‘I know,’ I said.
She raised her head. For a moment it seemed she’d forgotten where she was. I wondered if she was remembering Philip as a student, the irresponsible passion of that spring twenty years before. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I know that Philip Samson was Thomas’s father.’
‘Where on earth did you get that idea from?’ She looked at me as if I’d made a joke in poor taste. Some instinct of self-preservation stopped me telling her. From Philip. That’s why I came to your house before Thomas’s death. Philip wanted to trace him. Instead I said, ‘Isn’t it true, then?’
‘Of course it’s not true. I’d never met Philip before Ronnie started going to the Countryside Consortium meetings, and I never knew him well. Ronnie met him at one of Joanna’s social evenings and they seemed to get on. The closest I’d got to him before then was through seeing him on the television.’
I believed her. If it wasn’t true, she was way ahead in the Dan Meech school of acting. I was still trying to get my head round the implications of it when she started talking, pouring out a story which had been bottled up all that time, which she’d never told anyone, not Ronnie or her mother or her son.
‘I was young,’ she said. ‘Naïve. I wasn’t like the young girls today, who are brought up to see sex wherever they look. If I led him on, I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ve gone over and over it in my head. I feel it was my fault but I don’t see how it could have been. I was still a child. Not legally perhaps, but in every way it matters. He was old enough to be my father. He was the responsible person.
‘I used to baby-sit. Mum and Dad arranged it. We’ve fixed you up a little extra job. Proud as punch, not so much for me, but because they could do a favour for a smart friend. And I enjoyed going there at first. It was a treat to spend time in the big house. There was a freezer with a box of choc-ices and I was allowed to help myself. That shows you how sophisticated I was! I’d put the children to bed, switch on the television and eat ice cream and it was my idea of a good night out. Afterwards I’d get a lift home in the car with the leather seats and the radio. In my memory Frank Sinatra’s always on the radio. “Fly Me To The Moon”. It can’t always have been playing, but that’s what I remember. You know the tune?’
I nodded, but she didn’t really expect a response. It had taken me a moment to concentrate on what she was saying, but now I was hooked. It’s like when you know the end of a story but you don’t know how it’s going to get there. That’s still exciting, isn’t it? And there was something mesmerizing about watching this woman who was usually so controlled and self-protective suddenly letting go, just telling it as it came to her, desperate to get it right.
‘The policeman, Inspector Farrier, asked me about Thomas’s father,’ she said, ‘and I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t. Not even when it might have helped him track down the killer. I was too ashamed. Not by what I’d done, but that I could be so stupid. Can you believe it? I was afraid that they’d laugh at me, so I kept quiet.’
She was wearing a calf-length cotton dress with a flower print. It had small covered buttons at the neck and the wrist. She looked very prim and schoolmistressy, literally buttoned up. But she was shaking with anger at herself and the man who’d taken advantage of her.
‘He had a wife. That made him safe. I thought that and so did my parents. I didn’t like the wife as much. She wasn’t friendly to me. When he tried to press me with gifts or persuade me to stay a bit longer, she’d say, “I expect Kay would rather go home.” Her mouth was pinched with disapproval. I thought it was me she disapproved of, but it wasn’t. It was Mr Pool.’
She broke off and stared out of the window. I wondered if speaking his name was a big thing for her, the first confession, but it wasn’t that. She hadn’t even realized. She was just reliving it in her head.
‘It happened one night when Mrs Pool was at her mother’s. I think there’d been a row. She’d taken the children with her. I don’t think he planned it, he wasn’t that devious. I mean, I don’t think he even remembered it was Friday and I always baby-sat on Friday night. When I rang the doorbell he seemed surprised to see me. I’d hate to think he’d set it up. He’d been drinking. I don’t know if that was the cause of the row with his wife or the result of it. I always hated to see Thomas drunk. Perhaps that was why.
‘He asked me in. Usually the children were in their pyjamas ready for bed when I arrived and I took them up and tucked them in and read them stories. They’d be waiting for me in the living room. But I saw from the hall that they weren’t there. “Are they in their rooms already?” I asked, and started up the stairs. He followed me. At the top, near the landing, he put his arms around me. I could smell the whisky. He was whispering in my ear. “You’re a lovely girl, Kay. You know I think you’re a lovely girl.” And then he was unbuttoning my blouse.’
She stopped abruptly. Her arms were folded across her chest. Her mouth was a line. Even today she couldn’t bring herself to describe the details.
‘It was rape,’ I said. ‘Not your fault.’
‘I could have fought. I’m not even sure if I screamed. It was such a shock. I couldn’t believe it. And I’d been brought up to be polite. It was like a nightmare I was powerless to stop. I thought the scene would run to its end like bad dreams do, and then I’d wake up. But of course I never did.’
‘What happened next?’
‘Harry Pool drove me home. As if nothing had happened.’
‘He must have realized that Thomas was his son.’
‘I suppose so. We never discussed it. They didn’t ask me to baby-sit again. My mother asked if I’d done something to upset them. I couldn’t tell my parents what had happened. There was this dreadful embarrassment. Harry was my dad’s best friend. Dad admired him. His energy, his enterprise, all the money he made. They wouldn’t have believed me and I didn’t want to make a fuss. And it never dawned on me until too late that I could actually be pregnant.’
‘Why did Thomas start working at Harry Pool’s?’
‘Harry offered him the job. He made out that he was doing his old mate’s grandson a favour. What could I say? Thomas needed work. I didn’t like it but there wasn’t much I could do.’
‘I think Thomas might have found out that Harry was his father. You didn’t tell him?’
‘No!’
‘Does Ronnie know?’
‘I never told him,’ she said. ‘But Ronnie has his own ways of digging out information.’
Chapter Thirty-four
What happened next was farcical. It was like one of those interludes in Shakespeare when the mood suddenly changes. You know, everything’s really heavy and people are obsessing about statesmanship or death, and then in the next scene you get a couple of clowns or jolly rustics drinking and joking.
I was thinking through the implications of everything Kay had told me. There was too much to take in all at once. It had never occurred to me that Philip might not be Thomas’s father. Why would he lie? Wasn’t the deathbed the time for truth? And what would be the point? Had it just been a ruse to get me to accept the money? That seemed too elaborate to make sense, and I had to start all over again.
Perhaps the story hadn’t been invented by Philip at all, but by someone else. It had certainly been his signature on the bottom of the typed sheet. I recognized the handwriting from the letter he’d left me in Marrakech. But there could have been a lot of papers which needed his signature before he died. Legal stuff, drawn up by Stuart Howdon. Perhaps by then Philip had been too ill to read through everything properly. He trusted Stuart. He could have told him about our fling in Morocco. But why would Stuart send me on a wild-goose chase to track down Thomas Mariner? The obvious answer was because he wanted Thomas dead. I just couldn’t work out why. At that point I gave up and turned my attention to Harry Pool.