The Secret by the Lake (36 page)

Afterwards, Viviane would say that it was me. She said I was the one who came down on to the spillway after Mr Leeson fell, I was the one who walked across the slippery stone and took hold of her hand and led her back to safety. But that wasn’t how I remembered it. Not at all.

WE WALKED BACK
to the lodge, the five of us, a disparate little group of women and girls. I took them there because it was the nearest habitable building, because there was a telephone, because I knew where to find the key, because I wanted to be with Daniel … although he might still be angry with me, although there was so much to tell that I had no idea where I would start.

Only he wasn’t there. I found the key and we went inside anyway. I lit the fire while Julia telephoned the police. After that, she telephoned Kitty’s father – except he wasn’t in. He had gone with the other local men to put out a fire in one of the cottages on the hill. I helped Viviane take off her wet clothes and she and Kitty sat on the bed, wrapped in blankets, while Susan boiled water for hot water bottles and heated milk for them to drink. Susan was happy to be useful, glad to have something to do. She looked more at ease than I’d ever seen her before.

I then took off my own wet skirt, shoes and stockings. I put on a pair of Daniel’s trousers and a pair of his socks, slipped my feet into his huge boots and, while the others warmed themselves, I went outside to wait for him. I sat on the step and folded my arms about my knees. I waited.

The dog came first, the tricolour collie, running out of the fog. The dog recognized me and came creeping towards me, wagging her rear end, grunting with pleasure.

Daniel was behind, the beam of the torch in his hand reflected back by the fog, lighting the branches of the bare trees around the lodge, the door, me sitting on the step. He held the beam steady to pick me out, wearing his clothes, one of his hats pulled down low over my head, my hands deep in the collie’s fur, scratching the ruff of the dog’s neck.

‘Oh, thank God,’ Daniel said. ‘I didn’t know where you were.’

He was filthy. His face was covered in dirt, in soot. He came slowly towards me and I stood and went to him. He held me close. He breathed into my hair.

‘Where have you been?’ we both asked, together, and then we smiled at one another, touched by our mutual concern, by the fondness we each felt for the other.

I wiped the smuts from Daniel’s cheek.

‘I was here,’ I said. ‘Where were you?’

‘In the village. Amy, Reservoir Cottage is on fire. I don’t think it can be saved.’

The immediate shock I felt at this news was replaced almost at once by the realization that the burning down of the cottage was inevitable. The man I had seen on the motorbike was the vicar’s friend, Dafydd. The doctor must have realized that we would, eventually, find everything that Caroline had written on the walls in the empty bedroom and must have paid Dafydd to set fire to the cottage, to cover up the evidence for ever. Only he was too late. We already knew everything there was to know. There were no more secrets in Reservoir Cottage; nothing else was hidden beneath the wallpaper in the empty bedroom. Everything was out in the open.

‘The doctor’s cottage is burning too,’ Daniel said. ‘We couldn’t find Mrs Croucher.’

‘She’s in hospital. She’s safe,’ I told him. ‘Both cottages are empty. Julia and Viviane are in the lodge.’

‘Both of them?’

‘Yes. And Susan Pettigrew and Vivi’s friend Kitty.’ I took his hand. ‘I’m sorry, darling, we have completely taken over your home. A great deal has happened since I saw you.’

‘Obviously it has.’

‘I’ll explain everything, only not here.’

‘Then let’s walk.’

He led me to the back of the lodge, across the grassland, down towards the lake. The fog drifted; there was a splash as a fish leaped, somewhere in the darkness. The fog was masking the other lights, the police cars that must surely be on their way towards Sunnyvale by now; the frogmen who would come with their powerful lights to search for Eric Leeson. The fog would mask the sounds, the commotion, everything. We walked down to the water’s edge, into the grassy hollow, and we sat together, side by side, on the trunk of the fallen tree.

Daniel held my hand between his knees. ‘You and your cold hands,’ he said.

We were silent.

‘I don’t know where to start,’ I said.

‘That’s OK,’ said Daniel. ‘Take your time. I will sit beside you for as long as it takes.’

I rested my head on his shoulder. The lake was stretched out before us, flat and calm and black beneath the drifting fog. Caroline had sketched the view from here. I was certain she had come with Robert. Perhaps the two of them had sat in this same spot and felt the peace of the lake. Perhaps they had sworn their love for one another here. Perhaps this was where Daniel had been conceived.

It would always be the same. Minutes would go by, days and weeks and months and years, centuries would change, but lovers would sit on this fallen tree and they would gaze out over the water and they would feel the agelessness of it, and the peace, and it would be the same for them all; they would be separated only by time.

‘You told me your father has never stopped loving your mother,’ I said softly to Daniel.

‘That’s right,’ Daniel said, ‘he never has.’

‘Let me tell you about her,’ I said.

I WAS IN
Fairlawn, upstairs, sitting in the bedroom where Caroline slept when she was housemaid here. We had had the room converted into an office, and with its new, primrose-yellow walls and its cream- and rose-coloured curtains, it felt warm and friendly. It was a room where I liked to sit.

I had pulled the table up to the window, so I could look out over the lake while I wrote to my father. The window was open and the sunshine came in, making warm spangles of light on the floorboards. Bess lay in one of the patches, her legs outstretched, soaking up the heat. Down in the house, I could hear the sound of banging, hammering, the workmen’s voices as they put the finishing touches to the alterations. Outside, the only sound was birdsong.

Beyond the window, the lake lay calm and quiet, its reflective stillness only disturbed by dozens of small white gulls flashing like arrows above the shallows. It was a different place now the summer was here. Its dark shadows and sinister moods were gone; in their place were colour and beauty. Myriad wildflowers dotted the grassy perimeter with splashes of the sweetest pale yellow, pink and white, and the water was a gorgeous, azure blue. The trees, full of young leaves and flower candles, formed the softest border to the lake, no longer spiky and black, but different shades of green, round and kindly with lacy clouds of cow parsley below. If I leaned forward, I could see the shallow section of the lake, closest to the grassy hollow. Robert Aldridge was there, in his boat, checking the rope that connected the buoys segregating the area beside the hollow where it was safe for children to swim. Vivi was standing on the shore directing him, wearing shorts, an aertex blouse and Robert’s fishing hat. Robert and Daniel had built a wooden pier reaching out into the lake. Robert planned to take children out on to the pier, and teach them how to fish. He had already started to teach Vivi and she was proving a good apprentice.

The dog sat up, scratched her ear, turned a circle, sighed and lay down again. I looked down at the letter I was writing.

Vivi and Julia are settled here. Susan Pettigrew is with us. Once we are properly up and running we will pay her a salary to work for us – if she still wants to. She is really blossoming, Dad, you wouldn’t believe the difference in her! Julia has taken her under her wing. The two of them have become best friends. And Vivi is going to the local school and is doing terribly well. I’ve told her you and Eileen are going to come down for the wedding and she is
very
excited. My future husband and I are very much looking forward to seeing you both too. I hope you’ll stay for a while. I can’t wait to show you what we have done with this place.

I watched as Robert pulled the boat up to the pier and climbed out. He sat on the edge of the pier and Vivi went to sit beside him. The two of them gazed companionably out over the lake.

The last months had been hardest for Robert.

He had been the chief witness for the prosecution at the trial of the doctor and the vicar. They were part of the fabric of his life, and always had been. He had been brought up to believe they were good men, pillars of the community. It had taken him a long time to come to terms with the fact that everything he believed about them was false. Once he knew the truth, once it sank in, he had been willing to give evidence against them. He wanted them punished, as we all did. He wanted them to feel a fraction of the humiliation they had imposed on the children they had hurt. But still it was hard for him. It was hard having the role he had played in the events that led to the deaths of Jean and Caroline made public, but we had been there for him, Daniel and I. We had stood by him.

I picked up the pen.

Julia is writing a biography of Alain. His old editor is going to publish it for her. There is a great deal of excitement around the book and she has been back to France to discuss the publicity. She is almost back to her old self.
On the pier, Robert lit a cigarette. I watched the smoke drifting around him.

He had been a victim too.

He had returned from Scotland, all ready to pick up Caroline and elope with her, to find that both she and Jean were dead. His own father-in-law had told him Caroline had pushed Jean off the dam. Robert hadn’t believed him, he knew Caroline was incapable of murder, but by then the story had circulated. Robert found himself trapped by the web of secrets and lies, some of them of his own making. If he tried to speak out and tell the truth about the girl he loved, then the son he adored would be branded, for ever, the child of an adulterer and his teenage mistress, the Blackwater Murderess.

Robert could not do that to Daniel.

So he’d done his best, living the lie to protect his son, covering over the picture of Jean, telling Daniel stories of his real mother, but never saying her name, struggling all the time with his contradictory feelings. Telling lies for thirty years was exhausting.

Now the truth had been uncovered, Daniel and his father had achieved a new closeness. They were free to talk about Caroline, about the plans she and Robert had made, the future they now envisaged. It was wonderful to see them together, father and son, working on the project to convert the house. They were so alike, really. They worked so well together with such enthusiasm, firing ideas at one another, teasing one another, laughing. And if, occasionally, Robert took himself off on to the lake with a bottle of apple brandy and his memories, then nobody minded. We watched him go and our hearts were out there, on the lake, with him.

Some things had been lost, but others had been gained. Julia had a beloved new nephew, Daniel an aunt and a cousin who adored him. Robert was part of a family again and he had found himself capable of showing Viviane the gentle affection he’d always denied his son.

I picked up the pen once more.

Anyway, Dad, I’m going to sign off because the children will be here soon and I want to be ready to welcome them when they arrive, and to settle them into their new home. Robert has moved into the lodge, did I tell you that? He likes it there, it’s closer to the lake. Dan and I will continue to live here. We’ve converted all the spare bedrooms into little dormitories and hope, eventually, to make a home for a dozen foster-children. It will be strange for the newcomers at first when all they’ve known has been institutions, but I hope they’ll soon come to be happy here.

I paused, looked around the room. The photograph that used to hang on the wall – the large, blown-up picture of Jean Aldridge’s parents – was gone. It had been returned to Jean’s family, the Debegers, together with Jean’s portrait and certain items she had brought with her when she married. Her sister and nieces had accepted them graciously. They would, they said, pass them on to their children and grandchildren. Daniel and I had even gone back to the ruins of the cottage and searched through the wreckage for the pendant. We had found it, and had it cleaned. I was all for throwing it into the lake, as I’d planned, but Daniel insisted that was returned too. When they’d found out the truth about the village committee, and Sir George Debeger’s role in the conspiracy, Jean’s sisters had made a generous donation towards the refurbishment of Fairlawn and set up a trust fund to help pay for the care of the children who would eventually live there.

I finished the letter.

So goodbye for now, Dad. Give my fondest love to Eileen and I’ll see you both soon.

All my love, Amy

I folded the sheet of paper and put it in the envelope I’d already addressed. I propped it on the desk, called Bess and left the room. I ran down the stairs, the dog following me, out of the front door, out into the bright sunshine. I walked into the garden, out among the flowerbeds, the roses just opening their buds, and the peonies, the valerian, the late blossom, the gorgeous, scented lilac. Susan was pegging laundry on the line that stretched across the lawn, and Julia sat close by, in the shade of the cherry tree, a book, face down, on the bench beside her. She lifted her head and smiled at me as I passed by. I lay back on the grass with my arms stretched above my head, enjoying the feeling of the warmth on my skin, enjoying being alive.

And I knew I was lucky to be alive, to be able to enjoy this beautiful day.

Nothing we did now would ever bring Caroline back, or put the past right. We had cleared Caroline’s name. People knew now that she had been the victim, not the perpetrator, but we could not change the past, only view it from a different perspective.