by Jane Holland
I could sleep in Emily’s room, of course. Or any one of the lavish guest rooms available. But this cramped, stuffy, attic bedroom with the sloping ceiling is where I have been most comfortable in this house, and I’m not moving now.
Closing the door, I perch on the edge of my old bed like a child, hunched over and suffering.
First Emily. Then Dad. Now Tamsin.
There’s no one left.
Except Robin.
It tears me apart not to be back in Cornwall, dealing with my father’s funeral, but I’ll have to stay at least another night in France. It would be the height of disrespect to fly off home before Tamsin’s body is even cold.
I look around the room like an old woman myself, barely able to lift my head, too exhausted to do anything but sit in a stupor. The shutters are still closed, the room dark and warm, but bearable. I could open them, of course, but I dread the thought of one of the paparazzi spotting me up here and snapping my picture.
I ruck up the rug with one of my feet, and smooth it out again automatically.
Then frown down at the rug, puzzled.
The rug is once again covering the loose floorboard where I used to hide my journal. I thought I left it rolled up and pushed to one side. But perhaps Lucille lay it back in place on her daily round of the chateau, always so keen to things tidy away, to leave nothing on show. Only Lucille hasn’t been up here today. She can’t possibly have been. She drove me into town early on. Then there was the appalling discovery of Tamsin’s body. So was the rug still pushed to one side when I went to bed last night, or already down on the floor again?
A simple enough question. Except I can’t bloody remember.
‘Oh, give it a rest,’ I tell myself wearily, and start unpacking my bags. When I reach the diary, I pause, then sit down and open it, unable to resist.
I flick through the scribbled pages, reading a few of them in the semi-darkness. It’s not easy, reliving the past, those halcyon days when for a few brief weeks one summer I was happy and in love with Robin, even if it was never entirely requited. Especially given what I now know.
I reach the manic scrawl of my last few entries, where my teenage self weeps from the pages.
The cat was DEAD. In the bath tub. With her throat cut.
I shudder, feeling sick.
J-L.
The name Jean-Luc comes into my head.
J-L.
Jean-Luc.
With a terrible jolt, I remember him, and it feels as though the world has shifted on its axis. There was a Jean-Luc among us that summer. But not every day. He drifted in and out of the group, sometimes there, sometimes banished for some reason. But he was a little young for some of the more sophisticated games we played. A memory flashes through my mind of a youth with dark, slicked-back hair and watchful eyes.
Yes, that was Jean-Luc.
The dark-haired boy in the photograph in Lucille’s room, perhaps?
I catch my breath. I thought at first it was a photo of a young Robin in the silver frame. And the two did look similar as boys, but there were always subtle differences. The boy in the photograph had a deeper olive skin, his eyes were darker and less friendly, and he was much skinnier, his air bordering on the feral.
Jean-Luc.
He’s the same boy I could not identify in the beach photograph, I realise. The one wearing the baseball cap. The photo is still in the back pocket of my jeans. Pulling it out, I flatten down the central crease, and examine the beach grouping.
‘Pete, Louise, Daljit, Conrad,’ I say in a whisper, looking at each face in turn. ‘Charlotte, Tanya, Harry …’
Is that Jean-Luc at the back, standing beside Charlotte?
The crease cuts right through his tanned face, half-hidden under the brim of a Yankee baseball cap. I can’t quite make out his features. But there’s something naggingly familiar about him. I look more closely at his blue T-shirt. There’s something written in large white type across his chest. Some of the letters are partially hidden behind a raised hand, holding a barbecue fork aloft as though poised to turn over a sausage, but the word is clear enough.
HOLLYWOOD.
Jean-Luc wasn’t our age but a few years younger. One of the Cap crowd, though Emily seemed to hate having him around. I could never understand why unless it was because of the age difference between them. The others tolerated him though, perhaps because he was good at getting things we wanted. Things some of the stricter parents wouldn’t have allowed us to have. Marijuana, for instance. Whisky and champagne too, even hard drugs on occasion. He was a boy who knew how to get hold of certain people, even at his age. The kind of people who never had last names, and only dealt in cash.
So J-L is Jean-Luc. But how does he fit into this puzzle? And why does Lucille have a framed photograph of him in her room?
I put the photo back in my jeans pocket, unsure what my discovery means, and turn back to the diary.
I love Robin. He’s my whole life. And I bet they won’t let me see him again. AND IT’S NOT EVEN MY FAULT.
Even now, a grown woman, I feel embarrassed by my helpless, lovesick despair. I was so wildly in love with Robin that summer. He was not only good-looking, but mellow and relaxed, despite his casual arrogance toward girls. That arrogance was nothing but an act, I was convinced of it. Pure male bravado, designed to shield him from the chance of rejection. Certainly I would never have thought Robin Halifax capable of hurting anyone, especially after we made love that final night in France. He had been so gentle and careful with me, aware of my inexperience, to the extent that his tastes later on surprised me.
But the way the police reacted to his name earlier tells me that Tamsin was not exaggerating about his shady past. So the real question is, what happened to turn the charming Californian boy I knew into a liar, a rapist, and potentially a killer?
And how could I let a man like that fool me so completely?
I shift unhappily, and the diary slips off my lap with a thump.
‘Oh, great.’
I stoop to pick the diary up.
And stay stooped, staring at the wall across from my bed, my attention caught by something odd.
There used to be a poster of the French pop group Indochine pinned up there, right opposite my bed. Emily let me have it from her vast poster collection because the walls in here were so plain and she felt sorry for me, which surprised me at the time. The wall has grown dingy since then, except for the cleaner rectangle that was under the poster. It was still on the wall when I flew over for Emily’s funeral. I remember noticing how it was starting to look a bit sad and dusty, peeling at one corner.
Now it looks like someone has torn down the poster, and inexplicably drawn a small, brownish-red circle roughly in the middle of the wall where it used to be.
Rather like a bull’s-eye.
Straightening, I cross the gloomy room to examine the wall. The poster of Indochine was pinned up below my book shelves, on a level with the bed. I used to lie there in the evenings and stare at the sexy French pop stars whose names I could barely pronounce.
I touch the small, brownish-red bull’s-eye drawn on the white wall, and suck in my breath as my fingertip sinks into it.
It’s not a bull’s-eye.
It’s a hole.
CHAPTER FORTY
I leave my bedroom, my heart thumping, and stand on the gloomy landing near the head of the stairs. There are no skylights on the landing, so I turn on the electric light. High above my head, the bulb gives off a sickly, yellowish glow, probably covered in dust.
There are seven rooms on the attic floor. Two long but narrow rooms, used for storage, with low-beamed, sloping roofs. A disused bathroom at the end of the landing, full of dust and scarily vast spiders that scuttle away whenever I opened the door. My bedroom, of course. Plus, three smaller rooms. The attic space is a throwback to the nineteenth-century, Tamsin once explained to me, when the chateau was built by a wealthy French politician for family holidays. He had a dozen servants, mostl
y housed on the top floor. These days, linen and towels are stored in the attic rooms, along with other unwanted household objects like broken lamps and cracked china.
One of these store rooms is situated next to my bedroom.
Exactly behind the hole in my wall.
I try the old-fashioned, round door handle. It’s made of wood, painted black a long time ago. It turns slightly, but does not open the door.
It’s locked.
I go back into the attic bedroom, and press my eye to the hole. I can’t see anything much. A dull, brownish-red material seems to be pressed against the hole on the other side. Paper? I stick my little finger in the hole again. Not paper. The material feels soft, and yields to pressure.
Going back to the head of the stairs, I open my mouth to call Lucille. She must have the key to the storage rooms. But instinct stops me.
I don’t want to involve her. Not just because she’s grieving for Tamsin – we’re both grieving, after all. But who goes in and out of store rooms in this house? And who locked this door to prevent anyone from entering, except the one person with a key? I can think of no earthly reason for my aunt’s housekeeper to be spying on me. Yet she’s the only person who has access to that room.
I go back to the locked door and try the handle again, more forcefully this time. Nothing doing. I glance down at my trainers. Sturdy enough.
I kick the door with my right heel.
It rattles.
I kick the wood panel again, right over the lock area, as hard as I can. Then again. My hair flops in my eyes and I flick it back. Then I back up a few feet and try a flying kick, using all my force.
This time there’s a terrible splintering sound, and the door shudders opens, rotten wood fragments tumbling to the floor. My right foot hurts, a sharp ache extending all the way up my leg.
But the door is open.
I peer inside the store room, my heart thumping. At first glance, there’s nothing particularly exciting. The linen closet is narrow and dark, the window closed and shuttered. There are shelves fitted to the wall on my right, and a tall armoire opposite. Some bin bags have been left behind the door, but when I stoop to open them and look inside, they contain old sheets, threadbare and musty-smelling. Probably left there on Tamsin’s orders. She never liked to throw anything away, even when it was past saving.
Nothing much else.
There’s a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. But when I try the old-fashioned pull cord, it doesn’t work. I drag the heavy shutters open instead, and the tiny room floods with light. I open the window a few inches too, mainly to release the musty smell, and dust motes spin crazily past me in the sunshine.
I stand there a moment, letting my eyes adjust.
The wall shelves to my right are stacked with towels, in neat colour-coded bales, fastened together with white ribbons as though they came back from the laundry service like that. Vast white bath towels mostly, but also white with red stripes, burgundy, lilac, and even a few pale green hand towels, perhaps left over from an old towel set.
I lean past the towels and knock on the white wall behind them.
Plasterboard?
I drag out the white with red stripes bale, dropping them to the floor. Nothing. Just a blank wall. But when I search behind the burgundy bale instead, there it is.
A small hole.
Whoever bored it appears to have drawn around its circumference in thick black pen. To make it easier to find in a hurry? The hole is set quite close to the shelf, which makes me think these shelves were put in after the hole was made. Perhaps to conceal the hole’s existence. With all these towels in place, nobody coming in here would have any idea there was a spyhole at all.
My heart beating fast, I set my eye to the hole again, only this time from the other side.
I’m looking at my bed, in a direct line with where my head would be if I was lying down. If I’d been looking at the Indochine poster at the time, whoever was watching would have been looking straight into my eyes. Assuming the hole was there when I was staying in the chateau first time round. But every instinct tells me it was. Someone has been standing right on this spot, secretly observing me. More specifically, watching me while I’m in bed. Their field of vision would have been broad enough to take in the window too, and at least half the room.
I’m trembling now.
Who made this hole? Who the hell has been watching me in bed, for God’s sake? And why? Horror and embarrassment and fear wash over me as I stand there, staring at the unoccupied space opposite the hole. What did they see me doing?
A gentle creaking sound brings me upright in a hurry. I step over the mess of tumbled towels and stare out onto the landing.
It’s Lucille, coming up the stairs.
She stops and looks back at me in horror. I assume she wasn’t expecting to find the door to the store room open, let alone me in the doorway, framed by light.
‘Did you do this?’ I demand in very ungrammatical French, too furious to bother about getting the words right. I point at the shelves behind me, the now visible spyhole in the wall. ‘Have you been watching me, Lucille?’
‘W … Watching?’
‘For God’s sake, don’t pretend you didn’t know about this. I’m not a fool. Who else put these shelves up and arranged the towels to cover the hole, if not you?’
She does not query what I mean this time, a look of anguish on her face.
‘You don’t seem surprised. Was it you?’
Lucille mutters some kind of denial, and shakes her head. But it’s clear the housekeeper knows more than she’s admitting. She starts wringing her hands, her lips moving silently, as though saying someone’s name over and over. Like a mantra.
My gaze narrows on her lips.
‘Jean-Luc?’ I repeat.
She gasps, and clamps her mouth shut on the name. There’s fear in her eyes now.
‘Was it Jean-Luc who made that spyhole?’
I think of the framed photograph in her room. Jean-Luc. The skinny little boy who looked surprisingly like Robin, only with a savage, sharp-eyed air. The oddly behaved kid who trailed around after us all summer, tolerated by some, despised by others. Always one step behind us, yet never really one of the gang.
‘He’s your son, isn’t he?’ The truth is beginning to fall into place. ‘Jean-Luc is your son.’
Lucille takes a step back, clearly mortified. But there’s a kind of relief in her eyes too.
‘Time for the truth, Lucille.’
She bites her lip, still hesitant, and then gives a quick jerk of her head. ‘Oui,’ she says softly, no longer trying to conceal his existence from me. ‘Jean-Luc is my child.’
‘He lived here? In the chateau?’
‘He shared my room as a small boy, then later he had his own room next to mine. He hated it though. He felt like I was spying on him. So he used to come and … and sleep up here instead. In one of those old rooms.’ She indicates one of the other small rooms off the attic landing. ‘I should have kept a closer eye on him. But I was so busy in those days. And at least I knew he wouldn’t in anyone’s way up here.’
‘By anyone, you mean my aunt?’
Lucille licks her lips, clearly nervous. Then she nods.
‘I take it Tamsin didn’t like Jean-Luc?’
She gives a little shrug but says nothing, almost sullen now.
‘I do remember Jean-Luc, but only vaguely. I don’t think he was around much. He wasn’t very popular with the other kids. And Emily seemed almost to hate him.’ I pause, struggling to recall the times we had spent together. ‘Why?’
‘Emily was spoilt,’ she says sharply. ‘Your cousin didn’t like having another child in the house, stealing attention away from her.’
‘No, that’s not it. I think it’s because Tamsin didn’t like him. But why?’ I see her brows contract, the sudden tension in her face. ‘Who was his father?’
The housekeeper puts a hand to her mouth, visibly distressed. ‘That’s … no
ne of your business.’ She turns, stumbling away down the attic stairs.
Oh shit.
‘Lucille, wait.’ I hurry down the stairs after her, feeling sick. ‘Oh my God … Was it David Halifax? Robin’s father?’ When I reach the landing below, I find that Lucille has stopped and is standing in semi-darkness, staring back in horror. ‘That’s why Tamsin hated seeing him about the place. Jean-Luc looked like Robin. And his dad, more to the point. He looked like David Halifax.’ I nod to myself, suddenly understanding. ‘Jean-Luc was a constant reminder that you’d had an affair with him behind Tamsin’s back.’
She stiffens. ‘I didn’t have an affaire with David Halifax. How dare you?’
‘What was it, then?’
‘It was one night,’ Lucille says, her face gaunt. ‘One night. Nothing more.’
‘But one night was enough.’
‘It was a terrible mistake, and we both regretted it the next morning. We were in Australia, filming on location. It was such a remote place, incredibly hot, and we’d been there for weeks.’ She looks away, her expression pained, as though remembering. ‘David came to see Madame without any warning, a surprise visit. But Tamsin was in someone else’s trailer that night. Her co-star on the film.’ She shrugs, still defending her mistress even now. ‘David was furious. It was unfair of him, I thought. Madame couldn’t be expected to be exclusive when he wasn’t.’
‘David Halifax was a married man.’
‘But not happily married.’
‘That’s hardly an excuse for adultery.’
Lucille makes a face, clearly dismissing my attitude as bourgeois. ‘David wanted to leave straightaway, but I persuaded him to stay. I told him to wait. We sat and had a few drinks together.’ She bites her lip, looking away. ‘David Halifax was a very handsome man in those days. And persuasive with it.’
‘You slept with him.’
‘I hated myself for it afterwards. It was an act of betrayal. But I didn’t dare tell Madame. Not even when I realised I was carrying his child.’