James paused. “If you want to know Faye’s state of mind before she died you should look in her diary. She might not have confided in the rest of us but she bared her soul in that.”
“She would have had it with her at Juniper Hall?”
He nodded. “She took it everywhere with her. And she certainly didn’t leave it in the bed sit Mum and I went and cleared all her stuff out of there.”
He stood, quite still.
“I looked in her diary once. Just before she chucked me. Perhaps she meant me to see it… We were in her bed sit and she went out to the bathroom. Usually she hid it away in a drawer somewhere, but it had been left out on the windowsill. I know I shouldn’t have looked but it was too much of a temptation. That’s how I found out she was seeing another bloke.” His face twisted into a miserable grin. “She called me “sweet” in it. I suppose she meant that as a compliment.”
“What did the diary tell you about her new boyfriend?”
“Not much. Then he recited, as if he had learned it by heart: “I wonder what it would be like to be a farmer’s wife. I really like the idea.” I supposed then that the bloke she’d been seeing was working on a farm. And that she must have thought there was a future to the relationship. After all, she never talked about marrying me.”
Hunter and Sally stared at each other. Surely Ernie Bowles couldn’t have been Faye’s secret lover. Not of a pretty young girl like that! James was quite unaware of the reaction he had caused. He picked up the shears from the kitchen floor and said firmly that he had nothing else to tell them.
Later he wondered if that was quite true.
When he finished in the garden he lay on his bed. It was still light and his father was not yet back from the university. He seemed to be spending less and less time at home. James tried to remember the last evening he had spent with his mother, the Sunday evening before she was killed. The details were remarkably vivid.
Charles had been sulking. He had spent all evening in his study and had hardly spoken to them. Val had gone off to Magda’s group and when she returned she was strangely subdued. When Charles was out of the way James had teased her about it. They were sitting in his bedroom. She was helping him pack for the geography field trip, piling clean clothes on the bed, but really just wanting the excuse to talk about what had happened. He’d switched down the music so they could chat.
“Was it good?” he had said, slightly mocking. After all, he felt that he had grown out of that. “New insights? Lots of personal growth?”
“I suppose so,” she had said, but not so enthusiastic as she usually was.
He could picture her, still wearing the leggings and loose sweater she had put on for the Old Chapel group, squatting over his rucksack, looking up at him frowning.
“What went wrong?” he had asked. “Something blocking the energy? People too uptight to get anything out of it?”
“Quite the opposite,” she had said. Then: “Don’t you think there’s a danger that we can know ourselves and other people too well. There’s a need for privacy, even for self-delusion.”
He had shrugged, not sure what she expected of him, not in the mood to be heavy.
“I don’t think I’m going to go back there,” she had said, and he had sensed that she shivered slightly although the day was not cold. “It’s served its purpose. It’s time to move on.”
Now, lying on his bed in the last of the sunshine, he wondered if she had told anyone else of her decision.
On the way back to Mittingford the atmosphere between Sally and Gordon Hunter was more cordial, or at least slightly less frosty. There was a shared sense of achievement. They had valuable information to take back to Ramsay. They had perhaps even discovered a connection between Val McDougal and Ernie Bowles. It was possible, they told each other, that Faye had seen in Ernie some sort of father figure, that he was the man in the diary.
But when they returned to the Mittingford incident room, Ramsay could not accept it. The Faye he had come to know through reading the police reports was passionate, enthusiastic. She would have nothing to do with the grubby, overweight farmer from Laverock Farm, no matter how much she needed a father. He settled the matter by phoning Win Abbot. She would not talk to him for long. In the background he heard a baby screaming and she seemed preoccupied. But she knew that Faye had had a boyfriend. He sensed rather that she disapproved.
“Was he a local man?” Ramsay asked.
“Oh yes,” she said. “She went out with Peter Richardson. His father farms Long Edge.”
“The farm next to Laverock?”
“Yes,” Win said. “That’s right. I’m not quite sure what she saw in him.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Sean Slater was setting about making himself indispensable. Whatever happened to Laverock Farm he wanted to be involved. After years of drifting he thought he had found a project he could believe in. At least that’s what he told Lily. At the back of his mind there were other ideas which he would have found hard to confess to her. Marriage, children. He saw Laverock Farm as a way of finally tying her down.
Already they had moved from the caravan into the house. Somehow he had persuaded Bowles’s solicitors that it would be safer. The security was dreadful and they could keep an eye on the place. The Abbots had not been able to refuse.
“It’s only camping,” Sean had said to Lily. “But at least there’s room to swing a cat.” And it stakes our claim, he thought.
If Lily realized what he was up to she made no effort to escape. She even seemed to encourage him in his plans. The day the anonymous letter arrived at the incident room Magda Pocock and the Abbots came out to the farm, to survey, as Daniel grandly put it, their new estate. It was evening and the low sun made the place more attractive, warming the grey stone, hiding the rubbish with long shadows. Sean and Lily were in on the meeting and Sean was full of ideas.
“I think Stan Richardson up the valley would buy most of the land,” Sean said, hardly giving them time to get out of their car. “I talked to him about it. In general, you know. No commitments. That would give you the working capital to convert the house. I thought we might turn some of the outhouses into staff accommodation. That would leave the house for guest rooms and lecture halls. There’s plenty of space.”
“You had no right to talk to Richardson,” Magda said sharply. “The house has nothing to do with you.”
Lily was surprised by Magda’s anger it wasn’t like her but Sean was unabashed. “The police took the livestock up to Long Edge,” he said. “I had to speak to Richardson about that. Then he dropped some pretty massive hints that he’d be interested in the land. The sooner the better, surely, from your point of view. Once you’ve got the money you can start on the house.”
“We mustn’t get carried away,” Daniel warned, but he seemed to be getting carried away himself. He could imagine the place humming with people and ideas. They would attract the best teachers from all over the world. There’d be other spin-offs books, for example. He’d always wanted to write. And perhaps a training facility for other practitioners. The new EC directives would make further qualifications essential. And money. He had to admit to himself that he imagined the prospect of making money. “Still, I think Sean’s got a point, don’t you? It would be great to make a start.”
Magda said nothing, though Lily could sense her disapproval.
“I thought an organic garden,” Sean suggested enthusiastically. He was leading them across the farmyard. “To provide food for the Centre. It shouldn’t take long to get Soil Association approval. It’s run wild since we’ve been here and I shouldn’t imagine any pesticides were used even in Cissie Bowie’s day. Look, it’s a wonderful place.”