Believing the Lie

by Elizabeth George

  Holly? Holly! What sort of name was that? Her former husband was going for a shrub? Manette looked at Freddie— who at least had the grace to turn puce— and then poured herself a hasty cup of coffee, after which she retreated to her bathroom. There, Freddie came to apologise for the uneasiness of the situation— not, Manette noted, for having had the woman stay the night— and he said in best Freddie fashion that in the future he’d spend the night at their places instead of the reverse. “It all just happened between us rather quickly,” he told her. “I’d not intended it.”

  But Manette homed in on their places, and this was how she learned that times had changed and that instantaneous copulation had become the new form of shaking hands. She’d sputtered, “You mean, you intend to try out every one of them?”

  “Well, it does seem to be the way things are done these days.”

  She’d tried to tell him that this was lunacy. She’d lectured him about STDs, unplanned pregnancies, entrapment, and everything else she could think of. What she didn’t say was that they had a very good situation, she and Freddie, living as roommates, because she didn’t want to hear him say that it was time they both moved on. At the end of it all, though, he’d kissed her forehead, told her not to worry about him, revealed he had another date that night, declared he might therefore not be home afterwards, and said he’d see her at work. He’d take his own car today, he told her, because this date lived in Barrow-in-Furness, and they were meeting at Scorpio nightclub so if she wanted to hook up seriously— Freddie actually said “hook up seriously”— they’d go to her place as it was apparently too far to drive to Great Urswick if their knickers were on fire.

  Manette wailed, “But, Freddie …!” yet realised there was nothing else she could say. She could hardly accuse him of being unfaithful or destroying what she and he had or acting hastily. They weren’t married, they “had” next to nothing, and they’d been divorced long enough that Freddie’s decision to get back into the world of dating— as bizarre as that world now apparently was— had not been made on the fly. He wasn’t that sort of man, anyway. And one only had to look at him to understand why women would be happy to try him out as a mate: He was fresh and sweet and not half-bad looking.

  No, she had no rights here, and Manette knew it. But she mourned something lost all the same.

  Nonetheless, there were things to be seen to that went beyond her situation with Freddie, and she found that she was grateful for them, although she wouldn’t have thought so on the previous day after her confrontation with Niamh Cresswell. Something had to be done about Niamh, and while Manette herself was powerless when it came to the woman, she was not powerless when it came to Tim and Gracie. If she had to move a mountain to help those children, then that was what she intended to do.

  She drove to Ireleth Hall. She thought there was a good chance that Kaveh Mehran would be there since he’d been long engaged in designing a children’s garden for the estate, as well as overseeing the implementation of this design. The garden was intended for Nicholas’s future children— and wasn’t that like counting chickens, Manette thought— and considering the size of the garden that had been staked out, it looked as if Valerie was expecting dozens of them.

  She was in luck, Manette saw upon her arrival. She traipsed round to the location of the future children’s garden, which was north of the immense and fantastical topiary garden, and she saw not only Kaveh Mehran but her father as well. There was another man with them whom Manette did not recognise but reckoned was “the earl” that her sister had phoned her about.

  “Widower,” Mignon had told her. Manette could hear the tapping of her keyboard in the background, so she knew her sister was doing her usual multitasking: e-mailing one of her online lovers while simultaneously dismissing what she’d reckoned was a potential offline one. “It’s rather obvious why Dad’s dragged him up here from London. Hope springs eternal et cetera. And now I’ve had the surgery and lost all the weight, he reckons I’m ready for a suitor. A regular Charlotte Lucas, just waiting for Mr. Collins to show up. God, how embarrassing. Well, dream on, Pater. I’m quite happy where I am, thank you very much.”

  Manette wouldn’t have put it past her father. He’d been trying to offload Mignon for years, but she had him very much where she wanted him and she had no intention of making any changes. Why Bernard wouldn’t show her the door or give her the boot or any other figurative cutting of ties with Mignon was beyond Manette, although once he’d built the folly for her sister some six years earlier, Manette had concluded her twin was holding back something damaging that would ruin their father if she let it be known. What that was Manette couldn’t imagine, but it had to be something big.

  Kaveh Mehran appeared to be showing the other two men the progress so far made on the children’s garden. He was pointing hither and yon at stacks of timber beneath tarps and piles of quarried stone and stakes driven into the ground with string strung between them. Manette called out a hello and strode in their direction.

  Mignon was out of her mind, Manette decided as the men turned towards her, if she thought “the widower” had been brought up from London as a potential suitor for her, a sort of “gentleman caller” in the best tradition of Tennessee Williams’s psychodramas. He was tall, blond, exceedingly attractive, and dressed— even in the Lakes, for God’s sake— with that kind of understated rumpled elegance that fairly screamed old family money. If he was a widower out looking for Wife Number Two or Wife Number Two Hundred and Twenty-two, he wasn’t going to choose her sister to step into that position. The human animal’s capacity for self-delusion was absolutely amazing, Manette thought.

  Bernard smiled a hello at Manette and made the introductions. Tommy Lynley was the name of the earl and wherever he was earl of was not mentioned. He had a firm handshake, an interesting old scar on his upper lip, a nice smile, and very brown eyes at odds with his light hair. He was good at small talk, she found, and equally good at putting people at ease. Beautiful day in a beautiful place, he told her. He himself was from Cornwall originally, south of Penzance, an area which was— obviously— lovely as well, and he’d spent very little time in Cumbria. But from what he was seeing round Ireleth Hall, he knew he should make regular visits here.

  Very nicely said, Manette thought. Very polite. Had he said it to Mignon she would doubtless have considered it rife with double meanings. Manette said, “Come in winter and it’s likely you’ll think otherwise,” and then to Kaveh Mehran, “I’d like a word if you’ve time.”

  Her father had succeeded wildly in industry because he was a man fully capable of reading nuances. He said, “What’s going on, Manette?” and when she gave a glance at Lynley, Bernard continued with, “Tommy’s a close friend. He knows we’ve had a recent tragedy in the family. Has something more…?”

  “Niamh,” Manette said.

  “What about her?”

  Manette glanced at Lynley and then said to her father, “I’m not sure you want…”

  Lynley started to excuse himself but Bernard said, “No. It’s fine. Stay.” And to Manette, “As I said, he’s a friend. It can’t be anything— ”

  Fine, Manette thought. Whatever you like. And she said abruptly, “Niamh’s not yet taken the children back. They’re still with Kaveh. We need to do something about it.”

  Bernard glanced at Kaveh, his brow furrowed, and he murmured to Lynley, “My late nephew’s wife.”

  “It’s absolutely not right,” Manette said. “She knows it, and she doesn’t much care. I spoke to her yesterday. All dressed to the ninety-nines, she was, with a bucket of sex toys sitting out for all the world to see. She’s got some bloke coming round to do the business with her, and Tim and Gracie are in the way.”

  Bernard cast another look at Kaveh. The young man said, “‘Absolutely not right,’ Manette?” He spoke politely enough, but his tone told Manette he’d misunderstood her meaning.

  She said, “Oh for God’s sake, Kaveh. You know I’m not talking about what yo
u are. You can be as bent as a broken twig for all I care, but when it comes to children— ”

  “I’m not interested in children.”

  “Well, that’s just the point, isn’t it?” Manette snapped, choosing to misinterpret his remark. “It helps to have an interest in children if one is actually caring for them. Dad, Tim and Gracie belong with family and whatever he is, Kaveh’s not family.”

  “Manette…” Her father’s voice was minatory. Evidently, there were things in the “recent tragedy in the family” that he did indeed prefer Tommy Lynley not to know, despite what he’d said a moment earlier. Well, that was unfortunate, because he’d welcomed her to speak openly in front of the London man, so that was what she intended to do.

  She said, “Ian was happy to have the children with him in Bryanbarrow. I understood that and I was on board with it. Anything to keep them away from Niamh, who’s about as motherly as a great white shark, as you know very well. But Ian can’t have intended Kaveh to keep them if something happened to him. You know that, Kaveh.” And back to her father, “So you have to talk to Niamh. You have to order her. You have to do something. Tim’s in a very bad way— he’s worse than what he was like to get him into Margaret Fox School in the first place— and God knows Gracie needs a mother more than ever just now and she’s going to be completely desperate for one in a year or two. If Niamh isn’t willing to do the job, then someone else is going to have to step onto the pitch.”

  “I see the situation,” Bernard said. “We’ll carry on further another time.”

  “We can’t, Dad. I’m sorry.” And to Lynley, “Dirty laundry and more to come. If you haven’t the stomach for it…”

  To Bernard, Lynley said, “Perhaps there’s a way I can be of help?” and something passed between them, some sort of message or assurance or something that assuaged whatever Manette’s father had been concerned about in having Lynley present at an escalating conversation.

  Manette said, “Tim attacked me. No, no, I didn’t get hurt. I’m sore but that’s not the point. He must be dealt with— the whole bloody situation must be dealt with— and since Kaveh’s not going to be staying on that farm forever, it’s in everyone’s best interests to deal with it now before the farm is sold. Once Kaveh has to move house, what happens to the children? Are they going with him? And where? This can’t go on. They can’t keep being uprooted.”

  “He left it to me,” Kaveh said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Manette swung back to him. “What?”

  “The farm, Manette. Ian left it to me.”

  “To you? Why?”

  Kaveh said with a dignity Manette had to admire, “Because he loved me. Because we were partners and that’s what partners usually do: make arrangements to take care of each other in the event of death.”

  Silence ensued. Into it, the sound of jackdaws burst into the air. From somewhere the smell of burning leaves came at them in a rush as if there were flames nearby, which there were not.

  “Men usually take care of their children as well,” Manette said. “That farm should be Tim’s, not yours. It should be Gracie’s. It should be theirs to sell, to provide for their future.”

  Kaveh looked away. He worked his jaw as if this would allow him to master an emotion. “I think you’ll find there was an insurance policy for that.”

  “How convenient. Whose idea was all this: the farm left to you and insurance for them? How much insurance, by the way? And exactly who does the money go to? Because if it goes to Niamh in trust for the children— ”

  “Manette,” her father cut in. “That’s not on just now.” And to Kaveh, “Will you be keeping the farm or selling it, Kaveh?”

  “Keeping it. As for Tim and Gracie, they’re welcome to stay with me till Niamh’s ready to have them back. And if she’s never ready, Ian would have wanted— ”

  “No, no, no!” Manette didn’t particularly care to hear the rest. The point was that the children belonged with family, and Kaveh— partner to Ian or not— was not family. She said hotly, “Dad, you must… Ian can’t have wanted… Does Niamh know all this?”

  “What part?” Kaveh asked. “And do you think she actually cares one way or the other?”

  “Does she know you’ve inherited? And when did Ian do this?”

  Kaveh hesitated, as if evaluating the potential responses that he could make. Manette had to say his name twice to get him to respond at all. “I don’t know,” he told her.

  A look passed between Bernard and Tommy Lynley. Manette saw this and knew that they were thinking what she herself was thinking. Kaveh was lying about something. The only question was which of her enquiries he was answering with “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what, exactly?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know a thing about Niamh, one way or the other. She has the insurance money, and there’s quite a pile. Ian meant it to help her care for Tim and Gracie, of course, but that’s because he believed that if anything happened to him, Niamh would come to her senses about them.”

  “Well, she hasn’t. And it’s not looking likely she’s going to.”

  “If they must, then, they’ll stay with me. They’re established at the farm, and they’re happy enough.”

  Ludicrous thought, that Tim Cresswell was happy. He hadn’t been happy in ages. Manette said, “And what exactly is supposed to happen when you meet someone new in a month or two, Kaveh? When you move him to the farm and take up life with him? What then? What are the children supposed to do? What are they supposed to think?”

  “Manette,” Bernard murmured cautiously.

  Kaveh had gone quite pale with her words, but he said nothing, although his jaw worked furiously and at his side, his right hand clenched into a fist.

  Manette said, “Niamh will fight you in court for that farm. She’ll contest the will. For the children.”

  “Manette, enough,” her father said on a sigh. “There’s been plenty of grief to go round and everyone needs to recover, yourself included.”

  “Why are you playing the peacemaker in this?” Manette demanded of her father. “He’s nothing to us,” she said with a jerk of her head at Kaveh. “He’s nothing to the children. He’s just someone Ian ruined his life for and— ”

  “I said enough!” Bernard snapped. And to Kaveh, “Excuse her, Kaveh. She doesn’t mean— ”

  “Oh, she knows very well what she means,” Kaveh said. “Most people do.”

  Manette sought a way out of the mire she’d created for herself by saying lamely, “All right. Look. If nothing else, you’re too young to be the father of a fourteen-year-old boy, Kaveh. He needs someone older, someone experienced, someone— ”

  “Not homosexual,” Kaveh finished for her.

  “I didn’t say that. And I don’t mean that. I was going to say someone within his own family.”

  “You’ve made that point more than once.”

  “I’m sorry, Kaveh. It’s not about you. It’s about Tim and Gracie. They can’t be asked to tolerate more devastation in their lives. It’s destroying Tim. It’s going to do the same to Gracie. I have to stop their world from falling apart even further. I hope you can understand that.”

  “Leave things as they are, Manette,” her father said. “There are larger concerns at the moment.”

  “Like what?”

  He said nothing. But there were those glances between her father and his London friend and she wondered for the first time what was going on here. Clearly, this bloke wasn’t intended to press a case for love with her wily sister in the fashion of the eighteenth century: out for her money, perhaps, in order to support a crumbling estate in Cornwall. And the fact that her father had actually wanted him to hear every word of her conversation with Kaveh suggested that the quiet waters of Tommy Lynley’s outward appearance were probably deep enough for Nessie to swim in. Well, that couldn’t matter. Nothing could matter. She intended to do something about her cousin’s children and if her father wouldn’t join forces with
her, she knew someone else who was likely to do so.

  She threw up her hands. “All right,” she said. And to Lynley, “Sorry you had to listen to all this.”

  He nodded politely. But there was an expression on his face that told he hadn’t minded hearing the information at all.

  BRYANBARROW EN ROUTE TO WINDERMERE

  CUMBRIA

  The previous day had been a wash-out. Two hours trying to thumb it to Windermere and Tim had finally given up. But he was determined today would be different.

  The rain started not long after he began the most difficult part of his journey: the endless hike from Bryanbarrow village down to the main road through the Lyth Valley. He didn’t expect to get a lift during this part of the route, as the cars were few and far between and if a farm vehicle happened to come by— a tractor, for example— it moved so slowly and went so little distance that he could actually make better time on foot.

  He hadn’t counted on the rain, though. This was stupid of him, considering it was the sodden month of sodding November and as far as he knew, it rained more in the Lakes than anywhere else in the bloody country. But because he’d left Bryan Beck farm in a state in which clear thinking wasn’t exactly going on in his head, he had put a hoodie on over a flannel shirt, which he wore over a tee-shirt and none of this was waterproof. He had trainers on his feet, too, and while these weren’t soaked through, they were mud up to the ankles because the verges of the lane were swampy the way they always were at this time of year. As for his jeans, they were growing heavier and heavier as the rain got to them. Since they were several sizes too large anyway, the struggle to keep them up round his hips was infuriating.