For Death Comes Softly

Eleven

I woke up the next morning half delirious. My body was glowing. We had made love through most of the night. And the man I was so passionate about had asked me to marry him.

Of course I had said yes. It was a dream come true, wasn’t it? I should have been ecstatically happy. And so I was — almost. I knew that all I had to do was to put the past resolutely behind me, and my future was assured.

Robin’s arms were wrapped around me as usual. It was only just after six, but I still had a job to do, a job of such gravity that even this wonderful moment in my life could not entirely overshadow it. I extricated myself as carefully as possible, but he woke at once as I had known that he would. I had already learned that he was a light sleeper.

He smiled at me lazily. ‘Leaving me already, are you?’ he enquired.

I felt that now familiar heart-leaping sensation. I was head over heels in love, there was no doubt about it.

‘Only temporarily,’ I said. ‘You pledged yourself to a lifelong contract last night. Remember?’

‘Oh yes. I remember. I’m just glad you do.’

I sat down on the bed again, still naked, and gave him one last lingering kiss. He took my hand and put it on his erection.

‘You’re insatiable,’ I said.

‘Only with you. Come back to bed.’

I could feel the heat of him, sense the pleasure again. With a great effort of will I backed off and headed for the bathroom.

‘Later,’ I said. ‘I’ve still got this nightmare of a case to sort out.’

I was still wearing the engagement ring, but to my shame I slipped it off my finger and into my pocket just before I arrived at Kingswood. My affair with Robin might be common knowledge by now, but I was determined to keep our engagement secret for as long as possible. I knew that was wrong really, but I could so clearly imagine the banter. ‘Watch out, Rosie, his intendeds don’t last long.’ And somehow, to begin with, I did not want to share the magic with anyone.

In spite of my work pressure things seemed to get better and better between Robin and I — who knows maybe it was partly because of it, we were not together much. The magic not only seemed to hold, it increased.

He made few demands on my time but did push for me to take a Sunday off to meet his mother. I must confess it wasn’t only my workload which made me stall. Meeting your future mother-in-law is always going to be a little daunting — when you are a thirty-five-year-old cop and you’re marrying a man like Robin Davey, the prospect is quite overwhelming.

Robin’s father had died when he was thirteen and his brother James just eleven. Their mother, Maude, remarried two years later — an Exmoor farmer called Roger Croft-Maple — and that frightened the life out of me too. There is something about double-barrelled names which has always thrown me off my guard.

The Croft-Maples farmed upwards of 1000 acres, much of it the wildest part of the moor between Simonsbath and the sea. Robin wanted to take me there for Sunday lunch where we would be joined by brother James, a painter, who lived in a converted barn on the farm.

‘I’ve told Mother all about you and if she doesn’t meet you soon she’ll go potty,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what she’s like.’

‘No I don’t,’ I said. ‘And I wish you’d tell me — at least I might be better prepared.’

‘I have told you, she defies description,’ he said unhelpfully. And that made me all the more nervous.

Ultimately, just over three weeks after Robin had proposed I caved in. Even though at the time I was going in to the nick every day of the week including weekends, even if only for a few hours, Sunday lunch was duly agreed upon, for the first Sunday in November, which turned out to be a thoroughly awful cold, wet and windy day. We compromised on the arrangements — I got to Kingswood just after seven and spent three hours or so at my desk satisfying myself that the Stephen Jeffries investigation would be able to proceed for the rest of the day without my presence. Robin picked me up in the black BMW he now kept in Bristol just before 10.30, and we ploughed down the motorway through a continuous heavy downpour in terrible visibility which grew even worse when we turned off across the moor, but we still arrived at Northgate Farm in time for lunch — plenty of time as it happened.

Maude Croft-Maple was not at all what I had expected. I knew that she was seventy-seven years old and that she was Robin’s mother. That was about all I knew — and from it I had conjured up a stereotyped image of a blue-rinsed aristocratic lady with a face like a horse, an accent you could cut yourself on and a penchant for well-tailored tweed suits and sensible shoes.

My first sight of Maude knocked me sideways. In a sheep pen just off the lane which led to the house a skinny young man, his hair and clothes soaked by the rain which continued to fall relentlessly, appeared to be losing the battle to hoist a reluctant ewe into a sheep dip. As Robin pulled the BMW to a halt, across the yard, determinedly splashing through the puddles, a strapping six-foot-plus farmworker of undetermined age — wearing an Australian bush hat, a full-length riding Barbour and mud-encrusted Wellington boots — waved a disinterested greeting at us and proceeded to berate the skinny young man.

‘For God’s sake, Colin lad, get a hold of the bitch, can’t you.’

The voice was the first surprise — the accent was broad flat Yorkshire, and the speaker was undoubtedly a woman, who with smooth agility half-vaulted half-climbed the fence to the sheep pen, unceremoniously grabbed the ewe at both ends and, with Colin only going through the motions of helping, tossed the struggling beast into the dip.

I got out of the car and stood by it staring. I was not wearing a coat but I hardly noticed the rain. The job done the woman turned towards us.

‘Sorry ’bout that,’ she said. ‘Half the farm’s down with flu. We’re all behind. Don’t normally do this kind of work on a Sunday.’

Without apparent effort she propelled herself over the fence once again and walked towards us. Her face broke into a wide smile. I was mesmerised. It was Robin’s smile.

‘You must be Rose,’ she said. ‘I’m Maude. Welcome to Northgate. Lunch in an hour. Roger’s not back from church yet. James is on his way. Right. Let’s get a drink, shall we?’

Without giving either of us chance to speak she headed for the house, gesturing for us to follow. I glanced at Robin in amazement. He had been quietly watching his mother’s performance and my reaction. He came to my side to offer me the protection of the multi-coloured golfing umbrella he always kept in his car. His lips were twitching at the corners and he looked quite smug.

‘I thought you said she was seventy-seven,’ I whispered, still getting used to the spectacle of a fence-vaulting future mother-in-law.

‘She is,’ he said into my ear. ‘You wait. You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

Maude took us through the back door into the kitchen. The floor was slate-tiled and higgledy-piggledy — in common I was later to discover, with the whole house, which did not seem to have a straight line anywhere. The smell of roast beef wafted enticingly from a big cream Aga.

‘Take a pew,’ invited Maude, waving vaguely at an ill-assorted selection of wooden chairs arranged haphazardly around a huge kitchen table.

We obediently sat while she threw off her bush hat — flamboyantly tossing it at a hook on the wall in a manner vaguely reminiscent of James Bond. An abundance of blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders. I stared. At her age the colour had to come out of a bottle, surely, but it was pretty damn impressive nonetheless.

She kicked off her boots and removed the dripping wet waxed coat. Underneath she was wearing a cream cashmere sweater and tan slacks. She slipped her stockinged feet into a pair of black suede loafers and looked every bit ready for lunch at Claridges, let alone in an Exmoor farmhouse. The transformation was remarkable. I studied her face. Her skin was tanned and weathered but remarkably unlined. Age had been kind to her. I could detect no sign of make-up, yet she would have passed for a good fifteen years less than her years. She was a big, big woman, built like a stevedore. She had shoulders like a man, but her waist tapered nicely and her legs were long and slim. In spite of her size she was unmistakably feminine.

Robin was staring at her with undisguised admiration, and I didn’t blame him. ‘Meet mother,’ he said laconically, leaning back in his chair.

‘We’ve met, you fool,’ said Maude, and then to me: ‘You’re a brave woman to marry a Davey.’

She swiftly produced a bottle of champagne from a fridge in the corner and five crystal glasses from an old pine dresser. To me she said, with Robin’s smile again: ‘Congratulations and welcome.’ Then she turned to Robin. ‘Well done, lad,’ she told him.

Robin grinned hugely. I didn’t think I had ever seen him look quite so happy.

As if on cue Roger Croft-Maple arrived just in time to share the champagne. He turned out to be a benign charmer of a man a couple of years younger than his wife, who seemed to be just as unreservedly proud of Maude as was Robin. Minutes later James Davey arrived, and he so strongly resembled his elder brother that he could have been Robin’s twin. But I realised quickly that the resemblance ended with their looks. James, who had never married, was an artist and a dreamer, with none of Robin’s drive, and, I suspected, not a great deal of his energy. Like his brother, he was a charmer though.

Without ceremony dishes of vegetables, and ultimately a huge sirloin of beef on the bone were loaded onto the table, and as Roger carved the meat into thickly succulent pink slices I glanced appreciatively at Maude. ‘I’ll bet you’ve never stopped eating beef on the bone, even when it’s been banned,’ I remarked.

‘Got an arrangement with the butcher,’ she said in reply.

I bet you have, I thought.

‘Apparently the correct phraseology is to ask for a nice sirloin for the dog,’ grinned Roger.

Lunch was a pleasant and relaxed meal, washed down with a thoroughly decent claret. I couldn’t believe how at ease I felt. The conversation was light and unchallenging. It was a wonderful introduction to a new family, and as the meal progressed I learned more about Robin and his driving force than ever before.

‘He was just a boy when his father died, but he grew up straight away,’ said Maude. ‘He was only thirteen, yet he ran the place as much as I did from that time on. He was always so intense about Abri. That island is his life, you do know that, Rose, don’t you?’

Robin shifted uncomfortably in his chair in the way that sons and daughters of all ages invariably do when a parent talks about them. ‘Oh, mother,’ he said.

I ignored him. ‘Yes Maude, I do know,’ I said.

She nodded approvingly. ‘It was only a couple of years after Robin’s father died that I met Roger,’ she went on. ‘There’s not many of us get two chances to love, but I didn’t know what to do. I had two young sons and our home was an island in the Bristol Channel, and I didn’t see how I could build a new life with an Exmoor farmer. Robin did. He was sixteen. He insisted on leaving school to run Abri. He said it was all he had ever wanted to do anyway.

‘He told me to get on with my life. So I did. I married Roger and brought James here with me to live on Exmoor. James has never cared where he lived as long as he was free to paint — nor about anything much apart from painting. Right, James?’

Her younger son continued to munch contentedly, quite untroubled. ‘Aren’t you always right, mother?’ he responded through a mouthful of beef.

She smiled at him warmly. Maude Croft-Maple, I was to learn, possessed the rare gift of being able to love people for what they were, and not what she wanted them to be.

‘I still adore Abri, and I go back whenever I can,’ she went on. ‘But it’s Robin’s island. Always has been, always will be.’

I was fascinated. Robin eventually managed to manoeuvre the conversation on to topics he obviously found considerably less embarrassing — sheep, the state of the nation, movies, almost anything that was not personal in fact — but what Maude had said about his early life did make me fret again about how Robin and I were actually going to manage the mechanics of marriage. Currently he was spending four days a week on Abri Island, and three with me in Bristol. It wasn’t ideal and I sometimes wondered how long Robin would be prepared to carry on like that, or even able to. I knew already that running Abri was a full-time occupation and that before me Robin had devoted all his energies to it. I also realised, listening to Maude, that I must overcome my reservations about the island and make time to return there with Robin, although I didn’t know when — not with the job I had on at the moment. And for the first time since I had arrived at Northgate my thoughts turned uneasily to missing Stephen Jeffries. But I told myself that I was not going to let any of my worries spoil this day, and made myself concentrate on the conversation around the table which was light, bright and witty, and the food, which was quite delicious.

After the meal was over Robin excused himself from the table, walked over to the kitchen window and peered out at the sky. The rain had finally stopped.

‘Reckon it’s brightening up, Roger,’ he remarked.

‘Right,’ said Roger, rising from his chair. ‘Coming, James?’

‘Absolutely,’ replied James, swiftly downing the last of his claret.

I gave Maude another questioning look.

‘Shooting,’ she said. ‘You can always tell a farmer. It’s a lovely day, let’s go out and kill something.’

I burst out laughing.

‘Really mother,’ said Robin, and then to me rather pointedly, ‘You’ll be all right, Rose.’

It was a statement more than a question. I glowered at him. It seemed fairly clear that he was deliberately leaving me with his mother, and he could not have been much more transparent.

‘Glass of port,’ invited Maude. ‘The fire’s lit in the drawing room.’

The drawing room was another big airy room, and the fireplace turned out to be a beautiful old inglenook. I sank into a battered armchair which reeked of faded luxury and seemed to mould itself to my backside, stretched out my legs, and began to sip what proved to be an excellent port from a glass which most people would have considered to be rather too large for the purpose. Not Maude Croft-Maple, however.

She stoked up the fire, piling on logs from a basket in the grate, and when she had finally arranged the fire to her satisfaction she lowered her not inconsiderable frame into the armchair next to me.

‘You like sex, I suppose,’ she said.

I nearly choked on her splendid port.

‘Well, you do, don’t you?’ she pressed.

‘Uh, yes I do,’ I responded eventually, and not a little uncertainly.

‘Well, that’s all right then,’ she said. ‘They’re all rams, the Davey men. Lad wouldn’t be wedding you unless you’d got that side sorted out, I don’t suppose.’

I was speechless. You have to remember that at home with the Hyacinth Bucket of Weston-super-Mare sex was never even mentioned. I was a divorcee, and my mother had once caught me at the age of fifteen with my sixteen-year-old boyfriend and no knickers, yet I sometimes suspected she still thought I was a virgin.

It therefore came as something of a shock to be sitting with my aged future mother-in-law discussing my sex life — or rather listening to her discussing it. More was to follow.

‘Robin’s father was hung like a donkey,’ she remarked conversationally. ‘Could never get enough of it, neither. Didn’t play away from home though. Neither will Robin as long as he gets his home comforts. They don’t cheat, not the Davey’s.’

‘Right,’ I said. And that was all I could manage.

‘James is the same. Never interested in settling down with one woman, waste of energy as far as he’s concerned. He breaks hearts but not promises.’

She sighed. ‘I still miss it, you know,’ she continued evenly. ‘Wonderful man, Roger, I’m a lucky woman. Love him to bits, and he loves me. But he’s never made my nerve ends jangle. Know what I mean?’

‘Yes, I know what you mean.’ I did too. I may not have done, not quite, before I had met her son.

‘Shock you does it, an old woman talking about sex?’

I gulped. ‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘Surprises me, I suppose.’

‘Surprises me too,’ she said, with a throaty laugh. ‘I remember years ago reading in a magazine about some old geezer who was asked what he wished he’d known when he was eighteen, and he said he wished he’d known that one day the sex urge would go away and what a relief it would be.’

She winked at me. You hardly ever see a woman wink. It was quite captivating.

‘Trouble is, I’m still waiting for that to happen. Don’t know whether to be glad or sorry. More port?’

Grateful that Robin was driving I accepted another huge glassful. Maude continued to talk about her family but somewhat to my relief the sex discussion seemed at an end.

At no stage during the day was Natasha Felks ever mentioned, although I remained all too aware that she had died only eight months before Robin proposed marriage to me. I assumed that Maude and the rest of the family did not talk about her in my presence, even if they were sometimes thinking about her, out of deference to my feelings.

By the time we left for home that evening I had come to the conclusion that Maude Croft-Maple was the most extraordinary person I had ever met in my life. Apart from Robin, of course.

It was during the week after my first meeting with Robin’s mother that the news of our engagement leaked out — as, of course, it was always going to. Never try to keep a secret in a police station. One night Robin and I were enjoying a late-night curry in a little Indian restaurant where I had never before met anyone I knew in the world when in walked Phyllis Jordan, to pick up a takeaway, she explained. I was wearing my diamond ring on my engagement finger and Phyllis spotted it at once. She was after all my favourite office manager because of her extraordinary attention to detail.

I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head, she stared so hard at my wedding finger. Then she looked up at us both enquiringly and I felt myself flush. I didn’t know whether Robin had guessed that I had not exactly been boasting about our engagement, nor if he had how he felt about it, but he obviously decided the time had come to take the initiative.

I introduced him to Phyllis merely by name, without any explanation, which, I suppose, was pretty cowardly of me.

‘Hi,’ said Robin casually. ‘I’m Rose’s fiancé.’

Well, I suppose I couldn’t blame him. If you’re going to marry a woman you can hardly remain incognito.

Phyllis’s eyes opened even wider than they were already. ‘Delighted to meet you,’ she said, and she couldn’t have looked much more pleased with herself if she’d just won the lottery, as with a knowing smile at me she left the restaurant clutching a bag full of what smelt like a particularly fierce selection of curries.

I knew the news would be around the entire nick in no time and I was not to be disappointed.

‘Congratulations, boss,’ said Peter Mellor, rather pointedly, as we retired to the nearby Green Dragon pub for a lunchtime pint the next day.

I grinned. ‘Phyllis didn’t waste much time then,’ I said as easily as I could manage.

‘Perhaps she didn’t know it was a secret,’ he responded. I studied him carefully. I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling my cold fish of a sergeant was a bit offended that I hadn’t confided in him.

‘It’s not,’ I said firmly, and added a bit of a half-fib. ‘Robin’s only just given me the ring, that’s all.’

‘Well, all the best anyway, boss,’ he said.

‘Thanks Peter,’ I said. ‘You must come and meet Robin, have a drink with us one night.’

Well, the word was out now, so I might as well hit the gossip head on.

‘That would be great, boss,’ Peter replied, but I fancied he was a little tight-lipped.

In common with everyone else Peter knew the history behind my relationship with Robin. He also knew that there was still a feeling of dissatisfaction down at the Devon and Cornwall over the way the Natasha Felks’ investigation had ended in limbo. I was well aware that the news that Robin Davey and I were to marry was probably already fuelling better gossip at nicks throughout the South West than had been enjoyed since the wife of a one-time Chief Constable had left him for a young Detective Sergeant twenty years her junior.

For myself I was so besotted and so caught up with all that was happening in my life that I further feared I may be neglecting my work. In some kind of perverse compensation for this I drove myself harder than ever, turning up at my desk earlier and earlier and putting in longer and longer hours. The relatively brief times away from the nick I spent either sleeping or making love. There was time for nothing else any more. During the four days a week that Robin was away on Abri Island I slept. When he was with me at Harbour Court our hunger for each other was such that we seemed to make love almost ceaselessly. But I was starting to leave for work sometimes as early as 5 a.m., and I often did not return until nine or ten at night. And although, unlike Simon, Robin never criticised my timekeeping nor the obsessive way I had of throwing myself into the job, he did tell me frequently that he didn’t know how I could go on like it, and that I was driving myself too hard.

I knew he was right, and did not really need him nor Peter Mellor nor anyone else to point out the error of my ways. Long hours are no substitute for total concentration. By the beginning of December Stephen Jeffries had been missing for three long months. The case was terribly serious now. I was consumed with guilt about the mistakes that I may already have made and the mistakes I feared I was still making. I drove my team as hard as I was driving myself. Anyone not in the office by 8.00 a.m. at the latest could expect a call from me at home or on their mobile. I demanded 101 per cent commitment from them, fully aware that, in spite of the hours spent at my desk, I was no longer really capable of that kind of commitment myself to anything or anyone except Robin Davey.

Certainly I had no time to worry about what may or may not have happened to Natasha Felks, I told myself. And while the Stephen Jeffries investigation haunted me, it was as if I lived merely for the little time I managed to spend with Robin. That was my only relief.

In practical terms we did everything we possibly could to find young Stephen, dead or alive. We combed every expanse of wasteland within miles of the Jeffries’ home and sent divers into every likely expanse of water. We did not find the body we were dreading, thank God, but neither did we find anything to take our investigations further. I interviewed Richard Jeffries over and over again. So did Mellor and just about everyone else. We got nowhere, and I still found it hard to believe that the man could be guilty and remain so plausible.

Nobody can work for ever without a break. But I was close to collapse before I gave in. Robin desperately wanted to take me to Abri. I had already realised that if I really wanted to marry the man, and by God I did, then I would have to overcome the qualms I still had about the island, but I continued to put off a visit there for as long as possible. I felt haunted by the place.

It was more than a month after our lunch with Robin’s mother at Northgate Farm when I finally allowed myself to be persuaded to take a weekend off. And I still didn’t really want to go back to Abri.

‘About bloody time too,’ said Peter Mellor.

Titmuss merely grunted. Our relationship had sunk to the level when if he could not find anything to actively criticise in my conduct then he appeared to prefer to remain silent.

I was past caring about Titmuss. I cared intensely about Stephen Jeffries, but I also knew that my tormented obsessive approach to his case was probably no longer helping. And so on the evening of the second Friday in December, in the kind of blustery weather you would expect at that time of year — I returned at last to the island which had already played such a fateful part in my life. We travelled by chartered helicopter, Robin’s usual form of transport there, which was also available to guests at an extra charge and in case of bad weather.

The pilot was a jovial black man called Eddie Brown whom Robin knew well from countless journeys between Abri and the mainland, and with whom he obviously had an easy rapport.

Somehow I had barely been aware during my previous visit just how romantic Abri was, but then, I had not been engaged to Robin Davey. This time, although I was aware that my palms were sweating as the helicopter touched down, I became engulfed by the romance of the place from the moment Robin and I began to walk together along the winding cliff-top path which led to Highpoint.

I had wondered what Mrs Cotley’s reaction to the news of our engagement would be, but I need not have been concerned. If she thought it was all indecently soon after Natasha’s death, then, in common with Robin’s family, she gave no sign, but merely congratulated the pair of us warmly and proceeded to fuss over us greatly. As soon as we had finished the meal she predictably insisted on serving us, we retired eagerly to bed. Robin had coolly told Mrs Cotley that we would not be needing the guest room she had prepared and it had been quite entertaining to watch her try not to show her disapproval. There was, however, absolutely no chance of Robin and I missing an opportunity to sleep together — and we both pretended not to notice the housekeeper’s pointed glance at the kitchen clock when we eventually emerged at noon the next day.

We tucked into coffee and eggs and Robin kept kicking me under the table. I felt a bit like a naughty schoolgirl. It was a good feeling.

Our lovemaking, in Robin’s home for the first time, had been perhaps even more fervent than usual. My body, at least, was content. It had been a little strange at first to return to the big double bed in which I had recovered from my ordeal on the Pencil and to share it now with the owner of Abri Island. But I made myself not think about either my experience on that dreadful rock or what happened to Natasha Felks there. And certainly with Robin’s ardent attentions to cope with, that was not too difficult a task. This man was everything I had ever dreamed of — passionate, charming, amusing and kind.

It was almost too good to be true. But it was true. And during that weekend, although the Stephen Jeffries case lurked at the back of my mind for much of the time, I started to feel truly happy and secure in my personal life at last.

On the Sunday afternoon Robin suggested that we walk along the east coast to a sheltered spot, surrounded now by rhododendron bushes, where a granite monument to great-great-great-great-grandfather Ernest John, the first Davey to own Abri, had been erected.

The wind was blowing a gale as usual, but here we were protected and the sun was shining quite warmly for December. Robin took off his coat and lay it on the ground for us, then he produced a silver hip flask.

‘Brandy,’ he said. ‘I wanted us to come here to raise a toast to the past and future of Abri.’

He sounded very solemn. I sensed that he had brought me to the monument for something more than that. For reasons that I could not quite explain, I felt very uneasy.

There was only a little brandy in the flask and we finished it off. Then he stood up and walked over to the monument. He remained looking at it for several seconds before turning back to me.

‘It’s time I told you something,’ he said abruptly. ‘I am leasing Abri to a Japanese consortium who are going to build a luxury holiday development. The deal is nearly done. I will no longer run the island although it will be part of the agreement that I’ll keep Highpoint House.’

I was astonished. More than that I was shocked. Robin had mentioned often enough his need to bring new money into Abri, and I had always known that he spent much of his time on the mainland involved in various financial negotiations — but he had never given me any indication that he had been planning something as momentous as this. Apart from any other considerations, I felt a little hurt that he had not confided in me earlier, although I didn’t say that. I did feel, though, that I had to protest.

‘It’s your family heritage, Robin,’ I began haltingly.

He smiled, interrupting me. ‘I’m leasing, not selling,’ he said.

I could see the strain in him and I wasn’t convinced. ‘But it’ll be like it’s not yours any more, you won’t be running it. You don’t really want the island to become an up-market holiday camp out of your control, do you? Abri’s yours. Your life. Always has been. Your mother told me that.’

He shrugged, and looked away out over the Bristol Channel which contrived around Abri, even in the winter, to acquire the aquamarine hues more commonly associated with the Mediterranean. When he replied his voice was heavy and grave.

‘Everything changes and moves on eventually,’ he said. ‘Abri is draining what little resources my family still has. It’s drained us for generations if the truth be told. We’ve got to the stage now where I cannot afford to keep the island going without major new investment. The way it is at the moment there is nothing to invest in. And no, I don’t want Abri turned into an up-market holiday camp — I certainly don’t.’

He paused and managed a wry smile. ‘But I hope it won’t be quite like that, and in any case I’ve looked at the alternatives,’ he went on. He mentioned the name of another Bristol Channel island, a little smaller than Abri and asked if I had been there. I told him I hadn’t, but I knew about the place.

‘It used to be family-owned like Abri, but the family just ran out of cash,’ he said. ‘In the end they sold for a song to a well-meaning benefactor who wanted to give the island to the nation. It seemed like the best thing that could possibly happen and the islanders even made a presentation to him in thanks. The benefactor handed the island over to the Heritage Trust, which is vaguely linked to the National Trust, and the future seemed assured. After all, the Heritage Trust is supposed to be a non-profit-making charity which preserves things, but what they actually did was to destroy a community, and with utter brutality. Within ten years all the islanders were evicted — families who had lived there for generations were sent packing and their homes turned into holiday accommodation. The Trust might preserve buildings and wildlife, but it’s never given a monkeys for people and the very heart and soul of that island were ripped out. I won’t let that happen to Abri or Abri’s people. Abri is their home, as it has been my home, it’s a proper living community which takes holiday guests.

‘Allegedly non-profit-making charities can sometimes be even more greedy and ruthless than the private sector, Rose, because they’re like religious orders, they bury their consciences in dictum. I was advised years ago that the best thing I could do in order to turn Abri around financially, even just to survive at all, would be to clear the island as a living community and turn it quite simply into a sole-purpose tourist resort and nature reserve staffed by itinerant workers. And that’s exactly what they’ve done on the Heritage Trust island. Place is manned almost entirely by folk running away from their pasts and with no futures to go to, who are prepared to work for a pittance. Quite frankly I just couldn’t do any of that, Rose. I’d rather step back, give the place over to what at the very least will be a lesser evil.’

‘But won’t your plan really be just as bad for the islanders?’ I asked. ‘Surely your Japanese consortium will want to do what you’ve been told to do.’

‘They can’t. That’s the beauty of leasing the place rather than selling. It’s a condition of the lease that the residents of Abri are guaranteed their homes for life and that employment will first be given to them before any outsiders are brought in. Going for the luxury end of the market makes that possible, you see. The Japanese consortium — AKEKO — are looking to the real top of the market, and they’re even more aware than the Americans of the value of something that is quaint. Abri is quaint all right, and so are its people.’

He managed a wry chuckle. ‘I really believe that the consortium does want to preserve all that. Did I ever tell you there used to be a nine-hole golf course at the far north of the island, built in the twenties by my grandfather?’

I shook my head.

‘AKEKO are going to rebuild the golf course too, which could be a wonderful attraction. Crazy about golf, the Japanese.’

I remained concerned. ‘But it will be the most terrible wrench for you, won’t it?’ I asked.

He took my hand and held it tightly.

‘Yes it will — although not nearly as much as it would be if I didn’t have you,’ he said. ‘And you know, apart from the hard business side of it, there is our marriage to consider. I can’t see you settling down to life on Abri, and we can’t go on leading the double life we are at the moment. That would be no kind of marriage. You are a copper, Rose, a top cop. How can you do your job even spending half your time on Abri? And I know you wouldn’t be happy to give it up, you have worked too hard at it. If you’re not happy then we couldn’t be happy together. Simple as that.’

I’d never been used to the men in my life showing any respect at all for my job, particularly not my ex-husband, and Robin was probably the most thoroughly masculine man I had ever met. A true male animal. Previously I had learned to live with the attitude often apparent also in those I worked with — that really they thought I should be home with a pinny on, nursing the baby, even if they never quite dared say so. Robin surprised and delighted me. Yet again, he also alarmed me.

‘It’s wonderful of you to think that way, Robin,’ I said. ‘But I know what your family and this island means to you. I don’t want to be even partially responsible for the Davey family losing its heritage, I really don’t.’

‘It’s not like that,’ he assured me quickly. ‘The lease is a long one, it had to be, twenty-five years. But when it’s over I have the option to take the island back. It’s the only way there is to preserve Abri for my children, to preserve the Davey heritage.’

He had taken me into uncomfortable territory. We hadn’t even really talked about having children, he just took it for granted that went with the territory. Indeed we had stopped taking precautions, and the thought of having Robin’s child thrilled me. I was also scared it just wouldn’t happen.

‘I’m nearly thirty-six,’ I reminded him not for the first time.

‘You’re thirty-five, don’t wish your life away,’ he scolded. ‘And stop worrying, it will happen, I know it will.’

I didn’t want to think about what it would do to him, to us, if it didn’t happen. I preferred to take the conversation back to the subject in hand.

‘Robin, you’re talking about getting Abri back in twenty-five years,’ I told him very seriously. ‘You’ll be seventy then. It’s you who is wishing your life away.’

He answered me equally seriously. ‘No, I’m not Rose. But I have to think of the future because there is no present for Abri as it is, nor for you and me, for our family. Abri is desperate for new resources, for new money, for disposable cash. All I have in the world is already tied up in the island. I’ll be bankrupt within five years if I don’t do something about it.’

He paused. I tried to lighten the moment.

‘But I’m only marrying you for your money,’ I said.

He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. Indeed the remark deserved no response. I was so in love with Robin Davey that I’d probably have wanted to marry him if he were on the streets selling the Big Issue, and, not being a man short on self-confidence, he, of course, knew that.

‘I have no choice, Rose,’ he said. ‘It is time to move forward, and that’s that. I’ve been having discussions with the Japanese for over a year. I didn’t want to tell you until I was pretty sure I had it sorted out. It was not an easy decision to make, but Ernest John here would do the same thing if he lived now, I’m sure of it.’

He came over then and squatted down again on the grass beside me, raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. No wonder I found the bloody man so irresistible. He was full of extraordinary gestures like that, that way of talking and behaving that seemed sometimes to be straight out of Jane Austen.

‘I want to be with you so much, Rose,’ he said. Then he grinned, looking suddenly as near to boyish as he could ever manage. ‘And I have a confession to make. I’ve seen a rather beautiful house in Clifton which I think could be our new home — if you like it too, of course.’

I found myself basking in his warmth. In the past I would not have allowed any man in my life to even attempt to make decisions for me. With Robin I didn’t mind at all. I actually quite liked it.

All I said was: ‘Are you quite, quite sure?’

He nodded.

‘Don’t forget that this island is associated with a lot of tragedy for me, and it will do no harm for me to distance myself from it a little,’ he said softly. ‘I lived here with my first wife and our son, and it was here that Natasha died. We’ll still have Highpoint to come to as often as we like, but a new start, a new life on the mainland, will be good for me, Rose. I am quite sure of that. I have plans to run a property business in Bristol, and meanwhile Abri will be earning money for itself and for us, instead of swallowing up what little I have left.’

Suddenly his voice hardened and he looked very determined. ‘I am not going to give up the Davey heritage, Rose, far from it,’ he said. ‘I am going to rebuild it for future generations.’