The Guilty Secret (13 page)

‘Do me a favour, Jenny. I can't get to Tom. Rozalinda is monopolising that corner of the room. I'm just slipping back to make sure everything is all right at home. I'll only be five minutes, but I don't want Tom to start to worry.'

As a fresh gale of laughter came from Rozalinda's corner of the room I thought it highly unlikely that her absence would be missed. Seconds later the doorbell rang again, and Phil disentangled himself from Rozalinda to answer it. A crowd of people, some of whom I recognised as musician friends of Phil's crowded into the already crowded cottage. With them was a blonde-haired girl, holding an apprehensive child of eight or nine by the hand. Phil put his arm around her, steering her across to me. The little girl smiled shyly as Phil said:-

‘Jennifer, this is Nanette Crown and her daughter, Sarah. I was hoping her husband John would be here as well, but apparently he flew to New York last night. Nanette, this is Jennifer Harland.'

It seemed he had no reason to say any more about me. Nanette Crown held out her hand smiling warmly.

‘How super to meet you at last. Phil is a great friend of ours and has told us lots about you.'

‘I hope it was respectable!'

‘Very,' she said laughing. ‘I used to be a nurse too. It was only a small hospital in the country, but very friendly and I still miss it.'

‘Can I get you a drink, Nanette?' Phil asked.

‘A sherry, and is there any lemonade for Sarah?'

‘Sure,' he ruffled Sarah's shiny auburn curls and went in search of clean glasses.

‘I shouldn't really have come,' Nanette confided. ‘ Not without John. But I wanted to see Rozalinda in the flesh. She's very beautiful, isn't she?'

I looked across at Rozalinda, slanting eyes flashing, her blue-black hair a velvet cloud, her dress showing every curve and ripple of her voluptuous body.

‘Phil tells me you all grew up together.'

‘Rozalinda is my cousin, and Aunt Harriet unofficially adopted Phil when he was thirteen. We're all very close though we don't see too much of each other these days. Phil is still living in Templar's Way, when he's not travelling to concerts. I'm in London and Rozalinda is all over the world.'

Phil returned with the drinks and there came a fresh banging at the door. With an exaggerated sigh he left us, stepping over the couples who had seated themselves in the hallway for lack of space and letting in a fresh influx of guests.

‘John would have loved to have met her. He's a great admirer of hers. We saw her last film at Tunbridge Wells. Big night out,' she said laughing. ‘ She was terrific in it.'

Close to I realised she was older than I had first thought, somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties. Straight, fine blonde hair hung from a centre parting to her shoulders. Her face was fine-boned with a delicately pointed chin and large grey eyes. Her hands as beautifully manicured as Rozalinda's.

‘Why has your husband had to jet off suddenly to America?' I asked, immediately liking and feeling at ease with her.

‘Oh, he lectures. This time he'll be away for three months. I hate it.' The lovely grey eyes clouded. ‘Before Sarah was born I used to travel with him, but now she is at school it just isn't possible.'

‘She could go to boarding school,' I suggested.

‘Oh no! I've only the one child. I want to have the pleasure of seeing her grow up.' Her arm went instinctively around Sarah's slender shoulders.

She smiled merrily up at me. ‘ Daddy won't be going away again. We're going to buy a farm and then daddy will be home all the time and we'll be able to have chickens and goats and all sorts of nice things.'

‘Yes, thank goodness.' Nanette said with heartfelt relief. ‘This is the last parting. We're buying Hollings farm on the other side of the village and settling for the simple life. We've decided that money isn't worth a fig if you're not together.'

‘We used to scrump apples from old Hollings. He had a very nasty method of attack. He always used to keep buckets of icy rain water at the ready and if he caught us used to throw them over us with great enjoyment. We were always coming home soaked to the skin with feeble excuses of having fallen in the stream.'

She laughed. ‘It sounds like you had a happy childhood.'

‘We had, thanks to Aunt Harriet. Rozalinda's parents were always away from home and paid her very little attention so Aunt Harriet stepped in as substitute Mum, and my mother died when I was five and my father, who was the local doctor, when I was fifteen.'

‘No wonder you all love her so much. I've already found out for myself that she's a remarkable woman. When we first moved into the village last year, John was away and my automatic washer went berserk. There was scalding hot water pouring everywhere. I'm an absolute fool at anything like that and my first instinct was to race across to Harriet's. She had the whole thing sorted out in less than five minutes. Not only the flood stopped and the mess dried up, but she came back with a spanner and goodness knows what else and mended the thing. We've been close friends ever since. I was a town girl until I married John and rather apprehensive about living in a small village, but thanks to Harriet and Mary I don't think I've ever been so happy.'

‘Mary Farrar?'

‘Yes. She's a sweetie. She'll look after Sarah anytime I have to go uptown. Whoever coined the phrase ‘hearts of gold' had people like Mary in mind. She babysits for us as well when John is home. We like to catch up on our time together and go up to London to the theatre and concerts. I wish he had been here tonight. You would have got on well together.'

‘Mummy, do you think if I asked nicely she would sign her autograph for me?' Sarah asked, pulling out a small brown book from her dress pocket, her eyes feasting on Rozalinda.

Her mother looked across to where Rozalinda glittered and shone amid her admirers.

‘She seems awfully busy at the moment darling …'

‘Nonsense,' I took Sarah's eager little hand in mine. ‘ Rozalinda loves children. She will be only too happy to sign your book.'

Whether Rozalinda
did
love children or not I wasn't too sure, but certainly she had enough sense of occasion to realise what a pretty tableaux she made, bending down and kissing Sarah on the cheek and then signing her name with a flourish, whilst everyone stood back, smiling indulgently. I could almost read her mind regretting the fact that there was no press photographer to make capital of it.

‘Gosh!' Sarah whispered reverently as we made our way back to her mother. ‘ Were those
real
diamonds?'

‘Every one,' I said solemnly.

‘Gosh,' she breathed again, her face full of wonder.

‘Satisfied?' her mother asked, laughing.

‘She gave me a kiss
and
signed my book and Jenny says that all those glittering things are
real
diamonds!'

‘And it's long past your bed-time,' Nanette said, bringing her daughter back to earth. She turned to me. ‘Would you like to call round tomorrow for coffee? We live at “ The White Cottage”, overlooking the green.'

‘I'd love to,' I said sincerely. The party had been worthwhile just to meet Nanette and Sarah. ‘About eleven?'

‘Super. I can't see Phil anywhere. Would you say goodbye to him for me? Now we've seen Rozalinda in the flesh there isn't any reason to stay. It's impossible to talk above the music and this sort of party isn't really my scene. I'm more for tea and scones on the lawn!'

‘Me too,' we laughed at each other and she took Sarah firmly by the hand and began to squeeze her way through gyrating bodies to the front door.

I made my way with difficulty into the kitchen where Aunt Harriet was placidly making herself a cup of tea amid the blare of saxophone and guitar.

‘Make that two please. Nanette should have stayed.'

‘She's a nice girl, isn't she? I'd forgotten you hadn't met her before. They moved in two months ago.'

‘She tells me they're going to buy the Hollings farm.'

‘Good.' Aunt Harriet perched rather uncomfortably on a high stool. ‘Her husband is a brilliant man but away too much. He's in America or somewhere at the moment.'

‘Yes. She's missing him. They seem very happy.'

‘They are. When two people are in love it shows no matter how long they have been married.'

As she spoke she was looking at Harold and she sighed.

‘Not worrying about Rozalinda, are you?'

‘No more than usual,' she said. ‘I'm going to ask Phil to play something on the piano. Claire de Lune would make a nice change from this row'. As Phil began to play, Mary came in looking worried. By the frown lines beginning to etch themselves on her forehead, it was an increasingly permanent expression.

‘Have you seen Tom anywhere? I can't find him?'

‘I'm not surprised in all this crush. Would you like some tea?' Aunt Harriet asked practically.

Mary looked longingly at the teapot and shook her head. ‘No. I'd better find Tom first. He must have missed me and be looking for me.'

Aunt Harriet shook her head in fond exasperation as Mary hurried into the smoke filled room.

‘It's Tom this and Tom that. Her life revolves around that man.'

‘You don't sound very approving.'

‘Well of course I approve. He is her husband after all. I'd worry far more if she treated him like Rozalinda does Harold. It's just that she's started fretting over the least thing and it's making her middle-aged before her time.'

I put my cup down. ‘I've had enough for one night. I'm going back to the cottage for some sleep. Are you coming?'

‘Not yet. I'll stay and help Phil clear up.'

I kissed her on the cheek and edged my way to the front door. Phil was just finishing playing, the last notes dying amongst enthusiastic applause. There was no sign of Mary and Tom. I pulled the door open, breathing in the fresh night air with a sigh of relief. Like Nanette, parties weren't really my scene.

It was a dark night, the moon hidden by high banks of cloud. I eased the Fiat from between a Daimler and a sports car, waves of noise coming from the cottage behind me. It wouldn't make him unpopular with the rest of the villagers. His cottage was over a mile away from Templar's Way, cut off by thick woods, the only access a narrow winding lane, the trees plunging it into total blackness. I switched on my headlights and began to hum.

A giant oak that indicated the first of the sudden twists in the lane loomed up ghostly yellow in the beam of light. Still humming I rounded the high hedged bank and then screamed, swinging the wheel wildly over, ramming my foot hard on the brake. The car slammed into the tree, I was briefly aware of the shock of the impact, of searing pain and weight on my chest and legs and then blackness.

I regained consciousness briefly to a mass of headlights and a quiet commanding voice issuing instructions. I was lying in the middle of the road, my car a grotesque shape of smashed steel, nose on into the tree, the back wheels high in the air. I moved my head, searing pain making me cry out, straining to see amongst the dark shapes around me. Phil's familiar voice said ‘You're all right, Jennifer. You're all right. Keep still' and his tears fell onto my face, mixing with the stickiness of wet blood.

My eyes stared past him to a blanketed body. The head at a peculiar angle, the blonde hair shining softly in the darkness. By its side was a pathetically small mound covered with a raincoat, one tiny hand protruding, still clutching the tattered remains of a brown autograph book. The ambulancemen lifted me carefully into the ambulance, and agonising pain sent me mercifully back into unconsciousness.

I was unconscious for three days and when my eyes finally flickered open to the familiar sounds and sights of a hospital ward, Aunt Harriet was sitting beside me, her face haggard.

I knew even before I croaked the question.

‘Nanette? Sarah?'

She shook her head, gripping my hand tight, silent tears coursing down her ravaged cheeks.

I stared blankly at the ceiling above me as a doctor and nurses came in answer to Aunt Harriet's summons. The pain in my head was blinding, I knew I was encased in plaster from my armpits to my thighs. I didn't even wonder what my injuries were. All I could see was Sarah's merry face asking. ‘Were those diamonds
real?
' and Nanette's face as she talked about her husband, saying, ‘ This is the last parting. Money isn't worth a fig if you're not together,' and the autograph book, its pages slowly flipping over in the night breeze as it lay in the blood stained lane.

‘Oh God,' I whispered, closing my eyes. ‘ Oh dear, dear
God.
'

People couldn't have been nicer. The hospital staff were kindness itself, Aunt Harriet and Phil seldom left my bedside. My room was a mass of the expensive flowers Rozalinda sent daily from the West Indies where she was filming. I had a sympathetic visit from my ward sister at St Thomas's, even the police were remarkably gentle in their questioning. None of it mattered. I was as dead inside as Nanette and Sarah, and I could remember nothing.

The charge was causing death by dangerous driving. Rozalinda insisted on paying for the best defence lawyer money could buy. I was totally uninterested. I didn't want a defence lawyer. What could a defence lawyer do? I had killed them both. Nothing could bring them back. And it was all my fault. I was allowed bail and spent it all in hospital, my physical self slowly recovering, my mental self slowly deteriorating.

I went through the trial like a zombie, remembering only brief words that my barrister said:

‘Pleads guilty … dark night … road unlit … no alcohol in the bloodstream … had headlights full on … on a bend … victims wearing dark clothes …'

I was given a suspended sentence and disqualified from driving for one year. Faceless people told me I was lucky, that I could go home, could forget. But I hadn't wanted a suspended sentence. I had wanted to be punished, and if the law didn't do it, then my own mind did. There was no going home. Instead I entered the Landau Clinic, neither knowing or caring who was paying for my private and prolonged treatment there. Nanette's husband had not been at the trial. He had come home briefly to bury his beloved wife and child and then returned immediately to America, leaving an agent to sell The White Cottage, the memories too painful for him to bear. Old Hollings farm was sold to strangers from London.