But had someone else found out? The question had kept Rowan up past midnight and woken her again at four. If Marianne’s death was connected to what had happened back then, why, after ten years, had she needed to talk now? Why had she jumped now? Something must have changed. Something had frightened her. Threatened her. What? Or who? If she was going to keep the secret, preserve Marianne’s memory, Rowan needed to find out.
To spare the remaining Glasses some pain, to repay, albeit silently, some of the care and support they’d given her when she’d needed it, she would do everything she could. With a final look at their pictures, Rowan closed the Mail and turned it face down. Marianne’s death was front-page news but if what she’d done ever came to light, the media storm would rage for weeks. And the effect on Jacqueline and Adam would be devastating.
Six
A key had been left with the Dawsons but, as she rang their bell, Rowan saw an envelope with her name on it propped against the porch window. The door was unlocked and when she reached in and picked it up, she felt the weight of a Chubb inside. A note from Angela Dawson said they’d gone to help their daughter for a few days at short notice; she had a new baby.
The street was quiet, and Rowan’s boots crunched conspicuously on the gravel in the front garden. She scratched up the wide stone steps to the door and glanced over her shoulder, feeling like a burglar. The house loomed, all its windows dark. No need for the public face today.
When she shut the door, silence closed over her head like water. Here, where there had always been noise, it was jarring. Bags still in her hands, she stood and listened. Nothing at first but as her ears grew used to it, the silence came alive. She heard Adam’s voice – ‘Maz-zer, Rowan’s here!’ – then, b-bump, b-bump, b-bump, the sideways gallop at which she’d always come down. ‘Marianne, for the love of God, stop running on the bloody stairs!’ – Jacqueline’s voice from the kitchen. The phone, and then the click of Seb’s door as he took the handset into his office. Rowan felt a longing so intense it was physical. I’m here, she wanted to say. I’m back. Let’s do it again. Let’s not fuck it up this time.
She let the emotion wash over her. After ten years, she’d thought she’d never come back. Three days ago, filled with mourners, the house had felt different but now it was as if she’d opened the door and stepped back in time. On the motorway this morning, she’d thought about homecoming. To Oxford, yes; she’d been born and brought up here, she’d done her degree at the university; but really it was to this house. When she’d left, she’d mourned for it. If her primary motivation for house-sitting was unselfish, she acknowledged now the less altruistic part of her that had jumped at the opportunity to spend time here again.
She dropped the key in the china dish and the chime echoed up the stairs like a warning. The air had a heavy, ashy smell but when she went into the sitting room, the fireplace was swept and the furniture had been moved back into position. The room looked almost exactly as it always had; Marianne hadn’t changed it. The pale light through the bay window fell on the two low sofas and the chest that served as a coffee table, and Rowan had the idea that she was looking at a stage lit for a play in which two of the main actors were dead.
Briskly, she walked back to the hall and switched on the elephant lamp. Apart from what looked like a bill from Thames Water and something from HSBC, the mail tray held only flyers. A car passed on the street outside but, within seconds, the silence settled back in after it.
She carried her bag of groceries down to the kitchen. The epicentre of life here – Jacqueline had called it the engine room – it took up the entire lower-ground floor. At the front of the house were two sash windows, the reading sofa between them, but at the back were folding glass doors to the garden that made the room bright even on a sunless day like this. The zinc-topped table was long enough to seat ten. Rowan saw Marianne in her paint-covered dungarees wriggled down low in a chair with her feet up, Seb pushing them off as he walked past to get a bottle of wine. His office upstairs was large and expensively equipped but Jacqueline said working in the kitchen kept her in the real world. On her hard wooden captain’s chair at the far end, she’d been the ship’s navigator, plotting their course.
Opening the fridge, Rowan found butter, eggs and a pint of milk. R: a few things to get you started, said a Post-it on the bread-bin in Jacqueline’s distinctive square writing. Inside, a crusty white loaf nestled in a sheaf of tissue. Everything perishable had been thrown away but the cupboards were stocked with bags of beans and rice, cans of tomatoes. Marianne’s food, bought but never eaten.