A Wayward Game (15 page)

“Anyway, to
complete the pretence, he has to get to work, and quickly. So he
has a shower, changes, and goes off to the office. People said he
looked tired and dishevelled that day. He said he hadn’t slept
well. Damn right he hadn’t, the bastard. He pretends to call Di
later that day, pretends to be concerned when she doesn’t answer,
and then goes home early. That gives him a bit of extra time – to
clear up any loose odds and ends, to make sure everything hangs
together. God.” She gives a low, humourless laugh. “He’s one cool
customer, you’ve got to say that for the bastard.”

“Very cool. He
never slipped up when the police questioned him. Not even after the
cadaver dogs alerted.”

“Arrogant as
fuck. Knew that with all his wealth and connections, they wouldn’t
dare touch him. He knew he’d get away with it. I tell you when I
remember first thinking he was guilty, Katherine. It was when he
hired that PR consultant, ten days after Di vanished. Why hire a PR
consultant, for Christ’s sake? You’re girlfriend’s just gone
missing. How’s a PR consultant going to help?”

Frieda is
referring to Sallow’s hiring of Larry Mortimer, one of the foremost
PR consultants in the country. For years, Mortimer has planted good
headlines and buried bad news for a roster of starry clients, from
fading film stars to disgraced MPs. If anyone can make you look
good in the public eye, it’s Mortimer. Needless to say, his
services don’t come cheap. Sallow could afford him, of course. The
question, perhaps, is why he needed to.

“One of the
best PR consultants going,” I say. “If you ask me, Sallow realised
from early on that a media storm was coming, and he needed someone
to help him weather it. Don’t forget, Frieda, Sallow can afford the
best: the best legal advice, the best spokesmen, everything.”

“David against
Goliath, isn’t it?” Frieda says. “He’s got everything, and we’ve
got nothing. Only memories and love. But perhaps they’ll be enough,
in spite of everything.” She turns to me with an almost pleading
look. “Tell me what you remember, Katherine.”

She often asks
me this, though I’ve already told her everything I can remember, a
hundred times or more.

“I can’t tell
you any more than I already have, Frieda,” I say, as gently as I
can.

“You think so,
but you don’t
know
. Perhaps there’s something else,
something so small that you’ve overlooked it before, but when you
tell me it’ll somehow slot into place, and I’ll see it: some new
possibility, anything. Just one little thing could blow the entire
case wide open, and you – you could be the one to do that,
Katherine.” She grabs my arm and squeezes it, rather hard. “Look,
I’m not going to lie. You know I never thought much of what you two
were doing together, what you were. I’m not going to be a hypocrite
and pretend otherwise. I blamed you for leading Di astray, and I
hated the idea of you two together. But that doesn’t matter now.
You knew Di, and you loved her, and you can help.”

“There are so
many things. I don’t know where to start.”

“Well, all
right then, tell me this – did she ever talk to you about
Sallow?”

“Yes. When she
started seeing him.”

“And you two –
were you still together at that time?”

“No. Our
relationship was in the past, and that was where she wanted it to
stay.” I shrug, trying to ignore the pain the memory brings. “She
tried to pretend it had never even happened, that I’d never been
anything but her friend. I think she’d even managed to convince
herself of that.”

“Why would she
have done that?”

“It had never
been easy for her, you know. She’d always been worried about what
people would think – worried about what
you
would think,
certainly. I think she was afraid of her own feelings. At first I
thought that maybe what she felt for me would be stronger than
fear, but in the end it wasn’t. Everything that had happened
between us became a secret, but how can you live with so many
secrets?” I swallow, and look down at my clasped hands. “Besides,
there were so many things that I just couldn’t offer her. Part of
her just wanted a normal, conventional life – you know, a nice
house, a husband, a couple of kids. She wouldn’t have got that with
me.”

“And then she
met James Sallow.” Frieda’s voice is thick with pain. “What the
hell did she see in that bastard?”

“Well, he never
seemed
like a bastard. He could be pleasant, charming even.
He was good-looking and well-off. And those things meant a lot to
Diane.”

“I know. God, I
could see the discontentment in her when she was still just a kid –
the way she used to stare around her, at our little house, our
little town, and think about how she wanted more. More money, more
things, more respect, more everything. She wanted it, and she
started working for it, early – frighteningly early. Worked hard at
school, got a scholarship to a private school, started trying to
speak posh, dress and act a certain way. Got so good at it that
you’d never think she’d ever been any different. Started calling
herself Diane Meath-Jones, because she thought that sounded more
classy than plain Diane Meath. Told her friends at school that her
father was dead, because that sounded better than saying that he’d
just walked out; said that he was the last of an old aristocratic
family, related to royalty, no less. Of course, she could never
actually invite anyone back home; they’d see straight away what a
load of shit her stories were. I often thought that she was the
loneliest person I’d ever met. Not belonging in the place where you
are, and having nowhere else to go – God, she must have felt so
alone sometimes.”

Frieda falls
silent for a moment. Her bleak eyes sweep across the lake, the
trees. A crow takes off from a dripping branch, cawing, black wings
beating at the sky.

“I’ll tell you
this, though,” she says at last. “She might have been ambitious,
but she didn’t abandon everything. She had decency, a heart. Not
like Sallow. I think she saw what she wanted to see when she met
him, and fell for that. She fell in love with a fantasy. For him, I
think she started off as a diversion, a bit of fun. But Di wasn’t
anyone’s bit of fun. She wouldn’t let go, and she wouldn’t turn
away and pretend it had never happened. She’d have thought, Well,
I’ve been to bed with this man, I’m carrying his child, he owes me
something. The problem was that he didn’t see it that way.”

“No.” I close
my eyes, remembering. “When she told him that she was pregnant, he
told her to get rid of it. But Diane wouldn’t. She
couldn’t
;
all her life she’d dreamed of becoming a mother. I suppose she
cried and pleaded and tried to reason with him, and maybe she even
tried a bit of blackmail – think how bad it’ll look if you abandon
me while I’m expecting your child, that kind of thing. So he gave
in and let her move in, but he felt trapped. He must have resented
her.”

“She must have
known that, though. She must have seen it.”

“Yes, I think
she did. But she didn’t want to acknowledge it, not even to
herself.” I look out over the grey water. “We’re sometimes very
good at choosing not to see something if we don’t want to. We’re
like children, aren’t we? We think that if we close our eyes, maybe
it’ll go away. But it doesn’t. And of course there were the
arguments, the accounts of Diane being seen in tears. The whole
thing began to fall apart, but how could she face up to that? She
loved Sallow. And even if she hadn’t, she was pregnant. She needed
stability, a home.”

“She could have
come home to me.” Frieda’s voice is quiet, pained. “She could have
got on the next train, the next bus, anything. Jumped into that
bloody great car and raced down the M4. She must have known
that.”

“I’m sure she
did. But she didn’t want to admit that it had all gone so badly
wrong. It hurt her pride.” I shake my head. “You know, there are so
many people who’d have helped her, if she’d only asked. I would
have, in an instant. But she’d put so much faith in Sallow and the
baby, and she just couldn’t bear to admit that it had all gone so
wrong. And it’s so easy to kid yourself, isn’t it?” I close my eyes
and think, not just of Diane, but of Neil and his wife. “Sometimes,
even after you know you’ve made a mistake, you refuse to face up to
it. You just keep stumbling on, hoping that you’re wrong, or that
somehow things will change. You can get used to these things, so
much so that you don’t even realise that anything is wrong. I can
imagine that’s how it was. She went about her day-to-day routine –
doing housework, walking the dog – and perhaps she managed to
convince herself that everything was all right.”

We fall silent
for a moment. I sense that Frieda is turning my words over in her
mind, sifting them for some glimmer of additional meaning or
importance. Eventually she looks away from the lake, and turns to
me.

“That daily
routine of hers,” she says. “What was it like?”

“I can only
guess. She was on maternity leave, so she had a lot of time to
herself. I suppose she got up early with Sallow, had breakfast with
him, walked the dog, and then spent the rest of the day at home.
Sometimes she went to the doctor or met up with friends. There was
a maid who went to the flat every other day, so she didn’t have to
do much housework.”

“Did the maid
go there on the day Di was reported missing?”

“No. That was
one of her days off.”

“Pity,” Frieda
says. “She might have seen something. I can’t help thinking, you
know, that if we could only find out what happened that day, we’d
unlock this whole thing. Let’s run through the timeline again.”

“According to
Sallow – and really, his is the only account we have – he woke up
early, before six, and left Diane in bed while he went out to get
some cigarettes. Diane got up as normal at seven, and they had some
breakfast together. He left for work at around eight, and as he
said goodbye to her she mentioned that she was going to take Goldie
out to Bucklock Wood. He told her to be careful, kissed her, and
left, and that was that. Or so he says. The problem from our point
of view is that his version of events does have some support. There
was another dog-walker in Bucklock who saw Diane that morning.”

“Martin
Stevenson. Yeah, I know. What do you know about this guy?”

“Not much.
Name, age, occupation.”

“Track him
down, Katherine.”

“I’m not sure I
can do that.”

“Yes, you can.
Go and see him. Think of some cover story. Try and get the truth
out of him.”

“If he wasn’t
telling the truth to the police, he won’t tell it to me.”

“He might. You
might trip him up or something. You won’t know until you’ve tried.
Go and see him, Katherine. If you don’t, I will, and that’ll be
much worse.”

Frieda’s voice
tells me that she’ll tolerate no dissent on this issue. I sigh, and
nod.

“God, you must
hate me sometimes,” she says, in a kinder voice. “I know what a
bitch I can be. But I’ll tell you one thing, Katherine: in a world
that’s ruled by bastards, any woman who wants to stay sane has to
be a bitch sometimes. And it’s like I said: there’s just you.
Nobody else can do this. You couldn’t help Diane when she was
alive, but you can help her now. Don’t let her down.”

“I’ll do my
best,” I say weakly.

We sit staring
at the Mere for what seems like hours. A light drizzle falls,
covering our hair and clothes with a fine mist. The wood, more than
ever, seems a haunted place, a place with secrets, and I’m relieved
when Frieda finally gets up and we begin to walk away. We make our
way back to the car in silence, and all I can hear above our
footsteps is the distant caw of a bird and the wind ruffling the
trees.

Frieda leaves
early the next morning. I go with her to Paddington, and we stand
on the concourse waiting for her platform to be announced. I think
of her travelling across the open, empty miles of countryside, and
for a moment I wish that I too could escape and get away from this
city of death. But then I think of Neil, who is coming to see me
this evening, and I know that I want only to be here.

“Remember,”
Frieda says, “go to see Martin Stevenson. And tell me what you dig
up, even if it doesn’t amount to much.”

“I will.”

“Look after
yourself, too.” She steps back, and looks at me critically. “You
look well, Katherine. Better than you did before.”

“I feel better
than before.”

“Is there
someone else? You can tell me, you know. It’s been years since –
well, since Diane. I wouldn’t think you were betraying her or
anything.”

“There is
someone.” I think of Neil, and of whatever is happening between us.
“I don’t know how serious it is yet. It’s complicated, you
know.”

“Another
woman?”

“No. A
man.”

“Well, you’ve
certainly got very inclusive tastes, I’ll say that for you.” The
platform number flashes up on the electronic display board, and
there’s a flurry of movement as passengers pick up their luggage
and begin to walk towards it. Frieda gives me a quick, rather shy
hug, and then grabs her suitcase. “Well, there’s no reason why you
should feel sad forever. Di wouldn’t have wanted that for you.”

“She wouldn’t
have wanted it for you, either.”

“Maybe not, but
it can’t be helped. I’m her mother, even if she’s gone. Nothing
changes that, and I wouldn’t want it to change.” For a moment, she
almost smiles. “You know what, Katherine? James Sallow may have the
money and power and friends in high places, and all of those
things. But you know what we’ve got that he doesn’t? Love, and
loyalty. And maybe I sound like a sap, but I think if there’s just
one thing that gives us the edge over him, it’s that.”