The Woman From Paris (10 page)

“So how did it go?” he asked.

6

T
he following morning David strode across the fields with Rufus, his buoyant spirits giving his step a lively bounce. The sky was pale, a few pink clouds wafting across it, and the sun was already warm upon his face. He smiled, because today the thought of Phaedra coming to stay rendered everything more beautiful. Crops emerged through the earth, their green heads reaching up towards the light. Small birds danced and squabbled in the air, and a wide-winged buzzard hovered high above in search of prey. He took pleasure in the emerging buds in the hedgerows and the green shoots of bluebells yet to flower in the woods. Rufus disappeared into the undergrowth, where the curly green tentacles of bracken were already beginning to unfurl. Suddenly, the daily routine of his farming life didn’t seem ordinary at all, but glorious. The trees reached out to embrace him, the sun beamed down to envelop him, and the soft wind carried the scent of fertility and regeneration. His chest expanded with the sensual delight of it all.

When he reached his mother’s house, he found her in the kitchen having breakfast with Rosamunde. “I’ve got some news for you,” he announced, leaning back against the sideboard.

“I hope it’s
good
news,” said Rosamunde.

“I think you’ll be pleased.”

His mother looked at him anxiously. “Well, don’t keep us both in suspense.”

“Phaedra is coming to stay the weekend.”

Antoinette stared at him aghast. Small flourishes of pink broke onto her cheeks. “How do you know? Did you call her?” she asked.

“I drove up to London to talk to her face-to-face,” he confessed.

His mother smiled gratefully. “You did that for me?”

“Yes. I saw how upset you were. I wanted to help.”

“What did she say?”

“She was embarrassed at having barged in on us at Dad’s funeral, but I convinced her we’d all forgive her for that.”

Rosamunde buttered a thick slice of toast. “Good Lord, aren’t you a dark horse, David!”

“Wasn’t she surprised when you showed up?” Antoinette asked.

“Of course, but she invited me in and made me dinner.”

“She made you dinner?” Rosamunde repeated. “Gracious, Antoinette, she made him dinner!”

“She’s a rather good cook.”

“What did you have?” Rosamunde asked.

“Spaghetti Napolitana.”

“One of your father’s favorites,” Antoinette added quietly.

“It was very good.” David grinned guiltily at the recollection, conscious that his growing feelings for Phaedra were inappropriate.

“How did you convince her to come down?” Antoinette asked.

“She misses Dad. I told her she’d find comfort here with us.”

“That’s very sweet,” said Rosamunde.

“I’d better tell Tom the good news,” Antoinette said brightly. “I wonder whether Josh and Roberta will come.”

“You’re not going to tell them, are you?” David baulked.

“I think I should. They might not come, but it would be unkind not to include them. After all, Phaedra is Josh’s sister, too.”

“If you want Phaedra to come again, I’d refrain. If anyone’s going to scare her away, it’s Roberta.”

Antoinette looked to her sister for support, and Rosamunde was quick to show her allegiance. “Antoinette is right, David. It wouldn’t be fair to exclude them. Roberta’s already feeling hard done by.”

“Then Phaedra must stay with you,” Antoinette suggested. “That way she’ll have somewhere to escape to when Roberta’s insensitive.”

Rosamunde shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s proper, Antoinette.”

“She’s my sister,” David reminded her.

“I suppose she is,” Rosamunde agreed.

“Your house is less intimidating than this one.”

David was overjoyed. He felt their dinner had somehow sealed his claim on her. “If that’s what you want, Mum.”

“I think she’d be more comfortable. After all, she knows you now.”

Rosamunde was still doubtful. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. She might be your sister, David, but you’ve only just met her.”

“We’re not teenagers, Aunt Rosamunde,” David retorted with a chuckle.

“But you’ve never had a sister before.”

“Well, I have now, and I intend to get to know her.” He grinned at his aunt, who was now anxiously buttering another slice of toast. “There’s Rufus, don’t forget. We won’t be alone.”

Rosamunde took a bite and chewed heartily. “I suppose I’m rather old-fashioned.”

David grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl. “Right, so that’s settled. She’s coming Friday. I suggest we all have dinner here. I must get on. See you later.” He almost skipped out into the sunshine, where Rufus was playing with Bertie and Wooster on the grass.

That evening, when Joshua returned home from work, he told Roberta the news. She was horrified. “What? That girl is going to stay the weekend? Has your mother gone mad?”

Joshua put down his briefcase in the hall and walked into the kitchen to get a snack from the fridge. “No, she’s just grieving, Roberta.”

“Then her grief has clouded her judgment.”

“Darling, calm down. She might be a very nice girl. Don’t you think it’s a bit unfair to judge her before you’ve even met her?”

Roberta followed him into the kitchen and watched him take a slab of cheddar out of the fridge. “I suppose we’ve been summoned.”

“Mum would like us to be there, of course.”

“I thought so.”

“She’s my sister.”

“I’m not so sure. It’s all very contrived. I smell a rat.”

Joshua dropped his shoulders wearily. “You and your conspiracy theories. You read too much Patricia Cornwell.”

“Didn’t you notice the relish in Beecher’s voice when he declared that Phaedra had been left the Frampton Sapphires?”

“Not the bloody sapphires again!”

“It matters, Joshua, if your family’s being swindled. Antoinette is incredibly vulnerable at the moment. It’s very easy for George’s lawyer to pull the wool over her eyes.”

“Do we really have to talk about this all over again?”

He took the cheese and a tin of water biscuits to the table and sat down. “What do you think we should do, Roberta?”

She sat opposite and folded her arms on the table. “Firstly, I don’t think Phaedra should be rewarded for breaking the news that she was George’s illegitimate daughter on the day of his funeral, when his family was grieving. Secondly, I think it’s devious of your father to have withheld that information for nearly two years. Thirdly, I think it’s unforgivable to give her the Frampton Sapphires when they should be ours. Fourthly, he should have come clean and told Antoinette everything. She’s a good-natured woman; she was never going to kick up a fuss. He had no reason to doubt her.”

“That’s the same as number two, but go on . . .”

Roberta sighed impatiently. “Forget the numbers, Josh. It’s pretty clear to me that she’s trying to inveigle her way into your family. It’s a bit odd at her age. Doesn’t she have family of her own?”

“Perhaps they’re in Canada.”

“It’s the twenty-first century, and with the money she’s been given she can go back every week if she wishes!”

“Maybe she doesn’t have family, then. Perhaps we are the only family she has.”

“It’s still odd to adopt a family in your thirties. She should be concentrating on making a family of her own. You said she was pretty; funny she can’t find a man to marry her.”

Joshua shook his head wearily. “I don’t know, Roberta, and I don’t care. I’ll go down at the weekend and meet her for Mum’s sake. It
would be nice if you came, too, with Amber, but if you’re going to make a scene, I’d rather you stayed behind.”

She grinned wickedly. “Oh no, I’m coming to observe, even though I gave Kathy the weekend off. I’ll happily look after Amber all by myself in order to witness what would be a marvelous black comedy if it wasn’t so tragic!”

The following afternoon Antoinette stood before her husband’s grave and placed a posy of spring flowers against the temporary wooden headstone Barry had made. The sight of the dates 1954–2012 brought on a surge of anguish, and she sank to her knees and put her head in her hands. It was hard to imagine that George lay buried beneath the ground, like the dogs buried at the top of their garden. Nothing remained of him but possessions, and they had no life without him. “I’m so unhappy, George,” she whispered. “I don’t know how to be on my own anymore. But more than that, I’m so cross. Yes, I’m furious with you for lying to me. Why didn’t you tell me about Phaedra, when I would have supported you without question? Did you doubt me? Is that why you kept her secret? Did you think I’d be angry? How could you, when I never complained that you abandoned me all the time? You always went off on your travels and I let you go, because I loved you and wanted you to be happy. But whenever did you put
me
first, like I always put
you
first? Your climbing came before me, and I didn’t complain; surely you knew that I would never have complained about Phaedra.
You were everything to me, George, but I was not everything to you. I realize that now, and it makes me so cross. If I had been everything to you, you wouldn’t have taken such risks. You wouldn’t have died a young man and left me a widow. But you’ve abandoned me again, this time forever, and I can’t accept it. I just can’t.”

She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. The graveyard was littered with headstones, many inscribed with the Frampton name, dating back as far as the fourteenth century. Some were so old it was no longer possible to read the inscriptions on them. But each one of those graves bore witness to a life—a life that was once as vibrant as hers. One day she’d lie here beside George, and her vibrant
life would be over, too. Things that had seemed important would be reduced to nothing. Her existence would end like this, in a cold graveyard, and the years that had seemed so long would be reduced to a couple of inanimate dates carved into stone. How short life was—for what purpose?

A wave of fear washed over her, and she caught her breath. Death was inevitable, and it would come as surely as autumn follows summer. It wasn’t just something that happened to everyone else, but something that would happen to
her
. There was no avoiding it.

She stood up and hurried into the church. There was no one inside. It was dim but for the afternoon light that streamed through the stained-glass windows and fell upon the pews, catching small particles of dust in the air and making them shine like tiny fireflies. She walked up the aisle and sat in the front pew, facing the altar. Kneeling in prayer, she clutched onto the traditions of her childhood like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to the small remains of his ship.

Please be there, God. Oh, please be there, because I can’t face nothing. I can’t face all that I am being reduced to dust. I don’t want to believe that George is in the ground. He’s so much bigger than that. There has to be an immortal part of him that lives on somewhere. After all, he climbed mountains. He was a brave adventurer. I can’t believe that the adventure is over and my larger-than-life George is rotting in a coffin beneath the ground. What was it all for? George was a good man; he deserves more than that. Please God, be up there somewhere. I want to believe in you, I really do. I want to think of George in heaven. I want to believe there’s a place for me, too, because I’m frightened of being left alone.
Tears squeezed through her lashes, and she pressed her clenched hands to her mouth.
Oh, God, I’m frightened of being alone in the dark
.

She remained there on the hassock for a long while, listening to her breathing and the decelerating beats of her heart. At length the silence began to soothe her troubled soul, and the soft vibrations that filled the church from many centuries of candlelight and prayer eased her distress. When she sat up, she felt strangely uplifted. Gone was the terrible fear. In its place there remained a strange sense of
resignation—a feeling that someone stronger was going to take care of everything.

She walked outside and squinted in the brightness. She looked down at her watch; it was now just after six p.m. She had been in there for over an hour, so no wonder her eyes were taking time to adjust. As she set off down the path she noticed, to her horror, her mother-in-law chatting to Reverend Morley beneath the wooden gable of the church gate. They were so engrossed in conversation that they didn’t notice her. Antoinette froze and frantically tried to think of another way out. The only exit was through the gate, where her car was parked on the verge, but there had to be an escape route behind the church.

She turned around slowly, so as not to catch their attention, and walked as softly and swiftly as she could around to the back of the church. Once out of sight she strode faster, disappearing into shadow, and hurried across the grass to a high wall that bordered someone else’s property. Cut into the wall was a rusted iron gate. She peered through and marveled at the sight of a lovingly tended garden. It was very big, with a well-mown lawn, borders of neatly trimmed perennials, and burgeoning plants. Against the wall was a herbaceous border, and along the right side clusters of daffodils and tulips were beginning to rise out of the compost and shine in the evening sun. The house at the far end was a pretty Georgian building with a red-tiled roof upon which a couple of pigeons perched together, as absorbed in each other as the Reverend Morley and Margaret Frampton.

Antoinette didn’t know who lived there. She wasn’t in the habit of socializing with the village, and many houses like this one were hidden down driveways and behind towering trees and shrubbery. It didn’t look as if the owner was there, at least not outside, so she sneaked through the gate, which she found to her relief to be unlocked.

With her heart beating wildly she crept around the periphery of the garden. She felt like a criminal—though, on reflection, anything was better than having to stop and talk to her mother-in-law. As she
made her way around she was arrested suddenly by the unmistakable smell of
Daphne odora
. She paused to inhale the sweet, jasmine-like scent of the shrub already in flower, and her heart filled with pleasure. She took another luxurious breath, savoring the scent in her nostrils. Since George’s death she hadn’t been in her garden. She wasn’t even sure whether hers were out yet, which was unusual for Antoinette, because she considered
Daphne odora
spring’s greatest gift. As she stood with her eyes closed, sniffing the heady perfume, she slowly became aware that someone was watching her. She opened her eyes with a start, then a blush flowered on her cheeks and intensified when she realized that the man standing in the doorway of his conservatory was none other than Dr. Heyworth.