‘You and Hazel killed a man?’ I still couldn’t take in what she was telling me. I stared at her, trying to focus on the fact that this was my mother talking. All these years I’d suspected she wasn’t telling me everything about her past, after all, as far as she was concerned she didn’t really have one to share with me. It never dawned on me she could be capable of something like this. How could I have missed this other side to her character that had remained hidden from me until now?
‘What?’ Dee looked at my mother then me, open-mouthed. ‘Are you insane?’
My mother looked anything but insane to me. I thought of the many times she’d become absorbed by a character she was playing in a film. ‘You are serious, I suppose?’
She nodded. ‘Who would lie about something like this?’
I realised I didn’t know her at all. I took a deep breath to try and calm down, pressing the heel of my palms against my eyes to relieve the throbbing headache I could feel stirring. This couldn’t be happening.
She moved over to sit next to me and rested her hand on my back. I looked sideways at her. She looked the same and sounded the same. I opened my mouth to ask the identity of the man she and Hazel had murdered, gasping when an answer occurred to me that was so horrendous I had to close my eyes to speak.
‘Please,’ I whispered, my voice barely audible even to me. ‘Tell me you didn’t kill Jack.’
She frowned. ‘Who?’
‘Mum’s boyfriend,’ Leo said, his face pale and tense.
She gazed at me, her mouth open in confusion. ‘Hazel’s—? No, of course I didn’t kill Hazel’s boyfriend. What do you take me for?’
After what she had just dropped on us, the irony of her question wasn’t lost on me. I shrugged her hand off me and stood, glaring at her. How could she retain that cool veneer of control at a time like this? The nerve of her being angry with my reply made me want to shake her.
‘Mum, you’ve just announced you killed a man. If he wasn’t Henri’s father, then who the hell was he?’
She stared at me as if the name of her mysterious victim refused to part from her lips.
‘Vincent Black?’ Leo murmured eventually, nervously looking from me to Dee. ‘Was that the man?’
Where had I heard that name before? I realised Mum was crying. ‘Was it him?’
She closed her eyes. Incredible that with these revelations being thrown about her only reaction was to allow a few tears to fall. She nodded.
‘I once stupidly thought I was in love with him,’ she said, her voice quiet as if it was the first time she was allowing herself to hear this nugget of information.
I walked away from the three of them, desperate for enough space to be able to think clearly. My world was falling apart and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. I bent to pick a head of lavender, lifting it up to my nose to breathe in the familiar, calming scent. She was my mother and the only other person I’d trusted since Marcus’ death. She might be able to convincingly play the part of a killer in a television movie, but for her to be able to end another person’s life in real life—
‘What did he do to you?’ I asked, walking back to join them. ‘You must have been terrified of him to kill him.’ I looked at her tall, fine frame. She didn’t have the strength to fight a man, so this can’t have been something she had chosen to do lightly.
‘I need a moment to think.’ She leant her head back and stared up at the blue sky. ‘I never meant tell you.’ She gave Dee a pointed glare. ‘I’d give anything to have kept this from you.’
She recounted her story, her usually loud voice quiet and the look in her eyes haunted. I watched her pick away the skin from around her perfectly manicured nails and wished I could put my arm around her to comfort her a little, but any interruption could cause her to stop speaking. I daren’t move until she finished explaining what had happened.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Dee shouted, standing up and knocking over my glass.
I bent to pick it up before she stood on it. The idea of broken glass in the grass under the children’s bare feet wasn’t something I needed to deal with on top of everything else. ‘You knew?’ I asked, irritated she was overreacting yet again.
Dee shook her head frantically. ‘No. I didn’t know anything about this man, or his murder.’ She almost spat the last word as she jerked her head around to glare at my mother. ‘You’re trying to tell me that my crazy, pisshead of a mother helped you bury a man you were both in love with?’ She sat down heavily, burying her face in her hands. ‘You’re completely mad.’
‘Dee, that’s enough.’ My mother’s booming voice shocked us all. Dee looked across at her, hate filling her eyes.
I willed someone to tell me it was a sick joke. I recalled what Dee had said to start off this whole sorry confession and realised there was more to come. ‘If you weren’t going to tell me about the murder, what was the big secret you were so determined to share?’
Mum grabbed hold of my hand and squeezed, patting it with the other hand. I could feel her trembling. ‘Dee was going to tell you that Vinnie was your father.’
My mouth dropped open. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘And mine,’ Dee said, her mouth slowly drawing back into a sardonic smile.
‘What?’ I repeated, unable to force my brain into a cohesive thought.
‘I asked you a question earlier,’ Dee smirked. ‘Would you care for me like a sister?’
My mind raced. Nothing made sense.
Mum nodded. ‘She’s right,’ she said quietly. When I didn’t move, she turned her attention to Dee. ‘When did Hazel tell you?’
My new-found sister and I stared at each other. All these years, I’d had a sibling, and no one had thought to tell me. No wonder I had felt a part of Hazel’s family, I almost was. ‘Why didn’t you tell us we were sisters when we were little?’ I asked, my words sounding as if they were muffled behind a cushion. ‘We’d have been delighted back then.’
‘It might have changed many things, don’t you think?’ Dee asked.
I agreed. ‘Mum? Why didn’t you, or Hazel, tell us this before now?’
Sadness seemed etched in my mother’s face. ‘Because we knew you’d probably ask awkward questions.’ When we didn’t say anything to this, she continued. ‘You were both such inquisitive children, you would have wanted to go and look for him.’
She was right, we would have done. Both of us loved any excuse for an adventure and those were sorely lacking when we were younger. This news would have come as an exciting change in our mostly uneventful lives.
‘We were trying to hide the fact that we’d killed a man,’ she continued. ‘Don’t forget we had to be as inconspicuous as possible.’
I needed to glean as much information from her as I could while she was opening up to us. ‘But you lived so near to each other, yet let us believe you weren’t friends, why?’
‘We didn’t want anyone to see us together. We were scared Vinnie’s cronies were looking for the two of us, and—’ She hesitated. ‘It was complicated between Hazel and me. That night scarred us both. Every time I saw her I was reminded about what we’d done. It was easier to keep away from her.’
It sounded plausible. ‘But why end up in Oakwold?’ I asked.
‘We didn’t plan it this way,’ she admitted. ‘We just wanted to get away from that place and took several trains until we ran out of money.’ She closed her eyes wearily, looking her age for once. ‘It’s hard knowing that at any moment your secret could be discovered. Neither of us had any other family we trusted enough to care for our children if one of us ever did have to go away.’
Leo cleared his throat. He’d been very quiet. I’d almost forgotten he was there. ‘Obviously he couldn’t have been my father?’
Mum shook her head. ‘No, he died four years before you were born, Leo. Sorry. I’ve no idea who your father is. You’ll have to ask your mother that.’
‘This is madness,’ Dee interrupted. ‘How can you expect us to believe that you, an actress who’s spent decades on television, has been hiding from anyone who might have known you back then? Didn’t you think someone would recognise you?’
Mum nodded. ‘There was a possibility, but I was very young when this happened, my make-up was different. It was easy enough to change how I looked.’ She seemed almost proud of her achievement. ‘Even subtle changes to your appearance with colours, contouring and hairstyles can make a difference.’
‘Do you think the police looked for him?’
‘Would you waste resources on a villain you were delighted to see the back of? I wouldn’t.’ She crossed her arms. ‘I suppose they might have made perfunctory enquiries, but the people we were worried about were his cronies. Except no one came to find us. Hazel and I assumed that someone was ready to step into Vinnie’s shoes and take over where he’d left off. We probably inadvertently did them a favour.’
‘But your acting parts?’ I asked, wondering why she’d continue in a job that could put her in front of those looking for her.
‘As far as my publicity people and the papers were concerned, I was a mid-list actress, no one made too much fuss of. I reverted to being called Maureen. It was relatively simple, but it worked. Hazel and I took false surnames and came to live here.’ She paused, as if reliving it all. ‘It’s easier to hide in plain sight sometimes, you know. People tend to look hardest at a distant point and fail to see what’s right under their noses.’
‘Well, none of us had a clue this had happened, so you must be right,’ Dee said sarcastically. She hesitated for a moment. ‘I’d like to know, which one of you killed our father?’
‘Yes,’ interrupted Leo. ‘Are you, or is Mum, Vincent Black’s murderer?’
Her face contorted with what I assumed must be revulsion at the memory of what they had done. I recalled her wearing a similar expression in a television movie a couple of years before when she had played a murderer then. Was she acting this part too?
‘As I said, I was the one to hit Vinnie over the head,’ Mum said quietly. ‘But Hazel insisted we bury him and that’s ultimately what must have killed him.’
The three of us sat in stunned silence taking in what she had just told us.
‘Hang on a sec,’ Dee snapped. ‘Are you saying he was still alive when you buried him?’
Mum shifted in her seat and cleared her throat.
‘Mum?’ An icy shiver ran down my back. I willed her to reassure us that was not the case. Every part of me was trying to push this experience away.
Eventually she nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ I shrieked in disbelief. ‘How could you do such a thing?’
Discovering my father was some low-life creep who beat up women was one thing, but finding out that my mother had buried him alive was another entirely. I went to speak again, but could see she was flagging. Something else troubled her. What now? My head ached. She seemed to have aged ten years in as many minutes.
Each of us stared at her, lost in our own troubled thoughts. Something niggled in my mind. I recalled the burnt piece of her letter she had made me deliver to Hazel all those years ago.
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘The message I took to Hazel the day before she disappeared, what did it say?’
She turned the dress ring on her right index finger round and round. ‘I’d discovered they were digging up the woods near the country house where we’d buried Vinnie. We were both always frightened they might find his body, but as the years went by and nothing happened, I began to relax. Then, when I read in the newspapers that the house was empty and the area was being turned a housing estate, I knew I had to tip her off. I wanted her to be careful and keep her mouth shut.’
Leo stood up and walked around to the back of Mum’s chair. ‘Instead, Mum panicked and ran away with us.’
I could understand Hazel wanting to take her children away from the threat of her crime being discovered. ‘But what’s that got to do with Jack?’ I still couldn’t believe the fun-loving, occasionally possessive Frenchman had been Henri’s dad.
The three of them stared at me.
‘What’s he got to do with this?’ Leo asked.
It occurred to me that neither of them knew his real identity yet. ‘Jack’s name was actually Jacques. J-A-C-Q-U-E-S,’ I spelt it to make myself clear. ‘He was Henri’s dad.’
They looked more stunned by this news than that of our mother’s joint murder of Vinnie. There was a stilled silence as Leo and Dee took in this nugget of information and glanced at each other.
‘Henri’s father?’ Leo raised his eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ Mum said. ‘And the reason Henri’s leasing the farm is because his father disappeared in the summer of 2003 and he wants to find out what happened to him.’ She studied each of them in turn. Was she paying them back for forcing her to confess to everything today? ‘You wouldn’t know anything about that, I don’t suppose?’
‘Mum, of course they wouldn’t.’ Why was she trying to shift the focus on to them? I could see by the granite-hard glint in her blue eyes that she was relishing telling them this news. She didn’t take her eyes off them, and for once I could imagine her being capable of doing something far worse than I’d ever considered before.
‘Well?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been honest with you two, it’s your turn to return the compliment, don’t you think?’
Leo looked over at me. His face paled even more as I watched him, and his normally straight shoulders slumped. ‘She’s right, Sera. We do know more about Jack than we’re letting on.’
‘He’s dead,’ Dee said, matter-of-factly. ‘Killed that night before we left.’
‘No. I’m not listening to this anymore.’ I had had enough.
This was too much for me to take in. I didn’t want to hear any more about Jack, not yet. I had enough of my own past to process first. Jack was dead, though. I would have to tell Henri.
‘I’m going to check on the girls. I hope they haven’t heard any of this. Then later, when they’re asleep—’ I didn’t add, ‘and when my brain has caught up with this insanity’, ‘I want you to tell me everything you know about Jack. I’m going to have to tell Henri what happened to his father.’
Leo shook his head. ‘You’re not telling him anything,’ he said severely.
I went to argue with him but something about his manner stopped me. ‘Fine, I won’t,’ I lied. Henri had a right to know, but with all the talk of violence I didn’t like the way Leo was looking at me and wasn’t going to tempt fate by challenging him. Not yet, anyway.
I heard Katie’s voice calling from the upstairs window for me and made an excuse to leave them and go to her. I didn’t feel safe and could sense the evening ahead would reveal more secrets yet. I had no intention of keeping Katie here in case things did turn nasty and decided to take her to a guest house for a few days. Somewhere away from here until everything was sorted out. I ran up the stairs to find her, guilt flooding my veins. I would give anything not to have to leave Ashley in this house tonight, but she wasn’t my child to take.
‘What is it, darling?’ My faith in human nature healed slightly when I looked down at my little girl’s cherubic face, her arms outstretched for me to pick her up. I bent down to lift her, hugging her tightly. ‘I think it’s time you went to bed, don’t you?’
‘But I haven’t had my bath, Mummy.’ She gave me a hopeful grin.
‘You can go to bed without one tonight, just this once.’ She giggled. ‘Come on, let’s give your face a quick wash and clean your teeth, you do have to do that. Where’s Ashley?’
‘Sleeping,’ she whispered.
That was a relief. I gave her a quick wash and changed her, settling her in her bed. I needed time to pack some of her things. As soon as she began to drift off, I took a change of clothes, her swimming costume and a cardigan, packed her toothbrush and favourite teddy that had dropped from her arms, and snuck down the stairs and out of the front door to put them in the car.
I stepped back inside the house and turned to close the door as silently as possible.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Leo barked from behind me.
My heart jolted. ‘Bloody hell, Leo, you almost gave me a heart attack. What’s wrong with you?’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’ He stood close to me, not fooled by my bravado.
I refused to let him see how much he frightened me. ‘Firstly,’ I said, pointing my finger at him and stepping back slightly to make space between us. ‘This is my house and you’re a guest. You don’t have to stay here if you don’t like how I behave. Secondly, and most importantly,’ I lowered my voice to give it as much gravitas as possible, ‘I don’t need to ask permission from you, or anyone else. Got it?’
He lowered his head and moved in closer to me. ‘Sera, I have a feeling you think you’re addressing someone else. Probably that bloody Frenchman.’
I swallowed to moisten my throat, which for some reason had gone incredibly dry. If Leo thought he was going to intimidate me when my child was sleeping upstairs, he was sorely mistaken.
‘Leo,’ I said, very slowly. ‘Don’t you dare think you can boss me around, I’m not Dee and I don’t need you for anything. Now, move out of my way.’ I put my arm out to push past him and hid my relief when he moved. I didn’t want to give him any ideas about my plan to take Katie out of the house, so marched out to the garden to find Mum.
‘Mimi’s gone to bed,’ Dee said. ‘Told us she couldn’t talk about this anymore, and left. I can’t say I’m sorry.’
I looked at my half-sister and tried to imagine how different things could have been between us if her family hadn’t left when they did, or if we’d been brought up knowing our connection. Or if Jack hadn’t been killed that night in 2003.
‘What did happen to Jack?’ I asked Dee, unable to hide the tremor in my voice after my confrontation with Leo.
‘That night changed all our lives,’ she said, her voice distant as her thoughts drifted off elsewhere.
It was then I realised that the trauma of what she’d been forced to live with all these years had altered her beyond any point of recovery. She wasn’t the girl I’d known and loved when we were teenagers. Her spirit died that night, along with Jack.
‘Can you tell me how he died?’ I asked, wanting to find out as much as possible for Henri’s sake. I suspected Leo was going to stop her telling me anything more than I already knew.
She stared into space at some unseen horror. ‘Jack didn’t want us to leave the farm. Mum refused to tell him why she was so insistent on going, so he thought she was just being ridiculous. They argued.’ She took a deep breath. ‘When he refused to help her put things in the car she panicked that we were taking too long to pack and became hysterical. He slapped her.’ She looked at me. ‘I saw it all, but Leo was out by the car trying to fit everything into it. He only came back into the room when Mum fell over with the force of Jack’s slap. She hit her side on a table and yelped.’
I clasped my hands together in an effort not to show how much I was shaking. I wanted her to tell me everything, aware I didn’t have long before Leo came back outside and shut her up.
‘Leo charged at Jack. Jack grabbed Leo, who was only skinny then, if you remember, and slapped him. I think Mum falling had shocked Jack and he was almost demented with her out-of-character behaviour and then Leo having a go at him.’ She looked at me. ‘Thinking back, I don’t think Jack meant to hurt Mum, but it was incredibly hot and her reaction to Maureen’s letter and their fight pushed the atmosphere to breaking point. Mum was desperate to leave, you see. I was frightened and not sure what was going on. I panicked because she refused to give me enough time to visit your house to let you know we were going. And Leo was desperate to protect us.’ She stopped talking and took a shuddering breath.
I walked over to her and crouched in front of her, resting my hands on her knees. ‘Go on, what happened?’ I asked, keeping my voice as level as I could. I could see the back door out of the corner of my eye, aware that Leo could appear at any moment.
She stared at her hands. ‘I’m not completely certain, but one minute I was in the living room crying, the next I was in the kitchen grabbing a steak knife from a dinner plate one of us had used earlier. I ran back to Mum. I don’t know what I thought I’d do with it, threaten Jack to keep him from stopping us leave maybe. But Jack turned to leave the living room, just as I was running back in.’ She flinched and closed her eyes.
‘Oh, Dee,’ I whispered, picturing the horrific scene. I hugged her, wishing I could comfort that teenage girl who had altered her life forever in a single second of mistimed madness.
‘I’ll never forget the look on his face,’ she cried, large tears dripping down her face. ‘He was stunned. We stared at each other; time seemed frozen until Jack dropped to the floor, clutching his stomach, blood seeping through the gaps in his fingers.’
‘Dee, shut the hell up.’ Leo bellowed from the doorway. Then turning his anger at me, shouted, ‘Are you happy now? You had to know, didn’t you?’
‘So she’s told me,’ I said as cockily as I could manage. ‘So, what? It was years ago. No one should have to keep something that devastating secret,’ I said, recalling that my mother had done just that. ‘Come and comfort your sister. I need to I check on Mum.’
Not waiting for him to argue and knowing Leo well enough that he would want to grill Dee about exactly how much she had admitted to me, he and I crossed paths and I ran to the house. I turned to watch Leo and Dee briefly from the back door. They were whispering animatedly to each other. I left them to it and stepped inside.
‘Why did he mind Dee admitting she’d killed Jack?’ I asked Mum when I joined her in her bedroom and sat on the end of her bed. I couldn’t seem to stop trembling.
Despite everything that had happened, she was sitting at her dressing table, as she did every night before retiring, removing her make-up and applying her night cream to her face and neck.
‘I’m not sure,’ she murmured, studying her reflection in the mirror to ensure she’d rubbed every bit in to her youthful-looking skin. Satisfied, she came over to the bed, pulled back her summer duvet, stepped in and settled down against the large, downy pillows. ‘Maybe he’s being clever.’
‘How so?’ I asked, watching her and wondering if I’d ever really known her.
‘If neither of them confessed to killing Jack they could blame it on their mother.’ She stared out of the window. ‘As much as Hazel annoyed me, I don’t like the way they described her earlier. We must try and find out how she is.’
It was odd hearing her talking about Hazel in a caring way.
‘She could be steely tough when you least expected it, but as you know, she had a timid side to her, too,’ Mum considered. ‘If, as they say, Jack’s murder was an unfortunate accident, they shouldn’t have run away. Henri must have gone through hell all these years wondering what happened to his father.’
‘True.’ A thought occurred to me, and as much as I tried to suppress it, I couldn’t help asking, ‘Don’t you ever think about Vincent Black’s family and what they must have gone through?’ When she didn’t react, I added, ‘Wouldn’t they have wondered why he didn’t return from Scotland?’
She took a jar of hand cream from her bedside table and silently unscrewed the large silver lid. She dipped two finger tips into the white cream, handed the jar to me to reseal and began working the cream into her fingers, around her manicured nails and then over her tops of her hands to her wrists.
‘I think about them every day,’ she admitted. ‘I did a terrible thing. I can’t blame Hazel for it – even though we were both involved in his death.’ Her voice faltered at the last word in the sentence and she stopped what she was doing and looked directly at me. ‘Do you see me any differently now you know this?’
I wanted to lie, but she knew me far too well for me to get away with doing so. ‘Yes.’ She flinched, so I added, ‘But only because you’ve always been a nurturer to me and Katie.’ I laughed. ‘And to some of your younger boyfriends.’
She didn’t smile at my stupid attempt at lightening the mood. ‘I don’t want Katie to ever learn about this.’ She swallowed and cleared her throat. ‘I want her to always think of me as kindly Nana Mimi who buys her pretty dresses and ice creams.’
I placed the jar of hand cream on her bedside cabinet. ‘I can’t promise not to tell her, Mum. I’ve resented your secrets my entire life. I will do my best to make sure she doesn’t judge you. I’m sure she’ll always love you. I do.’
‘Good.’ She took both my hands in hers. ‘None of us ever knows what we’re capable of until we’re faced with a situation. I can’t tell you how terrified I was that night.’ She studied my expression. ‘And the hundreds of nights afterwards when I waited for someone to discover his body and come looking for me and Hazel.’
‘And now Henri has done just that.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, the man who saved your life today, the one to whom I’ll always be grateful, is probably going to be the one who sees me answer for my crime. Fate is having a laugh at my expense.’
I gave her hands a squeeze. ‘I don’t think he’s going to do that, Mum.’ I had to speak to him.
‘He’s a detective, Sera. His life has been about tracking people down and making them pay for crimes they’ve committed. Why shouldn’t he want the same result for Vinnie?’
I wasn’t certain, but thinking back to what he’d assured me, I said, ‘No, I truly believe he’s here to discover what happened to his father, and now he has. He can tell his family what became of Jack, and put it all to rest.’
She looked sad and suddenly fragile; almost not like my mother at all. ‘He’ll want Hazel’s children to pay for what they did.’
‘Yes, we can’t expect him not to want them to answer for killing his father.’ I rubbed my tired eyes. ‘I want to go and see him,’ I admitted, glancing at the door and lowering my voice, just in case Leo was standing outside listening. ‘Hang on a sec.’ I stood up and crept over to the window, peering down at the garden. They were still there, heads close together in conversation. I returned to Mum’s bed and bent down to whisper to her. ‘I put a few things in the car earlier, in case I needed to get Katie away from here.’
‘From me?’ She looked horrified.
I shook my head. ‘No, of course not from you.’
I explained about Leo waiting for me in the hallway when I came in and his determination not to let me go anywhere. ‘I think he suspects Henri would be my first stopping point if I left here.’
She sat up a little straighter. ‘Why would you take Katie there, you barely know the man?’
She was right. ‘I’m sure I can trust him to look after her for me. But I’m not so sure I’m happy having her here around Leo and Dee. They seem to be unravelling with every discovery, and I don’t think it’s going to be easy getting them to leave.’
Mum threw back the duvet and slipped her feet into her slippers, pulling on her fine dressing gown. ‘Come on,’ she said, opening the bedroom door. ‘There’s more I need to share with you, and I may as well tell Dee and Leo at the same time.’