‘It was as if you’d been given a second chance?’ she said.
‘Exactly.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and that is what Alastair has been given in meeting me, a second chance to be happy.’
Ah, so that was the purpose of her interrogation. Clever.
‘May I speak freely with you?’ she asked, tilting her head.
More freely than she had already?He nodded warily.
‘You know that Alastair wasn’t happy with Orla, don’t you? Not happy in his heart. Outwardly happy, but not in his heart and soul.’
Danny hesitated, unsure what to say in response to such an outlandish claim. Was this some crafty piece of divide and conquer on her part, just as Simon had warned him would happen?
‘But you knew that, surely?’ she said, when he didn’t comment. ‘That life with Orla became unbearable for Alastair?’
‘I’m afraid I know no such thing,’ he said stiffly, wanting to defend Orla. She was dead for God’s sake; you weren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead! ‘Orla was everything to Alastair,’ he said assuredly. ‘Yes, she could have her moments of—’ He broke off, trying to find the right word or expression.
‘Rage?’ suggested Valentina.
‘No,’ he said adamantly.
‘Sulkiness? Selfishness?’
‘Absolutely not.’ Yet even as he heard himself assert the denial, he knew it wasn’t true; Orla could be extraordinarily selfish when she chose, as well as sulk on a scale that defied all reasonable justification. On one occasion Alastair had treated himself to a new car, trading in his Jaguar for a Bentley Continental, but when he’d arrived home with it and proudly parked it on the drive, Orla had decried it as disgustingly ostentatious. ‘Either that car goes, or I do!’ she’d told Alastair. When Alastair declined to return it to the dealer, she refused to talk to him. When a week later the car was still on the drive, she packed a suitcase and announced she was leaving. At which point Alastair gave in and drove the car back to the showroom. Envious that they hadn’t had an Aunt Cora from whom they’d inherited a house and a secret – and very generous – portfolio of investments, both Danny and Simon had privately thought Alastair had done the wrong thing, that he should have called Orla’s bluff.
‘Orla’s artistic nature often got the better of her,’ Danny said tactfully to Valentina. ‘She was plagued with self-doubt as creative people so often are, and that made her unpredictable at times.’
‘Yes, I have known a few neurotic artists myself,’ Valentina said airily, ‘and they all had one thing in common, they believed the world revolved around them.’
Again Danny wanted to refute this about Orla, but he was unnervingly conscious that Valentina was right, that for years they had turned a blind eye to the worst aspects of Orla’s behaviour, in the same way they had accepted Sorrel’s tendency to cause an undercurrent of disquiet. But was there anything wrong in that? True friendship was all about accommodating the good and the bad in a close friend.
His tea finished, he stood up. ‘I should go and get dressed. Is Alastair awake?’
She shook her head. ‘I left him sleeping. He had a bad night.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Valentina gave him a disconcertingly direct look. ‘He’s told me before that since Orla’s death he sleeps very badly here, that he suffers night terrors.’
This was news to Danny. He was beginning to think that there might be a lot more he didn’t know about his old friend, things that Alastair hadn’t wanted to share with either him, or Simon.
Chapter Thirty-One
Ordinarily Jenna would have been the first to volunteer to go with Callum in his dinghy. But in the light of ‘recent events’ which she still hadn’t dealt with, she hesitated at his invitation that they should follow the rest of the party together, it being too much of a squash for them all to be on boardSwallowtail.It was catching Rachel’s eye – her Judge Judy eye – that made Jenna snap out of her reluctance to be on her own with Callum.Time to bite the bullet, she told herself as she untied the stern line, threw it to Callum to catch, and then stepped down into his boat.
This was the first time she had actually been alone with him since arriving at Linston End two days ago, having cowardly managed to engineer things so the situation never arose. Living so close there was no need for him to stay the night with them, and anyway he had to be up early to be at the boatyard every morning. Today he’d managed to carve out some time to join them for a picnic lunch on the river. Jenna knew that to him, like her, the tradition of them all being together every summer meant something. And now it meant even more, knowing that this would be their last summer here at Linston End.
As if picking up on her thoughts, while easing the boat away from its mooring point and steering them across the river to follow behindSwallowtail, Callum said, ‘Alastair mentioned last night that people were coming to view the house this afternoon; is that still happening?’
‘Yes. He had us all tidying our rooms before we left. The agent is showing the couple round while we’re out.’
Callum smiled. ‘You didn’t feel like sabotaging things to put the viewers off from buying?’
‘Such a dirty trick didn’t occur to me.’
‘I bet it did to my dad. I’ve never seen him so rattled about anything before. Danny seems to be handling it better, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say either of them are particularly pleased for Alastair.’
