Public Secrets Part 144

Writers and artists had always flocked to Chelsea. And musicians, Emma

mused. Mick Jagger had a home here. Or he'd had one. It hardly

mattered to Emma whether he and the Stones were still in residence.

There was only one person she'd come to see.

Perhaps it was the contrasts that appealed to Jane. Chelsea was punk,

and domestic. It was relaxed and frenetic. And it cost the earth to

live in one of the stylish homes. Or perhaps Jane's reason had

something to do with the fact that Bev had established herself in the

same district.

That too hardly mattered.

She stopped, clenching and unclenching her hand on the strap of her bag

while the snow drifted and clung to her hair and shoulders. The house

was a long way from the tiny walk-up flat where she had lived with Jane.

It pretended to be old, but the fussy copy of a Victorian row house

missed the mark by inches. Someone had decided to add cupolas and tall,

narrow windows. It might have been charming, in its way, but curtains

were drawn tight and the walk had yet to be shoveled or swept. No one

had bothered to hang a wreath or a string of lights.

It made her think wistfully of the Kesselring home. There had been no

seasonal snow in California, but the house had offered the warmth and

cheer that meant Christmas. Then again, Emma thought, she wasn't coming

home for Christmas. She wasn't coming home at all.

Taking a deep breath, Emma pushed through the gate and waded through the

snow to the front door. There was a knocker against the ornately carved

wood. She stared at it, half expecting the bra.s.s lion's head to

dissolve and re-form into the battered countenance of Jacob Marley.

Perhaps it was the season, or the ghosts of her childhood that made her

fanciful.

With hands icy inside her fur-lined gloves, she lifted it, just an old

bra.s.s lion's head, and let it fall against the wood.

When there was no response, she knocked again, hoping there was

no one to hear. If no one answered, could she tell herself she'd done

her best to erase Jane and the need to see her from her mind and her

heart? She desperately wanted to run away, from the house that

pretended to be something it wasn't, from the bra.s.s lion's head, from

the woman who never seemed to be completely out of her life. As she

stood, ready to turn away in relief, the door swung open.

She couldn't speak, could only stare at the woman in the red silk robe

that dipped carelessly over one shoulder, strained over hips that had

spread beyond lush. Her hair was a blond tangle around a wide, doughy

face. A stranger's face. It was the eyes Emma recognized and

remembered. The narrowed, angry eyes, reddened now from drink or drugs

or lack of sleep.

"Well?" In deference to the cold air, Jane hitched the robe up. There

was the glitter of diamonds on her fingers, and to Emma's horror, the

stink of stale gin. "Look, lovey, I got better things to do on a

Sat.u.r.day afternoon than stand in the doorway."

"Who the h.e.l.l is it?" The annoyed male roar came from the second floor.

Jane cast a bored glance olver her shoulder.

"Hang on, will you?" she shouted back. "Well?" She turned back to Emma.