31. Twenty years ago
Chapter 31
Twenty years ago
Cynthia
C ynthia stretched out on the sun lounger under the large navy sun umbrella. She watched Jonathan swim laps up and down their private swimming pool, admiring his broad back as he performed a front crawl. It had been years since the pool at Turner Hall had been filled. It reminded her too much of Jonathan and their son Benny messing about in the pool. She smiled at the memory of before Benny was born, and they were skinny dip at midnight while the staff were asleep.
They had been coming back to the villa on Lake Como for a long time. Their son Benny had made Italy his home, enjoying his thirties as a single man. He brought women back to the villa when she’d been there. Now that her father wasn’t as spritely as he once was, she could spend more time at the villa with Jonathan and Benny. She was thankful she’d been gifted the home years before from the previous owners. It was her home now with Jonathan and Benny. With no link to the Turner family.
More importantly, she had no link to her father or her brother, Freddie.
He wouldn’t speak to her, hadn’t for years. Freddie blamed her for his wife leaving him. She didn’t make Imelda leave. The woman couldn’t handle being a Turner. Her father was in his nineties, still sharp but not very mobile. Cynthia was a woman in her seventies and didn’t hurry about as fast as she used to, but she was still fit.
“Phone call,” Jennifer called out from the open French doors of the villa.
“For me?” Cynthia asked.
“Yes,” Jennifer replied, her face solemn. “You’ll want to take this.”
“No one knows I’m here.”
“What’s going on?” Jonathan said from the side of the pool. His muscular arms rested on the concrete as he caught his breath.
“There’s a phone call for me. But only you, Benny, and Jennifer know how to contact me.”
Jennifer cleared her throat. “There is one person who knows how to contact me. He doesn’t know where this is, but would know by the dialling code it’s Italy. I gave it to him, just in case.”
Jennifer spoke quietly. Her eyes darted to Jonathan and then Cynthia, seeking forgiveness, but her expression was imploring Cynthia to take the call.
“Who is on the phone?”
“Please, Cyn, take the call.”
“Is it my father calling?”
“Take the call,” Jennifer pleaded.
Jonathan pulled his body out of the pool and grabbed the towel on the lounger next to hers. He quickly dried off and then scrubbed at his full head of white hair. For a moment, Cynthia forgot she had a call to take, no doubt telling her that her father was dead. She admired Jonathan, someone she wanted to call her husband, but he refused to marry her. Once she’d taken the call, he would have no more excuses. They would be free of the burden of her father’s rules, and they could all go back to Turner Hall to live out their lives.
“I’ll come up with you,” Jonathan said, giving her a soft smile.
“It’s going to be the news we’ve been waiting for,” she whispered.
“Let’s worry about what comes next later. Take the call,” he coaxed.
She swung her legs to the side of the lounger, straightened her loose white blouse and grabbed her oversized sun hat. Once she was standing, Jonathan grabbed the hat and tossed it on the spare lounger next to where she was sitting.
“You don’t need a hat to take the call, Cynthia. Let’s go.”
Jonathan threaded his fingers through hers and held on tight as she marched along the concrete and then up the stone steps to Jennifer, who hadn’t moved a muscle. They all had mobile phones, so why they had called the landline was a mystery to her. Why hadn’t they called Jennifer on her mobile phone? The inconvenience of having to walk to find out her father was dead irritated her.
She reached the marble side table in the foyer of the villa. Cynthia glanced at the lead-lined double doors which led out to the front but couldn’t focus on them. The handset of the landline phone was lying on its side next to the rotary-style base. Everything was old-fashioned in the villa. Cynthia loved that. When she buried her father, she would instruct the staff at Turner Hall never to modernise a thing.
Picking up the receiver, she pressed the handset against her torso and cleared her throat. Then, glancing in the large ornate mirror hanging above the marble table, she patted her French pleat even though there wasn’t a hair out of place.
“Hello,” she said.
Jonathan squeezed her hand.
“Ms Turner?”
“Yes, Bailey, it’s Cynthia Turner.”
Bailey cleared his throat at the other end of the line. “Your father asked to get hold of you. I didn’t know how to, so I called Jennifer to see if she knew where you were.”
“Now you’ve found me. What did my father want me to know?”
“I’m sorry to tell you that Mr Turner is dead.”
“Did my father talk to you from beyond the grave?” Cynthia clipped out, not understanding.
“Mr Frederick Turner.”
Cynthia dropped the handset, and it hit the marble floor once, then swung like a hangman’s noose. She turned a quarter footstep and then staggered a few steps. Jonathan caught her and brought her into a tight hug.
“Jenny, pick up that handset, will you?” Jonathan said.
Jennifer hurried over and handed it to him. Cynthia looked on, dazed in shock.
“Hello, Bailey. Can you tell me what happened? Cynthia has gone to sit down. She looked shocked.”
Cynthia listened as Jonathan gave nonverbal sounds down the line while she looked through the front doors, thinking how pretty they were compared to the wooden doors at Turner Hall that were like prison doors when they were shut at night.
“Okay, thank you. Jennifer will be in contact when Cynthia knows about her travel plans. Goodbye.”
Cynthia clung to Jonathan, her fingers curled into the hair at the base of his skull. “Is it true?” she whispered.
Jonathan kissed her temple and shifted her in his arms. He bent his knees and then lifted her off the ground. Cynthia quietly sobbed into his neck, hugging him tight as he walked up the main staircase. She looked over his shoulder to see Jennifer standing next to the marble table, the handset still in her hand. Tears dripped off her jaw, and she kept eye contact with Cynthia. Just as Jonathan turned the corner, Jennifer mouthed the words I’m sorry .