Chapter 13
When the children left, Julia sat down on the bench that Mateo had vacated.
She let Jake wander around sniffing in the bushes while she thought about the two young people she had just met.
Sofia must have brought them to the Cotswolds for their father’s funeral, poor things. To grieve with their half-siblings.
How awful it must be to have a far-off, hardly known father, and then to have him die suddenly and brutally. Life could be so tough, and divorce and distance made it harder. She sighed at the thought of all the pain left in the wake of Basil Crow’s life choices, and of his murder.
Trying to give herself some comfort, she thought about how the Argentinian teens seemed fond of their smaller siblings. She hoped that being together gave them all some comfort, at least, in the short time they were together.
Jake completed his circuit of the bushes and lay down at her feet with a contented puffing sigh.
‘You were a good dog,’ she told him. ‘You made those poor children feel a bit better for a little while. That boy, especially, loved playing with these silky ears of yours.’
She stroked his ears, running them through her fingers, letting them flop around. She found herself feeling rather better, too.
‘I wonder if the children have dogs to go back to. I hope so,’ she said to Jake. ‘They’ll be going home to Argentina soon, I expect.’ Emilia had said they’d been out of school for two weeks already. They couldn’t stay away much longer.
She got up. She had that niggling feeling she got when things didn’t add up, but she hadn’t realised what it was yet. Something not-quite-right was tickling her subconscious brain.
The phone rang in Julia’s pocket. She fished it out. It was Sean on the line.
‘I want to take you for lunch,’ he said, without so much as a hello.
‘Oh,’ she said, surprised. It wasn’t like Sean to arrange spontaneous lunch dates, or to be so forceful about it.
‘My first appointment of the afternoon was cancelled.’
She was half listening to Sean, and half listening to the niggling feeling, which had intensified. Sofia and the children… Julia started to do a calculation in her head, and realised that she’d missed what Sean was saying.
‘… free for a couple of hours and there’s nothing I’d like more than to have lunch with you. So we can talk. The two of us.’
Her heart pounded – and not in a good way – thinking about what he wanted to talk about, just the two of them.
‘Are you there, Julia?’
‘Yes, you cut out for a moment,’ she stammered to Sean. She knew they had to have the conversation. ‘Lunch would be lovely, thank you.’
‘Anywhere you want, as long as it’s local. I’m in my car now.’
‘You know what?’ she said. ‘Jake and I are on a walk. We’re not far from The Swan Inn. Shall we meet you there?’
‘Lovely. We’ll see if we can get a nice quiet table on the terrace. So we can talk.’
The problem was the timing, thought Julia.
If Sofia and her two children had been in the Cotswolds for two weeks, it meant that they had arrived there before Basil Crow died. Which meant they had been there at the time of the murder.
Wasn’t it weird that no one had mentioned their presence?
Not the other wives, Delilah, Mary and Jacqueline – although from what the children had said, they had seen their sister and their little brother, so the other wives must know.
And not DI Hayley Gibson. Surely another ex-wife would be an interesting addition to the mix. Did Hayley even know Sofia was there?
And speaking of wives – or potential wives – how was she going to deal with this unexpected development in her relationship with Sean?
One thing she knew for certain – she did not want to get married again.
She’d thought that was clear. It certainly was to her.
She’d assumed that they both felt the same, but it seemed he was mistaken.
She blushed at the memory of him reaching into his pocket for a ring. She’d dodged that proposal thanks to an interruption, but this time, they would have to talk about it properly. She felt exhausted by the thought of what was coming.
She’d been married – mostly happily – as a young woman.
She and Peter had made a home, and had their lovely Jess.
They’d had dinner parties and careers, dogs and cats, holidays and birthdays.
There were some smallish disagreements, a drifting apart.
But mostly, it was all rather content until it wasn’t and then he met and fell for Christopher, and it ended.
Anyway, she wasn’t at all sure she would want to do it again.
But why? Sean would want to know. Julia decided that she would prepare herself by listing her reasons. Her independence. Her time to herself. Her little home.
They didn’t seem like such convincing reasons, laid out like that.
She tried to think of better, stronger reasons that would make more sense without hurting Sean’s feelings.
Suddenly, it came to her. She realised she didn’t have to.
That was it. She didn’t have to have a reason to justify her preference.
Her preference was enough. He would know that, and if he didn’t, well, then that would tell her something about him.
It was strangely liberating to have come to such a conclusion.
Jake whined and tugged at the lead. So consuming was Julia’s pondering that she was surprised, when she looked up, to find herself almost at The Swan. Sean had arrived moments before them and was standing at the front door waiting for them. That accounted for Jake’s eager pulling.
She looked at Sean, his face craggily handsome and also gentle. The humour in his eyes.
‘Hello, love,’ he said, opening his arms as she drew near.
He pulled her into his warm embrace. She smelled his familiar scent, a clean washing-powdery smell, mixed with the woody pine scent of the shampoo he used.
She was gripped by a fear that she was making a mistake.
Would they break up if she said no to his proposal?
They walked through the hotel lobby into the restaurant. General Manager Kevin was at the counter by the door, talking to the head waiter and writing something in the leather-bound book in front of him.
‘Hello,’ he said, looking up. ‘You’ve got a table in a quiet sunny corner, Sean. As requested. Come along, I’ll take you.’
They followed Kevin across the restaurant, where a few early lunchers were settling into their chairs or working on their pre-lunch G and Ts, and went out to the terrace. Luckily, like many restaurants and pubs these days, the terrace at The Swan allowed well-behaved dogs on leads.
‘Over here,’ said Kevin, showing them to a table in the corner at the far edge of the terrace, sheltered from any wind, with the sun filtering gently through a wooden screen planted with jasmine. They could see the lawns beyond, rolling down to the river.
‘Perfect, thank you.’
Jake went to lie down in a basket provided for that very purpose, with a convenient hook for his lead. Julia knew that she could count on the lazy hound sleeping for an hour or two before he became restless.
Kevin looked around guiltily. ‘Just between us, I shifted the bookings around to get you this table. With you bringing Jake, you need to be on the terrace. As you know, it is the prime spot, and we’re always fully booked, especially on sunny days like today.’
Sean nodded. ‘I know you are, and my booking was very last-minute. Thank you, appreciate it.’
‘It was rather a coincidence of circumstance,’ said Julia.
‘I was out and about, and I got talking to some people who said they were staying here, and I thought to myself that Sean and I should make the most of this weather and go to The Swan sometime soon. Serendipitously, as it turned out, because when Sean phoned not ten minutes later to suggest lunch, I had the perfect place in mind. And we even got a spot on the terrace!’
Kevin looked pleased at this turn of events.
‘The owners are going to extend the terrace, actually. You can’t believe the hoops you have to jump through on an old place like this.
The historical buildings inspectors were here yesterday, and then there’s an environmental report.
That’s a big thing, because of the river and the riverbank, and such.
The environmental inspector is here today, in fact.
You might see her wandering around. It will be months before building starts, but next summer, the terrace will be about twice the size. ’
He handed them menus, saying, ‘Salmon’s our special today. Someone will be with you in a minute to take your drinks orders.’ As he made to leave, he turned back to ask Julia, ‘Who were the guests?’
Julia looked blank for a moment, and then answered, ‘Oh. Two youngsters, actually. Jake tends to gather them up. A boy and a girl from Argentina.’
‘Oh, yes, I know the ones. They are very quiet and well-behaved.’
The poor things were confused and grieving, thought Julia.
Kevin continued. ‘Must have got their temperament from their father, because their mother has that dramatic Spanish temper.’
Having heard about their father’s run-ins with Tabitha, Julia thought that unlikely. ‘Who knows how children turn out?’ she said with a shrug. ‘Maybe it skipped a generation and they take after their grandparents.’
Sean gave her a quizzical look, and opened the menu.
When the waiter had brought their bottle of sparkling water – no wine on a weekday – and taken their lunch orders, Sean reached across the table and placed his right hand over her left. Julia’s heart rate kicked up a notch. This was the moment she’d been waiting for; dreading, to be more precise.
He cleared his throat and said, ‘There’s something I wanted to talk to you about, Julia.’
His voice, with its lovely burr, sounded weak.
‘Oh Sean…’ she said. Even as she spoke, she wasn’t sure what she would say.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please let me say what I want to say.’
She nodded for him to continue.