The Darkest Summer

by Unknown

  The three of them stared at me.

  ‘What’s he got to do with this?’ Leo asked.

  It occurred to me that neither of them knew his real identity yet. ‘Jack’s name was actually Jacques. J-A-C-Q-U-E-S,’ I spelt it to make myself clear. ‘He was Henri’s dad.’

  They looked more stunned by this news than that of our mother’s joint murder of Vinnie. There was a stilled silence as Leo and Dee took in this nugget of information and glanced at each other.

  ‘Henri’s father?’ Leo raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said. ‘And the reason Henri’s leasing the farm is because his father disappeared in the summer of 2003 and he wants to find out what happened to him.’ She studied each of them in turn. Was she paying them back for forcing her to confess to everything today? ‘You wouldn’t know anything about that, I don’t suppose?’

  ‘Mum, of course they wouldn’t.’ Why was she trying to shift the focus on to them? I could see by the granite-hard glint in her blue eyes that she was relishing telling them this news. She didn’t take her eyes off them, and for once I could imagine her being capable of doing something far worse than I’d ever considered before.

  ‘Well?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been honest with you two, it’s your turn to return the compliment, don’t you think?’

  Leo looked over at me. His face paled even more as I watched him, and his normally straight shoulders slumped. ‘She’s right, Sera. We do know more about Jack than we’re letting on.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Dee said, matter-of-factly. ‘Killed that night before we left.’

  ‘No. I’m not listening to this anymore.’ I had had enough.

  This was too much for me to take in. I didn’t want to hear any more about Jack, not yet. I had enough of my own past to process first. Jack was dead, though. I would have to tell Henri.

  ‘I’m going to check on the girls. I hope they haven’t heard any of this. Then later, when they’re asleep—’ I didn’t add, ‘and when my brain has caught up with this insanity’, ‘I want you to tell me everything you know about Jack. I’m going to have to tell Henri what happened to his father.’

  Leo shook his head. ‘You’re not telling him anything,’ he said severely.

  I went to argue with him but something about his manner stopped me. ‘Fine, I won’t,’ I lied. Henri had a right to know, but with all the talk of violence I didn’t like the way Leo was looking at me and wasn’t going to tempt fate by challenging him. Not yet, anyway.

  * * *

  I heard Katie’s voice calling from the upstairs window for me and made an excuse to leave them and go to her. I didn’t feel safe and could sense the evening ahead would reveal more secrets yet. I had no intention of keeping Katie here in case things did turn nasty and decided to take her to a guest house for a few days. Somewhere away from here until everything was sorted out. I ran up the stairs to find her, guilt flooding my veins. I would give anything not to have to leave Ashley in this house tonight, but she wasn’t my child to take.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ My faith in human nature healed slightly when I looked down at my little girl’s cherubic face, her arms outstretched for me to pick her up. I bent down to lift her, hugging her tightly. ‘I think it’s time you went to bed, don’t you?’

  ‘But I haven’t had my bath, Mummy.’ She gave me a hopeful grin.

  ‘You can go to bed without one tonight, just this once.’ She giggled. ‘Come on, let’s give your face a quick wash and clean your teeth, you do have to do that. Where’s Ashley?’

  ‘Sleeping,’ she whispered.

  That was a relief. I gave her a quick wash and changed her, settling her in her bed. I needed time to pack some of her things. As soon as she began to drift off, I took a change of clothes, her swimming costume and a cardigan, packed her toothbrush and favourite teddy that had dropped from her arms, and snuck down the stairs and out of the front door to put them in the car.

  I stepped back inside the house and turned to close the door as silently as possible.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Leo barked from behind me.

  My heart jolted. ‘Bloody hell, Leo, you almost gave me a heart attack. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’ He stood close to me, not fooled by my bravado.

  I refused to let him see how much he frightened me. ‘Firstly,’ I said, pointing my finger at him and stepping back slightly to make space between us. ‘This is my house and you’re a guest. You don’t have to stay here if you don’t like how I behave. Secondly, and most importantly,’ I lowered my voice to give it as much gravitas as possible, ‘I don’t need to ask permission from you, or anyone else. Got it?’

  He lowered his head and moved in closer to me. ‘Sera, I have a feeling you think you’re addressing someone else. Probably that bloody Frenchman.’

  I swallowed to moisten my throat, which for some reason had gone incredibly dry. If Leo thought he was going to intimidate me when my child was sleeping upstairs, he was sorely mistaken.

  ‘Leo,’ I said, very slowly. ‘Don’t you dare think you can boss me around, I’m not Dee and I don’t need you for anything. Now, move out of my way.’ I put my arm out to push past him and hid my relief when he moved. I didn’t want to give him any ideas about my plan to take Katie out of the house, so marched out to the garden to find Mum.

  ‘Mimi’s gone to bed,’ Dee said. ‘Told us she couldn’t talk about this anymore, and left. I can’t say I’m sorry.’

  I looked at my half-sister and tried to imagine how different things could have been between us if her family hadn’t left when they did, or if we’d been brought up knowing our connection. Or if Jack hadn’t been killed that night in 2003.

  ‘What did happen to Jack?’ I asked Dee, unable to hide the tremor in my voice after my confrontation with Leo.

  ‘That night changed all our lives,’ she said, her voice distant as her thoughts drifted off elsewhere.

  It was then I realised that the trauma of what she’d been forced to live with all these years had altered her beyond any point of recovery. She wasn’t the girl I’d known and loved when we were teenagers. Her spirit died that night, along with Jack.

  ‘Can you tell me how he died?’ I asked, wanting to find out as much as possible for Henri’s sake. I suspected Leo was going to stop her telling me anything more than I already knew.

  She stared into space at some unseen horror. ‘Jack didn’t want us to leave the farm. Mum refused to tell him why she was so insistent on going, so he thought she was just being ridiculous. They argued.’ She took a deep breath. ‘When he refused to help her put things in the car she panicked that we were taking too long to pack and became hysterical. He slapped her.’ She looked at me. ‘I saw it all, but Leo was out by the car trying to fit everything into it. He only came back into the room when Mum fell over with the force of Jack’s slap. She hit her side on a table and yelped.’

  I clasped my hands together in an effort not to show how much I was shaking. I wanted her to tell me everything, aware I didn’t have long before Leo came back outside and shut her up.

  ‘Leo charged at Jack. Jack grabbed Leo, who was only skinny then, if you remember, and slapped him. I think Mum falling had shocked Jack and he was almost demented with her out-of-character behaviour and then Leo having a go at him.’ She looked at me. ‘Thinking back, I don’t think Jack meant to hurt Mum, but it was incredibly hot and her reaction to Maureen’s letter and their fight pushed the atmosphere to breaking point. Mum was desperate to leave, you see. I was frightened and not sure what was going on. I panicked because she refused to give me enough time to visit your house to let you know we were going. And Leo was desperate to protect us.’ She stopped talking and took a shuddering breath.

  I walked over to her and crouched in front of her, resting my hands on her knees. ‘Go on, what happened?’ I asked, keeping my voice as level as I could. I could see the back door out of the corner of my eye, aware tha
t Leo could appear at any moment.

  She stared at her hands. ‘I’m not completely certain, but one minute I was in the living room crying, the next I was in the kitchen grabbing a steak knife from a dinner plate one of us had used earlier. I ran back to Mum. I don’t know what I thought I’d do with it, threaten Jack to keep him from stopping us leave maybe. But Jack turned to leave the living room, just as I was running back in.’ She flinched and closed her eyes.

  ‘Oh, Dee,’ I whispered, picturing the horrific scene. I hugged her, wishing I could comfort that teenage girl who had altered her life forever in a single second of mistimed madness.

  ‘I’ll never forget the look on his face,’ she cried, large tears dripping down her face. ‘He was stunned. We stared at each other; time seemed frozen until Jack dropped to the floor, clutching his stomach, blood seeping through the gaps in his fingers.’

  ‘Dee, shut the hell up.’ Leo bellowed from the doorway. Then turning his anger at me, shouted, ‘Are you happy now? You had to know, didn’t you?’

  ‘So she’s told me,’ I said as cockily as I could manage. ‘So, what? It was years ago. No one should have to keep something that devastating secret,’ I said, recalling that my mother had done just that. ‘Come and comfort your sister. I need to I check on Mum.’

  Not waiting for him to argue and knowing Leo well enough that he would want to grill Dee about exactly how much she had admitted to me, he and I crossed paths and I ran to the house. I turned to watch Leo and Dee briefly from the back door. They were whispering animatedly to each other. I left them to it and stepped inside.

  * * *

  ‘Why did he mind Dee admitting she’d killed Jack?’ I asked Mum when I joined her in her bedroom and sat on the end of her bed. I couldn’t seem to stop trembling.

  Despite everything that had happened, she was sitting at her dressing table, as she did every night before retiring, removing her make-up and applying her night cream to her face and neck.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she murmured, studying her reflection in the mirror to ensure she’d rubbed every bit in to her youthful-looking skin. Satisfied, she came over to the bed, pulled back her summer duvet, stepped in and settled down against the large, downy pillows. ‘Maybe he’s being clever.’

  ‘How so?’ I asked, watching her and wondering if I’d ever really known her.

  ‘If neither of them confessed to killing Jack they could blame it on their mother.’ She stared out of the window. ‘As much as Hazel annoyed me, I don’t like the way they described her earlier. We must try and find out how she is.’

  It was odd hearing her talking about Hazel in a caring way.

  ‘She could be steely tough when you least expected it, but as you know, she had a timid side to her, too,’ Mum considered. ‘If, as they say, Jack’s murder was an unfortunate accident, they shouldn’t have run away. Henri must have gone through hell all these years wondering what happened to his father.’

  ‘True.’ A thought occurred to me, and as much as I tried to suppress it, I couldn’t help asking, ‘Don’t you ever think about Vincent Black’s family and what they must have gone through?’ When she didn’t react, I added, ‘Wouldn’t they have wondered why he didn’t return from Scotland?’

  She took a jar of hand cream from her bedside table and silently unscrewed the large silver lid. She dipped two finger tips into the white cream, handed the jar to me to reseal and began working the cream into her fingers, around her manicured nails and then over her tops of her hands to her wrists.

  ‘I think about them every day,’ she admitted. ‘I did a terrible thing. I can’t blame Hazel for it – even though we were both involved in his death.’ Her voice faltered at the last word in the sentence and she stopped what she was doing and looked directly at me. ‘Do you see me any differently now you know this?’

  I wanted to lie, but she knew me far too well for me to get away with doing so. ‘Yes.’ She flinched, so I added, ‘But only because you’ve always been a nurturer to me and Katie.’ I laughed. ‘And to some of your younger boyfriends.’

  She didn’t smile at my stupid attempt at lightening the mood. ‘I don’t want Katie to ever learn about this.’ She swallowed and cleared her throat. ‘I want her to always think of me as kindly Nana Mimi who buys her pretty dresses and ice creams.’

  I placed the jar of hand cream on her bedside cabinet. ‘I can’t promise not to tell her, Mum. I’ve resented your secrets my entire life. I will do my best to make sure she doesn’t judge you. I’m sure she’ll always love you. I do.’

  ‘Good.’ She took both my hands in hers. ‘None of us ever knows what we’re capable of until we’re faced with a situation. I can’t tell you how terrified I was that night.’ She studied my expression. ‘And the hundreds of nights afterwards when I waited for someone to discover his body and come looking for me and Hazel.’

  ‘And now Henri has done just that.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, the man who saved your life today, the one to whom I’ll always be grateful, is probably going to be the one who sees me answer for my crime. Fate is having a laugh at my expense.’

  I gave her hands a squeeze. ‘I don’t think he’s going to do that, Mum.’ I had to speak to him.

  ‘He’s a detective, Sera. His life has been about tracking people down and making them pay for crimes they’ve committed. Why shouldn’t he want the same result for Vinnie?’

  I wasn’t certain, but thinking back to what he’d assured me, I said, ‘No, I truly believe he’s here to discover what happened to his father, and now he has. He can tell his family what became of Jack, and put it all to rest.’

  She looked sad and suddenly fragile; almost not like my mother at all. ‘He’ll want Hazel’s children to pay for what they did.’

  ‘Yes, we can’t expect him not to want them to answer for killing his father.’ I rubbed my tired eyes. ‘I want to go and see him,’ I admitted, glancing at the door and lowering my voice, just in case Leo was standing outside listening. ‘Hang on a sec.’ I stood up and crept over to the window, peering down at the garden. They were still there, heads close together in conversation. I returned to Mum’s bed and bent down to whisper to her. ‘I put a few things in the car earlier, in case I needed to get Katie away from here.’

  ‘From me?’ She looked horrified.

  I shook my head. ‘No, of course not from you.’

  I explained about Leo waiting for me in the hallway when I came in and his determination not to let me go anywhere. ‘I think he suspects Henri would be my first stopping point if I left here.’

  She sat up a little straighter. ‘Why would you take Katie there, you barely know the man?’

  She was right. ‘I’m sure I can trust him to look after her for me. But I’m not so sure I’m happy having her here around Leo and Dee. They seem to be unravelling with every discovery, and I don’t think it’s going to be easy getting them to leave.’

  Mum threw back the duvet and slipped her feet into her slippers, pulling on her fine dressing gown. ‘Come on,’ she said, opening the bedroom door. ‘There’s more I need to share with you, and I may as well tell Dee and Leo at the same time.’

  Chapter Thirty

  1990 – Bournemouth

  Mimi

  ‘Where are we going and what are we going to do when we get there?’ It took me a couple of seconds to realise we were on a train as Hazel’s terrified whisper woke me from a disturbed sleep. ‘We’ve got barely any money and they’ll probably come looking for us.’

  I yawned and stretched my aching legs as far as the space in front of the train seats would allow. This was our second train journey. My entire body ached from the effort of taking Vinnie outside and then burying him. We had dumped some of his belongings in several bins around the main station and we’d loaded stones into the case before dropping it into a river nearby with the rest of his stuff. Then we’d caught an antiquated bus for a brief trip to a different village to get on another train. We were hot and sticky, and
I just hoped we were getting far enough away from the country house.

  ‘Because the first train we could catch was going in this direction,’ I whispered when she asked me for a second time. ‘We’ll have to do whatever we can with any opportunities that come our way.’ I didn’t hold out much hope but was simply happy to be distancing myself away from Vinnie’s body more each second. I stared out at the fields as our train passed them by.

  ‘I was thinking, you need to dye your hair and I’ll cut mine.’ She pulled miserably at her long curly tresses she’d always been so proud of.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll cut mine. I’ve always wanted to see what it looked like shorter. You can dye yours red and cut it into a different style.’ I gave her a soothing smile. ‘We’ll be fine.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  I wasn’t, but I couldn’t let her carry on getting into more of a state than she was already. I nodded. ‘How are you?’ I asked, unable to forget the sight of her bruised thighs and other areas Vinnie had abused so cruelly.

  She groaned. ‘Sore.’ She picked at the skin next to one of her thumbnails. ‘Ashamed.’

  I put my arm around her trembling shoulders. ‘You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of and don’t you bloody forget it. Neither of us could have known what he’d do.’ I reflected on my times alone with him and shivered. ‘We both thought he was perfect.’

  She began to cry. ‘I can’t believe what we did to him.’

  Neither could I. ‘Shush, you don’t want to alert the other passengers, we have to stay as incognito as possible.’ I was concerned one of them might read the papers the next day, assuming Vinnie’s disappearance would make the press, and connect us to him.

  ‘Were we right to—’ she murmured, leaned slightly forward and glanced around at nearby passengers, ‘—you know, do what we did?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘It’s too late to do anything about it now, isn’t it?’

  She huddled up, bringing her slim legs up and hugging them. ‘I need to sleep.’