Chris hadn’t thought of that. Why hadn’t Alice come home?
‘You told the papers you knew she was alive!’ This was another betrayal. Chris was out of her depth; nothing was going according to plan. She should have told Alice to come herself instead of being so intent on getting all the glory. Mrs Howland wouldn’t believe Alice was alive. She must get a lot of weirdos knocking on her door claiming to have seen her daughter.
‘Papers print what they like. Besides, I say different things on different days. Depends on my mood. Since Alice went, I get asked all the time how I am coping. I say whatever comes into my head.’ Mrs Howland clicked shut the cupboard with a gesture of finality.
Chris longed to stay in the bedroom, to lie on the bed and read one of the books and listen to the seagulls.
She had expected they would return to the living room. Perhaps they would have another cup of tea, but Mrs Howland stopped in the hallway.
It was time to go.
‘You didn’t have a coat, did you?’ She stroked the collar of a girl’s anorak on the coat stand absently.
‘Just a jacket.’ Chris lifted it down because Mrs Howland wasn’t listening.
‘Forgive me saying so, but you are young. You seem…’
‘I’m eighteen.’
‘You’re not a journalist, are you?’ How did she ever think she could fool this wise old woman? Chris flushed crimson. She had treated Kathleen in just the way her Mum had treated Chris; as a pawn for her own ends.
Long, blonde hair. Blue eyes. Thin legs. Tall. Skin pale as a ghost.
Alive and living in South London.
Before Mrs Howland could speak, Chris heard herself speak:
‘I want you to come to London with me. I know where…’
Her head was in a vice and the breath was being squeezed out of her. Everything was convex and then concave. Chris smelled the sea and saw the word:
Alice.
Then everything went black.
Twenty-Two
Isabel lazily stroked more sun tan cream into her ankles and up her calves, rubbing it in with lingering strokes, noting with satisfaction how smooth her skin was, with no surface veins, which would be remarkable in a woman of over fifty let alone sixty. This comforting observation was straight away eclipsed by the sharp pains in her thigh and at the base of her spine as she stretched. She could not get Mark’s car out of her mind for long. Sunbathing helped. As she submitted to the heat, the watery image would be evaporated by the scorching sun, but every time she moved, her leg hurt and there it was again as if she was under water, her lungs bursting, groping desperately towards Mark.
Shifting about on the wonderfully soft mattress of her new lounger, Isabel applied circles of cream around her eyes with Impressionist dabs and kneaded it into her neck, wiping away the wrinkles. Finished. For a fraction of a second she was calm and content. Then an engulfing wave washed off the good feeling, leaving her old and shivering. She set the bottle on the table, next to her book, radio and empty coffee mug. Was the rest of her life going to be like this? One long to-do list marked off by a series of ticks.
Spots of sunlight flashed on the surface of the freshly filled pooclass="underline" yellow and gold segments like exotic fish whose progress Isabel tried to follow across the rippling surface until they vanished. She had heard somewhere that gazing at sunshine on water made you happy. Something to do with serotonin, but she hadn’t listened to the medical bit.
Perhaps she did feel a bit better.
Isabel tried to build on this tenuous impression. They were almost back to normal, the pool had been restored, and she had got through the funeral. Now she might believe that nothing had happened. It was a Wednesday afternoon when Mark was usually in London. She told herself he would be home tonight as usual.
Only recently the garden and the house had been teeming with strangers. After the frenzy of trying to save Mark was over and they had driven off with his body, it seemed to Isabel a more measured, calmer crowd took over.
First more police: some in white jump suits like spacemen. One was a woman, which had irritated Isabel, who was more conventional than she preferred to think. They had told her that only when they had completed their measuring and photographing and questioning, could the car be taken out of the pool. Until then it had lain there, bubbling away like a hookah. Isabel had been frantic to right everything to how it had been before Mark drowned. But she had lost the impetus to do it herself. She had bullied Lucian to get on to Mr Bunting and his son to come and clean the pool right away. Lucian had argued, unconsciously imitating the police, which before she might have enjoyed.
‘They will be impeded by the presence of a motor vehicle.’
‘You can be such a prat!’ Isabel found giving her children unconditional love exhausting. ‘They’ll have lots of bookings at this time of year, we need to get in or it won’t happen. I’m not looking at this cesspool for the rest of the year.’
‘Do we actually need the pool?’ Now Lucian was Mark without the good bits.
‘I’ve called them. The police say that the car’s going this afternoon. Mr Bunting will be here in the morning at eight and the fence people on Saturday. Everything will be ready in time for Dad’s funeral.’
Gina was carrying a tray of tea out to the white overalls and didn’t stop.
As the car was winched out of the pool Isabel had stood beside Gina to watch. She identified all the colours of the rainbow, and was saddened rather than outraged at the streams of oily water cascading out of the quarter lights. The bonnet tilted upwards and the car was once more inching up the steep hills of family holidays, as they all sang out in anthemic glee Breathe in, don’t move. First one to speak has to get out and walk! The radiator grill flashed as it caught the sun: a paean to
Mark’s polishing. Mark would have understood Gina’s need to witness everything. He too would have been rapping out instructions, warning them to treat his car with care. Shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare, Isabel had gazed up at her husband’s most coveted possession dangling uselessly. A twisting shadow darkened the patio, the car revolved slowly before swinging away from the pool as the crane chugged past the garage and up the drive. Although Mark’s body had been removed, Isabel didn’t feel he had gone until the crane disappeared round the bend in the lane. She walked back to the house, keeping pace with Gina, neither of them able to speak.
In lots of ways, Isabel reflected, as she let the sun take her over, Lucian and Gina were like herself; they got other people doing things, whether it was compensation for a faulty service, getting a price down or organising a funeral. Isabel twitched a hand to bat away the image of Lucian gazing forlornly at her whenever she was impatient with him. He was too sensitive. He and Eleanor were like Mark in that respect. Gina was made of sterner stuff. Mark had said it was apt that after marrying Jon, Gina took his name to become Gina Cross, because she so often was. But Mark had been crosser, that she wasn’t Gina Ramsay any more. He had taken her decision to change her name as a snub.
Of course he had been right.
When they were little, Isabel had felt powerless when her children bickered and had always relied on Mark to sort them out. Then she had hated to see their faces, white and staring, as he shouted and stamped. Each word was a bullet fired with precision, while Mark appeared to thrill with an electric current. She would feel she had let them down.
She had let them down.