The Secrets Between Us (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

RUMOURS AND INNUENDO
spread through Burrington Stoke almost by osmosis. Phoebe had been at work, and she’d been diligent in her tale-telling. I soon came to the distinct impression that people were avoiding me because they had heard my involvement with Alexander was more than professional and could not condone it. There was a coolness about the shopkeepers and villagers when it came to their dealings with me that had not been there before.

When I took a bag of tatty old books and DVDs into the charity shop, the lady who was manning it said: ‘Are these Genevieve’s?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered truthfully. All the items had been dusty and squashed under furniture or at the back of cupboards. They were clearly unwanted.

‘Why are you getting rid of her things?’ the woman asked, and her expression became hard. ‘Aren’t you expecting her back?’

I felt my face colour.

‘We were just having a clear-out. Don’t you want them?’ I asked.

The woman shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything that rightfully belongs to that wonderful girl,’ she said.

That wasn’t all. Several times, the phone rang, but when I answered there was nobody there. Three days in a row I found a single dead magpie by the hedge at the bottom of Avalon’s garden. I knew some of the villagers shot the birds, but it seemed too much of a coincidence that they should all fall in the same place. I couldn’t forget the words of the magpie rhyme: one for sorrow. Alexander picked the birds up and threw their carcasses into the orchard to make a meal for the foxes and the crows and told me to stop being paranoid. I could not understand how he could remain so calm.

I would have felt terribly isolated if it weren’t for Betsy and Claudia, who, although our friendship had cooled, still needed me as I needed her. Bill aside, there was nobody she could talk to openly and honestly and I was beginning to understand how difficult it must have been for her to be a motherless girl in a small village with a brother damaged beyond repair, a father who owned everything, a glamorous, celebrity half-sister and a stepmother who was feared and revered in equal measure.

The second time I met Virginia Churchill was by accident, during the last week in October. I was in the Burrington Stoke Spar-cum-post office, filling a wire basket with milk, bread, coffee and ingredients for the pasta dish I had planned for dinner that evening. It was an old-fashioned, family-run shop; you could buy everything from a newspaper and a loaf of bread to jump leads, aspirin and bird seed. Everything was packed together and there was only room for one person in any particular aisle.

I was reading the list of ingredients on a packet of stock cubes when I heard Alexander’s name mentioned in a clipped female voice that I recognized at once. I put the packet back on the shelf and moved to the end of the aisle.

Virginia stood at the far end of the store, at the post office
counter, with her back to me. She was paying in cheques from the estate’s tenants.

Mr Taylor, the shop’s proprietor, was making a note of the cheques, and Virginia talked to him as he worked. From his stance, and the way he sometimes glanced up at Virginia over the top of his half-glasses, I had the feeling that he had heard her story, or versions of it, many times before. His shoulders were hunched and he kept nodding as if in agreement, without concurring with anything she said. He knew what Virginia didn’t: that I was in the shop.

‘What nobody seems to be taking into account is that Genny always was incredibly sensitive to how other people were feeling,’ said Virginia. ‘I told the police. She simply would not go and live somewhere else without letting her family know where she was. She wouldn’t! It’s twelve weeks since she disappeared and they continue to procrastinate.’

‘They say that the police are overstretched …’ Mr Taylor said.

I couldn’t see Mrs Churchill’s face, but I imagined her expression.

‘It’s outrageous,’ she said. ‘Their complacency is disgusting. Ian Twyford told me they were keeping an open mind but they can’t
do
anything unless there’s a good reason to suspect something is wrong.’

‘There you are then,’ said Mr Taylor. ‘If Inspector Twyford doesn’t think there’s anything to worry about then there probably isn’t. He’s always kept an eye out for your daughter, hasn’t he?’

Virginia huffed. ‘But there is reason for suspicion now! We know that Alexander and that girl
are
more than just good friends. And that they’re both consummate liars.’

Mr Taylor swallowed, and rubbed his lips with the palm of his hand. He was trying not to catch my eye.

‘To be fair,’ he said in a careful voice, ‘Alexander must have been lonely.’

Virginia snorted. There was a pause as she rummaged in her bag.

‘And maybe he had the whole thing planned all along. We all know what that man’s capable of,’ she said.

I couldn’t bear to see Mr Taylor suffer any longer. I summoned all my courage, stepped forward and cleared my throat.

Mr Taylor scratched at the corner of his mouth. His daughter-in-law, Midge, was sorting greetings cards behind him. She too stopped what she was doing and waited. There was panic in her face. I smiled at them both and stood a few feet behind Virginia.

‘Good morning,’ I said.

‘Good morning, Sarah,’ said Mr Taylor.

‘Hiya,’ said Midge.

Virginia turned. I held on to my breath.

Her appearance took me by surprise. With make-up, the resemblance to her daughter was striking, only Virginia was a distorted version of the Genevieve I’d seen in so many photographs: older, harder and tireder. Virginia looked exhausted. Her silver-gold hair was pulled back from her face painfully tightly into a ponytail and the skin of her thin neck was crêped. Her eyebrows had been harshly plucked. Her beauty was still there, but it had been spoiled by time and worry. My fear of the woman was tempered by pity. I remembered that it is a terrible thing to lose your only child. Virginia looked me up and down.

‘Sarah,’ she said eventually.

‘Mrs Churchill.’

I held out my hand but she did not take it, so I let it fall to my side. Minutes seemed to pass. I didn’t know what to say next. I didn’t know what to do. I could hardly start to justify myself to Virginia while standing there in the Spar, with the Taylors watching us from behind their counter and a small, intensely interested queue forming behind me.

Virginia said: ‘You and I need to talk.’ She glanced over my shoulder and the people in the queue immediately looked at the contents of their wire baskets. ‘In private,’ she added.

I paid for my shopping then we went into the Swan Hotel at the end of the high street and sat in deep, cracked-leather armchairs in the lounge while a waiter fetched over-brewed coffee served in bone-china cups so old that the pattern had almost entirely worn away. The lounge was dark. Dust motes danced in what little light came through the leaded windows, the carpet was worn and the room smelled of pea and ham soup. Hunting memorabilia hung over the huge stone fireplace and pictures of the hunt lined the walls. The murmur of a smattering of guests, all elderly, was like a buzz behind us. At first Virginia said nothing; she watched me like a hawk. I tried to look as if I were at home in the place, although I was so far down in the chair that I could not reach the armrests with my elbows, so they were clamped to my side. I tried not to fidget. I needed to go to the lavatory but could think of no dignified way to excuse myself.

When our coffee came Virginia took her time stirring in cream and sugar. She passed me my cup by the saucer then said: ‘Let’s not beat about the bush. I need to explain my position.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, you don’t. I realize how me being with Alexander must look to you, and I am sorry if we hurt you, I didn’t mean any harm, I—’

She held up her hand. I stopped speaking.

‘How long have you known Alexander?’ she asked. ‘The truth, please.’

‘We met in Sicily.’

‘Alexander told you he was married?’

I struggled to remember what he had told me.

‘Yes.’

Virginia winced, and I realized that the truth painted me
in a worse light. I had known Alexander was a married man and still I went with him.

‘What did he tell you about Genevieve?’

‘That she had left him.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘Of course.’

Virginia stared at me levelly.

‘You had a holiday romance,’ she said. Now it was my turn to wince. ‘He moved you straight into his home. Don’t you think that’s strange behaviour for a man whose wife had’ – she made sarcastic inverted commas with her hands – ‘“left him” only a couple of weeks earlier?’

‘Alexander told me … He said his marriage had been in trouble for a long time before Genevieve left. He needed help with the house and with looking after Jamie.’

‘He had all the help he needed here.’

‘Perhaps he felt he could do with somebody who was on his side,’ I said quietly.

Virginia picked up her cup, took a sip, put the cup down on the dark little table that stood between our two chairs and patted her lips with a paper napkin. When she spoke, her voice was icy.

‘What will you do when Genevieve comes back?’ she asked.

‘If she comes back … I don’t know.’

Virginia looked at me, and her look was cold as death.

‘You think you’re so clever but there’s so much you don’t know, Sarah,’ she said. Her voice was low and threatening. ‘You don’t know, I assume, that Avalon is my daughter’s house? It belongs to Genevieve, not Alexander; it was a gift from her father.’

I had not known that.

‘And it was her father’s money that set Alexander up in business.’

‘But he’s paying back the loan.’

She shrugged as if that were not the point.

‘Alexander was penniless when he married Genevieve. He was jobless. He had nothing. Ask him. Everything Alexander has now – all the luxuries, the lifestyle you’re enjoying – by rights belongs to my daughter.’

I stared at the cup and saucer on my lap. More than ever I felt as if I were terribly in the wrong, although I didn’t know what I had done. I did not like the insinuations and the implications behind Virginia’s words and, worst of all, I did not like being told so much about Alexander that I did not know.

I shifted a little to ease the pressure on my bladder.

‘Do you trust him?’ Virginia asked me.

I looked up, into her eyes. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Even though it must be clear to you now that he hasn’t been entirely open with you?’

‘He’s told me everything that I needed to know.’

‘So you know he’s been in prison?’

That shocked me. The trembling in my fingers made the cup rattle in the saucer on my lap and for an awful second heat engulfed me and I was afraid I might collapse. It took all my energy, all my will, to maintain my composure. Virginia must not see how upset I was by this revelation; she must not. I raised the cup to stop the rattle and sipped the coffee. It was lukewarm.

‘You didn’t know, did you?’ she asked.

I put the cup back down in the saucer. The coffee had left a horrible taste in my mouth.

Virginia leaned forward and took the cup and saucer from me.

‘Sarah,’ she said, almost gently, ‘you might think you know Alexander, maybe you think he loves you or he needs you or that you can help him, but what you’re dealing with is a fantasy; a romantic fantasy. The truth is different. You don’t know what kind of man he really is. You have no idea.
I suspect your fantasy is stopping you from seeing the truth.’

Tears were prickling at my eyes and my bladder now was so uncomfortable I felt faint. I was too hot.

‘It’s not Alexander’s fault Genevieve’s gone away,’ I said. ‘Genevieve left because she wanted to, not because he did anything wrong. Perhaps she was seeing someone else.’

Virginia froze when I said this. She seemed shocked, but not surprised, and I realized that I had, inadvertently, hit a nerve. Her discomposure gave me strength. If Genevieve’s own mother suspected her of adultery, then there must be a strong possibility of it. It would explain everything. And if she and her lover had run away together, then no wonder they had covered their tracks so carefully, no wonder it had all been so sudden. It was the obvious explanation. I felt myself flush as possibilities raced through my mind, but before I could put them into any sort of order, Virginia spoke again.

She leaned forward so her face was close to mine, so close that I tasted, for the second time, the sourness of her breath.

‘Who is this other man, Sarah? Do you have a name for him?’ she hissed.

I shook my head, alarmed by her intensity.

‘Has Alexander told you anything about him?’

‘He doesn’t know anything.’

‘Are you sure?’

I nodded.

Virginia sat back a little. She pursed her lips and considered me in the same way a snake might consider a mouse. When she spoke next, her words were slow and precisely measured.

‘Here’s something else you don’t know, Sarah,’ she said. ‘When Genevieve told Alexander she wanted to leave him, a little while before she disappeared, he said he wouldn’t let her. He told her he’d rather see her dead.’

‘People say things they don’t mean when they’re upset.’

‘And sometimes they say things they do mean.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘How “upset” do you think Alexander might have been if Genevieve told him she was leaving him to be with someone else? Somebody who would treat her better than he did? Somebody who cared for her?’

I swallowed.

‘Hmm?’

I could not answer.

‘What do you think he might have done, Sarah?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, but the words came out so quiet I don’t think Virginia heard.

She seemed drained now. She sat back in her chair, looked up at the wood panelling on the ceiling and sighed.

‘If Genevieve has come to any harm,’ said Virginia, ‘I’ll make sure Alexander pays for it. And you. I don’t think you’re evil. I think you’re naïve and easily led, but if he’s guilty and if you stand by him, you’re just as culpable.’

We were silent for a moment. Across the room an elderly man in a wing-chair snored. A fly batted at the window behind us.