Chapter 16
THE PRESENT
They were in Owen’s car, driving through the now-deserted village of Winterhill and out onto the Downs.
Owen had grabbed some coffee from the machine in the visitors’ waiting room at Winterhill Hall, sealing it into two travel cups, one of which Jenna was now gratefully cradling.
The steam rose from it, clouding the windscreen of the car.
She sat, her mind quiet as Owen drove, her feelings strangely anaesthetised.
Owen was obviously waiting for her to talk when she was ready, but wasn’t hassling her for information.
After the trauma of the last couple of hours, it felt peaceful.
They had reached the lay-by where her car was parked, a small, huddled shape pressed against the hedge as though it was trying to hide. Owen pulled in without comment then half-turned in the driver’s seat, snapping the lid off his coffee mug.
‘Do you need to find Bree?’ he asked. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Oh…’ Jenna realised that she hadn’t thought about Bree for quite a while; also that Owen had guessed that it was her sister who had been with her, but presumably hadn’t said anything to Rachel or the police.
‘I expect she’s in an Uber halfway home by now,’ she said.
She got her phone out and checked the messages.
‘Yes, she’s left me a text. She’s on her way back to Oxford. ’
‘I’m not sure whether I admire her for her ability to find an Uber in Winterhill at midnight or deplore her for the ease with which she left you to sort out her mess,’ Owen said. His voice was tight and angry. ‘Both, probably.’
‘To be fair,’ Jenna said, ‘it’s my mess, not Bree’s. This is all my fault.’
When Owen didn’t reply she took a fortifying swallow of coffee.
‘I’m very sorry, Owen,’ she said honestly.
‘I’d like to explain everything to you properly.
I realise it’s the least I owe you.’ She rubbed her eyes, which felt impossibly gritty and tired.
She knew that it was all over, whatever she said to him.
In a night of disasters, losing Owen would be the thing that hurt the most when the numbness wore off.
‘I missed you this evening.’ Owen’s voice was rough. ‘I rang you earlier, but your phone was switched off. I wanted to talk to you.’
Jenna felt a bit sick. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. She felt hopeless, inadequate. ‘I know it looks as though I’ve used you, Owen, and that I’ve been keeping secrets from you, but it’s not how it seems—’
Owen shook his head and it silenced her. ‘Just tell me the truth,’ he said. ‘All of it.’
All of it.
Jenna swallowed hard. She stood at a crossroads now and Bree’s words were loud in her mind.
Why tell him anything about our past? He doesn’t need to know…
That was one path, a path of lies and omissions that led away from danger.
She could tell Owen half the story, perhaps; explain about Queen Anna’s box and what it contained, tell him that it was a matter of family obligation and honour to protect it.
He might think her foolish and deluded, but at least she would not have exposed her deepest secrets and risked him rejecting her as a mad fantasist. Yet she knew that would not be sufficient. It was all or nothing now.
‘All right,’ she said. She took another sip of coffee. It was still so hot it almost scalded her, but the warmth of the cup was comforting in her hands.
‘This evening, Bree and I came to retrieve a box that had been buried 500 years ago by Marris North in the middle of the sixteenth century,’ she said.
‘I was afraid that it would be discovered when the excavations started and I wanted to prevent that happening. It is a box that was entrusted to Marris by Queen Anna of Cleves and it contains papers confirming the identity of Anna’s son Henry Swan.
For complicated historical reasons, his existence was concealed and Queen Anna made Marris promise that his true parentage would never be revealed.
It’s fallen to me to protect this secret in the present day, and I was doing my best to fulfil that obligation.
That’s why I pretended it was just a prank – to keep the secret. ’
She stopped. Owen had been watching her silently and in the darkness of the car it was impossible to read his expression. She knew her explanation sounded bizarre, though, and she’d barely started.
‘That’s quite a story,’ Owen said noncommittally. ‘I’ve got to admit I didn’t see that coming.’ He shifted. ‘So where is this box now? Did you find it?’
Another wave of misery washed over Jenna. ‘It had gone,’ she said numbly. ‘It wasn’t in the grave. Someone must have taken it during the last 500 years. So I’ve failed to protect it, and worse, I’ve no idea where it is now.’
‘And you can’t produce it as proof of your story,’ Owen pointed out dryly.
‘Absolutely,’ Jenna said, ‘I have no proof at all.’
There was another silence. Jenna could tell Owen did not believe her and she couldn’t really blame him.
She had a sense that he was disappointed in her and that he felt she had let him down.
It was almost unbearable. She waited for him to say that her excuses were pathetic and that he could have come up with a better story himself, which she knew was true.
But he said nothing and somehow that made her feel even worse.
‘You don’t need to tell me how weak this all sounds,’ she said desperately, as though he had accused her of it.
‘Like I say, I can’t prove any of it. But there’s more, Owen.
It’s a sacred trust I’ve undertaken. I know about the box, because I was there when Marris made the promise.
I know I told you that I was descended from her but that isn’t strictly true.
It’s more complicated than that—’ She saw Owen shake his head slightly in a gesture of denial and stopped.
Owen ignored her last words. ‘The day I met you in the Long Gallery at Winterhill Hall,’ he said, and Jenna’s heart shrivelled at the dispassionate coldness of his tone, ‘we discovered that items had been disappearing from the collections. It seems a coincidence, don’t you think, that these two things – the grave-robbing and the thefts – have been happening at the same time? ’
Jenna’s mouth dried. In the fallout from the failed expedition to retrieve the box, she’d forgotten all about Molly’s pearl bracelet. ‘I don’t… It’s not…’ She swallowed. ‘The thefts are nothing to do with me.’
‘Yet you had evidently been in Winterhill Hall before,’ Owen said, ‘even though it wasn’t open to the public until recently.
I didn’t buy your story about a school trip, and now I’m starting to wonder if Rachel was right, and you’ve been playing me all along.
’ He shifted in his seat. ‘Jenna, I meant it when I said that I wanted to help you if you were in trouble, but if you’re only going to lie to me, there’s nothing I can do. ’
Something snapped in Jenna in that moment.
This man, whom she had known as Will Sharington, whom she had loved and trusted with her life, closer than close, for ever after, transcending time…
She’d met him again as Owen Power and harboured all sorts of hopes and dreams, but he remembered nothing of the past and despised her in the present.
And suddenly she was done with trying to explain or justify herself.
She plonked the coffee down on the dashboard with a snap that made it spill over the top and drip onto her jeans. She shook the drops off angrily.
‘You know what, Owen?’ she said. ‘You can stuff your help. I’ve had a really bad day and I’m pissed off with everyone.
I know my story sounds unlikely. I know I can’t prove anything to you.
’ She could hear her voice rising, hear the edge of fury making it shake with passion.
‘I was trying to do the right thing and I messed up.’ She opened the car door, grabbing her bag, fumbling for her keys.
The night air felt cold after the warmth of the car.
‘And I’m glad I didn’t tell you the rest of the story,’ she added fiercely, ‘because if you think this is preposterous, you’ve barely heard anything yet.
’ She glared at him. ‘Try asking yourself why you felt as though you knew me before. Try opening your mind to the possibility it could be true. Try to remember. Or, on second thoughts, don’t bother.
At least I’ve got the memory of Will Sharington. I don’t need you.’
She slammed the door unnecessarily hard behind her and stalked off towards her car.
She was aware that Owen had not moved. He waited until she had driven off before he turned his car and headed off.
Anger carried Jenna halfway home but by the time she reached the flat in Wantage, she felt nothing more than exhaustion and misery.
She ignored the message from Bree that was on her phone.
She didn’t want to hear it. Like everything else, it could wait until the morning.
* * *
Well, hell. Owen stalked into the kitchen at Swan Court, turned on all the lights and went to pour himself a double measure of malt whisky.
Immediately he saw one of Jenna’s scarves draped over the back of a chair, a bright splash of colour in the sterile white surroundings.
Was it only that morning they had woken up together and had breakfast?
He’d kissed her before she had headed off to the bookshop.
He could remember the fresh smell of her perfume and the smile she’d given him when she left.
And now this. It was too much to compute.
He put the scarf carefully out of sight in the hall and sat down in one of the armchairs by the unlit fire. The house was warm but it had a strange chill of loneliness about it, too quiet and empty. In a short time, he had grown to need Jenna’s presence.