The Secrets Between Us

by Louise Douglas

  Was Alexander a suspect? Was I?

  I kicked at leaves on the pavement, swung my bag and turned these thoughts over in my mind, and as I did so a car pulled up beside me. I looked up. It was the Land Rover. Alexander leaned across and opened the door. He didn’t say anything, so I climbed in.

  He drove past Avalon and out through country lanes until we reached a narrow road with a cattle grid at the end that wound up through a steep gorge. White goats stood precariously on the sides of the grey cliffs as if they were paper cut-outs that had been pinned there.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘For a walk,’ he said.

  ‘My shoes …’

  ‘Your boots are in the back.’

  ‘What about Jamie?’

  ‘Claudia’s giving him tea.’

  He parked close to the top of the hill and I changed into my walking boots. He passed me one of his old waxed jackets.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, as he helped me into it and its weight settled on my shoulders.

  I followed him over the road, up a stony path that led to the side of a huge hill, moorland really, fashioned into a beautiful big curve like the hip of a sleeping woman. The hillside was covered in purple-brown, dead bracken, and the ground underfoot was damp.

  ‘This way,’ he said.

  We walked for several miles, heading around the side of the hill, and we didn’t say anything. I followed his back, and every now and then we stopped to look at the view. He paused to help me cross a galloping stream. He held my eye for a second and then turned and set off again.

  It was a steep tramp up a wet, rocky path between flanks of heather and scrubby little wind-blown trees. Several times I had to stop to catch my breath, but Alexander ploughed on. He took off his jacket and tied it by the sleeves around his waist. There were sweat patches under each arm, in the centre of his back and at the neck of his shirt. I saw a deer leaping through the bracken and we startled some noisy hen-pheasants. I wanted to tell Alexander to slow down, but I couldn’t. I didn’t. I pushed myself to keep up with him.

  At the top of the hill, he made me turn.

  ‘Look,’ he said.

  I looked.

  Beyond the black, pointed treetops of a managed evergreen woodland was the Severn Estuary, spread out breathtakingly wide and reflecting the silver sun, with the distant hills of North Devon and South Wales stretching indistinguishably beneath an immense white sky made of sunlight.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.

  Alexander reached out and took my hand and led me a little further, to a benchmark monument.

  ‘This is Beacon Batch. It’s the highest point of the Mendips,’ he said. ‘It’s the best place to watch the sun go down.’

  ‘Alexander, I …’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t say anything.’

  He cleared his throat and he said very softly: ‘I went back to Avalon and you weren’t there. I thought you’d gone.’

  We sat down side by side on the mound with our backs against the monument.

  He picked up my hand and turned it over so it rested, palm upwards, in his larger one, cradled.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said.

  I glanced at his face. Alexander gently bent each of my fingers forward and examined each fingernail carefully as if it were something precious.

  ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘I can’t be without you.’

  I leaned my head back against the monument and gazed out. I could see for miles, hundreds of miles probably. The sun sank behind a low cloud and, as it dropped behind the Welsh mountains, the temperature fell with it. Sunlight slipped away from the hills like sand through a timer.

  ‘I found the statue of Genevieve in the back garden,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You should have been a sculptor.’

  He shook his head. ‘No chance.’

  ‘What happened to Pete?’ I asked.

  He behaved as if he had not heard. I took my hand away from his.

  ‘You have to tell me, Alexander. You can’t keep not telling me. Your secrets are what’s driving us apart. They’re poisoning everything.’

  ‘It’s better you don’t know.’

  ‘If you trusted me, you’d tell me.’

  ‘But you won’t like it.’

  Alexander looked out across the countryside. The sun was gone now – only its reflection remained, and its glorious colours were fading inevitably on the underside of the clouds.

  He said: ‘Genevieve and I had a fight.’

  ‘Because she was leaving?’

  ‘No, no. I knew she was going. I had resigned myself to that. It was because she was going to take Jamie with her.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I told her … I said she could do what she liked with her life but if she tried to take him from me, I would … oh Christ, Sarah, I said that I would kill her.’

  I was less shocked by this than I might have been, because Virginia had already told me about the argument.

  Alex’s hand was inside his shirt, under his rib, scratching at the place where the scar was, and his face was a picture of pain and something else, something ugly. It was anger.

  ‘But you didn’t mean it,’ I said.

  ‘I did at the time. I told her I would kill her. I was shouting … We were in the kitchen and the knife was on the counter …’

  ‘She stabbed you?’

  ‘She didn’t mean to. She was frightened; she thought I was going to hurt her and she grabbed it, it just happened, but I was bleeding, doubled over, and she was screaming at me and …’

  I wanted him to stop. I wanted to put my hands over my ears. He had been right, it was better I didn’t know, but now Alexander was telling me the cruel truth it became part of me, in my mind for ever.

  He shook his head and his voice changed. ‘Pete was the gentlest dog. He caught rabbits and rats but he’d never hurt a person,’ he said. ‘But he was my dog, and his instinct was to protect me. He went for Genevieve.’

  I held my breath. The cadence of his voice was falling now; anger was replaced by sadness and resignation.

  ‘I had to pull him off her. After that Pete wasn’t the same. He’d been badly treated before I had him and all his old aggression came back. I couldn’t trust him round people.’

  ‘Genevieve, you mean?’

  ‘And Jamie. Jamie was so little, and he was rough with Pete … The dog never hurt him, he growled and tried to back off, but Jamie was too young to read the warning signs. He kept jumping at him and I knew that sooner or later …’

  I rested my head back against the monument.

  ‘So Pete couldn’t stay with you?’

  ‘No.’

  I waited, but Alexander didn’t say any more. A couple of cheerful, loud Australian men, spattered from head to toe in mud, came by on their mountain bikes and stopped for a few moments. In their dirty Lycra shorts they made the world seem more normal again.

  ‘Where did Pete go?’ I asked.

  ‘To a colleague of Bill’s in Bristol. He’d just lost his dog and wanted a replacement.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  Alexander swallowed. ‘But Pete wouldn’t settle. He kept running away, escaping out of the garden …’

  I could tell by Alexander’s voice that this story was not going to have a happy ending.

  ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ I said. I covered my face with my hands.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Alexander said quietly. ‘This is what I was afraid of.’

  I leaned over and I kissed him. I kissed him insistently, persistently, until he responded and kissed me back. I pulled away a little then, and licked my lips. It was a promise, a pledge.

  ‘You won’t go back to Manchester?’ he asked. Or perhaps it wasn’t a question.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t go anywhere.’

  ‘It’s going to get worse,’ he said. ‘I mean, about Genevieve.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, feeling like I didn’t care. Only back then I
had no idea how bad it would become.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  FOR A SHORT while after that Alexander was exquisitely tender with me. He was gentle and careful in his words and actions and, together, in this newfound atmosphere of calm and trust, he and I communicated our feelings for one another through our mutual affection for Jamie. We were proud of every small achievement; we delighted in his chatter, his energy and his humour. Even his naughtiness – playful now rather than angry and foul-mouthed – charmed us, because we took it to mean he was recovering. If ever there was a time when we ran out of conversation, we talked about Jamie. Jamie was the light in our lives. In the middle of the police activity, and the family pressures, and the increasing burden of not knowing where Genevieve was, Jamie was something pure and innocent and untainted.

  The search for Genevieve had been ramped up a gear, and being in the village was intolerable to me now. Outside the school gate, I stood alone, isolated from the other women. Only Betsy talked to me, but her loyalty was making things more difficult for her, so if she was already with another group when I arrived I didn’t do anything to attract her attention.

  At Avalon, I sat with Jamie for hours making Lego models or drawing while we waited for Alexander to come home, which was the time when we could lock the doors and draw the curtains and be safe, together. The three of us – Alexander, Jamie and I – encased ourselves in a private bubble where we could simply be; untouched by the outside world.

  But the status quo couldn’t last. There were almost daily appeals for information about what had happened to Genevieve, and rumours were flying about with so many different theories. On the rare occasions I went down to the village, I would see a police car parked outside a particular house, or one would be pulling out of the lane that led past the quarry up to Eleonora House. Journalists from the local weekly papers were hanging around asking questions and collecting photographs. Genevieve’s disappearance was exciting to them. They didn’t care how Jamie felt when ‘friends who asked not to be named’ were quoted on the pages of their publication, speaking about frictions between Genevieve and her husband or how she used to turn up at the school gates looking as if she’d been crying and complaining about his moodiness. I had no idea how much of what they reported was true. I didn’t know if the unnamed friends were exaggerating or elaborating because they enjoyed the attention, or if these things really had taken place.

  Sometimes I dreamed of how it would be if Genevieve returned. I imagined her walking through the village like the heroine in the last scene in a film – ideally with Luke Innes walking beside her, holding her hand. Alexander and I would be exonerated, and the villagers would be sorry for all their unkind speculation and snide comments.

  And sometimes, as I watched Jamie beside me on the settee, curled up with his thumb in his mouth, stroking his nose with a finger, I prayed that if my dream came true, Genevieve would carry on walking out of our lives again, leaving her boy with his father, and with me.

  I could not talk about my fears with Alexander but at last I understood his reluctance to discuss the past. I didn’t want to talk about it either.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ONE OF THE knock-on effects of the media interest in Genevieve’s disappearance was that everyone in the village wanted to be involved in some way. There was never any shortage of people volunteering to talk to journalists; everyone had an opinion and a theory and, as speculation mounted, so did suspicion. I was used to conversations stopping when people saw me coming but it was becoming worse.

  It took me a while to realize that some of the village women were jealous of my relationship with Alexander. I was an outsider and he belonged to the village. If he were to take up with anyone, it should have been a local girl.

  By this time a small but increasingly outspoken group was complaining about the disruption caused by the media intrusion. They said it cast Burrington Stoke in a bad light. They were afraid it would become one of those places that is synonymous with tragedy or scandal. They didn’t blame the police or Virginia, of course; they blamed Alexander and me.

  I was grateful that Christopher’s mother, Karen, who was a teacher, had been resolute in her support for our little family. It was she, I knew, who protected Jamie from the worst of the gossip and made sure he was not picked on in the playground. One afternoon she called me at home to warn me there was a gaggle of reporters waiting outside the school. She suspected the police had issued some kind of news release concerning Genevieve, and suggested she take Jamie back to her house that night to save me having to face the barrage of cameras and journalists. I thought I ought to get Alexander’s permission first, but his phone was switched off. I couldn’t bear the thought of facing the journalists so I called the school back, thanked Karen and said I’d be grateful if she would look after Jamie. Then I switched on the television and waited for the news. It turned out that a man in his thirties had gone to an unnamed police station to answer questions about events leading up to the disappearance of Genevieve Churchill-Westwood. He had not been arrested and had attended the station voluntarily. Unconfirmed reports were that the man was Alexander Westwood, Mrs Churchill-Westwood’s husband. There was a lovely picture of Genevieve in her show-jumping gear, looking her most glamorous and laughing as if she didn’t have a care in the world, followed by a snatch-shot of Alexander going into the police station; he was frowning, unshaven, unkempt, his shoulders hunched, his hands in his pockets, gaunt and haunted.

  I turned off the television.

  The phone rang. It rang until it rang out, and then it started ringing again. It had to be journalists. What if it was the police? What if it was Alexander? What if it was the silence? What if it was Karen and something was wrong with Jamie? I picked the receiver up and held it to my ear.

  ‘Hello!’ said an excited female voice at the other end. ‘Is that Sarah?’

  I knew it was a journalist. Neil said they always tried to sound really open and friendly when they were cold-calling for quotes. I replaced the receiver and immediately it rang again. I didn’t know what to do. If I pulled the plug out of the socket, Alexander would have no sure way of contacting me. Something distracted me. Through the window, I thought I saw somebody in the garden. The photographers and journalists weren’t allowed on private land; they shouldn’t be in the garden. Neil said that didn’t always stop them though. If the stakes were high enough they’d do anything for the money shot. I ran round the house, breathless with panic, drawing the curtains. The phone kept ringing. It was driving me mad. I begged it to shut up and put my hands over my ears, but it rang again and again and again. In the end I unplugged it, and then the silence was almost worse than the bell. I turned on the television, the volume up loud, and watched some Coronation Street. May and I used to be addicted to soap operas, but I hadn’t watched much TV since I’d come to live at Avalon and I didn’t recognize half the characters. I tried to concentrate, but it was useless. It was just noise and it didn’t shut out the noise in my head.

  A cramp seized hold of the toes of my left foot. It was painful, the big toe splaying stiff at an awkward angle to its neighbour. I pulled the toes back towards my ankle, as Laurie had taught me, but it didn’t help. Nervy and cramped, I hobbled into the kitchen, filled a glass with ice and poured over a double helping of Southern Comfort. I took a good drink and felt the alcohol warm and anaesthetize me. I licked the sweetness from my lips. Then I opened the oven door to check the chicken I’d put in to roast. There was no rush of hot air, no warmth around my knees. The chicken, beneath its foil, was lukewarm, uncooked, its poor naked skin still flaccid, but ever so slightly yellowed.

  ‘Fuck,’ I said. Even the Rayburn was against me.

  My toes were still cramped.

  I slid open the hatch that gave access to the wicks and furnace of the Rayburn and, although there was a strong smell of kerosene, that was cool too. It didn’t make sense. How could the flame have gone out while the door was shut? I felt uneasy. I went over to
the door that opened into the rosette room and checked, but it was closed. I locked the door. I should have locked it before. Why had I not thought to do that? What if someone had come in while I’d had the TV turned up loud? What if someone was hiding in the house?

  ‘Don’t be an arsehole,’ I said to myself. It was a phrase that Jamie had recently picked up and, although I told him off every time he said it, he knew it made me laugh. ‘Don’t be an arsehole, Sarah!’ I said out loud. ‘Don’t be such a pathetic little arsehole.’

  I needed the spills to relight the wicks in the oven heater but I didn’t know where Alexander kept them.

  I rummaged through the cupboard under the sink to no avail, and emptied the kitchen drawers, but they weren’t there either. Then I remembered the little oil heater in Alexander’s office. He must use the spills to light that. I hardly ever went into that room, partly because I was afraid of disturbing the paperwork that was spread about the desk and floor in a system that only Alexander could possibly understand, but mainly because Alexander had expressly asked me not to go into the room when he wasn’t there. Jamie was also forbidden from going into the office, because it was where everything dangerous was kept, including Alexander’s gun, in a secure, steel cabinet. The door to the office, which was at the far end of the house, at the back, was always locked, but I knew Alexander kept the key on top of the frame. I stood on tiptoe and patted my fingers through the dust until I felt the cold metal. I slipped the key down, unlocked the door and pushed it open carefully. I did not switch on the light until I had drawn the curtains.

  The office was horribly cold and it smelled of the damp that was seeping through the ancient walls. The room was chaotic. Files were stacked upon files, papers spilled out of envelopes and plastic bags, and the computer printer was balanced precariously on twin piles of CDs. The locked cabinet was behind the desk, at the far end of the room. I could see the spill-box on top of it.