Losing Nicola (32 page)

I long for my own rebirthing.

Crumpling my fish and chip newspaper and stowing it in the rubbish can under my kitchen sink, I make a mug of tea and go over to sit on my window-seat, looking out at the sea.

Orlando. My beloved Orlando. Can he possibly be implicated? If I accept the version of events which Julian has just given me, then I also have to accept that he did indeed see Orlando cycling in the direction of the Secret Glade. What did he find when he got there, if he did get there? Can I really believe it possible that Orlando, of all people, could have killed Nicola?

His story about her threat to lay waste to his special blackberry patch sounded such a Nicola kind of thing to say, and if he'd believed it, if he'd seen her go off with Julian in that direction, he might well have followed, if only to protect what, over the summer ripening, he must have come to consider, in some way, his own property. Had he found her there, in pain, perhaps, from Julian's kicks, found her at his mercy, wanted to inflict some damage? Had he, too, seized her by her vulnerable neck, shaken her – ‘such a little thing' – and found, to his horror, that he'd killed her? It sounds all too horrifyingly plausible.

D
o I wait for fate to intervene once again, or do I grab hold of the future? Be reactive, or proactive? In other words, do I bide my time, in the hope that sooner or later, I'll encounter Louise Stone in some casual way, or should I boldly go and knock at her door?

Outside my windows, the green has turned into a dusty plain reminiscent of the African veldt. The sun hangs like a golden clock face in a white-blue sky. Major de Grey's garden is full of shrubs so parched that their dried-up leaves are falling fitfully to the baking soil in which they are planted. It is too hot to work, or even to think. I change into my swimsuit and sit on the shingle, plunging every now and then into a sea which has turned the unreal green of a travel-brochure photograph.

After two days of dithering, while fate does nothing to help, I wait until dusk and then make my way to the North End. Although it is cooler after dark, there is no need for me to delay this visit until the light is fading, yet by doing so, I feel more secure, as though I am a creature of the night, whose natural habitat is the dank and gloom of a subterranean cave, a burrow in the ground.

Eventually I find myself at Number Twelve, Fisher Street, in front of Louise's racing-green front door. The curtains are not yet drawn, and when I glance through the window into the as yet unlit sitting room, I can see it is empty. Perhaps she's out. I hope so because I can then further postpone this meeting. I tap the knocker, just to be sure.

Footsteps approach along the narrow hall. They're heavier than the quick brisk ones I associate with Louise and I surmise that the person now lifting the old-fashioned latch will prove to be the man I glimpsed when I last came down this street, some weeks earlier.

I am right. My smile is ready when the door opens. He raises enquiring eyebrows. ‘Yes?'

‘My name's Alice Beecham,' I say.

He frowns, as though wondering whether the name should register with him, and then decides it shouldn't. ‘How can I help you?'

‘I wondered if I could have a word with Mrs Stone – Louise.'

‘What about?'

‘Er . . .' I'm not prepared for this question. ‘She'll know who I am.'

‘Just a moment.'

He retreats down the passage. I hear voices, an angry exclamation, something being banged down on a table. A few minutes later he returns. ‘I suspect you're going to try and rake over matters which we much prefer not to think about.'

‘Well, yes, maybe, but . . .'

‘In that case, you'll have to forgive us if we appear uncooperative. However, since my wife seems to think you should come in, you'd better do so.'

As I follow him, I try to digest the fact that this pleasant-looking man is Louise's husband. Is this Geoffrey Farnham himself – Valerie's father has told me that he has been released from prison – or has she remarried in the years since I left Shale? He reminds me very much of Mr Johnson, with the same open face, the same haunted eyes. He moves ahead of me into the sitting room, still familiar to me from the past. The wooden beam, now wreathed in pot-plant ivy, still holds up the ceiling at one end of the room, the walls are a simple cream, there are long curtains of ivory and oyster linen.

Louise is sitting on a sofa covered in beige and piped in chocolate-brown. ‘Hello, Alice,' she says, without smiling. ‘After we met the other day, I knew you would eventually show up here.' She indicates the man now standing protectively beside her. ‘This is Nicola's father.' She looks up at him. ‘Darling, Alice is one of the two children who found her body.'

He looks me over. ‘I'm sorry that had to happen,' he says.

‘In fact, it was from Alice's twelfth birthday party that Nicola disappeared.'

‘I remember you telling me about it,' Farnham says. His expression is marginally less hostile. ‘You were by way of being Nicola's closest friend down here, weren't you?'

‘That's right.'

‘What do you want from us?' Louise asks. There is a smudge of pinkish lipstick on the rim of her glass, like half a kiss.

‘I'm not entirely sure. Any help you can give me. Any . . . clarification. Illumination. Something like that.'

She regards me steadily, without speaking. Then she nods. Sighs. ‘I suppose it's about time.'

‘You don't have to go into all this,' Farnham tells her. ‘It's done. It's finished with.'

‘Is it? I don't think so. Not for any of us.'

I regret having come here. ‘I'll go,' I say. ‘I shouldn't have come in the first place.'

‘No, Alice, wait. If anyone has the right to hear what really happened, to hear what we have to say, you do. But it won't be easy; we may need a drink to help us through.' She lays a hand affectionately on her husband's arm. ‘Would you mind, darling?'

Farnham retreats to a side-table at the end of the room where bottles and glasses wait. Without asking what I'd like, he pours gin-and-tonics for all three of us, slides a lemon slice into each glass, and hands them to us. ‘Right,' he says, ‘Let's get it over with, shall we?' He's clearly a man used to making decisions, to being in command.

‘Alice?' Louise looks at me.

I take a deep breath. Embarrassed by the sympathetic manner with which she waits for me to speak, I stumble through my now-familiar recitation about my inability to move onward, my urgent need for some kind of resolution.

‘I apologize for bringing this up,' I finish lamely. ‘It must be terribly painful for you both.'

Louise nods. ‘It is.'

I try not to stare too hard at Farnham, who has seated himself close to his wife on the sofa. This man killed a girl by pulling a scarf around her neck so tightly that she strangled to death. I wonder whether he heard the small bones in Valerie Johnson's neck snap. I wonder if he felt pity as her dying fingers clutched at the suffocating ligature. He seems so ordinary, yet he must surely have nightmares about those brief minutes in which he lost control and an innocent child was murdered. Given his war record, perhaps killing came more easily to him than to others. But that is not my present concern. ‘It's painful for me, too, believe me.'

Husband and wife glance at each other as I lurch to a halt. Neither says anything for a moment, as though they are collecting their ammunition, armouring themselves against me. Louise says finally, faintly, ‘The shock of finding her must have been . . .' Staring down at her drink, she says, ‘I always remember your faces, that afternoon. Yours and Orlando's. So white and pinched. I think I knew then what had happened' She grimaces. ‘You were far too young to have been through such an appalling experience.'

‘I feel that the more I can find out,' I say, ‘the clearer it will all become. And that once I can look at it without flinching, the nightmares will go.' And with them, I hope, though I do not say, the inanition which plagues my inner self, holds me mired in the past.

Farnham leans towards me, hands clasped between his knees. ‘Maybe we should start with the background which led to me being sent to prison for murder, and why my family moved down here in the first place,' he says.

‘All right.'

‘I enjoyed my job,' he begins. ‘I was a good headmaster. The kids liked me, I liked them. If you're at all conversant with the circumstances surrounding the death of Valerie Johnson . . .' He waits for a moment, and I nod my awareness of the case. ‘. . . you will be aware that a girl pupil, Barbara-Jane Finch came forward to say that I had spoken to her suggestively, or inappropriately, which added to the prosecution's case. And, of course, I confessed to the crime. Open and shut case, send him down, next case, please.'

‘I know all that.'

‘What you may
not
know is that a few years ago, Barbara-Jane Finch got married and eventually had a baby, a girl. She and her husband then went to the police and withdrew every word of her testimony at my trial.'

‘She said that even though her evidence hadn't been crucial,' put in Louise, ‘nonetheless she'd been wrestling with her conscience for years, that she'd been terrified she'd be sent to prison herself, for perjury, and it was only when she had a daughter of her own that she realized she couldn't keep silent any longer, she had to put the record straight.'

‘Of course it was far too late for me by then, and besides, my wife and I weren't anxious to have the facts made public.'

‘What facts were those?'

‘It turned out . . .' Head bent, he clears his throat while Louise puts her hand on his knee, murmurs some sympathetic endearment. ‘According to Barbara-Jane Finch, our daughter had bullied her into making a false statement, threatened her with whatever kind of reprisal girls
do
threaten each other with, in order to strengthen the case against me.'

‘
Nicola
did that?' I stare at him, disbelieving. ‘To her own father?'

‘Hard to take in, isn't it? So devious.'

‘So downright
wicked
,' says Louise.

‘But . . . but
why
?'

‘Self-preservation, I should imagine.' Farnham's voice is dry. ‘Though it was hardly necessary since I'd already confessed to a murder I didn't commit. My wife and I had decided, right from the start, that it was better me than the real culprit.'

‘And who was that?'

Geoffrey looks at me in surprise. ‘I would have thought it was obvious.'

‘Is it?'

Before I can process the nebulous possibilities in my head, Louise says, ‘Nicola, of course.'

‘Nicola?' I return to that distant summer and try to rearrange it. ‘
Nicola
?' Nicola had killed Valerie? It was because of Nicola that her father was given a twenty-year prison sentence, because of Nicola that Louise had to move away from her home, set up a new life under a different name and without a much-loved husband, because of Nicola that Simon was forced to start his life over again? I think back to those years, Simon's sullen silence, Louise's brave attempts at normality. I can see that over both of them must have hung the constant fear that somehow, some time, their true identities would be discovered. ‘She
actually murdered her best
friend
?'

‘Even after all these years, it's hard to accept, but yes, she did.'

‘I can't believe it.'

‘Neither could we. At least . . .' Louise glances at her husband. ‘. . . not at first.'

‘Do Valerie's parents know?'

‘I doubt it,' said Farnham. ‘As far as I'm aware, nobody does. Except us. And the police. And now you.'

‘Certainly we've never told the Johnsons,' explains Louise. ‘We talked it over and decided it was better if they went on believing Geoffrey had done it, than if they were told that Nicola, the little girl they'd known since nursery school days, was a killer.' She shrugs. ‘I don't know . . . maybe we were wrong. But having discussed it for hours, that's the conclusion we came to.'

‘But the . . . murder.' I cannot process this information. ‘How on earth could such a thing have happened?'

‘It was just the latest – and infinitely the worst, of course – in a never-ending line of problems with Nicola.' Louise sounded weary. ‘We long ago realized that just as some babies are born with a cleft palate or a hearing deficiency, so our child was born with a defective sense of morals.'

‘She was a premature baby, wasn't she?'

‘That's right.' Louise seems surprised that I know this. ‘Perhaps she didn't have time to develop a conscience. Today I imagine she'd be diagnosed as a sociopath.'

‘She was an almost textbook example,' says Farnham. ‘Believe me, I had plenty of time to bone up on the subject. Like most of them, even from earliest childhood, she displayed all the classic features. The charm, the cunning, the manipulative behaviour, the domineering hostility, the constant lying.'

‘The worst thing, as far as I was concerned,' said her mother, ‘was the complete lack of shame or remorse, if she was caught out. Even when confronted with conclusive evidence about something she'd done, she twisted her way out of every accusation, blamed everyone but herself. And as for any kind of empathy with the people she took advantage of, like poor Valerie, she simply despised them for being weak enough to suffer.'

Painfully I remember the look on Miss Vane's face as she opened the packet containing the corsets. We had all been embarrassed by Nicola's cruelty to someone whom, even then, we recognized in some indefinable way as weaker than ourselves, but none of us had made any objection, about that or about her other unkindnesses. None of us, except Orlando.