The Secrets Between Us

by Louise Douglas

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, putting what was left of my panini back on the plate and wiping my fingers on a paper napkin. ‘I know we’ve met but I …’

  ‘DI Twyford,’ he said. ‘My colleague and I interrupted your dinner to talk to Mr Westwood a few weeks back.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’

  I half-stood and took his hand. His grip was firm and assertive; his skin warm and dry. He held my hand for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

  ‘Should I call you Inspector?’

  ‘I’m Ian, to my friends,’ he said.

  I hesitated.

  ‘And acquaintances.’

  ‘OK. Hello, Ian.’

  I smiled into his smile. My heart was thumping like I had something to hide. ‘Would you like to join me?’ I asked.

  ‘If you don’t mind. There’s not much room here.’

  I glanced around quickly. That wasn’t true. There were several free tables, albeit at the edges of the room and not by the window, in the sunshine, like mine. Had he looked in and seen me sitting there by the window as he walked past? Was he following me? I felt panicky and held my breath to calm myself.

  The detective put his coffee on the table, beside mine. Some white froth had spilled over the lip and into the saucer. He pulled a couple of paper napkins from the dispenser and used them to soak up the spill. He seemed relaxed. I told myself to stop being paranoid. Wells was so small that any two people who were there at the same time were bound to bump into one another.

  ‘So what brings you into the city. Errands?’ he asked, stirring rather a lot of sugar into his latte.

  My shopping bag was leaning against the window, and so was my portfolio.

  ‘Your powers of deduction are impressive,’ I said.

  He laughed.

  I smiled too. ‘And you? Are you based in Wells or are you just visiting?”

  ‘I’m off duty. Here on errands, like you.’

  I sipped my coffee. I had no appetite left for the remains of the panini.

  ‘So how are you getting on in Burrington Stoke?’ he asked, emptying another twist of sugar into his cup. ‘You’re from Manchester, aren’t you? Isn’t village life a little provincial for a city girl like you?’

  ‘It’s a beautiful village,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s very nice.’

  He tapped his spoon against the side of the cup.

  ‘Did you ever see that film American Werewolf? That scene in the pub called the Slaughtered Lamb when the strangers walk in and all the locals stop talking and stare at them? They filmed it in the Quarrymen’s Arms because they didn’t need actors there.’

  I smiled hesitantly, although I was certain the pub hadn’t come into the conversation by accident. DI Twyford knew about the fight. He probably knew everything there was to know.

  ‘Burrington Stoke is an old-fashioned place,’ I said carefully. ‘I guess they don’t really like seeing new faces.’

  He shook his head. ‘This isn’t the Middle Ages, Sarah. It’s not you per se that worries them. It’s what you represent.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You being there, with Alexander, makes them think that Genevieve’s never coming back.’

  Here she was again.

  ‘I’m sure Genevieve is absolutely fine,’ I said. ‘Wherever she is, she’s probably having the time of her life.’

  The inspector, Ian, stirred his coffee and said: ‘Oh yes?’

  I told him about Genevieve’s letter to Jamie, and the teddy bear. I told the inspector that she could only have organized those things if she were planning to leave of her own accord. I even offered to show him the letter and the bear if he doubted my story.

  He didn’t seem particularly interested in what I told him. All he said was: ‘That was convenient.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘You finding the letter that corroborated what you’d been told about Genevieve leaving.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was convenient. But it happened.’

  The inspector didn’t respond. He gazed out of the window for a moment. Then he asked if I got on well with Jamie, and I told him that I did.

  ‘You haven’t known him long,’ he said.

  ‘A few months. We met in the summer, in Sicily, a couple of weeks after Genevieve left. I’m sure Alexander told you that.’

  The inspector nodded.

  ‘Why are you even asking me these questions?’ I asked. ‘You said you weren’t working.’

  ‘It’s a conversation, not an interrogation.’

  ‘It feels like one.’

  The inspector raised his hands and made a face as if to say: ‘Guilty.’

  ‘It’s the job,’ he said. ‘It takes over sometimes.’

  ‘Why does everyone think there’s something suspicious about Genevieve being gone?’ I asked. ‘She left letters. She prepared her son. Don’t you think …?’ I paused – I wasn’t sure if I should say what I was about to say – and then I thought, why not? ‘Don’t you think it’s possible she was having an affair and that she’s gone away with another man?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said the inspector.

  ‘What do you think has happened to her?’

  ‘It would be unprofessional and unethical to comment.’

  ‘Theoretically, then.’

  He shrugged and sipped his coffee. ‘People leave home all the time,’ he said. ‘They walk out of their old lives and don’t look back. You’d be surprised how often it happens, and most of the time there’s no foul play involved.’

  I made the inspector hold my gaze.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘The problem is people like Genevieve don’t disappear unless they have a very compelling reason to do so.’

  ‘Wouldn’t a lover be a compelling enough reason?’

  ‘Even if that is the case, why the silence? Why hasn’t she been in touch?’

  ‘Perhaps she’s waiting for the dust to settle.’

  He shook his head. ‘The dust’s never going to settle. And Genevieve might not have been a model wife, but she definitely loved her family and the kid. You never saw them together, of course.’

  A cold feeling came over me.

  ‘You knew her? Know her, I mean?’

  ‘Oh yes. Virginia taught my daughter dressage. As often as not, Genevieve would be up at the yard. She used to lean on the gate and watch the lesson with me or she’d be riding too, demonstrating. She could make those horses dance; she was incredible. Sometimes Jamie was with her. She was always laughing and messing around with him, swinging him round, chasing him, tickling him. If you’d asked me, I’d have said Genevieve would let nothing come between her and her son. Nothing.’

  I felt utterly helpless and as if I were terribly in the wrong. I shouldn’t have told the inspector that Jamie and I were close. I shouldn’t have spoken so carelessly of Genevieve. My mouth was dry as dust. I looked out into the street. People were passing by; to them it was an ordinary day – a bright, autumn day in a beautiful city – and all they had to worry about was what they were going to eat for supper, and there I was, trapped in the corner of a café by a man who knew so much more than I did.

  Neither of us spoke for a long time. The inspector finished his coffee.

  ‘You seem like a nice girl,’ he said eventually, more gently. ‘I’m guessing you wouldn’t still be in Somerset if you had any concerns about Alexander.’

  I blinked and continued to stare through the window glass. A very young woman in a red puffa jacket and hooped earrings went past, leaning forward to push a twin buggy uphill.

  ‘Somebody like you,’ he said, ‘would be in the best place to notice any irregularities.’

  The make-up bag didn’t mean anything. Genevieve could have had a thousand reasons for leaving her pills behind. Maybe those had been spares and she had a stash with her. Maybe she wanted to get pregnant.

  ‘I haven’t noticed anything,’ I said.

  He wa
s watching me.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The detective paused for a moment. Then he said: ‘Genevieve had a laptop. A white MacBook. Mr Westwood told us he hadn’t seen it since she left. Is it in the house?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I’ve cleaned everywhere and I haven’t seen it. Is it important?’

  ‘She used it all the time, took it everywhere …’

  ‘Then she’ll have taken it with her.’

  There was another pause.

  The detective drained his coffee in one go, put a few coins on the table and stood up.

  ‘Listen, Sarah, if you ever want a chat, you know, if you think of anything, give me a call.’

  He passed me a card.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I will.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  WE WERE WORKING in the garden, the three of us, raking up the leaves. It was an enjoyable task, and we worked well together. Alexander’s mood was lighter and more buoyant than it had been. I held open a sack for him to load with freshly fallen debris, the smell of smoke and leaf mould and autumn in my head, and he leaned forward and kissed me.

  It was a gesture of such sweetness and spontaneity that my heart softened. I looked around the garden, but there was no sign of Genevieve watching, no unexplained shadows, nothing sinister at all. I smiled up into Alexander’s face, his eyes, his lips, and for the thousandth time I was bowled over by his beauty. I had to look away. I could not believe I was actually with a man like him.

  I carried the sack over to the bonfire we were building in the far corner of the garden and turned it upside down, shaking it by the corners to empty it. Something trapped beneath the now bare branches of a large old rambling rose caught my eye. I leaned down to pick it up; it was a dog chew, a plastic ball fastened to a rope. The rope was almost rotted through, and the squeak had gone from the ball, which was punctured with teeth marks and tears. I bounced it in my hand and walked back to Alexander.

  ‘Look what I found,’ I said.

  Jamie came running over.

  ‘It’s Pete’s ball!’ he cried, jumping up and down for the toy. ‘He lost it ages ago!’

  ‘Who’s Pete?’ I asked Jamie, tossing the ball to him.

  ‘Our dog.’

  I remembered the dog bed and bowls stacked in the rosette room. I glanced towards Alexander. He had turned away and was raking furiously; despite the coolness of the air his shirt was dark with sweat down the back, at the neck and beneath the arms. I could tell from the shape of his shoulders and the rhythm of his movements that he was angry again.

  I returned to the bonfire pile and began to tidy it, throwing sticks and debris on to the top of the heap. Jamie came with me.

  ‘What happened to Pete?’ I asked, quietly.

  Jamie looked up and me and shrugged. ‘He had to go and live somewhere else.’

  ‘Was someone allergic to him?’

  Jamie shook his head.

  ‘Jamie?’

  ‘I don’t know why he had to go away!’ he cried. ‘Shut up fucking talking about him!’

  Jamie lifted the ball high, swung it by its rope and let it go. It flew into the heart of the huge old daphne bush at the centre of the far shrub bed. We both watched it disappear into the leaves. Jamie wiped his nose with his hand.

  ‘Sorry, Jamie, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Then why do you keep asking me about things I don’t want to talk about?’ Jamie said in a quiet, furious voice. ‘Why do you keep doing that? Where’s my mummy? Why are you here and she isn’t?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, briskly. ‘OK, never mind. Do you think it’s time for a cup of tea and a piece of cake?’

  Jamie looked up at me with his beautiful eyes, clear and blue as the day. He made a sneer with his lips.

  ‘You’re a bitch,’ he said, and he ran down to the swing and sat on it, pushing himself backwards and forwards with the toes of his blue plastic wellington boots.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  A BLEAK CLOUD of bad temper and introspection settled over Avalon for the rest of the day. For a while I tried to cajole Alexander and Jamie out of their moods, to placate them with food and humour and kindness, but they were intractable, the father and son so alike in their stubbornness it was infuriating. They shared the same ploy of retreating into themselves whenever something happened they didn’t like.

  It wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t known there was a problem with the dog; nobody had so much as mentioned its name before. It was Alexander’s fault. If he didn’t want me to keep putting my foot right bang in the middle of these sensitive subjects then he ought to bloody well warn me.

  I left Alexander and Jamie to the garden, each at either end of it, one raking, one swinging, both sulking, and I went into the kitchen to clean the last of the vegetables. I also had a colander of tomatoes from the greenhouse. I washed the fruit, halved them and laid them on trays, drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt and garden herbs to heat in the Rayburn’s hot oven and then to roast overnight in the cool one. I was in the middle of these enjoyable culinary tasks and feeling a bit better when Claudia phoned to ask if I’d like to stand in for one of their regulars on the pub quiz team who had fallen sick. They’d thought of me, she said, because they were desperate and also because it would annoy Virginia no end, and she wanted to annoy her because she was so sick and tired of Virginia refusing her access to her father, who was ill again, and confined to bed.

  I sympathized with Claudia for a few moments and then asked where the quiz was.

  ‘It’s in Sherborne. Don’t worry, the Quarrymen’s Arms won’t be sending a team.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Hold on.’

  I stepped out into the garden and called Alexander to ask if it would be all right with him. He told me to do what I liked. So I thought: fine, I will.

  ‘Yes, I’d love to do it, Claudia,’ I said into the mouthpiece.

  She said: ‘Great. I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.’

  I hadn’t had a proper evening out since I’d been at Avalon and that afternoon I was so edgy and irritated I thought it would do me good to be somewhere different.

  I prepared a great dish of buttered mashed potatoes for tea and served it with the cassoulet I’d put in the oven earlier. We ate it with home-grown green beans and sweetcorn from the freezer. Alexander and Jamie ate well enough – in fact, they had two helpings each – but they were both monosyllabic during dinner. I put forward several potential topics of conversation and had a sarcastic talk with myself – ‘What do you think of the dinner, Sarah? Oh, it’s lovely, thank you. Do you like the beans? Mmm, they’re delicious!’ – but they took no notice so I gave up. We ate in silence. A late, black fly banged itself against the window glass and then became trapped in a dusty cobweb in the corner of the frame. I went to rescue it but Alexander waved me away.

  ‘It’s a filthy fly,’ he said. ‘Leave it.’

  So we listened to the fly’s increasingly frantic buzzing and were all, I think, relieved when it was at last rendered silent by the spider that lived in the latch.

  After dinner, I stacked the dishes in the machine and gave the kitchen a wipe-round. Alexander was poring over some papers in his office and Jamie was lying on the settee watching television in the living room. I banged the pots a little to let them know I was upset by their behaviour but still neither of them took the slightest notice. So I opened a bottle of wine, poured myself a large glass and I took both the glass and the bottle upstairs to my bedroom and stood in front of the chest of drawers that was my wardrobe.

  It was only a pub quiz. There was nobody to dress up for but that night I wanted to look my best. I hadn’t realized until that evening how much I craved the stuff of females: make-up, jewellery, perfume, high heels and fabrics that felt good against the skin. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been out with a group of girlfriends with the single intention of having fun; it must have been well
over two years, before I was pregnant, before Laurie and I had even started trying for the baby. I had stopped drinking well in advance and taken vitamins and folic acid, all the things you’re supposed to do in order to end up with a perfectly healthy baby.

  I knew the pub we were going to was not going to be a party pub, but it was somewhere different at least and that was something to celebrate.

  I wondered if Genevieve had felt suffocated by the countryside; by its mud and its tractors, its masculinity and its relentless inevitability? Was this one of the reasons she had so wanted to get away from Burrington Stoke? But she’d been born into this life, she’d never known any different.

  I told myself to stop thinking about Genevieve and concentrate on going out.

  I took off the long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans and socks that had become my uniform, gulped a mouthful of wine and danced in my underwear with my arms above my head in front of the spotted old mirror that was perched on the chest of drawers. I hummed to myself, drank some more wine, refilled the glass from the bottle, rummaged in my bag and found a pair of black leggings. They had been a little tight when I left Manchester, but I must have lost some weight because now they fitted perfectly. I put a long-sleeved purple dress over the top and fastened it at the waist with a black belt with a gilt buckle. I sat on the bed and wiggled my feet into my long black velvet boots. Then I put on my make-up: eye-liner, dark eyeshadow, dusky lipstick and thick black mascara. I straightened my hair, licked my lips. I narrowed my eyes and blew kisses at myself in the mirror. I looked young and juicy and dangerous.

  In that different life of mine, the happy old Manchester life, I used to go out once a week with a group of girlfriends, Rosita among them. We used to dress ourselves up to the nines and go clubbing. We’d dance and talk and drink and laugh. I couldn’t remember what it was that was so funny, but I used to feel as if nothing could hurt me.

  I lay back on the bed and stared out of the window. It was dark but there was a good moon lighting up the orchard, the grass and trees, painting them pale blue and casting beautiful shadows. What had started, earlier, as a quiet ache had developed into a full-blown heartfelt missing of Manchester. I missed it with a kind of desperation. If there had been any way for me to get back there, that evening, I would have gone. I’d have hooked up with some girlfriends, drunk vodka shots and danced my socks off.