by Susan Lewis
Her eyes remained on his as she said, ‘I knew you were having problems around that time . . . You weren’t yourself, I could tell something was wrong, but I put it down to the stress of the election, the bruising defeat, the problems building up at the company . . . While all that was going on I was aware of the search for Jessica, obviously, it was all over the news, and I took an interest because of her connection to Kesterly. Then they revealed the name, Yoder, and I . . . I tried not to believe it. It seemed such a remote and unlikely connection, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Then you began falling apart physically and mentally . . . I kept waiting for you to tell me what had happened, where she was, what had been done to her . . . I was sure someone else was involved, that they were the ones who’d taken her. I was afraid for you, and I could see that you were terrified for yourself.’
All this she’d been thinking, but had never said. It was almost as incredible to him as the fact that they were having this conversation at all.
‘I had to find out if I was right,’ she continued, ‘but I couldn’t make myself ask, because if I was wrong and it had nothing to do with you . . . How were we ever going to get past that? Or maybe I was too afraid of the answer. I didn’t want details; I just wanted to know if you were involved. So I sent you a letter.’
A letter? He had no memory of a letter from her concerning Jessica. They never wrote to one another at all these days, unless by text or email.
‘It was anonymous,’ she told him. ‘In it I said I knew you’d had an affair with Jessica Leonard and that you were with her on the day she disappeared. Of course, I didn’t know that, I had no idea where you were that day, but I said if you wanted me to keep what I knew to myself it would cost you twenty-five thousand pounds.’
Charles had tensed with disbelief. His wife was his blackmailer? All those ugly letters, all that money, the fear, the thoughts of suicide . . . Was that what she’d wanted, to push him into ending his life?
‘When I received the cash,’ she went on, ‘my worst fears were confirmed. You were clearly involved in whatever had happened to her. I still had no idea how, but the fact that you were willing to pay to keep it a secret . . . That was when I realised I couldn’t go on living with you. I didn’t want you to lose everything, and I knew if it came out that you would, but if you found a way to sort it out . . . If she was still alive and you could persuade those holding her to let her go . . . I created so many scenarios for myself, I was desperate for you to work something out . . . I should have confronted you of course, but I still had no idea if anyone else was involved . . . I kept telling myself they had to be, because you’d never allow her family to go through so much suffering unless there was some kind of threat hanging over me or Lydia . . . I’ve waited all this time for you to act, but you never did . . . I stepped up the blackmail as a way of putting on the pressure, but it didn’t work, because you sent the money every time . . .’
Charles was silently reeling. He had no idea what he wanted to say, or do. Her reasoning, her actions were beyond his powers of comprehension.
She was still speaking. ‘I sent all the money to Blake Leonard,’ she told him. ‘I don’t know what he’s done with it, but I do know that no amount of what we can give them will ever make up for what they’ve lost.’
As the awful truth of her words curdled the air between them, Charles turned away and went to stand at the window. He had no idea what to do now, how to repair any of the damage he’d caused to his own family as well as the Leonards. He felt the responsibility of making amends as deeply as he felt the shame of his cowardice, but all he could think to say for the moment was, ‘I need to speak to Lydia before she finds out through someone else.’
‘She knows. She’s on her way here.’
He turned around, shaken. ‘You told her? When?’
‘This morning. I was afraid that you wouldn’t, so I did it myself.’
Hating that she’d had no faith in him, while understanding it, he almost asked how his daughter had taken it, but he’d find out soon enough.
Coming to him, Gina stared hard into his eyes as though searching for the man she used to know and love. He could tell she thought he was still there, but he had no idea himself how to find him.
‘I’m glad you told Andee,’ she said eventually. ‘I was going to. I meant to, but you’re the only one who knows the truth. Do we have it now? Is there any more?’
‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘there’s no more.’
Apparently willing to believe him, she said, ‘Why Yoder? What made you choose that name?’
He shook his head absently. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘If you’d used Smith . . .’ She stopped as he turned to her.
‘If I had she might never have been found,’ he stated.
Gina looked away. After a while she said, ‘I feel partly responsible. If you hadn’t felt the need for an affair . . .’
‘It’s not your fault,’ he came in quickly. ‘Please, for God’s sake, don’t blame yourself.’
She didn’t argue, only continued to look at him, but he knew her conscience well, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself for never telling what she had known any more than he would. ‘You loved her?’ she said softly.
He wouldn’t, couldn’t deny it.
‘You know it couldn’t have lasted.’
Yes, he’d known that.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and slipping her arms around him, she held him close. He stood staring across the fields in the direction of the woods and marshy lake where Blake and his family were due to visit what had been their daughter’s watery grave for the past two years.
Charles had been asked to stay away.
Blake could hardly believe how many flowers had already been left on this remote country road, so many that the police had been forced to move some aside to make room for him and his family to get through to the barrier that marked the edge of the sheer drop. They were now standing in the midst of the blooms, with Jenny one side of him and Matt the other. It was cool, up here on the hill, where a dense canopy of trees blocked out the sun and a wayward breeze blew carelessly by, taking the heady scent of flowers with it. The officers policing the scene were keeping their distance, not wanting to intrude on the family’s private grief, but keen to provide support or information if it was needed.
As close as they were to the cliff edge there was little chance of them going over, unless they climbed the solid metal barrier first. It had been installed, someone had told Blake, less than a month after Jessica had driven her car off the road. It wasn’t her accident that had triggered the work – no one had known about it, so it couldn’t have happened that way – it had been part of a scheduled road safety programme for the county.
What a bitter, tragic irony that it hadn’t been carried out a month earlier, although there was no knowing if it would have saved her life. Hitting a barrier at a tremendous speed would inevitably have produced its own disastrous results.
Feeling Jenny’s slight figure move in more closely to him, he tightened his arm around her and pressed a kiss to her head. This discovery, this awful, nightmarish tragedy, had, perversely, brought his beloved wife back to him, and she was here, she said, to stay.
Matt was standing slightly apart, staring down at the boggy pit of a lake. The lifting paraphernalia that had been brought in to recover the body and the car had gone now, leaving no trace. The machinery had been swallowed up by the past, just like Jessica.
Blake could feel his son’s grief as palpably as he could feel his own. It was a powerfully genetic force that joined them together. He wondered what Matt was seeing in his mind’s eye, what he was saying or hearing in his heart. He was surely connecting with his sister, drawing her to him as she would draw him to her. Death couldn’t put an end to that, could it? Their souls were surely as linked as their DNA.
Still holding Jenny close he looked down at the sludgy lake himself, and became aware of a horrible, terrifying sens
e of being sucked into its murky depths. His eyes closed as bile rose to his throat and he started to sway.
‘Are you OK?’ Jenny whispered.
‘Yes,’ he whispered back. ‘Are you?’
After a while she said, ‘I don’t know. It feels strange, as though we’re not really here.’
Understanding what she meant, he turned to look at Matt again. He wanted to reach out for him, but didn’t. Matt would come when he was ready; as a family they would bond even more tightly than before to get themselves through this. At least the journey from here would be unhampered by false hopes and debilitating fears.
His eyes closed again as, out of nowhere, he heard Jessica laughing down the phone. ‘I’m OK, Daddy, I promise. You have to stop worrying.’
‘I’m not worried,’ he’d lied, ‘I just want to know that you’re settling in all right and making friends.’
‘I have lots of friends and I love it here. Does that make you happy?’
‘Everything about you makes me happy.’
‘Oh Dad, that is such a corny thing to say. I know this is hard for you to get your head around, but I’m a grown-up now. I’ve left home, I’m at uni, I’m loving it and I can take care of myself.’
As his heart filled with the unstoppable pain of her not taking care, of her making mistakes that he should have saved her from, of being led astray by a man who should have known better, he kept hearing her, over and over, louder and yet softer as though trying to soothe him. ‘I’m OK, Daddy, I promise. You have to stop worrying. I’m OK, Daddy, I promise. You have to stop worrying.’
Was she OK? There was no reason to worry any more: the worst had happened, it couldn’t happen again.
Since being told about her affair with Stamfield and how Stamfield had hidden what he’d known for so long, Blake had been waiting for a terrible rage and hatred to consume him. He felt sure it was there, biding its time like a beast of prey, choosing the deadliest moment to strike, but if it was he could feel none of its power yet, not even a hint of its cold, steely need for a terrible revenge.
He’d been told that Stamfield was willing to see him, but he didn’t feel ready for that yet, wasn’t even sure he’d ever be. He only knew that he didn’t want to remember his daughter as the mistress of a much older and, until now, highly respected and powerful man. He wanted to see her the way she’d been for him, a musician, a gifted student, a fearless, radiant teenager with her whole life ahead of her. Allowing Stamfield’s part in her death to consume him would only end up destroying him, and his family needed him now more than they ever had.
Aware of Matt coming to stand next to him, he hooked an arm through his son’s and drew him closer. Nothing about the experience of coming here was proving easy. They hadn’t expected it to be, but already they were realising that finding Jessica, even like this, was better than the torture of not knowing.
The funeral was to be held next Friday at St Monica’s on the Hill. They’d decided on a small, family affair to try to avoid the press, since the news would have broken by then of Stamfield’s involvement. Though Blake was dreading that, he was trying to see it simply as something else to be got through, another step along the very difficult road to recovery. Somehow they’d survive it, of course they would, though whether Stamfield would was another story. The police might only be able to charge him with failing to report an accident, but the media and the public would no doubt subject him to a whole other kind of trial. There would be the man’s punishment, if Blake were seeking it, for the scandal, the disgust and well-deserved derision were likely to ruin him.
Matt said, ‘I think she’d want a bigger funeral than the one we’re planning.’
Jenny stooped to gather up the cards that had been left with the flowers. ‘So many people have been in touch,’ she said, ‘even some of our old friends from the north. They want to come if they’re invited.’
‘So do her mates from uni and school,’ Matt added. ‘I think she’d want them there.’
Feeling certain she would, Blake’s heart swelled with the love people were showing for his daughter, and for them. He’d heard from Andee this morning that her son Luke had already returned from Cornwall to be there for Matt, and apparently Graeme’s sons were on their way for the same reason. It seemed that all the town’s young people were gathering to support and pay respects to two of their own. Even those who hadn’t really known them were rallying, like Andee’s daughter Alayna who’d texted him, Jenny and Matt the night before, offering to do anything she could to help. Today, along with her mother and Pamela, Alayna was visiting the Victoria hotel with Jenny’s parents to act as the young persons’ representative in the decision of where to hold the reception.
If it was going to be a bigger affair he’d better call now to let them know.
It was feeling eerily quiet, almost other-worldly, as Andee drove along the avenue of limes towards Burlingford Hall. No one was around; the grounds staff had taken the day off to attend the funeral, and were now at Jessica and Matt’s favourite beach bar for the celebration of her life.
The church service had proved memorable in every way with so many young people taking part, reading poems they’d chosen specially, or even written themselves, and joining with Matt to perform some of Jessica’s favourite songs. Somehow Andee had managed to hold it together, desperate not to break down in front of her mother, who’d insisted on coming, but then something had happened that she knew she would never forget. Matt had been partway through performing a duet with a recording of Jessica singing ‘Fields of Gold’ when he’d suddenly found himself unable to continue. He took a breath, but nothing seemed to help, until his parents came to stand either side of him and together the three sang, with Jess, to the end of the song. Andee had never seen anything so brave or so moving. Even the minister had wiped away a tear, while the rest of the gathering broke into a spontaneous repeat of the chorus before Blake and his family returned to their seats.
After the service Andee’s mother had intended to return home, but Blake and Jenny had persuaded her to attend the celebration, and when Andee had last seen her she, Rowzee and Pamela, much to the youngsters’ delight, had been showing off their skills on the dance floor. She’d have willingly joined in, along with Jenny and Graeme’s nieces who were frantically waving her over, had she not promised to go and see Charles and Gina before they left this evening.
‘I’ll call when I’m leaving the Hall,’ she’d told Graeme as he walked her outside, ‘and if the party’s still going I’ll come back.’
‘Andee,’ Blake called out, coming up behind her. ‘Can I have a word?’
Clearly sensing that Blake wanted to talk privately, Graeme excused himself and returned to the party.
‘I couldn’t imagine giving up on her,’ Blake said when they were alone. ‘As her father, it just wasn’t something I was able to do, even when the police seemed to.’
Remembering how it had been for her own father, for her and her mother too, Andee squeezed his hand. ‘You were right not to give up,’ she told him. ‘I’m glad you didn’t.’
Looking deeply into her eyes he asked softly, ‘Does there ever come a time when you do?’
She nodded. ‘For the sake of your own sanity you have to, but two years wasn’t so very long. In my family’s case it’s been over thirty, so we’ve had to let go.’ Not always successfully, she didn’t add, because it was something he didn’t need to know.
‘Thank you for not turning me away,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have known how to carry on alone, and whatever you say about Rowzee finding her, which of course she did, it was you who connected the name Yoder to Stamfield, and you who he finally confessed to.’
Guessing the police had told him that, Andee watched him kick a stray football back to a group of children and smiled as he looked at her again.
‘Have you seen Stamfield since?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she replied.
He turned to gaze at the blinding sunlight on the wav
es, the swoop and soar of gulls over the bay. ‘Is that where you’re going now?’ he finally managed, bringing his eyes back to hers.
Deciding not to deny it, she said, ‘I know it probably doesn’t help, and you’ll say he deserves it, but he’s suffering terribly for what he did. We’ve all seen how viciously he’s been attacked by the media, but even they won’t be making him feel as bad as he’s made himself feel since it happened.’
He swallowed hard as he said, ‘Maybe it does help to know that. If she hadn’t mattered to him, if he’d gone on living his life as though nothing had happened . . .’ There was a tightness to his features, an edge to his voice that did more to express his feelings than the words he was struggling to find.
Understanding, she glanced back to the bar as she said, ‘I think they’re calling for you.’
Still holding on to her hand, he said, ‘Tell Stamfield from me . . .’ He broke off, shaking his head. ‘I have nothing to say to him. Nothing at all.’
Now, as Andee pulled up outside the Hall, she was recalling those words and understanding their meaning – there could be no forgiveness at this time, and probably none later either.
By the time she got out of the car the main front door was opening, and to her surprise it was Lydia who came to greet her. She was a tall, arrestingly attractive young woman with her mother’s striking colouring and her father’s deep-set intelligent eyes. Her air of confidence and sophistication had always made her seem a good ten years older than she was, but today, with so much grief and confusion in her heart, she looked much closer to her actual age of twenty-five.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, throwing her arms around Andee. ‘It’s been awful here with the two of them. I hardly know what to do.’
Certain it couldn’t be easy, Andee said, ‘It’ll mean a lot to them that you’re here.’
