The Lives She Left Behind (37 page)

‘Mould hate, dear,’ said the old woman at the table. ‘It’s “mould”, not “shape”.’

They turned to look at her in surprise.

‘You know it too?’ asked Ali.

‘Well, I don’t
know
it but it’s what we’ve just been reading. I’ve got it here.’

‘What is it?’

The woman looked at the sheet of paper. ‘It’s called the Declaration of Sir Guy de Bryan.’

‘Where did you get it from?’

‘The village shop. Sorry, do go on, dear, I didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s lovely to hear the words out loud. Do you know the rest of it?’ but Jo took no notice of her.
She seemed to have lost her thread.

‘When did you learn it?’ the woman asked.

Now Jo finally seemed to register her. ‘Long ago,’ she said.

‘Long ago? Well, that’s a shame,’ said the old man. ‘The shop woman’s been telling porkies and it was such a good story.’

His wife continued for him. ‘She said they’d only found it recently. Dug it up or something. She said it was so good they thought they’d print it. It was a lovely
tale.’

‘They’ve only had it in the shop two weeks,’ her husband added. ‘We’re one of her first customers. This is a first edition, this is.’

‘It talks all about it on the bottom here. Shall I read it out?’ The woman bent her head. ‘Sir Guy de Bryan’s Declaration was inscribed on a stone tablet on the wall of
his Chantry tower at Slapton, built in 1372 so that masses could be sung for his soul. The Chantry fell into ruin in the sixteenth century after Henry the Eighth’s dissolution of chantries
and monasteries. Only the tower and the walls of the Tower Inn, on the site of the original guesthouse, still remain. Broken fragments of the Declaration survived in a worn condition. When further
missing pieces were discovered in recent years, it was possible to assemble the whole text. It stands out as a heartfelt rejection of war by one of the most honourable warrior knights of the
fourteenth century.’

Jo looked round at them and her eyes were shining with pleasure. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Now shall we go back to the sea?’

‘Oh, yes please,’ said Ali. This time Jo walked more slowly and to start with she seemed to have a clear awareness of her two friends, though still with a reserve as if they had only
recently met.

‘What did you mean back there?’ Lucy asked her. ‘You said you stayed there.’

‘Did I? I thought I had.’

‘It must have been in the pub.’

‘It probably was.’

‘Your mum would know.’

‘Perhaps she would.’

‘Are you feeling better?’

‘I’m – I’m glad to be here. I’m pleased to see you,’ but that was it until they got to the sea, where she seemed at first to be looking for something she
couldn’t find, then became fascinated by the Start Point lighthouse at the western end of the bay, until all at once distress swept over her and she sat down on the shingle, wrapping her arms
around her knees, and began to weep.

The girls sat down each side of her. ‘What’s happened to you, Jo?’ Ali asked gently, stroking her arm, but she got no response at all.

‘Look,’ said Lucy. ‘Shall I show you the pictures I took on the dig?’ She held her mobile phone up in front of Jo. ‘See? That’s you two putting up the tent,
and there’s Andy and the boys. That’s the tattooed bloke – what was he called? Dozey? There’s Ali and Conrad.’

‘I didn’t know you’d taken that,’ said Ali, embarrassed.

‘Now we’re walking. That’s Glastonbury and that one too, and that’s the view from King Arthur’s Tower—’

‘Alfred’s,’ said Ali.

‘Whatever, and that’s – oh no, you don’t want to see that. Let me . . .’

But Jo had reached out to grab the phone from Lucy’s hand and was looking at it with an expression of delight on her face. ‘Ferney,’ she said and looked eagerly around her as
if the phone was a mirror, reflecting him somewhere behind her. She frowned when she couldn’t see him, looked at the phone again and turned it over as if that might help.

‘Where is he?’ she asked. ‘That’s his picture,’ as if the other two might not understand. ‘I need him. Do you see? He knows how to make it all better. He was
here. We sat on this beach and the men with the boats had houses here. They’ve gone. They’ve all gone.’

‘He’s not here, Jo.’

‘I’m not Jo.’

‘You are.’

‘I’m Gally. That’s my name.’

Lucy looked at Ali, eyebrows raised. ‘All right . . . Gally,’ she said, ‘why don’t you tell us about Ferney?’

‘I love him,’ the girl said, and her face had come back to life, her eyes glistening as she looked from one to the other of them. ‘Where is he? Do you know? I have to find him.
It’s not worth it without him. It never has been. He knows everything about me. He knows how to make it right and I know how to make it right for him. He brought me here when I needed healing
and Guy needed healing too, and we talked here until we had the words that said exactly what we felt. Do you see?’ The girls were stunned by her utter certainty. ‘Will you help me find
him?’ she said.

‘When you say Guy, is that the same Guy the woman just told us about?’ Ali asked.

‘Yes.’

‘In . . . um . . . 1370? You remember that?’

‘I can remember bits of all our lives, all the way back. Ferney and Gally, Ferney and me.’

‘And this man, Guy?’

‘Oh, poor Guy,’ said Gally. ‘We had him in the cottage, you see. I was looking after him. The cuts were bone-deep and they weren’t clean. Then Ferney heard noises outside
but when he ran out the men had gone, ridden off, but they had left him lying there.’

‘Who?’

‘The dead man – well, a boy still really. Guy hadn’t known him, you see? In the fight, he had a cloth round his face and it was kill or be killed. He had no choice. It was
awful for him. He shouldn’t have got up but when he heard the fuss he came limping out, leaning on the wall, and he saw what we had lying at our feet. He knew him then. He knew his own son
and in case he didn’t after all those years apart, they had painted Guy’s own crest in blood on the boy’s shirt. So do you see? It was Molyns’ revenge. Guy was grieving and
I was grieving because we both killed our sons, and that’s why Guy did it. That’s why he built his Chantry here.’

‘Are you sure you killed somebody?’

‘Oh yes. I killed her.’

‘You said you killed your son.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I don’t even know what a chantry is,’ said Lucy to get back to more solid ground.

‘It was for his soul, so the priests would say prayers for his immortal soul to free it from his sins. He thought he would suffer eternity in purgatory otherwise. Ferney told him he was
wrong.’ The girl’s voice became matter-of-fact, almost amused. ‘He told him there was no purgatory and we should know, but Guy said that might be true for us but not for him. So
we shared our sorrow and we wrote the words for both of us because I had killed my son too, you see?’

‘Poor Gally,’ said Lucy in a soft voice.

‘Did it help?’ Ali asked.

‘Not the building, not all the priests, not all the masses they sang. But the words helped.’

‘Your mother’s here,’ said Ali, looking up the shingle bank to the figure of a woman beckoning to them from the top.

‘She’s not my mother. I must find Ferney. Will you help me, please? You’re my friends. He’s the only way for me. Please?’

They heard Fleur shouting.

‘We’d better go.’

They steered her back to the car, one each side, and Fleur looked at them questioningly.

‘It’s fine,’ said Ali. ‘We’ve been just fine.’

‘I’m actually quite hungry,’ said Lucy. ‘Do you mind stopping at the shop?’

Fleur pulled over with a bad grace in Slapton’s narrow street and Lucy came back to the car with a carrier bag, offering sandwiches. Jo took hers but inspected the triangular plastic box
with puzzled fascination, tapped it against the window, then handed it politely back.

It all stopped being fine as soon as they drove out of Slapton because Jo’s distress mounted to the point where she was twisting violently to see behind her, clawing at the door handle,
sobbing and calling out in strings of disconnected and mostly incomprehensible words.

Fleur pulled over, got out slamming the door, and made a call on her mobile. ‘We’re going straight to the surgery,’ she announced when she got back in. ‘I’m not
taking her home like this. I thought you said she was okay.’

‘She was.’

As they approached Exeter, Jo quietened down and curled herself up, twisting to one side as much as the seat belt would let her. The surgery was a private practice in a leafy street just outside
the city centre and a nurse came to the car to help them get Jo inside. Halfway in, Jo seemed to come to herself for a moment. She stopped, clutched Lucy’s sleeve and said, ‘Find him.
Tell him. Tell him I’m sorry,’ then the girls had to sit and wait while Fleur and Jo were taken into the consulting room.

‘This is all wrong,’ said Lucy when they were alone. ‘I sometimes think her mother doesn’t give a toss for her.’

‘It’s very difficult,’ said Ali, judiciously. ‘I mean, she is saying some pretty weird things.’

‘But supposing it’s true? I think it is. I really think it is. Imagine if they’ve been lovers forever, those two.’

‘How can it be? It’s not one of your stories, Lucy. This is real. It doesn’t happen.’

Lucy said nothing in reply. She reached for a magazine and stared at it without reading it until Fleur came back into the room.

‘We’re taking her to a private clinic,’ she said. ‘She’ll be better treated there. Can you two get yourselves home?’

Something brave stirred in Lucy. ‘Does she want to go?’ she asked.

‘That’s neither here nor there,’ Fleur retorted. ‘It’s what’s best for her.’

‘She’s over sixteen,’ Lucy said. ‘Can’t she make up her own mind about that?’

‘She’s having delusions,’ Fleur said evenly. ‘She thinks she’s killed somebody and sometimes it’s a boy and sometimes it’s a girl. She doesn’t
even know her own name. She keeps asking for this boy you left her with. If she won’t go voluntarily, she will have to be sectioned – that’s their advice. Now go home before I
lose my temper.’ She spun round and left them staring after her.

‘What does sectioned mean?’ Ali asked faintly.

‘I think it’s that thing where they cut your brain in half, isn’t it?’

‘That’s called a lobotomy.’

‘I’m not letting them do that to Jo,’ said Lucy.

Detective Inspector Meehan was having a difficult day. The Duty Prosecutor thought the case against Michael Martin was evidentially weak but that was because, Meehan had
belatedly discovered, his Detective Sergeant had missed out one page of the toxicology report in the evidence file. Just as he had put that right, the Duty Prosecutor had managed to get himself
stung by a bee, suffered a severe anaphylactic reaction and had been carted off to hospital. The Crown Prosecution Service was sorting out a replacement but had warned him it might take another
hour and his time was running out. Meehan could only hold the teacher for twenty-four hours without a very good reason for needing more time and yet he knew in his bones something had always been
very wrong with this case.

When the CPS finally rang back, he found Anna Murray on the other end of the phone – the person least likely to be impressed by his argument.

‘There’s a hole in this file a mile wide,’ she said before he had a chance to say more than hello. ‘There’s all their new thinking on the timing of the lethal
effects but you’re still relying on the original analysis of the poison by the old methods. His lawyers will say you can’t change the rules on one and not the other.’

Meehan knew the lawyer in question was Leo Avery, who had never been known to say anything nearly so clever. ‘So what are you suggesting?’

‘That you need new samples.’

‘I need to dig them up?’

‘If you haven’t still got original tissue samples in good condition, then yes. You need an exhumation order.’

Meehan looked at his watch. ‘In that case, I’ll need an extension. It’s coming up to the twenty-four hours.’

‘Frankly, I think you’re out on a limb here. He’s not going to run away.’

‘If I get the order, can I hold on to him until the forensics come through?’

‘I very much doubt it but call me if you get it in time.’ She hung up.

He stared at the phone, resisting the temptation to throw it at the wall, then he called downstairs and set things in motion. He looked at his watch again and began working it out. Something in
him did not want to let Michael Martin go, even if he could be rearrested later. He wondered if the news that Martin’s wife and child were going to be dug up might be enough to shock a
confession out of the man. Leo Avery seemed at least halfway to believing in his own client’s guilt. There wasn’t quite enough time but Avery might just allow him the few extra minutes
he needed for the questioning and Martin himself certainly had no idea about proper procedures.

The front desk buzzed him to say the lawyer had arrived.

‘Show him to the interview room,’ Meehan said. ‘Don’t bring Martin up yet. I’ll have a quick word first.’

He walked in with a forced smile and a quip ready on his lips about the mess Leo had made at the third green last weekend, but there was a tiger waiting for him in the room. Rachel Palmer,
crouched and ready to spring, looked at her watch and said, ‘You have exactly eight minutes to charge my client or release him, Meehan. Which is it going to be?’

Mike didn’t say a word until they were in the car. ‘Thank you,’ he said as they drove away. ‘I thought you had given up on me.’

She looked at the harsh lines on his face. ‘So did I.’

‘What changed your mind?’

‘That can wait,’ she said. ‘We need to talk to Gally.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Her mother took her away. We have a very short time to sort this out because the only thing holding Meehan back is a technicality.’

‘What’s that?’

Rachel hesitated, understanding how upsetting this would be. ‘He has to get permission to exhume them.’

‘Oh no. He mustn’t do that. I don’t want them disturbed, not now.’