‘Let’s go round the back,’ he said, and Daisy trailed after him. They stood on the patio and looked in the kitchen window. Prince lunged up at the window, barking, snarling, smearing the glass with hot breath and saliva.
‘Kitchen door’s shut,’ said Rob, peering in past the maddened animal. ‘He’s trapped in the kitchen, can’t get out. That’s good. Looks like all the refitting’s been done, so the builders won’t be in today.’
‘Please tell me you’re not going to break in,’ said Daisy.
Rob looked over his shoulder at the big wooden bulk of the outside pool house. If he ever made a fortune like Joe so clearly had, he promised himself he would have the pool inside the house, not outside, save all that shivering your bare-naked arse off running between the house and the pool.
‘Let’s look in there first,’ he said, and set off.
Daisy followed Rob through the double doors at the end of the pool house. It was humid in here, super-heated, all the windows that looked out onto the gardens were densely misted. Instantly she felt sweat break out on her skin. There were a couple of blue-padded sun beds at the far end of the pool, and they could hear the pump working next door. The water shimmered pale blue, lit by underwater lamps, throwing hypnotic dancing shapes up onto the wooden beams over their heads.
‘What the f . . .’ Rob said, his voice echoing as he moved ahead of her.
Daisy looked at what had caught Rob’s attention. There was a wizened old man sitting on the edge of the pool. He was wearing a navy-blue dressing gown and she could see striped pyjamas underneath, buttoned up to the neck. His scrawny legs were dangling in the water, so that the bottoms of his pyjamas and the trailing hem of the dressing gown were floating, sodden. His bony feet were bare.
He looked up as the two of them entered the pool house.
‘Mr Darke? Joe . . . ?’ said Rob.
Joe gave a ghastly death’s-head smile. His skin was paperwhite, pulled tight over the skull beneath. Only his brown eyes had any life left in them.
‘You. I know you,’ he said weakly, wheezing the words out, then giving a long, gurgling cough.
Rob moved closer. ‘Yeah, I came out here before to see you. I was with Kit. Your nephew.’
‘That’s right.’ Joe nodded, his head waggling around on his thin neck.
‘Rob . . .’ Daisy was looking at the pool.
Rob hunkered down beside Joe. He indicated Daisy. ‘This is Daisy. Kit’s sister. Your niece.’
Joe’s eyes went to Daisy. She didn’t even glance at him. Her eyes were wide open with shock.
‘Rob . . .’ she said, more urgently. She kicked off her shoes.
Rob turned his head, looked at what Daisy was staring at, down in the depths.
Jesus, wasn’t that . . . ?
‘Fuck,’ he muttered.
‘
Don’t!
’ said Joe as Daisy threw off her cardigan. She froze there, arrested by the sharpness of his tone.
‘But that’s . . . she’s . . .’ Daisy blurted out in panic, staring fixedly down at the woman lying at the bottom of the pool.
‘That’s Betsy.’ Joe gave a breathy, rasping laugh that was almost a sob. ‘And the cow’s dead.’
117
Daisy stood transfixed. Down there in the blue-shimmering pool, Betsy’s streaked blonde hair was billowing softly around her head. Her eyes were half-open, glaring as she lay in a death lock with the red oxygen cylinder, its tubing coiled tight around her throat. Her skin was suffused with angry purple blotches where the tube had cut into her windpipe. Betsy was wearing a spangled pink bikini and a matching coverall. Even in death, she was flashily attired, with her pearly-pink-painted toes and fingernails, and masses of silver jewellery.
Starting to shake, Daisy turned shocked eyes upon her uncle.
He gazed right back at her. ‘She was a fuckin’ tart,’ he said weakly, struggling to draw in breath and get the words out. ‘No bloody good. I wanted to do that for years, put an end to her fuckin’ rubbish. So when she came out here yesterday for her swim I . . .’ he paused, coughed, then hitched in a struggling breath, ‘. . . I followed. Carried the fuckin’ bottle with me, sodding thing weighs a ton. She laughed when she saw me come in with it. Asked me what the hell I thought I was . . . was doing. She soon found out though.’
Neither Daisy nor Rob said a word.
‘I been sitting here ever since. Didn’t have the bloody strength left to move.’ Joe coughed again; it was a horrible, guttural sound.
Rob looked at Daisy. She had one hand clamped over her mouth and she was trembling. She wasn’t used to this sort of shit. He thought of the writing on the card – Betsy’s writing – matching the writing on the LP sleeve. Or did it? Was Ruby certain about that?
Not that it mattered a toss now. If Betsy
had
bedded Michael – among he guessed maybe a thousand others – then she’d paid the price as far as Joe was concerned. And if Joe had ordered Michael’s execution, well, the man was finished himself now. He was
this
close to death, any fool could see that.
‘I been sitting here, looking at her down there in the water. I loved her, you know. She didn’t love me though. For her, it was . . . always Charlie.’ Joe hitched in a long, painful breath and looked at Rob. ‘So here’s what I want you to do. I want you both to go, and what I’m going to do is this: I’m going to lean forward a bit, I think I can do that, and get into the water. I’m weak as gnat’s piss, but I can manage that, I reckon. Finish this whole fuckin’ thing off. OK?’
Rob stared at the man and thought of the police, cells, prison hospitals. This was Kit and Daisy’s uncle. Slowly, he nodded.
‘We can’t!’ said Daisy to Rob, understanding that Joe was talking about drowning himself. He’d never have the strength to get out of the water, once he got in there.
Rob looked steadily at Joe. Then he turned away, looked at Daisy.
‘Put your shoes on, Daise,’ he said, and walked over to where she stood.
‘We
can’t
,’ she said again, almost pleadingly.
Rob took her arm. ‘We can,’ he said gently. ‘It’s the kindest thing, Daise. You know it is. Come on. Let’s go.’
118
They went back to Rob’s flat out near Holborn. Rob was worried about Daisy; she was shivering hard, her teeth chattering. She said nothing all the way there. Once inside his flat, he pushed a brandy into her hand.
‘Come on, drink it up.’
He downed one himself, too. It hadn’t been the best of days.
Daisy threw back the brandy with a shudder.
‘God, that was awful,’ she moaned.
‘Bathroom’s through there, go and have a nice hot shower.’ Rob was peeling off his jacket. ‘Don’t think about it, Daise. I know it’s sad, but shit happens. He was suffering and now he’s out of it. They both are. Try and think of it like that.’
Daisy went into the bathroom. Rob made his way through to the bedroom and found a robe that one of his girlfriends had left in the closet, in case Daisy needed it.
He went back into the living room and drank down another brandy. Now he could hear sobbing coming from the bathroom, over the background roar of the shower.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
He stood listening to it for a minute. Then he went over to the closed door.
He knocked. ‘Daise? You all right in there?’
‘Fine,’ she said in a tearful voice.
And then it started again – the crying. He hated her crying. He grasped the handle and pushed the door open. Steam billowed around him. The noise of the shower was suddenly louder, and her gasping sobs were louder too.
‘Daise . . .’ he said, going over to the shower cubicle.
And all the while he was thinking,
Mate, what the fuck are you doing . . . ?
He opened the door, and there she was. More beautiful than he ever could have guessed at, her skin pinkened by the hot water, her naked body all hot luscious curves and her face a mask of tragedy, her blue, blue eyes reddened by tears.
She saw him there, and froze.
‘Daise . . .’ he murmured.
‘Rob . . .’
‘Jesus, Daise, there’s no way
around
you, is there?’ he said, and quickly threw off his clothes and stepped under the hot soothing spray with her, pulling her into his arms, pressing his naked body tight against hers, knowing that this was precisely what he had been wanting to do for a long, long time.
‘It’s just so sad,’ she mumbled against his shoulder. ‘That poor man, and that’s my uncle, and I never even knew him. He killed her. That’s so terrible. And they’ve got children, I don’t know them either. And they’re orphans now. It’s . . . horrible.’
‘Daise . . .’ Rob was kissing her hair, burrowing his face into her throat.
‘And the dog!’ Daisy stiffened. ‘Oh God, the dog’s going to starve in there, no one knows he’s shut in the kitchen!’
‘Fuck’s sake, Daise, I’ll phone the RSPCA from a phone box later on, say I’m one of the neighbours and I can hear him barking. Don’t worry.’
Daisy slipped her arms around him, cuddled in close. ‘It was awful,’ she muttered.
‘I know,’ he said, smoothing her hair back from her eyes, kissing her salty cheeks.
‘Oh God, Rob,’ she said, and their mouths met, and that was it. He gave up, gave in. There was nothing else he could do. ‘I’m such a mess,’ she murmured against his lips. ‘I cry at anything, and I’ve got this temper . . .’
‘It’s your hormones, after having the kids. My sister was the same. You can’t help it.’
‘And my breasts leak milk all the time, it’s embarrassing . . .’
Rob took Daisy’s breasts in his hands. He didn’t give a toss whether they leaked or not, they were delicious, fabulous, deeply erotic.
‘They’re gorgeous. You’re gorgeous,’ he said, and kissed her again, and couldn’t wait a moment longer. He lifted her, slipped his cock easily inside her. Nothing had ever felt so good.
‘Oh God – Rob!’ she cried out as he filled her.
He’d been fighting this for so long, but now he was lost and he didn’t care. He made love to her, right there in the shower. And it was better than he could ever have dreamed it would be.
119
Ruby phoned the London place first, but there was no answer. So she called the other house and told them she was on her way. She wrote a note for Daisy and placed it in their usual spot for messages, on the hall table. As she passed the mirror she saw her strained reflection there and thought back to that day when she took the phone call from Bella, and all that had happened since.
Blood will flow . . .
Maybe this would be an end to it.
She went upstairs and packed the essentials in her small overnight bag and got one of Kit’s boys to drive her to the railway station, where she got the train to Oxford. From there, she took a taxi out to Albemarle House, way out in the Oxfordshire countryside among a vast patchwork of fields and huge stretches of open country.
Finally the house loomed up, very tall, constructed in the sixteenth century, boasting a massive long gallery and a priest’s hole, a knot garden and a ha-ha. The home of Lord and Lady Albermarle.
Vi was expecting her. She opened the front door herself, a broad smile of welcome fixed to her face. She looked the same as always – polished, well groomed, her red bob sleek, her fingernails red, a mist of Devon Violets all around her.
‘Rubes! Well, this is a bit of a surprise. I’d have been back in town next week, you didn’t have to come all this way. What’s happened? Where’s the fire?’ she asked with a laugh. ‘Let me take your coat. An overnight bag! Are you staying in Oxford?’
Ruby nodded.
‘No, you must stay here. No arguments!’
‘I had to speak to you,’ said Ruby, letting Vi take her coat, stepping into the cavernous hallway with its walnut wood panelling and its vast array of hunting trophies.
A myriad of dead deer stared accusingly down at her from the walls. There was no fire in the big stone fireplace today. It felt cold in here, and as usual the place smelled faintly musty. In the winter, it was a freezing house to live in, Vi had told her. Thick cardies and hot water bottles were the order of the day. Good job the aristocracy were tough, she always joked.
‘What, it couldn’t wait?’ asked Vi, leading the way over to the drawing room.
‘It couldn’t wait,’ Ruby confirmed.
They went inside. The drawing room was decked out in damask pink with faded tapestries on the walls. Two hard-backed couches were pulled up in front of the empty fireplace. Vi indicated that Ruby should sit down, and gratefully she did.
‘So!’ said Vi brightly, sitting opposite. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure? You sounded a bit grim on the phone.’
Ruby eyed her friend steadily. ‘I felt a bit grim.’
‘Oh dear. Troubles?’
‘Some, yes.’
‘Come on then, what’s up? That’s what I’m here for.’
That’s what I’m here for.
It was so ironic, that statement, that it made Ruby want to laugh. Or cry. She reached into her bag, drew out the record sleeve.
‘What’s this?’ asked Vi, leaning forward, all interest.
‘Here. Have a look,’ said Ruby, and handed it over to her.
Vi kept her face amazingly straight as she looked at the writing on the sleeve:
I’m Still in Love with You.
Then she looked up at her dearest, oldest friend, her face puzzled. ‘So? What are you showing me this for?’
‘Because I’d like the truth,’ said Ruby. ‘Also, because that’s your handwriting.’
120
‘What . . . ?’ Vi was looking from the writing on the sleeve to Ruby’s face. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Rubes.’
‘At first I thought it was Betsy’s. You went to the same school as her and me, but you were a couple of years above us. And they were very keen on us all having that uniform super-neat writing in those days, weren’t they? There was a left-handed girl in our class and they used to tie her hand behind her back to force her to write with her other hand. So everyone came out of class with this same neat, well-formed writing. Although I believe that left-handed girl came out with a nervous stutter too. My writing’s similar to yours, to Betsy’s. But not quite the same; my loops are bigger. Yours and Betsy’s are
very
alike, I think that’s a family thing. That’s what confused me at first. But now I can see it. That’s not Betsy’s writing at all. It’s yours.’