What You Left Behind (19 page)

“This old place has certainly changed,” Adam had remarked, looking around the spare bedroom. It wasn’t like him to notice interior decor, wallpaper, or furniture, Lorraine thought, but he was gazing approvingly at the makeover—probably thinking what it would have been like to live there had Lorraine’s mother given the place to them instead.

“Jo spent a fortune on it just before Malc left.”

“Those two were a divorce waiting to happen.” She’d filled him in on her sister’s news as soon as they were alone. “Jo will never stay with one man forever. She’s just not like that.” He hadn’t been surprised when he’d learned that it was Jo who’d met someone else.

Lorraine had shaken her head. “It’s so sad. Some of Malc’s stuff is still lying about as if he’s just popped down to the pub. Jo says that he comes from time to time to see Freddie, but not often. I have no idea who the other man is. I’m not sure I want to know, either.”

Adam had pulled a face. He’d caught the sun in the last couple of days, Lorraine thought, and looked good.

“How’s Freddie taking it?”

Again, Lorraine had shaken her head. “Not well. You know how he adored Malc as if he were his real dad. To be honest, he’s been in a really low mood since we arrived. Jo says he’s been like that for months. She’s really worried about him.”

“He just needs a good dose of his Uncle Adam,” Adam had said, wrapping his arms around Lorraine again. He’d lifted her up until only her toes were left on the carpet.

“You think that’ll sort him out?”

There was no answer, just the soft spread of her husband’s mouth against hers. She was glad she’d tempted him to Radcote, even if it was with something that was bothering her increasingly the more she thought about it. But for now she would just enjoy being with Adam again, away from the pressures of work.

T
HEY
’
D BEEN GREETED
at the Manor with unexpected joviality, Prosecco, and several platefuls of intricately constructed canapés. Sonia had set everything out in a balmy spot under a stripy awning near the spread of a cedar tree that was almost as imposing as the house itself.

“I thought you said she wouldn’t go to too much trouble,” Lorraine whispered to Jo.

She watched as Adam chatted amiably with Tony over the spitting barbecue. After introductions had been made they seemed to hit it off straightaway, with golf as a common link. Not that Adam knew much about the game or was any kind of expert, having spent a number of troubled weekends trying to master his technique back in Birmingham. The friends he played were high-ranking officers he needed to keep onside. Golf, much to Adam’s dismay, seemed to be the way these things worked. He’d have much preferred a ten-mile run.

Jo and Lorraine clinked glasses, enjoying the sun before it sank behind the yew-and-laurel thicket. Even though she was smiling and chatting, Lorraine sensed that Jo was still troubled. Freddie hadn’t joined them yet, as he’d promised he would, and her concern for him was growing.

“You wait, he’ll be here soon,” she said kindly, giving Jo’s hand a squeeze.

Jo nodded and forced another smile.

The Manor gardens were stunning, ranging from formal rose beds and hedges clipped into fantastic-looking beasts to vast expanses of mossy lawn edged by rampant azalea bushes twenty feet high. Lorraine felt slightly guilty knowing that Sonia, who was no doubt still upset about Lenny’s death, was doing all the work. But she’d refused their offer of help.

She watched as she dashed between kitchen and garden carrying trays of salmon-covered blinis topped with rusty-colored drops of caviar, tiny stuffed baked tomatoes bubbling out a white cheese, miniature fish cakes crammed with herbs slid fresh from the Aga, and, of course, the regular top-ups of Prosecco. She was so thin she appeared birdlike, and Lorraine couldn’t help noticing the pale, set expression on her face.

“You have such a beautiful home,” Lorraine commented when Sonia halted near her for a moment. “You could hire it out for weddings. It’s the perfect setting for a marquee.”

Sonia’s eyes grew wide. She looked stunned for a moment, then managed a weak smile before going back inside. It was a while before she returned.

“Just before Simon … well, right before he died, we learned that he’d become engaged,” Tony said, giving the briquettes another quick squirt of lighter fluid. Flames briefly leaped out of the Weber drum. “He told us he wanted to get married here, at home, with a marquee, the works. Sonia still finds it hard to talk about weddings.”

He drew a deep breath as if he was going to explain further but Lorraine halted him almost immediately with an apology. “I’m so sorry. Jo told us what happened. It must be incredibly hard for you both, especially with the recent news.”

The mood was suddenly lifted by a change of expression on Tony’s face. “Ah, here comes trouble.” He was beckoning to someone behind Lorraine. “Come on, come on!” he called out.

Lorraine hoped it was Freddie, though she knew he’d be mortified by such a welcome.

“Gil, just the man,” Tony boomed in a friendly voice.

Lorraine managed to take Adam’s arm and give it a little squeeze, conveying that this was the man she’d mentioned on the phone to him.

“You’re quite an artist, I hear,” Adam said, but he might just as well have remarked that the sky was blue or they were standing on the ground. In Gil’s eyes it didn’t warrant comment or further exploration. It was affirming the obvious.

He blinked several times, staring somewhere around his feet.

“I’d like to see some of your work,” Adam continued, not put off. “Do you draw often?”

“I draw at my table,” Gil mumbled. He was looking at his phone now, his finger tapping the touchscreen.

“Lorraine tells me you’re extremely talented.”

Adam reached for a plate of canapés and offered them to Gil. He stared at them for a good few seconds before slipping his phone into his pocket and putting at least half a dozen blinis onto the palm of his left hand. Then he walked off.

“Some days he’s more talkative than others,” Tony said good-naturedly, poking the coals. “It’s no good disappearing, mate,” he called after Gil. “I need you to help me with the barbecue.”

Lorraine noticed how Gil briefly halted and nodded his head, tipping it off his round shoulders for a moment like a planet losing its center of gravity, before continuing his trudge.

“He’ll be back soon enough,” Tony explained. “We just let Gil be Gil, and as independent as possible, although we have to keep a watch over him. He wanders off quite a bit.”

“He seems keen to get a girlfriend,” Lorraine said, remembering how he’d looked at Stella, how it had made her feel uncomfortable.

“Ah, yes.” Tony smiled. “Gil has one aim in life and that’s to settle down with a nice lady and have a big family. The tack room’s perfect for him now that it’s converted. He has his independence but is still close by.”

“I just tried to phone Freddie,” Jo said quietly to Lorraine. She’d come out of the house carrying two platters, one of meat and one of fish. Lorraine eyed the selection of butcher’s sausages, steak, homemade kebabs, huge scallops, and fresh mackerel. “He didn’t pick up.”

Tony glanced at Jo as she put the platters on a fold-out table beside the barbecue. Her face was creased with worry.

“When’s the rest of the party coming?” Lorraine laughed, eyeing the quantity of food. “We need Freddie here to eat all this lot.” She gave a reassuring smile to her sister.

“Aunty Jo, did you remember to ask Freddie to pick up my phone and bring it with him when he comes?” Stella called out from her spot beneath the tree where she was reclining in a stripy hammock chair Tony had set up especially for her.

Jo nodded. “I left a message for him.”

“Is he not joining us?” Tony asked. He sounded disappointed. “Lana will be here shortly.”

Jo laughed, but Lorraine could hear the strain behind it. “You know what kids are like,” she said.

Tony nodded in agreement.

Right on cue, Lana came outside carrying another bottle of Prosecco. She topped up everyone’s glasses, smiling and chatting—again, it struck Lorraine, the antithesis of Freddie.

“Is Freddie coming tonight?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with him all afternoon.”

Jo glanced at her watch for the hundredth time, and took a large sip of her drink.

“Relax, Jo,” Lorraine said. “It’s not a disaster if he stays home, is it?”

As Tony concluded a discussion with Adam on the cooking order of the meat, Jo took Lorraine aside and said, “Ray, I suggested this afternoon that he go to the doctor about how he’s feeling, but he refused. He said there was nothing wrong with him.”

“Mmm, smells good already.” Sonia had finally stopped running
around. She was standing beside Tony, who was putting the sausages and kebabs on the grill, resting her head against his shoulder. “Any sign of Gil?”

“I’ll go and look for him,” Jo offered before anyone could reply. Lorraine knew she just wanted an excuse to go and find Freddie.

Tony nodded his approval. “That’s fine, you’ve got a good twenty minutes before this lot’s done.”

Jo nodded, striding off down the drive, taking her glass of Prosecco with her.

“Jo’s a bit worried about Freddie,” Lorraine said. “He’s been rather glum recently.”

There was silence while the meat sizzled.

“Poor Jo,” Sonia said. “I could talk to her.”

“Did you have any inkling about Simon’s state of mind?” Adam asked out of the blue.

“None at all,” Tony replied calmly, as if he was quite used to talking about it. “It was the biggest shock of our lives.”

“Simon was studying to be a vet at the Royal Veterinary College,” Sonia explained, still pressed against Tony’s side, a smile on her face. “He loved animals. It was his dream.”

“
Your
dream, Mum,” Lana piped up. “He hated it, if you remember.”

She walked over to sit with Stella. Her feet were bare, and Lorraine noticed how her painted toenails clawed the ground.

“Lana’s right actually,” Sonia continued with a remorseful expression and a sigh. “He was thinking of quitting, taking time out to go traveling and reconsider his options. He’d met someone and …” She paused, flicking a fly away from her face, and took a sip of her drink. “Well, it never worked out, did it? There was one more suicide after him. Jason Rees.”

“I’m very sorry,” Lorraine said, making a mental note of this new name, knowing she probably shouldn’t dig up old files but at the same time wondering what harm could come from it.

Tony was turning the sausages over with a large pair of woodenhandled tongs. Some were stuck and had burst open. “I hope Jo-Jo manages to find Gil and Freddie,” he said, taking a quick look in the direction she’d left.

Jo-Jo? Lorraine thought. No one apart from their mother had ever called her that.

“I’ll go after her,” she volunteered, suddenly feeling strangely concerned for her sister.

L
ORRAINE WALKED BRISKLY
down the drive. There was no sign of anyone in the little cottage, but she decided to knock anyway. When there was no reply, she turned the handle and pushed the old door inward.

“Gil? Hello? It’s Lorraine. Dinner won’t be long.”

Nothing. She ventured inside and, when her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, she could see there was even more artwork strewn about than last time.

“Good grief,” she whispered to herself, scanning the drawings. They were everywhere and very different from the pictures Gil had shown her before. “This stuff is …” She couldn’t find the words to describe them. She placed a hand on the back of a chair to steady herself, allowing her eyes to settle.

While many of the pictures were of everyday scenes, each had a horrific element—a child on a swing but with one leg half amputated and bloody; a mother holding a baby, unaware of a masked man about to stab her from behind; a still life of a vase with the reflection of a hanged body in the glass. She wondered if Tony and Sonia knew.

Lorraine turned and left the building, striding quickly down the drive and out onto the lane toward Glebe House. She got halfway there when she saw Jo running at speed toward her.