one of his political things.’
‘I’m not going up there for them. I’m going to London to spend time with you.’
‘And Dad?’
‘Yes, of course. He’s promised to take time out to be with us. He knows you’re having a bad time at the moment. That’s why he wrote you that letter.’
‘Not exactly a letter. Five lines. “I was sorry to hear about Barton. Here’s ten pounds. Buy yourself something at the shop.”’
‘He’s very busy, darling. He meant well.’
‘No, he didn’t. If he cared, he’d have come down here last weekend.’
‘He couldn’t. There was a conference he had to go to. You know that.’
‘I know that he doesn’t care about me. Or you. That’s what I know.’
‘That’s not true, Thomas.’
‘It is true. Spending all his time with Greta. Green-eyed Greta.’
‘She’s his personal assistant, Tom. And the fact that she’s got green eyes has got nothing to do with it. She’s very good at her job, and we must try to like her for your father’s sake.’
‘Everything is for his sake. Nothing is for ours,’ said Thomas, becoming visibly angry. He kicked his book to one side and went and stood at the top of the steps leading down to the drive.
Behind him he felt his mother approaching, but he did not turn his head even when she came to stand beside him. He fought to hold back the tears that were starting in his eyes and bunched his hands into hard fists.
Anne worried for her son as she stood beside him between the yews. He was so rigid and unbending as he fought to control emotions of anger and grief that threatened to overwhelm him. She thought of the old beech tree by the south gate broken by the great storm in January when the fisherman drowned in the bay. It had been too rigid, unlike the yews that swayed in the wind.
Peter had been here that night. With Greta. Driving Gracie Marsh down to the harbour. Anne didn’t like Greta. She had formed that opinion long before her son had found the woman trying on her clothes. She had seen Greta watching everyone, insinuating herself into their lives, but Anne had held her peace because Greta had done nothing wrong and it was clear that Peter needed her so much for his work.
Anne could tell that Greta had changed her accent, and she felt that the girl was watching her in order to imitate her. Sometimes it almost seemed as if Greta was trying to become her.
‘She’s not one of us,’ she had once caught herself saying to her husband in an unguarded moment, but she had accepted his retaliatory accusation of snobbery as just. Forgiveness was part of the code of manners by which Anne lived her life, and she had forced herself to accept Peter’s explanation for why Greta had tried on the dresses. She had money and Greta didn’t, and if she’d been nicer to her, then perhaps Greta would have felt able to ask to borrow a dress or two.
Thomas, of course, didn’t see it that way. It was ironic given all the efforts that Greta had made to get on with him. All those books she’d read about Suffolk. Anne didn’t know how she’d found time. It was as if something more had happened in her bedroom when Thomas found Greta trying on her clothes, but there was no point in asking her son. He’d found it difficult enough to tell her about the dresses.
‘Let’s not talk about Greta or your father, Tom. I know things aren’t easy at the moment with what’s happened to Barton, but you shouldn’t try to make them worse. You’re not the only one who misses Barton. Jane loved him and so did I. What we both need is a change of scenery. London’ll be good for us.’
There was a note of appeal in his mother’s voice that Thomas could not resist. He loved his mother and could not bear to make her anxious or distressed. That would lead to one of the terrible migraines that hurt her so badly. The long afternoons when his mother lay on her bed with her face covered by a flannel sighing with the pain were the worst days of his childhood. Afterward she would be weak for days, sitting in the rocking chair by the kitchen door in her dressing gown, drinking the cups of peppermint tea that Aunt Jane made for her in a special teapot.
‘Yes, Mum. I’m being silly. I’d love to go with you. I’ll go and get packed.’
‘Jane’s washed your shirts. They’re in the laundry room. And you’ll need to take your blazer for the theatre.’
‘The theatre? What are we going to see?’
‘Macbeth. At the Globe. I’ve got tickets for Thursday night. Just you and me.’
‘Macbeth! Oh, Mummy, I love you! It’s the one I’ve always wanted to see.’
Thomas ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and hurried to his room to get ready.
Anne smiled. What a strange boy he was! It was the first time in two weeks that she’d heard real happiness in his voice, and what was it that had caused this change? A tale of ghosts and bloody murder, treachery and treason.
They drove with the top of the Aston Martin down. It was a beautiful car that Anne had had since she was in her twenties. The garage in Flyte that had looked after her father’s Rolls-Royce did the same for the bright red sports car he had given her for her twenty-first birthday. Driving it made her feel young again. The world that flew by in a blur of fields and hedgerows seemed full of possibility. She was a fool to have shut herself and Thomas up in the house for so long.
Thomas also felt exhilarated. He loved to watch his mother drive. Her beautiful hands laced themselves around the spokes of the steering wheel, which was small, like in a racing car, as she sat back in her tan leather seat and allowed the wind to blow her brown hair over her shoulders. She was wearing a white summer dress with an open neck, and Thomas could see her favourite gold locket glinting in the sun where it lay heart-shaped on her breastbone. His father had given it to his mother on their wedding day, with a picture of them both shut inside.
On her finger Anne wore a blue, square-cut sapphire ring. The stone had been brought back from India by Thomas’s great-grandfather just before the First World War. There was a family rumour passed down through the generations that old Sir Stephen Sackville had stolen it from its native owner, who had then cursed him and his descendants, but no one believed the story. The jewel seemed so pure and magical and the portrait of Sir Stephen hanging in the drawing room at the House of the Four Winds was of a kindly old man, saddened by the early death of his daughter, Anne’s mother, in a riding accident. She had only been forty when she died, the same age that Thomas’s mother was now, and Thomas had often come into his mother’s bedroom to find her sitting at her dressing table gazing up at the portrait of her mother hanging on the wall above the fireplace.
‘I’m wearing the ring for you,’ said Anne, sensing her son’s attention to the sapphire. ‘I know it’s your favourite.’
‘Grandmother’s wearing it in the portrait, isn’t she?’ asked Thomas, who loved family history. ‘I was looking at it yesterday.’
‘Yes, she always wore it. Her father gave it to her when she was twenty-one. There’s that old story I told you about it. About where it came from in India. I’ve got a letter about it somewhere. I’ll have to dig it out. The sapphire’s so very beautiful. Wearing it makes me feel close to her. It’s silly, I know.’
