I Trust You (7 page)

Chapter 12

G
erald and Gaia Coleman’s residence was a substantial Victorian townhouse near the centre of Dorchester. The garden was long and narrow and not a patch on Eliot and Marisa’s plot at White Bay. But Gerald had insisted they move to a more manageable property after he retired. A place they could easily leave for weeks at a time whilst the couple travelled the globe.

              On this pleasant, sunny afternoon, the family were seated at the large table in their back garden, shaded under a pergola, relaxing with cold drinks after enjoying a leisurely lunch.

              Grace was following her youngest child, who was toddling unsteadily across the lawn. The older two were playing football with Tim against the back fence. For the first time, Marisa wondered if her sister-in-law was bitter that Eliot had got the house.
She
was the one with three children. Their huge garden would have been perfect for Grace and Tim. All they’d need to do would be to add a proper fence between the woods and the cliff path. It could be made perfectly safe for a family. She’d planned it enough times herself.

              As it was, Grace and Tim had a four-bedroomed new build in Weymouth. It was certainly not small, but compared to the house she’d grown up in, it must have felt like a step down in the world.

Tim was a teacher and probably didn’t want to depend on his father-in-law’s money to give them a leg-up the property ladder. This thought made Marisa feel uncomfortable. She relied on Eliot for everything.

              Her husband suddenly leapt up. ‘Hey, lads! Let’s have a game of cricket. I’ll get the equipment from the shed.’ Before Tim had a chance to respond, Eliot was hammering the stumps into a well-worn section of grass.

              Grace swept Lily up into her arms and came across to join them at the table. ‘Best to keep out of the way for this. Nobody’s safe when the Coleman boys get competitive.’

              Gerald laughed. ‘If my back wasn’t giving me trouble, I’d go and join them!’

              ‘Don’t you dare,’ warned Gaia.

              Marisa took in the appearance of Gerald’s second wife. Her age was never mentioned, but Marisa imagined she was in her late fifties by now. Her mother was Greek and her father English. As a result, her skin was a beautiful olive tone and she tanned to a deep golden brown in the sun. Gaia wore large Dior sunglasses and a floaty layered dress finished off with simple leather sandals. Grace looked pale and tired compared to her step-mother.

              ‘Is it a long family tradition, then?’ Marisa asked casually. ‘Playing cricket, I mean. Have any of the Colemans competed at county level – or for England, perhaps?’

              Gerald’s expression remained unchanged. ‘Not that I’m aware of. It’s always simply been a hobby for us. My grandfather went to Lords whenever he could, though. He loved the atmosphere of a test match.’

              ‘Would that have been in the sixties?’ Marisa sat forward. ‘Who were the big teams back then? Were the West Indies playing during that era?’

              Gerald let out a booming chuckle. ‘Good God, child. Why are you suddenly interested in that? I never thought cricket was your father’s cup-of-tea.’

              ‘I’m just curious, that’s all. I don’t know much about the Coleman clan.’

              ‘You’ve been married to Eliot for ten years. That’s all you need to know,’ Grace put in. ‘He’s the archetypal Coleman – charming, competitive, talented and bloody-minded. Did I miss anything out, Dad?’

              ‘Handsome? Fiendishly clever?’ Gerald polished off his gin and tonic.

              ‘Conceited,’ Grace added, with a grin.

              Marisa joined in the laughter.              

              ‘Dom and Alex will be just the same. They aren’t a bit like Tim.’ Grace sipped her lemonade.

              Marisa thought she seemed a touch melancholy about this fact.

              ‘They are beautiful, strong boys,’ Gaia commented.

              They watched them play for a while. Eliot was bowling in an exaggerated way and young Alex was swiping his bat at fresh air, unable to return a single shot.

              Marisa got up and excused herself. She walked through the French doors into the sitting room, pausing to glance at the photographs on the mantelpiece in there. The largest frames held the wedding shots of her and Eliot, Grace and Tim. Another was a picture of Gaia’s son at his wedding to a Spanish girl a few years earlier. She and Gerald had flown out to Granada for the ceremony.

              There were several school and nursery photos of Dom and Alex and baby shots of Lily. Marisa scanned the frames in this room and the main living room at the front of the house. She couldn’t find a single picture of Eliot and Grace’s mother.

              Marisa had seen pictures of her before, of course. Eliot had plenty in an album back at the house in White Bay. Celia was fair-haired and tall, almost the opposite physical type to Gaia. The pictures she featured in were predominantly of windy beaches and headlands where she held either Eliot or Grace in her arms, wrapped up in padded all-in-ones, their little faces peeking out of wide, fluffy hoods.

              Eliot didn’t like to speak about his mother. She died in a car crash in 1994. Marisa had never met her. The subject always struck her as a taboo in the Coleman household. Now she was curious. If Gerald’s past wasn’t quite the way he’d painted it, his first wife would have known all about the time he worked for Southern Seaways. She must have been a part of his life before he ever owned his own boatyards. Marisa couldn’t help but observe, that with Celia gone, he was able to invent a whole new background story for himself. Grace and Eliot would only have been babies when Gerald disappeared from the Southampton docks in the early eighties. His wife was the only one who knew the truth.

              Marisa jumped as she felt a presence behind her. She carefully placed the picture she was holding back above the grand Victorian fireplace before she risked dropping it.

‘It’s such a great shot of Eliot, don’t you think?’ The picture showed her husband as a little boy, seated on a checked blanket with the remains of a picnic scattered about him. Gerald’s voice was soft and sentimental. ‘It was taken by his mother.’

              Marisa turned to face him. ‘Really? I didn’t know that. Eliot doesn’t mention her often.’

              He sighed theatrically. ‘Eliot
adored
his mum. He was devastated after the accident. It was an awful age for it to happen. Teenagers just can’t express their feelings about these things. Grace was a little older. She’d met Tim by then at college. I never worried about her. I knew she’d be okay.’

              ‘But you worried about Eliot?’

              ‘I still do. He tends to internalise things.’ He looked at her intently. ‘I understand why you needed to come inside just now.’

              Marisa creased her face. ‘What do you mean?’

              ‘The sight of Eliot playing with Grace’s boys was hard to bear, wasn’t it?’

              Marisa felt shocked. She wasn’t expecting this comment. It was a cheap shot. ‘Actually, that wasn’t the reason.’

              ‘Oh, I’m sure you don’t want to discuss it. But to see my only son interacting with his strong, healthy nephews just reminds me of what has been so cruelly denied him. And
you
, of course.’

              Marisa was fighting to maintain her composure but tears were threatening to escape onto her cheeks. ‘Excuse me,’ she managed to mutter, before dashing past him into the hallway and locking herself in the downstairs toilet.

Chapter 13

M
arisa awoke early. For the first time since her sessions had begun, she was unenthusiastic about her appointment with Dr Marsh. It felt somehow indulgent - wasteful even - to spend an hour discussing her feelings about various unimportant topics when so much was shifting in her real life.

              The downstairs of the house was deathly quiet. Marisa put on the noisy Italian coffee maker to mask the sound of the call, then she rang up Dr Marsh’s receptionist and cancelled the counselling session for that day. Her memories and emotions would still be there next week. Skipping an appointment wouldn’t do any harm.

              She downed a cup of strong coffee and considered her options. Her encounter with Gerald the previous day had focussed Marisa’s thoughts. Once she’d stopped weeping in the ornate and fussy downstairs toilet at her in-laws house, Marisa had determined to pull herself together. She re-applied her lip-stick and mascara, marched out into the garden and joined in with the boys’ cricket game; fielding catches and laughing along with Eliot’s school-boy antics.

              Her husband had seemed to appreciate it. On the way home he repeatedly laid his hand over hers and talked animatedly about a regatta in Weymouth where he hoped to enter their new clipper. When they returned to the house, Eliot pulled his wife to him and pressed his mouth tenderly over hers. He led her upstairs and they made slow, gentle love with the curtains wide and the soft breeze from the open window cooling their naked bodies.

              For what Marisa had planned, she couldn’t use Eliot’s laptop. Even with her very rudimentary understanding of the internet she was aware that he could easily access the search history of his own device. So she left a note on the dining table and grabbed her bag, determined to return to Dorchester before the morning traffic began to build.

*

Marisa thought she might be taking a risk, coming back to Dorchester to do her detective work. But she figured that the very last place she’d bump into Gerald or Gaia would be at the library.

              From her day in Southampton, Marisa had learnt some things about using the library’s computer and records system. She was motivated by a resolution to learn everything there was to know about Celia Coleman.

              Celia’s obituary had made the Dorchester Gazette in December 1994. She was 46 years old when she died, leaving a husband and two children; Grace, aged 19 and Eliot, aged 16. The piece focussed on the importance of Coleman’s Marinas as a flourishing local firm. Celia was credited with helping Gerald to build the business, being at the helm with her husband since they married in 1973. Very little detail was devoted to the accident itself, presumably out of good taste. All that was mentioned was how Celia had been driving her car in icy conditions along the coastal road between White Bay and Charmouth when the vehicle overturned. No criminal investigation had resulted from the accident.

              Marisa sat back in the uncomfortable plastic chair and sighed. Maybe they’d got it wrong after all. This article made it sound as if the Colemans were as integral a part of Dorset culture and history as the fossils embedded in the Jurassic cliffs that fringed the coastline.

She leant forward again. There were several lines of inquiry sketched out on the pad placed open on the table beside her, it wasn’t time to give up just yet.

              Being the daughter of a corporate solicitor had provided her with certain gems of knowledge. She knew, for example, that a business had to register itself with Companies House. All their accounting information and corporate structure must be visible to the public on their website.

              This was what Marisa intended to look up next. To her great surprise, a search for Coleman’s Marinas drew a total blank. She tried
Coleman’s Yachts
next, and then several variations on the theme. Still there was no result. Instead, she entered Gerald Coleman as a company director. This search proved to be far more fruitful.

              Gerald L Coleman had been listed as the director of several companies, going back to the early 1970s. But from 1983 onwards, he appeared to have been the MD of an organisation called South Sea Holdings Ltd. Marisa’s eyes widened as she registered the amount of profit this company was raking in year on year.

              She checked the entry for 2011. Just as she expected, the sole director of this mysterious organisation was now her husband, Eliot D Coleman.

              Marisa printed the information out using one of the library’s bulky old machines. There was only one person who might be able to enlighten her about what she’d just read, without alerting the Colemans to her investigations. She took the sheets outside and reached for her mobile phone.

              It was Roger Lawson who answered. ‘Marisa, darling. Is everything alright?’

              ‘Yes, I’m fine Dad. Look, Eliot has asked me to sort through some paperwork for him. I’ve found a couple of invoices that are a bit confusing. I don’t want to bother Eliot with it, he’s so busy right now.’

              ‘What’s the problem? I’m glad to be of help.’ Roger’s excited tone betrayed the fact he missed being asked for his professional advice.

              ‘We’ve received some payments from a client, but I’m not sure where to bank them. Dad, who are South Sea Holdings?’

              The silence on the other end of the line was charged with palpable tension.

              ‘Dad? Are you still there?’ Marisa was trying to sound as innocent as possible.

              ‘I’m surprised that Eliot asked you to help with the admin without properly explaining the situation to you. Coleman Marinas in a trading name for Eliot’s business – a bit like a registered trade mark. The umbrella company that owns the whole thing is South Sea Holdings Ltd. It’s just a technical thing, darling, all to do with minimising costs and rationalising the tax bill. You can bank the cheque in the usual business account.’

              ‘Oh, thanks, I’ll do that. Just one more thing. You took on Gerald’s account in the mid-nineties, didn’t you?’

              ‘That’s right. It wasn’t long after Eliot’s mother passed away. Before that, Gerald had used a law firm in Dorchester. I believe that Celia had handled that side of the business, so they were compelled to start over again. I expect it was painful for the man to have those constant reminders of his dead wife in his professional life. It must have been hard enough at home.’

              ‘Yes, I imagine it was. Did Gerald ever tell you much about his early life – how he grew the business, where he studied and went to school, that sort of thing?’

              There was a brief pause. ‘I was rushed off my feet dealing with Gerald’s affairs in the here and now, without spending too much time on his background history. The business started with some kind of bequest, didn’t it? As far as the family story goes, Gerald was schooled at one of those private places – Charterhouse or Clifton College, perhaps.’

              ‘But you don’t know exactly which?’

              ‘No, darling. Why don’t you ask Eliot if you’re that interested? He must know.’

              Marisa mumbled something.

              ‘Oh, hang on a moment would you? Your mother wants a quick word.’

              ‘Sure, Dad. Put her on.’