The Staircase: A haunting romantic thriller Read online

  “Wonderful. A pretty home in which to live.”

  “Did you see your portrait?”

  Helena looked at him blankly. “My what?”

  “The picture of you opposite the bed, painted by the eleventh Vicomte.”

  Helena pealed with laughter. “Now who’s getting carried away! It was nothing like me.”

  “I thought it was, very.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  They got into the car and Hal opened the sun roof, then bent to kiss her. “The Vicomte may have dreamed of you, Helena, but I have the reality here beside me. I don’t know whose wife you were, when, but will you be mine now?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I really will, Hal. For all of my waking life.”

  “That’s an odd way of saying yes, but who cares. Here’s to the future Mrs Tymon.”

  And with that Hal accelerated into the sunshine smiling more happily than Helena could ever remember.

  The engagement party was held in John Holley’s beautiful Georgian house five miles from Stow Wells, and was packed with friends and relations of both families. John Holley, his face a permanent grin, served champagne throughout the evening and there was a discotheque in a marquee erected near the lake.

  “Never thought she’d do it,” Helena could hear him confiding to his closest friends.

  “And she most certainly wouldn’t if you’d been given your head,” retorted her mother. “Talk about over-kill!”

  “As a matter of fact,” answered John, pretending to be pompous, “I do believe that if it hadn’t been for certain advice I gave Helena recently, she would still be dithering.”

  “Oh, and what advice was that?” said Sheila.

  John laid a finger to his lips. “Top secret, my dear, top secret.”

  *

  Dawn was coming up over the lake as the last guest departed and Helena said goodbye to Hal, sensibly going home in a taxi.

  “See you tomorrow?” he asked.

  “You can be sure of it.”

  She turned, then, to go into the house but out of the corner of her eye spotted her father, a bottle of champagne in one hand and two glasses in the other.

  “Helena,” he called, “come and have one last drink with your proud father.”

  They sat side by side on the seat set at the lake’s edge, giving a perfect view of the dawn deepening scarlet over the parkland.

  “Well, my girl,” said John with a laugh, “there is something I really have to ask you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you remember when you telephoned from France and told me you had met somebody else but didn’t know how to contact him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, did you take my advice? Did you seek him out?”

  Helena looked at him over the rim of her champagne glass. “Yes, as a matter of fact I did.”

  John smiled knowingly. “And when you saw him again you found he didn’t match up to Hal?”

  “No, Daddy, not quite. As a matter of fact he and Hal are so different that one simply can’t compare them. They come from two different worlds.”

  “But you’ve finished with him now?”

  Helena gave a slow, secretive smile. “In a way.”

  Her father frowned deeply. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Helena stood up, her face glowing in the dawning.

  “It means, dearest Daddy, that from now on I shall see him only in my dreams.”

  John’s face cleared. “Thank goodness for that,” he said, and finished the champagne as Helena went slowly towards the house.

  If you enjoyed The Staircase, please share your thoughts on Amazon by leaving a review.

  For more free and discounted eBooks every week, sign up to our newsletter.

  Follow us on Twitter and Instagram.