Fear in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  But something had to be done, and the image of a large bag of specially formulated milk powder for baby animals, waiting only a quarter of a mile away, spurred her on, quelling the bubbling fear that threatened to prevent her from going outside at all, once it got dark.

  She pulled on boots, gloves, hat and coat, shut both dogs in the conservatory and was just opening the front door when the phone rang.

  She almost didn’t answer it, thinking it was Lucy. If so, she would have to report the death of the mother rabbit. On the other hand, if it was Lucy, she could shoulder the decision as to what should be done with the babies. So she turned back and picked up the phone.

  At first she couldn’t make sense of what was being said. ‘Could you come, do you think? There isn’t anybody else at such short notice. They’ve all got their own families. Just for a couple of hours, until I get home.’

  Eventually she worked out that it was Simon Newby, asking her to babysit his boys until he could get home to them. ‘Or Tony,’ he amended. ‘I mean, it might be Tony who gets there first. I’m trying to get hold of him.’

  Why me? Thea wanted to shout at him. You hardly know me. But she had been at Nicky’s party, demonstrating her competence and goodwill. ‘Where’s Janina?’ she asked.

  ‘I told you,’ he snapped. ‘She’s got to go back to Sofia tonight. Her stepmother’s been in a car crash and there’s nobody to take charge of the little brothers.’

  He had not told her properly, burbling about an airport and sudden changes. ‘Tonight?’ she echoed incredulously. ‘When exactly did the accident happen?’

  ‘Yesterday, I think. Look…I realise this is a dreadful imposition. But the kids like you, and to be honest, I think they need a woman. I’d ask Kate, but she’ll be too busy with her sheep and Granfer. He isn’t at all well. We had all this before. There just aren’t enough women around these days.’

  She wanted to tell him about the rabbits and the dogs, and her disabling anxieties about going out. But she was, at heart, glad to have been asked. Just to be remembered as somebody who might come to the rescue was flattering. ‘Where are you now?’ she wanted to know.

  He sighed deeply. ‘At the hotel. I’m always at the hotel. If you can’t come, I’ll have to have the boys here. It wouldn’t be the first time, but it’s far from ideal. They’re not really old enough…’ He tailed off, and Thea could imagine the difficulties all too clearly.

  ‘Is somebody collecting Ben from school?’

  ‘Oh yes. Janina’s doing that. She’s ordered a taxi to the airport for four o’clock. God knows how she got herself packed in time.’

  By Thea’s calculations, the au pair had had all day for that. A new thought struck her. ‘The police,’ she blurted. ‘Have they said it’s all right for her to go?’

  After a short silence, Simon said, ‘You mean they think she’s a suspect for my wife’s murder?’ He gave a little snort. ‘I think they abandoned that idea quite a little while ago.’

  What have I missed? she wondered. Was the whole investigation over and done with, and she never even knew? Why would she find that so enormously startling?

  ‘OK…well, it’s ten past three now. I have a lot of things to do here. I am being paid to do them, after all,’ she added defensively. ‘It would be a stretch to get done by four.’ It would be impossible if she were to attempt to feed the baby rabbits. Even acquiring the necessities would take longer than that. ‘What time are you coming back?’

  ‘Seven at the absolute latest. All you have to do is those three hours.’

  ‘Can I bring the dog?’ she asked daftly.

  ‘Of course. Benjy loves your dog. Besides, we’re convinced she’s your daemon – how could you manage without her?’

  Demon? She let it pass, suspecting she’d failed to grasp an allusion that anyone else would get instantly.

  She persuaded herself that the rabbits would survive for a few more hours, nestled in their box in her bedroom, the door securely shut. Not only were they potential prey for the bizarrely murderous Jimmy, but Spirit the cat was undoubtedly at least as great a danger. She hurriedly fed the donkey and the remaining rabbits, and scrambled into her car at six minutes to four, the dog following her unenthusiastically. ‘Your supper will have to wait until we get back,’ Thea told her. ‘It’s too early to have it now.’

  She arrived with a whole three minutes to spare, ahead of the taxi. Janina threw open the door, her eyes red and her hair in a mess. ‘Oh, God, you are so good,’ she exclaimed. ‘Such a good woman. I feel so very terrible and guilty about all this. It is like knives in my heart, to leave the boys at this time. And it is all stupid Bunny’s fault.’

  Thea flinched at this fearless breaking of the taboo concerning speaking ill of the dead. Mightn’t there be a thunderbolt any moment now, as a result?

  ‘Are they all right?’ she asked, only now really facing the implications of this drastic new loss. ‘I suppose they can’t be, really.’

  ‘I told them I am coming back,’ said Janina in a quiet voice. ‘But it is not true. My stepmother’s neck is broken. I guess she might never walk again.’

  Or move her arms, thought Thea with an icy shiver. A paraplegic, with four small sons. ‘That’s dreadful,’ she said.

  ‘She was driving fast on an icy road. We have told her to be more careful, but she never listens.’

  Which only made it worse, thought Thea.

  ‘Listen,’ said the girl urgently. ‘I have things I must say. Things I ought to tell Simon, but he—Well, never mind. He is a child, in many ways, like a lot of men. Bunny did not talk to him like a grown man, and that was how it rested between them. Do you understand?’

  ‘Not really,’ frowned Thea. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘Bunny – she had a lot of stupid ideas. About men abusing her sons, and the world being full of danger and risk. She was full of hate and fear. So stupid.’ Janina shuddered. ‘But she never said these things to Simon. He would not listen to them, just smiled and laughed if she was worried about anything. Always told her things would be fine, that everything was working well. And I…I was always on his side. Always thinking he was right. But now, she is dead. So she could have been the one who knew best, after all.’

  An engine outside announced the taxi, and Janina wrung her hands. ‘I do not know what is true any more,’ she wailed. ‘Perhaps the world is cruel and sick, as Bunny said. But listen, Thea Osborne…the important thing is that Simon knows nothing. We have protected him, in our different ways, even Ben. Even Tony. Everybody. So Simon is innocent, do you understand? More innocent than little Nicky even. More innocent than your fluffy spaniel.’

  Thea’s mind seized up under this urgent lastminute assault. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK…now you’ll have to go. You can phone me, if you like, tomorrow.’ She grabbed paper from the hall table and rooted for a pen amongst the scatter of junk mail and newspapers. ‘Here’s my mobile number. I’ll be able to tell you how everybody’s doing.’

  Janina finally departed with agonisingly minimal farewells. ‘I will not see the boys again,’ she said, with tears in her eyes, as she got into the back of the car.

  The boys were in the playroom, watching television. Hepzie trotted in ahead of Thea, and permitted herself to be greeted violently by Benjamin. There was something disconcerting in the exaggerated hugs the dog was expected to endure, and Thea quickly interposed. ‘Don’t squeeze her so tight,’ she said. ‘You’ll hurt her.’

  Nicky was sucking his thumb, his gaze fixed on the TV. ‘Hi, Nicky,’ said Thea. ‘Have you said bye-bye to Janina?’

  The smaller boy shook his head, without shifting the thumb. ‘It’s sad, I know,’ she pressed on, without yielding to the temptation to give empty reassurances. ‘I’m going to stay with you until Daddy gets home… OK?’

  The house was too hot, the radiators pumping out heat as if to compensate for the cold misery the family was living with. Nicky’s cheeks were flushed, and Hepzie was panting fr
om more than the vigorous affection she was receiving. Thea went in search of a thermostat – a search that took her upstairs, where she felt she really had no business to be.

  She found the dial on the landing, between two bedroom doors. An irresistible curiosity made her peer through one open door into what was evidently the master bedroom. A large double bed took up a lot of the available space, the covers rumpled, and a pile of clothes dumped on one side. Had Simon started sorting through Bunny’s things already? Or had the police left it like that after their searches? Never having met the dead woman, Thea had no sense of absence. The house she knew had only ever contained Simon and his children – and Janina. There was the absence, the loss of somebody crucially important. How fragile everything seemed, how truly terrifying. For a moment, Thea’s nose and throat filled with sharp tears, her head constricted with the pain of what was happening.

  It was a full ten minutes before she went downstairs again, to her poor little charges. She met Nicky in the main living room, apparently heading for the kitchen. ‘All right?’ she asked him.

  ‘Need a drink,’ he said.

  ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll get it for you. Maybe it’s time for a biscuit or some cake as well, do you think?’

  He looked at her, his head held sideways as if listening acutely for something. ‘We had cake,’ he said. ‘Janina gave us cake.’

  He climbed onto a chair, and sat tidily at the kitchen table, waiting for the drink. Thea found pineapple juice in the fridge and gave it to him in a glass. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s my cup,’ indicating a blue beaker on the table.

  ‘Sorry. Do you think Ben would like some as well?’

  There was no response to that.

  ‘I’ll go and see, then.’

  She went back to the playroom, but was arrested at the door by a high voice, apparently addressing the spaniel. ‘No, Benjamin, you can’t come. Go home, Benjamin. Mummy has to talk to George by herself.’

  Thea froze, dimly aware of some kind of acting out going on. Something that might well be therapeutic if allowed to continue.

  ‘You pervert, you bloody pervert,’ shrilled the child. ‘You just leave my kids alone, do you hear me? I’ll make you sorry, I’ll make you a…’ The little voice sank and faltered. Whatever the word had been was lost, and then he recovered, ‘You have to leave. Do you hear me? You have to leave this place and never come back.’

  Hepzie suddenly became aware of her mistress standing just outside the door, and began to wriggle from the child’s clutches. She whined when Ben held her tighter. Thea had little choice but to make her presence known.

  ‘It’s OK, Heps,’ she said, approaching the huddled pair. ‘Just let her breathe, Ben, OK?’

  The look on the boy’s little face was stony. What exactly had he witnessed? Would it ever release its grip on him, or were nightmares and flashbacks his lifelong fate? What was the current thinking on debriefing a six-year-old, anyway? Encourage him to relive it, or change the subject and hope to bury it deep?

  Benjamin made the decision for her. ‘I was bad,’ he said. ‘I followed them, when Mummy told me not to. She said I had to go home. I was shivering in the snow, and it was nearly dark, and she said Go home, Benjamin. Do as you’re told for once.’

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘To George’s house. We were going to find his sledge, and go out with it the next day. I was excited. But she said we couldn’t. Then she shouted a lot at him.’ He bowed his head, weighed down by what he had witnessed. ‘He hit her and she fell over.’

  ‘George hit Mummy?’

  Ben nodded.

  Thea tried to make sense of the story. When had it happened? Thursday – it had to have been the Thursday, when the schools were closed, and the world was in snowy chaos. ‘Where was Daddy?’ she wondered.

  ‘In the house. Mummy came back, and I saw her in the lane, out of my window. I ran out and told her about the sledge, and she said, I’ll see about that, and she went to shout at George.’

  ‘So Daddy didn’t know she’d come home?’

  Blankness greeted that question. How did he know what adults knew?

  ‘Why didn’t you tell him? Or Janina?’

  ‘George said I shouldn’t. He said we could go sledging if I never said what had happened. But if I told them, he would have to go away and never come back. He was crying,’ added the child, and his own tears began.

  ‘But he’s gone anyway,’ said Thea, without thinking.

  ‘It was me. I was bad. I told Uncle Tony. George never said I couldn’t. So George had to die, and it was because of me. And now Janina has gone as well, because she doesn’t like me.’ Quiet tears slid down his cheeks, and Thea knelt down and wrapped her arms around him, some commiserating teardrops falling onto the top of his head.

  ‘No, you weren’t bad, Ben. It wasn’t anything to do with you. Janina has to go because her mother had an accident. Not your fault in any way at all. You are not bad, Ben – you have to believe me about that. It was all the grown-ups who were bad.’ Most of all, she realised, bloody Bunny, and her paranoid sidekick, Philippa.

  Carefully, Thea reviewed what she had learnt. Her first instinct was to phone Gladwin and pass it all on, just as she’d heard it. But already she knew what the response would be: It’s not evidence, only hearsay. If you repeated what someone else had told you, it didn’t count in a court of law. The police would have to question Ben directly, and make him say it all again. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind that, perhaps it would even be helpful for him. But perhaps not. For Thea, recalling the tormented little face, it seemed too great a risk. After all, George had killed himself after murdering Bunny. There was no retribution possible, no loose ends to be tied.

  Except, of course, for Simon and Bunny’s other relatives. Didn’t they deserve to know the whole truth of what had happened?

  Already, too, unexpected loose ends were dangling before her eyes. Had George really been a paedophile? If so, who else might have suspected, or even known for sure? She remembered Janina’s parting words, insisting on Simon’s innocence – or had it been ignorance? Blinkered wilful refusal to face facts about damage to his own children? If Bunny had confronted George, didn’t that imply that she had some hard evidence against him? And if there was no truth in the accusation, why had he hit out at her, hard enough to kill her? Why such a powerful need to silence her, if it was all fantasy in her own twisted mind?

  The need to tread delicately was obvious, as was the lack of urgency. She could give herself time to think it all through, and perhaps consult someone other than Gladwin. Quite who this might be remained obscure, for the moment.

  Simon arrived home an hour later, harassed and resentful. ‘This is too much,’ he protested, ‘Janina going off like that. It makes things impossible for me.’

  Thea could quite see. Any one of his troubles alone would be enough to justify panic and self-pity, but he had three or four big challenges: the death of his wife; the needs of his children; the demands of his job – and the overwhelming implications of a murder inquiry. She ached to rescue him, to reassure him that everything would work itself out. She forgot, for the moment, the distress of Simon’s elder son.

  ‘You should probably contact social services,’ she suggested. ‘They might have some help to offer.’

  ‘What? You mean they’d take the boys into care, because I’m not a fit father?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She looked at him intently. Janina had been right – he was hopelessly immature, with no idea how to manage the situation. ‘But if there’s nobody else, they’ll give you some support.’

  ‘There’s Barbara,’ he said. ‘She’s good with children.’

  At least he hadn’t suggested Philippa, she thought ruefully.

  ‘Simon…Ben needs you. At least for the next few days, I think you have to forget the hotel and concentrate on rebuilding Ben’s security. He’s very shaken. He knows something about what happened to his mother. Try to encourage hi
m to tell you about it. You’re the central person in his life, now.’ She ought to tell him everything Ben had said, to pass the burden onto the shoulders where it properly belonged. But she couldn’t rely on him to handle it responsibly. He might argue with the boy, or laugh the story away as make-believe. There had to be a reason why Bunny never shared her fears with him, and until this was apparent, Thea was afraid she might only make things worse.

  ‘Oh, God,’ moaned Simon. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ He gripped his head in both hands for a moment, as if fearing it might explode. Then he looked up. ‘Tony! I’ll see if Tony can come and help. Why didn’t I think of that before? He’s brilliant with the boys – understands them a lot better than I do.’ He gave her a look full of pathos. ‘And thank you very much for coming to the rescue today. I should have said that sooner. I’m really very grateful.’

  ‘That’s OK. Anybody would have done the same. But—’

  ‘I know. You won’t be able to keep doing it. I understand. We’ll manage now. Tony’s self-employed – he can come here for a week or so, until we get sorted. I can’t believe I never asked him before. I suppose I was only thinking about women.’ He smacked himself lightly on the brow. ‘Ought to know better.’

  The sudden brightening was almost more disconcerting than his despair had been. ‘Well, I hope it works out,’ she said, doubtfully, feeling a burgeoning sense of guilt at leaving the wretched Ben with the two boyish brothers that were his father and uncle.