The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea (26 page)

‘So what if he wrote a letter to his wife just before he died,’ Hilary continued. ‘What was he supposed to say? That he’d loved another woman? Of course he wouldn’t. It doesn’t prove anything. Your mother had been dead 20 years; as far as he was concerned so had you. Of course he’d say he regretted the affair. Of course he wouldn’t mention whether he’d had feelings for you, for the child.’

‘Really, it doesn’t matter,’ Violet insisted.

‘Well,’ Hilary said. ‘Don’t let it get to you. That bitch is just frightened of you, that’s all. Nobody can tell what would have happened if your father had known you were alive; nobody.’

Changing the subject, Violet said she should check whether Anna and Izzy were exhausting Mrs Anderson. ‘She’s been so good with them.’ A chair scraped and Mrs Anderson retreated into the sitting room. Her entrance barely disturbed the children who were still gripped by the unfolding tragedy of the sick monkey. Its condition had worsened and Anna and Izzy were discussing whether it was still breathing. Mrs Anderson settled into her chair just as Violet looked round the door and saw the girls fixed on an apparently lifeless and almost hairless body.

‘Is the poor little thing dead?’ she asked and Anna and Izzy explained what had happened, taking it in turns to relate the litany of disaster that had befallen the unfortunate creature. Anna waved her mother closer and Mrs Anderson took the opportunity to excuse herself to put the kettle on.

As she hoped, Hilary was still at the kitchen table. Closing the door, Mrs Anderson wondered whether she would like another cup of tea. ‘I don’t suppose
Miss
Alexandra offered you very much.’

‘Certainly not tea,’ Hilary answered with similar disapproval to Mrs Anderson’s.

Mrs Anderson replied with a series of tuts. ‘In Mr William’s time it was always a very welcoming house. Not like it is now.’

‘You worked for William Ritchie didn’t you?’

‘I did, for many years, when he was a bachelor and then after his marriage to Alexandra’s mother.’

‘What sort of man was he?’

Mrs Anderson considered the question and Hilary mistook her slowness for offence. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Not at all,’ Mrs Anderson reassured her. Her mouth flinched as if in pain. ‘Not after the way Alexandra and that husband of hers have treated me.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘They wouldn’t have dared if Mr William had been alive.’ Mrs Anderson managed to look appropriately indignant. ‘A gentleman he was
and
he had good manners.’ In contrast to Alexandra was the implication. ‘Even if he did prefer his own company.’

‘You liked him?’ Hilary thought it safer territory than a question about Alexandra.

‘It wasn’t my place to like him.’ She corrected Hilary in her precise way. ‘I was his house-keeper. I respected him.’

‘Did he respect you?’

‘I like to think so.’ Mrs Anderson saw Hilary’s puzzlement at her uncertainty. ‘It was the way of things then. Mr William was someone who liked rules and formalities, everything in its proper place.’

‘He sounds like a cold man.’

Mrs Anderson considered Hilary’s criticism before answering. ‘He wasn’t an easy man to get to know, that’s certainly true. And he could be cold and distant. Emotions frightened him. He wasn’t comfortable with them, like a lot of men I suppose. But you could always rely on him to be fair. You could trust him.’ Once again the comparison with Alexandra was left unsaid.

‘Stop me if I’m prying but did you know Megan Bates?’

‘I did.’

‘You didn’t approve?’

‘Indeed, I did not.’ Mrs Anderson had become clipped.

‘Alexandra had a lawyer with her. A man called Gordon Campbell. Do you know him?’

‘I know of him.’ She didn’t elaborate. Mr Campbell had signed the warning letters she had received about the rent for Gardener’s Cottage.

‘Well, he said, the lawyer that is . . .’ Hilary dropped her voice and glanced at the door in case Violet was about to return. ‘He said that even William Ritchie wasn’t convinced that Megan Bates’s child was his.’

‘Mr Campbell said that?’

‘Yes.’

‘The nerve of some people,’ Mrs Anderson muttered.

‘William Ritchie thought he
was
the father?’

‘That was my impression at the time.’

‘Mr Campbell tried to make out that William Ritchie had no wish for any other child but Alexandra. He mentioned Alexandra changing her surname to his as evidence of that.’

‘She did change her name, yes.’ Mrs Anderson pursed her lips tight together.

‘What did her step-father think?’

‘I can’t say at the beginning,’ Mrs Anderson replied. ‘It wasn’t long after Megan Bates’s death.’

Hilary gasped. ‘You mean she tried to replace his dead child?’

Mrs Anderson’s eyes flicked to the ceiling inviting Hilary to draw her own conclusions. ‘At that time I don’t think Mr William would have noticed whether she called herself Ritchie or any other name.’

‘Why not?’

‘He locked himself away. I hardly saw him for months.’

‘He was upset at Megan’s death?’

‘That, and the baby, and the hurt he’d caused Diana, the shame of being exposed like that, everyone talking about it, the disgrace. It was all of those together.’

‘He mourned the baby too?’

‘Mr William had his differences with Megan Bates before her death but . . .’ She chose her words with care. ‘It would be a mistake to think he had no feelings for the child.’

‘Go on,’ Hilary said.

‘He would have been torn in two, between Diana and Megan Bates, between his marriage and the child. Diana was threatening him with a divorce if he continued the affair. Megan Bates was using the child to pressure him to live with her.’

‘She threatened to disappear with the baby?’

‘Apparently so,’ Mrs Anderson replied. ‘Mr William wouldn’t have known what to do and then it was too late. Megan was dead. Afterwards he blamed himself for everything.’

The sound of Anna and Izzy chattering in the hall penetrated the kitchen door. Hilary turned as the girls entered the room. Violet followed with their dirty plates. ‘I think it’s time we left you in peace,’ she said to Mrs Anderson. ‘You’ve been so kind.’

After saying farewells at the front door, Violet suggested a race to the end of the garden wall. She and Izzy had started running when Anna reached up to Mrs Anderson. ‘Thank you,’ she said as the old woman bent towards her. Anna planted a sticky kiss on her cheek and ran off, shouting ‘wait for me’ to Violet and Izzy.

Hilary hung back.

‘Don’t let Violet know I’ve told you this,’ she said.

Mrs Anderson attempted to conceal the effect Anna’s display of affection had had on her. ‘What dear?’

‘Alexandra made Violet an offer to settle any claim she has against William Ritchie’s estate.’

‘Did she?’

‘It was laughable really, only £1000.’

‘What did Violet say?’

‘She didn’t say anything. She tore up the document.’ Hilary looked at Mrs Anderson. ‘I’ve told her to fight for what’s hers.’

‘Of course, she must,’ Mrs Anderson snapped. Her right hand gripped Hilary’s arm. ‘She must. Tell her she must.’

‘I will.’

Mrs Anderson seemed to struggle for words. ‘She can’t . . . she can’t . . . let that
cuckoo
have it all.’

Hilary remembered the portrait in the hall, the way Alexandra’s head tilted upwards, just like a baby cuckoo waiting to be fed after it has evicted all the other fledglings from the nest.

Mrs Anderson felt the warmth and sugary stickiness of Anna’s goodbye kiss, the innocent simplicity of it provoking a storm of recriminations. How daft she was for allowing a child’s touch to affect her so. What an old fool she had become. She slumped into her chair in the kitchen to mourn what she had lost, what might have been. The forefinger and thumb of her right hand stroked the edge of the table where Violet had lain as a new-born baby, where earlier that day Violet had eaten chocolate and raspberry sponge cake.

One gust subsided and another of indignation blew in, at the humiliations Mrs Anderson had had to bear, at Alexandra’s ill-deserved good fortune to have children and money, at the injustice being done to Violet and Anna. She imagined Violet and Anna living at Brae. How different it would be. Mrs Anderson would be a cherished and frequent visitor. Anna would drop by to make cakes at Gardener’s Cottage. For righting the wrong in which she was complicit, had Mrs Anderson found salvation as well as a new family? ‘Violet must. Of course she must.’

The speed of the flames enthralled Anna and Izzy.
One moment delicate tongues of pale yellows and pinks played
around the bleached driftwood, the next a roaring brushfire of
livid red devoured a tangle of fishing nets. The noise
reminded Hilary of a breaker crashing on to a beach
in a storm.

‘Do you think,’ she asked the girls, ‘that nets and driftwood store the sound of sea until it’s released by fire . . . and do you think the sound returns to the waves?’ She was kneeling between Anna and Izzy, an arm around each, pulling one then the other back whenever their fascination with the flames drew them unconsciously closer. ‘Oh look, Mummy’s coming back,’ she said to Anna. The fire continued to hold the child rapt and she didn’t see Violet’s troubled expression after her walk along the beach with Cal or Cal’s signal for Hilary to accompany him to the pickup to collect the food for the barbecue.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked Cal as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘What’s wrong with Violet?’

‘The police have suspended the search.’

‘Why?’ Violet and Hilary had noticed the lack of activity at Boyd’s Farm on their way back from Mrs Anderson’s. They hadn’t really discussed it because of the children but they’d assumed the stoppage was temporary, just for the evening, and would start again in the morning. ‘Have they found the body?’

Cal shook his
head. ‘No.’ He’d gone to Boyd’s Farm after
collecting driftwood for the bonfire, ‘Just to check’. He’d
arrived as the digger, trucks and police vehicles were driving
away. A constable left behind on guard duty told him
the search had been suspended. The obvious places to bury
a body had been excavated, he’d said. So far
they’d found ‘nada, zilch, nothing apart from a sheep’
s jaw bone and some rusting farm tools.’ Which left
the barns, but they were in imminent danger of collapse,
and they took the view it wasn’t worth risking
an officer’s life for a body that was a
quarter of a century old. According to the constable, a
plan was being drawn up, involving the windfarm consortium. BRC
was in the throes of buying Boyd’s Farm. Once
the purchase had been completed, it would dismantle the buildings
under police supervision and the search would continue hand in
hand with the demolition. BRC would pay for everything including
the cost of transporting the barns’ contents to a police
warehouse where they would be sorted, sifted and searched. According
to the constable, there would be a delay of two
or three weeks before work resumed at the site, though
BRC was in a hurry to get things moving.

Hilary blew out her cheeks, imagining her friend’s reaction. ‘How did Violet take it?’

‘How do you think? She’s angry.’ Cal had mentioned to Violet the ‘flash car’ he’d encountered on the beach road by entrance to Boyd’s Farm, how the driver had been ‘a wheeler-dealer type’ working for BRC and the passenger had been Ross Turnbull. Cal said, ‘Violet thinks it’s happening again – the original inquiry into her mother’s disappearance was wrapped up quickly because the Turnbulls didn’t want police crawling over Poltown for weeks, disrupting their operations. Now this . . .’

After a barbecue of grilled sausages and tomatoes, Cal suggested a foraging trip to Anna and Izzy. He’d identified a place for collecting mussels, another for winkles and he’d seen some ‘good-looking’ tidal pools. While Izzy fetched the nets and buckets and Anna her painting book and crayons, Hilary thanked Cal. With the girls occupied, she would have an opportunity to talk to Violet, to persuade her to ‘stick with it and fight’.

Walking along the beach, Cal described some of the creatures Anna and Izzy might encounter: limpets, starfish, blenny, whelks, periwinkles as well as crabs. Arriving at the first rock pool, Cal peered into the still water and pointed out a prawn that was backing away towards a sheltering curtain of seaweed. Under his instruction, Izzy slid her net behind the retreating creature and Anna put hers in front. The two girls brought their nets together and lifted them to search for the captive prawn. Despite Cal warning about its agility, it leapt through Izzy’s fingers and splashed back into the water. The next hour or so passed with similar scenes of capture and escape, though increasingly of capture, with Izzy proving to be the more dextrous of the girls.

Eventually, Anna abandoned her ‘stupid net’ with a flash of temper and took her painting book and crayons to a raised ledge.

When Cal asked her what she was doing, she replied sulkily, ‘Drawing mummy.’

‘What’s she doing in your drawing?’ he asked.

‘She’s doing nothing,’ Anna said, her sulkiness turning to mild contempt for Cal’s ignorance. ‘Because she’s a baby and babies can’t do anything.’

‘They can cry,’ Cal said.

‘I suppose,’ Anna conceded reluctantly. ‘But I can’t draw crying.’

Cal glanced back at Violet and Hilary expecting them to be in conversation by the fire but he spotted them at the road end talking to a visitor. Mrs Anderson, Cal guessed, because her car, or a car very like hers, was parked beside his.

Noticing that Cal’s attention had drifted to the other end of the beach, Anna asked, ‘What are you looking at?’

‘Just checking the fire.’ he replied before diverting Anna by suggesting they looked for a crab. ‘And then we could collect mussels.’

Having become rivals at catching prawns, Izzy and Anna reverted to being allies against the large crab which Cal had seen scuttling away in a deep pool closer to the point of the headland. Despite prodding and poking, the crab remained hidden. At one stage Cal pretended it had the cane of his fishing net in its powerful claws and was dragging him into the pool. The girls helped to pull him back. After they’d stopped laughing Izzy said, ‘What’s mummy doing?’

Cal looked up. Hilary was running towards them.

Izzy had a confused expression, caught between happiness at the thought of showing off her catch of sea creatures to her mother and worry at her urgency.

‘Just wait here a moment,’ Cal said. ‘And watch out that crab doesn’t get you,’ he added, trying to make light of what was happening. He loped towards Hilary, hoping his casual manner would reassure the girls. When Hilary was a few metres from him, she stopped, put her hands on her hips and gasped for breath.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked, walking up to her.

She gulped a lungful of air. ‘Mrs Anderson,’ she gulped again, ‘has got some letters from Violet’s father.’ She managed a long, deep breath. ‘He wrote them to Megan Bates. Mrs Anderson has had them for years.’

It seemed Mrs Anderson had given a hurried explanation about discovering them in William Ritchie’s drawers after his death and somehow never finding the right moment to ask Diana whether they should be burnt. Now Diana was dead too, Mrs Anderson thought Violet should decide what happened to them.

There were seven letters, each one hand-written in black ink, and each contained within a single sheet of blue writing paper. Hilary remarked on the turmoil caused by an affair which warranted so slight a correspondence, a mere seven pieces of paper and about a hundred lines of text.

‘I wonder why there’s none from Megan,’ she said, studying Cal as he read the letters for the first time. She waited impatiently for his reaction, any reaction. ‘Perhaps she didn’t write any,’ she suggested, still watching his face. ‘After all, William Ritchie was a married man. In her position would I have risked writing a letter which Diana could have intercepted?’

Cal turned a page and carried on reading.

Hilary looked at Violet who had taken Anna and Izzy paddling. They were holding hands and jumping over the waves as they rolled in. ‘I wonder what she’ll decide,’ she said wistfully, observing her friend. ‘If I was Violet I’d grab as much as I could. I’d wipe the smile off Alexandra’s smug little face. Queen Bitch. I’ve told her that’s what she should do. With these letters she can’t lose.’

Still Cal said nothing.

‘Or,’ she
said, having another thought about the absence of letters written
by Megan, ‘possibly she
did
write and William Ritchie destroyed
them because he was worried about Diana finding them.’ She
sighed at another question without an answer. ‘Though why did
he keep these ones?’ Her face furrowed in frustration. ‘I
think,’ she decided, ‘that he kept these letters because the
affair had been exposed by the time the police handed
them back to him.’ Her face brightened, a light going
on. ‘I know!’ She examined Cal, hoping for an equivalent
flicker of reaction. ‘He couldn’t bear to part with
them because they were all he had left. That would
help Violet’s case, wouldn’t it?’

Cal turned another page, the second last. ‘We know she wrote one letter,’ he remarked, continuing to read.

‘The one that was posted around the time of her death,’ Hilary added quickly, pleased to have a response at last, hoping for another. ‘The one the police thought was a suicide note? The one that Duncan used to cover what he’d done?’

Cal didn’t answer.

‘I’ve been thinking about that too. Maybe she wrote it in desperation, without intending to post it. Maybe that’s why she showed it to Duncan, because she wasn’t sure about it.’

She had lost Cal again. She checked the letter he was reading. ‘Dear Megan’ it began. The last two opened in this way, indicative of the affair having cooled. The earlier letters started ‘My Dear Megan’.

‘I can’t help liking him for that,’ Hilary remarked. ‘Dear Megan, even when he was probably thinking she was anything but. Though,’ she reflected, ‘it can’t be easy falling in love with a man who starts letters ‘My Dear Megan’ when he’s in the grip of passion, or what passed for it in William Ritchie’s case, and ‘Dear Megan’ when he’s backing away and telling her he’s going to stick with his wife.’

Cal turned to the last letter in the sequence. It was short. Like the others, it was signed ‘Sincerely yours, William’. Hilary read it too, upside down, trying to judge when Cal would be finished. ‘Well?’

‘Well,’ Cal answered. ‘He couldn’t be clearer. Violet would have been his heir.’ Cal referred again to the last letter. ‘Megan would have been given a house and an allowance. Diana would have remained at Brae and their home in Edinburgh for her life-time, but the properties would have been put in trust for Violet. She would have gained possession of them on Diana’s death.’

‘Alexandra isn’t even mentioned.’

‘It doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have provided for her in some other way.’

‘I guess.’

‘Having read these . . .’ Cal looked through them again. ‘I don’t think Megan did send letters to him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he never makes any reference to anything she’s written. The first four . . .’ Cal read the fifth again. ‘Yes. The first four are him making up for his reticence when they’ve been together, or as he puts it in this one . . .’ He held up the second letter. ‘Yes here it is . . . where he apologises for his “lawyer’s preference for measured judgement over emotional fireworks”. By the fifth letter she must have told him about the pregnancy because he describes the “desperate and difficult decision” he’s been forced to make, how “for reasons of duty and morality” he cannot contemplate divorce. Then, these last two, he’s confirming the details of the settlement he’s already proposed to her at a meeting. See here.’ Cal showed the passage to Hilary. ‘He’s trying to reassure her that he’ll look after her and the baby. He’s committing it to paper so that she’ll believe him.’ He checked the last two letters again. ‘That’s it, yes. So the letter she composed just before she died, threatening to disappear, the baby too, might have been her only one, because William Ritchie doesn’t make any reference to another.’

Hilary drew Cal’s attention to Violet and the children. They were walking back up the beach.

‘What do you think she’ll do?’ Hilary asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘She must fight. She’s got to. You tell her.’

Cal and Hilary sat by the fire and listened to the rise and fall of Violet’s voice, now a dragon, now a pleading child, now a booming giant. They heard the protests of the children as their bed-time story ended and they waited for Violet’s decision. Hilary was impatient for an answer. As soon as Violet joined them, she asked, ‘Well, are you going to ring her?’

‘Do you think I should?’

‘God, yes.’

Violet took out her phone and scrolled through her call register to locate the number she had first rung to inquire about renting Orasaigh Cottage.

‘A bed-time story for Alexandra.’ Hilary looked smug with anticipation.

‘I’m still not sure,’ Violet said.

‘Don’t think twice about it,’ Hilary said.

Violet pressed the call button and Hilary said, ‘Good girl.’

Alexandra’s imperious voice answered.

‘Hi, it’s Violet Wells.’

‘So you’ve changed your mind?’

‘There’s something I’d like you to hear.’ Violet held the letter so the glow of the fire illuminated it.

‘What is it now?’

‘Dear Megan,’ Violet started reading, ‘I wish another resolution were possible.’

‘What is this?’ Alexandra demanded.

Hilary shouted, ‘It’s a letter from
your
father.’

Violet waited for quiet before continuing. ‘Dear Megan, I wish another resolution were possible.’ She glanced at Hilary who mouthed ‘go on’. ‘All that is left to me is to
honour the commitments that I have already made verbally. To
reiterate: I will treat the child as my own because
it is. The child will be my heir and will
inherit the bulk of my estate, including my properties in
Edinburgh as well as here, in Poltown. I will change
my will accordingly.’