“But I did.”
“Exactly. You met her. Later than Rowena. And there were no… signs… were there?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, maybe you can convince Rowena of that. At the very least, make her see this guilt she feels isn’t exclusive to her. Others missed the same chance.” Was this an oblique accusation? I asked myself. Was this a glimpse he’d unwittingly given me of a grudge he couldn’t help bearing, however irrationally? If so, he tried to brush it off at once. “Not that there was a chance, of course. Not a real one.” He smiled. But the smile didn’t completely reassure me. And then it broadened into something warm and genuine and unstinting. For behind me, in the doorway, Rowena had appeared. And Sir Keith blamed her at least for nothing.
It was Sarah, executing what I took to be a prearranged plan, who proposed a walk in the little daylight that remained to give us an appetite for tea. Rowena said at once she’d go with her. I had the impression her sister’s company was vital to the equilibrium she was just about maintaining. I fell in with the idea, leaving Bella and Sir Keith to invent reasons for staying behind.
The girls donned their Barbours and wellingtons and I drove them the few miles to Frensham, where we joined the hardier set of Sunday afternooners strolling round the Great Pond. We’d nearly completed a circuit before Sarah tired of waiting for me to mention her mother and did so herself. At which Rowena cast me a lingering glance whose meaning was clear. The elaborate manoeuvres hadn’t deceived her for a moment. She knew exactly why we’d been thrown together. The glance, with its flickering hint of sympathy, even implied I was to be pitied for playing my part. Especially since, in her opinion, it couldn’t achieve a thing. Beneath the wide-eyed unworldliness, there was a determination I couldn’t help admiring to mourn her mother in her own particular way.
“Would you like to go to Hergest Ridge one day, Ro? It’s where Robin met Mummy.”
“I know where he met her. And when.”
“It was only a fleeting encounter,” I put in. “We talked for a few minutes, hardly more.”
“And what did you talk about?” Rowena looked round at me as she asked the question.
“Nothing much. The weather. The scenery. The view was… magnificent.” I shivered, but not because of the cold. Her eyes wouldn’t release me, wouldn’t give up their hold. Go on, they implored me. Tell me what she really said. “She seemed… very happy.”
“She often did. When she wasn’t.”
“I don’t think it was put on. Her happiness almost amounted to joy. You can’t feign that.”
“No. But joy’s different, isn’t it? I haven’t been happy since… the summer. But sometimes I have been joyful.”
“I’m not sure I-”
“Sarah says Mummy offered you a lift.”
“Yes. She did. It was kind of her.”
“Why didn’t you accept?”
“I wanted to walk.”
“You didn’t understand, then?”
I stopped. And she stopped too, her gaze fixed calmly on me. Sarah came to a halt a few yards further on along the sandy path. She turned and looked back at us, then said, almost on my behalf: “What was there to understand, Ro?”
“She needed protection.”
“She can’t have known that.”
“Besides,” I said, “if she’d felt in danger, she only had to drive away. There was nothing to stop her.”
Still Rowena stared at me. “Some things you can’t drive away from. Or fly. Or run. Or even crawl. Some things have to be.”
What I said next wasn’t provoked so much by irritation at the opacity of her reasoning as by fear of what she might be beginning to discern: that she and I had both seen-or been shown-some part of the truth about the events of that day. But we hadn’t understood, hadn’t recognized it for what it was; and we still didn’t. “Can we really change anything, do you think?” Louise had asked me. “Can any of us ever stop being what we are and become something else?” “Yes,” I’d replied. “Surely. If we want to.” And then I’d watched her walk away to her transformation. From life to death. From enigma to conundrum. “If you’re right, Rowena, what good would my protection have been?”
She smiled. And looked away at last. “No good at all,” she murmured. “None whatsoever.”
I caught the disappointment turning to anger in Sarah’s face. This wasn’t what she’d hoped I’d achieve. This wasn’t what she’d expected of me. “Your mother’s death wasn’t inevitable,” I went on. “But it wasn’t preventable either. Surely you can see that.”
Rowena gazed past me, past both of us, her eyes scanning the bleak heathland beyond the pond. Dusk was encroaching, gathering like some grey presence at our backs, advancing with the steady tread of something that doesn’t need to hurry-because it’s bound to happen. “Soon it’ll be too dark to see anything,” she said. “I think I want to go home.”
I took care to ensure I was the first to leave The Hurdles that evening. I had no wish to confront Sarah with my failure to dent Rowena’s delusions. Not least because I wasn’t sure they were delusions. And that, I knew, was the last thing Sarah wanted to hear. Just as it was the last thing I wanted to admit. “Perhaps it was too soon,” Sir Keith said by way of consolation as he saw me off in the darkness of the driveway. “Perhaps we can try again when she’s more receptive.” I muttered some vague words of concurrence and shook his hand in farewell, not daring to tell him what I’d realized at Frensham. Rowena’s problem wasn’t an inability to face the truth. It was a refusal not to.
A few days later, Sarah phoned me at work to propose a meeting before term ended at the College of Law. I detected in her voice an eagerness to remove any awkwardness between us before it grew into something more serious. It was an eagerness I shared. Probably on account of it, she agreed to let me take her to an expensive French restaurant in Haslemere. And probably for the same reason, she dressed for once as elegantly as her looks and figure deserved.
Rowena’s name cropped up before the canapés, Sarah having no truck with prevarication. “Daddy thinks it was a mistake to spring you on her. After she’s thought about what you said, maybe she’ll see things differently.”
“I wouldn’t bank on it.”
“We have to. If she says any of those bizarre things in court, God knows what the consequences may be.”
“Does she have to be called?”
“It’s not our decision. But, without her, the prosecution can’t be as specific as they’d like to be about Mummy’s movements and intentions. I’d be reluctant to dispense with her testimony if I were them. Apart from anything else, it would look so odd.”
“Your father mentioned a note your mother left for him in Biarritz. Wouldn’t that be sufficient to-”
“Unfortunately, he threw it away before he’d heard about Mummy.”
“Then… what about the friend she was supposed to be staying with that night?”
“Sophie Marsden? No good either, I’m afraid. Mummy never contacted her. She must have been planning to surprise her with the picture.”
“I see.” Actually, I saw more than I liked. There was a disturbing vagueness about Louise Paxton’s actions on 17 July. In the hands of a competent barrister, it could be made to amount to legitimate doubt. “So… only Rowena…”
“Can testify to Mummy’s exact plans on the day in question. Precisely.” Sarah didn’t trouble to hide the concern in her voice. “And it’s vital Rowena should testify-if Naylor’s line of defence is to be nipped in the bud.”