‘Where have you been?’ we both asked, together, and then we smiled at one another, touched by our mutual concern, by the fondness we each felt for the other.
I wiped the smuts from Daniel’s cheek.
‘I was here,’ I said. ‘Where were you?’
‘In the village. Amy, Reservoir Cottage is on fire. I don’t think it can be saved.’
The immediate shock I felt at this news was replaced almost at once by the realization that the burning down of the cottage was inevitable. The man I had seen on the motorbike was the vicar’s friend, Dafydd. The doctor must have realized that we would, eventually, find everything that Caroline had written on the walls in the empty bedroom and must have paid Dafydd to set fire to the cottage, to cover up the evidence for ever. Only he was too late. We already knew everything there was to know. There were no more secrets in Reservoir Cottage; nothing else was hidden beneath the wallpaper in the empty bedroom. Everything was out in the open.
‘The doctor’s cottage is burning too,’ Daniel said. ‘We couldn’t find Mrs Croucher.’
‘She’s in hospital. She’s safe,’ I told him. ‘Both cottages are empty. Julia and Viviane are in the lodge.’
‘Both of them?’
‘Yes. And Susan Pettigrew and Vivi’s friend Kitty.’ I took his hand. ‘I’m sorry, darling, we have completely taken over your home. A great deal has happened since I saw you.’
‘Obviously it has.’
‘I’ll explain everything, only not here.’
‘Then let’s walk.’
He led me to the back of the lodge, across the grassland, down towards the lake. The fog drifted; there was a splash as a fish leaped, somewhere in the darkness. The fog was masking the other lights, the police cars that must surely be on their way towards Sunnyvale by now; the frogmen who would come with their powerful lights to search for Eric Leeson. The fog would mask the sounds, the commotion, everything. We walked down to the water’s edge, into the grassy hollow, and we sat together, side by side, on the trunk of the fallen tree.
Daniel held my hand between his knees. ‘You and your cold hands,’ he said.
We were silent.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ I said.
‘That’s OK,’ said Daniel. ‘Take your time. I will sit beside you for as long as it takes.’
I rested my head on his shoulder. The lake was stretched out before us, flat and calm and black beneath the drifting fog. Caroline had sketched the view from here. I was certain she had come with Robert. Perhaps the two of them had sat in this same spot and felt the peace of the lake. Perhaps they had sworn their love for one another here. Perhaps this was where Daniel had been conceived.
It would always be the same. Minutes would go by, days and weeks and months and years, centuries would change, but lovers would sit on this fallen tree and they would gaze out over the water and they would feel the agelessness of it, and the peace, and it would be the same for them all; they would be separated only by time.
‘You told me your father has never stopped loving your mother,’ I said softly to Daniel.
‘That’s right,’ Daniel said, ‘he never has.’
‘Let me tell you about her,’ I said.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
June 1962
I WAS IN Fairlawn, upstairs, sitting in the bedroom where Caroline slept when she was housemaid here. We had had the room converted into an office, and with its new, primrose-yellow walls and its cream-and rose-coloured curtains, it felt warm and friendly. It was a room where I liked to sit.
I had pulled the table up to the window, so I could look out over the lake while I wrote to my father. The window was open and the sunshine came in, making warm spangles of light on the floorboards. Bess lay in one of the patches, her legs outstretched, soaking up the heat. Down in the house, I could hear the sound of banging, hammering, the workmen’s voices as they put the finishing touches to the alterations. Outside, the only sound was birdsong.
Beyond the window, the lake lay calm and quiet, its reflective stillness only disturbed by dozens of small white gulls flashing like arrows above the shallows. It was a different place now the summer was here. Its dark shadows and sinister moods were gone; in their place were colour and beauty. Myriad wildflowers dotted the grassy perimeter with splashes of the sweetest pale yellow, pink and white, and the water was a gorgeous, azure blue. The trees, full of young leaves and flower candles, formed the softest border to the lake, no longer spiky and black, but different shades of green, round and kindly with lacy clouds of cow parsley below. If I leaned forward, I could see the shallow section of the lake, closest to the grassy hollow. Robert Aldridge was there, in his boat, checking the rope that connected the buoys segregating the area beside the hollow where it was safe for children to swim. Vivi was standing on the shore directing him, wearing shorts, an aertex blouse and Robert’s fishing hat. Robert and Daniel had built a wooden pier reaching out into the lake. Robert planned to take children out on to the pier, and teach them how to fish. He had already started to teach Vivi and she was proving a good apprentice.
The dog sat up, scratched her ear, turned a circle, sighed and lay down again. I looked down at the letter I was writing.
Vivi and Julia are settled here. Susan Pettigrew is with us. Once we are properly up and running we will pay her a salary to work for us – if she still wants to. She is really blossoming, Dad, you wouldn’t believe the difference in her! Julia has taken her under her wing. The two of them have become best friends. And Vivi is going to the local school and is doing terribly well. I’ve told her you and Eileen are going to come down for the wedding and she is very excited. My future husband and I are very much looking forward to seeing you both too. I hope you’ll stay for a while. I can’t wait to show you what we have done with this place.
I watched as Robert pulled the boat up to the pier and climbed out. He sat on the edge of the pier and Vivi went to sit beside him. The two of them gazed companionably out over the lake.
The last months had been hardest for Robert.
He had been the chief witness for the prosecution at the trial of the doctor and the vicar. They were part of the fabric of his life, and always had been. He had been brought up to believe they were good men, pillars of the community. It had taken him a long time to come to terms with the fact that everything he believed about them was false. Once he knew the truth, once it sank in, he had been willing to give evidence against them. He wanted them punished, as we all did. He wanted them to feel a fraction of the humiliation they had imposed on the children they had hurt. But still it was hard for him. It was hard having the role he had played in the events that led to the deaths of Jean and Caroline made public, but we had been there for him, Daniel and I. We had stood by him.
I picked up the pen.
Julia is writing a biography of Alain. His old editor is going to publish it for her. There is a great deal of excitement around the book and she has been back to France to discuss the publicity. She is almost back to her old self. On the pier, Robert lit a cigarette. I watched the smoke drifting around him.
He had been a victim too.
He had returned from Scotland, all ready to pick up Caroline and elope with her, to find that both she and Jean were dead. His own father-in-law had told him Caroline had pushed Jean off the dam. Robert hadn’t believed him, he knew Caroline was incapable of murder, but by then the story had circulated. Robert found himself trapped by the web of secrets and lies, some of them of his own making. If he tried to speak out and tell the truth about the girl he loved, then the son he adored would be branded, for ever, the child of an adulterer and his teenage mistress, the Blackwater Murderess.
Robert could not do that to Daniel.
So he’d done his best, living the lie to protect his son, covering over the picture of Jean, telling Daniel stories of his real mother, but never saying her name, struggling all the time with his contradictory feelings. Telling lies for thirty years was exhausting.
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Now the truth had been uncovered, Daniel and his father had achieved a new closeness. They were free to talk about Caroline, about the plans she and Robert had made, the future they now envisaged. It was wonderful to see them together, father and son, working on the project to convert the house. They were so alike, really. They worked so well together with such enthusiasm, firing ideas at one another, teasing one another, laughing. And if, occasionally, Robert took himself off on to the lake with a bottle of apple brandy and his memories, then nobody minded. We watched him go and our hearts were out there, on the lake, with him.
Some things had been lost, but others had been gained. Julia had a beloved new nephew, Daniel an aunt and a cousin who adored him. Robert was part of a family again and he had found himself capable of showing Viviane the gentle affection he’d always denied his son.
I picked up the pen once more.
Anyway, Dad, I’m going to sign off because the children will be here soon and I want to be ready to welcome them when they arrive, and to settle them into their new home. Robert has moved into the lodge, did I tell you that? He likes it there, it’s closer to the lake. Dan and I will continue to live here. We’ve converted all the spare bedrooms into little dormitories and hope, eventually, to make a home for a dozen foster-children. It will be strange for the newcomers at first when all they’ve known has been institutions, but I hope they’ll soon come to be happy here.
I paused, looked around the room. The photograph that used to hang on the wall – the large, blown-up picture of Jean Aldridge’s parents – was gone. It had been returned to Jean’s family, the Debegers, together with Jean’s portrait and certain items she had brought with her when she married. Her sister and nieces had accepted them graciously. They would, they said, pass them on to their children and grandchildren. Daniel and I had even gone back to the ruins of the cottage and searched through the wreckage for the pendant. We had found it, and had it cleaned. I was all for throwing it into the lake, as I’d planned, but Daniel insisted that was returned too. When they’d found out the truth about the village committee, and Sir George Debeger’s role in the conspiracy, Jean’s sisters had made a generous donation towards the refurbishment of Fairlawn and set up a trust fund to help pay for the care of the children who would eventually live there.
I finished the letter.
So goodbye for now, Dad. Give my fondest love to Eileen and I’ll see you both soon.
All my love, Amy
I folded the sheet of paper and put it in the envelope I’d already addressed. I propped it on the desk, called Bess and left the room. I ran down the stairs, the dog following me, out of the front door, out into the bright sunshine. I walked into the garden, out among the flowerbeds, the roses just opening their buds, and the peonies, the valerian, the late blossom, the gorgeous, scented lilac. Susan was pegging laundry on the line that stretched across the lawn, and Julia sat close by, in the shade of the cherry tree, a book, face down, on the bench beside her. She lifted her head and smiled at me as I passed by. I lay back on the grass with my arms stretched above my head, enjoying the feeling of the warmth on my skin, enjoying being alive.
And I knew I was lucky to be alive, to be able to enjoy this beautiful day.
Nothing we did now would ever bring Caroline back, or put the past right. We had cleared Caroline’s name. People knew now that she had been the victim, not the perpetrator, but we could not change the past, only view it from a different perspective.
One thing still troubled me and would always play on my mind. I wondered if the doctor had tried to save Caroline’s life after her collapse on the dam, or if he had allowed her to bleed quietly to death. While she was alive, she would always pose a potential threat to the committee. Caroline was not the kind of person to go down without a fight, and if Robert knew she was in the asylum, he would have done everything in his power to have her released.
I would never know. The doctor was not entirely without conscience, as his defence lawyer had explained to the jury. It was he who had persuaded the committee to give money to Julia’s parents so they could afford to fund her way through ballet school. He called it ‘compensation’. It didn’t stop the judge from sending him to prison for eight years. The bastard.
The Church of England had taken responsibility for the punishment and rehabilitation of Reverend Pettigrew. We did not know what had become of him. Julia, whose old cynicism had returned, was certain that he had merely been dispatched to some small, faraway parish where the local church was not attached to a school. There was nothing we could do. He was gone and we had turned our faces from the darkness of the past towards what we were certain would be a brighter future.
The sun beat down on my face. The grass was warm. Bess yawned and stretched herself out beside me. I tried to put the past from my mind. I didn’t want thoughts of it to spoil this wonderful day.
There was lemonade in the fridge, a cake in the pantry. There would be sandwiches and sausage rolls and ice cream for tea. That afternoon, we would have a little party to welcome our new children. We would do the right thing by them.
The sun shone down on me, and down on the lake. White birds dipped and dived above the water, catching the little eddies and breezes that danced over its surface. Cloud shadows followed one another over the hills and fields, they swept over the lake and the wind disturbed the leaves in the trees and the wildflowers shook their pretty heads. The fish were feeding on the swarms of midges at the edges of the water, the waders stood amongst the reeds and iris, the ducks and moorhens swam in and out of the weeds, followed by their broods.
I heard the engine approaching and then I heard my darling call my name and I stood up and smoothed my skirt. I took a deep breath. This was it, the start of the new beginning.
‘I’m coming,’ I called.
I walked across the lawn towards the car that had pulled up on the drive. Daniel caught my eye as I approached. I could not keep the smile from my face, or the happiness from my heart. He reached out his hand and took hold of mine.
Three small, distrustful faces looked out at us from the back window of the car.
There was a great deal of work ahead; we would need patience and gentleness and courage. We would need to tread carefully with the children, to gain their trust and to convince them that we were worthy of it. We would need to be kind, always, no matter how they tried to test us, because that was what they would do; they would push us to the limit to make sure our promises were real and that we meant it when we said we would never reject them and always treasure them. And we would need to be vigilant, to make sure no harm came to them and that nobody ever hurt them.
We would need time, but no matter how long it took, that’s what we would do.
We would do it for Caroline.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The biggest thank you goes to Bella Bosworth who has worked so patiently on this book in its several iterations and has been the most amazing editor. Thank you also to Harriet Bourton, Viv Thompson, Joan Deitch and everyone else at Transworld. I am so privileged to be part of such a great team.
Thank you and love to my agency family, Marianne Gunn O’Connor, Pat Lynch, Vicki Satlow and Sophie Wilson.
I am hugely grateful to the support of the online book community who make life and literature such fun: Kim Nash, Anne Cater and my other friends; you know who you are and that I enjoy every moment of your company.
The authors I know in real life and online are without exception talented, funny and hugely generous people and I still can’t believe that I’m part of this amazing club! Special thanks and love to Tammy Cohen, Amanda Jennings, Rachel Brimble and Alison Knight.
To my family and friends, I love you with all my heart.
And a special mention to lovely Estelle Taylor, and gorgeous Katie Andrews.
Blackwater and all its residents are entirely fictitious, but they inhabit the exact area in North Somerset where Blagdon exists in the real world, and Blackwater reservoir is similar
, although not identical, to Blagdon lake. Most of the other locations mentioned in the book, including the Mendip Hills and Blackdown, are real places and I’ve tried to describe them honestly. I walk the hills with our dogs Lil and Lola whenever I can, and Blackdown is where this story was conceived.
Finally, hello to my good-looking and clever friends at Airbus including Malin, Carolynne, Caroline and Maxine.
About the Author
Louise Douglas is a copywriter. She has three sons and lives in north Somerset with her partner. The Secret by the Lake is her sixth novel. Her first novel, The Love of My Life, was longlisted for both the Romantic Novel of the Year Award and the Waverton Good Read Award, and her third, The Secrets Between Us, was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick.
Talk to her on Twitter @LouiseDouglas3 and visit her website at www.louisedouglas.co.uk
Also by Louise Douglas and published by Black Swan
The Secrets Between Us
In Her Shadow
Your Beautiful Lies
For more information on Louise Douglas and her books, see her website at www.louisedouglas.co.uk
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain by Black Swan
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Louise Douglas 2015
Louise Douglas has asserted her right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
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