by Rebecca Tope
‘It doesn’t, though. I can’t explain it now, but I’ve definitely decided. We’ll have to call that place in Dorset and see if they can do it.’
‘What place is that?’
‘The green place, of course. Please, Maggs. Don’t make it any harder.’
She sniffed and said nothing, a woman outraged to her marrow. They both knew it was his decision, that he carried all the moral trump cards. But for him to make it so obvious was yet another sort of betrayal.
And so it had all been changed. The mourners were astonished; some of them arrived for a funeral that never happened. Some of those were angry enough that they failed to attend the rearranged burial two days later, in Dorset. Stephanie had quailed at the enormity of what she took to be all her doing. She did not believe her father when he said she had voiced what he had been feeling himself.
‘It’s the right thing, darling,’ he assured her. ‘We did the right thing.’
‘But everybody’s so cross,’ she wailed.
‘I know. But they’ll get over it. And it isn’t really their business, after all. It’s for us, you and me, to do what’s best.’
‘And Timmy,’ she reminded him. ‘Was it best for him as well?’
Drew moaned and pulled the child to him, holding her tight. ‘We’ll both have to be very, very kind to Timmy,’ he said thickly. ‘I need that from you, more than anything.’
She understood. Her understanding struck awe into him. He had thought for the past year or more that Timmy’s best hope, in the long term, lay with Maggs. Maggs had seen how things stood, even before the second Slocombe baby had been born, and resolved to protect him. She had kept to her resolution, but in some opaque way, Timmy had rejected her efforts. It was as if he was saying, I already have two parents, thank you, and if they can’t give me what I need, then nobody can. And Stephanie saw it all through her wise little eyes. Stephanie and Maggs were soul sisters, in many ways. They respected each other, and colluded in their elevation of Drew to prime position as demigod. Flawed and needy at times, he was still unarguably the centre of their universe. Even Maggs’s husband, Den, realised that.
But Maggs had been badly shaken by his extraordinary failure. So shaken that she made terrible accusations that poisoned the air between them – a poison that still hung about, six weeks later.
‘It’s that Thea woman, isn’t it?’ she shouted. ‘You want Karen swept out of the way, to give you a clear road, you and her. Bloody hell, Drew, you should be ashamed of yourself.’
He was ashamed, that much was true. But not because of Thea. Where she was concerned, his conscience was crystal clear. He had controlled himself magnificently, and somebody – preferably Maggs – should give him credit for it. There had been one or two occasions, earlier in his marriage, when he had been far closer to disgracing himself than he had been with Thea. At least … he shied away from the memory of a precarious moment in Broad Campden … at least he and Thea were both well-balanced adults, mature enough to know exactly what the implications would be.
But the damage had been done. Maggs’s accusation had effectively ensured that he could not contact Thea in any way. He could not permit the slightest hint that what she said could be true. When a beautiful spray of flowers arrived at the aborted funeral, bearing the label ‘With my deepest sympathy, Thea’ he had sorely wanted to keep it in the house, in pride of place. Instead, he had left it to wither behind the office, with a few other superfluous tributes. He had not told Thea of the change of plan. Presumably, she still didn’t know about it.
And gradually, as the weeks crawled miserably by, and the children went back to school, to be treated so dreadfully sensitively by their teachers, and Maggs resentfully kept the business alive, Drew did begin to feel ashamed of his feelings for Thea, as Maggs had said. Ashamed, because she infiltrated his dreams, and whispered into his waking ear. He heard her sensible voice, and saw her lovely heart-shaped face, as he dragged through the days. It was as if Maggs had known better than he did himself where his emotions were headed. In his tormented dreams, Maggs became an avenging angel, barring gates and wielding swords and constantly shouting at him.
But today was Sunday and he was responsible for the well-being of the children. Stephanie had a sore throat, which was apparently getting worse. If she had to be off school next day that would cause difficulties, because there was a burial due at midday. The business was sliding so drastically that he had been forced to apply for state benefits simply to survive. The children got their school dinners for free, and there were vouchers for milk. He knew the money was his due, but even so, the poverty only added to his feelings of shame.
He spent far too much time in the big bedroom he had shared with Karen. A big old wooden chair had always been part of its furnishings, and he had taken to sitting in it, trying to read diverting fiction, or more often, simply brooding over his situation. He was there now, while the children watched TV downstairs.
He would have to get them their tea, before bed. Scrambled eggs, baked beans, a pinch of grated cheese and apples from their own trees was the meal he envisaged. He had cooked for the family most of the time over the past year or two, as Karen became progressively more erratic. He had no objections to so doing, but he did hate the shopping and the endless need to make decisions as to what to provide.
‘Daddy!’ Stephanie was calling. ‘That lady’s in the news. That lady friend of yours.’
He knew already who she meant, and clattered down the stairs in the hope of catching the item. He caught the final seconds of a report of a murder in the Cotswold town of Winchcombe. A police officer was being interviewed on an old stone bridge, where behind him, amongst a stretch of woodlands, a body had been found. As the camera slowly panned, a woman and a dog came into focus, part of a small knot of people. ‘There!’ shrilled Stephanie. ‘That’s her.’
It was unmistakably Thea and her spaniel. She was trying not to be caught on camera, turning sideways and bending to the animal – which only seemed to impel the camera operator to hold his lens on her for some extra seconds. The police spokesman was asking the public to help with identification of the dead woman, without showing a picture of her.
Drew had little doubt that Thea was yet again involved in a house-sit where something had gone badly wrong.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘How clever of you to remember her.’
Chapter Nine
After his preliminary interview with Higgins, Gladwin took Fraser Meadows off to compose a formal statement in the hurriedly set-up incident room in a hall on the other side of the high street, and Thea seized the chance to talk to her mother alone. They were in the living room at Thistledown, the house having been declared no longer part of the police investigation. The assumption was that the visitors would stay overnight as originally planned.
‘Have you ever met Oliver?’ Thea began. ‘I’ve lost track, after everything that’s been going on.’
‘No. I spoke to him on the phone when Fraser suggested you could house-sit.’
‘Before or after you spoke to me about it?’
‘Um … I’m not sure. Does it matter?’
‘Not really. But you did tell me you’d dismissed the idea at first. Why did you? Was there something fishy about it?’
‘No, no. I just didn’t want you to think I was interfering. I know how independent you like to be.’
Thea sighed, wondering as always why she felt so chafed whenever a family member claimed to understand everything about her. She didn’t regard herself as unduly independent. She’d never been tempted to emigrate to Australia to get away from the family, or keep her life a dark secret from them. She looked at her mother – the white hair and wrinkled neck, mottled hands and stiffening knees. The woman was old by any standards. The fact that there were now innumerable women twenty years her senior still up and running should not obscure this truth. Her mother had been alive for a long time, and her brain and body might be expected to show some signs of wear. Ought
they to be taking the apparent memory lapses more seriously? Were they shortly to be faced, as a family, with the dreaded horror of dementia in their parent?
‘Have you met Maureen, then? Your namesake. Isn’t Fraser living with her? Did you stay there last night?’
‘Um … Mo. You mean Mo. They never call her Maureen. Yes, I have met her. She’s very dark. Her mother was Spanish.’
‘Was?’
‘She died about ten years ago. They’d been divorced for ages, of course. Absolutely ages. They went to Australia, and then she came back.’
‘Where were you this morning? I tried to phone you at home and there was no answer.’
‘I was at Damien’s,’ came the surprising reply. ‘Fraser collected me from there after breakfast, and we came here. It isn’t very far.’
‘So Damien has met Fraser?’
‘That’s right. I said that on the phone, days ago.’
Thea had forgotten, or paid no attention. Somehow it came as a relief to know her brother had met and presumably accepted the mysterious boyfriend. She still felt in need of more information. ‘But you said Fraser married again, didn’t you? Did they have any children?’
‘No. I told you that, as well. She died tragically, only a year after they were married.’
Thea recalled to mind the murdered Melissa, who had betrayed no trace of an Australian accent. If she had been Fraser’s daughter, she might be expected to have been conceived and raised in the Antipodes – although there could be numerous alternative scenarios.
‘But you don’t really remember him at all, do you? From the nineteen sixties, I mean. He remembers it all, but you don’t.’
‘I keep trying. You’d think his eyes would remind me, wouldn’t you? People’s eyes don’t change.’
‘I suppose not.’ Thea tried to imagine the stretch of time between the two encounters. Over fifty years was a huge span, the idea of accurate recall almost ludicrous. But there were constant proofs that the human memory could bridge it effortlessly. War veterans cheerfully described battle scenes in vivid detail; ancient women talked about nineteen fifties domestic routines as if they were last week. But Fraser had already explained these – repetition created much firmer memories, and the heightened stress of war would sear it deep into the brain. A fleeting romance in a crowded London life might well fall into oblivion. The real question, surely, was why did Fraser seek now to rekindle it? What could he possibly hope to gain from it? And the answer came again – Maureen Johnstone’s house and pension. The man wanted a hearth to call his own and a solicitous partner for his declining years. And yet he had a daughter who was apparently willing to give him a home.
‘Does he get on all right with Mo?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes. But she’s busy – out all day, and most evenings. She hasn’t got much time for him. And she’s just got a new boyfriend, so Fraser feels rather in the way.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Almost fifty. Two months younger than Damien.’
‘Has she got a husband? Presumably not.’
Her mother shook her head. ‘Divorced, seven years ago.’
‘Any children?’
‘Three. All girls, born within four years. The last one finished university this year.’
These responses brought a distinct sense of progress, of a picture coming into focus. Maureen Junior was wanting her freedom, now her daughters were off her hands. The arrival of an ageing father on her doorstep could not have been welcome. Therefore the prospect of a new girlfriend for him must have been thoroughly appealing. ‘I bet she really likes you,’ she said.
‘Why shouldn’t she?’ her mother said, with a grin. ‘What’s not to like?’
It was a reminder of earlier times, when a rare flash of wit would brighten the moment for the whole family. As a mother, she had been no better than adequate, focusing more than necessary on the duller aspects of her role. She complained about scuffs on the furniture, possessions strewn untidily around, coffee mugs in bedrooms and socks adrift from their brothers. She made her husband and her offspring impatient with such trivia. Not one of them ever accepted that it mattered whether or not the cushions were straight and the washing-up done within seconds of the meal being finished. ‘It’s me that’s the normal one,’ she said, more than once. ‘Without me, we’d be living in chaos.’
It was probably true – certainly the bit about being normal was. But Richard Johnstone and his four children all rejected, one way or another, the lure of normality. Even Damien, with his passion for religion and charitable works, was unusual. Damien could not find a matching pair of socks if his life depended on it, and he had chosen a wife who had a PhD in numerology, which was definitely profoundly abnormal. She told people she had married him for his name, which fitted with a highly significant numerical sequence that made no sense to anybody but her.
What’s not to like? echoed in Thea’s ears. Not just the sentiment, but the way it had been expressed, made her laugh. ‘Right,’ she said, with an affectionate pat on the mottled hand.
She had more questions, but the sensation of turning into an inquisitor kept her from voicing them. Instead, other queries were becoming increasingly persistent. Who killed Melissa? What was her connection with the Meadows family? Why was there a growing sense of careful background planning leading to her, Thea, being here at Thistledown at such short notice? Where was Oliver? Questions bred more questions, swirling around in her head, each one more worrying than the one before. She found herself feeling glad she’d have company that night.
But that led to another question, which ought to have been settled before now. ‘Er … Mum? You and Fraser? Do you want to be in the same room? He seems a bit frail to be sleeping on a sofa. He can have my bed, if necessary, and I’ll be down here.’
Maureen Johnstone blinked confusedly. ‘I thought we settled that. Aren’t there three bedrooms?’
‘Not really. The bed in the third one is piled high with junk. The room’s full of photographic stuff and a computer and books. Why? Did Oliver tell you differently?’
‘He can’t have done. I just thought …’ Worry deepened grooves around her mouth. ‘No, I don’t want to share a room with him. Please, Thea – don’t make me do that.’
Before Thea could properly respond to an alarmingly urgent plea, the front door opened and Fraser came in, looking almost as stricken as his new friend did.
The women both stared at him, while he squared his shoulders and forced a smile.
‘What happened?’ demanded Thea’s mother. ‘Why do you look so distraught?’
‘Delayed shock, I think,’ he said ruefully. ‘It hit me, all of a sudden, that a lovely young woman, in the prime of her life, has been wickedly killed. All I could think before was that she was not my daughter. But now I understand that she was somebody’s daughter, somebody’s desperate tragedy.’
It sounded to Thea as if he’d been rehearsing the words before uttering them. Not that there was anything wrong with that, she told herself. She remembered how she’d done it herself – searching for words to convey her feelings, and finding them woefully inadequate.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It does take a while to absorb, I know.’
He met her eyes. ‘The policewoman wants me to give you a message. She says to tell you that they now know where my brother is, and that there is every likelihood that he’ll want you to stay here at least for the rest of this week. They will interview him in … where he is, but he won’t be able to come home for some time. He still wants the birds to be fed. Is that all right?’
She had no choice but to concur, despite a feeling that the birds might have been deterred from coming to the feeding station for at least the coming week. Then she had a thought. ‘The camera!’ she said. ‘Have they found anything on the camera?’
‘They didn’t say, but my suspicion is to the negative. I detected an atmosphere of dogged plodding, rather than any excitement as to leads or hard evidence.’
; ‘What did they ask you?’ Maureen wanted to know.
‘Oh, the obvious things. Whether I was sure I’d never seen the woman before, where my brother was, how often I came here. Nothing unexpected. I think I made a fairly good witness, though I say so myself.’
‘Witness to what?’ Thea asked, in puzzlement.
‘Sorry – wrong word, I suppose. Provider of background information, I mean. Family connections and so forth.’
‘Did they take a DNA sample from you?’
Fraser flushed. ‘They did, as it happens. I wasn’t very happy about it, and insisted they destroy it as soon as the case is closed. I strongly disapprove of the tendency to store people’s personal data, against all reason or legality.’
‘So do I,’ said Thea, in heartfelt agreement. For the first time, she felt a flicker of actual liking for the man. ‘But they’ve got to confirm that the dead girl wasn’t your daughter, I suppose. After all …’
‘Yes, yes, you don’t have to be delicate. I know there’s a theoretical possibility that I had a daughter without knowing it. But if she’s the age they think – around thirty – then I can solemnly declare that I was at that time in a prolonged period of self-imposed celibacy. My wife had not long left me, taking my very much loved daughter with her, and after the calamity of my second venture into matrimony, I was most emphatically scared off the entire female half of the species. I was working in a very male environment, helping establish a new mining industry in the Pilbara. It was sufficiently exhausting for me not to feel any sense of deprivation.’
‘Pilbara?’ Thea repeated.
‘It’s in the north-west, the middle of nowhere. Massive iron deposits. It’s currently ensuring the Australian economy has very little to worry about for at least two or three decades.’
‘Blimey!’ said Thea. ‘I had no idea.’
‘It’s not important. It was a long time ago.’