Under His Influence Read online

  “Oh, of course, yes, I’m so happy with you, you must never think I’m not. But…” Anna paused delicately. She had no idea how she was going to phrase this. The rich steam of the coffee, unsettling her stomach beyond tolerance, forced the words out on her behalf. “I can’t bear the smell of coffee at the moment.”

  John laughed. “Is that it? We can have tea instead.”

  Anna placed a hand over her mouth, inhaling deeply through her nostrils until the queasiness passed.

  “I haven’t stopped taking my pills,” she faltered.

  “Your…No. I didn’t ask you to. I want a family, Anna, as you know, but I’m happy to wait until?”

  “Looks like you won’t have to,” she blurted.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I suppose even the pill isn’t one hundred percent effective, is it? Or perhaps I forgot to take them one day. I don’t know. All I know is—I took a test. And it was positive.”

  She felt almost apologetic as she spoke the words, but John did not appear to require any softening of what might be considered a blow.

  “Darling! Do you mean you…?”

  “I’m sure I am, John. I feel awful, and I can’t eat certain things, and, and, well, I know I am. I just know it.”

  He stood up, took the cafetière and coffee cups to the sink and emptied them before returning to pull Anna up by her hands and squeeze her so tightly she squealed.

  “You’re brilliant,” he told her, his voice thick with emotion. “Brilliant and beautiful, and I love you.”

  Anna was crying now, her tears of relief spilling and splashing onto John’s silk tie. “I was afraid you’d be angry. But I’m happy too. And scared—so scared. But mainly happy. And I love you too.”

  “He or she is going to be the most incredible child the world has ever seen,” John said, and Anna giggled. John was already the stereotypical father, bursting with pride. Suddenly she felt that everything was going to be fine—more than fine, in fact. Everything was going to be wonderful.

  John sighed and held her by the shoulders, searching her face, his eyes unaccountably troubled. “Damn. Now there’s no way I can leave you alone for a fortnight.”

  “Leave me? For a fortnight?”

  “Sorry, darling, it can’t be helped. I have to go to Russia for two weeks in August. There’s a man there who can help me develop my machine and I really have no choice.”

  “Can’t I come with you?”

  “Not really. And I don’t want you flying in your condition.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “Seriously, Anna, this is not a nice place I’m going to. It’s very remote, very inhospitable. It’s a military place. They won’t want to give you security clearance. I’m sorry, darling, I wish I could. But you have to stay here. But I can’t let you stay here alone. If anything happened, I’d never forgive myself.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Oh, Anna, you can’t. What if you invite Mimi? Have her stay for a few days.”

  “You…Really?” Anna half frowned. “I thought you didn’t like her.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think of her. You like her. She’s your friend. She will take care of you—I trust her to do that.”

  “That’s, well, thanks.” Anna could think of nothing more to say and she beamed up into John’s fond, misty eyes.

  “We’re going to be parents,” he said with elation. “The best parents. This kid will have everything. Damn, is that the time? So sorry, darling—I’d love to take some time off to celebrate, but I’ll book a table somewhere special for tonight. Or perhaps we could go down to the Heath again. Just like our first date. Would you like that?”

  Anna nodded, blissfully happy, too full of emotion to answer. He kissed her gently, then made a move for his briefcase, step full of spring, eyes full of gleam.

  “It’s nice,” Mimi said dispassionately, accepting a mug of steaming coffee and seating herself at an antique card table in the drawing room. “He has good taste. But then, we knew that, didn’t we? Since he married you.”

  Anna sipped at a glass of plain water with lemon and nibbled on a ginger biscuit. Eight months to go, she told herself, trying to accept that the nausea would pass and it was all worth it. She had been prepared for morning sickness, but not for the bone-deep fatigue and the bizarrely disturbed sleep. The dreams. Thick and fast, every night, and not one of them comprehensible or coherent enough to describe afterwards.

  “I’m going to turn up the air conditioning,” she commented, then she nodded on her way past Mimi’s chair. “He does love beautiful things. Not that I’d class myself as a beautiful thing. Gosh, that sounds awful, doesn’t it? I’m not one of his Louis the Umpteenth carriage clocks.”

  “I wonder where he acquired all these qualities. Fabulous wealth, fabulous taste and a scientific genius to boot. He’s superhuman. Does he plug himself into some kind of generator at night?”

  Anna forced a laugh over the bilious waves. “You know, you might be on to something there. He has more energy than anyone has a right to.”

  “So I suppose he’s a dynamo in the sack as well then?”

  Anna blushed, her silence revealing the answer.

  “God, he makes me sick,” muttered Mimi sotto voce, but it was Anna who had to run to the nearest bathroom and vomit.

  “Why don’t you go and lie down,” Mimi suggested once Anna had washed her face and sipped a bit more water. “And I’ll show myself around.”

  Anna nodded gratefully and staggered off to the bedroom.

  Mimi’s journalistic instincts told her that, in any five-storey mansion belonging to a mysterious millionaire, the most interesting things would be found at the very top or very bottom of the house. She decided to begin at the attic, even going to the lengths of finding a stepladder and poking her head into the loft, but all she found was rolled-up lengths of insulation material and dust balls big enough to swallow any passing mice whole.

  Most of the upstairs rooms were guest bedroom suites, impeccably styled and furnished with an eclectic mix of antique and modern pieces. Mimi opened all the unlocked drawers and cupboards, but found mostly mothballs and coat hangers, scented pouches and secondhand paperbacks. On the second floor, she found a huge, fully-equipped gym.

  I’d have put that in the basement. So what’s in the basement?

  Down past the kitchen, past the sunroom that opened into the extensive London garden, down into a chilly stone space filled with dusty racks of wine, and then there was a flagstone with a metal ring set in it, indicating that even lower depths lay beyond.

  Mimi crouched and tried to pull at the metal ring, but it was far too heavy; indeed, the flagstone seemed cemented to those that surrounded it. Disappointed, she sat back on her heels, presuming that whatever was underneath was no longer in use. She sighed heavily. Nothing incriminating so far. Perhaps it was all in his City office. Whatever it was. If she even knew what she was looking for, that would be a start.

  She made her way back upstairs, looking for John’s home office but finding it locked. She tried the door handle a few times, then sprang back in alarm when a voice behind her spoke.

  “Why you want go in there? Is private. The master say no go in.”

  She turned to find herself facing an unblinking, soberly-dressed woman with sharp cheekbones. This must be the fearsome Luana. I can see why Anna is so freaked out by her.

  “Oh. You must be Luana. Hello. I’m Mimi, Anna’s best friend.”

  Luana ignored the ingratiating behaviour and failed to take the proffered hand.

  “I am servant, you do not be my friend.”

  “Oh.” Mimi shook her head, a little bemused by the woman’s odd manner.

  “Why you want this room?”

  “Oh…I don’t really. Just taking a look around. Getting my bearings.”

  “Where is mistress?”

  “Asleep.”

  “Oh.” Luana rolled her eyes a little. “Always
asleep.”

  “Well, she is pregnant. I suppose she’s tired. Anyway, lovely to meet you, goodbye.” Mimi rushed down the corridor, looking for the sanctuary of her room so she could plan her next moves.

  Later, having overindulged in ice cream and chick flicks in the huge home cinema, lying on cushions and chatting sleepily in front of the dark screen, Mimi said, “Luana is a creepy woman, isn’t she?”

  “I told you she was.”

  “I totally get what you mean now. I wonder why John hired her. He must have had his pick of high-end housekeepers.”

  “I don’t know. You should invite Liam over some evening. Are you two, y’know, seeing each other now?”

  “We’ve got eyes,” Mimi teased. “We’ve always seen each other. But yes. I suppose. In a way. A no-strings kind of way.”

  “Aww, I think he wants a proper girlfriend. He needs a woman. He’s such a great big boy, isn’t he?”

  “He certainly is,” Mimi said with a dirty laugh, and Anna lobbed a cushion at Mimi’s head.

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “What does John do when he doesn’t sleep at night?” Mimi hoped the quick change of tack would catch Anna off guard.

  “I’ve no idea. Works on his project.”

  “Is it quiet? Doesn’t it keep you awake?”

  “What, in this house? It’s practically got its own postcode, Mimi. I don’t hear a thing. Besides, that basement is completely soundproof.”

  Mimi felt a burn of sudden excitement, her throat constricting.

  “Is five storeys not enough? What does he need a basement for?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been down there. John’s very protective of his workspace.” She laughed indulgently. “Oh God, I really miss him. It’s only been a day. That’s so pathetic, isn’t it?”

  “You’re newlyweds. Honeymoon phase and all that,” Mimi replied, trying to sound calmly philosophical while her heart raced. There must be another way into that basement. A door? An exterior entrance? I’m looking in the garden tomorrow.

  For a man who loved order and everything in its right place, John Stone kept an astonishingly untidy garden. Or perhaps it was deliberate styling—the artfully overgrown look, Mimi mused, her legs battered by rain-wetted stalks as she tried to negotiate the almost-invisible stone path through the jungle of rhododendron bushes and foxgloves. Anna was napping again, and Mimi had the whole of Sunday afternoon to kill before Liam arrived for dinner and more. Mimi was particularly looking forward to the “more.” But first, she had her mission. She wrenched thickets apart with her gloved hands, peering through them to find only more thicket or, for variation, the bark of a tree. Fat raindrops dropped from overhanging leaves, frizzing her hair and dampening her clothes, but Mimi was undaunted, determined to find a way into John’s secret recess. After an hour of painstaking foraging, the rain began again, and Mimi heaved a sigh, deciding to call off the search for now, but on her way back to the house, she heard echoey dripping underneath a pile of leaves and, on pushing the wet mulch aside with the toe of her ruined suede shoe, she saw a metal grille set into the uneven paving. And beneath the grille lay steps, leading to a wooden door with a large old-fashioned keyhole.

  The key had to be in John’s office. It was Sunday, so Luana was not working. Now was her chance. She had to take it.

  After racing up to the office, Mimi used every one of the tricks she had learned from investigative journalist friends to pick the lock. The one that finally worked was the good old hairgrip manoeuvre, and Mimi gave a silent cheer when the door eased noiselessly open, revealing cupboard and filing cabinets, a desk and computer, and very little else. So many places to look. But she would have to be methodical. Ransacking the place would be bound to lead to trouble.

  It turned out to be stupidly easy. The very first drawer she opened—in the computer desk—revealed a range of different keys. Most of them were small silver filing cabinet keys, but at the back was a heavy brass number with an ornate four-petalled handle. This had to be the one.

  She moved to grab it, but before she reached it, she found herself distracted by a dog-eared paperback book at the very back of the drawer. She held it aloft and squinted at the cover, which depicted a windswept woman with half her upper bodice missing, the torn fabric clenched in the fist of a very dark-browed and stormy-looking man.

  “Her Errant Lord,” she read. “Oh, John Stone, I can’t believe you’re a fan of the old-school bodice ripper.” She flicked through the pages, noticing that several paragraphs had been annotated, the sharp, angular pencil strokes matching John’s handwriting on other documents on the desk. He seemed to have made a list on the back cover. “Sweep girl off feet, blind with riches/affection, marry as soon as poss, get pregnant.”

  Mimi gasped. Had John copied his courtship style from the unreconstructed alpha jerk in the book? She found one of the highlighted passages and read it aloud.

  “I don’t know much, but I do know that life is short, love is rare and happiness has to be caught and caged when you find it.” She wondered if Anna had heard those very words from John’s lips. Weirder and weirder.

  She shuddered, put the book aside with an effort and turned her mind back to the key. She picked it up and kissed it before tiptoeing back down and out into the pouring rain.

  The grille needed a lot of jiggling and wrenching before it would shift, but eventually Mimi managed to drag it aside, revealing the small set of well-worn steps. She took the key from her jeans pocket and set forth, feeling like an explorer in ancient realms, her heart thudding and exultant. This was the real draw of journalism, she thought, this sense of discovery, of finding something that tilts the world on its axis, even if it is the relatively small-scale domestic world of her friend’s marriage. But with John’s research interests, this could be so much more…

  The key fitted the lock just as Mimi had hoped, and it took a matter of seconds to turn it and push open the creaking old wood. What lay beyond was…darkness.

  Profound and silent darkness, and cold. But not damp. Not at all damp. Mimi held the door open for a while, squinting into the relentless black, but she could make nothing out. It didn’t smell musty though, which was interesting. It was clear that it was a fully converted space, in frequent use, even if nothing could be seen.

  Mimi told herself that fear was unhelpful. Then she told herself the same thing again. If only her bumping heart and sweating palms would listen. She let the door swing to on its unoiled hinges and stood there for a moment, walled up in blackness, considering the next move. Feeling behind her for light switches, she came into contact only with smooth plastered wall. Her feet trod on cold flagstones and she dripped a small puddle around her as she shuffled about, feeling her way along the wall, trying to get a sense of the size and shape of the room, praying for a light switch that never came. Such silence. What does he do in here?

  Her toe bumped against something hard and flat and smooth—the side of a metal object, perhaps a cabinet, albeit a big one. It made a crashing sound so deafening in the vast bunker of quietness that Mimi cried out. When the last echoes died away, she took a shuddering breath. What kind of journalist am I? Why didn’t I bring a torch?

  “Yes, why didn’t you?”

  Mimi screamed and leapt into the air, clutching the metal object for support. She hadn’t imagined that voice. It was clear, low and absolutely real. It was John Stone, in here, somewhere.

  She dropped to her hands and knees and began scrabbling around the metal object, looking for a niche of some kind in which to conceal herself.

  “You can’t hide from me,” he said, his voice reminding her of an amused cat watching a mouse scurry blindly before pouncing at leisure. “I don’t need to see you to find you. I will sense you, Mimi. I’m sensing you right now. I know exactly where you are.”

  Kneeling beside the metal, pressed up to it as if for comfort, she spoke.

  “Put the light on then.”

  “I don’t need to.
Besides, I like having you at a disadvantage. That’s how I operate.”

  She heard his footsteps, the discreet tap-tap of high quality soles crossing stone, no hesitations, pure confidence in his stride. Before she could struggle to her feet, he was upon her, dragging her up and pinning her arms behind her, standing over her shoulder and speaking into her ear.

  “I knew you’d do this, Mimi. I set this up.”

  “You…didn’t go to Russia,” she panted, her rib cage bursting with the effort of keeping her heart inside it. “You were here…all along.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you. And now here you are. And here—” His tones switched from honeyed to snarling, “—you will stay.”

  “But why?” she blurted, trying to kick back at his shin and succeeding only in making him tighten his painful grip on her.

  “Why?” he crooned into her ear. “I’m not going to tell you that. Knowledge is power, isn’t it, Mimi? I don’t give power away. I like to keep it for myself.”

  “I was right about you!”

  “I hope that comforts you. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a chance. If you can find your way to the door without my catching you, I’ll let you go. What do you think? I can’t say fairer than that, can I? I’m not a complete bastard.”

  “This is a game to you.”

  “Yes. A lovely game. So much fun. Go on, then. Run along.” He jolted her forward, releasing her arms in the process so that she stumbled before finding her feet and trying to negotiate a path through the blinding black.

  It was useless, though, a maze in a nightmare. Everywhere she turned, he was in front of her, his warmth and scent warning her away, but whatever direction she took, he seemed to know in advance. He knows what I’m doing before I do. He is reading my mind. Or is he controlling it? I’m sunk. I’m doomed. He’s got me.

  “Bad luck, Miranda,” he tutted, reaching out a lazy arm to grasp her by the wrist. “You lose. Still, you were hardly a worthy opponent. Rather like playing Scrabble with a vole. Pitifully mismatched, but entertaining to watch.”

  He led her across the flags and then she felt herself being sat down in a high but comfortable chair, leather cushioned and firm backed, her head resting with her neck lightly held back. His hands on hers, he placed them on an armrest, then he pressed something and cuffs flew around her wrists, ankles and throat, securing her to the chair without any hope of escape.