The Other Child (47 page)

Now I know that she was right. I never let you go, Chad. However reserved and difficult you became in the end, to me you were still the wild, handsome wartime boy I used to sit with in the bay in the twilit hours of evening, who wanted to go to war and save the world. The boy I idolised, and whom I believed was going to be everything to me. I had woven a whole world around him in my dreams – without realising that it was only in my dreams, and not in yours. For decades I had romantic thoughts about you, and romanticism is not something you could normally accuse me of. I pulled the wool over my own eyes, I convinced myself that someone – I! – had to help you. After your father died, you were alone on the farm for many years. You had to work off the debts. You were overworked and had your worries. I cooked for you, I took your laundry away to wash it. I talked to you about harvest problems and falling prices for grain. I knew more about your life on the farm than about my husband's life at the university, which did not interest me in the slightest. Above all, I lost touch with what was going on in my daughter's head, soul and life. I knew the price of a kilo of sheep's wool. I did not know the date of the school show in which she was a solo singer
.

And after you married, and became a father, I was so used to that strange life with you that I did not manage to stop. I was unable to let go of you, just because there was now another woman. I persuaded myself that I needed to support her too. She was young, inexperienced, and had too much on her plate. I was ready to help and always there in an emergency. Except that was never the case. The family had no insoluble problems. Probably the only real problem was me
.

Chad, sometimes your wife must have been sick to death of me
.
But she was a submissive, fearful kind of woman. She suffered in silence
.

The strange thing is that we never had an affair
.

Physically, we never cheated on our spouses. Perhaps an affair would have made everything easier, at least clearer. Perhaps Oliver would have asked for a divorce if he had found out. Perhaps your wife would have had the strength to leave, if she had found us together in bed. But as it was, no one really knew what to accuse us of. Especially as I was acting in the guise of a good Samaritan
.

My recurring question is whether everything would have turned out differently without Brian. Whether we would have married, had a few lovely children and been happy. Or am I deluding myself there too? Perhaps our relationship would have survived the whole incident with Brian if we had really been made for each other? It is both depressing and fascinating to think that the lives of two people, and so also the lives of their later spouses and children, could be decided by a chance event. If my mother and I had left for the station earlier or later on that morning in November 1940, we probably would not have met Miss Taylor and Brian. And some things would have happened differently. Maybe everything
.

We survived the 1970 scandal better than was to be expected, in spite of the storm thrown up by Semira Newton, the police and the press. Surprisingly, no one blamed me, because I had been
a
child when the decisive incidents occurred, and because people assumed I knew nothing of Brian's horrific later fate. I was not hounded in the press, only mentioned in passing occasionally, and normally not by my full name. In your case there was a willingness to blame your parents and not you. It was generally assumed that your father alone had given Brian to Gordon McBright. You did nothing to deny that. Of course, that was not so much because you wanted to lay the blame on your father, but rather because your general approach was not to talk to people. Not just in this case. You had started at that point to avoid almost any communication with those surrounding you
.

The case caused quite a commotion
. The forgotten child
was one newspaper's headline, another's was
The child with no name.
Naturally the press had a field day, but thanks to how young we had been, we got away lightly. Public opinion blamed Arvid Beckett, the man who had never wanted Brian and barely shown any interest in him. You and he did it together, and indeed Arvid
was a sick, at times even confused, old man, who probably did not realise the full extent of what he was doing
.

But who would it have helped, if I had gone public and put ourselves and our families at risk?

I know you well, Chad. Perhaps better than any other person I have met in the course of my life. I know that if you have even read all of this, or at least skimmed it, you will be sitting there now with a furrowed brow asking, So what? I still don't know why she's dishing up this old story
…

I am not sure my reason will convince you, but I will try to explain
.

I wrote it all down because I wanted to face the truth, and
I
can only do that completely clearly and unsparingly if I write it all down. Thoughts get interrupted, fly off at tangents, lose themselves, are not taken to their logical conclusions. In writing there is nowhere to escape to. Writing forces you to concentrate and to express precisely what cannot be said. You finish your sentences, even if your mind twists and turns and your fingers would rather not touch the keyboard. You want to run away, but you write it down
.

That is how it was for me
.

And why have I sent it all to you?

Because you are part of my story, Chad, and part of my truth. Because our fate and Brian's are intertwined. The direction each life took is not imaginable without the other two people's lives. I feel connected to you two in a beautiful, sad and certainly very special way. So it would not have seemed right to keep our story to myself
.

Maybe there is also a certain wish for fairness behind my sending you these chapters. Chad, it was not easy to face the truth. Maybe it just seems fair to me for you to have to do it too. Of course I cannot force you to read all of this. Perhaps you will just press the delete key, as soon as you see what this is about
.

Perhaps you will protect yourself and not make yourself read it. I could understand that
.

But I want to share my life with you. If not in one way then at least in another
.

Fiona

Thursday, 16th October

3

Leslie wondered why she felt so rotten. It could not be the whisky, could it? She could hardly have thrown up more than she did last night. Perhaps she had not slept enough. Two hours at the most. And she had read too much that burdened her. Things had not become any clearer, instead they had seemed to become ever more hazy.

What had happened to Brian Somerville?

And who was Semira Newton?

She left her bedroom. It was slowly growing light outside. A bright red strip glowed above the sea between dark banks of cloud. The sun was rising, but Leslie doubted that it would show itself today. It was going to be a grey autumn day.

She went into the living room where, to her surprise, she found Dave Tanner already dressed and just picking the phone up from its cradle. He jumped and put the phone back down. He obviously felt bad being caught making a call.

‘You're awake early,' he said.

‘You too,' replied Leslie.

‘I didn't sleep too well,' admitted Dave. ‘Too much on my mind …' He did not go into details, but Leslie could guess.

‘You don't know what to do with your life.'

He smiled unhappily. ‘That's an understatement. I'm at a dead end and have the feeling I can't go backwards or forwards. Talk about taking a wrong turn …'

She pointed to the phone. ‘Did you want to call Gwen?'

‘No. I wanted to call an old friend, but she's … it's not important.'

‘Ah.'

He looked at her a long time. ‘You look tired, Leslie. I'd say you didn't sleep too well either.'

‘Not enough, that's for sure.' She did not want to tell him about her grandmother's files and that she had spent ages reading them.

She pushed aside thoughts of Brian Somerville and Semira Newton, whoever she was, and tried to concentrate on Dave.

‘Why did the police not believe your statement about Saturday night?' she asked. She had been in too much of a state the night before to go into it, but later, as she lay in bed, the question had gone round and round in her mind. He had said something about
conflicting reports
and then abruptly changed the topic.

From the changing expressions on his face, she could see that he was thinking quickly about what and how much to tell her, and that he finally, with a kind of relieved resignation, decided to tell her what he and Detective Inspector Almond had discussed.

‘A neighbour saw me leaving the house late on Saturday night,' he said. ‘Although
I
had said that I hadn't gone out again. She told the police.'

‘And was it true? Had you gone out again?'

‘Yes.'

She looked at him in amazement. ‘But why … and where did you …?'

He could see the distrust and fear in her gaze and he raised his hands in a calming gesture. ‘I didn't kill your grandmother, Leslie. Honestly, believe me. But I did go out again, and I didn't want to mention it.'

She guessed what was coming. ‘You were with another woman?'

During their conversation he had been standing in the middle of the room. Now he collapsed into an armchair and stretched out his legs. He was ready to surrender completely. ‘Yes.'

‘The whole night?'

‘Yes.'

‘Dave …'

‘I know. I'm a monster. I acted terribly. I lied to Gwen, cheated on her … I
know!'

‘Who is she?'

‘Karen. A student. We used to be together. I broke up with her because of Gwen.'

‘Apparently not.'

‘I had, actually. But now and then I've been weak. She didn't want to lose me, so she always made it easy for me … But of course, it should never have come to that.'

She stepped towards him. ‘Dave. You are having an affair with your ex. Last night you wanted to sleep with me. And—'

He interrupted her. ‘I'm sorry if I—'

‘You didn't hurt me, Dave. At the moment you would probably bestow your favours on pretty much any woman in Scarborough who you found halfway decent. Who didn't have anything against you. I don't take it personally that I would have been one of many …'

He looked at her with affection, as it seemed to her. ‘You would not have been one of many, Leslie. You
aren't
one of many.'

‘I'm part of your chaotic and incurable situation, Dave. Just like Karen. And Gwen. You are in a crisis, and you're acting in a wild flap, hoping that some path will open up for you. Your plan for your life has not worked out, or rather: you can see that it was a mistake not to have a plan. That's the sort of thing people normally notice once they're about forty. And they tend to have panicky reactions.'

He smiled a little. ‘Like you?'

‘I'm not a murder suspect. And I don't cheat on anyone. I limit my panic attacks to myself.'

‘And a lot of whisky.'

‘And I bear the consequences of that too.'

He stood up, looking more tense now. ‘What do you want, Leslie? You're not just giving me this little sermon because you have some time to kill. What's your point?'

She took a deep breath. ‘I've known Gwen for ages. My gran and her father have been friends all their lives. I've spent a lot of time on the Beckett farm. I don't want to claim that I'm close friends with Gwen. We're too different for that. But I feel responsible for her. She's almost like family to me. I can't stand by helplessly and let her …'

‘… waste her life on a rake like me?'

‘You're already cheating on her before you're married. You're horrified by the idea of sex with her. You have no connection to her at all. My gran was right: all you want is the farm. The land. Nothing else.'

He shrugged. ‘I admitted that to you ages ago.'

‘I can't let Gwen walk into that.'

‘Do you want to tell her everything? About Karen? About … us?'

‘I want you to tell her everything.'

‘Leslie, I …'

‘Please, Dave. Go to her. Sort this mess out. Tell her the truth. About Saturday night and about yourself.'

‘She'll break down if I do.'

‘If the two of you stumble into a catastrophic marriage, she'll have a much worse breakdown. Or do you think you can hide your affairs, escapades and unhappiness with the marriage for ever?'

‘Probably not,' he acknowledged.

‘Put it behind you, as quickly as you can.'

He did not say anything. She guessed that he was weighing up the various possibilities. He was used to leading people on a merry dance, living on his wits, avoiding conflicts and twisting out of unpleasant situations. He was not used to a straight path lined with disagreeable consequences. And never before had his path crossed a murder's. Fiona's violent death had not only upset Dave's favoured mode of operation, it had also catapulted him into a situation where he could not move forward with his usual mixture of tricks, evasions and cheating. It was one thing to play off against each other the women who drooled over him, or to elegantly manoeuvre them round each other. It was quite another thing to have to explain yourself in a murder investigation. A damn sight different, thought Leslie.

‘I assume you aren't giving me a choice,' Dave finally said. ‘If I don't go to Gwen, then you will, won't you?'

‘Before I see you marry? Yes.'

‘Then I'll tell her soon,' he said.

She could tell that he had only agreed because she was holding a gun to his head. If it had just been a question of her tough demand in isolation, he would have tried to negotiate with her. He would have used his charm to convince her. He would have fought. But she could see that he was tired of fighting, that he saw the senselessness of the path he had chosen. He was willing to withdraw from the battle, because there was no way to win.