The Secrets Between Us (38 page)

There was a smell of damp, of bird-shit and of rodents. Dirty cobwebs billowed from the rafters.

I took a step forward. To the side of the tractor was an old fridge, and behind that was a dusty old wardrobe, the mirrors still on its door. There were piles of newspapers, their edges chewed to shreds for mice bedding. Behind, I could see more modern junk. I took a deep breath of clean, outside air and squeezed through the gap between the tractor and the furniture.

The barn went back a long way. Behind the tractor were all manner of abandoned items: bits of carpets, a roll of chicken wire, fence posts, plastic buckets. Sticking out from amongst the clutter was the shiny, ornate, red metal leg of what could only be the Christmas-tree stand.

I felt a rush of relief. I leaned down and pulled at the leg. The stand was stuck beneath a pile of things that had been thrown on top of it. I put my back against the wardrobe door and my feet against the huge rear tyre of the tractor, braced myself and tugged again. It took several goes, but
gradually the stand became looser and freed itself. The release was so unexpected that I was pressed back against the wardrobe and I felt the lock snap as the door caved in behind my back. I lifted the stand over the tractor’s enormous hubcap and, as I squeezed myself back towards the open barn door, the wardrobe door silently opened.

I turned to push it shut but something caught my eye.

Inside was a bag. A pretty, pale-blue and brown, Animal-brand travelling bag.

I knew what it was – there was only one thing it could be and only one person to whom it could have belonged.

It was Genevieve’s.

I didn’t stop to think what I was doing.

I tugged it out of the wardrobe, hauled it over the tractor’s bonnet and into the daylight. I kicked the Christmas-tree stand aside, knelt down and pulled open the zip on the bag.

The clothes inside had been neatly packed, not in haste, but with thought. In one of the side pockets, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner and various cosmetic creams had been wrapped in a towel that still smelled of washing powder. There was a pouch of jewellery.

In the front pocket was a purse full of euros and a folded piece of paper that, when I opened it, had the details of a flight scrawled on it. The flight booked was to Sicily. It was a 9 p.m. flight from Heathrow and the date was 24 July. The day Genevieve had disappeared.

The only other item in the pocket was a passport. I picked it up and opened it.

It was hers.

‘Oh sweet Jesus Christ,’ I whispered. ‘Oh God!’ There was no doubt then.

Genevieve had not gone away. She had never left. And that being the case, she must still be here, somewhere.

A car drove past on the lane beyond and I jumped. Alexander would be back soon, he’d be back any minute. If
he came up the drive and saw me there, with Genevieve’s bag …

I picked up the bag and its contents, threw them back into the barn and pushed the door shut. It wouldn’t latch. I tried to lift it high enough for me to push the bolt back into its collar, but it was too heavy. Sobbing, I searched for a stone to hold it in place, found one, kicked it to make it stay, and then I ran back to the house. I didn’t have a plan, I just wanted to find my phone so I could get out of Avalon and, when I was somewhere else, I’d call for help. I didn’t know who I’d call but …

No, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t leave without Jamie.

Either way, I needed the phone. I searched frantically, pulling open drawers, tipping piles of paper on to the floor and going through the pockets on the coats hung in the hall, but it was nowhere. Maybe I’d dropped it in the barn. Breathless with fear and frustration, I called May again from the landline. I tried both numbers and, both times, it went through to answerphone. The only other number I could remember off the top of my head was Claudia’s. I dialled and was so relieved when Petra answered that I could hardly speak.

‘Petra, it’s me, Sarah. Listen, I need to speak to your mummy now, it’s urgent. I …’

‘She can’t talk,’ Petra said, and despite my own distress I could hear the anxiety in her voice.

I held my breath to try to stop the panicked breathing and asked as calmly as I could: ‘What’s the matter, honey?’

‘Mummy has to go to Grandma’s house and …’

I heard Allegra’s voice in the background and Petra must have put her hand over the receiver because everything went muffled for a while and then I heard a wail from one of the girls.

‘Hello?’ I called. ‘Petra, are you all right? Petra?’

She dropped the receiver and I heard frantic voices and, at
the very point when I was about to cut off the call and dial 999, Bill picked up the phone and said: ‘Hi, Sarah.’

‘What’s the matter?’ I cried. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Where are you?’ Bill asked.

‘At Avalon.’

‘What about Alexander and Jamie?’

‘They’ve gone to get a Christmas tree.’

I heard another muffled conversation, Claudia’s voice, strained and more highly pitched than normal, and then a bustle of activity, then the slam of a door. Bill came back on the phone.

‘Sarah, I’m going to come and pick you up. Wait outside for me.’

‘Why? What’s happened? Has there been an accident?’

Bill sighed. I could imagine him taking off his spectacles and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

‘The police searched the old quarry this morning,’ he said, and he sounded as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

‘And …?’ I asked in a voice so quiet it was barely even a whisper.

‘They found a body.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

I DIDN’T STOP
to pack a case. I picked up my coat and ran out of the door. I heard the garden gate bang shut behind me as I ran down the puddled drive.

I reached the barn and saw, to my horror, that its door had swung open again. Genevieve’s clothes had come out of the bag where I had thrown it and were weirdly stuck to the front of the tractor; it looked as if there had been a road accident. As I heaved my shoulder against the door, I heard the sound of tyres on the drive.

Thank God, I thought, pushing the door with both hands; it was so heavy, it resisted and the car came into view, and it was not the Volvo or Bill’s big off-roader but the Land Rover, spattered in mud up to its windows with the back of a Christmas tree jutting out from its tailgate.

Alexander tooted the horn and, from the passenger seat, Jamie waved frantically through the window. I tried to put a smile on my face but I honestly couldn’t remember how to do it. Time slowed until there were several seconds between every heartbeat. The muscles in my face were retracting cautiously; I closed my eyes for a moment and felt the top lashes spring as they met the lower ones.

‘Hi,’ Alexander said, leaning out of the window. ‘What are you doing?’

He was smiling but there was concern in his eyes. I kept one hand on the door, holding it shut, blocking the inside of the barn from his view.

‘I found the Christmas-tree stand,’ I said, and my voice was like a record played at the wrong speed, like a sound effect in a horror film. I pointed at the object with the toe of my boot.

‘We got a great big tree, Sarah!’ Jamie called. ‘And I helped put it in the tube to get wrapped.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Alexander asked. He turned off the engine of the Land Rover.

‘Nothing.’

The car door opened and Alexander stepped down. His face was pale.

‘Are you all right? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing.’

The barn door was heavy behind my back. He took a step towards me. I pressed back against the door. Dry old paint crackled and crumbled to dust behind my fingers.

‘Come on, Dad, I want to put the tree inside!’ Jamie called. He was struggling to unfasten his seatbelt. Stay in the car, Jamie, I thought. Please, please, please stay in the car.

‘Sarah?’

Alexander stood in front of me.

Now the smile that wouldn’t come before twanged on to my mouth like the smile of a puppet.

‘Why don’t you go in and put the kettle on?’ I said in a voice that had speeded up so far as to sound like it belonged to a cartoon character. I felt myself sway on my feet. I mustn’t faint, I couldn’t afford to faint now.

‘Let me see,’ he said in a quiet voice.

I shook my head. ‘No.’

He put one hand on the barn door, above my head.

I didn’t have a plan but, as he did this, I ducked under his arm, ran round him and jumped into the driver’s seat of the
Land Rover. Alexander, confused, turned from the door, but I was too quick. I started the engine and, sliding forward in the seat to reach the pedals, put the vehicle into reverse.

‘What are you doing, Sarah?’ Jamie asked. He was still strapped into the passenger seat. He did not look at all worried, just a little confused. The gear grated.

‘We’re going …’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know.’

I put the gear stick back into neutral and tried again.

‘But Sarah, we have to put the Christmas tree up!’

Jamie tried to open his door.

‘No, Jamie, don’t!’ I leaned over to grab his hand.

‘What are you
doing?
’

Alexander had let the barn door swing open but had not looked inside. He was walking down the drive towards us as I fought the pedals, trying to coordinate the gear and the clutch and the accelerator. His hands were at his sides, the palms turned up like the hands of Jesus in those pictures where he is beseeching God. Behind him was the tractor, strewn with Genevieve’s clothes and her upturned bag. He put one hand on the Land Rover’s bonnet.

‘Sarah …?’

And suddenly the gear took hold and I felt the wheels move backwards.

‘Sarah!’

Alexander thumped the bonnet with the flat of his hand and he had an awful expression on his face, but I wouldn’t look, I wouldn’t feel sorry for him. I turned my head to look over my shoulder to navigate the bend in the drive and immediately realized what was going to happen. I slammed on the brakes, but not quickly enough to avoid the awful crunch as the back of the Land Rover collided with the front of the police car that was coming the other way.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

IF I’D ONLY
had myself to think about, I would have gone straight home, back to Manchester, but I could not leave Jamie behind and I could not take him with me. Genevieve’s family would not have contemplated that option for a single moment and the police family-liaison officer said it would be best for him to be in familiar surroundings, with people he knew, during what she called ‘this difficult time’. Jamie and I could not stay in the familiar surroundings of Avalon, because the police had closed the house off – literally taped over the entrance and stationed a guard by the gate – so they could conduct a fingertip search. We went to stay with Claudia’s family at the Barn. All I had with me was my coat, purse and the phone, which I’d found on the Land Rover’s dashboard. I don’t know how it got there. Poor Jamie had nothing but the clothes he had worn to the farm to cut down the tree.

The atmosphere in the Barn was awful, a mixture of grief and anger. Cutting through it were pure streaks of innocence that were the twins and Jamie. They knew somebody had fallen into the quarry but they didn’t know that the person was dead, or that it was almost certainly Genevieve. They didn’t know that everybody thought Alexander had killed her. They didn’t seem to realize the horror of the situation.
They were excited about Christmas. I supposed they were used to the irrationalities of adults, their seemingly pointless changes of mood, and could not differentiate between the various levels of despair.

Claudia could hardly bear to look at me, and it was nothing to do with my face, which had become more bruised and swollen as the day wore on. I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking I was the woman who had slept with the man who had killed her sister. I’d slept with him when he was already a murderer. His murderous hands had been all over me. She thought I must have known something, I must have had my suspicions yet I never mentioned them to her. She was right. I’d had to decide where my loyalties lay and I had chosen Alexander, every time. If it was true that I had chosen wrongly, then I was almost as guilty as he was.

If it was him.

If he was a murderer.

My heart and the voice in my head still insisted that Alexander had not and never would have done anything to hurt Genevieve. At the same time, I didn’t know if I could trust my head any more. Knowing how strongly my heart beat for Jamie, I could even empathize, to an extent, if Alexander
had
killed his wife. I understood how the urge to protect and keep Jamie might have become overriding in Alexander knowing that if Genevieve took the child, he would, quite possibly, never see him again. I could understand how emotion could overcome all rational thought in those circumstances.

Something else was eating away at me.

The police hadn’t wasted any time when they came to Avalon. They had been friendly and brisk with Jamie, keeping him occupied so he hadn’t seen the officer go over to his father, and he hadn’t seen Alexander’s face when he heard what the policeman had to say. But I had.

I’d seen Alexander’s face, the horror on it, and then
Alexander had raised his eyes and looked over to me.

He didn’t say anything, he just looked, and what he was looking for was reassurance that I was still with him.

I couldn’t hold his eyes. I’d had to look away. In the moment when he’d most needed me to be there for him, I had let him know I doubted him.

At the Barn, I went into the kitchen to make a snack for Jamie. Claudia was washing up at the sink furiously, as if she could vent her despair on the innocent china. Many mugs had been soiled, because Claudia had been making drinks for the police who kept coming and going.

‘Hi,’ I said tentatively. ‘Is it OK if I make a sandwich for Jamie?’

Claudia turned and frowned at me. Then she threw the dishcloth into the bowl, sending suds flying into the air, and stripped off her rubber gloves.

‘I tried to help you!’ she said in a voice that was spiky with anger. It was awkward for Claudia because she was naturally so calm and gentle. Her eyes looked sore and red and her hair, showing an inch of grey at the roots, hung unflatteringly around her heavy face. ‘I showed you the ropes, I befriended you, I even gave you a second chance when I found out you’d been lying to me about … about
him
.’