Written in Red

by Annie Dalton

  Anna thought it sounded like the absolute opposite of a breakdown. She thought Hetty might have finally found some peace and calm, the calm of being loved by someone normal after growing up in that chaotic household where there was always champagne but never enough to eat.

  ‘When did you know?’ Jake’s voice was quiet.

  Isadora swallowed. ‘That she’d been murdered? Tallis summoned us to some stuffy little room at the back of the same east Oxford cafe where he’d bought me egg and chips when I first started working for him. That’s the place he chose to tell us. Poor James had to go out to be sick.’ From Isadora’s bleak expression, Anna knew she was suddenly back in that airless room where she’d first heard the inconceivable news that Hetty Vallier, once the centre of everything golden in Isadora’s life, was dead. ‘He said her body had been found in the Thames wrapped in a monogrammed sheet from a hotel known for dubious assignations. She’d been strangled.’ Isadora closed her eyes as if she was still struggling to absorb this part of the story. ‘And of course by the next day it was in all the papers.’

  ‘Did Tallis speculate on who might have killed her?’ Anna asked.

  ‘He wouldn’t talk about it. He wouldn’t let us talk about it. He reminded us that we had all signed the Official Secrets Act and could be tried as traitors if we broke our silence. He said he was dissolving our group and we could never meet or talk to each other again. He said if it ever got out, the damage to his department, and to the security of this country, would be incalculable. It was like a – a banishing. He made us leave the cafe one at a time. I was afraid even to look at the others as I left, but when I got outside Robert was still there fumbling with his bike chain. His face was red and puffy as if he’d been crying, but he said, “At least they got their man in the end. That’s the one good thing that’s come out of this whole fucking mess,” and then he got on his bike and rode off.’

  ‘What did he mean by “At least they got their man?”’ asked Jake.

  Isadora lifted her hands. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t understand how this game we’d all been playing had turned into some nightmarish film noir.’ She tried to smile. ‘So that’s what happened. And now Catherine and I are the only people left who remember.’

  And Tallis, Anna thought but didn’t say.

  Isadora began to collect up the soup plates. ‘I know we said just soup and bread, but I did poach some pears in red wine. I thought I should give you something at least slightly Christmassy after subjecting you to this rather grim trawl through my past.’ She was back in hostess mode, Anna saw. She’d promised she’d tell them what had happened, and now that she’d told them, she wanted to stuff all her dark secrets back into whichever mental strong-box she’d been keeping them all this time.

  Tansy went to help Isadora with the pears. Anna heard Tansy say, ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to reheat your soup?’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t seem to have much appetite,’ Isadora said.

  Jake surreptitiously nudged Anna’s shoulder. ‘Isadora’s dog has a really, really disconcerting stare. She’s been doing it ever since I got here.’

  ‘According to Tansy, Hero’s half goblin.’ Anna was careful to keep her voice down.

  ‘Are you sure it’s just half?’ Jake asked with a grin.

  Isadora and Tansy came back with the dish of pears and a jug of Chantilly cream. Isadora began serving out the pears into pretty antique-looking bowls. When it was Jake’s turn, he said politely, ‘Thanks, but I’m not really a big dessert man.’

  ‘You never eat desserts!’ Isadora said in horror.

  Jake smiled. ‘No, ma’am.’ He sat back in his chair. Anna could see he was thinking something through. At last he said, ‘I’m not sure if it’s OK to ask you this, Isadora, but if you and Catherine are the only members of the Oxford Six still left alive, who do you think is sending those anonymous letters?’

  Isadora’s smile faltered. ‘Of course, Anna’s told you about that. It is rather a puzzle, I agree. But I don’t think we need to talk about that now, do we?’

  ‘Catherine probably wrote them! I mean, it’s got to be some kind of religious nut and she’s the only one in the frame,’ Tansy said. ‘Anyway, I’m with Isadora. We should be thinking about Christmassy things, not giving any more of our energy to some anonymous letter-writing weirdo.’ It was Tansy who’d been so insistent that Isadora should tell them about Hetty. Now she seemed upset and slightly scared at what they’d unleashed.

  ‘With respect, I disagree.’ Jake was polite but firm. ‘I think we need to get to the bottom of it.’ At that moment Anna could see the calm pragmatic soldier he’d been. Jake saw a problem that needed solving, and he was offering to help.

  Isadora slammed her fist down on the table, rattling the crockery and water glasses. Hero fled to her basket. ‘I don’t want to get to the bottom of it!’ Isadora almost shouted. ‘I am terrified of getting to the bottom of it! I feel so desperately guilty, Jake – I am afraid it will destroy me!’

  ‘What in the world do you have to feel guilty about?’ Though Jake’s expression didn’t change, his southern intonation had become more pronounced, the only sign that his emotions were touched.

  ‘Because Hetty tried to warn me, and I wouldn’t listen! And now Hetty and James and Robert are all dead!’

  ‘But that’s not your fault,’ Anna said. ‘None of it’s your fault. There’s no reason to think that these three deaths are linked in any way and there’s absolutely no reason for you to feel responsible.’ She could have cried for Isadora and she could see that Tansy felt the same.

  Telling her story was supposed to help Isadora move on with her life. Instead tonight’s supper had only stirred up a wasps’ nest of painful memories. Of all people, Anna should have known better. It made no difference that Anna hadn’t personally pulled the knife on her parents. As an angry teenager, she had wished them dead a million times, and somewhere in her mind she was still terrified that simply through not loving them as they deserved she had caused their deaths. Whereas Isadora seemed to believe that she’d killed her friends through a simple failure in concentration.

  Jake was right, obviously, about finding out who was behind the letters. Damn him, she thought, miserably. But, like Tansy and Isadora, Anna had suddenly had enough of sadness and secrets. Like them, she wanted to stuff the genie back in its bottle; at least until after Boxing Day. Glancing at Isadora’s troubled face Anna hoped that it wasn’t too late and they could still have the happy Christmas she’d been longing for.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Anna, Anna! Happy Christmas! I’ve brought you coffee. Very strong coffee!’

  Anna squinted at her clock radio. It was 7.30 a.m. ‘Are you mad?’ she said weakly. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  ‘I can’t!’ Tansy stretched out her arms. ‘The sky is awake, so I’m awake.’

  Tansy must have had quite a few cups of strong coffee herself, if she was quoting dialogue from Frozen at seven thirty in the morning. Anna sat up, clutching her pillow as a barrier between her and this unexpected intrusion.

  ‘I know it might seem early to you,’ Tansy explained, ‘but when you’ve been up since five, it feels like practically lunchtime!’ Gently taking away the pillow, she passed Anna her coffee.

  ‘Why did you have to get up at five?’ Anna said, confused.

  ‘My slightly drunk and disoriented mother phoned to wish me happy Christmas at midnight Port of Spain time. They said to tell you a very happy Christmas, by the way,’ she said without drawing breath. ‘Then I was too wide awake to go back to bed so I took Bonnie out for a walk.’

  ‘Oh, was that real?’ Anna had a vague memory now of Tansy whispering to Bonnie in the dark. For the first time she took in Tansy’s outfit, an outsize scarlet sweater with a goofy Rudolph the Reindeer on the front, over glittery black leggings. She looked like a wide-eyed Christmas elf.

  ‘I’ve prepped the turkey,’ Tansy confided, pulling a face. ‘Haven’t done t
hat since I used to help my mum back in the day.’

  ‘I told you I was going to do that,’ Anna protested.

  ‘It was fine! It was only half as gross as I remember!’ Tansy perched herself on Anna’s bed, and Anna noticed the three tiny glittery baubles threaded into her flatmate’s hair elastic. ‘It was a nightmare, getting it in the roasting dish, but it’s in! Are you impressed?’

  Anna was impressed and relieved. The organic free-range turkey Tansy had insisted on having delivered could have passed for a decent sized emu. Tansy continued to list her dawn achievements while Anna groggily sipped her coffee. ‘And I’m so sorry I woke you, Anna,’ Tansy finished up, clasping her hands together, ‘but I couldn’t wait another minute for you to open your Christmas stocking!’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Anna said, capitulating. ‘But first I’ll need a shower.’

  ‘And then you’ll need this,’ Tansy told her with a grin. She held up a second oversized sweater with the words Ho-Ho-Ho blazoned across the front.

  ‘No!’ Anna said firmly. ‘In fact, no-no-no!’

  ‘Yes-yes-yes!’ Tansy said equally firmly. ‘These are our happy Christmas sweaters and we will wear them all day. Bonnie!’ she called suddenly. ‘Come and show Anna your gorgeous Christmas self!’

  Anna’s White Shepherd presented herself at her bedside with a distinctly sheepish expression.

  ‘Antlers!’ Anna said, aghast. ‘You put sparkly antlers on Bonnie!’

  Tansy gave her a sunny smile. ‘I almost got her the fairy wings, but I thought she suited antlers better.’

  Anna bent to pat her poor embarrassed dog. It could have been fairy wings, she told Bonnie silently. In a way you’ve had a narrow escape!

  Looking up, she caught Tansy watching her with an anxious expression. ‘Is it too much?’ she said in a small voice. ‘I just wanted everyone to have a really happy Christmas.’

  At that moment Tansy looked so vulnerable that if Anna had been the hugging type, she would almost certainly have hugged her. We both want the same thing, she realized. But unlike Anna, Tansy hadn’t settled for just wishing for some elusive Christmas magic. She had taken it on herself to be the slightly manic director of festivities.

  And so Anna showered and obediently pulled on her Ho-Ho-Ho sweater, over a pair of (non-glittery) leggings, and went downstairs to the sitting room. Tansy had a fresh pot of coffee waiting with a basket of croissants from her friend Leo’s bakery and they opened the little presents they had bought for each other and stuffed into Christmas-themed stockings.

  Twenty minutes later, Anna was tucking into one of the croissants, hopefully watched by Bonnie, surrounded by a sea of crumpled paper and ribbons. ‘So you seriously never got picked to be Mary?’ Tansy said. ‘I’d have thought you’d have been a shoo-in.’

  ‘No, no, I got picked,’ Anna said, ‘but three days before the performance I went down with chicken pox. The teachers gave my part to this girl who could have easily won a prize for being the child who looked the least like the Virgin Mary!’

  ‘Insensitive bastards,’ Tansy said, shaking her head.

  ‘I know! I was gutted. I’d learned the song and everything.’

  ‘What was the song?’ Tansy asked.

  ‘“Snowy flakes are falling softly”,’ Anna said. ‘Don’t make me sing it or I’ll cry!’

  Tansy did her sympathetic therapist’s voice. ‘That memory still hurts, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It does, damn you!’ said Anna, laughing. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tansy. ‘Well, I also got picked to be Mary – which was extremely forward-looking of our teachers, as all the other kids in my class were white.’ She beamed at Anna.

  ‘I thought you went to school in London?’ Anna objected. ‘Not to stereotype anybody obviously.’

  ‘My mum and I weren’t living in London that Christmas,’ Tansy explained. ‘Looking back, it was probably her and Frankie’s first trial separation, but anyway, my mum obviously forgave him that time, because she called him up and told him I was going to be the star of the school nativity play. So he gets into his flash Merc and heads off to deepest Norfolk, driving through the fog down all those twisty little lanes, eventually finding the school with, like, half a minute before the curtain goes up. And when I walk out on stage with the short little white boy who’s playing Joseph, there’s Frankie sitting bang in the middle of the front row holding hands with my mum, both of them total bags of nerves!’

  ‘That was so sweet of him,’ Anna said really meaning it, ‘driving all that way.’

  ‘For a twenty-minute nativity play, I know! What wasn’t quite so sweet was when little Joseph and I came on to take our bows at the end and my dad jumped up, pulling my mum to her feet, and gave us this long standing ovation. Talk about mortifying!’

  ‘But that was sweet too in a way,’ Anna said. ‘Your dad was obviously really proud of you.’

  ‘My dad loved Christmas,’ Tansy said. ‘He’s from this big London family, half of them villains in one way or another, and he’d insist on having everyone over for this huge tribal Christmas meal. It was always mayhem. Dinner was always late, little kids under everybody’s feet, venomous old aunties digging up some ancient family feud, and Frankie right in the heart of it all, drunk as a lord, having a whale of a time!’

  ‘Did you always put out snacks for Santa?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Of course we put out snacks!’ Tansy looked outraged. ‘Always exactly the same snack, actually, a wedge of Christmas cake and a glass of Dad’s whiskey.’

  ‘We left a single mince pie, a glass of brandy and a carrot for Rudolph.’ Having finally cracked the secret of Santa’s identity, Anna had then been co-opted to help her parents to sustain this make-believe for her younger brothers and little sister, hastily consuming Santa’s mince-pie for him before she went bed while her father drained the brandy.

  ‘I forgot about Rudolph’s carrot!’ Tansy said. ‘In the morning there’d always be a mysterious bite taken out of it! It didn’t matter what size carrot you left out, for some reason poor old Rudolph never got to eat the whole thing!’

  ‘Did Frankie do that thing with footprints?’

  Tansy frowned. ‘What thing?’

  ‘Make a single manly boot-print on the hearth?’ Anna said, ‘Final proof that Santa had come down your chimney?’

  ‘Ooh, cute touch! No, Dad didn’t do fake boot-prints. I shall have to remember that if I have kids!’

  Anna’s phone beeped. Kirsty had sent her a photo of a beaming Charlie in his Captain America outfit.

  ‘So we should probably get on with the trimmings?’ Tansy said. ‘Jake will be used to different side dishes, won’t he? Don’t they have sweet potato pie in the States? Or is that Thanksgiving?’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll care what side dishes we give him,’ Anna reassured her. ‘Jake is always perfectly happy with whatever turns up on his plate.’ From the little that Jake had let slip Anna suspected that his mom had not been the sweet-potato-pie-making kind, at Christmas or any other time.

  She and Tansy headed downstairs to a kitchen that already smelled deliciously of roasting turkey. Tansy opened the fridge pulling out a carton of cranberries and a bag of Brussels sprouts. Anna’s phone beeped for a second time. ‘Jake wants to check what time he should pick up my granddad,’ she said.

  Tansy tipped the sprouts into a colander. ‘The turkey should be cooked about one. It has to rest, so if they can get here by – oh, fuck it!’ She broke off laughing. ‘I sound like those mad foodie magazines – “Countdown to Christmas!” Tell Jake to come when he’s ready. He and your granddad won’t mind, will they, if we’re still prepping things?’

  As it turned out, Jake arrived with Anna’s grandfather just as Liam was parking his car.

  It took a certain amount of manoeuvring to get George Ottaway out of Jake’s hire car and into the house. When everyone was in the sitting room and Anna had finally remembered to introduce Liam, her granddad simply w
aved her away with a laugh, ‘I already met Liam on the step! This is Tansy’s young man!’

  Tansy gave Liam a flirty look, ‘Hear that, Goodhart? You’re my young man!’

  ‘Loving the understated knitwear, Tans,’ he said straight-faced.

  ‘Good, because there’s one here with your name on!’ Tansy flashed back. She turned to Anna’s grandfather. ‘Mr Ottaway, what kind of chair would be best for you?’

  ‘Something hard,’ Anna’s grandfather said. ‘If it’s too soft I need a winch to get me back up! It smells gloriously Christmassy in here,’ he added in a slightly wondering tone as if he thought that might have just happened by magic. In fact, Anna and Tansy had stayed up feverishly making clove oranges the night before. They had used clementines because they were smaller and took less time, tying them up with red ribbon and piling them in a shallow pewter dish which Tansy had found in a cupboard, along with nuts, nut-crackers and festive sprinkles of gold stars.

  Seeing George Ottaway smilingly looking around the sitting room, Anna wondered if he felt strange being back in the house where he’d lived with her grandmother for so many years.

  The doorbell rang. ‘That’ll be Isadora,’ Tansy said. ‘I’ll go.’

  Moments later Isadora appeared, carrying Hero in her arms. ‘Happy Christmas, everyone! How wonderful to see you all!’ She was wearing a fabulous knitted garment that could have been modelled on Hetty’s stolen Persian carpet coat. Her earrings were large silver birds, possibly crows (a city girl, Anna wasn’t good at birds), hanging from silver chains interspersed with garnets and what Anna thought might be black pearls. She looked like their old actressy Isadora, only even more so. Anna felt a rush of affection tinged with relief. Isadora had not only survived their night of truth telling, she had survived it magnificently!

  Tansy followed clutching a huge Fortnum & Masons Christmas cake. ‘Look what Isadora brought! We hadn’t even got to thinking about what to give you all for tea, had we, Anna?’