“I don’t want your sorrow!” He was shouting now, his voice rising in a cracked crescendo, his arms swinging free. I suddenly saw he was holding a bat cleft in his hands, raising it like a club as he advanced towards me. “I don’t want anything from you!”
Before I could even turn to run he was on me, the cleft slamming into my midriff. I doubled up and fell back against the car door. He aimed a blow at my head which I managed to parry with my forearm, then another I barely beat off. I tried to rise, knowing I had to get past him if I was to stand a chance. But he saw me coming and shoulder-barged me to the ground. I sprawled across the tarmac and scrambled onto all fours. I remember trying to push myself upright as the first of the pain lanced through the shock. I remember seeing him out of the corner of my eyes, behind and above me. I even remember the whistle of the cleft through the air as it sliced down towards me. Then nothing. The night swallowed me whole. As if I’d never been.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Apparently I was conscious when the ambulance reached the scene. I don’t remember it myself. Nor much else that night beyond a succession of blurred faces staring down at me and the unique disinfected smell of a hospital ward. I pieced together what had happened the following morning from the jumble of my own recollections and the puzzled questions of a staff nurse. The shock of seeing me lying stunned on the ground with blood oozing from my mouth and cheek must have stopped Paul in his tracks. Frightened by what he’d done, he rushed round to his car in Frenchman’s Road and called an ambulance. He waited with me until it arrived, saw me aboard and promised to follow me to the hospital. But he didn’t turn up. He hadn’t been seen since. And nobody knew who he was.
I decided from the outset to play dumb. The tragedy I’d helped create would only be worsened and prolonged by Paul being charged with assault and battery. I didn’t feel as if I was being a hero or a martyr. I didn’t even feel I was doing Paul a favour. It just seemed the least painful way out for all of us. Shielded from the police on medical orders until the middle of the following day, I rehearsed a suitable story, then trotted it out to a gullible detective constable. I’d returned late from London, surprised somebody I took to be a burglar skulking around the factory and been beaten up for my pains. Since it had been pitch dark, I couldn’t begin to describe my assailant. Nor, come to that, the Good Samaritan who’d found me and dialled 999. I was a victim of the rising crime rate who warranted nothing more than an obscure place in constabulary statistics.
Physically, I wasn’t in bad shape. A broken rib, a fractured cheek-bone, two loose teeth, sundry cuts and bruises; and what the doctor called a “straightforward” case of concussion. But that alone necessitated twenty-four hours of rest and observation. Which, in the end, turned out to be nearer forty-eight. Rushed in on Tuesday night, I wasn’t released until Friday morning.
Jennifer, Simon, Adrian and Uncle Larry all trooped in to see me, plying me with fruit, magazines and sympathy. Adrian was full of plans to improve security at the factory and left me with the brochures of a couple of guard-dog patrol companies to leaf through. He even suggested I might like to convalesce at his house. Thankfully, he interpreted my refusal as a reflection of my independent spirit. This spared me the need to explain why a few days spent under the same roof as Wendy and the children-not to mention the dogs-would probably see me re-admitted to hospital suffering from nervous exhaustion.
I heard nothing from Bella and assumed she didn’t know of the incident. There was really no reason why she should, unless Paul had decided to come clean. And even if he had, who was going to blame him for what he’d done? He had a child now as well as a wife to mourn. Just as Sir Keith had lost a grandchild along with a daughter. The grief had spread like a stain across three generations. And I couldn’t redeem or reduce it with a few broken bones.
I knew I’d hear from Bella eventually, of course. She’d be expecting me to report the outcome of my meeting with Sophie. But the longer that could be postponed the better. I felt as if I genuinely needed a spell of rest and recuperation before confronting her with whatever lies I decided to substitute for a truth even she would have found shocking. As for Sophie herself, each hour that passed made what we’d done seem not merely more remote but more unimaginable.
My dilemma hadn’t diminished by Friday morning, when Jennifer came to collect me and drive me home. Indeed, it was because of it that I jumped to a false conclusion when, halfway up the A3 towards Petersfield, she suddenly said: “Guess who was asking after you yesterday.”
“Bella?”
“No. Her stepdaughter. Sarah Paxton. She’d heard you were in hospital and-”
“How did she hear?”
“She didn’t say. Does it matter?”
It mattered a good deal. But for reasons I was in no position to explain. “Er… I suppose not.”
“Well, she seemed genuinely concerned about you. Quite touching really, in view of her recent bereavement and… well… how easy it would be for her to hold you at least partly to blame for her sister’s suicide.”
“As I’m sure she does.”
“You could be wrong. She’s going to look in on you at Greenhayes over the weekend, apparently. Check you’re all right. She said she was going to be in Hindhead anyway and it’d be no trouble, but, you know, it sounded to me as if she might be making a special trip. Just to see you. Very solicitous, I’d say. There isn’t something you want to tell me about the two of you, is there?”
“Nothing you want to hear, Jenny. Believe me.”
She arrived on Saturday afternoon. It was another in a succession of hot airless days. I was in the garden, dozing in a deckchair after too many cold beers, when I heard a car turn in from the lane. She must have guessed where I’d be, because, without pausing to try the doorbell, she walked straight round from the front of the house. I’d struggled to my feet by then and composed something close to a smile to greet her. But she wasn’t smiling. She stopped as soon as she saw me and gazed at me expressionlessly. Only then, after a few seconds of deliberation, did she come closer.
“Hello, Robin.” Still there was no smile. And even the formal kiss she’d normally have bestowed was banished. She was wearing a straw hat, dark glasses she showed no sign of removing, an outsize white shirt over pale blue trousers and sandals. And she was carrying a video cassette in her hand. I didn’t have to see the label on the cardboard case to know what it was.
“Hello, Sarah. I…”
“You look as if you’ve been through the mill.”
“A spot of bother at the factory. Did Jenny tell you how it happened?”
“She didn’t need to. Paul told me.”
“Ah. I see.”
“He’s been expecting to hear from the police. But I gather you’ve covered his tracks for him.”
“Well…” I shrugged. “I don’t think any useful purpose would have been served by bringing a complaint against him. Do you?”
“No. But it was good of you, even so.”
“Not really. Not after everything else.”
“Daddy doesn’t know. Nor Bella. There seemed no point telling them.”
“About me, you mean? Or about…”
“About you.” She stretched out her hand, offering the video to me. I had the strange impression that if I didn’t take it from her straightaway she’d drop it on the grass between us. I took it. “They know about the baby, of course. Daddy’s reacted badly. Paul too, I suppose. But he keeps his feelings bottled up. What happened with you… the loss of control… was unusual. Unprecedented in my experience.”
“I don’t blame him.”