Twenty-five
A light drizzle had started to fall at Boar’s Hill and when Rowan arrived back, the house looked damp and sullen, as if the atmosphere inside had seeped through the walls to infect the façade. When she closed the front door, the light coming through the glass panels was barely enough to see by so she walked to the table and switched on the elephant lamp.
Turning back past the bottom of the stairs to hang up her coat, she saw movement at the corner of her eye and gave a cry of alarm.
Four or five steps up, beyond the reach of the lamp, a man was sitting. Weak light from the landing window behind him outlined broad shoulders, a strong neck. His face was hidden in shadow. Run, her instincts urged, run, but fear rooted her to the spot. She couldn’t move her feet.
‘So here you are.’
A voice out of the gloom. An American voice. Cory – it was Michael Cory. She put her hand over her mouth as he stood up, extending himself to full height. Rowan’s heart beat against her ribcage like a panicked bird. He came towards her, down the steps, and as he moved into the light, she saw that he was dressed entirely in black: black jeans, a black sweater. Black leather gloves. No hat or coat, just gloves.
‘What …’ Her throat was dry; she choked. ‘How did you get in here? What are you doing?’ She couldn’t take her eyes off his hands. Why was he wearing gloves?
‘What am I doing?’ When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he loomed over her, nearly a foot taller and several stones heavier. ‘No, Rowan,’ he shook his head. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
She stared at him. Cory stared back, eyes glinting in the half-light. Then, spinning round, he went to the stairs and reached back into the darkness.
When Rowan saw what he was holding, her skin went cold.
The cardboard box from the wardrobe in her room. Marianne’s sketches.
‘Clearly you know what this is.’
She said nothing. Heart beating wildly, she watched as he carried the box to the hall table and took off the lid. Setting it aside, he lifted out the wad of tissue that held the contents in place then the batch of sketches that Marianne had given her over the years, the hands and the windfalls, Seb’s vinaigrette and the nude. As he put them down and reached into the box again, her stomach turned over so sharply she thought she was going to vomit.
He brought it out, careful to hold it only by the edges despite his gloves. Her eyes were accustomed to the low light now and she saw that the Sellotape had already been undone. He folded the edges back with the tips of his fingers, minimal pressure.
As if it were an offering, he carried it on open palms. When he reached her, she turned her head away, kept her eyes trained on the floor, which seemed to be tipping under her feet.
‘Look at it, Rowan.’
‘No.’
‘Look at it!’ he roared, his mouth inches from her ear, his voice so loud it was all she could do not to shriek in fright. He thrust it at her.
She kept her hands by her sides, she refused to touch it, but she looked.
She hadn’t seen it since the night a decade ago when she’d wrapped it up, taped it tightly and laid it to rest at the bottom of the box but ten years had done nothing to diminish its power. The impact was almost as great as the first time she’d seen it, upstairs on the worktable in Marianne’s studio. It was so skilful, so gorgeously done, and so appalling.
The houseboat had been moored near Donnington Bridge, where the river was distracted from its course for a few hundred yards by a handful of islets overgrown with willow trees and silky rushes. The day she and Marianne had gone to find it, a breeze had stirred among the leaves, making the whole scene scintillate with light, a million Impressionist brushstrokes. The boat was beautiful, too, not a narrow-boat built to negotiate locks and canals, but one of the wooden barges commissioned by colleges at the end of the nineteenth century to entertain guests for the racing at Summer Eights. Twenty feet wide and high-ceilinged, it had an elegant pillared porch and huge oval windows along the sides to allow maximum views of the rowers in inclement weather.
But if the scene that day had been a play of light, Marianne had reimagined it in darkness. The innocent green was gone, replaced by flickering shards of orange and black. In all but one of the windows, the glass had shattered, and the cabin behind was filled with fire. She’d drawn the scene then painstakingly coloured it: flames in yellow and orange and gold licked with a sort of voluptuous pleasure around the hands and face pressed against the one window that remained intact, the smallest one nearest the prow. The face of a woman whose agony made Rowan think of Hieronymus Bosch’s hideous tortured souls. A woman who knew she was dying.
There could be no doubt who’d drawn it. Marianne’s style was inscribed in every line, every serpentine branch and tongue of flame.
Cory’s stare had a near-physical weight and when Rowan raised her head to look at him, his eyes were dark, all pupil. Lit from below by the lamp, the broad planes of his face were hobgoblin-like, a Halloween mask. Over the roar of emotional turmoil came a wash of physical fear.
‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Just … get out.’
Half a laugh: Come on.
‘I can’t believe you.’ Her voice was shaking with a mix of fear and fury. ‘I can’t believe you did this. How dare you break in here and go through my stuff?’
‘When did she draw it?’ he said.
‘This was … You must have gone through everything; you must have …’
‘When?’ Surging forward, he grabbed her by the top of the arms.
Rowan gave a cry of alarm and tried to shake herself free but his grip was too powerful, he was too strong. ‘Get off me! Get … You’re hurting me.’
‘Tell me.’
The sketch was still in his hand, clamped between her upper arm and his fingers. She heard it crunch as he tightened his grip again. ‘It’s none of your business,’ she yelled, her face inches from his. ‘It’s nothing to do with you – nothing!’
She thought he’d shake her, shout back, but instead he let go of her and stepped away. He took a moment but when he spoke again, his voice was calm and deadly serious. ‘If you don’t tell me what the fuck this means – the truth – I’m going to the police.’
She made herself look him in the eye. Nothing said he was bluffing.
‘I mean it, Rowan. You know I do.’
Behind her ribs, panic rose, bubbling. She was almost in tears. She tried to speak but she couldn’t do it.
‘Come on.’
‘Before,’ she said, finally.
‘Before what?’
‘Before it happened. Before Lorna was killed.’
She expected him to light up, to be filled with the glory of discovery, his triumph, but instead, at the moment he heard her, the glow in Cory’s eyes went out. It was as if a wire had snapped: the energy that hummed through him was gone; he slumped. Moving as if underwater, he let the picture drop on the table, went back to the stairs and sat down heavily, head in his hands.
For some seconds, there was silence. The air was thick, it bore down on Rowan, making it hard for her to breathe. She thought of the day Seb died, the unnatural quiet as she’d passed the police car on the drive, walked through the open front door.
‘So I was right.’ He spoke through his fingers. ‘She was Seb’s girlfriend.’
The word was a stone on Rowan’s tongue. At last she managed to get it out. ‘Yes.’
He made a sound in the back of his throat. ‘Why? If he had so many affairs, why her?’
‘He was going to leave Jacqueline.’
Cory lifted his head.
‘None of the other relationships mattered. They were just dalliances … crushes. He never loved them. Those women – they weren’t in the same league as Jacqueline, they were, I don’t know, like a … different species. Mazz used to say Seb relied on Jacqueline but it was more than that – much more. She inspired him – she made him see what he could be. They were really young when they met, only n
ineteen or twenty, and he always knew she’d helped make him the person he became.’
‘So why the hell would he … ?’
‘Seb thought Lorna was the same, as clever and original and generous – maybe she was, how would I know? – but she was younger and …’ Rowan closed her eyes, struggling. ‘Both his children had graduated – Marianne had just finished at the Slade. He wasn’t a family man any more, day to day, and he was turning fifty, getting older. He was looking for the next stage of his life.’
To her shame, tears came now, hot and insistent; she dashed them away with her cuff. If Cory noticed, he didn’t care.
‘It wasn’t just about sex for him,’ she said, voice thick. ‘Not in the long run: it had to be about brains, too. Lorna was both and she came along just when he was vulnerable.’
She remembered the evening they’d understood that it was really going to happen, that Marianne’s family as she’d known it was about to implode.
They’d been in the kitchen when Jacqueline arrived home to find Seb getting ready to go out. He was showered and newly shaved, exuding scents of soap and fresh laundry on one of the hottest evenings of the year. The atmosphere had been almost unbearable. Marianne hadn’t spoken a word to him since the party but after recovering from the initial shock, Jacqueline seemed to have decided to do what she always did: pretend nothing was happening and wait for it to blow itself out. The act had been tissue-thin, however, the strain visible in the hunch in her upper back, the false brightness of her voice and laugh. ‘Like a nursery school teacher in extremis,’ Mazz said.
The day after the party, Jacqueline had told Marianne that if it didn’t stop, if Seb didn’t tell Lorna it was over, she would go to the lab and confront her in person – turn the desks over, if she had to. They’d never known for sure if she’d actually done it, gone there that afternoon, but when she’d walked into the kitchen at Fyfield Road, it was clear that she’d reached breaking point. Her hands were shaking – her hair seemed to crackle with electricity. One look at Seb in his clean white shirt had been all it took. ‘Do it,’ she told him, tossing her shoulder bag on to the sofa. ‘Pack your case and get out. Go on – right now. Out. Here it is.’ She bowed, flourishing her hand in front of her like a medieval nobleman. ‘My permission.’
‘Jacq—’ He’d moved towards her but she’d put up her arms, barring him.
‘Don’t you dare try and touch me.’
‘Please, I never wanted this – I can’t bear the idea that …’
‘You can’t bear it?’ She’d jumped on his words, savage. ‘You? You’re tearing us all apart and you can’t bear it? Fuck you, Seb. Get out – just get out. Go and screw your bimbo to your heart’s content.’
A change had come over Seb then, they’d all seen it. Gone were apology and regret, the look that implored them not to hate him, and in their place was anger. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he said in a voice that had dropped an octave. ‘Don’t you dare talk about her like that.’
Jacqueline seemed to shrink. She stared at him as if she were looking at a stranger and then, in a whirl of hair and emerald silk, she ran out into the garden. Seb, face crimson, took several deep breaths, picked up his keys and phone and stalked out. Quick footsteps on the kitchen stairs then, seconds later, the bang of the front door.
When Rowan turned to her, Marianne looked as if she’d been slapped in the face. ‘It’s dying,’ she said. ‘My family’s dying and I’m just sitting here watching.’
‘You’re telling me she loved her father so much she killed his girlfriend to try and keep him.’
‘I’m not telling you – you’re forcing me to tell you.’
Rowan thought of the ten years she’d said nothing, kept the secret so that Marianne – all the remaining Glasses – could live their lives in peace. And here – today, now – she was saying the words. Marianne might be gone, beyond harm, but what about the others? ‘It wasn’t just to keep her father,’ she said. ‘It was to keep her family. Without Seb, it was broken.’
‘She thought killing someone would fix it?’ The look on Cory’s face was incredulity mixed with horror.
‘She wasn’t thinking at all.’
‘Then what?’
‘She was – not crazy but … She changed. We didn’t know at the time but it was the start of her breakdown.’
‘Did you know she was going to do it?’
Rowan recoiled. ‘No. Of course not. You think I would have let her? For Christ’s sake. I thought it was a fantasy, the picture: a way of getting some of her anger out. A vent, not a … plan.’
‘You want me to believe that? You think the police would?’
Icy fingers on the back of her neck. ‘When we went there,’ she said, ‘Mazz told me she just wanted to see it. Know your enemy – those were her words. It was only when it happened that I realised she’d been working it all out that day.’
Cory looked sick.
‘Lorna was away for the weekend, Seb had taken her to Devon, so Marianne knew she wouldn’t be there. She went aboard.’
She remembered her own heart pounding as she urged Mazz to get off, come away. Marianne on the foredeck, peering through the windows, lifting the lid of the locker under the bench, examining the cylinder of Calor Gas. Rowan hadn’t realised the significance of that until later.
For some seconds, Cory said nothing.
‘But if she did all this, how come you have the picture?’ he said finally. ‘It was in your room.’
‘I took it. Stole it, Marianne said.’
‘When?’
‘Afterwards – after she … After Lorna died. Mazz was acting so erratically, her behaviour was so irrational, I was scared she was going to give herself away. The police came here – obviously they found out about the affair. I had visions of them going up to the studio and finding it lying on her worktable like I did. I should have burned it. Why didn’t I just bloody burn it?’
Cory took the gloves off and dropped them on the step next to him. ‘I need a drink,’ he said.
As soon as she walked into the kitchen, Rowan saw how he’d got into the house. The door was closed or pushed to, at least, but even so, her eyes went at once to the damage to the jamb. The wood around the lock was splintered – shattered; the mechanism had been knocked right out.
‘You kicked the door in?’ She stared at him.
Going to it, she tried to press the handle but couldn’t: the catch was jammed. Not that there was anywhere for it to go now, anyway. The door swung open and she stepped out on to the patio. At hip-height, there was half a boot print on the paintwork, treads precisely defined. She fixed her eyes on it until she could barely see it any more. Behind her, the rain fizzed like static on the flagstones.
‘I’m supposed to be looking after the place.’
‘I’ll get it fixed,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay for it, obviously. Come in, you’re getting wet.’
He’d seen the brandy on the worktop and she left him to pour it while she went to the utility room and turned on the boiler. The old Fair Isle sweater was on the arm of the sofa so she put it on, guessing by the way Cory looked at it that he’d seen Marianne wear it, too.
Going to his usual seat at the table, he sat down heavily. His expression was one she hadn’t seen before: he looked sad. He laid his hands on the tabletop, one either side of his glass. ‘I suspected. No, I knew – she told me, pretty much. But I just … Even an hour ago, when I found the drawing, I still hoped there would be an explanation, that you’d tell me she’d done it afterwards, I was making a mistake. I wanted you to tell me it was an accident. Even manslaughter.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He took a long sip of brandy. ‘All that stuff about you not giving her space after Seb died …’
‘A lie.’ Rowan made herself look him in the eyes. ‘It’s what I’ve always said when anyone asked me because I couldn’t tell the truth.’
‘Couldn’t?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Wouldn’t,’ she said f
inally. ‘I couldn’t go on being friends with her afterwards. What happened – it was … sickening. Actually sickening – I was ill. I couldn’t sleep – it was days before I could eat anything or keep food down. The idea that she could do something like that; that she had it in her, that degree of …’
‘Evil?’
The word glinted in the air between them.
Rowan shivered, as if it had come to settle on her shoulders. ‘I was going to say hatred. But I told her I wouldn’t tell anyone. I promised. Not because I was scared of her, she didn’t threaten me, but because I’d loved her – I loved all of them. I didn’t want to tell anyone. The idea of what it would do to the rest of the Glasses if it came out – if the police found out. If there was a trial.’
‘She killed someone, Rowan.’
‘I’m not saying I liked it. I didn’t approve,’ she said, with a burst of frustration. She lowered her voice again. ‘It wasn’t … It was hard. It …’ She shook her head, struggling to find the words. ‘Knowing something like this, being party to it – it changes you. It warps you. Look at my life, for someone of my age. You think it hasn’t messed me up?’
‘Then why do it – why keep doing it? Ten years later, you haven’t spoken to her in a decade, and you’re still keeping her secret? Risking jail if anyone finds out. Why?’
‘Because I understand.’
‘What?’
‘I understand why she did it. It terrified me, it scared me to death, but it made sense to me.’
Cory was staring.
‘I didn’t have a family,’ she said. ‘Not really. When Mazz and I became friends, I became part of hers.’
‘But still, you were …’
‘I loved them,’ she said. ‘The whole family. I hated what Marianne did, despised it, but I understood. For the same reason she did it, I kept it secret.’
Cory stood at the door to the garden, his back to the room. It had been a minute or more since either of them had spoken and in the quiet, she could hear rain dripping from the gutter beneath the bathroom window.
Keep You Close Page 23
