The Secrets Between Us (22 page)

Everyone stared at me. I had no coat, even though it was cold and the nights were drawing in, and I was wearing a pair of filthy old wellingtons that I’d found in the trailer.

‘Are you all right?’ Betsy asked.

‘Yes, fine.’

‘Only’ – she took my elbow and moved me away from the other women – ‘no offence, Sarah, but you look a bit freaked out.’

I sat with Jamie in the library, counting the minutes until I knew Alexander would be back at Avalon.

We bought fish and chips for supper because I had
nothing else prepared, and I warmed them up in the oven and waited for Alexander to find the broken telephone.

‘What happened?’ he asked, coming into the kitchen and carrying the shattered appliance in both hands as if it were an injured bird. Bits of wire and metal stuck out of the casing and the wire trailed behind him. ‘Somebody must have really upset you.’

‘It wasn’t me,’ I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the mushy peas I was heating in a pan on the hob.

Alexander laughed. ‘Who was it then?’

I looked up at him. His expression was a combination of amusement and confusion.

I opened my mouth, and then I closed it again.

‘It was an accident,’ I said. ‘It must have been an electrical surge.’

Alexander looked at me, trying to work out if I was joking or not. When I didn’t respond, he sighed, and threw the whole telephone into the kitchen bin.

He thought I was acting oddly, I knew he did, but I wasn’t the cause of our troubles. It wasn’t me, it was Genevieve or, more precisely, Genevieve gone away.

Her absence was at the centre of everything.

Alexander came home the next day with two shiny new cordless telephone handsets in a box, one for upstairs, one for downstairs. He spent a while charging their batteries and making them work. They smelled fresh, of chemicals and polythene.

I made more of an effort to stay in touch with my family back home. I recognized the pattern between Genevieve and me, how both of us had fled a situation for our various reasons, and how difficult that was for the people who loved us, and who we’d left behind. It was easy for me to keep the lines of communication open, and I made sure I did.

‘Do people ask about me?’ I asked May the next time we spoke.

‘Of course they do,’ she said. ‘They wonder if you’re all right and when you’re coming home.’

‘What do you tell them?’

‘I tell them you’re no more screwed up than usual and that we expect to see you when you run out of money.’

‘Thanks for your support.’

‘That’s OK. Sarah …’

‘Mmmm?’

‘Laurie called round the other day. He wanted to know … God, this is difficult …’

‘Just tell me.’

‘He wanted to know if it would be all right to give your pushchair to his sister. She’s pregnant again.’

I looked up at the ceiling. Suddenly I felt furious. I was angry with Laurie for even asking. Why couldn’t he just make a decision by himself? And also I was angry with May for passing on the message and reminding me that my son was dead and that life was moving on, and most of all I was angry with myself for feeling so upset.
Now
I wanted to smash the phone against the wall.

‘Tell him to do whatever he wants,’ I said coldly. ‘Like he normally does.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

BY MID-NOVEMBER I
began to feel as if I were a prisoner in Avalon. The nights were closing right in, and the weather was cold and wet. I only normally left the house to fetch Jamie from school. Once a week Alexander drove me to the supermarket on the outskirts of Glastonbury to shop for the week’s groceries so there was no need to keep going to and from the Spar. I didn’t like being in the village any more. If I was compelled to go on some urgent errand, I wrapped myself up and huddled along, with my chin tucked into my collar and the hair blowing across my face, hoping nobody would notice me.

There didn’t seem to be a problem with the new telephones. They rang infrequently, but when they did ring, there was always somebody there. I convinced myself that there must have been a fault with the old one. That would explain the silent calls and its violent self-destruction.

Because I spent so much time in the house, I had a lot of time for drawing. I’d always enjoyed it and it was one of the few activities that demanded my full concentration and stopped me thinking about Genevieve.

Alexander was not a man for compliments, but he said my pictures were good. He said I should take them into Wells and tout them around the art shops. I couldn’t imagine that
anyone would pay money for anything I’d drawn but he said I should give it a go, because otherwise I’d never know. He said it would get me out of the house and give me something to take my mind off things.

So I picked out the best drawings and caught the bus into Wells with my portfolio under my arm.

There were several small art shops in the city. It took me a long time to pluck up the courage to go in, and the lady in the first shop was polite but unenthusiastic about my pictures. The owner of the very next shop, a willowy woman who wore a long cardigan and spectacles on a chain around her neck, could not have been kinder. She wasn’t so interested in the sketches of Jamie but liked the pencil drawings of flowers. She said they were intimate and sensual. Even more than the flowers, she liked my coloured drawings of apples, not beautiful, perfect apples but the damaged, misshapen ones, the windfalls that looked so ugly but whose flesh tasted so divine.

We drank ginger tea sweetened with honey and ate the thinnest cinnamon biscuits, and then the gallery owner chose four pictures to frame. Two were apple studies and two were drawings of fading roses. The woman said they were subtly erotic, but honestly I don’t know how she came to that conclusion. We agreed to share the framing costs and she would do her best to sell them. I felt so happy I practically skipped out of the gallery. I longed to call Alexander to tell him the good news, but I knew he didn’t like being disturbed at work.

The art shop was huddled cosily amongst a number of very nice upmarket chi-chi little shops that were already preparing for Christmas. I spent a while wandering up and down the street looking in the windows, and bought a few bits and pieces.

It was only Wells, the smallest city in England if you don’t count the City of London, but it had traffic and shoppers
and people talking into their mobile phones. It had a pub that used to be the town gaol, pretty almshouses, a moated bishop’s palace and a cosy archway leading into the cathedral gardens. It did not have suspicious glances and posters of Genevieve and women who looked me up and down. That day, Wells could have been a million miles from Burrington Stoke. It felt deliciously cosmopolitan. I had a few errands to run. I went to the post office and to the bank, and dropped an envelope full of invoices off at the office of Alexander’s accountant.

After that, feeling more cheerful and normal than I had for a while, I went into a coffee shop and treated myself to a proper coffee, a panini and a magazine. I found a seat by a sunny window that overlooked the quaint cobbled streets and was eating my lunch while reading a magazine about celebrities that Laurie would have thoroughly disapproved of when a voice at my shoulder said: ‘Hello, it’s Sarah, isn’t it?’

I turned and looked into the face of a smiling man who was attractive in that rugged, confident way some older men are. He was holding out a hand in greeting and balancing a mug of coffee and a pastry in the other.

‘Sorry,’ I said, putting what was left of my panini back on the plate and wiping my fingers on a paper napkin. ‘I know we’ve met but I …’

‘DI Twyford,’ he said. ‘My colleague and I interrupted your dinner to talk to Mr Westwood a few weeks back.’

‘Oh yes, of course.’

I half-stood and took his hand. His grip was firm and assertive; his skin warm and dry. He held my hand for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

‘Should I call you Inspector?’

‘I’m Ian, to my friends,’ he said.

I hesitated.

‘And acquaintances.’

‘OK. Hello, Ian.’

I smiled into his smile. My heart was thumping like I had something to hide. ‘Would you like to join me?’ I asked.

‘If you don’t mind. There’s not much room here.’

I glanced around quickly. That wasn’t true. There were several free tables, albeit at the edges of the room and not by the window, in the sunshine, like mine. Had he looked in and seen me sitting there by the window as he walked past? Was he following me? I felt panicky and held my breath to calm myself.

The detective put his coffee on the table, beside mine. Some white froth had spilled over the lip and into the saucer. He pulled a couple of paper napkins from the dispenser and used them to soak up the spill. He seemed relaxed. I told myself to stop being paranoid. Wells was so small that any two people who were there at the same time were bound to bump into one another.

‘So what brings you into the city. Errands?’ he asked, stirring rather a lot of sugar into his latte.

My shopping bag was leaning against the window, and so was my portfolio.

‘Your powers of deduction are impressive,’ I said.

He laughed.

I smiled too. ‘And you? Are you based in Wells or are you just visiting?”

‘I’m off duty. Here on errands, like you.’

I sipped my coffee. I had no appetite left for the remains of the panini.

‘So how are you getting on in Burrington Stoke?’ he asked, emptying another twist of sugar into his cup. ‘You’re from Manchester, aren’t you? Isn’t village life a little provincial for a city girl like you?’

‘It’s a beautiful village,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s very nice.’

He tapped his spoon against the side of the cup.

‘Did you ever see that film
American Werewolf
? That
scene in the pub called the Slaughtered Lamb when the strangers walk in and all the locals stop talking and stare at them? They filmed it in the Quarrymen’s Arms because they didn’t need actors there.’

I smiled hesitantly, although I was certain the pub hadn’t come into the conversation by accident. DI Twyford knew about the fight. He probably knew everything there was to know.

‘Burrington Stoke is an old-fashioned place,’ I said carefully. ‘I guess they don’t really like seeing new faces.’

He shook his head. ‘This isn’t the Middle Ages, Sarah. It’s not you per se that worries them. It’s what you represent.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You being there, with Alexander, makes them think that Genevieve’s never coming back.’

Here she was again.

‘I’m sure Genevieve is absolutely fine,’ I said. ‘Wherever she is, she’s probably having the time of her life.’

The inspector, Ian, stirred his coffee and said: ‘Oh yes?’

I told him about Genevieve’s letter to Jamie, and the teddy bear. I told the inspector that she could only have organized those things if she were planning to leave of her own accord. I even offered to show him the letter and the bear if he doubted my story.

He didn’t seem particularly interested in what I told him. All he said was: ‘That was convenient.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘You finding the letter that corroborated what you’d been told about Genevieve leaving.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was convenient. But it happened.’

The inspector didn’t respond. He gazed out of the window for a moment. Then he asked if I got on well with Jamie, and I told him that I did.

‘You haven’t known him long,’ he said.

‘A few months. We met in the summer, in Sicily, a couple
of weeks after Genevieve left. I’m sure Alexander told you that.’

The inspector nodded.

‘Why are you even asking me these questions?’ I asked. ‘You said you weren’t working.’

‘It’s a conversation, not an interrogation.’

‘It feels like one.’

The inspector raised his hands and made a face as if to say: ‘Guilty.’

‘It’s the job,’ he said. ‘It takes over sometimes.’

‘Why does everyone think there’s something suspicious about Genevieve being gone?’ I asked. ‘She left letters. She prepared her son. Don’t you think …?’ I paused – I wasn’t sure if I should say what I was about to say – and then I thought, why not? ‘Don’t you think it’s possible she was having an affair and that she’s gone away with another man?’

‘It’s possible,’ said the inspector.

‘What do you think has happened to her?’

‘It would be unprofessional and unethical to comment.’

‘Theoretically, then.’

He shrugged and sipped his coffee. ‘People leave home all the time,’ he said. ‘They walk out of their old lives and don’t look back. You’d be surprised how often it happens, and most of the time there’s no foul play involved.’

I made the inspector hold my gaze.

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘The problem is people like Genevieve don’t disappear unless they have a very compelling reason to do so.’

‘Wouldn’t a lover be a compelling enough reason?’

‘Even if that is the case, why the silence? Why hasn’t she been in touch?’

‘Perhaps she’s waiting for the dust to settle.’

He shook his head. ‘The dust’s never going to settle. And Genevieve might not have been a model wife, but she
definitely loved her family and the kid. You never saw them together, of course.’

A cold feeling came over me.

‘You knew her?
Know
her, I mean?’

‘Oh yes. Virginia taught my daughter dressage. As often as not, Genevieve would be up at the yard. She used to lean on the gate and watch the lesson with me or she’d be riding too, demonstrating. She could make those horses dance; she was incredible. Sometimes Jamie was with her. She was always laughing and messing around with him, swinging him round, chasing him, tickling him. If you’d asked me, I’d have said Genevieve would let nothing come between her and her son. Nothing.’

I felt utterly helpless and as if I were terribly in the wrong. I shouldn’t have told the inspector that Jamie and I were close. I shouldn’t have spoken so carelessly of Genevieve. My mouth was dry as dust. I looked out into the street. People were passing by; to them it was an ordinary day – a bright, autumn day in a beautiful city – and all they had to worry about was what they were going to eat for supper, and there I was, trapped in the corner of a café by a man who knew so much more than I did.