THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END (25 page)

Nelson returns. ‘Snow’s started again. We can’t get the chopper out in conditions like this.’ Ruth thought he’d been joking about the helicopter. ‘We’ll have to sit it out for a bit, love.’

Love. It’s the second time he’s called her that.

‘You must be our guests,’ says Stella Hastings. ‘We’ll have a nice supper and I’ll make up the spare room for you,
Inspector. Ruth, you won’t mind having Clara’s room?’

‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘But the snow might stop soon.’

Hastings comes back into the room with snow on his peaked cap. ‘Not much chance of that, I’m afraid. It’s pretty heavy now. I walked up to the coast road and the lorry’s stuck fast. I knew something like this would happen one day. I’ve warned the council time and time again.’

It’s a strange, surreal evening. Despite further assurances from Clara (Kate is sleeping, she’s fine, they’re both fine), Ruth still feels tense and twitchy. She also can’t forget the events of the day – the boat trip, the discovery of the buried box and, finally, the film itself. All through dinner – polished dining table, flickering candles, acres of silver and china – she keeps seeing Hugh Anselm’s face, hearing his voice, the voice of a precocious teenager.
The story I have to tell is an unedifying one … there was a difference of opinion … to my everlasting shame, I acquiesced.
But his story was not a teenager’s story. This was a man who had to face a terrible choice and bear an intolerable burden of guilt – all before he was twenty. What had the rest of Hugh Anselm’s life been like, she wonders? Why did he decide, in the end, to break the oath? Why had he written to Dieter Eckhart? Dieter, who is now dead.

Yet Jack Hastings, who has just heard that his father murdered five men in cold blood, seems unaffected. Earlier, in the study, he had looked a broken man. Now he is every inch the genial host, pouring wine, telling amusing anecdotes about his family. His mother, Irene, smiles vaguely in the shadows. What does she know? What does she suspect?

Yet despite all these cross-currents of emotion, there is something almost magical about the evening. The formal dining room, the candlelight, the knowledge that outside it is still snowing, all conspire to make the little group around the table seem somehow removed from the rest of the world. It’s as if, thinks Ruth, they have travelled in time. When they finally get up from the table and open the doors to the white expanse outside, will it be 2009 or 1940? Or will it be 1840, with carriage wheels whirling through the snow? Will the warning light shine in the tower, three short flashes, two long? Will Buster Hastings be walking down the cliff path towards the sea, gun in hand?

And, if she’s honest, she likes the fact that she is there with Nelson. The configuration around the table, Jack and Stella, Ruth and Nelson, makes it almost seem as if they are a couple. She has never been out to dinner with Nelson and it is unlikely that she ever will again. So she enjoys looking at him across the table, she likes the fact that she and Nelson have some shared history to relate (they tell the story of the Iron Age body on the Saltmarsh, the discovery that first drew them together), she relishes the moment when, after repairing to the drawing room, they sit together on the sofa drinking brandy.

Irene has gone to bed. ‘She sleeps downstairs; it’s easier for her these days.’ Stella, after checking on her mother-inlaw, comes into the room with coffee in little gold cups, chocolates, coloured sugar.

‘Blimey,’ says Ruth, who has had rather a lot to drink, ‘do you eat like this every night?’

She sees Nelson smiling into his brandy.

‘We try to eat in the dining room at least once a week,’ says Hastings. ‘It’s a shame to let standards drop entirely.’

‘But most of the time we huddle round the kitchen table,’ says Stella. ‘Jack reads the paper and I listen to the radio. That’s why it’s nice to have guests.’

‘Do you entertain a lot?’ asks Nelson. He says ‘entertain’ like it’s a foreign word.

‘Not really.’ There’s a twinkle in Stella’s eye as she passes round the cups. ‘Jack’s fallen out with most of the neighbours, you see.’

‘Really, Stella! That’s not true.’

‘I can’t stand most of my neighbours,’ says Nelson. ‘But the wife still insists on asking them round.’

It’s the first time he has mentioned Michelle. At least he didn’t say her name, thinks Ruth.

‘You should be master in your own home, my dear fellow,’ says Hastings.

‘That’s easier said than done,’ says Nelson. ‘I’m outnumbered. I’ve got two daughters, you see.’ He looks at Ruth and away again. ‘They gang up on me.’

‘Clara could always twist Jack round her little finger,’ says Stella. ‘You’ve got all this to come, Ruth.’

Ruth smiles stiffly.

‘I don’t mind being outnumbered,’ says Nelson. ‘I haven’t been first in the bathroom for over fifteen years. It’s hard, though, when they grow up.’

Stella nods, her blue eyes warm. ‘You’re so right, Harry. I remember when Alastair left home I was bereft. I kept wandering into his room and crying. It was the same with
Giles and Clara. That’s why I’m glad that Clara’s come back to us for a bit.’

‘She’ll soon be off again,’ says Hastings. ‘She’s thinking seriously about the TEFL course.’

‘You must be proud of her,’ says Ruth. She thinks it’s about time she said something.

‘Oh we are,’ says Stella. ‘She hasn’t had it easy. School was difficult. I was so pleased that she made it to university and got a good degree. I just hope that this latest thing …’ Her voice trails off. The logs hiss in the fire. In the hall, a clock strikes.

‘Midnight,’ says Nelson. ‘I must be for my bed.’

‘Me too,’ says Ruth and blushes. Nelson grins at her.

‘Don’t mind us, ha ha,’ Jack Hastings is quick to enlarge on the joke.

‘Really, Jack,’ says Stella mildly. ‘I’ll show you to your room, Ruth. It’s in the tower. Yours is the one above, Harry. It’s got its own bathroom so you can make up for all those years of missing out.’

Clara’s room is comfortable and untidy. Because it’s in the tower it has curved walls and nothing quite fits. The bed juts out into the middle of the room, cupboards and bookcases stand awkwardly against the rounded walls. It was obviously once Clara’s childhood bedroom – there is a rocking horse grinning in the corner and a pile of teddy bears on the widow seat. Equally obviously, it has been recently decorated, with blameless sprigged wallpaper and curtains held back with little bows. Ruth goes to the window and looks out. Far below is the sea. It looks wrong to see
snow on the beach, like a negative, the black waves breaking on the white shore. Far off, she can see a flashing light. It’s probably on the coast road but it makes her think of the lighthouse and the days when its beam would have shone out, warning sailors off the jagged rocks. At the foot of the tower there is a narrow line of snow before the land drops away. The garden and the summer house have disappeared forever. Ruth thinks of the night when the Germans landed, the shots in the dark, the little boy watching from the window. Perhaps this same window? She shivers.

She washes in the bathroom, a thin slice taken out of the room. Stella has lent her a nightdress but it’s floor-length and frilly and she doesn’t want to wear it. (‘Why?’ she asks herself sternly. ‘Who will see it?’) Instead, she keeps on her T-shirt and knickers. She is appalled to find herself stealing some of Clara’s perfume. She doesn’t know what she is thinking of. She and Nelson said a very brief goodnight in the hall. She won’t see him again until morning. She puts her phone on the bedside table, wishing she could ring home again. But Clara will be asleep. Funny to think of her sleeping in Ruth’s bed and Ruth in hers (though Clara insisted that she would be comfortable on the sofa). When she last spoke to Clara, Tatjana wasn’t home. She has obviously decided to stay the night in Norwich.

Ruth sighs. She feels twitchier than ever, every nerve strung up to snapping point. How is she ever going to get to sleep? She fetches a glass of water from the bathroom. Perhaps she’s just a bit drunk. But slow sipping doesn’t help. She goes to the bookcase. She’ll read until she drops off. Clara is nothing if not eclectic in her tastes: law
textbooks, Dickens, Jilly Cooper, Agatha Christie. Ruth thinks of Archie and his crime novels. What made him think of that elaborate code? And why leave it to Maria, whose English, according to Nelson, isn’t that good? Perhaps that was a way to ensure that the film would never be found – a way of honouring his promise to Hugh but protecting the memory of the troop. And who, she wonders suddenly, was the third person who knew the secret? The person Hugh mentioned in the film. Presumably he too is dead by now.

Ruth takes out a copy of
Riders
; she loves books about horses. But as she does so she dislodges a small, leather-bound book that has been lying on top of Jilly Cooper’s epic. It is a diary.

She knows she shouldn’t open it. She knows that. She has no right to read Clara’s private diary. It would be the worst possible invasion of privacy. She should just put it back on the shelf.

Ruth opens the diary.

I hate his wife
, she reads.
I want to kill him for deceiving me
.

Ruth stops reading. Clutching the book, she goes to the window. The snow has stopped. Sea’s End House lies under a cloak of silence; everything is muffled, enclosed, secret. The roads will be treacherous. Ruth is miles away from home. Clara is looking after her baby. She hears Clara’s voice, on the night of the naming day party.
I was expelled from two schools.

Why was she expelled?

She hears Stella.
She hasn’t had it easy. School was difficult.

Why was school difficult?

On an impulse, Ruth goes to the bedside table and starts looking through the drawers. In the third drawer, she finds what she is looking for.

A pair of dress-making scissors.

‘Nelson!’

The hall is dark. A winding staircase leads up to Nelson’s room but the door is shut. Ruth starts up the stairs, but before she has reached the top the door opens.

‘Ruth! What is it?’

Nelson descends the stairs. He is wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts. Even in the state she is in, Ruth notices.

‘Nelson!’ She grabs his arm. ‘I’ve got to talk to you.’

She turns and screams. A little figure is standing in front of her, wearing a long white robe.

‘Ruth, for God’s sake.’ This is Nelson.

Ruth takes a deep breath and realises that the sinister figure is Irene and the robe is a candlewick dressing gown. She clasps the old lady’s arm.

‘Irene! Why was Clara expelled from school?’

Behind her, Nelson expostulates but Irene does not seem put out by the question. She blinks calmly once or twice.

‘Such a silly fuss. I’m sure it was as much the other girl’s fault as Clara’s.’

‘But what did she do?’

‘They said she … hurt someone.’

‘Hurt? How?’

‘Stabbed them. With some scissors.’

Ruth lets out a low moan and drags Nelson into her room. Unperturbed, Irene patters back downstairs.

‘What’s all this about?’ protests Nelson.

‘Didn’t you hear? Clara stabbed someone when she was at school. She was expelled.’

‘That was years ago.’

‘And I found these in her bedside cabinet.’

Nelson takes the scissors and turns them over in his hand.

‘Nelson!’ Ruth almost screams. ‘She’s looking after our baby.’

Nelson looks at Ruth, dawning horror in his eyes. ‘We’ve got to get to her,’ he says.

‘We can’t. The coast road is blocked.’

‘I’ll get one of my team. I need my phone.’

He runs back upstairs. Ruth thinks she should get dressed but Nelson is back before she has had time to move.

‘I’ll call Judy. She lives near you.’

‘But how will she get there?’ wails Ruth.

‘She’s got a four-by-four. We tease her about it.’

There is an agonising wait before Judy answers the phone. Ruth hears Nelson’s voice, barking orders as he paces round the room.

‘… Ruth’s place … yes … quick as you can, force entry if necessary … you can phone for back-up but I’m not sure a squad car’ll get through … yes … call me.’

‘Does she think she can make it?’ asks Ruth. She holds onto her arms to stop herself shaking.

‘Yes. The roads are bad but she’s got a pretty tough vehicle. She thinks it’ll take about an hour.’

‘An hour!’

‘Snow’s very deep in places.’

‘Oh, Nelson.’ Ruth collapses onto the bed. ‘Do you think she’ll be okay? Kate?’

Nelson sits next to her. ‘I’m sure she will.’ But his voice sounds shaky.

‘What will I do if anything happens to her?’

‘Nothing will happen to her. She’ll be okay.’

Ruth starts to cry and, after a moment, Nelson takes her in his arms.

Judy almost misses the turning to New Road. The snow makes everything look strange and unfamiliar. She finds herself leaning forward, like an old lady in a Morris Minor. Her headlights make dingy yellow circles in the darkness; twice she’s had to check that they’re actually working. The snow has stopped but the roads are icing over. As she takes the corner, she feels the ground sliding away from her. If she’s killed, it’ll be Nelson’s fault.

But the car’s solid tractor-like wheels hold up well. Judy feels a surge of satisfaction. They’d all laughed at her for buying this car. ‘Go off-road much, do you?’ Clough had scoffed. Clough has been even more obnoxious than usual recently, calling her ‘Bridezilla’ and implying that the wedding plans are taking her mind off the job. Bastard. She wishes she hadn’t invited him now. Besides, he’s totally wrong. She is throwing herself into work to take her mind off the nightmare of dressing in white and saying ‘I do’ in front of hundreds
of gawping spectators. Why didn’t she insist on a registry office? Or the Caribbean. The Caribbean would be good.

Anyway, tonight she’s one up on Clough. The boss called her, not him. It’s because of the car, she knows, but that just shows she was right to buy a four-by-four. Sucks to Clough and his flashy Saab. The boss asked her for help and he’ll be eternally grateful for … what exactly? Up to this point, the idea of being the heroine of the hour has taken her mind off the fact that she has no idea what this crisis is all about. Why is it so urgent that she has to drive to Ruth’s house across icy roads, forcing entry if necessary? Is Ruth’s baby in danger? But there’s someone babysitting isn’t there? ‘A girl called Clara,’ Nelson had said tersely. ‘If she gives you any trouble, arrest her.’ ‘What?’ ‘Just do it, Judy, please.’