Also, I’m taking up my pen for another good reason, quite an ordinary reason, and that’s because I’m bored, and it is this boredom — surely, this boredom and nothing else — that has been driving me crazy, provoking these silly delusions. I need a task, an occupation (of course, I thought I would find that by working for this family, but it has been a strange job so far, quite different from my expectations). And I’ve decided that this task will be to write something. I’ve not tried to write anything serious since my first year at Oxford, even though Laura, just before she left, told me that I should carry on with my writing, that she liked it, that she thought I had talent. Which meant so much, coming from her. It meant everything.
Laura told me, as well, that it was very important to be organized when you write. That you should start at the beginning and tell everything in sequence. Just as she did, I suppose, when she told me the story of her husband and the Crystal Garden. But so far, I don’t seem to be following her advice very well.
All right, then. I shall put an end to this rambling, and attempt to set down the story of my second visit to Beverley to stay with my grandparents, in the summer of 2003. A visit I made not with my brother this time but with Alison, my dear friend Alison, who at last after so many years’ mysterious distance I have found again, picking up the threads of our precious friendship. This is our story, really, the story of how we first became close, before strange — not to say ridiculous — forces intervened and drove us apart. And it’s also the story of –
But no, I mustn’t say too much just yet. Let’s go back to the very beginning.
*
Rachel stayed up most of that night writing the first few sections of her memoir. She felt tired in the morning, but also strangely refreshed and energized. After giving the girls breakfast and walking with them to school, she lay down for a short nap and then started working again. She wrote throughout the day, without interruptions. Outside, all was quiet. There was no sign of Mr Blake or the Romanian crew: she imagined that work had been suspended until a new site manager had been appointed. At three thirty, she picked the girls up from school again, and for the rest of the evening, again, she didn’t give them any extra lessons or ask them to do any homework. This time, being more practised at it, she was able to get them into bed more quickly and with less fuss. By nine o’clock she was at her desk once again. Looking back across the years, remembering the youthful friendship between Alison and herself, picturing the Beverley Westwood in summer sunshine, trying to evoke the love between her grandparents when they were both still in good health, she managed to escape the feeling of dread which she knew would otherwise envelope her if she had nothing to concentrate upon except the stillness of this house and the shapeless terrors which haunted its ruined garden.
She wrote for forty-five minutes and then, at a quarter to ten, there was a ringing on the front door bell. She ran down to the nearest video monitor, which was on the first-floor landing, and turned it on. A grainy black and white image of Frederick Francis appeared. He was standing outside the hoarding waiting to be admitted. She buzzed him in and then went further downstairs to open the front door.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling on you out of the blue.’
‘Not at all,’ said Rachel. ‘But Gilbert isn’t here. Madiana’s in New York and he’s … well, I don’t know where he is, exactly.’
‘I know,’ said Frederick. ‘It was you I wanted to see.’
‘Oh. Well, in that case … Come in.’
She led him into the sitting room, a place she rarely visited.
‘Are you going to offer me a drink?’ Freddie said, sitting down on the sofa nearest the door.
Rachel could smell alcohol on his breath already.
‘I’m not sure that it’s mine to offer.’
‘Oh, come on. After all you’re doing for this family at the moment, you’d be entitled to bathe in champagne every night.’
‘In a diamanté bath,’ said Rachel, smiling. ‘All right then, where do they keep the booze?’
Frederick rose to his feet and proved that he knew exactly where to find the drinks cupboard: it stood flush with the bookshelves that were full of unread eighteenth-century first editions. After a quick search among the bottles he plucked one out with an air of triumph.
‘Twenty-year-old Lagavulin,’ he noted, uncorking the bottle and pouring two large tumblerfuls. ‘Almost the same age as you, in fact.’
‘I don’t really drink wh —’
‘This is more than a whisky. It’s nectar.’ He clinked her glass. ‘Come on. Chin-chin.’
Rachel took a sip of the leather-coloured, peaty Scotch and had to concede that it was superb. All the same, she resolved not to drink too much.
‘So, to what do I owe this pleasure?’ she asked.
‘Well,’ said Freddie, ‘I was having a drink nearby, and I thought I might drop in to find out how you were coping, all by yourself, and also … Also, as it happens, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about our conversation the other day, on the plane.’
He had not returned to the sofa. He was pacing the room uncertainly, shooting glances of enquiry at Rachel’s face as he spoke.
‘Oh?’ she said.
‘The fact is, Rachel, that you obviously have rather a low opinion of me and … I’m not comfortable with that.’
‘I’m sorry if I gave that impression. It had just been a bit of a weird day, that’s all …’
‘I think it’s about more than just one day. You hate me. You don’t like what I do.’
‘No,’ said Rachel, taking another sip of whisky, and realizing that this conversation was going to be every bit as awkward as she had feared. ‘I don’t hate you. It’s true that I think your work is — well, a bit unethical …’
‘A bit! Come off it, Rachel. What I do stinks. It stinks to high heaven.’
She was taken aback. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Well, clearly you’ve had something of a change of heart in the last few days. But those are your words, Freddie. Not mine.’
‘I thought a bit of plain speaking was called for, for a change. And yes, I have had a change of heart. And I lied to you on the plane, Rachel. I said that everything Gilbert and I do is within the law. Well, it isn’t. At least one of the funds I’ve set up in Madiana’s name could land all of us in prison. And perhaps it should.’
‘I visited someone in prison, this week, as a matter of fact. A friend of mine. She’s doing three months for benefit fraud.’
‘I bet she hasn’t fiddled a fraction of what I’ve siphoned off for Gilbert over the years.’
Rachel wished that he would sit down. His pacing was beginning to make her dizzy.
‘Well, these are fine words, Freddie. So what are you going to do about it?’
‘I’m thinking,’ he said, ‘about going to HMRC and telling them everything. Or perhaps taking the story to the papers.’
Rachel took another, very cautious sip of whisky, and allowed herself a long look at Freddie while her lips were still to the glass. Nothing about this sudden conversion of his rang true, to her ears.
‘I wouldn’t do anything drastic,’ she said. ‘Having seen the inside of a prison, I don’t think it would suit you. And please don’t turn your whole life around on my account. Whatever your ethics, I don’t dislike you personally. Not at all.’