The Emerald Comb (21 page)

‘Nothing to gain? There’s everything to gain. She’ll gain a father, the knowledge of where she’s come from, a family history. She’ll gain
you
.’

He smiled. ‘Trust you to see it that way, love. I suppose it’ll feel more real to me when I meet her. I will have to meet her, I suppose.’

‘Yes, I think you must. She has a right to know her father, I think.’ Though why did her father have to be Simon? I could see already that this was going to change our family dynamic, and who knew whether that would end up being for the better or worse?

He nodded. ‘Though as she’s grown up now, I don’t see that I can be much use to her.’

‘I guess that’s for her to decide,’ I said gently. Everyone had a right to know who their parents were, I thought. And their grandparents, and great-grandparents. Knowing where you come from helps give you roots. ‘So, have you made any arrangements to meet her?’

‘Not yet. We’ve agreed to email a few more times before we meet up. Get to know each other a bit first. Besides, she lives in Durham. It won’t be that easy, logistically speaking.’

It wouldn’t be easy
at all
, and I wasn’t thinking about the logistics. ‘Sad about her mother dying.’

‘Yes, poor Sarah. I don’t know the details. I do feel sorry for Amy, losing her mother so young.’

Something occurred to me. ‘Simon, you’ve been late home a lot recently. Is this why – is it something to do with Amy making contact?’

‘Late? Have I? Oh, no. That’s been due to working late. Mostly. And, um, a couple of drinks parties after work which I couldn’t get out of. So, anyway, I think we shouldn’t mention anything about Amy to the kids. Not until after I’ve met her and we’ve worked out what’s going to happen next.’

‘I agree,’ I said. So the late nights weren’t down to Amy. That mystery was still not solved. And his stuttered answer and swift change of subject didn’t fill me with confidence. I ran a hand across my forehead. There was too much going on in our lives at the moment. We were barely settled in our new house. Simon had discovered a grown-up daughter he hadn’t known about. He might be having an affair. And there was a skeleton in our back garden.

‘Simon, I’ve got a headache. It’s been a hell of a long day. I’m going to bed.’ I got up, and poured the rest of my wine into his glass. I needed a half hour or so on my own before he came up, to mull things over and try to straighten out my thoughts. I suspected I wouldn’t get to sleep for hours.

The next day was a busy one. Simon decided to take a day’s holiday and stay at home, to help deal with the endless succession of police, forensic archaeologists and other scientific experts who traipsed through the house to the garden, examining the burial site and the remains of the beech. By the time I got back from taking the kids to school, the garden was swarming with people. I had the kettle almost continually on the boil, making cups of tea for them. It was worse than having the builders in. And every time I looked at Simon I thought about this girl, Amy. I kept trying to picture her. Would she look like an older Lauren? Or completely different, more like her mother?

By lunchtime the word had got out that a skeleton had been discovered in a North Kingsley garden. When the doorbell rang for the twentieth time that day, I sighed, wondering what species of policeman or scientist or nosy neighbour would be on my doorstep this time. But it was a reporter and a photographer.

‘Sorry to intrude, ma’am, but we’re from the
Southern Daily Echo
. Is it true you’ve discovered a body in your back garden? Could you tell us the full story?’

I gaped at him, unsure whether I should talk to the press or not. DI Bradley passed by on his way out, and gave me a reassuring smile. So it was OK to talk to them if I wanted to. I showed the reporters through to the dining room where they could see what was happening in the garden without getting in the way of the police work, and told them the story of the storm, the tree surgeon and the bones. Simon followed me in and sat with me, chipping in with comments every now and again. I may have been talking about the skeleton, but it was the more momentous news of Simon’s daughter that was really on my mind.

I decided against mentioning that my ancestors used to live here. If the bones were of someone who’d been murdered, and one of my ancestors had had something to do with that…well, I wasn’t sure myself how I felt about that yet. And I certainly didn’t want to discover how I felt by reading articles entitled ‘local woman is descended from long line of killers’ in the papers.

Twenty minutes later it was the
Winchester Star
at the door. And then the
Hampshire Chronicle
. By two o’clock half the village were standing in the lane to witness us bag the big one – the film crew from
South Today
. I ducked into the kitchen and let Simon deal with that one. No way did I want to be on the local TV news! Simon seemed to relish it all – after they’d gone he told me he’d enjoyed the experience of being interviewed, speculating on who the bones might have belonged to, reciting what he knew of the history of the house.

‘Did you tell them my ancestors used to live here?’ I asked.

Simon shook his head. ‘No, I kept quiet about that. You hadn’t mentioned it to any of the papers so I guessed you didn’t want it shouted about. Anyway I can’t remember the detail.’

I rolled my eyes. Of course he never bothered to store any information relating to my research. But God help me if I couldn’t recall who England’s fly-half was. ‘Thanks for not telling them. I want to wait and see what the police find out first. We don’t even know if the bones date from my ancestors’ time. They might be earlier, or later.’

‘They seemed to be hoping the body was more recent,’ he said. ‘Apparently a woman went missing from this village about twenty years back, and her body was never found. I think they wanted it to be her.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘Just what we know – that the bones were under a large old tree. Let them tell whatever story they want. Anyway, I must set up the TV to record
South Today
this evening. Don’t want the kids to miss their dad being on telly!’

I wondered whether Amy would see it and, if she did, what she’d think of her father. Then I remembered she lived in Durham, well out of
South Today’s
broadcast range.

Work continued all day. A slice of the tree trunk was taken for analysis by a dendrochronology lab. DI Bradley explained that if the body had been buried before the tree was planted, determining the age of the tree would give us the latest date on which the body was buried.

The bones were gathered up and individually bagged and labelled. Two forensic scientists spent the day in the root hole, scraping at the earth with tiny trowels, uncovering more pieces of bone and a few fragments of part-rotted cloth. For a while there was discussion about whether there might be more than one body buried. Again, that made me shudder. It’s one thing to discover a skeleton in your garden. Quite another to think that you live on the site of a mass murder. Late in the afternoon, the scientists decided they’d found the remains of just one, complete human. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Simon laughed. ‘Just the one body, eh? Thank goodness for that!’

It was almost dark before the police scientists finally packed up for the day, taking the bones, their tent and tools with them. DI Bradley called round just as we were clearing up after dinner. Thomas was already in bed.

‘Sorry to disturb you again, Mr and Mrs Smith,’ he said, as we invited him in to sit in the living room. ‘I just thought I’d let you know sooner rather than later – we won’t need to dig any more in your garden. You can get on with the clear-up job now, as soon as you like.’

‘Aw, and here was me hoping I could get the police to dig over my vegetable plot as well,’ joked Simon. ‘But thanks for letting us know. It’ll be good to get the garden back in action. The kids get so fidgety when they’re not allowed outside.’

‘Also, I just wanted to confirm that you know you’re not under any suspicion yourselves,’ said DI Bradley.

‘Well, I may look a little careworn but surely not old enough to have committed a hundred-year-old murder,’ I said, with mock indignation.

‘Precisely.’ DI Bradley smiled. ‘But it’s my duty to make sure you’re aware. Right then, I’ll be off and leave you to your evening. When we get the results of the carbon-dating and dendrochronology in about three weeks’ time I’ll come back to let you know.’ He stood up, and shook our hands. ‘Oh, and the lads said thanks for all the tea and biscuits. We’ll leave you in peace now.’

When he’d gone I turned to Simon. ‘Well, we can move on as regards the garden clear-up now. That’s good. Don’t suppose you heard anything more from Amy today?’

‘Who’s Amy?’ Lauren came skipping into the room, carrying a huge armful of teddy bears, mostly pink.

‘Just someone your dad –’ I began.

‘– works with,’ finished Simon. ‘No one you know. Why have you brought all those bears downstairs?’

‘I’ve grown out of them,’ Lauren announced, dumping them in a pile on the sofa beside me. ‘Thomas can have them if he wants.’

‘They’re probably a bit girlie for him,’ I said. ‘Maybe we can donate them to the school summer fair. I think it’s next month.’

‘OK,’ said Lauren, skipping back out of the room.

‘Hang on a minute, young lady.’ Simon jumped to his feet and caught her by the arm. ‘You’re not going to leave those bears there, are you? Pack them up into carrier bags and put them in the spare room for now. We don’t want them all over the sofa, do we?’

She scowled, and went off in search of bags. Simon glanced at me. ‘You know, I can’t help wondering whether Amy had pink bears when she was little, as well. Did she like the same kind of things Lauren does? I wonder what she looks like?’

I couldn’t admit I’d spent all day wondering the same sort of things. ‘I’ll bet you anything you like that she had at least one pink teddy bear. You can ask her when you meet her.’

He put his arms around me and kissed my forehead. ‘I might well do that. Thank you, Katie, for being so understanding about this. I didn’t know if it would upset you.’

‘Why’s Mum upset?’ asked Lauren, returning with a handful of plastic bags.

‘She’s not. And we were just talking about the mess in the garden.’

‘Oh. Where shall I put these, then?’ She stuffed the toys into bags and thrust them towards me. A one-eyed pink Care Bear was sticking out of the top of one. I remembered buying it for her on her second birthday.

‘Upstairs, in the spare room, like Dad said,’ I replied. She flounced off with them.

‘She’s growing up,’ said Simon.

‘Yes. Seeing those bears get thrown out is like the end of an era. She’s not a little girl any more.’ I sighed. All this change in our lives, so much to cope with. ‘But she’ll always be
your
little girl.’ I put my arms around him and quietly voiced my greatest fear. ‘Don’t let this Amy supplant her, will you?’ He responded by squeezing me tightly and sighing into my hair.

Mum and Dad came to visit on the following Saturday. Ted the Tree and Jamie had been back on Friday to finish cutting up the tree trunk. Now we had a huge pile of six-foot-long logs to chop up into firewood, a mangled trampoline waiting to be taken to the tip, a pile of old bricks which needed to be built back into a garden wall, and a huge hole requiring filling with earth. Not to mention a trashed lawn and trampled flower beds. Dad had promised to help take the trampoline away and fill the crater. He and Mum were also intrigued, of course, by the story of the skeleton and couldn’t wait to hear ‘all the gory details’, as Dad put it. I’d told them on the phone about the house having belonged to our ancestors. Dad was desperate to hear all about this, too. Simon and I had agreed, of course, not to mention Amy, yet.

It was the first time Mum and Dad had seen the house since we’d moved in. I gave them a guided tour, with Lauren skipping excitedly alongside, desperate to show Granny her room. Mum wanted to know all about what colours we’d paint the rooms, when we’d buy new curtains and carpets, and whether we’d replace the 1930s bathroom suite or not. While we were in our bedroom I took the hair comb out and showed it to Mum.

‘Pretty. Are you going to wear it?’

‘Not really my style. But I am fascinated to think about who it might have belonged to.’

‘It might be worth a bit. You could sell it.’

Sell something that could have belonged to an ancestor? Not likely!

At least Dad was interested in the history of the house. ‘Which St Clairs lived here? Remind me?’ he asked, as we climbed the stairs to the second floor.

‘It was built in 1799 by William St Clair, your great-great-great-grandfather,’ I told him.

‘Hey, my father was also William St Clair!’

‘Yes, I know. It seems to have been a bit of a family name. There were at least three of them. The William who built the house lived here till he died in 1841. Then his son Bartholomew inherited it and lived here with his wife Georgia, and their children. The elder son Barty then lived here until he died in 1923. But we’re descended from the second son, another William. He was your great-grandfather, Dad.’ I showed him into the room we’d designated as a playroom.

‘I bet the kids love playing up here. What happened to the house after Barty died?’

I told him what Vera Delamere had told me when I rang to tell her of the discovery of the bones.

‘Delamere – that’s who you bought the house from? So it’s only actually had four different families owning it, for over two hundred years? The original St Clairs, the between-wars family who used it as a country retreat, the Delameres and now you.’

I hadn’t thought of it like that. ‘Yes. It’s quite impressive, really. I hope we get to stay here as long as the Delameres did.’

Dad went to peer out of the window. This room was at the back of the house, with a good view of what remained of the garden. ‘What a mess. I can see why you want my help, love.’

I went to stand beside him, and took hold of his arm. ‘You don’t have to help if it’s –’