The Secrets Between Us (28 page)

I called my family to reassure them that I was OK and that things weren’t as bad as they possibly thought they were, but they’d seen the news coverage and read the papers. Neil hadn’t let on how serious the situation was, although he knew how big the story might become. Still, they knew what was going on. My mother wept and said I was breaking my father’s heart. My father told me that my mother was going mad with worry. May pleaded with me to get away while I still could.

‘I can’t leave Alexander now,’ I said. ‘I just can’t.’

‘Come back for a while,’ May begged. ‘For a few weeks, until all this is over. Neil thinks –
we
think – things are going
to be difficult for a while, but it won’t last for ever and, once Genevieve’s turned up, we’ll stand by you whatever you decide to do, I promise. Only come home now, please.’

Jamie was holding my hand, swinging on my arm as we walked home from school. He was kicking a pebble and singing under his breath. Genevieve’s face, sun-faded and rain-damaged, looked down from the posters. They were curling at the edges.

‘I’m needed here,’ I told May.

The wheedling went out of May’s voice and was replaced with frustration.

‘Sarah, that man doesn’t need you. He could manage perfectly well without you. He’s got you exactly where he wants you, with no thought of what’s best for you. If he cared for you even the tiniest bit he’d tell you to get out.’

In the distance the siren call of the quarry rose up. Jamie looked up at me, wide-eyed with mock horror. We had made up a game that whenever we heard the sirens it meant that the dinosaurs who lived in the quarry were on the loose and we had to run home as fast as possible.

‘May, I have to go,’ I said as Jamie tugged at my arm. ‘I have to get Jamie his tea.’

‘Just think about what I said about coming home …’

‘This is my home now.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’

The only good news was a call from the owner of the art gallery in Wells. My pictures had sold and she wanted more. It was pin money, hardly anything, but still I was profoundly proud. Betsy said I should start selling pictures over the internet, because there was always a demand for original art, but I didn’t know how to do that. I mentioned it to Alexander and he said that we should set up an eBay account.

We didn’t, though. We never got round to it.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

AND THEN, WHILE
all this was going on, while the village was in mayhem and the police were searching an area around Tenby, having found forensic evidence linking Genevieve to the love nest/bolt hole, we received, through the post, an invitation in an envelope addressed to both Alexander and me. We were invited to Eleonora House to a party to celebrate Philip’s eightieth birthday.

I had known the invitation was coming; Claudia had told me. She had been round to Avalon several times seeking refuge because she was finding the situation in the village as difficult as I was. The journalists hadn’t bothered her and Bill, but they had been hanging around the entrance to Eleonora House, alarming Philip when he’d spotted them as Virginia drove him to the hospital to have his leg looked at. He’d become very agitated and Claudia realized what Virginia hadn’t: the last time journalists had been clamouring to speak to him had been when his first wife killed herself. Virginia had been confined inside the big house with baby Genevieve. From there, she wouldn’t have been able to see the entrance to the drive and Philip must have done his best to protect her, as well as the children from his first marriage, from the mayhem. Now all those awful, conflicting memories had come back to trouble him. Only Claudia
was able to comfort the old man. She told me that, ironically, it was because she reminded him of her mother. She had to keep telling him that he was not to blame, that none of this was his fault. The situation was so terribly difficult for her and, like me, every time she went out she had to bear the staring and the whispering. When she came round to see me, she offloaded, talking for thirty minutes or more at a time, hardly pausing for breath, sometimes dropping her head into her hands and saying: ‘I wish it were all over. I wish it would just stop. I wish
I
could go away!’ Then she’d apologize for talking too much. She couldn’t do this with her ‘circle’. With them, she had to maintain the decorous façade, she had to be brave; she couldn’t let them see how much it was getting to her. I sympathized, made tea, put biscuits on a plate and understood.

Now Philip’s milestone birthday was imminent, the whole family agreed that the right thing to do was to proceed with the celebrations that had been in the planning since well before Genevieve went away. It wasn’t just because she would have wanted the party to go ahead, no matter where she was, but also because not to hold the event would send out the wrong messages to their friends, relatives, acquaintances and neighbours. It would imply that they were assuming the worst. The caterers had been booked in April, the entertainment in May, and Genevieve herself had commissioned the decorations in June. Besides which, it would take Philip’s mind off everything and give him at least a few hours of pleasure.

When Claudia told me that Alexander and a ‘plus one’ were to be invited, I was surprised, but not shocked. She’d kept talking about the event and I knew the family’s primary aim was that it should be exactly the kind of party that everybody was expecting, and to give nobody any further reason to worry, gossip or speculate.

Claudia had told me many times that Philip regarded
Alexander with affection – he was more of a son than a son-in-law to him – and that he always stuck up for Alexander, no matter how Virginia criticized and blamed. She said Philip admired his skill and craftsmanship. He had always respected that kind of talent and had been pleased to encourage it. He believed Alexander had been a good influence on Genevieve, and he loved him for that too. It was Philip’s birthday and he would want Alexander to be there, and because Virginia would do anything to make her husband happy, Alexander was invited. She knew he wouldn’t go without me, so I had been grudgingly asked along as his ‘guest’.

It felt more than a little humiliating.

‘Philip’s muddled,’ Claudia said. ‘He keeps confusing the past and the present, and the strangest things upset him. He’s told me we should all be grateful to Alexander, but when we ask why he can’t tell us. Or he won’t. Half the time I have absolutely no idea what he’s rambling on about! Poor soul.’

Later, when Alexander and I were alone together, watching television, he rubbing my feet, which were on his lap, I turned the invitation over in my hands. It was good-quality card, printed in gold ink with a gold ribbon running along the edge. ‘This feels all wrong,’ I said.

‘Philip’s very ill,’ said Alexander. ‘It’s his swan song.’

‘I don’t think we should go.’

Alexander shrugged. ‘I owe it to Philip to be there. The old man’s been good to me.’

‘Claudia said he keeps saying something about him being grateful to you.’

Alexander didn’t flinch. He massaged the ball of my left foot.

‘What does he mean?’ I persisted. ‘What did you do for him?’

‘Nothing.’

‘So why did he lend you the money to set up your own business?’

Alexander pushed my feet off his lap, stood up and walked out of the room.

‘I was married to his daughter. Why wouldn’t he?’

A couple of days later, Claudia called to take me shopping at the Christmas market in Wells. I was amazed to see that nobody was waiting at the bottom of the drive to try to grab a photograph through the car window.

‘Where has the press gone?’ I asked Claudia.

‘Don’t you watch the news? The local MP’s been caught
in flagrante
with his brother-in-law. Your fan club is sitting outside his house right now.’

‘Thank God for political scandal,’ I sighed.

Claudia and I were giddy with freedom in Wells, where nobody knew us. We picked our way amongst the stalls, shouldering through the crowds of cold shoppers, trying to avoid the freezing rain and filling our bags with candles, satsumas and intricate Christmas decorations.

‘You are coming to Philip’s party, aren’t you?’ Claudia asked as we queued at a stall selling exquisite ceramic candle-burners shaped like trees.

‘Yes.’ I picked up one of the burners and weighed it in my hand. ‘Alex said he’d never let your father down.’

‘Alex is good like that,’ she said.

We stacked our purchases in the back of her Volvo and went for lunch in a crowded little café. I ate a cheese and onion pasty and chips while Claudia picked at a green salad and a miserable piece of cold chicken. She wanted to lose weight before the party because Virginia, despite being racked with worry about Genevieve and Philip, still found the time to make derogatory comments about her stepdaughter’s size. I made an effort to look as if I wasn’t
enjoying my deliciously hot salty food as much as I was.

‘I ought to get a present for your father while I’m here,’ I said. ‘Do you have any ideas?’

Claudia shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know, anything – a Dick Francis, a bottle of port.’ Her voice was catching.

‘Claudia?’ I reached my hand out across the table and covered hers. It was hot and clammy.

She shook her head and her eyes glistened. ‘Poor Philip,’ she whispered. ‘Poor old man. He ought to be enjoying a peaceful retirement but this whole Genevieve thing is killing him. God, I wish she would come back!’

I had no idea what somebody like me was supposed to wear to a black-tie event at a place like Eleonora House and, even if I had known, I certainly didn’t have anything remotely right with me. I asked Betsy for her advice and she told me to choose something simple and classy.

‘You won’t go wrong with black,’ she said. ‘Only go for the best black you can afford.’

The next time Alexander was out pricing a job, I asked if I could borrow the laptop. I took it upstairs, into Jamie’s bedroom, which was the only room in the house where, by some architectural inconsistency, an internet connection was achievable. It also meant I could hear, and see, anyone who came to the house, because the window overlooked the drive.

I sat with my back against the door with the laptop balanced against my legs. Although the connection was painfully slow, I found the websites Betsy had recommended and ordered a couple of demure black dresses, a lovely velvet trouser suit and an expensive but very pretty pair of shoes.

Sunlight moved across the room. Jamie’s hamster stirred in its cage. I went over to the window and crouched down to watch it. The hamster with its dear little black-bead eyes picked a sunflower seed between its tiny paws and gnawed
at it. I smelled the hamster smell, and it reminded me of my own childhood; sawdust and must.

I put my finger through the bars and stroked the hamster’s back, but it didn’t like the intrusion. It scuffled away and hid in its tube.

I went back to the computer. With a racing heart and a dry mouth, I Googled the name Genevieve Churchill-Westwood. Page after page of hits came up. Many were articles about promising riders or lists of the winners of eventing and dressage competitions but also, now, Genevieve and what had happened to her were popular topics on a number of forums. The most popular was hosted by somebody called Slumdog, who had not only given a brief biography of Genevieve and other family members – biographies that were scathing and vituperative, but never quite crossed into the territories of libel or slander – but had also included photographs of Burrington Stoke and even an aerial photograph of the village with Eleonora House, Avalon and the Quarrymen’s Arms marked with red circles. I studied the image myself for a long time. From above, I could see how the two quarries bit into the hillside. Masses of woodland had disappeared to be replaced by open rockface. The new quarry was many times bigger than the older, disused one. In the picture, the blue sky was reflected in the water that filled the old quarry pit. Bushes and trees had grown right to the edge, and it seemed as if nature was soothing the damage caused by machinery and explosives. The new quarry, from above, was a moonscape, desolate; an act of destructive vandalism on a huge scale. Slumdog agreed. He said it was a perfect example of the exploitation of nature for commercial benefit.

It dawned on me that Slumdog was probably Damian. I Googled Damian Churchill and found he had his own website. It was impressive; up to date, beautifully presented, and emotive but well written. His next public ‘event’ was a
protest at the greenfield site of a proposed new shopping centre in the Midlands. He had friends in high places. Some were travelling to America to lobby a high-profile construction industry conference. I wondered where they got their money from; wealthy sponsors, I supposed.

I didn’t read any more. Instead I Googled Alexander Westwood. His name came up in relation to Genevieve’s disappearance, and I discovered he had won a couple of industry awards for his work on major restoration projects, but there were no results prior to the last four years. If there had been newspaper reports about his trial, they were no longer online. I sighed and turned to look at the montage of photographs hung on a frame over Jamie’s bed. Genevieve must have made it for her son. I’d seen it many times but never really looked at it before. There were pictures of Jamie as a baby, and as a boy, in his school uniform, dressed as a shepherd in a nativity play, walking with a sandy bottom along a beach. There were pictures of Jamie and Genevieve, their faces close together, he with his arms around her neck, the two of them sharing an ice-cream. I searched for Alexander’s face. Where was he? I found him at last in one single picture. Jamie and his cousins were sitting on a roundabout in a park. Genevieve must have been holding the camera. Standing behind the children were Alexander, Claudia and Bill. One of the Labradors was walking out of the frame; you could just see its back legs and its tail.

I smiled and reached out my fingers to touch Alexander’s face. He was smiling at the camera, smiling at Genevieve. He looked happier, and more settled, than I had ever known him. He looked younger.