“That’s why I couldn’t detect any signs of life…”
“Three days, no food or water… she might have some serious liver damage, Paul… among other things… it was touch and go for a while.”
“And she locked her behind that wall… for the rats to get her…”
“I should have listened to you. I’m sorry.”
Sarah had been flown back from Holland after two weeks in intensive care in the same hospital as Paul. On the day he was released, he had been allowed to see her, but she was unconscious, attached to various machines with wires and probes and tubes. She was pale and thin and ghostly. He had kissed her forehead and promised to see her very soon.
Dave had been to see her several times, on official business, taking statements as she gradually regained strength, although she was only really awake and able to concentrate for two or three hours a day.
Paul had visited twice before and they had said hello and hugged and she had cried. Neither of them had known where to begin. She said she’d call him when she was feeling better.
Chapter 52
So I walk into the room and she’s sitting up in bed and she’s smiling.
I see a small leather pouch on the bedside table. Inside is a tube of lipstick and a compact and other make-up stuff. She’s not as pale as the last time I saw her.
“You’re looking better”, I say.
“I was on some nasty drugs. But I’m eating more or less normally now. I can’t wait to get out.”
“Here”, I say.
I dig into my pocket and I take out a small box and hand it to her.
She opens it up and her green eyes shine.
“The shilling…”, she says.
“From the hiding-place.”
She takes it out of the box and looks at the chain I’ve had made.
“That’s not aluminium.”
“No.”
“Where’s yours?”
So I tell her the story.
And then I tell her most of what I have learnt. Since she went missing. Since she was found.
I tell her about Terry Booth and Linda Deighton, about Rebecca’s eye and her newspaper obituary and about prison and Uncle Frank and life in Paris and about the Cottage.
“You added the garden to the will…”, I say.
She nods.
“Even though you thought I was dead…”
“It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“And you put flowers on my parents’ grave…”
She nods again.
We sit there in silence for a while and we both shake our heads and there’s a thousand things we can’t believe have happened and not happened.
She wiggles a finger at me and gives me the shilling. I unclasp the chain and put it around her neck and step back. She takes it between her fingers and looks at it.
Then I hold out the photo of Rebecca and she takes it and she looks at it for a whole minute before she speaks.
“This was in the hiding-place, too”, she says finally.
“Yes and no”, I say. “It’s the same photo, but I found that copy somewhere else.”
“So why the glum face? What’s the matter?”
“If you turn it over, there’s a date on the back.”
She glances at me, a flutter of hesitation and apprehension in her eyes.
She slowly turns the photo over and looks at the date, written in Mme Rosa’s handwriting.
“I can’t make it out.”
“It says 15.4.1982.”
“What’s the significance of it?”, she says, unsure.
“I stole the photo, from Mme Rosa. It was taken at the villa in St Laurent-du-Loup on April 15th 1982. It means Rebecca wasn’t pregnant a month before you were born. It means you aren’t her daughter. And neither was Kristel.”
She looks at me and I look at her and we’re both trying to read something in the other’s eyes.
“It means that when my mother went to France with Rebecca in 1981 it wasn’t just to keep her company, it was to hide something from my father, who only found out much later, and it killed him. But obviously both your parents knew, from the start… they knew all the time… it was their idea too, or Greville’s at least”, I say, and I can hear my own voice echoing around the room. “It means it wasn’t Rebecca who was pregnant and who gave birth to twins, but my mother… although Greville was the father.”
I see tears welling in her eyes.
“It means you’re my sister”.
She looks down at the photo again and then lays it on the bedcovers.
She glances at the shilling hanging from the chain around her neck and she lifts it to her lips and she kisses it.
Then she takes my hand and she pulls me towards her.
As I lean in I’m convinced I can smell the lipstick she has put on for me.
I can almost taste it.
She puts a finger over my lips and whispers to me…
“I know”, she says. “I’ve always known.”
The King's Shilling Page 28