‘Back to Somerfold.’
‘Darling, don’t be ridiculous. Mr and Mrs Bills are here. Charlie and I have to stay. Go and sit upstairs quietly if you really can’t face it.’
‘I have to go home, pack my bag and get to the airport.’
‘The airport?’
‘I’m going to Thailand.’ Her decision was made. ‘I’m going to see Rachel.’ For the first time in a week, something finally made sense.
7
Rachel held her breath and looked up at the surface of the sea, just a haunting, glittering silver circle above her. She never knew how many shades of blue there were until she started free-diving. Fifty metres below the waves was the entire spectrum of her favourite colour: dark navy, ultramarine, deep sapphire, even a flash of cornflower if a fish flicked its tail. Down here, she was at peace, only her heart beating slow and steady in her ears, completely in control of everything. No phone calls, no emails, no distractions. Just it and her. Man against nature – or rather Rachel against her lungs. Because free-diving was diving without equipment, no regulator in your mouth or air tank on your back, you stayed down as long as the last breath you took would allow. And right now she could feel the burn increasing as the oxygen ran out. For a moment she considered just letting go of the rope and drifting off into the sea. How long would she last? A minute, maybe two? Everyone had a limit. Without warning, an image of Julian Denver popped into her head. Had he reached his limit? Had Julian just decided to let go of the rope?
Rachel kicked for the surface with her wide monofin – kick, kick, stroke – and was suddenly bursting through into the air, liberated from the water’s cold clutch, filling up her screaming lungs, gasping and clutching at the side of Serge’s boat. And there he was, his creased eyes smiling down at her.
‘You’re getting too good for this pond,’ he laughed, tapping his watch.
She took his hand and allowed herself to be pulled up on to the deck.
‘Bravo,’ he grinned, clapping wet hands together. ‘Three minutes two seconds.’
His accent was still thick after two decades away from France. Serge Bresson had come to Thailand as a competitive diver in the eighties. Something of a character on the circuit, he had got within twenty feet of the world record. ‘Feet not metres,’ he always added with a mischievous smile. But he had been mentoring Rachel’s diving with the same enthusiasm and eccentric energy he had brought to his own attempts, making her believe that one day, free-diving could be more than just a hobby for her too.
Right now, however, it was all she could do to lie back on the wooden boards and try to suck enough air into her body. Lack of oxygen made her feel weak, like a rag doll waiting to have life breathed into her.
‘Take it easy, don’t rush it,’ said Serge gently. ‘Let that body of yours remember you’re not a fish, eh?’
Eventually she sat up and took off her weight belt and goggles, letting them thump on to the deck. She was holding a small tag that indicated how far she had travelled down under the water.
‘Sixty metres!’ she gasped with triumph.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Breaking sixty metres for a constant weight dive – descending into the water down a long vertical line – was something of a milestone for Rachel. Only forty years earlier, this had been a record-breaking depth, although the world champions today went much deeper.
‘You know, I think you’re ready to do this competitively,’ said Serge thoughtfully.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Rachel, her breath slowly regulating. ‘Just think of all that training. All that yoga.’
Serge waved a hand dismissively. ‘You can swim sixty metres down without yoga. People work for years to train their breathing to the extent you can do naturally.’
‘Well, I like it that way,’ said Rachel, rubbing her hair with a towel. ‘I’m doing what comes naturally. Plus I have a lazy streak.’
‘Maybe. But you also have talent.’
Rachel wasn’t exactly sure why she was being so resistant; she had certainly thought about entering competitions, and her ambition had to go somewhere. Ambition.
Last night, her ambition had been focused on buying the bungalows, turning them into a dive school and resort – but look where that had got her. She had grabbed Liam in the sand outside those bungalows, taken a chance on them being together, fulfilling her dream together, and it had backfired spectacularly.
She gazed towards the island as Serge started the engine on the long-tail boat, wondering where they would go from here. Could they just forget it had happened? Was it that easy?
‘So come on, ma petite, what is really stopping you?’ said Serge, fixing her with a shrewd look as they made a lazy half-circle and began heading back towards the beach.
‘Well, there’s the diving school for one. I’m a fifty-fifty partner with Liam and he’s not going to like it if I start swanning off to the Cayman Islands or Greece for twenty weeks of the year, is he?’
Serge gave a Gallic shrug. ‘So take a minority share. I hear you’re hiring new instructors anyway.’
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Come on, it’s a small community. Nothing is a secret here.’ He raised his eyebrows meaningfully, and for a moment, Rachel had the horrible feeling that the Frenchman knew everything about her disastrous seduction of Liam.
‘How old are you, Rachel?’
‘Thirty-three.’
‘Still young enough to reach top-flight competition. And in addition to that, you are beautiful.’
She felt herself blush. Not many people told her that.
‘Seriously, I may be old, but I’m not dead,’ continued Serge. ‘I notice, and so will sponsors. It is different from when I was doing the sport. There is money there now.’
‘It’s not like being Venus Williams, though, is it?’
Serge began to chuckle. ‘That’s what I like about you, Rachel,’ he said, wagging a stubby finger at her. ‘This is why you would be a champion. Everyone else would think, “I’m not good enough to be a free-diving champion,” but not you. No, you think, “Merde, I won’t earn as much money as the world’s most famous tennis player.”’
Rachel couldn’t help laughing along.
‘You make me sound totally mercenary,’ she smiled, wondering vaguely if Serge had heard the rumours, if he knew what she had done back in London.
‘Not mercenary, no. I don’t think the money is so important to you, but the titles, that is what you want. Besides, being a free-diver is the best job in the world. Think about the places you would go, the people you would meet. Have you been to the Philippines?’
She shook her head. She remembered that Diana had been there years ago, just after she had started seeing Julian. Where had she stayed? The Amanpulo, that was it. She had made it sound like Paradise, a heady blend of beach butlers, watermelon mojitos and yoga pavilions.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.
Serge grinned as he guided the boat towards the pier.
‘You think it is nice here, but you will never see sand as white or water as clear as in the Philippines.’
‘Serge, I said I’d think about it.’
‘I tell you what I think,’ he said with a mischievous smirk. ‘I think you are a little bit in love with Liam.’
Rachel’s mouth dropped open. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Serge threw up a hand. ‘What is so ridiculous? You are very cute together and I have seen the way you look at him.’
‘Serge, he is my friend, my business partner.’
‘So. Make it more. If that’s what’s stopping you, then it’s simple, no?’
Rachel shook her head, squinting at the long jetty stretching out into the pale green water.
‘You Frenchmen. All you think about is affairs of the hear
t.’
‘So? What else is more important?’
But Rachel wasn’t listening; she was staring at a figure standing on the pier. She recognised her even before she could make out her face. It was her shape, so familiar, and her long dark hair, glinting in the sun like liquid chocolate. For a moment, she was tempted to tell Serge to turn the boat around, but he had already seen the woman.
‘Ah ha! I think I have some business,’ he smiled. ‘A pretty one too.’
‘She’s not a tourist,’ said Rachel with a flutter of panic. ‘She’s my sister.’
8
Thailand suited Rachel, Diana could tell that immediately. Standing on the strange banana-shaped boat, her younger sister seemed spotlit by the sun, highlighting a body that looked slim and toned, her dark hair slicked back, her skin glistening with beads of silvery seawater. She just looks so . . . alive, thought Diana, with a spike of envy, as the boat bumped gently against the pier and the driver cut the engine. Her heartbeat slowed as her sister came closer and closer, her features sharpening until Diana could make out her expression of anxious bemusement.
‘Hello,’ said Diana. She put one foot in front of the other and propelled herself to the end of the jetty, where Rachel stepped off the boat barefoot. ‘Have you been swimming?’
It was the only thing she could think of. On the twelve-hour flight to Bangkok, she’d agonised over what she would say to her sister after four years of silence, rehearsing over and over again her first words, hoping to come up with something clever and grand. But standing here, she just felt mute and stupid. She took a deep breath and swallowed warm, clammy air. What could you say to a woman you had effectively banished, to whom your last words had been hateful and angry?
‘Free-diving,’ said Rachel finally. She wasn’t smiling; in fact there was no trace of emotion on her face.
‘Free-diving? What’s that?’
‘Going as far under the sea as you can without an oxygen tank.’
‘Oh, like pearl divers?’
‘But without the pearls,’ said the man from the boat, but Rachel shot him a look and he walked on ahead of them up the pier.
‘Why are you here?’ asked Rachel when he was out of earshot. She said it quite neutrally, but Diana recognised a tiny flicker of anxiety. Rachel always put a brave face on any difficult situation, but Diana knew her too well to miss her signs of fear.
‘I . . . I just want to talk. There’s no one else I can talk to.’
It sounded lame, Diana knew that. But it was the truth, and it was the reason why she had flown halfway around the world. Rachel probably hated her guts. Diana herself had spent months, years blaming her sister for the problems in her marriage. But right now, Rachel was the only person she wanted to talk to.
‘Do you mind if I change first?’ said Rachel. ‘There’s a café just there.’ She pointed down the beach to a bamboo-covered shack with tables on the sand.
Diana walked over and ordered a Sprite, sitting under an umbrella and slipping her sandals off as her sister disappeared into a wood-slatted shower cubicle. She was tired and anxious herself, but the view of the sea soothed her. She had been to Thailand before – to a luxury villa on Phuket that came with the biggest infinity pool she had ever seen and a massage team that had dispensed the most exquisite four-hands massage. But this place was something else. Raw, luscious and uncommercialised. Julian had always been so proud of his architect-designed office, with its white carpets and its view over the city, the Shard, the London Eye and beyond. He had called it ‘the most incredible office with the most incredible view in the world’, but right now, looking at the bone-white sand and the jade ocean beyond, Diana thought that he had miscalculated.
Her sister had landed on her feet, she told herself with a trace of bitterness. The taxi driver had driven her from the ferry arrivals straight to the Giles-Miller Diving School office in Sairee village, and had refused to take a fare after Diana had told him that Rachel was her sister. ‘Rachel Miller, she good people,’ he had said in halting English. She had been even more surprised when she had met a tanned, sexy man in the office – apparently the Giles part of the partnership – whose eyes had opened like saucers when Diana had said her name and asked where she could find Rachel. The protective way he had spoken about her sister had made Diana wonder what the exact nature of their relationship was. If Giles was her personal as well as professional partner, then Rachel was even luckier than she’d thought.
‘Are you alone?’
Diana looked up, startled. She had been so lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t noticed Rachel approach.
‘Yes, I came on my own,’ she said.
‘Where’s Charlie?’
‘Mum and Adam took him back to school last night.’
‘Boarding school?’
‘Harrow.’
‘Figures,’ said Rachel, pulling up a chair, but only perching on the edge, as though she might jump up and run at any moment. ‘Do the rest of the family know where you are right now?’
Diana stopped a frown. She had left Hanley Park before the Denvers had arrived, leaving Sylvia and Adam to cover for her.
‘They know I’ve come to see you. They weren’t exactly thrilled about it.’
Rachel just nodded. Diana didn’t doubt that her sister felt awkward, but she could still be fearsome, formidable, even when she was cornered.
‘Is business good? I believe you have a diving school.’
Their words were brittle. That easy familiarity that had always existed between them had completely disappeared.
‘Business is great.’ Rachel nodded. ‘We train three hundred PADI-certified divers a year and we’re gearing up to expand, open up a whole resort.’ She tilted her head. ‘But you didn’t come here to run a credit check on me, did you?’
‘No, look, Rach . . .’ Diana began, but her sister had turned to speak to a waiter, rolling off long sentences in fluent Thai. Evidently she’d said something funny, because the waiter beamed as he scuttled back to the shack.
‘What’s so amusing?’
‘I told him you were a tourist, so to go easy on the chillies.’ A trace of a smile pulled at her lips. ‘I guessed you’d be hungry; haven’t been long-haul in a while, but I don’t remember aeroplane food being that exciting, even in first class. That okay?’
Diana felt her shoulders relax. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be as difficult as she’d thought.
‘Look, Diana, I’m so sorry about Julian.’
Diana blinked hard, unable to get any words out.
‘I thought it was better that I stayed away from the funeral,’ continued Rachel. ‘Even though I wasn’t there, it doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about you.’
‘I know.’
‘Did you get my letter?’
‘You wrote to me?’
‘You know me: I work better in print.’ Rachel grimaced. ‘Or perhaps not . . .’
Diana felt a sudden overwhelming desire to tell her sister everything, although not without some trepidation. Back in Britain she had been convinced that helping her out was the very least Rachel could do. But now she was here, was it right to ask her to give up her pocket of Paradise, to return home to investigate a crime that wasn’t even really a crime? To help her with her grief? To find answers Diana wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to hear?
She owes you, she reminded herself.
‘I need your help,’ she said finally. She almost felt a physical pain just saying it. She had spent years hating her sister. In those insomniac hours and days after Julian’s death, she had pinpointed the exact moment when her dream life with her husband had started to sour. And it was when her sister had chosen her career over her family by running a four-page exposé on Julian’s extramarital affair. ‘I want you to find out why Julian killed himself.’
Rachel jerked back. ‘Isn’t that what the inquest is for?’
‘The inquest is to find out what happened – I already know that. I want to find out why it happened.’
Rachel stared at her for a long moment.
‘Why me?’
‘Because you were the best at what you did.’
‘Di, I wasn’t exactly—’
‘It wasn’t a compliment,’ said Diana flatly. ‘As a journalist, you were unscrupulous, underhand and completely unprincipled.’
‘That’s not entirely fair,’ Rachel said, averting her eyes.
Diana leant forward. ‘Yes, Rachel, it is. You almost destroyed my life for the sake of a story.’
Her sister glanced up. She was picking her nails, a habit she had kept from her teenage years; it was her only tell that she was nervous or upset.
‘You’ve come an awful long way just to insult me.’
‘I didn’t come to insult you,’ replied Diana. ‘I’m just being honest; I want a journalist who has what it takes to get to the bottom of a story, who has the stomach for a fight. And that person is you. You stop at nothing; nobody knows that better than me. And I need you to find out why he did it.’
She could feel tears beginning to prick at her eyes, but she was glad that she had finished her speech.
Rachel just sat there, staring at her. Oh God, thought Diana, I’ve pushed her too far. Been too heavy-handed. I’ve come all this way and I’ve screwed it up.
Then slowly her sister reached across the table and put her tanned hand on top of Diana’s. Rachel could be stubborn, dogmatic, unyielding. But right now, as the sun set in long golden ribbons behind her, she looked truly remorseful.
‘I’m sorry, Di,’ she said. ‘I really am. I shouldn’t have . . . done what I did.’
Diana could only nod. She could still remember the moment she had realised her life was going to fall apart; it was as if someone had taken a photograph. She had just returned to their Notting Hill home from a morning yoga class when the telephone on the stand by the stairs had rung. It was a reporter from the Post asking if she had any comment on the story they were running the next day. Julian was having an affair, they said. They had pictures, an interview with the young woman, shots of the pair of them leaving a hotel. Diana had actually been calm, coolly declining to comment. Because she just didn’t believe it. For roughly sixty seconds, she had utter, unshakeable faith in her husband. Sixty seconds, because the moment she put the phone down, it rang again – and there was Julian, his voice shaking, saying that it had meant nothing, that Diana was the only woman he had ever loved: all the clichés. And she had just stood there in the hallway, the receiver held loosely in her hand, knowing that things couldn’t get any worse.
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