‘Why would anyone take their own life?’ said her mother bluntly.
‘No, I mean what happened? Was he depressed? Was he having problems? What?’
‘No. He was happy. They were happy, no thanks to you.’ Her mother’s voice was quiet, the undercurrent of bitterness unmistakable. The jibe wounded her – as intended.
Rachel exhaled deeply. ‘How’s Diana?’
She realised what a stupid, futile question it was even before the words had left her mouth.
‘She’ll be fine,’ said her mother. Rachel could imagine her disapproving expression, her meaning clear: she’ll be fine without you.
‘How can she be fine?’ she pleaded.
‘Do you really care?’ Sylvia Miller’s tone was emotionless.
‘Of course I care.’ Her voice was disappearing into a croak.
She stared out at the sea, which was darkening to navy in the dusk light, and forced herself to stay strong.
‘How did he die?’ she asked quietly. ‘Who found him?’ For a moment, she was a young journalist, back on the beat, asking difficult questions, doorstepping, intruding into people’s grief, asking the questions that had to be asked to get the story.
‘Diana found him in the basement of the London house. He’d hanged himself.’
Rachel shut her eyes, imagining her sister making the discovery, but it was too grim to form a proper picture. ‘When’s the funeral?’ she asked in a more even voice.
‘We don’t know yet. Julian’s parents are organising it. I expect there will be procedure to follow. Lots of people to get there.’
‘So is Diana with you?’ she asked, trying another tack.
‘I’m staying with her at Somerfold. Charlie has come home from school, of course. The family are rallying round. We are all being there for one another.’
Rachel gripped the phone harder.
‘I want to come home,’ she said suddenly. ‘I want to be there for her too. Like I always was . . . before.’
Her words were stuck in her throat. She held her breath, waiting for her mother to speak, willing her to invite her back into the fold, to share their grief, to help in whatever small way she could. The silence told her that wasn’t going to happen.
‘I’ve got to go,’ said her mother in a brutally cold and efficient manner. ‘I just phoned to let you know. I thought you should know.’
‘Mum, don’t—’
But Sylvia had already hung up.
Rachel stared down at the phone. Her feet seemed to be welded to the sand but her mind was whirling with questions. It didn’t make sense. It was the same feeling of stunned disbelief that she had felt as a teenager when Princess Diana had died. Some people seemed immortal. Some people simply didn’t, couldn’t die. Julian was one of them.
Julian Denver. Sometimes it was hard to even remember his face. But she could vividly remember what he was like. Brooding, seductive, a little bit frightening.
She shivered, recalling those final words.
If we ever see or hear from you again . . .
Her family still hated her, that much was clear from the brief conversation she had just had with her mother. And Julian’s death would do nothing to help repair that.
She sank down on the sand, feeling the cold graininess through her shorts, and rested her head softly on her knees. The evening air was a heady cocktail of sea salt, hibiscus, and green curry wafting from the nearby restaurants. But she was oblivious to it all.
A few moments later she heard scuffed footsteps on the path behind her.
‘You okay?’ asked a familiar voice.
Rachel stumbled to her feet. She glanced at Liam, then shook her head. ‘I have to go,’ she said, trying to push past.
‘Hey,’ he said gently, his large hand on her shoulder. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘That was my mother,’ she said finally. ‘Julian, my brother-in-law? He committed suicide yesterday.’
She tried to say it as matter-of-factly as she could, but it came out wrong: breezy, light-hearted, as if she didn’t care. Which is probably what everyone thinks.
‘Oh Rach, I’m sorry,’ said Liam, giving her arm an awkward squeeze.
‘I’m fine. Really. Just leave me.’
A few spots of rain started to fall. Thunderstorms came quickly here, but Liam didn’t move, and reluctantly she met his gaze. She saw the concern in her friend’s eyes and it made her breath stutter.
‘Come on, Rachel, you know you can talk to me.’
It was true: Liam was the one person in Thailand who knew everything. He knew about why she had come here, knew why she didn’t want to go back. And he knew that Diana and Julian were not the whole reason she had come to Thailand, but they were the reason it had been so easy to do so.
The rain spots were getting bigger, harder now. The sky was dark but she could make out black storm clouds overhead. Her T-shirt began to stick to her body as Liam pulled her under one of the palm trees that fringed the beach.
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You should go home.’
‘Liam, they hate me. I’m the last person they’re going to want to see at the funeral.’
‘Maybe, but maybe now is the time to say sorry.’
Rachel shook her head. ‘He’s dead, Liam. It’s a little bit late for that.’
‘It’s never too late to pay your respects.’
‘Well they’re going to think it’s a bit rich coming from me.’
There was a long pause.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
She looked up into his blue eyes. For a moment they connected absolutely with hers, and the unspoken frisson that had existed between them from the night that they had met, a frisson that mostly lay dormant, showed itself once more.
She shivered, and told herself it was the cool wind that had blown in suddenly off the sea.
‘You’d do that?’
‘I think it’s important you go, but I know it won’t be easy for you. If it were me, I’d want a bit of moral support.’
‘But we’d have to close the school, and we’re so busy. We can’t do it,’ she said.
‘Look, if there was ever a time to close the school and go back home, it’s now.’
‘Why? Out of guilt?’ replied Rachel too harshly. ‘My sister doesn’t want me there, my mother doesn’t want me there, and Julian would not have wanted me there either. The greatest respect I can pay him is not to go. If I do, people will immediately start talking about me and the reason I left. A funeral’s supposed to be a time to remember the good things about people, isn’t it, not to rake over old scandals.’
‘Rachel, do you want to rebuild your relationship with your sister?’ asked Liam simply.
She tensed, immediately defensive. Liam knew her too well. He knew what she wanted, more than anything. But she was also convinced of her reasons to stay away from England.
‘You have to go back,’ he pressed.
‘The rain is getting heavy,’ she said, looking away from him. ‘I should really be going home.’
3
The Peacock Suite had a beautiful view of the lake; that was the reason Diana loved it. That, and the fact that it was the quietest room at Somerfold and in the most distant wing of their Oxfordshire home. It was here she liked to sit, her chair pulled up in front of the enormous windows, alone with her thoughts, gazing at the water. But today the curtains were closed, with just enough light from two small lamps to make out what she was doing. No one could see into the room, but even so, Diana felt better doing this unobserved.
Taking a deep breath, she tipped the contents of two Selfridges bags on to the bed. It was quite a collection: papers, notebooks, letters, receipts, photographs. She had spent the morning gathering it together from desk drawers, filing cab
inets, even jacket pockets around the house, but slowly, unobtrusively. She didn’t want to raise any more eyebrows. After the police had finished with their endless questions, her mother had driven her straight to Somerfold as Diana wasn’t sure she ever wanted to see the house in Notting Hill again. Predictably, both her mother and Mrs Bills, the housekeeper, had been fussing around her, watching her every move. In fact, when Mrs Bills had found her poking around the library that morning, she had dispatched her to bed with herbal tea, as if she were recuperating from a mild case of flu. She meant well, of course, they all did. Presumably they must be secretly wondering about her state of mind, perhaps even imagining that she might try to ‘do something stupid’, as Sylvia Miller so subtly put it. But Diana had no intention of doing anything like that; in fact her mind was unusually clear and focused. That was why she was standing here in the dark, looking at this pile of letters. She had to know; that was what was keeping her going. Julian was dead – it was hard enough to grasp that idea – but he hadn’t been hit by a car or killed in an air crash, some senseless random event. He had taken his own life. There had to be a reason. Had to be. So it followed that somewhere there would be something that gave a clue as to why.
She picked up a photograph and looked at it. It was an old Polaroid, the white border yellowed and the colours slightly smeared, but it was clear enough: a group of students on a yacht. Julian was instantly recognisable in the middle of the group, with his foppish hair, shy grin and Operation Raleigh T-shirt, and Diana had to look away, her heart jumping. Jules, how could you? How could you do it?
Feeling overcome, she sat down on the blue silk coverlet. It’s just the lack of sleep, she told herself. Julian had been gone for almost forty-eight hours, and in that time she had not slept for a second. It hadn’t been out of choice – she was desperate to escape from this living hell, to close her eyes and shut it all out – but sleep just wouldn’t come. Lying in the dark, the empty space beside her, she couldn’t let her mind rest, her eyelids wide open, like some medieval torture designed to send her mad. And in those horrible, endless hours, she had gone over everything, examining every event, every word, every look between her and Julian through the past few months, searching for evidence of cracks, strains in their marriage. Things she might have said or done that could have driven him to some secret, hidden despair; things she could have said or done that might have made a difference; things that might have kept him alive. What if, what if, what if . . . The possibilities were endless and the nagging questions utterly futile. The guilt pressed down upon her, the frustration of simply not knowing making her head spin. Her body was weak with exhaustion, her mind stretched taut from chasing in circles. She had heard that people had died from lack of sleep, and lying there staring at the crack in the curtains, she hoped it would happen to her.
She turned back to the pile and ran her hands over the papers and photographs, half hoping to draw some sort of insight through touch alone. Shaking her head, she realised that she had met a dead end with this collection of stuff. She walked to the window, wanting to feel some light on her face, and pulled the curtain back just enough to see her son Charlie kicking a football across the grass near the lake. For a moment she almost didn’t recognise him – since Christmas he had grown inches and was now a long, loping figure with a shock of tawny hair. How he reminded her of Julian. They weren’t related by blood, of course, but they did say you could grow to resemble the people you were closest to, didn’t they?
‘Darling? What’s all this?’
Diana turned, startled by her mother’s voice. Sylvia Miller was a handsome woman in her late fifties, her ash-blond hair cut into a long bob, her body lithe and toned from the Dukan Diet and too much yoga. You would never guess that this woman had once been a working-class divorcee living in a terraced house in Devon. Sylvia looked born to the grandeur of Somerfold – more so, Diana had to admit, than herself.
‘What are you doing with all these papers?’
‘Nothing,’ said Diana, quickly crossing to the bed and gathering them together. Her mother stooped and picked up a letter that had fallen on to the floor. Diana was relieved to see that it was a bill; nothing personal, nothing useful. But she could also see that Sylvia had immediately grasped what her daughter was doing.
‘I really think you should leave this alone,’ she said, handing the bill to Diana.
‘I’m just spring-cleaning.’
Her mother raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘I think you should come downstairs and eat. Mrs Bills has made some chicken soup and a batch of madeleines that look ravishing.’
‘I’m fine up here, honestly.’
‘Best if you come. Liz just called. They’re ten minutes away.’
Diana nodded. It was another reason why she had spent the morning sifting through drawers and cupboards; something to take her mind off the fact that the preliminary inquest into Julian’s death was being held at noon. She had had no desire to be there, and Liz, Julian’s older sister, had assured her that there was no need for her to be and had gone in her place. Diana knew she could not have faced it, but it was just one more item to add to the long checklist of things to feel guilty about.
‘How did it go?’
‘Liz said it all went as expected,’ said Sylvia soothingly. ‘It was just a formality today.’
Sensing her daughter’s disquiet, she walked across and ran her hand up and down Diana’s arm.
‘Come on now, you’ve got enough on your mind without worrying about things like that.’
‘I know. You’re right.’
She sat down on the bed again and looked around the suite.
‘You know, Julian used to call this the row room,’ she said softly. ‘I used to come and sleep in here sometimes when we’d argued. It was always over little things. A bit like you and Dad.’
Julian and her father: the two most important men in her life. Now both dead.
‘Every couple on earth argues, Diana,’ said Sylvia. ‘It’s silly dwelling on things like that.’
The trouble was, Diana couldn’t do anything else, turning over every row and disagreement: had that been what had made him so unhappy? Had he really been so dissatisfied? She thought of how she and Julian had moved here four years ago, after the scandal. Diana had always associated moving house with moving on. They had decamped from Sheffield to Devon after her parents’ divorce; from Devon to London after her unexpected pregnancy. It was her own version of wiping the slate clean, except with removal vans and storage boxes. They had bought Somerfold hoping to make a fresh start, hoping to rebuild the trust in their marriage. Hoping to start a family. And actually, the row room hadn’t been used very much; they’d both made an effort to get along better, and eventually, day by day, their so-called ‘perfect marriage’ had clicked back on track. Or had it?
‘I wish we could have a row right now,’ she whispered, feeling the tears well up. ‘I’d give anything to hear his voice. But it’s just one of those things that’s never going to happen again. I’ll never see his face, hear his laugh, feel him next to me in bed . . .’
Her words started to falter. All the emotions that she’d been holding in were finally spilling over the dam.
‘Why?’ she said, her voice swallowed up into a sob.
Sylvia sat down next to her and held her tight as Diana’s tears soaked into the soft crêpe of her mother’s top. Somewhere inside, Diana felt some small relief that she was finally crying. She knew from the death of her father ten years earlier that grief was unique and it never happened the way you thought it should. Back then, she had been unable to stop crying for days, whilst her sister Rachel, who so often wore her heart on her sleeve, had been like stone.
There was a quiet knock at the door. ‘Mr Denver and Elizabeth have arrived,’ called Mrs Bills from outside.
Diana grabbed a handful of tissues from the bedside table, bl
ew her nose and wiped the tears away from her face. She glanced at her reflection – not good. Her skin was so pale, no one could miss her reddened eyes. Well, they’ll just have to lump it, she thought wearily, standing and allowing her mother to lead her from the room.
Ralph and Elizabeth Denver were standing in Somerfold’s wide entrance hall as she descended the staircase. Ralph moved towards her, his limp more prominent than she remembered, the lines on his face deep. Once such a vital man, Julian’s father had been one of the UK’s richest and most dynamic businessmen, until he had been partially paralysed by a stroke two years ago, forcing him to scale back his duties at the Denver Group and allow Julian to take over as CEO. Diana had not seen him for months. Under pressure from his wife Barbara, they now lived between their estate in Barbados and a villa in Provence. ‘You deserve a rest, Ralph,’ Barbara would say. ‘Julian can handle everything.’ Diana wondered if she remembered those words now.
‘How are you, my dear?’ asked Ralph, looking into Diana’s eyes. It was easy to forget, wrapped up in her own grief and confusion as she was, that Ralph was Julian’s father and had to be suffering deeply. And yet he had managed to attend the inquest . . .
‘Bearing up,’ she replied. She forced a smile across at Elizabeth, who nodded in acknowledgement.
‘That’s good to hear.’ Ralph squeezed her arm affectionately. Diana had always liked Julian’s father. He was powerful and, by reputation, ruthless in business – Diana supposed you didn’t get to build up and run the Denver Group without some steel in your soul – but he had always been polite and welcoming to her, which she could not say for everyone. Elizabeth, for one. Julian’s sister had always given the impression that she regarded Diana as an interloper and a gold-digger only interested in the family’s money.
‘It’s a difficult time for everyone,’ said Elizabeth, her expression still. The Denvers were not exactly old aristocratic money, but in three generations they had transformed themselves from successful soap-makers to a global conglomerate, and Elizabeth was every inch the rich heiress. Tall, elegant, clever, she was just as likely to be found giving her views to the Economist magazine as she was to be seen on the party pages of Tatler. She had grown up within the corridors of power and expected things to go her way; and they usually did. She was also very much an eldest child. She was a year older than Julian, and had almost a decade on Adam, the youngest Denver child, which Diana thought had always given her a quiet, controlling dominance in the family. Even Julian had been reluctant to take her on when she had a bee in her bonnet.
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