‘I’m so glad you’re out and about,’ Kelsey said, her astonishment at the sight of Blythe in daylight outweighing her shock at Adrian accompanying her.
‘Tell me about it,’ Adrian added, a little coyly. ‘I’ve been trying to get her to come out with me for months, but there’s always some excuse or other.’
‘I’m sitting right here, you know, Adrian.’
‘You’rethe grandson who brought her the flowers and the newspapers?’ Kelsey said. ‘But I’ve never seen you use the side door at St.Ninians? I live right upstairs.’
Adrian raised his shoulders. ‘Really? I have a key for the front door. I let myself in. I know I could visit more often…’
‘Not at all,’ Blythe interrupted. ‘You’re there every week, and young peoplemustlive their lives.’
‘You’re Lorcan’s son?’ Kelsey said, still thinking hard.
‘Uh-huh.’ Adrian was looking at Mirren now. ‘Sorry to surprise you. I didn’t realise you knew gran until a few weeks ago when she showed me the invitation to the launch, and I figured if you won’t speak to me and won’t see me, I could… turn up as Gran’s plus one and maybe you’d not hit me over the head with a champagne glass.’
‘What’s all this?’ Blythe asked, growing impatient with her failure to understand, until Jonathan put a glass of cava in her hand.
‘Do you remember I told you about Jonathan and Wagstaff?’ Kelsey said to Blythe and the actress nodded. ‘Well, we’ve been worried sick theExaminerwas going to run a story on them… thatAdrianwas going to run the story.’
Blythe chuckled. ‘Adrian? My boy wouldn’t hurt a fly; he’s no tattle-tale reporter.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Mirren was finding her voice and staring straight at Adrian. ‘What about the piece you wrote about Jonathan and Peony back in the summer? The thing was full of lies!’
Just as he was about to respond Blythe chimed in and they both uttered the same word at once, ‘Ferdinand!’ Then Blythe said some other words that turned the cold air blue and Kelsey winced, hoping the Mayor wasn’t listening.
‘That man is a thief, you know!’ Blythe was getting exercised now. ‘My Adrian writes lovely articles like the one about me, the one that accompanied your photos, Kelsey dear, and then Ferdinand sticks his own blasted name on them…’
Adrian took over the story at that point. ‘And he’ll run his sloppy, ill-researched, gossip pieces undermyname. He’s been doing it a lot recently.’
‘So Ferdinand wrote that awful rubbish about Jonathan and Peony?’ Mirren was incensed. ‘How can you let him get away with that?’ She thought of her own misattributed article in theBroadsheet, all of her hard work and care signed off as Jamesey Wallace’s. The injustice still rankled now.
‘I don’t know, I feel sorry for the old buzzard, I suppose.’ Adrian shrugged. ‘He gave me a job straight out of school and he’s kept me on all these years.’
‘That’s no excuse for letting him spread lies about innocent people,’ Jonathan waded in.
‘You’re right, I know. I thought if I kept my head down and tolerated him, he’d retire and I’d be left in peace. I mean, he must be in his sixties and he doesn’t exactly love his job anymore. I thought if I stuck it out I might end up with the editorship. You know, in this industry it doesn’t do to rock the boat, and jobs are hard to come by, especially when you don’t have a degree from a journalism school.’ His eyes fell back to Mirren’s. ‘I’m sorry, I should have stopped him running gossip pieces and claiming my work as his own, but…’
‘I get it,’ Mirren conceded, and all eyes turned on her. ‘It’s not an easy industry to work in.’
‘I promise you all, I had no intention of running a story about Wagstaff. I’d never do that. Even if hewasresponsible for ending Gran’s career.’ His jaw flexed with anger.
‘Dear boy, is that what you think?’ Blythe turned to peer up at her grandson in amazement. ‘Ibrought my career to an end.Ichose Laureano and my baby.Ichose to go to Spain.Me.’
Adrian crouched by her side. ‘But Wagstaff was blind drunk that night he fell from the stage. He spoiled the run. He ended your career.’
Blythe patted her grandson’s hand. ‘That season was ill-fated. The understudy did his best with me, but I was ill, darling. Very ill.’ Blythe’s eyes sparkled with welling tears she had no intention of letting fall. ‘My hips… I couldn’t go on any longer. Even if the managers hadn’t pushed me out because of my stubbornness and my refusal to be ashamed, there was still no pain relief good enough to get me up on stage twice a day, not back then. The warm weather in Spain and Laureano, and seeing your dad growing up, playing in the olive garden… they all helped my recovery and it was a wonderful time in my life, truly, and that daft old bugger Wagstaff had nothing to do with my absence from the stage.’
Adrian stood again, facing Mirren, shaking his head as he tried to process all this.
‘So that’s why you hated Wagstaff?’ said Mirren.
‘Your name though?’ Kelsey blurted, not letting Adrian reply. ‘You’re called Armadale, not Goode?’
‘Stage name, darling,’ Blythe chirruped. ‘“Goode” felt more… Elizabethan somehow, back in the day. Armadale’s my given name, and I never married, so it’sstillmy name. Daddy insisted Lorcan go by the family name when we came back to England and I had no objections; he was still Laureano’s son. No name would change that.’
‘We’ve all got in a bit of a mess,’ Adrian said, patting Blythe’s arm and keeping hopeful eyes fixed on Mirren.
‘OK, this is all getting crazy,’ Jonathan interrupted. ‘We can talk about it back at the pub for the after-party. Kelsey, you’ve got a business to launch and a speech to make. Come on.’
