ON MONDAY MORNING, ANNIE SET OFF for work early even though she knew she’d be there long before Jax turned up. It had taken her hours to get to sleep and she was awake again before dawn. She’d taken a mug of tea back to bed, but once it was finished, she was restless and had to get up, get out. It was milder, a hint of dampness in the air, a blustery wind from the west. The washing from the weekend was still in the machine, but there was no point hanging it on the line. She could smell that rain was on its way.
In the street the dead leaves on the pavement were already soft, without their icy crunch. She unlocked the door of the deli and went inside, and was immediately wrapped up in the smell of the place, savoury and yeasty, with an undertone of spice. She put on the coffee machine, so that the drinks would be ready when Jax got in.
Annie had hoped that the routine of work would help her to relax, to forget the sight of Rick, hanging like a strange misshapen puppet from the rafter in the grandest of the Pilgrims’ House’s bedrooms. But she’d been in the shop on the day that he’d died and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to relax here again. This place and the details of his death were twisted together, like the puppet’s tangled strings.
Jax burst in soon after, big and loud and full of sympathy. ‘Oh honey, I heard on the news. I know he was a friend.’ But she wanted the story, and Annie had always given Jax what she wanted, so she had to relive that moment again.
‘You were the person to find him?’ Horror and theatre mixed together and she put her arms around Annie and held on to her, squeezed her so tight that Annie almost stopped breathing. She felt like a small mammal squashed by a boa constrictor, and she had to push Jax away.
The morning passed almost in a daze, a dream. She went through the motions, but was hardly present. It was hard to imagine her life continuing without Rick Kelsall. He’d been there for her for every crisis in her adult life and suddenly she felt very alone.
Daniel appeared suddenly. Annie had her back to the door, stretching to pull a bottle of balsamic vinegar from the shelf behind her, and when she turned around there he was, standing just inside the shop. By now it had started to rain. He was wearing an old Barbour jacket, which could well be the same as the one he’d worn when they were still together. He might be rich now, but he’d never liked shopping. There were raindrops in his hair.
Jax had seen him before she had.
‘Why don’t you take a break? We won’t be busy for the rest of the day. Monday’s always quiet.’
It would have taken Annie too much effort to have come up with an excuse, so she fetched her coat from the cupboard in the kitchen and walked with Daniel out into the street. He led her into a coffee shop, which was empty too. There was a hissing coffee machine and condensation was running down the window. It felt as if they were completely alone here, separated from the rest of the world.
‘I’m sorry,’ Daniel said. ‘I know how much he meant to you.’
No. You really don’t. You have no idea.
‘What do you want, Dan?’ Her voice didn’t sound angry, though it had upset her, his turning up in the shop. Thrown her and made her confused. It sounded distant and very tired.
He waited before answering because the waitress was heading over to take their order.
‘It is still a cappuccino you like?’
She nodded, though these days she usually went for a flat white. Again, she couldn’t summon up the effort to explain that she was no longer the person he remembered.
‘A woman detective came to the tower yesterday,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t work out why. She didn’t really explain. I mean, I knew Rick Kelsall was dead, but why would she want to talk to us?’
‘They think he might have been murdered by one of us.’ Annie could tell the words were flat, that they showed no emotion. Better that, than that she should break down in front of Dan. She imagined him holding her, stroking her hair, reassuring her that everything would work out. He’d done that when Freya had died, before he’d lost patience with her. ‘By one of the group staying at the Pilgrims’ House. She seems very thorough. I suppose she was looking for background information from someone who once knew us all well.’
‘She believes one of the people at the reunion killed Rick?’ A pause. ‘But that’s crazy! I never particularly liked them, but they’re not killers.’
‘Why are you here?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. An impulse, maybe. I just wanted to check you’re okay.’ He paused. ‘And I suppose out of curiosity, if I’m honest. To know what happened over the weekend.’
‘Nothing happened over the weekend. No rows! No dramas!’
‘Do the police think they’ll be able to sort it out quickly?’ He looked up from his coffee. ‘The woman who came to the house didn’t seem very sharp.’
‘Was that Vera Stanhope?’
He nodded. ‘Katherine said she’s an inspector.’
‘I had to tell her about Isobel’s accident. She’s been digging into all our pasts.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Just that Isobel had a row with Rick and then she drove off the island at high tide and killed herself.’
‘She asked me about that too.’ Daniel looked up at Annie, and she found herself staring into the dark eyes. ‘It was an accident, wasn’t it? You’re not keeping anything from me?’
‘Of course not! What could there possibly be to hide?’
He didn’t answer.
Eventually she found the silence intolerable. ‘Why are you really here, Dan? What’s this all about?’
‘I suppose I’m worried that the business might be affected.’ He had the grace to sound sheepish. ‘The past year has been hard enough, with the weather so unreliable, and the last thing we need is an unsolved murder of a minor celebrity on our doorstep, all over the press, just as we’re getting back on our feet…’ His voice tailed off. ‘I’m sorry, that must seem crass.’
Of course, she thought, the business. That has always been his passion. He cared more about the tower than he did about me. But somehow, she resented the obsession less than she had in the past. It was good to be with someone who’d known Rick, who had, despite the men’s differences, been a good friend.
It had been months since she’d last seen Daniel and that had been at a distance in Kimmerston market. She’d glimpsed him through the crowds. He’d been standing at the cheese stall, laughing with the owner. Easy. Confident. Now, she felt a pull of the old attraction, despite his age, despite the lingering sense of betrayal. His hand was lying on the table next to the folded paper napkin and she was tempted to reach out and touch it.
‘Does Katherine know you’re here?’
He looked at her and shook his head. ‘This is nothing to do with Katherine.’ A pause. ‘She’s always so busy, though of course this will be difficult for her too. If the connection were to get into the press.’
Annie thought there was no connection. Not really. ‘Did she send you to talk to me?’
‘No!’ Daniel sounded genuinely offended. ‘No! Of course not.’
The waitress came with the coffees. There was a dusting of chocolate powder on the top of hers. She hated that, the sweet graininess of it, but she sipped it just the same. There was another moment of silence until the woman walked back to the kitchen.
‘Vera Stanhope’s a clever woman,’ Annie said. ‘Don’t be fooled by her appearance. She’ll sort it out quickly. By next season everyone will have forgotten about Rick Kelsall’s death, and tourists will be flocking to Rede’s Tower, glad of a holiday in your eco paradise.’
He smiled, unoffended by the mocking tone. ‘Perhaps. Look, I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have come.’ He’d finished the coffee and stood up, so he was looking down at her. ‘Really, I did want to check you’re okay.’
‘It was kind.’ Annie wasn’t sure what else to say. She couldn’t ask him to sit down again, to be company, to stop her brooding about what had happened at the weekend. ‘Keep in touch, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled suddenly, and though his face was older, the smile was just the same as when he’d been a teenager. ‘I’d like that.’
Then he disappeared, almost as suddenly as he’d arrived in the shop. Annie could hardly believe that the encounter had taken place. She finished the coffee and walked back to Bread and Olives. Jax was serving a couple of middle-aged tourists. When they left, she put her arm round Annie.
‘What did that rat want?’
Jax knew more than anyone else about the background to their marriage and divorce. Once, on the anniversary of Freya’s death, Annie had drunk too much and everything had spilled out. The grief and the guilt. Most especially the guilt. They’d been in Jax’s home, a flat in a converted warehouse on the edge of the town looking out over the river. It had been late summer, rolling out towards autumn, warm and laid-back. They’d sat on the balcony in the golden light reflected from the water. It should have been a relaxed conversation, funny, entertaining.
‘What is it with you and men?’ Jax had asked.
For some reason, Annie had ditched her usual answer about loving her own space, not needing a man in her life. She’d started talking and she couldn’t stop.
‘I was young, still at Newcastle Poly. Not planning to get pregnant. Certainly not, but chaotic, not eating properly, stressing about finals. All that stuff. I always was a bit obsessive. And Dan and I were together, properly together. He was working for his grandfather, but we met up most weekends, and every vacation I went and stayed with him. Then, when I found out I was expecting, there was this excitement, you know, and the sense that everything was right. That being a mother was what I wanted. What I could do. Because I was a very mediocre student. Kind of semi-detached, I suppose. I wanted Dan’s baby more than anything.’ The words had tumbled out. It had been years since she’d talked about it. Perhaps she’d never talked about it. Not properly, except to Rick Kelsall. Her parents had been sorry about Freya of course, but there’d been an element of blame too. Of suspicion. They still hadn’t quite been able to accept that Freya’s death had been unavoidable. And nor had Annie. Guilt had lingered and tarnished every part of her life.
‘Rede’s Tower was a very different sort of place then. His parents gave us a caravan on the site to live in. It had a leaky roof when we moved in, but Dan mended the roof and really, I made it very cosy. Not a bad place to bring a baby. It was a little girl. Dan was with me when she was born and he gave her the name. Freya.’ Annie had paused. Gulped for breath and gulped the wine, though Jax never offered wine that should be swigged.
‘And in the delivery room afterwards, he asked me to marry him. There were tears running down his face. He said he wanted us to be a real family. I could see my life stretching ahead of me. I had everything I wanted. A month later we were in the registry office, with our families and our very close friends.’ Rick, Phil, Charlotte, Ken, Lou, Isobel. Everyone in the pub afterwards, getting giggly drunk. Even me, although I was breastfeeding. Then back to the caravan.
In the apartment with its stylish art and the evening sun pouring through the window, Jax had poured more wine and waited for the rest of the story. Annie had known she couldn’t stop there.
‘Freya had been with us all day, and seemed happy and well. But she didn’t wake up in the night for a feed, and when I got up late, panicked and sick with anxiety she was lying still and cold in her cot. Dead. Cot death. You don’t hear so much about it now, but then it was a thing. I was twenty-one, with a new husband and a dead baby.’
‘Oh, my love.’ Jax had been in tears. ‘My poor love.’
A couple of months later it had been the Pilgrims’ House reunion. The first time Annie had been away from Rede’s Tower since Freya’s death, apart from the funeral. She’d been reluctant to go but Rick had persuaded her. He could charm anyone to do what he wanted, but especially Annie. ‘Come,’ he’d said. ‘It’ll be good for you to be with friends.’
And for a while, it had been. Dan had been a bit quiet, but he’d wanted to be there. He’d enjoyed being somewhere different, where the atmosphere lifted occasionally and people felt they could laugh. There hadn’t been much laughter in the caravan. Everyone had understood when Annie had wanted long walks on her own, or time alone in the chapel. They’d swept Daniel off to the pub, provided him with company when he’d needed it. Then Isobel had crashed her car and there’d been another death. Another funeral.
‘Is that why you divorced?’ Jax had asked that late summer evening in the airy apartment, as she’d opened another bottle of wine. ‘Because you lost Freya?’
Annie had thought about that and tried to explain:
‘I guess so, though we were very young. Perhaps it wouldn’t have lasted anyway.’
I stuck memories of the baby in a big black box at the back of my head. But sometimes they jumped out, like a jack-in-a-box, and nothing between us was the same again. I couldn’t love Dan like I loved Freya, because she would always be perfect. Of course, he resented that. I couldn’t blame him.
She hadn’t spoken those words though. Jax had reached out for her hand and they’d sat in silence, staring over the water, until the sun had set.
Back in the present, in the shop that had become a second home, Annie leaned into Jax’s chest, then pulled herself gently away. ‘Dan’s not a rat,’ she said. ‘He came to offer support, to see how I was doing.’
‘Just take care,’ Jax said. ‘He’ll be after something. I’ve never yet met a man who only wanted to offer support.’