It wasn’t much – wasn’t even a friendship. More like a shaky alliance. But I’d take it, because it was all I had of my sister.
“Fine by me,” I said, and held out a hand to shake on it.
Ellie ignored the gesture, gathering up the letters instead. “Then we’d better talk to Mum.”
I let my hand fall. “After dinner. When Dad’s putting Caro to bed.”
“Fine. I’ll see you then.”
And just like that, I was dismissed. I sighed, and left the room. Apparently things weren’t all that different after all.
After dinner, once Dad had disappeared up to the attic with Caro and her stack of books on the paranormal, once Therese had gone back to the cottage, and once Isabelle had retired to her room again while Greg cleared up, I caught Ellie’s eye and, together, we went to hunt down Mum.
We found her in the drawing room, collecting glasses for the dishwasher, and through some misdirection and hinting managed to get her upstairs to Ellie and Greg’s room. Neutral ground, or the best we could do in a house crowded to the gills with family. Mum seemed so pleased to see Ellie and I in the same room being civil to each other, that she didn’t really question our motives.
When Ellie and Greg moved in to Rosewood after their marriage, ostensibly because it was close to Greg’s work and property prices were phenomenal in the area, and so that Ellie could help Isabelle and Nathaniel around the house in between supply teaching stints, Isabelle insisted that they take on the front bedroom, the one with the huge bay window and at the opposite end of the house from the master suite, where our grandparents slept. As a result, their room had not only an en-suite bathroom, but also a sitting area in the bay window. Ellie had decorated it in creams and golds that gave an effect utterly unlike my own Yellow Room of Hell.
But it really wasn’t the time for being jealous.
“So, girls, what’s on your minds?” Mum asked, settling into one of the stiff-backed armchairs around the low, circular table. With a glance at Ellie, I took the seat on Mum’s left, Ellie the one on her right.
“It’s about Nathaniel’s memoirs, Mum,” I said, fingering the file of papers I’d carried up the stairs behind my back, hoping Mum wouldn’t see them and ask what they were until it was time.
“You’ve decided what to do with them?” Now I was looking for it, I could hear the reluctance and concern in my mother’s voice. She was just as worried as Isabelle; she was merely better at hiding it. How scared had she been, the last few days, waiting for me to find something that led me to this truth?
“Not yet.” I put the file on the table. “I wanted to talk to you about some things I found when going through the files.” No point mentioning to Mum that Edward knew too. This was bad enough as it was.
Mum opened the file, saw the wedding announcement, and slammed it shut again. “I see.”
“We just want to understand what happened,” Ellie said, sounding much calmer than I felt.
“You want to know if Tony is your father.” Mum’s voice was hard and blunt as she spoke to Ellie.
“That too,” Ellie whispered, looking close to tears.
Some of the fight went out of Mum then. “He is. Both of you. Tony’s your father, and Caroline’s, just like we’ve always told you.”
“Are you actually married?” I asked.
“No. We never… When I left Robert, I left him completely. Never spoke to him again, and he never tried to find me. So we never did get a divorce. So I couldn’t marry Tony, even though I took his name.” Which made sense. From what I’d read between the lines in Mum’s letters, I wouldn’t have ever wanted to see the man again, either.
“Did he… I mean, Robert. He hit you, didn’t he,” Ellie said, reaching out to hold Mum’s hand.
Mum tried to sound prosaic about it, but we could hear the tears in her voice. “Broke my arm, twice. And I don’t want you to even have to imagine the rest. Tony was… He was Robert’s best friend, but he couldn’t bear what he did to me. So he became my friend instead, my confidant. And we fell in love.” She shook her head, trying to brush away the tears. “When we found out I was pregnant… Robert would have known it wasn’t his, couldn’t be his. And we couldn’t risk what he might do to me, to you.” She clutched at Ellie’s hand. “So we escaped. Came home.”
“I can’t imagine what you must have been through,” I whispered. How had I thought for a moment that my own misdeeds could be measured against other people’s? That a stupid, selfish, childish act could be anything like what my mother had lived?
“Your dad…he gave up everything, you know.” Mum looked up, between the two of us. “You might not think it to look at him now, but…he was my hero. Robert…he came home, just as I was packing. Tony was there, standing guard for me, and when Robert tried to stop me…Tony knocked out his best friend with one punch, and then he took me away from everything. He left his job, his career prospects, his own dreams… He gave up everything to move back to Rosewood to be with me. With us.” She took Ellie’s hand. “Tony got a job at the university – a step away from the research he’d been doing in the States, but he made the most of it. And Mum and Dad looked after you, and later you, Saskia, while I went back to university. And eventually, we were able to pretend that none of it ever happened.”
Except it had, and Nathaniel had planned to tell the world all about it.
“So you can see why I’m not very keen on Dad’s memoirs being published,” Mum went on. “It’s a part of my life I just want to forget about. And…”
“And you’re afraid that it would prompt Robert to come and find you,” Ellie said. “Even though he never has before?”
Mum nodded. “It’s ridiculous, I know. I’m exactly where I should be – he could have tracked me down at any time over the last thirty years. But if you write the truth…even though I swear it is the truth, he could sue for defamation. That’s the sort of thing he would do. And the publicity… I’d just be so ashamed, to have my word questioned. To have people think that I lied, just to make my own adultery more palatable.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Ellie said, fiercely. “He didn’t deserve your love, or your loyalty. He gave up any right to that the moment he hit you.”
“I know, I know,” Mum said. “At least, intellectually, I know that. But inside…I’m still a scared twenty-year-old, terrified my husband will find me out.”
“We won’t let that happen,” I promised her, and even Ellie looked approving at the certainty in my voice. “You’re not alone, or far from home any more. We’re all here. There is nothing he can do to you. Not with us protecting you.”
Mum reached out to hold my hand as well as Ellie’s, and gave us both a brave, but wobbly smile. “I’m actually glad you know.” She sounded surprised, and gave a little laugh. “I didn’t think I would be, but I am. We’ll have to tell Caroline, I suppose…”
“We’ve got time to work that out,” I said, rubbing my fingers across the back of her hand. “Even if we go ahead with the memoirs, we don’t need to include this. Not if there’s a risk of Robert coming after you. I promise.”
Mum hugged me, and then Ellie. “Thank you, girls.”
I hugged her back, trying not to dwell on my promise. Edward wouldn’t like it, I knew, but this was my family. This wasn’t Nathaniel’s life, it was Mum’s, and she deserved some privacy if she wanted it.
And there wasn’t a chance of me doing anything to bring Robert back into Mum’s life again.
Chapter Eleven
The cottage lay at the top of the cliff path, looking out over the waves and the sand, and the tiny village below. On a wild night, the wind swept up from the sea, over the cliff, and rattled the tiles of the cottage roof. But the night that Rachel and Ursula met Sebastian wasn’t wild. It was warm, and clear: a classic British summer’s evening, with Pimm’s in the garden, the buzz of the insects in the long grass, and the fading sting of too much sun on one’s skin. The night they met was perfect.
&nb
sp; It was only after that everything started to go wrong.
On A Summer’s Night, by Nathaniel Drury (2015)
It was late by the time we finished talking, but I had one more, urgent thing I needed to take care of.
Checking the hallway to make sure no one else was near, I let myself into Nathaniel’s study. Placing the file with Mum’s letters on the desk, I pulled the newspaper clipping about Matthew Robertson’s death from my pocket. I needed to make sure Edward wouldn’t find this until I was ready. Until I knew what had really happened.
I grabbed the photo of Isabelle, Matthew and Therese from the journal I’d hidden it in, and stuffed both clippings into an empty envelope. Then, with one last check over my shoulder at the locked door, I crawled under Nathaniel’s desk and pulled up the loose floorboard I was pretty sure no one else knew about.
Nathaniel had used the hiding space for his secrets: for keepsakes he wanted to hide from the world, for notes on books so top secret he hadn’t even mentioned them to his agent yet, for chocolates he wasn’t supposed to eat, and an emergency bottle of whisky for when the writing got hard. He’d shown me the space under the floorboards when I was sixteen, swearing me to strictest secrecy.
If he’d had any other information about Matthew’s death, information he’d wanted to keep from Edward, this was where he’d have put it. And it was where I planned to hide the little information I had found.