Beth didn’t think this was a lie exactly. After that dinner with Roy, any normal woman would expect it to turn into a full-blown romance. It was obvious he wanted her, he was unattached, she had felt the kind of flutters which meant it was special.
‘Oh Beth, I’m so glad,’ Serena said excitedly. ‘Tell me all about him.’
Beth found it surprisingly easy to make Roy sound like Mr Right. His job, his cottage, his sense of humour, even his looks were all so attractive. She didn’t have to exaggerate, and just talking about him gave her a warm glow.
‘I hope he’s good in bed too?’ Serena giggled.
‘I haven’t tried that yet,’ Beth said, wishing her sister didn’t always have to be so earthy.
‘Why ever not?’ Serena exclaimed.
‘I haven’t known him that long,’ Beth replied, and that led to explaining how and why she and Roy became friends.
Serena was enthralled to discover that the woman she’d heard about in the news was her sister’s old friend and that Beth was very much involved with the case. Beth explained how Susan had come to shoot the two people, and how she’d met Roy because of this.
‘It was fate that brought you and Suzie together again,’ said Serena thoughtfully. ‘And Roy too. Flow with it, there’s got to be a reason behind it. I’m sure Roy is the one for you.’
It was so typical of Serena to suggest some sort of spiritual connection was at work. She lived her whole life that way, believing nothing was down to chance and destiny was preordained.
But for once, Beth wanted to believe that too.
Beth left Brightling in the early evening to drive back to Bristol. As she drove through dark, deserted roads she found herself thinking about Robert and Serena. Beth had always considered herself to be the odd one out in the family. Serena and Robert were gentle, kind beings. They were loving and giving, slow to take offence, quick to praise. They seemed so uncomplicated, so forgiving. Yet Serena had said today that both she and Robert had carried a great deal of resentment about their childhood into adult life, and that they’d both had several disastrous relationships before finding real happiness with their present partners.
‘I was becoming just like Mother,’ Serena said at one point. ‘I let men push me about, do what they wanted to me. I suppose I thought that was all I was worth. Robert told me once that he used to be cruel to women, and he saw in himself more than a passing resemblance to Father. I went to see a psychiatrist, thanks to a girlfriend who wouldn’t let me fall apart. Robert got taken in hand by an older woman he had an affair with. We both learned to put aside the terrible examples we’d been shown at home, and we found our real selves.’
This was something of a shock to Beth, who had always imagined both Robert and Serena had sailed through life without any angst. ‘What about me then?’ she asked. ‘I don’t let men push me around, and I’m not a bully either. But I still dwell on stuff that went on at home.’
She wished then that she could tell Serena about the rape. She wanted her sister to know the real reason she wasn’t whole. But she couldn’t bring herself to. Aside from upsetting Serena, Mother had made her promise she wouldn’t ever tell her brother and sister, and a promise was a promise.
‘You are the opposite to me,’ Serena said thoughtfully. ‘I dealt with it all by going out of my way to try and make people love me. You never give anyone the chance. I’m really glad you weren’t promiscuous like I was as a young girl, that can be very damaging too. But being so chilly isn’t right either. You have robbed yourself of a lot of joy. Try harder this time, Beth, for me. Give this policeman at least half a chance.’
It was very late when Beth got home, and her flat seemed stark and bare after the colour and glitter at Serena’s. But the red light was flashing on her telephone and when she listened to the message she felt better. It was Roy. ‘Just checking to see if you got home safely,’ he said. ‘Ring me, however late it is. There’s frost on the roads and I won’t sleep till I know you are there.’
She rang him back at the number he’d given her during their date. He answered on the first ring.
‘I’m home,’ she said. ‘You can go to sleep now.’
‘Was it a good Christmas?’ he asked.
‘Really great,’ she said. ‘And yours?’
‘Better than I expected,’ he said. ‘But then I’ve been on duty most of the time. Can I ring you tomorrow and arrange to meet?’
‘By all means,’ she said. ‘I’ll look forward to it. Now sleep tight.’
*
Steven came into Beth’s office soon after she’d arrived at work the next day. It was great to see him again, and after exchanging the usual questions about Christmas, Steven admitted he’d had a tough time with Anna.
‘I was warned Christmas is a bad time for recovering alcoholics,’ he said glumly, ‘booze being so much a part of it all. She was very edgy and sarcastic, everything I said seemed to annoy her. But she didn’t relapse, I’m really proud of her for that. All the same, I was glad to come back to work.’
Beth said she thought Anna was very lucky to have such an understanding husband. Steven grinned.
‘I don’t know that I could be called understanding exactly,’ he admitted. ‘I kind of escaped into my own head, thinking about Susan’s case and how we must push ahead and talk to the men in her life.’
Beth nodded, she’d thought the same thing. ‘Any reply from Martin Wright yet?’
‘Yes, it came this morning,’ Steven said. ‘He sounds as egotistical as we imagined. Refused point-blank to come to Bristol to talk to me. But he has deigned to say he can see me on January 6th at his home. We’ll have to track Reuben and Liam down too.’
Beth thought about it for a moment. ‘There’s not much we can do till after New Year,’ she said. ‘But I could go up to Stratford-upon-Avon on the Saturday after,’ she suggested. ‘I could call on Susan’s old neighbours and ask them if they know where Liam is.’
‘I’d offer to come with you, but I can’t leave Anna,’ Steven said. ‘She’s still very shaky, easily upset, and going off somewhere with you might just tip her over the edge.’
‘That’s okay,’ Beth replied. Steven looked drawn and tired and she guessed he had understated how bad things had been over Christmas. ‘I might be able to get my pet policeman to come with me. Not as a policeman of course, but as a friend.’
Steven grinned. He knew about their date and had noted the glow about her the following day.
‘What’s that silly grin for?’ she said, but her tone was affectionate.
‘Just the hope it might work out for you two,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, what about Reuben?’
‘Let’s think about that after we’ve found Liam,’ she said. ‘We’ve got enough on our plates for now.’
Roy was working right through New Year, but he said he’d be delighted to go to Stratford-upon-Avon with Beth on the following Saturday, and suggested they made a weekend of it and stayed in a hotel overnight. ‘Separate rooms,’ he said, almost too quickly, before Beth had even had a chance to think how she felt about sharing one. ‘I know of a really nice place, with a great restaurant, so I’ll book it if you’ll let me.’
Beth agreed, but as soon as she put the phone down, she went straight into Steven’s office to tell him.
‘Should I?’ she asked, leaning on the window-sill and looking down at the square below. ‘Am I asking for more hurt?’
Although she hadn’t actually told him that she had a problem with sex, Steven was a hundred per cent certain she did, and this was her way of confirming it.
‘How much do you like him?’ Steven asked. ‘On a scale of one to ten?’
‘I think ten,’ she said, still not turning to look at him. ‘But I’m scared.’
‘You! The indomitable Ms Powell scared?’ he teased her. ‘I bet poor Roy is quaking in his boots too.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, turning round to face him. ‘Why should he be scared?’
??
?Because he’s been hurt too, and you are a great prize,’ Steven said. ‘Men aren’t as confident about these things as they like to make out. Just go, Beth, have a good time and see what happens. I don’t think Roy is the kind to turn snotty if you don’t invite him into your bed.’
She was silent for a moment, gazing out of the window again.
‘What is it, Beth?’ Steven asked.
‘Do you think I should tell him?’
‘Yes, I do, if you think he’s that special,’ Steven said, getting up from his desk and putting his hand on her shoulder. ‘It will help him to understand you.’
‘You are a love,’ she said, turning to him and patting his cheek. ‘You’ve helped me more than you know.’
‘Just go off and have a great time with Roy.’ He smiled. ‘But don’t get so involved you forget to try and track Liam down.’
Beth spent New Year’s Eve alone. She had been invited to a party in Bath but she declined, preferring to stay in rather than face trying to get a taxi on the busiest night of the year. At midnight she put on her coat and went out on to her balcony with a drink to watch fireworks going off all over the city.
The previous year she had been in a very low state, what with her broken arm and having spent the whole of Christmas alone and in pain. She recalled that she’d been full of bitter thoughts at the sound of church bells ringing out and all the revelry, for it seemed to her that her whole life had passed without her ever experiencing even a fraction of the joy and happiness everyone else seemed to feel that night.
Yet she didn’t feel the same this year. The church bells seemed to be ringing out a message that the past was over and done with, the future new and exciting. When Roy telephoned a few minutes after twelve to wish her a happy New Year, and said he couldn’t wait until Saturday, she realized it was just the same for her.
He called for her at eight-thirty on the Saturday morning. They wanted to get an early start as it would be dark by four. As Roy drove, Beth brought him up to date with everything she and Steven had found out about Susan.
‘Tell me,’ he said when she’d finished, ‘do you still like her? I mean, if circumstances were different, would you be able to pick up your old friendship?’
Beth thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s an imponderable, isn’t it? She’s in prison, I’m a lawyer. There’s too much water under the bridge.’
‘Yes, but do you still like her, despite that? You see, I once had to arrest an old friend of mine. We hadn’t seen one another for maybe fifteen years, and he’d been involved in an armed attack on a building society, so I didn’t exactly have any hesitation about it. But I found I still liked him, I couldn’t help it. He still liked me too, even though I’d nicked him.’
‘It’s difficult to say. For one thing, the whole prison visiting bit prevents us both from being ourselves,’ Beth said thoughtfully. ‘There are flashes of the old Suzie, but mostly she’s a different person to the one I knew.’
‘In what way?’
Beth thought for a moment. ‘She’s coarser, she used to be so ladylike, she wouldn’t sit on a toilet seat for fear of catching something. I can remember us discussing kissing once when we were about twelve. She thought the idea of tongues was absolutely disgusting,’ she said with a giggle.
‘Well, we all get over that hurdle.’ Roy laughed. ‘She wouldn’t be so prissy after a year or so in some hippy commune, would she?’
‘That’s partly what I find so hard to get my head round,’ Beth said thoughtfully. ‘I can relate to her having the affair with the gardener. It was kind of romantic, and almost any woman as lonely and uncertain about her future as she must have been would have done the same. When I heard about how she lived in Ambra Vale with Annabel, that too seemed in character. She adored Annabel, that child made up for all the previous sadness and disappointments in her life. Had she shot the two people just after Annabel died, I would understand everything completely.’
‘I take it you mean you can’t get your head round the Reuben bit?’ Roy asked.
‘No, I can’t. It all seems peculiar to me. From what Steven said Susan got herself together again while she was with Reuben. Yet if she really did, why did she lose it again when she came back to Bristol? It just doesn’t fit in with the character of the girl I remember.’
‘It would fit in if she did lose her mind,’ he said, turning his head to look at her. ‘Don’t you believe that’s what happened?’
‘I might if I knew there had been another trauma in Wales. But according to Steven she just got disillusioned about it, nothing more. Is it possible for someone to slip in and out of rationality?’
Roy shrugged. ‘That’s one for the psychiatrist.’
They reached Stratford-upon-Avon at ten-thirty, and after a late breakfast and some coffee, they drove out to Luddington. Beth found she knew the way and recognized many of the houses, despite a great many of them sporting new porches and garages, but it looked very different from the way she remembered it.
‘I suppose it’s just because it’s winter,’ she remarked. It was a cold, grey day, the fields were brown bare soil, and the leafy greenness which was imprinted on her memory was missing. ‘It’s sort of familiar, but strange.’
But the little village green, the pretty half-timbered and thatched cottages and All Saints church were just as she remembered. The Rookery, however, was almost invisible behind trees and shrubs; they drove straight past it at first and had to turn back when Beth realized they’d missed it.
Roy pulled up opposite the drive. ‘That’s it?’ he asked in surprise. ‘It looks spooky.’
He was right, it did. The sort of place where you’d think twice before walking up the drive in the dark. Beth had always thought of it as mysterious, but that was only because of all the trees around it. They had all grown a great deal since then and almost enveloped the house now, concealing many of the windows.
The five-barred gate Suzie was often swinging on when Beth called for her was gone – perhaps the new owners couldn’t be bothered with opening and closing it when they drove in. But it wasn’t possible to see what other changes had been made because of the trees.
‘I wonder if the ghost of mad old Granny keeps them awake?’ Beth said.
Roy chuckled. ‘Even if it doesn’t, they’ll have reporters hounding them when Susan’s case comes to trial. I don’t think we’d better try them for any information, do you?’
Beth looked at the two small cottages right by where they were parked. They were probably once council housing, but had been gentrified with porches and new windows. Beth seemed to recall that one of them was a shop back in the Sixties. The other looked as if it had elderly owners, judging by the old-fashioned net curtains and small holder for milk bottles, and as the cottage windows looked directly on to The Rookery, the people living there were more likely than anyone to know what went on over the road.
‘Let’s try here,’ Beth said.
The door-bell was answered after what seemed an eternity by a small, elderly, grey-haired woman, almost drowning in a thick Arran sweater which came down to her knees.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you on a Saturday morning,’ Beth said. ‘But I’m trying to find my friend who used to live across the road. Suzie Wright. We kind of lost touch when I went abroad.’
Beth braced herself for outrage, but clearly this woman hadn’t connected her old neighbour with the murderess in Bristol, for her expression was one of kindly interest.
‘She went off when the house was sold,’ she said, looking Roy and Beth up and down. Presumably they passed muster for she asked them in, commenting that it was too cold to stand chatting with the door open.
She took them through to a warm, cosy living room at the back of the house, with a small couch and an armchair by the fire.
Once they were inside, Roy turned to the woman. ‘This is very good of you, Mrs…’ he said, holding out his hand to shake hers.
‘Mrs Unsworthy,’ she s
aid, and shook his hand.
‘My fiancée Beth has been trying so hard to find Suzie,’ he said, astounding Beth with his charm. ‘You see, we want her to come to our wedding.’
Beth shot him a glance, but he didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘So we thought if we took a drive up here today and asked around, we might be able to find her,’ he went on. ‘You said the house was sold. When was that?’
‘I can’t remember exactly,’ she said, sitting down on the chair and beckoning them to take the couch. ‘Eight, nine years I should think. Terribly sad for Suzie, she’d nursed her poor mother right from a girl, then she died, and her father just a few weeks later. That scoundrel of a brother of hers sold the house, right under her.’
‘My goodness!’ Beth exclaimed. ‘Martin did that? How awful for her! You must tell me everything.’
Mrs Unsworthy’s face took on new animation. She made them tea and offered them some rather stale fruit cake, and proceeded to tell them all about the Wrights.
Mr and Mrs Unsworthy had bought their house just a couple of years before Susan’s grandmother died. Their contact with the Wrights then was little more than saying good morning, but they were told by other people in the village that the old lady who lived with them was senile.
‘I used to feel so sorry for Margaret Wright,’ she said. ‘I had a dog in those days, so I often walked down by the river with him, and I’d see Margaret hanging out washing in her garden. Rows of sheets, so I guessed her mother was incontinent. I talked to young Suzie more. Sometimes I’d be out doing the front garden as she came home from school and we’d chat a bit. She was a nice girl, very helpful to her mother, and kind of old-fashioned. I didn’t really get to know Margaret until the old lady died. I think that was the first time I went in their house. I went to see if there was anything I could do. Margaret said she’d be glad if I could stay and have a cup of tea with her, she said she hadn’t had much sensible company for years. But the poor woman had a stroke herself just a few months later, and then it was Suzie who had to stay home and look after her.’