Chapter Forty-Four
MATTHEW AND JONATHAN SAT AT THE back of the house to get most shade.
They were looking inland across the garden to the river and watched a heron fly, wide-winged, towards the water.
They’d both come home early and had started with tea, and a piece of the fruit cake Matthew’s mother Dorothy had left the last time she’d come for Sunday lunch.
A peace offering of a sort. Now, Jonathan had opened a bottle of wine.
They’d been gearing up to a proper discussion about the important things that had happened in the past week, but now they were still on smaller, more domestic details. And those, Venn decided, were important too, the glue that held them together.
‘How’s Lucy Braddick getting on without her dad?’
‘Of course she’s sad, but she’s coping really well.’ Jonathan gave that wide, generous smile that had pulled Matthew in from the start. ‘She’s back at work. There’ve been a few weepy moments, but her friends have been looking out for her.’
They sat for a moment in silence.
Now, with the wine poured, the more important discussion started.
‘So, the Armstrongs have gone home,’ Jonathan said. ‘Back to London. Paul’s political reputation untarnished.’
‘We don’t know that he did anything wrong when he was on the council in Newcastle.’
‘Well,’ Jonathan said, ‘there’s no proof at least, or Geoff Kinzalow would have published the rumour.’
‘And the Kinzalows are on their way back to the States to reconnect with their daughter.’
‘Do you think Elaine Cauldwell knew what really happened on the evening of Elizabeth Kinzalow’s accident?’ Jonathan asked. ‘Did she realize that her daughter was into a sort of blackmail?’
Venn shrugged. ‘She might have guessed. Just like Tessa Brennan suspected that Jake might have been at Tide House the morning that the girls died. He’d always been emotionally frail, and perhaps she thought she could protect him.
Besides, she didn’t want to believe that he was involved.
’ Matthew paused and sipped the wine. ‘Elaine Cauldwell was pretty screwed up herself. I’m not sure she would have cared that Lottie was lying, manipulating Elizabeth’s accident for her own ends. ’
‘Do you think Lottie might have inherited some kind of dysfunctional gene?’
Venn shot a glance at his husband. ‘Really, I don’t think it works like that.’
Jonathan seemed not to have heard. ‘What do you think I inherited from my mother?’
‘Tell me about her,’ Matthew said. ‘What happened when you met her?’
In the silence that followed, Jonathan refilled their glasses.
‘I liked her at first,’ Jonathan said. ‘I really liked her. I mean, the whole vibe. The shanty band, the fact that she obviously belonged to the village. I had this story in my head that she’d been taken advantage of by some entitled twat who hadn’t stuck by her.
That she couldn’t afford to look after me and that’s why I’d been given up for adoption. ’
Venn remembered the cultured voice. The confidence. ‘Then you realized that she was the entitled twat.’
‘How did you know?’ There was an edge of anger in Jonathan’s voice. ‘Have you been prying? Did you check her out on your system?’
‘No! I guessed. The voice. I don’t know, the way other people treated her.’
‘She owns that great mansion on the hill in Sentock. The place we walked to when we were waiting in the village,’ Jonathan said. ‘She has some sort of title.’
‘I don’t see,’ Matthew said, ‘how that should affect the way you think about her.’
‘Really?’ A pause, and then he let out a howl of grief and rage.
‘She could have kept me! What was stopping her? It certainly wasn’t a lack of money.
Or space. Did you see that place? She even told me that her parents would have supported her.
But apparently, she wanted her freedom. To travel.
To explore the world. She’d had a fling with some guy she didn’t really care about and decided too late that she was too young to be tied down by a baby.
She said she didn’t think she’d be a very good mother, but that was an excuse, wasn’t it? ’
‘I don’t know,’ Venn said. This felt like some sort of minefield.
Each statement might set off an extreme reaction, like a boot on a bomb.
He’d never known relaxed and easy Jonathan be as edgy, as furious as this.
‘It sounds as if she’s been incredibly honest about everything else.
Why not about that?’ He wanted to support the man, but he thought he had to be honest too.
They sat again in silence. In the hedge that ran down the boundary of the garden, separating it from the marsh, a blackbird was singing its heart out.
‘What will you do?’ Matthew asked. ‘Will you see her again?’
‘I don’t know. What will she expect? Will she want me to go for afternoon tea in the stately home? Can you imagine me sitting making polite conversation in a drawing room with her grand friends? She holds the sort of position I’ve always despised.’
Now Matthew couldn’t help laughing. ‘She seemed more like a beer and pasty sort of woman to me. Don’t you think this is about your prejudices and not about her? You had an idea in your head about who she might be, and she didn’t live up to your expectations. You can hardly blame her for that.’
He thought that was why the Tide House case had taken so long. He’d jumped to judgement too quickly and assumed that he could trust his instincts.
‘So,’ Jonathan said at last, ‘what do you think I should do?’
‘Absolutely not my call!’
‘Ah, I’m not asking you to make the decision. I want your advice.’
The shadows were lengthening now. Soon there would be a beautiful dusk.
Matthew thought they might walk together over the dunes to watch the sun set over the sea, sit at the end of the golden path to the horizon.
He took a breath. He hadn’t wanted this woman to be a part of their lives.
He’d thought they were managing very well without her.
The conversation with his mother had made him shift perspective, be more sympathetic.
And he could see this was unsettling Jonathan and throwing him off balance.
‘Okay. I think you’ve spent your life looking out for other people. Maybe you find it hard that this woman doesn’t need saving. You’re meeting on equal terms. That’s not what you were expecting, and it’s tough.’
Jonathan nodded to show he accepted there was some truth in Matthew’s words. ‘So, what should I do?’
‘I think you should ask her here. Then it’ll be your territory, not hers. Show her your life and the magnificent work you’re doing at the Woodyard.’ Matthew looked out at the heron, upright and elegant on the edge of the river. ‘Be generous.’