‘It was a terrible day. One that really scarred me,’ Martin said. Shilpa put Roy’s journal on her lap. Martin stared at it, making her shift in her seat.
Shilpa had explained how Caroline had given it to her the day of his party. Martin didn’t see what the connection was, so Shilpa had no choice but to explain that Caroline had believed her father had been killed. She didn’t say that she believed Caroline; nor did she say that she assumed Caroline too had been killed. ‘I just wanted to know what Caroline was thinking before she died,’ she told him.
Martin explained that he had only just heard of his niece’s passing, that he was still in shock. His wife Julia had appeared then, giving Shilpa a deathly glare before storming into the kitchen without so much as uttering a word to either her or Martin. Shilpa was certain Martin was going to kick her out, back into the rain.
‘It’s been long enough,’ Martin said. ‘I’ve held on to this secret for so long, and it’s done nothing but eat me up inside. It ruined my life. You want to know what happened, I’ll tell you.’ He shifted in his chair and looked over his shoulder towards the kitchen, where his wife was clattering pots and pans. ‘I don’t see the connection though. I really don’t.’
Shilpa would be the judge of that. She just had to get him to talk. Martin disappeared into the kitchen then, and Shilpa heard raised voices. Julia wasn’t happy about something, but Martin, it appeared, didn’t care for her opinion. He had brewed a pot of tea and brought a cup to her. He sat in a well-worn chair looking out through the bay window. The tide was rising and the beach was deserted. The waves swelled and crashed against the black rock and pale sand.
‘What do you want to know?’ he asked after he had settled in his chair and had drunk half the contents of his cup.
‘What happened that day?’
‘It was a glorious day. One of those still summer ones. Our parents were taking us to the beach for a treat. The treat wasn’t the beach,’ he said with a smile. ‘We often went to the beach with nannies and whatnot. No, Mother and Father were coming with us; that was the treat. I knew then it wouldn’t be a proper beach day, not one where you came home with sand in between your toes. I knew we would go to the Café in the Cove not far from Mermaid Point. This was their routine. They often took us for a lunch at a café near a beach, drank a bottle of white and then went home. We were all happy on days like that. We got to spend a little time with our parents, and they felt they had done their duty for the summer. The wine must have helped. It should have been a perfect day, but it wasn’t. It was one of the worst days of my life.’
Martin paused. Shilpa realised that she should have told someone where she was. To pull her phone out now and send a message would have been a distraction, and she didn’t want to do anything to break Martin’s train of thought. Instead, she sat quietly and waited, silently worrying that no one knew where she was. She should have messaged Tanvi when Martin was making her a cup of tea. But as usual her sensible thoughts had come too late.
‘We both had our usuals. A prawn sandwich for me. I don’t know why I ordered that. I never really liked prawns, not back then when I was eight. I think I was trying to impress someone. Roy, probably. Show him how mature I was. I should never have bothered. For seventy-two years he hid something from me, and I’ll never forgive him for that.’
Shilpa could see that Martin’s eyes were moist, his frail hands clenched by his sides. ‘Roy had fish and chips. Mother tutted at our orders. She had a crab salad that she barely touched. Father had mackerel. It’s funny how clearly I can remember even the tiniest details from that day. They are etched in my mind. Sometimes I wish dementia would get me and I’d forget, but I don’t think I’d ever be so lucky as to forget that day. I’ll remember it till I die. Maybe that’s my punishment.’
Martin paused again. He took a sip of his tea. ‘A family was sitting on the table next to us. There was a little boy at the table with his parents. He was wearing brown shorts and a checked shirt. He had brown hair and freckles. I remember thinking he looked like us. He was a quiet boy, waiting patiently for his food while his parents talked about things he wasn’t interested in. I was tempted to talk to him, invite him to come and sit with us, but I was painfully shy. I could never find the right words, and when I did, they wouldn’t come. They were always lodged in my throat. Mother always said that I had to speak up. I tried, I did, but it was difficult for me.’
Shilpa nodded. She knew the feeling. She too had been a shy child. She liked to think it was because she was more self-aware than other children. She never wanted to say the wrong thing in fear of being laughed at, so like Martin she said nothing at all.
‘Roy looked at me and laughed. He knew what I was thinking. Then, as bold as brass, he caught the boy’s eye and sneered at him. The poor child. You didn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of Roy’s jeers. I could see the boy’s eyes welling up. Roy did the same to me, and even though I was his brother, I felt awful, so I knew just how bad Roy’s look had made that kid feel. I wanted to tell him to ignore my brother, but I didn’t. There was so much I could have said that day, but I never did. The poor boy looked in the other direction until his food arrived, and then it happened.’
When Martin didn’t start talking again, Shilpa cleared her throat and gently asked him what happened next.
‘I’ve never told anyone this,’ he said. ‘Well, my therapist and Julia know bits.’ He looked back towards the kitchen, which had fallen into silence. ‘I’ve never said it all like this. I suppose I would have if it hadn’t been for the shame, and now I’m eighty, well, it’s time people know the kind of man I really am. It’s time people understand what made me the way I am. Don’t get me wrong, I was always the quiet one, but after that day, I was never the same again.’
‘Go on,’ Shilpa said encouragingly.
‘The boy started eating.’ Martin put his hand to his mouth and then dropped it to his neck. He rubbed his Adam’s apple and closed his eyes. ‘I saw a wasp fly into his sandwich. You know what those things are like on still summer days. They are the only thing that ruin the British summer,’ he said with more venom than necessary.
‘I watched it, this wasp, burrow deeper and deeper behind the lettuce. I could see the flicker of its legs and wings, the end of its gold-and-black body. The boy held on to his sandwich. He was busy talking to his parents about something. Then the boy turned to me. He caught my eye briefly and then quickly looked away. He probably thought I was going to give him a nasty look like my brother had done. I wasn’t going to. I wanted to warn him, I did, but I was just too shy, too pathetic. I never said anything and then it was too late.’
‘The boy took another bite of the sandwich?’ Shilpa asked.
Martin nodded. ‘It was fine at first. I watched him, not knowing what would happen, and then suddenly his face went red. He clasped his throat with his hands. He couldn’t breathe. He was in pain.’ Tears were trickling down Martin’s face now. A little drop lay nestled in the crease under his eye. Shilpa wanted to reach out, put a comforting hand on him and wipe away his tear, but she refrained.
Martin buried his head in his hands. ‘I remember his mother screaming. A man rushed over to their table and tried to help. It was no use. The boy couldn’t breathe. Minutes felt like hours. We stood watching until our mother ushered us away. “Come away, boys,” she said sharply. Roy wanted to stay. He said he wanted to see if the boy made it or not. We heard the next day that the little boy in the checked shirt and brown shorts with freckles on his face died that day in the Café in the Cove. I could have prevented that death, but I didn’t say anything, and so he perished.’
Shilpa rose, went to Martin and put her hand on his. He looked into his lap. She understood now why Elaine said he lived in the shadows, why Caroline said he was so introverted. He didn’t feel like he deserved to live.
Martin lifted his gaze, and Shilpa took a step back. The pieces were suddenly slotting into place. ‘What is it?’ he asked, recognising her changing expression.
‘Your whole life you thought you were the only one who witnessed that wasp entering the little boy’s sandwich, but you weren’t. Your brother had seen what had happened too.’ It made sense now, why Roy had given his housekeeper Terry all that money for her son’s operation. He had mentioned to Terry that he was giving a little boy his life back. Roy too had felt some guilt then, even if it had come a little late in life.
Martin turned to the window. ‘I didn’t know that Roy knew about the wasp. For all these years, I never knew.’
Shilpa couldn’t help but ask the question that was going around and around in her mind. How was this incident the boys had with the wasp when they were eight relevant to Roy’s death? Caroline had been convinced that the journal contained important information that would lead her to her father’s killer, but this incident over seventy years ago had no relation to anything now, did it? She mumbled her question as new theories rapidly formed in her mind.
‘What?’ Martin asked. ‘What did you say?’
‘You didn’t know that your brother saw the wasp bury itself in that boy’s sandwich.’
Martin shook his head. ‘I was certain that if Roy had seen it, he would have said something. I never mentioned it again after that dreadful day.’
‘And neither did he,’ Shilpa said. She recalled what her neighbour Elaine had said to her when she had visited, that on a rare occasion Martin pulled Roy up on something. What was it? Taking the boat out behind his parents’ backs or something like that. Elaine had said that Roy had done the most peculiar thing. Roy had made a buzzing noise at him like a bee, which had instantly sent Martin off with his tail between his legs. It wasn’t a bee that Roy had been mimicking but a wasp. Caroline had said that Martin was afraid of wasps. With that buzzing sound, Roy was reminding his brother of that day as a warning of how little he mattered. ‘Roy only brought it up when he wanted to remind you of that day, to make you feel…’
‘Worthless. To remind me that I had failed that boy.’
‘But recently it dawned on you that your brother had witnessed exactly what you had seen that day, and it surprised you that it hadn’t affected him in the same way. Roy didn’t live to atone for what he had done. He had put the incident behind him and had moved on.’
Martin nodded. ‘Not a day goes past when I don’t think of what happened and the part I played in that little boy’s death. Every time I started to enjoy my life, I would see that boy’s swollen face, his blue lips, his mother screaming like she was being tortured, and I would put an end to the party, or break things off with a girlfriend. It wasn’t until Julia… I owe her everything for that, because I did manage to move on a little. But still, I still think of that day more often than I should.
‘Roy was good at buzzing around me when he was bored, when he wanted to provoke a reaction. He was like that; he enjoyed other people’s misery. A sadist. Of course, as he grew older, he stopped doing it so much. I thought he was getting wiser, but I think he had just forgotten. Annabel had occupied him for some time.’
‘What made you think that Roy had known about the wasp the whole time?’ Shilpa asked.
Martin shrugged. ‘A passing comment when we were at Arden Copse for lunch nearly six weeks ago now. Roy said something about a wasp in a sandwich, gave me a look, and then it clicked. It was like I had known all along but had chosen not to see it. I didn’t want to think that my brother was so heartless to move through life without any remorse.’
‘But you were both so young. Neither of you could have been held responsible for what you did or what you didn’t do.’
Martin stood up. He banged his fists on the table, making Shilpa jump. ‘We were old enough. We could have stopped it.’
‘Would you have blamed Isabella if she had done the same as a child?’
‘That’s enough,’ Martin spat. ‘This is none of your business. You shouldn’t even be here. Just leave it and get out.’ He turned away from her, putting his head in his hands.
Shilpa heard a clatter of plates from the kitchen. She looked at her watch. She had been with this frail old man for over an hour now. She could leave now and forever be in the dark about what had happened after Martin realised what his brother had done, or she could see this through. Martin was old, but he was steady on his feet and strong. She weighed up her options and decided that if she took him by surprise with one strong push, she could make a getaway if he tried to detain her in any way.
‘You confronted your brother the day of his party,’ Shilpa said. ‘You were there with your wife.’ Shilpa was sure she had seen Julia at the party, not just at Kaya Rock, and her words were out before she could stop herself.
Martin shook his head. ‘Julia didn’t know I was going to the party. I didn’t dare tell her because I knew she would stop me.’ Martin took a step back towards the window. ‘I was there alone. There my brother sat presiding over his estate. I waited till he was alone to speak to him. It took some time. There were so many guests. Each one had something to say, and then it was my turn.
‘Caroline had seen me approach her father. She was coming to talk to us both, but I warned her away. She knew there was always something unspoken between us and neither of us was getting any younger. Finally, I had found some courage and I wasn’t going to let it get away. I told him what I knew,’ Martin said before falling silent.
When Martin didn’t speak again, Shilpa prompted him.
‘He agreed that he had seen the wasp enter the boy’s sandwich.’
Shilpa nodded her understanding. It must have been a relief for Martin to know he wasn’t solely responsible for that boy’s death, but she imagined that Martin must have been angry as well.