Deep Water, Thin Ice (32 page)

But now, though Alex still treated him the same way, still wore her engagement ring, still talked in vague terms of their future together, there was something about her which worried him. He had long been aware that she held a part of herself back but he had only lately realised how deep she ran. Grief and vulnerability had given him a false impression of her shallowness and compliance; he was beginning to see a steelier side to her character. When he’d tried to pass all the cost of the party onto her, she’d stood her ground, pointing out that the party had been his idea and it had mostly been his friends who had consumed all the drink;
and
it had been she who had had to clear up afterwards. He’d been obliged to give in with good grace rather than cause a rift. He knew she wasn’t bothered about the money as such, that it was a matter of principle for her, and he was concerned about what significance that had. It suggested an independence of thought which was worrying. And though she responded to his love-making she still did so perfunctorily, without any real passion. There was something inside her which he couldn’t reach. He’d thought he had the measure of her which put him in control; now he wasn’t so sure. He was scared that she would slip out of his grip before he’d worked his plan through.

The morning after the party, he’d tried talking to Sarah again, explaining how fragile Alex’s compliance might be, how careful they both needed to be about their behaviour towards her and what they said. ‘Of course darling,’ she’d immediately responded. But the party at the Hall had embedded the prospect of living there so firmly in her head that it was getting harder and harder to quell her enthusiasm, made worse by the news that Alex had accepted an offer on the Hampstead house and that there would soon be money to spend on the Hall. Sarah kept talking about how she’d like the annexe refurbished for when she moved in. He didn’t want to encourage her to think about it yet but, if all his plans worked out, her stay in the annexe wouldn’t need to last long.

But in the short term he needed to look for another well-paid crewing job. He left the harbour wall and walked back up the quay, shoulders hunched against the spatter of rain in the wind. The job at the yard paid little and Theo was prodigal. In any case, courting Alex was expensive and it was important he kept up the right image until the wedding. Perhaps working abroad wasn’t ideal but giving Alex a bit of space for a week or two was no bad thing; it had become clear she wasn’t someone he could afford to crowd.

*

So Theo had gone away again. ‘This chap I met last year got in touch to ask if I’d crew for him,’ he told Alex. ‘I couldn’t say no. He’s been let down by someone at short notice and he’s already had the deposit for the charter. Patrick said it was OK. It won’t be for too long. Then I promise I won’t go away again for ages. I’d rather be with you.’

The night before he left he’d persuaded her to set a date for the wedding. ‘Maybe late April?’ he’d suggested. ‘It would be a great time for a honeymoon. And I know just the place we should go. Let me arrange it all. It’ll be a surprise.’

Now that he’d gone, Alex remembered being flattered by his enthusiasm and desire – who wouldn’t be? – but wondered a little that she’d agreed. April seemed so soon. There again, why not April? she thought. Why wait? Time was marching on after all; her fortieth birthday loomed at the end of the year. She should embrace her decision and run with it. She tried to recapture the happy, careless mood of those days before the party, when it had seemed easy for a while to seize the moment and look forward to a new beginning. Now it felt harder to do. Something had changed.

The conversation with Sarah Hellyon had stayed with her, like the bad aftertaste of a meal not enjoyed. Before Theo left, Alex had tried to bring Julian’s accident up with him again but he’d brushed off the subject impatiently and said he couldn’t remember much about it now anyway. But she hadn’t told him about the clock stopping, or the icy columns of air which moved around the house, or the voice she sometimes thought she heard calling, always falling silent before she could grasp the words. When Theo had found his wallet thrown casually in the waste bin and had accused her of a strange sort of humour, she’d tried to suggest that there might be some sort of restless spirit in the house, hoping he’d give her a chance to discuss it with him. He’d been unusually abrupt then, dismissing her ‘wild imaginings’ rather savagely and she’d let the matter drop. She couldn’t cope with the friction. And perhaps he was right anyway. Julian was beginning to haunt her dreams and it was time she tried to put him out of her mind; she was letting the eccentric sounds and movements of a creaking old house develop a life of their own. And now she wanted to give them a name.

So Alex made some phone calls, exploring possible dates for the wedding, searching for suitable hotels which had a civil wedding licence and facilities for an informal reception. Then she rang Erica to tell her the news and check when she’d be available. Her sister clearly had someone at the house, someone she wasn’t prepared to talk about and didn’t want to leave for long. Her reaction was therefore necessarily subdued and Alex was relieved to be able to obtain Erica’s promise to come without yet more warnings and advice. When the call ended, Alex held the phone for some minutes, arguing with herself before ringing her mother’s number. It was Erica who’d persuaded Victoria to come to Simon’s funeral, Erica who’d negotiated their mother’s invitation to their wedding so many years before. This time Alex was determined to seize the nettle and do it herself. A few minutes later, after a mutually guarded conversation ending in Victoria’s promise to attend, Alex put the phone down feeling a small glow of weary personal triumph.

A couple of  days later she drove to Plymouth to look for something to wear for the wedding, ordered a dress and bought some accessories and then drove home questioning her choice. When she got home, she found Theo’s mother sitting on the sofa in the drawing room, a fire burning up brightly in the grate of the inglenook. As she walked in Sarah looked up at her coyly.

‘Ah, Alex. I hope you don’t mind? It was a bit chilly so I put a match to the fire.’

‘No, of course not.’ Alex trotted out the form reply without thinking and then frowned. ‘Did I forget to lock the door?’

‘No, you gave Theo a key to the front door didn’t you? He left it at the Lodge.’

Alex stood, staring. In the face of this blatant intrusion, she couldn’t think what to say.

‘Didn’t Theo say I might call?’ Sarah added, shifting edgily in the chair. ‘I thought he said he had.’

‘Not that I remember. But you should have rung before you came, Mrs Hellyon, to check I’d be here. I might not have got back for ages.’

‘Do call me Sarah dear. Mrs Hellyon always makes me feel so old. And we’ll soon be related after all.’

‘Sarah,’ Alex repeated, tight-lipped. ‘Was there something you came here especially to see me about?’

‘No Alex. Just a visit. You know.’

‘Of course…’ Alex tried to smile. ‘Right.’

She offered Sarah tea and then drifted into the kitchen to make it. She didn’t remember Theo saying anything about his mother calling. Or did she? She’d had a lot on her mind lately. Or did he forget? Or had Sarah dreamt the whole thing up in some whisky-induced alcoholic haze? Sarah’s drinking was obviously becoming an issue which could be avoided no longer. She needed to speak to Theo about it though it wouldn’t be easy; he could be very protective and touchy about his mother. And then there was the issue of Sarah letting herself into the house. Why did it bother her so? Sarah was going to be her mother-in-law after all. But still this was Alex’s home and she couldn’t shake off the disturbing suspicion that Sarah had come to the Hall knowing that it would be empty. She regularly saw the woman’s face watching at the window when she drove out past the Lodge.

Over tea, Sarah talked endlessly about the wedding. She wanted to know what Alex would be wearing and what outfit her mother would have. The dress and silk jacket she described as having chosen for herself sounded worryingly grand. An image of her at the party floated into Alex’s mind. Then she wanted to know all about the reception.

‘I thought we might have it here,’ she said. ‘Hillen Hall would make a perfect backdrop for a wedding reception. It’s convenient for the church and we could have a marquee out on the park.’

Alex finally dug her heels in. She didn’t like the sound of this ‘we’.

‘But I don’t want the reception here, Sarah,’ she said. ‘In any case, as I thought I’d made clear, it’s going to be a small wedding and very informal. A marquee would be quite unnecessary. We’re not having a church wedding anyway. You can get married in lots of places these days.’

‘I suppose so.’ The smile froze on Sarah’s face. ‘Well, it seems a shame, but if that’s what you want.’ Soon after, she made her excuses and left.

Clearing up after she’d gone, Alex made a mental note to bolt the front door in future. She usually used the kitchen door anyway. There would be no more uninvited visits while she was out.

*

Theo’s mother might be kept at bay but Alex found Julian harder to keep out of her mind and Sarah’s visit rekindled all the old questions. Later in the afternoon she picked up Bill Franklin’s notebooks again and read through his brief account of the tragedy several times over, willing it to give up more information. She began to flick through the books hoping to find another reference to it but the notes were such a succession of infuriatingly haphazard scribbles that in the end she threw them down in frustration and went to make herself a meal.

That evening, curled up in the chair by the stove in the snug, she picked them up again and steeled herself to restart from the beginning. After a while, getting nowhere, she went back to the original account and read it through. At the bottom of the piece there was a squiggle, as if Bill had caught the paper by accident or was testing out the pen. She’d seen it before and hadn’t apportioned it any significance. But then it occurred to her that it might indicate a cross-reference to another relevant note and she began to search again. It was two in the morning when she finally found the matching mark and another reference to Julian’s accident. It was brief but contained the particular information she’d been looking for:

It is difficult to get eye-witness accounts of the accident after all these years. Most reports now are second or even third hand. Apparently Julian, his brother Theo and their cousin Simon were playing by the river in the evening. Julian’s parents were entertaining guests to dinner up at Hillen Hall. The boys were often seen out in the village together in the evening; their sometimes boisterous behaviour had caused comment. Some said they weren’t being controlled enough. Around dusk someone reported hearing shouts. It is believed that around eight fifteen Julian was trying to get over the stones when one of them gave way and he fell in. The cousin ran back up to the Hall. The brother stayed by the river but Julian disappeared from sight. It is assumed he drowned almost immediately. It was a couple of days later when his body was washed up on Longcombe beach.

Around eight-fifteen. It was just as she’d begun to suspect: Julian had died at twenty-past eight. Alex shuddered involuntarily and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was after eleven o’clock. She walked through to the drawing room, put on every light, and crossed to the long case clock. After a few minutes she managed to get it to run again and closed the door. She stared at it and then looked round the room, unsure in what way the clock stopped or when, or if, indeed, there was any pattern to it at all. But since she couldn’t stay there constantly, watching, she reluctantly abandoned it for the night and went to bed. This was going to be a waiting game.

Thereafter, each successive evening, soon after eight, Alex walked into the drawing room and positioned herself in front of the clock. For three nights the clock chimed a quarter past the hour and then ran through, uninterrupted, and chimed the half hour. It ticked on and eventually Alex gave up and left the room. When she checked in the morning, it had run through the night. By the fourth night, standing there again around ten past eight, watching the dial slowly move round, she began to think her obsession with the death of a fifteen-year old boy she’d never met was sending her crazy. This was a stupid idea. What on earth did she think she was going to achieve? She shuffled her feet restlessly and yet couldn’t bring herself to leave.

The clock chimed the quarter hour and ticked on. She glanced around the room, checking to see if anything had moved, for anything abnormal at all, but there was nothing. Her gaze irresistibly returned to the clock. The minute hand was virtually on the four and she was trying to convince herself to leave when it juddered the last millimetre into position and she felt a creeping chill sweep through her. She stared at the hand; it was frozen. The ticking had stopped. She glanced around again. Her chest felt tight and she realised she was holding her breath and forced herself to breathe out and inhale again. There was nothing to be scared of, she told herself. Nothing. Looking back at the clock, she jumped as an owl hooted outside and then laughed nervously. She lifted a hand to open the door to the clock face but stopped short of touching it and then moved her hand up and down either side of the case instead. She felt nothing but what, in God’s name, did she expect to feel? She slowly turned round and addressed the empty room.

‘Julian?’ she said softly, in a voice that shook. ‘Is that you?’

Mick wrapped up the carving in an old canvas bag and then, glancing out of the window and seeing light rain starting to fall, he put it inside a large bin bag and knotted the top. He stood a moment, gazing down at it. He had argued with himself for weeks before resolving to do this – a host of compelling reasons for going almost always counteracted by equally cogent ones for staying away - and yet he was still unsure if he was doing the right thing. He glanced across at Susie who was standing by the door watching him, waiting patiently to accompany him wherever he intended to go. Since Theo’s visit he’d made a point of bringing her in to the carriage with him rather than leave her outside unattended. He didn’t like her out of his sight these days, didn’t want to give the man any excuse to carry out his threats.