The Lies We Told(36)
‘So,’ Rose said, as though nothing had happened. ‘What brings you here?’
Haltingly, Clara and Mac explained their plan. ‘We might not find anything, of course,’ she told them, ‘but at least we’d be doing something …’
There was a silence, until Oliver nodded and, not meeting their eyes, said, ‘Well, yes … if there’s anything we can do to help …’
Clara looked anxiously at Rose, who said quietly, ‘Whatever you think’s best, darling, of course.’ She got up. ‘I’m very sorry. I hope you don’t mind, but I think I need to go and lie down now.’
They watched her go, Oliver sinking into a chair, staring after her with such a look of helplessness that it made Clara’s heart hurt. She thought about Emily’s email, wishing she could tell them about it, praying that one day soon she’d be able to give them the news they’d waited for so long.
Tom was outside when they left the house, leaning against his car and gazing out across the fields. A thin veil of drizzle hung in the tepid air and crows cawed and circled overhead. He turned when he heard them crunching across the wet gravel towards him and levelling his gaze at Clara said quietly, ‘I’m sorry about that.’
She felt a rush of indignation on Rose’s behalf and was relieved when Mac answered for them. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘It’s a difficult time. Are you OK?’
‘Yeah. You know …’
She was conscious of his eyes on her still and busied herself with fiddling with her phone.
‘What are you both doing here?’ he asked, and listened while Mac quickly ran through their plan.
‘We’re starting with Luke’s first girlfriend,’ he told him, ‘Amy Lowe. Did you know her?’
Tom shook his head. ‘Not well. I’d left for university by the time they started going out. Are you off there now?’
‘Yeah, she lives outside Framlingham, apparently.’ Mac checked his phone and read out the name of Amy’s street.
‘I know it,’ said Tom. ‘I’m heading in that direction myself. I’ll show you the way if you want to follow me.’ He paused, and finally Clara looked up and met his gaze. ‘Actually, there’s a pub nearby called the Kestrel,’ he said. ‘I could do with a drink, if you …?’
‘Sure,’ Mac shrugged, before she could make up an excuse. ‘We’ll follow you there.’
As they pulled out of The Willows’ driveway and began to follow the black Audi, Clara expelled a long breath. ‘God, that was weird,’ she said. ‘What the hell was going on between Tom and Rose?’
‘Christ knows.’
‘As if she hasn’t got enough on her plate without him laying into her too,’ she said angrily. ‘He’s so bloody strange.’
‘I know,’ he murmured. ‘I guess they’re all very upset.’ After a while, he said, ‘They looked awful, didn’t they, Rose and Oliver?’ He flicked his indicator and followed Tom as he turned left, away from the village. ‘Poor bastards. I can’t believe this has happened to them again.’
Clara watched the countryside slip past her window, the hedgerows and verges beginning to burgeon into spring, and thought about Rose. When they’d first met a few years before, Rose had been in her mid-sixties and newly retired, enjoying a ‘life of leisure’, as she’d laughingly put it. Gardening, cooking, taking holidays in Europe with Oliver, relishing her new-found freedom after such a long and distinguished career in medicine. Clara had seen pictures of her taken in her forties and fifties: a good-looking, impeccably dressed woman whose eyes had shone with intelligence and purpose and responsibility, but now, though she was still all of those things, there was a softness, an ease and comfort about her too that Clara thought made her even more attractive.
She recalled a time a year or so earlier when she’d first caught a glimpse of that other Rose, the coolly capable doctor she’d once been. It was a weekend in November and they’d all taken a walk together through the frost-covered fields. Rose and Clara, slightly ahead of the others, had come across a hare caught in a barbed-wire fence. It was bleeding, its face contorted in fear and pain. While Clara had cringed and fretted uselessly at its suffering, Rose had knelt and carefully freed it, but rather than hopping away, the animal had lain there, eyes bulging, still bleeding profusely. ‘Poor thing,’ Rose had murmured. ‘It’s dying. I think it’ll be kinder if I just … don’t look, darling, if you’d rather,’ and then she’d picked the animal up and deftly wrung its neck. And though Clara had felt a little sick, she had been filled with admiration for Rose’s unflappable efficiency, her ability to get on with what was necessary, no matter how unpleasant or bloody.
‘I wonder what Rose and Oliver were like,’ she said now, ‘before Emily left, I mean. I met them so many years afterwards, I can’t imagine how it must have changed them.’
‘They were quite a big deal by the sound of things.’ Mac replied. ‘Rose was head of paediatric surgery at the hospital, and Oliver had written his first book, which had got a lot of attention – TV appearances and so on. They were pretty well known in the area, very active in the village, fundraising and all that, then there were all the huge parties they used to throw. Luke told me their house was always full of people.’ He glanced at Clara. ‘So yeah. I’d say they had it pretty good.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It’s just so fucking tragic the way things turned out. They don’t deserve it, they really don’t.’