False Tongues (16 page)

In a sense it was a story that he had handed to her, like a gift wrapped in shiny paper and tied with a bow.

She owed it to Richard Frost—and to Sebastian—to get it right.

Front page stuff? Almost certainly. At the end of the day it would be up to the sub-editors to write the headline. But as Lilith sat at her computer to compose the story, she knew what she wanted the headline to say: A Father's Anguish.

***

John Kingsley had excused himself from the tea party earlier, pleading tiredness, saying he needed a few minutes to put his feet up in his room before the evening meal. ‘I'm not as young as I used to be,' he'd said.

Margaret thought she should probably go as well, and began to make a move to shift the cat from her lap. But Keith Moody intervened. ‘You don't have to go yet,' he said quickly.

So she didn't. She remained, and accepted a refill of tea. She even had a second sliver of chocolate cake. The conversation flowed, covering all sorts of topics from theology to Cambridge to favourite music. Talking to Keith Moody was effortless; Margaret wondered why she'd never really done it before. It wasn't until the sun dropped behind the trees that she realised she was chilled, and feared that she may have out-stayed her welcome.

‘I must put in an appearance at dinner,' she said. ‘And there's that session in the bar tonight. That was
your
idea, remember?'

‘I'll be there,' he assured her. ‘And I'll even buy you a drink.'

‘I should buy
you
a drink. You've given me such a splendid tea.' Margaret finally managed to remove the cat and stand up.

‘I hope you'll come back another time.'

‘Of course. And you must come and have a meal with me sometime,' she heard herself saying.

‘I would be delighted.' He gave her a courtly, old-fashioned bow.

‘Thanks so much for this. Really. It's been lovely.'

Keith Moody smiled. ‘My pleasure, Principal.'

‘Please,' she said. ‘Please, Keith. Call me Margaret.'

Chapter Nine

Neville turned over in bed and snuggled against Triona, fitting himself round her sleeping body. His hand moved lazily over the smooth satin of her nightdress, tentatively exploring, just in case…

‘Mmmm.' She opened one eye, then reached out a hand and grabbed the bedside clock. ‘Oh, Lord. Is that really the time?' she groaned, struggling up onto her elbow.

‘There's no rush.'

‘Oh, but there is!' She turned toward Neville, gave him a chaste peck on his bristly cheek, then pulled away from his questing hand and got out of bed, more nimbly than he would have thought possible with the size of her bump. ‘I have a meeting with a client first thing this morning. I did tell you last night.'

Last night he'd had other things on his mind. He probably hadn't even been listening, he admitted to himself—if not to her.

‘And I have to get clear across town,' she reminded him.

Her flat was in the City, very close to her office. But they were at his Shepherd's Bush flat instead. She'd spent the day there yesterday, while he was working, giving the place a thorough spring clean, the likes of which it hadn't seen since he'd moved in over fifteen years ago. He'd heard that pregnancy sometimes did that to a woman: brought on a cleaning frenzy, part of the nesting instinct. His flat, and the people who were going to buy it in the near future, were the beneficiaries of that primitive drive.

Last night they'd slept on freshly laundered sheets, under an aired duvet, in a room that had been scrubbed within an inch of its life. Neville scarcely recognised the place. Its familiar fug was gone; maybe now Triona wouldn't have as many objections to staying there, at least until they were able to move into their new house. And, please God, that would be soon. Before the baby. Then maybe they'd start to feel like a real family, instead of a couple of people making do.

Not that Neville had many grounds for complaint at the moment. The pregnancy hormones, in addition to producing the laudable cleaning frenzy and an even more laudable boost in her libido, seemed to be making Triona more mellow in temperament, less likely to take exception to his failings as a husband. And then there were the fantastic breasts, always delectable but now grown to unprecedented lusciousness. If only, he thought with a guilty sort of regret, she could stay pregnant like this forever, so he could reap the benefits without having to worry about the inevitable conclusion: the arrival of that life-changing baby.

For a full thirty seconds Neville managed to forget what he had ahead of him over the next few hours, and then it hit him. He had no illusions that Sebastian Frost's killer would have turned himself in during the night. Evans would be back at his desk, poised to jump on Neville at the earliest opportunity. And if the press hadn't got hold of the story yet, they would be having a field day very soon. He was going to have to come up with something good to feed to them at the news conference.

Neville groaned aloud and threw off the duvet.

***

Callie made it to Morning Prayer on Tuesday, arriving even before the summoning bell. Tamsin wasn't quite so prompt, slipping into the pew next to Callie in the middle of the General Confession. Distracted, Callie glanced at her and stumbled over ‘miserable offenders'; Tamsin shrugged with a significant roll of her eyes in Callie's direction. ‘I'll tell you later,' she whispered as soon as absolution had been pronounced.

‘Later' turned out to be after breakfast, before the morning session began. Callie went back to her room to clean her teeth and collect a notebook; Tamsin followed and closed the door behind her.

Callie's curiosity was piqued. ‘What's this all about?'

‘Gossip,' said Tamsin. ‘Juicy gossip.'

She knew she shouldn't encourage her, but Callie couldn't help it. ‘Tell me,' she demanded.

‘Have you met that new secretary woman?'

‘Oh, the Principal's PA, isn't she?' Callie recalled. ‘Hanna, with no H at the end.'

‘That's the one,' Tamsin confirmed. ‘She spelled it for me. Anyway, she waylaid me outside of the chapel. I was running late anyway. There wasn't anyone else about, so I suppose that's why she told me.'

‘Told you what?'

‘I'm getting to that.' Tamsin plopped down on the bed. ‘She said she was so upset that she just had to tell someone.'

‘Upset?'

Tamsin shook her head. ‘She didn't seem that upset to me. But that's what she said.'

If this was all meant to increase the impact of the gossip, it wasn't working: Callie was beginning to get bored. She crossed to her basin, twisted the cold tap, and reached for her toothbrush.

‘It's about Mad Phil,' Tamsin revealed.

Callie applied a squeeze of toothpaste to the brush and started on her back teeth. Mad Phil Moody seemed to her the least gossip-worthy of people, from what she had seen of him as her personal tutor and in tutor group. He appeared to have no private life as such, living alone as a bachelor in his little college-provided house. The main interest of his life was theology. What on earth could he have done to provoke upsetting gossip? Forgotten to put his bin out on the proper night, perhaps? Nicked an extra sausage at breakfast?

‘She said he has a girlfriend.'

‘A girlfriend?' Callie spoke through a mouth full of toothpaste, turning to face her friend with an incredulous look.

‘A
young
girlfriend. An undergraduate, most likely.'

Callie turned back to the basin, spit and rinsed her mouth before dignifying that with a reply. ‘That's absolutely ridiculous.'

‘She saw him. Them. That's what she said.' Tamsin shook her head, causing her curls to bounce. ‘I'm just telling you what she said.'

‘She
saw
them,' Callie repeated scornfully.

‘Kissing,' Tamsin added with ill-disguised relish. ‘In his back garden. Hugging and kissing.'

Callie stared at her.

‘That's what she said. That's what she saw. I'm not making it up.'

‘No,' said Callie. ‘No way. Mad Phil? I don't believe it. Not for a minute.'

***

The way that grief—bereavement—affected different people in diverse ways was something that had always interested Miranda Frost. Professionally, she had often observed it and had concluded that there was no way to predict how people would react. Yes, there were stages of grief which were fairly predictable, but they manifested themselves in ways that were not. And it wasn't just individuals: it was families—couples—with their own dynamics which combined in various ways to make things either easier or more difficult. In Miranda's experience, grief could either bring a couple together, or it could drive them apart; rarely was there a middle ground, with a relationship remaining untouched.

So often, she had observed, guilt and blame were involved, muddled together and liable to turn from one to the other in an instant. It was a toxic formula. ‘If only you hadn't given her the car keys….' ‘If you hadn't said that….' ‘If you'd just noticed…'

It wasn't, though, something she'd been thinking about consciously in the last twenty-four hours. Her own feelings were muddled, chaotic, anything but rational or analytical.

She'd taken a sedative. That was something she always prescribed for people who had suffered unexpected bereavement, and she'd decided it would be foolish to ignore her own advice.

Richard, however, had refused to have one. He was a grown-up; she couldn't force him to do it.

And he was no longer in bed beside her, Miranda realised as she woke up, groggily, to the sound of a distant telephone's ring. The ringing stopped, abruptly, but it was too late: she was awake.

She groaned and struggled up into a sitting position as everything came back to her. The sedative had given her a night's sleep, had suppressed her dreams, and that was a blessing, but it couldn't take away the living nightmare that her life had now become. Sebastian was dead. Fact.

Dead this morning, dead tomorrow. And every day from now on. Miranda didn't know why she should even bother to get out of bed.

There was a mug of coffee on the bedside table. Miranda reached for it automatically.

Cold. As cold as her dead son, on the slab in the mortuary.

But where had it come from? Presumably that nice policeman, the Italian one, had made it for her. That seemed to be his main function, along with answering the phone.

She put the cold coffee back on the nightstand and, telling herself that she had to get up whether she wanted to or not, reached for her dressing gown.

***

Brian Stanford had gone out to visit a few of his devout but house-bound parishioners and take them their Easter communion, so Jane had a bit of time to herself. She started a load of washing—Brian's alb and some other whites—then did the breakfast washing-up, and finally sat down for a few minutes with a cup of coffee, alone for the first time since she'd discovered her condition.

This time next year she would be washing nappies. It was an old-fashioned thing to do, she knew—these days everyone used disposable ones. Easier, yes, but even if she could afford them, Jane knew she wouldn't be going down that road. Easier wasn't always better; she'd learned that at her mother's knee, and a good thing too. Life as a vicar's wife had its compensations and she wouldn't have chosen any other life for herself, but ease wasn't one of the qualities associated with that particular path.

How was she going to tell Brian? He was going to be shocked, she knew: even though they'd been trying for a baby, she didn't think that Brian really believed it would happen. Had
she
even really believed it? Jane wasn't sure, in retrospect. It
had
happened, though, and it was too late to second-guess now. Nappies, sleepless nights, noise, mess. Their lives were certainly never going to be the same again. Not for another eighteen years or so, anyway. And by then Brian would be nearing retirement age, facing other momentous changes.

The phone rang, startling Jane out of her reverie. It was probably just a parishioner, wanting to bend her ear about the flower rota or talk to Brian about some personal problem. She answered it. ‘Hello?'

‘Mum?'

It was Simon, the twin to whom Jane had always felt the closest. She knew that parents weren't supposed to have favourites, and she didn't—not really,—but Simon was the one she understood the best. He was more sensitive and intense, more like her than his breezy and sometimes cynical brother.

She hadn't seen Simon for weeks. At the start of the Easter Vac he'd gone to stay with his girlfriend's parents in Northamptonshire, and was due to travel with them to the South of France. He'd rung on Easter Day, of course, but his own parents would be lucky if he found the time to come to London before the start of Trinity Term.

‘Simon!' she said. ‘Aren't you supposed to be on the way to France?'

‘Later today,' he confirmed. ‘We're flying from Luton this afternoon.'

Jane didn't approve, though she knew she didn't have any say in the matter. It wasn't just that she felt Simon's place was at home, with his own family. She resented the fact that Ellie's parents, the Dickinsons, were wealthy enough to subsidise her son's holiday travels, and that they assumed it was all right just because they had the means to fund it. Simon and Ellie, sharing a room, a bed, in some villa in the South of France…They wouldn't have to bother observing the proprieties as they did when they were under Jane's roof, in the separate rooms she insisted upon. It wasn't right.

‘Well, I hope you have a nice time,' she said as neutrally as she could manage.

‘Actually, Mum, there's something I need to talk to you about. Before we go.'

Jane's heart leapt. Simon had always confided in her, in the old days. The days before Ellie. Had he seen the error of his ways? Had he realised that Ellie wasn't the right one for him after all?

‘Yes?' She tried not to sound to eager.

‘Is Dad there?'

‘No, he's not. He's doing home communions.'

‘Good,' said Simon, and Jane smiled to herself. Simon
did
want to talk to her about something important. Something Brian might not like.

‘The thing is, Mum…' Simon paused, long enough for several scenarios to unfold in his mother's brain. ‘The thing is…we're having a baby,' he blurted.

Jane's brain wasn't working fast enough. ‘A baby…?' she echoed.

‘We didn't plan it, of course,' he added quickly, defensively. ‘Sometimes things just happen.'

‘Yeeees…'

‘I know the timing isn't good,' he went on. ‘Ellie will barely finish Michaelmas Term. She'll probably have to take a term or two out after the baby's born.'

Jane reminded herself to breathe. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. ‘Ellie's having a baby,' she stated, trying to persuade herself that she wasn't dreaming.

‘That's what I said. We'll get married, of course,' Simon added. ‘As soon as possible.'

‘But…Simon! You can't get married. You're too young. And your studies. Oxford…'

He gave a wry laugh. ‘I'm old enough to have a baby, Mum. It's going to happen. So the rest is a non-issue.'

‘Oh, Simon.'

‘Don't worry, Mum. We'll make it work. One way or another. Ellie's parents can help us financially, even if you and Dad can't. We'll find digs in Oxford after next term. As I said, Ellie may have to take a couple of terms out, but I'll carry on. It will be fine—you'll see.' His voice was hearty, as if he were attempting to convince himself.

Jane seized on something he'd said. ‘Ellie's parents…they know about this?'

‘Yes, of course. She told them straightaway, as soon as she was sure. Right after she told
me
.' Simon added, ‘Ellie's very close to her Mum. And they've both been really supportive. Just like I know you'll be, Mum.' He gave a little laugh. ‘Once you get used to the idea of being a granny.'