As Andee started out to her car she connected to her own mother, Maureen, to let her know that something had come up but she’d be with her as soon as she could. Though Maureen assured her it wasn’t a problem, Andee knew how worried she was about the biopsy results she was expecting tomorrow. She ought to be with her, and she would be, provided Joely turned out to be at the house and nothing untoward had happened.
The drive to Lynton took only forty minutes, most of which passed Andee by in a blur as she worried about her mother, and her daughter, who was having a difficult time at work, and her sister, who was always a concern. She tried Joely’s mobile several times, but knowing there was little or no reception at Dimmett House she wasn’t surprised when she was repeatedly bumped through to voicemail.
When at last she turned into the drive she saw right away that all the shutters were closed, apart from in the tower, and there were no cars to be seen. She pulled up outside the front door and went to press the bell, hearing a distant ring somewhere far deeper inside.
When there was no sound of anything happening, she pressed the bell again and walked along the front of the house, whose windows looked like blind eyes, to a covered patio at the base of the tower. There were no shutters here, but the French doors were firmly shut, and not wanting to set off an alarm by trying to force them, she rapped hard with her knuckles while calling out Joely’s name.
“Hello! Is anyone at home?” she shouted, knocking again. Cupping her hands around her eyes she peered through to what was clearly a kitchen. No sign of anyone, so she took a few steps back and assessed the upper levels of the tower.
No sign of anyone there either, and everything was silent.
She looked around at the benign and beautiful surroundings, and spotting a trail running through the long grass of the meadow she decided, in the interests of being thorough, to follow it.
It took only a couple of minutes to reach an incline that sloped in rugged tiers down to a small sandy beach. There were only the tide’s latest offerings to see on the sand that nestled between the huge, imposing cliffs rising up on either side of the cove.
Turning back to the house, Andee checked her phone, and seeing she had no signal she decided to cut diagonally across the meadow back to her car.
Before leaving she pressed the doorbell again, several times, but she was clearly wasting her time. There was no one at home.
Joely was coming awake, stiff and cold, head throbbing, threads of music still seeming trapped in her ears. They’d begun to echo on long after the concert had ceased, weaving through her mind and her dreams, as present and persistent as the reality of silence.
She sat up, pressed her hands to her face and tried to make herself think. Before the last musical onslaught she’d remembered the photograph she’d found in the table drawer the day she’d arrived at Dimmett House. A small girl with two boys on either side of her. She’d come to the conclusion that it must be the real young Freda with her brothers. Christopher and David.
Freda was Sir’s sister.
The music was playing again, but differently, distantly, like a bell until suddenly realizing what it was she leapt up from the bed and ran to the window.
There was a car on the drive, heading away from the house.
“No,” she cried frantically, and heaving up the heavy frame she scrambled out onto the balcony. “Don’t go,” she screamed into the wind. “I’m up here.”
The car was already turning out of the drive onto the road.
Realizing who it was, Joely yelled, “Andee! I’m here. Please don’t go.”
Moments later there was no car, no one to hear her, or to see her as she stood helplessly and desperately at the top of the tower buffeted by icy squalls of rain and watched by a solitary deer at the heart of the meadow.
“What are you doing?” Marianne cried, experiencing a bolt of terror when she found Freda blocking her way from the bathroom.
“You didn’t flush,” Freda told her.
Marianne stared at her, hardly knowing what to say. For one wild moment she considered trying to shove her into the bathroom and locking her in, but the bolt was on the other side—and besides it wasn’t going to help her find out what was happening to Joely.
Pushing past the woman, she stalked across the room and out along the landing, moving fast so Freda couldn’t get too close behind and push her down the stairs.
Why would she do that?
Why would she do anything?
When they got to the sitting room Freda went to stand at the window, gazing out at the street, and Marianne watched her not knowing what the heck to do.
Several minutes ticked by until finally Freda turned around and said, “Do you have a computer?”
Marianne didn’t reply.
“I’m sure you do,” Freda decided. “If you get it we can continue with the memoir, or maybe we should call it a confession from now on.” Seeming to like the idea she said, “You can write down everything that happened to you after my brother’s arrest, telling us why you lied, and continued to lie and perhaps we can detail your parents’ shameless hypocrisy in the way they condemned your affair with my brother when your mother as good as approved it.”
“That’s not true,” Marianne snapped before she could stop herself. “The way you’ve portrayed my parents . . . You knew nothing about them. They weren’t those people . . .”
Freda waved a hand, cutting her off. “They were well known for their lifestyle, even my parents were invited to some of their parties. They never went. Orgies weren’t their scene. But your parents and their low morals aren’t really the issue. It’s what you did that we need to get straight. Tell me, how much of the affair have I got right?”
Strengthening herself with thoughts of Joely, Marianne said, “Why don’t you tell me where my daughter is first, then I’ll answer your questions.”
Freda shook her head. “I want a full and frank confession out of you before I do that. For now, all you have to do is sit at your computer and—”
“It’s not going to happen, Freda. I’m not doing anything until I know Joely is safe.”
Freda’s eyes flashed. “Then we are at an impasse. I want the truth, you want your daughter, who’s going to give in first?”
Realizing she had to play for time at least until Andee rang with some news, Marianne’s hand tightened on the phone in her pocket as she said, “The girlfriend who returned from India. Her name was Dinah.”
Freda’s eyes narrowed with a humor that seemed sly and triumphant. “So it was,” she agreed, and Marianne realized she’d always known it. She must have changed it to confuse Joely.
“Dinah,” Freda repeated and her expression turned mournful. “Did you ever know, or even care about how your lies affected her? No, I don’t suppose you did. I’d be surprised if you spared her as much as a single thought. She wanted to stand by him, you know?”
Marianne swallowed drily. It was true, she’d never thought, or cared, about Dinah.
Freda said, “I’ve lost touch with her now, but she came to—” She broke off as Marianne drew her phone from her pocket.
It was a text from Callum. Did you get hold of Andee?
Tucking the phone away again, Marianne fixed Freda with a contemptuous stare.
Apparently unfazed, Freda shrugged. “I don’t have anything to fear,” she said, “so if you’re calling for help, or waiting for someone else to arrive, that’s fine. I won’t be going anywhere until I have what I came for.”
Still stalling for time, Marianne said, “Why now? After all these years, why are you doing this now?”
Freda smiled. “There are two answers to that,” she replied. “The first is the simplest: I do not intend to die without clearing my brother’s name.” She glanced down at her fingers as she stretched them out. “I could say,” she continued, “that I’m sorry for what it might do to you, being branded a liar and having to face the truth, but I would be lying.”
Marianne sat very still, already sensing what was coming next.
“The second answer,” Freda said, “is that I think it’s time I met my nephew, don’t you?”
Joely’s head was throbbing, and her heart kept racing as though trying to catch up with itself. The adrenaline rush of seeing Andee had subsided now, leaving her feeling more vulnerable and desperate than ever. Why hadn’t the music been blaring while her friend was here? She’d have known right away that something was wrong. But it hadn’t and Joely wanted to sob and rage at the sheer bad timing of it.
Aware that her physical strength was starting to wane, she told herself she must begin assessing exactly how she was going to clamber over the balcony and lower herself down onto the winter-bare wisteria. How thick were the branches, and were any of them strong enough to bear her weight? How could she find out without testing them, and when she did would it already be too late?
Staring down at the ground from the balcony, her stomach twisted—with both hunger and dread. She remembered reading once that hunger could change the pathways to the brain, making it hard to reach decisions. Did her fears for her mother even make sense? She was becoming increasingly convinced Freda had gone to see her mother, but what was she hoping to achieve? Was it revenge she was after? What else could it be? What had happened to Sir? Where, who was he now?
Unable to answer these questions, she became sure of one thing—she couldn’t bear to stay in this tower much longer. Should she write a letter to Holly, her mother, and Callum, in case the worst happened? The music would start again any minute, and there was a lot she wanted to say to them. She had to make sure they knew how much she loved them. And there was something she’d never told Callum, something that made her feel so sick inside that she wasn’t even sure she could tell him now.
Did he need to know?
No, was the answer. She would take it with her if she fell, and if she didn’t . . . Maybe she’d tell him herself the next time she saw him.
She’d barely got started on a letter to Holly before the music boomed back to life. She did her best to keep going through bass beats and unstoppable voices, but it simply wasn’t possible, so pushing away from her computer she went into the tiny bathroom and closed the door.
Andee was in the car park just past St. Mary Magdelene Church in Lynton. She’d paused to send a text to Marianne—She’s not at the house. Let me know if any more I can do. Ax—and after making sure it had gone she put the car into gear to start the drive back across the moor.
Nevertheless, she was aware of something niggling away at the back of her mind about Joely, she just couldn’t quite grasp what it was.
As Marianne put her phone away, Freda said, “Does Joely know that she and her brother have different fathers?”
Marianne looked up, her expression revealing nothing of what she was feeling inside, but both the text and the question were upsetting her badly. Even harder to deal with was just how crazy, even dangerous, this woman might be.
“Perhaps what I should be asking,” Freda continued, “is what my nephew knows . . .”
Marianne snapped, “Tell me where Joely is.”
Freda spread her hands in a helpless sort of way. “Write the truthful version of what happened when my brother ended your affair and you’ll have your answer.”
Marianne hesitated, but only for a second. “Your brother was a—”
“—rapist, yes in the statutory sense he was, but you didn’t let it end there, did you? He’d have gone to prison anyway, but you made up a story—”
Marianne shot to her feet.
“Where are you going?” Freda asked as Marianne walked out of the room.
Moments later Marianne was back with her laptop. Opening it, she clicked to a fresh screen and said, “You want the truth, you’ll have it.”
Joely was staring at her undies drip-drying over a lukewarm radiator. Dealing with the discomfort of being in the same clothes for so long had provided a bizarre distraction from the last assault of music, but at least it had reminded her that the normal, rational part of her mind was still functioning.
She’d washed herself and her underwear while trying to sing along with “Young Girl” and hoping she never heard it again in her life. Worse, always worse, was the passionate, heart-wrenching soprano that had turned to screams in her ears.
Everything about her situation was driving her closer to the brink.
She had decided that the best way down would be to climb the wisteria around the tower until she was over the tiled roof of the kitchen patio. It would still be a long way down, but at least if she fell there it wouldn’t be onto rocks.
She’d wait until the next assault of music was over, dress, and pray to God that the wind didn’t pick up. And that the wisteria would hold her weight.
As Marianne’s fingers flew over the computer keyboard she was trying not to engage with the words. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, think about how deeply the memories were affecting her; the private lessons, the uncle’s cottage, and those wonderful, unforgettable days in Paris. She could see his eyes more clearly than the page in front of her. She’d loved him so much . . .
She imagined him telling Freda about their affair—it was the only way she could have known so many details—and was able to hear his voice, soft and melodic, wry and endlessly sad that everything had ended the way it had. Her son reminded her of him in so many ways that at times it had been almost painful to look at him. She’d learned to live with it, and Lionel, her husband, had shown far more patience and understanding than she’d deserved. He’d been such a wonderful father to Jamie, the only one Jamie had known, or wanted to know. As a child he’d never asked about the man who’d come before his daddy, although in later years he’d been interested to know that he was the son of a gifted musician. Jamie loved music too, but he wasn’t as passionate about it as David had been.
Joely knew Jamie was a half brother, of course she did, but she’d shown no more interest in it than Jamie had. As far as she was concerned they were a family, and her father was Jamie’s every bit as much as he was hers.
Marianne wrote none of this in the “confession’ Freda was demanding. She kept her regrets, longings, guilt, and pain closely locked inside, although aware of it tightening and tormenting her heart as each new memory unfolded. He was there at the center of it all and feeling so real that he could almost have been guiding her fingers over the computer keys, as he once had over the piano. She felt fifteen again and wanted to rest her head against him, inhale the familiar scent of him, and feel the warmth of his skin in the places that it touched hers. If only she’d been able to talk to him; if her parents, his family, and the lawyers hadn’t kept them apart at the time of his arrest and sentencing . . . She’d had no idea back then that during those terrible months following the breakup, she’d been suffering as much from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder as she had heartbreak. None of them had even heard of PTSD, but the sheer wretchedness she’d felt, the shame and guilt of the affair, the lie she’d told mixed in with all the passion and longing had made her feel at times as though she was dying. As though in some terrible, undefinable way he was killing her.
Eventually her hands left the keyboard. She had no more to say, it was all there for Freda to read, exactly how it had happened, and struggling to hold herself together she passed the laptop over.