The coroner’s verdict on Aidan Rose had been suicide, ‘while the balance of his mind was disturbed’. There had been no suggestion that another person or persons might have been implicated in Aidan’s lonely downward spiral. But the anonymous blogger (had he been Aidan’s friend, Anna wondered, or a concerned sibling or other family member?) insisted Aidan had been the victim of a sustained bullying campaign which had led to him taking his own life part-way through his second year. Acknowledging that Huw Traherne was not the only student involved, the blogger was adamant that he’d been the main instigator, stepping up his persecution to such a pitch that, broken and demoralized, Aidan was driven to take an overdose.
As she read and reread the ugly accusations, Anna felt increasingly light-headed, as if she was being sucked out of the mundane physical world into some horrifying dimension where nothing was too terrible to be true.
She remembered Isadora confessing, as she drove through the mist, that she’d initially pegged Huw and Kit as the kind of undergraduates who came up to Oxford to join the right societies, ‘not to mention the wrong societies’. But then he’d met Sara and become a reformed character.
Anna quickly typed Aidan Rose’s name into the search engine, misspelling Aidan three times because her hand was shaking both from excess adrenalin and fear of what she might find. In fact there was pitifully little to show for his nineteen years on earth. There was a heartbreaking photo of a bespectacled Aidan in the college gardens, proudly wearing his cap and gown and a white bow tie. Anna guessed it had been taken in his first term when he was still aglow with his achievement. A working-class boy from Newcastle on Tyne, he had delighted the teachers at his comprehensive school by getting a place at Magdalen College.
Anna found a brief mention of the tragedy in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. Aidan Rose had also been name-checked in a Sunday broadsheet, one of those perennial articles about the high risk of depression amongst less privileged Oxbridge students and how they should be offered counselling as a matter of course. That was all. Unlike Huw Traherne, Aidan Rose was not connected to anyone of note, and so he had simply vanished into the statistics of those undergraduates who turned out to be insufficiently robust to cope with the rigours of an Oxbridge education.
Anna pulled up a photograph of Huw Traherne. Why did she always have that tragic war-poet association? Huw’s father, who was a bona fide poet, had looked like a scruffy countryman, a man’s man, someone with a dog at his heels and a hip-flask in his pocket. But Huw was now in his forties, and his face still had the unlived-in look of a boy whose world had imploded before he’d had the chance to grow up. People interpreted this look as intolerable disappointment and stress – poor Huw. But Anna didn’t think it was either of those. It was something else, she thought, studying his face; something he kept hidden.
Had Huw found out about his father and his school friend, then swiftly pushed this devastating knowledge out of sight? Then, when Owen died, had Huw found some bizarre relief in promoting the life and work of a largely fictional father, the heroic father Huw had wanted and needed, the father he should have had? Until Laurie shared his and Owen’s secret with Naomi …
Anna felt her breath catch. For a moment she’d seen another hated face overlaying the pixels that made up Huw Traherne’s image. She tried to tell herself it was just her tired brain playing tricks. But by then it was too late. The old compulsion had been triggered. She saw herself flying upstairs, unlocking the cupboard doors, scrawling her pain across the picture of that other privileged white boy; anything to relieve the pressure mounting inside.
But somehow this time she was able to make herself wait it out, and when the worst had passed she found that she’d decided to phone Isadora. Isadora had known Huw when he was up at Oxford. She would have heard if he’d been involved in a scandal. Just in time, though, Anna thought to check her mobile. It was only three a.m. What was an OK time to call someone to tell them you had possibly uncovered a murderer? Was eight a.m. too soon?
Too tired for rational thought, but too wired to unplug herself from the Internet with its addictive allure of instant answers, Anna started doing random searches. She looked up Sara Traherne and discovered that she had also lost her mother, in a car accident in her teens. The daughter of an eminent heart surgeon, she’d been educated at St Paul’s School for Girls and read English at Somerville College where she’d got an impressive first. Had the motherless Sara seen a fellow orphan in Huw? Eve had said she’d hoped Sara’s love might heal him. What exactly had she thought Huw needed to be healed from?
Anna was going round in circles, and she still had to get through another five hours before she could decently phone Isadora. She suddenly thought of another search she could do to kill time. She could look up the folk tale that had provided the inspiration for Owen Traherne’s perplexing poem, ‘The Tree of Sorrows’.
She found several versions of this rabbinical teaching story and printed one off to mull over later. It went like this:
Once upon a time, God became aware that his people had fallen out of love with his Creation. To start with they’d had nothing but praise for the beautiful world he had given them to live in, but now all they did was bemoan their sufferings. So in his infinite compassion, God created a giant Tree where for just one day humans could hang up these same sufferings, like washing left out to dry. The thought of handing them over for even twenty-four hours made everyone dizzy with excitement. People were queuing all night. Everyone wanted to be first to be rid of the oppressive conditions that had dogged them all their lives.
Miraculously, the Tree had just enough room for everyone’s woes, and for an entire day, everybody felt as peaceful and innocent as humans were originally designed to be.
But all too soon the day was ending and it was time to shoulder their detested burdens and limitations once again. Seeing everyone’s long faces, God suggested that they should walk around his vast Tree of Sorrows until they found something that suited them better. The people thought this was a wonderful idea. They walked round and round the tree, enthusiastically peering into the branches, determined to find a set of sufferings that were more congenial.
Next morning, God came by to see how his new arrangement was working out. To his dismay, every single human had reclaimed his own sorrows.
A therapist could have endless fun interpreting that story, Anna thought grimly as she fled upstairs carrying a litre bottle of mineral water. Did people fall obsessively in love with their sufferings like the unfaithful lover in Owen’s poem, even as they longed to be rid of them? Anna’s sorrows were so much a part of her now. How would it feel if she could just shrug them off like a worn-out coat and hang them up for twenty-four hours – or forever? Who might she be without them? Nobody, she thought bleakly. Owen’s poem had depressed her because it was true.
Anna pulled sweat pants and a running vest out of a drawer and put them on. Tugging her hair through a scrunchy she went into her study, switched on her running machine and began to run. With breaks for water she ran for the rest of the night. What was the point in asking who Anna would be without her sorrows? This was who she was: this thirty-something woman desperately running from nowhere to nowhere, all because she couldn’t bear the terror that overcame her when she stood still.
At six a.m. Anna stepped off her running machine, draped a towel around her sweating shoulders and called Isadora’s number. ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s early,’ she said, breathless from fear as much as from running. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’
‘Not at all!’ Isadora said, as warmly as if her friends phoned her at dawn all the time. ‘Hero already did that an hour ago by throwing up on my bed! Poor little thing, I think she’s got some kind of bug. So I’m up drinking coffee till it’s time to call my vet. So, darling, what’s got you so agitated that you’re up and awake at this appalling hour?’
‘I wanted to ask if you remembered an undergraduate called Aidan Rose.’ Isadora must have met thousands of students. Anna anticipated a long pause as she went hunting back through her memories.
But she said immediately, ‘Yes, I remember Aidan. I didn’t know him personally, but one of his friends was in my tutorial group. It was absolutely tragic what happened.’
‘I tried to look him up online,’ Anna said, ‘but there’s hardly anything.’
‘There wouldn’t be, darling,’ Isadora said. ‘It was rather hushed up. Quite wrongly in my opinion.’
‘You mean the college authorities hushed it up?’ Anna was sitting on the floor in her study. Outside her window it was reluctantly getting light. She swallowed. ‘I found this blog. The writer thinks Huw Traherne drove Aidan to kill himself.’
Isadora sighed. ‘I’m afraid there might be some truth in that story. This might sound fanciful, Anna, but the first time I met Huw, I felt that he was deeply damaged.’
‘Because of his mother committing suicide?’
‘My feeling is that Huw’s problems pre-dated her suicide. It’s just that afterwards they became more apparent. He had – episodes. Once he physically attacked one of his tutors because he thought the tutor had said something detrimental about his father’s writing. The tutor was a known drunk though, so Huw narrowly escaped being sent down, despite breaking the poor man’s jaw.’
Anna heard the surprised trill of a bird as an electric light came on somewhere. ‘Do you know who else might have been involved in the bullying?’ she asked. ‘I mean, was Kit?’ She hated asking, but just now she didn’t feel she dared to trust anyone.
Isadora sounded appalled. ‘No, no. Never! If anything, Kit was Huw’s Jiminy Cricket, trying to keep him grounded. It was really Kit and Sara together who helped him stay on track. If it wasn’t for them, I doubt he’d have even scraped a pass.’ Anna heard her take a gulp of liquid. ‘What’s this really all about, darling? Why are you digging up these sad old stories?’
Anna pictured Isadora wrapped in an exotically patterned kimono, bushy hair uncombed, doing her pouncing academic’s look. ‘Oh, you know me, the obsessive midnight googler,’ Anna said carelessly. ‘I’m having one of my insomniac phases that’s all.’
‘So this hasn’t got anything to do with Laurie?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Anna assured her. ‘Didn’t Tansy tell you? I’ve officially resigned from detecting. Just one more thing though before I go – why didn’t you tell me about Huw before?’
‘About the scandal? I think that would have been most unethical of me, as well as unfair. It was a long time ago. Huw changed, like we all do. God knows I’ve made some terrible mistakes in my time, and I would hate for people to still be throwing them in my face.’ She stopped for breath. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to rant.’
‘That’s OK,’ Anna said. ‘I’ve got to go now. I hope Hero gets better soon.’
‘I was thinking of going into town after she’s seen the vet,’ Isadora said. ‘Would you like to meet for lunch?’
‘Another time,’ Anna said quickly. ‘I’ve got rather a lot on just now.’ Promising to arrange something very soon, she rang off and went to shower and change.
Three hours later Anna walked into the offices of the Traherne Foundation. Her plan, if you could call it a plan, had come into her head as soon as she’d looked up the Traherne Foundation’s website and seen that their head office was in Central Oxford. Once she had this information she knew she had to go there to talk to Huw. She had to know if Huw had gone to see Laurie. The compulsion overwhelmed her need to hide and conceal.
She found the Foundation’s offices up a smart cobbled alleyway almost backing on to the Museum of Modern Art and at the top of a steep flight of stairs. The building dated back to the Georgian era, but the offices inside were airy and open-plan. Anna could smell fresh coffee and new paint. A low bookshelf was stocked with collections of Owen Traherne’s poems, some translated into different languages. The leather sofas looked expensive and comfortable. As offices went, it was pleasant.
The young woman at the reception desk was busy on the phone, so Anna went over to look at the large black and white photographs on the walls. All the pictures were of Owen except for a portrait of a touchingly young Owen and Audrey. With her long hair falling over her shoulders, Audrey looked as if she’d just that minute hitch-hiked back from some hippy festival. The photographer had posed them in a country lane, white and frothy with May blossom, making it seem as if Nature herself had decided to give them a wedding.
The girl at the desk finished her call. But before Anna could state her business, she saw Sara hurrying towards her. Dressed in faded denim jeans and a navy sweater, she was as skinny as an adolescent. Anna could see the sharp edge of her collarbones as she took a breath. ‘You should go now,’ she told Anna in a low voice.
Anna felt her stomach go into a slow dive. For the first time she understood that Sara was more than just bitter and unhappy. She was scared.
‘I mean it, Anna, just go,’ Sara pleaded.
‘Well, this is good timing on your part!’ Huw arrived beside them, smiling his usual taut smile. ‘Sara was just making coffee, weren’t you, darling?’
Sara nodded and smiled, but her eyes signalled, Run!
‘No coffee for me, thanks,’ Anna said. ‘I’m here because I want to clear something up.’ This was not how she’d meant to begin, but with Huw standing just a few feet away her nerve-endings were sparking like loose wires. She resisted the urge to touch her cheeks, which were suddenly burning.
‘That sounds very mysterious,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Should I be sitting down?’
‘Did you go to see Laurie?’ Anna heard her voice shake. ‘Did you go to his house before he died?’
The smile was instantly wiped from Huw’s face. ‘I didn’t even know where Laurie was living,’ he said brusquely. ‘We hadn’t spoken for years.’
‘Laurie’s nurse recognized you at the memorial,’ she said, fighting for calm. ‘She said you came to his house. She heard you talking.’
‘Then Laurie’s nurse, whoever the hell she might be, is mistaken,’ Huw flashed back, and Anna felt his cold fury like a physical force in the room. Not disappointment, not stress, she realized in that moment, but a raging need for control, a need that would stop at nothing.
Huw was hiding something, she was completely sure of that now.
‘You knew, didn’t you?’ she said, playing a hunch. ‘You knew about Laurie and your father!’
She saw him go paper white around his eyes. ‘That’s it!’ Huw’s voice was like a whip. ‘I want you to leave this building now.’
‘Oh my God, you didn’t even ask me what I meant! What did you do?’ she hissed at him. ‘What did you do to Laurie?’
‘Get out!’ Huw ordered. He was shaking with rage. ‘Get out before I call the police.’
‘Go ahead! Because that’s where I’m going next!’
The police station was just a few streets away. She ran all the way, heart thumping, a wild euphoria rushing through her. She wasn’t mad. She’d been right to suspect Huw. She hadn’t been able to find the person or persons who had murdered her family, but she could do this. She could put this right.
Bursting through the doors Anna pushed to the head of the small queue of people waiting to talk to the duty sergeant, ignoring their protests. ‘I’ve got to talk to Inspector Chaudhari,’ she demanded, breathless.
‘I’m sorry, miss, but you’ll have to wait your turn,’ said the sergeant.
‘I can’t!’ she almost yelled. ‘I think I know how Laurie Swanson died!’
But the stolid sergeant held his ground. When it was finally Anna’s turn, he told her with polite regret that Inspector Chaudhari had left the building some time ago. He couldn’t say when he’d be back.
Anna took one of the moulded plastic seats. Pressing her trembling knees together, she prepared herself to wait. Her heart was hammering like a rabbit’s. It’s OK, she told herself fiercely. She just had to keep it together a bit longer. She could keep it together for Laurie. After that it didn’t matter if she fell apart. It wouldn’t matter.
At last Liam Goodhart appeared. He smiled, but it wasn’t, Anna felt, a completely convincing smile. ‘The sergeant says you have important information about Laurie Swanson?’ he said.
She sprang up. ‘Yes! Yes, I do! Is Inspector Chaudhari here?’
Liam led her downstairs to an interview room. Anna thought it was the same one, but maybe there were dozens of featureless rooms down here. She took a chair and Liam leaned against the wall, and they waited in uneasy silence for Inspector Chaudhari to join them.
When he walked in, he exchanged a private look with Liam, and she felt a jolt of fear. She had burst in babbling about Laurie. They thought she was nuts. Anna couldn’t blame them. She even looked nuts. She was so freaked that one of her knees had taken on a jiggling life of its own, and she was fighting a losing battle to keep it still.
In her panic Anna started to pour out what she’d discovered: that Huw Traherne had been seen visiting Laurie; that he’d needed to silence this man, his father’s secret lover, before the news could get out and wreck his Foundation. Or that’s what she tried to say. But she couldn’t seem to get her thoughts in any kind of order. Like startled birds they scattered as soon as they’d formed. ‘I’ve got evidence,’ she heard herself say over and over like a mad bag lady. ‘Please, you’ve got to believe me!’
When the wound-up spring inside her had finally run down, and Anna had stopped talking, sick with humiliation, Inspector Chaudhari made a quick note of something on his phone, then he passed his hand over his thick black hair and gave her a look that somehow combined concern with reproof. ‘Mr Traherne has just called the station. Your accusations have made him extremely upset. I am therefore giving you an official warning not to go round to his home or to his offices or to try to contact him again.’
Her hands flew to her head. Too late she remembered that this was the classic pose of the mentally unwell and returned them to her lap. ‘But what if he killed Laurie?’ she said in a pleading voice.
The inspector drew a breath. ‘Anna, listen, however strongly you feel, you can’t afford to go throwing these kinds of serious accusations around.’ He gave her a long look. ‘Not with your history.’
Anna felt her blood drain from her face. When she was seventeen, a restraining order had been taken out against her by the family of a boy she’d believed partly responsible for the deaths of her parents and siblings. She’d been wrong. She’d been off her head. She wasn’t wrong this time, but to the inspector she would always be that teenage girl whose disturbed ramblings they still had recorded somewhere on their files.
The inspector went on to say a few other things. She was tired and upset. It might be time to think about talking to a professional counsellor, get some help. Anna could hear the sympathy in his voice, the kind of tone you might use to soothe a skittish pony. Summoning the last of her strength, she opened her mouth to plead one last time, then was overcome by a sense of utter futility.
‘My sergeant will show you out,’ the inspector said.
When they reached the reception area Anna was bewildered to see a tense-looking Tansy waiting by the desk. ‘I called her,’ Liam said. ‘I thought you might need a friend.’
Like a humiliated child, Anna waited as Liam handed over his car keys so Tansy could drive her home. Exhausted and wrung-out, she followed Tansy out to the car.
As Tansy drove, she kept darting anxious looks at Anna. ‘I feel so terrible about this,’ she burst out at last. ‘Liam said he took the call – you know from that arse Huw?’ She took a breath. ‘Remember when we came back from London? You said we just need to be normal?’
Anna didn’t see the point of saying that this was normal for her.
When they arrived outside Anna’s door, Tansy said, ‘I don’t feel happy about just dropping you off, but I’ve got to return Liam’s car then go back to finish my shift.’ She flashed Anna a grin. ‘When I left, Julie looked as if she was about to have a stroke, so it’s not all bad news!’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Anna muttered. She felt sick with shame. ‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘Isadora’s got some big dinner party tonight,’ Tansy said, glancing at her watch, ‘but if it’s not too late – actually, even if it is – we’ll pop over and make sure you’re OK.’
Anna shook her head. ‘No, don’t worry. I just need to sleep.’
To sleep and also to sever every last connection to the outside world. Though cutting her connections wasn’t going to be a problem, she thought wearily as she let herself into her flat. She caught herself unconsciously fingering Kit’s pendant. She wouldn’t let herself think about Kit Tulliver. She’d blown it for all time with him. No matter how much she tried to explain, she knew he would never forgive her for publicly denouncing Huw.
She went down to her kitchen where Bonnie was already waiting expectantly at the foot of the stairs. Anna knelt beside her. Wrapping her arms around Bonnie’s solid warmth, she buried her face in her snowy coat. At least I’ve got you, she thought. No matter how mad people think I am, I’ve got you, you sweet, beautiful dog.