CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

It took Piers a few moments to control his shock and, more tellingly, the fear of loss that twisted his gut. He heard Saul saying that he’d check to see if Lizzie’s car had gone and Tilda telling him that she’d left it out on the drive rather than in the barn; was aware of Teresa putting forward several theories, but it was to his father that he instinctively turned. Felix was watching him with the familiar look of compassion and affection.

‘She’ll have left a message,’ he said firmly, as if in answer to Piers’ unspoken question. ‘If she’s gone there will be a reason for it. There will be a message.’

A message: Piers was seized with new hope but it was Tilda who found the card propped against Piers’ breakfast cup and saucer. She passed it to him and, with barely a glance at the picture of the Yarn Market, he turned it over to read what she had written on the back. His eyes swiftly scanned the lines whilst the others watched him eagerly and Saul came back to report that Lizzie’s car had gone.

‘It says that when she checked her mobile after the party last night she had several urgent messages from her agent.’ Piers cleared his throat. ‘He was expecting her back at the weekend and she’d completely forgotten to let him know she’d extended her stay. Apparently she has to be in Manchester first thing Monday morning for some filming and she needs to stop off at Bristol on the way to collect clothes.’ He paused and then read directly from the card. ‘“I imagine you’ll all be sleeping late after such a wonderful party so I’ll probably sneak away, trying not to disturb anyone. I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed myself. I’m so sorry this has blown up but please give my love to everyone and my thanks.” So there it is.’ He looked around at them, trying to hide his crushing disappointment.

‘I suppose that’s how life is,’ Teresa was saying, ‘when you’re famous. She was telling me last night that they’re making another advertisement as a kind of follow-on to the first one.’

‘But even so,’ Tilda sounded nearly as disappointed as Piers was feeling, ‘I wish she could have stayed to say goodbye.’

‘It’s a long drive to Manchester,’ Saul said, ‘and if she has to stop off in Bristol she hasn’t got a lot of time to spare. It would be silly, not to say irritating, hanging about hoping people are going to wake up. After all, we might all have slept until midday.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing with Jake around,’ said Tilda, almost crossly. ‘Not to mention Lion. I expect it was Lizzie going out that disturbed him.’

Piers remembered the noise of the door closing and the sound of the car in the lane. He still held the card in his hand, unwilling to put it down to be read by the others: ‘It’s meant so much to meet you at last, Piers,’ she’d written. He wanted time to study it again in private and suddenly he needed to be quite alone.

Felix got up from the table. ‘How would you feel if we went off shortly?’ he asked Teresa. ‘I don’t want to be tiresome but I feel that a long rest is the order of the day as far as I’m concerned.’

If he’d hoped to deflect the attention from Piers and the card his plan was a success. Tilda looked at him anxiously and her mother rose at once.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘You must be exhausted, Felix. Not in pain, I hope?’

‘No, no.’ He smiled at her reassuringly and shook his head ruefully, as if in despair at his own weakness. ‘I’m so sorry to break up the party. If Saul doesn’t mind collecting it, my bag is ready packed.’

Teresa and Saul went upstairs together, Tilda began to clear the table whilst Piers and his father wandered out into the garth where Lion was sniffing curiously at a bee. Roses turned their papery faces to the sun, two swallows sat gossiping together on the barn roof but, in the middle of this tranquil scene, it seemed to Felix that Piers was the centre of seething mental activity: he could almost hear the thoughts churning in his son’s head. His arms were folded across his chest, his hands bunched, whilst the thumbs were clenched between the centre fingers of each fist. Felix waited, watching the puppy, who had now found the discarded ball of newspaper, which he nose-butted gently across the cobbles.

‘It seems so odd,’ Piers said at last, ‘her hurrying away like that.’

He kept his voice low and Felix glanced at him, frowning a little.

‘You don’t believe her message? It seemed quite reasonable to me.’

‘There was something wrong last night,’ said Piers. ‘Not early on but later, when she came back downstairs right at the end of the party. I’ve been wondering if that’s when she picked up her messages but, if that’s the case, why didn’t she tell me then that she’d have to be going first thing in the morning? It doesn’t make sense. There’s another thing . . .’ he hesitated as if trying to decide just how significant this thing was that haunted him. ‘She hasn’t left an address or a telephone number.’

‘I see.’ Felix looked thoughtful. ‘Of course, if she dashed off in a rush she might not have thought about it. She’ll probably telephone when she gets to Bristol. One does these crazy things, you know, in moments of stress.’

‘I wondered about that.’ He paused. ‘But you know her address anyway, don’t you?’

‘Well,’ said Felix, taken aback, ‘I did once but I’m damned if I can remember it off-hand. I didn’t write to . . . any of them very much, you know. Christmas cards, birthday, that kind of thing. I telephoned sometimes, from the office. You see, Angel was generally at the theatre in the evening so the best time to get hold of her was in the afternoon, just after lunch . . .’

He felt a tiny pain in his heart as he remembered. Oh, those conversations. Him in the empty office, receiver held close to his mouth, hunched over the pad on his desk on which he doodled little matchstick figures: Angel in bed, cigarette smoke curling from the ashtray, hair spread on the pillow: ‘Oh, sweetie, you can’t imagine how much in need of soothing I am . . .’

Felix opened his eyes to see Piers staring at him.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked. ‘Can you remember it?’

Confused, Felix stared back at him. ‘Remember it?’ he repeated, still thinking of those afternoons, talking, talking, always so much to say. How could he ever forget it?

‘The address,’ Piers reminded him. ‘Can you remember it?’

Felix swallowed, pulling himself together. ‘I can’t,’ he admitted. ‘It’s gone. They lived in a pretty little square up near the university.’

‘Well, anyway, you know where the house is. You could guide me to it, couldn’t you, if I found a street map of Bristol?’

Felix raised his eyebrows, taken aback at Piers’ insistence.

‘My dear fellow,’ he said. ‘Yes, I suppose I could. But, goodness, it’s more than thirty-five years ago . . .’

‘But you went to collect the birdcage.’ Piers joked his father’s memory. ‘How long ago was that?

‘Fifteen years?’ Felix hazarded a guess. ‘The trouble is that places change. One-way systems, that kind of thing.’

‘Cities don’t change that much,’ said Piers firmly. ‘Not in the residential areas. I’m sure that between us we’ll find her.’

Felix smiled at him, secretly delighted by his total acceptance of Lizzie and all that she represented.

‘I’m sure we will,’ he agreed. ‘Of course, we could check with the Luttrell Arms. She’d have given them her address, wouldn’t she?’

Piers looked at his father with admiration. ‘Brilliant,’ he said, ‘but would they give it to us?’

‘I’ll ask,’ said Felix. ‘After all, they know me well enough. I’ll give it a try when I get into Dunster and I’ll ring you.’

‘Thanks.’ Piers looked suddenly self-conscious. ‘I’m probably over-reacting,’ he admitted, ‘but I’ve just got this feeling that something is wrong. Why did she come now, Father? Did she actually tell you?’

Felix frowned, trying to remember the meeting in the garden. I came to Dunster to find you, she’d said. Because it was as if he’d been waiting for her – because it seemed so right that she should be there – he hadn’t questioned her. Not then. Later, when he’d tried to talk about her own life, she’d looked sombre. Don’t ask, she’d said. Angel, Pidge, Sam. Oh, Felix, I’ve lost them all.

‘She said something about losing her husband,’ he said. ‘And, of course, Angel and Pidge are gone. I assumed that after her husband’s death – being all alone, clearing things out in the house in Bristol, she’d started down that road to the past that we sometimes go along after a trauma in our lives. We try to reconnect to things or people we’ve lost along the way; we look for our youth in old photographs and letters.’

He remembered Pidge’s last words to him: Remember the way we were.

‘I think,’ he said carefully, ‘that for a short period in Lizzie’s life I was important to her and, in her grief, that particular time came back to her. I know it sounds odd but I never went deeply into the question of why. You didn’t ask her?’

‘Yes, I did,’ he answered. ‘She talked about trigger points; that when something grim happens you re-evaluate your life. She didn’t actually talk about her husband, if I remember correctly, she simply said that with Angel and Pidge dead she decided to find you in the hope that you’d fill in some of the gaps for her.’ He shook his head frustratedly. ‘At times like that you’re not really thinking straight enough to cross the t’s and dot the i’s, are you?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Well, I wasn’t.’

‘You’d had a shock,’ began Felix cautiously – but Piers smiled at him.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘No more recriminations. I just don’t want to lose her now, that’s all.’

At that moment, Tilda and Teresa came out into the garth, followed by Saul carrying Felix’s overnight case, and Felix could do no more than grip Piers’ hand in gratitude and relief.

‘Give me a buzz later,’ Piers murmured, ‘when you’ve had a rest.’

They went out in a group to Teresa’s car; there was a flurry of kissing and farewell and then the car moved off, everyone waving.

‘I’m going upstairs to find the playpen.’ Piers scooped up the now-recumbent puppy from the cobbles and settled him on the bean bag in the scullery. ‘Bed,’ he said firmly.

Lion opened a sleepy eye and stretched comfortably.

‘He and Jake will be able to go into the playpen together,’ observed Tilda. ‘That should be fun.’

Piers went away upstairs but, as Tilda and Saul reached the kitchen, a car passed the window; the engine was switched off and a door slammed. Tilda hurried to the scullery door, with Saul close behind her, both wondering if Lizzie might possibly have returned. To their surprise they saw Marianne crossing the garth. Her face was grim and over her arm she was carrying what appeared to be a rug.

‘Hello, Tilda,’ she said, ignoring Saul. ‘Is Gemma here, by any chance?’