by Liz Fenwick
‘Hard not to.’
I nod, forgetting that Tom can’t see my features any more than I can see his. ‘I keep thinking it’s the miscarriage.’
Tom shuffles closer to me on the bench.
‘I’m sorry.’ His hand reaches out, touching first my thigh, then my arm, before finding my hand and clasping it.
I hold my breath for a moment. ‘Thank you.’
We are both quiet and I long to know what he is thinking.
‘Has he behaved this way before?’
‘Yes.’ I take a deep breath. ‘And no.’
‘I wonder,’ he says before puffing his pipe. The smoke catches the thin moonlight. ‘Do you think it’s the stress?’ He releases my hand.
‘Possibly.’ I answer. It could be the cause of both.
‘I should never have brought you back in.’
‘You had no choice. You needed someone you could trust who was invisible.’
Animals scurry under the bench, rustling leaves. ‘That doesn’t make it right.’
‘You can’t live there and not be involved in some way.’ I sigh. ‘You know that.’ Even before I became the key contact for the double agent Victor, the strain of our life in Moscow had been trying for Allan and me. We couldn’t talk in the apartment. We spoke in code. Some days I think we forgot how to communicate naturally. The only normality in our life was Diana. She let none of the strictures infringe on her enjoyment of it all.
‘There’s involved and then there’s . . . putting you at risk.’
‘I’ve been at risk before.’ I put my hand on his arm.
‘Yes, but that was before – before Diana.’
I pull out my cigarette case and open it. It’s empty. I forgot to refill it earlier. ‘But this is important.’
‘I can’t argue with that.’ He sighs; locating his cigarette case, he lights one and offers it to me.
I feel rather than see him slump beside me and I think back to Aden. It had been almost carefree in those days. I was good at checking people’s personal diaries, overhearing conversations, and getting invitations into homes. ‘What’s happened?’ I ask, bracing myself. This would explain the arrival of the American, George Russell, tomorrow.
‘I’m finished.’ He taps his pipe on the seat again.
‘What?’ I try to keep my voice quiet, but the shock is hard to contain.
‘I’ve been blown.’ His voice trails away into the night air.
‘Who?’ Images flash in my mind like a slide show of faces and locations.
‘Don’t know.’
I shiver. ‘But you have an idea . . . ?’
‘You might be, too.’
‘How?’ My thoughts race through everything, everyone. Nothing appears. No one could know. I am a housewife, a mother. I do nothing.
‘As from later today, I’m no longer your handler.’
‘No.’ I have feared this from the moment I began. Tom knows me and my strengths. He is my anchor. ‘You’re not leaving me in this alone.’
‘No. The Americans are taking it over.’
I shake my head. I don’t know them. How can I trust them? Tom makes all of this easy and he always has. ‘Is Victor blown?’
‘We don’t think so, but as you know he was itchy on the last drop.’
I nod in the darkness, remembering the heat of the Moscow day and the lack of air, even in the park. Diana had been reluctant to play and even Salome, our dog, was uneasy. She hadn’t wanted the treat that Victor had offered, making things awkward, then Diana had come back. ‘Was the info still good?’
‘I believe so.’ He sighs again. ‘I hate leaving you alone in this.’
‘Yes.’ I look down to the house, thinking of all those sleeping peacefully. ‘Does Allan know?’
‘No.’
My head shoots up. ‘Why?’
‘There is a leak.’
‘But it would never be Allan.’ I fight the urge to strike out. This isn’t Tom. He would sell his soul for Allan.
‘It’s no longer in my hands.’ His voice catches.
I will not let emotion into this. I have a role to play. ‘So he doesn’t know?’
‘No.’
‘This George Russell . . .’
‘Allan believes the cover story of the aunt in Penzance.’
I cough. ‘Surely he doesn’t.’
He laughs. ‘We all believe things, Joan.’
My gut turns. ‘Yes.’ So many of us have been fooled, haven’t looked when we didn’t want to see.
‘Right, we both need to get some sleep.’ Tom stands and walks up the path away from the house and I retrace my steps back. I dry off the bottom of my plimsoles and replace the cardigan on the hook before returning to my room. Allan is in light sleep and I carefully slide into bed and lay staring at my husband. Is anything as it seems?
24
Lottie
4 August 2018, 6.00 a.m.
‘Damn.’ Lottie rubbed her eyes and grabbed her phone. Six a.m. Yawning, she knew she could have used more sleep. It was way too early to be awake, but she’d forgotten to close the curtains last night. The rising sun filled the room with a blinding light. There was no point in drawing the curtains now and trying to go back to sleep. She had a lot to do today.
She swung her feet out of bed and kicked her mother’s diary and the shoebox with Gran’s notebook. Her grandmother was dying. The reality hit, and her shoulders slumped. There was no time to waste. With any luck her mother would still be asleep, and Lottie could do something to stop her from confronting Gran, or Gramps for that matter. She understood her desire to know. Lottie had that same desire. Who was her father? Maybe her mother didn’t know, or didn’t want to remember. When she was a teenager, she saw several articles about her mother’s abduction and Lottie began to make a few guesses based on her age and her mother’s time in captivity.
She went to the mirror. The dark haired, grey-eyed woman looking back at her was no English rose. Her mother and Gran both had dark hair and dark eyes, but they were fair skinned. Lottie’s eyes, her best feature according to Paul, stood out against her tanned skin. Her irises were pale grey with a dark grey ring. They haunted her, and she thought they haunted her mother, too.
Looking away, her glance fell on the file. How could one pile of papers contain enough to explain how her life had collapsed? Yet they did, showing the refused insurance claim for the theft of the jewellery, the police report saying there had been no evidence of a break-in or damage to her safe, the legal paperwork for the sale of the flat, the outstanding invoices for the gems and the gold and platinum, and her Vegas marriage certificate. She sighed. Married in haste and repenting at leisure. He had taken her freedom, her money, her career and her self-esteem. She was an idiot. At least the money from the flat should have cleared by Monday or Tuesday, then she could close the chapter of her life entitled ‘Lottie the up-and-coming London jewellery designer’. God, she had been blind.
She needed coffee before she did anything. Her old fluffy dressing gown from her boarding school days hung on the back of the door. Covered in teddy bears, it was the height of revolting taste, but it still did the job of covering the essentials. There was some comfort in wearing something that dated from before she had ruined everything.
The flowers she’d put on the hallway table yesterday felt right. Later she would gather more from the kitchen garden, but first she wanted to check on her grandparents. Boskenna’s idiosyncrasies soothed her as they had always done. She loved the way the house was odd in its layout, the eccentricities of the additions over the years. It had begun life much more fortified, by all accounts. This was apparent if you looked closely. Some of the original stonework from the Tudor building was visible around the courtyard. Those stones formed the foundations of the house that stood here today. Gran had pointed them out to her years ago, along with all the other joins in the house. There were so many. She paused, overwhelmed. Boskenna without Gran. She was the very mortar that held it all together.
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br /> Taking a steadying breath, she climbed the steps up to her grandparents’ bedroom. Those steps were another of the many visible joins. She stopped at the door, ready to knock. Gramps sat by the windows – not looking at the view but at her grandmother propped up in bed. She was speaking but her eyes were closed.
‘Gramps?’ Lottie came in and went to the bed. ‘She isn’t speaking English. It sounds like Russian.’
‘Take no notice.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s delirious.’ He put his cup and saucer down on the dressing table in front of the middle window. There were two cups and saucers, one unused. She looked away. What would he do when she was gone?
Lottie sat next to Gran and stroked her forehead until she settled, and her breathing was no longer as distressed. ‘I’ll sit with her a while.’ She gave him an encouraging smile. ‘Why don’t you take a bath or maybe a walk?’
She looked past Gramps to the view. The rising sun had washed the colour out of the sea and the sky, but there was not a cloud to be seen.
‘Are you sure you’ll be fine?’ He pushed himself out of the chair. It took so much effort.
‘Absolutely.’ She smiled.
‘A bit of cool morning air might do me some good.’
She nodded and turned back to Gran, listening to the thump of Gramps’ cane on each stair then along the corridor.
‘It’s a glorious day, Gran.’ Lottie walked over to the teapot and poured a cup. ‘I might even be tempted to take a swim.’ She smiled. ‘Do you remember how I used to join you every morning for one?’ So many days, rain or shine, she would follow Gran down the path to the beach. Frequently it was very early, before the families with buckets and spades arrived. Normally it would just be old Jacob with his fishing rod sitting on the far rocks. He’d wave to them as they dropped their towels and Lottie would race into the water trying to match Gran’s stride. Oh how she’d wanted to be like Gran with her bathing cap and sleek black swimsuit. Instead she’d sported a spotted bikini with her hair in a plait.
‘Do you remember Jacob? He was there every morning just like us.’ She laughed. ‘He was a man of very few words but many fish.’
Gran turned her head towards her.
‘I wonder if he’s still alive. I always thought he was ancient, but I saw him in the village a few years ago and he hadn’t changed. I guess the sea had hardened his face early on and he hadn’t aged.’
She looked down. Gran’s eyes were open.
‘Morning.’ Lottie beamed.
‘Yes.’ Gran’s voice was more of a croak.
Her heart lifted. ‘I love you.’
Gran’s hand came out from under the covers and she grabbed Lottie’s. ‘Forgive me.’
She pulled a face. ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’
Gran shook her head and lowered her eyes, so Lottie couldn’t read her expression.
‘Forgive me. I had no choice.’
‘You’ve done nothing to forgive.’ Lottie frowned. ‘You’ve been everything for me.’
She shook her head and she fought for breath.
‘Gran, I forgive you whatever you think you’ve done. I love you and nothing will change that, ever.’
She sighed. ‘Thank you.’ Her eyes closed and in moments she was asleep again. Lottie kissed her forehead and walked to the window. Below, Gramps hobbled around the path circling the lawn. He stopped every few feet and gazed out at the sea. She couldn’t blame him. In the distance a gaff-rigged bark bobbed on the swell. The scene was timeless. Only the tower on Gribben Head dated it. She remembered Gramps telling her its history – that had been built in 1832 to help boats distinguish Gribben Head from Dodman Point. Lottie had felt it looked like a stick of rock stuck into the hill. This had made Gramps laugh because he’d thought it looked like a broken candy cane.
Hearing footsteps, she turned and put the cup on the table. Lottie knew it was her mother. She hoped she was wrong, and that a confrontation wasn’t about to happen. But reading her mother’s face, it wore not a daughter’s concern, but the expression of the award-winning investigative reporter who left no stone unturned until she knew the truth. She’d seen it too many times. Lying was not an option with her mother. Lottie knew because she’d tried. She couldn’t get away with it, not even by omission.
She held her finger to her lips and her mother stopped in her tracks, holding the box in front of her. For a moment Lottie saw her confusion but that didn’t last long. She put the box on the bed and walked to Lottie.
‘How is she?’ her mother asked in hushed tones.
‘She’s just nodded off.’
‘I’ll wait.’ She sank into the armchair by the window. It was where Gran would normally sit and read in the morning. Gramps would bring up a tray of tea and toast as he had today, and he would read the paper in his chair. Lottie looked for him below again, but he was not in front of the house anymore.
‘Make some coffee, please.’ Her mother picked up the book on the table, To Kill a Mockingbird. ‘This was mine, or more correctly, I made it mine.’ She turned it over in her hands and opened it. There in childish print it read
This book belongs to Diana Trewin of Boskenna
July 1962
‘I knew I had a copy.’ She ran her fingers over the cover then at Gran. ‘I wonder what she thought when she saw the inscription?’
Lottie tilted her head to the side. ‘Why?’
‘I was very young to be reading this.’ She flipped it over in her hands.
‘True.’ Lottie frowned, thinking of the diary. ‘I’ll go and make coffee but promise me you will be gentle with Gran.’
Her mother pursed her mouth.
‘Mum, promise.’
‘Fine.’
Lottie didn’t like the word fine – it had too many connotations – but on this occasion, it would have to do because she wasn’t getting anything further from her mother. Her nose was in the book. Lottie sighed.
25
Diana
4 August 1962, 6.30 a.m.
Diana hummed as she walked down the stairs. It was the song about night and day that Mummy was dancing to last night. Diana took a spin around at the bottom of the stairs. The sun was out and no one else was up. But that was not true. She must pay more attention to things if she wanted to become a journalist. The front door was open. Someone else was awake. Looking around, she saw the newspapers were on the hall table. She must read articles to learn how to report.
She skipped to the table where three papers were laid out. The front pages didn’t look very interesting. She kept flipping pages until she saw the words that she had heard mentioned in quiet voices . . . nuclear threat, Khrushchev, President Kennedy, Cold War. Goosebumps rose on her arms. Her glance stopped at the headline, Keeping a Goat in the House. That sounded fun, but she frowned. It was described as a parable. Jesus told parables in the Bible. Mr Khrushchev told them in the paper. Her nose wrinkled when she read about getting used to the smell. Mr Khrushchev called the goat imperialism. That was strange. She would need to ask what imperialism was. It didn’t sound like a name. He also mentioned war and at that, Diana stepped away from the table. She didn’t like reading that there had been more nuclear tests. She had asked Daddy what that meant, and she hadn’t liked the answer. Mummy had made a serious face at Daddy and muttered that he shouldn’t be telling her things like that because it would scare her.
Mummy would make more faces when she found out Diana was reading the papers. She studied the article again. It was confusing. But somehow the goat made the nuclear thermal weapons necessary. She sighed and decided she wouldn’t ask Mummy about it, but would ask Daddy or Uncle Tom.
There was a picture of President Kennedy in the other paper. Mummy liked him. Diana thought he was handsome. Mrs Kennedy was almost as pretty as Mummy, but not quite.
‘There you are little one. Hungry?’ Mrs Hoskine walked through the front door carrying a broom.
‘Yes.’
‘Permanently, it seems to me.’ She raised an
eyebrow. ‘It appears we have mice because there was a scone missing this morning.’
‘Really?’ Diana opened her eyes wide.
‘You know it’s best to tell the truth.’
Diana looked down. ‘Sorry, Mrs Hoskine. I ate a scone last night because I was very hungry.’
Mrs Hoskine ruffled her hair. ‘That’s better my little one. Now let’s see to some breakfast for you.’
Diana trailed behind her into the kitchen where she first smelt, then saw, fresh bread. ‘Bread and butter, please, with jam.’
‘Of course.’ She sliced a piece and Diana layered it with butter and jam. The bread was warm enough that the butter melted right in and dripped down her chin. Mrs Hoskine wiped her face with a clean tea-towel. ‘Is that enough for now or do you need more?’
‘Enough for now, thank you.’ Diana dashed out of the kitchen and went straight to the piano. She put the music away that was out from last night and pulled hers out of the seat. She was about to begin warming her fingers up, as Madame Roscova had taught her, when she thought of her diary. She needed to write in it.
She raced back upstairs and pulled it out from under her mattress. She had been puzzled to find it on her bedside table this morning. But then she’d looked in it and there was a pencil line dragged down one page. She must have fallen asleep writing. Mummy would have put it on the table. She knew it was Mummy and not Daddy because of the pencil placement. It was tucked just inside the cover. She did that with her own notebook. Mummy wrote in hers all the time. It was like a diary of sorts, except hers was all about food and clothes and people.
Peering out of the bedroom window, the sun was making steam come off the lawn. It was going to be a wonderful day for sailing. She put her diary under her arm. Today she would bring it with her and record everything that she saw. Maybe she would have another piece of bread, butter and jam before she practised the piano. Madame Roscova had told Diana she must practise every day and that she wanted to know all about her holiday in England. Recording everything in the diary would make it easier to remember. There was nothing that happened here that she couldn’t tell Madame Roscova. She had to think hard in Moscow during her lessons, focusing on her finger placement and what she could and couldn’t talk about. It was tricky but she did her best.
