She knew she would never see Vi again.
123
‘Maybe there’s a way we can trace the son of a bitch who did it,’ said Kit when Ruby got back and explained what Vi had told her.
They were all – Kit, Rob, Daisy and Ruby – at Ruby’s house in Marlow. It was the day after she’d taken off for Oxford, leaving a note for Daisy.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ Daisy complained.
‘I had to. I couldn’t wait for you all to come back. I needed to see her, face to face, to know what was going on.’
‘It must have been horrible for you. And it could have been dangerous,’ said Daisy.
Ruby thought that Daisy was probably right; it could have been a risk, going there. Thinking of it now, of Vi sitting there trying to justify the chain of events she had set in motion, made Ruby feel nauseous. But she was glad she had confronted her. Now she felt a weight had been lifted. At last she knew what had happened to Michael.
‘Daise is right. You shouldn’t have done that, you should have left it to me,’ Kit told her. ‘Anything could have happened to you.’
‘But it didn’t,’ said Ruby.
‘It’s all been such a nightmare,’ said Daisy. She’d told her mother what happened at the Chigwell house, the horror they’d stumbled across.
Ruby was still trying to take it all in. Her brother Joe was dead, and Betsy too. And Vi? Well, she might as well be dead – she was dead, to Ruby. Overwhelmed by sadness, her eyes drifted back to Kit. She could see that he was suffering, and her heart went out to him. Bianca had gone, without a word. He’d searched so hard for her, but he couldn’t find her.
Then she looked at Daisy, and Rob – and she saw how his eyes followed Daisy when she left the room and came back in with Jody, each of the women carrying a baby. Daisy was like the cat with the cream, having her twins home, and every time she looked at Rob she lit up like a Christmas tree.
‘What happened,’ she asked Kit, ‘about Reg?’
Kit was taking his nephew Matthew from Daisy, bouncing him in his arms. Matthew was laughing.
‘Dunno. We haven’t caught up with him yet.’ Kit shot a look at Rob.
No need to let Ruby know they’d found Reg in the flat over the garage at Ruby’s place, dead from an overdose. And no way of knowing what tricks Vittore had pulled – blackmail, money, who knew? – to turn a faithful old soul like Reg against the people who’d been like family to him for so many years. At least he’d had the decency to top himself before either Kit or Rob had to do the job for him.
‘Jeez, what you feeding this kid, Daise?’ Kit asked her. ‘He weighs a ton.’
Kit came over to Ruby and put baby Matthew down into her arms. Ruby rocked the baby soothingly and smiled up at her son. Kit smiled back at her. In this room, right now, were the people she loved best in all the world. The riddle of Michael’s death was solved. Despite her sorrow for all that was lost, she felt at peace. Almost.
There was still one thing left to sort out.
124
‘You know what shocks me?’ said Thomas Knox to Ruby when he opened the door of his Hampstead house to her next day.
‘Hello to you too,’ said Ruby. She was wearing a coat and carrying a bottle of Cristal champagne. It was freezing out here on the doorstep. Summer in England. It was pissing down.
‘You know what absolutely floors me?’ he asked, leaning against the door and staring at her.
‘No,’ said Ruby. ‘Go on then. What?’
‘That you actually believed I could rub out my old mate.’
‘I didn’t know you. I still don’t. My toes are cold.’
‘You hungry?’
‘No.’
‘OK.’
‘You said I was on my own. That you wouldn’t help me, or Kit,’ said Ruby, feeling a little breathless.
‘I know I did.’
‘So…?’ Ruby leaned in until she was nose to nose with him.
‘I lied,’ said Thomas, and pulled her inside and kissed her.
An hour later, most of the champagne had been drunk and they were in the heated luxury of the pool, swimming naked.
‘Forgiven me yet?’ asked Ruby, floating; this felt like paradise.
‘Dunno,’ said Thomas. ‘So you found out who did it in the end,’ he said.
‘We found out who was behind it.’
‘Kit going to let it rest there?’
‘I doubt it. So, am I forgiven?’
‘Still dunno.’
‘You want me to beg? On my knees?’
‘That could be interesting.’
‘You’ve got a sadistic streak.’
‘You love it.’
‘Hm,’ said Ruby, as he pulled her into his arms. ‘I think I might be falling in love with you,’ she murmured against his mouth, gazing into those stony blue eyes.
‘You think?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, let me persuade you…’
125
It was Sunday lunch at Rob’s family home. Rob’s dad had already settled in front of the telly with his beer, and Rob’s two married older sisters were on the sofa, chatting and doing their nails. His two teenage brothers were play-fighting, bouncing around the living room like they were on speed.
‘Careful!’ cautioned Dad, peering around them at the screen.
Of course they didn’t take a blind bit of notice. They romped up and down the hallway, up and down the stairs, making a bloody row.
Rob assembled them all, asked Dad to turn down the telly, called Mum in from the kitchen. The table was already set.
‘What is it? This ruddy dinner won’t cook itself,’ said his mum, red in the face and undoing her apron in a hurry.
‘Just a quick word,’ said Rob. He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m off to get her. We’ll be back in under an hour. Now the thing is, no one laughs at her posh voice. All right?’
‘We wouldn’t do that,’ said Mum, but the boys were already doing shrug-shouldered impressions of Ted Heath laughing.
‘I mean it,’ said Rob, giving them a stern look.
‘Hmph,’ said Dad.
The family Sunday lunch. Always a nightmare. And now he was going to thrust Daisy into this madhouse, the poor cow.
He drove over and collected her from Ruby’s place. She looked terrific, as always. Gorgeous. They kissed on the doorstep. Ruby was out, visiting a friend, Daisy said, then she’d be having Kit over for dinner this evening.
Daisy was ecstatic at how well Kit and Ruby were getting on now.
‘Yeah, well, it shook him, nearly losing her like that,’ said Rob when Daisy enthused about it. ‘Woke him up, I think. Made him see the light. Made him see what a prize prat he was being.’
He drove them back to his parents’ house. Took her inside.
‘Hello!’ she said, beaming around at them all.
‘It’s like a fuckin’ royal visit,’ said one of the boys, and Dad cuffed him.
‘Hello, Daisy,’ said Rob’s dad, standing up and holding out a hand. ‘Come on in.’
And much to Rob’s surprise, it was all right. It really was.
126
November 1975
It was a day much like the one on which Michael Ward had died a year ago. Two thirty in the afternoon and already the sky was a darkening purple-grey bowl over their heads. It was drizzling, and there was a cold wind blowing. Browning leaves were drifting down from the silver birches and the oaks around the perimeter of the graveyard, forming a mushy uneven carpet on the tussocks of grass around the graves.
Kit had parked the Bentley at the cemetery gates and together he and Ruby had walked slowly over to Michael’s final resting place beneath the yew tree. The headstone was large, black granite inlaid with gold, and elaborately carved; Kit had chosen it, paid for it.
Here Lies Michael Ward
Much Loved, Much Missed