Lizzie looked at her. Anna met her eyes defiantly but behind the bluster and bravado, Lizzie could see another Anna Robsart, the one who had hidden her grief when her mother had died, whilst her hatred and resentment festered because she thought no one else cared enough, no one had done enough to save her. She saw the Anna who loved Johnny fiercely and had tried to comfort him, and the girl who had never meant to kill her sister but had lost her temper because, as Arthur had once said, she sometimes went way too far.
‘I truly didn’t mean it to happen,’ Anna said, and in that moment, she crumbled, and her voice shook, and Sam gave a muttered curse and got up to pull her into another clumsy hug.
Lizzie stood up as quietly as she could. She wanted to slip away, unwilling to spectate on this family tragedy anymore. It felt horrible and intrusive. She knew the police would want to question her but that could wait. She already knew she wouldn’t press charges against Anna. The whole hideous mess would hardly be helped if she did; as it was, Anna would have to live with what she had done for the rest of her life.
Arthur looked up and for a moment their eyes met but he said nothing, nothing at all, and Lizzie turned and walked away, out into the daylight that felt like another world.
Back at The High, Lizzie found both Jules and Avery waiting. She took one look at them and burst into tears.
‘I’ll run you a bath,’ Jules said. She couldn’t deal with tears; it was left to Avery to enfold Lizzie in her arms and soothe her like a child while she poured out the whole story.
‘Is it over now?’ Lizzie finally pulled away from Avery, pushed the hair back from her hot face and wiped her eyes. ‘It has to be over because otherwise how can it have been worth it?’
Avery, her face full of sorrow, stroked Lizzie’s hair just like her grandmother had done when she was a child. ‘I don’t know,’ she said regretfully. ‘I hope so.’
Later Arthur rang. The police had come, he said, and Anna had broken down completely. He and Johnny were bearing up as well as they could. They both wanted to see her, but in a little while, when Johnny was stronger.
‘Any time,’ Lizzie said. She could barely breathe, it felt as though there was so much she wanted to say. ‘Come any time.’
A fortnight went by. Lizzie went to the local art class. She was worse than even she had anticipated, utterly unable to draw anything recognisable though she had better success with abstract painting. No one seemed to care, though. They were just pleased she was there, which she found rather nice. She went to yoga, which wasn’t at all like the class at her London studio but was absolutely fine all the same. She found a piano tuner and a gardener, neither of whom posted photos of her on social media. Avery suggested that she should get some exercise by walking a dog for the Blue Cross shelter nearby. Lizzie chose a miniature spaniel with sad eyes called Perry whose previous owners had had to give him up when they had twins. Two days later, Perry moved into The High. The two of them got into a routine of sorts; Lizzie found it soothing.
And then, one afternoon, Arthur was there. Lizzie was playing with Perry in the garden when the dog gave a tiny yip and barrelled over to the gate where he then sat, tail wagging in the leaves, begging for attention.
‘Your dog is very well trained,’ Arthur said. He let himself in, bending to stroke Perry’s velvety head. The dog promptly rolled over, begging for his stomach to be tickled.
Arthur straightened. ‘I never imagined you as a dog person,’ he said.
‘I grew up with dogs,’ Lizzie said. Her throat was dry, her heart beating fast, ‘At least when I was staying with Jules’s family.’ She felt a pang of nostalgia. ‘I wanted a dog when I moved to London,’ she said, ‘but I was too busy. It wouldn’t have been fair.’
‘You could have got your assistant to look after it,’ Arthur said, ‘or found one that fitted into a handbag.’
‘Kat doesn’t like dogs,’ Lizzie said. ‘The clue is in her name.’ She smiled at Perry. ‘Besides, if I have a pet I want to look after it myself otherwise what’s the point? He’s not just an accessory.’ She raised her gaze to Arthur and sighed. They could carry on talking about dogs for ever or they could be brave.
‘Would you like to come in?’ she asked. ‘There’s some coffee – or lemonade. Avery makes it for me.’
Arthur followed her over to the terrace and into the kitchen, Perry trotting along behind. ‘You seem… settled… here,’ he said. There was a question in his voice.
‘It’s early days,’ Lizzie said, ‘but I think I may be.’ She gestured him to a chair and poured lemonade from the painted jug. Her hand shook a little, spilling drops of liquid onto the table. ‘Arthur—’ she said, but she didn’t know how to continue, what to say.
‘I thought you’d like to know how Johnny’s getting on,’ Arthur said. He sounded distant. Lizzie’s heart ached.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Please. I hope he’s doing OK.’
‘He’s pretty subdued,’ Arthur said, ‘but he’s back at school and he’s seeing a counsellor and I think he’ll be fine in a while.’ He stretched his legs out, sitting back. ‘He wanted to come with me today, actually, but I told him I needed to talk to you alone first. He says he’s got a lot of explaining to do and he hopes you’ll forgive him. He really means it this time.’
‘Right,’ Lizzie said. She scrubbed at the spilt juice, avoiding his gaze.
‘Lizzie,’ Arthur said. ‘It’s not your fault. Johnny took advantage of all of us in different ways because he was so obsessed with breaking the pattern and bringing Amelia back. There was no space in his life for anything else. And the truth of what Anna did would have come out even without your involvement. None of this is your fault.’
‘I know,’ Lizzie said. She swallowed hard. ‘I know that really. It’s just…’ She took a breath. ‘I feel as though my actions shattered what was left of your family,’ she confessed. ‘Even though I never intended it.’
When Arthur didn’t deny it or reassure her, she felt a little bit sick. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was that they had barely started to know each other and now they were strangers again. She wanted to ask if they could try again but that sounded both needy and selfish, and she shied away.
‘How is Anna?’ she asked instead.
Arthur grimaced. He took a mouthful of the lemonade.
‘They’ve charged Anna with manslaughter,’ he said evenly. He moved his glass in slow circles of the table. ‘Her defence team think they can get her off, though, by explaining how affected she was by Jessica’s death. They’re calling Amelia’s fall an accident that happened in the heat of the moment.’ For a moment he was very still then he sighed. ‘I’m not sure Anna wants to be found innocent, though. She’s broken down completely.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ Lizzie said. ‘Your family had already gone through so much,’ she said. ‘It feels almost unbearable, except of course somehow you have to bear it.’
‘We’ll get through it,’ Arthur said. ‘We’re strong enough. It’s better to know the truth anyway. Like I said, secrets have a way of coming out in the end.’
‘Yes.’ Lizzie’s heart sank as she remembered the last secret of them all. She went over to the dresser, sliding open the drawer and taking out the little silver phoenix that had hung on the driving mirror in Arthur’s car.
‘I have something of yours that I need to give back,’ she said. ‘I found it in my bedroom. I think it must have fallen on the floor of your car when the chain broke and somehow got snagged on my coat.’
Arthur was very still. He didn’t take it from her outstretched hand so after a moment she put it on the table. ‘It had the initials JG in it,’ Lizzie said. ‘I guessed it had belonged to Jenna, your Jenna.’
‘I didn’t realise I’d lost it,’ Arthur said. He cleared his throat. ‘I kept it in the car like a little talisman. It was just a stupid, small thing, a present I gave Jenna when we got engaged. The phoenix is supposed to signify endurance and eternal life. I was into all that spirit
ual stuff at the time and I thought it was a nice way to show I’d love her for ever without sounding too sentimental about it.’
He looked at Lizzie. ‘You read it, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘You read its history.’
‘I didn’t do it deliberately,’ Lizzie said. ‘I wish I hadn’t but you know how this works – I have no warning. Sometimes I see things and sometimes I don’t. It’s fickle, this gift. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like it. I didn’t want to read the talisman.’ She stopped. ‘It felt private,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to know.’
Arthur was silent. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. When it came to reading Arthur, it only worked when he wanted her to do it. She thought it was only fair that he should be able to deny her that insight but his reserve, his impenetrability, made this doubly difficult. She couldn’t leave it unsaid, though. She was committed now. This was the last secret between them and it had to be laid to rest, no matter what happened afterwards.
‘I always wondered why you hated Dudley so much,’ she said slowly. ‘I sensed it in you from the very first. I knew you disliked me, and I thought that was because you believed I was having an affair with Dudley, but you hated Dudley even more. I thought it was because of what had happened to Amelia. That was a part of it, of course, but it wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was Jenna.’ She waited, but Arthur said nothing. Still she could not read any of his emotions. That door was slammed in her face but she could feel the tension coming off him like static.
‘Avery said that there were three other cases she knew of that mirrored in some way Amy Robsart’s death,’ Lizzie said. ‘There was Amethyst Green, the serving maid at Oakhangar, and there was Amyas Latimer, the clerk in Oxford. There was Amelia, of course. But there was a fourth, someone called Mia.’
‘Mia was Jenna’s real name,’ Arthur said. His voice sounded dull.
‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘I didn’t work it out straight away because of the names, but of course Jenna Gascoyne was her stage name; her real name was Mia Roberts.’ She took a gulp of the lemonade. It felt cool and sweet, soothing.
‘Avery told me that Jenna couldn’t cope with the pressures that came with her work,’ Lizzie said. ‘You told me yourself that she was messed up and you did everything you could to help and support her. Everyone says the same; that Jenna developed anorexia and her life spiralled into depression and drug-taking and she died. What the reports don’t say—’ she cleared her throat, ‘what I saw when I touched the phoenix, was that Jenna had been partying with Dudley’s band, with Call Back Summer, just before she died. It was Dudley who gave her the drugs – and was too pissed to save her when she fell in the swimming pool at Oakhangar. It was an accident, but in so many ways he was culpable all the same.’
Arthur stirred at last. ‘The band’s management hushed it up because it would have been too damaging,’ he said. His voice was rough. ‘It would have finished them. I only found out two years ago. Millie told me. She said Dudley had let slip one night that Jenna had died in the pool at Oakhangar. Millie had been away at the time because it was whilst Jessica was ill. She badgered the whole story out of him.’ Arthur ran a hand through his hair. ‘It was the beginning of the end for them really. I don’t think Millie ever thought Dudley was faithful to her but the thought of him getting high with her brother’s fiancée whilst she was away with her dying mother…’ His face twisted. ‘It was pretty horrific. It sounded like some mad orgy of drink and drugs and by the end of it Jenna was dead and everything was a godforsaken mess.’ He looked at Lizzie properly for the first time. ‘I guess Dudley never told you?’
‘Dudley never said a word to me,’ Lizzie said. ‘If he had, do you think I would have hidden it from you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Arthur said. He sounded tired. ‘After all, I hid it from you. I could have told you, but I didn’t.’
Lizzie swallowed the hurt. Of course Arthur had hidden it from her. It had been devastating, shattering his life. And she had been Dudley’s friend. Arthur would never have confided.
Arthur shifted slightly, angling his body towards her. ‘I loved Jenna,’ he said, ‘properly loved her, I mean. Yes, we were young and it might have all gone wrong in time but to me at that time it felt real and mature and more important than anything.’
Lizzie nodded. ‘I can’t say I understand,’ she said, ‘because I’ve never experienced that sort of first love. I’ve always protected myself against feeling too much. But I understand that it could be like that for you.’
‘What hurt the most when I found out,’ Arthur said after a moment, ‘was realising that Jenna hadn’t felt the same about me as I did about her. When I heard about the party… That she’d been sleeping with Dudley…’ He shook his head. ‘I’d been so grief-stricken when she died and it felt as though I’d never known her. It felt like such a betrayal; it almost killed me.’
‘Perhaps Jenna did love you as much as you loved her,’ Lizzie said. ‘We all make mistakes, Arthur, and we can all be self-destructive when we’re unhappy.’
Arthur looked up. He gave her his heart-shaking smile and for the first time, Lizzie felt a shred of warmth.
‘That’s a very generous thing to say,’ he said, ‘and I think I’ve come to terms with it now, but—’ he shrugged, ‘for the last couple of years, since I found out, it just about ate me up.’ His gaze focussed on her, sudden and intent. ‘When I met you, I could see it happening all over again,’ he said. ‘Another crazy, mixed-up girl—’ he gave her a wry smile, ‘whom I really, really liked and wished I didn’t.’
Lizzie’s heart stuttered and then started to race.
‘You said you knew I disliked you,’ Arthur said. ‘That was the least of it. I knew there was a connection between us but I didn’t want to get involved with you. Why would I? You were Dudley’s friend, maybe more than just a friend, and I’d already lost two people I loved as a result of Dudley’s selfishness. He was never directly culpable and yet it always came back to him in some way. So I thought it best to steer clear of you.’
‘I understand,’ Lizzie said. She swallowed hard. ‘I guess,’ she said, struggling for lightness, ‘that it wouldn’t have worked between us anyway. I mean, we may have been following some sort of pattern laid down in the sixteenth century, but Queen Elizabeth I never had a thing going on with Amy’s brother Arthur Robsart, did she? From what I’ve read of her it sounds as though she spent the rest of her life alternatively pining for Robert Dudley and trying to make him jealous with other men, which sounds pretty ghastly to me but hey, she had to do what she had to do.’
‘We don’t have to follow the sixteenth century pattern too closely,’ Arthur said. The underlying thread of humour was back in his vioce. ‘I don’t think Robert Dudley did too well out of it either. He might have been loaded with money and titles but he didn’t get to marry Elizabeth, and his enemies used Amy’s death as a stick to beat him with for the rest of his life. I came across a particularly cutting epitaph to him the other day.’ He took a breath and quoted wryly: ‘Here lies the constant husband whose love was as firm as smoke.’
‘Ouch,’ Lizzie said. ‘That’s harsh but probably deserved.’
Silence fell. The peace of The High seemed to flow around them, soft and timeless. Perry, curled up at Lizzie’s feet, twitched in a dog dream.
‘I hope he’ll get on with Charlie and Lola,’ Arthur said, looking at Perry. ‘My dogs,’ he added, smiling at Lizzie. ‘I’m sure he will.’ He stirred. ‘I want to finish this, Lizzie,’ he said. ‘Once and for all. I want to be sure it’s over.’
‘You mean the recurring pattern of Amy’s death,’ Lizzie said cautiously, ‘not…’
Arthur looked horrified. He reached across the table and took her hands in his. ‘No! God no. Sorry. No, not us.’ He smiled at her. ‘We’ve only just begun,’ he said softly. ‘But I don’t want us, or Johnny, or anyone else’s life overshadowed by this again. We have to end it now.’
Lizzie nodded. ‘I’ve
been thinking about this,’ she said. ‘Now the truth is out that Anna killed Amelia, Amy Robsart’s spirit may be appeased and the curse broken. In every other instance the truth was hushed up – Amy’s death, and Amyas Latimer, and Amethyst Green…’ She tightened her grip on Arthur’s hands. ‘And Jenna,’ she said. ‘We don’t know exactly what happened to all of them,’ she said, ‘and probably we never will. The story was similar but different every time, but now at least the truth is free.’
She stood up, pulling Arthur to his feet too. ‘I have an idea,’ she said. ‘I need to talk to Avery and I need a little time.’ She reached up and kissed him. ‘Come back tomorrow,’ she said.
Arthur put his arms about her and joy swept through her, wrapping itself around her heart. It felt good.
‘I’ll go,’ he said, kissing her again. ‘But I will be back.’
‘For a crazy, mixed-up girl you never wanted to get involved with,’ Lizzie said. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, Arthur…’
‘Hey…’ Arthur brushed away her tears with the pad of his thumb. ‘We can do this.’
‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. Her fragile heart was just starting to believe it. ‘I’m used to being on my own,’ she cautioned. ‘I’m not good at relationships. It was always easier to manage by myself. I guess—’ she swallowed hard, ‘perhaps I never felt that lovable.’
‘I’ll show you that you are,’ Arthur promised. He rubbed his cheek against her hair. ‘Besides, you have Jules and Avery and Johnny as well as me.’ He nodded to the snoring dog. ‘And Perry, of course.’
Lizzie giggled. ‘It’s nice having people – and dogs – you love in your life.’
‘I’ll take that as a declaration,’ Arthur said. ‘I love you too. But you know that—’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘You can read me like a book.’
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