Viola persuaded Elizabeth Smithson and her assistant to stay at Haverford for just one night, to watch the last performance of the Shakespeare Festival, to see Twelfth Night once again, and to go to speak to Superintendent Boyle in the morning.
‘Everything always feels a bit more manageable in the mornings,’ Elizabeth agreed, and Viola felt herself release a little.
‘I’m going to have to tell the dowager countess everything that you’ve told me,’ Viola said. ‘Before the story gets out.’
Elizbeth nodded. ‘I understand. Will you tell her perhaps tomorrow, while I speak to your policeman?’ she asked, as though Boyle belonged entirely to Haverford House and had no other cases to work on. Viola agreed. If they were going to put off telling Boyle until tomorrow, they could put off telling everyone.
‘Your friends, your brother, will they not ask questions?’ Elizbeth said.
‘Not if I ask them not to,’ Viola replied.
They went then to find Emily, to get rooms made up for them both. Emily said she would drive back to York and collect their things while Elizabeth rested. She’d be back in time for the final night of the festival.
‘Wouldn’t want to miss seeing Seb McKay in tights after all,’ she said. Viola smiled tightly. She hated it when people clearly lusted after her brother.
When Emily had gone and Elizabeth had settled in, Viola sent the same text message to Seraphina, to Chase and to Sebastian.
Elizabeth is staying for the play. Please don’t ask any questions tonight. We’ll tell you everything in the morning.
Seraphina’s text came back first.
I’m desperate to know, she wrote. But I’ll keep my big mouth closed for one night only.
*
The atmosphere was electric at the Shakespeare Festival that night. The very air itself felt charged as though everyone knew something was going to happen. Something big. Something that would change everything. To Viola tonight didn’t feel so much like the end of something, but rather a beginning.
They sat together on fold-up chairs towards the back of the crowd – Viola, Chase, Seraphina, Elizabeth and Emily – and ate the picnic Seraphina had prepared. They opened champagne and Emily, in particular, cheered very loudly as Sebastian took to the stage. In the interval they talked to Elizabeth about New York, about her trip over and, mostly, about her books. Nobody spoke about who she really was, even though they all knew.
‘As a child I wanted to be a writer,’ Seraphina said. ‘My parents were big readers, had shelves and shelves of books and I liked to imagine that one day my name would be on one of the spines – Seraphina Reynolds as I was then. But the future had other plans for me I suppose.’
‘It’s never too late to start,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘I was nearly forty when I wrote my first book. It’s not something you have to retire from after all.’ She paused and smiled. ‘It seems to me that Viola has everything in hand on the estate and thanks to Chase you have the Conservation Trust grant to keep you going. Now, I must know more about these toads.’
As Chase talked to Elizabeth about the smooth-bellied toads they’d found in the lake, carefully avoiding talking about what else had been found, Viola thought about the Conservation Trust grant. Tomorrow, when she took Elizabeth to see Superintendent Boyle, when she told Seraphina the truth about Elizabeth, about what she had done, what would happen then? They couldn’t keep it quiet; there was already so much speculation about the discovery in the boathouse and, now, why Elizabeth Smithson was visiting Haverford. There were stories they could concoct and lies they could tell, and no doubt Boyle would have his own ideas about what the press should and shouldn’t know, but ultimately the truth would come out as it always had a tendency to do, and what would the Conservation Trust do then? Would they take the grant away?
Then she felt Chase’s hand on her back, warm and comforting, and she leaned into him reminding herself that there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t control everything. For now Haverford was safe, and so was her job and all she could do was enjoy the moment and look forward to the future.
‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you yet what Elizabeth has shared with me,’ she said to Chase.
‘It’s OK. I’m dying to know of course but I understand. Your loyalty to Haverford knows no bounds, does it?’ He smiled.
‘It’s the only place I’ve ever lived since my mother died that truly feels like home.’
‘Even now? Even after everything that has happened?’
‘Even now.’
‘So I’m not going to lose you to the bright lights of Kiama?’
Viola laughed. What kind of place did he imagine Kiama was?
‘No, I’ll definitely be back and you won’t be far away.’
‘I hope I’ll never be far away,’ he said, kissing her gently.
In ten days’ time Chase would leave for Sheffield to begin his course. Two days after that Viola and Sebastian were flying to Sydney so that Sebastian could find out his schedule for the new season of Sunset Bay and from there the drive up the coast to Kiama. Viola was nervous. It had been fifteen years since she’d left and she’d never really imagined going back. But it also felt right – going home with Sebastian was exactly what she needed and it would give her the closure she wanted. She needed this, just as she needed her brother. Even though they would be living on opposite sides of the world, she felt they had made a breakthrough this summer. They had both stopped running. They had both found things that captured their hearts and, from now on, they would both know where the other one was. There was something very comforting in that.
Seraphina would look after things while Viola was away, as everything wound down for the end of the season. And when Viola was back, through the dark days of winter when the house was closed to the public, she would work out where they would go from here. They could hardly live off the legend of Annie Bishop anymore, not once everyone knew she was alive and living in New York. But perhaps that was just as well. Perhaps Haverford had leeched off Annie Bishop’s sadness for long enough.
As the second half of the performance began, as Seraphina handed around glasses of champagne and Chase threaded his fingers through hers, Viola allowed herself to relax. Whatever happened tomorrow, however things went with Elizabeth and Boyle and people’s reactions to the truth, she had so much to look forward to.