Deep Blue Sea

by Tasmina Perry

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  ‘Diana, what do you think the day should be like?’ said Patty.

  She felt nervous speaking first. Everyone else around the room was so confident, so sure about everything that came out of their mouths. Diana never had been.

  ‘I’m bothered about the guest list,’ she said tentatively.

  Patty looked at her with encouragement.

  ‘I looked around the funeral and there were too many people that Julian didn’t really know or care about,’ she continued haltingly.

  Patty started scribbling notes. ‘We should all suggest a dozen people that Julian really liked. Get Anne-Marie Carr involved too. Di’s right. Everyone knows how successful Julian was in business, but what about all the other things he did, like that Atlas Mountains trek for charity? How much did he raise, Greg?’

  ‘One point one million.’

  ‘We could make a slideshow of all his adventures,’ suggested Diana.

  ‘I’ve got lots of photos from when we did the Paris–Dakar rally,’ said Greg, sitting up straight in his chair.

  ‘There’s plenty of that stuff,’ agreed Adam.

  ‘It shouldn’t just be a load of showing-off,’ said Diana carefully.

  ‘I can tell some horror stories about his cooking,’ smiled Michael. ‘Remember when he dragged us fishing to Iceland, Greg, and said he was going to whip us up a Scandinavian delicacy. What did he give us?’

  ‘Harkarl.’

  ‘What’s that?’ smiled Diana.

  ‘Fermented shark.’

  ‘It is a delicacy,’ said Greg.

  ‘Not served with soggy chips,’ roared Michael.

  They were all laughing and a little misty-eyed.

  Diana thought of the music that had been played at the funeral. The aria sung by the world-famous soprano had been beautiful, stirring and appropriate, but it hadn’t been the sort of music Julian really loved. She remembered how he used to listen to U2’s ‘One’ over and over again when he’d had a particularly stressful week at work; how Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ would blare out of his iPod when he went for a jog around the lake; the heavy-metal music he was nostalgic about from his youth – his old denim jacket covered in Metallica and the Scorpions patches still hung in the storage room, never allowed to be thrown out.

  To people in the City Julian had been the king of the world, but in his own space he was just a regular guy who liked football and middle-of-the-road rock. He loved cars and watching Top Gear; he liked going to boxing matches with his friends, and fishing for salmon in crystal-clear waters.

  What a life he had led, she thought with bittersweet sorrow. She wondered if he had remembered all those things as he tied the climbing rope around his neck. She wondered how long it had taken for him to die; whether there had been a point when he’d thought about all the wonderful things his life had been full of, wonderful things he could do again, and wanted to stop what he was doing. Or had it been too late by then? Had he been past the point of no return, so that he couldn’t come back to the people who loved him?

  ‘What do you think, Adam? You were closest to him.’

  Diana didn’t dare look at him.

  ‘Do you remember John Duncan?’ said Adam.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Worked in the post room. Single dad. Died about ten years ago. Well, his kid Luke got in touch yesterday. He said that Jules had turned his life around. Apparently Luke got into drink and drugs after his dad passed away. Jules paid for him to go to rehab, to go back to college then on to university. He’s just qualified as an architect.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Diana whispered.

  ‘Apparently he wrote to you too.’

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to open all my post yet.’

  ‘You should. I think you’ll find a lot of stories like that.’

  After an hour, they had a long list of things they all agreed would give Julian the memorial service he deserved, after which they all dispersed.

  Diana found herself standing on the street alone with Adam.

  ‘I’m glad we did that,’ said Adam finally.

  Diana nodded. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’

  ‘Well, Patty called me this morning . . .’

  The conversation stopped still.

  ‘Here’s your house key,’ Diana said, rooting around in her bag. She handed it over to him and he put it in his back pocket. It was as if she were handing over a future she hadn’t yet lived.

  ‘Do you want to go for lunch? None of us really ate much in there.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’ She looked at him and then away. She didn’t want to spend the rest of the afternoon with him. Not today. Not when they had just spent an hour talking about Julian. ‘Are you coming to the Boughton fair on Saturday?’

  ‘Am I invited?’

  ‘Actually, I’ve got a surprise for you.’

  ‘Sounds intriguing,’ he said, his eyes dancing with hers.

  His smile gave her confidence. ‘Perhaps you should come and see it before Saturday.’

  ‘Now this really is curious. What is it?’

  ‘Remember you encouraged me to invest in that café? You said I needed a project.’

  ‘You’ve done it?’ The caution that had been evident in his expression just a few minutes earlier dissipated.

  ‘We’ve just tarted it up really, changed the menu. The grand opening is the day of the fair. I’m picking Charlie up from school on Friday. Maybe you could come after work on Thursday to see it.’ She felt bold, brazen saying it. Were her intentions so blatant? That she wanted to be alone with him?

  She held her breath until he answered.

  ‘Okay. I’ll see you then. It’s the place on the green, isn’t it?’

  And she smiled with relief.

  42

  ‘Want to meet to get the train home?’ asked Liam on the other end of the phone. He was in London to see friends for lunch and they had a loose arrangement to travel back to Somerfold together.

  ‘I’ve got things to do,’ she said distractedly.

  ‘Want any company?’

  ‘No. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ he pressed.

  ‘If you must know, I’ve tracked down one of Julian’s other mistresses.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ He whistled slowly. ‘So he really did get around a bit.’

  ‘Thanks for that insight, Liam.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘St John’s Wood.’

  ‘Then I’m coming with you. I’m only in Marylebone.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she protested.

  ‘Rach, I don’t like you going off alone. Not after what happened to Ross.’

  Rachel grinned to herself. She usually hated other people bossing her around, but she couldn’t help admit there was something flattering about Liam’s concern.

  ‘So you want to be my white knight, do you?’ She knew she was flirting, but what the hell.

  ‘I’ll meet you at St John’s Wood station in twenty minutes,’ he said gruffly, and hung up.

  Marjorie Case-Jones, the society beauty who had given Susie McCormack her card, had been understandably jumpy on the phone when Rachel had called her, but the name Julian Denver had opened doors. Literally.

  The Case-Jones residence was an impressive detached house on one of the area’s prime residential streets. The iron gate swung open as they announced themselves. ‘Mrs Case-Jones? I’m Rachel Miller, we spoke earlier. This is my friend Liam Giles.’

  The woman seemed to soften when she saw Liam. Not for the first time, Rachel realised the power of a good-looking man at your side.

  ‘Come through,’ she said quietly.
/>   The kitchen was situated at the back of the house. It was an impressive space with double-height ceilings and glass and marble at every turn. Certainly no cooking was ever done here; it was spotless, and the ridiculously over-the-top appliances – a chrome coffee machine built to serve a thousand people a day, a matt-black range with at least ten industrial burners – were there for aesthetic effect, not practical reasons.

  ‘Do sit,’ said Marjorie, indicating a row of ironically distressed fifties bar stools. She herself took a seat on the other side of the breakfast bar.

  Rachel could see that Susie McCormack had been right: there were striking similarities between Marjorie and Diana. Marjorie had vivid chestnut hair as opposed to Diana’s dark elegant locks, but both shared exquisite pale, delicate features.

  There was an open bottle of wine and two glasses on the counter – Rachel noted that the bottle was a little over half empty already. Dutch courage? Or was this standard operating procedure for rich housewives at three in the afternoon?

  ‘It was quite a shock to hear Julian’s name when you called,’ she began. ‘I mean, obviously I’d read all about it – terrible to think of him like that – but I didn’t expect to get a telephone call, not after so long.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Oh, I saw him on and off quite regularly,’ said Marjorie. ‘It’s the nature of the circles we move in, a very small world. My husband gets invited to the same parties, which can be a little awkward. It’s not easy keeping up pretences.’

  ‘What does your husband do?’

  ‘He’s in business. Nothing you have probably ever heard of, but successful all the same.’

  Rachel glanced around the room and had to agree with her.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it about Jules,’ Marjorie said slowly. ‘We see our husbands go off to work each day, we have no idea what they really do, how much pressure they are under. How well do we know the people we love? you might ask yourself. My husband certainly knows very little about my life. Regarding some aspects, I’d like to keep it that way.’

  Rachel understood what she was implying. ‘Mrs Case-Jones, I assure you I’m not here to embarrass you or make your relationship with Julian public. Nothing you tell me will ever leave this room, I promise.’

  ‘You promise?’ laughed Marjorie. ‘Oh, you’re good. I know what you did, Rachel, I know the whole story. Do you really think we didn’t discuss every last detail about Julian’s newspaper disgrace at every dinner party for about six months? The girl who betrayed her sister says “I promise”? Ha!’

  Rachel noticed too late how Marjorie was slurring some of her words and how her left eye was drooping slightly. Clearly this half-finished bottle was not her first.

  ‘So if you don’t trust me and you have no love for Diana, why are you speaking to me?’

  ‘Because I loved him,’ she said simply. ‘And I can’t help but think that if I’d pushed him a bit more to do the right thing, he might be alive today.’

  ‘Do the right thing?’ asked Liam cautiously.

  ‘We talked about running away together. We both knew we could make each other happy. If you love someone you should be with them, simple as that. You shouldn’t let golden handcuffs get in your way.’

  ‘He wouldn’t divorce Diana?’ said Rachel.

  Marjorie shook her head violently. ‘No. It wasn’t going to happen.’

  ‘How long did your relationship go on for?’

  ‘Maybe eighteen months. It started a couple of years ago. It ended when Diana lost the last baby.’

  ‘How often did you see each other?’

  ‘Whenever we could. The sex was good, so good, but we really liked each other too. We could talk, confide in each other. I’m not sure Julian had a great deal in common with his wife. I think she came along at the right time. A time when he thought he should settle down, have a family. I think he liked that she had a child already. He wanted to protect her, look after her. I think a shrink might say he had a saviour complex.’

  ‘You say you loved Julian, but was the feeling mutual?’

  ‘I thought we had a future together.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘He bought a house for us. We were both sick of all the rules we had to follow to not get caught. Assumed names at hotels, never entering a building at the same time – it took some of the fun away, to be honest. So he got us a place where we could meet.’

  Rachel’s heart gave a little leap – her hunch had been correct.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Highgate, of all places,’ said Marjorie with a laugh. ‘He loved it up there. The expanse of the Heath, the view of the city.’

  ‘He bought it?’

  Marjorie nodded. ‘Handed me the keys all tied up with ribbon. That was typical of Julian. Big sweeping gestures. Declarations of love . . . Didn’t turn out that way, though, did it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was ready to leave my husband. Julian said I could live in the Highgate place when I did. But when Diana got pregnant and passed the twelve-week point where she usually miscarried, he cooled off the relationship. He wanted me to play the little mistress, tucked up in the cottage in Highgate, but he made it clear that it wasn’t going anywhere more serious. I ended it, thinking he would come running back. But he never did, and now he never will.’

  ‘And what about the house?’

  ‘Of course he didn’t put it in my name. But I still have the keys.’

  ‘Could I borrow them? I’m looking for something that Julian had, something I think he might have tucked away somewhere.’

  Marjorie laughed. ‘It was a tucking-away place all right. I mean, it used to be me.’

  She stood up and left the room, returning a few moments later with a piece of paper. She slid it across the counter.

  ‘That’s the address, and these . . .’ she held up a set of keys, ‘these will get you inside.’

  43

  ‘This isn’t what I was imagining at all,’ said Liam, shutting the door of the cottage behind him and looking around the small, low-ceilinged room.

  Rachel couldn’t help but agree. Julian’s little house was in a quiet back street near the cemetery. It looked cute enough from the outside, with wisteria scrambling around the door. But inside it had the unloved air of a house that hadn’t been occupied for some time.

  ‘I thought it was going to be all chrome and leather,’ said Liam as they looked into the rather ordinary front room with its corduroy sofa and pine bookshelves.

  ‘Well he was hardly going to have anything too flashy, was he?’ said Rachel. ‘This was supposed to be discreet. Besides, I think he was only interested in the bedroom.’

  They went upstairs into the master suite. The bedroom covered most of the first floor, with high windows offering a view out across Parliament Hill and the Ponds. It had cream curtains and crisp baby-blue sheets on the king-sized oak sleigh bed, along with evidence of a woman’s touch in the generous en suite. Marjorie? she wondered. Of course, perhaps Julian had changed the decor every time he acquired a new mistress – even though for all they knew, Marjorie Case-Jones was the only one he’d brought here.

  ‘Oh yes, now this is more like it,’ said Liam, coming up behind her. ‘A proper little shag pad.’

  ‘Is it?’ snapped Rachel. ‘Does it fit nicely with your image of him? Does it tick all the right boxes?’

  Liam put his hand on her arm. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She nodded, and exhaled sharply. ‘I’m sorry too. It’s been a long day and I guess I just hate finding all this stuff out.’

  ‘Julian’s secret life.’

  She nodded sadly. ‘He wasn’t my favourite person by a long chalk. But he was my sister’s husband. My nephew’s father. How can you live with some
one, look them in the eye each day, knowing you have another life, another lover? It’s just all lies. Marriage. It’s one big lie.’

  ‘Not always,’ he said quietly. ‘Not in most cases.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, sniffing hard. ‘Let’s do this room by room. I’ll start downstairs. You take up here. I’m not sure I can bear to find balled-up lingerie at the bottom of the bed.

  She clomped back downstairs and got to work. It didn’t take long; the house wasn’t that big. She found nothing of any note; everything was where it should be: pots and pans in the kitchen cupboards, brooms and mops under the stairs, DVDs in the cabinet by the TV. As she’d expected, the books on the shelves were pulpy boy’s own novels by George MacDonald Fraser mixed with a few sports and movie biogs: the real Julian, she supposed, compared to the ‘acceptable’ Julian she had seen in the Notting Hill bedroom. Reading Diana’s diaries, she had got the sense that her sister was living in a gilded cage. But did the same apply to Julian? Had he boxed himself into a hole he didn’t want to be in?

  She was just walking back into the hall when she heard a muffled call from upstairs.

  ‘Rach, I think you might want to see this.’

  But Liam wasn’t in the bedroom or the bathroom.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In the loft,’ came the reply.

  She followed the sound to a door in the corridor she had assumed was a cupboard. Inside was a set of steep stairs, and at the top, another bedroom, which had been converted into a study of sorts. More of the real Julian, she thought as she walked in. An acoustic guitar was propped in one corner, and there was another TV with an expensive-looking games console, plus a pile of games cases strewn in front of it. There was also a desk covered with piles of papers – it looked as if Liam had been going through them.

  ‘In here,’ he said – she could just see his feet and his bum sticking in the air. He was leaning into a storage cupboard built into the eaves of the house.

  He threw her an A4-sized book. Actually no, it was professionally bound with a plastic cover, but it was obviously a business report. In fact, it was more than that. Much more.