Cupid's Arrow (15 page)

Panic clutched at me. My hair prickled with cold. 'But Mrs Gomert...'

'I want to see your mother. Right now.' She crashed into the house, breathing hard, her face full of rage, her eyes shooting sparks. She looked mad. Possessed. I was really scared that she might even try to physically attack me. I stepped back. I said, 'Please, Mrs Gomert, I don't understand. Please, tell me what this is about.'

'You came into my house. I trusted you. But what are you really here for?'

She was mad, I thought. Stark. Raving. Bonkers. Tears sprang into my eyes. 'Please, Mrs Gomert, won't you tell me what I –'

'I want to see your mother. Now!' The last word was a shout.

'Who wants to see me?' said Mum's bewildered voice, behind me. Even from the garden, she must have heard the commotion. She stared at Valerie Gomert. 'What is going on? Who are you? Why are you shouting like that at my daughter?'

Valerie Gomert's expression changed. Not completely – she still looked very angry – but her features relaxed, just a fraction. She said, 'I have come here to ask your daughter not to have anything more to do with my son.'

Mum looked astonished. 'I'm sorry? Oh, you must be Remy's mother. Oh, I see.' She looked from me to Valerie. 'But I–I don't understand. What happened?' The question wasn't to Valerie, but to me.

I shook my head. 'Nothing. Nothing happened. I don't know. I don't understand. Remy and me, we had a good day. A perfect day.' I looked at Valerie Gomert. 'Please, please believe me. We did nothing wrong. Nothing.'

Her face flamed. 'I have forbidden Remy from seeing you again. Oh, and don't think he won't obey me. He is the dearest boy alive and he will never go against me. He knows what I have suffered. What I
suffer.'
She turned to my mother. 'I want you to tell your daughter that she is not to see Remy again.'

'Hang on,' said Mum, crossly, 'this is just ridiculous. Why you think I would do such a thing I have no idea, especially as you're not making any sense –'

'What's going on?' It was Oscar's voice. He was followed by Wayne, Christine and Laurie, all trying to look discreetly concerned and failing, and instead looking more like agog onlookers at a school fight than anything else.

Mum said, 'This lady seems to think my daughter's done something or other to her son,' and Oscar said, 'Oh, Valerie, my dear, whatever is the matter?'

Valerie looked at him, at the others. From red, she had gone very white. Actually, not white. Grey. The bones seemed etched into her skin. Her eyes seemed to stare into the shadows beyond us, a pulse twitched in her throat. She looked sick, old, terrible. She whispered, 'Keep away from me. Keep away from my son. Do you hear?' and then, before anyone could move a muscle, she had fled out of the open front door, flung herself on her bicycle, and pedalled wildly away.

'Sweet Mary Mother of God,' breathed Laurie, watching her disappear up the drive. 'Who in blazes was
that?'

'A poor woman called Valerie Gomert,' said Oscar, distractedly. 'She's a bit... well, you saw.'

'But
who
is she?' said Christine. 'I don't think I ever saw her before in the village.'

'No. She doesn't live in the village. She lives in the woods. She's almost a hermit. One of Uncle's friends. Well, one of the strays he took pity on. She's an artist. When she's okay, she works well, I believe. She did some work for him now and again. She hasn't been here for a few weeks. Months, even. Before your time, anyway.'

'Your uncle was a kind man,' said Christine, shaking her head. 'I don't think I'd want someone like that near my house.'

'She's not always – not usually – like that,' said Oscar sadly. 'I've heard stories in the village that she can go a bit berserk, but I've never seen it before.'

'Shouldn't someone go after her, maybe?' said Wayne Morgan. 'She looked sick.'

'She sure did,' said Mum, her eyes blazing. 'Sick as in mentally sick. Poor Fleur!' She put an arm around me. I'd been listening to all this chatter with only half an ear. I felt sick myself. Disconnected from my body. Cold all over. I thought, no, no, no, it can't really be happening, not really, this is a nightmare, maybe I'm really still up there on my bed having a dream and I'll wake up in a second and I'll know it's not true.

'I don't think it'd be wise to go after her,' said Oscar, giving Mum and me a sideways glance. 'Let her simmer down in her own good time. I'm sure it's all a mistake and she'll come back tomorrow and apologise.'

'She looked as mad as a hatter,' said Christine, and all of a sudden she began to laugh.

'Christine,' said Oscar, mortified. 'Please.'

'Sorry,' she said, and stopped abruptly. 'It was just, well, she was such a sight. Sorry, that was stupid of me. Just the shock, I suppose.' She smiled at me. 'Sorry, Fleur. You poor thing.'

'It's okay,' I whispered, hardly knowing what I was saying. Okay? Okay? Nothing could ever be okay again if what Valerie Gomert said was true and I could never see Remy again.

'Come on, darling,' Mum said gently. Her arm was still around me, and I was grateful. I felt so cold now that I was shaking. 'You and I, let's just go and have a little chat together, all right?'

'You settle in the library, girls. I'll get you both a nice hot drink,' said Wayne heartily and unexpectedly. 'And we'll get that dinner organised and on the plates in a jiffy. Don't you worry about a thing.' Shepherding Christine and Laurie and Oscar in front of him, he took them all out of the room, and Mum and I were left alone.

'I want you to tell me exactly what's been going on.' Mum is usually very easygoing and sometimes even vague about things. She doesn't tend to give me the third degree about what I'm up to. She does expect me to tell her what's going on, generally, and generally I do tell her. But just occasionally, she shows a completely different side. Everything about her sharpens. And you know, you just know it is useless to lie because somehow she'll be able to tell and then she'll come down on you like a ton of bricks. She's grounded me once or twice after episodes like that, and there was no getting around the grounding. There was just no argument.

So I knew I had to tell her the truth. Or at least as much of it as she really needed to know. I left out a few things, such as my dream, for instance, because I didn't want her to think I might need to speak to the psychologist again. I told her how Remy and I had met, and how we had become friends straightaway, and how Remy's mother had seemed perfectly happy about it when I met her. I told her that I thought Raymond had been looking for evidence that the vanished British king Riothamus was King Arthur, and that we thought he'd found a coin, that he'd done a drawing of it in a book of his dreams that I'd found, and that Remy and I thought we might investigate. I said I didn't understand why Remy's mother would have gone off her brain like she did, because we'd done nothing wrong. Mum listened carefully, without commenting, and when I'd finished she said, 'I see.'

'What? What do you see?'

'She's afraid.'

'Afraid? What of? I'm not that scary, am I?'

Mum smiled faintly. 'Sometimes you can be, Fleur. So strong and fiery and certain. It can scare people.'

I snorted. 'Come on! I don't believe she's scared of me. She's just jealous. Possessive. She doesn't want anyone being friends with her son. Not real friends. That's why she brought him up in the woods, away from people. Why he didn't go to school. She just wants to hang on to him.'

'I think that's unfair,' said Mum mildly. 'I think she's probably just protective of him. After all, with her history...'

'Oh, that's silly! What has that got to do with it? I'm not threatening Remy or anything! I don't understand what she's so scared of. I'm not a criminal!'

Mum sighed. 'I don't think she's afraid of
you,
but of him getting in too deep too young.' Her tone changed. 'I'm afraid of that too, Fleur. It's dangerous. You're only sixteen.'

'Going on seventeen,' I retorted.

'This isn't
Romeo and Juliet,
you know. This is real life.'

'I thought you believed in romance and magic,' I said flippantly.

She frowned. 'Don't be silly, Fleur. You know very well what I mean. You don't want to get too serious at your age. It's not a good idea.'

'Who said we were getting serious?' I lied, changing tack. 'If she thinks that, she's silly. We're just friends. Good friends. Really good friends. Why shouldn't he have a good friend?'

Mum looked at me sharply. 'Are you sure that's all it is?'

I shrugged. 'It is on my side, anyway,' I said, carelessly, while my heart raced painfully. I didn't want to say those things, but I had a feeling I had to, or Mum would get spooked too and I'd be forbidden from seeing him. And I couldn't bear that.

'What about him, though? Maybe that's why she's worried. Maybe he's misread things. He sounds like an intense sort of boy from what you describe. And he's not had much to do with people his own age – maybe not even people in general at all, brought up like that.'

'I don't think so,' I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. 'He's fine. It's just her. I think she's unbalanced. I think she might think too that what we've been doing is dangerous. I mean the investigation.'

'Why should it be? Oh,' said my mother, as the meaning of my words sank in, 'you mean the discovery you think Raymond made might be connected with his death? But surely – surely no-one would kill anyone for that sort of thing.'

'It would be an amazing discovery. Whoever made it would be world-famous.'

'Only to people who care about things like that.'

'And there's lots and lots of them. You know that! It would be headline news in every newspaper. You could write a book about it that would sell millions. It would be like
The Da Vinci Code,
only real.'

'Yes, but to kill someone for it?'

'Plus the coin, if it exists, would be priceless.'

'Yes, but you couldn't sell it or anything. It would have to go in a museum.'

'Not if some nut got hold of it first. Someone who might believe it was magic, or something. Someone who'd be prepared to pay any price to own the coin that proved the existence of King Arthur in Avallon. You know there are people like that around.'

Mum looked troubled. 'I suppose there are, but –' she broke off, then went on – 'Anyway, Fleur, what you're arguing certainly doesn't help your case. If what you say is true, then Remy's mother is right to be worried about you and him meddling in something that could be very dangerous. I must say I agree with her motive then, if not her method.'

'She doesn't need to worry,' I said, hastily. 'And neither do you. Because we'll
stop
meddling, as you call it. We won't go near it. We'll give the dream book to the police and they can sort it out and see whether they think there's anything to our theory. How about that?'

'Hmm,' said Mum. 'It certainly sounds like the sensible option. I'm sure if she knew that, she might feel better about it all.'

I nodded, eagerly. 'Yes, that's right. Mum, I want to go and tell her now. I want her to understand, so she doesn't need to worry.'

Mum shook her head. 'No, Fleur. I am not going to let you do that.'

I stared at her. 'What?'

'You are not going there on your own,' she said firmly. 'Not after that performance this evening. It would worry me to let you go on your own to face God knows what.'

'But Mum! That's not fair!' I wailed. 'It's not my fault, or Remy's, that she went off the deep end! Why should that mean we can't be friends? It's just so unfair.'

'Wait. I haven't finished. If you really want to go and see her, then I will come with you. I will talk with her, try to see what the matter really is, see if we can sort things out. But not now,' she added, as I made as if to speak. 'It's far too late. And we've got to give her time to simmer down. We'll go tomorrow morning. And that's final, Fleur.'

I knew that tone. It
was
final. I knew I had to abide by her decision – or run the risk of never being allowed to see Remy again. Mum was quite capable of just deciding we would leave Bellerive straightaway, if she felt like it. Plus I have to admit that I was relieved by the thought of her coming with me to face that crazy woman. So I agreed, and we left it at that, and went back to our delayed dinner. The others all looked at us as we came in, but thankfully nobody asked us any questions, or made any further comment on what had happened, and I was glad.

After dinner I went up to bed pretty early and stood at my window for quite a while, hoping against hope that Remy would go against his mother and come to see me. I wished I could see him and Patou slipping through the shadows at the end of the park, like I did the other night. But there was nothing. Only the rustle of the wind in the trees, and the scream of the fox in the distance, and the shifting patterns of moonlight on the ground.

Eventually I went to bed and lay there tossing and turning, thinking over everything that had happened. The more I thought about Valerie Gomert's reaction, the weirder it seemed. She hadn't given me a chance to explain. And she'd looked at me as though I wasn't me, but a threat, an enemy, literally. She was quite obviously mad, I thought. I mean yeah, of course she'd be affected by what had happened to her family, but that was way back when and in another country and it had nothing to do with Remy and me being friends. Maybe living in the woods away from everyone had seemed a good idea at the time but it sure hadn't helped her mental state, if she flipped like that over nothing. Well, even if she was worried about Remy and I trying to look into that Riothamus stuff, she just had to say so, for God's sake.

Maybe, I thought, maybe she's gone crazy because she thinks I'm leading him astray, into doing things she doesn't approve of, like investigating stuff. I remembered what Remy had said, about how he'd like to go into the police but didn't dare to tell his mother because he was afraid of how she'd react. I hadn't really understood it then, but I could understand it now. And it chilled me to the bone. I'd told him that I couldn't tell my mother about my fantasy of going into ASIO and that sort of stuff, but that was different. Mum would not be happy – she would be disappointed – and it's not an easy thing to cope with a parent being
disappointed,
they can make you feel real bad about it – but it's not like being scared of someone actually going crazy. Remy was actually scared. And he had good reason to be. Who's to know what she might do, if she
really
lost it?

I finally dropped off into an uneasy sleep, punctuated by lots of annoying little dreams that I didn't really remember the details of when I woke up. They were the kind too that make you feel like you've hardly slept at all, so you feel kind of yuck when you wake up. As soon as I'd had my shower, I went looking for Mum and found her in the kitchen reading
The Discovery of King Arthur
and drinking a cup of coffee. Christine Foy was in the kitchen too, reading the paper and eating toast. She smiled at me.

'Are you okay?'

'Fine,' I lied.

'Your mother tells me you're going to go and see
her.'

For a moment, I didn't know what she meant. 'What? Oh, right.'

'I just said too that if you needed any more moral support –'

'Oh, no! I mean, thanks,' I said, hastily, 'but it's okay. Really.'

'Take care, then, won't you? I've told Anne she should take a phone with her or something. Just in case.'

'For heaven's sake, Christine,' said Mum, closing her book with a snap. 'What do you think the woman's going to do, physically attack us? She's probably ashamed of her outburst by now. Don't worry, we'll sort it out.'

'Can we go now, Mum?'

'You haven't had your breakfast.'

'I don't feel hungry. Mum. Please.'

'Okay, then.' She heaved herself out of her chair. 'I must say I feel tired this morning. Didn't sleep very well.'

'Neither did I.'

'I'm not surprised,' said Christine, taking a hearty bite of her toast. 'You poor things. People like that woman, they should be locked up. Good luck, anyway.'

We went out of the house and down to the river path. Mum was pretty quiet for a bit, then she started talking to me, not about Remy or his mother, but about
The Discovery of King Arthur
and how fascinating it all was and how she really hoped it was true and that Raymond had found real evidence. She said that in her view it was very unlikely anyone had attacked him for that reason because if that was so, why attack the private investigator too? I said that maybe the PI had known about the coin too and where Raymond had it, but she thought that was unlikely, you wouldn't tell a PI that, but you might tell your solicitor, and that she thought Nicolas Boron might know more about the subject than he was letting on. Maybe, I said, but then why had Raymond consulted the PI in the first place? Who knows, she said, it could be anything, just anything, maybe he wanted to check up on someone. Or track someone down. Or anything, really. It was possible Nicolas knew that too, she said, and she'd ask him about it once we'd come back.

I hadn't thought of all those things and I have to say it made a kind of sense. Maybe we had been making too much of things. Maybe Raymond really had been killed by a burglar and the fact that he'd consulted a PI was nothing to do with it. But the police seemed to want to follow it up. Probably just because they had to cover every base though. But then why hadn't there been anything found in Raymond's papers about his Riothamus/Arthur research, and why had his laptop and files been taken but not his valuable things? I wanted to believe it had nothing to do with the Arthur stuff because, although I'd said I'd give up on it – and I was quite prepared to do that – I was still intrigued by it, and would like to have gone to the heart of the mystery myself. I couldn't do that if it was linked to actual deaths – I knew that now – I had to leave it to the police and not meddle, just like Mum had said.

We went past our willow hideout and I felt a real pang, thinking of what it was like yesterday, and the feel of Remy's arms around me, his lips on mine, the warmth of his skin. It didn't matter what it took to persuade his mad mother, I just had to make her change her mind. I just had to. Or I thought my heart would break. I could feel pain in me already. A sore feeling under my ribs. A weird lump in my throat. A heaviness in my limbs.

It felt like ages, getting to their house, and every step seemed slow, but in reality we were going quite fast. At least I was, and several times Mum told me to wait up and not race like that. I hadn't realised I
had
been racing. It just felt like the distance was hardly lessening, like in a dream when you run and run and yet you never get anywhere. But at last we arrived in the clearing in the woods and saw the house, standing serenely in its fenced patch of vegetable garden, just like it had that day I first saw it. It was very quiet. There was no sign of anyone about, and no smoke coming out of the chimney. But as we opened the gate and went down the path, I could see the door was slightly open. My heart started to hammer painfully, my palms prickled. It was one thing to talk about confronting Valerie Gomert and get her to see reason, it was quite another to actually be here, about to do it. I couldn't help hanging back just a little. But Mum had no such fears and she came sailing past me and pushed open the door, calling out, in French, 'Hello? Hello, Valerie? Remy? It's Anne and Fleur Griffon. We've come to talk to you.'

Her words fell on empty air. There was no-one in the kitchen. The fire seemed to have gone out, but there was a pot of something sitting on the wood stove. There were neat bunches of herbs lying on the table, and a mug full of cold tea. Something about that room, I couldn't say exactly what, made me feel suddenly uneasy. I went through into the next room, Mum following at my heels, and stopped.