This time she had no problem in believing the response. A weary shake of the head and, “No, I wish I did. I feel very close to him.”
“Oh?” As ever the gentle manner promised to elicit confidences. And it did.
“The fact is, this family…I mean, when I met Rowley, it was him I fell in love with. I didn’t realize to quite what an extent by taking him on, I’d be taking on the rest of the Locke clan too…” Jude stayed silent. She knew more would come. “They are very all-enveloping. They see themselves as a kind of coalition against the world. I think it all started when Rowley and Arnold were boys. They were brought up in Cornwall…”
“At Treboddick?”
“Yes. And, you know, they were always playing these fantasy games. There’s one in particular called the Wheel Quest.”
“Oh?” Jude responded as if she’d never heard of it. She’d admitted knowing Carole, but didn’t want to suggest that they’d discussed the Lockes together.
“It’s something Rowley devised. Started off as a role-playing thing the boys acted out, then he turned it into a kind of board game. And a family obsession. I expect Chloe and Sylvia are playing it downstairs right now. Anyway, that stuff was all instigated by Rowley. He was the imaginative one, he invented everything, and Arnold was happy to be his acolyte, to go along with whatever Rowley said. Then, when they got married, the wives became part of the…well, it may be overstating it, but you could almost call it ‘the alternative Locke universe’. Eithne was fine about the whole thing, still is, and of course the children love being part of it. Joan – that was Rowley’s first wife – well, the impression I get is that she went along with it quite enthusiastically at first. She’d been an only child and suddenly being part of this huge, hermetically sealed comfort zone…she loved everything about it. But, as the years went on, I think she got a bit disillusioned with the whole set-up. It can be difficult for an outsider.”
Ignoring the implication about Bridget Locke’s own position, Jude asked, “And was Nathan something of an outsider too?”
She’d got it right. “Yes. I suppose that’s why I bonded with him. Neither of us swallowed the whole Treboddick and Wheel Quest business quite as much as we should have done. We liked it, we loved the individual members of the family, but both of us I guess had a kind of independence in us…something that meant occasionally we didn’t want to do everything as a pack. At times it could all feel a bit claustrophobic. We both liked some level of solitude, which is very difficult to achieve in this family.”
“And that’s the bond between you and Nathan?” Jude was rewarded by a nod. “So is it worry about him that has got you in this state…and probably brought on the back trouble?”
“Maybe. Yes, probably.”
“Hmm.” Here was a slight dilemma. By asking what she wanted to ask next, Jude would be admitting that Carole had reported back every detail of her visit to the Summersdale house, and there were some people who would find that an invasion of privacy. Still, it was worth the risk. “Another thing my friend said, Bridget…was that, having met you and your husband, and Arnold and Eithne…”
“Yes?”
“…you seemed to be the only one genuinely worried by what might have happened to Nathan.”
There was a silence, and Jude feared she might have made a misjudgement. But Bridget proved to be more concerned about the boy than about having her affairs discussed by total strangers. “I know what you mean, but that’s very much a Locke way of doing things. With their solidarity there also comes a huge confidence, so they really can’t imagine that anything dreadful’s happened to Nathan. He’s a Locke – he’ll be all right.”
“I don’t suppose you think it’s possible…” Again Jude was treading on potentially dangerous ground, “…that they’re confident because they actually know where he is…they know he’s all right?”
“No. Absolutely not.” But then came a concession. “I did actually suspect that at first. Not very loyal of me, was it? But straight after the murder was discovered, my immediate thought was that Nathan had taken himself off to Treboddick and was lying low down there. That would have been a very Locke solution to the problem. Whatever goes wrong with anyone in the family, a few days at Treboddick is always reckoned to be what’s required. That’s the universal panacea. So I was suspicious.”
“But the police were also suspicious and they went down to Treboddick…searched all the cottages and found nothing.”
“You’ve got a lot of cottages down there?”
“A sort of terrace of four. Old miners’ cottages. Rowley’s parents used to own all of them. Now one of them’s permanently for the family, the other three are let.”
“During the summer holidays?”
“And any other time of year anyone’ll take them. Mopsa lives down there and she’s supposedly in charge of organizing the lets.” She didn’t sound over-confident of her stepdaughter’s organizational skills. “Anyway, once I knew that the police had searched Treboddick, I stopped being suspicious of the rest of the family. They don’t know where Nathan is. They’ve just convinced themselves that, because he’s a Locke, nothing bad can happen to him.”
“It must be rather wonderful to have that kind of confidence.”
Bridget Locke grinned wryly. “Well, it is…and it isn’t. Rowley and Arnold feel more secure in the family circle, being judged by family standards, than they do in the real world. So, if something goes wrong, like say when Rowley lost his teaching job, rather than going out into the competitive marketplace trying to get another one, he shrinks into himself. The world of Treboddick and the Wheel Quest is more benign than the real one.”
“Hmm.” Time, Jude decided, to get back to the purported reason for her visit. “Well, let’s have a look at this back, shall we?”
Obediently, Bridget Locke rolled back the duvet and lay on her front. Jude removed the pillows and began very gently to pass her hands up the line of the woman’s vertebrae. Not actually touching the skin, she waited to feel the angry energy of pain rising from the body. After the scan, she asked Bridget to perform various movements and tell her which ones hurt. Then, rolling up the nightdress and anointing the shapely back with some aromatic oil she had brought with her, Jude started to do a deep hands-on massage.
The effect was almost immediate. Bridget Locke’s body relaxed, and her breathing settled into a slow, regular rhythm. Her limbs twitched and, within minutes, she was fast asleep. She really had been exhausted.
As Jude tiptoed out onto the landing, her mind was full. She’d dealt with a lot of lower back pain, and this was the first sufferer she’d seen who was more comfortable propped up on pillows than lying flat. Nor had she seen many who could shake their heads and throw off duvets with quite such abandon.
Whatever Bridget Locke’s reason had been for calling Jude to the house, there certainly was nothing wrong with her back.
Twenty-One
To leave while a client was asleep would not be the proper professional procedure, and yet to wake her seemed unnecessarily cruel. Bridget Locke’s main problem was exhaustion, and the best remedy for that was a large dose of rest. Besides, Jude could hear the excited sounds of the two girls playing in the sitting room. She had been granted more information than she had ever anticipated from their stepmother. Maybe there was more to come from Chloe and Sylvia.
“Your mother’s asleep. I’ll just wait here until she wakes up.”
The girls hardly reacted to Jude’s words as she settled herself into an armchair. They seemed to share the Locke lack of interest in people outside the charmed circle of their own family. And, as their stepmother had predicted, they were deeply absorbed in their game. Jude sat back to watch and listen to the two little, uniformed Pre-Raphaelites. From their conversation she deduced that the one who had let her in was Chloe (aka Zebba) and the smaller one Sylvia (aka Tamil).