“I got home in late August, sure by then that nothing could implicate me in the murders and that my conscience, though it could never be clear, was at least secure. I wrote a letter of condolence to Sarah and got a polite but guarded reply. I decided to leave it at that. Our paths had divided and I was confident they’d never cross again. I went back to Cambridge in October determined to start my life over again. To re-create myself and in the process cast aside forever the memory of the things I’d done that night at Whistler’s Cot.
“I succeeded. I made new friends and threw myself into new activities. By the time the trial started, I was beyond its reach, so safe in my busy self-regarding world that I didn’t even read the newspaper reports of its progress. It was only thanks to another student who’d known Sarah that I learnt of Naylor’s conviction. And do you know what I felt when I heard the sentence? Relieved. That’s what. Just relieved it was over. Just glad he was going to be locked away for twenty years. Just happy to know I could forget all about him.
“But I couldn’t, could I? Not as it turned out. Because after graduation I toyed with several job offers, thinking one wasn’t much different from another, and accepted a post with Metropolitan Mutual Insurance. A fatal mistake, I suppose you could say. Because it meant moving to Bristol. Where Sarah had gone to take her articles. And Rowena had also gone, to study mathematics. I didn’t know they were living there, of course. I had absolutely no idea. Until the day I bumped into Sarah in Park Street.
“It seemed no big deal at the time. A coincidence I could simply brush off. But Sarah invited me to dinner and I could hardly refuse. So I went out to Clifton one night and met Rowena for the first time. Early January of last year. Not long ago really. Not long at all. Yet in other ways it seems… Sarah admitted later that she was keen for Rowena to meet as many new people as possible. It was only six weeks or so since she’d tried to commit suicide. Sarah thought varied company might take her out of herself. That’s really why she invited me.
“It started slowly. As an attraction to the things in Rowena that reminded me of Louise. A rapport developed between us, based on a subconscious awareness that we were both suppressing something. In Rowena’s case, doubts about her mother’s death. In my case, the knowledge of what really lay behind those doubts. She was lovely as well, of course. Lovely and vulnerable. Right from the beginning, I wanted to protect her. To shield her from a truth I thought she’d be unable to bear. And to shield myself at the same time. Chance had given me the opportunity to repair some of the damage I’d done and to silence the voice that still whispered reproaches to me in the long watches of the night. It seemed as if fate had taken a hand in my life once more.
“And so it had. But not in the way I thought. I married Rowena and for a while everything seemed perfect. Loving her made me see my obsession with Louise for what it had truly been: a shallow delusion. But its consequences endured. Whether the secret I always had to keep ate away at Rowena’s trust in me or whether she just wasn’t quite capable of abandoning her doubts I’m not sure, but something was wrong even before the book appeared, let alone the TV programme. And then there was the pregnancy, of course. How that affected her I don’t know. But she didn’t tell me about it, did she? So maybe it wasn’t good news as far as she was concerned. Maybe it just added to her problems. Made her future seem as doubt-ridden as her past. And just as intolerable.
“I shouldn’t have tried to keep her in the dark. That’s obvious now. But I was afraid that facing up to the rumours and speculation would eventually oblige me to tell her the whole truth. Secrecy becomes a habit, you see. More than a necessity. A way of life, almost. It can’t just be shrugged off. It doesn’t work like that. So my response to the growing interest in the case was to block it off and pretend it didn’t exist. It was all grotesquely misplaced anyway. Oscar Bantock may or may not have been a forger. But I knew better than anyone why he’d died. And forgery didn’t come into it.
“Except in the sense that my whole life had become a forgery. A convincing but counterfeit piece of work. A sham based on a lie. The only genuine thing in it was my love for Rowena. When she threw herself from the bridge, she took the purpose of my deception with her. She exposed my forgery. For the world to see.
“But it didn’t see, did it? It never does. It never wants to. It has to be forced to open its eyes. The righting of wrongs is a deeply uncomfortable experience. Admitting to a mistake is much more difficult than concealing it. And usually there are so many ways to dodge the issue. To avoid the admission. But not this time. Not now. Because I intend to be seen and heard. I intend to set the record straight. And to face the consequences. Along with everyone else.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Listening to Paul Bryant’s confession made me realize how little I’d really known about the Paxton family and the events of July 1990. I’d mistaken glimpses of the truth for insight and understanding. I’d constructed a whole version of reality from the constituents of my limited knowledge. And now, suddenly, I saw it for the travesty it had always been. The past was as fluid and uncertain as the future.
I was too shocked at first to react to what Paul had said. So much was altered by it, so much thrown into disarray. Louise hadn’t been what I or others had thought she was. She hadn’t been prepared to be what we wanted her to be, even in death. Everything we’d believed about her had been a lie. And the one thing said about her that we were sure was a lie turned out to be true. Naylor wasn’t guilty. But almost everyone else was. Of deceiving others. Or of deceiving themselves. It hardly mattered which.
Except in Paul’s case, of course. He’d lived the grossest lie of all. He’d murdered two people and let an innocent man go to prison in his place. I should have felt angry. And so, eventually, I did. But not because of the hideous crime he was at long last owning up to. Oh no. What really angered me was the revelation of so much falsehood, so much shared credulity. It had just been too pat and convenient to resist, I suppose. Naylor locked away. And our doubts with him. But now he-and they-were going to be released. The villain of the piece was going to be revealed as the ultimate victim. History was about to be rewritten. And everyone who’d subscribed to the version I knew now to be false would be exposed as at best a fool, at worst several different kinds of scoundrel.
I suppose the unavoidable acknowledgement of my own gullibility explains the muted dismay with which I finally responded. I was horrified, of course. But horror loses its edge at three years’ remove from the deed. The satisfaction with which I’d greeted Naylor’s twenty-year sentence could never be renewed. Paul’s guilt was somehow diminished by the injustice I’d participated in. And by the shame I felt at its realization. There was a moment when I was tempted to urge silence on him, to whisper some weaselly platitude about letting sleeping dogs lie. Then I faced down the thought. There had to be an end of evasion and collusion. And this was it.
“What you did, Paul-what you freely admit you did-was terrible. Awful. Unpardonable. I believe murderers should be executed. Hanged by the neck until dead. You understand me? Done away with.”
“I understand you, Robin. I hear what you’re saying. I actually agree with you. A life should be repaid with a life. But the law says otherwise. So…”
“What will you do now? Go to the police?”