Marcus, who could charm for England when he wanted to, had always made a huge fuss of Jennifer’s mother. And Mrs Stone could not help being impressed by him, particularly after he became the local MP. He was what was still referred to in Pelham Bay as ‘a good catch’. Among the many things she did not understand about her daughter and her daughter’s life was why Jennifer had not married Marcus when she first had the chance. After all, the pair of them had been obsessed with each other since Jennifer’s schooldays — and Mrs Stone knew and suspected more about that than anyone. And so this second divorce for Jennifer was a considerable shock as well as a disappointment.
‘Not another one, dear. Whatever is your Aunty Pat going to say this time?’ was Mrs Stone’s first remark.
‘Mother, really!’ said Jennifer, exasperated. Nothing changed in Pelham Bay. For her mother, the biggest problem still of a broken marriage remained the reactions of family, friends and neighbours, and because Marcus was a public figure, the break-up would be all the more embarrassing.
Margaret Stone saw nothing strange in her own reactions. ‘Thank goodness your father isn’t alive to see this,’ she continued. ‘You know how upset he was the last time...’
Jennifer retreated thankfully to the anonymous sanctuary of London. She loved her mother dearly, but often came to the conclusion that they were from different planets.
Not long afterwards, Jennifer Stone was made an assistant editor at the Globe — number three in the hierarchy — although she suspected that was as far as she was going to go.
And so it all might have continued, had Jennifer not endured one office row too many and decided to walk out of the paper. She would have heard about Bill Turpin, of course, and all that was discovered in his cottage. But whether or not she would have become personally involved if she had not physically been in North Devon at the time, she would never know...
To have actually arrived in Pelham Bay at the time of old Bill’s death had seemed like another stroke of destiny. That summer Sunday, twenty-five years earlier, had in one way or another shaped the whole of her life. It had brought her and Mark together, forced her to grow up, introduced her to fear and the darker side of life. She had always known that it had played a part in shaping Mark’s future too, and not just that part which included her.
She relived virtually the whole of her life that afternoon in May 1995 as she lay dozing on the big old bed in her mother’s back bedroom. And by the time she went downstairs again, she had vowed that she would at last try to find the answers to some of those old nagging questions.
Part Three
The Dream Is Over
The dream is over, lover
And there’ll never be another.
You cast your spell on me
And I gave in quite willingly
To a lifetime’s fantasy.
But it was not to you I gave my love
I saw what was not there to have.
I offered my heart
To a thing apart.
I offered my flesh
To so much less
Than the man I created
Inside my head.
I offered my mind
And I was blind.
We shared sweet madness
Cocooned within badness.
My whole being craved
To be possessed by you.
I was afraid
Yet remained obsessed by you.
Strange, now that I see you clear
How I cannot bear you near.
The dream is over, lover,
And there’ll never be another.
Fifteen
The next day the urgency of the previous afternoon had mostly left Jennifer. She decided to go for a drive around all her old haunts and to take her mother with her. That would win a few bonus points. They drove to Pelham Bay, to the car park by the cliffs, and her mother said she would be quite happy sitting in the car while Jennifer went for a bit of a walk.
She strode out along the cliff path for a while, and then sat herself on a big sandstone boulder almost at the cliff edge. It was a brilliantly clear day. You could see Lundy Island and across the water to Wales. The only sound was the whirl of the wind and the crash of the waves against the rocks below. There was hardly anyone about, just a lone couple in the distance walking their dogs, and one man out on the furthest point of the rocks down below, casting a fishing line. The sun was a flash of silver on the water, which was so darkly green and blue that in places it appeared almost black. The foaming crests of the waves curled and entwined and reared up into endless bucking shapes, demonstrating with extravagant clarity how they had come to be called white horses. From where Jennifer sat there was a sheer drop a couple of hundred feet down to the sea, and she felt suspended above it. The wiry heath grass was springy beneath her feet, and the boulder on which she perched felt warm from the sunshine, although the breeze had a bitter chill to it. And it was the strength of the wind that day which was keeping the sky so clear and free of clouds. The wild flowers were in their full blaze of late spring glory, the deep pink of campions mixing crazily with the vivid blue of bluebells. A backdrop of deep green fern lay at the foot of dense woodland lifting up from the flat ledge of the cliff top and stretching right back over the great hill beyond. It was a magical day. The air tasted of salt — how she missed that in London. The wind was like a massage of sharp needles against her upturned face. She closed her eyes and breathed in the wonder of the moment.
Some lines of T. S. Eliot, which she had discovered only recently and instantly known the truth of, flashed unheralded across her mind.
‘We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring,
Will be to arrive where we started,
And know the place for the first time.’
She had begun to walk back to the car and her patiently waiting mother, when, on autopilot, almost, she had taken the other track, the one she knew led past old Bill Turpin’s cottage. If she was to unravel any of the mysteries of the past, this would be the key to open the first door. Instinctively she knew that, and although one half of her wanted to carry on with her life and have nothing more to do with the past, she could not do so.
She was not able to get very close to Bill’s cottage because the police had cordoned off the area. She was vaguely puzzled. She could not even follow the path which would have taken her past the cottage and along a circular route back to the car park. A uniformed officer told her politely that she would have to return the way she had come. Over his shoulder she could just glimpse the activity at the cottage. There were a number of police there, many dressed in overalls, and they appeared to be digging up the garden.
Jennifer tried, without a deal of success, to talk to the young constable about what was happening. Just as she was ready to give up and reluctantly retrace her steps, she heard a familiar voice, a good strong solid Devonian voice issuing orders. She smiled. He always had that ring of authority about him, did Todd Mallett. People were inclined to do what he told them automatically, couldn’t be a bad trait for a policeman. She turned to the constable again and asked if perhaps she could have a brief word with Sergeant Mallett, who was an old friend, she explained. Or maybe he was Inspector Mallett now?
The constable swiftly corrected her. ‘Detective Inspector Mallett, madam,’ he said.
He took her name and told her he would tell the detective inspector she would like to see him.