by Imogen Clark
‘What did he do?’ she asked tentatively.
Please don’t let it be anything violent, she said to herself, thinking of her children. Then again, part of her wanted it to be something so bad that she could use it to shock all the hideous hangers-on that being Lady Hartsford attracted. ‘Oh, you’ve met my husband, Charles, have you? His half-brother went to prison for murder, you know.’ She could just see the expressions on their prissy faces.
‘He robbed a building society,’ said Charles, and Grace felt that inappropriate thrill again. That was better than murder. It was bad enough to be intriguing, and they probably didn’t need the scandal of a murderer in the family, not really.
‘Badly,’ Charles continued, raising an eyebrow as if this was now a hilarious anecdote that he was recounting rather than a serious part of his own family history. ‘He was part of a gang, but it turned out they were totally incompetent. The plan went wrong and they all got caught. Plus they all had previous.’
Previous – that meant that they’d been caught for something else before, Grace knew from the television cop shows she’d watched with her father when she was growing up. Honestly, this was the most exciting thing to happen to her for ages, even though she knew that it absolutely shouldn’t be.
‘No one was hurt, but they were sentenced to fifteen years each. Ray got out after ten.’
Ten years in prison. What would that feel like? Grace tried to imagine losing ten years of her life. It depended which ten you picked, of course, not that Ray had that luxury. Grace couldn’t choose ten from her own life. Whichever way she rolled it, ten years was still far too long to sacrifice. Had Ray thought it was worth the risk? Well, he must have done. If you had no money, she supposed, you might take bigger risks to acquire some.
‘But what’s this about a house?’ Grace asked, steering them back to the original mystery, although now she thought she could probably guess.
Charles rubbed his chin and she could hear the scratch of his fingers against the stubble.
‘Ray just couldn’t get a start,’ Charles said. ‘When he came out, I mean. No one would give him a chance. And here’s me with all this.’ He waved his arm in a great sweeping gesture. ‘So I said I’d buy him a house. Just to give him some stability. I told him that I’d help, but only if that was the last I heard of it. I don’t want him in our life, Grace. He doesn’t know where I live or anything about you. He just knew that I played violin, so he tracked me down that way. I really don’t think he’ll be in touch again.’
Part of Grace was disappointed. Her curiosity had been tickled. Now she wanted to meet this shadowy character, Ray, to draw her own conclusions about him. Was he the kind of criminal that you could spot just by looking at him? There were people like that, she knew, from watching the news. All you had to do was look into their eyes on those uncompromising mugshots and you could just tell they were ne’er-do-wells. Or was Charles’s half-brother the sort of hapless criminal who made a mistake, but then could slip back into the folds of society without causing any more wrinkles? Grace toyed with the idea of telling Charles that Ray would be welcome in their family, but then she thought of the Turner hanging in the drawing room and the Matisse on the landing and thought better of it. Charles knew what was best here. She should just accept his judgement on the matter.
‘And does he have any family of his own?’ she asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Charles. ‘I don’t really know. Like I said, we didn’t keep in touch. I only know what he told me when he tracked me down. He hasn’t really settled to much since he got out of prison. But I thought that if he at least had a little house then that would be a help. He’d be off the streets and could make a fresh start. But I should have told you, Gracie. I’m so sorry.’
He was out of his chair again and this time he knelt on the floor before her and grasped her hands in his.
‘Please tell me that you’re not angry. I hate it when you are cross with me and we’ve only just got over all that business with me missing . . . Well, I just wanted to help. You can understand that, can’t you, Gracie? And you do forgive me, don’t you?’
The answer came easily to Grace. Of course she would. She’d forgive him anything. This was Charles, her lovely, handsome, twinkly husband, the father of her children and the love of her life. How could she not forgive him? She could even understand why he hadn’t said anything to start with, although she wished that he’d had the courage to trust her reaction. What did he think she was going to say? No? Buying a house was a good thing, a kind and generous gesture, albeit one undertaken in secrecy, and it wasn’t as if they couldn’t afford it.
‘Yes, of course I’ll forgive you,’ Grace said, and Charles let out a sharp sigh. ‘But is that it now? There’s nothing else you’re keeping hidden? No mad aunts in the attic? No extra children you’ve never thought to mention?’
She was laughing now and Charles, picking up on her clear acceptance of his mistake, smiled too, although perhaps with less conviction than Grace.
‘No,’ he replied, his brown eyes looking straight into Grace’s blue ones. ‘No. That was it. My one big secret.’
31
LEAH – NOW
So, you go on a ‘not-date’ with someone that you didn’t think you fancied, end up having loads of fun and accidentally enjoying two really, really lovely kisses that weren’t at all on the cards, and then what? Well, you talk to your girlfriends and dissect the entire thing second by second. Obviously.
Unfortunately, there were two problems with this approach. Firstly, girlfriends were a bit thin on the ground for me. Of course, I had friends; some of them were even the kind that you can rely on to be there for you when the chips are down. So, if something like this had happened to me with a local lad, you can bet that I’d have been straight on the phone, reporting back the details like the best of them. That said, the last time I’d had anything to report in that department had been with Noah’s dad, and he’d been gone for three years. Since then it had been tumbleweed city on the romance front so I was a bit rusty on the protocol.
This led me to the second problem. If I told my friends about Marlon, I would need to explain how I’d met him and that would mean explaining about Clio. Being friends with someone who lived in a stately home and whose mum had a title would provoke far more interest than having a random snog with a stranger. My friends would be buzzing with questions but I didn’t feel ready to share Clio with them. Not yet.
And I knew what they’d say if I did tell them. They’d either question why Clio would want to be mates with the likes of me, which would tap into my own doubts in that area, or they’d advise me to get as much out of her as possible and that definitely wasn’t what this was all about. I needed Clio to know that I definitely wasn’t her friend just because she was rich. Although she’d not said it in as many words, I’d got the impression that she was sick of being used by people who were supposed to be her friends.
So instead of ringing anyone else, I calculated how long it would take Clio and Marlon to get back to Hartsford Hall, and consequently when I might be able to speak to Clio on her own. She was the obvious person to have the post-kiss post-mortem with. She knew both parties and she’d set the whole thing up in the first place.
Then I lost my nerve. Maybe I didn’t know her that well yet? Perhaps we hadn’t got to the dissecting ‘not-dates’ with each other stage? I didn’t want to come across as needy.
I was just contemplating this problem when my phone rang.
‘Well?’ asked a breathy Clio without bothering with any pleasantries. ‘How did it go? You like him, don’t you? I knew you did. I could tell when we went bowling, well before that even. Isn’t he lovely? Are you cross with me? You aren’t, are you?’
Her words came out in one long ribbon of questions which she uttered without pausing for breath, and by the end I was laughing down the line at her.
‘It was fine,’ I said. ‘He was nice. We did get along. I am quite cross w
ith you, but I suppose I’ll get over it.’ I hoped that Clio would hear that I was joking.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know it was a bit of a low-down mean trick, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get the two of you to spend some time together on your own. Admit it, Leah. If I’d just suggested that you hook up with him for the afternoon you’d have turned me down flat.’
That was true, I knew, and I was slightly surprised that Clio knew this too. Was I that transparent? Or maybe it was that Clio was starting to understand the way I ticked. I much preferred this idea because it matched my theory that there was a kind of weird understanding between us.
‘And I knew he liked you,’ Clio continued coyly.
I liked this idea less. It suggested that the two of them had been talking about me behind my back, and I’d had enough of that kind of thing to last me a lifetime. I hated that there was the merest chance that Marlon and Clio had cooked up a plan to catch me like a fly in a spider’s web, although from Marlon’s reaction to the ‘not-date’ I gathered he’d been as much a victim of Clio’s scheming as I had.
‘How did you know that?’ I asked suspiciously.
‘I’ve known him forever,’ Clio replied. ‘So I could just tell, in the way a girl can always spot these things.’
I knew then that there’d been no giggling conversations when I wasn’t there to hear them. Clio had just relied on her trusty female intuition, and if she had been right, then talking Marlon into a trip to the coast wouldn’t have been so very challenging.
‘So?’ said Clio, anxious now for more details. ‘How did it go?’
It was like being transported back in time to being a teenager again. Even though I’d only known Clio for two minutes and her probing should probably have been an intrusion into my personal space, it felt completely natural, like we’d been friends forever.
‘Actually, it was great,’ I confided.
I could hear Clio squealing down the other end of the line. ‘I knew it!’ she interrupted.
‘Are you going to let me get a word in?’ I asked.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Carry on.’
‘It was a bit awkward at the start, what with having been bounced into going and all that . . .’ I made my voice sound jokily snippy, and Clio muttered her ‘sorry’s again. ‘But then it was fine . . .’ I remembered the unexpected kiss behind the lighthouse, the exhilaration of running back through the waves to get to safety, Marlon standing in his underwear in my kitchen. ‘And then it was lovely.’
Clio tutted. ‘Lovely? Lovely?! Is that the best you can come up with? Well, it’s not good enough. I need details! Look. We clearly have far too much to discuss over the phone. How about I pop over tomorrow evening? I can help with the children’s tea. I can even pick Noah up from school for you, if you like,’ she offered, but I heard doubt starting to creep into her voice, as if she was worried that she’d overstepped some invisible line. And she was right. My natural instincts were pulling me back, too. I wasn’t used to anyone offering to help me or thinking ahead on my behalf. It almost felt as if accepting Clio’s offer was exposing some weakness on my own part. But that was silly. Noah loved Clio. Poppy happily tolerated her in her teenage way, and I could really use a girly night in.
‘Okay,’ I heard myself say. ‘That would be great.’
With tea cooked, eaten and cleared away and Noah bathed, read to and in bed, Clio and I settled down on the sofa. I was aware that Poppy was still loitering somewhere. She was at that age when she didn’t know whether she fitted with the children or the grown-ups. Of course, I knew exactly which camp she fell into, and this wasn’t going to be the kind of conversation that a thirteen-year-old needed to earwig on. Luckily Poppy seemed to get that too. She sloped off to her room and I heard her door close, firmly barred against intruders. We could chat without fear of interruption.
We started with Marlon.
‘Should I arrange another meet-up?’ asked Clio eagerly.
‘I can use a telephone!’ I said.
I’d meant it as a joke, but Clio seemed to pull back, like a snail into its shell.
‘Of course,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t mean to . . .’
‘I’m teasing,’ I said, and Clio smiled a little sheepishly at me, but there was a wariness in her eyes. She really didn’t want to mess this up, I could tell. It was so endearing and it made me feel far more special than I had any right to feel.
‘I think I would like to spend some more time with him,’ I continued. ‘Get to know him a bit better, but there’s no rush. I’ve got work and the kids. I can’t keep racing off on dates at the drop of a hat. And I don’t want to look too keen,’ I added with a grin.
‘I get it,’ she said.
‘And what about you?’ I asked, risking a more personal question now that my love life seemed to be fair conversational game. ‘Are you seeing anyone?’
‘No one special,’ she said, twisting her mouth downwards. ‘There’ve been a few over the years. I saw this guy Richie for a while. I think Mummy started to get excited about grandchildren. He was sweet, but in the end it didn’t work out. He’s married now.’
I saw that sadness again, the one I’d seen in the photographs.
‘The trouble is,’ she added, ‘they are either only in it for the kudos of going out with aristocracy, or I think they are and then they get offended. And going to an all-girls school, I never really got the hang of talking to men. The ones I met when I was younger were all friends of Hector’s and they were only interested in sex. And the people I know now are happily paired off and having babies. I never meet anyone single these days. I suppose if I had a job . . .’ She shrugged and let out a little sigh. ‘I think I might have missed the boat.’
‘Being in a couple isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,’ I said.
‘Well, I wouldn’t mind giving it a go,’ Clio replied. She tipped her head back against the sofa and looked up at the Anaglypta ceiling. ‘I realise that this might sound odd to you,’ she said. ‘So please forgive me. But I’m really envious of you and your life, Leah.’
This threw me. Here was a woman who lived in a stately home and had never had to clean other people’s floors to put food on the table, and yet she envied what I had. I didn’t interrupt her. I was curious to know what it was about how I moved through life that was so appealing to her.
‘I mean, you have your independence,’ she continued. ‘You make decisions for yourself. You don’t seem to worry about what others think.’
Well, that was true enough, even though I’d had independence forced on me rather than choosing it for myself.
‘You have your beautiful children and you give them a secure home,’ she continued. ‘You live in a community where everyone knows you and would look out for you if you needed help. And you really know who you are. To me you seem, well, truly content with life.’
She glanced at me, as if to check that she hadn’t spoken out of turn, but actually she’d hit the nail pretty much on the head. I did have everything that I needed and I was pretty happy with my lot. Not that I’d ever thought about it in those terms, but now that I did I realised that what I’d got was pretty precious.
But it hadn’t always been like that, I thought. I was usually so protective of the dark parts of my life, keeping them buried, but now I found that I wanted to tell Clio although I wasn’t really sure why. Partly it was to show that my life wasn’t the bed of roses that she seemed to think it was, but partly it just felt right to share it with her.
I took a deep breath. ‘My life hasn’t always been this good,’ I said.
What a masterly understatement that was. Now that I’d said it, I suddenly wondered whether I actually had the strength to retell the whole ghastly tale. It crossed my mind that I could just make up some everyday difficulties and fob her off with those instead. But no, I decided. This felt right. I would tell my new friend everything. I’d only ever told the whole story to one person before. Maybe the time had come
to tell someone else?
32
LEAH – NOW
‘When I was eighteen,’ I began, looking across the room and away from Clio’s gaze, ‘my mum committed suicide.’
I heard Clio’s sharp intake of breath, but I didn’t look at her. I needed to plough on and tell it in one go before I lost my nerve. ‘She threw herself off the cliff,’ I continued. ‘Just up the promenade, not far from the lighthouse. They said she probably died as she hit the rocks, but if not she would have drowned. Some people said that she didn’t mean to kill herself and that it was a cry for help that went wrong. The cliffs round here aren’t that high and she could just have fallen by accident. Even the coroner said it was misadventure. But I think they just said that to try and make it easier for me. I’m certain she did it on purpose and that she meant to die.’
I pulled my knees up into my chest and wrapped my arms tightly around them. I was okay, I thought, not about to cry or anything.
I carried on. ‘She and my dad had a massive row about a week before it happened. I don’t know what it was about, but my dad left that day and I never saw him again.’
‘What? Never?’ Clio said.
I shook my head. ‘Never. I went to a party and when I came back Dad wasn’t here and he never came back. I kept thinking that he would. He was always leaving and then coming home again. That was how our life was. For a long time after Mum died, I kept thinking he would just stroll back in, dump his bag on the sofa and it would be like it always had been before. I even practised what I was going to say to him, how I was going to explain about Mum. But he never came. And the longer he stayed away, the more I hated him.’
I paused, remembering how it had felt all over again.
‘I couldn’t understand it,’ I went on. ‘I tried to imagine what could possibly have been so bad that he’d leave like that, but I couldn’t think of anything. I tried to talk to Mum about it but she just kind of closed down. It was like part of her had died that day. She loved him so much and I thought he loved us, but it just shows how wrong you can be about someone, doesn’t it? Anyway, Mum couldn’t bear to live without him, so she just gave up and killed herself.’