The Queen of New Beginnings (18 page)

“Dad? What’s this?” In Alice’s hands, the flattened lid had slipped off the box and instead of smashed chocolates inside, there was a necklace; a delicate gold chain with a solitaire diamond. She held it up and the diamond sparkled in the firelight. “Oh, Dad, why didn’t you tell Julia what you’d really given her?”

“What does it matter? What does any of it matter?” He went over to the tray of drinks on the table behind the sofa. “George, what do you fancy?”

“Give me something stiff with plenty of kick.”

• • •

It was three thirty in the morning and Alice couldn’t sleep. Some Christmas it had turned out to be.

Rufus hadn’t left immediately as he’d threatened. The weather forecasters had got it right about the snow. It had started falling shortly after George’s departure; slowly at first then quickly, gathering momentum until it was a full-blown blizzard. Only a fool would have set off in such treacherous conditions. Rufus was many things, but he wasn’t a fool.

It was still snowing; Alice could see and hear it pattering softly against the window. It was years since they’d been snowed in, but if it kept up like this, in all likelihood no one would be going anywhere for the next twenty-four hours.

Rufus had apologized in a desultory fashion for losing his temper and Alice suspected that Isabel had had something to do with that. Alice had wanted her father to give Julia the necklace he had bought her, if only to make peace over Christmas, but he’d shaken his head and said enough was enough. Alice wasn’t entirely sure what he had meant, but she hadn’t pressed him. Having locked herself in her sanctuary after the cherry liqueurs fiasco, Julia had childishly refused to come out. If it had fitted, Alice would have been tempted to slide the necklace under the door with a note telling her to stop acting like a sulky teenager.

Resigned to a sleepless few hours ahead of her, Alice decided to go downstairs to make herself a drink. Rather than risk disturbing anyone, she didn’t switch on her bedside lamp but carefully made her way to the door, then out onto the landing. She had reached the bottom step when she heard noises coming from the direction of the sitting room. The door was open a crack, letting a faint glowing light from inside spill out in the darkness of the hallway.

Alice went to investigate. Maybe it was her father and like her he’d been unable to sleep. She suddenly thought how nice it would be to have his company, to mull over the day’s events together.

At the door, she hesitated before peering through the tiny gap. What if it wasn’t her father? What if it was Rufus and Isabel?

The first thing she saw was the Christmas tree with the lights switched on. Then she saw the log fire burning in the grate and the two naked bodies directly in front of it. There was no mistaking what they were doing. Or that it was Isabel with her head of silvery-blonde hair cascading around her shoulders, her skin radiant in the firelight, who was lying on her back with Alice’s father moving languidly on top of her. They were both gazing deeply into each other’s eyes, wholly immersed in each other, their expressions intense.

Neither of them was aware of Alice or that she had crept away.

Most people would agree that Boxing Day could not be anything other than a forgettable anticlimax to the main event. But Boxing Day at Cuckoo House that year proved to be the exception to the rule and became a day no one would ever forget.

When Alice had finally managed to sleep she had fallen into a profoundly deep, dead-to-the-world kind of sleep. As she surfaced, heavy-headed and befuddled, she recalled a disturbing dream she’d had of her father and Isabel. But then her head cleared. It hadn’t been a dream. It had been real. All too real. It had really happened.

She threw on the first clothes to hand and hurried downstairs. If her father and Isabel had fallen asleep in the sitting room, there would be all hell to pay if anyone else discovered them. Or was that what her father had planned all along: to be discovered? Was this his way of paying Rufus back? To destroy his relationship with Isabel? Oh, God, was her father really capable of such a thing? Had he planned this from the moment Isabel had set foot in the house and he’d understood the extent of Rufus’s feelings for her?

The sitting room was empty. The Christmas tree lights were still switched on but the fire had burned out. There was no sign that anything untoward had taken place here. Even so, Alice checked for any damning evidence; stray items of underwear would be sure to set alarm bells ringing.

Alice didn’t know what to do next, other than go upstairs and wake her father and demand to know what the hell he had thought he’d been doing. But how would she react if he was to say he had done nothing but fulfil his promise to her?

She took refuge in the kitchen and while she busied herself with making a pot of tea, she stared out of the window. Beneath an unwaveringly crystalline sky and a brightly shining sun, the snow was already melting, dripping off tree branches and exposing patches of grass. A blackbird was pecking intently in a small circle of exposed earth. It eventually found what it was looking for: a worm.

The sound of raised voices from upstairs and running feet broke the still quiet. What now? Had Rufus discovered what his fiancée had done? Alice went to find out.

Julia was on the landing. She looked dreadful, as though she had aged a hundred years overnight. Her face was deathly pale, her eyes were bloodshot and tears were streaming down her face. Next to her was Rufus and wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, he was reading something. A letter? “No!” he cried. “
No!
” He dropped the piece of paper to the floor, turned on his heel and shot off towards his room.

“What is it?” Alice forced herself to ask. “What’s happened?”

Julia’s answer was to lean against the wall behind her and slowly slide down it until she was crouched on the floor. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She started to cry. “How could he?” she wailed, more to herself than Alice. “How could he do this?” Her hand flew to her mouth, stifling a scream.

Her heart racing, Alice picked up the discarded piece of paper. Her father’s handwriting was instantly distinguishable. She had read no more than a few words when Rufus reappeared. He was wearing a pair of jeans now and a T-shirt. “Her clothes and case have gone,” he said. His voice was unlike Alice had ever heard it before. It had lost all of its potent clarity.

Dreading the answer, Alice said, “Do you know where my father is?” She was hoping against all hope that her worst fear wasn’t about to be realized.

Julia suddenly let out a manic scream. “He’s gone as well!” she screeched. “Read the letter for yourself.”

“But he can’t have. Not without saying good-bye.”

“It seems your father’s capable of anything,” Rufus seethed. “Go on, read the letter. It’s all there.”

So it was. Bruce Barrett and Isabel Canning had run off together. There were no words of apology. No remorse. No regret. Just a few lines about living life to the full and seizing the day. There was no mention of when he might be back. With or without Isabel.

“What’s all the noise about?” It was Tasha, emerging from her bedroom like the bleary-eyed dormouse at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. “Oh God, Mum, you’re not still crying over those bloody cherry liqueurs, are you?”

Alice left Rufus and Julia to explain. She ran downstairs to the kitchen, unlocked the back door, and raced round the side of the house to the garage. Her father’s Jaguar was still there but Julia’s Range Rover was gone. There was a single set of tyre tacks in the snow that lead inexorably away from the house. “Oh, Dad,” she murmured. “What have you done?”

• • •

She was held personally responsible, as if it had been her job to control her father. The sad truth was, she
was
responsible. Her father had done this entirely for her benefit. He had exacted his revenge on Rufus in the cruellest way imaginable. Having made their feelings clear, no one wanted to talk to Alice now. Julia had shut herself in her sanctuary and downstairs in the sitting room, after Alice had made a fire, Tasha and Rufus had holed themselves up in there, making it obvious she wasn’t welcome to join them. Not really knowing why she was doing it, other than needing to be busy, Alice put a tray of coffee, mince pies and sandwiches together for Rufus and Tasha. She didn’t bother knocking, just went straight in.

Standing by the fireplace, his knuckles white with the force of his grip on the poker, Rufus was jabbing a log into place. “I thought she loved me,” he was saying. “I really did. But she couldn’t have felt anything for me, not when she could go off with a man old enough to be her father.” He shook his head, gave the log another vicious jab.

Now you know what it feels like, Alice thought nastily.

“I suppose you’re quietly cheering to yourself,” Tasha said as Alice put the tray down on the table in front of her. “And you can take that away,” she added, pointing at the tray. “We don’t want anything from you. If we want anything to eat, I’ll make it myself.”

“Tasha, don’t be such an idiot.” With great effort, Alice kept her voice level.

“Don’t call me an idiot. Not when your father has broken my brother’s heart, not to mention what he’s done to our mother. She’s up there in her room, inconsolable. I doubt she’ll ever get over the shame of what that disgusting man has done.”

“I’m sorry,” was all Alice could say. Although part of her wasn’t.

“I bet you were in on it, weren’t you?” Tasha continued. “Your father probably told you what he was going to do. I wouldn’t put it past you to have helped the pair of them slip away in the night.”

Rufus whipped round from the fire. “Did you, Alice? Did you help them?”

“No! I’m as shocked as you are.” Well, that wasn’t totally true, was it? She’d had a warning. She’d seen them in the garden. And then last night. Could she have stopped them? If she had spoken to her father, would he have listened?

Something in Rufus’s face made her think he didn’t believe her. “Our situation here is now untenable,” he said. “Just as soon as our mother is feeling better, we’ll leave. You can stay here all on your own, Alice. I certainly don’t intend to be around when your father returns. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of ever setting eyes on me again.” How pompous he sounded. “Now if you’d kindly leave us alone, Tasha and I have things to discuss.”

Untenable
, repeated Alice silently as she left them to it. What did Rufus think this was, a Victorian melodrama?

For days, weeks and months afterwards, Alice looked back on that day and wondered if Rufus ever blamed himself for what happened next. Certainly she blamed herself often enough. Had Rufus taken a different line, if he had been more of a support to his mother or forced her to pull herself together, would the worst have been avoided? But he did neither of these things. Instead he indulged her weeping and wailing and added to her hysteria by insisting they had to leave, saying Alice couldn’t wait to be rid of them. The tension and ill-feeling escalated until, in the end, Alice did shout at him and his mother that she would be glad to see the back of them.

• • •

An excruciating twenty-four hours later, during which time there was no word from her father, Alice went out to the garage to sit in his car. She thought she might find some kind of solace there. Despite what he’d done, and despite the appalling mess he’d left her to cope with, she wanted to feel his presence. Where better than his beloved old Jag?

When she opened the garage, she found that his car had been trashed. The tyres had been slashed and the paintwork had been scratched; there were places where it had been gouged quite deeply. When she approached the driver’s seat, she saw Julia slumped over the steering wheel. At first Alice thought her stepmother was asleep, sleeping off her petty act of revenge.

But Julia wasn’t asleep. When Alice tried to shake her awake, her body was stone cold. On the passenger seat beside her was an empty bottle of sloe gin liqueur, along with a selection of empty pill bottles.

The silence was abrupt and long.

Clayton waited patiently for Alice to continue, but she didn’t. He wasn’t very good with silences—he always felt uncomfortable around them, like he was with police officers and tax inspectors—but in this instance he was determined to keep his mouth shut. There would be no putting his great, big clumsy foot in it.

After taking a lengthy, steadying breath, Alice spoke again. “I’ve never forgotten that moment,” she said, “when it hit me that Julia was dead, that she had taken her own life. She had hinted that she might do as much, that day in the car when she came to fetch me home from school. She had said she didn’t know how much more she could take. She had even questioned whether my mother had killed herself for the same reason. But I didn’t think she meant it. I simply never took anything she did or said seriously. I should have done more for her.”

“You don’t really think you were responsible for her death, do you?” Clayton said.

Alice shrugged and turned to look at the glowing embers in the grate. “I was very cruel to her at times. My father and I were so dismissive of her.”

“She could have left any time she wanted. She chose to stay. Whatever her reasons for doing so.”

“Only because she was weak. A stronger woman would have walked away. She wasn’t that woman. Aren’t the weak supposed to be helped by the strong?”

Clayton didn’t respond. Another moment of silence passed between them. “Dare I ask what happened next?” he said quietly.

Alice turned to look at him. “Ah, the writer in you wanting all the ends tied up?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’ll give you the shortened version. A post-mortem was carried out and Julia’s death was officially recorded as a suicide. There was talk of her having been under a lot of stress recently, of her being unhappy. Both Rufus and Tasha went as far as to say that my father was to blame, that he had as good as tipped those pills down her throat. Naturally that had everyone wondering for a while. Was it possible? Had Bruce Barrett murdered his wife? Then, of course, my mother’s death was raked over again. The gossip machine was churning like mad by this stage. The local newspaper played its part and then a couple of the nationals picked up on it. The combination of my father’s reputation as a photographer of some repute, and his first wife having had a public persona for a number of years was too tempting a story to pass up. Not to mention that he had scooted off with a woman so much younger than himself.”

“Where was your father when all this was going on?”

“He’d disappeared. No one could track him down. The police knew that at the time Julia had been sitting in his car swallowing handfuls of pills he and Isabel were on a flight to Chile, but from then on there was no trace of the pair of them. I remember him saying after my mother’s death that he had been glad he was out of the country when she had died as then no one could point the finger in his direction. He must have been relieved it happened again in the same way.”

Clayton knew he was probing unashamedly, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Did you ever seriously wonder about your mother’s death?” he asked.

“For no more than a blink of an eye. My mother was not the suicidal type. If she was unhappy she would have sooner killed my father than herself.”

“And when did your father finally surface?”

“A week after Julia’s funeral. He telephoned to say sorry for having gone off without leaving a note for me. He said he’d felt badly about that but knew I’d understand in the end. I told him about Julia. He went very quiet but when I asked him to come home, he said he couldn’t do that. I begged him. “Do this one thing for me,” I pleaded. But he wouldn’t budge. Not even when I threatened never to speak to him again if he wouldn’t come back when I needed him most. He told me I’d be fine, that I didn’t need him anymore. I yelled at him that he was wrong. I ranted. I cried. I called him a selfish bastard for only thinking of himself. He said he was being anything but selfish, that he was thinking only of me. “You don’t deserve the shame of having me around,” he said. “If people want to think I drove Julia to suicide, it’s better for you if I’m not there.” He went on to say that he was starting a new life with Isabel. I told him he had to be out of his mind. He said that maybe he was, but he didn’t care because Isabel made him happy, happier and more alive than he’d felt in years. He went on about life being for living and that he hoped if a chance of happiness came my way I’d have the sense to take it. I reminded him that I’d thought I’d be happy with Rufus and look where that had got me. And then I told him that as of that moment, since he obviously cared so little about me, he no longer had a daughter. My last words to him were to say that I would never speak to him again. Ever.” She sighed deeply, closed her eyes and when she opened them she pressed a finger to her top lip and stared into the fire. She looked so solemn, so very sad.

“Do you think your father really did plan to use Isabel to get back at Rufus?” Clayton said as he watched her reach for a log and toss it into the embers of the fire, sending sparks flying. “Or do you think the attraction between them was real from the word go?”

Without looking at him, she nodded. “It wasn’t until some time later that I came to the conclusion that the attraction was genuine. I thought about the way I’d seen him photographing her in the garden and I knew there had been a powerful intimacy to what they were doing, as if he was already making love to her through the lens of his camera.”

Clayton could picture the scene all too well. “And what of Rufus and Tasha?” he asked. “What happened to them?”

“They left the day after the funeral. I never saw or spoke to them again. Tasha didn’t return to school. I asked the headmistress if she knew where Tasha had gone to finish her A-levels, but she didn’t know. Rufus’s last words to me were to say he hoped I was satisfied now, now that my father had destroyed his family.”

“He had a highly tuned sense of drama, that young man,” Clayton said.

“Could you blame him? His mother was dead and he’d lost his fiancée.”

“He could have done a lot more himself to avert the disaster. I get the feeling his every word and action was carefully orchestrated. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but do you think he ever really cared about you?”

“I think my father was right: Rufus had been playing a game. He hated my father and used me to get at him. He knew, or thought he knew, that I was the only thing my father cared about. In the end, he was proved wrong on that score. Bruce Barrett only ever cared about himself.”

“I’m sure that wasn’t true,” Clayton said. “Your father lost his head over a beautiful woman; he wouldn’t be the first man to do that.”

“That may well be true and I know this is going to sound like I’m wallowing in self-pity, but he never came back. That hurt. He wrote to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to read his letters. I threw them away. Every single one of them. I didn’t want to read about what a great time he was having, I just wanted him to come home. Then I made sure he couldn’t. I completed my A-levels, sold Cuckoo House—it was mine after all—and took a gap year. I left no forwarding address. I cut all ties with the place. The only person who knew where I was, was the solicitor I used in Derby to handle the sale of the house, and he was under orders not to pass on my new address to anyone. I used the same solicitor to change my name by deed poll. A year later than planned, I took up my place at university—not my first choice, just in case I could be traced, and I pretended I was somebody completely different. I gave myself a whole new back story. Just as my father had embarked on a new beginning, so did I.”

“You were very thorough.”

“Anger and rejection can do that to a person. Also, I didn’t want anyone to associate me with what had happened. I wanted a clean slate. I saw myself as the Queen of New Beginnings.”

“Do you have any idea if your father tried to find you?”

She shook her head.

“Do you ever regret that?”

Frowning, she said, “This is starting to sound like one of those awful daytime programmes when the host keeps asking probing questions and then a curtain swings back and a mystery guest, in this case my father, is wheeled on.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so tactless.”

“Oh, blunder away. The truth is, yes, I do regret what I did. Especially when I read of his death. It wasn’t his obituary, just a reference to the fact that Bruce Barrett, the naturalist photographer, had died some five years earlier. In some ways, that was really what forced me to leave behind my life in London. The knowledge of his death seemed to compound the sense I had of having reached a dead end. The acting roles just weren’t coming my way. Have you any idea how humiliating it is to audition for a blink-and-you-miss-it-walk-on part and not get the part? Too animated, I was once told.”

“I’ve been on the receiving end of far worse rejections, I can assure you. A commissioning editor at the BBC once thanked me profusely for the script I’d submitted. He said he’d run out of newspaper to line his son’s hamster cage and my pages of mind-numbing effluent had arrived in the nick of time.”

She smiled faintly. “You had the last laugh, though.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

After another prolonged silence, Clayton said, “I know this is going to sound tactless again, but when you learned of your father’s death, did you find out anything about his life after he left here?”

She shook her head. “All I know is that he died in Argentina about seven years ago. And before you ask, no, I’ve never felt the need to go there and find his grave so I can pay my belated respects. What would be the point, when I’ve always felt the spirit of him never really left this house?”

She yawned hugely and looked at her watch. Clayton glanced at his: it was nearly midnight. “I must go,” she said. “It’s late and the neighbours will start to talk.”

“George has this place watched, does she?”

“No, not George. I was thinking of my neighbours, Ronnetta and her son, Bob. Bob tends to keep rather a close eye on me.”

“In a good way? Or a bad way?”

“In a habitually tedious kind of way.”

She was on her feet now. As was Clayton. “You’ll come back, won’t you?” he said.

“Of course. We had a deal; my story then yours.”

• • •

Clayton saw Alice to the door, then watched the red tail lights of her car slowly disappear into the night. He locked up, but instead of turning out all the lights and going upstairs to bed, he returned to the room where they had spent the evening. He threw another couple of logs on the fire and reflected on all that Alice had shared with him. He could only wonder at the effect that being back here must be having on her. Whatever her feelings were, she hid them well. But then he guessed that was a skill she had learned at a very young age. For him, one of the most interesting things she had said was that she believed the spirit of her father had never really left Cuckoo House. Was it fanciful of him to think that she was right? How else could he explain the feeling he now had that any minute the door could swing open and, large as life, in would stride Bruce Barrett?

With his back to the fire, Clayton closed his eyes and listened to the silence of the house. Only a matter of seconds passed before the silence was crowded out with voices. He could hear laughter as well. And tears. There was no doubt about it, the Armstrongs—and any other owners before them—may have stripped the place of its superficial trappings, but nothing could erase Alice’s childhood from the house. He could feel it as acutely as he could feel the warmth of the fire on him. He opened his eyes and took a deep breath. He went and settled himself at the desk, took another deep breath and switched on his laptop.

A writer has an inexhaustible supply of excuses for why he cannot get down to the job in hand. It’s too early. It’s too late. Too noisy. Too quiet. Not enough caffeine in the bloodstream. The light is wrong. The paper isn’t the right sort. The bookshelves need re-arranging. Venus and Jupiter are entering Uranus. Oh, the list is endless. However, for the poor devil suffering from writer’s block, there is only one reason for not being able to write and that is debilitating fear; the fear that the brain is no longer wired in the way that it once was. The consequence of this is that with each failed attempt, the fear grows and grows until one day life simply doesn’t seem worth living anymore.

Clayton had come terrifyingly close to that low point. He had known what it was to sit alone, late at night, at his desk contemplating his demise.

But now, with the kind of assurance he so rarely experienced, he knew he was free of the crippling fear he’d lived with these last few years. The wires had reconnected inside his head and it felt good. It felt bloody good! He was zinging with creative energy.

He hadn’t felt like this since working on that first magical script for
Joking Aside
.