Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

I heard nothing from Bella and assumed she didn’t know of the incident. There was really no reason why she should, unless Paul had decided to come clean. And even if he had, who was going to blame him for what he’d done? He had a child now as well as a wife to mourn. Just as Sir Keith had lost a grandchild along with a daughter. The grief had spread like a stain across three generations. And I couldn’t redeem or reduce it with a few broken bones.

I knew I’d hear from Bella eventually, of course. She’d be expecting me to report the outcome of my meeting with Sophie. But the longer that could be postponed the better. I felt as if I genuinely needed a spell of rest and recuperation before confronting her with whatever lies I decided to substitute for a truth even she would have found shocking. As for Sophie herself, each hour that passed made what we’d done seem not merely more remote but more unimaginable.

My dilemma hadn’t diminished by Friday morning, when Jennifer came to collect me and drive me home. Indeed, it was because of it that I jumped to a false conclusion when, halfway up the A3 towards Petersfield, she suddenly said: “Guess who was asking after you yesterday.”

“Bella?”

“No. Her stepdaughter. Sarah Paxton. She’d heard you were in hospital and-”

“How did she hear?”

“She didn’t say. Does it matter?”

It mattered a good deal. But for reasons I was in no position to explain. “Er… I suppose not.”

“Well, she seemed genuinely concerned about you. Quite touching really, in view of her recent bereavement and… well… how easy it would be for her to hold you at least partly to blame for her sister’s suicide.”

“As I’m sure she does.”

“You could be wrong. She’s going to look in on you at Greenhayes over the weekend, apparently. Check you’re all right. She said she was going to be in Hindhead anyway and it’d be no trouble, but, you know, it sounded to me as if she might be making a special trip. Just to see you. Very solicitous, I’d say. There isn’t something you want to tell me about the two of you, is there?”

“Nothing you want to hear, Jenny. Believe me.”

She arrived on Saturday afternoon. It was another in a succession of hot airless days. I was in the garden, dozing in a deckchair after too many cold beers, when I heard a car turn in from the lane. She must have guessed where I’d be, because, without pausing to try the doorbell, she walked straight round from the front of the house. I’d struggled to my feet by then and composed something close to a smile to greet her. But she wasn’t smiling. She stopped as soon as she saw me and gazed at me expressionlessly. Only then, after a few seconds of deliberation, did she come closer.

“Hello, Robin.” Still there was no smile. And even the formal kiss she’d normally have bestowed was banished. She was wearing a straw hat, dark glasses she showed no sign of removing, an outsize white shirt over pale blue trousers and sandals. And she was carrying a video cassette in her hand. I didn’t have to see the label on the cardboard case to know what it was.

“Hello, Sarah. I…”

“You look as if you’ve been through the mill.”

“A spot of bother at the factory. Did Jenny tell you how it happened?”

“She didn’t need to. Paul told me.”

“Ah. I see.”

“He’s been expecting to hear from the police. But I gather you’ve covered his tracks for him.”

“Well…” I shrugged. “I don’t think any useful purpose would have been served by bringing a complaint against him. Do you?”

“No. But it was good of you, even so.”

“Not really. Not after everything else.”

“Daddy doesn’t know. Nor Bella. There seemed no point telling them.”

“About me, you mean? Or about…”

“About you.” She stretched out her hand, offering the video to me. I had the strange impression that if I didn’t take it from her straightaway she’d drop it on the grass between us. I took it. “They know about the baby, of course. Daddy’s reacted badly. Paul too, I suppose. But he keeps his feelings bottled up. What happened with you… the loss of control… was unusual. Unprecedented in my experience.”

“I don’t blame him.”

“Neither do I. But… on his behalf… and for Rowena’s sake… thank you for not taking it further.”

Silence and distance crystallized in the still air. Her mouth didn’t so much as quiver. And what there might be in her eyes to reveal her real opinion of me I couldn’t see. “Would you… like a drink?”

“No. I can’t stay.”

“Not even for a few minutes?”

“What would be the point?”

“I don’t know. I just…”

“Why did you say those things to Seymour, Robin? I’d like to know that much at least. I really would.” Even if her face remained a mask, her voice had now, at last, betrayed a hint of emotion. “I mean, after making us think of you as a friend, after assuring us of your best intentions… After all that. Why?”

“What I said was true.”

“And that excuses everything, does it? That makes Rowena’s death worthwhile?”

“No. Of course it doesn’t.”

“What about Sophie? I gathered from Bella you’d undertaken to find out what she thought her few minutes of character assassination were likely to achieve. I can’t believe she pretends to have been speaking the truth.”

“She does, as a matter of fact.”

“I see.” Sarah sighed and gazed past me up at the hills behind the house, their wooded slopes shimmering in the heat. “Good old Sophie.”

“Sarah-” She looked round at me, daring me, I sensed, to make some attempt at mitigation or apology, almost craving the opportunity to reject whichever I offered. But I knew better than to try. Whatever blame attached to me for Rowena’s death I meant to accept. It was my secret act of mourning. But blame for something even worse than a despairing dive from Clifton Suspension Bridge hovered at the margins of my thoughts. Which Sarah might just be able to help me corner at last. “Sophie claims your mother told her a few weeks before her death that she was planning to leave your father.” No reaction. No response. Just the same blank grief-sapped stare. “You once told me something similar yourself. As a theory. As a suspicion you’d formed. Sophie seemed rather more definite.”

“Did she?”

“But she didn’t know who your mother was planning to leave your father for . Who the man in her life was. Nor did you, as I recall.”

“Why does there have to have been a man?”

“No reason, I suppose. Except… Lying in hospital most of this week’s given me time to think. And to remember. Ten days after the murders, I drove up to Kington with Bella. We had lunch with Henley Bantock. He told you about it. You said so when you wrote to me in Brussels. You’d been there the same day.”

“What of it?”

“So had somebody else. He nearly drove into Bella and me in Butterbur Lane. Did Henley mention him to you? He did to us.”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“Because the driver of the car was obviously extremely upset. He might have been… well, he could have been…”

“The man in Mummy’s life?”

“Well, he could, couldn’t he?”

“Yes. I suppose he could. So, who was he?”

“I don’t know. But it occurred to me you might. If I described him. As a friend or acquaintance of your mother. Of your father too, perhaps. A neighbour. A colleague. An art collector. Something like that. He was-let’s see-a chap in his fifties, with thick silver-grey hair. Round face. Chubby. Well, more flabby really. As if he’d lost weight recently. Of course, it was only-” I stopped. Sarah’s lips had parted in surprise. She plucked off her dark glasses and stared at me intently. “You know him?”