‘Please tell me you don’t believe for a moment I would abuse Amy?’
She picked up her coat. Folding it over her arm, she bent down to collect her handbag.
‘For God’s sake, Lena, I couldn’t stand it if you thought that. I love her, and to have you thinking for a second I would abuse my little girl sickens me.’
Lena took a deep breath. ‘I think tomorrow you need to come over to the house and read the journal for yourself. I’m going home now. I need to be there in case she calls.’
‘What do you think has happened to her?’ he asked plaintively, his voice quivering.
‘I don’t know; I am scared to really think about it. I want to remain positive because I want her to come home.’
Lena hesitated, and watching him near to tears she felt she should make amends for the accusation she had made, but as always her control barrier was firmly in place.
‘Amy is not very nice about me in her journal, she describes me in such horrid detail. She says I am cold and unforgiving, sarcastically referring to me as “Little Madam Perfect” and a lot more that I don’t want to repeat right now. Whatever she really feels about me, I want to try and understand or make her understand that I have always had only her best interests at heart. I want to take time out to be with her, forget the business for a while to make up for…’ She couldn’t finish as in her mind she could see clearly the neat tight handwriting on one of the pages from Amy’s journaclass="underline" ‘Bitch is always busy.’
Leaving Marcus already onto his third brandy, Lena said goodnight and left. By the time he heard the main entry door below slam behind her he had shambled into his bedroom. He got back into bed, drained the rest of the brandy and lay back thinking of what Lena had accused him of. He felt deeply ashamed and confused as to why she would have even hinted at there being anything sexual in his relationship with Amy. Had she been jealous of his girlfriends? She had never shown it, in fact to the contrary. He knew his wife was in many ways very naïve, but he couldn’t understand why she had implied that the love he had for Amy was anything other than paternal.
Lena’s drive back to Richmond at such a late hour meant the journey was free of traffic. Letting herself in and placing the key chain on the door, she headed into the kitchen and after making a cup of camomile tea she went up to her bedroom. The house was silent, not that it had ever throbbed with sounds – neither she or Amy used the stereo system on a regular basis; only their televisions were used frequently and she could not recall the last time they had sat together in the TV room to watch DVDs. They had sometimes taken a tray and eaten together but after Amy went to boarding school these evenings stopped.
Passing her office, Lena knew she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep for a while if at all, and so she went in and switched on her computer, which she rarely if ever used for anything but work and research. She opened her emails; there were so many she had to prioritize what was important to enable the business to run without her presence before replying. She gave detailed instructions about deliveries and collections that she felt needed to be dealt with, and then spent a considerable amount of time checking new orders and assignments to go to the various outlets before she began listing everyone that worked for her and their contact numbers to give to the police.
It was three a.m. before Lena went to her bedroom, leaving the printer to continue printing. Last in the print queue were the present financial sales for Kiddy Winks. This created a lot of work as she employed a sales assistant to specifically deal with the contacts and requests coming in for the themed party packages. Lena had compiled a very good list of children’s entertainers, venues, and birthday cake bakeries for not only individual orders but also to make cupcakes and party bags.
Changed into her nightdress and ready to remove her makeup, she sipped the by now cold camomile tea. She had placed everything she had worn back onto hangers, and her underwear into the white laundry bag. She noticed that all the items she had swiped off the dressing table had been replaced – what she had broken would be listed no doubt by the ever-diligent Agnes. She creamed off her makeup, brushed her hair and, still feeling wide awake, she decided to take a sleeping tablet because she knew she would be unable to sleep without one. Getting into the crisp pure cotton sheets, first neatly folding the silk bedspread, she lay back, leaving just a small bedside lamp lit. Left on the bed was Amy’s dark green leather journal. Reaching out with her hand to touch it, she felt such a weight of sadness envelop her she wept. Gradually the sleeping tablet took effect as she debated whether or not she should allow the police to read the journal – maybe she would see what Marcus felt about it, and whether or not he would admit to her if what Amy had written about him was the truth.
Chapter 9
Marcus had a thick head; his mouth felt rancid and the phone ringing had woken him from his drink-fuelled sleep. He was so eager to reach it he slipped sideways off the bed. Hoping it would be Amy, he struggled to sound coherent as DI Reid asked if he would come to the station as he was organizing a press meeting and had arranged for journalists to be present at a ten-fifteen briefing. He also told him that Mrs Fulford had been informed and said she would be there. Marcus agreed and replaced the phone, only for it to ring straight away. He snatched it up, with no idea what time it was, and now his head throbbed. Lena didn’t sound like herself; her voice was very subdued as she asked if Detective Reid had made contact about the press conference.
‘Yes.’
‘I think we should go together if that’s okay with you?’
‘Sure, I’ll come over to your house first. What time is it now?’
‘Just after eight, and you need to be here no later than nine thirty.’
‘No problem. I’ll get dressed and be with you in about an hour.’
‘They haven’t heard anything,’ she said quietly.
‘I guessed as much, so I’ll see you later.’
‘Please wear a pair of socks and look presentable. If we have to meet the press we should at least show up looking decent.’
She hung up and he dragged himself into the kitchen, put a pot of coffee on and opened a bottle of aspirin. He didn’t give a shit about looking presentable and it was absolutely typical of Lena to tell him what to wear. She had often treated him like a kid, and it irritated him, but he would shave and make an effort.
Lena was dressed and having her coffee when her housekeeper arrived.
‘Any news?’ Agnes asked, removing her coat.
‘No, not yet.’
‘I was telling Natalie about it last night; she was so upset – have they any idea what’s happened?’ Agnes went on.
‘No, and I would appreciate it, Agnes, if you did not discuss this situation with anyone outside the family.’
Agnes pursed her lips and nodded as her boss went upstairs, then she noticed the mess of cooking utensils left in the sink. It wasn’t very often that Mrs Fulford cooked for herself, but it really annoyed Agnes that whenever she did she never bothered to put the dirty pans, pots, plates or utensils in the dishwasher.
Lena sat in her study and wondered how upset Natalie would be if she read what Amy had written about her. Agnes was also viciously depicted as a stone-faced harridan with an obsessive compulsive disorder. Amy had said that Agnes’s obsession about placing groceries into plastic bags and plastic boxes in the fridge, all labelled in her thick black marker pen, was ridiculous; Amy reckoned that if she stood still long enough Agnes would put a plastic bag over her head, and put her in the deep freeze, adding that Agnes would probably describe the contents as ‘Rich bitch frozen daughter’.
There was a lengthy description of how Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, had craved her father’s approval as he was always so cold and vicious towards her, and how she had felt that if she remained still and silent there was nothing he could complain about. Mary Shelley had even practised making her breathing so shallow it could not annoy him. Amy had practised being totally silent around Agnes, never replying to her queries, ignoring her presence, so that eventually she was thrilled that Agnes no longer even looked at her. She had written so many pages describing the housekeeper that it was difficult to make sense of her reasoning. She appeared to have a hatred of her and felt that she was evil and twisted and that her mother was foolish enough not to even notice that the pale round-faced woman was infiltrating the house. Amy was just as vitriolic about Agnes’s precious daughter and how much she detested having to hear about her. Natalie she described as a cloying dependant, who was so controlled by her mother she was dysfunctional and needy, and to hear Agnes constantly referring to her as gorgeous made her want to vomit.