The Moment She Left (17 page)

‘They should. Come and see me again in a week. We need to talk about radiotherapy . . .’ She stopped as Rowzee’s hand went up. ‘It’s here, in Mr Mervin’s notes,’ she told her. ‘You need to see an oncologist . . .’

‘I don’t want all that sort of messing around.’

Letting it go for the moment, Jilly said, ‘OK, make an appointment on your way out. We’ll have another chat next week to discuss the situation again.’

As the door closed behind Rowzee, Jilly sat back in her chair and covered her face with her hands. Rowzee Cayne had to be the dearest, most selfless and most maddeningly stubborn woman in the world. Not that Jilly blamed her for wanting to take control of her life, who wouldn’t in those circumstances, she just couldn’t be allowed to do it alone. For a fleeting moment Jilly wondered if she should offer to go with her to Zurich, but it would most likely be the end of her career if she did.

Pulling Rowzee’s notes forward again, her eyes fixed on the words that she’d not yet spoken to her, and because Rowzee hadn’t asked she wasn’t sure when, or even if, she should.

Life expectancy: Six–nine months.

If Rowzee knew she only had that long, surely she wouldn’t see herself as burdening her family. It was going to be over almost before it began. On the other hand, if she told her she was going to die so soon there was every chance Rowzee would add an even greater urgency to her end-of-life plans.

With it being such a warm, but not overly hot day Rowzee decided to walk to the old town rather than take the bus for three stops along Primrose Lane and into Sidley Coombe. The exercise and fresh sea air were doing her good, and maybe even helping to clear her head, if such an achievement were possible these days.

One thing she’d decided on without too much trouble was that she was going to take the steroid, if only to get her through the next week or so. A respite from the headaches, not to mention the absence attacks and occasional blackouts, should mean no more fears of raising her family’s suspicions and, with any luck, she might even be less forgetful. She wondered if the drug was supposed to help her memory, and suspected it probably wasn’t or surely they’d give it to people with dementia. Maybe they did. How would she know?

Remembering she hadn’t turned her phone on since leaving the surgery, she stopped outside the pharmacy on Sidley Coombe Way to check for messages. To her dismay there was one from Jamie, her lawyer, asking if she was all right as she’d missed her appointment today.

Annoyed and upset, she rang him straight away to apologise and ask if she could come now.

‘I’m sorry, I’m chock-a-block for the rest of the week,’ he told her. ‘I’m sure we can squeeze you in somewhere next week though. I’ll get my secretary to give you a call with some times.’

After collecting her prescription from the pharmacy, Rowzee headed on into the old town feeling wretched and foolish and despairingly frustrated with herself. She just hoped Pamela didn’t get to hear about the missed appointment. As it was, she wouldn’t stop going on about how Rowzee had stood her up at the Italian the other night.

‘What do you mean, you fell asleep?’ Pamela had snapped crossly when she’d got home. ‘You look perfectly awake to me. So what
have
you been up to? And please don’t tell me you’ve been riding around on Bill Simmonds’s mower, because I won’t laugh and I won’t believe you either.’

‘He’s very keen on you,’ Rowzee told her, seizing the change of subject. ‘He asked me to put in a good word.’

‘Well you can save your breath. I’m not interested. All I want to know is why you didn’t even call the restaurant to let me know you couldn’t make it.’

‘I told you, I was asleep.’

‘You mean you forgot.’

‘That’s not what I said.’

‘You don’t have to. It’s written all over you. I want
you
to ring the doctor first thing and make an appointment. No, don’t argue. I’m starting to get worried and you should be too.’

‘Thanks for trying not to scare me.’

Pamela’s face immediately softened. ‘I don’t want to scare you,’ she promised, ‘I just want to get to the bottom of what’s making you so scatterbrained. It’s probably nothing more than an iron deficiency, or low blood pressure, it can have a strange effect on you. I know, maybe I should have a check-up too. Keep you company. I’d just better not turn out to be the one with Alzheimer’s, that’s all I can say, or there’ll be trouble.’

Fortunately, ironically, Pamela seemed to have forgotten the doctor by the next morning, possibly, Rowzee decided, because she was too distracted by Bill Simmonds turning up to mow their lawns.

‘For someone who’s not interested,’ Rowzee commented, ‘you’re spending a lot of time at the window watching him.’

‘I’m checking he’s not making a mess of it,’ Pamela retorted.

‘He never has before.’

‘There’s always a first time.’

Rowzee looked her up and down. ‘Where are you going all dressed up to the nines?’ she demanded.

Tapping her nose, Pamela said, ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’

‘So what’s his name?’

Ignoring her, Pamela mistakenly returned Bill’s wave and scowled to show she hadn’t meant it. ‘Time to go,’ she declared, picking up her bag. ‘Things to do, people to see.’

‘I don’t understand why you’re being so secretive,’ Rowzee grumbled, following her to the door. ‘If you’re Internet dating I think it’s wonderful.’

‘I’m
not
Internet dating,’ Pamela assured her. ‘But if you want to, I’m happy to help. It could be fun.’

‘You’re up to something,’ Rowzee told her. ‘All these new clothes and talk of surgery.’

‘Well, you can’t take it with you when you go,’ Pamela replied breezily.

Dear God, was Pamela hiding a similar secret? Was that what was happening here? She was spending all her money (money Rowzee had always thought was tied up in investments) before some dastardly disease kicked in and felled her? No, it wasn’t possible. She was the picture of health, and besides no ailment had ever struck Pamela, big or small, without her complaining to the world about how much worse she had it than anyone else ever had.

Dropping a kiss on Rowzee’s cheek, Pamela said, ‘You’ll find out everything soon enough. I just need to make some more progress first.’

Rowzee watched her go, trying her best to work out what was going on, but apart from Internet dating she was fresh out of ideas.

‘There’s sure to be a man involved,’ she confided to Blake over a cup of tea in his workshop. Having arrived with no clear memory of why she’d come, she’d left Graeme to the client he was busy with in the showroom and wandered through for a back-room browse. ‘And I hope there is,’ she continued, ‘because she could do with some romance in her life. She deserves it after what she went through with her marriage.’

‘And she’s still an attractive woman,’ Blake added helpfully. ‘In fact you both are, so maybe some romance for you too?’

Rowzee smiled ruefully. ‘I’ve had my share,’ she assured him. ‘I really don’t want any more.’ Her eyes went hesitantly to his. ‘How’s Jenny?’ she asked gently. ‘Will she be coming home soon?’

He shook his head dismally. ‘I’ve no idea. She’s not in good shape, that’s for sure. Her mother’s trying to persuade her to see a doctor to help with the depression, but she won’t.’

‘Did she ever suffer from depression before?’

‘You mean before what happened up north? Sometimes, but it was never like this. Well, nothing like this ever happened to us before.’

‘No, of course not. I don’t suppose there’s any news?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m still waiting to hear from Andee. However, on a more positive note I think Matt’s got himself a girlfriend.’

Rowzee’s eyes brightened with interest. ‘Anyone we know?’

‘I can’t tell you that, because he hasn’t actually admitted there’s someone, but I heard him on the phone to one of his friends last night saying he couldn’t make some event or other because he was seeing Ellie.’

Impressed, Rowzee said, ‘If it’s Ellie Sandworth then I’d say they’re very well suited, because she’s as excellent a guitar player as he is, and if you’ve heard her sing . . .’ Realising what she was saying, she came to a sorry stop.

Blake gave her a reassuring smile. ‘I wasn’t sure a time would ever come,’ he confessed, ‘when I’d want to hear Matt playing without Jess, but I think I could, if only to reassure myself that he was getting over it.’

Understanding that, Rowzee squeezed his hand in a vain gesture of comfort. She wondered if she should start talking to him about the collaborative art project they’d been discussing before Jessica had disappeared. It might help to distract him – or it might just remind him that his life had come to a standstill, and that wouldn’t be good.
‘He who would search for pearls must dive below,’
she recited softly.

He regarded her curiously. ‘What makes you say that?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know, it just came to me. It’s from the prologue of John Dryden’s
All for Love
.’ It was strange the things she remembered, how they came floating up from places she’d long forgotten. She hadn’t read Dryden since she was a student.

After a while, Blake said, ‘Do you think she’s dead?’

Keeping her hand on his, Rowzee said, ‘I wish I knew how to answer that. Better still, I wish I could tell you where she is, but at least you’re doing everything you can to find her.’

His smile was weak. ‘It doesn’t feel like much when I’m sitting here, da
y
after day, repairing treasures from down the years, bringing them back to life in a way that makes them seem to breathe again, and yet I can’t do the same for my wife or my daughter. I keep thinking if only Jess was as easy to find as a missing chair from a pair, or the lost bow to a precious violin.’ His eyes drifted around the watchful clocks and cabinets, the silent dolls and damaged paintings. ‘Some missing parts can take years to trace,’ he said, ‘but
they’re usually found in the end, and the odd thing is how often they turn out to be not so very far from home.’

Another letter had arrived. This one was postmarked from a town in Cornwall; the previous one, which he’d received only days ago, had come from somewhere in Berkshire. It was as though his persecutor was getting greedy, couldn’t wait to get his – or her – hands on even more money, in cash, unmarked, so untraceable and ready to be spent.

Send £40,000 in cash to the PO Box below. If you don’t you know what will happen
.

It was much shorter than previous notes; the sender didn’t need to go into detail any more, he or she had convinced him in the first note that they knew enough.

At least this time he hadn’t been asked how he was living with himself.

He read the two short lines again and felt a vacuum of horror opening up inside him, one so black and powerful it could have swallowed him completely, and he almost wished it would.

Did this person have any idea how complicated the situation was, how impossible it was for him to do the right thing and tell what he knew? His and his family’s lives would be completely destroyed if the truth were to get out, especially now.

He wanted desperately to talk to Andee again, to ask for her help in any way she could give it, but she’d confirmed his fears the last time she was here: unless he told her everything there was nothing she could do.
And would finding the blackmailer really put an end to it?

He’d started seeing the face again – the woman’s face, stark as a moon, circled by a fiery halo in a forest of night-blackened leaves. It kept coming to him like a warning, a threat, a terrible damnation. The first and only real time he’d seen her she’d appeared out of nowhere, suddenly she was there, and it had happened so fast, quicker than the blink of an eye or the gasp of a breath. He had no idea who she was, or how she’d come to be there. Was she the blackmailer? If so, how had she found out who he was? Who had told her, when there was no one to tell?

There was no doubt in his mind that he’d send the money. He was ready to, and could do so without raising questions at the bank. A long time ago his father had advised him always to keep large sums of cash in the safes of both houses, Burlingford Hall and Bede Lodge in London. ‘If someone breaks in and holds you or your family to ransom, you must have something to give them,’ he’d cautioned.

As Charles went to the safe, sensing the strange woman’s face lurking behind him, he was wondering if Andee believed in the friend he’d told her about. There was a friend, though he wasn’t a victim, as Charles had made it seem. In fact, for all Charles knew he was the blackmailer, for he was the person who’d invited Charles to the gathering the night it had all begun. Apart from the ghostly woman this man was, as far as Charles was aware, the only other possible suspect in this unending nightmare. Yet it made
no sense at all, for he was an ex-Cabinet minister with a wife who had her own aspirations in that direction and a son who was rising fast through the ranks of the Party. Why on earth would someone like that resort to blackmail? He had no need of the money, and if he suspected for one minute that his friend and colleague, Charles Stamfield, knew anything at all about the disappearance of Jessica Leonard he’d surely have gone straight to the police.

Andee was driving behind Graeme through Kesterly’s affluent suburb of Westleigh Heights, across Moorland Park where hikers and tourists set out on their explorations, down through the Valley of Streams and finally up Lidditon Hill to the Burlingford Estate. It was a gloriously sunny day, with endless views of the estuary stretching out like dreams to the west and the dramatically rugged rise of Exmoor to the south.

She had heard this morning that Jason Griffiths did indeed live in Totnes with his grandmother and father, that he’d never been in trouble with the authorities, and was currently working as a groundsman for the local council. His father, on the other hand, had been arrested a number of times for drunk and disorderly offences and had also, several years ago, received a suspended sentence for attempted robbery. All she’d been told about the grandmother was that she worked part-time at a local arts and crafts boutique, which she part-owned.