But then everything changed when the bald man sat down, sending his trouser hems up around his calves, revealing white hairless legs, and it was the turn of the visiting medium to take to the dais. She was of a statuesque build and was wearing a shapeless dress of vivid purple. Her thick hair had a matching purple tint to it and was coiled on the top of her head like a large cottage loaf. From the moment she made herself comfortable in the chair on the dais, closed her eyes and held out her hands as if in an act of supplication, her presence commanded total silence, and a zealous hush fell on the room.
And so it began, the part that Keith had dreaded but which Diane had so looked forward to. He sensed her sitting up straighter beside him, all eager hope and anticipation. He didn’t dare turn his head to look at her for fear of showing the dismay and disbelief on his face.
Keeping his gaze on the statuesque woman who now seemed to be in a trance – her eyes were open, but her expression wasentirely blank – he wondered how the hell he’d got here. This wasn’t him. He wasn’t some poor deluded sap who needed to believe in the afterlife to comfort himself. What’s more, he hadn’t thought Diane was the sort to need this kind of false hope. He felt disappointed that her seemingly rock-sure ability to bear the death of her own child was in fact far shakier than he’d believed. For some reason he felt let down, cheated.
He’d thought her too intelligent and secure in her acceptance of losing her daughter, but seeing her like this and realising he’d fooled himself into thinking she was the answer to his own grief, he knew with gut-wrenching conviction that this was the beginning of the end of his relationship with her.
Whatever they’d had, or thought they’d had, he couldn’t conceive of being part of her life if it included this … this world of supernatural jiggery-pokery. What next, Ouija boards and tarot cards? The spirit world being peddled here didn’t exist, it was nothing but a cheap parlour trick that gave the vulnerable and the gullible false hope. And to his mind, there was nothing worse than false hope. Why couldn’t these people accept that death was the end? There was nothing beyond it. It was what he’d always believed. And as much as he’d loved his son, he knew that Hugh was gone, and no amount of wishful thinking, or tapping into ‘the other side’ would ever change that.
He suddenly longed for the certainty of his old life. It might not have been perfect but at least he’d known exactly where he’d stood. What he’d give to turn back the clock to when he and Hilary had rubbed along well enough together … to that time before Hugh’s death had imploded their lives.
Thinking of those relatively halcyon days, he was hit with a wall of shame. Despite Nina’s urging that he involve himself with helping Hilary, he had selfishly, not to say childishly, dug in his heels. She wasn’t his responsibility! To his further shame he hadn’t even bothered to contact her sister, Lindsay. Whatkind of man had he become that he could be so self-centred and heartless?
He decided, just as soon as this nightmare was over, he’d ring Lindsay. What was more, he would go and see Hilary. He would apologise and do his best to help her just as Nina had asked him to.
At the sharp nudge in his ribs, he turned to look at Diane.
‘It’s Hugh,’ she whispered, ‘the medium’s received a message for you from Hugh.’
Chapter Fifty-Six
Agood night’s sleep had eluded Venetia ever since losing Bon-Bon. This morning, and with an unpleasantly fuzzy head, she had been awake long before the first signs of the wintry dawn had appeared.
Now, as she finished her third cup of coffee and stood at the window of the sitting room, she looked out at the dense ribbons of eerily opaque mist snaking their way over the river. Despite the quantity of strong coffee she had consumed, it hadn’t cleared the fog from her head, so she decided to go for a walk to see if that would do the trick. She was also aware that she needed the exercise. A disagreeable lethargy had come over her and she was conscious she was in danger of vegetating, of letting herself go. It was ages since she’d had her hair and nails done and if she wasn’t careful, she was in danger of turning into one of those ancient old hags she’d vowed never to become. Something had to be done.
It was the worst kind of cold outside, the sort of bitter damp cold that seeped right through to the bone. Jamming her hat further down over her head, she tightened the woollen scarf around her neck and set off with a resolute and purposeful step across the soggy long grass towards the river where the mist still hung over the torpid surface of the water. The drab December sky was lowand the air, still and dank, smelt of decay. From the woods over to her left came the ugly call of crows, their sound magnified in the inertness of the morning as they circled above the naked limbs of the trees.
How would Ronnie adapt to this after the blue skies and sunny warmth of his life in Majorca? she wondered. The last she’d heard from him, just a few days ago, was that the final stages of selling the hotel were within sight. He claimed he was looking forward to retirement and taking it easy for the first time in his life.
‘It’s been a long time in coming,’ he’d said on the phone. ‘Stupidly, and maybe something to do with vanity, I believed I could keep going for ever, that retirement wasn’t for me, that the moment it happened it would sound the death knell.’
‘We always keep going with something when we enjoy it,’ she’d replied, ‘but the minute it stops being fun, that’s the time for a change of plan.’
The thought had crossed her mind more than once in the last few weeks that maybe she needed a change of plan for herself. Moving here to Hope Hall had not brought her the satisfying sense of completion she had thought it would. She knew that in all probability that was because of the needlessly tragic way her darling Bon-Bon had died, but even so she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she had made a mistake. A terrible mistake.
By the time she’d been walking for almost an hour the mist had lifted from the river, and there was a glimpse of an ethereal white ball of light breaking through the murkiness of the sky. After watching the progress of a heron flying languidly off into the distance, she turned around to go home.
Home.In her heart, Hope Hall had always been her home. A place where she had known love and given love, where her dreams for the future had been forged in the very fabric of the building. It had been her world, and everyone in it had been her family.
With the Hall now in front of her, she looked up at the extraordinarily imposing building, a sight that had never failed to fill her with myriad emotions.Luckyandproudhad been two of her early childhood feelings whenever she had taken the time to stand and gaze at the Hall. She had felt so very lucky to call the place home, and proud too that she was a part of its history. That was something that Lady Constance had tried to instil in them, to be proud of their beginnings in life and not be ashamed of growing up in a children’s home.
Venetia couldn’t speak for all the other children who had spent their childhood here, but she had never felt ashamed of her background. Even after everything that had happened here.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
June 1960
Nobody cared about Lucien disappearing.
The medical staff at the hospital had apparently been glad to see the back of him because he’d been so rude. The police certainly weren’t bothered, to them he was just another runaway who’d decided he’d had enough of institutions. In their eyes, Lucien was old enough to make his way in the world.
Mr Grafton and Miss Selby weren’t interested either, they were too busy covering themselves in readiness for Lady Constance’s arrival home with her husband, Mr Butler. It was only Edie who cared about Lucien but as she and Venetia had no way of knowing where he could have gone, searching for him would be a Herculean task.
Terry’s death and the burning down of the cottage at Hope Hall had held barely any interest for the local newspaper, giving it no more than a column inch. The paper was far more concerned with a scandal that had broken about the Master of one of the Cambridge Colleges who had been revealed to be a Russian spy.
Edie had promised Venetia that she fully intended to complain to Lady Constance on her return about the way Mr Grafton and Miss Selby had treated Lucien, how they’d believed Terry’s word over his and how he’d been forced to apologise for something he hadn’t done. Venetia hadn’t had the courage to tell Edie theawful thing that Terry had made poor Lucien do, she wasn’t sure that Edie would even understand, and besides Venetia had promised her friend never to tell anyone.
‘I can’t see that speaking to Lady Constance will do any good,’ Venetia had said miserably. ‘Mr Grafton will claim he was right, he might even say Lucien had confessed to him that he had taken the money which was why he then made him apologise. And that’s why he’s run away, because of the shame of being caught out.’
