by Linda Coles
Well, two actually, Chrissy. A place in France, too—remember?
And that came down to wise investments early on in her career and earning large chunks of cash on delicate assignments long before she’d ever met Adam. To tell him now would mean uncovering far too many stories to fill in the gaps, and Chrissy wasn’t prepared to assume he’d understand her previous lifestyle. Having kept it from him for so many years, she knew he would, understandably, be pissed at her. She knew she would be at him if it were the other way around.
But LA and all the extremes that came with it was a few days away yet. In leafy Englefield Green, the sun was glorious. She kicked off her sandals and wriggled herself down onto the lawn, removed her T-shirt and lay in the sun wearing nothing but her shorts.
“The vitamin D will do me good,” she murmured happily, and closed her eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A nearly twelve-hour flight away in the early waking and sunny climes of Abbot Kinney, Philip was already up and about, running shoes on his feet but struggling to dig up the motivation needed to actually go out and do it. The blonde woman between the cotton sheets was starting to stir and he was drawn to her slow, languid movements. The top sheet was caught on her foot, and it slipped down to her waist as she turned, revealing a young, bronzed body of bikini-model proportions. He’d no clue as to her name, nor she to his.
The mystery woman opened her eyes and smiled up at him sheepishly. His body responded in the only way a man’s would. Philip reached out a hand and gently teased his fingertips down the tanned, inviting thigh.
“Good morning.” He smiled at the creature who, in turn, broadened her smile in reply. “Want some juice, maybe?”
“Maybe,” she said coyly. “But I’ve a better idea. Why don’t you join me back under here?” she enquired, lifting the top sheet fully so her entire naked body was open to his gaze. It didn’t take Philip long to decide. He kicked off his running shoes and almost leapt out of his shorts back into bed, thoughts of his morning run all gone.
“Not like you to be a mid-morning stroll-in,” Alistair said to his friend when Philip finally arrived.
“I got waylaid.”
Alistair raised his eyebrows in question.
“Hot, was she?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Philip had all the luck with the women. “Don’t answer that. Anyway, what gives?”
“My sanity, I think.”
“Eh?”
“Never mind.”
Philip dropped his bag on the floor in the small kitchen area, which was essentially their place to brew coffee and refill their mugs. A small fridge under the counter held a few beers and Carmel’s daily salad lunch but nothing else of any note. But then, it really wasn’t big enough for anything else. Philip rubbed his right temple as he waited for a fresh pot to finish brewing and opened the nearby drawer in search of an Advil. Or two. Perhaps he should have drunk more water last night. Or had his morning run properly, as per usual. He smiled to himself; he never did ask her name as she’d slipped out of his place not an hour since. He doubted he’d see her again, as was often the case.
Alistair was keen to get his full attention, tapping his fingertips on the table while he watched the coffee being prepared. When he was sure that Philip was on the same planet as he was, he asked, “What’s on your mind? Besides whatever you got up to this morning, that is.”
Philip turned around and looked at his friend square on. “I guess you’ve forgotten, then?”
“Well, obviously, if I’m asking.” He was often cocky, though jovial with it.
Philip wasn’t going to make it easy for him. “Well, what’s today the anniversary of, then?”
Alistair sat silently and Philip figured he was probably searching the filing cabinets of his brain, looking for a plausible answer.
When it popped into his head and recognition registered on his face, he groaned. “Ah, shit. The first anniversary of Stuart’s death. My bad.”
“Yes, your bad. The twins will be about two now. Do you think I should give Jo a call, see how she’s doing? Or will that only bring it all up again?”
“I think the first anniversary alone will be the thing that brings it all back up again, to be frank. She’d going to hurt for some years to come, I expect. But we should call her anyway, let her know we’re thinking of the three of them.” He reached for his phone to check the time. “We’re eight hours behind them, so it’s early evening there. Shall we call her together, now?”
Philip fell silent for a moment while he decided what he wanted to do. He had planned to call Jo himself a bit later on, in private, but if Alistair wanted to say hello too, then why not.
“May as well,” he conceded and pulled up a chair around the tiny table. The office phone, on speakerphone, sat in the centre. The screen glowed while they both waited for it to connect and after a few seconds, Jo’s voice could be heard loud and clear.
“Hi Alistair,” she answered. The benefits of caller ID.
“Hi, Jo. I have Philip here with me too,” he said by way of explanation. He waited while Philip said his hellos. For some reason, he waved at the screen, not that she could see either of them, but it was a habit, something he did regularly. Jo greeted Philip too, then another voice, a much younger one filled the room and both men smiled.
“And Ben says hello, too,” Jo said, “though you’d not know that’s what he said obviously. Jerry, is fast asleep, unlike his brother here.” She and Stuart had named the twins after Jo’s out-of-control craving for ice cream while she’d been pregnant, and the names had stuck. Probably later on in life, when they started school, they’d suffer the mocking for it. And on their wedding days. Thankfully, both were a long way off. Ben ranted off another line of two-year-old talk; if nothing else, it filled the space with joy rather than sorrow.
Finally, though, it was time to say what was on their minds.
“We wanted to say hello, and say we are thinking of you,” Alistair said gravely.
“Thanks lads. Stuart would be glad to know that, as am I and the boys. Twenty-seventeen will always be remembered as the year of Stuart’s death, nothing else. But we’re slowly on the mend now, though it’s taken all this long to finally resume some sort of normal life again. And I think the two little ones have helped me get through each day, to heal and come to terms with what he did that day. He made me cross for a while, though, leaving us, but then we never stayed angry for long; we didn’t do that. So yes, we’re getting there. Each day is a little easier.”
“Well, we’re both glad to hear it,” Philip said, speaking for the two of them. Alistair nodded in agreement. “And our offer stands, as always: if you ever feel the need for a little extra sunshine, there’s always a free spot at either of our places if you want to come for a trip out.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it; really, I do. Maybe when the boys are bigger, though. I can’t see me managing an airplane and two screaming two-year-olds and carry-on luggage for us all. Not yet, anyway.”
Philip grimaced at the thought; no one enjoyed screaming children at the best of times, and, confined to a big tin can in the sky with a set of hollering toddlers, anyone could be forgiven for murder. It was an inappropriate thought, but true nonetheless.
Alistair wrapped the brief conversation up. “Well, love to the boys, and love to you, Jo. Take care, and shout if you need anything, eh?”
“I will, and thanks again.”
The two men said “Goodbye” together, and the back room at Banks & Crowley fell silent as each became lost in their own thoughts.
At length, Alistair turned to Philip. “Jo was obviously trying to hide her pain, even twelve months later. It can’t be easy.”
“No, it can’t be. But at least the man who forced Stuart’s hand to suicide has gone too.”
“And good riddance.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
She’d only lain there for fifteen minutes, long enough to bring a couple of extra freckles out on her cheeks. There wa
s no way she was going to fall asleep in the sun this time. She opened her eyes and squinted towards the sky. Even though the sun was slightly behind her head, the day was as bright as an LED bulb shining directly at her, and she waited for her sight to adjust slightly before sitting back up. With no whiskey bottle at her side, she felt somewhat fresher than she had after her last sunny garden experience. Plus, she hadn’t actually napped. She picked up her mug of tea, which was now only lukewarm, and headed back inside, tipping the liquid into the geranium by the patio. There wasn’t a drought around her part of the country, but Chrissy hated wasting anything.
The kitchen was cool and dim, and once again her eyes adjusted to the lower level of light indoors. She placed her mug in the dishwasher and carried on through the house and upstairs to her office in the attic. The house was almost silent, and she breathed it in like a type of meditation as she climbed up to her private domain.
Her desk was up against the one dormer window so she could look out onto the back garden. There were two skylights that bathed the room with ample light, and Chrissy reached for the pole near the door that she used to open them with. It was a tad stuffy and she needed the warm air to circulate out and let some fresh in. Satisfied they were both open enough, she took her seat at her desk and turned on her Mac, then logged in.
By now, the photos she’d taken back at her father’s shed would have uploaded themselves to a file in the sky and would be available for her to access on her computer. She clicked on ‘camera uploads’ in her Dropbox account and scrolled to the last batch she’d taken, all automatically timestamped with the date and time they’d been added. She thought back to the originals and the date stamps printed on the back of each photo. Technology certainly had changed since then, she mused. Clicking on each of the seven images in turn, she resized them so they fitted onto the screen in front of her, all together in two rows. Then she sat back to study them further, as a whole. A cloud passed over her room, diminishing some of the light as she examined the faces in front of her.
When the cloud moved on, the room was once again bathed in sunshine. Seven young teenaged boys looked out at her from the screen, tight smiles on their faces, as though they disliked being in front of the camera. From her own school photo experience, she knew the pupils lined up for the photographer, walked one by one to a backdrop, sat down, smiled, and snap! They were done. Then the next pupil. And then the next. A student had only seconds to get their grin right before the flash of light sealed it. Then your mother barked at you when she saw the pictures the following week and was expected to buy the package. “Look at your hair!” she’d snap, or “Call that a smile?” She’d dutifully hand over the money, of course, then keep the picture in a drawer where no one could see it. That had been Chrissy’s experience, anyway, and probably loads of other kids’ too.
She leaned in closer, studying each of the boys in turn. All in shirt and tie. All the same tie.
“So, you were all at the same school then,” she murmured. “And all in the same year, I’m assuming. But which school? Where were you all together?” Zooming in, she looked at the crest on the ties, but it wasn’t familiar to her. She selected and cropped the crest from the clearest photo, saved it, then brought up a browser page and did a reverse image search.
“Bingo!” she cried. “Glendene School, Berkshire. Thank you, Mr. Google. So that’s where you all attended. Or did you?” Since British schools had no yearbooks like schools in the US did, there was no point in looking for one. That would have made the next job easier—finding out who the boys were.
Selecting the first face from the top of her screen, she did another reverse image search via Google and waited for the page to load. “A bit before the internet, but what the hell? It’s worth a try.” No hits. Chrissy tried a second image and waited. Nothing either.
With the fourth image, however, she finally found something—the boy’s name. It was a group photo at what looked like a rugby tournament with another school, and there, kneeling down in the front row, was … she tapped her forefinger across the row of names … Stuart Townsend.
“Hello, Stuart Townsend,” Chrissy said. “Mind telling me who your buddies are, please?” She changed the auto-date-stamped image name to Stuart Townsend and repeated the process for the next boy. It would have been too easy had they all been on that one rugby team, of course, but the next image drew another blank. That left two more to find, and she crossed her fingers hopefully.
“Bingo again,” she said, peering closely at the screen once more. The photo was blurry, but it was undoubtedly the mystery boy from her collection. Cody Taylor’s unmistakable blond curls would have been the envy of many women. It was a picture of a fundraising event in the nearby town of Hungerford, not far from where Glendene School was located, which made her even more sure it was him, though the curls were enough on their own. She wondered what they looked like now—would they be more grey than blond?
“Welcome, Cody Taylor,” she said, and gave his image the rightful name. “One more to go.” Entering the picture of a dark-haired boy with a goofy smile, she held her breath in hope. When a page opened with another image of the boy, she almost yelped out loud at her luck.
Three of the seven boys now had names. This latest one, sporting a bright, proud smile, was a district athletic day champion, and the last boy in the tin.
His name was Philip Banks.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Three out of seven wasn’t bad. It was a start, something to work with. Since Glendene School appeared to be the link between the boys, she looked up the school’s website. When they boys had attended back in the eighties, the internet hadn’t been even thought up then, so she wasn’t expecting to find anything of use about any of them on the school’s site. It was worth a look, though; miracles did happen. Like finding the first of the three boys online. Perhaps there was a history or timeline page that could be of use.
The photo of the school and grounds looked as majestic as the bigger country houses around her own home, Chrissy thought, secluded behind high wrought iron railings and tall, faded brick walls. The school building itself was vast and ancient-looking—Harry Potter would have been proud to have attended—though the annexes looked more modern. The whole of the main building was covered in green ivy. Chrissy thought of the spiders that would make the vine their home.
“I’d never open a window,” she said, shuddering.
There was a page tab titled ‘Past and Present,’ and she clicked it. A handful of ancient portraits of famous alumni was displayed, but made no impression on her. She didn’t move in academic circles. Had the names included Donald Maclean or Kim Philby, ex– British intelligence officers who had been part of the so-called ‘Cambridge Five,’ she might had been a little more impressed. They had moved more in her old circle.
There was nothing more of note on the school’s website, so she closed the tab. The obvious thing to do next was go back to Google and see what she could learn about each of the three names that she did have.
“Let’s start with you, then, Stuart,” she said as she typed his name into the search bar and clicked. There were fourteen million results. How the hell was she going to figure out which one was the individual she sought? There had to be a way of narrowing it down.
“If Glendene School was in Berkshire, he must be from the UK,” she said. She added UK to the search and clicked again. Down to six million results.
“Okay, Google, let’s add ‘Glendene’ into the equation.” A mere 14,200 results. But was her Stuart Townsend one of them? Stuart may have gone to Glendene School, but did he still live in Berkshire as an adult? More than likely not. And since Glendene was also a boarding school as well as a day school, the young man could have been from anywhere in the world. The thought didn’t help her. Chrissy sat drumming her fingers on the desk while she pondered what to do next.
Out of sheer force of habit, she closed her eyes and repositioned herself mentally in a basement office where she
’d worked for so many years.
You had more tools then, Chrissy.
What would her next move have been, back then when technology wasn’t as it was now?
“You’d have picked the phone up and traced the headmaster, that’s what you’d have done,” she said to the empty room. She opened her eyes and brought the school’s website back up, then searched for the staff and principals of past and present. She silently praised the school for having the list readily available. The names and dates listed went back to 1910 when the ivy-covered school had first been built. Scrolling down the list, she remarked to herself that the names all sounded like something from a Shakespearean novel, each one steeped in a family history all its own. Being a teacher or headmaster at such a school seemed a family tradition, given the many duplicate surnames: brothers, maybe, or fathers and sons. There were, of course, scant few female names.
Tradition, eh?
Women were still chained to the sink, remember?
Finally, she found what she was looking for: Frederick Browning, headmaster at the time the boys would have been pupils. Annoyingly, he’d retired some twenty years ago, and another headmaster was now running the school. Still, it was worth calling to see if the man was still alive. She dialled the number and waited. A receptionist answered in a bright and extremely high-pitched voice. Chrissy had to stop herself from spluttering with laughter. She had a friend who sounded identical to a donkey hee-hawing when she laughed, which invariably stopped nearby pub conversations dead. Awkward… She felt sorry for them both.
