Never Tell (37 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life
.

Samuel Johnson

I took the children home the next day. There was nothing for us here except immediate danger and I couldn’t see James again until next week. I knew I’d never work for Higham; I feared I might not work again at all right now. I was exhausted by everything and utterly confused; unsure which way to turn.

I’d spent hours making calls – and frighteningly, I’d found the same story all over town. Ex-colleagues weren’t answering; no one was hiring because of the ‘global downturn’; no one was posting abroad. Higham’s name resounded round my head; somehow it seemed his tentacles had crept into my life and were strangling it. I could only think that he was punishing James and me for knowing Dalziel – and I’d always known that I would pay for my mistake. I just didn’t realise the banker would claim everything at once.

In the past when things had got tough in any area of my life, I’d run. I’d follow a story until it unfolded as far as I could take it. If I was unhappy or anxious, I’d bury it beneath work. I’d jump on a plane, I’d live out of a suitcase. I was addicted to moving on. Everything that happened to me at college had shaped me, made me reckless in a way I hadn’t been naturally. Later, when I found that I was pregnant with Alicia, I weaned myself off the danger and took different assignments; I stopped running and settled down to domestic bliss.

But now I wanted to run again. I wanted to scoop up my children and disappear them to safety. I was facing the truth head-on and it was this: I wanted out of me and James, I wanted out of the Cotswolds and, for the first time, London was no longer an option. I’d loved it for so long, but now I was tired of the buzz and adrenalin of a city that suddenly seemed mired in corruption. I craved sanctuary, although I knew now it didn’t lie with anyone apart from myself and my family.

But for now, our little village would have to suffice. Jen and I hugged goodbye outside her flat.

‘You be careful, Rose. No more funny business,’ she made me promise, and we set off for home.

‘Cor, who’s been eating garlic?’ Alicia wrinkled up her nose and opened her window. ‘It smells.’

‘There’s a garlic in
Doctor Who,’
Freddie said solemnly. ‘A bad garlic what will explode you.’

‘Dur,’ Alicia said. ‘Dalek, dummy, not garlic.’

‘It’s not, Mummy, is it, it’s a garlic.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Is.’

‘Isn’t.’

Freddie began to wail as Alicia began to chant, ‘Isn’t, isn’t, isn’t.’ Freddie hit her; I nearly hit the car in front as I turned to restrain Freddie’s flailing arm. In the midst of the chaos, Effie read her
Charlie and Lola
comic calmly, sucking her thumb, wisely ignoring her siblings.

* * *

‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with – motorbike.’

‘Beginning
with motorbike? Er –’ I tried for solemnity. ‘Motorbike?’

‘No.’ He was triumphant. ‘It’s – motorbike.’

‘Fred-die!’ Alicia kissed him affectionately. ‘Silly!’

‘This isn’t our house.’

‘This is a funny place.’

‘This is – where is this, Mummy?’

A group of children kicked a ball against the wall of the last square house in the cul-de-sac.

‘I’ll only be a sec. Stay here and listen to
Winnie-the-Pooh.’

‘I’m bored of
Winnie-the-Pooh,’
Alicia moaned. ‘It’s for babies.’

‘I want to play football. I can do really high kicks,’ Freddie said, watching the big boys reverently. ‘Shall I show you?’

‘Look, we’ll be home in half an hour, I promise. Then you can have footballs, telly, and –’ I floundered, bit the parental dust – ‘ice cream.’

‘OK,’ they sighed in unison.

Bang, went the ball. Bang, went my head.

I rang the doorbell. The PVC front door bore an intricate pattern of gold leaf in the thick frosted glass. A middle-aged woman answered, gingham tea-towel in hand. She looked droopy and sad; pretty once, washed-out now. Even her frizzy hair was limp.

‘Hello.’ I offered her the bouquet of rather pathetic carnations I’d just bought at the petrol station. ‘I just came to say – I’m so sorry about Katya.’

‘Kate,’ she sniffed. ‘Her name was just plain Kate. None of that fancy foreign stuff.’

‘Of course,’ I agreed quickly. ‘Kate.’

‘Not Angel either. Just Kate.’

‘Sorry. Yes, Kate. It must be awful for you.’ Effie and Fred’s voices were rising querulously behind me. I tried hard to concentrate. ‘Such a tragedy. She was so young.’

‘She looked young for thirty-two, I know that. She always took such pride in her appearance.’ I could feel her need to talk about her daughter. She looked down at the flowers, and then eyed my car parked at the edge of the postage-stamp lawn. ‘Do you want to come in?’

‘Oh, I won’t.’ I did badly want to go in. ‘I’ve got the kids. I don’t want to disturb you. We’re—I just wanted to say sorry.’

I just want to know how your daughter knew my husband. What they had planned together
.

‘Bring them in,’ she said, peering over my shoulder. ‘I’d be glad to see some little ones.’

I felt sick with guilt and duplicity. This woman’s daughter had died in my house; this was dishonest and—I hesitated. But I desperately needed to know why she had been there in the first place.

‘If you’re sure.’

She gave the children flapjacks she’d made herself and glasses of florid orange squash, and they ran down the tiny garden, two immaculately matching beds striping either side, a swing hanging from the cherry tree at the end.

‘My only grandchild lives in America now,’ she said sadly, watching them run to the swing. ‘My son, well, his marriage broke down. It’s so common these days, isn’t it? His wife went back to Texas. And now – well, now Kate is gone.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘How did you know her?’ She turned to me abruptly.

‘We—From the club. You know.’

‘Those bloody clubs. I never wanted her to do all that circus stuff in the first place.’

‘She was brilliant, though.’ For the first time since I’d arrived, I wasn’t lying. ‘She had a real talent.’

‘She loved it, she did, flying over people’s heads. You should see their faces, Mum, she used to say. All turned up to me. And so peaceful up there.’

‘I’ll bet.’ I had an image of her twisted body on the floor and clutched my teacup tighter.

‘And she met all sorts. Rich boys who promised her the world and never stuck around.’ I thought of Charlie Higham. ‘I wish she’d stayed here. There was always a place for her here. With us.’

‘I suppose – the clubs were very glamorous.’

‘It was him that did it. He came into the café, all smiles and charm. He offered her a job. And now look. So much more fun than a café in town,’ she muttered. ‘That’s what she said.’

‘Who is – who is he? Was he called Charlie?’

‘No, it wasn’t Charlie, though he was good for nothing too. It was that bloody man. He broke her heart once. Then he came back. And now look. Look where he is too.’

My stomach lurched. I watched Freddie trip and fall on the grass, Alicia help him up. Effie clambered awkwardly onto the swing.

‘You’ve got a café?’ I tried to smile.

‘Yes, in town. It was my parents’ before mine.’ She sat wearily on the beige armchair in the corner, the fussy lace antimacassars over the arms, reminding me of the ones my grandma used to have. ‘The Tea Room, on the High Street.’

I was in that tunnel again.

‘We’re going to change the name now.’ I realised she was still talking. ‘My son’s arranging a new sign. We’re going to call it Kate’s Teas.’

The tunnel’s end was coming up too fast; I was going to smash into it. I blinked.

‘The Tea Room beside Blackwells?’ My voice was strangely hoarse. ‘Where all the Magdalen and Jesus students go?’

‘I don’t know which colleges use it, love. They’re all the same to me. Lots of foreign students too, these days.’ She looked at me again. ‘How did you say you knew my Kate?’

‘I – we met in London.’

‘And where do you live now? Did you come all this way to see me?’ Her forehead creased. ‘It’s a long way to come, with them.’ She looked out at the children again.

‘Oh dear, I think – oh poor Fred. He’s hurt his knee.’ I put my cup down too quickly, it spilt on the table, next to the bowl of pungent pot-pourri that looked like bits of dead skin.

‘Kids, we’re off now.’ I quickly slid open the glass door. I was suffocating in here.

‘Have we met before?’ She was standing now, staring at me. ‘You look familiar, now I look at you again.’

‘No I don’t think so. I’d remember, wouldn’t you?’

I ran out into the garden, and plucked Effie off the swing.

‘Mum,’ Alicia whinged. ‘We only just got here.’

‘And now we’re going home. Now. Hurry up.’ I should never have brought them here. Such a bad mother. Such bad parents. I grabbed Alicia’s hand. ‘Bring Freddie. Hurry up.’

I got them to the car, apologising profusely, Kate’s mother standing at her door, nonplussed. I couldn’t tell her the truth, though I’d done nothing wrong. I couldn’t admit I’d seen her daughter dying at my feet. Not now, I couldn’t. I had to make sense of it.

‘What, by the way,’ I croaked, as I shut the back door. ‘What was the man’s name?’

‘The man?’

‘The man you said she loved.’ Though of course I knew the answer. But I had to hear her say it.

‘Oh.’ She stared at me. ‘It was that bloody James. James Miller. He broke her heart when she was a teenager, and then he came back, and he broke it all over again.’

Chapter Thirty

Love Is the Drug

Roxy Music

We settled down to our routine at home. Even without James it wasn’t very different from how it had been before. The children readily accepted that he was working abroad. Until his trial came up, I didn’t want to scare them; I thought they were too little, and when he was acquitted, well, they could wait until they were older to know the truth. Whatever that might turn out to be.
If
he was acquitted … I pushed that thought away.

James was able to speak to them on the phone once a fortnight and somehow he managed to keep up a convincing front. I visited him without them, studied the case with the lawyers. But there didn’t seem much to know. The police had impounded a huge amount of heroin that had been contained in the shipment of furniture – and that was that. James swore at first he didn’t know what Lana meant about the blackmail, but he did eventually admit that Kate was the same girl from the café all those years ago, that cold morning in Oxford. The waitress who’d stolen my scarf.

‘I bumped into her,’ he said when I confronted him about it. ‘I went to the bank and it was opposite the café. She recognised me from Facebook.’

‘So you
didn’t
just bump into each other? Make up your mind, J, for God’s sake.’

‘We’d emailed a bit on Facebook last year,’ he scowled. ‘But we had no plans to meet. It was just – oh God, Rose. Whatever. We met, we went for a drink.’

‘And?’

‘And one thing led to another. She’d trained at the circus place in London, but she still helped her mum and dad out when she was back in Oxford. I got her a job in Paris.’

‘Very convenient. So why – what happened?’

‘Nothing happened.’

‘You fell in love,’ I said sourly.

‘Not love, no. Just—’

‘What? Lust?’

‘I suppose. It was nice to feel wanted. But it was only once or twice, Rose, I swear.’ He took my hand. ‘I want to make things work.’

It was too late for us, though. I knew that much. Only – what do they say? Don’t kick a man when he’s about to go down.

‘And the money thing? The big man thing? Kate’s flatmate, Lana, mentioned a big man – and she means Higham, I know she does. He hauled me in to see him. He was threatening me. Trying to buy me off.’

‘There
was
no money thing.’

‘James, I know you were in trouble financially. What were those photos doing in the cupboard? The photos of Higham?’

‘They were his son’s.’ James wouldn’t meet my eye now. ‘Charlie Higham’s.’

‘When did you get involved with him? Why didn’t you tell me you’d met him?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Oh, come on, James. The kid who Dalziel tried to get us to kill. Why would you not mention him?’

He dropped my hand.

‘I felt bad when I first met him, I admit it. I gave him free entry, VIP membership, free drinks – but he’s just an arrogant little fucker who thinks the world owes him a living, Rose. Just like Dalziel, in fact.’

‘I don’t think Dalziel really thought that,’ I said quietly. ‘I think he was desperately lonely and unhappy.’

‘Yeah, whatever, Rose.’ James raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Why the fuck you’re still defending him, I don’t know. But actually it was Charlie that Kate really loved, not me. They were his photos. Not mine. He gave them to me, and they added up to precisely nothing.’

‘James,’ I sighed. ‘You’re not being honest.’

‘I’ve done nothing wrong, Rose.’ The shutters came down. ‘Other than fucking up a bit financially. How many bloody times do I have to say it, Rose?’

He wasn’t budging. He was innocent; he was set up. He was the eternal child, the petulant little boy whose friend had stolen his toy. I gave up. Not knowing what to believe any more, I treated it as I would have done a news story and kept impartial. Of course I would try to support him – he was my husband, father of my family – but I no longer trusted him.

Eventually they moved James to a prison on the Isle of Wight, where Liam or I visited him once a week. He adapted to his environment, growing stronger and more determined he would get out. I encouraged him, but deep down, I feared he’d done something he still wasn’t admitting. I waited for the day it would all come out.

And the loneliness I’d felt when James was around faded into a kind of peace. I was questioned again by the police; I still knew nothing. I kept writing for the
Chronicle
, thanks to Tina. I started to earn again, writing features for various glossy magazines; slowly work came through from the nationals. Xavier sent whatever he could my way. He came to stay occasionally and I loved having him there. Our old friendship cheered me beyond belief. One cold autumn weekend as we tramped along with the kids deep in the Cotswold hills, he finally admitted that he was ill. His penchant for naughty boys and early morning clubbing had apparently caught up with him. I held his arm firmly, feeling a profound grief for my dear friend, although he was remarkably cheery about the prognosis. ‘Amazing what drugs can do these days, darling.’ He patted my arm sagely as I wiped away my own tears.