The Last Days of Summer

Sally came home last night. She brought with her a man I don’t imagine I’d have spent more than a moment considering under normal circumstances. He shouldn’t fit in here; he’s not loud enough, or brash enough, or full of stories. You couldn’t write a book about him. But to my daughter, he is everything. And to me…he is more than another character in our story. He’s the hero.

From the journal of Nathaniel Drury, 1987

It should have been awkward the next morning. It should have been difficult to sit down at breakfast with Edward and everyone else and know that he’d seen me break down more completely than even my family ever had. But somehow it wasn’t.

“I suppose you’ll be starting work on the memoirs today, then,” Isabelle said, glaring at us over her cup of coffee. “After all, he’s dead and buried now. No point in waiting.”

Edward gave me the ‘This one’s yours’ look. I gave him the ‘Thank you very much’ sarcasm glance in return.

“I’m not making any firm decisions yet, Isabelle,” I said, calmly pouring myself another cup of tea. As strange as it seemed, I did feel much better after my crying jag in the Rose Garden the night before. Even dressed in my own jeans and top and not a film star’s outfit, I at least felt I could cope with the world. “But I can’t make that decision without taking a look at the materials Nathaniel left behind, and we’re still only about halfway through. So, yes, Edward and I will be working in the study today.”

“Did you really mean that?” Edward asked, as we escaped up the stairs towards the study.

Ah. That. I’d thought I was doing quite a good job of keeping everybody happy by hedging my bets every which way, but eventually I really was going to have to make a decision.

I waited. I was pretty sure that wasn’t everything he had to say on the matter.

To his credit, Edward managed to keep quiet until we were in the study. Whether out of habit, or to stop me escaping without answering his questions, he locked the door behind us again. I settled into my usual chair and tried to look engrossed in the next box in the pile, but Edward was having none of it.

Perching on the edge of the desk closest to me, he said, “What’s holding up your decision?”

I sighed, and put aside the box for the time being. “A number of things. First of all, I still don’t know what it is everyone doesn’t want broadcast to the public at large, so how can I say it’s the right thing to publish them? I need to know exactly what we’re talking about if I say yes to this.” Most especially, I needed to know what secrets Isabelle had been talking about, the night of the Golden Wedding. Did it really all tie into the story Nathaniel had told me that morning? Did someone really die at a Rosewood party – and if so, how? I thought about the clipping again, and the way the guy in the middle had been looking at Therese. Who was he to her? And what did Nathaniel think about that? I couldn’t help but think that if whatever happened was as innocent as I hoped, I’d have heard about it before now.

“Not to mention your own secrets.” Edward gave me an assessing look. “Are you sure you’re not holding back because you don’t want to expose those to the whole world? I mean, that’s understandable, I guess.”

But I could tell from his expression that understandable wasn’t the same as acceptable to him. Edward Hollis was all about the unvarnished truth. He’d never accept me keeping something back just because it made me uncomfortable. Even if it turned out that my family had something to do with a man’s death.

“This isn’t about me and Greg.” Because that was what he was talking about, I knew. And it was almost the whole truth, too. “Not everything is, you know.”

“Fine.” He didn’t believe me, I could tell, but he moved on anyway. “So what are your other reasons?”

I considered. What else was holding me back from committing to the job? Other than a possible investigation into a long ago death, my own despicable behaviour, and the possibility of being banished from Rosewood for good? Wasn’t that enough? “Well, there’s the logistics of it all, I suppose.”

“Logistics?” Edward hitched a leg up to rest on the pile of boxes and looked at me with interest.

“I do have a job, you know. And a life. Hundreds of miles away.” Whether I liked it or not. “Either you and all this material would need to move to Perth, which doesn’t seem very practical considering the input we need from the rest of the family, or I’d need to move down here permanently.”

“That’s what Nathaniel was going to ask you to do,” Edward said. “At least, he planned to. I don’t know what changed.”

“Maybe he saw just how unwelcome I was here.” Or maybe he changed his mind. Or perhaps…perhaps he had been asking me, in his way, that whole last weekend – and I just didn’t notice until it was too late. “I’m not sure I could stay, without him here.”

Edward gave me a sympathetic look. “Maybe we could come to some sort of arrangement, if you did decide to do it. Work by email in the week, when you had time around the paper, and try and get together every other weekend, or something. It would take longer…”

“But it would be better than nothing,” I agreed. “Maybe. We’ll see.” For some reason the idea of only being a part of this on a part-time basis didn’t appeal. If I took this on, it would have to be the whole thing.

I didn’t let myself acknowledge that the idea of only seeing Edward every other weekend wasn’t very appealing, either.

“What else?” Edward asked. When I hesitated, he went on, “Come on, Saskia. There’s another reason, I can tell. So spit it out.”

I looked away, taking in the mountain of information still left to wade through. “When I left, to go back to Perth…I had a plan. Ellie told me to stop running, remember? So I was going to try. I was going to find something new to work towards. A new life to live, for me. And instead…”

“You ended up back at Rosewood again,” Edward finished. “And you don’t think the memoirs could be part of that new life?”

And the thing was, I wanted to. I wanted to explain it to him; I just wasn’t sure I had the right words.

“Nathaniel said to me – before the Golden Wedding – he said he always hoped that I’d be a writer. Create my own stories. I never knew he wanted that for me. And I never told him how badly I wanted it for myself. We hadn’t talked about it since I was a child.”

I nodded. “I’ll always be in his shadow, whatever I do as a writer. It’s okay for you – you had your own career, your own name before you ever came here. But I’ll always be Nathaniel Drury’s granddaughter first.”

“I know.” I looked down at my hands. “And I do want to do it. I just don’t want it to be the only thing I ever do.”

“It won’t be.” Edward sounded so certain, I looked up to seek the reason for his surety in his face. “I know you, Saskia. I know you’re going to get there. Wherever you want to be.”

I hoped to God that they were both right. Because I knew for sure I couldn’t stay where I was – outcast from my family, my home, working at a job that only filled my days, not my need for creativity, sleeping with a man I didn’t love, didn’t see a future with. I couldn’t be this person any more.

We’d fallen into a familiar rhythm with the job of sorting through the information for the memoirs; we’d each take a box, and try and assign each of the contents to a date, an event, at the very least a year. Documents relating to the same period of time were clipped together and annotated, as far as possible, to remind us later what we thought they were. Then we’d put the pile with the journal corresponding to the same period of time. My grandfather had been a sporadic journal keeper. For some years we had detailed entries full of description and information. For others we had nothing but a few scrawled notes, or lists.

I was still searching for the journal that covered the year they moved to Rosewood. I wasn’t entirely sure which sort I wanted it to be.

We were helped, to some degree, by the notes Nathaniel had left – pages of lined A4 paper covered in his sprawling script, detailing vague timelines that started abruptly and finished without warning and never linked to the next one. Each date or event had some scribbled notes beside them – words and sentences that would obviously have jogged Nathaniel’s memory enough for him to be able to write it up fully, but all too often meant nothing at all to us.

“Well, I think I’ve reached 1987,” Edward said, tossing a file onto the desk. “Although since I arrived here by way of 1954 and 2003, I have no idea which direction I’m going in.”

I heaved the box in my lap onto the floor, and went to perch myself on the edge of the desk. “Ellie was born in 1988,” I said. “So I’m pretty sure my parents were married in ’86 or ’87.”

“Might make it easier to figure out the year,” Edward agreed. “What date’s their anniversary?”

I was already flipping through the file before I realised that I had no idea. “They never really celebrate it,” I explained, pulling out a carefully clipped newspaper cutting. “But this should tell us.”

Even thirty or so years later, the woman in the black and white photo was very clearly my mother. Same wide eyes, same pale blonde hair swept up on top of her head under a lacy veil, same broad smile as she clutched her bouquet of flowers to her flouncy white wedding dress. What was confusing, though, was that the man standing next to her was equally obviously not my father.

My heart started to beat faster. I’d been so busy concentrating on Isabelle’s long ago secrets, that I’d forgotten she wasn’t the only one who’d objected to the memoirs.

“‘Miss Sally Drury, daughter of Nathaniel and Isabelle Drury, was married to Mr Robert Marks, son of Harold and Sheila Marks, at St Michael’s Church on Saturday April 26th 1986.’” I read slowly, not really believing the words even as I said them. “That’s… Ellie was born in January 1988.”

“There’s more here,” Edward said, pulling a pile of envelopes from the file. “Letters from your mother, by the look of things.” He handed them to me, and I took them with shaking hands.

How had I not considered that Mum had her own secrets, too? I’d assumed she was protecting Ellie, or even herself – not wanting her daughter’s shortcomings out there in the world, in print. Not wanting to read the truth and have to believe in it. Not wanting that shame for Ellie, or her, or even me.

But how did a secret marriage, and lying to your children their whole lives, stack up against sleeping with your sister’s fiancé? Was there even a scale for secrets like ours?

The letters had all been opened, read, put back in their envelopes then taken back out to read again many times, judging by the soft feel of the envelopes and the well-worn folds of the writing paper. The stamps on the envelopes were unfamiliar, from countries I’d never even heard of in some cases. How many times had my grandfather pulled these out and read them, missing his only daughter on the other side of the world? And what was in them to explain my mother’s marriage to a man I’d never heard of? Perhaps, a small corner of my mind added, perhaps he’d read them so much because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to include this story in the memoirs.

One thing was clear: I would have to talk to my mother about this. But first, I wanted all the information I could get.

I pulled my chair closer to the desk, still reluctant to sit in what would always be Nathaniel’s chair, positioned in the bay window behind the leather-topped desk. In date order, I read my way through the letters, passing each page to Edward as I finished with it. After all, there was no way to keep the story from him, even if we did decide to keep it from the rest of the world.

They started off so happy. Having a wonderful time in America! Robert has an interview for a lecturer’s position here. We’re still in New York – I’ve been exploring the city! And then, a new name. Robert’s friend, Tony, has been such a great guide. He’s British too, but studying here.

“They had an affair?” I guessed. Maybe that was why Mum had never wanted to know what really happened between me and Greg. Too much of a reminder of her own past.

I miss you. Robert says that maybe we can come back next year. Or the year after.

Risk. The word jumped off the page at me and I knew instantly that this was nothing like what happened between me and Greg. Whatever story I told myself about my own actions, I couldn’t hold it up against my mother’s.

By the end of the stack of letters, I was cold and my eyes were damp. There was just so much she didn’t say, even right at the end when she wrote that she was pregnant and coming home with this man who wasn’t her husband, this Tony Ryan. What had my grandparents thought then? Only a year or so after the wedding. But in everything she didn’t say, I thought I could read a glimmer of the truth. She had married the wrong man – a destructive, terrible man – and she had gotten out.

But was that after Robert Marks got her pregnant? Was Ellie actually my sister, or only a half sister? And did that make anything I had done to her any more excusable? The last, at least, I felt I could answer – no, not at all.

The lies, though. My whole life, my parents had lied to me – by omission if not in fact. My mother had a whole history I never even suspected. My father might not even be her husband at all. I felt like my whole foundation had shifted, and I wasn’t quite sure how things would resettle. Or what my family would look like once they had.

“What do you want to do?” Edward’s voice was quiet as he put down the last letter.

“I need to talk to Ellie, and then we need to talk to Mum.” That much I knew, even if what would happen next was a mystery.

“Why Ellie first?” Edward asked, curiously, as I opened the file to return the letters. I frowned; there was something else in there. Another clipping. I pulled it out, my body shielding it from Edward’s view. Was this another wedding photo? Or something else?

“Because she’s my big sister. That’s who you go to when family stuff turns crazy.” I turned the clipping over and took in the headline. There was no photo this time, only the stark black text on yellowing paper. Murder investigation at Rosewood. Then underneath, in smaller text, Matthew Robertson, 25, was found dead after a party at the home of author Nathaniel Drury and his wife Isabelle.

This was it. This was exactly what I’d wanted – and been afraid – to find. Suddenly, Nathaniel’s last story – about the death at the first party at Rosewood – came flooding back. Was this what he’d been talking about? A murder investigation? And if so, who was the murderer?

Perhaps Mum’s secrets were only the beginning, the prologue in a long list of truths I needed to uncover. And now I knew I absolutely had to find out what happened – before I told Edward. If I told Edward.

“Even now?” he asked, and I struggled for a moment to remember what I’d been saying. Ellie. Mum. The man who might be Ellie’s father. That was what I needed to deal with first.

He reached into his pocket and handed me the heavy brass key. “Let me know how it goes?”

With a half smile, he reached out and brushed the hair away from my face. “Good luck.”

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as just presenting the evidence to Ellie and asking her advice. I mean, it should have been. But the last proper conversation we had involved her telling me to run away to Perth – and me following her instructions. Could we just put that aside and deal with the crisis at hand? I wasn’t sure.

“El?” I found her in the kitchen, chopping nuts. “Stress baking?” Ellie might be most like my mother in many ways, but in others she definitely takes after Dad. Baking was one of those. Was cooking ability genetic or learned? Maybe, if we found out who Ellie’s father really was, we’d have a better idea.

She didn’t look at me as she replied. “Isabelle threw out what was left of the Golden Wedding cake. So I’m making coffee and walnut cake to keep us going.” Which, I had to admit, did sound delicious.

I waited until Ellie had put the knife down and had turned her attention to blunter instruments – in this case a wooden spoon and a mixing bowl full of butter and sugar – before I spoke again.

Ellie sighed into her cake mix. “Saskia, really, do we have to? The funeral’s over; you’ll be heading back to Perth soon. Can’t we just leave it?”

Always Ellie’s preferred plan of action – ignore a problem until it went away. I might run, but she hid – and I wasn’t sure that was any better.

“What if I decided to stay?” I asked. “At Rosewood, I mean. To finish the memoirs with Edward.”

The wooden spoon stopped moving, but still Ellie didn’t turn. “Are you going to?”

How to start… The best plan, I’d decided, was to start small. Build up to the shock and the horror. “Ellie, did Mum ever talk to you about anyone she dated before she met Dad?”

“Not that I can remember.” Ellie turned at last and looked up at me. “Is this about Duncan? Or about…”

“Neither,” I said, hurriedly, before she could say the name that would take this from a conversation between sisters to a conversation between bitter enemies. “It’s about Mum.”

Ellie tipped the walnuts into the bowl and mixed them in. “Mum’s fine.” The tone under the words suggested, ‘and I should know, because I’ve been here while you’ve been off gallivanting in Scotland.’ Which wasn’t really very fair, since I’d only left to save Ellie’s sanity. And everyone else’s.

“I know she is. It’s not that. It’s just…” I took a deep breath. “Edward and I have been going through Nathaniel’s files, to help decide whether or not to go ahead with the memoirs.” Ellie muttered something into her mixing bowl that sounded suspiciously like ‘bet that’s not all you’ve been doing’ but I charitably ignored it. “We found something this morning, about Mum. And I wanted to talk to you about it before I spoke to her. Or, preferably, we both spoke to her. Together.”

I had all her attention now, I could tell. Perfectly calm, Ellie tipped the cake mixture into the pre-lined tin and pushed it into the oven, before setting the timer. Then, she washed her hands, dried them on her apron, and took a seat beside me at the table. “Show me.”

I waited silently as she read through the letters, watching as every emotion I’d felt passed over her face. In this, at least, we were still sisters, still as one.

“How could we not know this?” Ellie placed the last letter on the pile and looked up at me, her eyes wide with confusion. “I mean…this man could be my real father. I could be…”

“You’re my sister,” I said, fast, before she finished the thought. “That’s all that matters. And this man, Mum’s husband – God, that sounds strange – he’s out of our lives. Hell, he was never even in them. He shouldn’t matter any more. Not after what he did.”

Then she met my gaze, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. Not all sins deserve forgiveness.

I nodded. “I know. That’s why I brought these to you first. I think we need to, I don’t know, present a united front? Show her that we just want to know the truth; we’re not judging.”

“I agree.” She paused, then went on, “But, Saskia, you have to realise…she might not want this in the memoirs. She might not want to talk to you about it.”

Not to me. Because I was something less than family now, wasn’t I? I was the enemy – and for once, not because of my own actions, but because of Nathaniel’s.

The idea cut through me, but I knew she was right. This had to be what Mum was afraid of, about the memoirs. I needed to show her she didn’t need to worry.

“I’ll explain. They’re Nathaniel’s memoirs, not hers. We can leave this out.”

“How will Edward feel about that?” Ellie asked, in the sort of voice that told me she already knew the answer.

“It doesn’t matter. They can’t go ahead without my say-so.” And given everything else I’d found out about the history of my family at Rosewood, I wasn’t completely sure I’d be willing to give my approval anyway.

“This… Mum, the memoirs, Nathaniel’s death, all of it… It’s bigger than what’s between you and me,” she said, eventually, and I couldn’t help it. I started to hope.

“Or forgive,” I guessed. “I get that. But perhaps…perhaps we could come to an agreement?” It would be a start. And a million times better than the nothing I’d had so far.

Ellie gave a sharp nod. “An agreement. We avoid the subject of the past, and everything that happened. At least until everything else is decided.”

“No. I can’t do that,” Ellie said. “But I can just about handle you being here, I think, as long as we don’t talk about it. And I mean it, Kia. Not a mention, not a reminder, not a throwaway comment, nothing. We live as if it never happened. And only until we get things here sorted out.”

It wasn’t much – wasn’t even a friendship. More like a shaky alliance. But I’d take it, because it was all I had of my sister.

Ellie ignored the gesture, gathering up the letters instead. “Then we’d better talk to Mum.”

And just like that, I was dismissed. I sighed, and left the room. Apparently things weren’t all that different after all.

After dinner, once Dad had disappeared up to the attic with Caro and her stack of books on the paranormal, once Therese had gone back to the cottage, and once Isabelle had retired to her room again while Greg cleared up, I caught Ellie’s eye and, together, we went to hunt down Mum.

We found her in the drawing room, collecting glasses for the dishwasher, and through some misdirection and hinting managed to get her upstairs to Ellie and Greg’s room. Neutral ground, or the best we could do in a house crowded to the gills with family. Mum seemed so pleased to see Ellie and I in the same room being civil to each other, that she didn’t really question our motives.

When Ellie and Greg moved in to Rosewood after their marriage, ostensibly because it was close to Greg’s work and property prices were phenomenal in the area, and so that Ellie could help Isabelle and Nathaniel around the house in between supply teaching stints, Isabelle insisted that they take on the front bedroom, the one with the huge bay window and at the opposite end of the house from the master suite, where our grandparents slept. As a result, their room had not only an en-suite bathroom, but also a sitting area in the bay window. Ellie had decorated it in creams and golds that gave an effect utterly unlike my own Yellow Room of Hell.

“So, girls, what’s on your minds?” Mum asked, settling into one of the stiff-backed armchairs around the low, circular table. With a glance at Ellie, I took the seat on Mum’s left, Ellie the one on her right.

“It’s about Nathaniel’s memoirs, Mum,” I said, fingering the file of papers I’d carried up the stairs behind my back, hoping Mum wouldn’t see them and ask what they were until it was time.

“You’ve decided what to do with them?” Now I was looking for it, I could hear the reluctance and concern in my mother’s voice. She was just as worried as Isabelle; she was merely better at hiding it. How scared had she been, the last few days, waiting for me to find something that led me to this truth?

“Not yet.” I put the file on the table. “I wanted to talk to you about some things I found when going through the files.” No point mentioning to Mum that Edward knew too. This was bad enough as it was.

Mum opened the file, saw the wedding announcement, and slammed it shut again. “I see.”

“We just want to understand what happened,” Ellie said, sounding much calmer than I felt.

“You want to know if Tony is your father.” Mum’s voice was hard and blunt as she spoke to Ellie.

Some of the fight went out of Mum then. “He is. Both of you. Tony’s your father, and Caroline’s, just like we’ve always told you.”

“No. We never… When I left Robert, I left him completely. Never spoke to him again, and he never tried to find me. So we never did get a divorce. So I couldn’t marry Tony, even though I took his name.” Which made sense. From what I’d read between the lines in Mum’s letters, I wouldn’t have ever wanted to see the man again, either.

“Did he… I mean, Robert. He hit you, didn’t he,” Ellie said, reaching out to hold Mum’s hand.

Mum tried to sound prosaic about it, but we could hear the tears in her voice. “Broke my arm, twice. And I don’t want you to even have to imagine the rest. Tony was… He was Robert’s best friend, but he couldn’t bear what he did to me. So he became my friend instead, my confidant. And we fell in love.” She shook her head, trying to brush away the tears. “When we found out I was pregnant… Robert would have known it wasn’t his, couldn’t be his. And we couldn’t risk what he might do to me, to you.” She clutched at Ellie’s hand. “So we escaped. Came home.”

“I can’t imagine what you must have been through,” I whispered. How had I thought for a moment that my own misdeeds could be measured against other people’s? That a stupid, selfish, childish act could be anything like what my mother had lived?

“Your dad…he gave up everything, you know.” Mum looked up, between the two of us. “You might not think it to look at him now, but…he was my hero. Robert…he came home, just as I was packing. Tony was there, standing guard for me, and when Robert tried to stop me…Tony knocked out his best friend with one punch, and then he took me away from everything. He left his job, his career prospects, his own dreams… He gave up everything to move back to Rosewood to be with me. With us.” She took Ellie’s hand. “Tony got a job at the university – a step away from the research he’d been doing in the States, but he made the most of it. And Mum and Dad looked after you, and later you, Saskia, while I went back to university. And eventually, we were able to pretend that none of it ever happened.”

“So you can see why I’m not very keen on Dad’s memoirs being published,” Mum went on. “It’s a part of my life I just want to forget about. And…”

“And you’re afraid that it would prompt Robert to come and find you,” Ellie said. “Even though he never has before?”

Mum nodded. “It’s ridiculous, I know. I’m exactly where I should be – he could have tracked me down at any time over the last thirty years. But if you write the truth…even though I swear it is the truth, he could sue for defamation. That’s the sort of thing he would do. And the publicity… I’d just be so ashamed, to have my word questioned. To have people think that I lied, just to make my own adultery more palatable.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ellie said, fiercely. “He didn’t deserve your love, or your loyalty. He gave up any right to that the moment he hit you.”

“I know, I know,” Mum said. “At least, intellectually, I know that. But inside…I’m still a scared twenty-year-old, terrified my husband will find me out.”

“We won’t let that happen,” I promised her, and even Ellie looked approving at the certainty in my voice. “You’re not alone, or far from home any more. We’re all here. There is nothing he can do to you. Not with us protecting you.”

Mum reached out to hold my hand as well as Ellie’s, and gave us both a brave, but wobbly smile. “I’m actually glad you know.” She sounded surprised, and gave a little laugh. “I didn’t think I would be, but I am. We’ll have to tell Caroline, I suppose…”

“We’ve got time to work that out,” I said, rubbing my fingers across the back of her hand. “Even if we go ahead with the memoirs, we don’t need to include this. Not if there’s a risk of Robert coming after you. I promise.”

I hugged her back, trying not to dwell on my promise. Edward wouldn’t like it, I knew, but this was my family. This wasn’t Nathaniel’s life, it was Mum’s, and she deserved some privacy if she wanted it.

And there wasn’t a chance of me doing anything to bring Robert back into Mum’s life again.