Sworn Secret (39 page)

Jon shook his head. ‘That’s not true.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I stole you.’

‘Stole me?’ She looked incredulous. ‘How on earth did you steal me?’

‘I told you Dan wouldn’t be faithful. I pursued you, bullied you into dinner when you were upset about Dan. I remember. I remember thinking, what kind of man does this to his brother?’

Kate sat up and faced him. Her brow was furrowed with frustrated disbelief. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. I wanted you from that first conversation. You, in that tweed suit! You were so different from everyone else. Clever and funny. And so intense. Dan meant nothing to me. I would have taken you home that night, but it was his birthday, remember?’ She nudged him. ‘What kind of girl dumps the birthday boy for his brother? For goodness’ sake. I had to pretend I was upset about Dan and that tart from the sculpture class. I’m not stupid, you know. Dan and I would have lasted about five minutes. I mean, what good is he for me? Christ, one night with the idiot and I’m taking drugs and vandalizing houses.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s you, Jon, you I’ve always loved.’ She paused. ‘But you can’t ask me to separate you from my children. I can’t do that. You gave them to me. It’s been such a tough time for both of us, and I know the way I’ve handled myself has made it so hard for you. But that’s me and, you know, that’s why I need you. These last few days, the fog seems to have lifted a little, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I feel like I’ve turned a massive corner. I think things are going to improve. I really feel that. But I can’t promise I’m not going to break again. I can’t promise it’s going to be easy.’

Jon put his arm across Kate and rested his forehead against hers.

‘We lost one of the two most important things in our lives,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll be sad about that until we die. That sadness is a part of us now. She will never leave me, and she’ll never leave you. But I won’t give up on us, on this family.’ She paused to gather herself. ‘And you can’t give up on us either.’

Jon tilted his head to kiss her. She kissed him back, and then he felt her hands unbutton his shirt. She bent and kissed his chest. Then he felt her hesitate and her body braced. He heard her draw a difficult breath.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not the right time.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is.’

Suspicions

Lizzie was still in bed. It was ten thirty and she was reading. She was glad of the rest. Getting her head around Anna and Dr Howe and what Rebecca had told them had left her in pieces. And she knew her parents were totally shattered too. It was like they’d been in a plane crash and only just survived. Her dad looked especially dreadful. She’d never seen him so thin and tired. He looked at least sixty, and normally he didn’t look close to that.

Lizzie tried desperately hard to keep focused on her book. She didn’t want to think about anything to do with Anna, but it was impossible. The more she tried to concentrate on the words, the more they seemed to blur and swim. She had to keep squeezing her eyes shut really tight, then rereading sentences she’d just read. But she just kept hearing Rebecca’s voice. She shook her head and reread her last page.

When Lizzie heard her mother’s footsteps on the stairs, she folded the corner of her page and put the book on her desk. Her mum knocked once and came into her room with a glass of Ribena that clinked with ice cubes.

‘I thought you might like a drink.’

‘Thanks,’ said Lizzie.

Her mum put it on the desk and then straightened her sheets. ‘Lean forward a sec,’ she said. She plumped the pillows, then smiled and picked up the empty cereal bowl and Lizzie’s half-drunk mug of tea.

‘Your uncle’s flying back to New York this afternoon, and your dad’s leaving work early to drive him to the airport. I’m going round in a bit to say goodbye and take a lasagne over for your grandparents. Do you want to come?’

Lizzie suddenly felt guilty remembering that she never made it round to see her grandpa on his birthday, and nodded.

‘Lovely. Dan will be pleased, and I know your gran will be over the moon to see you,’ her mum said. ‘Get yourself dressed and when you’re ready, we’ll go.’

On her way to the bathroom, Lizzie passed the stairs up to the attic and smelt the strong reek of oil paint and white spirit. She loathed the smell. It reminded her of her mum crying. She hadn’t been up there. Not since Anna died. At first it was because her mum hadn’t let her. The door was always locked, whether her mum was painting or not. And then, as the months progressed and Lizzie was forced to endure the noises coming from above her room, the sobbing, banging and thrashing that sometimes went on all night, it became a place she wouldn’t go near, even if she was welcomed with open arms.

Lizzie listened for her mum downstairs. The vacuum cleaner was on. She peered up at the studio door and hesitated. Then, with another quick check for the sound of the vacuum cleaner, she took a couple of steps. She hesitated again, rubbing her hand and arm which were still tingling painfully from the wasp sting, then she took another few steps until she was standing at the door. She reached out and opened it and, without going in, stared into the room. Sunlight flooded it through the two large roof lights. The room was cleared. The tubes of paint were lidded and in a neat row on the table in the corner, like the dead after a massacre line the side of a road. The palettes were stacked and the paint-smeared jars were empty of spirit. It was remarkably restful up there, nothing like the dark place of misery and emotional torture she’d imagined.

She stepped inside. There were canvases of all sizes stacked in horizontal piles against the walls around the room. The first picture in each stack, and there were maybe fifteen stacks, was a different depiction of Anna. Lizzie knew without looking that the other canvases, the ones she couldn’t see, were all of Anna too. She did a quick calculation. What was it? A hundred, more like a hundred and fifty, paintings of her sister? Lizzie felt suddenly uneasy, trespassing on her mum’s secret psychosis, witnessing a side of her she shouldn’t see. Cautiously she began to look through them. Though some were better than others, each one seemed to have something about it. There was her defiance, perfectly captured in the set of her mouth as a teenager; her wide, enthusiastic smile as a toddler; grace and sensuality in a study of her hand, painted open, palm up as if it belonged to a goddess who proffered a heavenly peach.

She looked up and noticed the painting on the easel in the corner of the room beneath the slope of the roof, and her breath caught in her throat. It was phenomenal. It was Anna, smiling, her head tipped back as if she were about to laugh. It was as if Anna were right there in the studio with her. Lizzie walked up close to the painting, her arms crossed, leaning lightly away, drawn by the picture but at the same time wary of it. She uncurled an arm and slowly reached out to touch the tips of her fingers to the side of Anna’s face. As she touched the painting, her whole body began to ache with missing.

Then she saw Mrs Howe. She was sitting in that armchair in the dark, her face twisted with loathing and hatred, calling her sister a slut. She heard Rebecca’s fearful voice telling how Mrs Howe had threatened her. Her head began to turn over and over as thoughts battled and jostled, her mind beavering away, fingering through the facts, the motives, piecing it all together, puzzling.

‘Lizzie!’ she heard from downstairs. ‘We should leave!’

Lizzie took one last look at the painting of her sister. ‘Did she?’ she asked Anna softly. ‘Did that woman do it?’

‘Great,’ her mum said when she came into the kitchen. ‘Shall we go?’

‘Mum,’ she said, catching her breath a little.

‘Yes?’

‘We haven’t really spoken about what Bec said.’

Her mum hesitated. ‘No,’ she paused. ‘Do you want to?’

‘Do you think Mrs Howe did something to Anna?’ Lizzie could tell by the shock on her mum’s face that she wasn’t expecting her question.

Her mum sat at the kitchen table and stretched her arms out in front of her. Lizzie pulled out a chair and sat too.

‘Mum?’

Her mum turned her head to face her. She looked sad again, as if she might cry. Lizzie would normally have felt guilty, but she didn’t feel guilty; she wanted to know what her mum thought. Her suspicions, her conclusion, ate away at her. It had been since Rebecca talked to them. It made perfect sense to her. Too much sense, so that she was incapable of seeing any other way. It was all far too convenient. Anna sleeping with Dr Howe, trying to get them to break up, saying the things she said to the woman, the Howes the first on the scene.

‘No, darling,’ her mum said. ‘I don’t think that.’

‘She was so angry with Anna. Those things Rebecca said . . . how livid she was about Anna and him. Then the blackmail. She said she was going to kill Rebecca when they sent the film. Bec said that. What if she went up on the roof and
pushed
Anna?’

Her mum took her hand. ‘Sweetheart, this whole business has been so traumatic for all of us. Really, it has. But you can’t say things like that. You can’t go around saying Angela Howe murdered Anna. You can’t even
think
it. There’s no evidence—’

‘But didn’t you hear what Rebecca said? How angry she said Mrs Howe was? Then Mrs Howe was there minutes after she died. What if they lied? What if she was there when Anna was still alive? It can’t be a coincidence. I don’t believe it.’

‘Look, Angela was at the school because Haydn called her. He asked her to come, because he was worried about what Anna was doing. There is no reason not to believe her.’

‘What about her telling Rebecca not to tell anyone? She said she’d make her life a misery.’

‘Just because she doesn’t want anyone else to know about her husband and one of his pupils doesn’t mean she is a murderer.’

‘But Mum,’ Lizzie pleaded. ‘She was so angry. You didn’t see her. I did, and she definitely looked like she wanted to kill someone. And you should have heard the way—’

‘I’ve seen her angry too. But there’s getting angry and then there’s killing someone.’

‘But
you
got angry and hurt Rebecca, and you’re not half as loony as Mrs Howe.’

Her mum pursed her lips and looked down at her hands, and Lizzie immediately wished she hadn’t mentioned the thing with Rebecca.

‘Listen,’ her mum said gently. ‘The woman’s husband was having sex with a child at his school, there was a film Anna threatened to show everyone, then he kills himself. This kind of stuff will make her desperate and unhappy, and yes, angry. But it doesn’t make her
bad
. Do you understand that, Lizzie? Angela Howe is not a murderer.’ She paused. ‘In the last few weeks you’ve been through so much, and lots of it is difficult for you to understand.’

Lizzie opened her mouth to protest, but her mum was quicker.

‘My behaviour at the memorial, you falling in love, all the fighting and the things you heard about Anna and Dr Howe. Then you were stung. All this will interfere with your judgement, the way you see life.’ Her mum shuffled her chair closer to Lizzie so their knees were touching. Then she took hold of her hands. ‘Look at me.’

Lizzie stared at the fruit bowl on the table as tears welled in her eyes.

‘Please, Lizzie, look at me.’

She lifted her gaze from the fruit bowl and drew in a deep breath. She turned her head to look at her mum. Her mum smiled.

‘There is no evidence to suggest Angela hurt Anna, and so the police won’t reopen the file.’ She looked at Lizzie and raised her eyebrows, looking for confirmation that Lizzie understood. ‘Lizzie?’ Her mum lifted her chin so she was forced to make eye contact. ‘Angela Howe did not push Anna off that roof. She fell. I know it’s hard. God knows I find it hard myself, but that’s what we have to believe.’ Her mum pulled her in for a hug. ‘These last weeks have shown me that blame and anger and self-pity, they aren’t healthy things to feel.’ She kissed the top of Lizzie’s head. ‘Anna fell,’ she whispered. ‘It was an accident.’

Lizzie stared at her mum.

‘OK?’ her mum said. ‘Lizzie, I want you to say you understand.’

Reluctantly, Lizzie nodded.

The Tortoiseshell Comb: Part Two

Kate shook as they drove over to Jon’s parents’ house; trying to stay calm and address Lizzie’s fears without letting on that she had her own suspicions had been almost impossible. There was so much of her that wanted to jump up and cheer.

At last! Someone believes me. Someone else believes that Anna didn’t fall off that roof.

But she had to be the parent. She had to do what was best for Lizzie.

They stood on the doorstep and rang the bell. Barbara opened the door, but only a crack. She peeped through the gap, and when she saw who it was, she neither smiled nor opened the door.

‘You’ve come for Daniel.’

‘And we brought you a lasagne,’ said Lizzie before Kate could speak.

Barbara still didn’t open the door.

‘Can we come in?’ Kate asked.

Barbara looked hesitant, but then she stepped back and disappeared. She left the door ajar. Kate and Lizzie exchanged looks, and then Kate pushed the door open.

They walked into the hall and found Barbara with her back to them just in front of the door into the kitchen.

‘I haven’t had time to tidy, I’m afraid,’ she said weakly.

‘Is Jon here yet?’ Kate asked.

Barbara shook her head and walked into the kitchen.

Kate followed her. ‘He’ll be here soon.’

The kitchen was in a state, with crockery and pans stacked in the sink, clothes heaped up on the table; a pile of Peter’s books and papers had fallen like a demolished tower block, throwing itself across the floor, which itself needed a sweep and a mop.

Suddenly, Barbara began to shake, almost as if she were having convulsions. ‘I can’t. I can’t. I . . . I . . .’

Kate went to her side and put her arm around her shoulders and gently shushed her.

‘Lizzie, darling,’ she said. ‘Will you make Granny a cup of tea with some sugar in it?’