by Janet Tanner
She has a whole heritage there that fate has deprived her of, Robin thought. It’s only right she should go and find it. And if it makes her think twice about getting engaged to Sean it might not be such a bad thing. I don’t think she is one hundred per cent sure and I wouldn’t want to see her steam-rollered into something she might regret.
He straightened up, a tall rangey man with a slight stoop as if at one time, at least, he had borne all the cares of the world on his shoulders.
Perhaps he’d better go back inside and see if Molly was all right. Really it was the least he could do.
Sean Richardson idly tangled a hand in Juliet’s thick fall of hair, playing with the little kiss curls made by the short ends at the nape of her neck, and though his tone was intentionally light his eyes were shadowed.
‘You’re not serious about going to England, are you, Julie?’
She jerked her head around to look at him and he knew she had seen right through his pretence at the casual, couldn’t-care-less approach.
‘Perfectly serious. Why shouldn’t I be?’
He swallowed. There was no way he was going to tell her the truth – that he was very afraid that if she went he might lose her. It sounded so feeble and in any case he really wasn’t sure why he should feel that way. They had been going out together for three years now, since they’d met at art school where Juliet had been studying interior design and he had been doing 3-D. They’d been on the Student Union together and the relationship had stuck. They’d helped one another with their projects, taken all their holidays together, slept together. Now they were talking about getting engaged and married, two steps that he, as a free-thinking art student, had never dreamed for a moment that he would even consider. But to put a ring on her finger seemed the only way to make certain she stayed with him – if he could get a ring on her finger! Sean wasn’t totally confident that he could. All very well for her to talk vaguely about getting engaged on her next birthday, that was some comfortable way off. If she felt as he did why wouldn’t she move in with him now? He had this apartment, not paradise but not bad either, three good-sized rooms and a little back yard, and he was doing quite well with his career and making the sort of salary that would have seemed like riches to him two short years ago when he had been a student. But there was something elusive about Juliet. A quick-silver quality that made him love her all the more but at the same time unsettled him and made him feel very unsure of himself.
Stay here and let’s get married now, he wanted to say, but he was afraid to. Instead he settled for the least controversial reason he could think of for persuading her to stay in Australia.
‘What about your new job?’
‘I don’t start that for another month and I’m sure they’d hold it for me a bit longer if I asked them. I am going to be a very small fish in a very large pool when I go to Darby Grace. They have plenty of extremely talented designers and I dare say it will be ages before they allow me even a sniff of a project of my own.’
‘You’ve been doing your own projects very successfully at the Dream Machine.’
‘On a quite different scale, though, and I went straight into that from college, remember. I think I’m due for a bit of a break and Darby Grace as good as said so. I shall come back refreshed and ready to give my all to my career.’
‘There will be a little bit left over for me, I hope!’
‘Oh Sean, you know there will!’
‘I still wish you wouldn’t go.’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ She wriggled round to face him. ‘Nobody wants me to go it seems. Mum and Dad had a go at me this afternoon about it, though their reason was quite different to yours. It seems we have a rather chequered family history.’
He laughed, tossing his light sand-coloured hair back from his long, angular face.
‘I can’t believe that. I thought your Jersey family were supposed to be real swells. Unlike my convict forbears.’
‘It’s true – really! It seems my grandmother murdered her son, my Uncle Louis. That was the reason Mum and Dad came to Australia, to get away from the scandal …’ She broke off. He was staring at her with a shocked expression. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘You are joking, Julie?’
‘No, I’m not joking. I know it sounds pretty incredible – I couldn’t believe it either at first. Not so much that it happened, although that’s pretty spooky, but to think they’ve kept it a secret from me all these years. Unbelievable!’
‘They’re having you on.’
‘No, they’re not. If you’d seen their faces … I thought it was strange we’ve never been back, not for a single holiday. I mean, I know it’s the other side of the world but in a jet aeroplane it’s not that far – a matter of hours on Concorde.’
‘And your family, I suppose, could well afford Concorde. No going the cheapest way the bucket shop can provide for them!’
‘Don’t start that again. I can’t bear it when you get all assy and left-wing. OK, they’ve got money, but it’s no big deal.’
‘No, it’s only a big deal for the poor sods with nothing. All right – I’m sorry – I’ll get back to the point. I think this murder business is just a story to stop you going and I don’t believe a word of it.’ He said it almost fiercely as if that was what he wanted to think and she was surprised to realise she had shocked him.
So much for the revolutionary left-wing artist. So much for the native born Australian who boasted of being descended from deported convicts. Beneath it all Sean really had a very puritanical soul.
‘If that’s their reasoning I’m afraid they’ve got it totally wrong,’ she said with forced lightness. ‘I’m quite determined to go now and see what my family is really like.’
‘Let me come too.’
‘Sean, don’t be silly. You certainly haven’t got a month’s holiday just now. Look, I’m going. I’m going on my own and that’s that.’
She leaned over, kissing him and sliding her arms around his neck. It was the one way she knew of shutting him up, the one infallible way, and as always it worked. He picked her up bodily, slipping an arm beneath her knees and another round her shoulders and carried her to the bed. This was the part she always liked best, the teasing, the little love games, the erotic feel of his body, hard and hot, before he undressed her. Why was it always better when there were clothes between, when the feeling of soaring urgency was motivating her, making her want … want … it. And why when it happened was it always such a let down? Each time when she experienced the sharp cords of desire she thought, yes, yes, yes. Tonight it will be different. Only it never was. When she felt him naked, when he entered her, always she was aware of wanting to scream at him to wind the film back, quickly, before it was too late, always she found herself sobered by the intimate contact as surely as if someone had dowsed her with a bucket of icy water.
There’s something wrong with me, Juliet sometimes thought. I’m not normal. But she was afraid to tell anyone how she felt and especially not Sean. It didn’t seem fair when he enjoyed doing it so much.
Tonight, as if the thought that he was about to lose her had imbued Sean with a sense of urgency, it was over quickly and Juliet was left feeling even more beached than usual since the desire the initial contact had aroused had had no time to wear off.
‘Cigarette?’ Sean was reaching for the packet on the shelf beside the bed.
‘No thanks.’ She’d given up over a year ago but Sean had never got it into his head. ‘It’s a revolting habit,’ she said now, irritated with him without really knowing why. ‘Just look how brown the ceiling is and imagine the colour your lungs will be if you keep it up.’
‘So what?’
‘Don’t you care?’
‘Not much. I enjoy smoking. A short life and a merry one, I say.’
‘That is a stupid attitude at your age. Anyway, you smell disgusting.’
‘Well thanks! I love you too!’
A rush of penitence overcame he
r. Why was she treating him so badly?
‘I’m sorry, Sean, I guess I’m a bit edgy tonight. It was probably more of a shock than I realised, finding out that my grandmother served time for the murder of her own son. And it’s not just that either. I have this feeling there’s more.’
‘More?’ Sean pulled on his cigarette and aimed a stream of smoke at the offending brown of the ceiling. ‘What do you mean, more?’
‘I don’t know really.’ Juliet spoke slowly as if she was only just piecing together impressions which she had not fully appreciated before.
‘I’m just not sure even now that they’ve told me the full story. They were so … secretive, both of them.’
‘Twenty years of silence.’
‘I suppose so. Perhaps it’s just as they said, that they thought there was no need for me to know. Perhaps they were protecting me.’
‘Who else would they have been protecting?’
‘Themselves.’ It came out almost as a reflex and as she realised what she had said she shivered. ‘That could be the reason they didn’t want me to know and don’t want me to go back to Jersey. They’re hiding something – not just about my grandmother and Uncle Louis but about themselves.’
‘Julie! You’re letting your imagination run away with you.’
‘Maybe, but Dad couldn’t even stay in the room to talk about it, and Mum was … very strange.’
‘What could they be hiding?’
‘I don’t know. But Mum could hardly bring herself to say his name. Louis. All my life I’ve had an Uncle Louis and I didn’t know.’
‘All your life you haven’t had an Uncle Louis. He was dead.’
‘Not until I was four.’
‘And you don’t remember him at all?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Though strangely enough now I know about him and what happened I almost can. It’s like it’s there on the edges of my mind only I can’t quite catch it. A bit like a very blurred old negative of a photograph.’
‘Maybe now it will start developing.’
‘Especially if I go back to Jersey.’ She shivered suddenly. ‘Sean – I’m scared.’
He ground out his cigarette and put his arm around her.
‘Don’t go, then.’
She leaned against him, feeling his shoulder comfortably solid behind her head, and was tempted for a moment to agree. Her life, after all, was here. Her new job with its challenges and the promise of rewards, her friends, her parents, Sean who loved her and wanted to marry her. He’d be good to her, she knew, and she loved him too – didn’t she? So why was she leaving it all behind to fly across the world alone to a home she barely remembered and relatives who were total strangers? Well, maybe that was not so unnatural. In the beginning when she’d first got the idea it had seemed simply like a good idea for a short break – a holiday, no more no less. Only now it had taken on a whole new complexion, now suddenly there was something sinister, menacing even, in the thought of delving into the past. What Pandora’s box was she about to open? Would she do well to forget the whole thing, commit herself to Sean here and now and settle down to marriage and her new job? Perhaps. But even as she thought it she knew she could not do it. She owed herself this one. Until she went back to Jersey and saw for herself the past would remain with her, a constant enigma she would be unable to forget. And when it haunted her she would probably blame Sean for not having allowed her to do what she wanted to do. Unfair, but human nature all the same.
‘I’m sorry, but I have to go, Sean,’ she said. ‘ Now, more than ever, I have to go.’
He nodded, kissed her and reached for another cigarette.
‘OK. Well, don’t be gone too long, Julie. I’m going to miss you like hell.’
She snuggled into him, relishing the moment.
‘And I’ll miss you. We’ll get engaged as soon as I get back, all right? We won’t even wait for my birthday, if that’s what you want.’
He smiled but it was a rueful smile. He very much wished he could believe she meant it.
Chapter three
Jersey, Channel Islands, 1991
As the plane began its descent Juliet craned her neck to catch her first glimpse for almost twenty years of the island of Jersey.
How small it was! she thought in astonishment, the compact settlement which she imagined must be St Helier, so different from the endless sprawl of Sydney, the little patches of green edged with roads and lanes like a hotchpotch of material scraps sewn into a patchwork quilt, the whole of which might have been totally lost in the vastness of just one sweep of Australian countryside. All around it was the sea, banded in shades of green and blue, beautiful but less hurtful to the eye than the brilliant azure and silver of Sydney harbour. But at least the sun was shining! When the QANTAS jumbo jet had put down at Heathrow it had left the sun behind above a thick cloud base and the effect of descending into a damp morning had been unexpectedly depressing. All very well for the captain to have warned them: ‘It is raining in London and the temperature is 11c, 52f,’ after a long hot Australian summer and a flight that had involved stops in Singapore and Bahrain, the cool greyness had been just too much of a culture shock.
Wheels touched tarmac, the engines went into reverse and the little jet slowed and taxied towards the airport buildings. As Juliet unbuckled her lap belt and reached into the locker for her bag a nerve throbbed in her throat. She was here now – no going back. Well … she could go and claim her luggage and book straight on to a flight back to England, she supposed, and chuckled softly to herself at the thought. What a cop-out that would be! Halfway round the world for nothing and her Jersey family all wondering where she had got to. They had promised to meet her at the airport, were presumably waiting now somewhere beyond the Customs Hall. How would she know them? Would they have a board with her name written on it like the tour companies and hire car firms did? Or their name, like the hotel courtesy buses? Since they owned a chain of hotels perhaps that was not as silly as it sounded.
Juliet emerged from the cabin and paused for just a moment, sniffing the air. Fascinating how every part of the world smelled different. Then she went down the flight of steps and started across the tarmac.
As the first passengers began filtering through Customs Deborah Langlois stood up from the low bucket seat where she had been sitting and strolled to a vantage point near the door. As she did so the eyes of practically everyone else waiting in the lounge followed her but Deborah scarcely noticed. People looked at her wherever she went and had done for so long now that she accepted it as a fact of life. As a child her tumble of fair curls and her clear turquoise eyes had made adults treat her a little like a living doll, as a teenager, when her curves had developed, she had learned to use her looks to get what she wanted. Now those days were well and truly behind her. At thirty-six Deborah had wealth, position and power – and it showed. Youthful prettiness had matured into beauty, extreme fashion tastes blossomed to style and flair, and confidence had grown from what had once been almost chronic insecurity. As the wife of the Managing Director of the Langlois Hotel and Leisure Group, Deborah’s photograph often graced the society pages of Harpers and Queen and the Lady or figured in the gossip columns of the Daily Mail or the Express, the very epitome of sophistication, elegance and glamour.
Occasionally a reporter with a nose for a story would ask an awkward question or two about Deborah’s past but for some reason the trail had never led very far. Always Jersey’s monied elite had closed ranks. Deborah was the wife of David Langlois now. Did it really matter who she had been or where she had sprung from? As for those who tried to pursue the question with Debbie herself, most of them soon gave up, won over by the sheer power of her charm.
I never knew my father, Debbie would tell them, and my mother died when I was in my teens. She was a vicar’s daughter, her family had disowned her because of me, so I never knew them at all. But please – I wouldn’t like to cause them any embarrassment. I know it sounds ridiculous in
this day and age but older people like them can still be extremely puritanical, and really, for modern tastes, there’s no scandal at all. Just a rebellious daughter and a love child.
Her turquoise eyes would meet theirs, clear and seemingly transparent, and they almost always found themselves believing her and what was more actually wanting to protect her. There had been scandals in the Langlois family but they had already been done to death in the gossip columns and none of them had had anything to do with Deborah. It had been her misfortune that she had been caught up in them. What was the point of demolishing the reputation of someone who admitted so readily to shortcomings in her pedigree? Invariably the journalists enjoyed a drink and a cigarette with Deborah and went on their way feeling privileged to have met her and never realising for a moment the wonderful copy they had failed to unearth.
If she had lived on the mainland, Deborah sometimes thought, she would never have got away with it. But this was Jersey, a law unto itself, and the expanse of English Channel dividing it from the mainland made an effective moat. The secrets of Deborah’s past remained hidden and these days the reporters did not bother her at all.
She stood now in the airport lounge, a slim elegant woman wearing a jacket and trousers in peach silk suiting, her shoulder length silver blonde hair taken up into a classic chignon, dark glasses dangling from a slender hand on which the nails had been painted to the exact same shade of peach as her suit. The craze for flat heeled pumps had passed Deborah by; at just short of five feet five she had never felt she was tall enough to wear them and still look elegant. As a teenager she had teetered on stilettos, ignoring the platform soles of the early seventies as she was now ignoring the ‘flatty’, but nowadays the high heels she wore were the very last word in tasteful glamour, they came from Manolo Blahnik and Russell and Bromley, and the soft leather bag swinging from her shoulder was unmistakeably Gucci. Most of Deborah’s clothes bore designer labels, Versace and Ungaro, Lagerfeld and Krizia and even her underwear was La Perla – ‘ You must be crazy, paying so much for a pair of knickers!’ Catherine, her husband’s aunt, had once said. Catherine took a great delight in the outrageous comments for which she was renowned and Deborah had merely smiled and said nothing. She had no intention of explaining that the secret spring of her confidence lay in the wearing of designer clothes and without them she could sometimes, even now, feel slightly gauche. A little girl dressed up in her mother’s best or an actress playing a part, neither was the image Deborah wanted to project. She had worked so hard at being who she was; to let even the smallest weakness show could be disastrous.