I figured they needed some space and made to leave the room.
“Stay where you are, Katie,” she said. “You might as well hear this too. I should have told you ages ago. If I had—” she stopped and shook her head. Her anger seemed to fade as suddenly as it had arisen.
“If I had,” she went on in a quiet voice, “Then maybe none of this would have happened.”
“Go on then,” said Dad. “We’re listening.”
“Would you like some tea?” I asked.
“No,” they both said in unison. At least they could agree on that, which was something I supposed.
“Do you remember when Tanya suddenly invited me to spend a weekend with her at Bournemouth?” Mum asked.
Dad nodded. “Of course. She’d got some complimentary tickets for some spa hotel or something.”
“Well, I thought it was a bit strange, because Tanya and I hadn’t been getting along, particularly not since there was all that upset between the four of us over Gran Latcham’s cottage.”
“What was all that about?” I was still at college when Gran died and was surprised when the cottage had been sold, because it had always been planned that it would be kept in the family.
“Dad and I wanted to keep the cottage,” Mum told me. “Your dad had great plans for doing it up. I was going to have my salon downstairs and we were going to turn the upstairs into a flat. Richard, who was going to get the income from the flat, was all for it, right until the last moment when Tanya suddenly decided she wanted to go on a world cruise or something. So Richard, who could never say no to her, changed his mind and said to sell it. He offered to let us buy him out, but of course we couldn’t afford to.”
“And now it’s one of Margot’s holiday cottages,” I said.
Dad sighed. “Mum would have hated to see that.”
“Anyway,” Mum went on, “Tanya and I fell out over that and hadn’t really spoken since. Until a couple of years ago – you were still in Bristol, Katie – she suddenly rang me out of the blue and asked if I wanted a weekend in Bournemouth with her. I wasn’t keen. But your dad persuaded me to go. I’d had that bad bout of flu, if you remember, and he thought the sea air would do me good.”
Dad sniffed. “Much good it did. You came back worse than before you went away. Said you’d caught a chill.”
Mum took a deep breath. “Yes, well, I lied. I’m sorry. I should have told you back then what really happened. But I was ashamed.”
“Go on.” Dad’s face was grim.
I shifted in my chair. “Look, I think I’d better…”
“No, Katie. Stay. Please.” Mum said firmly. “When we got to Bournemouth, I realised that the whole point of the weekend was so that Tanya could spend time with this guy she was having an affair with. And I was to be her cover. I got really upset and wanted to come home there and then. But Tanya was driving and she said we’d go home in the morning. So, against my better judgement, I agreed to make up a foursome for the evening. This guy that Tanya had been seeing had brought a friend along.”
She flicked an anxious look at Dad. Then she cleared her throat and went on. “He seemed a decent enough man. A bit awkward about the whole thing, same as I was. We were a pair of gooseberries together, I thought. So we sat and chatted about our families while Tanya and her guy – well, you know. Anyway,” she swallowed. “I hardly drink at all, as you know, and was sticking to soft drinks. But then Tanya bought a bottle of Prosecco and insisted I had some – and well, it went completely to my head. I’m afraid I don’t remember much else of the evening.”
A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of Dad’s mouth. “And is that it? Your terrible confession? You went out in a foursome and got drunk?”
“No,” Mum looked down at her hands, clasping and unclasping them in her lap. “No, that’s not all. I woke up in the morning with the hangover from hell. And Tanya flew at me. Accused me of being a hypocrite, criticising her for having an affair while I’d been happy enough to have a – a one night stand. She also advised me to find a chemist and ask for the morning after pill.”
Dad gave a sharp intake of breath. He stared at her, stunned.
“I don’t remember any of it,” Mum said miserably. “No, I tell a lie. I have vague memories of the man – God help me, I can’t even remember his name – helping me to my room. But nothing after that. Tanya, however, did remember, and was more than happy to fill me in on all the graphic details. I suppose I should be thankful she didn’t take pictures and plaster them all over Facebook.”
“So that’s why she kept going on about Bournemouth?” I said.
Mum nodded. “She’s been blackmailing me about it ever since. Oh, not in the financial sense. Mostly she wanted me to cover for her, say I’d been with her if Richard asked. Until last week, of course. When she just turned up on the doorstep, looking for somewhere to stay. And knowing I wouldn’t be able to turn her away.”
There was a long, deep silence. Inside, the whirring of the fridge, the ticking of a clock. Outside, a dog barked and somewhere a child laughed.
“I should have told you before,” Mum said. “I’m sorry. To you both.”
Dad stood up and, without saying a word, picked up his coat and left.
Mum stayed at the table, her head bent, eyes fixed intently on her hands, as she twisted her wedding ring round and round her finger.
Chapter Eighteen
“Mum?” I said after a few minutes when it seemed she was going to sit staring down at her hands for ever. “You’ve got to go after him.”
“There’s no point,” she said without lifting her head. “You saw the way he looked at me. He hates me. And I can’t say I blame him.”
“He was shocked, that was all. He’ll come round.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Look, are you sure you can’t remember anything?”
Her head snapped up and a bit of the Mum I knew re-emerged. “For goodness sake, Katie, you’re not expecting all the graphic details, are you?”
“What?” The thought of Mum and her graphic details sent a shudder down my spine. “Of course not. I just wondered what exactly you did remember?”
“Just what I told you and your dad. Now, if you don’t mind, I don’t want to talk about it any more.”
“But you must. Not to me, of course,” I added hastily, in case she decided to launch into the graphic details after all. “But to Dad. You can’t let him go off like that. Go after him.”
“Like I said, there’s no point.”
“There’s every point.” Jeez, doing marriage guidance stuff for my parents was the pits. But I forced myself on. “That thing he said about Uncle Richard. Do you really want him to go on believing you married him on the rebound? That you’re only staying with him until a decent interval has elapsed and you and Richard can be together again?”
Her head shot up. “What do you mean? Again?”
“I know you were once engaged to Richard. That he broke it off when Tanya came along. And that you then took up with Dad.”
“Who told you that? No, don’t answer that. As if I can’t guess. It was Elsie, wasn’t it?” She shook her head. “Honestly, that woman. She wasn’t even living around here at the time.”
“No, but Gran Latcham and Elsie were great friends. And, for the record, Elsie reckoned you got the best of the two brothers. And so, if you want to know, do I.”
I thought that this time I’d gone too far because Mum looked like she was trying to decide whether to send me to the naughty step or not. Then she gave a little smile.
“And so, if you must know, do I,” she said softly. “That’s one thing I have to thank Tanya for, at least. Taking Richard and leaving Terry for me. I did indeed get the best of the two brothers.”
“Then tell him,” I urged. “Believe me, Mum, he doesn’t think you did.”
This was so wrong. On so many levels. She should have been giving me relationship advice, not the other way round. Goodness knows, I could have
done with it after my recent encounters with Will.
“It won’t do any good,” she said. “You know what your father’s like when he makes up his mind about something. I think I’ll…”
She broke off at the sound of a car pulling up outside. She stood up and went across to the window, then pulled back out of sight with a groan.
My heart sank. “Not the police again? What do they want now?”
“No. Not the police. It’s Richard. I can’t face him at the moment. I’ll go out the back way. Sorry, love. Go and let him in the front door so he doesn’t see me, will you?”
***
I opened the front door as Richard was getting out of his top of the range BMW. He looked grey and utterly drained.
“Come on in,” I said, as I ushered him through the salon and into the kitchen. “I’ll make you a cup of tea – unless you want something stronger?”
He shook his head. “Tea will be fine, thanks, love. Is your mum or dad in?”
“Neither, I’m afraid. Have you just driven down from Yorkshire? You look all in.”
He shook his head and sank into the chair with a long sigh. “No. I drove back this morning. I’ve just come from the mortuary. I had to – to identify my… wife. It was… difficult. And I really didn’t fancy going home to an empty house. Not after that.”
I swallowed. “No. I guess not. I’m so sorry.” The words seemed so inadequate.
“The police say she was murdered,” he went on, still in the same weary voice of a man who’s had one shock too many. “Did you know that?”
“I’d heard they were treating her death as suspicious. Have they told you what happened?”
“They said there’d been some attempt to make it look like an accident, but the post mortem showed she’d died from a blow to the head which wasn’t caused by the car going into the rhine. It had been deliberately driven in there.”
I shivered. “That’s awful. Who’d do such a terrible thing? And why?”
“I have no idea.” He sighed. “I – I know we had our problems. I came down here yesterday to ask her to give our marriage another go. But she was adamant it was over. That the only thing she wanted from me was a quick divorce.”
An image of Tanya, the last time I’d seen her, came into my head. She was laughing, excited. ‘Like a teenager rushing off for a first date,’ I remembered thinking at the time.
But I couldn’t tell Uncle Richard that.
“And – and there’s something else, Katie,” Uncle Richard went on. “I – I thought I’d best let your Mum know. I didn’t mean to. But I’m afraid it slipped out.”
“What?”
“I told the police that Tanya and your mum had had a big falling-out.”
“Uncle Richard! You surely don’t think Mum would do something like that? How could you?”
“For pity’s sake, of course I don’t. I feel really bad about it now. It’s just… well, they asked.”
“They asked what? If you knew who’d want to kill your wife? And you suggested Mum?”
“Of course not. Although Tanya did say how very aggressive Cheryl had become. That she’d moved into the pub because she was frightened of what your mother would do to her if she stayed.”
I’d have got pretty aggressive, too, if Tanya had been blackmailing me. Now that I knew the full story of Bournemouth, I could only admire my mother’s restraint.
“I was there at the time,” I said sharply. “And Tanya was really winding Mum up, goading her…”
“Goading her about what?”
I could have bitten my tongue. The last thing I wanted was for it to get back to the police that Mum had reason to want Tanya out of her life.
“It was nothing. Just a little spat about Mum’s cooking,” I said, figuring it was better to stick to the story Mum told DS Barking Mad Miller. “Tanya was very rude about it and Mum objected. It was nothing more than that. As for threatening her, you know what a drama queen Tanya is. And I’ll tell you why…”
“Was,” he corrected me bleakly. “She was a drama queen.”
“I’m sorry. It still doesn’t seem real.”
“It does to me,” he said quietly. “But go on. You started to say you’ll tell me why – what?”
“I was just going to say why she moved to the pub. It was because the WiFi signal’s rubbish down this end of the village and it’s ok in the pub.”
He nodded. “A good signal would count for a lot with Tanya. She lived most of her life on line. Never off her bloody phone.”
“Did the police say if they’d found it?”
He shook his head. “Not to me, they didn’t. They were more interested in asking me where I was at the time of the…” he paused. “At the time she died.”
“And what did you say?”
“The truth, of course,” he said huffily. “I told them I was on my way home. Now, where’s that cup of tea? I could really do with something warm inside me. Since I left the mortuary I’ve felt chilled from the inside out.”
As I put the kettle on, I asked: “Did you know Tanya was thinking of buying a property in Much Winchmoor? That she had plans to open a hair and beauty salon?”
He shook his head. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it, but then, she didn’t confide in me.”
“She didn’t ask you for money to help her buy it?” I asked as I placed a mug of tea in front of him.
He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Hardly. I’m broke.”
“You’re kidding?”
He gave me a stern look. “That is hardly the sort of thing I would joke about, Katie.”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m just – surprised, that’s all.”
“The reason I’m broke,” he began, then paused to wrap his long, thin fingers around the mug and inhale the steam. “Is my inability to say no to Tanya. We’ve been living a millionaire lifestyle on a non-millionaire income for years, and you don’t have to be a financial genius to realise that’s unsustainable. The house is about to be repossessed and my accountancy practice is up the Swanee after I lost two major clients last year.”
“Did Tanya know?”
“Oh yes, that was one of the reasons she wanted a divorce. None of this for richer, for poorer nonsense for her,” he added bitterly. “She was going to take every last penny I had, and even that wouldn’t have been enough.”
A sudden thought struck me. If Uncle Richard wasn’t Tanya’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then who was?
“What are you going to do now?” I asked.
He relaxed back into his chair and took a sip of the tea. A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his thin mouth. “You’re never going to believe this.”
“Try me.”
“I’ve bought a pig farm with the little money I have left, after the mortgage company and the bank have had their pound and a half of flesh.”
“A pig farm?” If he’d said he was going to limbo naked down Dintscombe High Street on market day, I couldn’t have been more surprised.
“Why not? I’ve always loved pigs and farming’s been something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. I hate accountancy and was only doing it for the money. Anyway, I had a client in Yorkshire who was selling up and that’s where I’ve just been. I put in an offer to buy it and he accepted.” His eyes shone and, for the moment at least, he lost that careworn, defeated look. “It really is in the most stunning location, deep in this beautiful but very remote dale.”
“Which was why you couldn’t be reached.”
He nodded. “It wasn’t until I was driving home that my phone came back to life and I found I had all these missed calls.”
“Poor you. That must have been tough.”
“It was a shock. Yes.”
“Tell me, did Aunty Tanya know about your pig farming ambition?” I asked.
He looked up quickly. “What do you think?” he said with an unexpected grin. “She’d have had a fit. But once I accepted that our marriage was well and truly over, well, there
was nothing to stop me going ahead with realising my boyhood dream, was there?”
“I suppose not. We should all follow our dreams,” I added, as I thought wistfully of the dream I’d had to give up on. I was about to go on to say something like, ‘life’s too short,’ then realised that that would have sounded a tad insensitive, given the circumstances.
“Look, Uncle Richard, I’m sorry I have to ask you this. But, do you know the name of the man Tanya was having an affair with?”
For a moment, he looked as if he was going to tell me to mind my own damn business. But he didn’t.
“It was never mentioned. As for his wife, now there was someone who looked as if she could do Tanya harm. I thought when she turned up at our house that night she was going to strike her. I’ve never seen someone so angry.”
“Did you tell the police this?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t see how it was relevant.”
And yet he thought that Mum having a few words with Tanya was relevant?
“Are you sure you don’t remember her name? Or his?”
He shook his head. “I’d have remembered, had she mentioned it.”
“And you say she struck Tanya?”
“No, but I thought she was going to. And when I remonstrated with her, she rounded on me and had the nerve to tell me to keep better control of my wife, if you ever heard anything so outrageous. Like Tanya was a badly behaved poodle.”
I thought that, actually, it was a pretty good description of Tanya, but figured this wasn’t the time to say so.
“Why do you want to know?” he went on.
“Just trying to piece a few things together.”
“You surely don’t think either of them had anything to do with Tanya’s death, do you?” he said sharply.
“Of course not.” I was beginning to wish I hadn’t said anything now. Because I certainly didn’t want to have to tell him about Mum’s weekend in Bournemouth.
“Then why?” The look he gave me was challenging, verging on the hostile.
“Because the police are asking my mother all sorts of horrible questions,” I said. “Not helped by the fact that you told them about the spat she and Tanya had.”
Rough And Deadly (A Much Winchmoor Mystery Book 2) Page 18
