Amy did so, and after a brief conversation with the gallery owner, went to get her coat from the peg on the wall.
‘Mr Grieves says your mum called in sick ten days ago, and he hasn’t heard from her since. I’m going round there now. Can you mind the children for a bit?’
She got the usual shrug, and before she burst with fury at his lack of concern for his mother – or in fact, for anyone but himself – she left the house.
She drove along the High Street, trying to take pleasure from the pretty lights framing the shop windows and the bustle of excitement on the crowded pavements. It was simply a relief to get out of the house, even if she was deeply concerned about Posy. It was so unlike her mother-in-law not to call to check in or answer her mobile. And, buried deep in her own problems, Amy realised she hadn’t noticed.
‘Please be okay, darling Posy,’ she begged the darkening skies.
When she arrived at Admiral House, Amy saw Posy’s car sitting in the drive. She walked round to the kitchen door, hoping her sense of dread was manufactured from stress and not real. The kitchen was in darkness and the radio – which was permanently tuned to Radio 4 and normally talked to itself in the background – was unusually silent.
‘Posy? It’s Amy. Where are you?’ she called as she went into the morning room to find that deserted too.
Having searched all the downstairs rooms – including the loo – Amy continued to call Posy’s name as she walked up the stairs. The master bedroom door was shut and as she tapped on it, her imagination conjured up visions of what she might find behind it. Receiving no answer, she garnered some courage and pushed it open, almost crying with relief to see the bed empty and neatly made. She then made a sweep of all the other rooms, pausing in the bedroom Sebastian had used when he’d been here and made love to her so gently . . .
‘Stop it!’ she hissed to herself, then turned and left to check the attic floor above. That too was deserted, and it was clear that Posy wasn’t at home. Yet her car was . . .
Running back down the endless flights of stairs, Amy tore along the corridors towards the kitchen, her head full of images of Posy having collapsed days ago in the garden, lying there alone and in pain, or even worse . . .
‘Hello, Amy,’ a familiar voice said as she entered the kitchen. The lights were now on and Posy stood by the Aga in her Barbour, warming her hands and waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘Oh my God! Oh my God, Posy!’ Amy panted and sat down heavily on a chair. ‘I thought you were, I thought you were . . .’
‘Dead?’ Posy looked at Amy and smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
‘Yes, to be honest. Where have you been? You haven’t been answering the phone, you haven’t been at work . . .’
‘I’ve been here. Tea?’
‘I’d love one, thank you.’
Amy studied Posy. She looked the same physically, but something about her was different. It was as if all her joie de vivre – which encompassed not only her zest for life, but her kindness and concern for those around her – had been sucked out.
‘There.’ Posy put the mug down in front of Amy. ‘I’m afraid I only have biscuits from a shop. I haven’t done any baking recently.’
‘I’m fine, really.’
She watched as Posy poured her own tea, but didn’t move to join Amy at the table as she usually would. ‘Have you been ill?’ she ventured.
‘No, I’m in my usual fine fettle, thank you,’ Posy replied.
Amy realised she’d never had to ‘lead’ a conversation with her mother-in-law before, and she was struggling. Posy was normally so interested in hearing her news.
‘What have you been doing?’
‘I’ve been in the garden mostly.’
‘Right.’
A silence fell between them and Amy didn’t know how to fill it.
‘Posy, is it about Sam and what happened?’ she asked eventually. ‘I’m so sorry, I mean, I’m sure you’ll get another buyer and—’
‘It’s not about Sam, Amy. For once, it’s actually about me.’
‘Oh, right. Is it anything I can help with?’
‘No, dear, but thank you for asking. I’ve just had something I needed to think about, that’s all.’
‘About the house?’
‘I suppose that is part of it, yes.’
Amy sipped her tea, realising that she wasn’t going to get any further information out of Posy.
‘Tammy’s been trying to contact you about coming to collect your mother’s old clothes.’
‘Actually, I’ve boxed them all up and put them in the stables. Tell her she can collect them any time.’
Amy saw Posy give a sudden strange shudder.
‘Right, I will. I like Tammy a lot, actually, and it’s just a shame that . . . well.’ Unable to stand it any longer, Amy stood up. ‘I’d better be getting back, but if there’s anything I can do, please tell me, Posy.’
‘Thank you, dear. Send my love to Sam and the children.’
‘I will.’
Amy put her cup in the sink and walked to the back door. She turned and looked at Posy.
‘We all love you very much. Goodbye, Posy.’
‘Goodbye.’
Driving home, Amy stared mutely ahead. Up until now, she hadn’t realised what a huge cradle Posy had provided over the years with her endlessly positive outlook and practical but sensitive advice. She stopped at the supermarket to buy pasta and baking potatoes, which would hopefully take the family through until her salary came in next Wednesday. With the last of her money, she added a six-pack of beer to her basket and went to the checkout to pay.
As she stood waiting to be served, Amy pictured Posy’s expression in her mind’s eye.
And realised she had looked broken.
Posy stood in the morning room and watched the tail lights of Amy’s car disappear down the drive of Admiral House. Twinges of guilt that she had not been the usual Posy plagued her, but just now, she simply couldn’t be. In fact, she wasn’t even sure whether the ‘usual’ Posy was really ‘her’ anyway, or merely a persona she had developed and worn like a favourite cardigan, tightly wrapped around her to hide the fearful, confused soul who lived inside it.
Well, the cardigan had been well and truly stripped away in the past ten days, moth-eaten as it was after all these years. After Freddie had told her and handed her the file, she’d somehow driven home, let herself in, then climbed up the stairs to bed. And there she’d lain for almost three days, only rousing herself to use the bathroom and drink some water from her tooth mug. Somewhere in the background, she’d heard the telephone ringing, but she hadn’t answered it.
She’d spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling but not actually seeing it as she went through the endless algorithms of her brain to try to make sense of what Freddie had told her. Realising it was an impossible task, she’d slept a lot instead – perhaps, she thought, it had been her body’s way of protecting her, because the pain and shock were so dreadful. She was grieving all over again for a father she realised she’d never known and a mother whom she had known all too well.
A crime of passion . . . a brutal murder . . .
Posy had realised it was both.
What hurt the most was the betrayal of everything she had believed about her father for over sixty years. And there was not the slightest doubt that Freddie was telling the truth. When she’d eventually dared to open the file, she’d seen the headlines splashed all over the newspapers.
BUTTERFLY ROOM MURDER LATEST!! . . . WIFE AND LOVER CAUGHT IN FLAGRANTE BY SPITFIRE PILOT HUSBAND! . . . WAR HERO ANDERSON TO HANG!!
At first, she’d snapped the file closed quickly, knowing the salacious details could bring her nothing but further pain. Freddie had handed it to her as proof because at the time, she simply couldn’t accept what he was telling her. Subsequently, she’d realised everything made perfect sense. She knew her darling grandmother must have done all she could to protect her: stuck out in the middle
of Cornwall for all those years, there was little chance of her hearing that her beloved father was in prison and subsequently being tried for the murder of Uncle Ralph.
‘Freddie’s father,’ she murmured, still incredulous at the thought.
And of course, she’d been named in the newspapers as ‘Adriana Rose’ – the very thing that had alerted Freddie to who she really was the night he’d proposed to her. There had been nothing to connect ‘Posy’, the little girl who lived in a tiny village near Bodmin Moor, to the terrible thing happening far away on a gallows in London.
Posy only wished she could have asked her beloved grandmother how she had borne the ignominy and pain of her son being tried for murder and subsequently hung for his crime. Images of Granny’s pale, strained features floated back to her . . . that day when the telegram had arrived a few hours before her mother – come to tell her that her father was dead – and all the times she had gone away to London, probably to visit and then say a final goodbye to her son . . .
‘How would she have coped with Maman?’ she’d muttered to the ceiling. The wife of her son, whose actions had pushed him to kill another human being.
She’d subsequently read in the old newspapers that her father’s defence had pleaded that, after years of risking his life to protect his country, Lawrence had not been of sound mind. They’d begged for leniency, for a war hero whose nerves had been stripped raw by the lottery of possible death he’d been subjected to day after day as he flew across Europe. Apparently, the trial had divided the country, and provided the media with plenty of fodder to fill their pages as public opinion swung backwards and forwards.
And what if he had lived? Been sentenced instead to life imprisonment? she’d thought. Would they have told me then . . .?
What burnt in her heart the most was the way her mother had left the country almost immediately and moved swiftly on, as if her old life was an unwanted dress; she’d cast it off and quickly acquired a new one.
‘And leaving me behind,’ she’d added out loud, further tears coming to her eyes. ‘Oh Granny, why aren’t you here to talk to?’
Eventually, she’d roused herself from her bed and taken sanctuary in the only place she could find comfort. For once, she’d been grateful for the weeds that sprang up in the flower beds no matter what the season. As she’d tugged them from the earth, her senses had begun to clear, but so many questions filled her thoughts that she nearly went mad with frustration. Granny and Daisy were both gone, and the one person who could help her make sense of these thoughts was the person she could never see again. Her father had murdered his father, destroyed his childhood, as she had floated through hers unaware.
Posy had shuddered as she remembered the many times she’d waxed lyrical about her father to Freddie, especially in the early days, and realised it was Freddie who was the real victim in this. No wonder he had left her when he’d discovered who she really was. Not Posy, the woman he’d once said lit up his life, but Adriana Rose, the daughter of the man who had taken his father away forever.
Of course he’d presumed she’d known, that fifty years on, someone would have told her, but they hadn’t. Posy had thought back again to the moment she’d returned to Southwold and Admiral House with her young family and husband. She’d searched her mind and vaguely recalled some strange looks from one or two of the locals. She’d assumed at the time that they were to do with a stranger arriving in the midst of their small community, but in retrospect, the real reason was clearly something different.
She felt so ashamed – tainted by the past her father had created for her, a past that had haunted her to this day and, through the irony of life, changed the course of her own. Without his actions, Freddie and she would have been married as they had planned, had children together, a happy life . . .
‘Do I hate my father?’ she’d asked the gardening fork, as it burrowed beneath the frost-hardened soil to find the roots of a weed.
It was a question she’d asked herself over and over again, but her heart still refused to offer a verdict. She almost expected it to send her one of those ‘out of office’ emails that so irritated her; she only hoped it would return from its break soon and give her an answer.
Posy sipped the rest of her tea, listening to the silence in the house and shivering. To top it all, any chance of moving away from the very building that had witnessed the tragedy and making a fresh start in some purer air was now on hold. No wonder Freddie had been eager for her to move on. How he could bear to come near a house where his father had been slaughtered in cold blood, she just didn’t know.
Now, having licked her wounds for the past ten days, Posy realised the only way she could survive was to think of the future. She could put Admiral House on the open market, sell it, and maybe move away completely from Southwold. But what of her beloved grandchildren, her job and her life here? She’d seen a number of her contemporaries retire and move away to the sun, but she was single and alone; and besides, if she knew one thing for certain, it was that the past went with you, however much you tried to run away from it. And maybe this house and all that had happened here was her destiny: like Miss Havisham and her lost love, she would sit here until she died, slowly rotting away with Admiral House . . .
‘Stop it, Posy!’
Amy’s visit had broken the spell. The one thing that horrified Posy more than anything else was the thought of being seen as a victim.
‘Enough of your self-indulgence – you have to pull yourself together,’ she told herself. The thought of Amy running home to tell her son his mother was losing it enough to fire her up.
That begged another question: would she tell her boys what she had just discovered about their grandfather . . .?
No, was her brain’s instinctive reply.
‘Yes,’ she said out loud. Look where protecting one’s children had got her. Besides, they were both grown adults and had never even known their grandfather. Yes, when the time was right in the future, she would tell them.
She walked over to the radio and firmly switched it back on. Then she gathered together the ingredients to make a cake, which she would take over to her grandchildren tomorrow.
Posy began to sieve the flour into a bowl. Order was restored. For now . . .
‘And where have you been?’
Amy looked at Sam, swaying menacingly in the doorway of the sitting room. She could see he was drunk, but where he’d got the money to buy more alcohol, she’d no idea. There was no way he could have found her secret stash, was there . . .?
‘At your mother’s, Sam. I’m worried about her. She’s not herself at all.’
‘Bitching about me, were you?’
‘No, of course not. I just told you, I’m worried about her,’ she repeated. ‘Have the kids had anything to eat?’ She took the shopping through to the kitchen and dumped it on the table.
‘There wasn’t anything to eat, Amy, as you well know.’
She watched Sam’s eyes light up when he saw the beers. He grabbed a bottle, popped the top off and took a deep swig. Biting her tongue to prevent herself from saying he looked as though he’d already had enough, she went into the sitting room, where Jake and Sara were glued to a video.
‘Hi, you two,’ she said, kissing them both. ‘I’m going to put on some pasta for tea. It won’t be long, promise.’
‘Okay Mummy.’ Jake barely looked away from the screen.
She walked back into the kitchen to begin preparing supper.
‘What is it?’ Sam asked her.
‘Pasta.’
‘Not more bloody pasta! It’s all I’ve had for the past two weeks!’
‘Sam, there’s no money for anything else!’
‘Oh yes there is. I found some cash in the bottom of the wardrobe.’
‘That’s for the kids’ Christmas presents, Sam! You haven’t taken it, have you?’
‘You haven’t taken it, have you?’ he mimicked her cruelly. ‘Don’t trust me, then? Thought I was meant to be your
husband,’ he said as he opened another bottle of beer.
‘You’re my husband, Sam, and you’re also a father. Surely you want the kids to have some presents?’
‘Course I do, but why does it always seem that my needs come last, eh? Eh?’ Sam came up behind her, leaning over her as she took the boiling kettle to pour the water into the pan.
‘Careful, Sam, I’ll spill the water.’
Amy was aware from his breath at her shoulder that he was very, very drunk. He must have found her stash and gone out to the off-licence whilst she was out. She walked to the hob and filled the saucepan with boiling water, then added the pasta.
‘I know that’s not the only cash in the house, Amy.’
‘Of course it is. I only wish there was more stashed, but there isn’t.’
‘I know you’re lying.’
‘Really, Sam, I’m not.’
‘Well, I’m not prepared to have any more bloody pasta! I want a takeaway and a decent bottle of wine, so you’d better tell me where it is.’
‘There’s no more money anywhere, Sam, I swear.’
‘Tell me where it is, Amy.’
Sam swiped the bubbling pan from the hob.
‘Put that down before you spill it, please!’ Amy was frightened now.
‘Not until you tell me where you’re keeping the rest of the cash!’
‘No, I can’t because there isn’t any, really!’
Amy watched the steaming water splash out onto the kitchen tiles as he walked towards her.
‘Sam, for the last time, I promise, there isn’t—’
‘You’re lying!’ Sam hurled the pan in her direction. The contents came at her like a small tidal wave, and she gave a cry as she felt searing hot agony hit her legs before the pan clattered to the floor.
Sam then lurched towards her and grabbed her by the shoulders.
‘I just want to know where you’ve hidden the money.’
‘I – I haven’t,’ she cried out. She wrenched herself out of his grasp and staggered to the hallway, but felt his hand grip the back of her shirt to spin her around and pin her against the wall. She tried to push him away, scratching and clawing at him, but he was too strong.
The Butterfly Room Page 41