Silent Child(64)

Before I left the car, I pulled off my thick cardigan. I was already sweating. I didn’t need the extra layer, even with the winds. The gravel of the back drive was difficult to walk on, especially when carrying extra weight at the front of my body. I was completely off balance and forced to stumble my way to the back door. But I got there without anyone telling me to clear off and I knocked on the old oak wood. Three raps.

I’d expected Wetherington to be something like Downton Abbey, with a butler ready to answer the door. That wasn’t the case at all. A small, stooped woman with greying but neatly set hair opened the door. She looked me up and down, no doubt taking in my shocked expression, and her lips thinned to a tight line.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked. The words were strange coming from my mouth, especially given who I was facing, but then I wanted her know. I wanted her to know who she was looking at.

“I do,” she said. “You’d best come in.”





32


As I followed the back of her tasteful cream cashmere cardigan, it struck me that I had absolutely no idea what to call this woman. Would I call her Duchess? Or would I call her Mrs Graham-Lennox? Or what about Maeve, her actual name?

“He isn’t here,” she said. “In case you were wondering.”

The thought had entered my mind. As soon as I stepped foot over the threshold I’d wondered whether the man who took my son shared the same breathing space as I did. That was, if he had taken my son.

“I asked him to leave,” she said, stepping through an ornate doorway into a small but beautiful little sitting room adorned with antique dressers and racehorse paintings. “I couldn’t have him here in this house with me. Not after the things the police found on his computer. I’d shared a bed with that man for over fifty years, but not for another night. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you,” I said. Since entering the house I had found myself feeling more and more like the teenager who snuck onto the property as a dare with her boyfriend. I clutched hold of my bag and stared at the beautiful antiques like a child in a posh department store. I certainly didn’t want to spill anything.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said, gesturing to a floral sofa with mahogany legs.

“Thank you for letting me come inside. I didn’t expect you to.”

She laughed as she settled into a red velvet armchair across from the sofa. “I bet you didn’t.” Her make-up was perfectly applied, with pink lipstick and a little rouge on her wrinkled skin. She sat with her legs crossed, and cut the figure of a woman holding everything together. “I wanted to meet you. I’ve wanted to meet you ever since my husband was arrested. I feel somewhat responsible, you see. Though I had no idea about the lengths of my husband’s… obsession, I did have a suspicion that I constantly ignored.” She moved her hand in a vague, swatting motion. “I never knew for certain, and I never knew what was wrong, but I always suspected that my husband had a dark side. This may sound extremely trifling after what you’ve been through, but you have no idea how much pressure I have been under to maintain certain standards throughout my marriage. Divorce was not an option for me fifty years ago. So even when I realised I’d married a dud, there was no going back.”

“But if you thought he was a monster—”

“What is a monster?” she asked. “Is it a scary ghoul hiding behind the bedroom door? Is it some sort of beast with sharp fangs? No. Those things don’t exist. Monsters are men and women just like us, and they have the ability to hide their true face. No, I didn’t think I’d married a monster, I thought I’d married a homosexual. I never caught Edward looking at children in that way, I only knew that he wasn’t particularly interested in me. We managed to continue the family line, but that was about it.”

“And your kids?”

She shuffled uncomfortably and removed her glasses like she was stalling for time. “I’ve broached the subject with them. Neither remember him doing… anything.” She closed her eyes and I realised that she had removed her glasses in an attempt to distract me from the fact that she was trying not to cry.

“If you didn’t know, it isn’t your fault,” I said.

The duchess leaned back into the chair and let out a soft laugh. “And is that what the newspapers say about you? Oh, the mother is always at fault. So is the wife, really. Women are supposed to control men, isn’t that how it goes? What’s that saying again: ‘Behind every great man is a great woman’. We’re supposed to be the ones holding them up, or holding them back. Forget having our own lives. Forget our own careers and loves and losses. We’re the matriarchs.” She narrowed her eyes and clenched her hands as she said the word ‘matriarchs’. Her body slumped forward, suddenly appearing exhausted. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think James ever touched your boy. He hasn’t been particularly active for the last decade, riddled with gout and in remission from bowel cancer. My husband has not been a well man. If he ever has abused children—and I’m not certain that he has—then I would say it happened long ago. Long before your boy went missing.” She had crumpled into herself, leaning over like a wizened old crone. The woman had aged a decade just speaking to me.

“Thank you for your time.” I stood and collected my bag. For a brief moment I hesitated, searching for some words of comfort. I grasped at nothing.