Wishing Water (55 page)

‘Who? Who is it?’

Miss Henshaw was wearing her professional expression, though there was some other emotion behind it too. Disbelief, uncertainty, fear? ‘Two accountants, sent by the Law Society. They’re going through all of Mr Brandon’s papers. Taking the place apart they are. They arrived just after lunch and Mr Brandon, well ...’ Miss Henshaw paused, drawing in a shaky breath. ‘I can’t say where he is now. He lost his temper when he saw them, blew up he did. Never, in all my life, have I seen him lose his temper, but he did today. A shocking rage he was in, throwing books everywhere. Now he’s taken himself off, I don’t know where. In a huff I shouldn’t wonder. He’s not a happy man. Not at all.’
 

Lissa felt numb. Whatever was going on? ‘Why are they here? Who brought them in?’
 

‘Elvira Fraser’s grandson. He not satisfied about what happened to all her money.’
 

‘Is he the one Derry talked to at the funeral?’
 

‘Derry?’ Miss Henshaw nodded, fingers twitching on her chain. ‘I suppose he did, yes, now I come to think of it. The grandson claims to have found letters in his late father’s desk proving that Mr Brandon had made himself entirely responsible for the investment of Mrs Fraser’s funds. He wants to know where every penny has gone and has put in an official complaint to the Law Society. I must say, Mrs Brandon, that it doesn’t look good.’
 

‘No,’ Lissa agreed. ‘It doesn’t.’ Then why was her heart beating almost with delight? As if her wishes were at last about to come true?

Moments later her mood changed as Jimmy burst through the door, bristly hair standing even more on end than usual.

‘He’s done it again,’ Jimmy cried. ‘Came up whilst me and Renee were helping the twins finish the snowman and just took them off. Only this time she’s gone with him, says she’s not letting them whippersnappers out of her sight.’
 

Lissa felt herself grow quite cold, yet her voice was oddly quiet. ‘Where has he taken them, Jimmy?’
 

‘Don’t you fear, Lissa, he seems very calm and them two is happy as gnats. He’s taken them up to Larkrigg.’
 

‘Oh dear God.’
 

The trees by the tarn were feathered with snow, hanging as heavy as lace over the white-encrusted surface. A dry, freezing cold bit through Lissa’s thick woollens and her breath froze into puffballs of ice on her cheeks. She struggled through the thick snow, frustrated by its cloying softness in her anxiety to reach the colourful figures out on the ice. Renee crouched beneath the rowans, shivering and making tiny keening sounds in her throat.

Lissa pressed a hand to her shoulder. ‘Don’t fret, Renee. I’ll soon have them home and safe. Where is he?’
 

‘He wouldn’t listen,’ she mourned. `Oh, hecky thump.’ Renee slid her eyes round to where Brockbarrow wood stood, black and forbidding against the stark white of the snow. ‘He’s over there, brooding.’
 

‘Beth! Sarah!’ Lissa called, waving to her excited children.

‘We’re skating, Mummy. Watch.’
 

The twins, both dressed in their red and blue hooded jackets and thick trousers, ice skates clamped to their small boots, slid about in the middle of the ice, wobbling madly. Lissa’s heartbeat quickened, but she smiled reassuringly at them. ‘I must speak to Daddy, then I’ll watch you skate. Take care now. Come away from the middle. Keep to the edges where the ice is thicker.’
 

‘Yes, Mummy,’ they said, in sing-song, happy voices.

Lissa found him at the opposite edge of the small copse, seated on a rock above Whinstone force. Below him shafts of water split and cascaded over jagged stones, the brilliant spray crisp as diamonds in the sharp air.

‘Hello, Philip.’ The gushing sound of the water hammered in her head. It made her feel giddy. The falls here, high on the fells, made Skelwith force look like a trickle. ‘Can we sit somewhere else, please?’

He did not respond. He sat unmoving for so long that she touched his arm, in case he hadn’t heard. When he turned towards her his face was empty, bleak as the landscape. ‘Hello Philip,’ she said again, trying to put some warmth into her voice. ‘I thought I might find you here.’
 

‘Why have you followed me?’ His voice was bitter yet rich with self-pity. ‘Why aren’t you working, as you always seem to be these days.’
 

‘I was concerned about you.’ Lissa propped herself on a rock beside him. It felt dangerously slippy with spray from the water. ‘Miss Henshaw told me about the Law Society’s visit. Why did you do it, Philip?’
 

‘It was necessary.’ The eyes he turned to hers were vague, as if they looked into some other place.

‘Did you really embezzle Mrs Fraser’s money?’ When he chuckled she could only stare at him, appalled. ‘Why? Why couldn’t you earn your money honestly, as other people do?’
 

‘I am not other people. I deserve more. My mother always told me I was special, and I am. We were quite poor then,’ he said, as if it were some sort of crime. ‘My father was useless, an ineffectual idiot besotted with books and fishing and points of law. He let my mother down, showed her up before everyone by being totally lacking in ambition. Once I had control of my own life, I vowed never to let that happen to me, or any wife of mine.’
 

‘But to cheat an old woman is despicable.’
 

He glared at her, eyes burning with unexpressed fury. ‘People like her have too much money, why shouldn’t I have some of it?’
 

‘You mean there were others?’
 

‘Her family never visited her so why should they inherit what they don’t deserve?’
 

‘Even so…’
 

‘You don’t understand,’ he snapped, grasping her arm and wrenching her suddenly towards him. ‘You
never
understand anything, do you?’ The gushing drops of water spun before her eyes and Lissa instinctively shrank away, her finger nails scrabbling for purchase on the slippery rock beneath her. Surely he wouldn’t toss her down the waterfall? The dark anger in his charcoal eyes told her he was capable of anything in his present mood.

‘Philip, please be calm. Why don’t we go home? It’s cold and the twins will be wanting their tea.’
 

‘I never had this trouble with Felicity.’
 

The sudden reference to his former fiancée took Lissa by surprise. ‘I beg your pardon? What has Felicity to do with all of this?’

‘She did as she was told. You never would, not once. Felicity was humble and sweet and obedient.’
 

Out on the ice came a loud squeal and Lissa jerked her attention back to her children. She could just make out Sarah pulling Beth about by her coat tails as if she were a sled and they were both squealing with delight. Then she was brought sharply back to her predicament by the sting of icy water upon her face. One wrong move and both of them would plunge thirty feet into the abyss, beautiful in spring and summer, lethal in winter, as now.

‘You aren’t well,’ Lissa gently reasoned. ‘It must have been a shock seeing the Law Society move in. But we can face it.’ She swallowed. ‘Together.’
 

It would be the end of his career and they both knew it. His laughter rang out, bouncing back off black rocks and Lissa shuddered, fear crawling up her spine.

‘Felicity was considered delicate,’ Philip said, conversationally. ‘She was an only daughter. Spoiled, of course.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘Her father knew I wanted to marry her but did everything he could to stop us. He didn’t consider me quite suitable.’ Philip patted his pocket. ‘Not enough in here to match his own fortune.’
 

Lissa struggled to take in what he was saying, hoping that if she kept him talking she could gradually ease him back from the brink of the gorge. ‘Did Felicity want to marry you?’
 

‘Of course, but in the end she wouldn’t because of Daddy. He’d convinced her she was too delicate for marriage.’ His lips curled at the corner into a parody of a smile. ‘Even got a doctor to agree, would you believe? Utter nonsense. It didn’t matter to me if she was. I loved her and would have looked after her.’
 

‘Oh, Philip.’ Lissa felt her blood start to freeze, and, as she shifted a foot to more solid ground, accidentally loosed a stone which fell and bounced from rock to rock till it disappeared, swallowed up by frothing foam. ‘So what happened?’ She really didn’t want to know. All Lissa wanted was to get off this icy rock and take her children home to a warm fireside.

My darling Felicity simply could not disobey her beloved father and that, she said, was the end of it. I took my revenge, of course. I had every right to do so. They ruined my life. Instead of being a member of a well-respected family with a rich and beautiful wife, I was to be deserted, jilted, cast aside. I couldn’t let that happen. Not when I’d worked so hard.’
 

Lissa scarcely dared breathe.

‘I did explain to her how it had to be,’ he said, sounding perfectly reasonable as he turned to Lissa. ‘I suggested it would be far less painful than living a lonely life without love, under the thumb of her father. She agreed, in the end. Always compliant, my sweet Felicity. It was all so very simple, and everyone was most sympathetic. How tragic, they said, to lose a fiancée by drowning, mere days before the wedding. For one so young to take her own life in such a way was so very sad.’
 

Oh, dear Lord, what was he saying? Lissa found she was shaking uncontrollably, her eyes flickering from the hard planes of his face to the gushing water below.

‘What future did she have, without me?’
 

She gazed at him in horror. ‘But why, Philip? Why? You gained nothing from her death, nothing at all.’
 

He looked puzzled. ‘Of course I did. I kept my good name, the respect and status that was due to me. And I gained my revenge. Her father deserved to suffer as I had.’
 

Lissa could find nothing else to say. Her silence was overwhelmed by the roar of the water, muted only slightly by the icicles forming at its edges. She had no wish to repeat Felicity’s mistake. The poor girl must have lost all will to resist, but she’d fought for her freedom and gained it. She was her own person now and must cling on to that with all her strength. She looked down at his fingers, curled possessively about her arm. ‘Let go, Philip.’ Cold panic threatened but Lissa knew it was vital to remain calm, to stay in control.’ We have to take the twins home for their tea. We mustn’t have them catching a chill now, must we?’
 

He was shaking his head. ‘There’s nothing left for me, Lissa. Nothing left for either of us. If I can’t have you, nobody will. I explained all of that to Felicity. I can’t let it happen again.’
 

It happened so quickly there was nothing she could have done to prevent it. One moment she was desperately clinging to the rock, the spray of iced water stinging her eyes and nose as she battled to free her arm from his menacing grip, the next a cry rang out. Renee’s voice calling her name. A great cracking sound ripped through the air like a gun shot, only half swallowed up by the screams of her children.

Somehow she’d torn herself free of his hold. She was running, slipping and sliding, hampered by the thick snow, breath a hard ball in her frozen breast as instinctively she leapt forward, out on to the ice. It was quite the wrong thing to do. Then Philip was there beside her, taller and faster, halfway across before Lissa thought better of it.

‘No,’ she cried. ‘That’s not the way. A tree branch. We need a branch.
Renee
!’

The ice was breaking up even as they frantically searched, her children huddled precariously together on one small ice floe, arms about each other, in danger of slipping into the water at any moment.

Then Renee was thrusting a long branch out on to the ice. ‘I’ll hold it, go on.’
 

Sarah and Beth, too stunned to cry or move, clung to their small island of ice.

‘Come to Mummy, my darlings. Be brave. You can do it.’ Lissa was lying on her stomach on the ice, urging them, filling them with her energy and confidence till first Beth and then Sarah finally found the courage to let go of their island and slide across the yawning gap of black water to grasp her hand and the long branch that Renee held so firmly. Then they were in her arms and they were all crying and sobbing together. Her wishes had been answered and her lovely children were safe.

Philip’s body was not found until the thaw came. Then he was buried with due ceremony in the small churchyard at Carreckwater. The Law Society found all manner of problems in his practice. Any number of bank accounts in various names had once held money which should rightly have belonged to Elvira and several other clients. Philip’s mistake with Mrs Fraser was to imagine that she would stay at odds with her family. Her grandson, David, had proved him wrong, often visiting his grandmother in the home. He could at least be satisfied that justice, of a sort, had been done. Even sad Felicity’s fate had been given restitution. Philip had died in much the same way.

The house on the Parade was taken by the bank, in lieu of debts, and Lissa moved back into the rooms above the shop with her twins.