‘I have no choice, Rose,’ he said. ‘It is time to move forward, and that’s that. I’ve been having discussions with the Japanese for over a year. I didn’t want to tell you until I was pretty sure I had it sorted out. It was not an easy decision to make, but Ernest John here would do the same thing if he lived now, I’m sure of it.’
He came over then and squatted down again on the grass beside me, raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. No wonder I found the bloody man so irresistible. He was full of extraordinary gestures like that, that way of talking and behaving that seemed sometimes to be straight out of Jane Austen.
‘I want to be with you so much, Rose,’ he said. Then he grinned, looking suddenly as near to boyish as he could ever manage. ‘And I have a confession to make. I’ve seen a rather beautiful house in Clifton which I think could be our new home — if you like it too, of course.’
I found myself basking in his warmth. In the past I would not have allowed any man in my life to even attempt to make decisions for me. With Robin I didn’t mind at all. I actually quite liked it.
All I said was: ‘Are you quite, quite sure?’
He nodded.
‘Don’t forget that this island is associated with a lot of tragedy for me, and it will do no harm for me to distance myself from it a little,’ he said softly. ‘I lived here with my first wife and our son, and it was here that Natasha died. We’ll still have Highpoint to come to as often as we like, but a new start, a new life on the mainland, will be good for me, Rose. I am quite sure of that. I have plans to run a property business in Bristol, and meanwhile Abri will be earning money for itself and for us, instead of swallowing up what little I have left.’
Suddenly his voice hardened and he looked very determined. ‘I am not going to give up the Davey heritage, Rose, far from it,’ he said. ‘I am going to rebuild it for future generations.’
Twelve
I will never be able to quite explain what it was that made me want to go out to the Pencil again. It made no sense really. Robin’s and my future seemed to be assured, and I fell a little more in love with him every day. How could anyone suspect a man as caring and morally upstanding as Robin of anything remotely underhand, let alone a violent crime?
In the weeks which followed his revelation to me about the plan to lease Abri, our relationship grew ever stronger. I managed a couple of days off for Christmas, which we spent quietly together on Abri. It was the happiest Christmas I had enjoyed in a long time, and while we were there we set our wedding day for the 7th of April, which would be almost eighteen months after our fateful first meeting on the island. So much had already happened since then, and so much that I would have preferred not to have happened. In some ways it seemed to Robin and I that much longer had passed, although we had only been lovers for less than ten months, and yet we suspected that to many, at least to my family and friends, we were moving far too fast. I would have been happy to wait. Robin would not hear of it.
‘Neither of us are exactly in the first flush of youth, Rose,’ he said. ‘We have decided we want to be together, so let’s go for it. We have nothing to wait for. I want you to be my wife and the mother of my children.’
When we were together I clung to his body desperately through the nights and when we were apart and I was working I drew my strength from the memory of his arms wound tightly around me. Unfortunately finalising the Japanese deal kept him away on Abri more throughout January than previously, but the agreement was signed and sealed quicker than I had expected — within less than a couple of months of his telling me about it. Robin was as pleased as possible under the circumstances.
‘The consortium is ideal,’ he enthused. ‘Money to burn and they love the idea of the island more or less as it is, of conserving its history. I actually think the development they’re planning is something I’d like to have done myself if I’d had the money to invest. And they do genuinely believe that keeping Abri as a working community with its farm and its fishermen and all the rest will add to its attraction, thank God. Anyway they are prepared to guarantee homes for the islanders for their lifetime, just as I had hoped.’
What did not go quite so well was reassuring the sixty-seven islanders about their future. It was important to Robin that they not only accepted what he was doing but approved, that they believed he was not abandoning them and appreciated that he was taking the course of action he had decided upon for their good as well as his own. Predictably, I suppose, this caused problems. The islanders were not convinced. In fact they were horrified, Robin confessed to me. People rarely welcome change, and the people of Abri were particularly unfamiliar with the process. Their lifestyle had changed very little in generations.
One morning, early, when Robin called me from Abri all his usual ebullience seemed to be alluding him. ‘They think I’ve let them down,’ he said. ‘Whatever I say, however I put it, that’s the way they see it. I am the Davey who is walking away.’
I asked him then if he was still sure he wanted to go ahead with the deal. ‘Don’t wait until it’s too late and then regret it for the next twenty-five years,’ I said.
His sigh came down the line loud and clear.
‘I have no choice, Rose,’ he said glumly. ‘As it stands the whole thing is such a mess. It can’t go on. There are all kinds of complications that I haven’t explained to you, after all you have your own worries. But trust me in this, the deal has to go ahead if any of us are to survive.’
I was already becoming used to his confident positive approach to life. I hated to hear him sound defeated.
‘I love you,’ was all I could think of to say. A bit lame perhaps, but I was beginning to realise, to my great joy, that he was every bit as besotted with me as I was with him.
‘I know you do,’ he said, and his voice cracked a little. ‘Sometimes that really is all there is.’
It was a wrench to eventually put the phone down. I wanted to hold him close, to comfort him, to take him to bed and listen for his little grunts of pleasure. I missed him so much when we were apart. And the job did not make life any easier. The pressures of the Stephen Jeffries case were continuing to mount. The boy had been missing for more than four months. Realistically none of us expected ever to see him alive again. Robin was not the only one overcome with a sense of failure.
That evening, after yet another day of no progress, I really did not feel like going home alone to the TV and a frozen pizza. Instead I insisted on dragging Peter Mellor over to the Green Dragon for a pint. He was not exactly enthusiastic which was hardly surprising. All we ever talked about nowadays was Stephen Jeffries, and true to form we both sank into melancholy as we went over and over again all the nuances of the case. The big problem was that we were not moving forwards in any direction. There was no evidence of anything, really.
After a couple of morosely dispatched pints of bitter we moved on to large whiskies, more unusual for Mellor than for me — particularly as we were both driving, something about which Mellor, at any rate, was usually quite meticulous.
‘We just keep going around in circles, boss,’ he said. He looked worn out. He was putting in almost the same kind of hours as me. I was not the only one the case had got to.
‘I just can’t get that little lad out of my head,’ Peter Mellor continued. ‘I mean, he was so trusting and loving. And now... well, God knows what’s happened to him.’