The Mill on the Shore (17 page)

‘Oh Jane, that’s outrageous,’ Rosie said, roused at last from her brooding. ‘Those binoculars have been out of focus since Tim dropped them on the floor. And they were miles away. All you could see was a couple of shapes. They were probably talking. Or perhaps he was upset and she was comforting him. It was some sort of therapy.’

‘I bet it was!’ Jane said. She rolled her eyes and made them laugh. ‘Grace might live in splendid isolation in that posh new house but you know what a reputation she’s got.’

‘You know her socially?’ Molly asked.

‘We do get let out of this place occasionally,’ Jane said. ‘It’s not quite a prison, whatever Rosie might tell you. When I moved up here my parents gave me a second-hand Mini. A sort of consolation prize for being a failure. At least it means we can escape during our times off. Usually we just go to the pub in the village but sometimes we go to Mardon for a change. The night life isn’t terribly sophisticated but there’s a folk club in one of the pubs and a group of us meet up there once a week. I suppose you could say that Grace is one of the gang. Or she was. She hasn’t been around much lately.’

‘Tell me about her,’ Molly said.

‘Duckie, where shall I start?’ Jane was enjoying herself enormously. ‘Her mother died when she was little but she certainly didn’t have a deprived childhood. There was loadsa money. Her dad was a director at Mardon Wools till he retired.’

‘Was he?’ Rosie was definitely interested now. ‘ I didn’t know that.’

‘Didn’t you, dear? You can’t have been listening to the right people. She was always a bit wild. In the end she got sent away to one of those progressive boarding schools where you only have to work if you feel like it. She was an only child and spoilt rotten. Daddy hoped she’d do some sort of business management course and follow in the family footsteps but she surprised him and opted for nursing. Daddy thought that was a bit beneath her. What would
she
do with a bedpan? But when she decided to go in for psychiatry he was horrified. He hated the idea of his little girl being mixed up with those loonies. For years he kept up a determined campaign to persuade her to change her mind. In the end he bought her that smart house by the river just before he retired. Perhaps it was a final attempt to get her to join the family firm. Obviously it didn’t work but they say he became resigned to the idea of her nursing in the last few months, and he’s almost proud of her now.’

‘They?’ Rosie interrupted in astonishment. ‘Who are they? Jane, where did you get all that information?’

‘By listening,’ Jane said, suddenly serious again. ‘I’m always telling you that I’m a good listener.’ She turned to Molly in explanation. ‘Look, I’m not very good in company. Shy, I suppose. My parents always left me with the impression that I had nothing worth saying. So in the pub when the music’s finished and Rosie’s being the life and soul of the party I’m usually sitting in a corner eavesdropping. I live a sheltered life and get all my excitement second-hand. You’d be amazed at some of the things people say when they think they can’t be overheard.’

‘And in those conversations, did the subject of Grace’s boyfriends come up?’

‘All the time,’ Jane said. ‘As you say she’s a very attractive woman, very sought after. And getting on now. Thirty-five next birthday. Her name must have been linked with most of the eligible men in the county. Though if they were after her money they must have been disappointed.’

‘And in all this gossip there was never any talk about an intimate relationship with Jimmy Morrissey?’

‘No, but then there wouldn’t be. James was something of a local celebrity of course. Most people had seen the repeats of his programmes on the telly. But he was quite a recluse. And no one would have considered him Grace’s type. He was so old for one thing. Besides, she always went for the flash and the irresponsible, usually the younger sons of county families. The rural equivalent I suppose of the yuppie.’

‘But nothing serious?’ Molly asked. ‘ There was no prospect, for example, of marriage?’

‘Definitely nothing serious,’ Jane said. ‘At least not since we’ve been here. I heard her say once that she saved all her emotional involvement for her work. Everything else had to be fun. There was only one man in her life and that was her father.’

‘What about before you lived here? In her past?’

‘She was engaged once,’ Jane said. ‘Apparently she was mad about the bloke. Besotted. He was a conservationist. A bit like James, I suppose. Perhaps she had a thing about green wellies. He dumped her six months before the wedding and went off to Malawi to do a research project into fish for an aid agency. I think that’s the story anyway. No wonder she was put off serious commitment.’

‘Fish,’ Molly said. ‘ I suppose that would have made him a marine biologist?’

‘What? Yes, I suppose so.’ Jane was losing interest. This was all past history.

‘I don’t expect you ever knew his name,’ Molly said casually. ‘Or who he was working for?’

Jane thought hard. It was a challenge. ‘He was called Nick,’ she said at last, triumphantly. ‘I never knew his surname. And he was working for the water authority. Apparently he spent a lot of his time up to his thighs in the river taking water samples. It didn’t sound much of a job.’

Molly changed the subject as if Grace’s ex-fiancé held no interest for her.

‘When did it first occur to you that Grace and Jimmy might be emotionally involved?’ she asked.

‘It never occurred to me,’ Rosie said quickly. ‘ It’s all in Jane’s imagination.’

‘When James started to shake off his depression something had to be giving him an interest in life again,’ Jane said. ‘And it certainly wasn’t Meg.’

‘You don’t think it was starting work on the autobiography then?’ Molly said. ‘That seems to have been most people’s opinion.’

‘No,’ Jane said. ‘It was sex. Nothing like sex to buck you up. Wouldn’t you say?’

It was so unlike her to be worldly wise, so outside her own experience that they began to laugh again.

When Molly left the kitchen she found Ruth in the schoolroom. It was almost lunch-time and the others had drifted away. Their scraps of poetry were scattered over the table. Ruth was reading and was concentrating so hard that she did not hear Molly come in. Only when the door closed behind her did she look up.

‘If you’re looking for your husband I think he’s with Mother,’ she said. ‘They’re probably still in the flat.’

‘No,’ Molly said. ‘I wanted to talk to you. About Aidan. You must have some idea why he left so suddenly. You were friends, weren’t you?’

‘I thought so,’ Ruth said.

‘When did you first meet?’

‘Ages ago. Soon after Mother married James. He won a painting competition and James invited him to the house for supper. I was very young but I remember how shy he was. It must have been a terrible ordeal for him. Mother was pregnant with Emily and Tim was just a toddler. It was a big house full of toys and children, terribly embarrassing, don’t you think, for a teenage boy to cope with. He dropped his fork during the meal and blushed like a turnip. I thought he was quite grown up but I still felt sorry for him.’

‘You remember it very well,’ Molly said.

‘I suppose I do. Probably because he was kind to me. Perhaps I was feeling a bit left out. Mother was all tied up with Tim and being pregnant. She was writing pieces then too for women’s magazines on family life, child care, you know the sort of thing.’ Molly nodded. ‘But that was all …’ She paused, not wanting to be disloyal but trying to explain. ‘ … abstract, theoretical. She liked the
idea
of our being a big family, but I think quite often Caitlin and I just got in the way. Babies were easier. They went to bed early. Caitlin probably resented it more than me.’ She paused again. ‘James was enormous fun but hardly ever there.’

‘So when Aidan gave you some attention you remembered it,’ Molly prompted.

‘He read to us,’ Ruth said, ‘and drew pictures to go with the stories. And sometimes, when James was away, he came to babysit so Mother could go to the theatre with her friends. We always looked forward to that. We said he was the best babysitter in the world. Much better than the childminders who came in occasionally to give Mother some time to herself.’

So Meg wasn’t a wonder mother after all, Molly thought. Just human and selfish like the rest of us.

‘Aidan went to work for your father, didn’t he?’ she said.

Ruth nodded. ‘When he was at art school. During the holidays.’

‘You must have been a bit older then. Did he ever talk to you about the work?’

‘I don’t think so. He still treated me as a kid even when I began to wish he wouldn’t.’

‘And James?’ Molly asked. ‘Did he talk about his work at all?’

‘All the time. It was the only thing he thought about. It was all plans, dreams, schemes – ideas for a new television series, for an article for the magazine. I don’t think it was what Mother expected when she married him. She thought, somehow, it would be more of a partnership.’

‘Do you remember the weekend Hannah died?’ Molly asked.

‘Of course,’ Ruth said.

‘How did you get on with Hannah?’

‘Very well. We were about the same age. I could talk to her, you know, about things you could never discuss with your parents. I know Mother thought she was doing the right thing by teaching us at home and she always made sure there were lots of other children around. But they were children of
her
friends. It wasn’t like being in a big class and being able to choose for yourself. I suppose I was always quite lonely and that’s why I looked forward so much to Hannah coming to stay.’

‘Did you ever come to visit her in Salter’s Cottage with Phil and Cathy?’

‘Once,’ Ruth said. ‘It was the Easter holidays. I loved it. Phil took us out ringing with him and let us hold the birds though that wasn’t really allowed. I was only thinking of it this morning because we found a dying swan on the shore, just like Tim. Phil took it back to the cottage and tried to clean it up but it died in the night. Hannah cried for it.’

‘When was that?’ Molly asked gently.

‘The same year. The year that she died too. July 1991.’

‘Can you remember what arrangements were made that weekend, the weekend she was going to visit you?’

Molly half expected the girl to demand some explanation, to ask where the questions were leading but she answered readily enough.

‘It was a spur of the moment thing, right at the start of the summer holidays. James said he had to go north anyway for work and he might as well bring Hannah back with him.’

‘Did he tell you what the work was about?’

‘Not really but I heard him discussing it with Mother.’ She paused, wondering why she found it so easy to talk to this old lady. She was trusting her with memories she’d not discussed with anyone else. ‘They were arguing,’ she said. ‘That’s why I remember it so clearly, I suppose, and because everything that happened around the time of the accident seems very sharp and immediate because of the shock. They didn’t argue much. James sometimes tried to provoke a fight – I think he would have quite enjoyed it – but Mother didn’t respond. She usually walked away.’

‘But that day there was a row?’

‘Yes. I didn’t hear it all. I came in, I think at the end of it. Mother didn’t want him to go away. I suppose there was some event they’d been invited to. She liked to be seen out with James. He was famous then. She was shouting: “But what will people think?” Then he said quite quietly: “ Does it really matter?”’

‘Did you ever find out what the argument was about?’

‘No,’ Ruth said. ‘I couldn’t ask Mother. But James came to find me later that night before he went away. I was in my room reading and he knocked on the door and came and sat on the bed. He’d never done that before. He was always in so much of a hurry. He talked about Hannah. He asked what I’d like to do when she was staying. I said ice-skating, bowling, the usual things. Then he said: “You and Hannah must stay friends whatever happens. Even if the grown-ups fall out you must stay friends.”’

‘Did you understand what he meant by that?’

‘Not at the time. I suppose I thought then he was sorry for having rowed with Mother. But later I wondered if he was meaning to leave her, that he was saying that even if they separated Hannah and I could still see each other.’

‘Yes,’ Molly said. ‘ I suppose he could have meant that. But he never did leave your mother, did he?’

‘No,’ Ruth said, ‘and after the accident he wouldn’t have had the courage.’

They sat for a moment in silence. ‘ What’s this all about?’ Ruth asked at last. ‘I thought you wanted to talk about Aidan. I can’t help you, you know. I don’t have any more idea than you do where he’s disappeared to.’

‘But you might know
why
he left,’ Molly said. ‘ You seemed very close.’

‘I think I scared him away,’ Ruth said bitterly. ‘I wanted him to notice me, to see that I’m not a kid any more. But he wasn’t interested and I scared him off. That’s why he ran away in such a hurry.’

‘Oh no,’ Molly said. ‘ I don’t think it was like that at all.’

They told Meg that they would be out for lunch and drove instead to the Dead Dog, where they ate limp ham sandwiches and drank glasses of flat beer. The place was empty except for Cedric who stared at them mournfully from behind the bar. They seemed to have gained a lot of information during the morning but it was all vague and unsubstantiated. George especially felt he needed a fact, something concrete to work from.

‘What are we saying then?’ he demanded. ‘That Jimmy hadn’t fallen for Grace at all? That he pretended to be close to her because he wanted to find out about a boyfriend she’d had who happened to work for the National Rivers Authority?’

‘We don’t know that it was the National Rivers Authority,’ Molly said. ‘Jane wasn’t that specific.’

‘Of course not!’ George said crossly. ‘Nothing in this case is that specific.’

‘It’s an odd coincidence though, isn’t it?’ Molly went on. She was accustomed to George’s frustrations. ‘ Grace did tell me that she felt she was being used. And I don’t think one thing precludes the other, do you? Jimmy could have fallen for her and still used her to get information for his story. Surely he was never bothered about mixing business and pleasure …’ She paused in thought. ‘Perhaps the article Christabel told you about was never quite completed, the facts never checked. When Jimmy decided to write the autobiography and set the record straight he might have needed to talk again to the people involved. The boyfriend of Grace Sharland’s would have given him access to those. Especially if the incident happened locally.’