The Girl Who Came Back

by Susan Lewis

  “Are you working these days?” Andee asked as Jules passed her a mug of peppermint tea.

  Yes, Jules was working, but at a very different kind of job to the one she’d had before. “I’m an administrator for the Greensleeves Care Home, down near the seafront,” she replied.

  Andee’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

  Managing one of her old ironic twinkles, Jules said, “My mother’s there, and it’s only part-time. I usually end up doing most of the work from here. How about you? What are you up to now you’ve left the force?”

  Andee looked faintly sheepish as she took a sip of her tea. “Well, I tried being a full-time mum for a while, but my kids soon got fed up with that. They’re eighteen and sixteen now, so, as you can probably imagine, I was just in the way. Actually, their father and I finally got married a few months ago. They seemed to enjoy that, and of course they had to come on the honeymoon with us, as did both our mothers, although we did manage a few days in Paris on our own.”

  Jules felt dizzied by the image of three generations enjoying one another so much that they’d willingly travel together even for a honeymoon. Her own family had been just like that, doing everything and going everywhere together.

  “…so I’m now toying with the idea of studying for the bar,” Andee was saying.

  Though Jules immediately saw beer taps, she quickly realized Andee was talking about the law. Actually, she could see her as a barrister. She’d be good. Scrupulous, thorough, ruthless where necessary, sensitive, sharp, effective, but above all honest and incorruptible.

  There were lawyers like that, Jules was in no doubt of it; it was just that she and her family hadn’t come across them.

  “What about the women’s refuge?” Andee asked. “Are you still involved with that?”

  Jules both nodded and shook her head.

  It seemed such a long time ago that she’d set up the refuge for battered women, probably because it was. It had happened in another lifetime, when she’d been as fearless of consequences as of raising money; she’d thought nothing of taking on the council for permissions, getting the social care the women needed, financial support, and even protection for the women and children to keep them safe from their tormentors. Memories of the fund-raisers they’d staged for the place and shows they’d put on for the children began flickering as though trying to find a focus, but she quickly shut them down again. “They still have lots of volunteers doing their bit,” she told Andee. “It’s lovely how supportive some people can be, especially when there’s nothing in it for them.”

  “Apart from the satisfaction of knowing you’ve done something good for someone else. That’s always rewarding.”

  Jules didn’t disagree, although she couldn’t remember ever thinking much about how she felt when helping others. It was just something she’d done because she could, and what sort of person turned their back on someone when it was in their power to make a positive, even life-changing difference to a wretchedly unfortunate soul?

  She wondered if they were now getting round to what this visit was actually about. Perhaps Andee had come to solicit her help in setting up some new kind of social project? She’d happily work with Andee on anything, since she had no doubt it would be a worthy cause. In fact, she felt a stir of excitement, as much at the thought of getting involved in something new as at the idea of becoming friends with Andee. It seemed such an age since she’d had someone to chat with, confide in, share a goal with, apart from Em, but with Em being so far away now she couldn’t count on her in the same way as if she were still in Kesterly.

  Andee was here, and they’d got along very well the last time they’d known each other, in spite of her not really being Andee’s type. Actually, they probably were quite similar in some ways; it was just that they were from very different backgrounds. Jules had started life on the notorious Temple Fields estate, over on the other side of town, whereas Andee was from the right side of London, where her father had been high up in the police force before his retirement. Not that she could imagine anything like disparity in social backgrounds being a problem for Andee; during the time Jules had known her she’d never shown any signs of considering herself superior to anyone, which made her pretty unique for someone doing her job. No, as connected and cultured as Andee might be, she’d been every bit as appalled as Jules had when the wheels of justice had turned the way they had almost three years ago.

  It was time, the therapist had told Jules only last week, to start making efforts to move on. Though Jules had known it, hearing it had made her want to bury herself even deeper in her grief and anger, to tell the wretched woman that she had no idea what she was talking about, that if she were in Jules’s shoes she’d know what a ridiculous, insensitive, and impossible suggestion that was. However, when she’d got home she’d found herself collecting photographs and other treasured mementos and putting them away. That was all she’d done. It had felt huge at the time, exhausting, debilitating, but now, like some guardian angel, Andee had arrived, maybe to help her on the next stage of the journey?

  She could do it. Whatever Andee was about to ask of her, she was going to say yes.

  “I have some news,” Andee said, and her lovely blue-green eyes seemed to search Jules’s in a way that made Jules start to tense.

  She’d read this wrong. Andee wasn’t here for a worthy cause, or to make friends; she was here for only one reason, and now Jules wanted her to leave before Andee confirmed her worst fears.

  “I had a call from an old colleague,” Andee continued. “He thought I should…He asked me if I would break it to you.”

  Though Jules’s heart was starting to thud, the beats were all wrong: fast, slow, harsh, so faint her heart might have stopped with dread. She knew what was coming, and yet she couldn’t allow herself to think it, much less believe it.

  “Amelia Quentin is being released,” Andee said quietly.

  Jules’s insides turned so hard they might crack. The hand she pressed first to her head and then to her cheek was stiff like a claw, yet shaking. She knew she shouldn’t feel shocked; if anything, she should have been expecting it, but so soon…It was as though no time had passed. Considering what the girl had done, no time had.

  “Come and sit down,” Andee said gently, pulling out a chair at the table.

  Doing as she was told, Jules said, “When?”

  “I don’t have an actual date,” Andee replied, “but it’s imminent.”

  “And where will she go?”

  Andee swallowed and her eyes moved briefly away before she said, “I believe she’s returning to Crofton Park.”

  The reply was like a slap. Crofton Park, one of the Quentins’ several country homes, was less than four miles from this part of Kesterly, out on the moors, close to the medieval village of Dunster. The old folks, Amelia’s grandparents, the judge and his wife, had spent their final years at Crofton Park and no one locally had liked them. Good riddance, they’d all said when the ill-tempered, tight-fisted old beak had followed his snobbish, petty-minded, unpleasantly outspoken wife to the grave. Since their passing the place had become little more than a weekend retreat for their only son, Anton Quentin, QC, and his despicable toff friends from London. They hardly ever mixed with the locals, unless it suited them for some trifling reason; otherwise they were far too exclusive to entertain even the idea of becoming involved in the local community. Theirs was an overprivileged, overmoneyed, overtitled, rarefied existence that the rest of the world—the everyday plebeian world—only read about in expensive glossy magazines and society columns. They were also, Jules had come to learn the hard way, a section of the upper-class British establishment that stuck together no matter what, and even believed they were entitled to play by rules of their own.

  “Doesn’t she have to go to a halfway house first?” Jules murmured, still trying to take it in. “That’s what usually happens when someone’s released, isn’t it?”

  “Often, yes,” Andee confirmed.

 
; Jules looked at her briefly. Of course the rules were different for the likes of Amelia. How stupid of her to have forgotten that.

  Amelia Quentin was to be released; she was returning to Crofton Park…How could the girl even think about setting foot in that place again, never mind actually want to? “It shouldn’t be happening,” she said hoarsely. “It’s just not right.”

  “I know,” Andee responded.

  “Her sentence was a farce! An outrage!”

  Andee didn’t disagree.

  “There are other places she could go,” Jules cried angrily. “Why does it have to be there?”

  Andee had no answer to that.

  “She should never be allowed out,” Jules declared fiercely. “If we hadn’t been cheated of a proper trial…What about Dean Foggarty? Is he being released too?”

  “I haven’t had any news about him.”

  Thinking of Dean caused Jules to see red again. “It was one massive injustice from start to finish,” she growled. “We were treated like the little people, cretins who don’t matter…Dean shouldn’t be where he is, everyone knows that. She’s the one who should be paying.”

  Andee’s eyes showed her sympathy; the words she’d spoken at the time of the trial had expressed how disgusted she too had felt at the way things had turned out.

  “If I see her, if she comes anywhere near me…,” Jules raged. What would she do? She knew what she’d like to do.

  “She won’t, I’m sure.”

  Jules’s breathing was still ragged as she struggled with a tangle of fury, frustration, helplessness, and the deepest, bitterest resentment. Just as she was finding the heart to start moving forward…

  She couldn’t cope with this.

  “Where’s Kian?” Andee asked softly.

  Jules looked at her, her eyes feeling as wide as the jagged holes in her heart. From the kindliness and concern of Andee’s expression it was clear that she had no idea about Kian.

  —

  Andee Lawrence had gone now, leaving Jules alone with the stark reality of a nightmare with no end. She knew that if Andee had been able in any way to soften her news, or to change it to what everyone wanted to hear—that Amelia Quentin was never coming out of prison—she would have done so. But it hadn’t been in her power. All she’d been able to do was come here in an act of selfless consideration that went above and beyond what was called for, given that she was no longer with the police. She had her own life to lead now, and there was no need to concern herself with anything that had happened during the time she was a detective. And it wasn’t even as if she’d been assigned to the Bright family case back then; what she’d done had been out of genuine kindness, something Jules would never forget.

  Jules suspected Andee was driving home now worrying about leaving when she had. In a way, it was reassuring for Jules to know that she had someone on her side. On the other hand, maybe she didn’t want to connect too strongly with Andee when the thoughts in her mind were so chaotic and dark.

  Glancing at the clock, she calculated the time in Chicago, where her best friend, Em, was a first-grade teacher, and Em’s American husband, Don, was the director of alumni relations at one of the city’s exclusive private schools. They’d met, by chance, in London, over two decades ago, at which point in time Em would have been the last person to envisage herself leaving Kesterly, never mind Britain, and going to live in the States. However, that was what had happened; she’d even married in the States at Don’s family’s lakeside villa in Indiana, where Jules and Kian had spent just about every summer vacation since.

  “You’re kidding me,” Em cried when Jules broke the news about Amelia Quentin, sounding every bit as sickened as Jules had expected. “How the hell can that happen?”

  “It’s called parole. Apparently she’s eligible—or someone’s seen to it that she is. I’ll need to look it up, because I don’t know how these things work, but she hasn’t even served three years.”

  “What about Dean? Are they releasing him too?”

  Jules winced, as she often did when Dean’s name was mentioned. There were so many emotions attached to him, guilt, confusion, anger, love, despair…One day, when she could think straight again, she might work it all out. “Andee didn’t know about him,” she replied, “only about Amelia.”

  With a sigh Em said, “Oh, hell, Jules. What are you going to do? Is it absolutely certain she’s coming back to Kesterly?”

  “To Crofton Park is what Andee said. Close enough.”

  “Then why don’t you just pack up and come here? I could help you—”

  “You know why,” Jules interrupted. “Apart from everything else, I can’t just abandon my mother, even though she hardly knows who I am. I like to think we’re still connecting on some level. I have to tell myself we are, or there wouldn’t be a point to anything.”

  “Poor Marsha. No better, huh?”

  “That’s never going to happen, and I have to be honest, I sometimes feel glad of it. At least she didn’t have to go through what the rest of us did. It would probably have killed her if she had.”

  “I get what you’re saying,” Em assured her. “But listen, I’ve just noticed the time, and I have to be in class in half an hour. I’ll call again at noon, OK? Just tell me, do you think you’re going to be safe with that girl on the loose?”

  Jules’s insides clenched with a sour blend of hatred and unease. “She’s got more to fear from me than I have from her,” she declared tightly.

  “Mm, you and the rest of Kian’s family. When’s it supposed to happen?”

  “I don’t have an exact date, but apparently it’s imminent.”

  “Is Stephie around?”

  “No, she’s in Thailand.”

  “How about Joe? Are you going to be in touch with him?”

  “I had an email from him a couple of weeks ago. He’s coming here at the end of next month to kick off a tour of Europe.”

  “That’s cool. It’s great that he’s kept in touch. And it was real kind of Andee to come and tell you about the release. I always liked her.”

  “Me too. She didn’t know about Kian.”

  “That surprises me. Did you tell her?”

  “Yes. I think it came as quite a shock. Anyway, I should let you go. Call me back as soon as you can.”

  After ringing off, Jules sat down in front of her laptop, not quite sure what to do next, apart from check her emails and maybe catch up on some work. She knew she should email Stephie and Joe, and call Kian’s family, but all she did was walk to the window and stare out at the rain. Lucky she hadn’t put any washing out; she’d been about to when Andee had arrived. Now all she could think about was what she was going to do if, when, she ran into Amelia Quentin. She could see, almost feel the girl creeping up on her as she draped sheets on the line or walked out to her car, grabbing her, forcing her to the ground, and stabbing her, over and over…

  Her vision blurred as the past loomed up in all its frantic and bloody glory.

  She was aware of her hand tightening around the handle of a knife; there were spasms in her arm as if it were trying to make a frenzied attack; there was sickness and murder in her heart that was blackening all the natural goodness and love.

  Wrenching herself free of the chaos, she ran upstairs to the spare room and dragged out the box she’d stored there so recently. With trembling hands she took out the photo of Kian that she used to keep next to her bed. Why had she removed it? There had been no need to. He was her husband, and it was only right that she should look at him every day.

  “Hello, my love,” she whispered, her slender fingers tracing the easy line of his jaw and the fair, tousled curls that made him look so fun-loving and rakish. He was laughing straight into the lens, carefree, happy, as though nothing could touch him, no one could be as lucky as him.

  It was what he used to say: “Being married to you makes me the luckiest man alive.”

  Jules could hear the words so clearly, he might be saying them now. They
were falling around her as softly as petals, and felt as refreshing as spring rain. He was pouring his love into her heart, driving out the darkness, filling it with light and laughter, the way he always had when she was afraid, or sad, or angry, or starting to lose hope. She’d never doubted him or his love, the way she knew he’d sometimes doubted hers.

  “I didn’t mean to shut you out,” she whispered, tears shining in her eyes. “Is that what I did?”

  He’d never accused her of it, but she’d sensed a loneliness in him at times that she knew she could have done something about, but she hadn’t. It broke her heart all over again to think of it now.

  “I should have made the time,” she said hoarsely. “If only I’d made the time. Maybe none of it would have happened if I had.”

  She didn’t really think that was the truth, or not all of it, anyway, but sometimes there was comfort to be found in punishing herself with guilt. If she was responsible, then it meant she was in control, and if she was in control she could have stopped it.

  Her therapist was having none of that. “You know that doesn’t make any sense,” she’d tell her, and Jules never argued. She understood why the therapist always steered her away from the self-destructive thoughts. It was her job, what she was trained to do. In her shoes Jules would do exactly the same.

  “Hey, you,” she said tenderly as she stroked Kian’s face again.

  He was still smiling at her, so she smiled too and did nothing to stop her mind drifting back over the years to a time when just about everyone they knew had smiled with them….

  The pub door crashed open loudly and in stepped a man in black.

  On the man’s head was a montera—a flat-topped hat with a round fluffy bulb above each ear. Swinging from his shoulders was a heavy cape, flashing flirty glimpses of a blood-red lining as it swayed. His silken shirt was slicked tight to his manly body, opened down the front to reveal his even more manly chest. Around his waist was a crimson sash; his trousers hugged his hips like a lover’s hands and flared like sails around his ankles.