“What do you want, William?” she said, finally meeting his eyes, but with a catch in her voice. “I can’t imagine you’ve come all this way for nothing.”
He seemed to hesitate. “I could have written.”
“Yes.”
“I had your parents’ address. When I went there, your father told me you were here. I’m so very sorry about your brother.”
She bowed her head and blinked to stop the tears. “Please don’t be nice to me.”
There was a short silence.
“I wanted to see you.” He paused and hesitated again. “Because Deirdre has asked me for a divorce.”
Margo got to her feet, the color draining from her face. “Because of me?” she said, struggling to take it in.
He shook his head. “Not directly, but she says she wants to cite you as co-respondent.”
After a sharp intake of breath, Margo’s eyes widened. “But that’s awful.”
“It is. But don’t you see what this means?”
Margo gazed at Louisa with a pleading expression. Holding her hands palms up, Louisa shrugged and couldn’t help feeling bemused.
“It means we can be married eventually. If you’ll still have me,” he said, now with a purposeful look, all hesitation gone.
Margo sat down again abruptly, her breath ragged. “My mother will have a fit.”
“Does that mean you agree?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He gave her a warm, genuine smile, half in encouragement, half in hope. “Please, Margo. Think about it. This could be our chance.”
With a deep sigh Margo gazed at her hands in her lap. She turned them over and then, glancing up, smiled back, but it was a nervous, hesitant smile. “Tell me everything.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Why did she decide she wanted a divorce? Did you tell her about me?”
“Not until after she raised the subject of divorce. What I told you was true. We haven’t been happy for years. Now she has inherited some money and wants to move back to her hometown in Devon.”
“She didn’t ask you to go with her?”
“No. She knows I need to be where my work is. All my clients are in Kent.”
“Where would we live?”
“Do you mean you’ll consider it? I’m afraid your name will be dragged through the mud.”
She blinked rapidly as if thinking. “I don’t know.”
“Margo, my darling.” He paused. “You must know what you mean to me.”
She nodded, but to Louisa it looked as if Margo was close to tears. She went over to stand behind her and placed a comforting hand on her sister-in-law’s shoulder.
“Have you missed me?” William said. “I’ve missed you every minute you’ve been gone.”
“Look,” Louisa said, and squeezed Margo’s shoulder, “I’m going to see what’s happened to Ashan. I think you two should discuss this by yourselves. You don’t need me playing gooseberry. And Margo, don’t let what Irene will say influence you.”
“You think I should agree?”
“I think we all have to take our chance of happiness when we can.” And with that she left the room. Poor Margo, she thought, as she went to speak to Ashan; it was a tough decision. Being cited as co-respondent would be miserable and everyone would know her business, but if she did indeed love William, as he claimed he did her, maybe it was the right thing to do.
His smile when he saw her was startling, lighting up the rugged angles of his face. She opened her mouth but ended up swallowing her words.
“Come on in,” Leo said.
He stood back to give her room to pass. They went upstairs into the comfortable but slightly shabby room littered with books, several oil lamps and some candles.
As she stood just inside the threshold, she again struggled to keep the past where it belonged. Fed up with Elliot living in her head, she glanced at Leo and, when he smiled at her so generously, Elliot’s ghost faded. Relieved, she gazed at Leo’s gentle dark eyes, and although he was still smiling she glimpsed a trace of something she hadn’t spotted before. Sadness, possibly. She wasn’t sure.
“I’m pleased to see you,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
“Yes.”
“So?”
She pulled out an envelope. “I have the agreement for you to sign. Sorry it’s taken so long.”
“You could have posted it.”
“Yes.”
“But you came.”
“Yes.”
“And?” He held out a hand to take the contract. Feeling the warmth of his skin as he brushed her fingers with his, she longed to respond but instead drew her hand away, then sat in a chair and nibbled at her nails.
“Louisa,” he said. “I’m sorry if I overstepped the mark.”
“You didn’t,” she said in a low voice, remembering how she had felt when he had touched her cheek in the fisherman’s hut. She glanced out of the window as the sun came out briefly from behind the clouds. She could recall the exact moment she had known she would marry Elliot, and the way those early days had always seemed sunny. They’d been sharing an ice cream at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo and when he wiped a smear of it from her cheek she had felt so certain. Now she had lost the ability to rely on her emotions but, despite being wary, there did seem to be something compelling between her and Leo. As she lifted her head and looked at him, she silently acknowledged how much she wanted to get to know him.
“What are you thinking?” he said. “At times I feel I know so little about you.”
“I’m thinking, if you sign it now I’ll take it back with me, and then send it to my manager.” She lied, of course, couldn’t begin to say what had really been on her mind.
He opened the envelope and drew out the agreement, reading it carefully before going across to the coffee table. While he was doing this, she thought about William and Margo. If there was one thing Elliot’s death had taught her, it was that life had to be lived and love still mattered. But it was different for her because she still needed answers, and that muddied everything.
He glanced up at her and she felt a sudden burst of happiness. Then he signed.
“All done.”
She nodded.
“So, how have you been?”
It was so quiet she could hear the beat of her own heart. “I wish I could be free.”
“You’ll get there,” he said. “There’s no rush.”
She stared at her feet. “Sometimes I’m so afraid.”
“Of?”
“Anything. Everything. The past, the future. The husband I didn’t know.”
It was true. She had been living with a low level of anxiety almost every day since Elliot died.
“You know you can talk to me.”
She nodded again, but not wanting to say more about how she was feeling about Elliot’s death, she changed the subject. “How is Zinnia?” she said, and could tell he was disappointed she hadn’t confided in him more fully.
“It’s also okay not to talk,” he said. “As for Zinnia, she’s in a bad way again, I’m afraid.” She could see the concern in his eyes and realized, despite his focus on the plantation, he was genuinely worried for his cousin.
She hesitated before speaking. “Can I see her?”
“I thought you didn’t want to.”
“I think perhaps I must.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I hate the thought of it—well, of her, I suppose—but I think I have to see her in the flesh. Apart from one fleeting moment, I’ve only ever seen her in her paintings.”
“If you’re sure.”
She sighed. “I’m not sure of anything.”
There was a short silence during which she couldn’t look at him.
“How is she
coping with Conor?” she eventually asked.
“Barely at all. He comes up here a lot, but it’s not satisfactory. I do my best—but he needs attention I can’t give him, and nor can she now.”
“He has lost his father.”
Leo nodded.
It was terribly sad, and yet she hadn’t forgiven Elliot for having a son and she couldn’t help how that affected the way she felt about Conor.
“Will Conor be there?”
“He’s down at the sheds with the cinnamon peelers.”
“Good. In that case let’s go now. I’ll just put the papers in the car.”
Leo pulled on his boots and they first went to her car and then he led her down to Zinnia’s house via a shortcut. She listened to animals scratching in the undergrowth and slapped the swarms of flies from her face.
“Not too rough for you? This path?”
“I’m fine,” she said, though her stomach was somersaulting. What would it be like to meet her husband’s lover? Was it crazy to do this or, as she suspected, was it the only way she might eventually accept what had happened?
“I had the doctor out again, but she refused point blank to see him. I don’t know what’s wrong, but she seems in dreadfully low spirits as well as physically ill. Maybe seeing another woman might help her.”
“Even me? I expect she hates my very existence.”
“Zinnia isn’t the hating type.”
She stood still and hesitated for a moment. “What type is she?”
Leo sighed. “Hard to say. She’s talented and a bit bohemian, but also insecure. She’s made some mistakes in her life but has paid for them too. To be honest, I don’t think she really knows who she is.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I’d say, although you are feeling rather at sea just now, you do have a pretty strong sense of who you are, where you came from, where you belong.”
She snorted. “You think that?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t feel like it right now.”
“Well, Zinnia didn’t have the best of starts.”
“What happened to her parents? Maybe they could help with Conor.”
“I’m afraid her father, my uncle, died some years back.”
“And her mother?”
“Her mother was a dipsomaniac. Nobody knows what happened to her. Wherever she is, I don’t imagine being a grandmother would be part of her life plan.”
Louisa inhaled slowly and then let her breath out in a rush. She felt suddenly hot but still had to ask. “And how did Zinnia become involved with Elliot?”
“I don’t know much. She kept the truth of it from me when I first suggested she live here. I knew she was pregnant but didn’t know by whom. I gradually discovered it was Elliot and that he was married.”
“And you didn’t approve?”
“It wasn’t for me to approve or not. I tried to get her to end it, though.”
“But she didn’t.”
“I think she tried to once or twice.”
“Did she believe Elliot would leave me?”
He looked at her quizzically. “Do you think that?”
She swallowed the lump developing in her throat. “I found a pretty damning letter from him to her, though he’d never sent it for some reason. And, from what I read, it seemed Zinnia had tried to end it.”
“Maybe she was trying to force his hand?”
“You think so?”
“I don’t know. I do know you are a lot stronger than Zinnia. And, if you don’t mind me saying, I feel you are stronger than Elliot was too.”
“Really?”
“And because Zinnia is weaker than he was, I imagine it made Elliot feel more of a man than he really was.”
She sighed. “That’s harsh. You think I made him feel less of a man?”
“I didn’t mean it like that, but haven’t you noticed some men need to surround themselves with weaker people?”
They carried on walking and then, twenty yards from Zinnia’s bungalow, Louisa halted. Apart from the sound of crickets there was an unnatural emptiness about the spot. She felt terribly exposed and for a few minutes she longed to turn back, to quietly rewind her footsteps to a place where she felt safe. Wherever that now was. She glanced up at the lemony sky just showing through the tops of the trees; her thoughts collided and she shrank back.
“Can you handle this?” Leo said, clearly sensing her state of mind. “You don’t have to do it.”
She was tempted to say, No, I don’t want to go on, but she drew herself up tall instead. “I don’t have to—but somehow I know I must.”
Even so, a knot of dread tightened her throat. Just the idea of Elliot with Zinnia was appalling, but if she was ever to get over it she had to face this horrible situation head on, and now was as good a time as any. If she didn’t confront the truth, Elliot’s other life would remain shrouded in mystery, just out of sight, his deception constantly haunting her. I don’t want to know, she thought. I don’t want to see. And yet…
Leo led the way past the same heavily overgrown scented plants in pots, and after gently tapping on the door they went in. Louisa gazed around at a room in disarray.
“This is a bit of a shambles,” she said.
Various pieces of clothing hung haphazardly over the back of two chairs and lay in an untidy pile on the floor, and everything seemed to be coated in a thin layer of dust.
“Can’t you get somebody to see to this?”
“It gets dusty quickly here. I come in once or twice a week and Kamu does what he can, but often as not she locks the door and won’t let us in. Shall we go in? Are you ready?”
He opened another door and poked his head around it. Louisa heard him say he’d brought someone to see her, but all Zinnia said in reply was, “No more doctors.”
“Not a doctor.”
He signaled to Louisa to come through with him and, as she went in, the stale air made her breath catch in her throat. The room was hot and gloomy, with heavy curtains blocking the light. Repulsed by a lingering smell of sour wine, Louisa hesitated, but then stared at Zinnia. As Zinnia stared back, Louisa longed to slip into a corner where she could flee from the woman’s dark eyes, so like Leo’s, but for the fact that these eyes were hollow and circled by purple shadows. Eventually Louisa glanced about the room but she was increasingly assaulted by images of Elliot: Elliot lying naked in bed beside this woman, or standing there by the window smoking a desultory cigarette, his head thrown back, blowing the blue smoke up to the ceiling. She felt herself buckle.
“Cat got your tongue?” the woman said.
Louisa saw she was terribly pale, far too thin, and her red hair hung limply about her face. What was it about this woman that had led Elliot to betray her?
“I’m Louisa Reeve,” she managed to say, but her voice sounded strangled, paralyzed by the heat and anger gripping her throat. And in a flash, more than anything she wanted to hurt the woman who had stolen her husband.
Zinnia shivered and her skin seemed to break out in a sweat. “I know who you are. What are you doing here?”
“Leo is worried about you,” Louisa replied, her voice still too thin, and she sat down on a chair before her legs gave way.
“I’m fine,” Zinnia said.
While Leo spoke to Zinnia, Louisa was vaguely aware of her heart pounding and her palms growing sweaty. In the semidarkness of the room she tried to shake off the anger. She clenched her fists and dug her nails into her palms and thought back to the catastrophic day she had found out about Zinnia and Conor: the day her world tilted and changed forever. Overnight she had become a different person. There was a before, there was an after, but nothing in between. She sat hunched in the chair and heard Elliot’s voice. It went on and on. In her mind, she stood up and screamed at the empty space.
In her mind, she tore at his face, his hair. You bastard. You utter bastard. But there was no triumph in her anger and the unspoken words fell flat. Elliot wasn’t there. She ran her shaking fingers through her hair and listened to a bird singing outside the window.
Leo twisted around to look at her. “You okay, Louisa?” he said.
She gathered her courage and faced Zinnia. “I need to ask if you really intended to end it with Elliot.”
Zinnia rubbed the side of her head around the temple and winced. “I did end it.”
“He didn’t believe you?”
“I told him it was over. He kept trying to persuade me otherwise. It was wrong. All of it was wrong. Oh God! My head hurts like hell.”
“Have you taken anything for it?”
“Of course.” Zinnia closed her eyes and Louisa took the chance to leave the room.
In the outer living area Louisa began to collect up the clothes and, although she felt a strange kind of pity for Zinnia, her anger welled up again. After a few minutes, she called to Leo to come out. “These need washing,” she said, lifting a few random items. “Do you think your dhobi can do them?”
“I don’t really use a dhobi. Kamu does my washing, and Zinnia’s when she lets him.”
“Why don’t you insist?”
“Believe me, I do.”
“I’ll arrange for a dhobi to collect all of this. He’ll take it away and bring it back clean. Do you think your houseboy would bring down some rags and cleaning fluid?”
“Louisa, this really isn’t down to you. I’ll sort it out.”
She turned on him. “You’re right. It is not down to me, but I can hardly walk out leaving her like this. So, let’s not discuss it. Just get me some help. She’s clearly not looking after herself, let alone Conor. Someone should take a better look at her. What did the doctor say last time she let him see her?”
“Pleurisy, maybe. That’s what she thinks.”
“Worsened by a heavy dose of misery.”
He looked at her intently. “I admire you for this, more than you can know, but now I’m afraid I have to get on. The peelers are waiting for me. I’ll have more time this evening, so can get some tidying up done then.”
The Sapphire Widow Page 19