‘They call it ambiguous loss,’ he said. ‘It’s very difficult to deal with, because you don’t have . . . what do they call it? Closure. And you never know the reason why. What went wrong. What you did wrong.’ He paused for a moment. ‘In the end, I learnt to focus on the present. I taught myself to come to terms with the fact that Jamie doesn’t want to be found. And I decided I wasn’t going to beat myself up about it. I did my best as his dad. The best I knew how . . .’
‘Of course you did.’ Claire touched him on the arm.
‘I knew if I carried on hoping, like Monique, that I’d drive myself crazy in the end. And she needs me to be strong.’
He picked up more pebbles, clawing at them urgently. Claire could feel the tension in him. The frustration that must still eat him up, all these years on.
‘The reason I’m telling you all this,’ he went on, ‘is because this hotel project is the first thing that has really fired Monique up since Jamie disappeared. I think it could be the turning point. The thing that helps her move on. Which is why I so desperately want it to work. And why I want you both on board. Because you can make it happen. There’s no way she could do it on her own – she’s smart enough, but I don’t think she’s strong enough. And I’ve got too much else on to give it the attention it needs. Someone’s got to finance it after all. But with you and Luca – it would be a great team.’
‘I understand,’ said Claire. She felt guilty that she’d thought it was just a vanity project to keep a silly woman with too much money happy. Poor Monique.
‘I know Luca’s committed.’ Trevor pushed up his sunglasses and fixed her with a look that said the emotional stuff was over and now he meant business. ‘But I can see you’re not convinced.’ He held a hand up as she started to speak. ‘Which is absolutely right. You shouldn’t be rushing in. As a woman, you’re bound to have more reservations. It’s okay for Luca to go charging ahead, but what about you? You’ve just got engaged. I expect you’re thinking about your future. How it all fits in. How you’ll cope if you want a family.’
‘Well,’ said Claire. ‘There’s a lot to think about, certainly.’ Her heart was hammering. Trevor was getting too personal for her liking. Yet she admired him for his perspicacity. He knew something was amiss.
‘All I’m saying,’ replied Trevor, ‘is that whatever it takes, whatever I can do to convince you, I’ll do it. If you have concerns, or you want to make conditions, please talk to me. I don’t want this project to fall through. I want to make it work for you. So I can make it work for Monique.’
Claire nodded. There wasn’t much she could say, because she couldn’t reveal the real source of her reluctance. Yet at the same time, she felt a sudden desire to take the project on. Trevor’s story had moved her deeply. Of course, she knew that this was why he was so successful, because he was an expert in manipulating people, but he certainly hadn’t been lying.
And she saw Monique in a different light now – underneath the make-up and the designer clothes and the flashy jewellery, she saw a woman, a mother, in constant pain.
‘I’ve got some stuff I need to work out first,’ she managed finally.
Trevor smiled. ‘Whatever it takes. And remember – we haven’t had this conversation. Monique doesn’t like people to know about Jamie.’
He flipped his glasses back down to cover his eyes as Luca and Monique came into view. They were talking animatedly, Luca gesticulating, Monique nodding.
Claire didn’t want to hear what they were saying. Now that she knew the stakes, she didn’t want to be part of the conspiracy until she knew exactly where her future lay. And the only one who could figure that out was her.
She stood up. ‘I’m going for a swim.’
She didn’t wait for a reply. She ran down towards the water and straight into the sea, gasping at the coldness. But she didn’t stop. She carried straight on until the water reached her waist, and then she plunged underneath the waves, down into the deep coolness, where there was no sound. She stayed there until her lungs nearly burst, wishing she could swim off into the silent green depths of the ocean where nothing and no one could reach her.
Laura and Tony sat on the terrace at the front of the house for lunch, an Indian parasol shielding them from the heat of the sun.
Tony brought out home-made watercress soup, served with a swirl of double cream and a sprinkling of chives from one of the pots of herbs that were ranged under the windows. With the soup were a chunky loaf of organic stoneground bread and a wedge of Sharpham Brie, ripened to gooey perfection.
They ate for a few minutes in silence. A gentle breeze came off the sea, bringing with it a tang of ozone that sharpened Laura’s appetite: she was so nervous, she hadn’t thought she could face food, but she was surprised to be hungry. Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying to each other.
‘They’re a bloody menace,’ said Tony. ‘They’ve been known to come and take food off the table. You can’t turn your back.’
‘But they’re part of the seaside, aren’t they? You can’t have sea without seagulls. They’re iconic.’
‘I suppose so.’ He smiled at her as he sliced another couple of chunks of bread and passed her one on the end of the knife.
‘So – how long have you lived here?’ Laura busied herself with the butter.
‘Fifteen years now. We decided we wanted to leave the rat race and have a simpler life. We’ve never regretted it. Okay, so we don’t have a flash car and we don’t stay at posh hotels if we go away, but I sleep at night now. I’m not very good at stress.’
Oh dear, thought Laura. You might not sleep tonight after what I’m about to tell you. She took a gulp of elder-flower cordial. Her mouth felt so dry, she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to form the next words. She had to confront him. Wendy might come back at any moment, and then it would be too late.
She cleared her throat before speaking.
‘You used to teach at St Benedict’s, didn’t you?’
It came out as more of a statement than a question.
Or an accusation.
The fleeting look on Tony’s face was a mixture of fear, surprise and guilt, which he managed to erase with admirable speed.
‘St Benedict’s?’ He frowned, and shook his head.
‘The girls’ school? In Reading. I looked you up,’ insisted Laura. ‘You were head of art.’
‘Oh!’ A gleam of recollection came into his eye. Was she supposed to be taken in by his acting? ‘Yes, I was there for a couple of terms. But it was an awfully long time ago. An awfully long time.’ He put his hands on the table to push himself up, as if to accentuate how old he was. ‘There’s gooseberry fool if you’d like it . . .’ He trailed off as he realised Laura was staring at him. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking down at the table. He sat back down.
‘What?’
He knows, she thought. He knows.
She bent down and burrowed in her bag for the photocopy of the drawing she’d found in Marina’s box file, then laid it out on the table.
‘Did you draw this while you were there?’
He stared at the picture for what seemed like an eternity. Apart from the slightest crease between his brows, his face was expressionless. At long last, he spoke.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘It looks like my signature, certainly. But I must have done hundreds of drawings like this during my life. I’ve no idea who it is, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t remember anyone, really. My memory’s dreadful these days.’ He passed the drawing back to her with a smile. Was his hand shaking slightly, or was it the breeze ruffling the paper? ‘Anyway, I’m hardly famous, so even if I did draw it, it won’t be worth anything. Though I’m flattered that you might think so.’
He laughed, but it didn’t fool her.
‘I didn’t bring it because I thought it was valuable,’ she told him. ‘And I know who it is. It’s my mother. She was at the school. It must have been drawn not long before I was born.’
&n
bsp; There wasn’t a flicker of reaction.
‘Really?’ he asked, and a note of hostility had crept into his tone.
‘Yes,’ said Laura, and she leant in towards him. ‘And I brought it because I think you might be my father.’
He gazed at her in absolute astonishment, the horror on his face almost comical. Then he gave a splutter, something between a laugh and a cough.
‘Oh, dear God. Oh, my dear girl.’ He sat back and ran his hands through what was left of his hair. ‘How on earth could I be your father? Wendy and I were already married when I was at St Benedict’s. I’d have been old enough to be . . . your mother’s father. Almost. Whatever made you think . . .?’
Laura snatched up the drawing and waved it at him.
‘She kept this. With all her important stuff. And the dates add up. She was about to do her A-levels when she got pregnant. You were her teacher. Why else would she keep it a secret who my father was? If it had just been some random boy, she’d have told me. But she must have wanted to cover it up . . . Of course she could never tell anyone. An affair with a teacher – that’s pretty scandalous.’
She realised she was ranting. She stopped. Tony nodded politely.
‘It certainly would be,’ he replied. ‘If it were the case.’
Laura looked down at the picture, her only scrap of evidence. She took a deep breath and carried on.
‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘It’s not just a sketchy life drawing done in a school studio. Look at her face. Look at the way it’s drawn. Whoever did this was in love with my mother. And she was in love with them. You can see that in her eyes.’
She was almost in tears, racked with the emotion. The effort of wanting her theory to be proved right.
‘Look,’ said Tony. ‘I understand how much you want to find out who your father is. It’s a very powerful instinct, to want to know who we are and where we come from. But I’m very sorry. I’m not your man.’ He spread his hands on the table in front of him, looking down at his long, tanned fingers. ‘I can tell you this with absolute certainty because . . .’ He looked up, squinting in the bright sun. ‘This isn’t easy. I don’t speak about it often. But . . . Wendy and I were never able to have children. We tried for years. We had all the tests. I’m totally infertile. So you see . . . it can’t be me. No matter how much you want it to be.’
‘Oh.’ The breath came out of Laura as if she’d been punched in the back.
‘Quite apart from the fact that I didn’t have a relationship with your mother. She was a pupil. It would have been a total abuse of my position.’
They sat in silence for a moment. The seagulls were still wheeling.
‘Come on,’ said Tony. ‘Let’s go inside and make a cup of tea.’
After Colin and Chelsey had finished their shopping spree, Chelsey had insisted she didn’t want an all-singing, all-dancing excursion. All she wanted to do was go to the beach. And so when they went back to the Townhouse to drop off their purchases, Colin asked the kitchen if they could pack up a picnic, which Fred and Loz duly did – chicken sandwiches and mini quiche lorraines and tubs of fruit salad and the rest of Luca’s blueberry friands – and together they set off with buckets and spades and fishing nets for Neptune’s Cove, a tiny crescent of golden sand at the mouth of the river, sheltered by cliffs on both sides.
Chelsey seemed quite content to just potter about, poking around in the tidal rock pools and splashing in the shallows. Such was her delight that Colin soon realised that she had rarely been given permission to behave like a child. He certainly couldn’t imagine Karen packing up a picnic and sitting on the beach all day with her. But he was more than happy to. He rented a couple of deckchairs for them to make their camp, and watched her as she explored, going over when she waved to him to come and see what she had found, making sure she had enough sun cream on, traipsing over to the ice cream van for a 99 each when it got too hot.
By the middle of the afternoon, freckles had started to come out on her nose and her skin was already beginning to turn gold. She looked, he thought, like a healthy, happy kid on holiday, not the pallid, downtrodden creature he had picked up the day before. She had lost that horrible air of solemnity she seemed to carry with her and seemed a little more carefree. How much that had to do with Karen not being around, he couldn’t be sure. But she had definitely come to life since her mother had left the scene. She was totally engrossed in gathering up shells, wiping the sand from them carefully and putting them in her bucket.
He couldn’t help feeling that at eleven, she was a bit old for shell-gathering. But then she didn’t seem to have had much of a childhood at all, so perhaps she was making up for lost time. Over the course of the day he’d managed to extricate as full a picture as he could of her life, and it seemed pretty grim.
Karen, it seemed, never helped her daughter with her homework or turned up to parents’ evening. Chelsey’s diet revolved around McDonald’s, Subway and Domino’s – she seemed proud that she knew how to phone for a pizza. And she seemed to spend a lot of time being dumped at other people’s houses. Colin was furious. Furious with Karen and furious with himself. He should have taken control years ago. He should have taken more interest; he should have made the money he gave her conditional on certain things. He should have monitored Chelsey’s school reports.
He should, in short, have been the father she so desperately needed. Was it too late? No, he thought. It was never too late. Chelsey still had a sweet nature and a desire to please. There was time to turn her life round. Get her a decent education and nurture her. Like Michelle and Ryan had been nurtured. He hadn’t missed a single parents’ evening for either of them, no matter how hard he had been working.
He pulled out his phone. He had twenty-four/seven access to both his accountant and his solicitor. He paid them enough to be able to call them whenever he liked. Not that he often called them out of hours – Colin didn’t operate like that – but he considered this an emergency. Martin Crane wouldn’t mind. He’d drawn up the contract for every deal Colin had ever done since he started in business. Every year without fail, Colin sent him a Christmas cake laced with Courvoisier from the bakery.
Martin answered on the second ring.
‘Colin,’ he said crisply, fully alert. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I need help,’ Colin responded. ‘It’s probably not your line of work, but you should be able to find me the right man for the job. Or woman.’
‘Do you want to put me in the picture?’ Martin asked.
Colin hesitated. Then took the plunge. He’d spent enough time trying to sweep Chelsey under the carpet.
‘I’ve got an illegitimate daughter. Eleven years old. I’ve been paying a grand a month maintenance her whole life. Her mum’s done a bunk. Left me holding the baby, so to speak. And I want custody, as of . . . yesterday.’
‘Is your name on the birth certificate?’
‘I imagine so.’ Colin felt sure Karen wouldn’t have forgotten this trick in her quest to score money from him.
‘And you’re sure you are the father?’
Colin’s stomach lurched. This thought hadn’t occurred to him. But of course he couldn’t be sure. Karen could have been stringing along any number of fools like him. For all he knew, she was claiming maintenance from half a dozen hapless idiots.
He looked over at Chelsey. She was lying on her towel now, iPod earphones in, knees bent, her feet tapping in time to the music.
Of course she was his. Karen was manipulative and opportunistic, but not that evil. And probably not even that clever.
‘Positive,’ he said, because he had to believe it.
‘Okay. What you need is a shit-hot family lawyer. We’re probably looking at getting a parental responsibility order, which might mean going to court. Depending on whether the mother cooperates. Be prepared for it to get messy – these things are never straightforward.’
‘I’m ready for it.’ Colin felt calm. Resolute. ‘And by the way, Alison doesn�
�t know anything. Yet.’
He heard Martin give a huff, as if to say, ‘I don’t envy you, mate’.
‘I’m on it. It’s a bank holiday weekend, so it might be a while before I get anyone, but I’ll call you back as soon as,’ said Martin, and rang off.
Colin knew that by Tuesday he would have the best man or woman for the job at his disposal. He would just have to hope that Karen didn’t reappear on the scene before then, having had a change of heart. He wanted this to be a clean operation, and by staying away, Karen was giving him plenty of rope.
There was one more call he had to make. One he wasn’t looking forward to in the least. He pressed ‘Home’ on his mobile, and waited for his wife to answer.
‘Hello?’ Alison always answered the phone with a querying tone, as if she was puzzled as to why anyone would want to call.
‘Alison, love, it’s me,’ he said.
‘Oh, hello.’ She sounded pleased to hear him. ‘You’ve just caught me. I was on my way into town.’
‘Listen, I need you to get in the car. Drive down to the Townhouse by the Sea in Pennfleet.’
‘What’s happened?’ Her pleasure turned to alarm. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine. There’s just something I need to talk to you about.’
‘Can’t you come home?’
‘No.’ On this Colin was firm. ‘No. I’ll book us a table for dinner. Be here as soon as you can.’
‘Can’t you tell me over the phone?’
‘I need to see you. Face to face.’
‘Okay.’ She sounded perplexed and a little put out. ‘The Townhouse in Pennfleet? Isn’t that Cornwall? I thought you were in Bristol?’
‘No.’ His so-called conference did exist. He kept his alibi as watertight as he could. He’d even bought a three-day ticket. But he’d never darkened the door of the exhibition.
There was silence while Alison digested this information.
‘Right.’ She didn’t sound too thrilled. ‘Well, if you’re not going to enlighten me, I’ll be as quick as I can, I suppose.’
Laura sat inside at the breakfast bar while Tony made her a cup of tea.
The Long Weekend Page 22