Bones Under The Beach Hut

When she was calmer, Jude said, 'There's clearly quite a lot you're not telling us, isn't there, Philly?' This prompted a feeble nod. 'And if you don't want to tell us any more, that's fine. But what you know is clearly troubling you, and if you think sharing it might help . . . ?'

The suggestion dangled in the air for what seemed like a long time before Philly tore off a sheet of kitchen roll and wiped her nose firmly before saying, 'All right, I'll tell you. It'll be useful practice for me, because no doubt I'll have to repeat it all for the police sometime soon.'

Chapter Sixteen

Neither woman responded, unwilling to break the confessional atmosphere. Philly took a deep breath and started. 'Mark's life has always been complicated. Basically he's married. He was married when we first met — and he didn't make any secret of the fact. He wasn't one of those men who passes himself off as a bachelor and only reveals his real status when the woman's too involved to back out. No, he told me early on that he was married, but he told me things had been difficult with his wife for a long time. She's Irish, very temperamental, called Nuala. Drank a lot, and encouraged him to drink a lot too. Very much part of that City drinking culture. Obviously I was only hearing Mark's side of things, but she did sound an absolute nightmare, a real emotional vampire.

'So when we first started seeing each other, he was having a terrible time. He kept telling her he was leaving and every time she'd overreact.'

'In what way?' asked Jude.

'She'd get ill — or pretend to get ill.'

'Any suicide attempts?'

'Yes, but those were no more real than the illnesses.

She'd take enough pills to make her woozy, but not enough to do any permanent harm. She'd announce on the phone to Mark that she'd slashed her wrists, but when it came to it, she just got a little scratch, something that would heal up without even leaving a scar.'

'Was she ever hospitalised after these attempts?'

'No way. She didn't want a doctor to see how far she'd been from doing herself any real damage. It was all just for Mark's benefit.'

'And did he respond to these "cries for help"?' asked Carole.

'He did at first, yes. After a while, he came to recognize them for what they were — just straightforward emotional blackmail. And then things got better.'

'How?'

'Two things. One, Mark settled some money on her.'

'Bought her off?'

'You could call it that. Anyway, Mark could afford it. He'd saved a lot from his bonuses while he'd been in the City and he'd made what seemed at the time to be some pretty shrewd investments. So Nuala got a monthly payment for keeping out of his hair, and she seemed quite happy with that.'

'If she was reconciled to the ending of their relationship, why didn't they get a divorce?' asked Carole.

'Nuala refused that. She said it was because of her Catholic upbringing, though she had no faith at all. I think it was just a way of keeping an element of control for the moment when she might need it.'

'You said there were two things that improved the situation,' Jude reminded her.

'Yes. The money was the first. The second was even better. Nuala met someone else. She got into a new relationship. Suddenly she didn't care anything about Mark . . . though actually I don't reckon she ever did. Anyway, it left him and me free to make our move down here. Everything seemed fine.'

'So what went wrong?' asked Carole.

Philly's face screwed up into an expression of wry despair. 'What didn't? The company in which Mark had most of his investments suddenly went belly up. You know how volatile the stock market's been recently and his were pretty high-risk companies. He lost a packet. Keeping our lifestyle going down here and making the payments to Nuala . . . well, there just wasn't enough money in the bank. And then to add to the problems, Nuala's new relationship broke up. Her bloke found out — just as Mark had done — what she was really like, and he got out as quickly as he could. So suddenly Mark's not only getting financial demands from Nuala, she's also back on the emotional blackmail routine.'

'Illness, suicide attempts?'

'All that, Jude. And Mark . . . well, he's a decent bloke. She could still get to him. I kept saying he should ignore her. Call her bluff. Let the spoilt bitch go ahead with one of her threats. I knew she'd never really top herself. But Mark didn't see it that way.'

'And is that why he walked out?' Jude asked gently.

'Yes. He was under so much pressure — from the money, from everything else — that he said he just needed a bit of time to sort things out.'

'So do you actually know where he is?' Carole's question was less delicately put than Jude's.

Philly shook her head. 'If I did, I'd go and find him, tell him he doesn't owe that crazy bitch anything. Tell him that he should be with me, not with her.' The tears, which she had been controlling very well, threatened once again to break through.

'You're suggesting,' Jude observed, 'that Mark has gone back to Nuala.'

'Well, what else am I meant to think? He says he's going away to sort himself out, for about a week I get regular texts from him, then suddenly nothing. Nuala's got her talons into him again.'

'Was that the first explanation you thought of?' asked Carole. 'You didn't worry that he might have had an accident or something?'

'I did at first. But after a while I thought if he had — even if he was dead — I would probably have heard about it, from the police, from the media, from somewhere. People don't just suddenly vanish from off the face of the earth.'

'It happens more often than you might think,' said Jude.

'Well, that wasn't my reading of the situation. I reckoned he'd probably gone back to Nuala. Back to the vicious spiral of drinking and emotional blackmail and . . . The alternative was that he'd gone abroad, just cut loose from everything and arranged a disappearing act. Either way, I wasn't ever going to see him again.' The thought was so painful that again tears welled at her eyelids.

'Well, at least now you know that he's alive,' said Carole. 'If he was seen down here only last week.'

'Yes. But that's not much comfort. Particularly if he was down here with another woman. I'd put money on the fact that that was Nuala.'

'Do you know what she looks like?'

'I've never met her, if that's what you mean. But from what Mark said, I gather she was very tall. Taller than him, nearly six foot. Very slim, and with long black hair. And those blue eyes Irish girls have.'

Carole made a mental note to check out that description with Curt Holderness if she got the opportunity.

'But why would they come down here?' asked Jude. 'Do you think they wanted to meet up with you, actually talk through the situation?'

'No, I wouldn't have thought that was why they came. I bet Nuala made him come down here, just so that she could crow over me. "So here's the nice little seaside idyll you set up with Philly, is it? Well, it was never going to last, was it, because you're back with me now, Mark." I can just hear her saying it.' And indeed for Nuala's imagined words Philly had taken on a hint of an Irish accent.

'That would be very cruel,' said Carole. 'Would coming here and crowing about your unhappiness be in character for Mark as you knew him?'

'Not for Mark as I knew him, no. But when he's with Nuala he's not Mark as I knew him. She poisons his mind. She's a vile malevolent bitch.'

'I thought you said you hadn't met her?' Jude pointed out mildly.

'I don't need to meet her. I know from the effect she had on Mark what kind of woman she is.'

As she tried to make sense of her boyfriend's actions, the pain that Philly Rose had suffered for the past few weeks had clearly now been curdled with paranoia. And deep hatred of the Irishwoman she had never met.