A French Affair (54 page)

Jessica put the book down and as she heard her daughter's perky, busy little voice echoing from the page she felt her entire world starting to crumble around her.

Charlie had been here when Natalie died.

AS CHARLIE CAME
into the arrivals hall Jessica was standing to the side of a large group of people, so he was unable to see her at first. She watched him looking around and felt an odd sensation that seemed to be a mix of nerves, anger and a kind of bewilderment. It was vaguely like watching a stranger, she was thinking, who bore a resemblance to someone she knew. Of course his appearance hadn't actually altered, he was still a large, robust man with a handsome face and shock of loose sandy hair, but the truth he'd kept hidden from her all this time had altered him in her mind. Now he seemed diminished, if not in stature then certainly in self, and all she could think was,
You were there when Natalie died, and you never said a word. Why? What are you hiding?
The answer seemed so blindingly obvious that were it not for the need to hear it from his own lips, she'd have turned around right then and walked away.

Instead, she stepped forward, saw his expression turn to one of pleasure, and attempted a smile of her own as he drew her into a hug.

‘I was beginning to think you weren't here,' he said, holding her tight.

She didn't reply, merely allowed him to look down at her and wondered what he could read in her face. He must have sensed something, because his eyes showed a moment of wariness, but then he was smiling as he said, ‘I'd almost forgotten I had such a beautiful wife.'

‘Come on, let's go,' she said. ‘The car's not far.'

As they walked out of the terminal he put an arm round her shoulders, while giving her all the latest news from home as well as passing on messages. ‘. . . and Suzie Collins is really keen to see you,' he was saying as they got into the car. ‘She's heading down to Provence with her new man next week, so I've told her to give us a call when she gets there, in case we're there too. I wasn't sure if you wanted to go small and romantic,' he continued, as they drove away, ‘or grand and expensive, so I've earmarked a few places to show you. You're using Lilian's computer, aren't you?'

‘I was,' she replied.

Instead of sounding curious about that, he let a few seconds pass, then with a note of anxiety in his voice he said, ‘So, do you still want to go, or have the plans changed again?'

‘I'm not sure,' she answered.

He said no more and she wondered how deep his anxiety was, for the coldness of her manner must surely be setting off all kinds of alarms by now.

They continued in silence for a while, joining the autoroute and speeding north towards Macon. She thought about the secret he was hiding, and could only wonder how he'd found the courage to come here at all. Certainly it explained his reluctance, in fact it
explained so much that she could barely make herself think of it, for the deception was so great, and had gone on so long that almost everything in the past few months seemed tainted by it. Including his inability to deal with his grief. Now she knew why he'd been blocking it all this time, trying to carry on as though Natalie's death hadn't happened, but it had come at him in other ways, and in amongst all the horror and confusion in her heart, she realised she almost felt sorry for how bitterly it must be destroying him.

‘Have you spoken to Nikki today?' he asked, as they left the autoroute to begin driving through the countryside.

‘No,' she answered. ‘She's making a strike for independence, so we only speak every other day now. The rest of the time we text.'

‘She seems to be having a good time up there.'

‘Yes.'

‘I miss her,' he confessed. ‘The house is too quiet without any of you there.'

It's especially quiet without Natalie
, she wanted to say. ‘Harry's with Antoine and Elodie,' she told him, changing the subject. ‘They're at a pool party so he won't be back until late.'

He had nothing to say to that, so she let the silence run on until he asked, ‘What's this Harry tells me about a concert at the weekend? At the château.'

‘Yes, Daniella's singing.'

He turned to her in surprise. ‘And you want to go off somewhere without seeing her?'

‘Not really.' She swung the car sharply to the left, and started heading down the road that would eventually lead to Valennes.

He turned to gaze out of the window, apparently
still not willing to get into why she was being so uncommunicative. He must know I've found out, she was thinking to herself, he simply has to.

‘So how are Luc and Lilian?' he asked, making another attempt to be friendly.

‘Lilian's going to have a baby.'

He nodded, as though approvingly. ‘They must be pleased,' he commented. Then, with an awkward laugh, ‘I expect we'll be godparents. Do they have them in France?'

‘Yes, but I doubt we'll be asked.'

To her surprise he said nothing to that, which annoyed her, for he surely had to be curious to know why Lilian might not want them.

Eventually he said, ‘Have you and Lilian fallen out, or something?'

Instead of answering she simply glanced at him, and continued to drive.

Twenty minutes later she walked into the cottage ahead of him and turned to watch where his eyes went first as he came in the door. She wasn't entirely surprised when they avoided the stairs, nor was she sorry to see how pinched his expression had become.

Without even offering him a drink, she took the diary from a drawer in the table and handed it to him.

The moment he saw it the blood drained from his face.

‘I want you to read the final entry,' she said evenly, ‘and then I want you to tell me the truth.'

As he opened it she was aware of her heart starting a strange kind of beat, and could only imagine what was happening to his. Then for one awful moment she realised how close she was to tears. He was Natalie's
father, for God's sake, he'd adored her, so surely it couldn't be as bad as she feared.

When finally he looked up from the page he appeared so haggard and grey that she was half afraid he might be on the verge of collapse. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a strangled sort of cry, and slumping into a chair he put his head in his hands.

‘You were having an affair with my mother,' she said.

His eyes came up to hers, but before he could say anything she went on, ‘Natalie found you together. She tried to call me, so you . . .' She couldn't say any more, she just couldn't. ‘Please tell me you didn't push her down the stairs,' she gasped brokenly. ‘Please tell me it wasn't . . .'

His eyes dilated with shock. ‘No!' he cried. ‘My God, how can you even think it?'

‘Then what happened? For Christ's sake tell me how she fell. I need to know.'

He looked down at the diary again, and when his eyes came back to hers they were so full of pain that she couldn't remain unmoved. ‘You're right, she did find me,' he told her, in a voice that rasped with grief. ‘But not with your mother. It was Lilian.'

Jessica was so stunned that for a moment she didn't think she'd heard right. Then, becoming aware of the strangest swirling in her senses, she put a hand to her head. It was as though she was floating away from the shock, even as it held her to its core. ‘But Lilian was in Paris,' she said stupidly.

He only looked at her, his expression telling her that her belief belonged to another place, another time, not to this horrible new world he was suddenly opening up.

A full five seconds or more passed before she could even inhale, and when she did it made her feel sick.

She continued to stare at him, all the time thinking,
he was here with Lilian, he was here with Lilian
. She repeated it over and over as though to make herself believe it.
Lilian. Her Lilian.
It couldn't be true. She wouldn't let it be. Lilian's betrayal felt so much worse than his, not because of Charlie, but because of Natalie and the pretence they'd kept up all these months, lying to her in ways that made her head spin, even trying to convince her she was crazy for being unable to accept what she'd been told. How shamefully, wickedly, they'd deceived her, and so too had her mother.

She could feel herself starting to tremble, as though the shock was turning into some kind of attack. She tried to envisage the scenario, where he and Lilian might have been when Natalie found them, where her mother was, and how Natalie had come to walk in on them. Then suddenly she said, ‘I want to know everything that happened here that day, from the moment you arrived till the moment . . .' She choked on the next words. ‘I want to know everything,' she finally managed.

With his face drained of colour and his eyes heavy with pain he looked a different man to a few minutes ago, as though he was fracturing apart inside and unable to hold on. He tried to take a breath, then tried again. It was a while before she realised he was sobbing, dry, brutal convulsions, his whole body juddering as the beginnings of his grief broke free.

‘You have to tell me,' she cried. ‘Charlie, please.'

He nodded. By now his torment was so clear that she felt a stirring of pity, for whatever he had done, whatever madness had taken place here, she knew he
would never have meant it to end the way it had.

‘Lilian and I left Paris very early that morning,' he began, his voice cracked with emotion. ‘I'd hired a car and . . .'

‘How long have you and Lilian been involved with one another?' she asked, barely connecting with the words, they seemed so strange.

He shook his head. ‘We're not. It was over before she moved to Paris.'

Jessica's eyes closed as another dizzying wave of shock came over her.

‘I think it was why she went,' he continued. ‘We'd been seeing one another for six months, maybe more . . .'

Jessica looked at him and wondered who he was. Who Lilian was too, because suddenly her world seemed full of people she didn't know.

‘We were terrified of you finding out,' he said, ‘but we still couldn't seem to stop.' His gaze started to lose focus, as though he was no longer quite sure where he was. ‘To be honest I don't think it was as serious as either of us thought, it just seemed that way at the time. I knew she was lonely and desperate for someone to love her, while I . . .' He took a breath, and for a moment it seemed he might break down again. ‘I only ever loved you, but I didn't know how to end it. She was . . . It became . . . Oh God, it hardly matters now, because she came to France and met Luc, then finally it was over between us. I'm not saying I didn't have feelings for her, because obviously I did, but they weren't what she needed . . . I could never give her that.'

‘I take it Luc doesn't know any of this,' she said, wishing he was there now so she could hold onto his
hands, and feel as though something might keep her together.

He shook his head. ‘Not as far as I'm aware. I'm sure she wouldn't have told him.'

No, of course she wouldn't, Jessica thought. How could she, and still hope to keep him? ‘Go on,' she said.

‘When we came here that day,' he continued raggedly, ‘it wasn't with the intention of . . . I was coming to surprise Natalie, and she was going to surprise Luc.'

‘What happened when you got here?'

As he started to answer his face contorted with the effort of not breaking down. ‘Your mother and Natalie were about to go for a walk,' he said, barely able to speak. ‘I was going to go with them, but then I had a call from the crew in Paris that I had to take, so they went on without me. Lilian was on her mobile too, talking to someone in Dubai, and we ended our calls around the same time. Then I asked her if she'd like a drink, and I guess . . . one thing ended up leading to another . . .' His voice gave out on him then, and as tears spilled from his eyes and the breath shuddered in his lungs, Jessica tried to understand how Lilian had been able to make love with another man when she and Luc had only been married for a few months. It didn't seem to make any sense. It was so out of character for the Lilian she knew, but clearly it had happened, and now she had somehow to accept that Lilian was more capable of betraying their friendship – and her husband – than she, Jessica, would ever have imagined.

After giving himself a moment to recover, Charlie forced himself on. ‘We went upstairs,' he said, ‘to the room Natalie was using.'

Jessica almost flinched at the thought of him making love to her best friend amongst his own daughter's soft toys, and on the sheets she would later use . . .

‘When it was over,' he continued, ‘I guess because of the early start, we fell asleep, and the next thing we knew Natalie was . . . Natalie was . . . there.' His head went back and in a voice that was so anguished it sent chills through her, he cried, ‘Oh God help me! God help me! Why did it have to happen? Why? Why? Why?'

As Jessica looked at him her own heart was breaking apart, yet she realised his pain and horror must be far greater than anything she would ever know.

‘She started . . . started shouting at me,' he stammered, pushing himself on, ‘saying, “You can't do this. It's not right. I'm going to tell Mum.” She had her phone in her hand and as she ran out onto the landing . . .' He gulped for more air. ‘I leapt out of bed. I . . . I had no clothes on, so I grabbed . . . grabbed my shorts, and by the time I opened . . . opened the door she'd got through to you.' He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. ‘Then she realised I was coming and started to run. She didn't see . . . the . . . newspapers at the top of the stairs, nor did I, but . . . but your mother did. She was in her room, and she shouted but it was too . . . too . . .
late
.' His voice was high-pitched with horror, as saliva and mucus mingled with the stream of his tears. ‘She fell and . . . Oh God! Oh God!'