Half-hidden at the back of the cabinet was a small, dark-blue silk make-up bag. I took it out of the cupboard and opened the clasp. It contained a lipstick tube without its lid, a pair of tweezers and two small cardboard boxes. I knew what they were. I used to keep similar boxes in my make-up bag. I opened one box and took out the long, slim blister-pack that was inside. About half of the blisters had been popped.
It could only have belonged to Genevieve.
I could think of no reason why she would have left her contraceptive pills behind. Surely she’d have remembered to pick them up before she left?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AT HALF PAST four, a rackety old Volvo estate pulled up on the drive and Jamie and two lanky, identical-looking girls in grey and maroon school uniform with their socks around their ankles clambered out. The girls wore old-fashioned straw boater hats. They saw me standing at the gate and stood still, close together, watching, whispering. They were about nine years old.
A large, hot-looking woman with long brown hair streaked with grey climbed out of the Volvo’s front door, opened the boot to let out two panting black Labradors and the three of them led the children up the drive. The younger, larger dog bounded towards me and leapt up, almost knocking me over with his huge paws. He was all muscle and must have weighed at least as much as me.
‘Blue, get down!’ the woman bawled. The dog ignored her and tried to lick my face. I pushed him away and he jumped up again, and when, for the third or fourth time, I pushed him down, he ran around my legs, wagging his tail and making playful feint jumps, his big pink tongue hanging out of his chops.
The older dog was heavy on its legs. So was the woman. Her hair was held back with kirby grips and she wore Jesus sandals on her big, grubby feet. She was wearing a long, shapeless dress that reached to her ankles. She huffed to the gate and smiled. I greeted Jamie, who pushed past me with a scowl.
‘Jamie …’ I called.
‘Fuck off!’
He ran off down the garden, and the willowy twin girls, shocked and impressed, followed gracefully in his wake. I tried not to mind or to let my humiliation show in my face.
The woman shook her head as she came through the gate and she held out her hand to me. The smile on her face was genuinely warm.
‘I’m Claudia,’ she said. ‘Genevieve’s half-sister. How do you do?’
‘I’m Sarah,’ I said. ‘Alexander’s housekeeper.’
‘Oh, you don’t need to introduce yourself. Everyone knows who you are.’
‘I’ve only been here a few days!’
‘The jungle drums never sleep.’
From the corner of my eye, I saw a movement down the garden. Jamie was throwing stones into the stream. The ducks quacked and flapped up into the sky. The twins squealed and turned away.
‘He shouldn’t do that,’ I said. ‘He shouldn’t throw things at the ducks.’
‘He’s showing off,’ said Claudia. ‘It’s for your benefit. Best to ignore him.’
‘I’m not very good with him,’ I said.
Claudia patted my arm. ‘He’ll come round. You need to be patient, that’s all.’
For a moment we stood and watched the children. Jamie had taken off his shoes and socks, and was ordering the girls to do the same. The younger dog bounced around them, begging them to throw the sticks they were collecting.
‘What are they called?’ I asked.
‘The dogs or the twins?’
I laughed. ‘Twins.’
‘Petra and Allegra. And the dogs are Bonnie and Blue. She came from the dogs’ home and is a lady. He’s a full-flight, locally bred pedigree who set us back six hundred smackers and is completely out of control. The postman’s threatened to sue us if he knocks him off his bike again and we were expelled from dog-training classes after he impregnated a German Shepherd. You don’t mind if I put the kettle on, do you? I’m parched.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I should have thought!’
We went into the kitchen and I filled a bowl from the tap for Bonnie while Claudia made tea.
‘How are you settling in?’ she asked.
‘Fine, thank you.’
‘Don’t you find this house a bit of a nightmare? Always seems to be something leaking or breaking or falling apart – that’s what Genevieve said. Not that I’m trying to put you off or anything.’
‘I’m still getting used to it,’ I said. ‘We drove past your house at the weekend, the converted barn. It’s beautiful.’
‘Yes, yes it is. We’re very lucky.’
She leaned her bottom against the kitchen table and smiled at me. Bonnie lay on the floor and watched her adoringly.
‘I heard you met my father and my wicked stepmother.’
‘Can’t a person do anything in private round here?’
She shook her head. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely nothing. Did Virginia give you a hard time?’
‘A bit. She thinks I’m under-qualified to look after Jamie.’
‘That’s because you scuppered her plans.’
‘I did?’
‘Mmm. She wanted Jamie to go and live with her at Eleonora House until Genevieve comes back.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘She likes to be in control, does Virginia. Alexander has been struggling here on his own and Virginia was most insistent that she’d take Jamie. Plan A was that he’d move in with her when term started so that Virginia could meet him from school and generally look after him, at least during the week. When Alexander came back from Sicily and said he’d found help her nose was very much put out of joint.’
I was shocked, although I tried not to show it. That put a completely different slant on everything that had happened between Alexander and me. So he had an imperative to find somebody to help him. Would anyone have done? Had he simply been searching for an available, easily manipulated woman he could persuade to take the role of housekeeper/nanny at desperately short notice?
‘Does Virginia suspect my motives?’ I asked brightly.
‘Of course she does. But Alexander assured us that your relationship is strictly business. She told me you didn’t give her a straight answer when she asked you directly but I expect that’s because you were embarrassed.’
‘Yes.’ I nodded.
‘But that’s right, isn’t it? I mean, there isn’t anything between you and Alexander?’
‘No,’ I said, with as much conviction as I could muster. ‘No, there isn’t. All he thinks about is Genevieve. She’s all he talks about.’
It was only when I said the words out loud that I realized they were true. I had a sudden, desperate pang of homesickness. I wanted to talk to May. I wanted to be back amongst people who loved me. My eyes felt hot. I’d spoken to my family since I’d come to Somerset, but briefly. I’d made out it was Nirvana and had told them how wonderful it was here, and how much better I felt, how all I’d needed was a change of scenery. Now I realized how selfish I’d been and how hurtful those words must have sounded to the people who had done so much to try to help me.
Claudia didn’t notice my discomfort. She smiled in approval at what I’d said about Alexander.
‘Well, that’s exactly as it should be. So there’s nothing for Virginia to worry about. She always sees the worst in people, I’m afraid. Really, she should be grateful to you for helping the family out in a crisis.’
I stroked the top of Bonnie’s big head.
‘Do you get on well with her, Claudia?’
‘Virginia? So so.’
‘Oh.’
‘Her heart’s in the right place, I suppose. Did Alexander tell you the story about Genevieve and me?’
‘No.’
‘You might as well hear it from me,’ she said, spooning tea leaves into the pot. ‘Because if I don’t tell you someone else will and they’ll make far more of a meal of it.’
‘Tell me what?’ I asked quietly.
She sighed. ‘Virginia is my father’s second wife, obviously. She swanned into our lives
when I was about twelve – it was some hunt ball or other – and my father was besotted at first sight. You couldn’t blame him. Mother was like me. Overweight, bit of a sight, none too bright, and Virginia was … well, she wasn’t at all like that.’
I didn’t know what to say to this.
Claudia smiled. ‘To cut a long story short, Daddy and Mother divorced so he could marry Virginia and things all went a bit pear-shaped for my brother and me after that. We’re civilized together, she and I, but we’re not exactly best friends.’
‘You have a brother?’
‘I might as well not have. He’s disowned us.’
I waited but she didn’t say any more. She rubbed the bottom of her nose with her knuckle.
‘What about your mother? Does she still live in Burrington Stoke?’
‘No, she passed on a long time ago.’
She put the lid back on the pot and a different expression came into her eyes. She smiled as she gazed out through the door into the garden.
‘I have a sister, though,’ she said, and the tone of her voice had changed; it was gentler now, lower. ‘Genevieve was my compensation for having to put up with Virginia as a stepmother.’
She fanned her face with a copy of the village newsletter. Her skin was pasty, beaded with sweat, but she was still smiling.
‘We’ve always been very close,’ she said.
‘I’m glad,’ I said. I thought of my own sister and how she cared for me. I would ring her the moment Claudia was gone. I would tell her how much I appreciated her.
‘Do you know where Genevieve is now?’ I asked gently.
Claudia shook her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It must be an awful worry for you.’
Claudia shrugged, picked up the packet of biscuits I’d put on the table and unwrapped the paper.
‘The thing is …’ Claudia sighed, and took out a biscuit. She looked at it and then broke it in two, and fed half to the dog. ‘Genny has always been an “act first, think later” kind of person. Since she was a little child she’s been impetuous and I just hope … Oh, I hope she’s not in any kind of trouble.’
I thought of the abandoned, or forgotten, or deliberately left-behind contraceptive pills. I thought of the image in the mirror. I shivered a little and turned away.
‘Am I talking too much?’ Claudia asked. ‘I’m sorry. You’re probably wondering what kind of family you’ve ended up working for!’
‘I’m sure Genevieve’s all right,’ I said, and I was trying to reassure myself as much as Claudia. ‘If she’s the sort of person who does things on the spur of the moment, then …’
‘But she’s never gone away like this before. Well, once … She went off the rails for a while when she was at university, but that’s not unusual, is it? Virginia was always so protective, it was no surprise that Genevieve kicked her heels up when she had the chance.’
I nodded.
‘That’s why Daddy and I were so thrilled when she took up with Alexander. He calmed her down. He was a positive influence. Virginia didn’t think he was good enough for her, obviously, but my father adored him from the start. And Jamie came along and it was all perfect!’
I smiled as best I could.
Claudia put the other half-biscuit into her mouth.
We were both quiet for a few moments. Then Claudia said: ‘I always seem to end up talking about Genevieve. It’s a beautiful day. We won’t have many more like it this year. Why don’t we go and drink our tea outside?’
We sat on a blanket on the overgrown lawn in the front garden, Claudia and I. I sipped tea and breathed in her secondhand cigarette smoke while the children played and bees fed on the lavender stems and the songbirds gorged on blackberries. Claudia chatted about village life, and what it was like growing up in Eleonora House, the calendar governed by horse shows, trials and competitions and social events: balls, charity dinner dances, birthday parties. It was a different world from the one I’d known and I enjoyed hearing her stories, although I did not envy her. It wasn’t only that I felt sorry for her and her brother. I imagined that it must have been difficult growing up in a family where everything was so managed and organized. There could have been very little room for rebellion. No wonder Genevieve felt suffocated. I rubbed the inside of the old dog’s ear with my knuckle and she groaned with pleasure.
Later, when Claudia had left with the twins and the dogs, and Jamie was inside the house watching television, I picked the mugs up and emptied the dregs over the wall that separated the garden from the orchard beyond. I disturbed a crow. It flapped away lazily with blood on its beak. I looked down over the wall. The crow had left behind a small, silvery-brown mess of blood, fur and jaw: the remains of a squirrel. Its skull had been smashed into fragments.
The crow could not have done that. The sleeve of my cardigan caught on the top of the wall, and as I pulled away I looked down.
I wished I had not.
On top of the wall was a smear of blood, and caught in the roughness of the grain of the stone was a circle of silvery hairs and one tiny shard of bone. Leaning up against it was a wooden-handled mallet with a metal head.
I dropped the mugs and backed away.
Alexander had killed the squirrel.
There was no other explanation.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE SQUIRREL-KILLER BREEZED in later smelling of a dry, scorched substance that I came to recognize as stone-dust, and of sweat. He had shrugged off the top half of his overalls and tied the arms around the waist. He went straight to the sink and washed his hands, then he turned to smile at me. I was sorting out the laundry I’d washed earlier.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Something smells good.’
‘Lasagne.’
‘You don’t know how great it is to come in to the smell of home cooking!’
‘It’s nothing special,’ I said.
He glanced at me. I did not let him see my face.
‘How was your first day in service?’
I smoothed the towel I was folding.
‘Fine.’
‘Any trouble from Her Ladyship?’
‘Virginia? No. But Claudia stayed for a while when she dropped Jamie off. She’s lovely.’
‘Yep. She is.’
‘She told me a bit about her family.’
‘Did she mention Damian howling at the moon?’
‘Damian?’
‘Her brother.’
‘Oh … No, she said … well, nothing really. She told me how much she and her father like you.’
Alexander had his back to me, so I couldn’t see his face. He made a noncommittal noise.
‘She asked about us,’ I said. ‘I told her there was nothing between us.’
He pulled up a chair and sat down.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s for the best. Though there’s no love lost between Claudia and Virginia. Claudia’s loyalty is with Genevieve.’
I noted that we had managed less than two minutes of conversation before Genevieve’s name was mentioned. I snapped a pillowcase.
Alexander unlaced his boots, one after the other, and when he eased them off his feet I could smell the hot wool of his socks. I found it endearing. If I had known him better, if I hadn’t known about the squirrel, perhaps I would have gone to his chair and stood behind it and rubbed his shoulders. As it was, my heart had hardened slightly.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Then I said: ‘No. Actually, I’m not. Did you kill the squirrel that was trapped this morning?’
He didn’t apologize or shrug or look remorseful. He said: ‘Yep.’
‘Why? Why didn’t you let it go?’
‘Because it would have been straight back in the roof. There’d have been no point trapping it in the first place.’
‘You could have taken it somewhere else and released it.’
‘You can’t do that. Squirrels are territorial. They fight and they spread dise
ases amongst themselves. It would be cruel.’
‘More cruel than smashing its head in?’
He reached out and took hold of my hand and squeezed. I looked down at my hand in his. It looked all wrong.
‘It’s a country thing,’ he said. ‘It’s what you have to do. It’s kinder than poisoning them.’
‘It’s horrible.’
I withdrew my hand and rubbed it with the palm of my other.
‘You’re a city girl,’ he said. ‘You’ve got this Beatrix Potter idea of fluffy squirrels and rabbits in jackets and …’
‘Don’t patronize me, Alexander.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But it’s true. Squirrels are vermin. Real life isn’t like a romantic novel.’
Now there was anger in his voice, and I didn’t know him well enough to push it any further. I turned away so that he wouldn’t see the heat in my face, and I took the cucumber from the colander of washed salad on the counter and a sharp knife, and began to peel it.
‘This is stupid,’ he said, in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Don’t let’s fall out over this.’
I nodded, but I didn’t say anything.
‘If it upsets you,’ he said, ‘I’ll find a different way to get rid of the squirrels.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
Alexander had a shower with his son while I finished making the dinner, and then the three of us ate together at the large, dark, wooden dining-room table. I’d given the room a cursory clean but, from the amount of dust and debris, I was pretty certain it hadn’t been used for its original purpose in months. Piles of paper, unsorted washing, riding paraphernalia and other mess lay in little heaps on the seats of chairs and on the sideboard. The huge oil painting of two horses in a field that dominated one side of the room was dull with dust. Genevieve couldn’t have been bothered with housework for a while before she went away. Or maybe she never cleaned the house. Why would she want to spend time polishing and vacuuming when she could be out riding in this beautiful countryside with the wind in her face, knowing she was one of the best in the country?
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