The Secrets Between Us

by Louise Douglas

‘Bill, please!’ Claudia interrupted. ‘Let’s not talk about business at the dinner table.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Bill said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do, Claudia?’ I asked.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said in a cold, hard voice. ‘You’ve done more than enough already.’

  I said very little for the rest of the evening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE NEXT DAY I woke with a migraine and a head full of regret. I didn’t know how much damage had been done by my comment. I valued Claudia’s friendship. Now, the truth – or a strong suspicion of the truth – would be between us, and I felt, as I had before, that it would be wrong not to be entirely honest with her. I asked Alexander what I should do, but he refused to talk about it. He closed himself off from me. I would have preferred it if he’d shouted at me – brought his feelings out into the open and dispersed his anger – but I didn’t have the courage to initiate an argument.

  Phoebe, I suspected, would have promised Claudia not to breathe a word about what I’d said but would tell everyone she knew. The news would be all over the village by now, galloping through the horse-riding sorority like wildfire.

  I was desperate for reassurance so I went to see Betsy. I had not told her everything about our relationship, but she knew most of the story and, like everyone else in the village, she was well aware of the domestic politics of the Churchill family. Her mother went up to Eleonora House twice a week to collect and drop off the Churchills’ ironing.

  We sat in the kitchen of her chilly council house and dunked no-frills ginger biscuits into mugs of milky coffee. I told her exactly what had happened and she rolled her eyes.

  ‘Well, honestly,’ she said. ‘It’s Alexander’s fault, making you keep secrets like that. What does he expect? If you’d been honest about everything right from the start, people would’ve been used to the situation by now.’

  I explained about Alexander knowing his relationship with Genevieve was over ages before she left, but that other people wouldn’t see it like that. They’d think, like Virginia, that it was obscene to begin a love affair so soon after she was gone.

  Betsy didn’t see it that way. ‘It’s just covering up one set of lies with another,’ she said. ‘What’s the point? The truth always comes out. Always, sure as God made little green apples. The more you try to push it down, the stronger it tries to bob up.’

  Betsy leaned over to the baby, who was sitting in her high chair, and wiped her nose with the cuff of her shirt. The baby turned her round, red face away and squirmed.

  ‘Do you think I should call Claudia and apologize?’ I asked.

  Betsy pulled a face. ‘I should wait for her to come to you,’ she said.

  ‘What if she doesn’t?’

  She shrugged. ‘Then don’t take it personally. Blood is thicker than water and all that.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll tell Virginia?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Betsy said. ‘You’ve gone and put her in a very awkward position. She won’t want to be keeping things from Virginia, not with the situation with Genevieve being how it is. And if Phoebe’s going round spreading the news, it won’t be long before it gets back to her anyway.’

  I groaned. ‘Oh lord,’ I said, ‘could it be any worse?’

  ‘Yes,’ Betsy said cheerfully. ‘It could. And it probably will be.’

  *

  It was immediately apparent that Claudia wanted to sever her friendship with me. She sent a message via Jamie to cancel a trip we had arranged to take the children to the cinema and she didn’t call in to Avalon any more. I called her several times, but each time was connected to her answerphone.

  I didn’t leave a message. How could I explain in a few seconds all that I needed to say? I couldn’t bear the thought of Claudia being hurt because of me. At the very least I wanted to explain why I had lied. Also, I missed her.

  One morning, one of those glorious mid-October mornings when the autumn hangs on by its fingertips and anything still seems possible, I collected two basketfuls of the best of the apples from the huge old mistletoe-laden tree in the front garden, and I walked up the hill, all the way up the lane past the old quarry, to Claudia and Bill’s house. My shoulders and arms were aching by the time I reached the Barn. The dogs heard me before I reached the gates and came running from the back garden to greet me, barking madly through the wrought iron, their paws skittering on the paving. Claudia could not pretend she was not in. She opened the gates remotely and then came to meet me at the door, drying her hands on a tea towel. I held out the baskets.

  ‘Tell me to go away if you want,’ I said. ‘The apples are for you, anyway.’

  Claudia pulled at the neckline of her shirt. Blue ran around me in circles, still barking. She waved her hand at him to make him sit and he ignored her, bouncing up at me. Through the mayhem I said: ‘I have to tell you how sorry I am. It’s the least I can do.’

  Claudia didn’t say anything. Her eyes seemed redder and more watery than the last few times I’d seen her. She looked older.

  ‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘Take the apples. You told me you liked to make apple sauce at this time of year.’

  ‘Genny and I always spent a day at it,’ Claudia said. ‘It was one of our traditions. Come in.’

  She stepped aside and I went into the house past her, through the hall and living room, into the huge, beautiful kitchen. I put the baskets down on the slate-tiled floor.

  ‘Alex said I shouldn’t say anything,’ I said. ‘He said whatever I said would make things worse.’

  Claudia shook her head. ‘My sister is missing. Whatever you and Alexander get up to is not going to make the situation any worse than it already is,’ she said. ‘What I find difficult is that you deceived me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I thought you were my ally, Sarah. I don’t have many people to talk to round here, but I thought I could rely on you.’

  I felt my eyes grow hot. I looked into her dear face and wanted to weep and beg her forgiveness, but I remembered her rule about being dignified.

  ‘I only meant to protect you,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’

  Even to me, the words sounded hollow; too little too late.

  Claudia shook her head. ‘I don’t want to know anything,’ she said.

  ‘Then what can I do …’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘You can’t do anything. You only get one chance at being trusted, Sarah. You should know that as well as anyone. It’s a fragile thing and when it’s gone, it’s gone.’

  It was true. We stood together in silence for a few moments. I felt terribly ashamed.

  Then Claudia said: ‘Well, you’re here and you’ve brought a ridiculous amount of apples. You’re going to have to give me a hand.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  It was a pleasant afternoon. As time went by, so we both relaxed. The apples floated in the sink and I peeled with a sharp knife while Claudia stood at the stove stirring the cut pieces of white apple flesh in two large pans with water and sugar. I put the cores and the damaged flesh into a colander to go back out to the compost bin and, covertly, I glanced at Claudia. Her round shoulders were hunched over the steaming pan. She was stirring the apple sauce with a wooden spoon, and then transferring it with a metal ladle into sterile jars fresh from the oven. I could hear the gentle popping of the hot, sweetened juice. The kitchen smelled of cooking sugar. Claudia had a tea towel over her shoulder.

  ‘This is nice, isn’t it, Gen?’ she said distractedly. ‘Just you and me.’

  Her voice was softer than normal, full of affection.

  I did not want to spoil the moment for her, so I said nothing at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  RUMOURS AND INNUENDO spread through Burrington Stoke almost by osmosis. Phoebe had been at work, and she’d been diligent in her tale-telling. I soon came to the distinct impression that people were avoiding me because they had heard my involvement
with Alexander was more than professional and could not condone it. There was a coolness about the shopkeepers and villagers when it came to their dealings with me that had not been there before.

  When I took a bag of tatty old books and DVDs into the charity shop, the lady who was manning it said: ‘Are these Genevieve’s?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered truthfully. All the items had been dusty and squashed under furniture or at the back of cupboards. They were clearly unwanted.

  ‘Why are you getting rid of her things?’ the woman asked, and her expression became hard. ‘Aren’t you expecting her back?’

  I felt my face colour.

  ‘We were just having a clear-out. Don’t you want them?’ I asked.

  The woman shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything that rightfully belongs to that wonderful girl,’ she said.

  That wasn’t all. Several times, the phone rang, but when I answered there was nobody there. Three days in a row I found a single dead magpie by the hedge at the bottom of Avalon’s garden. I knew some of the villagers shot the birds, but it seemed too much of a coincidence that they should all fall in the same place. I couldn’t forget the words of the magpie rhyme: one for sorrow. Alexander picked the birds up and threw their carcasses into the orchard to make a meal for the foxes and the crows and told me to stop being paranoid. I could not understand how he could remain so calm.

  I would have felt terribly isolated if it weren’t for Betsy and Claudia, who, although our friendship had cooled, still needed me as I needed her. Bill aside, there was nobody she could talk to openly and honestly and I was beginning to understand how difficult it must have been for her to be a motherless girl in a small village with a brother damaged beyond repair, a father who owned everything, a glamorous, celebrity half-sister and a stepmother who was feared and revered in equal measure.

  The second time I met Virginia Churchill was by accident, during the last week in October. I was in the Burrington Stoke Spar-cum-post office, filling a wire basket with milk, bread, coffee and ingredients for the pasta dish I had planned for dinner that evening. It was an old-fashioned, family-run shop; you could buy everything from a newspaper and a loaf of bread to jump leads, aspirin and bird seed. Everything was packed together and there was only room for one person in any particular aisle.

  I was reading the list of ingredients on a packet of stock cubes when I heard Alexander’s name mentioned in a clipped female voice that I recognized at once. I put the packet back on the shelf and moved to the end of the aisle.

  Virginia stood at the far end of the store, at the post office counter, with her back to me. She was paying in cheques from the estate’s tenants.

  Mr Taylor, the shop’s proprietor, was making a note of the cheques, and Virginia talked to him as he worked. From his stance, and the way he sometimes glanced up at Virginia over the top of his half-glasses, I had the feeling that he had heard her story, or versions of it, many times before. His shoulders were hunched and he kept nodding as if in agreement, without concurring with anything she said. He knew what Virginia didn’t: that I was in the shop.

  ‘What nobody seems to be taking into account is that Genny always was incredibly sensitive to how other people were feeling,’ said Virginia. ‘I told the police. She simply would not go and live somewhere else without letting her family know where she was. She wouldn’t! It’s twelve weeks since she disappeared and they continue to procrastinate.’

  ‘They say that the police are overstretched …’ Mr Taylor said.

  I couldn’t see Mrs Churchill’s face, but I imagined her expression.

  ‘It’s outrageous,’ she said. ‘Their complacency is disgusting. Ian Twyford told me they were keeping an open mind but they can’t do anything unless there’s a good reason to suspect something is wrong.’

  ‘There you are then,’ said Mr Taylor. ‘If Inspector Twyford doesn’t think there’s anything to worry about then there probably isn’t. He’s always kept an eye out for your daughter, hasn’t he?’

  Virginia huffed. ‘But there is reason for suspicion now! We know that Alexander and that girl are more than just good friends. And that they’re both consummate liars.’

  Mr Taylor swallowed, and rubbed his lips with the palm of his hand. He was trying not to catch my eye.

  ‘To be fair,’ he said in a careful voice, ‘Alexander must have been lonely.’

  Virginia snorted. There was a pause as she rummaged in her bag.

  ‘And maybe he had the whole thing planned all along. We all know what that man’s capable of,’ she said.

  I couldn’t bear to see Mr Taylor suffer any longer. I summoned all my courage, stepped forward and cleared my throat.

  Mr Taylor scratched at the corner of his mouth. His daughter-in-law, Midge, was sorting greetings cards behind him. She too stopped what she was doing and waited. There was panic in her face. I smiled at them both and stood a few feet behind Virginia.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said.

  ‘Good morning, Sarah,’ said Mr Taylor.

  ‘Hiya,’ said Midge.

  Virginia turned. I held on to my breath.

  Her appearance took me by surprise. With make-up, the resemblance to her daughter was striking, only Virginia was a distorted version of the Genevieve I’d seen in so many photographs: older, harder and tireder. Virginia looked exhausted. Her silver-gold hair was pulled back from her face painfully tightly into a ponytail and the skin of her thin neck was crêped. Her eyebrows had been harshly plucked. Her beauty was still there, but it had been spoiled by time and worry. My fear of the woman was tempered by pity. I remembered that it is a terrible thing to lose your only child. Virginia looked me up and down.

  ‘Sarah,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Mrs Churchill.’

  I held out my hand but she did not take it, so I let it fall to my side. Minutes seemed to pass. I didn’t know what to say next. I didn’t know what to do. I could hardly start to justify myself to Virginia while standing there in the Spar, with the Taylors watching us from behind their counter and a small, intensely interested queue forming behind me.

  Virginia said: ‘You and I need to talk.’ She glanced over my shoulder and the people in the queue immediately looked at the contents of their wire baskets. ‘In private,’ she added.

  I paid for my shopping then we went into the Swan Hotel at the end of the high street and sat in deep, cracked-leather armchairs in the lounge while a waiter fetched over-brewed coffee served in bone-china cups so old that the pattern had almost entirely worn away. The lounge was dark. Dust motes danced in what little light came through the leaded windows, the carpet was worn and the room smelled of pea and ham soup. Hunting memorabilia hung over the huge stone fireplace and pictures of the hunt lined the walls. The murmur of a smattering of guests, all elderly, was like a buzz behind us. At first Virginia said nothing; she watched me like a hawk. I tried to look as if I were at home in the place, although I was so far down in the chair that I could not reach the armrests with my elbows, so they were clamped to my side. I tried not to fidget. I needed to go to the lavatory but could think of no dignified way to excuse myself.

  When our coffee came Virginia took her time stirring in cream and sugar. She passed me my cup by the saucer then said: ‘Let’s not beat about the bush. I need to explain my position.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, you don’t. I realize how me being with Alexander must look to you, and I am sorry if we hurt you, I didn’t mean any harm, I—’

  She held up her hand. I stopped speaking.

  ‘How long have you known Alexander?’ she asked. ‘The truth, please.’

  ‘We met in Sicily.’

  ‘Alexander told you he was married?’

  I struggled to remember what he had told me.

  ‘Yes.’

  Virginia winced, and I realized that the truth painted me in a worse light. I had known Alexander was a married man and still I went with him.

  ‘What did he tell you about Geneviev
e?’

  ‘That she had left him.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Virginia stared at me levelly.

  ‘You had a holiday romance,’ she said. Now it was my turn to wince. ‘He moved you straight into his home. Don’t you think that’s strange behaviour for a man whose wife had’ – she made sarcastic inverted commas with her hands – ‘“left him” only a couple of weeks earlier?’

  ‘Alexander told me … He said his marriage had been in trouble for a long time before Genevieve left. He needed help with the house and with looking after Jamie.’

  ‘He had all the help he needed here.’

  ‘Perhaps he felt he could do with somebody who was on his side,’ I said quietly.

  Virginia picked up her cup, took a sip, put the cup down on the dark little table that stood between our two chairs and patted her lips with a paper napkin. When she spoke, her voice was icy.

  ‘What will you do when Genevieve comes back?’ she asked.

  ‘If she comes back … I don’t know.’

  Virginia looked at me, and her look was cold as death.

  ‘You think you’re so clever but there’s so much you don’t know, Sarah,’ she said. Her voice was low and threatening. ‘You don’t know, I assume, that Avalon is my daughter’s house? It belongs to Genevieve, not Alexander; it was a gift from her father.’

  I had not known that.

  ‘And it was her father’s money that set Alexander up in business.’

  ‘But he’s paying back the loan.’

  She shrugged as if that were not the point.

  ‘Alexander was penniless when he married Genevieve. He was jobless. He had nothing. Ask him. Everything Alexander has now – all the luxuries, the lifestyle you’re enjoying – by rights belongs to my daughter.’

  I stared at the cup and saucer on my lap. More than ever I felt as if I were terribly in the wrong, although I didn’t know what I had done. I did not like the insinuations and the implications behind Virginia’s words and, worst of all, I did not like being told so much about Alexander that I did not know.