The Secrets Between Us (43 page)

‘Did she ever go on!’ Matt said. ‘She was a class-A victim, the world’s greatest drama queen. Any normal person would have thought “silly cow” for getting involved with a married man. But Alex took her side completely. He blamed the bloke, thought she’d been used and abused, and wanted to make her happy again.’

I nodded encouragingly.

‘He loved the girl,’ Matt said. ‘He worshipped the ground she walked on. He would have done anything for her, anything.’

He picked a piece of buttered bread and wiped his plate. I gazed out of the window for a moment while I composed myself. I was furiously jealous of Genevieve and furious with Alexander for being so good to her.

‘I didn’t think you’d be defending Alexander,’ I said. ‘Not after what he did to you.’

Matt paused with the bread between his fingers. He looked right into my eyes. Then he looked away again and put the bread into his mouth. I waited while he chewed. He washed it down with a drink of tea, and took a long time swallowing. He replaced the cup in its saucer slowly.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he said.

‘I know he stole a lot of money and brought you to the brink of bankruptcy.’

Matt nodded. ‘That’s what it said in the papers, yes.’

‘Isn’t it true?’

‘Alex confessed. He pleaded guilty. That much is true.’

‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say,’ I said.

Matt leaned forward and spoke quietly.

‘You don’t know what happened after the trial, do you?’

I shook my head.

‘As soon as Alex changed his plea to guilty, magically all the missing money reappeared in the company accounts.’

‘All of it?’

‘Every penny.’

Matt sat back up straight again. He folded his arms across his chest. I put the crust of the toastie back on the plate and wiped my fingers on a paper napkin.

‘I don’t understand. Are you saying the money was never stolen?’

‘No, it was stolen all right. Only, once Alex took the rap, somebody gave it back with a note to our accountant that it was an anonymous donation from a well-wisher.’

‘Why would anyone do that?’

‘I figured that somebody told Alex that, if he changed his plea, they’d bail the business out. So he put his neck on the line to save mine.’

‘My God.’

‘Of course he was also protecting whoever did take the money.’

The breathless, excited feeling was creeping back under my skin. My mouth was dry. I took a sip of tea. I felt a surge of affection for Alexander. I held the next question in my mouth for a second or two before I asked, because the answer was so important to me.

‘You’re certain it wasn’t Alexander? He’s not the thief?’

Matt snorted.

‘How long have you known him? He can’t do numbers, he can barely manage email. He counted as special needs in school, his dyslexia was so bad. No way he could have pulled off a stunt like that and covered his tracks.’

‘If it wasn’t him …?’

‘Oh, come on, it’s not rocket science! Who had a rich, besotted father willing to do anything to keep his baby out
of trouble? The same person whom Alex wouldn’t have thought twice about going to gaol for? The poor sod probably thought she’d see it as proof of his devotion.’

‘Genevieve?’

‘Who else?’

I had to look down in case Matt saw the jealousy in my eyes. I was ashamed of myself. Poor Genevieve was dead, she was lying ice-cold in a mortuary drawer somewhere, she would never see Alexander’s face or hold her son again, and still I was jealous. Still that nasty little worm of resentment burrowed away at me.

‘But her father’s rich as Croesus,’ I said to Matt. ‘Why would she need to steal money?’

‘I don’t know, but I’d wager it was something to do with the married lover. Maybe he’d told her he couldn’t afford to leave his missus now they had a kid. Maybe she wanted to buy a love nest. She could hardly go asking Daddy for money for that.’

I remembered the flat in Tenby.

‘So you don’t think it was over between Genevieve and this man even though he’d told her he wasn’t going to leave his wife?’

Matt shrugged. ‘She didn’t get pregnant by herself, did she?’

‘No, no she didn’t.’

‘I’m sorry the girl’s dead,’ said Matt. ‘She didn’t deserve that, but there was never going to be a happy ending for those two. Genny was eight months pregnant when they let Alex out of prison, and still he believed her when she told him he was the one she’d wanted all along.’

We chatted for a little longer. I asked Matt if Genevieve had stayed in touch with his sister, and he said he didn’t know. Charlene had married and gone to work for a bank in Hong Kong. She had a couple of kids and was settled there; he
hadn’t seen her for several years. I came to the impression they weren’t close.

When I stood to say goodbye, he stood too, and he shook my hand and clasped my shoulder.

‘I hope it’s all going to turn out all right for you and Alex,’ he said. ‘He’s a lucky man to have you fighting his corner for him.’

I shook my head. ‘I lost the faith for a while.’

‘You’re all right, love,’ he said. ‘You’re doing fine. And when you see Alex, when you get him out of the clink, give him my regards. Tell him I could do with an extra pair of hands round here if he’s at a loose end.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I will.’

Alexander is innocent, I thought, as I left Worcester and headed back towards the motorway. He was definitely innocent of the theft and he was probably innocent of murder. The things he’d told me about his relationship with Genevieve – that she had been in love with somebody else when they married, that he had tried to make her happy but couldn’t – had all been confirmed by what Matt had told me. Everything was complicated and hidden behind secrets and lies, put in place to protect darker secrets and lies. The story was the same, it just depended which way you told it.

I told myself that I’d known Alexander was a good man in my heart all along but now I knew it in my head too. I wished there was some way I could wind back the clock to the day Alexander and Jamie went to fetch the Christmas tree. I wished that, instead of running away from Alexander, I’d gone to stand at his side and taken his hand and had the courage to tell the police officers that he was incapable of dishonesty or worse.

But I hadn’t.

I’d believed he was a thief. I’d suspected him of hiding Genevieve’s laptop in the well and deliberately making me
doubt my own mind. When I’d looked at him, I’d remembered the words
You next
, and I’d wondered what he was going to do to me.

Alexander had loved Genevieve unconditionally, until she made it impossible for him to love her any more. I began to understand why she had acted as she had, why she had stabbed him. His devotion must have frustrated her. She must have felt trapped by it. Perhaps she had wanted to make him understand that she would never reciprocate his feelings for her. She wanted to set him free.

But she’d also wanted to keep her child.

Alexander had done nothing but look after me and put his trust in me. He didn’t love me like he loved Genevieve, but maybe that sort of passion only comes once in a person’s life. I could hardly blame him for that.

Alexander was innocent, but I was guilty of the worst disloyalty. I didn’t know if he’d ever be able to forgive me. I knew I would never forgive myself.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

IT WAS LATE
by the time I arrived back in Manchester. The Christmas lights were still lit but the sales had started and there were leaflets and posters defacing the shop windows and the streets seemed to be full of sodden litter. Everywhere was quiet. It was the calm before the chaos of the New Year’s Eve celebrations. The eyes of a fox gleamed in the headlights and then the creature turned and trotted into the darkness. I watched the city pass me by and I wondered where Alexander was and what he was thinking; if he had any inkling that I was doing my best for him or if he had given up on me as he believed I had given up on him.

When I got back to the flat, Neil opened the door to me, and we hugged enthusiastically.

‘Through here,’ May called. ‘I’ve made kebabs.’

‘I just need to wash my hands!’

I went through to the bathroom and freshened up, then I went into the spare room – my room – and crossed to the window to draw the curtains. I gazed out. I couldn’t see much in the dark, only the lighted windows of the houses that backed on to May and Neil’s street. For a moment I felt the weight of a baby on my shoulder. I had imagined broken nights standing at a window like this, patting my baby’s back, singing him to sleep as he nuzzled his hot little head
into my neck, and the little snuffling noises he would make. I had imagined that scenario so many times it was almost as if I was remembering something real. Almost.

I pulled the curtain across.

We sat in the living room. May had made a buffet supper and laid it out on the table. She and Neil sat on the settee, and I sat on the floor opposite. The room was cosy. I felt safe and hungry and normal, like my old self.

‘Look at you!’ said May, passing me a glass of wine. ‘All bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! You’re dying to tell us what you found out, aren’t you?’

I shuffled about a bit.

‘Go on,’ said Neil, gesturing with his hand.

‘Well,’ I began, like a child about to recite a poem in front of the class, ‘the main thing is that Alexander didn’t steal a single penny from Matt Bryant’s business.’

I beamed at May and Neil. They nodded at me encouragingly.

‘In fact it was quite the opposite. Matt thinks Alex made a deal to save it. He thinks Alex agreed to plead guilty because he knew, if he did, the missing money would be paid back to Matt.’

Neil pulled a face.

‘That may be the case, but it doesn’t rule out Alexander from being the person who took it in the first place,’ he said.

‘Matt’s theory is if the trial had progressed Alex would have been proved innocent and the identity of the true culprit would have been obvious. That’s why it was imperative he changed his plea when he did.’

‘Goodness!’ May raised her eyebrows. Her eyes were wide. We exchanged smiles.

‘Matt thinks Genevieve took the money,’ I said.

‘What do you think?’

‘I think he’s probably right.’

‘How did she do it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think I might!’ said Neil.

May and I gazed at him expectantly.

‘Hold on,’ said Neil. ‘Let me start from the beginning.’

He told us he’d tracked down the last of Genevieve’s old schools easily enough through the internet and spoken to her long-suffering house mistress. Genevieve had been a ‘wilful’ girl, according to the woman, who didn’t go into details but implied that Genevieve, having successfully contrived to get herself expelled from two boarding schools, had spent most of her time at the third endeavouring to achieve a hat trick.

‘She told me that everyone was surprised when Genevieve announced that she wanted to go to university,’ said Neil, ‘because she wasn’t at all academic and had shown no inclination to study. All she wanted to do was ride. Everyone assumed that, if she bothered with further education at all, she’d go to the agricultural college in Cirencester, but one day she decided that university was what she wanted to do, and that’s what she did.’

‘She must’ve done OK at school to get in,’ said May.

Neil shook his head. ‘She did terribly. The school suspects strings were pulled. The family must have had friends on the staff.’

‘It’s all right for some,’ May said. She wiped her fingers on a sheet of kitchen paper and then sat back into the settee.

‘Genevieve was at university with Matt Bryant’s sister,’ I said.

Neil nodded. ‘That’s where she and Charlene Bryant met and became friends. And that lad you mentioned, Sarah, Luke Innes, he was in the year above her and they all shared a flat for a while.’

‘Ahhh …’ said May. ‘That’s why she wanted to go to university. Her boyfriend was there.’

‘You could well be right,’ said Neil. ‘Only if it was love’s
young dream, it didn’t last long. Luke dropped out in the second term of his second year when he found out Genevieve had been seeing someone else.’

A thrill of excitement ran all the way through me, like an electric shock. Everything was falling into place. I put up my hand to interject.

‘Matt said she was involved with somebody who was married.’

‘Blimey,’ said May, wide-eyed.

‘That’s right,’ said Neil.

He put his plate on the carpet and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. ‘The fourth person in the university flat-share was a woman called Isabel Gerard. She thinks Genevieve may have been seeing somebody she’d met on the eventing circuit. He’d promised to leave his wife …’

‘But then the wife fell pregnant and that changed everything,’ I said, thrilled that our two separate lines of investigation were marrying. ‘Matt made it sound as if Genevieve had some kind of breakdown. She couldn’t cope with being at home, because Virginia wouldn’t leave her alone, so she went to stay with Matt’s sister and the family. That’s how she met Alexander.’

‘So if she was living with Matt’s family, and was friendly with Alexander, she would have known all about how the business was doing,’ May said.

‘Exactly. And she must have known Alexander had trouble with numbers, so she probably offered to help out with the accounts or something. That’s how she stole the money.’

‘We don’t actually know this,’ I said. I was looking for reassurance or confirmation, because I desperately wanted it to be the truth.

‘It all fits,’ said Neil.

‘You didn’t find out the name of this married man?’ I asked Neil. He shook his head.

‘Isabel wasn’t even sure he was a rider, only that somebody from Genevieve’s horse-riding life would be the most likely candidate, and that does tie in with what we know about her more recent activities – assuming it’s the same bloke. She said Genevieve was very protective about him so she thought he must be somebody important, perhaps someone famous, maybe somebody titled even. The family rubbed shoulders with the gentry. It’s feasible.’