The Real Katie Lavender (15 page)

Again the hesitant half-smile and a gentleness in her expression. An expression that reminded him of her mother. ‘On the understanding that I make myself useful,’ she said.

‘In that case, I can think of something very useful you could do for me.’

The first thing Katie did was to drive into Henley. If she was going to stay the night again, she needed a few essential items, such as a change of underwear and maybe a top, and some toiletries and a basic make-up kit.

With everything she needed in two bags on the back seat of her car, she negotiated the one-way traffic system of the town. She drove along the river until she came to a set of traffic lights by a bridge. Across the road she saw a pub called the Angel on the Bridge. She wondered idly what it was like, recalling Dee referring to it last night as her favourite pub in Henley.

She had felt a little guilty continuing with the pretence last night while saying goodbye to Dee, but what else could she do? One word about her being Stirling’s daughter to a gossip like Dee and the whole of Henley would know about it! As soon as Sue and Merrill had finished loading up the van and had tidied the kitchen, they gave Dee and Katie their wages – both of them now changed out of their waitress uniforms – and drove off with Dee following slowly behind on her bicycle, her rear light flickering in the dark. If they’d wondered why Katie wasn’t leaving at the same time, they hadn’t said anything. Back inside the house, Stirling had reappeared with Cecily for her to take home, having sneaked her away while the rest of the family were occupied elsewhere.

The traffic lights changed from red to green and she turned left over the bridge, following the sign for Sandiford, where Pen Nightingale was expecting her at The Meadows. Katie had been instructed to walk round to the back of the house, just as she had done yesterday.

‘It was sweet of Stirling to think I’d like the company,’ Pen said to Katie, kicking off her gardening shoes at the back door and leading the way to the kitchen in her bare feet, ‘but I’m sure you must have better things to do with your time than babysit me.’

Watching her go over to the sink to wash the dusty soil from her hands, Katie thought how she must have taken refuge in her garden the minute she had returned. There was no mistaking that her husband’s death had aged her overnight. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes red and puffy, and her voice was huskier than it had been yesterday, probably hoarse from crying. For all that, she was giving a good performance of a woman seemingly now in control of her emotions.

‘I don’t think babysitting was quite what Stirling had in mind for me, Mrs Nightingale. I think he wanted you to make use of me.’ Actually what Stirling had as good as said was that he thought Katie might provide a useful distraction for his sister-in-law.

The woman dried her hands on an old towel. In comparison to Willow Bank, the kitchen here had not been updated in many years; everything had definitely seen better days. The cream-coloured cupboards were knocked about in places, with the paintwork chipped and marked, and a large dresser taking up most of a wall from floor to ceiling was home to an untidy library of gardening books and horticultural magazines. There wasn’t a cookery book to be seen on the cluttered shelves. On the pine table in the centre of the kitchen was a hand-written poster advertising the open day for the garden next Saturday. Presumably that would have to be cancelled now.

Her hands dried, she hooked the towel over the back of a chair. ‘Please, call me Pen. What kind of use of you did Stirling have in mind?’

‘He thought I could help you in the garden.’

She gave Katie a wary look, as if contemplating the horror of a clumsy novice wrecking her pride and joy. ‘Do you know anything about gardening?’

‘A bit.’ Katie explained about her mother’s love of gardening and how it had rubbed off on her. She described the small courtyard garden back in Brighton. ‘Mum was a good teacher and I like to think I’m a good student. I know I’m still learning.’

Pen nodded thoughtfully as if satisfied with Katie’s response. ‘Yes. Well.’ She cleared her throat. ‘That’s what a true gardener would say. We never stop learning, there’s always something new to find out.’ She filled the kettle and put it on the Rayburn. She then straightened her back, drew in her breath and exhaled with a shudder that seemed to come from the very depths of her being. She turned to stare out of the window, her expression intensely sad. A heavy silence swept into the kitchen and for a long, long moment it was as if she had forgotten anyone else was there. But as though suddenly snapping back into the here and now, she looked at Katie, her eyes pools of anguish. ‘I still can’t get over the fact that you’re Stirling’s child, that he had an affair. Have you always known he was your father?’

Katie shook her head and told her story all over again. When she’d finished, and when she had apologized for her deception yesterday, Pen said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if a love child of Neil’s pops up in the coming days.’ Her words had no bitterness to them, just a weary echo of sad acceptance.

‘Why do you think that?’

Tears filled Pen’s eyes. ‘Because I wasn’t a good wife to him. I put all my energy and passion into that.’ She pointed at the beautiful garden through the window. ‘I always convinced myself that he didn’t mind. But he must have minded. I didn’t put him first. Not even second. I neglected him. And now he’s dead and I can never say how sorry I am. He killed himself because of me. I made him so unhappy. He must have been suffering inconceivable agony.’ Her face contorted and she began to cry.

Katie went to her. ‘Please don’t think that,’ she said inadequately. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t you who made him unhappy. It’s never just one thing that makes a person do what he did.’

The poor woman sagged heavily against her and sobbed.

Oh dear, thought Katie. Stirling had been right when he said he didn’t think Pen should be left on her own today. But as a stranger to this poor distraught woman, how could she possibly help her?

How long, she wondered, before the son arrived home from New Zealand?

All around him people were buckling up and preparing themselves for the eleven-hour journey ahead.

It was almost midnight, and finally Lloyd was on his way. Or he would be providing there wasn’t another hold-up. The flight had already been delayed by two hours with a fuelling problem. The captain had just assured them the problem had been fixed and they would be ready for take-off in the next twenty minutes.

Lucky to have got the last available seat, Lloyd was wedged in between a rake-thin woman who was fidgeting nervously and a hulk of a teenage boy with a scalped head and two large diamond studs in his ear lobes. At odds with the chilly weather they would soon be leaving behind them, the boy was wearing the biggest and baggiest shorts Lloyd had ever seen and a loose-fitting vest top. His bare arms and legs sported a range of tattoos – decorative Chinese characters that most likely didn’t say what he thought they did. In the row of seats behind him, Lloyd could hear an overly loud man telling a fellow passenger about the Pilates classes he attended. He had clocked the man when he’d sat down: a leathery grey-haired hippie type sporting a goatee and a ponytail. Not even in the air yet, and already Lloyd was heartily sick of the sound of the man’s voice and had to fight the urge to tell him to shut the hell up.

Since receiving the call from his mother, Lloyd had allowed himself only to deal with the immediate problem of finding a flight, packing and saying goodbye to his friends – not just John and Emma, whose wedding it had been, but the group with whom he’d flown out. They’d all planned to stay on to explore Wellington, then drive down to Christchurch and back up to Auckland before flying home. Lloyd had managed to keep the news of his father from John and Emma, saying only that a family emergency required him to leave – he hadn’t wanted their wedding day to be marred by death. They were currently on their way to Bali for their honeymoon. He’d tell them the truth when the time was right.

But now with nothing to occupy him – only counting down the hours from here to Singapore and then on to Heathrow – time stretched dauntingly ahead for Lloyd. With nothing to do, there would be no avoiding the shock of his father’s death and the big question: why? Why had he done it?

With no sign yet of the plane taxiing to take off, he took out his mobile to send his mother one last message, to put her mind at rest that he really would be on his way soon. He’d spoken to her earlier to see how she was, and she’d said that she was back at home now. Which meant she was probably distracting herself in the garden.

One look at the screen of his mobile and he saw that he’d received a text message; it was from Rosco and it was worryingly long. He read it, and then because he simply couldn’t believe it, he read it again.

But still he didn’t believe what he was reading. It had to be a mistake; his father wouldn’t have done that. Fraud? Taking clients’ money? Not in a million years. Not Dad. Dad wouldn’t take a toothpick from a restaurant.

He sat back in his seat, stunned. What the hell had been going on in his father’s head lately? And why the hell did it have to be Rosco to tell Lloyd about it?

You probably know by now that your dad had been embezzling clients’ money
, Rosco had written.
It explains why he took the easy way out and killed himself, but not why he took the money in the first place. Any ideas?

Choking anger took hold of Lloyd. Only Rosco could be have with such obscene insensitivity. Not a word of sympathy for the death of a member of the family, a man Rosco had known all his life. No thought given to the fact that this was Lloyd’s father who had died. Rosco could have been referring to a stranger.

Anger was good, Lloyd told himself. Anger would get him through the journey. It would get him home, and then he’d beat the shit out of his cousin. Yeah, he’d do that the minute he was back. First he’d thrash the arrogance out of him. Then the superiority. Followed by his condescension. And none of it would be personal. Nothing personal at all. Not much.

Lloyd was known within the family for being steady and easy-going, but when push came to shove, he could shove with the best of them. It was all a matter of who was doing the pushing against him. And it wouldn’t be the first time he and Rosco had had a falling-out.

‘I’m sorry, sir, you’re going to have to switch that off now.’

He looked up at the smiling stewardess and nodded polite acquiescence. When she’d moved further down the aisle, he quickly sent Rosco a message.
Thanks for your support in this difficult time
, he wrote.
Mum and I appreciate it
. He hit send. Oh yeah, he was royally pissed off.

The stewardess was heading back his way. He switched off his mobile and stuffed it in the inside pocket of his leather jacket, only then to realize he had wasted the opportunity to send a message to his mother. Now he’d have to wait until they landed in Singapore.

The plane was moving at last. The fidgety woman to his left was fidgeting even more. A nervous flyer. Lloyd hoped she wouldn’t be hitting the drinks trolley too heavily to calm her nerves. A fidgety tipsy woman would start talking, and he was in no mood to talk.

He closed his eyes. Had his mother known about the fraud when she’d phoned with the news that Dad was dead? Had she deliberately kept it from him, wanting to spare him that extra burden of shock? He doubted it. She would have wanted to share the worst with him. So if Mum genuinely didn’t know about it, there was only one reason why that would be, and that was probably Stirling’s doing. He would be protecting her. It would be so typical of him.

Lloyd wished now that he’d spoken to Stirling to get the full story. And Granza. Granza would know what was what. Nothing slipped under the wire with her. She was one of the sharpest people he knew. Age had not dulled her senses; if anything, time had honed them to make her almost supernaturally intuitive. If anyone had noticed anything different about Dad, it would be her.

To his shame, Lloyd hadn’t spotted a change in his father’s behaviour, but then for the last six months, since the article about his garden furniture had appeared in the
Sunday Times
lifestyle magazine, he’d been so inundated with commissions he’d barely had time to draw breath. Had it been anyone else’s wedding in New Zealand, he wouldn’t have found the time to go. But because John – his oldest and closest friend, who had met and fallen in love with a girl he’d met on holiday in Wellington and had decided to settle there with her – had asked him to be his best man, there was no way he could say no.

And now he would always be left to wonder whether, had he not been so wrapped up in his own affairs, and had he not gone to New Zealand, his father might not be dead.

A meal and a film later and with the cabin lights lowered, he slept. He dreamt of his father. He was on his own, sitting on the riverbank at home in the sunshine, smiling his usual relaxed smile. And then the sky darkened, and fully clothed he slowly waded into the cold water. First it came up to his waist, then his chest, then his neck, and then he was gone, the inky-black water swallowing him up. Lloyd appeared on the bank, not as he was now, a grown man, but as a boy. He called to his father: ‘Dad, where are you?’ Like something out of a horror film, a hand suddenly shot through the surface of the black water. ‘Help me!’ Lloyd heard his father call. ‘Help me, Lloyd.’ ‘I’m coming, Dad. I’m coming.’ But try as he might, Lloyd couldn’t move. He was stuck to the riverbank, his feet sinking in the squelching mud. ‘Swim, Dad!’ he shouted. ‘Swim! You can do it.’ ‘I can’t,’ his father cried. ‘Lloyd, you have to help me!’

He woke with a jolt, his heart crashing wildly. The stewardess who had earlier asked him to switch off his mobile was hovering in the aisle, a concerned expression on her face. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ she asked.

‘I was dreaming,’ he said, embarrassed. Oh God, had he called out in his sleep? Had people heard him?

She smiled and offered him a plastic cup of water from the tray she was carrying.