Had he read them, before he stole them?
She was sure he must have.
It made her feel sick.
‘I guessed something must be wrong,’ Robbie continued. ‘I knew you wouldn’t just ignore what had happened to Mum … ’
‘Of course not.’
‘I wrote to you. I wrote … God … I don’t know …somany letters.’
‘But I should have got them,’ she said, still not understanding that bit. ‘Lady Somers paid to have all our mail forwarded.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well, no.’ She emitted a sound, much less than a laugh. ‘Not any more I’m not.’
‘Did you ever get anything forwarded from anyone else?’
‘You’re the only person who wrote to me there.’
‘I tried to see you. I went to the house.’
‘What?’ Her eyes widened. ‘When?’
‘The start of August, after Mum moved to her nursing home. My father had left York, I have no idea where he went, and all I wanted was to get to you. It …brokeme, when I found the Somers’ house all boarded up.’
It broke her, thinking about him doing it.
‘I called in at a farm,’ he said, pulling a box of matches from his coat. ‘They told me the house had been put up for sale.’ He extracted a match. ‘Apparently, the Somers had sold a lot of the estate off already. Like Heaton with this place.’
‘I had no idea,’ said Iris, her reeling mind now struggling to absorb that, too.
The Somers had always seemed so affluent to her, with their house parties, and motors, and weekends away.
‘They told us they were building a house in New Zealand,’ she said. ‘That they were leaving to get away from this war.’
‘Well, that certainly worked out for them,’ said Robbie, lighting the match and flicking it into the grate, his face glowing in the sudden crackle of flames. ‘I suspect though that they were most interested in saving face, and getting away from their debts. Their neighbours seemed to think they were carrying a lot of them.’
‘So they lied to us,’ said Iris. ‘They lied tome.’ She took a breath, digesting just how much their pride, their arrogant pride, had cost them both. ‘If they’d just been honest, said they couldn’t afford to pay the post office … MyGod.’ Sheplaced her hands to her face, digging her fingers into her cheeks, thinking of everything she might have done differently, if she’d only known. ‘I want to scream.’
‘Don’t do that.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Want to scream? No.’
‘Why aren’t you angrier?’
‘I am angry. I’m furious.’
‘But you’resmiling.’
He was.
He was smiling at her.
And now she was doing it too, just because that was the kind of smile he’d always had.
