Simon leant against the doorway, like a vampire barred from crossing the threshold. “I don’t have time for coffee. I’m on my lunch break.”
She banged two mugs onto the counter. “I wasn’t offering you one. This is for Phil.”
“What’s the matter with you?” His voice was flat, unemotional. “At the very least you could be polite.”
Polite? Polite?
Only the rumbling of the kettle and the distant sound of the drill broke the silence.
“I appreciate it must have been a dreadful shock for you,” he added stoically. “For your father die in such a horrible way … ” he shook his head.
Was it common knowledge already? “Who told you?”
“Not you, obviously.” Then, when she didn’t respond, “It was on the news.”
Great, now she was going to be door-stopped by reporters? She paused for a moment, leaning on the counter. She really couldn’t deal with all that right now. To be honest, she didn’t want to be dealing with anything - Sarah, Geraint, Bryn, her father, the police - and certainly not Simon. All she really wanted was take some paracetamol and go back to bed. But if she didn’t keep her appointment at Tom’s Coffee Shop, Bryn was likely to turn up here. And that would really set Simon off.
The simplest solution would be to explain everything to Simon. He’d be happy to take control, just as he had done before.
But she was thirty now, not fifteen.
Simon produced a slim bouquet of flowers from behind his back. Roses, of the palest pink, just starting to open. They were pretty, but she couldn’t bring herself to take them.
He held them out towards her. “I’m sorry, Natalie. I should never have said those things to you. It was cruel and unkind.”
The kettle switched off. Grateful for the excuse to turn away, she began spooning instant coffee into the two mugs. By the time she’d poured out the hot water and milk, the flowers were lying on the counter beside her. Condensation was beginning to gather on the cellophane. If they weren’t put into water now they’d die. Did she even care?
“You’re upset,” he said. Now he was standing beside her; so close, she could feel his breath on her neck. “You’ve had an appalling shock; it’s only natural to feel disorientated. You ought to give Charles a call. Even though you’re not his patient any longer, I’m sure he can sort you out with something.”
He certainly had a short memory. Bloody Charles was one of the reasons she was so screwed up in the first place.
“If I want tranquillisers, I’ll visit my own GP, thanks,” she said. “I’m thirty, not fifteen. I can deal with this.”
“If you’re sure?”
An image of a blackened corpse forced itself into her head.
“I’m sure.” She concentrated on stirring the coffee. Did Phil take sugar? She had not thought to ask. One simple task, that was all it had been. Make coffee. Why was it suddenly so difficult?
“Charles helped you get back on your feet last time, didn’t he?”
Last time …
She was back in Charles’s office. There was his precious mahogany desk, but she was bent over it, her heart pounding, as Charles slid one cold hand between her bare thighs.
Pain brought her back to the present. Blood - dripping onto the desk. No, not a desk - it was a kitchen worktop. Her kitchen. She forced herself to concentrate. She had cut her hand - but how?
There was a yellow-checked tea towel directly in front of her and she picked it up, pressing it against the wound, stemming the flow of blood. There were spots of blood all over the worktop, mingling with copious amounts of coffee. And in the centre - the shattered remains of a mug.
“What is wrong with you?” Simon was staring at her in horror. If she hadn’t seen his lips move she would have thought she’d hallucinated that too.
“I don’t know … ” Coffee dripped down the side of the counter. She used the tea towel to wipe it up but soon it was saturated. “I don’t what happened … ” Am I going crazy?
“You deliberately smashed the mug! I saw you do it. Do you deny it?”
“Yes - no, I don’t remember.” Was this another blackout, like last night? Were those date rape drugs still in her system - or was this only another symptom of stress? She certainly had plenty to feel stressed about.
Natalie felt tears stinging her eyes but the only cloth she had was soaked in coffee and Simon was backing out of the kitchen as though he thought she was dangerous.
“Are you OK, Miss Grove?” Phil had appeared in the doorway behind Simon. He still held his drill.
“I’ve had a bit of an accident,” she said helplessly.
In a second Phil had turned on the cold tap and thrust her hand beneath the water. “Got a first aid kit?” he asked Simon.
“I don’t know.” Simon looked pointedly at her. “I don’t live here.”
She gestured towards the dresser on the other side of the kitchen. “There’s one in that cupboard.” She expected Simon to fetch it but suddenly he wasn’t there anymore.
Was it that easy to get rid of him?
Phil bit off an exclamation and retrieved the first aid kit himself. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said cheerfully, drying Natalie’s hand on a piece of kitchen roll and applying a bandage. He pointed to the plaster on his head. “We make a right pair, eh?”
He wrung out the tea towel and chucked it into the sink, before wiping down the worktop with the dishcloth. “Anything else I can do for you, Miss Grove? Only if I’m not back soon, they’ll send out a search party for me. We’re all a bit paranoid after last night.”
Something else which was her fault.
“You never had your coffee,” she said sadly.
“Maybe next time, but I’ve got to go.” He dropped a collection of keys onto the worktop. “Those are for your front door,” he said, “plus a couple of spares.”
“Thanks, Phil. For everything.”
“No problem, Miss Grove.” He hesitated, glancing again at the shiny new keys on the table, then back at her. “But be careful who you give ‘em to, eh?”
29
By the time Natalie arrived at the coffee shop, Bryn was at the counter placing his order. He was easily recognisable, even from the back, in his scruffy jacket, jeans and boots. Did he ever take them off? He had his canvas satchel too, carelessly slung over one shoulder. Was her book still inside? It was unnerving that he knew so much about her, when she had discovered so little about him in return.
He turned his head and caught her staring.
“Hi,” he said. “How do you like your coffee?”
She relieved him of the two cups he held and dropped them back onto the counter. “No time for that. We’re going on a trip.”
He regarded her with suspicion. “What kind of a trip?”
She pointed her key through the café window at the black BMW parked outside. The indicators flashed.
“A road trip,” she said. “You want to work with me to find out who killed Sarah? We’re going to start at the very beginning.”
*
She was relieved Bryn did not question her again, but settled back into his seat and watched the village pass in a grey and white blur, as they headed up the hill and towards the main road. The tinted windows made everything seem darker and gloomier than it actually was. Or was that only her mood?
By the time they had reached the King’s Forest, the sun had emerged from the clouds and was glinting on the autumn leaves, which ran through every shade from deepest crimson to brilliant gold. Unwilling to let the silence to do the talking, Natalie switched on her music. Paloma Faith was singing about choosing between the truth or something beautiful. She quickly switched it off again.
“Why did you stay in Calahurst?” he asked her. “You’re rich. You could live anywhere.”
She wasn’t prepared for that conversation. She didn’t want it either. All she wanted was to get to their destination as quickly as possible.
“It certainly made it
easier for you to find me,” she told him.
“You’re surrounded by unhappy memories. I’m surprised it didn’t send you crazy.”
Natalie blanked out the image of a lily pond. “Better the devil you know.”
He returned his attention to the view. “It would send me crazy, living my life where everyone knew me and judged me on what I’d done in the past.”
“I guess that makes me the stronger person.”
He fixed her with a rather too astute stare. “Are you sure about that?”
“I’ve written eight best-selling books, two of which have been filmed for television. I’ve been translated and sold into practically every country around the world. Everyone thinks they know me. Everyone judges me on my past. I’m used to it. I deal with it. No problem.”
He turned his attention back to the view through the side window. “I’m relieved to hear it.”
As they were now belting along a straight stretch of road through the forest, she took the opportunity to give him a sideways glance. She had thought he was watching the countryside fly past the window but, as her eyes met the reflection of his own, she realised he had not stopped watching her since they had left Calahurst.
The car bumped over a cat’s eye and brought her attention back to the road. “You think I’m going to pretend Sarah’s murder never happened? What would be the point in that? It would be to deny she existed. Besides, I happen to believe that the way you deal with your past helps you to develop as a person.”
“That sounds as though it came straight from the mouth of a shrink.”
She clenched her fingers tighter around the steering wheel.
“You think you’ve become a better person because your sister was murdered? Excuse me, but you’re talking bollocks. Your sister is dead, gone from your life for ever. Everything she was, the person she would have been, snuffed out in an instant. It’s worse than if she never existed. There’s a permanent hole in your life, where that person should have been.”
There was a hole in her life all right, but it wasn’t occupying a space where Sarah should have been - it was where her own hopes and dreams had disappeared, wrapped in this all-encompassing obsession.
“You don’t know me,” she said. “You cannot judge me or presume to know how I feel. So don’t - and we’ll get along fine.”
“I do know how you feel. I’ve been through it myself. Except you know what happened to your sister. You haven’t spent your life hoping she was going to walk back through your door. You have a conclusion, a finality. You have a grave.”
It was the one thing she had never been able to do - visit Sarah’s grave. She knew Alicia left flowers regularly, but she herself had not even attended Sarah’s funeral. Instead, she had crept out of the Lodge and peered over the stone wall of the churchyard, as Sarah’s small, slight coffin had been lowered into the earth. The only mourners had been her mother and Sir Henry Vyne.
For the first time Natalie realised her father had been absent. Where had he been? Had the funeral been before or after his accident? It had taken a while for the authorities to release Sarah’s body - so perhaps the funeral had been afterwards. Why had she never realised the significance before?
“Are you OK?” He broke her chain of thought. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I get the impression you’ve never really talked to anyone about this. It might help if you did.”
He sounded so kind, so caring, she could almost feel herself weaken. Then, as the road emerged from the trees, swooping through a patchwork of fields towards the sea, she realised they’d arrived.
“We’re here,” she said, greatly relieved.
“Great.” Bryn stared at the bleak coastline that now lay before them. There was no sandy beach here, only mud and rocks, where hungry herring gulls swooped low over shallow stagnant water. “Wherever ‘here’ is.”
She turned the car down a single track lane, between a long avenue of lime trees. At the end was a pretty Georgian manor house, its red brick glowing in the afternoon sunlight.
Bryn was suitably impressed. “Is there anyone you know who doesn’t live in a mansion?”
She ignored him, parking close to the house, beneath a cluster of chestnut trees. The leaves hung limply, dead and brown, dripping from a recent shower of rain. The gravel drive beneath them was littered with pale green and yellow shells, each one split to reveal a furry white inside. The glossy brown conkers were conspicuous by their absence.
She didn’t linger. She knew their approach would have been seen and that a strategy was being formed. She walked quickly across the drive towards the house, pleased that for once she was wearing flat ballet pumps and not her usual heels. Bryn followed - but his attention was caught by something on the other side of a wire fence. It was a tennis court, where two young boys played with great enthusiasm, if not much skill.
“Natalie?” When she didn’t respond, he caught her arm, turning her towards him. “Who lives here?”
She glanced past him, at the two boys playing tennis. They wore matching jeans and striped jerseys; their blond hair was so pale it was almost white.
“My mother,” she admitted.
“Your mother is dead.”
“She would like people to believe that.” To avoid any further questions, Natalie tried to pull away, to continue towards the house, but again he held her back.
“Natalie, why are we here?”
“To understand the life that Sarah and I had, you need to meet our parents. It’s too late for you to meet my father, so I’ve brought you here to meet my mother. If she will see us, of course. One can never tell what mood she’s going to be in.”
“Could you stop being so bloody flippant and - ”
There was a movement behind her, effectively distracting him.
The door to the house had opened.
“It looks as though we’re in luck,” she said, sliding away from him and towards the house. Behind her she knew Bryn had hesitated and she could hardly blame him. Then she heard him curse, followed by the scrunch of his footsteps in the gravel, as he caught her up.
“You could have told me about your mother. We didn’t have to come all the way out here.”
“Trust me, we did.”
She had half-expected to be denied entry, but the man who opened the door stood aside to let her enter without saying a word. Evidently the staff had been briefed.
She was taken across the hall to a sitting room overlooking the tennis court. It was a small, if pleasant enough room, which did not appear to be used very often. The walls were painted an inoffensive duck-egg blue, the furniture was old and mismatched but most likely antique, and there were a few silver sporting trophies and nondescript paintings - perhaps banished from some place more important.
Natalie tried not to think of allegories.
Her mother stood slightly to one side of the window, ostensibly watching the boys play. She wore a simple grey blouse and dark trousers, and had a delicate platinum chain around her neck, which she was winding about her fingers.
It took a moment for her to turn her head, but when she saw her daughter approach she offered her cheek to be kissed.
“Natalie, how lovely to see you.”
Natalie reluctantly moved in for an air kiss. Magda smelt of expensive perfume. Close to, there were barely any lines or wrinkles. She certainly did not appear old enough to be the mother of a thirty-year-old. The hunting, shooting and fishing lifestyle she’d adopted since her remarriage obviously suited her.
Was this how Sarah would have looked if she had lived?
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” said Natalie, blanking out that last thought.
“Perhaps next time you will allow me to have the choice?” murmured her mother.
Natalie chose the chair nearest the fire.
Magda was rather more pleased to see Bryn. “You’re the new one?” She looked him up and down. “You’re certainly an improvement on that dreadful Simon. Did you know he used to be her t
eacher? He should have been sacked.”
“He was Sarah’s teacher, Mother,” sighed Natalie. “Never mine. I owe everything to Simon. He helped me get into university and he encouraged me to write my first book. He even found me somewhere to live, after you married Richard.”
Magda pretended she had not heard.
Bryn, thankfully, said nothing more incriminating than his name and held out his hand.
Natalie held her breath, waiting for the recognition the surname would invoke but, as Magda reached out to shake his hand, her expression did not falter.
“I’m Lady Vyne,” she said graciously. “You may call me Magda.”
It appeared Bryn’s research had some whacking great holes in it. “You’re Lady Vyne?”
“Perhaps you thought there could be only one?” Magda glanced across the room to her daughter. “Have you not told him anything?”
“Not really, no.”
Where the hell would she begin?
“Is your husband related to Sir Henry Vyne?” asked Bryn, politely filling the silence.
“They were first cousins,” Magda said. “Richard inherited the baronetcy when Henry died, as well as most of the property. The Hurst Castle estate was not entailed. Henry left that to Alicia.”
The butler was still lingering in the doorway. Magda waved a hand in his direction, requesting tea, and then sat in the chair opposite Natalie. This left one end of a sofa for Bryn.
“I suppose you have come to tell me your father is dead,” Magda said.
Natalie supposed it was as good an excuse to use as any. “You already knew?”
“A Detective Chief Inspector Bloom came to see me this morning. Apparently I was still listed as John’s next-of-kin.”
“Did you ever even visit him?”
“I visited him often,” reproved Magda. “The last time was about a week or so ago.”
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