‘Maybe eighteen months. It started a couple of years ago. It ended when Diana lost the last baby.’
‘How often did you see each other?’
‘Whenever we could. The sex was good, so good, but we really liked each other too. We could talk, confide in each other. I’m not sure Julian had a great deal in common with his wife. I think she came along at the right time. A time when he thought he should settle down, have a family. I think he liked that she had a child already. He wanted to protect her, look after her. I think a shrink might say he had a saviour complex.’
‘You say you loved Julian, but was the feeling mutual?’
‘I thought we had a future together.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘He bought a house for us. We were both sick of all the rules we had to follow to not get caught. Assumed names at hotels, never entering a building at the same time – it took some of the fun away, to be honest. So he got us a place where we could meet.’
Rachel’s heart gave a little leap – her hunch had been correct.
‘Where?’
‘Highgate, of all places,’ said Marjorie with a laugh. ‘He loved it up there. The expanse of the Heath, the view of the city.’
‘He bought it?’
Marjorie nodded. ‘Handed me the keys all tied up with ribbon. That was typical of Julian. Big sweeping gestures. Declarations of love . . . Didn’t turn out that way, though, did it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was ready to leave my husband. Julian said I could live in the Highgate place when I did. But when Diana got pregnant and passed the twelve-week point where she usually miscarried, he cooled off the relationship. He wanted me to play the little mistress, tucked up in the cottage in Highgate, but he made it clear that it wasn’t going anywhere more serious. I ended it, thinking he would come running back. But he never did, and now he never will.’
‘And what about the house?’
‘Of course he didn’t put it in my name. But I still have the keys.’
‘Could I borrow them? I’m looking for something that Julian had, something I think he might have tucked away somewhere.’
Marjorie laughed. ‘It was a tucking-away place all right. I mean, it used to be me.’
She stood up and left the room, returning a few moments later with a piece of paper. She slid it across the counter.
‘That’s the address, and these . . .’ she held up a set of keys, ‘these will get you inside.’
43
‘This isn’t what I was imagining at all,’ said Liam, shutting the door of the cottage behind him and looking around the small, low-ceilinged room.
Rachel couldn’t help but agree. Julian’s little house was in a quiet back street near the cemetery. It looked cute enough from the outside, with wisteria scrambling around the door. But inside it had the unloved air of a house that hadn’t been occupied for some time.
‘I thought it was going to be all chrome and leather,’ said Liam as they looked into the rather ordinary front room with its corduroy sofa and pine bookshelves.
‘Well he was hardly going to have anything too flashy, was he?’ said Rachel. ‘This was supposed to be discreet. Besides, I think he was only interested in the bedroom.’
They went upstairs into the master suite. The bedroom covered most of the first floor, with high windows offering a view out across Parliament Hill and the Ponds. It had cream curtains and crisp baby-blue sheets on the king-sized oak sleigh bed, along with evidence of a woman’s touch in the generous en suite. Marjorie? she wondered. Of course, perhaps Julian had changed the decor every time he acquired a new mistress – even though for all they knew, Marjorie Case-Jones was the only one he’d brought here.
‘Oh yes, now this is more like it,’ said Liam, coming up behind her. ‘A proper little shag pad.’
‘Is it?’ snapped Rachel. ‘Does it fit nicely with your image of him? Does it tick all the right boxes?’
Liam put his hand on her arm. ‘I’m sorry.’
She nodded, and exhaled sharply. ‘I’m sorry too. It’s been a long day and I guess I just hate finding all this stuff out.’