Lost Innocence (52 page)

‘She’s good at acting, dancing and song,’ Nat pressed on, ‘and typical of a girl, she’s never in the wrong.’

Darcie burst out laughing. ‘That was quite good,’ she told him generously. ‘Except the bit about our street, that was really dumb.’

‘Yeah, like the line about me being fat.’

‘I said you weren’t until you were mean,’ she reminded him.

‘OK, before this develops into an argument,’ Craig interrupted, ‘who’s going to walk down to the bakery with me to get some croissants for breakfast?’

‘Not me,’ Nat said. ‘It’s freezing out there. I’m going back to bed.’

‘I’m doing my homework,’ Darcie told him.

Craig looked at Alicia.

‘Seems you’re on your own,’ she told him, snuggling back under the sheets.

He turned on to his side so his face was close to hers. ‘Bet I can clear this room of children in three seconds flat,’ he murmured.

‘I’m gone,’ Nat cried, even before his parents started to kiss.

‘Me too,’ Darcie said, taking off after him.

Laughing as the door closed behind them, Alicia said, ‘Isn’t it amazing, the way she remembered what you said about me creating on a whim?’

‘Mm, amazing,’ he murmured, running a hand up over her thighs.

Her eyes fluttered closed. ‘So no croissants?’ she said faintly.

‘No croissants,’ he confirmed, and turning her mouth to his he kissed her deeply as he pulled her on top of him.

The poetry morning had been a mere two days before he’d died, and it was the first time in over a year that Alicia hadn’t wondered, while he was making love to her, if he was thinking about Sabrina, and maybe wishing he was with her instead.

Taking a deep breath now, as though to draw the memories back into the past, she refused to allow herself to think of how cruel fate had been to have taken him when they were finally starting to put it all behind them, and returned her mind to the present.

It gave her a jolt when she remembered that they were about to meet up with Cameron, and for a moment she felt herself pushing that away too. It seemed wrong to be waiting for someone who wasn’t Craig, to be seeing another man at all, even if he was just a friend. But then, reminding herself of how kind and supportive Cameron had been through this dreadful summer, and how he never uttered a single word or made even the slightest gesture to suggest that he might be trying to insert himself more permanently into their lives, she felt herself relaxing again. She liked him enormously, there was no doubt about that, but for the time being at least she was still very much Craig’s wife – and perhaps as wedded to her grief now as she’d once been to him.

Besides, until she knew what was going to happen to Nat she couldn’t allow herself to think very seriously about anything else at all.

Sabrina was in an excellent mood. For once everything seemed to be going right. All the friends she wanted to
invite for cocktails, the second weekend of September, were able to make it, the caterers and bartender were booked, and Robert was due back from yet another trip to Washington two days before, so would be home in plenty of time. Added to the success of her own party plans was the pleasure of knowing her first book-club meeting had now been scheduled for the end of next week (so she’d better get reading fast);
The Buzz
had achieved a higher than usual advertising take-up thanks to June’s hard work these past three weeks; and she’d received a very welcome invitation to an end-of-summer party at the Roswells, who were always extremely particular about who made their list. Not that she and Robert were ever left off, but being at the centre of all this unpleasant business of police inquiries and court appearances, they might have found themselves
personae non gratae
as far as the county elite were concerned.

Fortunately that hadn’t happened, and since she’d heard last week, just after arriving back from France, that Nathan Carlyle had been shipped off to Bristol, and that Annabelle’s supporters in the village had remained true throughout, she’d felt as though her cup was truly running over. All she had to do now was get Annabelle through the ordeal that lay ahead, and if justice was done it might, with any luck, help to bring her and Annabelle closer together without having to go into all that painful business about what she’d been like after Craig. At the same time, it might even make it impossible for Alicia to remain in the village.

Two birds with one stone, marvellous.

‘Mum!’ Annabelle shouted from somewhere in the house.

‘I’m in here,’ Sabrina shouted back from the small parlour she used as a study. Following their dreadful showdown in France there had been an uneasy sort of truce between them, mainly, Sabrina suspected, because they were both still afraid of it happening again. In a way, her relationship with Robert was travelling along the same lines, much sweetness and light on the surface, while behind the scenes something else altogether was going on. She’d tried talking to him about it, but he kept brushing it aside, saying he was too hot, or too tired to make love, or she was making too much of it.

‘Of course I still find you attractive,’ he’d assured her only last night, ‘I’m just not really in the mood at the moment.’

‘Mum!’ Annabelle shouted again.

With an exasperated sigh, Sabrina got up from her computer and went to the door. ‘Where are you?’ she said.

‘I’m upstairs. I need you to come here.’

‘I’m busy. What do you want?’

‘I just told you. I want you to come here.’

‘I will when I’ve finished. What time is your dental appointment, so I know when to be ready?’

Annabelle came out on to the landing and looked over the banister. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she announced.

Sabrina turned very still as all the signs she’d tried to ignore started clashing about in her head like a bizarre sort of circus, and turning into an unimaginable reality. ‘If that’s meant to be a joke,’ she croaked.

‘Look for yourself if you don’t believe me,’ Annabelle cried, and she tossed the white wand with its telling blue line down to the hall.

Going to pick it up, Sabrina registered it and felt her head spinning. She looked up at Annabelle, whose eyes were like deep, haunted pools in her ghostly white face, then back to the blue line. She wasn’t sure how long she went on standing there, she only knew that when she looked up again Annabelle had returned to her room, and that she couldn’t get her mind to function beyond the fact that what she was holding in her hand was the first evidence of a child that had her and Craig’s blood running in its veins.

Oliver’s Mendenhall’s forbiddingly hawkish eyes were regarding Nat across Jolyon’s desk. ‘We’re still putting pressure on the CPS to drop the rape charge,’ he told him, ‘but unfortunately he’s digging in his heels. It’s likely he’s getting pressure from other quarters,’ he added. He wouldn’t tell Nat about his father’s history with Detective Inspector Caroline Ash, because he hadn’t yet been able to discover how much sway that was having with the prosecutor, and besides the boy didn’t need to know. It was enough that Mendenhall knew, and though he wasn’t completely
without sympathy for Ash’s position on what had transpired after Craig had got the arsonist’s case thrown out, the law was the law. She hadn’t done her job properly, so in Mendenhall’s book that made her every bit as responsible for the tragic deaths that had occurred, possibly even more so. And just in case she
was
leaning on the prosecutor, he was ready to play her prejudice as a trump card should the CPS make the grand mistake of going to trial.

‘So I still have to attend the committal,’ Nat said, his dark eyes partly concealed by an overly long fringe.

‘Yes,’ Oliver replied, ‘but it’ll be brief and quite informal again. They’ll set the date for the Plea and Case Management hearing, which should probably be around four to five weeks later.’

‘And that’ll be in the Crown Court?’

Oliver nodded.

‘So that’s when I have to stand in the dock and plead not guilty?’

Again Oliver nodded, picking up on the boy’s dread as Nat looked away.

‘There’s a judge in Taunton now who can hear these cases,’ Oliver told him, ‘but I think it’s more likely you’ll be referred here to Bristol. This is presuming it gets that far, and I’m still very hopeful it won’t.’

Nat looked at him, then at Jolyon who was standing against the windowsill listening.

‘I’ll be with you for the committal,’ Jolyon told him. ‘Oliver will take over at the PCMH.’

Oliver glanced at his watch. ‘I’m afraid I have to go now,’ he said, ‘I’m due back in court at two. I’m glad I’ve had this opportunity to see you,’ he told Nat, getting to his feet. ‘The case I’m here for is likely to go on for a few days, so if you want to get together at any time, just let me know.’

‘Thanks,’ Nat said, standing up too and shaking Mendenhall’s hand. ‘I’m going back to Somerset tomorrow. School starts next Tuesday.’

‘Ah,’ Mendenhall responded. ‘Well, good luck with that.’

Nat’s expression remained taut.

‘I’ll be at the end of the phone if you have any questions,’ Mendenhall assured him, ‘or if you simply want to talk.
Otherwise Jolyon will keep you abreast of developments, especially if we receive some good news from the CPS. Oh, and by the way, Jolyon tells me you’ve been extremely helpful around here these last two weeks. Well done.’

Nat glanced at Jolyon and tried to smile a thank you.

Much later in the day, having taken the bus back to Jolyon’s flat while Jolyon went to a meeting at the Law Society, Nat sat in his room for a long time trying to decide what to do. In the end, knowing Marianne was about to come home, he let himself out of the flat and walked across the road to the bridge approach. With rush hour still under way traffic was streaming by, slowing to a stop at the red brick towers that housed the tollbooths before speeding on to the other side.

It was cloudy and dull, but not cold. The air smelled of fumes and seaweed from the river, way below, and the roar of engines was drowning the sound of gulls and footsteps. He wasn’t really registering much – his mind was strangely empty, his thoughts, his decisions had ground to a halt.

It was free for pedestrians to cross the bridge, so he walked on past the Clifton-side tower, feeling a warm blast of air on his face as a lorry went by. The walkway was separated from the road by solid casings, and the rails between him and thin air were thick iron struts that soared like bastions to the sweep of the suspension. He’d studied the construction of this bridge once, in year eight or nine. He knew Isambard Kingdom Brunel had designed it, and that it had first been opened in 1864, after Brunel’s death. A local wine merchant had financed it, but he couldn’t remember the merchant’s name.

He was standing three hundred feet over the gorge now, halfway across the bridge and wondering if he could really feel a sway, or if it was just his imagination. He was so high that the river below was no more than a ribbon of sludge in the mud banks, and the cars clogging up the Portway were like toys. He looked out over the city, his eyes travelling from the tangled roads that made up the Cumberland Basin, across a myriad Victorian rooftops to the Mendips in the distance. Somewhere beyond those hills his mother and sister were going about their day.

His eyes dropped down through the gorge again, passing over the cragged rock face much faster than anyone could fall. At the bottom a blade of light struck the grimy water and was gone.

Suddenly his mind was filling again, a clamouring chaos of thoughts that seemed to have no beginning or end.
Not guilty
…
Forced himself on me
…
She was begging me
…
Why did you lie? Penetrated with your penis
…
Nathan Douglas Carlyle, you are accused of the rape
… His eyes closed. He felt sick and giddy. The world was swooping and pitching. He could sense everyone watching him. Accusatory and contemptuous eyes. His mother would be in court, torn apart with grief and shame. She’d hear how he’d touched Annabelle when she was twelve. It would all come out. Everyone would know and call him a pervert, a child molester, a rapist.

His hands gripped the rail. He squeezed it so tight his knuckles cracked. His mind was emptying again, like a chorus pausing for breath. Then he could hear his father’s voice, but not what he was saying. He wanted his father so much it seemed to hurt in every part of his soul. He’d have the answers, he’d know what to do. Yet how could he? His father wasn’t who he’d pretended to be. He was a fake, a liar, a cheat. He hadn’t loved his wife, and thinking of his mother unloved, when he knew how deeply she’d loved his father, wasn’t something he could bear. The mere thought of anyone causing her pain made him want to hurt them in every possible way, but his father was no longer here to face his shame. In dying he’d cheated his family again.

He looked up at the security caging, the uncompromising bars that attempted to keep people in and death out. If he went to prison he’d be treated like scum. They’d beat and rape him and turn him into a miserable, toadying fag. The dream of a career in the law would end the day he was convicted, and for the rest of his life he’d bear the label of a sex offender. No one would want to live near him, wherever he went frightened parents and vigilantes would drive him out. He’d never find a job or a wife, he’d have no friends or children of his own.

And all because of that one crazy moment with Annabelle.

Why was she doing this?

Would he, if he could break through the bars, make the jump?

The answer, he realised to his shame, was no, because he didn’t have the courage. Or maybe it was because he knew what it would do to his mother. And there was still, please God, a very slender chance that he might not be punished for a crime he hadn’t committed.

Though she was scared and horrified by her pregnancy, Annabelle knew exactly what needed to happen. Her mother would make an appointment at a clinic in London, then she’d drive her there and a couple of hours later they’d come home again. ‘It’s easy,’ she declared. ‘I know three people who’ve done it, and they only had a day off school.’