The Secrets Between Us (37 page)

Alexander switched off the shaver and nodded.

‘I suppose that’s inevitable.’

‘The thing is, I think they’re watching us. I think they’ve been looking at the stuff we’ve thrown away and …’

‘They wouldn’t be doing their job if they weren’t.’

‘No, but I’m worried there might still be things here, in the house, I mean, that it might be better if they didn’t find. You know.’

Alexander smiled at me.

‘You worry too much,’ he said.

This time I nodded. I held my wrists between my knees. I was feeling quietly desperate. If Alexander was perturbed by the news, he wasn’t showing it. He turned on the hot tap and rubbed soap between the palms of his hands, working up a lather.

‘Did they say when they’d be coming?’ he asked casually.

‘I can’t remember exactly. Soon. Maybe not today though. Maybe not for a few days.’

‘It’ll be OK, Sarah. We’ll probably have left by the time they get round to Avalon.’

‘You don’t think they’ll want to start here? It was the last place Genevieve … The last place we know she was.’

‘It’s possible. But there’s no point worrying about it until it happens. Pass me the towel, would you? You never know,
there might be some new development that’ll make them change their plans.’

I could not understand why Alexander was so relaxed when we were having such a terrible conversation. Didn’t he realize the implications?

He turned round and kissed the top of my head.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ he whispered. ‘It might never happen.’

After breakfast, Alexander went up to the attic and fetched down the Christmas decorations. He was in such an upbeat mood that it was difficult not to be infected. I had never heard him whistle before but that’s what he did as he spread the boxes and bags out on the living-room floor. There were hundreds of lights and ornaments and baubles, all meticulously wrapped in tissue paper. It made me feel a little sad and a little jealous to know that the last hand that had touched the decorations had been Genevieve’s. Jamie didn’t make the connection; he was far too excited. As I uncovered each new treasure, he exclaimed in delight – ‘Oh, the Santa in the sledge! The bird with the real feathers! The jingle bells – listen, they really chime!’ He ran in and out of the living room like a whirlwind, taking his favourite Christmas ornaments up to his bedroom and distributing the rest where he thought they ought to be.

I had a tiny pang of homesickness. This would have been my baby’s first Christmas. I had looked forward to it so much. The previous year, I had been pregnant during the holiday. The foetus was four months old and I had already begun to feel him kick. At four months he was six inches long, almost perfectly formed, and the soul had been breathed into him, according to Rosita. Laurie and I, flushed with the imminence of parenthood, shopped that year with different priorities. For my Christmas present, Laurie bought me and the baby a Mamas and Papas Pramette that cost as
much, Laurie told me, as a small family saloon. My mother shook her head, partly at the extravagance, but mainly at our foolishness. She said we were tempting fate. She said we shouldn’t buy anything until at least the seventh month. We giggled about her primitive superstitions behind her back, bought more decorations and spoke of how they would become our child’s heritage. I wondered if Laurie was unpacking those carefully chosen things now. I wondered if he was thinking of what might have been.

I had to be strict with myself to put those thoughts from my mind, and then I joined in with Jamie, helping him thread differently coloured baubles on to ribbons to hang over the fireplace in the dining room and making a big fuss of the handmade glitter and cotton-wool snowmen he’d made at school. I loved being with Jamie and doing these enjoyable jobs with him, but still I felt as if I were acting. Together we unravelled the fairy lights and plugged them in to make sure they all worked. Then, with the tangle of wires and tiny coloured bulbs heaped up and twinkling on the carpet, we moved back the furniture to clear a space in the corner of the living room for the tree.

‘That’s where it always goes,’ Jamie said solemnly. ‘Mummy says it’s the best place.’

He looked up at me in surprise, realizing what he had said and that he was without his mother at Christmastime.

‘She’s right,’ I said. I squeezed Jamie’s shoulder. He had put his thumb in his mouth and was staring at the dusty space on the carpet.

‘Come on, Jamie!’ Alexander called. ‘I need you to help me put the lights up outside.’

I made sure Jamie was wrapped up warm enough to go outside, then, while he and Alexander attended to their task, I filled the vegetable bowl with water, peeled some potatoes and cut them into chips. I was frying mushrooms to go in an omelette when Alexander opened the door, letting in a rush
of cold air. Beyond, in the garden, I could hear Jamie loudly singing:
Jingle bells, Batman smells
…

Alexander was wearing his big boots, a jacket, gloves, and in his hand was an axe.

‘Jamie and I are going up to the farm to cut down a Christmas tree,’ he said.

Robin’s flown away
…

‘Are you coming?’

I shook my head. Alexander weighed the axe-head in the palm of his right hand.

Uncle Billy lost his willy
…

‘I need to get lunch on.’

‘OK.’

On the M4 motorway
.

Still, he paused.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Please stop asking me. I told you there’s nothing wrong. I’ve just got a terrible headache is all. And my face looks like shit.’

Jingle drums
…

Alexander frowned. ‘You’ve been distant. You’ve had a look in your eyes like you’d rather be somewhere else.’

Batman bums
…

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, where’s Jamie got that from?’ I asked. ‘He shouldn’t be using that kind of language.’

‘It’s never bothered you before. Sarah, what is it?’

‘For the thousandth time, I had a bang on the head!’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not that.’

Robin did a smelly poo
.

‘And the police came. I’ve been worrying about the search – I mean, about what they might find. I’ve had a horrible couple of days. Stop fussing,’ I said. I turned back to the counter, picked up a chilli and began to slice it.

Mr Whippy’s got a stiffy
…

‘Go and fetch the tree,’ I said in a light voice. ‘I’ll get
everything ready here. What do you normally put it in? A bucket?’

‘There’s a stand somewhere,’ said Alexander. ‘It’s biggish, red, it’s got three legs, made of wrought iron. I haven’t seen it since last year.’

And the penguin’s got one too
.

‘I’ll have a look,’ I said.

Alexander bounced the head of the axe up and down in his gloved hand. He pulled a comedy face.

‘Do me a favour, Sarah – if you come across anything incriminating, perhaps you could find a really good place to hide it.’

‘Ha ha,’ I said. ‘How about down the well?’

There was a pause between us. A heartbeat. Jamie appeared behind his father, his eyes bright, wanting to know without asking if we’d heard his song and if we were amused or annoyed. For once, Alexander and I took no notice.

‘What do you mean?’ Alexander asked.

‘I looked down the well yesterday. I saw what’s down there.’

‘The well in the cellar? You can’t have done.’

‘I did.’

‘Sarah, the cover’s padlocked, and I don’t know where Genevieve kept the key. It hasn’t been opened in years.’

I shook my head.

‘I moved the cover myself.’

‘That’s impossible.’ Alexander frowned. ‘It must have been the knock on the head that’s confused you. There’s no way you could have moved it.’

I swallowed and looked at my fingers. I felt tearful. I
knew
what I’d seen. Why was he lying to me? Was he trying to make me feel as if I was losing my mind?

‘Hey,’ said Alexander. ‘Come on, it’s dark down there, creepy; it’s easy to think you’ve seen something that isn’t there.’

He stepped forward and kissed my cheek.

‘You will be here when we come back, won’t you?’ he asked me.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Where else would I be?’

As soon as the Land Rover had pulled out of the drive, I unlocked the cellar door, propped it open with a box of ready-to-recycle crockery and then, to be doubly sure, taped over the latch so it could not possibly close by itself. I switched on the light, picked up the torch, just in case I should need it, and went down the concrete steps for the second time.

The cellar wasn’t nearly so oppressive in daytime. A naked bulb at the foot of the staircase illuminated the area brightly. As well as that, light from the door filtered down, and daylight also shone around the edges of a hatch that I hadn’t noticed in the dark. It obviously opened to allow wood, coal or other bulky essentials to be delivered directly to the cellar. The floor was damp, though, and slippery in places. Shiny slug and snail trails criss-crossed the walls like graffiti.

I looked around to orientate myself. There was the fuse box on the far wall and beneath it was the cardboard box where I’d rested the torch the previous evening. I followed the line of the wall over to the wood pile and realized at once that something was different. The stack was the wrong shape. The logs I’d moved then tried to replace had tumbled down in the night so there was a V-shaped gap in the stack. The alcove and the well cover were entirely visible. I looked over the logs down on to the well lid. Metal plates had been bolted on to either side of it, and these were set into the floor. The bolts were huge. They were solid. The metal plates were held together at the centre of the cover with a large, closed padlock.

Alexander must have put the bolts and the padlock there in the night, I decided. But how could he have done that
without my noticing? I was certain he had been with me the whole time. I’d slept so fitfully, and every time I’d woken he’d been there, and it would have taken ages to move all the wood to get the access he would have needed. The storm had been raging and it was possible he could have drilled into the wood, and the floor, without me hearing but … How could he have?

Was I just looking at it from a different angle? Had the dark been playing tricks on my eyes when the lights went out the previous evening? Maybe the bolts had worked themselves loose or something. Maybe they’d rusted and rotted away and that was how I’d managed to lift the cover. Crouching, and taking care not to knock my head, I tugged at the rope handle.

The cover wouldn’t budge.

My heart began to race. Had I imagined the whole scenario?

Alexander had told me I was obsessed with Genevieve, and maybe he was right. Perhaps my subconscious had given me what I wanted, showing me a place where the laptop, which I’d been looking for for weeks, could have been hidden?

Or maybe my mind wasn’t quite right. I knew that sometimes what was in my head wasn’t quite how things were outside it.

After the baby was stillborn, I had remembered some events wrongly, muddling sequences and recalling thoughts as facts and imagined conversations as having taken place. The doctors told me that my confusion wasn’t unusual. It was one of the symptoms people experience when they’ve had a bad shock. It didn’t mean I was losing my mind; quite the opposite, it showed that my mind was trying to find a way to manage. I’d been so tied up in my feelings, and my sense of loss, it had been so consuming that I’d misinterpreted some of what real life was all about. Was that happening to me now?

Only, I was
so
certain of what I’d seen.

The lump on the back of my head was real. I reached up to touch it. My face had been smashed by the fall. That was real too. I stared down at the well cover.

It was obvious that the only way to open the well would be to take off the padlock that held the plates together.

I went back up the cellar steps, switched off the light, put the torch in its place and locked the door behind me. Then I called May. I desperately wanted to talk to her, but there was no answer on her landline or her mobile phone. Neil’s mobile went straight to answerphone too. I left messages asking them to call me, made myself a coffee and sat at the kitchen table, jiggling my legs and waiting to hear their voices. I wanted to hear familiar, normal people talking to me as if the world was a happy, straightforward place.

I wanted to feel like myself again, because I was so out of sorts now, so confused.

The phone didn’t ring.

They were probably out shopping. May always left her Christmas shopping until the last week; she said it put her in the festive spirit. They’d call when they returned.

I remembered the Christmas-tree stand. I’d promised I’d find it.

I knew it wasn’t in the house, and if it had been in the cellar I would have noticed it. I gazed out towards the dilapidated outbuildings. If I were looking for a place to store a largish item that I wouldn’t need for eleven and a half months, that’s where I would put it – out of the way.

I put on my boots and went outside. The winter sky was reflected in the puddles on the drive. Twigs and branches had been torn from trees during the night and littered the garden and the orchard and the drive. I walked around them, followed by a tiny robin. All the ramshackle barns and stables were open to the elements except the largest and oldest, at the bottom of the drive. I checked inside the trailer,
peered through the overgrown ivy and brambles into the hay store, but I knew the Christmas-tree stand wasn’t there. If I had been Genevieve, I’d have put it in the big barn, where it would be protected from the weather. I paused beside its big old wooden door, the green paint peeling from its surface in wide curls revealing older, white-grey paint beneath.

I had never been inside the barn. I’d had no need to go there. I hesitated. Then I took a deep breath, pulled back the heavy iron bolt and the door swung open of its own accord.

The interior was not pitch dark. There were holes in the roof and walls which the birds and bats used for access, and patches of light fell in random places. An old tractor filled most of the space, and around and behind it were various pieces of ancient agricultural equipment and sacks of animal feed splitting at the seams, spilling their contents on to the floor.