guess it was."
"You guess?"
He wouldn"t meet my look, then. "I don"t know," he said. "It"s all a blur. It"s like it happened to someone else. She insisted it was consensual, and I suppose that"s what matters, isn"t it? She said she"d orchestrated it, that she wanted it, that she"d still be there if they hadn"t so rudely interrupted.
"She was waiting for us when we walked out of that police station. We came out, flanked by the Bentinck-Stanley legal team and she was just standing there in a little denim skirt and t-shirt, clutching her bag. She was like a puppy. If she"d had a tail to wag it"d have been going twenty to the dozen when she laid eyes on the Honorable Will.
"He just walked past her, as if she wasn"t there. He was done with her. I think that was the first time he"d really understood what kind of power his family had, and that it was all his. He didn"t need groupies like Sally Fielding, who were more trouble than they were worth. He suddenly had a much larger horizon."
"So what happened to her?"
"Ethan and I tried to help, but it was Will she fixated on. That Stockholm thing, that puppy-dog attachment to her captor. Like one of those charismatic religious leaders: he couldn"t do anything wrong in her eyes. She was hungry for him, driven. Obsessed."
I felt that heat in my cheeks then, and it was my turn to look away, down, anywhere but meet Charlie"s look.
"He does that," he said. "He has that kind of effect on girls. You"re not the first, you know."
I met his look then, and the angry flash in my eyes stopped him in his tracks. "It"s not like that," I said. I"m strong. I"m not weak like Sally Fielding was. I know my own mind.
"She couldn"t handle it," he went on. "She"d always been a bit, well, erratic. She found ways of coping. A bit of c.o.ke, a bit of speed, the occasional joint. Nothing much at first, but when Will kept blanking her she spiraled. Alcohol and heroin, and then she ended up sectioned under the Mental Health Act, locked up in a loony bin. She"d already been disowned by her family by then too much scandal and depravity for them to come to terms with."
"And you blame Will?"
"If I try to put a positive spin on it, I"d point out that he could have intervened before she went out of control."
"And a less positive spin?"
"Someone turned her family against her. You don"t just drop your own daughter like that. And somebody followed her, watched her, feeding her paranoia, ensuring that she broke."
"You"re saying Will did that?"
"Oh no," said Charlie, raising his hands defensively. "Of course Will didn"t do that. But the people around him, protecting him...? What do you think? Who benefited from Sally being locked away and treated as mad and delusional?"
I shook my head. It was all too much. I didn"t know what to think.
"And I"ll just say one more thing before I shut my whiney posh little voice up and leave you to think things over," he said. "Who do you think benefited from Sally Fielding"s death, once she"d re-emerged? Had you wondered about that?"
I"d wondered about little else. Sometimes at the front of my mind, turning things over and over. But more often, I"m ashamed to admit, it was something I"d been burying away at the back of my mind, suppressing the speculation, the doubts, the fears.
But it had still been there.
A knot of uncertainty, of tight, tight tension.
That time... our first real date, when we"d been talking about Sally Fielding"s death. When, quite casually, Will had mentioned his friend in Interpol and that I might be needed to make a statement about Will"s whereabouts that evening.
We"d been at the hotel in the Alps, having dinner in his private dining room, having hot s.e.x up against the window, that startling contrast between cold and heat. We"d spent the night together.
I"d been his perfect alibi.
He should have known not to call me then. He should have had some kind of extra sense, some way of detecting my state of mind. He should never have called me when I"d just spoken to Charlie and I"d had just long enough to go over things in my head and get more and more angry that I"d been his G.o.d-d.a.m.ned alibi and that he was using me, manipulating me, that, as everyone kept on telling me, Will Bentinck-Stanley always got what he wanted and what he"d wanted, for a time at least, had been me.
He should have known.
He really should have known.
Mid-morning, Tuesday, and I was staring at my screen, an email open but the words just a blur. It was something from the head of marketing, but that was as far as I"d reached.
I couldn"t concentrate. I was still angry, but now I"d reached that stage where I was trying to calm myself down and do something positive.
What have you learned, Trudy? What have you learned from all this?
That inner voice, guiding and prompting me. If only I had an answer!
I"d learned that I didn"t like being pushed around, manipulated. I didn"t like being part of something bigger, where things happen and I don"t quite know why.
I"d learned that I wanted to be able to trust people close to me, and I didn"t like suddenly having to question their motives. Even my brother...
I"d learned and this was an uncomfortable one for me to acknowledge I"d learned that, counter to all the other things I"d learned, I liked the thrill, the adrenalin rush. That time in the church yard after Ethan and Eleanor"s wedding: me and Charlie and urgent, hot s.e.x. And Will: international man of mystery. The hints he dropped, the adventures he had... it excited me, there"s no getting away from that.
But Sally had died, been killed, and Charlie had as much as said that Will, or the people around him, were responsible, which meant that the whole trip to the Alps, that magical, stunningly romantic experience, had all been a ruse to give Will an alibi.
I"d learned My phone went, and for a second I was completely thrown, startled by the sudden noise, my eyes slowly coming back into focus on the words on my screen: ...higher than average bookshop returns mean that...
The phone.
I looked at it, then lifted the receiver.
"Trudy Parsons, Editorial."
"h.e.l.lo, Trudy Parsons-Editorial," said a familiar voice, and for an instant I smiled, relaxed but then I caught myself, angry that my first response to that voice had been to melt. Such a G.o.d-d.a.m.ned schoolgirl response.
"Yes?" I kept my tone business-like. I wasn"t going to give him anything.
A slight pause, then he said, "It"s me. Erm, Will. Will Bentinck-Stanley? Your sister-in-law"s brother, whatever that makes me. Your brother-in-law in-law?"
This was fl.u.s.tered Will, the Will he used to face situations where he wasn"t sure what response he"d get. Another layer, hiding what she"d thought of as the real Will. But was even that just another facade?
"Yes?"
"I... erm. That is..."
You wowed me and played me and then you just reeled me in.
I let him stumble on to fill the silence.
"I was wondering if, you know, perhaps you might like lunch? I know a place."
He always knew a place. If I said I wanted lunch at Le Gavroche he"d be able to get us the best table at the drop of a hat, I was sure.
"I have sandwiches," I said. And then I went on, hating those silences. "It"s not a good time, okay? It"s Tuesday and I"m busy and you don"t help me think straight." What did it being Tuesday have to do with anything, for G.o.d"s sake?
"Well, I do apologize." A jokey tone: he"d taken that as a compliment. d.a.m.n it.
"Not like that," I said. "Just... Just. Okay? Look, I"ve got to go. A million and one things."