CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I was silent for a while after he told me this.
I didn’t want to believe him. But something inside was telling me that everything Dan had related was the truth. He’d told me he hated people who lied and that he believed in being scrupulously honest. So why would he lie?
But if I believed his story, that meant Wyatt had been lying through his teeth all along.
I felt dazed and mightily confused, and when we got off the train and I drove Dan back to Leonard’s house, we barely spoke and we parted with a cool, ‘See you. Yeah, see you.’
I’d already been feeling so fragile because of the hangover.
But what Dan had told me had shocked me to the core and made the nausea I was feeling even worse.
I still couldn’t believe Wyatt could have behaved so wickedly.
There had to be more to the story than Dan had told me.
Where was Judith now? She was the only one who knew the whole truth about what had happened back then.
Did Wyatt really have a child somewhere that he’d refused to acknowledge? A fact he’d kept hidden from me all this time?
I groaned aloud as I drove home.
I’d have to be all loving and cheerful towards him when he came over to cook dinner for my family later – when all I really wanted to do was to sit him down and get the real truth out of him about Judith . . .
*****
As it turned out, putting on a cheerful front wasn’t altogether necessary.
Mum and Blaize welcomed me home as if I’d been abroad for a fortnight, wanting to hear all about my latest Chawton visit with the mysterious Dan. (All my family were Austen-ites and knew the books, the movies, the boxsets and the biographies inside out.)
Seeing the lingering hangover on my pale face, Mum pressed me to recline on the sofa while she made me a cup of mint tea to combat the nausea.
Blaize fetched me some strong painkillers and made me laugh by telling me all about an uproar in the library where she sometimes wrote her essays for uni.
Apparently, one of the librarians had opened a book and found that someone had been using a rasher of cooked bacon as a bookmark.
The painkillers did their job, and by the time Wyatt came round with his plastic bag of groceries, I was in a better mood.
I was also really hungry, having not eaten a thing all day, and as I breathed in the delicious herby scents wafting through from Wyatt’s efforts in the kitchen, I decided I’d avoid the subject of Judith that evening and instead, tackle him about her the next day.
When dinner was ready, I hoped Wyatt might be able to persuade Kitty to join us, but he came back down with a shake of the head, his irresistible charm having failed for once.
‘She’s busy and she has a deadline to meet, apparently,’ he said. ‘She said she’d come down a bit later and to save her some pasta.’
Mum sighed, looking worriedly from Blaize to me. ‘A deadline? What on earth is she doing up there?’ I noticed Mum looked tired and was on her second glass of wine, unusual for her. She always joked that she was a ‘cheap date’ because just one glass and she was starting to get woozy . . .
‘Maybe she’s working on a job application,’ said Blaize with a hopeful expression. ‘No wine for me, Lizzie,’ she’d said, when I offered her a glass. ‘I’m doing dry January.’
I filled my own glass, thinking a little ‘hair of the dog’ wouldn’t do me any harm. I didn’t want to voice what I suspected was happening – that Kitty was drowning her sorrows in vodka, which was why she was closeting herself in her room and banning everyone from entering . . .
As usual, Wyatt held court at the dining table, telling us all funny stories from his acting auditions.
He made everyone laugh, as he always did.
Even me. Mum thought he was marvellous and I suspected Blaize did, too, although I guessed her particular fondness for Wyatt had a lot to do with the bond created between them the night Wyatt had dived onto her car bonnet and stopped her driving away in a drunk state. Blaize owed him a lot, and so did I.
I still had nightmares wondering what would have happened that night if Wyatt hadn’t been there.
It was such a selfless act, throwing himself in front of a car with its engine running.
He’d shown admirable courage and an instinctive urge to help others, and that’s why I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe he would have cared so little about Judith as to desert her when she was pregnant . . .
We got onto the subject of the Regency Romp Festival and Blaize promised to help me polish my performance for the event next weekend.
I was taking part as Elizabeth Bennet in two vignettes, playing opposite Wyatt as Mr Darcy – the first in which Darcy makes his surprise proposal of marriage to Elizabeth and she refuses him; and the second involving a much-anticipated scene in which Wyatt as Colin Firth swims across the lake in the grounds of Brambleberry Manor and encounters Elizabeth when he emerges.
Advertised locally as an event not to be missed, the lake scene was expected to draw the largest crowd of all to the festival.
I’d been rehearsing in front of the mirror in my bedroom, and I’d taken part in the first dress rehearsal at the manor a few weeks ago, at which everything seemed to go like clockwork.
Wyatt had braved the freezing waters of the lake, wearing a wet suit under his fancy white shirt, and he’d emerged to a general round of enthusiastic applause.
I’d felt very proud of him and it had all been quite a turn-on, really.
I had cheekily offered to rub him down personally after the event, and Wyatt had been quick to accept.
Now, the thought of playing opposite him didn’t exactly thrill me. But I could hardly back out at this late stage.
Mum made coffee after dinner and Wyatt entertained us all by showing us his latest amusing post on social media.
In this one, he’d donned a dress in the Jacobean style, as well as a wig and an elaborate headdress, and he was holding up a dagger dripping with something that was probably tomato sauce – all while translating Lady Macbeth’s ‘Out, damned spot!’ monologue into current slang.
Sometimes I found his spoofs a bit cringey, but this one was actually really funny.
We were laughing about it, but then I noticed Mum had fallen silent and seemed to have detached herself from the general conversation.
I thought she looked as if she had the worries of the whole world on her shoulders, and when she slipped out of the room, I excused myself – leaving Blaize and Wyatt chatting away – and I went after her.
Maybe she was feeling Dad’s absence particularly badly today, with everyone laughing and joking around the table over our meal – like we used to all the time when Dad was alive.
I leaned next to her closed bedroom door and listened, reluctant to knock. She might just want a moment alone.
Then I heard her sob and I felt a jag to my heart.
I knocked softly. ‘Mum? Are you okay?’
There was a brief silence. Then I heard her get up and come to the door. When she opened it, her face was tear-stained.
‘What’s wrong? Is it Dad?’
She nodded. Then she shook her head. ‘Not really. It’s just . . .’
‘Just what? Are you worried about Kitty?’
Tears filled her eyes as she nodded. ‘But it’s not just Kitty, either. She’s in pain like the rest of us, but I’m just assuming that being by herself is her own way of coping and she’ll eventually emerge into the daylight again.’
‘What else is going on, then? Is it money worries?’ I’d seen her staring at her bank statement the other day, and it had occurred to me then to wonder if she was finding it hard, paying all the bills now that Dad had gone.
She nodded. ‘I’m going to have to sell the house. Our family home. And it’s breaking my heart, Lizzie!’