Chapter 50
CHAPTER 50
Beau and Tamar were standing outside Charlie’s barn looking at the view, still beautiful in the winter morning mist, with all the leaves gone from the trees. After Charlie had given them a quick tour of the vineyard, they’d gone over the barns with him and Sophie, brainstorming ideas for how it could be converted and what to do with all the space. There was so much of it.
Then Charlie and Sophie had gone back to the house, leaving Beau and Tamar to get fully familiar with the layout and soak up the atmosphere. Sophie had given Beau the car keys so he could drive home. She was staying on with Charlie.
‘It’s doing my head in that we can’t see this view from the inside,’ said Beau. ‘How could anyone put a building in this position without a single window in it?’
‘Well, I suppose bales of hay and tractors, or whatever that farmer kept in it, don’t really appreciate scenery,’ said Tamar.
‘I’ve got an idea. If we stand out here and intently study the view so it imprints on our retinas and then close our eyes and run inside really fast, when we open our eyes we might still be able to see it from in there.’
They both stared hard then Beau grabbed her hand and they stumbled back into the dark barn, giggling, then stared towards the metal wall.
‘Just for a moment there,’ Beau said, ‘I think I had it.’
‘I didn’t. I can just about make out corrugated steel through the gloom. So what did your mystic insight tell you, oh, swami one?’
‘It told me that pretty much this whole wall needs to be glass.’
‘I think we knew that already, didn’t we?’
‘It also told me it’s bloody cold in here. But the great thing is we could have acres of solar panels on the roof and be completely off-grid for electricity and have those buried heat pump things, whatever they are, so it would always be perfectly cosy. Which it would be with you here anyway.’
He folded her into his arms, still getting used to the feelings he had for her. He felt so warm and protected and nurtured by these new sensations. It was like having an amazing down coat. New with tags. He felt cocooned.
‘Let’s start back to the car,’ he said. ‘If we walk briskly it will warm us up – and if you don’t mind listening as we go, I have something I would really like to share with you.’
It was time for him to tell someone. And Tamar was the someone he wanted to tell.
Sophie and Charlie were in bed. He’d done a calculation that it would take the kids twenty minutes to walk back to the house from the barns, even if they’d left straight after them so it would be a shame to waste that valuable time.
Lying with her head on his warm chest, Sophie felt completely looked after in a way she hadn’t for a long time. Well before Matt died, because he’d always been distracted so work and he’d been out of the house a lot. Of course, now she knew why.
Charlie was stroking her hair. ‘That was a big sigh,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ said Sophie, putting her elbows on his chest and looking up at him. ‘It’s not because I’m not happy in the here and now. I’m ultra happy.’
‘But you were thinking about things, weren’t you? All those things that aren’t very nice to think about, but which you know you need to face up to. Get it over with, Soph. I really think now’s a great time to tell Beau. He’s so loved up you could drop a bomb on him and it would bounce off.’
‘But that’s exactly what just made me sigh. How can I send that wrecking ball in when he’s so happy?’
‘There’s never going to be a right time. But you all need to start moving on, which just can’t happen while there are these great unspoken things looming in the background. Even though your boys don’t know about them yet, the way it affects you, affects them.’
Sophie thought about that. She probably was being weird in lots of little ways. Like, she knew how much Beau wanted his dad’s paintings to be put up in the new house and Jack had asked her about it too last time they’d Facetimed. She was running out of excuses why she wasn’t ready to do it yet.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s time.’
Juliet was sitting in a cafe on Kings Road, twenty minutes’ walk from her mum’s care home where she’d just dropped Cassady and Hettie. One of the many wonderful benefits of the place was that there was a nursery on site so her mother could spend proper time with her granddaughters, with a childcare professional always nearby. Pauline and Cassady were probably feeding the chickens or collecting eggs, thought Juliet. Or sitting together in the art room, making something out of clay.
That image was a brief, pleasant distraction from what she knew she had to do. She looked down at her phone, sighing. Dottie had sent her Sophie’s number the day after they’d met up at Rachel’s house, saying it had only taken her one text to get hold of it. That tightly interconnected creative world again.
Now she had the number, she had no excuse for not trying to make contact and she knew she had to get on with it. She didn’t want Sophie to find out from a newspaper reporter ringing for a comment, if Luiza ever went through with her threat, despite the generous pay-off Juliet had given her – on condition of her signing a non-disclosure agreement.
And it was even more pressing since Gwen had filled her with cake the day before and revealed that she’d told Beau everything, so now he knew that Cassie and Hettie were his sisters.
Juliet had been astonished at first that her most trusted employee had betrayed her like that, but once Gwen had explained her decision Juliet could see it was right. It wasn’t a betrayal – it was actually a massive favour and very brave of Gwen to do it. As Rachel and Dottie had also said, everyone had to be told the whole truth, so they could all start to deal with it.
Taking a deep breath for courage, she started a message to Sophie’s number.
Beau and Tamar were in Agata’s sitting room. He’d told Tamar the whole story on the walk back to Charlie’s house and when he’d asked her what she thought he should do, her reply had been immediate: ‘Ask Agata. She’ll know.’
So here they were. Olive was here too, because as soon as Beau had asked Agata if she could give him advice about something very serious, she’d asked him to get Olive first. ‘We are a good team,’ she’d said. ‘I am a butterfly, she is a hammer. You will get both approaches.’
Beau told them everything, with Olive responding at key points with ‘Jeez, fuck’, ‘Bastard!’ and ‘What a crock’, while Agata just shook her head and sighed a couple of times.
‘So what do I do?’ said Beau, once he’d reached the climax with Gwen’s revelation. ‘Do I put gaffer tape over my mouth for the rest of my life in case I accidentally ever mention Dad’s gross betrayal and the small detail of his other family? Do I never see my gorgeous little sister again?’
‘You’ve got to tell Sophie!’ said Olive. ‘You’ve got to tell your mum and Jack and your whole bloody family everything, immediately. I know he was your dad, but what a fuck knuckle. Worst kind of bastard. No one needs to keep his filthy secrets for him. Bloody fucking wanker.’
Beau couldn’t help smiling. It was strangely releasing to hear his father being assessed in those terms. He’d always held Matt up as some kind of higher being and anything a bit off he’d ever done had been excused by The Work. The precious bloody work, which took priority over everything.
He was a bloody fuck knuckle.
Beau glanced at Agata, who hadn’t said anything yet, and she looked back at him steadily with her piercing pale blue eyes.
‘I think Sophie knows already,’ she said. ‘I knew from the start there was something else. Not just the death. The anger.’ She shrugged, raising her hands in her characteristic gesture.
‘Actually, now you say it, I know what you mean,’ said Olive. ‘That first dinner at mine, I could see she was really pissed off, not just grieving. I recognised it because it was like looking in a mirror. I was furious with my old man for dying. He’d still be alive if he hadn’t felt it was his personal responsibility to keep the whisky stills of Scotland afloat.’
‘You think she knows?’ repeated Beau, trying to process it.
‘Yes,’ said Agata. ‘At least some of it, maybe not all. But if, as you tell us, a woman was asked to leave the funeral, it seems like your mother knew something, no? Even if that wasn’t the same woman, it is an indication that something was not right.’
Beau had his hand on his head, trying to stop his brain from exploding. Tamar put her arm round him and kissed his cheek.
‘And now I’m even more glad she has that lovely Charlie,’ said Agata. ‘He is a good man – and very virile for his age, I think. A betrayed woman deserves a wonderful lover.’ She smiled at Beau. ‘I’m sorry if that makes you feel sick.’
‘Well,’ said Beau, ‘I’m generally feeling like I have far greater insight into both my parents’ sex lives than I’ve ever aspired to, but, hey, I really like the guy and it will be helpful to have him around to support her when I finally tell her all this crap. Which is a fuck-knucklingly horrible prospect, but I agree, it has to be done.’
He stood up and gave Agata the biggest – and the most gentle – hug he could. He didn’t want to break her.