“Sarah mentioned trauma counselling.”
“It’s become rather more serious than counselling. Rowena doesn’t have Sarah’s strength of mind, her… resilience. She’s really quite fragile. Doesn’t look her age at all. More like fourteen than nineteen. On a personality like hers, well, you can imagine the effect this must have had. She had to identify her mother’s body, you know. And she was the last to see Louise before…” Why did Bella’s use of Louise Paxton’s Christian name anger me? Why should I still care so much? “Except she wasn’t the last to see her, was she, Robin? Not quite.”
“Where’s this leading, Bella?”
“To a possible way of helping her, that’s all. It might make it easier for her to accept if you explained how carefree, how oblivious to what was going to happen, Louise was when you met her. Rowena seems to think… Well, her psychiatrist thinks… The girl believes her mother had something on her mind that day. Something… more than she’s been told. Something… that could have amounted to a premonition.”
“What makes her think that?”
“Who knows? Guilt for not stopping her. An inability to take things at face value. Whatever it is, you might be able to rid her of the delusion where others have failed.”
“Why?”
“Because you know it’s not true. You saw Louise that day. Like Rowena. But unlike anyone else.”
“I’m a stranger to Rowena. She won’t trust me.”
“Maybe she’ll trust you because you’re a stranger.”
I wasn’t going to refuse, of course. The argument made a kind of sense. And I wanted to see Rowena now this hint had been dropped that she too had glimpsed the ambiguity-the mystery-in her mother’s soul. But why was Bella the messenger? Why not Sarah-or Sir Keith? Why was my sister-in-law suddenly an insider while I remained a stranger? “Whose idea was this, Bella? Yours?”
“I suggested it, yes. But Keith saw the sense of it at once. He agreed it was well worth trying-if you were prepared to cooperate.”
“Of course I’ll cooperate. There’s just one thing I don’t understand.”
“Well?”
“What’s in it for you?”
She arched her eyebrows. “Does there have to be anything? I simply want to help.” But she must have read the disbelief in my eyes. It riled her. More than I’d have expected. “You bloody Timariots. So suspicious. So sceptical. So… miserly with your high opinion. Have you considered that I might have met somebody who brings out the best in me, rather than the worst?”
“Unlike Hugh, you mean?”
“If you like. Hugh. Or his brother.”
I looked away and sighed without attempting to disguise the reaction. It was an old battle nobody was ever going to win. But some of the wounds still hadn’t healed. “This somebody is Sir Keith Paxton?”
“Maybe.”
“With his wife less than five months dead?”
“I’ll leave the arithmetic to you.”
“Fine. What it adds up to is this. You want me to make you look concerned and sensitive for the widower knight’s benefit.”
“It’d be for his daughter’s benefit, actually. But if that’s going to be your attitude, perhaps it would be better if-”
“No.” I held up my hand, in warning as well as truce. The sniping had gone on long enough. “I’ll come, Bella. I’ll do what I can. I’ll try to help. Not for your sake. Nor for mine. Just because it really is the least I can do. Good enough?”
She nodded and, after a moment’s silent contemplation, smiled. We understood each other. Better than most. Though not as well-not nearly as well-as I might have hoped to know another. Had she lived.
Sunday was a cold grey winter’s day-raw, damp and stark. A polar opposite of the summer’s day my mind dwelt on as I drove up to Hindhead. And of other days I didn’t want to remember. But which my destination always evoked.
The Hurdles occupied a large and secluded site backing onto Hindhead golf course. It needed summer foliage to soften its harsh roof-line and faintly alien appearance. Without camouflage, it looked as if it might blend more happily with the landscape of southern California than the Home Counties. Like wedding photographs in which the guests are wearing the risible fashions of the day, The Hurdles stubbornly reflected aspirations that hadn’t long outlasted its construction. For cosmopolitan boldness, as the architect had fatuously put it. For a loving but enlightened marriage, as Hugh had convinced himself he was to have. And for ownership of a definable future, which he should have realized was available only on the shortest of leases.
There was a Daimler parked beside Bella’s BMW in the drive. Sir Keith, I assumed, had already arrived. When I rang the bell, Sarah opened the door. She’d had her hair cut even shorter since her visit to Brussels. And she’d lost a little weight too. It suited her, though it was also worrying. I doubted if counting calories was the cause.
“Good of you to come, Robin,” she said. “I mean it. Really very kind.”
“Not at all.”
“I’m sorry we’ve not been able to get together since you…” She was nervous, though whether because of meeting me again or because of the reason for our meeting I couldn’t tell. “Well, we’ve both been busy, haven’t we? Come on through.”
The others were in the drawing-room. Bella came forward as I entered and gave me a kiss on both cheeks. I suppose she reckoned that’s how normal people would expect her to greet her brother-in-law, though it took me aback. Then she introduced me to Rowena and Sir Keith.
Rowena was even slimmer and slighter than her sister. She had long fair hair, almost exactly the shade of her mother’s. It cascaded in waves down the back of her dress as far as her hips. Uncut since childhood, I assumed. And an arresting sight. But not quite as arresting as her aquamarine eyes. They gazed up at me as I shook her hand, solemn and unblinking, fixed momentarily on mine. And for that moment her concentration-her absorption-seemed total. As if we were alone together. As if nothing mattered except what we might be about to say to each other.
“Hello,” she said softly, frowning like some cautious but well-bred child. “Sarah’s told me about you, Mr. Timariot. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“And I you.” I wanted to offer her my condolences, but something stopped me. Then Sir Keith was beside us, sliding a fatherly arm round Rowena’s shoulders while he treated me to a firm handshake and a formal smile. The chance was gone.
He was a big man, in manner as much as physique. Grey-haired, broadly built and handsomely weather-beaten. He met my glance with the brisk confidence of somebody whose profession it is to encounter a wide variety of people in difficult circumstances. But there was a diffidence there as well. Our roles were strangely reversed. I should have been the one offering consolation. But his breezy warmth seemed to forbid it. We could laugh or converse or share a drink, it implied. Anything more profound-anything remotely intimate-was territory best left unexplored. Which was only to be expected, I suppose. The ingrained reticence of a certain generation of Englishmen. Yet there was another layer to it, I felt. There was a suspicion of me. I was the last man to see his wife alive-apart from her murderer. I was the stranger who possessed a small piece of knowledge he might have craved. If he’d allowed himself to admit as much. But he wasn’t going to. That was clear. Bereavement was to him an enemy you engaged and defeated, grief a weakness you never showed.
Lunch was one of the more uncomfortable experiences of my life. I sat next to Rowena and exchanged few words with her beyond an excruciating discussion of the weather and how best to cook broccoli. Every other subject that came into my head-Christmas, the Cotswolds, her plans, her pastimes, her present, her future-came back to her mother and what had happened to her. Precisely how to talk about that in a casual and reassuring manner over roast beef and burgundy with a girl who could hardly have looked and sounded less like the average nineteen-year-old sophisticate was a task I couldn’t begin to tackle.