London, the day Anna dies
Maria’s flight is booked for the day after she meets Harry in Regent’s Park. The car David has arranged to take her to the airport is due to pick her up at the hotel at 1 p.m., and she will be back by then, dressed in the demure button-down tunic dress he bought for her at one of the boutiques on the high street, together with a pair of pretty leather sandals; one of a number of parcels she’d found stashed in the cupboards or under her pillow over the past months. Her final transformation into the image of the woman with whom he intends to live out the rest of his life is almost complete.
She has stayed the night in the room Anna booked her into by way of atoning for her untimely dismissal, after David died. Anna had meant well in asking her to leave and Maria respected her for it. She wanted to be a good mother to those girls. The strength it must have required to tell Maria to go gave her some hope for Anna’s future – at this point Maria was still able to tell herself the future had not yet been set in stone.
She takes some comfort in that as she brushes out her hair at the dressing table in front of the window overlooking the church on Portland Place; its presence has to be an omen of sorts, though whether good or bad, she cannot yet be sure.
There is no need to bring anything with her, David has explained. There will be a suitcase full of clothes waiting for her when they meet at the airport. For a moment she wonders whether if, in the days to come, Anna will wander along the high street and notice the shoes she gave her for her birthday in the window of the charity shop, where she had deposited her belongings on her way from the house.
Maria stops herself. What a foolish thought. Anna will have no time for window-shopping after her appointment with the lawyer. But it is imperative that she still thinks of her as someone with a future. At this point, she cannot allow herself to engage with the alternative.
She leaves her hotel room at 8 a.m., giving herself enough time to do what she has to and still get back in time for the driver David has arranged to collect her from reception.
But for now, she ducks into her first taxi, the one about which David knows nothing. The one that forms the first stepping stone on the final journey to salvation.
As the car turns in a wide U before sweeping along Portland Place, towards Regent’s Park, she thinks of those first days in London, having been brought in as much to watch over Anna as to care for her daughters.
‘You’ll be our eyes and ears, Maria. Anna, she’s … volatile.’ Clive had taken Maria aside one afternoon in the Maldives, talking to her like an old friend. ‘We have our concerns. I know you can be trusted. You’re like family to David and me.’
She had gripped the side of her shorts with her fists to stop her fingers from trembling.
At this time of morning it takes just twenty minutes to reach Hampstead Heath. As Maria steps out of the taxi, approaching the house on foot, the key she has secretly had duplicated pressed in her pocket, she thinks of the first time David touched her, in that room just there, the girls asleep upstairs.
Given this is the last time she will ever be here, Maria allows herself a moment to take it all in: the wisteria creeping up perfectly formed London bricks, the curve of the iron railing that lines the steps. To the random passer-by, this is London at its most picturesque. Few could imagine what secrets lie beyond these perfect windows.
It is 8.45 a.m. as she makes her way up the front steps of the house. By now Anna will already be on her way to see Clive’s lawyer, as David has proudly made her aware. Yet still her eyes scan for signs of life within as she climbs one tread at a time, stopping for a moment before knocking tentatively at the front door, pushing her fingers through the letterbox and checking for any hints that she is not alone.
Only once she is sure it is safe to enter does she slide the key from her pocket and turn it in the lock.
Knowing she has to be as quick as possible, Maria only allows herself a moment to linger in front of the photo of Stella and Rose, the girls who she raised from birth; the girls whose lives will be destroyed along with their mother’s. Unless …
Breathing deeply, she walks towards the kitchen and pulls two notes from her pocket. The first is in her own handwriting. She has deliberated for hours over the wording, but in the end she tells Anna as much as she knows. However she says it, it sounds incredible. How she wishes that it was.
Anna.
I know this will be hard for you to accept but David is alive. He and Clive are planning to have you killed, just as Clive did with his own wife, when she started to question the business. They will make it look like suicide and they will tell everyone that you were mad. You must leave the house immediately. You are not safe here. Please, as soon as you have read this letter you must burn it – if you don’t I will be uncovered and I will not be able to finish what we started. So please, burn the letter, take the girls, and run. I have made contact with Harry and together we will make sure of everything else. You can trust us.
Love, Maria
When she plays the moment back in her mind later, she will tell herself that at this point she still hadn’t made up her mind – that there was still a chance she might have left her own note along with his. Just as she told herself it wasn’t her fault what had happened to Artemis the night of the storm. And it wasn’t, not really: she was a child; she was so young and her dad had left and it was Artemis’ fault. She had heard Athena shouting this at Artemis one night when she found them arguing in the kitchen not long after her father left. From then on she had been so angry with Artemis. If her father hadn’t been in love with David’s mother then he would never have left her.
And then, the night of the storm, when Artemis came to the house, she was so upset and Maria hadn’t known what to do. Maria had been holding in all her anger at Artemis for so long; she had said such bad things about her in her head. But when Artemis, who was always so kind to her, came to the house crying and Athena was so nasty to her, Maria’s head spun. Even then, as a child, she knew what her mother had said was wrong. Artemis was a good person. After all the bad thoughts she’d had towards her, Maria needed to say sorry; she needed to see that she was OK.
Plagued by guilt, she had snuck out of the house – not that Athena would have noticed or cared whether she left or not. The storm was raging and the rain was lashing from the sky as she followed the path to Artemis’ cottage.
Visibility was bad in the dark, the rain further blurring her vision, and Maria sensed the man’s presence before she saw his silhouette, pulling open the door and stepping inside. When Maria heard the screams, she moved instinctively towards the house, but she didn’t understand what she was witnessing. It was so dark, only a candle on one side of the room, and on the other, Artemis was slumped over the table, the man thrusting from behind her. Instinctively, she took a step back. She had understood the violence of the scene in a way that was intuitive, even to a child who had no understanding of what she was witnessing.
It was only once she heard the man come back out, pulling up the zip of his trousers and walking away from the house, that she dared step back towards the window.
She had wanted to go to Artemis, to comfort her as she sat sobbing at the table, circling a white cloth in her hands, but she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what she had seen. She was a child. And yet if she had done something, gone in to her, Artemis would never have done what she did.
Instead she ran home, and before she opened the door, she heard Clive’s voice from inside, followed by her mother’s laughter. She walked in, and found them seated across from one another at the table.
‘Clive just stopped by to see if David was here. You haven’t seen him, have you, Maria?’
Maria’s eyes moved between their wine glasses.
‘No. Have you checked at the house?’
‘I’m going there next, in a minute, once I’ve finished this. He said he was going to come and see you first, Maria. He’d swapped a toy with that French lad that he wanted to show you,’ Clive boomed, so self-assured, so at home in his own skin, even here inside their house. Even with his son alone on the mountain in the middle of a storm, his wife at home—
She pushed the image of what she had seen out of her mind.
‘Why wasn’t he with you?’ Maria said, her voice accusatory.
Athena’s expression shifted. ‘Maria, how dare you speak to Mr Witherall like that—’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s fine. I like her spirit. David got bored waiting for me after our dinner in the square, he promised he would run straight here. It’s only a couple of minutes. And then your mother mentioned something about Artemis so I just stayed for a moment, and now I’m going to go home and see if David headed straight—’
He never finished his sentence, for at that moment David appeared in the doorway to the house, shaking, his face pale, his eyes perforated with the image of his mother hanging from the stairwell.
Standing in front of the table in the hallway of the house, Stella and Rose’s scooters lined up along the wall, Maria feels a single tear run down her cheek. But it is too late for tears. Pain and remorse are useless to her now, without action. Finally, she has the chance to do something, even if the final act means sacrifice. And she has no choice. If she warns Anna of Clive and David’s plan, she will be putting her own life in jeopardy. They will know exactly who tipped her off, and the chances are they will find Anna anyway. The truth is, the die has already been cast.
She bows her head as she thinks of Anna now. I will look after them. She speaks aloud, and there is a strength in her words that bolsters her.
Anna is incapable of protecting herself or the girls. She is a liability to them all, and at this stage, Stella and Rose are the only ones who matter. They are the innocents. If Maria doesn’t save them, no one will.
Absent-mindedly picking up the post from the doormat – just one thick cream envelope, another condolence card, no doubt – she walks back to the kitchen. She puts the card on the kitchen table, setting Harry’s letter on top of it, and slides her own note back into her handbag. There is a sense of resolution, amidst the bitter sadness. Anna will at least know the truth, at the end. In part.
By the time she gets back from lawyer’s, the men will already be waiting for her, and there will be no time to run. She will read Harry’s letter and then she will burn it because if there is one person Anna will listen to, even after everything he has done to her, it is Harry. She will put her trust in him and she will believe that he is going to save her. In the end she will know that Harry had wanted to save her.
In that knowledge, Maria finds some peace.