The Lake House

by Kate Morton

  “Shhh.” Eleanor wouldn’t let him speak the preposterous thought out loud. “It won’t happen.”

  “It could.”

  “It won’t. I won’t let it. I promise.”

  “You can’t promise that.”

  “I can. I do.”

  There’d been so much fear in his face, and his hands as they clutched hers were shaking. “Promise me, if you ever have to make a choice, you’ll save them from me. Save me from myself. I couldn’t live with myself if—”

  She pressed her fingers against his lips to stop him from saying the terrible words. She kissed him and then held him tightly as he shook against her body. Eleanor knew what he was asking of her, and she knew she’d do whatever she had to in order to keep her promise.

  Twenty-one

  London, 2003

  Sadie’s flat looked and smelled like the sort of place she was used to being sent out to on call. “You can tell a lot about a person by the home they keep,” Donald had told her once, in a prim sort of way, quite out of character with his usual burly self and rather rich coming from a man whose wife did all his cleaning. She picked up the scattered layers of junk mail and bills from the mat and closed the door with her foot. The weather had come over grey, but when she switched on the light only one bulb of three complied.

  Just over two weeks away and a layer of dust had already settled on every surface. The room’s odour was sour and neglected, and Sadie’s furniture, never lovely, had become sullen and reproachful in her absence, more tattered, too, than she remembered. Further adding to the air of ill-kempt, unloved, couldn’t-give-a-damnness was the pot plant on her kitchen sink. “Oh, my,” said Sadie, dropping her bag and tossing the mail onto the sofa as she approached the poor, sad carcass. “What’s become of you?” She’d picked it up from the local nursery school Easter fete a couple of months before in a fit of domestic aspiration, rebuke to the man she’d been sort of seeing whose parting shot had echoed down the stairwell as he left: “You’re so used to being alone you couldn’t even care for a pot plant.” Sadie crunched the dry, curled leaves onto the stainless-steel sink. She’d shown him.

  Noise outside, traffic and voices, made the room seem unnaturally quiet. Sadie found the remote and clicked on the television. Stephen Fry was on, being clever and funny about something, and Sadie lowered the volume to a hum and checked the fridge. It was a further disaster site. Almost empty except for a couple of insipid, whiskery carrots and a container of orange juice. She checked the use-by date on the juice and decided six days past was fine, they were always overly cautious with these things. She poured a glassful and went to her desk.

  While the computer booted up, Sadie plugged in her phone to charge and then dug the Edevane file from her bag. She took a sip of piquant juice and sat wincingly through the anxious squeal of the dial-up modem connecting to the internet. All the way home she’d gone over the interview with Margot Sinclair in her mind. Sadie had been so convinced Rose Waters and Anthony Edevane were engaged in a love affair and that Theo was Rose’s son, not Eleanor’s, that she was having a hard time processing the new information. The pieces of puzzle had fit together so well it took an enormous act of will to pull them apart and start again. Perhaps that was why she clung to her hunch that Anthony Edevane was important. When the search engine home page appeared she typed in shell shock.

  A list of sites appeared on her screen and she skimmed through the options until she found an entry from a site called firstworldwar.com which seemed reputable. Sadie clicked and started reading the definition. A term used to describe psychological trauma . . . intensity of artillery battles . . . neurotic cracks in otherwise mentally stable soldiers. There was a black-and-white photograph of a uniformed man staring at the camera with a wistful half-smile, his body angled so that the right side of his face was concealed by shadow. The article continued: Soldiers came to recognise the symptoms but recognition by military authority was slower to develop . . . panic attacks, mental and physical paralysis, fearful headaches, terrifying dreams . . . many continued to feel its effects for years afterwards . . . treatment was primitive at best, dangerous at worse . . .

  There was a link at the bottom of the page to a paper delivered by a Dr W.H.R. Rivers in which he outlined his theories based on observations of injured soldiers at a hospital called Craiglockhart between the years 1915 and 1917. Much of the article was spent explaining the process of repression, Dr Rivers suggesting that returned soldiers who spent most of the day trying to forget their fears and memories were far more likely to fall victim during the silence and isolation of night when sleep weakened their self-control and made them susceptible to the creep of ghastly thoughts.

  It made sense. In Sadie’s experience most things were more intense at night. That was certainly when her own dark thoughts escaped their bounds and turned into dreams to haunt her. She kept skimming. According to Dr Rivers, repression made the negative thoughts accumulate energy, resulting in vivid or even painful dream imagery and horrors that raced violently through the mind. Sadie jotted the line in her notebook, considered it and then circled the word violently. The doctor was referring to the passage of thoughts in the soldier’s brain, but the word, especially in the context of Theo Edevane’s mysterious fate, gave Sadie an uneasy feeling. She’d known all along there was a third grisly possibility, that the boy might not have wandered or been taken but had met instead with a violent end. When she’d talked with Clive she’d wondered whether Clementine Edevane could have been involved in her brother’s death, accidentally or otherwise. But what if it had been Anthony? What if it had been Theo’s father, all along?

  Sadie flicked back through her notes to those she’d taken during her interview with Clive. Anthony and Eleanor had provided alibis for each other. Eleanor had been grief-stricken during interviews and needed sedation over the course of the week. Clive had noted that Anthony was particularly caring and attentive and that he’d been fiercely protective of his wife. He was so careful with her, Clive had said, gentle and protective, making sure she rested, stopping her from tearing outside to join the search. He barely let her out of his sight. Sadie stood up and stretched. When she wrote those things, she’d accepted Clive’s observation as evidence of the Edevanes’ strong bond, their love for one another, the natural actions of a couple experiencing the unimaginable; she certainly hadn’t suspected anything untoward. But now, viewed through the lens of her developing theory (and that’s all it was, she reminded herself, one hunch built upon another), the behaviour took on a more sinister tint. Was it possible that Eleanor knew what her husband had done and was covering for him? Would a mother do that? Would a wife? Had Anthony been placating her, standing guard so that she couldn’t reveal to police what she knew? No, it was ridiculous.

  Sadie glanced at the digital clock in the corner of her screen. She’d decided on the drive back from Oxford that tonight was as good a night as any to catch up with Donald. She ought to be getting her head in the right space to convince him she was ready to come back to work, not chasing ghosts around the internet. She should switch off now and return to the website later. She should put her notebook away and shower. Nothing said “ready to be professional’ like observing the basics in personal grooming. But a scribbled note further down the page caught her eye—Clive’s account of Eleanor’s annual visits to Loeanneth—and she kept reading. Clive had said that Eleanor returned each year in the hope her son might somehow find his way home, but that had been supposition. Eleanor hadn’t told Clive that was her expectation; it had been his reading of her actions. What if she hadn’t been expecting Theo to return because she already knew that he was dead? What if her annual visit wasn’t a vigil but a memorial, in the same way people made regular pilgrimages to the gravestones of those they’d lost?

  Sadie drummed her pen on the notepad. She was presuming a lot. Nowhere in any of the interviews had anyone used the word “violent’ in relation to Anthony
Edevane, and Dr Rivers wrote about dissociation, depression, confusion, a soldier’s sense that his “light’ had gone out, but again made no mention of violent tendencies. She sat down and surfed through a few more webpages, scanning and clicking until she came across a quote from a war correspondent called Philip Gibbs, writing about the return of soldiers to their lives after war:

  Something was wrong. They put on civilian clothes again and looked to their mothers and wives very much like the young men who had gone to business in the peaceful days before August 1914. But they had not come back the same men. Something had altered in them. They were subject to sudden moods and queer tempers, fits of profound depression alternating with a restless desire for pleasure. Many were easily moved to passion where they lost control of themselves, many were bitter in their speech, violent in opinion, frightening.

  Sadie sucked in her lips and reread the passage. Sudden moods . . . queer tempers . . . lost control . . . violent in opinion . . . frightening. Conditions that could certainly lead a person to make a terrible mistake, commit a heinous act they would never be capable of when they were in their right mind.

  There followed an article about trench conditions on the Western Front, descriptions of the horrific lack of sanitation, the rats and the mud and the fungal decay of trench foot, the lice that sucked off rotting flesh. Sadie was completely absorbed by what she was reading and when the home phone rang it jolted her back to the present so rapidly she could almost see images of the mud and the slaughter fading around her.

  She took up the handset. “Hello?”

  It was Bertie, his warm homely voice a welcome balm. “Just calling to see that you made it back to London all right. I couldn’t get an answer on your mobile. You were going to ring me when you got there.”

  “Oh, Granddad, I’m sorry!” I’m a hopeless excuse for a granddaughter who doesn’t deserve someone like you. “My phone’s flat. I stopped a few times along the way, and traffic on the M40 was a nightmare. I’ve only just come in.” She pictured him in the kitchen in Cornwall, the dogs asleep beneath the table, and felt a physical pull of longing in her chest. “How’s the day? How are my lads?”

  “Missing you. I went to put my shoes on and they gathered expectantly at my heels, ready for their run.”

  “Well, you know what you have to do. They’ll show you the way.”

  He chortled. “I can just imagine how much they’d enjoy a run with yours truly. More like a limping lope!”

  Regret came in a sudden wave. “Look, Granddad, about the other night—”

  “Water under the bridge.”

  “I was insensitive.”

  “You miss Ruth.”

  “I was snarky.”

  “You snark because you care.”

  “I like Louise, she seems kind.”

  “She’s been a good friend. I need friends. I’m not trying to replace your grandmother. Now tell me, how was your meeting with Rose’s great-niece?”

  “A dead end, sort of.”

  “The baby wasn’t the nanny’s?”

  “It would appear not.” Sadie gave him a potted summary of her conversation with Margot Sinclair, the disappointment that her theory appeared defunct, finishing with the unexpected news about Anthony Edevane’s shell shock. “I don’t know that it’s relevant, but I’ve been doing a bit of reading and it’s hard to imagine a man going through all that without it impacting his life afterwards.” As she spoke she’d wandered over to the window and stood now looking down into the street where a woman was remonstrating with a child who refused to get into his buggy. “Did any of our family go to the First World War, Granddad?”

  “My mother’s cousin fought on the Somme, but he lived up north so I never knew him, and my favourite uncle fought in the second war.”

  “Was he different when he came back?”

  “He didn’t come back, he was killed in France. Terrible loss; my mother never got over it. Our next-door neighbour, though, Mr Rogers, came back from the First World War in a dreadful condition.”

  “Dreadful how?”

  “He’d been buried under the earth for eighteen hours after an explosion. Eighteen hours! Can you imagine? He was out in the middle of no-man’s-land and his mates couldn’t get to him for all the shelling. When they finally managed to dig him out he was in a catatonic state of shock. He was shipped back home and treated at one of those hospitals they set up in country houses, but he was never the same according to my parents.”

  “What was he like?”

  “His face was fixed in a permanent expression of horror. He used to have nightmares where he couldn’t breathe, and he’d wake up gasping for air. Other nights we’d be woken by a godawful wailing that travelled right through the walls into our house. Poor man. The neighbourhood children were all frightened of him; they used to take dares to see who was brave enough to walk up to his door and knock before running away and hiding.”

  “But not you.”

  “No, well, my mother would have tanned my hide if she’d even suspected I was capable of that sort of childish cruelty. Besides, it was personal with Mr Rogers. Ma had taken him under her wing. She cooked an extra plate of supper every night, brought in his washing, made sure his house was kept clean. She was like that, the kindest of hearts, never as happy as when she was helping someone less fortunate.”

  “I wish I’d known her.”

  “I wish you had, too.”

  “She sounds a lot like Ruth.” Sadie remembered how willingly Ruth had welcomed her into their home when she had nowhere else to go.

  “Funny you should say that. After Ma died and we took over the shop, Ruth took over with Mr Rogers, too. She was adamant that we couldn’t just leave him in the lurch.”

  “I can just hear her saying that.”

  Bertie laughed and then sighed, and Sadie knew he’d be climbing the stairs to the attic when they finished their phone call, digging through his boxes for some small reminder of Ruth. He didn’t mention her again, though, changing the subject to more immediate, tangible and solvable concerns. “You all right for dinner?”

  Sadie felt a crumpling of emotion. That was love right there, wasn’t it? Someone in your life who cared that your next meal was coming to you. She opened the fridge and wrinkled her nose. “Just dandy,” she said, pushing the door shut. “I’m heading out to meet a friend.”

  * * *

  The Fox and Hounds did a roaring trade on Tuesday nights, due in no small part to its position across the road from a backpackers’ hostel and its institution of a four-hour happy hour. There were other pubs closer to the Met, places that were teeming with police officers, but Donald reckoned he saw enough of the guys from work at work and it was worth the extra walk to have a break from talking shop. Sadie had taken him on faith for a long time, until she realised he always let her tag along, and they always talked shop, usually at his instigation. Truth was, the Fox and Hounds had the cheapest pints this side of the Thames and Donald was a cheapskate. A lovable cheapskate, but a cheapskate nonetheless. Tuesday was also the night all four of his daughters came home for dinner, and Donald had once told Sadie he needed all the fortification he could get if he didn’t want to bust a cracking headache the minute he stepped across the threshold. “The arguments, Sparrow, the bickering and the shifting loyalties. I can’t make head nor tail of it. Women!” He shook his head. “They’re a mystery, aren’t they?”

  All of which was to say that Donald was a creature of habit and when Sadie set off for the Fox and Hounds, stomach growling, she knew she’d find him sitting on the bench below the framed picture of the frog who would a-wooing go. Sure enough, when she arrived, a telling fug of smoke sat thick above the booth. She paid for a couple of pints and then carried them gingerly across the room, ready to slide into the empty bench opposite him. Only it wasn’t empty. Harry Sullivan was slouched in the corner, laughing uproar
iously at something Donald had just said. Sadie plonked her two beers on to the table and said, “Sorry, Harry. Didn’t realise you were here.”

  Like all old cops, Donald had seen enough of the odd and the ugly to have lost the ability to look surprised. The closest he came was the slight suggestion of an eyebrow shift. “Sparrow,” he said with a nod, as if she hadn’t just spent two weeks in the wilderness at his insistence.

  “Don.”

  “Thought you were on holidays, Sparrow,” said Harry cheerfully. “Tired of the sun and surf already?”

  “Something like that, Sully.” She smiled at Donald, who drained the last of his current bitter and wiped his moustache with the back of his hand before pushing the empty glass to the edge of the table.

  “Cornwall, wasn’t it?” Sully continued. “I had an aunt who used to live in Truro, every summer me and the brother and sister would—”

  “How about getting us another round, eh Sull?” said Donald.

  The younger detective eyed the fresh beers Sadie had brought with her, opened his mouth to point out to Don that he was already well served, before shutting it again. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but realisation settled on his broad brow. He waved his empty glass in the general direction of the bar and said, “Might just go and fetch myself a fresh one.”

  “Righto then,” said Donald pleasantly.

  Sadie stepped aside so Harry could leave the booth and then she took his place. The leather was warm, an unfortunate physical manifestation of her growing sense she’d been replaced. “You and Sull have been partnering then?”