mind it black.’
Charlie glanced around again, glimpsing her existence, finding it wanting and dusty and faded. ‘OK.’
He followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table under the window, keeping her in his line of sight, but maintaining a safe distance while he watched her fumble with the kettle. ‘So, what do you do with yourself then? Are you working?’ he asked, as if they were old acquaintances who had just bumped into each other. He felt as banal as the question had sounded.
She poured water in the cups and shook her head. ‘No.’
‘What do you do with yourself then?’ he pressed as she put the cups onto saucers and placed the whole paraphernalia on a tray just to bring it the few yards to the table. Just like her mother would have done – anything to keep up appearances.
She put the tray down, immediately silencing the rattling china that had been so effectively serenading her anxiety. ‘I read a lot, walk, watch the world go by. Time passes – I don’t notice it much.’
He picked up his cup, its dainty fragility looking incongruous in his calloused hand. It almost made him smile. ‘I half expected to find Stella here.’
Rachel hovered, seemingly reluctant to pick up her own cup. He noticed that her hands were still trembling. She gave a wry smile and shook her head. ‘She would never come here. Lila scared her. She had too much life for Stella.’
That a woman long dead yet still so tangibly present had the ability to dismay the living in such an assiduous way scared him a little too. ‘You know I said that Amy thinks you’re dead? She thinks that our relationship is sad and romantic and that I’m tortured by unrequited love and grief.’ He laughed, the sound of it full of scorn. ‘I’ve never had the heart to put her straight. And neither should you – whatever happens she needs to be kept out of this.’
‘I suppose it’s better for her to think that she was left by someone who didn’t choose to go,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s going to be hard to stop her reading papers or watching the news. I can’t be responsible for that, but she’ll never find out from me.’
Charlie couldn’t help it. The bitterness of what Rachel had done had been burning a hole in his gut for years. That she could talk to him so calmly about it just felt like insult heaped upon injury. ‘Better than knowing that your own mother dumped you without a word? Yeah, I’d say so. Anything would be better than that,’ he said with potent bitterness because the truth of her words illustrated a threat that neither of them could control.
Lila’s kitchen clock ticked loudly, marking the moments that the ugliness of it all hung in the air between them. ‘Better than knowing why,’ she said finally.
He gripped the cup, almost crushing it in an effort not to hurl it at the wall and watch the jagged shards flail her as they fell. ‘What about me? I’m not a little girl who needs to be protected from life’s shit, Rachel,’ he hissed, watching her wince at the suppressed violence of his contained rage and not caring. ‘Don’t you think I deserve to know why?’
‘I didn’t love you; I didn’t want her. I made a mistake.’ Even though she closed her eyes when she said it, unable to look him in the eyes, her words sliced at him like a razor – sharp and sure. The extent of the damage would be delayed by the swiftness of the cut, but he would feel it and it would hit bone.
He stood, moved towards her slowly, every step an exercise in measured control. He felt drunk, surreal, and incapable of coherent thought.
Peter Haines stared down at the unconscious form of his wife and wondered if he loved her. Wondered if anyone could truly love a woman like Frances? She was admirable in many ways: cultured, elegant and formidable. Qualities quite desirable in a partner, but traits that could hardly be termed as lovable.
This was the first time he had ever observed her in a state of relaxation, albeit enforced. She looked different, not soft, just less determined than she normally did. It was a strange experience to see a woman you had shared a bed with – shared a life with – transformed into a stranger because of a bump on the head. Quite disturbing really.
Before this he had always felt proud of her as a wife. She represented him well, even though she could be a little strenuous in her opinions at times, even though her proprietary efficiency was a little forced. She was a good wife, faithful, but passionless. Her emotions ran cold and had set like stone, only ever emerging as grit-toothed sound bites, and only then when necessary to keep up appearances.
Children might have helped. However, they had never come along, and if he were honest, he wouldn’t have known what to do if they had. He wasn’t a man able to tolerate mess and chaos so maybe it had been for the best. He had no memory of being a child, couldn’t relate to what it was like at all. Even in his mother’s house, proudly populated with pictures of decreasingly younger versions of himself, he couldn’t make the connection, just felt slightly embarrassed by the tight-lipped, two-dimensional boy that he saw staring back at him from the photographs. Sometimes he was sure that he’d been born old.
Despite all that, the one thing he had never, ever anticipated was the prospect of being associated with scandal. Part of the reason that he had chosen Frances for a wife was because her background was good. Her family were a little odd, but of good pedigree, or so he had been led to believe. Never would he have contemplated that they could be capable of the level of depravity that was splashed all over the newspapers. It had come as a shock.
In some respects his other recent discovery had been a greater shock. When Valerie had died both he and Frances had been relieved – not only were they free of an unlikeable burden, they also stood to inherit a share of The Limes. Initially he had held out hope that Valerie had made a will, cutting out Rachel and favouring Frances above Stella. Typically, she had not.
He had assumed that the process of probate would be lengthy but at least straightforward. He’d been wrong. A complication had emerged already. Not only had Valerie not left a will, neither had William, and to top that, there was no evidence that William Porter was actually dead. When Peter had heard from the solicitor that no death certificate was in evidence he had been incredulous until he had discovered that there was no grave either. No funeral had taken place; no notice had been in the papers. William Porter had simply disappeared into the ether.
The only will that had ever decreed ownership of the house was that made by Stella’s birth mother. Technically William still owned the property. For Peter, it was a nightmare situation – one that was costing him eighty-five pounds an hour every time their solicitor even thought about resolving it. If just one of the bodies found had been William, it would have been far more simple. Distasteful, but simple.
Now that he thought about it, the whole thing had been a sham. In selecting him as a husband, Frances had achieved respectability and had managed to disguise herself and her family so that they couldn’t be recognised for what they were. He’d been duped, all his assumptions now proved wrong.
Stella, the single most ineffectual example of the human condition he’d ever encountered, had been someone to be pitied. Valerie, with all her apparent her pride in Frances, had been nothing but guise and guile, all designed to ensnare him and link him to a family of felons and sycophants. As for Rachel, he’d been fortunate enough to never have met her. From what he’d heard it had been a lucky escape.
He couldn’t even bear to look at Frances lying there seeming so peaceful and oblivious. She had nothing worse than a head
