The House on Sunset Lake (26 page)

‘I’m going to the hospital,’ said David, glancing at Jim.

‘I’m coming too,’ replied Jennifer quickly.

‘I’ll take you,’ said Jim, a quaver of desperation in his voice.

She sighed, and her breath shook in her throat.

‘Catch your plane. Go back to England,’ she whispered.

He came to her and grabbed her hand, tears welling in his own eyes.

‘I’m here for you, Jen. Just tell me what you want me to do.’

She summoned all her courage and looked straight at him.

‘You’ve read my letter. Go back home, Jim,’ she said as she followed her father into the back of the ambulance.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

2015

Jim felt horrible. He stood there for a moment, listening to the breeze. Everything Jennifer had said made sense, and yet it was the most vicious and vile story he had ever heard.

He remembered vividly where he’d been on the afternoon following Jennifer’s twenty-first birthday party: in Savannah, trying to change his airline ticket. His mother had gone downtown too, wanting to buy last-minute presents for everyone back in London, and a little something for Saul Black, whom they were due to meet the next day in New York. Jim had driven them both there in the truck, and on the way he’d confided to Elizabeth that he wanted to stay in Georgia just a little while longer.

‘You’re in love with her,’ his mother had teased.

‘I think I am,’ he’d smiled, wanting to get back to the Isle of Hope as quickly as possible.

Everything had taken for ever. The drive into town, the queue in the travel agent’s, where they had eventually confirmed Jim’s suspicions that he would just have to buy a fresh ticket if he wanted to postpone his trip back home. His mother hadn’t met him at the time she’d said she would, and then she wanted to stop on the way back for one last slice of her favourite key lime pie from a bakery on Abercorn Street.

Jim had got back to the Lake House at around four o’clock. Their bags were already packed and his father was upstairs, apparently pulling together his notes to show his agent in New York. It was the lazy time of the day, when Jim would usually sit on the pontoon with a book or his guitar, but his mother had asked him to help do a final tidy of the house. He’d been grateful for the opportunity to keep busy. He was anticipating a knock on the door, or the ring of the telephone in his room. He was waiting for Jennifer to get back in touch, and he didn’t quite believe it when he didn’t hear a peep.

He remembered, quite clearly, calling Casa D’Or, only to be told by Sylvia in crisp and certain terms that her daughter wasn’t at home. She’d sounded upset, even peeved, and at the time Jim thought it was because she absolutely hated him. But now, armed with the knowledge of Bryn and Sylvia’s affair, he suspected other reasons.

He imagined his father typing his Dear John letter to Sylvia. Imagined it being left under a stone or in the pavilion, like a Cold War drop of secret intelligence, perhaps even brazenly slotted into the Casa D’Or mailbox itself. He imagined Sylvia watching the Lake House from a window at Casa D’Or. Imagined her seeing Jennifer disappear inside the boathouse and not come out for thirty minutes or more, and speculating what had happened. Jim did not know how long Bryn and Sylvia’s affair had been going on, but judging from the dated letters he had found, it had been at least a month, and knowing how intensely he himself had felt about Jennifer after just a few short weeks, he had a good idea of how hurt Sylvia had been by it all.

It was quite easy for Jim to imagine everything, except what had gone on in the boathouse. He could not let himself accept the version of events that Jennifer had told him, even though the voice in his head told him it was all true.

He squeezed his eyes tightly closed to help him think more clearly, and when he opened them, he could see the shadow of someone standing by the door to the pavilion.

‘Mum,’ he said after a moment.

‘It was always the quietest and most lovely spot out here,’ Elizabeth said.

He groaned silently, feeling sickened at the thought that she might have overheard his conversation with Jennifer.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you two were down here,’ she added, almost apologetically.

He didn’t reply, and the silence seemed to stretch on for ever.

‘So that’s what happened. That day in the boathouse,’ she said at last with crisp resignation.

He glanced across at her, noting the look on her face. Firm, stoical – the army officer’s daughter that she had been brought up to be.

‘She’s emotional,’ he muttered, looking away.

‘So you don’t believe her?’

‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’

Another silence that seemed to make the night air vibrate between them.

‘I do,’ said Elizabeth eventually, stepping out into the moonlight. ‘I believe her.’

‘What?’ whispered Jim incredulously.

His mother’s face had paled so that it looked ghoulish.

‘I remember that day,’ she said, moving towards him. ‘It was hot, sticky. We’d come back from Savannah and your father was in the shower. At four o’clock in the afternoon.’

Jim didn’t remember that detail.

‘You said it yourself. It was hot . . .’

‘Your father was a man of routine,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘A glass of claret, a bath, a cigar in his dressing gown . . . Not a shower in the afternoon.’

She paused and looked out towards the inky lake.

‘I’d suspected him of seeing someone for weeks. He was different, pleased with himself. I knew it wasn’t the work, his book. I’d seen his notes, and believe me, there wasn’t much of it. I wondered if it was Sylvia Wyatt, but then I knew how much she disliked us. Or perhaps the housekeeper, Marion. She was certainly appealing. So I went down to the boathouse. I don’t know what I was looking for – a sign, a smell, a clue, something . . . and then I saw it.’

‘What?’

‘A necklace. A thin gold chain with a little hummingbird just here,’ she said, touching her throat. ‘I remembered Jennifer Wyatt wearing an identical necklace at the party. I tried to tell myself that perhaps you and she had been fooling around in there, but in my heart of hearts I knew something had happened.’

‘It doesn’t mean he . . . it doesn’t mean he raped her.’ He struggled to say the word.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said sadly. ‘But I heard Jennifer just then, and she wasn’t lying. Besides, your father had form . . .’

‘Form?’

It was another minute before she spoke.

‘Saul had an assistant. Julia. Beautiful thing. Very similar in looks and poise to Jennifer. She made allegations . . .’

‘What sort of allegations?’

‘That your father assaulted her. Sexually.’

‘People didn’t believe her, did they?’

Elizabeth didn’t speak.

‘Say something,’ pressed Jim. ‘Was she trying to blackmail him? I’m guessing this was after his success with
College
 . . .’

‘Saul had the allegations buried,’ said Elizabeth, shifting uncomfortably. ‘Bryn was the biggest client the agency had.
College
was on its twelfth printing. It was one of the biggest global hits of the decade. No one wanted that bandwagon to stop rolling, and besides, there was no concrete evidence. Not that there ever is . . .’

‘I don’t believe it,’ he whispered.

‘We’ll never know the truth. About Saul’s assistant, about Jennifer. But yes, your father had his demons; all this self-confidence and yet he never quite believed he was good enough.’

Elizabeth took a moment, as if she were collecting her thoughts.

‘We were never really happy together,’ she said finally. ‘Certainly after the business with Saul’s assistant I could never sleep next to him at night without wondering if the allegations were true. But I stayed with him. I took the easy option, even if that meant being dishonest; dishonest with myself, dishonest with the world about what I knew about Bryn Johnson.’

‘The truth hurts,’ replied Jim quietly.

‘Yes, it does. But at least it’s the truth. Lies always catch up with you in the end.’

She stepped forward and took her son’s hand.

‘Go and find Jennifer. Trust her. Trust your feelings for one another.’

‘I can’t. Not after everything I’ve done, everything I’ve said,’ said Jim, feeling wretched. All he had ever wanted was to be with Jennifer. Protect her. Even the acquisition of RedReef had been to help her, and yet when it really counted, he had turned his back on her.

‘Jennifer was right. If you don’t go after her now, he’s won.’

Jim squeezed his mother’s fingers, then wrapped his arms around her in a hug that had never been more full of affection and support.

‘Go,’ she whispered, and he released her and ran up the lawn towards the house.

As he pushed through the crowd, he vaguely registered the scene. In one corner he could see Simon Desai still deep in conversation with Sarah; in another, Celine Wood was sitting on her fiancé’s knee. A couple kissed by the pool, a waiter topped up the fountain of champagne to shrieks of delight, a seventy-something socialite was laughing with Nina Scott, the travel PR. For one night at least, happiness was everywhere, except in his heart.

He ran through the house towards the front of Casa D’Or. Already a line of black Town Cars was queuing down the drive to whisk away the earliest-departing guests. He ran along, banging the window of each one, calling her name, until one pulled away and he saw her. The back of her dress, her dark hair fluttering in the evening breeze. Her hand was stretched out for a white Savannah taxi.

‘Stop. Don’t go!’ he shouted. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest.

The driver of the cab held up his hand, but Jennifer shook her head, and with a disgruntled expression he went to park and wait for another fare.

They stood there for a moment, just looking at each other.

‘I was wrong back there,’ he said finally. ‘I didn’t want to believe you. I couldn’t let myself.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ replied Jennifer in the quietest of voices.

‘It does,’ said Jim more passionately.

He took another tentative step closer to her.

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

He was ashamed of even trying to justify his actions, but he wanted her to know.

‘Bryn was my father, my hero,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘And now he’s gone. Part of me blames myself for his death, and that’s the reason why I behaved like I did back there. But I guess he wasn’t the person I wanted him to be.’

‘I think we just have to accept that people are flawed. We all are, in our own ways.’

‘Will you forgive me?’ he asked.

For a second, Jennifer didn’t say anything. Time seemed to drag on for ever, and Jim had a fierce and dreadful sense that he had just lost everything.

‘Please,’ he whispered.

‘Only if we have no more secrets,’ she replied, and his shoulders sagged with relief.

‘No more secrets,’ he agreed, holding out his hand, and when she took it, he drew her into his arms. He inhaled deeply, smelling the fresh scent of her shampoo, never wanting to let her go, and she rested her head on his shoulder as if, against all the odds, she felt the same.

‘You know you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened to your father,’ she said into the fabric of his dinner jacket. ‘That doesn’t end well, and I should know.’

He pulled away and looked at her.

‘About that . . .’

He saw a wave of anxiety creep across her face and thought about Sylvia’s box of letters sitting in a drawer in the house. He had spent half the night tossing and turning, wondering what to do with them, and had woken up deciding that it would serve no purpose to tell Jennifer about her mother’s affair with Bryn. He had stood there in front of the roaring fire that the housekeeping staff had lit and taken the letters out of the box, imagining them disintegrating to ash and taking the memories of that summer with them.

But something had stopped him.

No more secrets
, repeated a voice in his head.

‘You shouldn’t blame yourself for your mother’s death either,’ he began.

‘I know,’ agreed Jennifer quietly. ‘But it’s not easy to do. We had words. I went down the stairs. She must have followed me and slipped . . . If we hadn’t argued . . .’

‘I don’t believe it happened that way,’ said Jim with conviction.

He looked away, and wiped his mouth, knowing that he was doing the right thing.

‘Sylvia and Bryn were having an affair,’ he said gently.

‘What?’ said Jennifer incredulously.

‘I found love letters they had written to each other. I’ve got them upstairs.’

‘An affair?’ she repeated, her face crumpling into a frown. ‘For how long?’

‘I’d say a month or so, from the letters. Your mother’s were very eloquent, passionate. I think she had intense feelings for Bryn, or perhaps they just felt intense at the time,’ he continued carefully. ‘But I’m not entirely sure they were reciprocated.’

Jennifer was looking down at her shoes.

‘Bryn called it off the night of the party. I think she was distraught.’

Jennifer nodded slowly. ‘It makes sense,’ she whispered, as if she was lost in the past. ‘She screamed at me that day – “Where have you been? What were you doing at the Lake House?” I thought she was upset about Connor, our relationship, my reputation . . .’

‘Did you see her slip?’ asked Jim, trying to catch her gaze.

‘No.’

‘She had been diagnosed with depression.’

Jennifer looked at him. ‘Depression?’

‘They wanted to keep it from you. But there was a reason why your mother could be cold and difficult. She was ill. Seriously ill. In your final year of college, she took an overdose. Two, in fact.’

Jennifer was wide-eyed with horror. ‘She tried to commit suicide?’

Jim shook his head. ‘She didn’t want to kill herself,’ he said, remembering what Marion had told him. ‘It was a cry for attention.’

There was another silence. Jennifer’s expression was stricken. Jim moved towards her in the dark to reassure her. He knew how bad she felt about her mother’s death; he knew because he felt the same about his father. But now he just wanted to convince her it was not her fault.

‘Maybe she fell that night, Jen. Maybe she was miserable, maybe it was another cry for help. But it was an accident, an accident that could have happened at any time because her illness wasn’t under control,’ he said, stroking her cheek.

‘It doesn’t matter how it happened, Jim. The fact is, she died.’

‘And you don’t have to carry that guilt around for the rest of your life.’

‘Nor do you,’ she whispered, this time taking his hand in hers, holding on as if she would never let go.