Till We Meet Again

by Lesley Pearse

  Her room overlooked the front drive and the fields and woodland beyond. It was just on dawn, and a thick frost covered everything so thickly it looked like snow. She thought that almost anyone would put such a view on top of their wish list, yet Susan, who had lived with an even more outstanding one than this for most of her life, hadn’t once remarked on missing it since she was arrested.

  The sound of the kettle boiling stopped Beth’s reverie, and she hastily made a cup of tea and went back to her warm bed. She wondered if Roy was awake yet, and if he was, was he thinking that she must be frigid?

  After the meal last night they had moved into the drawing room and had several more drinks by the fire. Had they been alone, Beth felt she might have been able to really talk to him, hold his hand, and that a few kisses might have encouraged her to invite him into her room later. But another couple on a golfing weekend had come and joined them by the fire, and kept talking to them, so by the time the bar closed Beth was too sleepy even to consider anything more. Roy had kissed her at the door of her room, and she’d come in alone.

  This could-she, couldn’t-she stuff was almost worse than jumping in with both feet and finding things were as awful as ever. At least that way she always lost her romantic ideas about the man immediately. She knew now she didn’t want to lose Roy, yesterday had been so lovely. He was such a good companion, relaxed, amusing, thoughtful and stimulating. He didn’t try too hard either, the way most men did. None of that trying to impress her that she always found so tedious.

  Yet he did impress her. He had a natural charm that made everyone open up to him, a clever way of wording questions to get at the truth. Part of this of course was influenced by his job, just as it was with her, but he had a real interest in people. By the time they’d left the old couple in the late afternoon, he really knew them well. As they were driving back to the hotel he’d made some remark about them being yet another old couple whose children didn’t bother with them. She asked him how he knew this.

  ‘The photographs of their grandchildren were all baby ones. But they are obviously all grown up now,’ he said, looking surprised she hadn’t picked up on this. ‘The old girl said, “There isn’t much for young people right out here in the country,” that’s her excuse for no one coming to visit.’

  Beth thought he was probably right. That was probably the reason why they had befriended Liam too. But she wouldn’t have thought of it herself.

  She wondered though how many more times Roy would ask her out before he lost his patience with her. Most of her previous promising relationships had fizzled out that way. Over the years she had been called everything from a prick-tease to a cold-hearted bitch, and though she hadn’t lost any sleep over that most of the time, thinking about Roy reminded her of how she’d felt about James Macutcheon.

  James was a solicitor too, in a firm in Chancery Lane. Like Roy, he was strong, charming, affectionate and good fun.

  She was thirty-four then. James was a year younger, tall, blond, with the kind of poise that came from a loving, comfortable, upper-middle-class family. She had fallen in love with him by their third date, and by the fifth she was afraid he would lose interest if she didn’t go to bed with him. When he invited her over to supper one evening at his place, a smart flat in Chelsea, she was ready to take the plunge.

  Everything seemed so perfect – soft music, candlelight, and the Chinese meal he’d got delivered was one of the best she’d ever eaten. They lay on a couch cuddling later, and she wanted him, really wanted him in a way she’d never known with a man before.

  But all at once his kisses became too forced, he was sticking his tongue half-way down her throat, and his hand was going up her skirt. She wanted him to arouse her gently, but he thrust his fingers inside her so hard it hurt, and all her desire vanished. She tried to make a joke of it, asked if he could just slow down a bit, but he muttered something about how he knew she was the kind to want it rough, and yanked her knickers down.

  Just remembering it brought tears to her eyes. She didn’t let him force her, she wriggled away.

  ‘I don’t like it rough,’ she said, crying by then as she pulled her knickers back up. ‘I wanted to be loved, not raped.’

  If he’d looked shocked or apologetic, or got up to embrace her, it might have ended differently. But he just lay there on the couch, his trousers unzipped, his hair all tousled, and looked at her with cold disdain.

  ‘Grow up, Beth,’ he said in a cold voice. ‘What did you come here for, if not for a fuck?’

  She was out of the door before he could even get up, running down King’s Road with her shoes in her hands, looking frantically for a taxi.

  In the months that followed, she went over and over that evening again in her mind, asking herself what gave him the idea she liked it rough. It seemed logical to her that any man would guess when a woman didn’t leap into bed on the first date that she was the kind who wanted to be seduced with tenderness.

  The worst thing about it was she had fallen for James, believed he felt the same, and that he sensed there was a good reason for her hesitancy. Clearly she was wrong on both counts as he hadn’t run after her to apologize. He never contacted her again. All he did for her was to take her right back to being seventeen again, feeling dirty and humiliated.

  After that experience she’d lost trust in all men. She only accepted a date now and again, and got a taxi home alone. She never went out with anyone more than twice. She felt she was safer leading a celibate life, she couldn’t be hurt that way.

  As she snuggled back under the covers, she decided that Roy was very different to James in his outlook. He’d known deep sorrow, he was sensitive and kind, and she knew she must try to talk to him about her problems.

  After a huge breakfast they put their bags back in Roy’s car and went for a walk. Beth put on a woolly red hat, gloves and matching scarf, and Roy laughingly said her nose was turning red to match them, and kissed it.

  ‘I love walking on frost,’ she said gleefully as they took a footpath from the hotel up over the fields to Stratford. ‘There’s nothing quite like that scrunch.’

  ‘Cracking ice is even better,’ he said, thumping his heel into a frozen puddle and grinning like a schoolboy.

  All at once Beth felt the need to say something. She slid her arms around his middle in a hug, and rubbed her cold nose against his.

  ‘You’re doing a good job on cracking this ice maiden,’ she said. ‘I can feel myself thawing. Don’t lose patience with me yet, Roy, there are reasons why I’m like I am.’

  She held her breath, expecting either questions she couldn’t answer, or silence because he was mystified. But instead he put a hand on either side of her face and looked right into her eyes with understanding. ‘I guessed as much,’ he said. ‘But patience is something I have by the cartload, and I’m a good listener too. When you want to tell me about it, just say.’

  ‘How did you guess?’ she said a little later as they walked on hand-in-hand through the fields. Their breath was like smoke in the cold air, and the sky was leaden as if snow was on the way.

  ‘You are extraordinarily defensive,’ he said. ‘When I first met you in the courts I noticed then how everything was tight about you, the way you moved, the way you talked. Even though we had a very stimulating chat, you gave absolutely nothing away about yourself.’

  Beth frowned. ‘Well, surely no one does on a first meeting?’

  ‘Most of us do,’ he said, and grinned. ‘Whether we mean to or not. Anyway, that evening when we went for a drink after Susan’s arrest, you had a go at me for asking if you had a man. That isn’t a normal reaction for a woman as lovely as you, Beth! Most women, when asked such a thing, laugh and then give you the whole nine yards as to why they haven’t.’

  ‘Do they?’ she said with some surprise.

  He nodded. ‘Perhaps they wouldn’t if they thought the man was an arsehole, or on the make. They might not always tell the truth either. But moving conversation on to
a slightly more personal note is the way we make friends.’

  ‘So that’s why I don’t have many friends,’ she said, and smiled ruefully. ‘So why did you bother with me then?’

  ‘Because I was intrigued, especially when it turned out Susan was a childhood friend, and I saw how it affected you,’ he said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. ‘I saw a glimmer of the girl you once were, the woman you could be if you stepped out from behind your professionalism. I wondered what made you so defensive, and afraid.’

  Beth took a deep breath. ‘I will tell you soon,’ she said. ‘But not today, I don’t want to spoil things.’

  Steven drove along Acacia Avenue slowly, looking for number 27. It was a miserable grey day, very cold with intermittent showers of sleet, but fortunately the M4 had been surprisingly traffic-free, and he’d enjoyed the drive up from Bristol.

  He had of course expected that Martin Wright would live in a smart house. Windsor was a good area, and he knew the man had got a great deal of money from the sale of The Rookery. But he hadn’t really expected anything quite as grand as this road. It was tree-lined, with neat grass verges and wide drives leading up to detached houses that had to be worth half a million at least. They were the sort of homes that came with swimming pools in the back garden, domestic help and children at private schools.

  He stopped the car when he saw Wright’s house, a Thirties mini-mansion with a green tiled roof and Art Deco stained glass on a central round staircase window. It was painted white, with a portico over the front door and three lots of windows on either side. The drive itself was the expensive kind Steven had seen advertised in glossy magazines, laid with shiny cobbles which were sealed so that no weed could ever lift its ugly head. It was a far cry from Steven’s semi-detached with its scrubby lawn and the children’s artwork stuck up in the windows.

  ‘Even further from the place his sister ended up in,’ Steven muttered to himself as he parked his car out in the road. The large wrought-iron gates were shut, preventing him from driving on to the drive, and Steven saw this as further evidence that Wright was intending to be difficult.

  Steven was nervous. Everything he knew about this man suggested he was a nasty piece of work. Anyone so ruthless, so uncaring about his sister, wasn’t likely to be easy to talk to. He was glad now that Beth had bullied him into getting his suit cleaned and his hair cut. She’d said he was to drop her name into the conversation too, as she didn’t want Martin to think Susan hadn’t got a friend in the world.

  The door-bell was answered by a middle-aged woman wearing a white overall. She had gold-rimmed spectacles and a superior expression.

  ‘Mrs Wright?’ Steven asked, even though to Susan’s knowledge Martin had never married.

  ‘No, I’m his housekeeper,’ she said.

  ‘Smythe, from Tarbuck, Stone and Aldridge. I have an appointment with Mr Wright,’ Steven said.

  She allowed him in and left him waiting in the hall while she went towards the back of the house.

  ‘Mr Wright will see you now,’ the housekeeper called out a few moments later. She was standing by the door she’d disappeared through earlier, indicating he was to go in.

  Martin Wright was standing by the fireplace in a room which was an attempt at a Victorian gentleman’s library, with leather chairs, walls lined with books and an antique rosewood desk inlaid with mother-of-pearl. But it didn’t really work – the proportions of the room were all wrong and the dark red carpet and curtains made it oppressive rather than opulent.

  ‘Plenty of money but no imagination,’ Steven thought maliciously. He decided he would ask to use the lavatory later on so he could check out a little more of the house.

  ‘Steven Smythe,’ Steven said, holding out his hand. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me.’

  He was surprised by Wright. In his imagination he’d been a short, portly man. In fact Martin Wright was as tall as Steven himself, slender and straight-backed, his dark hair flecked with grey, a handsome man with strong, even features and few facial lines, even though Steven knew he was fifty-four. His eyes were the only thing he had in common with Susan, they were the same pale greenish-blue.

  ‘First let me say I see absolutely no point in talking to you,’ Wright said crisply, sitting down at his desk. ‘The police have already interviewed me, and I am certainly not prepared to be a witness in my sister’s defence.’

  Steven was tempted to say that if he was called to be a witness he’d have no choice but to attend, but resisted the temptation.

  ‘It’s only background information I’m after,’ he said, smiling pleasantly. ‘May I sit down?’

  The man waved his hand at the seat furthest from him. Steven ignored it and took the one closest.

  ‘When you were told of your sister’s arrest and the charges laid against her, what was your reaction?’ he began.

  ‘Reaction?’ Wright raised his eyebrows. ‘Horror, of course.’

  ‘Not disbelief?’

  ‘Of course not. Suzie always was an irrational, highly emotional woman,’ he said, crossing Ms legs and moving in his chair so he wasn’t looking directly at Steven.

  ‘No sympathy? You do know that she holds the man and woman she shot responsible for her child’s death?’

  ‘There are ways of dealing with such things without resorting to murder,’ Wright retorted crisply. ‘No, I have no sympathy with her whatsoever.’

  ‘Did you ever see Annabel?’

  ‘Who’s Annabel?’

  It crossed Steven’s mind that Wright was trying to wind him up, and he was succeeding.

  ‘Her daughter, Mr Wright. Your niece, who died of meningitis,’ Stephen said sharply.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘But you did know of her existence?’

  ‘Yes. Suzie sent me a photograph once, and a foolish gushing letter reminding me the child was my niece. I don’t know what she expected of me.’

  ‘I don’t believe she expected anything at all of you,’ Steven said. ‘It was her way of offering the olive branch.’

  Wright got up from his seat and stalked over to the window, a distance of only a few feet. He was wearing a very well-cut dark grey suit. ‘I take it you’ve been given the full Cinderella story then?’ he said, leaning one hand on the window frame and staring out into the garden. ‘Suzie always had a tendency for drama. The truth of the matter is that my father was an old-fashioned man who believed the eldest son should inherit. As that was his wish, I was bound to honour it.’

  Steven felt like pointing out that an honourable man would have made some provision for the younger unmarried sister who had devoted her entire youth to taking care of their parents. But the whole point of coming here today was to get to know the man better, not to antagonize him.

  ‘I’m sure you are aware Susan could very well have contested the will,’ Steven said evenly. ‘She would almost certainly have won too, given the length of time she’d cared for your parents. But she didn’t, and that meant she had to live in drastically reduced circumstances. I believe that when she wrote to tell you about Annabel, it was her way of showing she felt no bitterness to you.’

  ‘How long have you known her?’ Wright asked with a disparaging sniff.

  ‘About three months.’ Steven said.

  ‘Well, I’ve known her since she was born and I know perfectly well why she wrote that letter. She wanted a handout.’

  Steven bristled. He understood exactly how euphoric new parents felt, and that they wanted to share their joy with friends and relatives. ‘I don’t believe that was her motive at all,’ he said calmly. ‘You are her brother. If she hoped for anything at all from you, it was only that you take an interest in your niece.’

  ‘That to Suzie would mean money. She was always a parasite.’

  ‘That’s not what I’ve heard from Beth Powell, one of the partners in my law firm,’ Steven said.

  As Steven mentioned Beth’s name, a flicker of surprise crossed Martin Wright’s face. Clearly
he had known of the friendship.

  ‘Beth has known your sister since they were both ten,’ Steven continued. ‘According to her, Susan didn’t choose to stay home and take care of your mother, the role of carer was foisted upon her at an age when she couldn’t know the long-term implications of it. By the time she had realized what it meant, despite the fact that she would rather have got a job and become independent, she was trapped. It seems your father always claimed he couldn’t afford a nurse. Furthermore, he said if Susan wasn’t prepared to do the job, he would put your mother in a home.’

  ‘Suzie’s favourite role was always that of martyr,’ Wright said dismissively. ‘There was absolutely no question of my father putting Mother into a home, he was devoted to her. Suzie stayed because she had it so easy there.’

  ‘I’d hardly call caring for an invalid and housekeeping in such a big house, working seven days a week for mere pocket money, easy.’ Steven retorted. ‘She had no fun, no friends, no life of her own. I’d be more inclined to call it slavery.’

  He could understand now why Susan was intimidated by this man. He was so cold he was almost reptilian. And a liar too.

  ‘Suzie would imply slavery.’ Wright shrugged. ‘It sounds just like her. The truth of the matter was she was too lazy to make a life of her own. There were no locks on the doors. If she felt so strongly she could have upped and left at any time.’

  ‘Emotional ties are every bit as strong as locks,’ Steven said. ‘But even if you don’t agree that she was compelled to stay and care for your parents, surely you must feel she deserves sympathy and understanding for what she went through losing her only child?’

  ‘I agree, that was sad,’ Wright said, but his cold eyes suggested he had no conception of what losing a child would do to anyone.

  ‘She was devastated,’ Steven said more forcefully. ‘But what made it so much worse for her was that Annabel needn’t have died. The doctor was negligent, he turned her away from his surgery, dismissing her symptoms as a viral infection. Susan was alone, with no one to turn to for support or comfort. Absolutely nothing left in her life. I don’t condone what she did, but I can understand why she did it. Can’t you?’