by S J Bolton
‘After twenty years?’ Amber said.
‘I agree,’ Talitha said. ‘We should have done it back then. We were idiots, and we were in shock, but we’re not now. Megan hid that letter and the photographs somewhere, and we have to find them. Without them, if she starts throwing accusations around, it’s her word against ours and who are people going to believe?’
No one argued. A junior minister, the senior partner in a law firm, a self-made millionaire industrialist, an investment banker and the head teacher of one of the best performing schools in England. Their word against that of an ex-con child killer.
‘She won’t need proof,’ Amber said. ‘If this gets out, even as an unsubstantiated accusation, I’m finished.’
‘Without proof, we won’t be charged,’ Talitha insisted. ‘None of us will face prison time. None of us will lose our families or our livelihoods.’
‘If Megan doesn’t have proof, she won’t push it,’ Felix said. ‘Especially when we offer her the money to stay quiet. She’s not stupid.’
‘She’s a very long way from stupid,’ Xav said. ‘She was smarter than any of us back then, and she won’t be a pushover, even now.’
‘So where is it?’ Talitha said. ‘There were limited places she could hide it that night. She went to the police first thing next morning.’
‘We searched her bedroom, remember?’ Daniel said. ‘It wasn’t there.’
‘Someone should have gone with her that night,’ Felix said. ‘I mean, we should have followed her.’
Amber said, ‘None of us were thinking straight.’
‘Except Megan,’ Xav said.
Something occurred to Talitha. She said to Xav, ‘You took her to her car that night. Did you notice anything? She didn’t – I don’t know – show an unusual interest in one of those big terracotta pots on the terrace?’
Xav spoke slowly as though trying to remember. ‘She had the letter in her hand when she got in the car. She put it on the passenger seat. The film must have been in her pocket. And Dan’s right, they weren’t in her bedroom. I think she must have stopped off somewhere on the way home.’
‘We need a map,’ Amber said, but Felix was way ahead of her. He’d already opened Google Maps on his iPhone.
‘Wherever she put it, it may still be there.’ Talitha moved her chair around the table so that she could see the map of Oxfordshire. ‘She’s hardly had a chance to retrieve it since she’s been back. Especially if she’s been ill.’
Felix made a scissor movement on the screen to widen the map. ‘It’s a needle in a haystack,’ he said. ‘It’s eleven miles from your old house to where she was living back then, and that’s assuming she went straight home.’
‘Her old back garden,’ Amber suggested. ‘Her mum sold the house, but she could climb over the fence to get it back.’
‘Needle in a frigging haystack,’ Felix repeated.
‘I’m not suggesting we start treasure hunting,’ Talitha said. ‘I’m going to have her followed.’
‘You can do that?’ Amber asked.
‘We’re one of the most successful divorce law firms in the northern home counties,’ Talitha said. ‘We have miscreant spouses followed all the time. I can put a tail on Megan before the night’s out.’
‘Expensive,’ Felix said.
‘I’ll reclaim it from the fund when we’re home and dry.’
‘Does anyone feel guilty about this?’ Amber asked. ‘I mean, Megan saved us and we’re planning to shaft her all over again.’
Daniel couldn’t help it. ‘Wait till she comes for your vital organs.’
Amber didn’t back down. ‘If hers are damaged, it was because of what she did for us.’
‘Fine, then you go under the knife,’ Daniel said. ‘You give the kidney that you might want to hang on to in case your husband or one of your kids needs it one day. Oh, I forgot, your blood group isn’t the same, so you’re off the hook.’
‘Megan had less to lose than we did,’ Felix said. ‘She’d screwed up her exams. She wasn’t going to Cambridge, and she almost certainly knew that. If anyone was going to take the rap for what happened, she was the obvious one.’
‘I’m not sure she sees it that way,’ Daniel said. ‘We were supposed to stand by her. Tal’s dad was supposed to be her solicitor, not act for her victims. If she’s pissed off now, heaven help us when she learns about that.’
As he finished, he watched Amber’s eyes widen and saw Xav’s puzzled frown. Felix, he noticed, remained unmoved. So, not all information about Megan had been equally shared over the years.
‘Dan makes a good point,’ Talitha said. ‘Although not the one he was intending to make.’
‘What?’ Amber said.
‘She’s going to want something from each of us. If we can’t find the proof, we need to be prepared.’
‘So, we give her the money,’ Amber said. ‘It’s a lot of cash.’
Tal shook her head. ‘I’m not sure it’s going to be enough. I think she’ll want something big. Something that hurts. You all need to start thinking what she might want of you.’
‘I already know,’ Xav said.
All eyes turned to him.
‘She told me that night,’ he went on. ‘That’s why she wanted me to walk her to the car.’
Amber said, ‘You told me she had nothing special to say, that she just wanted some company.’
‘She had plenty to say,’ Xav said. ‘She told me exactly what my favour was and made me swear I’d say nothing to any of you. If I told you, the deal was off.’
‘What?’ Talitha said. ‘What did she want? What did you have to do?’
‘Stay single,’ Xav replied.
Daniel could see from the faces around him that none of them were following. Neither was he.
‘I had to stay single until she was released from prison,’ Xav went on.
‘Why?’ Amber had gone pale.
Ignoring the others, Xav directed his next words at Amber. They hadn’t been an item for years, but Daniel was reminded then of how close they’d once been. ‘She told me she loved me,’ he said, as Amber’s eyes opened wider. ‘That she had done for years, and would have said something before, but then I started going out with you. She said that had all changed, that I had to break up with you and stay single.’
He picked up his drink and downed it. They gave him the time he seemed to need.
‘She said she was going to prison for the best years of her life and would lose her chance to meet someone and fall in love. She said she didn’t want to come out in her late thirties and be a sad, old spinster. So, I had to wait, and when she was out, I had to marry her. That was my favour.’
‘But, you and Ella . . .’ Amber began. ‘Xav, you married Ella two years ago. What the hell were you thinking?’
Felix leaned back in his chair and gave a bitter, hollow laugh. ‘Man,’ he said. ‘You are so fucked.’
19
They agreed to show up at Talitha’s house that Saturday for Megan’s welcome-home lunch. They had no choice. Daniel could usually organise his weekends to suit himself, but the others would all have to reorganise schedules, placate annoyed spouses, deal with difficult kids and invent a dozen excuses afterwards. It didn’t matter; they had no choice.
Talitha’s home was an ultra-modern construction on a wide, tree-lined road north of the city centre. Most of the other houses dated back a hundred years or more, but somehow Talitha had got permission to knock down the Edwardian mansion and erect her own monument in concrete, coloured glass and granite. Her white Range Rover stood on the drive next to her husband’s larger model in steel grey. A scattering of mud-encrusted rugby boots lay around the front step, and Daniel could hear young voices from an open upstairs window. Talitha had no children of her own, but her husband had three sons from his first marriage.
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nbsp; The disarray of youth was at odds with the pristine landscaping of the front garden and the gleaming front elevation of the house, but comforting at the same time. This too, it seemed to say, is a normal family home, and in normal family homes terrible things don’t happen.
Daniel, wheeling his bike up the drive, told himself to hold on to that thought.
He was about to ring when he heard tyres on the gravel and turned to see a black electric BMW pulling up. He didn’t recognise the car, but it turned out to belong to Sarah, Felix’s wife – a tall, rather plain blonde with Pony Club manners. Daniel watched Felix reach into the back seat for their two-year-old son, Luke, as Xav climbed out of the other side.
No sign of Ella, Xav’s wife.
Barely had the four of them reached Daniel when another vehicle pulled in, this one a massive black Volvo with Dexter, Amber’s Afro-Caribbean husband at the wheel. With the ease of long practice, he executed a three-point turn so that the vehicle might be ready for a quick getaway, and then he too turned to help his children out of the car.
While none of her friends would have suggested for a moment that Amber married Dex to help her career, being part of a glamorous, mixed-race couple had done her no harm. Together with two of the prettiest little girls imaginable, Amber and her brood were poster children for the modern British family.
The two families turned to greet each other, the mothers to exclaim over the children, the three men to exchange handshakes, and Daniel had his customary moment of feeling left out. The world of the family was one from which he was permanently excluded. He rang the bell and Mark, Talitha’s husband, answered immediately.
‘Good game?’ Daniel had no interest in rugby but had learned from experience that Mark could talk of little else. He could smell the outdoors on the other man; also the glass of red wine he held in one hand.
‘Bloody excellent.’ Already Mark was looking over Daniel’s shoulder for the more interesting arrivals. ‘Marlborough College. Wiped the floor with us last season, couldn’t get a try past us this morning.’
From upstairs came an explosion of sound that managed to sound feral and electronic at the same time.
‘How many have you got up there?’ Daniel was used to the exuberance of Talitha’s stepsons but they seemed to be taking it to another level that morning.
‘Five,’ Mark told him. ‘One of Gus’s friends did something to his knee and I sent him to A and E. We’ve got his brothers. Come on, you all know the way – you come here often enough.’
Daniel hung up his coat, turned to say hello properly to the others and braced himself for the usual ritual of hugging and cheek-kissing. A lifetime of celibacy had trained him to avoid physical contact, but he’d never managed to make the others understand that. The women seemed to feel they were doing him a favour with their tactile behaviour. When they finally let him be, he followed Mark through to the large kitchen at the back of the house.
Large, though, was an understatement; it was a huge space, stretching up two floors and constructed of floor-to-ceiling glass. Impossibly hot in summer, in Daniel’s view, it was tolerable in late spring.
‘Could have done without this,’ Mark muttered. ‘I’m on call, and Tal can’t manage my three on her own let alone with a houseful of guests.’ He glanced Daniel’s way. ‘No offence. I’m certain we saw you all the other week though. Too much of a good thing.’
Daniel was used to Mark. He meant well, and besides, he was inclined to agree.
‘No Ella?’ Daniel asked Xav as the others piled in behind.
Xav shook his head. ‘I told her it was a work thing.’
Talitha, at the kitchen counter, turned to face them and her smile barely broke the rigid set of her jaw. Her hair was scraped up, out of the way, and the style didn’t suit her. It left her face looking too large, too angular. She hadn’t even bothered with make-up. Daniel was about to approach her when the women and children flowed past him to engage in more hugging. Freeing herself from Sarah, Tal came over to him.
‘She’s here already,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Don’t look round.’ She moved swiftly away; Daniel saw her leaning to kiss Xav and knew she was saying the same thing to him.
Don’t look round? What the hell did that mean? Turning to talk to Felix and Sarah, Daniel saw something in the periphery of his vision. Lifting his head, he found her.
The most notable feature of Talitha and Mark’s grand design was a wide internal balcony running the entire width of the house. From the ground floor, Daniel could see the upstairs landing behind a half-wall of reinforced glass and, leading off it, five bedroom doors. Standing in its centre, looking down at them, was Megan. Daniel’s first thought was that she looked so much better. Her hair had been freshly washed, held back from her face by a pair of red sunglasses. Knowing what he did now about her feelings for Xav, he realised she’d made an effort for his friend that she hadn’t felt necessary for him.
‘What you staring at?’ Felix followed Daniel’s gaze and then, one by one, the others noticed – Talitha was already there, of course – and they all looked up, like players on a stage, at their one-woman audience.
‘Who’s that, Mummy?’ Amber’s oldest asked.
‘I’m Megan,’ she replied. ‘Hello, everyone.’
Megan’s skin was still pale but had lost the horrible yellow tinge he’d seen when she’d come to the school. Better dressed, she looked fashionably slim, not anorexic and angular. She was even wearing make-up and Daniel had a moment to feel very grateful that he was not Xav.
‘Don’t hide away up there on your own,’ Mark called. ‘Come on down.’
Megan waited a second longer and then walked the length of the balcony before vanishing onto the staircase.
‘Who’s this?’ Felix’s wife, Sarah, asked.
‘Old school friend,’ Felix said.
Talitha sidled close to Daniel. ‘She decided to show herself around,’ she hissed in his ear. ‘She’s been acting like she owns the place.’
‘Maybe that’s your favour,’ Daniel couldn’t resist replying. ‘Maybe she fancies your house.’
He almost felt guilty at the stricken look on Talitha’s face.
‘Does Mark know?’ he asked. ‘Who she is, I mean?’
She shook her head and shrugged. Exactly – what would she say? They’d all work it out eventually though: Mark, Sarah, Ella and Dex. He was lucky, in a way, that he had no one he’d need lie to. God didn’t count. He already knew.
Megan’s heels sounded on the pale stone floor and she reappeared. Determined to prolong the grand entrance as long as she could, she stared at them all from the doorway.
‘“There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days”,’ she said. ‘“No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise”.’
‘Who’s that?’ Felix asked, a little too loudly. ‘Shakespeare?’
‘Oliver Wendell Holmes Senior,’ Megan replied. ‘Hello, Felix, did you miss me?’
Daniel had a sense, then, of them all standing on a jetty, looking out over a freezing lake, knowing they needed to jump and putting it off for as long as they could. Felix went first, which should have surprised no one, and Megan vanished inside his hug. One arm around her waist, he steered her towards Sarah and little Luke. For the rest of them, it felt like a stay of execution, but Felix was never one to sacrifice himself for long.
‘You remember your bestie.’ He pulled Amber forward. ‘We call her the Right Honourable Lady now. And we all pretend we vote for her party; she gets mean if we don’t. This is Dex, her long-suffering, and the two adorables, Gunmetal and Tungsten.’
‘Pearl and Ruby!’ the girls chorused. Felix had been doing this for years, but they never seemed to tire of it. He was being too jolly, trying too hard, but Daniel couldn’t exactly blame him; none of them knew how they should behave.
Meg
an had run a finger fondly down the toddler’s cheeks, but at the sight of the girls she seemed to melt. Dropping to her knees, she held out a hand to each of them. ‘Well, you are too beautiful,’ she said. ‘How old are you?’
‘Five,’ Pearl told her. ‘Ruby’s three. Who are you?’
‘I’m an old friend of your mummy’s.’ Megan stood up and reached out for Amber, who didn’t move, and there followed an awkward embrace of arms and hair while their bodies, even their faces, remained inches apart.
‘This is so sweet of you all.’ There were tears in Megan’s eyes as she smiled round at them. ‘I’m so grateful.’
‘And Xav, of course.’ Felix seemed determined to act as ringmaster. ‘Step up, Xav, take your seat at the table.’
Daniel felt the group bracing itself as Megan and Xav’s eyes met.
‘Talking of which, I’m starving.’ Mark’s hands landed, one on Daniel’s shoulder, the other on Xav’s, effectively cutting off whatever greeting Megan had in mind for her one true love.
They sat around Talitha’s huge glass table and tried to do justice to the lunch she’d organised. She’d had caterers in, of course – Tal had never cooked a meal in her life – and it was typically fabulous: salads gleaming with fruits and vegetables, a giant ham with a sweet, blackened crackling, a whole brie garlanded with figs and honeycomb, peppered fried chicken. Apart from the five teenage boys though, none of them could eat much.
Daniel had been worried the conversation would be stilted, that no one would know what to say, that they’d have not so much an elephant as a mammoth in the room. To his surprise, it was anything but, even though the five old friends took little part in it. Megan was the life and soul. She talked school rugby to Mark, horses to Sarah and the perils of being a parliamentary widower to Dexter, and you had to admire her, really, because every word that came out of her mouth had to be bullshit.
She said nothing to Xav, he noticed, possibly because Tal had tactfully seated him on the same side of the table, several places down – eye contact between the two of them was tricky. Xav, for his part, spoke hardly at all, checking his phone from time to time, once leaving the room to take a call that Daniel felt sure was from Ella, eating next to nothing.