Borrowed Time

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I’m not sure now how I got through the rest of that day. For most of it, I was shut away in my office, struggling to articulate a response to Rowena’s death. I knew contact with Sarah at this stage would be counter-productive. She’d be bound to blame me for what had happened. Although I longed to ask her how Rowena had come to see the video, to do so was to all intents and purposes impossible. Paul was a virtual stranger to me. To approach him in the midst of his grief was inconceivable. Bella was a possible go-between and I did risk a call to her in Biarritz, only to be told she and Sir Keith had already left for England. So I was left in limbo, unable to act because every action I considered led me nowhere.

One decision I did take was to play along with Seymour, though for my own reasons. I instructed Liz to tell any journalists who rang that I was out. She heard from several. But they weren’t going to hear from me. An interview had started all this and I knew public recriminations would only prolong it. If Sarah wasn’t prepared to believe the explanation I’d given her face to face, seeing a garbled version of it in the tabloid press wouldn’t make any difference. I let Seymour imagine what he liked, though. I was out to him as well. And meant to go on being.

I went home as early as was consistent with a pretence of putting in a day’s work, but didn’t stay there longer than it took to change my clothes. I dreaded the telephone ringing with Sir Keith or some muck-raking newspaperman on the line, yet knew I’d have to answer in case it was Sarah offering me an olive-branch. To walk myself into a state of exhaustion round the lanes and hangers was preferable to an agony of suspense at Greenhayes, so out I went. I finished up at the White Horse, an old haunt of Thomas’s on the Froxfield plateau, where I was mercifully unknown and could drink steadily away until the demons were dulled, though scarcely banished.

It was nearly midnight when I got back to Greenhayes. But the telephone rang before I’d so much as locked the door behind me. And I was too drunk to hesitate before picking it up.

“Robin?”

“Oh, Bella… It’s you.”

“I’ve been trying to contact you all evening.”

“Sorry. I was… out.”

“I assume you’ve heard about Rowena.”

“Oh yes. I’ve heard.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“What else do you want me to say?”

“I should have thought we were owed an explanation from you at the very least.”

“I’d be happy to give one. If you thought it would be listened to.”

“I’ll listen, Robin.”

“But will Keith? Will Paul? Will Sarah?”

“Probably not, no. Can you blame them? They think you and this Marsden bitch are partly responsible-if not chiefly responsible-for what Rowena did.”

“And no doubt you agree with them.”

“What I think isn’t very important at the moment. Now listen to me. Keith’s spending the weekend with Sarah and Paul. But I’m coming down to Hindhead tomorrow. I’d like to see you. Come to The Hurdles at… say… four o’clock?”

“All right. If you think it’ll serve any-”

“Just be there, Robin.” And she hung up before I had a chance to prevaricate any further. Not that I would have done. I had as many questions for her as she had for me.

I reached The Hurdles halfway through a blazing hot summer’s afternoon. The lawn was loud with grass-hoppers. The plop-plop of a tennis game could be heard from beyond the neighbour’s fence. And a distant growl from the deep blue sky as a light plane towed a glider up into the thermals. Death seemed as remote as winter. But death was what had brought me there.

Bella greeted me with a complaint about the heat. “I’d forgotten how humid it can be in England,” she said. “God, what a time for this to happen.”

“Could there be a good time?”

“You know what I mean. Do you want a drink?”

“Why not?”

“There’s a beer in the fridge. About all there is in the fridge. Bring it onto the terrace.”

I fetched a can and a glass and followed her out to the rear of the house, where she’d arranged a couple of directors’ chairs beneath the pergola. She already had a drink, something cool and lemon-coloured, with a straw in it. A sheaf of ripped-open letters beside her chair testified to the length of her absence. And she didn’t look happy to be back. She was smoking, which wasn’t a good sign. Nor were the sunglasses she hid her eyes behind. I might have betrayed her husband and stepdaughter. But I’d inconvenienced her. A heinous offence indeed.

“Sarah told me you’d claimed to be a victim of selective editing.”

“It’s true. I was.”

“Bullshit. I’ve seen the tape, Robin. What did you think you were doing?”

“Trying to tell it how it really was.”

“And was that worth driving Rowena to suicide for?”

“No. Of course not. I had no idea-”

“You knew about the first attempt. How can you claim to have had no idea?”

“Ah. Sarah’s mentioned that, has she?”

“Yes. And I wish she’d done so at the time. Then Keith and I might have been able to- Oh, never mind.” She rose and walked up and down, puffing at her cigarette. “It’s not all your fault. I’ll say that much. Sarah was a fool to keep us in the dark. And she should have realized what might happen if Rowena found out about the programme.”

“How did she find out?”

“A stroke of bad luck. With her exams finished and term all but over, she wasn’t going into the university last week, so Paul thought she probably wouldn’t meet anybody who’d seen the programme. But another maths student she knew quite well had seen it. She called round for coffee on Thursday morning and asked Rowena about it. But Rowena didn’t know it had even been made, let alone broadcast. She was shocked. Outraged, I suppose, that it had been kept from her. I knew that was a mistake all along. I should never have let Keith… Anyway, about half an hour after her visitor left, Rowena was spotted by another resident going into Sarah’s flat in Caledonia Place. She still had a key from when they shared it. She must have guessed her sister had recorded the programme while she was out with her and Paul the night before. But Sarah hadn’t needed to record it, had she? Because you’d given her a tape of it, neatly labelled, which Rowena found and watched on Sarah’s TV. It was still in the video recorder when Sarah got back. Can you imagine the effect it must have had? Sophie Marsden implying her mother was some sort of nymphomaniac.”

“She didn’t exactly-”

“And you backing her up. Reviving Rowena’s delusions about second sight and missed opportunities. Making her feel guilty for aiding Naylor’s conviction. Making her suspicious of her own family for keeping so much back. Making her afraid of what it all might mean. God knows how many times she watched that video over the next couple of hours. But it was too many times for her to bear. She drank about half a bottle of gin, you know. Then walked up to the bridge and threw herself off. They think she may have tried to phone somebody just before she did it. They found her diary in the call-box on the Clifton side.”

“It was me.”

Bella stared at me in astonishment. “You?”

“Yes. But I was at Lord’s all day. With Simon. She told my secretary she’d call back.”

“Oh, perfect! Our last chance of saving her blown. Because you go to bloody Lord’s and get pissed with Simon. That really is wonderful.”

“For God’s sake, I wasn’t to know.” If blame was to be distributed, I didn’t mean to take more than my share. “Sarah swore me to silence about Rowena’s overdose. And your husband pleaded with me to say nothing to her about Benefit of the Doubt. Maybe if you’d tried to understand her misgivings before the trial; maybe if you’d trusted her just a-”

“Keith didn’t plead with you to give Seymour an interview. Or to pour out some psycho-babble to the wretched man about Louise’s state of mind the day she died.”

“No, but-”

“And since you seem to be trying to shuffle off responsibility for what’s happened, I may as well mention something I was intending to spare you. But it makes more sense now you’ve admitted it was you she rang, so you may as well know. When Sarah got back to her flat, the TV was still on. With the Benefit of the Doubt video freeze-framed on the interview with you. So now you know why she wanted to speak to you, don’t you?”

“To ask which version was the truth,” I murmured in reply, as much to myself as to Bella. “The one I told at the trial. Or the one I hinted at in the interview. The one she forced herself to believe. Or the one she could never quite forget.”

“And what would you have told her?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure of the answer any more. I suppose I never was.”

Bella sat down again, stabbed out her cigarette and glared across at me. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone, Robin, eh? She was getting over it. They all were. Keith’s been so happy recently. Really enjoying his retirement. And now…”

“I’m sorry, Bella. Sorry for everything. But even if I’d done and said nothing, Bantock would still have written his book. Seymour would still have made his programme. The questions-and the doubts-would still have been raised.”

“And maybe Rowena could have borne them. But for your intervention. Have you considered that?”

“Yes. I’ve considered it. Kind of you to point it out, though.”

Bella plucked off her sunglasses and stared at me. I think she may have felt she’d gone too far. But a softening of her tone was the only concession she offered. “Keith, Sarah and Paul are going to need all my help to recover from this. It’s like a blow to an unhealed wound. I have to think of them before anyone else.”

“I understand that.”

“I’m not sure exactly when the funeral’s going to be, but I think it would be best if you left them alone until it’s out of the way, don’t you? Until it’s well out of the way.”

I’d expected it, of course. This exile from their company as well as their affections. I’d brought it on myself. Yet it still hurt. “You’ll let me know when and where? I’d like to… send some flowers.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“If there’s anything-”

“There is, as a matter of fact.”

“What?”

“Speak to Sophie Marsden. Find out what the hell she meant by saying those things to Seymour. It’s eating Keith up. The fear that there was some truth in it. I doubt there was, personally. Louise was no good-time girl. Not according to everybody I’ve spoken to about her. In which case, I’d like to know why Sophie Marsden chose to depict her as one. Keith looked on Sophie as a friend. Her behaviour’s shocked him even more than yours.”

“What makes you think she’ll open her heart to me?”

“You’re on her side, aren’t you?”

“Of course not. There are no-”

“Besides, I wouldn’t trust myself in her presence. I need an intermediary. If you want to repair some of the damage you’ve done…”

“All right. I’ll be your messenger boy.” My reluctance was mostly show. I wanted to prise Sophie’s motives out of her as much as Bella did, if not more so. Our one brief meeting at Rowena’s wedding had left me with the strange and disturbing impression that she knew something about me that I didn’t even know myself. It was high time I found out what it was.

Bella had given me Sophie’s phone number. I tried it as soon as I got home. But Sophie was out, according to her husband.

“You’re not another of these bloody journalists, are you?”

“No. More like another victim of them.”

“I’ll tell her you called, in that case.”

There was something faintly familiar in his mournful voice. I could almost have believed I’d spoken to him before. But when would I have crossed paths with somebody in the agricultural machinery business? Never seemed the likeliest answer.

No less than five hours later, rousing me from drink-deepened slumber, Sophie called back. She didn’t sound in the least drowsy, even though the hall clock had struck one as I stumbled to the phone. Nor, to my fuddled surprise, did she seem at all reluctant to meet.

“I think we probably should, don’t you? In the circumstances.”

“Well, obviously I do. But-”

“Would London suit you? We have a small flat in Bayswater. I’m thinking of going down there for a few days next week. The summer sales may cheer me up. I’ve felt quite awful since the news about Rowena.” The idea that a spendthrift spin round Harrods could reconcile her to the needless extinction of a young girl’s life disgusted me more keenly than for the moment my tired brain could grasp. “Why not come to tea on Tuesday?”

“All right. Where do you-”

“Six, Godolphin Terrace. I’ll expect you about three thirty.”

“OK. I-”

“See you then. ’Bye.”

By the time I got back to bed, I was alert and fully awake. Had she delayed her call until her husband was asleep? I wondered. If so, why should she want to keep our appointment secret? Anyone would think it was an illicit liaison. And why-yes why-was she not just willing but eager for us to meet?

Such thoughts pushed sleep effortlessly aside and left me to toss and turn through the brief summer’s night, tracing and retracing in my mind the sequence of events leading from Louise Paxton’s murder to her daughter’s suicide. Rowena’s self-destruction was in some senses the more awful death. She was so fragile, so vulnerable, so patently in need of protection. There should have been some way to save her. There should have been and probably there had been. But it had been neglected, overridden in the pursuit of other claims, other fleeting impulses. By me among others. And what did the others really matter when I closed my eyes and saw, in images I couldn’t suppress, that slender figure falling from the bridge, arms outstretched, with a diary left behind her on a call-box shelf and my face blurred and flickering on a television screen?

Dawn was only a few hours away. When it came, I was already washed and dressed. The idea of spending a solitary Sunday lying low at Greenhayes wasn’t just intolerable. It was quite simply inconceivable. Bella had told me to leave them alone and so I would. The living, that is. But nobody could stop me going in search of the dead. I’d stood in the room where Louise had been murdered. Now I had to stand on the bridge from which Rowena had leapt. It wasn’t a matter of choice. It was something I had to do.

Clifton was still and quiet as the grave so early on a Sunday morning. But the sun was already warm on my back as I walked up Sion Hill and risked a glance along Caledonia Place. A milk float was humming towards me from the far end. I watched as it chinked to a stop near Sarah’s door and wondered, if I waited, whether I’d see her come out to collect a bottle. She’d be awake, I had no doubt. She wouldn’t have slept any better than me. But at the thought of what might happen if she spotted me, I pressed on.

Now I was probably retracing Rowena’s footsteps of three days before. Following the curve of Sion Hill, with the suspension bridge dominating the view to my left. The hangers looked no thicker than twine from this distance. And the depth of the gorge wasn’t apparent. It could have been a footbridge across a shallow stream. Except I knew it wasn’t.

A path led up across a broad grass bank to the bridge road. As I turned onto the pavement, all possible routes converged. For there, ahead of me, was the call-box Rowena had used. I paused beside it and pulled the door open. I don’t know why, really. There was nothing to distinguish it from a thousand others. The phone. The printed instructions. The rank smell. The sundry graffiti. And an empty shelf.

I moved on. Past the control-box and the toll barriers. Round the giant left foot of the pylon. And out onto the bridge. The railings were about five feet high, fenced in with flimsy mesh and topped with blunt wooden spikes. No real obstacle for the desperate or the determined. And Rowena must have been both that day. They said she’d jumped from the centre. I glanced ahead and behind as I went to make sure I knew when I’d reached the point where she must have stopped. When I had, I stopped too. And looked down for the first time.

So far. So awesomely far. Sunlight twinkled benignly on the winding river and gilded the fat wrinkled mud-banks. The Bristol to Avonmouth main road hugged the eastern side of the river and the height I was above it sowed a fleeting illusion in my mind. That it and the few cars moving along it were toys I’d laid out on my bedroom floor as a child. Toys I could pick up or dismantle at will. Then the huge gap of empty air rushed into my consciousness and I stepped back, appalled. Good God almighty. What a thing to do. What an act to have not just the wish but the courage to carry out. To find a foothold and climb onto the railings. And then what? Leap from there? Or lower yourself down until your toes were resting on the narrow sill at the foot of the railings, then turn round and let yourself fall? The deliberation. The decision. And the deed. All reversible. All nullifiable. Until the fraction of a second after letting go, when wind and gravity plucked your freedom away. And your life had only that long plummeting moment to last.

Why had she done it? Standing there in the centre of the bridge, I felt a wave of nausea sweep over me. I stared up into the sky until it had passed. Then I looked down again. And knew. It wasn’t the lies we’d told you, was it, Rowena? It wasn’t the thought that we’d implicated you in a possible miscarriage of justice. Nor the fear that you’d never known your mother for what she truly was. It was none of those things. Not in the end. Not when you came to the point of no return. “She was on the brink,” you’d said of her. “She was about to step off.” I remembered now. “Into the void.” Your words. “She knew it.” Your every word. “And still she stepped.” You had to know, didn’t you? You had to find out. “Why?” I couldn’t tell you. Nobody could. You knew that. And, watching the video, you must have realized it would never be any different. Unless you followed her. Unless you surrendered to the impulse you’d tried to bury. “The thought of it can be so exhilarating.” Yes. Of course. “So tempting.” And so very very final.

It was mid-morning before I left Bristol. I drove slowly, hardly knowing whether it was better to stay or to go. Somewhere near Warminster, I turned on the radio and found myself listening to the cricket commentary from Lord’s. The Test Match was still going on. When it had started, I’d actually been quite interested in the outcome. But Rowena had been alive then. Now it seemed like a transmission from another planet. There were tears filling my eyes as I stabbed the “off” switch. And there was comfort in the silence that followed.

Tuesday came. And with it my appointment in London. After putting in a desultory morning at work, I walked to the station and caught a lunchtime train to Waterloo. Then I took the long way round the Circle line to Bayswater and tracked down Godolphin Terrace.

It turned out to look less grand than it sounded. The houses had all the traditional touches: four stuccoed storeys plus attic and basement, complete with pillared porch and dolphin door-knocker. But some were beginning to look dilapidated. One or two would be ripe for squatters if the residents didn’t watch out. Though Sophie Marsden, I felt sure, could be relied on to do that.

Number 6 was in good order, brasswork polished, paint gleaming. When I rang Sophie’s bell, she answered promptly.

“Robin?”

“Yes.”

“Push when you hear the buzzer. I’m on the second floor.”

I was in. And when I reached the second landing, she was waiting at her door. Newly coiffured, I reckoned, though presumably not for my benefit. But her close-fitting dress made me think, as I followed her into a tastefully furnished lounge, that I might be wrong. Perhaps flirtation was to be her counter to whatever line she expected me to take. If so, I didn’t propose to let it work.

“There’s tea, of course. But I fancy a gin and tonic myself. You?”

“All right.”

I moved to the window while she poured them and gazed down into the street. Sooner than I’d anticipated, she was at my elbow, glass in hand, smiling enigmatically. “Afraid someone might be following you, Robin?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Here’s your drink. Let’s sit down.”

A sofa and two armchairs were arranged around a low table in front of a huge marbled fireplace, an aspidistra in a copper pot filling the grate. A mass of gold-edged invitations crowded out the bric-à-brac on the mantelpiece, above which hung a gloomy oil painting of what looked like the Tower of Babel. Sophie took one end of the sofa and patted the cushion of the adjacent armchair. I sat down and sipped at my drink, resisting a powerful urge to take several large gulps. Then I noticed the Bantock hanging on the wall facing me. As I’d been intended to, of course. A Madonna and child. Or an old woman with a doll. It was hard to tell.

“What’s your opinion of Expressionism, Robin?”

“I’m really not qualified to-”

“We’re all qualified, surely. To judge whether something’s good or bad. Right or wrong. I’ve never been entirely sold on Oscar’s work myself.”

“Then why-”

“As an investment. Louise was the enthusiast. I trusted her taste. And it’s paid off. Though ironically only because Oscar’s dead. And Louise with him.”

“Sophie, I didn’t come here to-”

“Discuss art? No. I suppose not.” She jiggled the ice in her glass and took rather more than a sip. “Ah, I needed that.” She smiled. “The first taste is always the best, isn’t it? Of everything.”

“Why did you say what you did to Seymour?”

“You believe in coming to the point, don’t you? Is that what-Well, we’ll come back to that later, I expect.”

“Come back to what?” She was playing the same game with me she’d started in Sapperton. The same cat-and-mouse progression towards a meaning we never quite reached. And the resemblance to Louise was growing again. Or I was noticing it more. But perhaps resemblance wasn’t the right word. It was more an imitation. An expert re-creation of parts of her she knew I’d recognize. The soft voice. The toss of the head. The balancing on the brink.

“I was shocked to hear about Rowena. A young life snuffed out. So tragic. I always envied Louise her children, never having had any myself. But I suppose they bring as much grief as joy. How is Keith bearing up?”

“I haven’t seen him. Or Sarah. Or Paul.”

“Ah. Giving them a wide berth, are you? I quite understand. I thought I ought to do the same. In the circumstances.”

“I’ve spoken to Bella.”

“Of course. Your sister-in-law. Lady Paxton, I should say. Though the name doesn’t quite fit, does it?”

“She tells me they’re all extremely upset. As you’d expect. And they hold you and me to blame for what’s happened. As you’d also expect.”

“So we’re in the same boat, then.”

“In a sense.”

“Mmm.” She leant back and stared up thoughtfully at the ceiling. “In that case, why don’t you tell me why you cooperated with the charming Mr. Seymour.”

“To stop him harassing Rowena.”

“You think he meant to?”

“I don’t know. It was an effective lever of persuasion, though. And once he’d got me talking, he knew a little creative editing would do the rest.”

“That’s your cover story, is it?”

“It happens to be-”

“Come on, Robin. Nobody’s going to swallow it, least of all me. Neither of us thought Rowena would be so… drastic. So… extreme. It wasn’t our fault.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No. So let’s stop pretending we were set up by Seymour. Even the papers seem to have given up portraying him as the villain of the piece. We both knew exactly what we were doing. And why.”

“Maybe. But I doubt our reasons were the same.”

“Really? I’d have said they were identical. You’ve never believed the official account of Louise’s death. And you were hoping Seymour might be able to cast enough doubt on it to make others share your disbelief. So you decided to give him a little help. That’s all.”

“Are you saying… that’s why you…”

“Of course. If I’d known you thought the same way-”

“But I don’t. I don’t think the same way at all.”

“Yes you do. You must do. Otherwise you wouldn’t have given Seymour an interview.”

“No. You’re wrong. That’s not why I did it.”

She leant close to me across the arm of the sofa, lowering her voice as if to whisper a secret. “I’m glad we’re on the same side, Robin. I reckon we both need an ally. A friend we can turn to. I was very much afraid you were in on it. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know you weren’t.”

“In on what?”

“I can see now I made too much of your… economy with the facts. But there was always a simpler explanation for that, wasn’t there? Some girlfriend you wanted to protect. Some fiancée, perhaps. Has she fallen by the wayside since? Is that why you’ve risked putting your head above the parapet?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do. But have it your own way. I don’t want to force you to admit anything.” She reached slowly out and traced a circle with her index finger on the back of my hand where it rested on the arm of the chair. “Or to do anything. Unless you want to. Unless we both want to.”

I looked into her eyes and realized with a shock of sudden desire that we both wanted what was still-but only just-avertible. The reasons were sick and wrong. There’d be a third party to anything that happened. A rival. A substitute. A silent observer. And yet-

“Louise is gone, Robin. But you don’t need to let go of her completely. People always said how alike we were.” I believed her. Even more than I wanted to believe her. The ghost I was chasing made flesh. Warm and close. The hem of the dress sliding up her thigh as she leant forward. The white lace bra glimpsed through its buttons. As once before. Pursuit, denial and temptation. Joined. “In so many ways.”

She kissed me slowly and deliberately, giving me ample time to recoil, but sensing I wouldn’t. Her eyes were closed at first. When they opened, I looked into them and knew we both meant to play this game to the end. From cool formality to burning intimacy. From lust to consummation.

And so we did. With eager abandon as she stretched like a cat beneath me across the hearthrug. And later, in the bed she led me to, again and again, with measured delight, as the sunlight mellowed and lengthened and passion curdled towards excess. As the afternoon faded towards evening and her urgings became my desires. I found her out in all her ways and wiles; her pains and her pleasures. What she wanted and how she wanted it, explored and refined with the heightened sense only long denial can breed. Mine and hers. From brutality to tenderness. And back again. Some of the way. But not quite all.

“What are you thinking, Robin?” she asked when the frenzy was finally spent and we lay motionless together, drained by what we’d done. “Are you shocked? That a middle-aged married woman should be capable of such depravity?”

“No,” I murmured in reply. And it was true. Sophie hadn’t shocked me. Nor had the things she’d let me do to her. Our shared and savoured spasms meant nothing. Compared with the dangerous fantasies that had coiled themselves around every moment of release-and all the moments after.

“My husband is my husband in name only, you know,” she went on, heedless of the ambiguity of my denial. “We haven’t made love in years. And even when we did…”

“Is there somebody else?”

“No. Nobody else. Not any more, anyway. Just as there isn’t for you, is there? Nobody. Not a single person who can replace her.”

“I don’t understand you.” It wasn’t quite true, of course. I seemed to understand her only too well. As she did me. And there was the rub. She shouldn’t have been able to. She shouldn’t have been capable of prying so deeply and accurately into my thoughts. And yet she was. “What do you mean, Sophie? What do you think you know about me and Louise?”

“We were each other’s oldest friend, Robin. We were bound to share our secrets, even if we didn’t intend to. Call it intuition if you like, though it was far more than that. She as good as told me who you were.”

“Told you? About me? You’re crazy. How could she? She was dead within hours of our only meeting.”

Sophie chuckled. “You can drop the pretence with me. After what we’ve done, I think you should, don’t you? Louise meant to leave Keith. I know she did. I heard it from her own lips a few weeks before she died. She was going to leave him that summer. Quite possibly that very day. She was going to meet you in Kington, wasn’t she? And you were going to carry her off.” She must have seen the stupefaction in my face. But what she read it as I can’t imagine. “What went wrong? Did you argue? Did you have second thoughts? You may as well tell me. Why didn’t she leave with you?”

“Because we’d never met before. Because we were strangers.”

“Come on. She confessed to me. She talked to me about the man in her life. The one she’d met on Hergest Ridge that spring. Mid-March, wasn’t it? Just after Oscar’s exhibition in Cambridge. So she said, anyway. And perhaps you know what else she said. Is that why you said you were strangers? Did she call you that to your face?”

“Call me what?” The grotesque fallacy at the heart of Sophie’s reasoning no longer mattered as much as the need to hear it through to the end.

“‘My perfect stranger.’ Her exact words. Her description. Of you.”

A long moment of silence followed in which time and my own thoughts seemed to stand still. It wasn’t possible. It made no sense. It was pure madness to leave the idea unrefuted even for a second. Yet I did. And, for as long as that, I almost believed it myself.

“Don’t worry. Nobody else knows. Only me.”

“Sophie-”

“Don’t deny it. Don’t underestimate me to the extent of thinking you can deny it.”

“But I have to. It isn’t true.”

“She couldn’t have made it up. The coincidence would have been too great. The man she met on Hergest Ridge and fell in love with was you. She never named you, of course. I wouldn’t have expected her to. But what she did tell me was enough for me to suspect you the very first time we met. And after your interview with Seymour… I was certain.”

“You’re wrong.”

“No. Why else should you still be trying to avenge her? Why-unless you loved her?”

“I didn’t love her. I never had the chance.”

“That’s not what Louise said.”

“What did she say, then? Tell me. Precisely.”

“All right. If that’s what it’ll take to convince you. I’ve nothing to hide. Louise and I went to a health farm near Malvern for a few days in the middle of June that year. It was a place we’d often used before. Somewhere we could relax and get into shape. Sarah’s graduation ceremony was coming up and Louise wanted to look her best for it. Well, that was her story. But there was a glint in her eye I knew had nothing to do with her daughter’s academic achievements. The last night we were there, she admitted she had a lover. A man she’d met by chance on Hergest Ridge. She’d gone to Kington to return some of Oscar’s pictures after the exhibition in Cambridge. Oscar wasn’t in. So she left the pictures in his studio and drove up to Hergest Ridge for a walk. The weather was unusually warm for March. She wanted a breath of fresh air. You were there for the same reason. I suppose.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Whoever. She met him on the ridge. They fell into conversation. They left together. He took her to a hotel near Hereford. They stayed overnight. She told Keith she was staying with me. The same story she used in July. But a lie on both occasions. Instead… Well, you know what happened instead far better than I do. A one-night stand that turned into a passionate love affair. So passionate she was already determined to leave Keith when she told me about it. I’d never seen her that way before. So… overwhelmed. So… carried away. She was losing control. And control was what she’d always had in abundance. But not in those last weeks. Thanks to you.”

“Not me. Somebody else. If what you’re saying is true.”

“You know it’s true. And you know it’s not somebody else. You can’t forget her, can you? That’s why you’ve stayed in touch with her family. Why you helped Seymour stir up interest in the case. Why you came here this afternoon. Why what we did was so…” We stared at each other, her belief and mine meeting but never joining. She wasn’t lying. Louise had told her what she’d just told me. In every particular. “I’ve worked it out, Robin. I’ve lain in wait and now I’ve found you. It has to be you. There’s nobody else it can be. She was the love of your life. Wasn’t she?”

I hardly remember now how I left the flat. Everything is clear in my mind. What we did. What we said. Except at the end. I was too confused by then to concentrate, too taken aback by Sophie’s misapprehension to construct a response to it, let alone a rebuttal. She must have expected me to tell her everything. She must have hoped I’d share my secrets with her as I’d shared my desires. But her reasoning was as sound as her conclusion was false. There was nothing I could tell her. Beyond what she’d already refused to believe. And there was nothing I could tell myself. To stop the indefinable fears she’d planted in my mind growing and taking shape. Sophie was wrong. But in so many ways-too many to shake off or disregard-she was right. They’d met-as we’d met-on Hergest Ridge. By pure chance. As perfect strangers. Louise-and somebody else. Who was he? Who could he be? If not me?

“You can stay… if you like.”

“No. I must go.”

“When will we meet again?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m not… sure of anything.”

I fell asleep on the train and relived the afternoon in my dreams. Closing my eyes to forget, I only saw more clearly. Sophie and me. Every action. Every detail. Seen again, as if by an invisible observer.

It was dark when I reached Petersfield. A cool still night after the breathless day. I walked round to the factory, where I’d left my car. I was tired now, too weary to think it through any more. The answer would have to wait. At least until tomorrow.

My car was the only one left in the yard. It was on the far side, near the drying shed, an open-sided structure where the newly delivered clefts of willow were stacked and left to sweat out the last of their sap before they were moulded into blades. A security light came on as I approached, dazzling me for a moment. I shielded my eyes and went on to the car, fumbling in my pocket for the keys. As I rounded the boot and my vision adjusted to the glare, I looked up. To see a man standing a few yards ahead of me, silhouetted against the light. He stood quite still, his arms folded in front of him. He seemed to be waiting for something. Or for someone. Only when he spoke did I realize who he was.

“You’ve been a long time.”

“Paul?”

“But it doesn’t matter. I’d have stayed as long as I had to.”

“What… what are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to speak to you.”

“But… we could have…”

“Worked something out? I don’t think so. Maybe before. But not now. I had some news today, you see. About Rowena.”

“Rowena?”

“She was pregnant.”

“What?”

“Two months pregnant. She’d known for some time. Her doctor seemed surprised she hadn’t told me. Well, maybe she was planning to make a special announcement. It’s the anniversary of our engagement later this week. Maybe she was leaving it until then. We’ll never know now, will we?”

“Paul, I-”

“We’ll never know because of what you and that bitch Sophie Marsden did for her between you with your poisoned words and your evil little insinuations. Didn’t you?”

“Look, I’m sorry for what happened. Sorrier than I can say. But I never-”

“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.