CHAPTER 24
The three of them elected to walk back from the pub along the coast. As they strolled down the lane towards the car park and Birling Gap, Pat’s brain was churning.
Why was Derek still here? Why was he going on dates but still living in Fiona’s mansion?
And how could he be so careless, so brazen about it?
Picking the village alcoholic as his next victim was a new low.
When they reached the car park, the queue for the Mr Whippy van curled around the café and all the wooden picnic tables were full of families working their way through piles of sandwiches and sharing large bags of crisps and litre bottles of Coke.
The place was rammed, and there was a line of people waiting to go down the steps to the sea.
‘How could nobody have seen Henry?’ asked Sue, frowning, as she stood next to Pat, watching the swirling sea below. It was high tide, and the waves were crashing on the beach and then frothing and foaming swiftly back.
‘Well, it was off-season in April, so that makes a difference,’ Pat replied.
‘But I agree with you. The volunteers from the chaplaincy patrol the coast all the time, and there are the walkers, who are the first to stop and help people. They notice if someone is sitting with their legs over the edge, looking down rather than out and not moving.’
‘So it was here, then?’ asked Sue, looking up and down the cliff, her blonde bob blowing in a light gust of wind.
‘I’m not a religious person, as you know, but I feel like I should say a prayer or something.
He was a such a sweet boy.’ Her face crumpled for a second, and she sighed loudly into the wind. ‘It’s all so very upsetting.’
‘His mother called me the other day – I think I told you about it,’ said Pat. ‘She was inconsolable.’
‘I’ve spoken to her too. It’s heartbreaking, and now that she’s found out all the money is missing, she’s convinced it wasn’t an accident. I think they had a good relationship,’ added Sue.
‘Yeah, he mentioned several times during our sessions how close they were,’ agreed Pat.
They walked a bit further along the coastal path and sat down on one of the many benches that looked out to sea. The wind had dropped, and it was surprisingly still and calm, although the crashing waves could still be heard below.
‘This is where I found his phone,’ announced Pat, her eyes closed as she turned her face towards the sun.
‘Right here?’ Sue stood up, walked tentatively towards the edge and peered over. It was a long way down.
‘Sue, get back here, those cliffs are made of crumble!’ shouted Pat.
‘Do you think he could have been pushed from here and then washed up on the beach a few hundred yards along, what with the current and the undertow?’ asked Sue.
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Pat. ‘It would explain why no one has any photographs of him actually at Birling Gap, except his jacket sleeve and his arm. Not many people can be bothered to leave the car park and walk up this way, unless you’re local, I suppose.’
‘Do you fancy an ice cream?’ asked Sofia, leaping off the bench.
‘What? After all that lunch?’ replied Pat.
‘When you’re eating for two, Patricia Phillips,’ said Sue, pulling Pat up, ‘there is no rhyme or reason to what you want, or when you might fancy eating it, or so I have read. Cravings, darling, cravings!’
Sofia didn’t even ask if the ice cream was organic. Which was lucky. They wandered back over the Downs eating their cones with the Flakes she had insisted they all have as an added extra, and headed up the hill towards the barn with the red roof and the wooden fence.
‘I’ve seen the plans,’ said Pat, dipping her Flake in her ice cream and licking it.
‘All this is going, Sue. All of it.’ She pointed about with her stick of chocolate.
‘She’s going to put cabins here facing the sea, and a swimming pool and a nine-hole golf course, if I remember correctly, and there’s a spa, obviously, with pump rooms and a sewage bit right over there, next door to Ivy Cottage.
There was probably one of those planning notices in a plastic sheet, but that’s long since blown away, but the sign is here.
’ She gestured, then looked. But Dorna’s orange sign had disappeared.
‘That’s weird,’ she said. ‘It was here yesterday.’
‘It was,’ confirmed Sofia. ‘I saw it.’
‘Maybe it’s fallen off,’ said Sue, looking the other side of the fence. ‘No. Nothing.’
‘Do you want to go and see if the bats are back?’ asked Pat.
Sofia glanced at her watch. ‘I think I need to get home. It’s a long drive, and the traffic on a Sunday night away from the coast is awful.’
‘True,’ agreed Sue.
‘You’re not wrong, although I’m sad you’re leaving so soon,’ added Pat. ‘But the M25 can be gridlocked.’
‘Adam will be worried,’ continued Sofia. ‘He doesn’t like me driving on my own.’
‘What, in between the twelfth and thirteenth holes?’ Pat laughed drily. Sue shot her a look. ‘Of course he will,’ she corrected herself quickly. ‘And you can tell him your news, though only if you want to. Of course.’
‘I want to.’ Sofia nodded.
‘Well, it’s the best thing I’ve heard all week, all month, all year.’ Pat gave her daughter a tight hug.
When they got home, it took Sofia fifteen minutes to pack. Pat wheeled her heavy suitcase of mostly unused outfits back up the path to her red 4x4, which was still parked on the verge of pain, still blacking out the kitchen window.
‘Thank you, Mum,’ Sofia said as she climbed up into the driver’s seat. ‘Thank you for your help, and support, and for helping me make up my mind.’
‘It was a pleasure,’ replied Pat, feeling a wave of emotion as she grabbed hold of her daughter’s soft arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘And here’s that book I told you about. Let me know what you think of it.’
‘Good luck with your murder,’ said Sofia with a smile, placing the book on the passenger seat. ‘You’ll find out who did it, I know you will.’
‘Thanks.’ Pat smiled. ‘I really have enjoyed seeing you, and I’m so happy at your news. You should tell Martin too, after you’ve spoken to Adam, of course. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.’
‘Dad?’ Sofia started the ignition. ‘He already knows. He was the one who told me to come and talk to you about it all.’
‘Oh,’ said Pat, taking a step away from the car.
‘And he was right. He said you’d have the answers, and you did.’ Pat simply nodded, a light smile on her face. ‘I love you, Mum, see you soon.’
Sofia waved as she drove down the lane and turned around in Mal and Fi’s drive, then, honking her horn, she waved again as she headed back past the cottage, over the cattle grid and towards town.
Pat returned slowly to the kitchen.
‘Cup of tea?’ suggested Sue.
‘Probably,’ Pat replied, putting her hands on the table. ‘Apparently it makes everything better.’
As Sue pottered about making the tea, Pat sat at the table and stared in silence at the board in front of her.
‘Well, it was nice to see her,’ said Sue, sitting down and handing Pat her cup of black tea. ‘And it’s great news about the baby. Exciting. Babies are always exciting.’
‘They are. She told Martin before me.’
‘Did she? She’s always been a daddy’s girl,’ said Sue with a shrug as she blew on her own tea.
‘We had a talk last night about how absent I was when she was growing up, working full-time and doing my psychotherapy training on top of that, and what’s more, being preoccupied.
It was good she could tell me and I could validate how she felt; that’s gone a long way to healing our relationship.
And, you know, I parented better than I had been parented, and she will do better than me. It’s going in the right direction.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you were a great parent,’ said Sue. ‘I think she’s got that thing about her childhood – you’ll know what it’s called, false memory something.’
‘False memory syndrome.’ Pat took a sip of her tea.
‘No, she hasn’t got that. Truth is, I probably wasn’t a great parent.
I found the whole thing quite boring. For some people pushing a swing in the park on a drizzly Sunday afternoon is what they dream about.
I didn’t really. I didn’t mind changing nappies, that was just something you had to do, and I was happy reading her books and telling her stories.
But there are hours and hours of trying to soothe crying, and tedious playgrounds.
I think I’d be better at it now; I’ve learnt that parenting is a long game and those hours are a valuable investment.
My attitude was wrong then; I saw them as a waste, I didn’t realise how important they were. I delegated being with her.’
‘What about Martin? He was busy too.’
‘He was better at being present when he was with her. I was too easily distracted.’
They drank their tea in silence for a while, Pat still staring at the murder board.
‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Sue.
‘Do you think Derek’s clever enough to have emptied Henry’s accounts all on his own?’ Pat asked. ‘I mean, you know him.’
‘I know of him. On paper. But no, I don’t know whether he’s clever enough.’
‘He’s more fisty than cerebral, isn’t he?’
‘He’s highly manipulative, and that usually requires a certain amount of intelligence.’
‘Why would he go for Marcus while he’s still staying at Fi’s, though? Does he think he can scam both of them at the same time?’
‘Marcus doesn’t look like he’s part of Henry and Derek’s crowd, does he? The handsome, successful young metropolitan men who drink cocktails and go on holiday to Mykonos.’
‘Except Derek wasn’t one of those types either; he was just pretending to be one.
He was a fraud, who found Henry online and set out to exploit him.
Pretended to want what Henry wanted then tried to rinse him for his money and contacts.
Henry was waking up to that, and it seems it was enough to get him killed.
’ Pat put down her tea and glanced up at the wall clock.
‘You’re going to miss your train if we don’t hurry. ’
‘I was putting off getting into your car,’ said Sue with a smirk.
‘Oh come on,’ said Pat. ‘You love my driving really.’ A statement they both knew was not entirely true.
Sue was not a fan of the moss-mobile at the best of times, but the way Pat scraped past – or sometimes, it felt to Sue, through – thorny hedges to let a car get by the other way amused and annoyed her in equal measure.
‘You’ll scratch the paint,’ she often laughed.
‘I know,’ Pat would reply, ‘and it makes it completely not worth nicking. People are far too precious about their cars.’
By the time Pat came home from dropping Sue off at the station, she felt quite low.
Sunday nights were always her least favourite night of the week; they were dull and boring, punctuated with bursts from Songs of Praise that still seemed to reverberate down the decades.
She wished she’d spent more time with Sofia and Sue and been less distracted by Henry’s murder and trying to solve it.
She found herself thinking, I did it again.
I was distracting myself instead of being present with people.
She went into the sitting room and turned on Antiques Roadshow, hoping to be diverted by some diamonds rescued from a box of tat at a car boot sale, or Granny’s old Fabergé egg. Maybe Dave sensed her low mood, because he sat upright on her lap looking at her, giving her head bumps.
‘Knock knock!’ came a voice from the kitchen. ‘Pat? Are you in?’
‘In the sitting room, Prichard.’
‘Marvellous! I thought you might want to try this bottle of joy I have just found at the back of the cupboard.’ He poked his head around the door. ‘Damson 2021,’ he grinned. ‘How vintage!’