Reflections

by Bannister, Jo

  “The attic?” Daniel’s brow was puzzled.

  “He and Robert grew up here, all their old toys are still there. The second night we were here I lost him for an hour, and that’s where he was—up in the attic, brushing the cobwebs off the rocking-horse, patching up the puppet theatre.”

  Daniel perched on a handy stool. “It must have been strange for him, coming back in these circumstances.”

  Peris Daws regarded him evenly “It was. Strange and difficult. This was his home, then it was his brother’s home.

  now he’s back and Robert’s on the run. I think he’s afraid Robert will resent him for that.”

  “I’m sure Robert’s grateful someone’s looking after his daughters. He must have been worried sick after he came to his senses.” Daniel hesitated. There were things he wanted to know—needed to know if he wasn’t to risk hurting his pupils again—and it occurred to him that Peris might find it easier to talk than her husband would.

  She saw him deliberating with himself and prompted him. “Daniel?”

  “Can you tell me what happened? I know what was in the papers, but they can’t always give much detail. It would be useful to know what you know, what the girls know. I won’t be giving evidence in court, it doesn’t matter if some of it’s only supposition. But I’m going to be working with two traumatised children and I don’t want to say the wrong things. For instance, if Hugo had told me it was Serena’s studio, and therefore where she died, I wouldn’t have asked them to show me the cottage.”

  Peris’s eyes narrowed for an instant, then she nodded. “That makes sense. You might as well know, as much as we can tell you. What do you know already?”

  “That Robert stabbed his wife. That she was seeing another man. That the girls found the body. And now, that it happened in the cottage.”

  Peris sighed. She left her baking, towelled off her arms and came to sit beside him. “Everyone knew about Robert and Serena. I understand they were happy once, but they hardly went anywhere in recent years that they didn’t leave either separately or in a temper. Most people blamed Serena, but then she was easy to blame. Flamboyant, you know? If she wasn’t the centre of attention she’d do something to make sure she was.

  “There was a string of young men. I don’t how much they meant to her, but if they meant much you’d have thought there’d be fewer. She didn’t stay long with any of them: she did stay with Robert. I suspect they were Serena’s way of saying he wasn’t paying her enough attention.”

  She rocked on the stool like a hen settling on eggs. “Robert’s a nice man. I’d have said he was a good man. He worked hard, and he gave Serena everything you can go into a shop and buy In spite of that, they weren’t a good match. Serena craved glamour, and Robert was never glamorous. He’s ten years older -she was thirty-six—and he seems older than that. He’s quiet, sober and industrious, and he spent the day making expensive decisions and all he wanted was a nice family to come home to at night. What he had was Serena: perfectly groomed, beautifully dressed, capable of turning every head in a big room, still wanting him to dance attendance on her the way he did when they were courting. Punishing him when he was too tired to.”

  She used her affairs as a goad. Peris said. There was no shortage of men who would spend time with her, and she used them, discarding them when her point was made. “That was almost the saddest thing. The man this was really all about was Robert.”

  And the second saddest thing was that as Serena got older the men got younger. “The latest was nineteen, for heaven’s sake! Young enough to be her son. Robert annoyed her, and she went down to the bottom of the drive and seduced the first thing to walk past in jeans. Nicky Speers—he works at the farm across the road. I don’t blame him for any of this. How many nineteen-year-olds could resist a beautiful, sophisticated, wealthy woman waving her knickers at them? She said she wanted to paint him.” Her opinion of that hung unspoken in the air.

  “But she was an artist,” ventured Daniel.

  Peris looked at him speculatively. “Did you see her paintings?” Daniel shook his head. “No,” said Peris, “I don’t think they’re in the cottage now. Hugo took them up to the attic. Come and look.”

  Daniel met her gaze fearlessly. “Mrs Daws—are you inviting me upstairs to see your etchings?”

  Some clichés don’t travel. It took her a moment to understand. When she did she laughed out loud and slapped his shoulder hard enough to rock him. “You should be so lucky!”

  Hugo heard footsteps on the wooden stair and met them at the top. “Is everything all right?”

  “I want Daniel to see the paintings.”

  He looked as if he might object. Then he shrugged and stood back, and Peris led the way to the last of three attic store-rooms where a rack of canvases leaned against the wall, hiding their faces. She waved an arm in invitation. “You tell me if she was an artist.”

  Daniel turned the top four canvases to the room. Then he stood back, quietly observing. He didn’t claim to be an expert but he reckoned to know the difference between a good painting and a bad one. And now he understood Peris’s difficulty. Serena Daws had been a good painter. She had not been a good artist.

  “Technically,” he said at length, “they’re superb. She’s deliberately set herself challenges—capturing different textures, and the play of light on this silvery fabric—and met them all. And the flesh-tones: there must be twenty shades blending in that boy’s skin. But…”

  “Yes?” said Peris softly

  “There’s no soul in it, is there? No attempt to capture his personality. She doesn’t care about his personality. She’s meticulous about recreating the physical image—they’re almost photographic—but you end up knowing nothing about either the sitter or the artist. Which is bizarre, because—” He looked up, carefully. “Well, this is him, isn’t it? Her lover.”

  Hugo’s voice was low. “Yes, that’s him. That’s the boy who wrecked my brother’s life and made virtual orphans of my nieces.”

  Daniel wasn’t sure it was fair comment, but perhaps fairness was too much to ask just yet. “I thought Robert slashed the paintings.”

  “Just the one that she was working on. She had a lot of paintings of Nicky Speers, all of them like this. After I found them in the cupboard in the studio, finally I understood. Until then I hadn’t really believed Robert had done what he was supposed to have done. He isn’t a violent person—in any conflict he was always more likely to be the victim than the aggressor. But when I found these I could see how even a gentle man could be pushed too far. I think, for the few minutes it took, he was literally insane. I think she drove him mad.”

  Daniel looked at the painting again, trying to see something human in the flawless specimen on the canvas. After a moment he started to. Not in the swelling muscles, honed by physical labour and recorded in a detail that was more scientific than loving; not in the perfect nineteen-year-old body rendered decent by an errant fold of the silvery fabric positioned so calculatingly that he managed to look more naked than he would have stepping out of his shower; but in the eyes. They were brown, deeply set, sensitive, and afraid.

  Daniel touched the paint and found it hard, weeks old. When Nicky Speers posed for this painting the affair was new, the excitement high, the coming tragedy yet to cast its shadow over them. But even then, at a time when he was sufficiently captivated by Serena Daws that he was not only bedding a woman seventeen years his senior but also sitting for her—or sprawling, like the centrefold from a top-shelf women’s magazine, pushed and prodded into an essay in soft pornography that stripped him of his dignity even more comprehensively than of his clothes—even then he was afraid of her. He knew what she was capable of. He was riding the tiger partly for the thrill but mainly because he was already too scared to get off.

  Daniel straightened and turned the paintings to the wall again. “We’d better put them back in the cottage. The girls probably play up here too.”

  Hugo had the grace to look embar
rassed. “I didn’t want you stumbling on them.”

  Daniel shrugged. “Rather me than the girls.”

  They bundled them up in an old curtain and took them back to the studio. If the girls saw, they stayed out of the way. Once the canvases were back in the cupboard where Hugo had found them Daniel gave his employer a reproachful look. “You might have told me this was where Serena died.”

  “I should have. I—” Hugo shrugged awkwardly—“still don’t find it easy to talk about.”

  “Peris was telling me what happened. I need to know the facts if I’m to help the girls deal with them. Can you finish the story?”

  “How far did you get?”

  “She told me a lot about your brother and his wife, not about how Serena ended up dead.”

  “Robert stabbed her,” said Hugo briefly. “Thirteen times. And smashed the phone so she couldn’t call for help.”

  Daniel winced. “How much did the girls see?”

  “They heard shouting and peeped over the windowsill. Robert and Serena were fighting over”—he nodded at the cupboard door. “The girls knew what it was about. Serena hadn’t tried to be discreet—they’d met here in the studio while the girls were in the house. They knew exactly what had been going on.”

  Hugo swallowed. “They say Robert was crying. That he disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a knife. When he began slashing the painting Serena flew at him, beating him with her fists. At that point the girls got scared and ran away.

  “When they thought the drama would be over they came back. They found Serena dead in a pool of blood with the smashed phone beside her. They ran over the road in hysterics. Philip Poole couldn’t get any sense out of them so he came to see what had happened. Then, of course, he called the police.

  “That’s about it. I’m sorry I wasn’t straight with you. Would you rather not stay here now?”

  “It’s not that,” said Daniel. “I just needed to know the truth. I know talking about it’s painful.”

  Hugo nodded tersely “It’s awful. I love my brother -1 still love my brother—but I really keep hoping the police will call and say they’ve got him. Not because I want to see him punished, but while he’s missing everything’s in limbo. We can’t begin to sort out what happens to the girls or the house or anything. He’s an innocent man until proved otherwise, and that can’t even begin until he’s found. Or gives himself up. That’s what I’m praying for. But it’s been eight days. If he was going to, surely he’d have done it by now?”

  Daniel thought so too. His silence was answer enough.

  “Grocery is an international business: Robert has contacts all over the world,” said Hugo. It wasn’t a boast. “They’re bound to include people who, if he said he needed to flee the country, could whistle up an executive jet and have him safe abroad within hours. Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe he’s sitting by a kidney-shaped swimming pool right now, sipping a daiquiri and chuckling over the mess he’s left behind.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  Hugo flicked him a haunted look. “No. If he turned to someone in desperation and that was what they suggested, he may have gone along with it. But wherever he is, however safe he feels, what he’s done will be tearing him apart.

  “You never met my brother so this will sound pretty stupid, but Robert’s a good man. A man you couldn’t help but admire. Not because he was successful in business and made a lot of money, but because he was the soul of decency. He always was, even when we were boys. He was three years older than me so maybe it’s partly hero-worship, but up to last week I thought he was the most honourable man I ever knew. I was proud of him. He was sure as hell too good for Serena. The only thing she wanted from him was his credit card. It broke my heart to see him wasted on flashy trash like her.”

  Hearing himself he stopped abruptly, flushing like a schoolboy. “I’m sorry. Whatever she did she’s paid for, I shouldn’t abuse her now she can’t fight back. But I can’t help the way I feel. She did this. He wielded the knife but she put it in his hand. She made a killer out of a man I thought the world of, and I’m afraid I’m never going to see him again.”

  “He may come home,” said Daniel softly. “Once the dust settles and he realises there’s no future worth having until this is dealt with. It may take weeks or even months. Whoever helped him will try to talk him out of it, it’ll take time for him to know his own mind. But perhaps an honourable man would rather pay the bill than slip away down a back alley”

  Hugo nodded. Contrary to his expectations, talking had actually eased the burden. “Unfortunately I can’t wait weeks. I’m getting panicky e-mails from my partners: I’m on a plane tomorrow. Peris will stay till the end of October in the hope that Mrs Farrell will find Constance.”

  “She’s very good at what she does,” said Daniel. “If anybody can find her, Brodie will.”

  “She speaks highly of you, too.” Hugo ventured a slow grin. “Are you two some kind of a number?”

  Daniel considered. “No. We really are just friends. We haven’t even known one another that long. It’s just, you know how you click with some people? You spend an hour together and it’s like you’ve known them half your life? We clicked.”

  Hugo still didn’t understand. “Then why aren’t you a number? She’s free, and you are. Unless—”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, but the thought went all the way. Daniel laughed aloud. “No, I’m not gay There isn’t a reason, only that’s not the deal. She’s my best friend; I may be hers. I think maybe a real friendship is too precious to risk by trying to turn it into something different.”

  “All right.” But it was plain that Hugo was still perplexed and probably always would be.

  “How did you meet?”

  For a moment he thought Daniel was changing the subject. “When you asked her to search for Constance, did she tell you that she didn’t look for people?”

  “Yes. She wanted Superintendent Deacon to confirm my bona fides before she went ahead.”

  “Did she tell you why?”

  “She said she did it once and someone got hurt.” Then his eyes, normally snug in their sun-trained wrinkles, widened.

  Daniel smiled. “Yes. That was me.”

  Hugo wasn’t sure he’d got this right. “She found you for people who wanted to hurt you. They hurt you so much that you had to give up your job. And this is the woman you call your best friend?”

  “None of it was Brodie’s fault,” Daniel said quietly “They lied to her. She was their victim too.”

  “But—”

  “I nearly died,” said Daniel forcibly. “When I woke up, she was the one sitting with me. She told me what happened. Her part in it. Can you imagine the courage that took? I’ve never stopped admiring her for it.”

  Hugo shook his head in wonder. “I can’t imagine being able to find that kind of forgiveness. I can’t even find it for my brother. I wish I could.”

  “You will,” said Daniel. “It takes time. You’re still in shock. When it stops being news and starts being history, you’ll get a sense of perspective. You’ll be able to place responsibility without allocating blame.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You have to. If you’re going to look after your nieces you can’t afford to stay angry with either of their parents. They’ll never see their mother again, but they may eventually get their father back. If they’ve spent a decade hating him it’ll be a lost opportunity. If there’s any way to preserve communications between them you have to do it. And if you let the girls know how you feel, that Serena got her just deserts, they’ll feel guilty about still loving and missing her. They need you to take a step back. To refrain from judgement.

  “I’m not saying it’ll be easy. But it could be the difference between those girls growing up with a bearable sorrow, and never getting past the rage and bitterness and confusion. They’re too young to see it for themselves, but in order to reconcile those feelings they’ll need to be able to acce
pt both parents and the mistakes they made, and love them anyway if they still can.”

  He found Hugo staring at him as if he’d sprouted an extra head. “What?”

  Hugo coughed to cover his confusion. “Nothing. I’m sorry. I expect you’re right. Er—when we first met, and I wasn’t convinced you were the right person for this job? I was wrong.”

  Chapter Six

  In the morning, after Brodie had taken Paddy to school and checked the office for messages, they piled Daniel’s belongings into the back of her car and she drove him to Sparrow Hill. Peris had offered to collect him, but Brodie had work there too.

  “I’m pretty sure they’ll have thought to check her address book,” said Daniel mildly. “If Serena had Constance’s number they wouldn’t have needed your services.”

  Brodie nodded. “I know. But there’ll be a lot of old friends and acquaintances in that book, and some of them may have kept in touch with both sisters. But most people haven’t the nerve to phone fifty strangers asking who they do and don’t know, and asking again until they get an answer they believe. That’s why I’m worth my fee. I don’t care who I offend.”

  It was true: most people are too polite to be good at research. When she first moved into this field, which was when she was still working as a solicitor’s clerk, Brodie had been embarrassed too. She was a well-brought-up young woman who found it hard to quiz total strangers. But she discovered that most of them were polite too, and if they could help they would. The only time they got aggressive was when they had something to hide, and that brought out the hunter in Brodie. Embarrassment gave way to cunning.

  She dropped the back seat of the car and lifted the tail-gate. “How much are you taking with you?”

  “Everything,” said Daniel. When she saw his belongings lined up at the front door she realised it was a stupid question. Apart from the telescope, everything he owned was in one suitcase, and the suitcase was hers. He’d bought some clothes since the fire, and replaced the telescope and some of the books. He had no furniture, no equipment, no personal treasures of any kind. Nothing of his previous life had survived.