When we get home, Dad is waiting for us in the brightly lit porch while Dominic supports me over the threshold. Seeing him reminds me of the letter waiting in his study. Has he found it already? Has he read it?
There’s no sign of Kasia, I realise, looking past him into the empty hallway. But it’s getting late. She must have left to be with her kids. I’m glad. And not just because I’m still a little suspicious she deliberately locked me in the cellar. I don’t like the thought of her and Dad being home alone together for so long. The horrible idea that they’re having an affair has got hold of me now, and I can’t seem to shake it, even though I’m sure it can’t be true. All the same, I avoid his gaze.
It ought to be a relief to be home.
But it isn’t.
Quite the opposite, in fact. I find myself shivering again, even though the hall feels suffocatingly warm after the cold night air.
‘Good grief, girl, what on earth have you done?’ is my father’s opening question, staring at my crutches in disbelief. ‘I got your mother’s message. What were you doing poking around in the cellar?’
‘She took a tumble, that’s all,’ Dominic tells him coolly, and then gives him an even more truncated account of my misadventure than the one Mum told my father in the hospital.
To my surprise, Dad doesn’t lay into me for my clumsiness but merely watches in silence as Dominic helps me hobble up the stairs. I half expect Mum to follow, but she disappears into the kitchen instead. To mix herself a stiff gin and tonic, probably. She hates hospitals even more than I do.
Dad follows her, vanishing before we’re even at the top of the stairs. Perhaps he wants a drink, too. A drink and a proper explanation.
‘Bloody hell,’ I whisper in Dominic’s ear, ‘I think Dad’s scared of you.’
‘It’s the scrubs,’ he whispers back.
Briefly, I consider asking Dominic his opinion of Kasia, and whether she may have set her sights on my dad. But I dread his answer. What if he agrees with my suspicions? Worse, what if he admits to finding Kasia attractive himself?
I don’t think I could bear to hear that. I’m not feeling strong enough.
Not tonight.
‘Home sweet home,’ he mutters when we reach our suite of rooms at the top of the house. I throw myself down on the bed, and he lands beside me, careful not to hurt my bandaged ankle.
Nasty little memories keep slipping back into my mind – the eyeball in the snow globe, Jasmine’s cryptic postcard, the forms at the food bank signed Rachel, the unseen figure who locked me in the cellar – but I push them away with as much force as I can muster.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asks softly.
‘Nothing.’
We look at each other. Our lips meet, and his tongue slips into my mouth, exploring gently. Then his hand strokes over the curve of my hip, pulling me into him. I can feel he’s interested in taking it further. Here and now. Whether or not I’m in pain.
‘The doctor said I should get some rest,’ I point out after a few minutes, by which time he is already breathless.
‘No problem,’ he murmurs, and pulls down the strap on my top, bending to kiss my exposed breast. ‘You lie there, take it easy. I’ll do the hard work of undressing you.’
‘But my parents . . .’
‘Forget about them. Focus on this instead. On feeling good.’ He kisses my mouth, demanding now. ‘It was quite a turn-on to see you on that trolley in A & E. In your loose hospital gown, with some doctor bending over you.’
‘Seriously?’
‘No doubt about it.’
‘Sicko.’
‘Maybe.’ He laughs, then cups my breast in its black bra. ‘You’re sexy when you’re helpless though, did you know that?’
After we’ve made love, Dominic and I lie together in panting silence until our hearts have slowed and the sweat on our bodies is beginning to cool. It’s dark outside the window, that pale, glowing, never-quite-black darkness of the city. I stare straight up at the ceiling, and avoid looking at the wall where my name was written.
Dominic is the first to break the silence.
‘What were you really doing in the cellar?’ he asks suddenly.
I don’t answer, pretending to be asleep.
Chapter Thirty-Three I decide it will be good to have Jasmine here for Christmas. It should take the spotlight off me. She’s so vibrant and cheerful; it’s hard not to smile whenever she’s in the room. Even if everything inside is dark and silent.
But I still need to broach the subject of Rachel.
‘Dad, did you get my letter?’ I ask tentatively, finding him alone in the kitchen just before Jasmine is due to arrive from Birmingham.
He’s got his back to me, chopping herbs for our dinner: fresh parsley and dill for a sauce to accompany the salmon. I see him stop momentarily, then he carries on chopping the parsley.
‘Yes, I did.’ To my relief, he sounds calm.
‘And did you show Mum?’
‘Yes, I did,’ he repeats in the same way. ‘And thank you for being so candid with us. It can’t have been easy, putting that down on paper.’
‘No, it wasn’t easy.’
Dad turns his head and studies me, his expression unreadable. Then he says carefully, ‘I take it you’ve confided all this to Dominic?’
‘Of course.’
‘I see.’ He pauses. ‘Jasmine will be here soon. We can’t sit down and discuss Rachel with you and Dominic while she’s in the house.’
‘Why not?’
‘What happened with Rachel is private. Our family business. It’s not something we want to share with a guest.’
‘But Jasmine is family.’
‘Not close family,’ Dad says deliberately, as though this makes a difference. ‘And Christmas should be a time of peace and joy, Catherine. I’m afraid there’s not much joy to be had out of discussing your sister’s demise.’
And that’s an end to our discussion, apparently.
When Jasmine arrives from Birmingham, carrying a suitcase and gifts, I greet her with the others, then take advantage of the commotion to slip away from the kitchen and retrieve the notebook. It’s almost the first time I’ve been on my own since I got back from the hospital. Everyone insists on treating me like an invalid, although all I have is a cut on my temple and a sprained ankle.
Gently, I close the living room door to shut out the noise of Jasmine’s welcome, and turn on the lights. The room is quiet and empty.
I lean my stick against the armchair and lower myself gingerly to look under the glass-fronted cabinet. But there’s nothing there.
Someone has taken the notebook.
I stare at the space where I hid it. I can’t believe it’s gone.
‘What the hell . . . ?’
Someone comes along the hall from the kitchen, where Jasmine is being treated to wine and cake, and I clamber to my feet, wincing at the sudden strain on my ankle.
But whoever it is keeps on going and heads slowly up the stairs. Now they are calling, ‘Catherine? Where are you, darling?’ It’s my mother, undisguised concern in her voice. ‘Jasmine has brought Christmas presents. Why don’t you come and help her put them under the tree?’
I don’t answer.
Hurriedly, before limping out of the room, I check all the surfaces and shelves, in case Kasia has been cleaning in here and, after finding it, put the notebook to one side to be claimed later.
But there’s no sign of it.
Who took the notebook from its hiding place? And where the hell is it now?
On Christmas Eve, Dominic takes me and Jasmine out to the pub for drinks with some of his colleagues. We grab a meal first at Sushi Hiroba in Holborn, the sort of Japanese restaurant where the food goes around on a conveyor belt and you help yourself. It’s busy and fun, and a good way to avoid the chaotic atmosphere at home. We left Mum and Kasia struggling to manoeuvre a gigantic turkey into the fridge, while Dad alternately stirred a vast vat of mulled wine and brought bottles up from the cellar for a drinks party they’re giving tonight for their friends and a few of Dad’s colleagues from the Foreign Office. We were also invited, of course, but excused ourselves.