‘Is it true that it was him and not your father who murdered Ruby Blackwell and Heather Farley?’ another reporter called out.
Rosie lifted her head and looked out defiantly. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said. ‘Seth told me himself that it was him. My father was an innocent man.’
‘But your father must have guessed it was his son who killed them. Why didn’t he speak up at his trial?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. That was a question she had asked herself again and again in the last two days, and she still hadn’t come up with any answer. ‘Maybe he hoped Seth would confess, but it’s too late to ask him now.’
‘Do you hope Seth will recover to stand trial?’ someone from the back of the bank of reporters called out.
Rosie knew someone would find fault, however she answered that question. ‘I hope he recovers enough to make a confession which will clear my father’s name,’ she said evenly. ‘I haven’t thought beyond that.’
‘That’s enough now,’ Thomas said suddenly as the reporters’ questions became too probing. He could see they didn’t care tuppence about Rosie. All they wanted was more horror to thrill their readers. One had actually seemed disappointed to see she wasn’t more badly scarred. He knew they would rush back to their offices and embroider what they’d been told with sensationalism, twisting the truth to make both Donald and her into a pair of freaks from a sideshow. ‘I’m taking Rosie in now. You have everything you need.’
‘Not quite, Mr Farley. It is Thomas Farley, isn’t it, the brother of Heather Farley?’ A foxy-faced man in his twenties pushed his way to the front of the crowd, his eyes narrowing with malicious intent. Thomas was pretty certain he was one of the journalists who had practically camped outside the shop in Flask Walk during the trial. ‘As the brother of one of the women murdered by Parker, and chief prosecution witness at his trial, I’m somewhat surprised to find you involved here. I’m sure we’d all love to hear how and when you and Rosie came to be such good friends. Was it before or after the trial?’
Thomas couldn’t think of any reply, clever or otherwise, so he merely glared at the man for a second, then took Rosie’s arm more firmly, wheeled round and escorted her indoors.
Rosie went over to the stairs and sat down, looking questioningly back at Thomas. He was still standing by the porch door, quivering with anger.
‘Thomas,’ she said quietly, ‘what is it?’
‘I loathe and detest journalists,’ he said vehemently. ‘They are the human version of vultures.’
Rosie could understand him being angry at being picked on by that journalist. There was a definite implication that there was something odd, shady even, about them being friends. Yet she thought his reaction was a bit extreme. ‘We always knew that someday, someone would ask us that question,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should just have told him how it came about?’
The front door was still open wide, but they had closed the inner door. It had red stained-glass panels and the sun coming in was turning his fair hair pink. Outside the press were still firing questions at Donald and his parents, but here in the hall they seemed a long way away.
‘You know why. I can’t stand talking about Cole or Heather. I never see our friendship as having anything to do with them, or what happened. We are separate.’
Rosie was just about to say how good that sounded, when Thomas turned his head to one side. His face had been in shadow until then, but as he moved she saw tears glistening on his lashes. It reminded her that she’d thought he’d changed in some way since Seth abducted her – how exactly she couldn’t pinpoint, just less sure of himself, brooding perhaps.
In the last two days she’d had every opportunity to talk about what had happened to her. The police, the doctor, Mrs Cook, everyone was only too keen to listen and give comfort. Yet although she’d told all those people most of what had happened, she still hadn’t revealed how she actually felt about it.
That policeman’s words, ‘It’s all over now’, came back to her. He was wrong, just as she’d suspected. An incident as traumatic as this one had been, with deep roots in the past, couldn’t be forgotten with just a couple of brandies and a hot bath.
In a flash of intuition she knew that it was the same for Thomas as it was for her. Both of them needed to examine their feelings, about the recent events and the old injuries too. Thomas had joked soon after she was brought home about being as useful in her rescue as a chocolate fireguard. Now she realized it wasn’t a joke, but a statement of exactly how he felt.
She got up from the stairs and walked across the hall to him. Impulsively she slid her arms around his waist and held him tight. ‘It’s time we really talked,’ she said softly against his shoulder, surprised by how good it felt to hold him. ‘After all those people have gone, shall we slip out on our own somewhere?’
His lips brushed against her cheek. ‘I was thinking I ought to go back to London. Mr Bryant sounded as if he was losing patience when I phoned him yesterday.’
Rosie sensed this was an excuse. He wanted to crawl back into a hole where no one could question him. But she wasn’t going to let him do that. ‘You could go back on the evening train,’ she suggested. ‘That still leaves this afternoon.’
She heard a sigh form deep inside him, almost as if he knew he couldn’t fight her will. He took a step back from her and forced a smile. ‘Okay, but I don’t know where we can go without bumping into someone.’
‘I do,’ Rosie smiled up at him. ‘Trust me.’
‘Are you sure about this?’ Thomas asked as Rosie unlocked the side gate of Swallows, a small cottage just five minutes away from The Grange.
‘Mr Tweedy asked me a while ago to come and make a plan for improving his garden,’ Rosie replied with a mischievous grin. ‘He and his wife are away on holiday until next Saturday, that’s why they gave me this key. So maybe I’m not actually going to plan the garden today, but I need to sit in it for a bit to get the feel of it.’
It was a garden that had been allowed to run wild for several years. The many flowering shrubs overshadowed the small lawn, and a pergola was almost collapsing under the weight of wisteria and climbing roses. Seen now at the height of summer after the recent heavy rain, it was a glorious, colourful jungle and an ideal secluded place to talk freely.
‘So what else do we have to talk about that requires so much privacy?’ Thomas asked eventually. They were sitting on a bench in the sunshine and had already been through a discussion about Donald and what effect being pushed into the limelight might have on him.
‘Something I should have admitted a long time ago,’ she said simply. ‘You may hate me after I’ve told you.’
Thomas turned on the seat to look Rosie in the face, disturbed by her words. She had regained her colour since the press had left the house. In fact she’d seemed quite bouncy and normal again over lunch. He hadn’t imagined she intended to reveal any deep, dark secrets this afternoon. He thought she just needed to get away somewhere quiet.
‘I don’t think I could hate you for anything, however bad it was,’ he said, putting one hand on her cheek. ‘But what makes you want to tell me now?’
‘Something you said this morning made me see that neither of us can move on in our lives until we fully come to terms with the past,’ she said in a rush, brushing his hand away from her cheek. ‘I’ve got this locked away. I think you’ve got something too. So I’m going to tell you mine, in the hope you’ll tell me what’s bothering you.’
Thomas felt an unpleasant prickle in his spine. He frowned. ‘Something to do with Heather? Did Seth tell you what he did to her?’
‘Yes, in crude, graphic detail,’ Rosie admitted, hanging her head. ‘But that’s not it. It’s something that happened a year before she disappeared. If I’d told my father then, Heather would still be alive now.’
Rosie had buried the memory of her brothers raping Heather. It hadn’t been entirely erased from her mind, any more than she could wipe out the horror of her father’s trial and hanging, but she had buried it deeply enough for her to go months and months without thinking of it. When Seth forced her to listen to his boasts about all the other times he’d abused Heather, and that last day with her before he killed her, the true significance of what she’d seen and kept quiet about was laid bare.
Every word stung as she described to Thomas what she’d seen as an innocent eleven-year-old. She could recall all the noises, from the rain outside to the creaking bed, the men’s grunts and Heather’s cries, just as if it happened yesterday.
Thomas sat very still as she was speaking, but he was clenching and unclenching his fists in a frightening manner.
‘I’m to blame,’ she whispered when she’d finished. ‘If I’d told Dad that night, he would have thrown Seth and Norman out. Dad and Heather would have been happy again. But instead it just went on and on.’
‘Why didn’t you tell him?’ Thomas said in a strangled voice.
‘I was scared.’ It sounded so weak and pathetic, but yet she could vividly recall the terrible nightmares which followed that day, and the fear that Seth would do it to her too.
Thomas took a deep breath. He wanted to go and punch that tottering pergola in front of him so it came crashing to the ground, but he controlled the urge.
‘You were only a child,’ he said at length. ‘You didn’t fully comprehend what you’d seen, any more than Donald really understood what Seth was trying to do to you the other night.’
‘I did,’ she admitted. ‘I even expected that Heather would run away after that. I just hoped she’d take me when she went.’
Thomas just sat there unable to speak for a moment. He wondered how Rosie could have become such a beautiful person, inside and out, after being exposed to such things.
‘So that’s why he killed her?’ he said eventually. ‘She got brave one day and she threatened to blow the whistle on him?’
Rosie nodded.
Thomas slumped forward, his head nearly on his knees. ‘Oh Rosie,’ he said. ‘I don’t know which is worse – you carrying that memory in your head, or putting such a terrible picture into mine.’
Rosie began to cry. It had all seemed so simple earlier. She would tell him this shameful dreadful secret and he would get angry enough to bring out whatever it was that was troubling him. Yet all she’d succeeded in doing was giving him more anguish.
‘For God’s sake, get angry!’ she suddenly roared out. ‘You are allowed to be angry. It’s quite normal! Or did you lose the ability to show your feelings when you lost your leg?’
He straightened up with a jerk, his lean face flushed and his lips curled back.
‘Angry! I’m more than angry, I’m furious!’ he said in a rasping voice. ‘But there’s no one left to take it out on, is there? Your father’s been hanged, Donald’s virtually destroyed Seth, and your other brother is in hiding somewhere. What do you want me to do, Rosie? Beat the stuffing out of you to show what a big man I am? That’s what the men in your family do, isn’t it? But I couldn’t even hurt you – one punch and I’d probably fall over. I’m no use to anyone.’
‘I said get angry, not feel sorry for yourself,’ she snapped back. ‘So you’ve lost a leg – you’ve still got plenty of other things going for you. You’ve got two eyes, two hands and a fine brain. What’s a missing leg?’
‘I’ll tell you what a missing leg means,’ Thomas snarled, standing up and glowering down at her. ‘It means you can’t run to protect a woman you love, you can’t fight for her, and she’ll never want you anyway.’
Rosie could only stare back into his angry brown eyes in amazement. But as the full realization of what he’d admitted came to her, she felt deep shame at having goaded him into revealing it.
‘Oh Thomas,’ she whispered.
‘I’d better go,’ he said, turning away. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Forget it.’
Rosie got up and grabbed his arm. ‘You were right to say it if it’s the truth,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But I don’t agree a woman wouldn’t want you just because you couldn’t fight to protect her.’
Thomas gave a tight little laugh and looked scornfully at her. ‘Wake up, Rosie! So a woman might be able to love a man with a heart condition, a blind man or even one with an incurable disease. There’s a touch of romanticism to that. But not one with an ugly stump. I know because other women have seen it, and it killed anything that might have happened stone dead.’
Rosie felt the deep-seated inner pain that had prompted such a speech and it made her wince. She had believed she knew him, but just as she had locked away that image of Heather and her brothers, unable to speak of it, so he had locked this fear of rejection away too. She had always loved him as a friend, confidant, sometimes brother and father figure too. But she wasn’t seeing him in any one of those roles now. He was just a man who meant the world to her.
‘A woman who truly loved you for yourself wouldn’t be put off,’ she said tartly. ‘And a man can fight for a woman without using his fists. Ever heard of wooing? It’s insulting to women to suggest that every single female who might be attracted to you is bound to drop you after one glimpse of your stump. You weren’t the only man during the war to lose a limb, and I’m damn sure many of those others have fallen in love, married and had children.’
Thomas squinted at Rosie, the sun in his eyes. ‘So how does a man start wooing a woman he’s known since she was a little ragamuffin?’ he said softly.
Rosie smiled. She didn’t have the least idea of how to try to shift a long-standing friendship into a different gear.
‘You’re the one with all the experience,’ she said. ‘But I always thought kissing was the way most people get started.’
‘I’m too old for you,’ he groaned.
‘That’s a pathetic excuse,’ she said, and knowing he wasn’t going to make the first move, she did. She stepped forward, took his face in both hands and kissed him lingeringly on the lips.
His arms came round her and suddenly it was him who was kissing her with sensual, soft lips which made her every nerve-ending tingle. Rosie knew then that she hadn’t made a fatal mistake; she felt the same hunger she could sense in him.
‘You’re some sort of demon kisser,’ she said, when he eventually let her go.