The Secret by the Lake (27 page)

‘No, we’re fine, thank you,’ I said.

‘That’s not what Dr Croucher told me.’

‘Things have changed since I spoke to Dr Croucher.’

‘Well, we’re here now,’ said the vicar. He nodded to the man beside him. ‘This is Dafydd. He’s a painter and decorator by trade and he owes the doctor a favour so we’ve persuaded him to give up an afternoon for you. Isn’t that right, Dafydd?’

The man nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said.

‘That’s very kind,’ I said, ‘but we don’t need any help.’

The vicar’s expression had become decidedly less jolly. He adjusted his dog collar. ‘Can’t we at least come in and talk about it?’

‘Amy? Who is it?’ Julia appeared at my shoulder. ‘Oh, hello, Vicar.’

‘Mrs Laurent, I was just telling young Amy here—’

‘The vicar was just leaving,’ I interrupted. ‘We appreciate you coming round, but we can manage the work ourselves. Thank you.’

I shut the door, turned my back to it and leaned on it. We could hear gruff voices on the other side, the vicar disgruntled, the other man annoyed.

‘Oh, go away, you fussy, interfering old chauvinist,’ I hissed.

Julia, in the gloom of the hallway, said, ‘Amy, you just shut the door in the vicar’s face! That was a terribly naughty thing to do.’

She widened her eyes and bit her lip. I stared back at her for a second, and then the two of us began to laugh. We covered our mouths with our hands to stifle the laughter but it bubbled up behind. The more I tried to contain it, the more I laughed until I was weeping with laughter, and Julia was too. I slid down the wall and crumpled on the floor with my head on my knees and I laughed and laughed until my sides ached. Our laughter spread through the old cottage. It echoed down from upstairs. It was only the echo, but it seemed to me that the laughter was coming from the empty bedroom too.

BY CHANCE, DANIEL
drove by in his jeep while I was waiting to meet Viviane off the school bus that afternoon. I waved him down, and when he stopped and wound down the window I said, ‘I’m sorry about this morning. I shouldn’t have been short with you.’

‘No,’ Daniel smiled, ‘you shouldn’t have. That kind of behaviour doesn’t bode well for our future happiness.’

‘I’ll do my best to ensure it doesn’t happen again,’ I laughed.

‘I would appreciate that.’ He leaned his elbow on the vehicle’s doorframe and poked his head out. I reached up to kiss him. I kissed him for a long time and, when I had done so, he said: ‘What did I do to deserve that?’

‘You never told me the whole truth about your mother’s death. You never told me that Caroline was involved.’

‘I knew you would find out sooner or later.’

‘You were right, I did. And Julia knows that I know and she is afraid that you will hate her.’

‘How could I hate her? I’ve never even met her. And I don’t blame her for her sister’s actions. I never have and I never will.’

‘Then you must be acquainted as soon as possible. I think you would both like one another very much. And perhaps it will be better now that the truth is out in the open.’

‘No more secrets between us.’

Only the pendant in the satchel under the bed.
I would find a way to tell him. I would think of something. But in the meantime I wanted an excuse to invite him round to the cottage. I wanted him to meet Julia.

I told him about the shed, and how it had been padlocked shut and that we needed to open and clear it and that I didn’t know how to set about doing so.

‘How thick is the chain that holds the padlock?’ he asked.

‘About this wide.’ I showed him with my fingers.

‘Would bolt-cutters do the trick?’

‘I’d imagine so.’

‘Then I’m your man. Is there anything else?’

I glanced past him down the hill. The school bus was chugging up towards us. ‘Could you get me some emulsion paint, just ordinary white paint, the thicker the better? I’ll need a lot, at least a gallon.’

‘What for?’

‘To paint one of the bedrooms.’

‘I’ll do it for you.’

I thought of the words on the wall that I’d bleached, but which were still faintly visible:
I hate Jean Aldridge, I wish she was dead.
No matter that we all knew the truth now, I still could not let Daniel see those words. I couldn’t hurt him like that and neither could I expose Julia to the shame.

‘No, Daniel. I just need the paint, that’s all.’ I looked back to the bus. It was labouring around towards the stop. ‘I’ll give you the money.’

‘You know I don’t need the money. Why won’t you let me help you?’

‘It’s just something I have to do myself.’

The school bus pulled up behind the jeep. The door opened and Viviane climbed off, dragging her bag behind her. I could tell at once from her demeanour that she was not in a good mood.

‘I’d better go,’ I said. ‘It looks like there may be trouble ahead.’

‘I’ll come by with the cutters later,’ Daniel said.

‘Thank you.’ I kissed my fingers and put them to his cheek.

Viviane sidled up as the jeep drove away.

‘Hello, sweetheart.’ I put my arm around her, but she shrugged me off. ‘Are you tired, darling?’

‘No.’

‘Then what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Did something happen at school?’

Viviane looked at me sideways from under her fringe. ‘I had some extra coaching with Mr Leeson at lunchtime.’

‘Singing coaching?’

‘Maths. To make up for the lessons I missed.’

‘That’s good of him to help you.’

‘I don’t want to do the coaching.’

‘But darling, you need to catch up with everyone else.’

‘I hate maths.’

‘You’ll like it better when you understand it more.’

‘I’m no good at it.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true but even if it is, it doesn’t matter. You can’t be good at everything. And I bet you’re way ahead of everyone else in French.’

Vivi kicked a pebble. ‘Also I don’t want to be in the choir any more.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘I just don’t. I’ve got to do the extra coaching and it’s not fair that I have to do choir as well.’

‘I thought you liked the choir. And it’s your concert at Sunnyvale tomorrow. Oh, that’s what it is! You’re nervous about performing in public. But you mustn’t be, darling, really you mustn’t; I heard you singing during your practice in the church and you were wonderful. You sounded like an angel. Honestly, you’ll be the star of the show.’

‘I don’t want to do it,’ Vivi said. There was a tremble in her voice. ‘Please don’t say I have to.’

‘Let’s see what Mummy says.’ I pulled Viviane close, tipped back her hat and kissed her forehead. ‘Remember that you are very loved,’ I said. ‘Always remember that.’

I put Viviane’s mood down to tiredness. Back at the cottage, she went upstairs to change, and when I checked on her a few moments later, she was asleep, sprawled across the bed. I went back downstairs and recounted the conversation about the concert to Julia while I prepared supper.

‘She’s adamant she doesn’t want to sing for the old people.’

‘Well, I shan’t make her do it if she really doesn’t want to,’ Julia said. ‘But I feel that she ought to do it, not least because that school has been so accommodating with her.’

‘It might be good for her confidence too. She has such a lovely voice, and she doesn’t realize how talented she is.’

‘I’ll telephone the school in the morning and have a word with Mr Leeson,’ Julia decided. ‘I’ll see what he says about it. In his time he must have dealt with a thousand cases of first-night nerves.’

DANIEL WAS AS
good as his word. He came to the cottage later, just after dusk. Julia came out to say hello and they shook hands. It seemed enough to start with. After that I took the torch and led him down to the shed, past the old swing and the winter-dead shrubs, past the old washing-line. Daniel looked at the bolt, and the padlock securing the shed door. ‘It’s like Fort Knox,’ he said. ‘Someone wanted to make sure nobody got in there.’

He lifted the chain, felt its weight, dropped it and then he took out his cutters.

‘Turn your face away, Amy,’ he said, ‘in case it splinters.’ And then he squinted to protect his own eyes and held the two blades of the cutters over the thick chain.

It took a while but eventually I heard the grating sound as the cutter blades finally made contact with one another and then the clank and slither as the chain slipped through its housing and clattered to the ground. I turned to see Daniel leaning on the bolt, putting all his weight on to it. It would not budge.

‘It’s stuck solid,’ he said. ‘I need a hammer.’

He took the torch and disappeared back up the garden and I stood there, on my own, by the shed watching the swing of the beam of light from his torch until I lost sight of it behind the house. I looked up, sensing that someone was watching me. Viviane’s face was at her bedroom window. I waved, but although she seemed to be looking directly at me, she did not wave back. Her light was on and I must have been invisible. Her chin was in her hands, her elbows resting on the window ledge. She tilted her head as if she were listening to something, and then her lips moved. Julia was in the back room; Viviane was not talking to her mother, she was talking to Caroline.

When Daniel returned, he asked me to hold the torch and I took it in both hands, directing the beam of light at the rusted bolt while he banged at it with the hammer. The noise was terrible, a tremendous reverberation through the quiet night air, so loud I imagined it making ripples on the surface of the lake. He hit the bolt a dozen times then pushed it with the flat of his hand, rocking it from side to side … and finally it slid open.

It took both of us, using all our strength, to pull the door open wide enough to look inside. The old hinges protested and did their best to hold the door back, but we persisted. A puff of air, slightly warmer than the outside air and smelling foul, of smoke and age, came from inside. Daniel picked up the torch and shone the beam into the shed. I was almost sick with anticipation. I told myself to buck up. What was the worst that could be in there? Mice, perhaps? Spiders?

I made myself look. In the beam of light I saw there was a small concrete step down into the shed, old, water-stained lino on the floor, a square of carpet wet and foul-smelling and almost completely disintegrated. The inside walls were black, sooted. The shed was full of junk. There was furniture, the criss-cross metal springs of the base of a single bed, an old mattress, horribly stained, boxes made of wood, a suitcase, a dressing-table mirror, a small stool and a table, a watercolour paintbox, splayed open. Cardboard boxes left on the floor had disintegrated, their contents ruined, but there were other things; clothes had been bundled together and thrown inside, and there were books, and toys. I picked up a small bottle from the floor.
Ashes of Roses
was inscribed on the glass. It looked as if Dr Croucher and Mr Cummings had simply gathered all of Caroline’s possessions and thrown them into the shed before they sealed it shut.

I took a step forward.

‘Don’t let the door close on me, Daniel,’ I said.

The beam of the torch swayed madly from the floor to the roof and back again.

‘There’s something written on the wall – there,’ Daniel said. He pointed to scratches on the wall, four short vertical lines struck through with a single horizontal one. The scratches disappeared back into the darkness behind the clutter. ‘Someone was counting something.’

‘Julia used to play house in here. Maybe it was her.’

‘And there’s writing.’

‘What does it say?’

‘I can’t tell. The brickwork is scorched.’

I pulled the metal bedframe away from the rest of the clutter and tried to make sense of what Daniel was showing me, but I could not. Behind me on the floor was a large trunk, secured by heavy-duty leather straps. I tugged at the straps but I could not move the trunk. Daniel tried to help me, but it was wedged solid. He put his hand on my shoulder.

‘There’s too much weight on top,’ he said. ‘We can try again in daylight. There’s no hurry, is there?’

There was not, but I felt compelled to move the trunk.

‘I just want to get all this stuff out, get it out into the open and sort it out and then get rid of it. I won’t be happy until that’s done,’ I said.

‘It must have been like this for decades, Amy. A few more hours won’t make any difference. We’ll come back to it tomorrow, in the daylight.’

‘Can’t we just move the trunk?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ll come and help you tomorrow.’

VIVIANE AND HER
friend Anaïs were standing in the sunshine by the pool at the back of Les Aubépines; they were in their swimsuits, their wet hair making rats’ tails down their skinny little backs, playing a clapping game. Julia and Alain were sitting together at the table, beneath the shade of the umbrella. A half-empty bottle of wine was on the table between them. Alain was smoking, he was reading the newspaper, one hand on Julia’s knee. I felt a rush of love and relief.
Alain!
I called and Alain looked towards me and smiled; he raised his other hand, the cigarette between the second and third fingers.

‘I thought you were dead!’ I called.

Alain looked down at himself, gave his stomach a poke, raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

‘No, it seems I’m perfectly alive.’

‘Oh, thank goodness!’

Julia pushed her sunglasses up on to the top of her head and smiled. ‘Oh Amy, you are funny,’ she said. ‘You must have dreamed it and believed it was true!’ She tipped back her head and laughed and Alain laughed too. The relief made me giddy and now I was closer to the edge of the pool. I was watching the girls and I was holding somebody else’s hand and the hand I was holding was merging with mine, the skin between our fingers fusing, the nerves and capillaries weaving together, the bones splicing. The hand that was holding mine was like marble and my fingers were calcifying too. I tried to pull my hand away but I couldn’t, it had become part of the other hand. My eyes travelled from the marble hand to a marble wrist, an elbow, a shoulder, a face; grape-coloured lips, dark hair. And all the beauty of the place turned ugly; the warmth turned cold. My relief turned to horror.