Borrowed Time

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I combined my visit to Cambridge with a long-overdue tour of willow suppliers in Suffolk and Essex. This kept me away from the office for most of the following week, which was something of a bonus, since Adrian was due back from Australia halfway through my absence and was sure to think I was deliberately avoiding him.

Cambridge turned out to hold no more clues than Chamonix to the secrets of Paul Bryant’s soul. Even if he’d revealed anything of himself to Doctor Olive Meyer, I doubt she’d have noticed. She wasn’t exactly the sensitive type. Largely as a favour to Sarah, however, she did give me the name of a third-year student who’d roomed next to Paul in his first year. But Jake Hobson, when I finally tracked him down in the college bar after a lengthy vigil outside his Romsey Town lodgings, had difficulty even remembering what Paul looked like. “Hardly said two words to him all year, mate. He was a closed book to me.” In that, I reckoned, Jake was unlikely to have been alone.

So, once more, like a laboratory mouse in a maze, I was back where I’d begun. I stood on the riverside path opposite the Garden House Hotel, imagining Louise walking towards me through the chill October mist as she’d walked towards Paul through the warm June sunshine. I went to the gallery where they’d met that momentous March night and strolled past the pale still lives that had succeeded Bantock’s blood-bright daubings. I paced the courts of King’s College and wondered why I couldn’t see her, as Paul had, rounding a corner or looking down, half in fear and half in temptation, from a high window. But the past didn’t lie like the yellowing leaves about me, waiting to be gathered. It kept its distance. One step behind. Or ahead.

I got back to Greenhayes on Thursday night, at a loss to know what I should do next. But there, obligingly, the answer was waiting, among the bills and junk mail on the doormat. A visiting order from Albany Prison, authorizing me to pay a call on Shaun Andrew Naylor of E Wing any afternoon during the next four weeks. There and then I decided to go the following day. Delay wasn’t going to make the encounter any easier. Urgency just might.

It was another apple-crisp autumn day, with the Solent like a millpond and the cosy countryside of the Island bathed in golden light. But Albany was still a prison with a high wall and a locked gate. And the cramped foyer I waited in with the other visitors still contrived to preserve, like an essence in the air, the closeness of confinement, the claustrophobic reality of long-term imprisonment. Naylor had served just over three years of a twenty-year sentence. Standing there with the wives, girlfriends, mothers and children, I began to wonder, for the very first time, what it was like to face such a future when you knew-as nobody else did-that you were innocent, not guilty, not the right man; that you were going to spend a third or more of your life rotting in this place or some place like it as a punishment for something you hadn’t done.

Two o’clock came and the other visitors went in. There was a delay, they told me. Naylor hadn’t known I was coming and had to be fetched from the gymnasium. I read the signposted Home Office prohibitions for the nth time, stared out at the blue sky and the traffic moving on the Cowes to Newport road, struggled to remember what Naylor looked like and tried to decide what to say to him. Then, after twenty minutes that had seemed like hours I was called.

A prison officer took me through two time-locked closing doors, up a flight of steps, through a metal detector and into the visiting room. Which, to my surprise, was comfortably furnished and pleasantly decorated, with potted plants and pictures on the walls that somehow made you forget the bars on the windows. Family groups sat at well-spaced tables in peach-upholstered chairs, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, chatting and smiling. While in the farthest corner from the supervising officers’ desk sat one man without companions. And he was staring straight at me.

A stone heavier perhaps and longer-haired than when I’d studied him in the dock at his trial, Shaun Naylor looked bemusingly fit and well, his eyes clear and intense, his gaze direct and mildly challenging. He was wearing the regulation outfit of blue denim trousers and striped shirt, cuffs rolled high above the elbows to reveal gym-honed biceps and forearms. He finished a cigarette as I approached and stubbed it out in the ashtray without taking his eyes off me. He didn’t smile or get up or even uncross his legs. He just waited, like a man who’d learnt the necessity of patience, like a man with time to spare-even for me.

“You came, then,” he said quietly as I sat down. “Didn’t think you would.”

“Didn’t Mr. Sarwate explain? I-”

“Oh, he explained. Still didn’t think you’d show up, though. These places put people off.”

“Well…” I glanced around. “Facilities here seem quite… reasonable.”

“Yeh. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Different story back there.” He nodded towards a door behind him, the door to the rest of the prison.

“Yes. I imagine it is.”

“That’s all you have to do, though, ain’t it? Imagine. You don’t have to live it.”

“No. Well, of cour-”

“Get us a cup of tea, will you?” He pointed over my shoulder to a serving hatch. “Two sugars.” Obediently, I went and bought him a cup. When I brought it back to him, he uttered no word of thanks, merely took a gulp and said: “It ain’t so bad here. I don’t get as much harassment as… other places. My first night at Winson Green, well, I thought it was going to be my last. Anywhere. They beat the shit out of me. Literally. Cons don’t like nonces, see.”

“Nonces?”

“Sex offenders. We have to be segregated. That’s why I’m here in the VPU. Vulnerable Prisoner Unit. Locked away with the child molesters. You know? Really nice people. But I can’t complain, can I? Being a rapist and a murderer. I’m getting off lightly. Don’t you reckon?”

“It’s not for me to-”

“You know I didn’t do it. You met her that day. You must have known what she wanted. Is that it? Have you got it in for me because you missed out on a sure thing?”

It was the tiny fragment of truth in his question that angered me more than the suggestion itself. “If you’re trying to antagonize me, Mr. Naylor, you’re going the right way about it.”

“That right?” A sneer quivered across his lips. “Well, if you came here expecting me to beg, you’ve had a wasted journey.”

“I came here at your solicitor’s suggestion, in the hope you might be able to-”

“Tell you who tipped off Vince? Yeh, he said. He also said the police think you did.”

“Yes. They do. But I’m sure you don’t.”

He lit another cigarette and took a long draw on it, then said: “Tell you what. Agree to alter your statement. Agree to say you knew all along she was on the pull that day. Then I’ll give you what you want.”

“Are you trying to blackmail me?”

“Nah. You’d know if I was. That’s just an offer. A fair offer. Causes you no grief. It’s only the truth anyway.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Come on. You know what she was after. I could tell when I heard you give evidence. You’d seen the signs. Like me. Oh, you hadn’t done anything about it. Too well-bred, I suppose. But you knew what her game was, didn’t you?”

“No. I didn’t. What was her game?”

“You want me to tell you? You want to hear me say it? OK. She was seeing how far she could go. Seeing how far she enjoyed going. And that was quite a way. She wanted a stranger to do the things to her she’d never dared ask her husband to do. Or her lovers. She was after some rough trade. And I gave it to her. You bet I did. A classy lady, no holds barred. Too good to refuse. A real bargain, I reckoned. But it didn’t turn out to be much of one, did it?”

“Obviously not.” Remembering Sarah’s suggestion, I added: “Tell me, did she mention anybody else to you that day?”

“No.”

“Some man in her life who’d ditched her or… let her down in some way?”

He looked nonplussed. “She didn’t say nothing like that.” And it was clear to me he didn’t have a clue what I was getting at.

“Never mind, then,” I concluded lamely.

He grinned cockily. “I’m going to get out, y’know. Never thought I would. Never thought the bastard who croaked them would cough. But he has, hasn’t he? Pretty soon, everybody’s going to know I didn’t do it.”

“You don’t need me to change my statement, then.”

“It ain’t vital, if that’s what you mean. But Sarwate thinks it’ll help, so… I said I’d talk to you.”

“Who tipped off Cassidy?”

Naylor smirked and picked a flake of tobacco from his tongue. “Not so fast. You going to change your statement?”

“Perhaps.”

“I need a promise.”

“They come cheap. What if I gave you one, then broke it?”

“I’d bear it in mind. For when I get out. I’ll have some scores to settle then. You wouldn’t want to be one of them.” He took another gulp of tea and eyed me knowingly. “What you said on the telly would be good enough.”

And what I’d said on the television had been truer than I’d realized at the time. To resist the conclusion was to cling stubbornly to a memory every fresh discovery showed up as a lie. And stubbornness was a luxury I couldn’t afford. He was going to get out. He knew it. So did I. There would be other settlements-other surrenders-more painful than this one. “All right. I’ll make a fresh statement. Along the same lines as my interview on Benefit of the Doubt. You have my word.”

He chuckled. “The word of a gentleman?”

“If it amuses you to say so.”

“Yeh. It does. But, then, the whole thing’s a bit of a joke, ain’t it? All that effort-all that closing of ranks-to get me put away. And the real murderer turns out to be one of your own. I’ve heard of keeping it in the family, but-”

“Who was Cassidy’s informant?”

“Ain’t it obvious?”

“Not to me.”

“I’m only entitled to a couple of visits a month, mate. Why d’you think I’d waste one on you?”

“Because Sarwate advised you it was-”

“Sarwate? I don’t take orders from some-” He broke off and smiled grimly. “Truth is, I got visits to spare. The missus don’t come to see me no more. Says it’s bad for the kids. But that’s bullshit.”

“Why doesn’t she come, then?”

“Because she’s got somebody else. Simple as that. Can’t blame her, really. I mean, twenty years is a long time, ain’t it? Must have come as a bit of a shock to hear I was going to be out in less than four. Like I say, I can’t blame her. Leastways, I wouldn’t. If it had been anybody else but Vince Cassidy.”

“You’re saying…”

“My wife tipped off Vince. Nobody else it could be. Sarwate told her about Bryant. She told Vince. And Vince scarpered. What else could he do? Hang around till the police came for him, then explain he helped have me sent down just so he and Carol could…” He shook his head. “Don’t think so, do you?”

“Why didn’t you say this at your trial?”

“Didn’t know, did I? Not then. Carol talked me into believing he’d done it to get the Drugs Squad to drop some charges against him. But I’ve heard since he was having it away with her long before…” He swirled the tea glumly in his cup and drained it. “Should have guessed. She was always thick with that tart Vince had for a sister.”

Then it came to me. The girl on the walkway outside Sharon Peters’ flat. The faint but mutual recognition. We’d seen each other on the same videotape. Carol Naylor and me. Carol Naylor, calling on Vince Cassidy’s sister. She’d tipped him off. There was treachery everywhere. Even, perhaps especially, for Shaun Naylor.

“You look more shocked than I was at the time, mate. Not the answer you was expecting?”

“Not exactly.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. But it’s the oldest story in the book.”

“You’re certain of this?”

“Oh yeh. I’m certain.”

“And Bledlow? Why should he have testified against you?”

Naylor shrugged. “Christ knows. He hated my guts, but… maybe he’d have done some deal even if he hadn’t. He got a light sentence, y’know. Must have thought he’d played it real sweet. Funny how it goes, ain’t it? If he’d kept his mouth shut and copped the usual, he wouldn’t have been out in time to get his head blown off in that bullion raid. I have a laugh about that sometimes.”

The trail ended here, I suddenly realized. The mystery of Vincent Cassidy’s motive-and his foreknowledge-dissolved into the sordid normality of adultery and deceit. And the enigma of Louise Paxton vanished with it. I hadn’t found what Bella wanted. Instead, at every turn, I’d been met by something much less palatable: the truth; the whole unquenchable insistent truth.

“What you going to do now?”

“Alter my statement. As promised. I’ll have to tell the police about Cassidy and your wife, of course.”

“Be my guest. They probably already know. Probably just said they blamed you. To frighten you off. Sounds like their style.”

“You may be right.”

“What about this digging around Sarwate said you been doing? Going on with that?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s nowhere left to dig.”

“Meaning you’ll have to admit Bryant did the murders?”

“Oh, I’ll leave that to the proper authorities. Time I dropped out of the picture, I think.”

“You’re lucky you can,” he said, apparently without rancour.

“Quite.” I pushed my chair back and stood up. “Well, I must be going. Thank you… for seeing me.”

He made no move, merely raised his eyes fractionally to meet mine. “No problem.”

“I’m sorry… about your wife.”

“Not half as sorry as you are I didn’t do it, I bet. Galling, ain’t it?”

He was smiling now, already savouring the foretaste of his ultimate victory, already planning the humiliation he’d heap on those who’d wronged him. I should have counted myself lucky to face mine behind closed doors, with ample warning; to be baited by this loathsome man to the point where I could tell myself he didn’t deserve to hear the apology he was owed. But I didn’t feel lucky at all. Only eager beyond reason to be out of his sight.

“This guy Bryant…” he began, his smile fading into a thoughtful frown.

“What about him?”

Several silent seconds passed as Naylor looked up at me. Then he said: “Nothing. It don’t matter.”

“Very well. I-”

“Best be on your way, eh?” The smile returned as he raised the cigarette to his lips.

“Goodbye, Mr. Naylor,” I said through gritted teeth. I waited for him to respond, but all I got was a cool stare through a veil of smoke. Then I turned and walked slowly towards the exit, catching the eye of one of the prison officers as I passed their desk.

“Leaving so soon, sir?”

“Yes.”

But it didn’t seem soon to me. Steeling myself not to glance back at Naylor as I waited for the door to be unlocked, it seemed, in fact, all too late.

Sitting in the passenger lounge on the car ferry back to Portsmouth an hour later, I confronted and took the decisions I could no longer delay. Whatever Bella might say, this was the end. She’d be outraged as soon as she heard I’d changed my statement, so I might as well cut my losses and tell her I wouldn’t be doing her bidding from now on. She’d probably retaliate by giving her vote to Adrian, unless I could persuade her I really had done all she could expect of me. And even then… But it couldn’t be helped. I’d plead my case as forcefully as I was able. In the end, though, it wasn’t up to me. My visit to Naylor had made me almost glad of that. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be involved any more, whatever the cost.

Determined to act on my decision at once, I telephoned Bella that evening. She seemed irritated I’d made contact and insisted on calling me back later, “when it’ll be easier to talk.” This turned out to be near midnight, one of her most alert and active hours. On other occasions, she might have found me sluggish and slow-thinking. But on this occasion I was ready for her.

“I have to see you straightaway, Bella. There’s been a development.”

“What sort of development?”

“I can’t discuss it over the phone. We have to meet.”

“Well, I can’t come to England at the moment.”

“Then I’ll come to you.”

“No. Things are fraught enough here without you turning up out of the blue. Keith’s in no mood to entertain unexpected guests.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Let me think,” she snapped. A few moments passed. Then she said: “We could meet in Bordeaux.”

“All right. But how does that-”

“Get a flight out on Tuesday. I’ll drive up the same day. A shopping trip with an overnight stay won’t sound suspicious to Keith. I’ve done it before. I’ll stay at the Burdigala, as usual. You’d better stay somewhere else. Meet me in the hotel bar at six o’clock.”

“OK. I’ll be there.”

“And, Robin-”

“Yes?”

“This had better be worth it.”

My absences from the office had become so conspicuous and commented on that I gave no warning of the next one. Monday elapsed with merciful swiftness, Adrian proving as reticent about his trip to Sydney as I was forced to be about my tour of East Anglian willow plantations. The board meeting was ten days away, its imminence spreading apprehensiveness and suspicion among the entire staff, let alone my siblings. Our futures are always in the balance, of course. But usually we manage to ignore the fact. At Timariot & Small, during the last week of October, that simply wasn’t possible. As for the consternation my phone call to Liz from Gatwick on Tuesday morning was likely to cause, I’d ceased by then to give a damn.

The Hotel Burdigala was a stylish grand luxe establishment close to the fashionable stores and restaurants in the centre of Bordeaux. Bella always insisted on the best, which the soulless low-rise joint I’d booked into out at the airport certainly wasn’t. But her standards had slipped in one respect at least. This time, she didn’t keep me waiting. Or guessing long about her response when I told her what I meant to do-and why.

“So, you’re giving up on me, Robin.”

“I don’t have any choice.”

“That’s ridiculous. I don’t accept we’ve exhausted all the possibilities yet.”

“I’ve exhausted them. And myself in the process. Naylor was set up. Deservedly so, you could say. But that’s supposed to be the acid test of justice, isn’t it? Doing right by the innocent, even when you can’t stand the sight of them.”

“And Paul?”

“Is facing up to what he did. I suggest you find the decency to do the same.”

She might have bristled at that. Instead, she treated me to a soulful stare. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Robin. This business is tearing Keith apart. And our marriage with it.”

“I’m sorry, Bella. That’s not my problem. You have my sympathy, but…”

“Not your help?”

“I’ve done all I can.”

“I don’t agree.”

“Meaning you’ll break your promise and vote with Adrian?”

“I didn’t say so.” She lit a cigarette, her hand shaking faintly as she did so. Was she really upset? I wondered. Or just seeking another route round my defences? “Won’t you reconsider? I genuinely believe Paul’s made all this up. There has to be some way of-”

“For God’s sake!” I’d spoken loudly enough to turn heads elsewhere in the bar. Now I leant forward across the table and softened my tone. “I’ve spoken to everyone who knew him three years ago. I’ve been everywhere he went. And some places he never went. I’ve tried everything. And ended up where I knew I would all along. I don’t want him to have done it. I wish he hadn’t done it. But he did. And you have to accept it.”

She raised her left hand to her face and covered her mouth, her thumb pressing against one cheekbone, her forefinger against the other. Her engagement ring glittered in the lamplight. Smoke climbed in a gentle plume from the cigarette in her right hand. And in her eyes there was such brilliantly simulated agony that I could almost have believed it was what she truly felt. But when she took her hand away, her mouth was set in a firm determined line. “I have to think of myself now, Robin. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“I’ve always understood that.”

“I have to prepare for an independent future.”

“You’ll ditch Keith, then?”

“It’s not a question of ditching. It’s a matter of necessity.” She saw me raise my eyebrows in doubt, but carried on unabashed. “And it’s not the only one. I shan’t vote with Adrian. I’ll vote with you. But we’ll lose.”

“What do you mean?”

“Adrian’s made me an offer, you see. One that’s too good to refuse. Especially now.”

“What offer?”

“He’s willing to buy five thousand of my shares. At a substantial premium over the Bushranger price.”

I almost smiled in spite of myself. And so, I think, did Bella. Five thousand shares would exactly invert the voting ratio, giving Adrian a 52 1/2 per cent majority in favour of acceptance. Bella would vote on the losing side, but end up even better off than if the offer had gone through unopposed. She’d make a fool of me and Adrian. And then she’d walk away with the money she needed to rid herself of a husband who was about to become an embarrassment to her. Farewell, Timariot & Small. Adieu L’Hivernance. They’d been pleasant enough while they lasted. But Bella had decided it was time to leave. And time for them to go.

We walked out into the mild Bordelaise dusk. Bella looked and sounded genuinely sorry for me as she stood beside me in front of the hotel. But her sorrow came cheaper than her vote. Much cheaper. “I booked a table for two at Le Chapon Fin,” she said. “It’s an excellent restaurant.”

“You’ll have to dine alone. I know I shall prefer to.” It wasn’t meant as bitterly as it may have been taken. But I hadn’t the energy to pull my punches, even the unintentional ones.

“As you please,” said Bella. “I suppose it’s an arrangement I may have to get used to.”

“Not for long, if I know anything about it.”

She frowned slightly, as if struggling to construct an explanation of her motives. I thought I understood them well enough already. And the task was an unfamiliar one for her. With a toss of the head, she abandoned it. “What will you do, Robin?” she asked with amiable curiosity. “Go back to Brussels?”

“Which you said I should never have left? I don’t think so. There’s such a thing as too much security.”

“What, then?”

“I’ll resign from the company, of course. Before Harvey McGraw gets a chance to fire me. Then, well, I don’t know. I’m a free agent. I’ll have three hundred thousand pounds burning a hole in my pocket thanks to you and Adrian. I think I may do some travelling. See the world. Get away from it all. Get a very long way away-before friend Naylor comes out of prison.”

“And Paul goes in?”

“That too, of course.” I raised a hand as a taxi pulled into the hotel lay-by. The driver nodded and drew up beside me. “That too.”

“Good luck,” said Bella.

“I’d wish you the same,” I responded, “but the words might stick in my throat. Besides, you’ve never needed luck to get what you want, have you? I don’t suppose that’s about to change.”

“But it is,” she said, so softly I only half-heard the words as I climbed into the taxi. “Believe me, it is.”

I flew home to England the following morning and was back in the office before the end of the day, dodging Simon’s ever more frantic questions and acting dumb for Adrian’s benefit. He’d made it known in my absence that McGraw had refused to budge on the offer price. This didn’t surprise me, but it worried Simon and Jennifer considerably, since Adrian had said nothing to them about his alternative method of winning the board over. Accordingly, I said nothing either, preferring to let matters take their course. A letter from Bella reached me before the end of the week, appointing me her proxy for the meeting. But it was the key to an empty cage, as Adrian’s smug cat-who’s-dined-on-a-canary expression confirmed. The game was up. But both of us meant to play it to the end.

I contacted Inspector Joyce around the same time and made an appointment to see him in Worcester the day before the board meeting for the purposes of making a new and revised statement about my encounter with Louise Paxton on 17 July 1990. Our telephone conversation, like my exchanges with Adrian, embraced a fair amount of shadow-boxing, since we were both aware how big a climb-down this represented. In an attempt to preserve some self-respect, I put it to him that Naylor’s wife might be the person who’d tipped off Vince Cassidy. And something in his tight-lipped demurral told me Naylor had guessed right. They’d known all along.

I turned to Sarah, as so often before, for sympathy and advice. She was naturally curious about the sour and sudden end my enquiries on Bella’s behalf had come to and suggested we meet at Sapperton, where she had to go on Sunday to do some “clearing out” at The Old Parsonage.

It was the last day of October, mild, dank and breathlessly still. I stopped at the cemetery on my way into the village and visited Rowena’s grave for the first time. It stood beside her mother’s, with fresh flowers in both urns, matching headstones and echoing inscriptions. I remembered Louise’s well enough: First Known When Lost. But now the words seemed dense with bitter unintended irony. Which only heightened the poignancy of the phrase of Thomas’s Sarah had found to commemorate her sister.

ROWENA CLAUDETTE BRYANT,

NÉE PAXTON

23 MAY 1971-17 JUNE 1993

THE SUN USED TO SHINE

In my mind, I was on Hergest Ridge again, turning slowly, like a teetotum about to fall. Take all, half or nothing. The chances were always as slender, the mathematics of unpredictability as unyielding. I walked back to the gate, my shoes crunching in the gravel, an illusion of some fainter step behind me garlanding itself around the surrounding silence. The wrought-iron railings of the gate met my hand as the balustrade of the bridge must have met Rowena’s. For an instant, I could see the abyss and sense its appeal, its strange gaping allure. To jump. And leave it all behind. But I couldn’t. There was only the ground beneath my feet. Only the close grey sky above my head. Only the future to face.

And Sarah, of course. She was the one among us who seemed the most resilient as well as the most perceptive. She didn’t ignore reality or buckle under it. She defied it to do its worst, then retaliated by leading a normal well-balanced life. Not for her Rowena’s despair or Sir Keith’s refusal to recognize the truth or even Bella’s eagerness to subvert it. I knew I could rely on Sarah to do what had to be done. I knew I could look to her for answers as well as questions.

The “clearing out” she’d mentioned on the phone turned out to be rather more than that. She was removing all the family’s personal possessions prior to the arrival of tenants on a six-month lease. As she explained, Sir Keith had only kept the place as a weekend retreat for her and Rowena, then for Rowena and Paul. They had no use for it now. It was time to close another chapter.

We went down to the Daneway Inn for lunch and sat outside, scarfed and sweatered against the chill. I described my trips to Cambridge, Albany and Bordeaux. I left nothing out, reckoning Sarah if anyone deserved to hear it all. After the reappraisal she’d been forced to make of her mother’s character, the extent of her stepmother’s selfishness was no big deal. Besides, Bella’s desertion of her father was something Sarah had already anticipated.

“The sooner she goes the better. Perhaps then Daddy will be able to come to terms with what’s happened.”

“You think he will?”

“Eventually. There’s still quite a lot of time for all of us to prepare ourselves.”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“I’m trying to. So’s Paul, I suppose.”

“Have you seen him recently?”

“No. I have nothing to say to him. But I met Martin Hill the other day. He’d been round to see Paul.”

“Did he say how he seemed?”

“Yes. Martin was expecting some histrionics, I think. But instead he got what you got. This immense chilling calm. Paul’s reading the Bible, apparently. I don’t mean he’s dipping into it. I mean he’s reading it from cover to cover, memorizing whole chunks. Can you believe it? He sits in that house, with Rowena’s possessions-Rowena’s memories-thick about him, reading the Bible. All day every day as far as I know.”

I shook my head, admitting my unwillingness as well as my inability to guess the state of his mind. I’d start feeling sorry for him, I knew, if I tried to imagine his plight. And I didn’t want to feel anything for him, even contempt. I didn’t want to share Naylor’s innocence or Paul’s guilt. I didn’t want to rail against an injustice or rejoice at its correction. All I craved now was what I could only have had if I’d read the newspaper articles and watched the television reports back in July 1990-and said absolutely nothing. Uninvolvement. Indifference. The stranger’s sanctuary. Which for better or worse I’d turned my back on.

“I came across something this morning that might interest you,” Sarah said suddenly, reaching into her handbag and taking out a pocket diary, which she laid on the table in front of me. The red leather cover had the year embossed on it in gold. 1990. “It’s Mummy’s. Returned by the police at some stage, I suppose. Daddy must have hung on to it, then forgotten he had it.”

I reached out and picked the diary up, turning it over in my hand. I wanted to open it at once, to rifle its secrets. But I needed Sarah’s permission to camouflage my desire. “May I?” I said.

“Of course. There’s not much. Mummy was no diarist. Just the usual. Hair appointments. Telephone numbers. Flight times. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Dinner dates. Deadlines. What you’d expect. The normal everyday fixtures of life.”

Already I was flicking through the pages, seeing her handwriting for the first time, sensing her fingers close to mine as she penned the entries. Sarah was right. There was nothing unusual. But even mundanity can be portentous. Wednesday March 7: Oscar’s Private View. Allinson Gallery, Cambridge, 6.30. I turned on. Friday March 16: Collect pictures from Allinson p.m. My gaze flicked to the next day. Saturday March 17: Take pictures to Kington. There it was, then. Confirmation of Sophie’s claim. According to her, that was the day Louise had met her “perfect stranger” on Hergest Ridge. “The weather was unusually warm for March. She wanted a breath of fresh air. You were there for the same reason, I suppose.” But it wasn’t me. It never had been.

“Look at the entry for April the fifth, though,” said Sarah. “That’s not quite so normal.”

Thursday April 5: Atascadero, 3.30. I frowned. “What does it mean?”

“It was just a hunch, but when I checked with directory enquiries and phoned the place, it turned out to be right. Atascadero is a café in Covent Garden. The one where Mummy met Paul to give him his marching orders.”

“So this corroborates his confession.”

“Yes. I suppose I shall have to bring it to the attention of the police. But there’s something else. Something much more significant to my mind, though I doubt they’ll agree.”

“What?”

“Turn to the week of her death.”

I leafed through to the week containing 17 July. There was only one entry. An Air France flight number and departure time for the morning of Monday 16 July. Nothing else. But why should there be? By 18 July, she was dead. “What of it?” I said.

“Turn on.”

I did so. But there were only blank weeks, their days and dates printed on empty uncreased pages. No trips. No appointments. No aides-mémoires. Nothing.

“Don’t you see? There should be something. I don’t know. A dental check-up. A hotel booking. Some trivial commitment. But there isn’t a single one. It’s as if-”

“She knew she was going to die.”

“I remember Rowena saying that. I remember telling her not to be so absurd. And now there it is, in Mummy’s handwriting. A full stop. An end. A void.”

“That she chose to step into.”

“But she can’t have done, can she? I mean, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“It could simply have been a precaution,” I suggested. “She might have refrained from putting her plans for the rest of the summer down on paper in case your father got hold of the diary and deduced from the entries that she was planning to leave him.”

“Wouldn’t a total blank look even more suspicious?”

“I suppose it might, but… what other explanation can there be?” I gazed across at Sarah and saw my own incomprehension reflected in her face. There was never going to be an answer. There never could be. Rowena had known as much without the need of a diary to prove it. Her mother’s life had reached a turning point. And become her death.