Deep Blue Sea (7 page)

6

Hanley Park – the
main
house, as Barbara Denver liked to call it – was just a couple of miles away from the church, although the actual boundary of the property was practically next door. Diana had always thought of the Denvers’ collective portfolio of homes as a set of Russians dolls, a series of ever-larger properties each designed to make the last one appear small. Hanley Park made Somerfold look like a doll’s house. One of the biggest estates in the entire country, it was just a shade smaller than Castle Howard, with the same grand and chilly beauty – a slate-coloured dome that soared up into the sky and vast baroque-style gardens designed to impress the highest of society. In the 1940s it had been used as a military hospital and still had room to spare, before it was sold to an American entrepreneur and finally to Julian’s grandfather, which made it, by the skin of its teeth, an ancestral family seat.

Quite why anyone needed a property this size was beyond Diana, although she recognised the irony in even thinking that. Growing up, she had always thought their three-bedroom house in Ilfracombe was perfectly sufficient for the Miller family, provided she wasn’t allocated the box room, and yet she had twisted Julian’s arm to buy Somerfold.

As the car proceeded down the avenue of lime trees she watched Hanley Park get bigger and bigger. She knew it wasn’t the ideal place to seek refuge. Diana just wanted to curl up somewhere warm and cosy, to pull a soft blanket up to her chin and sink into a silent, untroubled sleep. But coming here was better than staying at the funeral. On the journey over, Adam hadn’t discussed her panic attack any further. She couldn’t even make sense of it herself. But her cheeks were still hot from the embarrassment of it all.

The car stopped outside the impressive pillared entrance. As her foot crunched on to the gravel drive, a fleet of butlers appeared from nowhere, like genies from a lamp, clearly anticipating the arrival of the first guests for the wake. Adam straightened his thin black tie and waved them back inside.

‘Thank you,’ whispered Diana, grateful that Adam had read her mind that she wanted absolutely no fuss. Behind them they could hear another car speeding down the driveway. She tensed, and knew she should have insisted on being taken back to Somerfold rather than the closer Hanley Park.

‘This will be Elizabeth’s event planners come to tell me off for running away. Tell me you’ve got a secret passageway we can escape into.’

Adam put his hand on her shoulder in reassurance.

‘Funnily enough, there’s a priest hole in the kitchen. It takes you to the catacombs beneath us and comes out by that woodland over there. I used it plenty of times when my mum and dad were on the war path.’

Diana managed a smile at the thought of the young, mischievous Adam Denver, whose boyhood and teenage antics were the stuff of family legend. Flushing his nanny’s slippers down the toilet, poking beehives to extract his own honey, taxiing his friends to the pub on a tractor liberated from the estate’s farm.

‘Do you think there’s time to make a run for it?’ she grimaced.

‘Not in those heels. Come on, let’s get inside,’ instructed Adam.

They made it as far as the entrance hall, resplendent with huge vases of lilies, before they heard a car stopping on the gravel. Diana sighed with relief as Charlie ran through the door towards her.

‘Mum, what happened?’

‘It’s fine, Charlie. Really . . .’ she began.

Without hesitation her son hugged her as tightly as he could. The gesture took her by surprise. Charlie was now of an age when any affectionate contact with his parents was decidedly uncool. He must have been concerned about her to have her practically in a headlock.

Adam returned from the drawing room and handed her a whisky.

‘Drink that,’ he ordered.

‘I’m not going back to school,’ said Charlie suddenly, breaking away from her and meeting her gaze levelly. Since starting boarding school, he had become increasingly headstrong. Julian said it was his burgeoning confidence, but Diana was convinced he had the Denver genes if not the Denver blood.

‘Of course you’re going back. Granny and I are driving you there tomorrow.’

‘How can I leave you like this? You fainted. You can pretend that everything is all right, but it obviously isn’t.’ His voice was loud, firm, protective. ‘I’m staying with you. School’s almost finished anyway.’

‘You’ve got three weeks left of term,’ she said feeling some maternal steeliness returning to her body. ‘Besides, there’s your exams.’

‘Stuff exams.’

‘Charlie!’

‘Uncle Adam. Tell her that exams aren’t important.’

‘You don’t want to take a leaf out of my book,’ said Adam sheepishly.

‘Please tell her.’ Charlie looked across at his uncle, willing him to back him up. They didn’t see each other very often, but they always got on like a house on fire when they did. Diana would have preferred that her son hero-worship a less mercurial member of the family; Adam sent wholly inappropriate birthday and Christmas presents – a gift-wrapped gold Dunhill cigarette lighter had arrived when Charlie had turned thirteen – but right now he was the only ally they had.

‘I think you should listen to your mother. She always knows best,’ he said, shooting Diana a look of complicity, and she was grateful for his support.

The front door swung open again and Sylvia Miller walked into the house, her lips pressed into a thin burgundy line.

‘You just ran off!’

‘I didn’t run off. I had to get away.’

‘What on earth happened?’

‘Charlie, come and help me make sure there’s enough food and drink,’ ordered Adam.

‘It’s a wake, not a party,’ the boy replied quietly.

‘Charlie, go with Adam,’ said Sylvia. She wanted to get to the bottom of what had gone on.

They moved into the study and shut the door. It was a glorious room, flooded with light, which bounced off the leather-bound books. Diana leant back on the huge mahogany desk, waiting for her mother to interrogate her.

‘I know this isn’t easy for you . . .’ said Sylvia finally.

‘But what?’ said Diana, sipping the whisky. ‘You know this isn’t easy for me but I shouldn’t just run away from my husband’s funeral like that?’

‘You gave Victoria Pearson the fright of her life. We all care about you. We’re here to help you get through this. But you can’t just be rude to people and then collapse, and expect us not to ask questions about whether you should see someone. A doctor, a counsellor.’

‘I was not rude to Victoria Pearson,’ Diana said quietly.

‘Barbara said she heard a few sharp words between you. What was that about?’

She had to tell someone. The words were bursting on her lips and she just needed to hear that she was being ridiculous.

‘I don’t know. I just thought . . . I just thought Julian might have been having an affair with her, or something.’

‘An affair? With Victoria?’ said Sylvia incredulously.

‘It’s not so hard to believe, is it? Look at her. Elegant, beautiful . . . and she looked so upset.’

‘Diana, I don’t know how you could think such a thing . . .’

Diana gave a low, soft snort. Of course it was easy to believe that Julian was having an affair. They’d had sex just once or twice since Christmas, since they had lost the baby. Both had been awkward and painful experiences which Julian had treated with his usual diplomacy, making all the right noises about ‘easing ourselves back into it’. She had counted her blessings that she had such an adoring, supportive husband, but deep down she wondered if his patience, his understanding had a darker truth. That he was simply getting his sex elsewhere.

‘It would all make sense,’ she said, voicing the fears that had been nagging at her since the day he died. ‘Julian didn’t kill himself for nothing. Something drove him to it. A feeling of the situation being out of control, guilt, I don’t know, but it wasn’t something that he could talk to me about.’

‘And you think he had a mistress?’

‘Perhaps,’ she whispered.

Sylvia hesitated before she spoke again.

‘But he had had an affair before,’ she said softly. ‘He dealt with it. You both dealt with it. That wasn’t the sort of thing that would have made him do what he did.’

Diana tipped the entire contents of the whisky glass down her throat as fat tears began streaming down her cheeks. She could feel them making rivulets down her thicker than usual make-up.

‘I could see people at the funeral thinking, speculating what drove him to it. Drugs, marital problems, financial ruin, another terrible scandal that would have dragged him back into the papers . . .’

‘Diana, you’re being paranoid,’ Sylvia scolded.

‘No I’m not. No one said anything, of course. They are far too polite for that. But it’s human nature, isn’t it? To wonder.’

She clasped the empty crystal tumbler to her chest. It felt cold through the thin fabric of her blouse.

‘So imagine how it feels for the person who knew him better than anybody. Or who ought to have known him better. Imagine how it feels for me, wondering what could have been so wrong in our perfect lives, wondering what I could have done differently, wondering if I could have saved the man I loved.’

Her mother came over, took the glass out of her hand.

‘You couldn’t have done anything differently. Depression isn’t a rational thing . . .’

‘So Ralph told you he was depressed?’

‘And you don’t believe him?’

‘There’s another reason, I know it,’ she whispered through bursts of sobs.

‘And if there is, the inquest will find it out,’ said Sylvia calmly.

‘No they won’t.’

Her mother looked as if she was beginning to lose patience.

‘You should sleep this off. Barbara’s doctor can be here in twenty minutes with one phone call. I believe temazepam is very good . . .’

‘I want to see Rachel,’ Diana said quietly.

‘Rachel? What does Rachel have to do with this?’

‘Everything.’ She could hear her sister’s voice in her head, the voice she hadn’t been able to shake for the past few days. ‘Rachel would work out what went on.’

‘Oh yes, she’s good at that,’ said Sylvia sarcastically.

‘It’s what she does. Finding the truth.’

‘And the truth hurts,’ said Sylvia, curling her lip. She put both hands on Diana’s shoulders. ‘Listen to me. Getting through the next few months is going to be hard enough without turning it into a witch-hunt.’

‘It’s not a witch-hunt. I want to know what happened to my husband. I
need
to know.’

‘Leave it, Diana. For Charlie’s sake, if nothing else.’

‘This
is
for Charlie. For Julian. For me.’

Sylvia stepped away and shook her head.

‘And what happens if you involve Rachel? Say she finds some hidden reason why Julian committed suicide. Then what? Then she sells it to a newspaper and causes you and the family more pain. Is it worth it? It’s certainly not going to bring him back.’

‘But at least I would know,’ Diana whispered, with more assurance this time. She blotted her eyes with the palms of her hands. ‘I have to go before people start arriving.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to Somerfold.’

‘Darling, don’t be ridiculous. Mr and Mrs Bills are here. Charlie and I have to stay. Go and sit upstairs quietly if you really can’t face it.’

‘I have to go home, pack my bag and get to the airport.’

‘The airport?’

‘I’m going to Thailand.’ Her decision was made. ‘I’m going to see Rachel.’ For the first time in a week, something finally made sense.

7

Rachel held her breath and looked up at the surface of the sea, just a haunting, glittering silver circle above her. She never knew how many shades of blue there were until she started free-diving. Fifty metres below the waves was the entire spectrum of her favourite colour: dark navy, ultramarine, deep sapphire, even a flash of cornflower if a fish flicked its tail. Down here, she was at peace, only her heart beating slow and steady in her ears, completely in control of everything. No phone calls, no emails, no distractions. Just it and her. Man against nature – or rather Rachel against her lungs. Because free-diving was diving without equipment, no regulator in your mouth or air tank on your back, you stayed down as long as the last breath you took would allow. And right now she could feel the burn increasing as the oxygen ran out. For a moment she considered just letting go of the rope and drifting off into the sea. How long would she last? A minute, maybe two? Everyone had a limit. Without warning, an image of Julian Denver popped into her head. Had he reached his limit? Had Julian just decided to let go of the rope?

Rachel kicked for the surface with her wide monofin – kick, kick, stroke – and was suddenly bursting through into the air, liberated from the water’s cold clutch, filling up her screaming lungs, gasping and clutching at the side of Serge’s boat. And there he was, his creased eyes smiling down at her.

‘You’re getting too good for this pond,’ he laughed, tapping his watch.

She took his hand and allowed herself to be pulled up on to the deck.

‘Bravo,’ he grinned, clapping wet hands together. ‘Three minutes two seconds.’

His accent was still thick after two decades away from France. Serge Bresson had come to Thailand as a competitive diver in the eighties. Something of a character on the circuit, he had got within twenty feet of the world record. ‘Feet not metres,’ he always added with a mischievous smile. But he had been mentoring Rachel’s diving with the same enthusiasm and eccentric energy he had brought to his own attempts, making her believe that one day, free-diving could be more than just a hobby for her too.

Right now, however, it was all she could do to lie back on the wooden boards and try to suck enough air into her body. Lack of oxygen made her feel weak, like a rag doll waiting to have life breathed into her.

‘Take it easy, don’t rush it,’ said Serge gently. ‘Let that body of yours remember you’re not a fish, eh?’

Eventually she sat up and took off her weight belt and goggles, letting them thump on to the deck. She was holding a small tag that indicated how far she had travelled down under the water.

‘Sixty metres!’ she gasped with triumph.

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Breaking sixty metres for a constant weight dive – descending into the water down a long vertical line – was something of a milestone for Rachel. Only forty years earlier, this had been a record-breaking depth, although the world champions today went much deeper.

‘You know, I think you’re ready to do this competitively,’ said Serge thoughtfully.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Rachel, her breath slowly regulating. ‘Just think of all that training. All that yoga.’

Serge waved a hand dismissively. ‘You can swim sixty metres down without yoga. People work for years to train their breathing to the extent you can do naturally.’

‘Well, I like it that way,’ said Rachel, rubbing her hair with a towel. ‘I’m doing what comes naturally. Plus I have a lazy streak.’

‘Maybe. But you also have talent.’

Rachel wasn’t exactly sure why she was being so resistant; she had certainly thought about entering competitions, and her ambition had to go somewhere.
Ambition
.

Last night, her ambition had been focused on buying the bungalows, turning them into a dive school and resort – but look where that had got her. She had grabbed Liam in the sand outside those bungalows, taken a chance on them being together, fulfilling her dream together, and it had backfired spectacularly.

She gazed towards the island as Serge started the engine on the long-tail boat, wondering where they would go from here. Could they just forget it had happened? Was it that easy?

‘So come on,
ma petite
, what is really stopping you?’ said Serge, fixing her with a shrewd look as they made a lazy half-circle and began heading back towards the beach.

‘Well, there’s the diving school for one. I’m a fifty-fifty partner with Liam and he’s not going to like it if I start swanning off to the Cayman Islands or Greece for twenty weeks of the year, is he?’

Serge gave a Gallic shrug. ‘So take a minority share. I hear you’re hiring new instructors anyway.’

‘Where did you hear that?’

‘Come on, it’s a small community. Nothing is a secret here.’ He raised his eyebrows meaningfully, and for a moment, Rachel had the horrible feeling that the Frenchman knew everything about her disastrous seduction of Liam.

‘How old are you, Rachel?’

‘Thirty-three.’

‘Still young enough to reach top-flight competition. And in addition to that, you are beautiful.’

She felt herself blush. Not many people told her that.

‘Seriously, I may be old, but I’m not dead,’ continued Serge. ‘I notice, and so will sponsors. It is different from when I was doing the sport. There is money there now.’

‘It’s not like being Venus Williams, though, is it?’

Serge began to chuckle. ‘That’s what I like about you, Rachel,’ he said, wagging a stubby finger at her. ‘This is why you would be a champion. Everyone else would think, “I’m not good enough to be a free-diving champion,” but not you. No, you think, “
Merde
, I won’t earn as much money as the world’s most famous tennis player.”’

Rachel couldn’t help laughing along.

‘You make me sound totally mercenary,’ she smiled, wondering vaguely if Serge had heard the rumours, if he knew what she had done back in London.

‘Not mercenary, no. I don’t think the money is so important to you, but the titles, that is what you want. Besides, being a free-diver is the best job in the world. Think about the places you would go, the people you would meet. Have you been to the Philippines?’

She shook her head. She remembered that Diana had been there years ago, just after she had started seeing Julian. Where had she stayed? The Amanpulo, that was it. She had made it sound like Paradise, a heady blend of beach butlers, watermelon mojitos and yoga pavilions.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.

Serge grinned as he guided the boat towards the pier.

‘You think it is nice here, but you will never see sand as white or water as clear as in the Philippines.’

‘Serge, I said I’d think about it.’

‘I tell you what I think,’ he said with a mischievous smirk. ‘I think you are a little bit in love with Liam.’

Rachel’s mouth dropped open. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Serge threw up a hand. ‘What is so ridiculous? You are very cute together and I have seen the way you look at him.’

‘Serge, he is my friend, my business partner.’

‘So. Make it more. If that’s what’s stopping you, then it’s simple, no?’

Rachel shook her head, squinting at the long jetty stretching out into the pale green water.

‘You Frenchmen. All you think about is affairs of the heart.’

‘So? What else is more important?’

But Rachel wasn’t listening; she was staring at a figure standing on the pier. She recognised her even before she could make out her face. It was her shape, so familiar, and her long dark hair, glinting in the sun like liquid chocolate. For a moment, she was tempted to tell Serge to turn the boat around, but he had already seen the woman.

‘Ah ha! I think I have some business,’ he smiled. ‘A pretty one too.’

‘She’s not a tourist,’ said Rachel with a flutter of panic. ‘She’s my sister.’