Neighbours along Paul’s Lane were interviewed. Never suspected and I’ll keep my doors locked from now on, I will were the general comments. Both Zachary Whiting and a Home Office spokesman made a few statements about the duty of the local police in matters of new identities, and for several days sightings of both Michael Spargo and Reggie Arnold were reported. But finally, the story faded away, as these stories do, when a member of the Royal family got into an unfortunate struggle with a paparazzo in front of a nightclub at 3:45 A.M. in Mayfair.
Rob Hastings had managed to weather all this without speaking to any of the journalists. He let his phone take the messages, but he returned no calls. He had no desire to discuss how the former Ian Barker had come into his life. He had less desire to talk about how his sister had taken up with the bloke. He understood now why Jemima had left the New Forest. He did not understand why she had not confided in him, however.
He spent days pondering this question and trying to work out what it meant that his sister had not told him what had driven her from Hampshire. He was not a man prone to violence, and she surely had known that, so she could hardly have expected him to accost Jossie and do damage to him for deceiving Jemima. What would have been the point of that anyway? He could also keep a secret, and Jemima had to have known that as well. Beyond that, he would have only too happily welcomed his sister home without question had she wanted to come back to Honey Lane.
He was left considering what all of this said about him. But the only answer he was able to come up with was the one that asked another question: What would have been the point of your knowing the truth, Robbie? And that question led to the next: What kind of action would you have taken, you who have always been so fearful about taking action in the first place?
The why of that fear was what he couldn’t cope with in the aftermath of all the revelations and the deaths. The why of that fear led directly to the heart of who and what he was, of who and what he had been for years. Solitary not out of choice. Solitary not out of necessity. Solitary not out of inclination. The sad truth was that he and his sister had long been, in fact, much the same sort of people. It was only the manner in which they’d muddled through their lives that was different.
Understanding this at the end of days and days upon horseback on the Forest was what finally prompted Robbie to go to Cadnam. He went at midafternoon, with the hope that Meredith might be alone at her parents’ home at that time of day so he could speak to her without anyone being there.
This was not to be. Her mother was in. So was Cammie. They answered the door together.
He’d not seen Janet Powell in ages, he realised. In the early years of the girls’ friendship, he and Meredith’s mother had met now and again when the act of fetching Meredith and Jemima from this place or that had been called for. But he’d not seen the woman once the girls had each been old enough to have a driving licence, which put an end to the adults in their lives having to ferry them here and there. He recognised her, though.
He said by way of introduction, “Missus Powell. Afternoon. I’m—”
“Well, hullo, Robert,” she broke in kindly. “What a nice surprise it is to see you. Do come in.”
He didn’t know quite how to react to the welcome. What he thought was, Well, of course, she would remember him. He had a rather unforgettable face.
He’d worn his baseball cap as was his habit, but he removed this as he stepped into the house. He glanced at Cammie as he tucked the cap into the back pocket of his jeans. She dodged at once behind her grandmother’s legs, and she peered out at him with rounded eyes. He offered the little girl a smile. He said, “’Spect Cammie doesn’t remember me, eh? Been donkey’s years since I’ve seen her. Must’ve been only two years old last time. Maybe less. She won’t know who I am.”
“Bit shy with strangers, she is.” Janet Powell put her hand on Cammie’s shoulder and drew her forward, cuddling her to her hip. “This’s Mr. Hastings, luv,” she said. “You say hullo to Mr. Hastings.”
“It’s Rob,” he said. “Or Robbie. Want to shake a hand here, Cammie?”
She shook her head, and she took a step backward. “Gran …,” she said. She hid her face in her grandmother’s skirt.
“Ah, it’s no matter,” Robbie said. He added with a wink, “Present something of a sight, I do, this toothy old face, eh?” But the wink was forced and he saw that Janet Powell knew this.
She said, “You come right in, Robbie. I’ve a lemon cake in the kitchen that’s begging to be eaten. Will you?”
“Oh, ta, but no. I was on my way to …Actually, I just come to …I was hoping Meredith was …” He drew in a calming breath. It was the fact that the little girl was hiding and he knew she was hiding because of him. He didn’t know how to put her at ease, and he wanted to do so. He said to Mrs. Powell, “I was wondering if Meredith … ?”
“Of course,” Janet Powell said. “You’ve come to check on Meredith, haven’t you. Terrible thing. To think I had that young woman here in the house for a night. She might have …well, you know …” She cast a glance at Cammie. “She could have m-u-r-d-e-r-e-d us all in our beds. Meredith’s just in the garden with the dog. Cammie, luv, will you take this nice gentleman out to see Mummy?”
Cammie scratched one ankle with the toes of her other bare foot. She seemed to hesitate. She kept her gaze on the floor. When her grandmother said her name again, the little girl murmured, “Mummy’s been in hospital.”
“Aye,” Robbie said. “That I know. It’s why I’ve come. To say hullo and to see how she’s feeling. Bet you were a bit worried about her, weren’t you.”
Cammie nodded. She said to the floor, “That dog’s taking care of her, though.” And then looking up, “Hospitals’re like where the hedgehogs go.”
“Really?” Robbie said. “You like hedgehogs, do you, Cammie?”
“They got a hospital for them. Gran told me. She said we c’n go there an’ see them.”
“I ’spect they’ll like that, the hedgehogs.”
“She says not yet, though. She says when I’m older. Cos we’re meant to spend the night when we go. Cos it’s far.”
“Right. That makes sense. I ’spect she wants to make sure you don’t miss your mum if you spend the night,” Rob said.
Cammie frowned and looked away. “How’d you know that?” she asked.
“The bit about missing your mum?” And when she nodded, “I had a little sister once.”
“Like me?” she asked.
“Just like you,” he said.
That appeared to put her at ease. She stepped away from her grandmother and said to him quietly, “We got to go through the kitchen to get to the garden. The dog might bark, but she’s quite nice.” And she took him outside.
Meredith was sitting on a lounge chair in the only shade there was, on the far side of a garden shed. The rest of the area was given over to rose bushes, and they filled the air with a fragrance so intense that Robbie imagined he could feel it move like a silk scarf against his skin.
“Mummy,” Cammie called as she led him along a gravel path. “Are you still resting like you’re meant to? Are you asleep? Cos there’s someone to see you.”
Meredith wasn’t asleep. She had been drawing, Robbie saw. She had a large sketch pad spread on her knees and she’d used coloured pencils upon it. She’d created squares of patterns, he saw. Fabric designs, he reckoned. She still held on to her original dream. At the side of the lounge chair lay Gordon Jossie’s dog. Tess raised her head, then lowered it to her paws. Her tail swished twice on the ground in greeting.
Meredith closed her sketch pad and set it to one side. She said, “Why, hullo, Rob.” And as Cammie made to climb into her lap, she said, “Not yet, darling. Still a bit too much for me,” but she moved to one side and patted the seat.
Cammie managed to squeeze in next to her, squirming round to make her little bottom fit the space. Meredith smiled, rolled her eyes at Robbie, but kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “She w
as worried,” she said in explanation, nodding at the little girl. “I’ve never been in hospital before, far as she’s concerned. Didn’t know what to think.”
He wondered what Meredith’s daughter had been told about what had happened to her mother on Gordon Jossie’s holding that day. Very little, he expected. She didn’t need to know.
He said, with a nod at the golden retriever, “How’d you come by her?”
“I asked Mum to fetch her. It seemed like …poor thing. I couldn’t bear the thought …you know.”
“Aye. Good for you, that, Merry.” He looked round and spied a wooden folding chair leaning against the garden shed. He said to Meredith, “Mind if I … ?” with a gesture towards it.
She said, colouring, “Oh, of course. I’m sorry. Do sit. Don’t know what I was …Only, it’s quite nice to see you, Rob. I’m glad you’ve come. They told me at the hospital you’d phoned.”
“I wanted to see were you coping,” he said.
“Oh, I was that.” She touched her fingers to the bandage on her neck, doubtless a much smaller one than what she’d had wrapping her wound originally. The gesture seemed an unconscious one to him, but it was apparently not because she said with a humourless laugh, “Well, I’ll look like Frankenstein’s wife when this comes off, I s’pose.”
“Who’s that?” Cammie asked her.
“Frankenstein’s wife? Just someone from a story,” Meredith said.
“Means she’ll have a bit of a scar,” Robbie told her. “It’ll give her distinction, that will.”
“What’s distinction?”
“Something making one person look different from everyone else,” Robbie said.
“Oh,” Cammie said. “Like you. You look different. I never saw anyone looks like you.”
“Cammie!” Meredith cried, aghast. Her hand went down automatically to cover her daughter’s mouth.
“’T’s all right,” Robbie said although he felt himself go red in the face. “Not like I don’t know that—”
“But, Mummy …” Cammie had wiggled from beneath her mother’s grasp. “He does look different. Cos his—”
“Camille! Stop that this instant!”
Silence at that. Into it, cars from the road in front of the house swooshed by, a dog barked, Tess lifted her head and growled, the motor of a lawn mower sputtered. Suffer the little children, Robbie thought bleakly. Didn’t they always tell the truth.
He felt all thumbs and elbows then. He might as well have been a two-headed bull. He looked round and wondered how long he had to remain in the garden in order not to seem rude by running off at once.
Meredith said in a low voice, “I’m that sorry, Rob. She doesn’t mean anything by it.”
He managed a chuckle. “Well, it’s not like she’s saying something we don’t all know, is it, Cammie.” He offered the little girl a smile.
“Still and all,” Meredith said. “Cammie, you know better than that.”
Cammie looked up at her mother, then back at Rob. She frowned. Then she said quite reasonably, “But I never ever saw two colours of eyes before, Mummy. Did you?”
Meredith’s lips parted. Then closed. Then she rested her head against the back of her chair. She said, “Oh Lord.” And then to Cammie, “Only once before, Cam. You’re completely right.” She looked away.
And Robbie saw, to his surprise, that Meredith was deeply embarrassed. Not by her daughter, however, but by her own reaction, by what she’d assumed. Yet all she had done was reach the same conclusion that he himself had reached, hearing Cammie’s words: He was truly ugly and all three of them knew it, but only two of them had thought the matter worthy of comment.
He sought a way to smooth the moment. But he could come up with nothing that didn’t draw further attention to it, so he finally just said to the little girl, “So it’s hedgehogs, is it, Cammie?”
She said, not illogically, “What’s hedgehogs?”
“I mean what you’re liking. Hedgehogs? That’s it? What about ponies? D’you like ponies as well?”
Cammie looked up at her mother, as if to see if she was meant to answer or to hold her tongue. Meredith looked down at her, fondled her rumpled hair, and nodded. “How do you feel about ponies?” she asked her.
“I like ’em best when they’re babies,” Cammie said frankly. “But I know I’m not meant to get too close.”
“Why’s that?” Robbie asked her.
“Cos they’re skittish.”
“What’s that mean, then?”
“Means they’re …” Cammie’s brow wrinkled as she thought about this. “Means they’re scared easy. An’ if they’re scared easy, you’ve got to be careful. Mummy says you always’ve got to be careful round anyone scares too easy.”
“Why?”
“Oh, cos they misunderstand, I expect. Sort of …like if you move too fast round them, they c’n think the wrong thing about you. So you got to be quiet and you got to be still. Or move real slow. Or something like that.” She wriggled round again, the better to look up at her mother’s face. “That’s right, isn’t it, Mummy? That’s what you do?”
“That’s exactly right,” Meredith said. “Very good, Cam. You take care when you know something’s scared.” She kissed the top of her daughter’s head. She didn’t look at Rob.
Then there seemed to be nothing else to say. Or at least that was what Robbie Hastings told himself. He decided he had done his duty and, all things considered, it was time for him to leave. He stirred on his chair. He said, “So …,” just as Meredith said, “Rob …”
Their eyes met. He felt himself colouring once again, but he saw that she, too, was red in the face.
She said, “Cammie, darling. Will you ask Gran if her lemon cake’s ready? I’d like a piece and I expect you would as well, hmm?”
“Oh yes,” Cammie said. “I love lemon cake, Mummy.” She clambered out of the lounge chair and ran off, calling to her grandmother. In a moment, a door slammed shut behind her.
Rob slapped his hands on his thighs. Clearly, she’d given the signal for him to take himself off. He said, “Well. Dead happy you’re all right now, Merry.”
She said, “Ta.” And then, “Funny, that, Rob.”
He hesitated. “What?”
“No one else calls me Merry. No one ever has but you.”
He didn’t know what to say to this. He didn’t know what to make of it either.
“I quite like it,” she said. “Makes me feel special.”
“You are,” he said. “Special, that is.”
“You, too, Rob. You always have been.”
Here was the moment. He saw it clearly, more clearly than he’d seen anything ever. Her voice was quiet and she hadn’t moved an inch, but he felt her nearness and, feeling this, he also felt the air go dead cold round him.
He cleared his throat.
She didn’t speak.
Then on the roof of the garden shed, a bird’s feet skittered.
He finally said, “Merry,” as she herself said, “Will you stay for a piece of lemon cake with me, Rob?”
And ultimately, he saw, the reply was simple. “I will,” he replied. “I’d like that very much.”
Acknowledgments
The New Forest itself served as enormous inspiration for this novel, but inspiration is nothing without details. So I’m grateful to people both in Hampshire and in London who assisted me with various aspects of the book. First among them must be Simon Winchester, master thatcher, who allowed me to observe him at work in Furzey Gardens and who explained the myriad techniques and tools of his craft. Additionally, Mike Lovell met with me in Lyndhurst and explained his work as one of the New Forest’s five agisters, while the Honourable Ralph Montagu and Graham Wilson added a great deal of information both on the history of the New Forest and on the purpose and employment of verderers and keepers, respectively. Alan Smith of Hampshire Constabularly supplied me with all of the policing details, and in London, Terence Pepper and Catherine Bromley of the Nation
al Portrait Gallery gave me the necessary information that allowed me to create my version of the competition for the Cadbury Photographic Portrait of the Year. Jason Hain kindly allowed me access to the Segar and Snuff Parlour in Covent Garden, and a lovely Peruvian mask maker in Jubilee Hall nearly convinced me to have my likeness rendered in plaster, thereby inspiring me to create my own mask maker in this novel. The always resourceful Swati Gamble sorted out the answers to countless questions I threw at her regarding everything from the Home Office to the location of educational institutions. Finally, the New Forest Museum was a treasure trove of information in Lyndhurst, as was the British Museum in London.
In the United States, Dr. Tom Ruben once again fielded medical questions, for which I thank him, my assistant Leslie Kelly did mountains of research for me on dozens of topics, and both my longtime reader Susan Berner and my new reader Debbie Cavanaugh gave me extremely valuable feedback on the penultimate draft of this novel.
I am always supported in my work by my husband, Tom McCabe; by my literary agent, Robert Gottlieb; by my U.S. and UK editors, Carolyn Marino and Sue Fletcher; and by my U.S. and UK publicists, Heather Drucker and Karen Geary.
Elizabeth George
WHIDBEY ISLAND, WASHINGTON