Hidden Cottage (45 page)

Again he wasn’t expecting an apology from her. ‘You don’t have to apologize to me, Mia. I understand. Truly I do. I just wish there was a way I could make things right for you. To make you happy again.’

She blinked, but didn’t say anything.

‘Did Jeff mention to you that I ran into him that day? Literally. Just outside Parr’s.’

She shook her head. ‘How did he seem to you?’

‘Awful. And very angry. Like a man spoiling for a fight. I think if I’d given him cause, he would have taken a swing at me. Is there any way he could know about us?’

‘No. Absolutely not. But . . .’ she faltered and put the spoon down. ‘But I think Jensen suspects there’d been something between us.’

‘He’s never hinted as much to me.’

‘He wouldn’t.’

‘What makes you think he suspects something?’

‘He said he’d noticed how happy I was before . . . before the accident. He then asked me why I telephoned you that night.’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean he knows anything.’

Her expression intensified and as he stared into her violet eyes, Owen was reminded of the strength of his feelings for her.

‘I know my son,’ she said. ‘He never says anything without a reason.’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘I lied. Something I’ve never done with Jensen before.’

‘I’m sorry you had to.’

‘So am I. I’m sorry for a lot of things.’ She drank some of her coffee, then looked anxiously about the café, her gaze darting and hovering. She was probably checking to see if there was anyone here who knew her, worried at them being seen together. Drinking his own coffee, he noted the extra lines at the corners of her eyes, the fine strands of grey threaded through her hair, and the weight she’d lost. Grief had changed her but she was still beautiful. She was one of those women who always would be.

Her gaze came back to rest on him. ‘I want to ask you something,’ she said, ‘and I think it’s because of the dream I had last night. It’s made me think about some things more clearly.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘For both of our sakes, can we put what we did behind us and be friends? I don’t want to go on ignoring you. Ultimately it will only make things worse and people will wonder why.’

He put his cup down. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘Yes.’

‘It wouldn’t be better for you if I left Little Pelham?’

She frowned. ‘But you can’t leave; you’ve only been here a short while.’

‘That’s not really answering my question, is it?’

‘I wouldn’t want you to leave because of me,’ she said. ‘Not when I know that it was a dream of yours to live here.’

‘Maybe I need to have a new dream.’

She blinked and her frown deepened. ‘You’d be greatly missed. Only yesterday Muriel said that we must do all we can to keep you here.’

Surprised, he said, ‘What made her say that?’

‘She has the impression that you’ve lost some of your enthusiasm for living in the village. Is that true?’

He fixed her with a long, hard stare. ‘What do you think?’

Her gaze, almost hypnotic, didn’t waver from his. ‘I think I’ll always wonder how things might have been between us, if . . . if I hadn’t lost poor Daisy.’

He leant forward. ‘Mia, we could still make it happen.’

‘I can’t leave Jeff. Not now. He doesn’t have anyone else to turn to. I’m all he has.’

It was just as Owen feared. This was what he’d known she would say. There was even something to be admired in her stoicism. It might be misplaced, but she wasn’t the kind of woman who would kick a man when he was down.

‘What if I said I’d wait?’ he tried.

‘For what?’

‘For Jeff to get over Daisy’s death and for you to feel he could cope if you left him.’

‘He’ll never get over her death. She was everything to him.’

Choosing his words with care, Owen said, ‘Do you still feel that our affair brought about Daisy’s—?’

She raised a hand to stop him. ‘Please don’t,’ she said, ‘don’t say the words.’

‘I’m sorry. But I sincerely hope you no longer think that. You’ve suffered enough without torturing yourself by believing something that can’t possibly be true.’

Her eyes intense and pleading, she said, ‘How can you be so sure it isn’t true?’

Without thinking what he was doing, he reached across the table and took her hand in his. ‘I can’t prove it to you, Mia, but every ounce of my being says life doesn’t work that way.’

She opened her mouth to speak but closed it abruptly, snatching her hand away from his. ‘Don’t turn round,’ she said, staring out of the window, her face stricken, ‘we’ve been seen.’

His heart plunged. ‘Who?’ he asked, resisting the instinctive urge to follow the direction of her gaze.

‘Wendy Parr.’

He groaned. Wendy Parr, the woman who could singlehandedly spread news faster than Twitter.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Saturday afternoon. While Mia was in the barn with customers, Jeff was feeling restless and in need of some fresh air. He’d drunk too much whisky last night and was paying for it now with a fuzzy head. So he put on his coat and went for a walk.

It was a depressingly damp autumnal day and it wasn’t long before he felt the chill of it seeping through him and he headed for home. He was almost back at Medlar House when he decided to stop off at the church, to take a look at Daisy’s grave. He hadn’t visited for some time, but today he felt drawn to it and as he stood before the grave, he thought of the cause of his hangover. He had got drunk last night – angry drunk – because Mia had asked him if he thought it would help if they were to see a grief counsellor together; apparently Muriel had put the idea into her head. He’d told her straight that it was the last thing he’d ever consider doing and had grabbed the bottle of whisky and taken it upstairs with him.

Why the hell would he see a counsellor? His only experience with counselling had been when Daisy was ill and he’d been subjected to the most offensive and vile accusations. The worst – the very worst any father could be accused of and which he could barely bring himself to recall – was that he had loved Daisy in an unhealthy way, that it was an obsessive love that had led him to
interfere
with her.

He swallowed back the loathsome memory of sitting in that room and being subjected to such a despicable accusation. Furious, he’d stormed out of the session and never went back. Nor did he ever utter a word of it to Mia, or to anyone else. To say the words aloud, even to deny them, would have given credence to them and to his dying breath he would never do that. He’d been made out to be a monster and he wasn’t. He was a father who’d loved his daughter. No more, no less.

Choked by the memory, he covered his face with his hands. Then feeling his thoughts would taint his daughter’s grave if he stayed there a second longer, he turned and fled. He stopped at the lych gate to catch his breath. His chest tight with a painful stitch, he inhaled deeply and caught the faint aroma of a bonfire burning somewhere. And voices. They were coming from the other side of the lych gate. He recognized one of the women’s voices; it belonged to Bev, their cleaner. He pricked up his ears when he heard his name mentioned. Mia’s as well. Curious to hear more, he stayed out of sight and held his breath.

‘I tell you it’s true. Wendy saw them in Olney.
Together
. Bold as brass, holding hands.’

‘How long do you think it’s been going on for?’

‘Who knows? They’ve obviously been careful.’

‘Not careful enough if they’re sitting there for all to see in Olney. But as my mother used to say, there’s always someone who sees you when you’re up to no good.’

‘Too true. It all goes to prove that no one is what they seem. It’s Jeff I feel sorry for. The daughter dead and his wife carrying on like that. Now we know the real reason they’ve had separate bedrooms.’

A car went by, its engine drowning out what the two women said next, but then Jeff heard, ‘Mind you, he’s a bit of a looker, isn’t he? I mean, would you say no to him if he invited you into his bed?’

There was a short burst of crude laughter.

‘Would I heck! Hey, maybe we should sign up for piano lessons? Owen Fletcher can tinkle my ivories any time he wants.’

More laughter followed and then the two women said good-bye. Still staying out of sight, Jeff peered round the side of the gate and watched Bev turn to go up the main street of the village while the other woman crossed the road to go in the opposite direction.

His heart thumping wildly in his chest, he stood motionless and understood now why he’d taken such a dislike to Owen Fletcher. It had been instinctive, an innate sense that the man was trouble, the sort of man who would take advantage of a vulnerable grieving woman.

Fury boiled inside Jeff as he thought of Mia in bed with Owen Fletcher; it ripped through his guts with an explosive force. He dragged in a breath then coughed, gasped and retching hard he made it just in time to the stone wall where he threw up in the long grass.

Afterwards, he wiped his acrid mouth with the back of his hand and shuddered, both at the disgusting mess on the grass around him and at Mia’s duplicity. How could she do it? And with Owen Fletcher?

Gritting his teeth, he left the churchyard and stepped onto the pavement. He stared to his left at Medlar House. His jaw muscles clenched. He knew exactly what he was going to do next.

Owen was upstairs stripping wallpaper in his bedroom. As much as he disliked the black and purple pattern of the wallpaper the previous owners had favoured – too fiercely boudoir chic for his taste – he did wonder why he was going to the bother of removing it. If he wasn’t going to stay, why waste his time and energy on such a futile exercise?

Because the bottom line was he didn’t want to sell up and leave. He wanted to stay. He liked it here. He liked his place within the village; it felt right. More to the point, he wasn’t a quitter by nature; he liked to see things through.

He tugged on a piece of wallpaper and it came away in a long satisfying strip.

To stay here happily, as he wanted, all he had to do was be satisfied with having Mia as a friend. Surely that wouldn’t be too difficult if it meant he could keep hold of his dream?

Gathering up the stripped wallpaper and bundling it into a bin liner, he went over to the open window and looking down at the garden he had a sudden mental picture of himself as a boy, watching the dragonflies skimming the surface of the water while listening to the music coming from the house and thinking how one day, when he was grown up and rich enough to buy whatever he wanted, he would live here. His childhood dream had been to bring his mother to live here, to give her the kind of life he’d felt she deserved. It hadn’t exactly worked out that way, but then life rarely went the way one thought it would.

Certainly the day he’d decided he was going to stand up to his father hadn’t ended how he had imagined it would. He’d had it all planned in his head, had gone over and over it. He was totally prepared.

Except he wasn’t prepared for just how sick and twisted Ron Fletcher was. Several days had passed since his father had beaten out of his wife the truth of where they’d been that day when he’d come home early from work and found the house empty. Nothing further was said on the matter but two days later when Owen arrived for his usual after-school piano lesson at The Hidden Cottage, he was dismayed to find his father there. There was no sign of Lillian, but Gretchen was standing at the open door. Her face was always unreadable, because it was so badly disfigured, but Owen could see the apprehension in her eyes.

‘Ah, and here’s the boy himself,’ his father said in his horribly sarcastic voice as Owen drew near. ‘Now I know everything about the big secret you’ve been keeping from me,’ he said, grabbing hold of Owen by the arm. ‘And what have I told you before about lying? Liars always get caught out, and you, Owen, have been caught out. What have you got to say for yourself?’

‘I didn’t lie,’ Owen managed to say. ‘I just didn’t tell you about it.’ His father’s grip on his arm increased, his thumb digging in hard. Willing himself not to show how much it hurt, Owen tried not to wince.

‘Mr Fletcher,’ Gretchen said, her voice crisp and clear, ‘if anyone is responsible, it’s me. I should have approached you and asked for your permission to teach Owen. I apologize for any offence that oversight on my part may have caused you.’

Ron Fletcher stared at her. ‘That’s the trouble with people like you: you poke your nose in where it’s not wanted and think you can talk your way out of anything with a fancily worded apology. But I’ll thank you to mind your own business. This is a matter between me and my boy and he’s going to be punished for his lies. What’s more, as of now, there’ll be no more lessons, and if I ever hear that he’s been here again, I’ll make damned sure you regret it. That goes for your sister as well.’

‘Are you threatening me, Mr Fletcher?’

He let out a nasty laugh and took a step towards her. Towering over her, he said, ‘I’m just asking you to keep away from my son. As his father, I decide who he mixes with and I don’t want him mixing with the likes of you.’

Later, back at home, as soon as the door was closed, his father threw Owen against the wall, caught him by the throat and lifted him off the ground so that his feet were dangling and he was struggling to breathe. ‘If you
ever
defy me and go there again, I swear I’ll burn that house down with those two ugly bitches inside it. And after I’ve done that, I’ll decide what I’ll do to you and your mother. Now get out of my sight.’

It took Owen three days to summon the courage to confront his father. He waited for his mother to go to the shop and approached him in the lounge where he was stoking up the fire, the weather having turned unexpectedly cold. Owen stood behind him, close enough to show that he wasn’t scared. ‘If you do anything bad again to Mum and me,’ he said, ‘or to Gretchen and Lillian, I’ll tell people about you.’

His father stopped what he was doing, but he didn’t turn round. ‘And who will you tell?’

‘My teacher at school. Then . . . then I’ll go to the police as well.’

‘Will you now? And what will you tell them?’