The Girl Who Came Back (3 page)

‘Come and sit down,’ Andee said gently, pulling out a chair at the table.

Doing as she was told, Jules said, ‘When?’

‘I don’t have an actual date,’ Andee replied, ‘but it’s imminent.’

‘And where will she go?’

Andee swallowed and her eyes moved briefly away before she said, ‘I believe she’s returning to Crofton Park.’

The reply was like a slap. Crofton Park, one of the Quentins’ several country homes, was less than four miles from this part of Kesterly, out on the moors, close to the medieval village of Dunster. The old folks, Amelia’s grandparents, the judge and his wife, had spent their final years at Crofton Park and no one locally had liked them. Good riddance, they’d all said when the ill-tempered, tight-fisted old beak had followed his snobbish, petty-minded, unpleasantly outspoken wife to the grave. Since their passing the place had become little more than a weekend retreat for their only son, Anton Quentin QC, and his despicable toff friends from London. They hardly ever mixed with the locals, unless it suited them for some trifling reason, otherwise they were far too exclusive to entertain even the idea of becoming involved in the local community. Theirs was an overprivileged, overmoneyed, overtitled, rarefied existence that the rest of the world – the every day pleb world – only read about in expensive glossy magazines and society columns. They were also, Jules had come to learn the hard way, a section of the upper-class British Establishment that stuck together no matter what, and even believed they were entitled to play by rules of their own.

‘Doesn’t she have to go to a halfway house first?’ Jules murmured, still trying to take it in. ‘That’s what usually happens when someone’s released, isn’t it?’

‘Often, yes,’ Andee confirmed.

Jules looked at her briefly. Of course the rules were different for the likes of Amelia. How stupid of her to have forgotten that.

Amelia Quentin was to be released; she was returning to Crofton Park … How could the girl even think about setting foot in that place again, never mind actually want to? ‘It shouldn’t be happening,’ she said hoarsely. ‘It’s just not right.’

‘I know,’ Andee responded.

‘Her sentence was a farce! An outrage!’

Andee didn’t disagree.

‘There are other places she could go,’ Jules cried angrily. ‘Why does it have to be there?’

Andee had no answer to that.

‘She should
never
be allowed out,’ Jules declared fiercely. ‘If we hadn’t been cheated of a proper trial … What about Dean Foggarty? Is he being released too?’

‘I haven’t had any news about him.’

Thinking of Dean caused Jules to see red again. ‘It was one massive injustice from start to finish,’ she growled. ‘We were treated like the little people, cretins who don’t matter … Dean shouldn’t be where he is, everyone knows that.
She’s
the one who should be paying.’

Andee’s eyes showed her sympathy; the words she’d spoken at the time of the trial had expressed how disgusted she too had felt at the way things had turned out.

‘If I see her, if she comes anywhere near me …’ Jules raged. What would she do? She knew what she’d like to do.

‘She won’t, I’m sure.’

Jules’s breathing was still ragged as she struggled with a tangle of fury, frustration, helplessness and the deepest, bitterest resentment. Just as she was finding the heart to start moving forward …

She couldn’t cope with this …

‘Where’s Kian?’ Andee asked softly.

Jules looked at her, her eyes feeling as wide as the jagged holes in her heart. From the kindliness and concern of Andee’s expression it was clear that she had no idea about Kian.

Andee Lawrence had gone now, leaving Jules alone with the stark reality of a nightmare with no end. She knew that if Andee had been able in any way to soften her news, or to change it to what everyone wanted to hear – that Amelia Quentin was never coming out of prison – she would have done so. But it hadn’t been in her power. All she’d been able to do was come here in an act of selfless consideration that went above and beyond what was called for, given that she was no longer with the police. She had her own life to lead now, there was no need to concern herself with anything that had happened during the time she was a detective. And it wasn’t even as if she’d been assigned to the Bright family case back then; what she’d done had been out of genuine kindness, something Jules would never forget.

Jules suspected Andee was driving home now worrying about leaving when she had. In a way it was reassuring for Jules to know that she had someone on her side. On the other hand, maybe she didn’t want to connect too strongly with Andee when the thoughts in her mind were so chaotic and dark.

Glancing at the clock, she calculated the time in Chicago where her best friend Em was a first-grade teacher, and Em’s American husband, Don, was the Director of Alumni Relations at one of the city’s exclusive private schools. They’d met, by chance, in London, over two decades ago, at which point in time Em would have been the last person to envisage herself leaving Kesterly, never mind Britain, and going to live in the States. However, that was what had happened, she’d even married in the States at Don’s family’s lakeside villa in Indiana, where Jules and Kian had spent just about every summer vacation since.

‘You’re kidding me,’ Em cried when Jules broke the news about Amelia Quentin, sounding every bit as sickened as Jules had expected. ‘How the hell can that happen?’

‘It’s called parole. Apparently she’s eligible – or someone’s seen to it that she is. I’ll need to look it up, because I don’t know how these things work, but she hasn’t even served three years.’

‘What about Dean? Are they releasing him too?’

Jules winced, as she often did when Dean’s name was mentioned. There were so many emotions attached to him, guilt, confusion, anger, love, despair … One day, when she could think straight again, she might work it all out. ‘She didn’t know about him,’ she replied, ‘only about Amelia.’

With a sigh Em said, ‘Oh hell, Jules. What are you going to do? Is it absolutely certain she’s coming back to Kesterly?’

‘To Crofton Park, is what Andee said. So close enough.’

‘Then why don’t you just pack up and come here? I could help you …’

‘You know why,’ Jules interrupted. ‘Apart from everything else, I can’t just abandon my mother, even though she hardly knows who I am. I like to think we’re still connecting on some level. I have to tell myself we are, or there wouldn’t be a point to anything.’

‘Poor Marsha. No better, huh?’

‘That’s never going to happen, and I have to be honest, I sometimes feel glad of it. At least she didn’t have to go through what the rest of us did. It would probably have killed her if she had.’

‘I get what you’re saying,’ Em assured her, ‘but listen, I’ve just noticed the time and I have to be in class in half an hour. I’ll call again at noon, OK? Just tell me, do you think you’re going to be safe with that girl on the loose?’

Jules’s insides clenched with a sour blend of hatred and unease. ‘She’s got more to fear from me than I have from her,’ she declared tightly.

‘Mm, you, and the rest of Kian’s family. When’s it supposed to happen?’

‘I don’t have an exact date, but apparently it’s imminent.’

‘Is Stephie around?’

‘No, she’s in Thailand.’

‘How about Joe? Are you going to be in touch with him?’

‘I had an email from him a couple of weeks ago. He’s coming here at the end of next month to kick off a tour of Europe.’

‘That’s cool. It’s great that he’s kept in touch. And it was real kind of Andee to come and tell you about the release. I always liked her.’

‘Me too. She didn’t know about Kian.’

‘That surprises me. Did you tell her?’

‘Yes. I think it came as quite a shock. Anyway, I should let you go. Call me back as soon as you can.’

After ringing off Jules sat down in front of her laptop not quite sure what to do next, apart from check her emails and maybe catch up on some work. She knew she should email Stephie and Joe, and call Kian’s family, but all she did was walk to the window and stare out at the rain. Lucky she hadn’t put any washing out; she’d been about to when Andee had arrived. Now all she could think about was what she was going to do if, when, she ran into Amelia Quentin. She could see, almost feel the girl creeping up on her as she draped sheets on the line, or walked out to her car, grabbing her, forcing her to the ground and stabbing her, over and over …

Her vision blurred as the past loomed up in all its frantic and bloody glory.

She was aware of her hand tightening around the handle of a knife; there were spasms in her arm as if it were trying to make a frenzied attack; there was sickness and murder in her heart that was blackening all the natural goodness and love …

Wrenching herself free of the chaos, she ran upstairs to the spare room and dragged out the box she’d stored there so recently. With trembling hands she took out the photo of Kian that she used to keep next to her bed. Why had she removed it? There had been no need to. He was her husband, it was only right that she should look at him every day.

Hello my love,
she whispered, her slender fingers tracing the easy line of his jaw and the fair, tousled curls that made him look so fun-loving and rakish. He was laughing straight into the lens, carefree, happy, as though nothing could touch him, no one could be as lucky as him.

It was what he used to say, ‘Being married to you makes me the luckiest man alive.’

Jules could hear the words so clearly he might be saying them now. They were falling around her as softly as petals, and felt as refreshing as spring rain. He was pouring his love into her heart, driving out the darkness, filling it with light and laughter, the way he always had when she was afraid, or sad, or angry, or starting to lose hope. She’d never doubted him or his love, the way she knew he’d sometimes doubted hers.

‘I didn’t mean to shut you out,’ she whispered, tears shining in her eyes. ‘Is that what I did?’

He’d never accused her of it, but she’d sensed a loneliness in him at times that she knew she could have done something about, but she hadn’t. It broke her heart all over again to think of it now.

‘I should have made the time,’ she said hoarsely. ‘If only I’d made the time. Maybe none of it would have happened if I had.’

She didn’t really think that was the truth, or not all of it, anyway, but sometimes there was comfort to be found in punishing herself with guilt. If she was responsible then it meant she was in control, and if she was in control she could have stopped it …

Her therapist was having none of that. ‘You know that doesn’t make any sense,’ she’d tell her, and Jules never argued. She understood why the therapist always steered her away from the self-destructive thoughts. It was her job, what she was trained to do – in her shoes Jules would do exactly the same.

‘Hey, you,’ she said tenderly as she stroked Kian’s face again.

He was still smiling at her, so she smiled too and did nothing to stop her mind drifting back over the years to a time when just about everyone they knew had smiled with them …

THE PUB DOOR
crashed open loudly and in stepped a man in black.

On the man’s head was a
montera
– a flat-topped hat with round fluffy bulbs above each ear. Swinging from his shoulders was a heavy cape, flashing flirty glimpses of a blood-red lining as it swayed. His silken shirt was slicked tight to his manly body, opened down the front to reveal his even more manly chest. Around his waist was a crimson sash; his trousers hugged his hips like a lover’s hands and flared like sails around his ankles.

He stamped his feet, threw out his long arms and shouted, ‘
Olé!
’

Jules’s eyes were alight with laughter.

Tap-dancing across the bar, the matador (or was he a flamenco dancer?) clicked his fingers, flourished his cape and declared, ‘I am come to see the beautiful lady. You must follow me outside, oh lovely señorita, I have special surprise to make your heart happy and your husband very jealous.’

Glancing at the laughing decorators, watching from atop their ladders, Jules was about to ask if they were in on this when Ruthie Bright bustled in from the next bar with a bucket and mop in one hand, and something indefinable in the other.

‘Mary, Mother of God!’ Ruthie muttered as she spotted the man in black. ‘What the devil has he come as this time?’

‘I’m still trying to work it out,’ Jules twinkled, as the flamboyant Don Juan planted a trail of noisy kisses up her arm, and whisked her from behind the bar to dance her out through the door into the morning sunshine.

The pub garden was cluttered with boxes, pallets, skips, all manner of builders’ paraphernalia and a freshly painted sign waiting to go up. The Mermaid of Hope Cove, it declared. The garden’s grass was long and ragged, coated in cement dust, and appeared on a steady slide into a glistening bank of pebbles that dipped abruptly on to the shale beach beyond. Beside the garden was a slender stone footbridge over an inlet that led into a small harbour, where a mere handful of boats bobbed and jangled in the watery undulation.

Rising up alongside the cove, as though protecting it, or maybe even threatening it, were dark and jagged cliffs, dropping straight from the vast and mystical wilderness of Exmoor National Park. Nestled at the heart of the cove, with a gentle flow of fields and forest to the back and the tempestuous estuary to the front, was the legendary Mermaid Inn, one of Kesterly’s oldest and quaintest public houses.

It was said somewhat intriguingly, or even absurdly, that the pub was responsible for choosing its owners. It was also said that its walls had ears and no secret was safe if spoken within, but no one had any proof of that. Everyone knew it had a ghost though no one could actually lay claim to having seen it. The records showed that the oldest part of the inn dated as far back as 1462, with various rooms, stables and outhouses being added over the years to form the characterful, although rundown establishment it was today. Until a dozen years ago it had belonged to an investment banker from London who’d visited often, but had left the running of the place to those more qualified than he. Since his untimely death in a skiing accident the Mermaid had stood empty, the subject of a bitter inheritance dispute. Those who knew Dickens’s work had referred to it as a Jarndyce v Jarndyce situation, though mercifully the case hadn’t dragged on anywhere near as long as its fictional counterpart, and there was certainly nothing bleak about this house.