‘Why? Out of guilt?’ replied Rachel too harshly. ‘My sister doesn’t want me there, my mother doesn’t want me there, and Julian would not have wanted me there either. The greatest respect I can pay him is not to go. If I do, people will immediately start talking about me and the reason I left. A funeral’s supposed to be a time to remember the good things about people, isn’t it, not to rake over old scandals.’
‘Rachel, do you want to rebuild your relationship with your sister?’ asked Liam simply.
She tensed, immediately defensive. Liam knew her too well. He knew what she wanted, more than anything. But she was also convinced of her reasons to stay away from England.
‘You have to go back,’ he pressed.
‘The rain is getting heavy,’ she said, looking away from him. ‘I should really be going home.’
3
The Peacock Suite had a beautiful view of the lake; that was the reason Diana loved it. That, and the fact that it was the quietest room at Somerfold and in the most distant wing of their Oxfordshire home. It was here she liked to sit, her chair pulled up in front of the enormous windows, alone with her thoughts, gazing at the water. But today the curtains were closed, with just enough light from two small lamps to make out what she was doing. No one could see into the room, but even so, Diana felt better doing this unobserved.
Taking a deep breath, she tipped the contents of two Selfridges bags on to the bed. It was quite a collection: papers, notebooks, letters, receipts, photographs. She had spent the morning gathering it together from desk drawers, filing cab
inets, even jacket pockets around the house, but slowly, unobtrusively. She didn’t want to raise any more eyebrows. After the police had finished with their endless questions, her mother had driven her straight to Somerfold as Diana wasn’t sure she ever wanted to see the house in Notting Hill again. Predictably, both her mother and Mrs Bills, the housekeeper, had been fussing around her, watching her every move. In fact, when Mrs Bills had found her poking around the library that morning, she had dispatched her to bed with herbal tea, as if she were recuperating from a mild case of flu. She meant well, of course, they all did. Presumably they must be secretly wondering about her state of mind, perhaps even imagining that she might try to ‘do something stupid’, as Sylvia Miller so subtly put it. But Diana had no intention of doing anything like that; in fact her mind was unusually clear and focused. That was why she was standing here in the dark, looking at this pile of letters. She had to know; that was what was keeping her going. Julian was dead – it was hard enough to grasp that idea – but he hadn’t been hit by a car or killed in an air crash, some senseless random event. He had taken his own life. There had to be a reason. Had to be. So it followed that somewhere there would be something that gave a clue as to why.
She picked up a photograph and looked at it. It was an old Polaroid, the white border yellowed and the colours slightly smeared, but it was clear enough: a group of students on a yacht. Julian was instantly recognisable in the middle of the group, with his foppish hair, shy grin and Operation Raleigh T-shirt, and Diana had to look away, her heart jumping. Jules, how could you? How could you do it?
Feeling overcome, she sat down on the blue silk coverlet. It’s just the lack of sleep, she told herself. Julian had been gone for almost forty-eight hours, and in that time she had not slept for a second. It hadn’t been out of choice – she was desperate to escape from this living hell, to close her eyes and shut it all out – but sleep just wouldn’t come. Lying in the dark, the empty space beside her, she couldn’t let her mind rest, her eyelids wide open, like some medieval torture designed to send her mad. And in those horrible, endless hours, she had gone over everything, examining every event, every word, every look between her and Julian through the past few months, searching for evidence of cracks, strains in their marriage. Things she might have said or done that could have driven him to some secret, hidden despair; things she could have said or done that might have made a difference; things that might have kept him alive. What if, what if, what if . . . The possibilities were endless and the nagging questions utterly futile. The guilt pressed down upon her, the frustration of simply not knowing making her head spin. Her body was weak with exhaustion, her mind stretched taut from chasing in circles. She had heard that people had died from lack of sleep, and lying there staring at the crack in the curtains, she hoped it would happen to her.
She turned back to the pile and ran her hands over the papers and photographs, half hoping to draw some sort of insight through touch alone. Shaking her head, she realised that she had met a dead end with this collection of stuff. She walked to the window, wanting to feel some light on her face, and pulled the curtain back just enough to see her son Charlie kicking a football across the grass near the lake. For a moment she almost didn’t recognise him – since Christmas he had grown inches and was now a long, loping figure with a shock of tawny hair. How he reminded her of Julian. They weren’t related by blood, of course, but they did say you could grow to resemble the people you were closest to, didn’t they?
‘Darling? What’s all this?’
Diana turned, startled by her mother’s voice. Sylvia Miller was a handsome woman in her late fifties, her ash-blond hair cut into a long bob, her body lithe and toned from the Dukan Diet and too much yoga. You would never guess that this woman had once been a working-class divorcee living in a terraced house in Devon. Sylvia looked born to the grandeur of Somerfold – more so, Diana had to admit, than herself.
‘What are you doing with all these papers?’
‘Nothing,’ said Diana, quickly crossing to the bed and gathering them together. Her mother stooped and picked up a letter that had fallen on to the floor. Diana was relieved to see that it was a bill; nothing personal, nothing useful. But she could also see that Sylvia had immediately grasped what her daughter was doing.
‘I really think you should leave this alone,’ she said, handing the bill to Diana.
‘I’m just spring-cleaning.’
Her mother raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘I think you should come downstairs and eat. Mrs Bills has made some chicken soup and a batch of madeleines that look ravishing.’
‘I’m fine up here, honestly.’
‘Best if you come. Liz just called. They’re ten minutes away.’
Diana nodded. It was another reason why she had spent the morning sifting through drawers and cupboards; something to take her mind off the fact that the preliminary inquest into Julian’s death was being held at noon. She had had no desire to be there, and Liz, Julian’s older sister, had assured her that there was no need for her to be and had gone in her place. Diana knew she could not have faced it, but it was just one more item to add to the long checklist of things to feel guilty about.
‘How did it go?’
‘Liz said it all went as expected,’ said Sylvia soothingly. ‘It was just a formality today.’
Sensing her daughter’s disquiet, she walked across and ran her hand up and down Diana’s arm.
‘Come on now, you’ve got enough on your mind without worrying about things like that.’
‘I know. You’re right.’
She sat down on the bed again and looked around the suite.
‘You know, Julian used to call this the row room,’ she said softly. ‘I used to come and sleep in here sometimes when we’d argued. It was always over little things. A bit like you and Dad.’
Julian and her father: the two most important men in her life. Now both dead.