Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

“If there’s anything I can-”

“No, no. You’re right to get out of it. Go and enjoy yourself. And don’t worry about me while you’re at it.” She grinned gamely, as reluctant, it seemed to me, to admit her need of comfort as she was to acknowledge her own unspoken wish: that Paul should have let the truth die with Rowena. It was different now from when she’d come to me in Brussels. We were both older and wiser and sadder. Yet it was also the same. We represented to each other a link with Louise as she’d been that last day of her life. We embodied the failing hope that something could be salvaged from the wreckage of facts to ennoble her death. But in our sombre faces and subdued words we detected the same creeping awareness that nothing ever would be. “When did you say you’re leaving?”

“Friday.”

“Friday,” she repeated musingly, gazing past me to the dusk-shuttered window. “A lot will have happened by then.”

“You mean the hearing?”

She didn’t answer. And the distant look in her eyes deterred me from pressing her to. Besides, there seemed no need. What else could she mean?

We went down to the Cricketers for a drink as soon as it opened. Sarah’s periodic distraction became as pronounced as her occasional outbursts of gaiety. She talked about Rowena and her mother with rambling fondness, recalling childhood scenes and adolescent incidents. They’d been an ordinary affectionate family then, untouched by tragedy, unmarked by notoriety. “I didn’t see it coming, Robin. I never had a clue. I never felt the future coiling its tentacles around us. I just thought we’d go on in the same serenely happy way.” How I wished then I could have seized the chance Louise had given me of making sure they would. Even though I hadn’t known that’s what it was.

At half past seven, she said she ought to start back for Bristol. When I assured her she was welcome to stay at Greenhayes, her refusal took a long time to come. But I suppose we both knew she had to refuse. This was an end, not a beginning. This was a stepping apart, a turning away. Only the last lingering looks back remained.

“I’ll miss you,” she said, her breath clouding in the frosty air as we stood beside her car in the pool of yellow light cast from the windows of the pub. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone else who understands.”

“You must have better friends than me, Sarah.”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t think I have.”

“What about Rodney? Aren’t you going to make him a happy man one day soon?”

“No. Since you ask, I’m not.”

“Really? You almost make me wish-”

“Don’t say it.” She put her gloved hand to my mouth to stop me speaking, then smiled at the extravagance of the precaution. “Sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Saying goodbye?”

“Yes. I suppose that’s it.” She frowned. “Don’t let anything make you postpone your flight, will you?”

“Why should it?”

“No reason. It’s just… I think it’ll do you good to go. And I wouldn’t want newspaper talk about Mummy… or Daddy, come to that… to make you think you had to stay.”

“There’ll be some hard things said.”

“I know. But none of them will be your fault. So promise me you’ll leave on Friday. Whatever happens.”

“All right. It’s a promise.”

“Good.” She brightened. “And now you’d better kiss me. And let me wish you bon voyage .”

A few minutes later, I was standing at the side of the road, watching the lights of her car vanish from sight. She’d offered me a ride back to Greenhayes, of course, but I’d declined, preferring a solitary walk up the hill through the cold night air. The stars were scattered brightly across the sky, a sickle moon riding high and clear among them. “‘When first I came here I had hope,’” I recited under my breath as I went. “‘Hope for I knew not what.’” And now, just when I thought I might know… “‘I’m bound away for ever. Away somewhere, away for ever.’”

Wednesday the twenty-second of December. The clouds had rolled in from the west and it had been raining all morning, in London as well as Steep. There was the sheen of it on the pavement behind the trench-coated correspondent as he gave his report in front of the Law Courts in the Strand for the one o’clock television news. And there was the steely tap of it at the window behind me as I sat and listened to his words.

“Shaun Naylor will be released from prison later today following an hour-long hearing before Lord Justice Sir John Smedley at the Court of Appeal this morning. He was granted bail pending a full appeal next March against his convictions for the murders of Oscar Bantock and the rape and murder of Lady Louise Paxton in July nineteen ninety: the so-called Kington killings. The judge at his trial ten months later described him as “a depraved and dangerous individual” and recommended that he serve at least twenty years in prison. But Naylor has consistently protested his innocence since then and it was confirmed here in court this morning that a person identified only as Mr. A has confessed to the murders and that the police now believe he, not Naylor, carried out the killings. Naylor has always admitted having sexual intercourse with Lady Paxton on the night in question, but has denied rape. The implication of his release on bail is that the prosecution accepts all three convictions will be quashed at the full appeal. Until then, the person referred to as Mr. A cannot be charged with any offence. Lord Justice Smedley said the prospect of a fair trial would be prejudiced if the suspect was identified at this stage and urged the media to exercise restraint in the matter. Shaun Naylor’s wife, Carol, was not in court to hear the ruling. It is believed she is planning to rendezvous with her husband at an undisclosed address later today.”

So he was free. Or soon would be. What his wife would say to him about Vince Cassidy if and when they met “at an undisclosed address” I couldn’t imagine. And what Shaun planned to do when she’d said it I didn’t want to imagine. It wasn’t over for them. And it wasn’t over for Paul Bryant. Or Sarah. But, for me, it very nearly was. In two days’ time, I’d be flying away from all of it.

Jennifer entertained me to dinner that evening as her way of saying goodbye. Thursday, my last night in England, was earmarked for a drinking session with Simon, who I knew would be full of questions about Naylor’s release. But Jennifer was as yet unaware of the event, for which I was grateful. The less I had to talk about it, the easier it was to avoid thinking about it. Deflecting Jennifer’s suggestions of ways to patch things up between Adrian and me was child’s play by comparison. In the end, she agreed my absence in itself would probably do the trick. “Time’s a great healer,” she observed. And I refrained from pointing out that the example of Louise Paxton proved the exact reverse.

It was nearly midnight when I got back to Greenhayes. To say the sight of Bella’s BMW parked in front of the garage was a surprise would be a considerable understatement. As I pulled up behind it and climbed out of my car, the unlikely idea occurred to me that she’d decided I shouldn’t be allowed to leave without some parting words of advice. But the expression on her face when she opened the window of the BMW and gazed up at me suggested an altogether more serious purpose.

“God, I thought you were never coming back,” she said. And somehow the lack of reproachfulness in her voice heightened my concern.

“I’ve been at Jenny’s.”

“Yes. I guessed you were probably with her.”

“Then why didn’t you call round-or phone?”

“Because the fewer people who know what’s happened the better.”