The Things You Didn't See(32)
‘Of course. Victoria?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Did you see your dad on Saturday?’
‘How could I see him? He was with you, wasn’t he?’ Another pause, longer this time, and she lowers her voice. ‘Mum, are you sure you’re okay?’
Daniel lied to me. He said he’d driven to Oakfield and taken the girls out. Where was he, when I was watching the paramedics save your life? When I was waiting for news at the hospital?
‘Mum?’
‘Sorry, love, it’s just . . .’ I miss you. I love you. Words I never say, left hanging in the air yet again. ‘Don’t miss the film.’
She’s already gone. Another failed connection.
I call Katie again, who is less friendly this time. She tells me in a terse voice that Daniel isn’t at the Studio, that I should call his mobile if I need him. I do, redialling every time I get his voicemail until he finally picks up.
‘Cassandra, I’m driving.’
‘Why did you tell Victoria I was sick?’
‘I’ll be home in twenty minutes. I need to concentrate on the road. This is dangerous and illegal.’
‘Don’t you dare hang up on me!’
I hear him sigh. ‘What would you have me tell her, love? That her grandma shot herself and could die?’
I freeze. ‘She didn’t shoot herself.’
His response is so urgent it makes me jump. ‘Cass! Your mum attempted suicide – why can’t you just accept that? I’m really starting to worry about you . . .’
‘Don’t talk to me like I’m crazy, Daniel!’ I can hear the noise of a motorway in the background, the distance in his voice. ‘Answer me! Why did you tell her I was sick?’
‘I didn’t want to worry her. It was the first thing I could think of.’
‘Why couldn’t you have told her it was you who was ill?’
‘For pity’s sakes, Cassandra!’ I can hear him muttering and cars are beeping. ‘I’m never ill. If I said I was, she’d be really worried.’
He wasn’t with me on Saturday morning – he lied to me about going to Oakfield. And he’s refusing to believe that you didn’t shoot yourself.
If I’m going to discover the truth, I need help. But it’s clear I can’t ask Daniel.
15
Holly
Philip Godwin’s home was easy to find. The lights were ablaze in the flat at the top of the school building and Holly could see him moving around up there. The doorbell was next to the main entrance to the school with a gold sign importantly announcing HEADMASTER’S RESIDENCE.
She rang and waited, and soon the door was opened. If asked to envisage a headmaster from the nineteenth century, this is the man she’d think of. He looked exactly the same as he had when he’d taught her, twenty years ago now, with his narrow squirrel-like face, brown beady eyes and orange-tinged bushy hair. He was dressed eccentrically in a long-collared burgundy shirt paired with a red cravat and formal trousers.
‘Mr Godwin? Cassandra asked me to come and collect Jet. You may not remember me, but I used to be one of your pupils: Holly Redwood.’
He scrutinised her, then his eyes gained intensity. ‘You were the girl from the base. You speak much more clearly now you’ve lost that American drawl. Come on up! Mind the stairs, they’re steep.’
Steep and narrow, so she followed him carefully up to what must have once been the school’s attic, but had been boarded over to provide bijou living quarters for the head teacher. The ceiling was low, and the windows looked down onto the school playground and the road beyond. She understood now why the lights were on even in daytime, as any light they provided would be scant.
Hearing activity, a black spaniel bounded forward, pushing his nose between Holly’s legs.
‘Hi, Jet, I’m here to take you home.’ She ruffled his fur, trying to push him back as she did, and surveyed the flat. It was open plan, a kitchen area with a small table and chair that led directly to an area with a sofa, and as they walked, their feet clomped on the wooden boards. It was a bit like being in a treehouse, although instead of nuts, he had piles of books against the wall, and on a low coffee table a stack of glossy A4 posters, all bearing the logo HANDS OFF OUR COUNTRYSIDE!
‘Drink?’ he asked, a congenial host. ‘I have a pot of filter coffee already brewed.’
Holly wasn’t thirsty, and she had no wish to spend time with this odious man, but he had been at the farm on Friday and might know something valuable. ‘Lovely, thanks.’
The dog still twirling at her feet, Holly bent to read one of the posters, noting with her senses the pervasive feeling of being up high, the whiff of loftiness and arrogance.
‘This,’ he said, returning with the drinks, ‘is my passion. Protecting our land from the fat cats at the Port who would turn our countryside into a car park.’
Holly took the cup from him, and without wishing to alert him to the real subjects she wanted to discuss, asked, ‘The disagreement over the farmland has been going on a while, hasn’t it?’
‘Since your lot abandoned the base, it’s been derelict. No one wants to move to the empty houses – it’s like a ghost town. No one knows what to do with it,’ he said, sitting on the sofa. There was no armchair and she imagined he had few guests. ‘Things have heated up recently with the Port Authority upping their offer, but they can’t do anything without the farmland surrounding the base. And Hector would rather cut off his arm than sell, so he’s always been our first line of defence.’