The Silence Before Thunder Page 5

  Jo glanced at it, fingering it open but reluctant to trespass further on Eleanor’s private space. Her aunt was still alive, if only just; it felt ghoulish and intrusive to pick through her things. Still a feeling of unease, of things unexplained, made her look inside. She could see Eleanor’s reading glasses case and a small notebook. No phone though. Jo frowned, and looked more thoroughly. There was an empty pocket at the side, the size for a phone, but it definitely wasn’t there. Was that significant? Jo looked round the room. There was no sign of it anywhere. Perhaps it was downstairs. Or maybe Eleanor had taken it with her into the garden. She made a mental note to look outside later and went to give Sidney his breakfast.

  It was still only eight twenty when she returned to the sitting room and sat on the floor, idly playing with Sidney, watching the clock. She wanted to speak to Lawrence as soon as he arrived and clear the air, but he was too quick for her and the next moment he was in the doorway, stealing the initiative.

  ‘Joselyn? May I have a word?’

  He didn’t wait for a reply and walked in.

  ‘I wanted to see you too, Lawrence.’ She scrambled to her feet to face him and waved a hand vaguely towards the sofas. ‘Shall we sit?’

  He ignored her. Standing with legs apart, arms crossed aggressively in front of him, his body bristled with anger.

  ‘What did you think you were doing last night? If you wanted to interfere, you might have had the courtesy to speak to me privately and not make me look ridiculous in front of the others.’

  ‘If you’d had the courtesy to tell me in advance that you were planning to cancel, I would have explained how I felt then, without finding out about your meeting by chance.’

  ‘Who told you about it?’

  ‘Why didn’t you want me to know?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware that you had any part in the running of this estate or the workshops. You haven’t bothered with your aunt for years, but for a cursory message here and there. Who are you to come and tell me what I should and shouldn’t do on Eleanor’s behalf?’

  She felt the accusation as badly as he intended her to. But that was her affair with Eleanor, not his, and she refused to give ground.

  ‘I’m her niece, her closest living relative. I’ve been away too long but my love and concern for Eleanor haven’t changed. I have a right to express my opinion and I believe I have a right to take some responsibility for what happens here until she can do it herself.’

  He smiled grimly. ‘You’ve decided to take over. How noble of you.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, that was never my intention. But I should be involved. I want to help.’

  Their eyes met and locked. It felt absurd, like a childish game to see who would blink first.

  ‘You’re very out of touch,’ he said, a shade less belligerently. ‘You don’t understand the half of what’s going on here.’

  ‘So tell me then. What are “these issues about which I know nothing” which you mentioned last night?’

  ‘All right. Let’s assume you genuinely care about her. What if you’re actually making the situation worse? What makes you think she wants the workshops to continue? Eleanor’s not been herself lately. You haven’t been around to see. She’s been having trouble with her writing, really struggling. It’s been painful to watch. I had her agent, Jenny - you remember Jenny Huggins? - on the phone yesterday. She’d heard about the tragedy and wanted to know how Eleanor was and what was happening. She knows Eleanor was having problems; she’s been having them for some time. The publishers are getting impatient because deadlines have come and gone. There’s been a lot of pressure. The workshops are a distraction and just add to that pressure. They barely pay their way and she refuses to charge the tutors for their accommodation.

  ‘And then this engagement. It was a shock for her. Can you imagine how much? Do you think she wants Frank and Louisa here all summer, in her own back yard, after that? Are you going to sit by her hospital bed and tell her you’ve arranged to keep them here, nice and close? How cosy for her.’

  Jo was silent, frowning. She turned and sat down. Sidney immediately jumped up and insinuated himself onto her lap. She stroked him without thinking, then looked back up at Lawrence. He hadn’t moved but something in his manner suggested that he thought he had won.

  ‘You think she jumped?’ she asked softly.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s possible. Frank has hurt her a lot over the years. She hides a lot, you know. I’ve often thought she struggled more than she admitted. A person can only take so much. Maybe it finally got too much.’

  ‘And you told the police that.’

  ‘I believe I mentioned it.’

  She nodded, then glanced at her watch, moved Sidney to the side and stood up again.

  ‘I’ve got to go to the hospital. By the way, do you know where Eleanor’s phone is?’

  ‘No.’ He glanced round the room. ‘It’ll be about I expect.’

  ‘I can’t find it.’

  He shrugged the issue away. ‘How long are you planning to keep this vigil?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m taking one day at a time. I’ve brought some work with me. I’ll fit it in as and when I can.’

  ‘Well I have to plan ahead, so please rethink your stance on the workshops and let me know your decision later today.’

  ‘That’s too soon. I need to think about it.’

  ‘What possible diff…?’ He stopped himself, pressing his thin lips together. ‘All right. Tomorrow then. And, if you insist on them going ahead, I shall expect your support and input. If any of the tutors were unable to run sessions for any reason, Eleanor would step in. I assume you’ll do the same.’ He raised one sardonic eyebrow then walked to the door, paused and turned. ‘Eleanor was involved in planning a literary festival for the beginning of September too. It was a new venture suggested by someone down in the village, all absurdly last minute. Now there’s the inevitable committee which spends hours debating the trivial. It was all too much, even for her. She got talked into trying to arrange speakers. I hope you’re going to see sense and not try to keep her part in that going too. Oh, and maybe don’t believe everything Frank tells you. Eleanor certainly didn’t.’

  Later, sitting beside Eleanor, waiting in vain for the twitch of an eyelid or the fleeting pressure of her hand, the argument reran through Jo’s mind and she began to question her motives. Maybe she only wanted to keep the workshops going because of Lawrence’s arrogance and proprietorial attitude. She hadn’t thought of it as a power struggle before, but perhaps it was. Or maybe she was trying to prove to herself and everyone else that she did care about Eleanor and hadn’t just abandoned her.

  Perhaps Lawrence was right about Eleanor’s state of mind. Jo had been away too long and could have misread the situation. She tried to recall their telephone conversation from the Friday night. Had there been any clues in it? ‘Life’s too short,’ Eleanor had said at one point. Was that significant? But the Eleanor she knew had never been a quitter. It was one of the things Jo loved her for: Eleanor rose to meet problems. She never backed off.

  But maybe jumping had been the final escape. If Eleanor had been drinking, perhaps with her mind clouded from alcohol, her resolve weakened, it had seemed like the best way out. Perhaps she was too tired of it all to continue. Jo hadn’t allowed herself to believe it before but now she felt sick with regret and recrimination. Why hadn’t she paid Eleanor more attention?

  She looked down at her aunt’s face and wished she could ask Eleanor what she wanted her to do but the blank, closed expression gave nothing away. That morning, the doctors had reduced her sedation in order to try her off the ventilator and she was now breathing unaided - constantly monitored by both nurses and the ITU doctor on duty - but she remained as still and silent as before. Jo was acutely disappointed. She had naively hoped that the reduced sedation would reveal a conscious Eleanor, the thinking, restless person Jo knew so well. But there was nothi
ng.

  The nurses moved in to see to Eleanor and Jo went in search of coffee.

  *

  Frank wandered down the footpath through the woods on the western slope of the headland and let himself out of the side gate. It was the only access point in the fenced estate other than the main gates and it too had a keypad lock. For security, Lawrence changed the codes every week though Frank wouldn’t put it past the man to change them again without warning - just to spite them all.

  He and Louisa had slept late and she had still been in bed when he left. A short winding walk downhill from here took him onto the road through the village, not far from the public beach. He liked the walk, always had. Even when he lived with Eleanor, he had never got over the novelty of being able to stroll along the sea front in the freshness of a sunny morning. It was such a contrast from the noise and bustle and grimy streets round the flat in London where he still stayed intermittently. His relationship with Eleanor had always been elastic. They had both appreciated the space his occasional spells in London had given them. It made their relationship more special when they were together.

  Eleanor. She kept intruding on his thoughts. He wondered how she was. A new romance didn’t mean he didn’t still care about her. Eleanor was part of his life and always would be. And now she was… He didn’t want to think about it. He was desperately trying not to show his distress to Louisa. She wouldn’t understand.

  He reached the bottom of the path and turned left towards the sea, trying to regain his train of thought. Yes, he loved it here. Walking through the village, buying fresh rolls for breakfast from the shop, watching the waves lap the shore, smelling the salt air… He had written about it many times.

  Sparkle of sun on sea and stone,

  Gritty salt sand in your shoes.

  But he didn’t want the place to become too known, too popular or trendy. He wanted it to stay quaint and old-fashioned - like the beaches he remembered from his childhood, the way he and Eleanor both liked it. There she was again. But every time he thought of her now it was as if something was extracting all the air out of him.

  He bought a broadsheet and one of the tabloids from the display just inside the door of the convenience store, paused by the bakery section to make his choices, then paid and left. He didn’t look inside the papers until he was back in the apartment, sitting on one of the easy chairs at the back of the room, a coffee and a brioche on the cupboard to his right. He could hear water running: Louisa was in the shower. He opened the tabloid first and glanced over the headlines, turned the page and stopped short. There was a large photograph of Eleanor with the headline: Mystery fall of famous author.

  ‘Oh shit,’ he muttered.

  He frowned, reading it through. It was garbage, a selective mix of quotes from the police and ‘locals’ and an insight from ‘a friend’.

  ’Where the hell do they get this stuff?’ he exclaimed, and tossed it on the floor in disgust, just as Louisa emerged from the shower room, wrapped in a bath towel.

  ‘Mm,’ he said, approvingly, as she came towards him. ‘Are you joining me for breakfast then?’ He reached out a hand as she got close. ‘Are you sure that towel’s tucked in tight enough?’

  He nearly managed to get hold of it but she giggled and pulled away, ducking to pick up the strewn newspaper.

  ‘Something annoyed you, darling?’ She perched on the armchair nearby, fussing the pages back into position.

  ‘There’s a rubbish article about Eleanor in there. One minute it’s making her out to be a party girl and virtual alcoholic, barely able to stay upright, the next she’s a depressive recluse with financial worries. God knows where they got it from. All innuendo and hearsay. And made up. Though Vincent’s likely to be one source, the bugger.’

  He felt the anger build inside him again and tried to quell it, looking away, taking a bite of his brioche.

  Louisa opened the paper and read the article. Her eyebrows lifted.

  ‘They haven’t painted a very pretty picture, I must say. And she had been drinking. Oh dear. How sad that her life should be reduced to this.’

  She got up, dumped the newspaper on the bed and grabbed a croissant and a paper napkin before sitting down again. Frank was aware of her eyes on him, looking up through her lashes as she tore the croissant in two, examining his face.

  ‘Does it bother you?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘What, the article? No. It goes with being famous, doesn’t it? Eleanor’s had negative press before. She used to laugh it off.’

  ‘Really? It looks like it bothers you. Perhaps you don’t find it as easy to laugh off as she does. She’s quite tough, isn’t she?’ When he didn’t reply, she added, ‘Perhaps it’s being here. Is it too difficult for you, being at Skymeet with all the old associations?’

  There it was again, the unasked question about his affections. She kept needling at him, worrying over his attitude to his old lover. Louisa was so insecure. He hadn’t realised until they’d arrived here just how much. She seemed haunted by the idea that he might still want Eleanor, however many times he denied it and told her he loved her.

  ‘No, I’m fine here,’ he said. ‘It’s years since Eleanor and I were an item. You know that. I mean, the circumstances are awful of course but…’ He shrugged then reached out a hand to touch her bare arm. ‘It’s tough on you though. I think maybe we shouldn’t have come here this year after all.’

  She swallowed the last of her croissant, got up and came to perch on his lap. ‘No, it’s good that we did. It was important for you that we faced her sooner rather than later. She needed to see us together, didn’t she? So she understood.’ She shrugged her naked shoulders, making her towel start to slip. ‘It just didn’t work out the way we thought. But we can’t let her come between us, even when she’s in a hospital bed.’

  ‘She’s not going to do that, Louisa. You keep talking about her as if she wouldn’t accept it. But Eleanor had moved on too, you know.’

  ‘Are you sure? If the gossip is true, it doesn’t seem that way.’

  He didn’t answer but brushed a croissant flake from her cheek and kissed her on the mouth. Then he bent forward to bury his head in her chest, pushing away all thoughts of Eleanor, comatose in her hospital bed.

  Louisa arched her neck back and giggled again as he pulled the towel down.

  *

  As usual, it was late afternoon when Jo got back to the house. Already the number of journalists hanging around outside the gates had dwindled. Hopefully they would soon leave altogether.

  Sidney curled round her legs, purring, as soon as she walked through the door, hampering further movement. She picked him up and took him through to the kitchen. Charlotte was still there, her broad backside incongruously perched on a tiny stool. She turned as Jo walked in.

  ‘Good. I was hoping to see you.’ Charlotte eyed up the cat in Jo’s arms. ‘Ah yes, Sidney. Thank you for the note. We’ve been getting acquainted.’

  ‘Thank you for keeping an eye on him.’ Jo put him down. ‘Has he been any trouble?’

  ‘He cried a bit early on, missing you no doubt, but he seems to have got used to me now. Doesn’t appear to like Lawrence though.’

  ‘That would be mutual then. Lawrence doesn’t like him, either.’

  There was a brief, tense silence. The air was thick with unspoken accusation. It was more than ten years since Charlotte had come to work for Eleanor. She came up from the village every weekday, cleaning, cooking, managing all the household issues which Eleanor never quite got around to. The two women were of an age but very different. Charlotte had no interest in books; she loved eighties pop music, television soaps and cookery programmes. Eleanor listened to classical music and occasionally jazz and she watched crime dramas and witty sitcoms. They often argued, exchanging vitriolic insults, and Charlotte had handed her notice in more than once, but she was still here. They were perversely devoted to each other. Now she was regarding Jo reproachful
ly.

  Jo offered an olive branch. ‘How are you, Charlotte? It’s been ages but that’s my fault, I know. I was wrong to stay away. There’s no excuse.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Charlotte allowed grudgingly, ‘we’ve all done things we’re not proud of, I dare say. But I can’t pretend your aunt hasn’t missed you. Not that the old bat would ever admit to it.’

  ‘How has she been, Charlotte?’

  ‘How do you think she’s been? All by herself since she finished with that man. You staying away like she had a contagious disease.’

  ‘Was she depressed, do you think?’

  ‘Depressed?’ Charlotte gave a shake of the head. ‘No. Not the type.’

  ‘I guess anyone can get depressed though.’

  ‘Maybe. But she just gets on with things.’ She hesitated. ‘Though she did seem distracted on Friday, now you mention it. Not that you should believe that rubbish in the newspapers. I think she lost her footing and slipped. I’ve told her a thousand times that she should fence that terrace off properly and the steps but would she listen? “It’d spoil the atmosphere of the place,” she said. “I want to keep it natural.” Natural indeed. Stuff and nonsense - and now look.’ She sniffed, adopting a careless expression. ‘And how is her ladyship today?’

  ‘Unconscious still, but breathing for herself at least.’

  She grunted and prised herself off the stool. ‘Well I’m off. I’ve left you a lasagne to eat this evening. No doubt you’re not eating properly…’ She tutted. ‘…just like her when she’s writing. You look awful, I must say.’

  ‘I blame myself, Charlotte,’ Jo blurted out, desperate to say it to someone. ‘It’s my fault and now look what’s happened.’

  Charlotte hesitated then took Jo’s hand. ‘Now there’s no point getting yourself in a state about it. She’s a strong-willed woman, your aunt. Stubborn as hell. She’s not going to go anywhere without having her own say in the matter, you can be sure of that.’ She patted Jo’s hand and let it go, turning for the door. ‘By the way, Lawrence has gone but said to tell you he has to know by tomorrow - whatever that means.’