The Secrets Between Us (45 page)

11.05 p.m.:

You’re so wise! Of course he can’t text – either they’ll be fighting or talking. Poor him. Poor them. Gxxx

11.45 p.m.:

I couldn’t bear it any longer. I called the landline. He answered. He said he couldn’t talk but he said it in a way that made me think he was in the middle of something deep. He HAS told her. I know he has.

2 a.m.:

I STILL haven’t heard anything but, like you say, no news is good news. Just think, Charlie, in less than 12 hours we’re going to be together, me, him and Jamie – first time we’ll have been a proper family, out of the closet so to speak!!! Can’t wait!

Wish me luck, Charlie! Don’t expect to hear from me for a while. It’s going to take ages to sort out broadband etc in Sicily. I’ll be back in touch when I can. But I promise I’ll be fine. I’ve never been so happy in my WHOLE LIFE!!!

Love you loads, Genny xxx

I read the series of emails three times. Neil perched on the corner of the desk and passed me a corrugated-cardboard beaker full of coffee.

‘Are you all right?’

I nodded. Then I shook my head.

‘Poor Genevieve,’ I said. ‘That last sentence …’

‘It sounds as if Lee’s been leading her right up the garden path,’ Neil said. ‘But it doesn’t tell us any more about who he is.’

He peeled the lid off his coffee and blew at the steam.

‘The trouble is, none of these emails proves Alexander didn’t kill his wife. Genevieve says he’s watching her, that he suspects something, that she’s nervous. One could argue that all this points to the possibility of her deciding to front it out with Alexander that morning and him losing his rag and doing her in. Or him finding out, somehow, that she was planning to take Jamie away.’

‘But it does confirm that she was due to meet this L – Lee, it’s got to be Lee – on the morning of the twenty-fourth and that they were planning to go to Sicily with Jamie.’

I imagined Genevieve’s excitement that morning, her anxiety and how she’d be thinking about her little house by
the sea, and of being a family with her son and her lover. I’d had exactly the same fantasy, only I’d pictured Jamie, Alexander and me in Cornwall. I remembered how I had enjoyed that imaginary scenario, how I’d played the tape forward until Jamie was a long-haired, broad-shouldered teenager and Alexander and I had lines on our faces from laughing so often, and so well. No doubt Genevieve had done the same. Was there anything I had done that she had not done first? Even in my mind?

‘Did you read Genevieve’s earlier emails?’

Neil nodded.

‘What do they say?’

‘Much the same. She was getting increasingly frustrated by her lover’s procrastination. Scroll down a bit to 19 June. Yes, that’s the one.’

I told him today that if he won’t tell her, I WILL!!!

‘She’s threatening to tell his wife about their relationship?’

‘Yep. She says she doesn’t care about the consequences any more.’

I pulled a face at Neil. ‘So how did Lee react to that?’

‘Look at the next email.’

He showed me pictures of the house in Sicily. He says we can rent it for six months while we sort ourselves out. It’s beautiful and remote and it will give us the time and space we need to become a proper family.

‘It sounds as if he’s trying to buy time,’ I said.

Neil nodded.

‘There’s something, somewhere, about the brother, Damian, too.’

Neil leaned across me and flicked through some of the messages.

‘Here.’

Genevieve had written:

Sicily is going to be our new start. And once everyone knows, I’ll finally get my evil half-brother off my back!!!

‘What do you think that means?’ I asked.

‘Well’ – Neil tapped his teeth with the end of his pen – ‘this is just a guess, but you told me Damian hated Genevieve, didn’t you?’

‘He was just a little kid when …’

I stopped speaking as I realized that Damian had been almost exactly the same age as Jamie was now when his mother died. Damian had been brought up by Philip and Virginia Churchill and never been loved as he should have been. I knew how damaged he was. I could not, would not, let the same thing happen to Jamie. I felt a rush of anger inside me and it made me feel stronger.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, he hated Genevieve. He blamed her for everything.’

‘Well, let’s suppose he found out about her affair. Damian was estranged from his family, he needed money to finance his campaigns and causes, he didn’t have a job but he needed somewhere to live …’

‘You think he was blackmailing Genevieve?’

‘Yep,’ Neil nodded. ‘I think he was. I think the original hundred thousand that was taken from the Bryant account was to keep him quiet when lover-boy’s wife was pregnant. Probably it was an agreed one-off, and it would have lasted him a while, but what if he’d been getting greedy again? That would have put Genevieve under a huge amount of stress and would have been another compelling reason for her to
come out, as she puts it, and get everything into the open.’

‘And it would explain why Damian came back to Burrington Stoke when he heard she was missing. He’d need to know if what he’d heard was true. Do you think he’d tell us, or the police, who Genevieve was seeing?’

‘He’d have to admit to blackmail. I don’t know the man, Sarah, but there could be any number of reasons why he wouldn’t want to get involved. Possibly he now regards the lover as an even more reliable source of funds.’

We were both silent for a few moments.

Then Neil said: ‘There’s something we haven’t considered yet. Remember when we first met Alexander in Sicily, he said he was there “on business”, or something like that.’

‘Mmm.’ I nodded.

‘And that night we had dinner with him, Jamie was complaining that he’d spent ages talking to some man.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know who this man was?’

I shook my head. ‘I got the impression that Alexander was paying him for something.’

‘Private detective, maybe?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Alex had obviously got wind of the fact they were planning to go to Sicily.’

I took a sharp intake of breath.

‘Neil, if he and Jamie were in Sicily looking for Genevieve, then he
can’t
have known she was dead.’

‘You’re right,’ said Neil. ‘Think,
think
who this man could have been. We need to speak to him.’

I racked my brains.

‘Rowl,’ I said. ‘Or Rowell perhaps. Alex probably spelled it wrong, but someone he called Rowl was trying to call Alex in Sicily. I saw the name on the phone.’

Neil wrote the name down.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

*

I went to the canteen to buy us some sandwiches. When I returned, Neil was sitting in a chair, leaning back, talking on the telephone. He had fastened a mini-recorder to the set, to keep a copy of the conversation. When he saw me, he beamed and gave me the thumbs-up.

‘Bingo!’ he mouthed.

I put our lunch down and sat at the desk, my hands between my knees, while I waited. Neil kept saying things like ‘Yes, I know,’ and ‘I completely understand,’ and ‘Right, OK.’

It seemed to take for ever.

At last, he thanked whoever was on the other end of the line profusely, switched off the phone, scooted his chair right up to mine and kissed my forehead.

‘Not Rowell but Raul. Sam Raul. He’s a private detective based in Catania who specializes in gathering evidence in transnational child-custody cases.’

‘Were you speaking to him?’

‘No, to his assistant. The general gist was she couldn’t discuss individual cases but could confirm that a Mr Westwood had been to their office. And she remembered Jamie.’

‘So what you’re saying is … Alex had gone to Sicily to prepare himself to fight Genevieve for custody of Jamie?’

‘Yep. He must have assumed she was going to come back for him. He had an idea she was in Sicily so he wanted to find a local expert who understood the law and how the system worked.’

‘And that’s why he needed me,’ I said quietly. ‘Somebody who wasn’t a Churchill to keep a close eye on Jamie in case Genevieve came back to take him.’

‘Maybe that’s part of the reason.’

Neil took my hand and squeezed.

‘Sarah, this is the evidence we need to clear Alex’s name,’
he said. ‘It doesn’t matter that we haven’t identified this Lee person. That’s a job for the police now.’

I hardly dared believe what he was saying.

‘What do we do next?’ I asked.

‘I’ll put the facts into order to present to the police. Then I’ll tip off some of the nationals that we’ve got a cracking story about to break. That’ll put pressure on the police to hurry things along and get your man out of gaol fast. You don’t mind us going big on this?’

‘Can you keep Jamie out of it?’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘What about me?’ I asked. ‘What should I do?’

Neil reached over and hugged me.

‘Get yourself back down to Somerset and start picking up the pieces.’

‘You don’t think it’s too late?’

‘It’s never too late,’ he said.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

I STOPPED ON
the way back to May and Neil’s flat to buy a postcard with a picture of Manchester By Night on the front. The streets were busy now, packed with taxis and people dressed up to the nines. I enjoyed the bustle and the atmosphere. I wrote the postcard in the shop:
We know what happened. You’ll soon be out of there
. I didn’t know how I should sign it, so I just wrote my name underneath. The shopkeeper gave me an envelope and I addressed it to HMP Bristol. I posted it first class.

At the flat, I checked the train times back to Bristol. Then I called DI Twyford, but he didn’t pick up his phone. I tried police headquarters but they wouldn’t tell me anything or let me explain why I was calling. I didn’t know who Alexander’s solicitor was. I called Claudia’s number but there was no answer there either so I recorded a message on the answerphone saying that I would be returning to Burrington Stoke first thing in the morning.

I ran myself a bath, and I lay in the hot water with my eyes closed. I was exhausted, but also excited. Alexander was innocent of everything except love, misplaced loyalty and a ridiculous pride that could have cost him everything. He was a hero in my eyes. I was ashamed and sorry ever to have doubted him. I wished he’d trusted me enough to explain the
past to me and, at the same time, I understood why he didn’t want to return to it. Maybe he regretted sacrificing so much for Genevieve. Perhaps he thought the best way to protect Jamie was to bury painful truths as deeply as he could and hide them behind more palatable lies. Either way, he thought those times were behind him, but they weren’t. He was the same as everyone else: he carried his past inside him. There was no escape from it, he could not shut a door and close it away.

No matter how hard you push it down, the truth always comes to the surface – that’s what Betsy had said.

When my bones were warm, I climbed out of the bath, wrapped myself in warm towels from the airing cupboard and sat on the bed drying my hair.

I looked at the picture of Alexander and Jamie on my phone: Jamie with his wide grin and his sticking-out ears, his blue, blue eyes with the darker outline of the iris; Jamie who was not going to turn into another Damian, not while I had breath in my lungs.

‘I’m coming to get you,’ I whispered, and I held the phone to my lips.

The city was noisy and joyful. The pubs were full and people were singing. I knew May and Neil would have been invited out, but both, separately, told me they’d used me as an excuse to stay at home. They didn’t feel like going out, they said.

‘I’m perfectly all right now,’ I said. ‘Honestly, I’m fine!’

May looked at me, searchingly, and a little smile came on to her face, and she beckoned me with her finger and I followed her into her bedroom. She opened the top drawer of her dressing table and took out a narrow plastic wand.

There were two lines down the centre of the wand.

We stood together and stared at it as if it were a miracle, which, in a way, it was.

‘Oh, May,’ I whispered. ‘I’m so happy for you!’

‘You won’t tell a soul, will you?’ she asked, and I shook my head. I’d learned my lesson about tempting fate. I would never do that again.

I had trouble sleeping that night and it was nothing to do with the fireworks going off around Manchester, although the dawning of a new year did feel significant in a positive, ‘line drawn’ way. I was tired but I was buzzing; my mind was busy, overloaded with thoughts about how the next few days would pan out. I didn’t know the order in which things would happen. I supposed that, when the police were presented with Neil’s new evidence, they would release Alex and then he’d be free to go and fetch Jamie – as long as the Churchills were willing to give him up. I knew there was a very strong possibility that they wouldn’t. Virginia must have known that Alex wasn’t Jamie’s blood father. If she decided to fight Alex for Jamie, I didn’t know who would have the stronger claim on the child, the genetic grandparents or the man Jamie had known as Dad since the day he was born.

Even if, by some miracle, Virginia was happy to reunite Jamie with Alexander, I still wasn’t sure where that left me.

I didn’t know how Alex would be.

I knew he would want to be with his son, but I couldn’t be sure that he would still want to be with me.

In the next moment I thought of poor Genevieve and how her whole life had been manipulated by her lover, the cruel, cowardly lover who strung her along and allowed her to suffer for their mutual mistakes; who failed her at every step. Stealing the Bryants’ money was a terrible thing to do, but she did it to protect him. And then she fell pregnant and must have felt considerable pressure to marry, to provide a father for the baby, and once again Alexander’s willingness to take care of her and Jamie let the real father off the hook.
At the very end, when she finally believed that everything could be made open and honest, her lover let her down again.