But did it work both ways? Did she have to compete for Adam’s love? It was Lizzie Siddal Bethany really identifed with. Lizzie, who had wanted only Rossetti, who couldn’t bear to share him, who killed herself when she thought he was with another woman.
Natasha phrased the next question very carefully. ‘Where did Alex stand in all this?’
‘Oh, on Jake’s side, they’ve always been best mates.’
Natasha grabbed at that. It was Alex who Christine had overheard Jake talking to that night. Adam knew nothing about it.
He massaged his temples. ‘Y’know, before Bethany, the longest relationship I’ve ever had lasted about a fortnight. I thought I wasn’t cut out for monogamy. You said we can blame all our problems on past generations, people who died before we were born. I don’t know about that, but I’d agree to a certain extent. That it goes at least one generation back. It’s true what they say about your parents fucking you up. Mine were always rowing. I couldn’t stand it. They tried to hide it from me at first, to wait until I’d gone to bed. All day I’d catch these looks between them, eyes like razors, a sort of hissing in their voices, and then later their shouting kept me awake for hours. They stayed together for my sake. People should never do that.’ He broke off, looked up. ‘The thing is, it’s like I’m hooked on that first stage of being in love, when you’d do anything for each other, and everything is perfect. As soon as it starts to change, when you become a normal couple who go to the supermarket together, I start looking elsewhere. Every time I think, this will be different, I won’t let things change. But it always does. Except with Bethany. She was different, I don’t know what it was about her. She appreciated little things. I still loved her even when I knew she was lying to me. She told me she lived at Chatham Place. Jake had written it down in the studio contact book. I went there one day, to surprise her. And the old lady who lived there said the only lodger she had was a middle-aged man. I told Bethany what had happened and she just laughed at me. I was so angry I ripped the page out of the address book, tore it to shreds in front of her. She just watched me. But it didn’t change how I felt about her.’ He paused. ‘You’re a good listener. I bet people always end up pouring out their hearts to you.’
‘Seems to happen that way.’
‘I almost told you everything before, right at the beginning. But I couldn’t. I knew you wouldn’t agree to help me.’
‘You’d have been wrong.’
People got away with all kinds of things under the guise of artistic decadence. But she could easily understand the appeal of what Adam and his friends had done, how you’d come up with an idea like that, to add some spice to life, then get swept along with the danger and drama and romance of it. Life crossing over into art again. She didn’t know what to say. Next door the music had come to an end.
‘I think I’ve found her father,’ she said. ‘I’m going to see him at eleven o’clock the day after tomorrow.’
Adam looked as if he didn’t believe her, never honestly thought she’d manage to pull it off.
‘I found out a little about her family, too,’ Natasha said. ‘Her mother died when Bethany was a child. Bethany had an older sister, Charlotte, who also died suddenly.’
‘My God. I want to come with you.’
‘Your exhibition opens in a couple of days.’
‘There’s nothing much left to do now.’
‘Is Jake going to be there, for the opening?’
‘I expect so.’ She stored that information away for later. ‘I thought about cancelling the whole thing. It was Bethany who persuaded me not to. And then when she’d gone … I won’t work with Jake again. This is it.’
‘I have to ask you this.’ Natasha paused. ‘Do you think there’s any chance he might have harmed her.’
‘No.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I…’ How could she tell him about what Christine had told her? It would become clear tomorrow at the Wilding’s house. If Bethany and Adam managed to make a go of it, it would be up to Bethany whether or not she ever told him what had happened between her and Jake. ‘No reason,’ Natasha finished.
‘Once she’d gone, once I didn’t have her either, Jake lost interest,’ Adam said ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’
Maybe Christine had made a mistake. Got the wrong end of the stick. ‘You know her better than I do.’ Just pray he knew Jake.
Adam picked up his car keys. It was late. She was in half a mind to tell him he could stay. But something prevented her.
She opened the door and a blast of cold night air took her breath away. He turned. ‘I couldn’t understand why you seemed almost more determined than I that we keep looking for her. I can’t believe you kept all that to yourself. That you’d do that, for a stranger. It’s sod’s law, isn’t it? I go through my life never finding anyone I could imagine loving for ever. And then I meet two at the same time.’
Forty
NEXT MORNING, WHILE Natasha ran a bath, she printed out all her notes on Bethany’s case.
As she read them, lying in the tub, she understood exactly why Bethany had asked if some families could be cursed. If you believed in such things, you’d easily be persuaded that her family carried that blight.
Eleanor’s grandson who died when he was twenty-one. Harry and Harold Leyburn, in all likelihood distant cousins but blood relations none the less. Bethany’s sister who never reached her thirteenth birthday. Bethany’s mother, who didn’t live to see her youngest child start school.
A good old-fashioned curse, or one of the more scientific varieties?
Later she called Will. ‘Have you heard of Harry Leyburn, young athlete who died a few weeks ago, suspected heart attack?’
‘Mmm.’ Said in a tone that indicated he was bracing himself for the next question.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve any wild theories about any hereditary condition that might have killed him?’
* * *
Will had agreed to meet Natasha at the Genetics Research Centre, a modern glass and concrete building on the outskirts of Oxford. He’d warned that he could only spare half an hour or so before he had to get back to Cheltenham for a meeting with the scriveners.
They met in the spacious reception area, and took the lift up to the canteen where they filled chunky white china cups with tea from the dispenser.
‘I’ve had a word with Professor Holmes,’ Will said, as they sat down by a wall of glass. ‘He’s one of the world’s leading specialists in hereditary heart conditions, specifically something called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.’ He handed over a sheaf of printed notes. ‘It’s pretty scary reading.’
Natasha flipped through the stapled papers. A series of diagrams of the heart, cross sections of muscle, elongated diamonds with dots in them in, the diamonds aligned horizontally, neatly on top of each other, then, in an adjacent diagram, all over the place, some vertical, some diagonal, crossing over. Myocardial Disarray it said underneath. On another page were ultrasound pictures, which looked to the untrained eye like the pictures Mary had proudly shown her of the baby in her womb; on another examples of family trees, medical ones, that mapped heredity, males and females represented as circles and squares, those unaffected showing as clear shapes, those that carried the condition, shaded in.
Natasha looked at Will. ‘Okay. Give me the basics.’
He took the notes back. ‘The condition was first recognized in the 50s. According to estimates, one in five hundred births could be affected. In the UK alone it’s thought that ten thousand people have it. Mis-diagnosis is common. There’s a severe lack of knowledge about the condition, so it often goes undetected, even during an autopsy. As such, it’s guessed that up to seventy per cent are totally oblivious that they’ve got it, or are carriers. The condition is transmitted from one generation to the next without skipping. Dominant inheritance. Each child of an affected male or female has a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting. Want a rundown of symptoms?’
‘Go on.’
/>
Will read aloud. ‘HCM is marked by a thickening of the heart in the absence of an apparent cause – because of a genetic abnormality. Sometimes causes a blockage that results in the heart overworking. Patients may have shortness of breath, exercise intolerance, chest pressure, pain, fainting, or no symptoms whatsoever.’ Natasha watched Will’s eyes as he read, flicking from side to side. ‘HCM is cardiology’s great masquerader. Sometimes it simulates coronary artery disease, sometimes it resembles valvular heart disease with heart murmurs. Sometimes the heart seems normal. The condition may be present at birth or in childhood, is occasionally the cause of a stillbirth, but it’s much more common for the heart to appear normal at this time. Hypertrophy more frequently develops in association with growth and is usually apparent by the late teens or early twenties.’
‘What does it say about people who die suddenly?’
Will scanned a couple of pages. ‘Ah, here we are. Adolescents and young adults with no prior symptoms can suffer sudden death without knowing they have the disease. HCM is the most common cause of sudden cardiac death in young athletes and people under thirty years of age. It is suspected that ventricular fibrillation, a chaotic heart rhythm, is the cause of death.’
‘What about cures?’
Will shook his head. ‘Nothing to reverse the condition. Pacemakers and drugs can be used to control heart rhythm if the problem is detected early enough.’ He turned the page. ‘Conclusion: Developments are likely to come from the early detection of persons carrying the gene and treating them to prevent the development of hypertrophy. It is hoped in the future that gene therapy will help to bring about curative intervention.’ He stopped reading, put the papers down, sipped his tea. ‘Like any hereditary disease, they’re using family histories to learn more about it, and to quantify the risk to particular individuals. Using extended family trees to actually find and warn those who are at risk. This girl you’re researching: what makes you think she’s affected?’
‘I think she was related to the Leyburns.’
‘And her mother and sister both died. Maybe her old man wasn’t guilty. I’ve not had time to do any more checks on the Stratford papers, I…’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
She went over the symptoms Will had listed in her head. ‘Her boyfriend said that she fainted.’
Will gave a slight nod. ‘If you’re right, then she’s fortunate that she’s got you working for her. She’d be one of the lucky ones. Like I said, all too often someone drops dead and it just goes down as a freak heart attack. So the relatives carry on unawares. When you find her, you make sure she goes and gets checked out. ECG or angiogram might pick something up. There might even be a genetic screening test already developed for her family.’
Natasha stared at him. ‘You mean there might be details of some of her family on files here? You couldn’t—?’
Will silenced her. ‘No. I definitely couldn’t. Those patient records are highly confidential.’
‘Of course.’ Natasha looked down at her tea meekly. ‘But…’
‘But nothing.’
‘OK, I get the message.’ Natasha thought for a moment. ‘What would it show up as in death certificates, before the condition was identified?’
‘Sub-aortic stenosis. Heart attack. Heart failure. But then that covers a multitude of sins. It’s what everyone dies of in the end.’
Natasha thought of Lizzie. ‘How about the nineteenth century. General malaise, weakness, undiagnosable?’
Will pursed her lips. ‘Possible, I suppose.’
And Lizzie’s baby. HCM was a cause of stillbirth.
Natasha looked out of the window to the street below, a mother pushing a buggy, an old man making his way stiffly over the pedestrian crossing, leaning on a walking stick. ‘What’s the death rate for those affected?’
‘Same as always,’ Will said with a smile. ‘One per person.’
‘Thanks Will. I’ll let you get on.’
They walked back towards the lift. Natasha spied the sheaf of notes tucked under Will’s arm. ‘Could I get a copy of those?’
‘Yeah. We can stop off at the machine on the way down.’
They got out at the third floor. ‘Just be a tick,’ Will said.
As soon as his back was turned she flew in the opposite direction, frantically peering through doors for an empty office. She found one, the computer not in screensaver mode. Just pray whoever had been using it had just popped out for a cup of tea and she wouldn’t need a password to access data.
She was in luck.
In the ‘patient details’ box she typed: Wilding.
No Results Found.
Leyburn.
No Results Found.
So much for luck. She pushed the chair back. Then remembered. The e-mail that had come in from the Genealogical Research Directory, from Sue Mellanby, who remembered being taken to the Marshall grave as a child.
She typed: Mellanby.
Four names popped up. Two from Cambridgeshire.
Genetic condition: HCM.
Natasha clicked on one of the names. Rachel Mellanby. Age 22. She scanned the screen. Whizzed the mouse to the box that said ‘affected members’.
She hit enter and a medical family tree spidered across the screen, similar to the one in Will’s notes, showing those who were dead, probably due to the condition, and those who were definitely free of it. She scrolled upwards. No recognizable names. Then along the right. John Miller was there, one of the names she came across at the Gloucester Records Office. So he was an ancestor of the Mellanbys. He was also Bethany’s distant ancestor.
The old lady who’d spent her younger days researching her family tree, and who remembered hearing of a little girl called Bethany. Sue Mellanby was not on the tree but it was a rare enough surname, with a high proportion of the family coming from Cambridgeshire. They’d just not traced the link to her yet.
Faced with that fragmented family tree, with all its gaps and question marks, Natasha had an overwhelming sense of a race against time. To fill in those gaps, to find all the scattered members and warn them before it was too late. She saw for the first time what Will meant when he said that genetic research was bringing a new importance to genealogy.
One thing required no question mark next to it. The Mellanbys detailed here had HCM. And they were related to Bethany’s family.
Natasha looked more closely at the names of those who’d died. In one generation, there were five teenagers.
The escape button.
She peered out into the corridor. All clear. She snuck out, sauntered back to the lift.
Will was waiting, looking impatient.
‘Had to pop to the ladies,’ Natasha smiled.
‘You took your time about it.’ Will handed over the copied notes. ‘There you go.’
‘Thanks. Don’t worry about coming down with me. I can find my own way if you’ve got things to do.’
Will linked his arm through hers. ‘Why is it that I find I’d feel happier if I knew I’d escorted you off the premises?’
Forty-One
THE ALPINE NEEDED petrol. Natasha called in at a station on the way to Stratford. Copies of the local papers were on display on a newstand outside. The Worcester Evening News. Cotswold Journal. Oxford Times. She’d completely forgotten about the call from the reporter who’d wanted to ask her about Adam’s exhibition. She picked up a copy of the paper as she paid for the gas.
She drove to the small railway station at Stratford-Upon-Avon and parked outside. She was a few minutes early and the train from Oxford was delayed according to the arrivals board. She scanned the paper. Oxford United’s latest victory on the front page. Photos of school children on a sponsored run, a story about a local computer games business that had just won an award. What was the reporter’s name? Peter Deacon. She scanned for his byline, turned to the arts pages. MYSTERIOUS MODEL MISSING. A grainy black and white copy of Bethany as Ophelia. The caption underneath: Do you know this girl?
> Controversy surrounds a photographic exhibition, due to open at Exeter College tomorrow, by a radical group of anonymous young artists who go by the name of The Ravens. The model, Bethany Marshall, the star of the showpieces, walked out several weeks ago after a row with her lover, who has hired Gloucestershire-based private detective, Natasha Blake, to find her. Intriguingly, it appears the girl left no clues as to her family or possible whereabouts. So far the search has proved unsuccessful.
Get your bloody facts right at least! Now she’d be getting calls from jealous husbands wanting her to tail their wives.
How had they got hold of this shit? Someone had fed it to them, been obliging enough to give them a copy of the photograph for God’s sake. Was Jake Romilly unscrupulous enough, just to get his name in print, to settle scores?
Adam’s train slid up to the platform, left again as a trickle of passengers appeared. Natasha watched all the usual little dramas of train stations, people saying goodbye running into each others arm’s, embracing.
She noticed that Adam had made a touching effort to smarten up. Freshly shaven, a well-ironed white shirt beneath his black jacket.
He opened the passenger door, sat down beside her. She handed him the paper.
He didn’t look at it. ‘It wasn’t me, OK? Angie offered to handle the PR for the show. She sent the paper a Jpeg of Ophelia. Some reporter rang to ask for Bethany’s details. Angie happened to mention that…’
‘Happened to mention? Are you absolutely sure about that? I mean, it’s a great publicity stunt, isn’t it? Look at these adjectives. In one fell swoop you’re radical, controversial, mysterious.’
He snatched the paper, ripped it in two and screwed it into a ball, getting out and dumping it in a bin. ‘Garbage,’ he said when he came back. ‘You’re talking absolute rubbish. And what does it matter anyway? Bethany might see it…’
She might. ‘And so might her family.’
‘Lucky we’re going to see them then.’ He looked at her. ‘Forget it, all right?’
Pale as the Dead Page 23
