The Secrets Between Us (23 page)

Neither of us spoke for a long time. The inspector finished his coffee.

‘You seem like a nice girl,’ he said eventually, more gently. ‘I’m guessing you wouldn’t still be in Somerset if you had any concerns about Alexander.’

I blinked and continued to stare through the window glass. A very young woman in a red puffa jacket and hooped earrings went past, leaning forward to push a twin buggy uphill.

‘Somebody like you,’ he said, ‘would be in the best place to notice any irregularities.’

The make-up bag didn’t mean anything. Genevieve could have had a thousand reasons for leaving her pills behind.
Maybe those had been spares and she had a stash with her. Maybe she wanted to get pregnant.

‘I haven’t noticed anything,’ I said.

He was watching me.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

The detective paused for a moment. Then he said: ‘Genevieve had a laptop. A white MacBook. Mr Westwood told us he hadn’t seen it since she left. Is it in the house?’

‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I’ve cleaned everywhere and I haven’t seen it. Is it important?’

‘She used it all the time, took it everywhere …’

‘Then she’ll have taken it with her.’

There was another pause.

The detective drained his coffee in one go, put a few coins on the table and stood up.

‘Listen, Sarah, if you ever want a chat, you know, if you think of anything, give me a call.’

He passed me a card.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I will.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

WE WERE WORKING
in the garden, the three of us, raking up the leaves. It was an enjoyable task, and we worked well together. Alexander’s mood was lighter and more buoyant than it had been. I held open a sack for him to load with freshly fallen debris, the smell of smoke and leaf mould and autumn in my head, and he leaned forward and kissed me.

It was a gesture of such sweetness and spontaneity that my heart softened. I looked around the garden, but there was no sign of Genevieve watching, no unexplained shadows, nothing sinister at all. I smiled up into Alexander’s face, his eyes, his lips, and for the thousandth time I was bowled over by his beauty. I had to look away. I could not believe I was actually with a man like him.

I carried the sack over to the bonfire we were building in the far corner of the garden and turned it upside down, shaking it by the corners to empty it. Something trapped beneath the now bare branches of a large old rambling rose caught my eye. I leaned down to pick it up; it was a dog chew, a plastic ball fastened to a rope. The rope was almost rotted through, and the squeak had gone from the ball, which was punctured with teeth marks and tears. I bounced it in my hand and walked back to Alexander.

‘Look what I found,’ I said.

Jamie came running over.

‘It’s Pete’s ball!’ he cried, jumping up and down for the toy. ‘He lost it ages ago!’

‘Who’s Pete?’ I asked Jamie, tossing the ball to him.

‘Our dog.’

I remembered the dog bed and bowls stacked in the rosette room. I glanced towards Alexander. He had turned away and was raking furiously; despite the coolness of the air his shirt was dark with sweat down the back, at the neck and beneath the arms. I could tell from the shape of his shoulders and the rhythm of his movements that he was angry again.

I returned to the bonfire pile and began to tidy it, throwing sticks and debris on to the top of the heap. Jamie came with me.

‘What happened to Pete?’ I asked, quietly.

Jamie looked up and me and shrugged. ‘He had to go and live somewhere else.’

‘Was someone allergic to him?’

Jamie shook his head.

‘Jamie?’

‘I don’t know why he had to go away!’ he cried. ‘Shut up fucking talking about him!’

Jamie lifted the ball high, swung it by its rope and let it go. It flew into the heart of the huge old daphne bush at the centre of the far shrub bed. We both watched it disappear into the leaves. Jamie wiped his nose with his hand.

‘Sorry, Jamie, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ I said quietly.

‘Then why do you keep asking me about things I don’t want to talk about?’ Jamie said in a quiet, furious voice. ‘Why do you keep doing that? Where’s my mummy? Why are you here and she isn’t?’

‘OK,’ I said, briskly. ‘OK, never mind. Do you think it’s time for a cup of tea and a piece of cake?’

Jamie looked up at me with his beautiful eyes, clear
and blue as the day. He made a sneer with his lips.

‘You’re a bitch,’ he said, and he ran down to the swing and sat on it, pushing himself backwards and forwards with the toes of his blue plastic wellington boots.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

A BLEAK CLOUD
of bad temper and introspection settled over Avalon for the rest of the day. For a while I tried to cajole Alexander and Jamie out of their moods, to placate them with food and humour and kindness, but they were intractable, the father and son so alike in their stubbornness it was infuriating. They shared the same ploy of retreating into themselves whenever something happened they didn’t like.

It wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t known there was a problem with the dog; nobody had so much as mentioned its name before. It was Alexander’s fault. If he didn’t want me to keep putting my foot right bang in the middle of these sensitive subjects then he ought to bloody well warn me.

I left Alexander and Jamie to the garden, each at either end of it, one raking, one swinging, both sulking, and I went into the kitchen to clean the last of the vegetables. I also had a colander of tomatoes from the greenhouse. I washed the fruit, halved them and laid them on trays, drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt and garden herbs to heat in the Rayburn’s hot oven and then to roast overnight in the cool one. I was in the middle of these enjoyable culinary tasks and feeling a bit better when Claudia phoned to ask if I’d like to stand in for one of their regulars on the
pub quiz team who had fallen sick. They’d thought of me, she said, because they were desperate and also because it would annoy Virginia no end, and she wanted to annoy her because she was so sick and tired of Virginia refusing her access to her father, who was ill again, and confined to bed.

I sympathized with Claudia for a few moments and then asked where the quiz was.

‘It’s in Sherborne. Don’t worry, the Quarrymen’s Arms won’t be sending a team.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Hold on.’

I stepped out into the garden and called Alexander to ask if it would be all right with him. He told me to do what I liked. So I thought: fine, I will.

‘Yes, I’d love to do it, Claudia,’ I said into the mouthpiece.

She said: ‘Great. I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.’

I hadn’t had a proper evening out since I’d been at Avalon and that afternoon I was so edgy and irritated I thought it would do me good to be somewhere different.

I prepared a great dish of buttered mashed potatoes for tea and served it with the cassoulet I’d put in the oven earlier. We ate it with home-grown green beans and sweetcorn from the freezer. Alexander and Jamie ate well enough – in fact, they had two helpings each – but they were both monosyllabic during dinner. I put forward several potential topics of conversation and had a sarcastic talk with myself – ‘What do you think of the dinner, Sarah? Oh, it’s lovely, thank you. Do you like the beans? Mmm, they’re delicious!’ – but they took no notice so I gave up. We ate in silence. A late, black fly banged itself against the window glass and then became trapped in a dusty cobweb in the corner of the frame. I went to rescue it but Alexander waved me away.

‘It’s a filthy fly,’ he said. ‘Leave it.’

So we listened to the fly’s increasingly frantic buzzing and were all, I think, relieved when it was at last rendered silent by the spider that lived in the latch.

After dinner, I stacked the dishes in the machine and gave the kitchen a wipe-round. Alexander was poring over some papers in his office and Jamie was lying on the settee watching television in the living room. I banged the pots a little to let them know I was upset by their behaviour but still neither of them took the slightest notice. So I opened a bottle of wine, poured myself a large glass and I took both the glass and the bottle upstairs to my bedroom and stood in front of the chest of drawers that was my wardrobe.

It was only a pub quiz. There was nobody to dress up for but that night I wanted to look my best. I hadn’t realized until that evening how much I craved the stuff of females: make-up, jewellery, perfume, high heels and fabrics that felt good against the skin. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been out with a group of girlfriends with the single intention of having fun; it must have been well over two years, before I was pregnant, before Laurie and I had even started trying for the baby. I had stopped drinking well in advance and taken vitamins and folic acid, all the things you’re supposed to do in order to end up with a perfectly healthy baby.

I knew the pub we were going to was not going to be a party pub, but it was somewhere different at least and that was something to celebrate.

I wondered if Genevieve had felt suffocated by the countryside; by its mud and its tractors, its masculinity and its relentless inevitability? Was this one of the reasons she had so wanted to get away from Burrington Stoke? But she’d been born into this life, she’d never known any different.

I told myself to stop thinking about Genevieve and concentrate on going out.

I took off the long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans and socks that had become my uniform, gulped a mouthful of wine and danced in my underwear with my arms above my head in front of the spotted old mirror that was perched on the chest
of drawers. I hummed to myself, drank some more wine, refilled the glass from the bottle, rummaged in my bag and found a pair of black leggings. They had been a little tight when I left Manchester, but I must have lost some weight because now they fitted perfectly. I put a long-sleeved purple dress over the top and fastened it at the waist with a black belt with a gilt buckle. I sat on the bed and wiggled my feet into my long black velvet boots. Then I put on my make-up: eye-liner, dark eyeshadow, dusky lipstick and thick black mascara. I straightened my hair, licked my lips. I narrowed my eyes and blew kisses at myself in the mirror. I looked young and juicy and dangerous.

In that different life of mine, the happy old Manchester life, I used to go out once a week with a group of girlfriends, Rosita among them. We used to dress ourselves up to the nines and go clubbing. We’d dance and talk and drink and laugh. I couldn’t remember what it was that was so funny, but I used to feel as if nothing could hurt me.

I lay back on the bed and stared out of the window. It was dark but there was a good moon lighting up the orchard, the grass and trees, painting them pale blue and casting beautiful shadows. What had started, earlier, as a quiet ache had developed into a full-blown heartfelt missing of Manchester. I missed it with a kind of desperation. If there had been any way for me to get back there, that evening, I would have gone. I’d have hooked up with some girlfriends, drunk vodka shots and danced my socks off.

The view from this window must have been the same, give or take the odd cow, since the house had been built four hundred years ago. A person can, I thought, have too much serenity. I finished my wine, filled the glass again; now the glass was fuller than the bottle. I hoped Claudia wasn’t relying on me too much for the quiz. I trotted downstairs. The clock on the mantelpiece above the fire in the dining room said it was quarter past seven. I went into the office and
stood behind Alexander, one hand resting lightly on his shoulder. He was staring into his laptop. On the screen was an Excel page, a mass of figures as incomprehensible as Latin to me. I was hoping he would turn to look at me, and admire me, as Laurie would have done. Laurie was always appreciative; that was one of the good things about him. He made everyone feel special. Oh lord, I thought, are things so bad between Alexander and me that I’m seriously beginning to miss Laurie?

I let my fingers play with the ends of Alexander’s hair; it was slightly greasy. I started to make a little plait. Alexander didn’t seem to notice I was there. I leaned down so that he would feel the warmth of my skin, and smell my perfume. If he looked, he would be able to see my cleavage, the lace of my bra. I knew I was looking good. I wished he would notice; I wished he’d pay a little more attention to me.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked huskily. I wobbled ever so slightly on the heels of my boots.

‘Accounts. I’m trying to make the books balance.’

‘Is there a problem?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve always been shit with numbers. I’m dyslexic and numbers are worse than words. They look like they’re dancing across the page. Before Genevieve left she …’

‘Oh, her again.’

I took my hand from his shoulder and turned away. For a moment he did not move, then he put his pen down and slowly turned to face me. He exhaled.

‘What? What is it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Oh come on, Sarah.’

I sucked at my lower lip and twirled a skein of hair around my finger. I looked into his beautiful, beautiful face. He was already in a bad mood. I did not want to criticize or hurt him. But I had to say something.

‘It’s just that everything – every conversation, everything we do, everything – always revolves around Genevieve.’

‘Yes.’ He nodded in agreement.

I almost stamped my foot in frustration. ‘But Alexander, she’s not here!’

‘I know.’

‘She’s gone!’

‘A-ha.’

‘So why is she still the centre of the universe?’

He was confused. It was written on his face. He did not understand why we were even having this conversation because, to him, it was obvious.

‘You knew the situation,’ he said. ‘I warned you it would be difficult.’

‘I know, but she’s like a black hole,’ I said, warming to the astronomical analogy. ‘You can’t see her but she influences everything.’

‘Yes, she does.’

‘But I can’t stand it! It’s not fair! She’s
not here
!’