by Annie Dalton
Even so, out of habit, Anna found herself giving him a highly-edited version of her weekend; mischievous character sketches of the people in her group and incidents that she hoped might amuse him.
‘So, it wasn’t really your cup of tea,’ George Ottaway chuckled after she’d described Daisy inexplicably channelling the young Princess Elizabeth for her innocent school girl.
‘To begin with, I thought it was utterly ridiculous, all these supposed adults rushing around like extras in Miss Marple.’
‘You never were much of a joiner,’ her grandfather said with a grin. ‘I remember taking you to see Peter Pan. You can’t have been more than three years old. When they begged the audience to clap their hands to show they all believed in fairies, you literally sat on your hands, clenching your little jaws together as if resisting torture!’
Anna stared at him open-mouthed. ‘I refused to save Tinkerbell? What a horrible child I must have been!’
‘Not at all,’ her grandfather said at once. ‘You were genuinely concerned for Tinkerbell. You just refused to succumb to mass hysteria. Quite rightly in my opinion. I was rather proud of you!’
Anna hastily looked away. She didn’t remember the pantomime, but her mother had always given the impression that Anna was a stroppy, distrustful, little girl. This new interpretation of her character touched her to the point of tears.
‘Well, anyway,’ she said, taking refuge in briskness, ‘believe it or not, by the end of the day I had almost suspended all my disbelief!’
‘Honestly? You felt as if you had genuinely slipped back in time?’
She nodded. ‘At the ball, especially. Anjali and her team really went to town on the details. Plus, we’d spent all day immersed in various wartime scenarios, so it wasn’t hard to imagine that we’d all come through that terrible war and were ready to celebrate like crazy.’ She smiled at her grandfather. ‘Was it like that in real life?’
‘I’m sure it must have been.’ For some reason he avoided her eyes, taking the lid from the teapot to see if it needed topping up, and pouring in – it seemed to Anna – completely unnecessary hot water.
Aware that she’d said something to disturb him; she tried to turn it into a joke. ‘So – did you go crazy on VE Day? Jump into fountains? Kiss beautiful strangers?’
‘I’m afraid not. It sounds rather wonderful.’ He attempted a smile.
‘So what –?’ she started.
‘I was with the men who liberated Bergen Belsen.’ Her grandfather’s voice came out with unusual force. ‘That sounds extremely grand but it was actually more distressing and shameful than celebratory.’
Anna set down her cup. ‘I had no idea. Mum never said.’
‘She didn’t know. I never talked about it. I couldn’t. I think I briefly alluded to it to your grandmother once.’
‘It must have been horrible.’ Anna pulled a face. ‘Sorry, that’s a grossly inadequate thing to say.’
‘There are no adequate words,’ her grandfather said, very quietly. He rubbed his hand across his face as if to banish some unspeakable image. ‘I still dream about it. The smell. The – the bodies.’ He took a breath. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ Anna said. ‘I didn’t mean to make you feel so …’
She’d have given anything to take back her careless words, anything to spare him the memories of such horror. Not knowing what else to do, she poured them both fresh tea so they could both regroup.
‘Well—’ George Ottaway said, with a slightly shaky laugh, ‘—to return to the present day. Your weekend was good in parts? Like the curate’s egg?’
‘Actually, it took rather a grim turn,’ she admitted. After what he’d just told her Anna felt she owed her grandfather the truth. ‘Last night, a woman had too much to drink, wandered off into the grounds, fell into a pond and drowned. Or so we think.’ She had an unwanted flashback to the dead woman floating amongst the budding water lilies.
‘These things happen.’ Her grandfather sounded uncharacteristically brusque. ‘That’s one thing I learned in the army. If some drunken idiot is bent on self-destruction there’s isn’t a thing you can do to prevent it.’
Anna was taken aback. ‘To be fair, we don’t know for sure if she was drunk or self-destructive.’ But George Ottaway wasn’t listening. He seemed distracted, as if he was wondering how to broach some unpleasant subject. She heard him take a steadying breath.
‘Talking of drunken idiots, I gather Dominic Scott-Neville is back in the country.’
Anna felt a sudden dark buzzing inside her head.
‘No doubt he’s back to fritter away the family fortune,’ her grandfather said, apparently oblivious to her distress, ‘after he’s danced on his father’s grave. Not that I’d blame him. Ralph was a – well, we all know what Ralph was,’ he finished grimly.
Despite the hothouse warmth of Bramley Lodge, Anna felt herself go freezing cold to her core. For a moment, she was back on that college rooftop on New Year’s Eve, hearing Alec Faber gasp, ‘If you think I’m a monster …’ She couldn’t seem to breathe.
Her grandfather started talking again. ‘Don’t look so shocked, darling. Your grandmother and I weren’t so old and out of touch that we didn’t know what was going on. We knew Dominic was part of that crowd you ran with. We knew about the drink and drugs.’
But Anna was still on that terrifying rooftop, as Alec’s dry calloused hands frantically tried to pull away from hers. ‘Just let go!’ he’d begged hoarsely. ‘Can’t you see I want to die?’
‘I had no idea you even knew Dominic’s name,’ she said faintly. Somewhere beneath the inrush of unwelcome memories, she was aware of a feeling of suffocating shame.
‘I knew it all right,’ he said grimly. ‘And all his other entitled friends. That ghastly boyfriend of yours. Max, wasn’t it? You were worth ten of any one of them, but you just couldn’t see it.’
He saw Anna’s stricken face and his voice softened. ‘On the other hand, if you hadn’t been out running wild every night, you might have been home when …’ He shot an inadvertent glance at the family photograph on the table behind him. ‘There’ve been times when I’ve thought I should thank the little bastard.’ His voice suddenly cracked.
Her grandfather didn’t know everything then, Anna thought. He didn’t know what she’d suspected for so many years and driven herself to the edge of madness trying to prove.
‘Your father worried about you too obviously,’ he went on. ‘But by that time, he was too entwined with the Scott-Neville family to be able to take a stand.’
His words jolted her back to the present. She stared at him. ‘What do you mean, “entwined”?’
‘Because of all the money Scott-Neville Senior poured into your father’s auction house.’
‘I didn’t know about that!’ Anna said, appalled.
‘It was just after Will was born,’ her grandfather said. ‘Hempels had hit a bad patch. I never knew the details. All I know is that Ralph Scott-Neville conveniently stepped in to save the day. Just as a silent partner, but it meant your father felt his hands were tied.’
Anna felt her known world tilting on its axis. Julian might not have been her biological father but, in her heart, he was still her dad. It was unthinkable that he’d been mixed up with the Scott-Nevilles, the same family that had spawned Dominic. If you think I’m a monster …
‘Your father wasn’t the easiest man to get along with,’ her grandfather said. ‘But he wasn’t a bad person. If anything, he cared about you all too much. He wanted his family to have the best of everything.’
I wasn’t his family though. Anna felt a guilty pang. She still hadn’t told her grandfather about Tim’s discovery that he and Anna were brother and sister. How could she tell him that her mother, his daughter, once had an affair with Chris Freemantle, her father’s best friend?
She saw George Ottaway pass his hand shakily over his face. ‘I don’t know how this conversation got so dark. All this talking about the war
. It’s opened up a whole can of worms. Tactless old man that I am. And now I’ve upset you.’
Anna insisted that he hadn’t, but as they said their goodbyes her grandfather seemed subdued and she knew he wasn’t convinced.
As she drove back to Park Town, she kept helplessly flashing back to New Year’s Eve, when she had fought to save Alec Faber from falling to his death. Alec Faber, who had betrayed the trust of his superiors at the Foreign Office and been callously betrayed in his turn. Professionally disgraced and cast out by his family, he had lost everything except an unquenchable thirst for revenge. But his last words, ground out through gritted teeth, still reverberated through Anna, like a dark riddle that had the ring of a malign prophesy. Dominic Scott-Neville was my brother’s godchild. And if you think I’m a monster, Dominic is the devil!
She let herself in through her front door and was immediately, rapturously greeted by Bonnie. Anna knelt in her hallway and wrapped her arms gratefully around her White Shepherd.
‘I have missed you,’ she said.
‘She’s missed you too,’ Jake called. ‘Kept going upstairs to look for you.’
She found him in her bedroom and was childishly disappointed to see him packing his bags.
‘Hi, stranger,’ he said.
She walked into his arms. Home, she thought, closing her eyes. In novels, female characters always went on about how their men smelled of lemons, mint or some other homely-yet-manly kitchen ingredient. Jake, however, just smelled uniquely and appealingly of Jake.
‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back,’ she said into his shoulder. ‘I did an unscheduled detour via Bramley Lodge.’
‘To check on George? I thought you would.’
‘How does it feel to live with an obsessive?’ she asked him forlornly.
‘He’s ninety,’ Jake said. ‘He’s incredibly precious to you.’
‘But so are you precious to me! And I’ve just wasted an entire weekend of you being here.’
He tightened his arms around her. ‘Sweetheart, I’m a rough, tough boy from South Carolina and I intend to stick around to annoy you for aeons yet. So, don’t you fret about some little bitty weekend. How was George anyway?’
Anna would have trusted Jake with her life, but she still felt too raw to share what her grandfather had told her, so she just said casually, ‘He was OK.’
He gave her one of his searching looks. He knew something was up, but being Jake he wouldn’t push it. So he said equally casually, ‘Mind passing me those shirts?’
She picked up the pile of identical, flawlessly-pressed cotton shirts.
‘Wow,’ she said in awe. ‘One day I must get you to teach me to iron like a marine!’ She handed them over, careful not to disturb Jake’s pristine folds.
‘You know, it’s a funny thing.’ Jake’s southern drawl was suddenly as thick as honey. ‘People have this mistaken idea that getting into the marines has something to do with how well you handle fire arms or how many sit-ups you can do in sixty seconds. When it’s actually all about the ironing!’
She laughed, relieved. Jake knew she needed him to keep it light. They continued in the same light jokey vein, until his taxi came to take him to the airport.
She and Bonnie watched from her front step, as the taxi performed a neat U-turn in front of the lovely, old, Georgian terrace.Then they went back indoors and down the stairs to her basement kitchen. Despite everything that had happened there, this was the room she instinctively retreated to for comfort.
After Anna’s grandfather had signed over the house to her, she’d had it converted into three flats, two of which she rented out. She’d also got the builder to open up the kitchen to bring in more light. Now, French doors looked out onto a leafy courtyard with her herb pots and bird-feeders. She opened the doors and went outside, Bonnie following at her heels. With hopeful eyes, Bonnie brought Anna one of several old tennis balls that were littered around the garden and Anna threw it for her for a while, trying to take both their minds off Jake’s absence.
She decided she needed something to eat. She soaked slices of bread in beaten egg and milk with a spritz of vanilla – she had Jake to thank for this last addition. Then she smeared oil on one of her grandmother’s heavy-bottomed pans and set it to heat on the stove. Anna had inherited all her grandmother’s pans, along with the Limoges crockery that she had secretly coveted ever since she was a little girl. She still caught herself looking for those perfect, translucent cups and saucers on her dresser shelves, even though she’d seen them smashed to smithereens by someone who was trying to kill her and Bonnie. The dresser had remained bare for months, except for a single cup which Tansy had painstakingly repaired for her. Then, for her birthday, Tansy and Isadora had taken Anna to a local department store and bought her a set of kitchen crockery by Littala. Designed in Finland, the mugs, bowls and plates all featured glowing fairy-tale designs against a rich midnight blue.
When Anna had cooked her French toast to the right degree of puffy goldenness, she drizzled on maple syrup, shamelessly eating it straight out of the pan. As she ate, she could still feel the shockwaves from her grandfather’s revelation.
Her own father mixed up with the Scott-Nevilles. How had things at Hempels got so bad? And how come Anna hadn’t known? The auction house had been in her father’s family for more than three generations. Her dad had both passionately loved and resented it, like an endearing, yet excessively demanding, elderly relative.
When she was small, Anna had been similarly passionate about Hempels. Then, in high school, she’d made new friends whose fathers were film directors, TV presenters and music producers. In her supercilious teenage world-view, a boring auction house couldn’t compete; something she’d made eye-wateringly clear, she remembered, to her everlasting shame.
Seriously, how hard would it have been, to try to take an interest in the business that meant so much to him? The same business that kept Anna and her siblings comfortably fed and clothed. She wished – she immediately checked herself. Don’t go there, Anna.
She washed the pan, dried it, hung it on its steel rod next to the others and heard the faint ding as it knocked briefly against the others. She realized she was vividly picturing the elegant, old, Georgian building in South Kensington and felt a confused longing.
It’s not too late, she told herself. Hempels had not died with her father. In fact, under its new owner, its reputation seemed to be going from strength to strength.
A normal person would just jump on a train and pay them a visit. With a pang of shame, Anna admitted to herself that she would probably never again be that person. Since the murders, too many places had become fraught with painful associations. Oxford, her beloved city, was full of such hidden minefields.
But going to Hempels, her father’s auction house, would completely undo her.
THREE
Surfacing from a confused dream, Anna reached for Jake then, with a sensation like missing a step, remembered that he was on the other side of the English Channel.
He’d sent her a text.
Here I am in Paris and I’m spending it with a bunch of international security geeks. P.S. Don’t go getting into mischief now you’re a lady of leisure.
P.P.S Bet I know where Bonnie slept the night!
Anna would swear she hadn’t made even the tiniest sound, yet she could feel Bonnie on high alert in her basket, only just containing her longing to start the day.
Peering over the edge of the bed, she saw dark-rimmed eyes hopefully looking up at her. ‘How do you know the exact minute I wake up?’ Bonnie wagged her tail. ‘Classified info, huh?’
Anna threw on some old clothes and a pair of trainers that had seen better days, grabbed an energy bar and took Bonnie for a long walk in Port Meadow, because, as Jake had pointed out, there was currently nowhere else she had to be.
After much soul-searching, Anna had handed in her notice at Walsingham College. She’d taken the job share as a means of keeping herself grounded
, whilst she pursued what she’d thought of as her real occupation; following up any lead that might help her to find her family’s killers. Then, after her near-death experience on New Year’s Eve, it became a matter of urgency for Anna to reassess her life. Well, it was the first time I’d had a life to re-assess, she thought with a flicker of humour.
She glanced down at Bonnie, as she stopped to sniff some compelling, springtime scent that had sprung up since their last visit. Trotting through the shiny, young buttercups, she looked exactly like a white wolf; the magical wolf who had changed Anna’s life.
It was just weeks after she’d brought Bonnie back from the rescue shelter, that Anna had found herself involved in a murder investigation along with fellow dog walkers, Tansy and Isadora. Inexplicably, this traumatic experience had helped Anna begin to heal from her own trauma. It wasn’t the most obvious cure, she thought, just as stumbling across the body of a murder victim wasn’t the obvious basis for lasting friendships, but by the time the case had been resolved, these two very different women had become indispensable to her well-being.
So now that she’d finally got a life, Anna had decided to do something with it, something worthwhile. She had no idea what this might be, but giving in her notice had seemed like a crucial first step. Her admin job had started feeling too much like another place to hide. A holding pattern, she thought, remembering a phrase her therapist, Miriam, had used. The repetitive tasks of university admin were supposed to keep Anna safe and sane. But life wasn’t safe, tidy, or remotely controllable, as Anna had good reason to know.
Bonnie had wandered off to investigate a mole hill. Like her owner, she was enjoying not being squeezed into a timetable.
‘Barney – Barney!’ someone yelled, followed by a couple of blasts on a whistle. A leggy, young spaniel, brown and glossy as a horse chestnut, came bounding up to Bonnie, long ears flying. Anna’s White Shepherd endured his antics until he tried to lick her face and then she calmly knocked him flat on his back where he remained, with a surprised, faintly goofy expression.
