But what about the entry outlining Isabel’s plan to leave? Why would Nora have removed that one? If anything, it would have helped her cause, suggesting that Isabel was far from suicidal: she’d been planning a new life. Was it simply because it was personally upsetting to Nora that Isabel had been planning to leave her Australian life—and family—behind?
And why, after tearing them out, had Nora kept the pages?
Jess frowned. Maybe, once Daniel Miller’s book was written and public attention had moved on from the Turner story, she’d figured there was no reason to fear what was written on them? Isabel’s affair, Thea’s true parentage—these were facts that need not have worried Nora until she received the letter from Marcus Summers referencing a client and a desire to discuss Thea Turner’s death.
All the same, keeping them was an action. It would have been so easy to destroy them: throw them in a fire, watch them burn...
Jess’s head was spinning. She was missing something. There were so many moving parts. One thing, though, was clear. She needed to share what she’d found with Polly. The journal pages, and the notesthat Nancy Davis had sent her, too—Nora’s account of what she claimed to have seen Isabel do with the pillow that had convinced the police that she was guilty. It had been niggling ever since Jess read it, so similar to the incident Nora claimed to have witnessed when Polly was a young mother and Jess a baby in her crib.
Leaving everything else where it lay on the floor, Jess took up the journal and hurried downstairs, hoping against hope that her mother hadn’t left yet for the airport.
“I was beginning to wonder if I needed to send a search party,” said Polly, when Jess arrived at the kitchen door. Her suitcase was packed and standing against the wall.
“Do you have a second?” Jess knew she had to be careful here. The journal was very big news, speaking as it did to Polly’s parentage; she had no choice other than to reveal it, but her mother was sensitive, delicate. Jess had no idea how she’d take the information. “I have to tell you something.”
Polly’s face fell. “Is everything okay? Did you find the trunk?”
“I did, and before I say anything else, I should tell you that I opened it. Not just opened it—I took everything out. I searched it. I’m sorry. I hope you’re not too disappointed.”
Polly smiled. “Neither disappointed nor surprised.”
“Really?”
“I don’t think a Christmas went by that you didn’t hunt out your presents well ahead of time. I’d ask whether you found any skeletons in the attic closet, but after the last couple of days, I’m a little frightened you’ll say yes.”
“I didn’t find a skeleton.”
“That’s a relief.”
“But...”
Polly winced. “But?”
Jess indicated that they should sit down together at the table, andalthough Polly obliged, she did so guardedly, as if preparing for bad news. When they were seated, Jess slid the journal across the surface. “It’s Isabel’s,” she said.
Polly looked at it. She didn’t open it. She didn’t even touch it. After a few seconds she glanced up, her chin held high, an attempt at bravery that made Jess feel painfully fond. “What does it say?”
Jess understood that her mother was asking her for the kindness of a summary. Important parts only; any blow dealt swiftly.
She took a deep breath and outlined what she’d read: Isabel had been having an affair, she’d been careful not to name her lover in the pages of her journal, but Jess knew who it was. Whether he was conscious of it or not, Miller’s book had made the answer clear: Henrik Drumming, the farm manager. He had a sick wife for whom he cared deeply, they had met when they were children together at school in Tambilla, he was a good and decent man. Someone Isabel had known for a long time, as he’d been coming to the house for work, but whom she had evidently come to know much better. No wonder he had continued to maintain the garden after her death, even when Thomas Turner told him not to: he hadn’t been able to accept that she was gone.
“She writes about some of their meetings. She really loved him. From what she wrote, it wasn’t a sudden one-off thing, or an accident. It was a true meeting of minds. They loved one another. And”—Jess hesitated—“she seems certain that he was the father of her baby.”
Polly absorbed this information, nodding slowly. It was impossible to tell by her expression how the news was landing, and Jess was anxious. She found it difficult to imagine how she would feel, confronting so many changes over the course of twenty-four hours, let alone what it must be like for someone like Polly.
And then her mother said, “I always liked him in the book. He seemed to be a kind man. The way he cared for his wife.”
Now, she opened the front cover of the journal, touching it gingerly, as if it might be hot. She pulled it closer and ran her fingertips over the pen-crinkled pages. She wasn’t reading, rather turning page after page—thinking, Jess supposed, about the woman who had written it, recording her most intimate thoughts and confessions.
When she reached the end, Polly considered the inside back cover closely.
Jess realized her mother was worrying a fine crease at the top. “What is it?” she said.
“I’m not sure.” Polly slipped the tips of her fingers into what had now revealed itself as a fine cut in the endpaper. As Jess watched, she withdrew an envelope, pressed flat over time. When she turned it over, Jess could see that a message was written on the front in large capital letters and underlined:
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL:
FOR THE EYES OF MRS. ISABEL TURNER ONLY
