‘Well, I do hope she and Marcus stay together. She’s a good influence on him.’
Simon nodded silently as he took a sip of his brandy. ‘I bet you miss your grandfather.’
‘I do, very much.’
‘Were you close?’
‘Extremely. I know Jamie misses him as well, although he doesn’t say much. He was the man of the house, his father figure. Mind you, there’s lots of things I’m discovering that I didn’t know about him.’
‘Really? Like what? His life seems to have been pretty well documented.’
‘William Fielding was telling me only last week before he died that my grandfather originally hailed from Ireland. In fact, he told me all sorts of things about him. Whether they were true or not, who knows? Fact gets mixed with fiction when you go back seventy-odd years.’
‘Yes,’ Simon remarked as casually as he could. ‘Did Sir James tell you stories of the old days? I’ll bet he knew the great and the good.’
‘He did, yes. His letters are all festering away in the attic in the house in Dorset. When filming is finished I’m going to go down there and sort them out.’ Zoe stifled a yawn.
‘You’re tired, I’ll leave you alone.’ Simon drained his brandy glass and stood up. ‘Thanks for the drink.’
‘No problem. Thanks for amusing my son. Night.’
‘Night, Zoe.’
As Simon went up the stairs to his room, he was as convinced as he’d ever been that Zoe Harrison had no idea about her grandfather’s past. He hoped, for both their sakes, it stayed that way.
Despite both of their flats feeling unsafe, Marcus and Joanna had no choice but to opt for Crouch End that night – as Marcus pointed out, she at least had new locks on her door.
‘How do you fancy spending the weekend after next in a lovely country hotel in Ireland?’ Marcus asked her in bed, after he’d pulled a duvet over them to muffle their voices.
‘What? Why?’ Joanna asked.
‘Because I think I’ve pinpointed the place where dear old Sir Jim may have originally hailed from.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Jamie and I had a chat. He told me how Sir Jim had spun him some tale about this magical place in Ireland where a man and a woman had fallen in love. He showed me the place on the map.’
‘Where was it?’
‘According to Jamie, it was a small village in West Cork, called Rosscarbery. Apparently this house stands alone, right out in the bay. I’ll make some calls on Monday, get the travel agent to recommend a good hotel. Even if it turns out to be a red herring, it’s a great excuse for a holiday – and for getting away from our bugged flats. It’d be even better if you could take an extra day off, then it wouldn’t be such a rush to get there and back.’
‘I’ll try,’ she said, ‘but my boss isn’t exactly in a generous mood with me.’
‘Just tell him you’re uncovering an IRA plot.’
‘Yeah, garden plots maybe,’ Joanna said with a snort of derision.
23
‘I’ve had a call from the palace. I’m picking His Royal Highness up at eight tonight.’
‘Yes.’ Zoe nodded distractedly to Simon as he pulled the car out of the drive, her gaze still fixed on the receding figure of Jamie standing on the steps of his school. She sat in the front of the Jaguar, formality dispensed with. It felt better like this.
‘You know, I think Jamie was more sorry to say goodbye to you than he was to me,’ said Zoe.
‘That’s not true at all, but we did have fun together. There are some bright spots to this job after all.’ Simon headed onto the motorway in the direction of London. ‘Zoe?’
‘Yes.’
