The Secrets Between Us (12 page)

‘No,’ he said, in the same quiet, stony voice I’d used the last time I spoke to Laurie. ‘No, I don’t give a toss about that woman now. I’d be glad if she was dead. She can go to Hell for all I care.’

I looked at him, and he looked so distressed I had to look away again.

‘Fuck her,’ said Alexander. He wiped his nose with his wrist, put down his glass and walked out of the room into the garden.

I waited for a while, but he did not come back inside so I finished my drink and went quietly to my bed.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I SHOULD HAVE
left then. I should have returned to Manchester, but I didn’t, even though it was obvious that Alexander and I were careering towards a disaster. Nothing was as I had imagined it. My romantic and, in retrospect, ridiculously naïve dream of setting up home in the country with a beautiful but damaged man and caring for his charismatic, tragic child seemed a million miles from the reality I now faced.

For days after the police came Alexander retreated right back into himself. I felt sorry for him and my instincts were to reach out and coax him out of whatever dark place he was in, but the truth was I hardly knew him at all. I was afraid of making things worse, of adding to his distress or making him angry. I couldn’t think of any words of reassurance or comfort because, whichever way I looked at the situation, it looked the same. Genevieve was gone and nobody knew where she was, and until she returned, or at least let her family know she was safe, we would continue to live under the huge shadow cast by the cloud of her absence.

Part of me wished she would return.

Part of me hoped she would not.

If such thoughts were going through my head, they must have been haunting Alexander too.

When he was in the garden and I was inside, I watched him, searching his body language for clues. He moved like a man with a burden, always; when he was alone his fingers moved to the scarred place on his side and worried at it like a dog with a sore. Sometimes he would stand for ages simply staring out across the fields; maybe he was watching the birds or the clouds but I believed he was lost in thoughts of Genevieve and interminable ‘what if’ scenarios. It seemed to me that his sense of foreboding was worse than mine.

At dinner I studied his face while he ate, or when he was listening to Jamie’s chatter and, although I searched, I found no trace of deceit. Alexander was evasive – often he refused to answer questions, even Jamie’s questions – but he did not lie. He would rather say nothing than tell a lie. I was sure of that. I was as sure as I could be.

One day I asked him why he did not move away from Burrington Stoke if he was certain Genevieve was never coming back. Why not up sticks and start again somewhere else where nobody knew him or his history or what had happened? He told me he owed a debt to Genevieve’s father and that he could not leave until it had been repaid.

‘What kind of debt?’ I asked.

‘The money kind,’ he replied.

And that was that. I already knew that, if I pushed, he would simply withdraw. So I was quiet, and I waited.

I told May about Alexander’s debt during one of our regular telephone conversations while I was waiting outside the school for Jamie. It was one of the few places where I had a signal for my phone. I was looking for reassurances; I didn’t get them.

May recounted several horror stories about people she had heard of who had been in debt and then rounded off with the statement: ‘Owing money is not a sign of good character.’ She said it in a manner that implied that was a gospel fact.

‘That’s a bit harsh,’ I said. ‘What about people who have money problems because they’re ill? Or because they’ve lost their jobs?’

‘Does either of those reasons apply to Alexander?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then stop being so defensive.’

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘Alexander’s working all hours to pay it back.’

‘It’s just one more thing, though, isn’t it? One more thing that’s wrong. Something else to add to the growing list of reasons why you shouldn’t stay in Somerset.’

‘I like it here,’ I said brightly, reverting to my preferred script. ‘It’s doing me good being away from Manchester.’

‘You don’t
have
to be there, though, do you? You could be in London or Edinburgh or Dublin or Leeds. You could be anywhere. You’re just infatuated with that man. He’s got some kind of hold over you. What’s it going to take to convince you to come home?’

Then we went into a conversation we had already had many times. May tried, for the hundredth time, to persuade me to return to Manchester and, for the hundredth time, I refused to budge. She told me that Laurie had called her to ask how I was; he’d been trying to contact me directly but the phone was always switched off.

‘It’s not switched off,’ I said. ‘I just don’t get any signal at Avalon. And, anyway, I don’t want to talk to him. Why would I?’

‘He just wants to know you’re OK. And also, Mum said the doctor’s written and …’

‘May, I have to go,’ I said. ‘The children are coming out of school. I’ll speak to you soon.’

After that I made a vow not to tell May anything else about Alexander that could possibly be construed as a sign of bad character, and hurried through the afternoon to reach a point where I could relate the conversation to Alexander
and reassure him that Genevieve had probably not been ignoring his phone calls but was simply in a place where there was no network coverage. When I told him he looked at me as if I was an idiot.

‘Don’t you think I thought of that?’ he asked. ‘I must have left a hundred messages.’

‘But you can’t retrieve messages without a signal!’

‘She’s not using her phone any more,’ he said. ‘The bills still come here but no calls are listed. She hasn’t used it in weeks.’

‘Oh.’

Then I said: ‘Alexander, if Genevieve’s calls used to be listed …’

‘I’ve done that. I called every number on the bill I didn’t recognize, and asking Genny’s vet and hairdresser if they knew anything about the whereabouts of my wife didn’t get me anywhere apart from convincing people who were already suspicious that I was paranoid.’

He scratched his head with both hands, furiously.

‘Sorry,’ I said quietly.

‘Look’ – he sighed and took hold of my hands, and he held them tight in his hands, his thumbs squeezing down – ‘I know you’re trying to help, Sarah, but please stop. It’s not your job to find Genevieve. It’s nothing to do with you. Let it be.’

‘OK,’ I said.

He turned away, and that was my cue to leave the subject alone and never go near it again.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

ONE DAY FOLLOWED
another.

About three weeks after I’d come to Avalon, I was eating my lunch in the garden when I heard a clattering on the gravel of the drive. Over the top of the wall I saw the top half of a white horse and a girl in a sweatshirt waving at me. I picked up my empty mug and plate and walked over to the gate. The girl dismounted on the other side and walked the last few steps, holding on to the reins so that the horse had no choice but to follow. We faced one another over the gate.

‘Hi,’ she said. She was about my age, with ruddy cheeks and strings of brown hair hanging down on either side of her face beneath a shabby riding hat.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Is Genny in?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, she isn’t.’

‘Oh!’ The girl frowned. ‘But she knew I was coming today. We planned it ages ago and I’ve come a long way.’

She looked at me as though waiting for me to give her a reason why Genevieve had missed her.

‘Perhaps she forgot?’ I suggested tentatively.

‘Well, obviously. Where is she?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Out riding?’

Behind the girl, the horse delicately extended one front leg like a ballerina, leaned down, and rubbed its cheek against its knee. The flies were bothering it. It had darker grey freckles on its face.

‘No, I don’t think she’s riding,’ I said.

The girl looked at me with exasperation.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘but, really, I don’t know where she is.’

‘Who are you exactly?’

I realized that she had probably seen me sitting by the stream at the bottom of the garden as if I owned the place.

‘I’m the housekeeper.’

‘Genny didn’t say anything to me about getting a housekeeper.’

I shrugged helplessly. The horse shook its head and blew air out of its nostrils. It made a whinnying sound. The girl turned to it and calmed it with her hand.

‘When are you expecting her back?’ she asked. ‘Is it worth me waiting?’

‘I don’t know when she’ll be back.’

The girl frowned again.

I grasped for something to say that would make me credible.

‘Do you know Mrs Churchill? Virginia?’

The girl pushed the horse backwards away from the gate.

‘Of course I know her.’

‘Perhaps you’d better speak to her.’

She grabbed the front of the saddle with one hand, found the stirrup with her left foot and hopped effortlessly on to the horse’s back.

‘I will,’ she said, and she made the horse turn and start cantering down the drive, sending gravel skittering this way and that.

I exhaled as she went, and turned back into the house.

She wasn’t the only visitor. The farrier turned up just a few
days later wondering why Genevieve hadn’t brought the horses down into the loose boxes for their regular appointment. He had also come a good distance and I went through a similar conversation with him. There was a flurry of enquiries from the organizers of various major equine shows and events, which I politely deflected. I even answered a telephone call from the manager of a horse and donkey sanctuary in Taunton asking if Genevieve would be available to turn on their Christmas lights. I said I didn’t know.

‘She’s such a lovely person, she’s always helped us out before,’ the woman said.

‘I’m sure she’d love to do it, but …’

‘We thought she could arrive on horseback to turn on the lights. Don’t you think that’d make a good photograph?’

‘I’m sure it would,’ I said. ‘Only the situation here is difficult.’

‘Can I pencil her in? Then she can either confirm or not when she’s ready.’

I didn’t tell Alexander about any of these things. I didn’t see the point. I knew he would pretend they meant nothing, but they would remind him of Genevieve and how she had stepped out of her life, and his, and I didn’t want anything to cause Alexander any more pain than he’d already been through.

September was drawing to a close. The days grew shorter, and I bought myself some warmer clothes one Saturday when Alexander took me into Castle Cary to show me where he worked. I used to be drawn to the fashion items; now, I picked up practical sweatshirts, fleeces and jeans. Alexander bought me a waterproof coat and a good pair of boots.

‘You’re turning me into a Wurzel,’ I complained.

‘I like Wurzels,’ he said, and I smiled and said: ‘If you’re happy, I’m happy.’

Alexander smiled at me then and I saw something new in his eyes. He moved his face towards me as if he were going
to kiss me, but Jamie was looking up at us with curiosity, and nothing happened. We did not touch physically, but something had changed between us; the connection was stronger. I was sure of it.

I worked hard. While Jamie was at school I cleaned the house thoroughly, one room at a time, not just the floors and surfaces but inside the cupboards, the skirting boards, the windows. Gradually, Avalon became less dark and gloomy. I cleared out the spiders, vacuumed up the dust and worked away at the stains. I carried out minor repairs and organized a handyman to deal with more substantial problems. Lights whose bulbs had needed replacing now illuminated the darker corners of the house, radiators gave out warmth and draughts were blocked. I paid with my own money for a builder to come and fix the holes in the roof so that the squirrels could no longer find their way in.

I found a photograph beneath the plastic cutlery tray in the kitchen drawer. It was a picture of Genevieve, with her hair long, like mine, standing beside the statue at the entrance to Eleonora House. Genevieve was mimicking the pose of the statue, one hand at her breast, the other reaching out and turned towards the gateway to the drive, inviting visitors in. Her face was downcast, like the statue’s, and the resemblance between them was striking. It was an old photograph, watermarked and dirty. I thought it was creepy. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t see the shadow of whoever had taken the picture. Surely it should have fallen across the grass, in front of Genevieve. And why had she posed like that, knowing the tragic story behind the statue? Was it a joke, or was she trying to underline her blood heritage by showing how alike she and her unlucky ancestor were? Either way, I didn’t like it.

I didn’t know what to do with the photograph. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, but I didn’t want to have to find somewhere safe to put it. In the end, I slipped it
back beneath the cleaned tray, where I had found it.

In all my cleaning, I never went again into Alexander and Genevieve’s room. If I went past and the door was open, I would pull it shut. The empty space inside the room scared me. I knew, rationally, that all I’d seen that day was my own reflection – that was all it could have been. But what I remembered seeing was not me but someone else altogether, and the more I thought about it, the more the fear in the eyes of the face in the mirror seemed to haunt me.

I did not mention any of this to May during our daily phone calls. The last thing I needed was May telling the rest of the family I’d had a supernatural experience, that I was obviously having trouble coping with my situation and that my mental health was deteriorating. No, I didn’t want them to start down that route – it had been difficult enough persuading them that I didn’t need specialized ‘help’ after the baby – so I said nothing about the image in the mirror, nothing at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY

AUTUMN WAS SETTLING
in, and so was I. There hadn’t been a frost yet, but the morning air was cold and mists hung low over the valley. As the colours of Somerset mellowed into pale greens and browns, I felt calmer and less anxious. When I spoke to May on the telephone, I must have sounded more like my old self, because our conversations were more normal. I still had nightmares about losing the baby, but they weren’t as regular as they had been. Looking after Jamie and Alexander took up so much of my time and energy that I dwelled less on the past. I did my best to shut out the thoughts and memories I didn’t want in my head and, by keeping busy, I generally succeeded.