For Death Comes Softly (31 page)

Apart from that there was no doubting our happiness together. The Abri Island disaster would always be a great shadow over our lives. We could never conquer the grim memories, but we began, I suppose, to learn to live with them.

Robin continued to make casual remarks about ‘our children' and I continued to show no signs of becoming pregnant. However I told myself that considering the three months of enforced celibacy I had endured after the disaster that was not surprising. I could not really be expected to fall at the first opportunity at my age, and Robin was so sure that it would happen sooner or later that I determined that I really would not worry about it.

In fact I determined to put everything that bothered me out of my mind as much as possible. I began to understand the true meaning behind the expression ‘past worrying'. I really was past worrying. I even refused to think about my job – and particularly not the Stephen Jeffries case which had so haunted me. I was asked to see a police doctor who seemed to have no doubt that I qualified to remain on fully paid sick leave. I suppose I vaguely assumed I would end up going back to work one day, but I knew I was still far from ready for it.

I had seen Julia only once since the days immediately after the disaster – at the enquiry when she had been required to give evidence – and I kept trying to persuade her to come and spend a weekend with us. I so wanted her to get to know Robin better. I felt we were at last able to cope with visitors again, and I missed her. But she continued to make one excuse after another until eventually I invited myself to lunch with her, travelling up to London, one chilly day in early December, by train from Bristol Temple Meads.

We arranged to meet at her club, the Soho House in Greek Street, and it was great to see her again although I had a feeling that all was not entirely well with her.

We ordered champagne. ‘What the hell else?' muttered Julia, and that, at least, was utterly true to form. We gossiped about mutual friends, and I tried to tell her about my life now with Robin, but she seemed to have little interest in any of it, which was not like her at all.

There was a disturbing unease in her. Eventually I just had to confront her.

‘What's wrong, please tell me, Julia,' I said.

She sighed, put down her knife and fork, and pushed away her plate of only half-eaten seafood risotto.

‘Rose, you're not going to like it . . .' she replied.

I gestured for her to continue. She took a deep breath and began.

It seemed she had been to one of her impossibly trendy Hampstead dinner parties full of divorcees and second timers where the late-night conversation turned to marital betrayal. Everybody told a story.

‘There was a BBC producer there who told a story about Jeremy Cole. Do you know who I mean?' Julia enquired.

I nodded. Sir Jeremy, knighted by the last Tory government, was a geologist who had become a TV personality and rarely seemed to be off the box.

‘Apparently Cole had this affair and used to take his girlfriend away with him when he was filming or whatever, the usual crap,' Julia continued. ‘His wife got suspicious and one night turned up unexpectedly on some location and discovered that Sir Jeremy was indeed booked into a hotel room with another woman. She conned her way into the room while the erring couple were having dinner, stripped off and got into bed. BBC legend has it that when the pair returned she invited them both to join her – the girl fled and Sir Jeremy returned, suitably chastened, to the straight and narrow.'

There was a brief silence. I waited, puzzled.

Julia reached across the table and touched my hand. ‘Rose, get ready for the punchline. Apparently a year or so later Marjorie Cole, who they say is a real tough cookie and also filthy rich which is one reason why her husband returned to the nest, turned up at the Beeb tiddly and announced that she was celebrating what she considered to be the ultimate triumph because the girlfriend, in her words “had been dumped by some lunatic on a rock in the middle of the Bristol Channel and drowned”.'

I didn't want to understand what she was getting at, although I was beginning to have a pretty good idea.

‘So?' I responded quite aggressively.

‘Rose, Jeremy Cole specialises in the history of mining. You can't have missed his programmes, there've been enough of them.
Jewels in the Ground, Cole on Coal
– and then there was
Falling Houses
. You must remember
Falling Houses
.'

I did. The programme had caused quite a stir. It had investigated what it called the scandal of how properties in long-time mining areas would every so often just be swallowed up into disused workings. I did not speak.

‘Cole is a recognised leading expert on the dangers of old mining complexes, Rose, that is his speciality. And it had to be Natasha Felks who had this affair with him. She went filming with him. She visited mines with him.'

I felt my stomach lurch.

‘That doesn't make her an expert too,' I snapped. ‘Natasha Felks was a debbie bimbo, I shouldn't think she ever learned a damn thing about anything in her life.'

A waiter came and collected our discarded plates. Julia did not reply until he had walked away.

‘You're being ridiculous, Rose,' she said. ‘Natasha had a long affair with Cole, apparently – we aren't talking about a one-night stand. She must have picked up something about his work, it must have been in her mind, surely, and there she was spending half her life on an island with a bloody great gold mine underneath it. Don't you think it's possible that she may have suspected they could be dangerous and even suggested that to Robin . . .'

I'd had enough. I glowered at her over my champagne glass for a few seconds. Then I stood up.

‘No, Julia,' I said. ‘Robin never had any idea the mines might be dangerous, as, I'm sure, neither did Natasha Felks. You're the one being ridiculous if you even think I'm going to sit and listen to this nonsense. I just don't want to hear any more.'

With that I turned on my heel and swept out of the restaurant, down the narrow staircase and out on to the crowded pavement of Greek Street. I don't sweep terribly well, being only five foot three tall, but I did my best.

Julia did not try to stop me. She knew me too well. But I could feel her eyes on my back. We had known each other for virtually all our lives and as far as I could remember this was the first time we had ever parted on bad terms. Yet in the heat of the moment, I really didn't give a damn.

Nineteen

The train journey from Paddington to Temple Meads takes an hour and three-quarters. After leaving Julia at the Soho House it felt like several days long. I tried to dismiss what she had told me from my mind, as I had rather successfully with several of my other worries. But in this I did not succeed so well.

Robin was surprised to see me already home from London when he returned from work. I fibbed that Julia had been unexpectedly called back to her office.

‘Well, I'm delighted you're here so early,' he said. ‘I have something to tell you.'

I was beginning to wish nobody would tell me anything more about anything – ever.

‘First, we need champagne,' he said, and set off for the kitchen. I gazed out through the living-room window over the rooftops of the city and tried to suppress the premonition that, in spite of his obvious excitement, I wasn't going to want to hear Robin's news.

Robin returned with a bottle of Tattinger cold from the fridge and two elegant glasses. With his usual efficiency he popped the cork and poured.

‘Rose,' he said, and he was grinning from ear to ear. ‘Abri Island may not be lost for ever, after all.'

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

‘Robin,' I protested. ‘Abri has been lost for ever. Forty-four lives have been lost for ever. What are you talking about?'

‘Look, I've been studying the new plans of the mines which the enquiry's surveyors drew up, and I've had a good look around Abri myself, and tried to take an unemotional look at the damage.'

Abri had officially been designated a disaster area, and even the sheep had been evacuated. It went without saying that both boats and helicopters were no longer allowed to land there and visitors, including the island's owner, were forbidden.

He saw my look of surprise and touched my cheek with one hand in a vaguely apologetic gesture.

‘I persuaded Eddie to take me over in the chopper,' he said. ‘We landed on the north side which is quite safe. I didn't tell you because I knew you'd only fret.'

‘Damn right,' I said, and waited for him to continue, which he did at once, his enthusiasm bubbling over, the words pouring out of him.

‘I had a meeting with AKEKO this morning, and I offered them the only hope there is of getting any return for their investment. They neither like nor trust me, but they are businessmen. They listened. You see I do not believe that the damage to Abri is irretrievable. We could either fill up or excavate the remaining tunnels. I am sure the place could be made safe – at a cost. There were mine shafts, many more than we knew about, right under the village, the church, and the site of the new hotel. The building activity and all those people at our wedding were the last straw for Abri, we certainly know that, and the structure of the place just collapsed, but we could build another village somewhere where there aren't any tunnels.'

‘I got the impression from the enquiry report that the tunnels were everywhere,' I said lamely.

‘Not quite,' said Robin. ‘It can be done, I'm sure of it, and AKEKO have the funds. They just need convincing that they won't be putting good money after bad. I have offered to re-invest most of what they paid me for the lease as a gesture of good faith.'

‘But you could lose everything, Robin,' I said.

He looked angry for a moment. ‘This isn't about money, Rose,' he said quite sternly. ‘It's about my island.'

I studied him carefully. His cheeks were slightly flushed. There was a gleam in his eyes. Abri would always belong to Robin Davey, and he to it. Even after all that had happened.

‘Surely you'll never be allowed to rebuild, will you, Robin?' I asked. ‘Even if it were possible I don't see you getting planning permission. Isn't there a bloody great crack across the island?'

Robin was really impatient now. ‘We can landscape it,' he snapped.

I stared at him in astonishment. Forty-four people had been killed on his blessed island and he was talking about landscaping the crack in the earth which had swallowed them up.

‘It could be a kind of memorial,' he said, as if reading my mind. ‘It could even become a tourist attraction. People find that sort of thing fascinating. They flocked to Lynton and Lynmouth after the terrible floods in the 1950s. And look at all the Diana memorials – millions visit them.'

I was completely speechless. We were sitting in armchairs facing each other. He got up, came and kneeled on the carpet before me.

‘Rose, what's wrong?' he asked, and I was amazed that he did not know how I felt.

‘It just doesn't seem right, that's all,' I stumbled eventually.

He took both my hands in his.

‘Why not?' he asked. ‘What's wrong with wanting to rebuild? You didn't expect them not to rebuild the freeways after the LA earthquake, did you? If Abri were a town instead of an island, you would expect it to be rebuilt, wouldn't you? What's the difference?'

There really were no more words. I supposed that in some ways he was right. It was just that I couldn't bear even to think about Abri and he was patently still possessed by the place. I knew he loved me deeply, but I suspected even I was nothing to him compared with his island. And if he was disappointed with my reaction to his news, it certainly didn't stop him babbling on.

‘AKEKO have agreed to at least arrange to send an engineering team in,' he continued just as eagerly as before. ‘It's a start, anyway, I'm quite sure the practical problems can be overcome . . .'

I let his words wash over me. His excitement merely reminded me of the depth of his obsession with Abri Island.

On top of what Julia had told me that day, I found myself seriously unnerved.

The next morning, immediately after a still-ebullient Robin had left for the office, I called Julia.

I didn't mess about. She was, after all, my oldest and best friend.

‘Sorry I went off in a huff,' I said.

‘Oh, Rose, I probably shouldn't have said anything,' she replied. ‘Just dinner-party gossip. A juicy story like that gets told everywhere, and sometimes it's quite apocryphal. Means bugger all, probably.'

‘You don't believe that,' I said, and I heard her give a little sigh.

‘To be honest, I don't know what to believe, Rose,' she said, unconsciously echoing my sister.

‘Look, Todd Mallett and his team are sure to have known about the Jeremy Cole angle and checked it out,' I told her. I knew I was lying to myself and I guessed what her response would be.

‘Nothing about Natasha Felks having possibly had a special reason to be interested in old mines or at least having a strong connection with a mining expert, let alone one as well-known as Cole, came out either at her inquest or the Abri enquiry did it?' Julia asked.

It was a rhetorical question to which we both knew the answer.

‘I can't believe Todd wouldn't have found out about it though . . .' My voice tailed off. I was beginning to realise that I wasn't being very convincing, to myself, let alone to Julia.

‘Why on earth
should
the police have found out about it?' Julia sounded exasperated. ‘Natasha Felks was having an affair with a married man, and an eminent one in the public eye at that. The three in a bed story may have been common gossip at the Beeb, but it is the kind of tale people wouldn't know whether to believe or just take as a good yarn, and Natasha's name wasn't generally known. It was an absolute freak that I stumbled across it and put two and two together.'