“I know what you mean. Sometimes in the past, after a sustained period of pressure, I’ve gone down with a fluey cold.”
“And you’ve rather enjoyed that, haven’t you?”
Gaby grinned, acknowledging Jude’s intuition. “Yes, it’s been very welcome. Snuffling round the flat, watching daytime television and endless mushy DVDs.”
“But you only got ill when you’d completed the project in question, didn’t you? Illness has never stopped you from doing some work you had to, has it?”
“No.” Gaby chuckled. “Why are we such idiots? Why do we let our bodies play these tricks on us? We should be able to recognize their little games. Yes, I’ve been stressed. When the stress is off, I will be ill. And yet, every time it happens, it’s like a big surprise. Same as when there’s snow in England. Everyone has always known it’s a possibility, but there’s still total shockwhen it happens, and the whole country grinds to a halt.”
“Illness is often a very good medicine, Gaby.”
“Mm.” The girl was thoughtful. “Maybe Mum needs a nice comfortable little illness, to make her less uptight.”
Jude shook her head. “From what I hear of your mother, she controls things by being uptight, by being publicly uptight.”
“I know what you mean. Everyone knows she’s nervy. You only have to meet her to know that.”
“So instantly you have less expectation of her. I think that’s how your mother has insulated herself from the unpleasantnesses of life.”
“You’re right. She seems very self-effacing and unassertive.”
“But in fact the entire life of her family revolves around her.”
Gaby nodded, as if at the confirmation of something she had always suspected.
“Power,” Jude continued, “comes in different packages.”
There was a silence. They both looked out of the plane window. The wide green fields of northern France – so different from the greens of England – rolled away below them. Both felt that little burst of liberation that flying can bring.
“Do you know what changed your mother, Gaby?”
“What do you mean – ‘changed her’?”
“Carole met someone who’d been at school with her. Apparently, as a teenager, she was an incredibly lively personality, real life and soul of the party.”
“Mm. I’ve always suspected there was another side to her, but I’ve never seen it.”
“So what do you think changed her?”
“I don’t know. Getting married? Having kids?”
“A lot of people regard getting married and having kids as very positive experiences.”
“Yes, but I don’t think Mum and Dad really got on very well. I mean, as a kid, you’re really too close to know what’s going on, but it was a very tense atmosphere to grow up in. I don’t know what was wrong between them, but there did seem to be something.”
“Did your mother ever talk to you about it?”
A firm shake of the head. “Emotions were a no-go area. Mum just got on with life, though always with the air that the whole business was a major imposition.”
“Did she ever talk about the time when you were born?”
“No. But I get the impression it was round then that something changed for her. Maybe it was the worry because I was premature. Maybe she got post-natal depression. I should think that’s the most likely explanation. But of course, it’s something that she would have kept quiet about. And I don’t think Dad would have been aware there was a problem – he was a sweet man, but not very sensitive to the feelings of others. I’m sure Mum would never have gone to a doctor or anyone like that for help. I’ve thought about this quite a lot, Jude, as I’m sure you can imagine, and that’s the best explanation I’ve come up with.”
“Sounds reasonable,” said Jude, although she had thoughts of her own on the subject. “And your father – was he a dominant presence around the house?”
“No. He was very quiet. I mean, he went out to work and came back in the evenings and watched television. But he was kind of…I don’t know. I wasn’t very aware of him when I was growing up.”
“When you came to see me about your back, you mentioned that your father had had bowel cancer.”
“Yes. What, eight years ago, I suppose? But he made a complete recovery – survived so that he could be murdered,” Gaby added bitterly.
“You also told me that when you’d got stomach trouble, you’d been worried that it might be bowel cancer presumably because of the family history of the disease?”
“Yes, but it was all right. I talked to Mum and – ooh, look at that big lake down there!”
Jude duly looked in the direction of the pointing finger, wondering whether the interest of the lake was sufficient to justify the change of subject. Anyway, she wasn’t going to be side-tracked so easily.
“Gaby – sorry to go back over unpleasant memories – but thinking back to when your father’s body was found in Epping Forest…”
“Yes?”
“Carole told me everything that happened. It must have been terrible for you when the body had been found, but still not identified.”
“It was, awful. Because part of me thought, so a body’s been found in Epping Forest. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last. But, because Dad hadn’t gone back home the night before, another part of me was having all these awful fantasies which, sadly, turned out to be true.”
“Yes. Carole said that initially the police weren’t sure how they were going to identify the body.”
“True. Talk of DNA matches, which was another complication, because Phil had gone missing that night, but it turned out all right. They identified Dad from his dental records and the scar where he’d had the cancer surgery.” Gaby shuddered. “Oh God, I never want to live through anything like that time again. The thought of something like that happening to Steve.”
“It’s not going to happen to Stephen,” said Jude, automatically reassuring, while her mind raced, building up a new edifice of logic which she longed to share with Carole.
Their conversation broadened and they started to talk about France. Clearly visits to Villeneuve-sur-Lot had featured large in Gaby’s childhood, and she spoke of her Grand’mère with deep affection.
“How long has she been living there?”
“She moved fairly soon after Grandpa died. I suppose I was about five or six. I don’t really remember him very well.”
“But he was English, your grandfather?”
“Oh yes.” Gaby hugged her knees. “I’ve always loved France. I always feel a part of me belongs here. I’m longing to show my favourite places to Steve.”
“I’m sure you’ll soon be able to when all this is over.”
This reminder of her situation cast a slight shadow over Gaby, so she determinedly moved the conversation on. “You said you lived in France for a while, Jude. What were you doing?”
And, because Gaby had asked a direct question, Jude told her. She was still telling her when they arrived at Bordeaux Airport. Carole would have killed to have been there.
Thirty-Two
You’re being stupid, Carole Seddon told herself. It was something she had told herself many times over the years. Indeed much of the interior duologue of her entire life had been castigating herself for some real or imagined lapse. Such was the penalty of being a postwar middle-class woman.
But that morning on Fethering Beach, Carole wondered whether she really was being stupid. She had picked up Gulliver as soon as she got back to High Tor from Gatwick, and taken him straight out for his walk. He was, as ever on the beach, in canine nirvana. He scuttled around on missions of desperate urgency, whose purposes he kept forgetting. He faced up to the threats of weed-fringed plastic bottles, and boldly challenged strips of khaki bladderwrack to single combat.