'I couldn't believe it when I saw her,' Hannah said breathlessly, hauling Milly up and clutching the dog to her chest. 'I couldn't believe it.'
'There. You see? Sometimes good things happen,' Liza said, her face pink with the effort of tying the knots. 'If we have faith.'
I didn't answer her. I suspected Hannah's illuminated smile had made my decision for me, and I was no longer sure that she was right.
I slept alone in my own room that night - or, rather, I sat in the battered leather armchair until my thoughts were as twisted and frayed as Liza's bits of rope. I did not have to explain my reticence to Liza - Hannah's mood had taken a sudden downturn that evening, seemingly in inverse proportion to the highs of earlier in the day, and she spent the night in her mother's room. As I stared out of the black window at the fishing lights, I could hear her sobbing, heard Liza murmuring reassurance. In the early hours I got up to make myself a cup of tea and found Kathleen in the kitchen in her dressing-gown. She looked at me, and shook her head. 'It's tough on her,' she said, and I wasn't sure which of them she was talking about.
They say that a mother is genetically programmed to want to stop the cry of their baby. Well, that night I would have done anything to stem Hannah's tears. In them I heard every bit of loss she had suffered, every loss that stood ahead of her, and while I have never thought of myself as particularly emotional, that night I felt wretched. Anyone not moved by them would have had a heart of lead.
When I finally slept, as it was getting light, she had been quiet for several hours. But I felt the fragility of her sleep, just as I felt Liza's presence down the corridor, and I knew that twenty feet away, behind the whitewashed wooden door, she was awake too.
The following morning, when she returned from the school run I was waiting for her in the car park. I had positioned myself against the back wall of the hotel where I could not be seen by anyone else.
'Hey, gorgeous,' she called, as she reversed in. In her smile was the relief of seeing me alone after what had felt like a day's separation. 'You're a sight for sore eyes.' She climbed out of the car, and closed the door behind her.
'Walk with me,' I said.
She blinked and looked at me suspiciously.
'What's up?'
Neither of us had made a move towards the other. Normally I would have had her in my arms by now, would have been unable to resist that brief moment of solitude to pull her close to me, to feel her skin against mine.
'Mike?'
I forced my face into the most neutral expression I could manage. 'I've got some news.' I squared my shoulders. 'I'm going to stop the development. I've - I've spoken to someone behind it, and I think I can persuade them to go elsewhere.'
She lifted a hand to her brow, the better to see my face. Her own was bruised with tiredness, mauve shadows round her eyes.
'What?'
'I think I can stop it - I know I can.'
She frowned. 'The development will just stop? No more planning inquiry? Nothing? Just like that?'
I swallowed. 'I think so.'
'But - how?' A smile was playing on her lips, as if she daren't give it full vent until she knew what I was saying to be true.
'I don't want you to say anything to anyone until I've made sure. I'm going back to London.'
'London?' The half-smile vanished.
'So you don't need to go, Liza,' I said slowly. 'You don't need to go anywhere.'
She glanced at me, stared fixedly at her feet, then out to sea. Anywhere but at me. 'You know the development's only half of it now, Mike. I need a clean slate. I need to stop running.'
'Then do it when Hannah's older. Tell the authorities when she doesn't need you so much. It'll keep.'
She stood there and I watched every thought I had had flicker across her face, like clouds scudding across the sky. The possibility of not having to go was beyond relief. But I could tell that she'd mentally adjusted to the idea of leaving and was finding it hard to pull back. Finally she faced me. 'What's going on, Mike?'
'I'm going to make sure you're safe,' I said, 'and that Hannah gets to grow up with her mother.'
She stared at me for a long time, her eyes questioning. Then she must have realised that I wasn't smiling. Given what I had achieved, I should have been. And I knew what she was going to ask next. She kicked at a pebble. 'Are you coming back? When you've done this thing?'
'Probably not,' I said.
There it was, out in the open.
'I thought you wanted . . . I thought you wanted to be with us.'
I said nothing. There was nothing I could say.
'You're not answering my question.'
'I need you to trust me,' I said.
'But you're not coming back. Whatever.'
I shook my head.
I saw her jaw tighten. I knew she wanted to ask me how I could do this when I had told her I loved her. I knew she had a million questions, and she no longer knew the answer to the biggest one. I knew she wanted to ask me to stay. But she wanted to stay with her daughter more.
'Why won't you trust me enough to talk to me?' she said.
Because I can't make you choose, I told her silently. But I can carry that burden for you. 'Do you always ask so many questions?' I said jokingly. But I didn't laugh. I stepped forward and held her, feeling her stiffen in my arms, and knew that my heart was broken.
Night falls swiftly in Silver Bay. And, as with any small town, it comes with a rhythm of its own: birds declare the end of day with increasing fervour, then fall silent; cars edge into driveways; children are called in, bouncing or dragging their feet, for their supper; somewhere in the distance a hysterical small dog barks, warning of the end of the world. In Silver Bay there were other layers of nightfall: the sound of pans clattering through the open kitchen window, the creaking of warped lock-up doors, the hiss and grind of tyres in sand down the coast road as the fishermen readied their boats, the grunting and good-natured shouting of those launching their vessels from the shore. And then, as the sun sank slowly behind the hills, the winking advent of the bay's lights, silence, and the occasional distant illumination of an oil tanker on the horizon, and then, finally, blackness. A blackness into which you can project almost anything: the song of an unseen whale, the beating of a heart, the endlessness of an unwanted future.
I watched it all as I sat in the leather armchair. And, given the momentous nature of what was about to happen, of what had already happened, my final conversation of that day was almost anticlimactic.
'Vanessa?'
She had picked up on the second ring. I gazed out of the window and then, perhaps more sharply than I'd intended, pulled down the blind.
'Mike . . .' She let out a long breath. 'I wasn't sure when you'd call.'
She sounded unsure of herself. I wondered how long she had been waiting. I had promised to call several hours previously, but had sat in the room, staring at the phone, my fingers refusing to hit the keys. 'Mike?'
'You still want me?'
'Do you want me?'
I closed my eyes. 'We've been through a lot,' I said. 'We've hurt each other. But I'll give it a go. I really will give it a go.'
I was almost relieved when she didn't say anything.
'When's your flight home?' she said.
Twenty-five
Monica
I didn't tell Mike I was going to do it: I was worried he'd tell me not to, that he just wanted me to do what we'd discussed, and stop fretting about the detail. I guessed he was royally pissed off with me - he'd left increasingly strident messages on my voicemail and every time I switched on my mobile phone it seemed there was a missed-call alert from Australia. Last night he must have called a hundred times, warning me not to speak to anyone until I'd talked to him.
But I couldn't ring him back, not until at least some of this made sense. I couldn't talk to him until I understood what was going on. I'm not the greatest journalist in the world - I've never fooled myself that I'm much more than a jobbing hack -
but I know when something odd's going on, and my blood was up. In one respect at least I'm like my brother: I'm thorough. So, on my one weekday off, I headed to Surrey, caught a cab from the station to the address I'd scribbled on a piece of paper, and shortly after ten I was standing outside a large house in Virginia Water.
'Nice place,' the cabbie said, peering at it through the windscreen as he scribbled a receipt.
'Yes - I'm scouting locations for a porn film,' I said. 'Their rates are very good, apparently.' I grinned as he drove off. Mike's girlfriend could have that one on me.
I soon saw that I wouldn't be able to check out the house as I'd planned: it was surrounded by high hedges, and was so far from the road that I would have drawn attention to myself walking up the long drive. I had wanted to take a quiet look, maybe glean some clues about its inhabitants, its history, work out what I was trying to find. Instead I stood at the bottom of the drive, half hidden by a tree, outside the five-bar gate, and waited.
It was a big mock-Tudor affair, with leaded windows, the kind of house I imagine accountants aspire to. (This may be a slur on either accountants or mock-Tudor houses - but I live in a two-bedroom flat above a burger bar and, according to my friends, have no taste.) The lawns and flowerbeds were tidy enough, even in October, to suggest a gardener's vigilant attention. Five or six bedrooms, I thought, staring at it from the roadside. At least three bathrooms. Lots of carpet and expensive curtains. A Volvo estate stood in the drive, and pricy wooden play equipment in the damp garden. I shivered, despite my thick coat. There was something cold about that house, despite its affluence, and I didn't think I was being fanciful. Mike had told me what had gone on inside it, and I couldn't help but imagine that young woman looking out at the drive as she tried to plot her escape.
Several cars drove by, their occupants turning to stare at me as they passed. It was not the kind of area where people tended to walk, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. As I was considering where to move to, I caught sight of a woman walking past an upstairs window: a flash of a pale jumper, short dark hair in a neat bob. It was probably the wife. I wondered what he had told her about his previous life. I wondered whether she, too, was planning her getaway, or whether he treated her well. Whether it was a marriage of equals. Then I thought of what Liza had told my brother and wondered whether love had blinded him to the possibility that she was lying to him. How else to explain any of this? How else to explain such huge holes in what she had described?
As I considered what to do next, a girl in a thick blue jumper and jeans came round the side of the house. She might have left the door open; from inside I could just hear the dull murmur of the radio, then the sound of a baby crying and being pacified. As I ducked back, she walked towards me, to the end of the drive, and made to pick up the post from the mailbox. I stepped out from behind the tree, trying to look as if I had just been passing. 'Hello there. Is Mr Villiers in?' I asked. My breath left little clouds of vapour in the air.
'If it's council business,' she said, 'he sees people on Fridays.'
'Fridays.'
She nodded.
'His office told me he'd be working from home today.' I don't know why I lied. I thought perhaps if I could keep her talking I might find out a little more about him.
'He's in London,' she said. 'He's always in London on Thursday nights.'
'Oh,' I said. 'I must have got it wrong. He's still at the bank, right?'
'Yes.'
'I saw him in the newspaper. Quite an important man, isn't he?'
She pulled the letters from the box and leafed through them. Then she looked at me. 'I can give you his number, if you like.'
I glanced at my notebook. 'I have it, but thank you.'
I could ask to come in, I thought. But I wouldn't know what to say to his wife. I had no back story thought out, and until I knew how to present myself, there was no point. Hello, Mrs Villiers. I'm a journalist. Can you tell me if your husband - the pillar of the community - is actually a wife-beating sociopath? Is he a bullying, unfaithful control freak partly responsible for the death of his own child? Lovely curtains, by the way.
'I'll ring his office. Thank you.' I smiled, in a friendly, businesslike way, as if it were of no importance. I would go into the village and have a coffee. I could always come back, once I had worked out the best way to proceed. Perhaps the wife was the way forward. Perhaps I could pretend to be a local feature-writer, keen to do something on the Villiers family life. If I could get her by herself, over a cup of tea, there was no saying what she might admit to.
''Bye then.'
''Bye.'
The girl stood in front of me, not really paying me any attention, and pushed her hair back behind her ear. Then as she began to walk slowly towards the house, I noticed she had a pronounced limp. And something funny happened to my heart.
I've heard that expression: the world just fell away. I hate cliche. In my writing I've always worked hard to steer away from it. Yet that was the only phrase that echoed through my head.
I put my bag on the pavement beside me, and stood very still, staring after her.
'Excuse me!' I called, not caring who heard me. 'Excuse me!'
I shouted until she turned round and walked back slowly towards me.
'What?' she said, head tilted to one side. It was then that I saw it. And, for a moment, everything stopped.
'What . . . what's your name?' I asked.
Twenty-six
Kathleen
I was making lunch for Hannah when I heard the door slam. That isn't unusual in this house, not with a dog, a near-teenager and guests who either seemingly hail from barns or leave the sea wind to close doors. But the ferocity with which my ancient portal hit the frame, then the agitated thumping of Mike - not a small man - leaping up several steps at a time made me curse gently. His feet sounded like the pounding of a battering ram. When he made it into his room he must have left the window open because that door banged noisily behind him too, sending a shudder through the house.
'We're not in need of demolition just yet,' I yelled at the ceiling, wiping my hands on my apron. 'You go through my floorboards, you'll be paying for 'em!'
We had the radio on so at first I couldn't make out what he was yelling, but we both paused at the commotion in his room.
'You think he's having another fight with someone?' said Hannah.
'You get on with your homework, Miss,' I said. But I turned off the radio.
This is an old house, wood-built, a little rickety in places, so from the kitchen you can hear a lot of movement upstairs, and as Mike threw himself across the room and dragged the chair back from his desk I was moved to remark that that man had ants in his pants.
'Perhaps he got bit by a redback,' she said, suddenly interested.
'Monica?' he was yelling into his phone. 'Send it now. Send it now.'
Hannah and I exchanged a glance.
'That's his sister,' she said quietly. And I thought, That's the journalist, and my peaceable mood dissolved.
I was making a cheese omelette, and whisked the eggs furiously, trying to lose the dark thread of my thoughts in domestic tasks. Since Liza had told me her plans, I had never cooked so hard, nor the hotel been so clean. Pity there were no other guests - they would have had a rare five-star service. I stuck my head down, and whisked until I had forgotten what I was thinking about and I had eggs so light they were ready to fly out of the bowl. It was several minutes before I noticed that since Mike's shout there had been no noise at all from upstairs. Not even the usual padding of his feet as he moved from desk to leather chair, or the creak as he lay down on his bed.
Once again Hannah was engrossed in her exercise book, but there was a quality to the silence that made me curious.
I took the pan off the heat and walked to the doorway. 'Mike?' I called up the stairs. 'Everything okay?'
Nothing.
'Mike?' I said, holding the banister and taking a step up.
'Kathleen,' he said, an
d his voice was tremulous. 'I think you'd better come up here.'
As I entered the room he told me to sit down on the bed. In truth he was so pale, so unlike himself, that it was a couple of seconds before I agreed to do so. He moved towards me and squatted in front of me, like someone about to propose. Then he said those two little words, and as I heard them spoken aloud I felt the colour drain from my face. Afterwards he told me he was afraid I'd have a stroke like Nino Gaines.
He was a fool, I thought, with the part of my mind still capable of functioning. Or a madman. We'd been harbouring a madman all this time. 'What the hell are you saying?' I asked, when my voice returned to me. 'What kind of joke is this?' Suddenly I felt furious with him, and he waved a hand at me, telling me, uncharacteristically rudely, to shush, to wait while he opened his computer.
He stood up and, as I began to protest, scanned down a load of messages. Then, as I wondered whether I should try to leave the room, a little box opened on his screen and there she was. Unbelievably. In full colour. Staring at us with a wary incomprehension that matched my own. And my hands began to tremble.
'This is the picture Monica took today. It looks like her, right?'
My mouth hung open and my hand was glued to my chest. I was unable to tear my eyes away from that face. And then, in halting sentences, he told me what his sister had told him.
'Hannah,' I croaked. 'You've got to get Hannah.'
But Hannah must have become curious about what was going on upstairs because when I looked away from the screen she was already in the doorway, her pen still in her hand. Her eyes flickered from me to Mike and back again.
'Hannah, sweetheart,' I said, lifting a trembling hand towards the computer. 'I need you to look at something. I need you to tell me whether this - this looks like . . .'
'Letty.' Hannah moved closer to the screen, lifted a finger and traced her sister's nose. 'Letty.'
'She's alive, sweetheart,' I said, as the tears came. I couldn't speak properly for several minutes, and I felt Mike's hand on my shoulder. 'God save us, she's alive.' And I was afraid for Hannah, afraid that she would be feeling even more than the shock and disbelief I felt. My thoughts were in turmoil, my heart numbed by the sight of that child, whom I'd never known but whose life and death had hung over this house as surely as if she'd been my own. How on earth could we expect Hannah to cope with this?