Chapter 35 Slammed
Slammed
I awoke shaking and cold in the early hours and didn’t fall asleep again until the time I usually got up, so that I was pale and wan when I went down to breakfast.
The others were already there, including Cariad, who told me her friend Mel was coming over and they were going to make a big collage of the aquarium they had visited, in Auntie Nerys’s studio.
‘But quietly, I hope,’ said Verity plaintively. ‘Because I’ll be working in there, you know.’
‘Well, Auntie Nerys will be, too, and if she doesn’t mind, I don’t see why you should!’ retorted Cariad spiritedly.
‘Manners, Cariad,’ said Nerys mildly. ‘I’m sure you will both be concentrating so hard, you’ll be practically silent.’
When I sat down with my porridge I looked questioningly at Rhys, but he just shook his head a little. When he helped himself to another coffee while the others were leaving, I lingered too.
‘So, you still haven’t heard anything from Flint?’ I asked.
‘Actually, I have. I just didn’t want to say anything in front of the others. I not only had a text in reply to mine, but he followed it up with a phone call – at two in the morning. He’s in the States.’
‘What did he say?’
Rhys finished his coffee and got up. ‘Come on – Tudor will want to clear and we don’t want to be overheard.’
I followed him through the hall, and he shut the sitting-room door firmly behind us.
I hardly waited for him to sit down before demanding eagerly: ‘Well? He must have had something to tell you, if he actually rang you from America!’
Rhys ran his fingers through his black curls in a now very familiar gesture and I took in for the first time that he looked as tired as I felt.
‘He was on the phone for ages and he was either drunk or high on something, and seemed desperate to get what really happened on the night of Annie’s accident off his conscience.’
‘So we were right – there was something more to what happened?’
‘There certainly was. Some of it he only found out about later, but as we know, it all kicked off when he had that row with Annie earlier that evening, after he’d told her he was going to his cottage to work on some songs.
She accused him of intending to meet some other woman there and that she knew he was being unfaithful to her.
That was Verity planting a few barbs in Annie’s mind, although Flint didn’t realize that till later,’ he explained.
‘Much as we suspected,’ I said. ‘But was he actually meeting someone else at the cottage?’
‘He certainly was and – wait for it – it was Verity!’
‘No!’
‘Yes. He’d been having an on-and-off affair with her for years, especially when Annie and I were having one of our reconciliations.’
‘So Verity was there in Flint’s cottage that night?’
‘She was waiting for him when he got there. She knew about the row, because Annie had sent her that text, but Annie hadn’t told her she was driving down after Flint, so that must have been a later impulse.’
‘Did Annie turn up at the cottage and find them there together, then?’
‘She did, and discovered it was her supposed best friend he was having the affair with. Verity showed her true colours at that point, and told her Flint had been in love with her first, before Annie snatched him, and he’d never been faithful to her.
There was quite a scene. Annie was a volatile creature at the best of times, and was in such a fury that she went for Verity, and Flint had to separate them.
Then Annie, still in a rage, got into her car and drove off. ’
‘Which would account for why she smashed the car up so badly. Her mind must still have been on what had just happened,’ I said.
‘I’m sure it was, and that’s what was on Flint’s conscience,’ agreed Rhys.
‘Anyway, after Annie left, he told Verity to get out too, they were finished, although she was still there when the police rang to tell him about the accident, having checked Annie’s phone.
They went to the cottage later to interview him, too, but by then Verity had gone and he’d told her to pretend she’d never been there that evening – or that Annie had, either. ’
‘And it obviously never occurred to the police that Annie was driving away from Flint’s cottage, not towards it.’
‘No, but then, you didn’t think of it at first, either, did you?’
‘True. And even if they had noticed that, they could have just assumed she was a townie who’d taken a wrong turning,’ I suggested.
‘Quite possibly.’
I thought it all over for a minute. ‘It’s sort of justice that Verity feeding lies to Annie led to her being dumped by Flint, but a tragedy that Annie lost her life because of it. That must surely still be on Verity’s conscience, too?’
‘I’m not sure she’s got one! All these years she’s been playing the part of Annie’s best friend and coming here, pretending to be fond of Cariad for her sake. She even had me fooled for a while.’
‘Well, she completely took me in for ages,’ I pointed out.
‘She’s very good at playing a part; even fooled Annie for all those years. She’s so clever and devious, and so far she’s got away with it.’
‘Until now, when Annie’s last words were to try and tell me what had happened.’
And perhaps, I thought, that had been why I’d felt that Annie was haunting me? Not to come between me and Rhys, but because she wanted the truth of what had happened revealed.
I said, ‘But what can we do about it?’
‘Confront Verity with what we know,’ he said grimly. ‘I’ve got a few questions I want answered.’
‘She might just deny everything.’
‘She might, but we have the element of surprise on our side,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll do it after lunch because I don’t really want to hoik her out of the studio, with the girls there. Of course, I’ll tell Nerys and Timon later.’
‘Of course,’ I agreed.
‘Nerys has never liked or trusted Verity. She has a better instinct than I have, because I gave her the benefit of the doubt for so many years.’ He smiled grimly. ‘She was a lot sweeter when she hoped we’d get together, until I made it clear I wasn’t interested.’
‘Which is the opposite of what she told me, which was that you’d made a pass at her, and she’d turned you down.’
‘What a poisonous little snake she is,’ he said. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing her face when we expose all her lies.’
‘What if she just denies everything?’
‘I’m hoping the element of shock will cause her to reveal her true colours, like she did to Annie and Flint that night,’ he said, and I thought he might be right.
*
Rhys and I might both have been preoccupied, but it was still a lively lunch with the two little girls there.
We lingered after the others had gone away, for predictably, Verity was the last to finish eating, and then Rhys asked if he could have a private word with her.
‘How very mysterious!’ she said, looking surprised but vaguely flattered. ‘But you know, I want to get back and finish my painting this afternoon.’
‘This won’t take long,’ he said, ‘but we’ll go into the family sitting room, so we aren’t disturbed.’
She followed him there still looking mystified – and even more so when she saw I’d also followed them and shut the door behind me.
‘I thought you said you wanted a private word with me,’ she said, pointedly, sitting down gracefully in one of the chintz armchairs. ‘What on earth is this about?’
‘This concerns Ginny too. We want to tell you a story, Verity, a true one, unlike the tissue of lies you spun to me about the night of Annie’s accident.’
She seemed to freeze, and a slightly wary expression crossed her face. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Rhys.’
‘I think you have. It might interest you to know that I’ve had a long talk to Finn Flint and he’s told me the whole sorry tale of what happened at his cottage that night. In fact, he was glad to unburden himself. It has been on his conscience. Has it been on yours too, Verity?’
Her face for a second reflected complete shock. Then she gathered herself and said, ‘I don’t know what he’s told you—’
But Rhys cut her short, retelling all that Flint had told him, including everything Verity had poured out to Annie in a fit of jealous spite during their confrontation.
‘It made Flint look at you differently too, Verity, didn’t it? He dumped you after that and didn’t want anything more to do with you.’
That hit a nerve, and I saw Verity’s face become twisted so that it wasn’t remotely pretty any more.
‘That bastard, dumping me like that!’ she said, and then out it all poured, in a stream of spite.
‘He was going out with me before Annie came along, and he came back to me after she married you. But they never ended their affair. I was just second best when she wasn’t available.
So yes,’ she continued, ‘earlier that day I’d told Annie he’d been unfaithful, to wind her up.
But I didn’t think she’d go down to the cottage. ’
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Even when she walked in and found us there together, it took ages for the penny to drop. At first she thought I’d gone there to try and reason with him, on her behalf.’
‘You were her lifelong best friend; she trusted you,’ I said. ‘She must have felt totally betrayed by you and Flint, as well as furious, when she drove away.’
‘You can’t blame me for the accident,’ Verity cried hotly. ‘The police said it was a rabbit – she swerved to try and avoid it.’
‘But if her concentration hadn’t been shot by what had just happened, she might not have been killed,’ Rhys said. ‘She was a good driver.’
‘Well, I’m not sorry she’s dead because I’d hated her for years,’ Verity said defiantly, but then her face sagged, and she suddenly looked infinitely older. ‘And she was the reason Flint dumped me in the end, too!’
‘No, he dumped you because he saw what you were really like, for the first time,’ I said.
‘If you’d told Annie what you thought of her all those years ago when she first took Flint from you, that would have been natural and understandable.
But carrying on pretending to be her best friend, while constantly undermining her relationships, was a horrible thing to do! ’
She gave me a dismissive look and turned to Rhys, more in control now. ‘I don’t know what put you on to asking Flint about it after all this time.’
‘It was because Ginny had been with Annie when she died and heard her last words – and although they didn’t make sense to her then, they did to me when Ginny repeated them to me yesterday. Annie was trying to tell me what happened: that you’d played a part in it.’
‘You would just happen to be there, and then turn up here and tell him all about it!’ she spat at me, then added spitefully, ‘And now I suppose you think you and Rhys are going to live happily ever after. But you won’t, because you can never hold a candle to Annie for looks or talent, and if she couldn’t hold him, you’ve got no chance! ’
‘I think that’s quite enough,’ Rhys said. ‘In fact, I think it would be a good idea if you left Triskelion as soon as possible.’
He looked at the darkening window. ‘It’s already getting dark and it would be too much of an irony if we turned you out and you had an accident on the unfamiliar roads. So tomorrow will have to do.’
Verity stood up abruptly. ‘Don’t think I won’t leave the moment it’s light enough in the morning, especially since I don’t suppose you’ll waste any time in telling everyone what you’ve found out. This place has been more like a support group for misfits than a writing retreat!’
‘I’ll certainly tell Nerys and Timon,’ said Rhys.
‘Then you can also tell Nerys I’m shaking the dust of this place off my feet at first light and she can get Tudor to bring my dinner up to my room tonight.’
She opened the door and paused. ‘And also tell her I expect a refund for the time I won’t be spending here!’
And on that note of anticlimax, she slammed out.