Her Sister's Secret

by E. V. Seymour

  I returned dad’s first.

  “Molly, thank God.”

  “I’m very sorry. It was wrong of me to worry you.”

  “Nobody has seen you for the best part of thirty-six hours.” He lowered his voice. “You haven’t had any more trouble, have you?”

  I glanced over my shoulder in Rocco’s direction. “No, nothing like that.” I cursed the false note in my voice.

  “Thank God. Where have you been?”

  “Staying with a friend.” I pulled a face at Rocco who flashed a grin and zipped up his fly.

  “I went to the house, then phoned Lenny, spoke to Zach.”

  Zach. I wondered how that had played out. “I should have told you I wanted some space.” I winced as I piled on cliché after cliché. Typically, Dad cut to the chase.

  “Mum told me you’d had words.”

  There was no defence. Without anything to say, I said nothing.

  “Come home, Molly. We need you.”

  “Did Mum say that?” My voice was thick and heavy. How could I face either of them?

  “She did.”

  I pretty much buckled with relief.

  “Dinner at six?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Stay over?”

  “Yes.” It would give me a chance to have a proper talk with my dad.

  I smiled weakly at Rocco as I finished the call.

  “See, that wasn’t so bad?” He slipped his arms around my waist. A good fit, mine snaked around his neck. He smelt of old-fashioned soap and something more astringent.

  “Thank you,” I said, meaning it.

  “For what?”

  “For not judging me too harshly.”

  He grinned, nuzzled my neck and dropped a soft lingering kiss upon my lips. “So, shall we–” He grimaced, cut off by the sound of rapping at the door.

  “Expecting someone?”

  A gleam of irritation sparked behind his eyes at the intrusion. Maybe he’d hoped for a crazy action replay. “Stay right where you are.” He sprinted towards the door, closing it firmly behind him.

  Voices drifted up the stairs. I plumped down on the bed and listened.

  “Are you decent?” a voice called from the landing.

  Astonished, I opened the door to find Lenny’s solid frame occupying the doorway.

  “How on earth?”

  “The question you should be asking is what took you so long?”

  “You mean you knew where I was?” I stepped aside.

  “Credit me with some intelligence.” She swished in, the large canvas bag on her shoulder almost knocking me off my feet. “After a frantic phone call from your dad, which I handled as if your little disappearing act were no big deal, I retrieved Mr Noble’s name and address from the diary. Thought I’d give it a bit for you to come to your senses. Looks like that might take time.” The way her eyes scoped the room you’d think she was hunting down criminals.

  “I didn’t feel well.” I winced at my cowardly and pathetic lie.

  Lenny plumped down in the place I’d recently vacated. Disapproval tightened her mouth. Didn’t suit her. She stared at me for several seconds.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  “A mercy fuck is not complicated.”

  “That’s not what it was.”

  “Look,” she said in a gentler tone, “your parents are going through hell, Molly. I know you are too but shagging a client and disappearing without trace isn’t going to remove the pain.”

  Ouch. Lenny knew how to land a blow. I opened my mouth to reply then thought better of it.

  “You need to go home.”

  “I am.”

  “Good.” Pleased with getting a result, she reached out, patted my hand. “What made you run?”

  Blown away by her doggedness, I told her about the row with my mother. “So, call a truce.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Not quite. I brought you this. Thought it would help you see the light - in more ways than one.” She rummaged in her bag and handed me a small cardboard box that weighed heavy. Puzzled, I took it. As I opened the container, Lenny’s face cracked into a wide forgiving smile. Inside was a torch. But not any torch: a BYBLIGHT. I looked up, truly touched. She’d remembered my story about Zach, my fear of the dark and Chancer coming to my rescue.

  I felt the weight of it in my hand. “It’s very fancy.”

  “Be careful where you point. It’s powerful enough to rip out retinas.”

  “What’s that?” Rocco said.

  “Lenny bought me a present in case I get stuck in a tunnel.” I exchanged a grin with her. “I guess you two have met?”

  “Briefly.” Lenny gave Rocco the big look treatment although her smile seemed genuine enough. I think she wanted to prove that she didn’t disapprove of Rocco Noble, only what I was doing with him.

  Lenny got up and made for the door. “Remember what I said, Molly.” Turning to Rocco, “Nice to meet you,” and then she thundered down the stairs and was gone.

  Chapter 31

  Standing outside, bracing myself to go in, it felt like someone had bashed six-inch nails into my flesh. Back on intimately familiar terrain, all those things that didn’t make sense oppressed me.

  In the space of days, the house and garden had fallen into decline. Paintwork looked faded, bleached by the sun, and worn. The grass was too long. The drive sprouted weeds, flowers wilting and shrivelled in the fierce heat. The Malverns didn’t so much as stand majestic as loom over Mum and Dad’s home like the backdrop to a horror movie.

  Mr Lee was first to greet me. Shiny-eyed, he jumped up, glad to have someone take an interest. The smell of barbeque wafted in from the garden and I followed my nose, with Mr Lee in hot pursuit.

  Dad had his back to me. Of Nate there was no sign.

  “Hi,” I called. “Where’s Mum?”

  Dad turned. He wore a stripy butcher’s apron, a long fork clasped in his hand. To the casual observer, nothing appeared wrong and yet nothing felt right. What the hell were we doing having a barbeque? Shouldn’t we be indoors, out of the sun, in the shade? “Showing your aunt to her room,” he said with a heavy sigh.

  “Dusty?” Christened Jean, everyone called my aunt by her nickname. I had no idea why. Loud and over the top, my mum’s sister, whom my mother hardly mentioned, was not the kind of woman you wanted in your house at a time like this. I think I’d probably seen her on half a dozen occasions during the course of my life. Unmarried, and retired from running a high-end dress shop that had been her life, she travelled around sightseeing, and sometimes took off for long stints abroad. The last time I’d clapped eyes on her I’d been a teenager. For some reason that escaped me, she’d never made it to Nate and Scarlet’s wedding.

  Dad, obviously unnerved by the prospect, stared back at the grid. Chicken legs, steaks and sausages spat and sizzled through a haze of white smoke. Looked as if he were feeding an army.

  “Nate around?” I asked casually.

  “Somewhere.” Vague, lost in his own thoughts, Dad was a man going through the motions without understanding why. I couldn’t imagine how difficult this must be.

  It didn’t take long to find my brother-in-law. He was in the kitchen, helping himself to a drink. Expecting my mother, the smile briefly vanished when he saw who it was. “Hey, you gave your folks quite a scare. You okay?”

  “Yes.” As okay as can be expected.

  Nate looked down, fished a lemon pip out of his drink. “Want one?” he said, gesturing with his glass.

  “G&T would be nice.”

  He took his time fixing it. We didn’t say ‘Cheers’ or anything like that. I didn’t fill in the gaps with small talk, but that didn’t stop Nate. “Journalists still call despite our pleas for privacy and refusal to comment. Your dad has grown an obsession with tidying his garage. Your mum spends much of the day upstairs. Sometimes I hear her crying.”

  Focus, I thought, on what you can do instead of what you know you can’t. “Any
fresh developments?”

  “If there are, the police aren’t sharing them with me.”

  “But aren’t they supposed to? Isn’t that Childe’s job?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “What happened in the study?”

  Nate’s expression tightened. “Wondered when you’d get round to it.” He eyed me over the rim of his glass. “Your dad is a lot smarter than you give him credit.”

  “I’ve never underestimated my father. And I think I told you that.”

  He flicked a smile in a weak attempt to take the edge off. “Following the letter from Heather Bowen’s solicitor, Rod’s been making a few enquiries.” He spoke in a giving me the lowdown, ‘know what I mean’ tone. “It seems our Mr Bowen is not as squeaky clean as he’s portrayed. He had what you could call a colourful private life.”

  I could hardly tell him this wasn’t breaking headline news, so I sat down and took a long swallow of gin. It tasted bitter. In the absence of a riveted response, Nate elaborated. “While playing happy families, his mistress and child were tucked up in Dorset.”

  How could Bowen afford a mistress and child on a sergeant’s salary? Was this the reason for Scarlet’s request for a loan? Had Bowen manipulated his ‘other woman’ in order to fund his alternative lifestyle?

  “The police aren’t going to muck-rake over one of their own, are they? Don’t you see,” Nate continued, “Bowen’s unconventional lifestyle is enough to discredit him and put the police right off.”

  “The point is to prove Scarlet’s innocence, not Bowen’s guilt. What about the bracelet – any prints found?”

  “It was clean.”

  It could only be clean if it had been wiped, surely? This didn’t seem to occur to Nate. So, I told him.

  Nate shrugged. “Belonged to the mistress.”

  “We both know that’s not true.”

  “We don’t,” Nate sniped back. “You’d better go and join them in the garden,” he said pointedly.

  “Don’t you think you should show your face?”

  He shook his head.

  I got it. Barbeques were for fun, not funerals.

  Chapter 32

  Dusty did that mwah mwah actressy thing on either side of my nose. Apart from looking as if she’d been left out in a desert to bake, she was still very much the woman I remembered from way back. Taller, older and with a rangy build, quite dissimilar to my mother, she wore a navy knee-length cocktail dress with sleeves. Her matching sandals revealed a highly polished pedicure. A gold anklet teased a millimetre below a gaudy piece of body art that trailed up the side of her leg to her knee. She had suspiciously thick bright blonde hair – could it be a wig, or hair extensions? Beneath the fringe, surrounded by tons of eyeliner and mascara, she had sharp blue eyes that could leave you blind if you stared into them for long enough; amazing she could jack them open with that lot clinging to her lashes. The lines on her face suggested that she’d spent her entire life laughing. She wasn’t laughing now.

  “I came as soon as I heard.” She tilted her head in Mum’s direction. Mum, wan and gaunt, a listless, ‘not there’, look in her eyes, glanced back, distracted. She must have dropped a stone in weight. Utterly lost. On the edge. Lights out. I tried to catch her attention, but she was too spaced to notice. “Scarlet was such a lovely girl,” Dusty murmured.

  “Yes,” I said, my turn to avoid my mother’s gaze.

  “Nate not coming?” Dad asked.

  “He wants to be on his own.”

  Privately, I thought we could all have done with being on our own. I was right about the barbeque: a bad idea. Sure, we had to eat, but this?

  “No Zach?” Dusty glanced over my shoulder as if he might suddenly materialise.

  “Not coping too well,” Dad explained. “Better off where he is.”

  Was this the conclusion my dad came to after his most recent conversation with Zach, or was this my brother’s idea and my dad was going along with it?

  A deadly silence cast a shadow over the lawn. Even the birds seemed to have packed it in for the evening. We stood, each of us fixed on the grass, eyes squinting against the curling smoke from the barbecue.

  “Mand, are you all right?” Dusty said. Mand? I’d never heard anyone call my mother anything but Amanda. A difficult smile flashed across my Mum’s lips. “Darling, don’t be like that.”

  “Like what?” Mum’s voice was metallic.

  “Like you don’t know who I’m talking about. Everyone called her that,” Dusty told me with a chuckle.

  “Long time ago,” Dad said, shooting a look at Mum, one part warning; two parts concern.

  I pictured Scarlet sitting on the bench near the water feature, watching proceedings, thinking what stupid twats we all were.

  The next two hours were incongruous, awful, and exhausting. The terrace filled with smoke. While Dad obsessed about the food, whether or not it was cooked properly, whether he’d got the charcoal at the right temperature, whether he was going to kill us all with food poisoning, my mother, glassy-eyed with booze and bellicosity raised the tension in the garden to seismic proportions by uttering not a single word. Seriously wondering whether Mum might lump Dusty one, I was glad when she excused herself and went to bed.

  “How long is she staying?” I asked Dad when Dusty tottered off to the loo some time later. In the sipping stakes, she could rival my mother. Must have shifted at least half a litre of gin before necking into wine.

  “Christ knows.” Exhaustion chiselled deep grooves along his forehead and either side of his mouth. My youthful-looking dad looked old.

  I reached up, gave his shoulder a squeeze and followed his gaze. He was looking up longingly at his and Mum’s room. “Mind, if turn in?”

  I patted his arm. “You go ahead.”

  He cast a doubtful look in the direction of the French windows, from which Dusty would, no doubt, emerge at any second, torn, it seemed about leaving me with my aunt. I knew what he was thinking. “How much does she actually know?”

  “Only the bare bones.”

  “Shall I keep it that way?” Instinctively, I knew this was what he wanted.

  He was unequivocal. “Most definitely.”

  Chapter 33

  “Talking to your mother is like engaging with a terrorist about to kill a hostage,” Dusty said.

  We were sitting on the bench in the same spot Scarlet and I had shared weeks before.

  “That’s a little strong.”

  “You think me unkind?”

  “I do.”

  “What a lovely young woman you are,” she said with a beam. “Not afraid to tell it straight.” She linked her arm through mine in a ‘part of the sisterhood’ gesture, which I didn’t much care for. “Bit of a black sheep, aren’t you?”

  “I think Zach was awarded that particular title.”

  “Of course, yes,” she said, as though she’d only just remembered I had a brother. “How is he? Still on the straight and narrow?”

  “As far as I know.” Which wasn’t much at all.

  “Your mother was extremely distressed at the time, I recall.”

  Which time, I wanted to ask. The trouble with relatives who flitted in and out was that, understandably, they had a poor grasp of the main narrative.

  “Naturally, I appreciate how dreadful things are for your parents right now, truly I do,” she continued, “but your mother lives as if in a perpetual state of atonement. People like that take tragedy to heart.”

  “Is there any other way to take it?”

  “I don’t see you falling apart.”

  “Everybody grieves in a different way. Scarlet wasn’t my daughter.” I wondered how my mum would have reacted had it been me in the crash. Would she have been stricken? I kicked the malodorous thought into the rockery where it shattered into a gazillion pieces.

  “You know, Molly, you’re so like your dad. Strong, stoic, silent. Always admired him. Typical Gemini. Considered quite a catch back in the day when he worked i
n Vice.”

  “They still call it that? Sounds very old-fashioned.”

  “Talking of which–” She gave a little snort of laughter, reached for her bag and slipped out a pack of cigarettes. “Would you mind? Only I’ve been dying to light up since I got here. Your mother hates me smoking.”

  “She hates anyone smoking.”

  “Want one?” Dusty shook out two cigarettes.

  “No, I’m good.”

  “I won’t tell. Our secret.”

  I’d had quite enough of those. Secrets confer power. Give it away and it loses its vitality, and the secret-keeper is forever feared and despised. In an offbeat second, it occurred to me then that too many people were asking me to keep my mouth shut about various things.

  I shook my head and watched as Dusty took out a fancy gold lighter and went through the ritual. Tilting her head back, she narrowed her eyes and exhaled a sigh of deep pleasure. “You know they’re burying that poor man day after tomorrow?”

  I didn’t know. How did she? Suspicious, I asked her. “Your dad mentioned it,” Dusty said. “Someone from inside the police keeps him in the loop.”

  Odd, I thought. Dad had intimated that his source had dried up, unless it was Stanton, which would be incredibly indiscreet of him if not plain wrong. It also told me something. Any investigation by the coroner and police must have been concluded. Surely, that wasn’t remotely possible in the timescale?

  “So?” she said.

  “So what?”

  “Molly, darling, I’m not daft. Whatever is going on?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Which was true.

  “Nate, poor boy, told me Scarlet was drunk.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do we know why?”

  “No.”

  Her crafty gaze fell on me. With Rocco, I’d almost crumbled. Dusty stood no chance. “You have no idea?” I spread my hands. “Always seemed such a together young woman.”

  “Mmm.”