Arthur cast aside the newspaper and cleared his throat. ‘The only person who needs to understand what happened last night is you, Julia. I hit a deer, and that’s an end to the matter.’
Julia was trembling now. She didn’t understand how her husband could be so adamant that he’d done nothing wrong. ‘But it’s your sister,’ she said.
He slowly rose to his feet and came towards her, his expression as hard as granite. ‘Hope may well have been involved in an accident last night, but it has nothing to do withus.’
‘What if she dies?’
‘What if she does?’
Julia was appalled. ‘Don’t you care about her?’
‘I care as much as she would care about my demise.’
‘But Arthur, if she dies, it ... it will be murder.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic. And if her death was to be classed as murder, or perhaps manslaughter, it would still not have anything to do with me. For the simple reason, I didn’t hit her. I hit a deer. Do I have to keep reminding you of that? But if you persist with this nonsense, you will risk sending me to prison for something I did not do. Is that what you want? Is it?’
‘Of ... of course not,’ she stammered.
‘Then you need to stop talking such gibberish. Or you’ll get us both into a lot of trouble. Because, maybe I might become as confused as you and remember things differently. That it was you who drove us home and that I begged you to stop when you hit something in the road, but you refused.’
Julia stared at him,horror-struck. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Darling,’ he said with a laugh, ‘I wouldn’t. Why would I want you to be sent to prison? It would be too awful. Especially for Charles. Think what it would do to the boy.’ He shook his head and sighed. ‘But if you made the situation so difficult, well, then you would leave me no choice. Now why don’t you be a good girl and go and organise those flowers for Hope?’
He was at the door, his fingers on the handle, when he turned around. ‘By the way, don’t forget the kitchen and pantry inventory, will you? Oh, and I’ve decided to go up to London for a few days.’
In a state of bewildered shock, Julia stared at him. ‘When will you be back?’
‘I don’t know.’
ChapterForty-Six
St Gertrude’s College, Oxford
November 1962
Annelise
‘I wish you could come with me.’
‘I wish I could too,’ Harry said.
‘I’ve never asked you for anything before, can you not do this one thing for me?’
‘Annelise, I’d do anything to be with you. You know I would.’
‘Not quite anything.’
The words were out before she could stop them. They were words she had never wanted to utter; they were too loaded with need, the desperate need she had never wanted to reveal. But now she had, and with an unavoidable edge of scolding sarcasm that made her squirm.
‘Don’t be like that,’ he said softly in her ear. ‘You know I can’t suddenly drop everything and leave Oxford. I’m not a free agent like you.’
Sitting at her desk, Annelise gripped the telephone hard, and held her tongue, not trusting herself to continue. A free agent, was that what she was?
‘Darling?’
‘Will you ever leave your wife?’ she asked bluntly.
