Sara pulled a handkerchief from the handbag on the table.
‘I’m sorry,’ she sniffed. ‘I know you mean to help. But really there’s nothing you can do.’
Patsy placed a mug on the table next to Sara, and sat down.
‘Thanks.’
‘Is Simon all right? Have you been able to keep it away from him, all the problems?’
‘Hardly,’ Sara laughed bitterly. ‘It was through Simon that Philip found out.
‘I’d been very silly. A little while back, there was a man I… used to see. He came round here quite often. I let Simon meet him. Then, ten days ago, he and Philip bumped into the man in the city. Suddenly Philip had found the key to my little box of secrets.
‘Simon was back at school when it all came out, so he missed the awful rows. I think he sensed it was coming, though; that’s what’s been behind the trouble at school this term.’
‘Vandalizing microscopes?’
‘That’s it. I’m sure there’s worse to come. Perhaps I’ll bring him home for a while…’
‘Why don’t you? That could be good for both of you.’
‘I think I will.’
They fell silent and sipped at their coffee. Patsy took a deep breath, and started the conversation again.
‘This man you were seeing… The one you said worked for a foreign government… the Russian… did you… tell him anything at all that you shouldn’t have?’
‘I don’t think so, but then I’m not sure what he wanted to know. Nothing really secret, that’s for sure. I don’t know anything secret. Do you? I mean, does Andrew talk about his work?’
‘Never.’
‘It’s…, it’s not my fault, Patsy,’ Sara pleaded. ‘Whatever Philip’s doing — it’s unfair to blame me for it. It’s much more involved than people think.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘This “revenge” they think he’s planning — they imagine it’s just because of me and Gunnar, but it isn’t. It’s more than that. It has to be.’
Wishful thinking, Patsy wondered?
‘They really think he’s going to attack the Russians?’
‘Yes. They told me this morning.’
‘What? Who did?’
Sara scraped back her chair and stood up. She grabbed a transistor radio from the worktop next to the kettle, and turned it on at full volume.
‘We may be bugged,’ she explained in a whisper.
‘Who by?’
‘MI5. They were here this morning.’
The pop music was deafening. Patsy found it unbearable.
‘Couldn’t we walk in the garden? It’s a nice morning,’ she suggested. Sara led the way to the back of the house.
The garden was walled, sheltering it from the wind. Roses and honeysuckle clung to the old brickwork. The last of the season’s apples weighed heavily on the branches of young trees which Andrew had helped Philip plant the previous year.
‘We should be safe out here.’
‘You must think I’ve gone mad.’
‘I’d be the same, I assure you.’
Sara reached out and held one of the apples, giving it a tiny twist so that it parted from the branch. Perfectly ripe. She held it out for Patsy.
Patsy took a bite. ‘Gorgeous.’ Sticking her hands determinedly into her trouser pockets, Sara turned to face Patsy squarely.
‘Do you know about Philip’s father?’
‘No. Should I?’
‘Philip hero-worshipped him, but he died when Philip was just fourteen. HMS Tenby? Does that ring a bell?’
‘Vaguely. One of the SSNs is called Tenby.’
‘This was an earlier one. An old diesel sub. Disappeared on patrol in the Barents Sea in 1962. All a big mystery. Philip’s dad was her first lieutenant.’
‘Oh, yes. I remember something. An accidental explosion, was it?’
‘Not according to Philip. He’s convinced the Russians sank her.’
‘What? I’ve never heard that said before!’
‘It was an open verdict at the official inquiry. No wreckage was ever found. No survivors. Just theories. The one they settled for was that there’d been a fire on board and the torpedoes had gone up. They even made changes to the way the things were stored on board after that.’
‘But Philip didn’t buy that idea?’
‘I suppose he may have done at the beginning; he was only a boy. But he overheard someone talking to his mother about it, a few years later, saying the Tenby had been in the Barents to keep an eye on Russian torpedo trials. Nuclear torpedoes.’
‘Crikey! And was it true?’
‘I don’t know. But Philip thinks so. He became convinced the Russians tested a nuclear torpedo on the Tenby and vapourized his father along with the rest of the crew.’
‘But that’s madness! The Russians would never have done that. They’d have risked starting a nuclear war, wouldn’t they?’
Sara shrugged. She’d never given much heed to Philip’s theories before now.
‘It was November 1962, the Cuban missile crisis, remember? All very jumpy. The Americans and Russians on the brink of war — Philip reckoned the White House put pressure on Britain not to make an issue of the Tenby.’
‘Oh.’
Patsy racked her brains to remember what that crisis had been about.
‘What is it you’re saying? That this revenge Philip’s planning is to do with his father’s death?’
‘I don’t know exactly. But I’m sure it’s involved.’
‘Why are you so sure?’
Sara hesitated over how much to say.
‘This summer we went on holiday to Guernsey, all three of us. It was Philip’s idea. He used to go there as a boy, but hadn’t been back since. I didn’t know before, but it was in Guernsey that he’d last seen his father. Straight after that holiday in 1962, the Tenby sailed north and never returned.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Something happened this summer, to Philip. We’d been there a few days, staying in an absolute dump of a hotel. He’d been a bit moody — memories and all that — then one afternoon he came back after a walk on his own, looking as if he’d seen a ghost. Simon and I were by the pool; I expected him to join us, and when he didn’t I went up to our room to look for him. Well…’
She frowned.
‘Go on…’
‘He was — I didn’t go into the room, because he seemed to be… crying. I could hear, through the door. I… I didn’t know what to think. Philip’s so — undemonstrative. So, I just stood there, listening to this awful croaking noise, sort of frozen. And then he said something, in a strangled voice. Out loud. He said “Dad, Dad, what have they done to you?”’
‘Good Lord! But you still didn’t go in?’
‘I thought he’d be upset — embarrassed that I’d heard him. So I went down again and waited for him. He didn’t appear for hours. Claimed he’d fallen asleep. I asked if anything was wrong, but he said no. So I just put it down to his being back in the place where he’d last seen his father. Something deeply buried coming to the surface.’
‘And that was that?’
‘Well, no. He didn’t sleep at night, tossing and turning; always desperately short-tempered and wanting to be on his own. Then a couple of days later, some other mother I got talking to at the hotel was telling me about a beautiful walk she’d just been on, lonely clifftops and all that, when she mentioned having seen Philip up there, sitting on a bench — with a woman.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘I thought the obvious at first. That evening I asked him about it. It shook him that he’d been spotted, but he dismissed it; said the woman had just been another walker who’d stopped for a rest. He was lying; I can always tell — he does it very badly.’
‘You think she had some connection with his father?’