The Secrets Between Us (41 page)

‘She’s only known him five minutes. And she doesn’t know the first thing about love.’

Neil joined the two of us.

‘Let’s just go,’ he said. ‘Come on, Sarah. I’m sure you’ll be able to see Jamie again when things are different.’

He took my other hand and his hand was cool and made me feel safe. May squeezed my fingers. I let the two of them guide me into the hall. The front door was open. The dogs were sniffing about on the lawn. We were on the drive, our heads held low against the stinging flash of lights from the photographers grouped behind the gates, when I heard the cry.

‘Sarah!’

I turned my head and there was Jamie, hurtling towards the front door, holding his arms out to me.

Bill caught Jamie under the arms at the door, and pulled him back. He wasn’t properly dressed. His skinny bare legs were flailing.

‘Sarah!’ he screamed. ‘Where are you going?’ There was a barrage of lights.

‘You can’t snap the kid!’ May shouted, dropping my hand and heading towards the assembled press. They immediately turned their lenses towards her.

‘Leave her alone!’ Neil shouted.

‘Let me go to him!’ I pleaded to Neil. ‘Let me just have a word!’

‘Get in the car, Sarah,’ said a voice at my shoulder. It was Detective Inspector Twyford.

Jamie was screaming: ‘Let me go, let me go, let me go! Sarah!’

‘Oh God,’ I cried, trying to pull my hand away from Neil’s. ‘Please let me go to him!’

‘You bastards!’ May yelled at the cameramen.

DI Twyford gripped my arm and spoke in an authoritative voice.

‘Turn to Jamie,’ he said. ‘If he sees you panicking, he’ll be even more scared. Smile like nothing’s wrong and wave and say you’ll see him soon.’

I turned and I saw the little boy reaching both arms out to me and screaming to come to me.

Bill was trying to close the door but Jamie had his fingers gripped around the edge. He was going to get his fingers trapped. I knew he wouldn’t let go.

‘Why are you going away?’ he screamed. ‘Where’s my Daddy? When are we going home?
Where’s my Mummy? Don’t go!
’

I opened my mouth but could not speak.

‘Go on,’ said the inspector. ‘Smile. Reassure him. I’m going to get your sister before there’s trouble.’

I turned and caught Jamie’s eye, and he was so distressed it was terrible to see.

‘I’m going to get Daddy. I’m going to bring him home,’ I said, and I said it so quietly that I could not be sure I’d actually spoken the words, but may have just held them in my mind.

Jamie did not hear of course. He couldn’t possibly have heard. He screamed and held out his arms to me: ‘Sarah! Sarah!
Don’t leave me!
You promised you wouldn’t go! You
promised
!’

‘Get in the car,’ May cried, shaking the detective away. ‘Please get in the car, I can’t bear this! It’s horrible.’

Bill prised Jamie’s fingers from the frame. He closed the door. I climbed into the back seat of Neil’s car and put my head in my hands, and I wept.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

I WENT BACK
into the bed in May and Neil’s spare room and I stayed there for a while – days, a week, longer. The bruises on my face turned black and then yellow. The scabs started to heal. May took me back to see my old GP and I was scolded, gently, for not even having bothered to register with a doctor in Somerset.

‘Still,’ said Dr Rooney, ‘saves us having to start all over again, eh?’

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to be back in bed, warm under the duvet.

‘You’d been through a lot last time we spoke,’ said the doctor, ‘and now you’ve been through a whole lot more. Can you tell me how you’re feeling?’

‘I’m not feeling anything,’ I said, which was the truth.

I was prescribed some tablets and I went back to bed.

I didn’t read, I didn’t think, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t dream, I didn’t talk, I didn’t eat or drink or remember or laugh or cry or anything. I was like a non-person. I didn’t wash my hair. Every so often May ran a bath and filled it with nice-smelling bubbles and while I soaked she straightened the sheets on the bed, gave the room a clean, took away whatever it was I’d been wearing and replaced it with something
soft and folded. Poor May. It must have been awful for her, and she was so patient and so kind.

Betsy called. I saw her number come up on the phone, but I didn’t answer. I was too tired. May must have called her back because a parcel arrived from Burrington Stoke with some of my things in it.

‘They must be letting people back into the house,’ May said, holding a jumper up to her nose and sniffing, before tossing it into the laundry basket.

‘Does that mean I can go back?’ I asked.

May shook her head. ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

In the evenings Neil came into my room and he sat beside me and read me articles from his collection of film magazines. Neil’s visits became the only thing I looked forward to. I listened to him and I became interested in what he had to say.

He never tried to persuade me out of the room or the bed or even out of my head. He never passed any comment on the situation. May, of course, was the opposite, it was her nature, but Neil’s complete acceptance of how things were was good for me. Then, one evening, he came in as usual but he didn’t sit down. He stood at the door and said: ‘Sarah, this isn’t doing any good, you know. It’s not helping Jamie or Alexander.’

‘How can I help either of them?’

‘You could find out the truth about what happened to Genevieve.’

I propped myself up on one elbow.

‘How?’

‘It’s been quiet at work lately,’ said Neil. ‘It always is this time of year. I’ve been reading a lot of stuff about your man and his wife and the family. I think there’s more to this than meets the eye.’

‘What have you found out?’

Neil smiled. ‘Sarah, I can’t take you seriously while you’re lying in bed looking like a child. Get up, get dressed and we’ll go out somewhere grown-up and I’ll tell you.’

I went into the bathroom and splashed my face with hot water. I cleaned my teeth with May’s electric toothbrush. Then I dried myself with a towel and smoothed May’s moisturizing cream into my damaged, uncared-for skin. It made me smell a bit better. I went back into the bedroom.

‘What day is it?’ I asked Neil.

‘December the twenty-ninth.’

May and Neil had completely foregone Christmas to protect me from myself. Their selflessness moved me. I had not felt anything for days, but I felt something then. It was a combination of gratitude and sorrow.

‘Are the pubs open?’

‘Of course.’

‘Let’s go for a drink then,’ I said.

So we went to the Lion, which was a big old Manchester estate pub. Lately it had been done over by a chain and now it had old-fashioned prints on the walls and catered for people looking for good-value food and widescreen-TV sport.

While Neil ordered the drinks I picked at a beer mat and remembered that the last time I’d been in a pub had been in a life about three times removed, with DI Twyford. I recalled the kindness of the inspector as he’d ushered me into Neil’s car outside the Barn, how he’d coaxed me into reassuring Jamie that everything would be all right. That thought led me to how I had failed the child, and I couldn’t bear that. I felt the shutters in my mind beginning to slide together and, just as they were about to lock, Neil returned with a pint of beer and a large glass of Merlot and a small pink raffle ticket.

‘Chips and curry sauce,’ he said, putting the ticket in the centre of the table, and my dry, withered-up stomach
uncurled itself and stretched with pleasure at the prospect of its favourite Lancashire supper.

For a while, Neil asked questions about Alexander and me, filling in the gaps in what he knew about our relationship. The food came and I realized I was ravenously hungry and the wine was making me relax.

My top lip was still a bit sore, but I ate through the pain. The scab was gone and, when I pressed the scar with the tip of my finger, I could feel it was healing.

‘When you met Alexander, was there anything about him that made you feel uncomfortable?’ asked Neil. ‘Did your instincts tell you anything was wrong? Did you have any inkling that he might be capable of violence?’

I tried to think back to how it had been in Sicily. It was so hard to remember, but I did recall the pull there had been between Alexander and me, and I didn’t think I would have felt so strongly if his feelings for me had not been completely open.

‘No,’ I said. ‘And in all the time I’ve known him he’s always been gentle with Jamie and me.’

‘He started a fight in the local pub.’

‘Oh that … God!’ I put my head in my hands. ‘I was there. It wasn’t his fault.’

‘That’s not what the locals are saying.’

‘They’re wrong. They’re just talking everything up to make it dramatic.’ I ate another chip. ‘Anyway, how do you even know about that?’

‘It’s been in all the papers, Sarah. They’re not so interested in you, but Alexander and Genevieve are big, big news. At this time of year, when there’s nothing much going on, the broadsheets love a nice, juicy scandal to fill up the feature pages, especially if it involves proto-aristocracy.’

He paused a moment and swirled his pint around his glass. Then he said: ‘The thing is, the thing that struck me, is that everyone, even the police, are assuming that Alexander is
guilty. Everything is clear-cut. He has a criminal record and a strong motive, he’s clearly taken steps to cover up the truth and he’s made well-documented threats to kill his wife. He’s admitted they had violent rows. He hasn’t acted like a man whose beloved has left him; he moved in his new girlfriend, you, barely a month later; he’s destroyed evidence and has done nothing to co-operate with attempts to trace Genevieve. He also made you complicit in his plans to do a bunk.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s almost too …’ Neil paused. ‘It’s too neat. Life is messier than this.’

‘Isn’t the most obvious answer usually the right one?’

‘That’s what they say. But just because everything points to Alexander being guilty, it doesn’t make him a murderer.’

I felt a flicker of excitement in my belly. I put down my glass and waited for Neil to carry on.

‘What if he isn’t guilty?’ he asked me, and this time my heart missed a beat and then it began to beat strong and fast.

‘What if,’ said Neil, ‘Alexander has been telling the truth all along? What if he had nothing at all to do with Genevieve’s death?’

I opened my mouth and closed it again. So many questions and ideas were crowding together in my mind I couldn’t pick them apart.

‘What if,’ said Neil, ‘everyone is so busy building up the case against him that the truth never has a chance to come out?’

The implications of what he was saying were so immense my mind could hardly process them. After so many days of complete despair, now it seemed as if a ray of light so bright I could barely look at it was piercing the darkness. I was overwhelmed with joy and relief. At last, something positive was happening.

Neil took my hand and squeezed.

‘Sarah, don’t get your hopes up. As it stands, it’s looking pretty bad for Alexander. I don’t know if he’s innocent or guilty. I don’t know anything. I just thought you and I could maybe do a little research and see if we can find some new information that might help.’

I nodded.

‘I can’t promise anything.’

‘I know.’

‘But we’ll give it our best shot, eh?’

‘Yes.’

Neil told me what he already knew about Alexander. He hadn’t had the best start in life. His mother was a chronic alcoholic with severe mental-health problems and he never knew his father. When he was a child, he was in foster care on and off, and he was often in trouble.

‘Basically,’ said Neil, ‘he gave out all the usual signals that he’d turn out a bad’un.’

I thought of Jamie and how Alexander tried so hard to be a good father to the boy, and my eyes grew hot.

‘He’s not bad,’ I said.

Neil shook his head. ‘Sarah, if we’re going to get to the bottom of this, you’re going to have to behave as if you’re not involved. You must not let your feelings or your perspective on things influence what we’re doing. From now on, your opinion isn’t relevant. We’re looking at the facts here. Try to be objective.’

‘OK. Sorry.’

‘Alexander may or may not have suffered abuse as a child. He was certainly neglected. His relationship, or lack of relationship, with his mother may have affected his ability to connect with other women.’

I winced.

Neil pretended not to notice.

‘Genevieve had told her mother that she was afraid of
Alexander, that he’d already come close to killing her and she thought that, next time, he might go through with it.’

‘No, that’s not true,’ I said. ‘She was the one who hurt him! He didn’t lay a finger on her.’

‘Genevieve told other people she thought her life was in danger. That’s all that’s important right now. That’s a
fact
. She reiterated her concerns and Alexander’s threat in the “goodbye” letter to her parents. That’s another fact. She was spelling out her reasons for leaving him. As it’s the last documented communication from Genevieve, it makes pretty compelling evidence.’

‘It also proves she definitely was planning to leave that morning.’

‘Yep. If it weren’t for the letter, her parents would have reported her missing much sooner. She was quite specific that she wouldn’t be in touch for a few weeks and that they shouldn’t worry.’

‘She didn’t mention anyone else in the letter, did she?’

Neil shook his head.

‘Only’ – I paused for a moment – ‘her mother let on to me that she might have had a lover.’

‘She was right.’

I felt another frisson.

‘How do you know?’

‘NWM has had someone on the case for weeks. Genevieve used to travel to different horse events all the time and, according to various sources, never socialized with the other competitors in the evenings. She’d always slip away. Somebody using the name Juliet Bravo – we’re certain it was her – booked into hotels all over the place. Nice hotels – quiet, expensive country places; discreet. She was always accompanied. Always a double room, always champagne on ice and dinner served in the room, so none of the staff ever clocked the lover.’