A Traitor to Memory (122 page)

Jill said, “Surely someone would have seen something.”

“They were interviewing people when the ambulance fetched me.” He spied the Humber where Jill had left it and lurched towards it in silence. Jill followed him, saying, “Richard, are you telling me everything?”

He didn't reply until they were at the car. Then he said, “They think it was deliberate, Jill,” and then, “Where's Gideon? He needs to be warned.”

Jill hardly knew what she was doing as she opened the car door, flipped the seat forward, and deposited Richard's packages in the back. Jill saw her lover safely into his seat and then joined him behind the wheel of the car. She said, “What do you mean, deliberate?” and she looked straight ahead at the worm tracks that the rain was making on her windscreen and she tried to hide her fear.

He made no reply. She turned to him. She said, “Richard, what do you mean by deliberate? Is this connected to—” and then she saw that he was holding in his lap the frame she'd found beneath her seat.

He said, “Where did you get this?”

She told him and added, “But I can't understand … Where did it come from? Who is she? I don't know her. I don't recognise … And surely she can't be …” Jill hesitated, not wanting to say it.

Richard did so for her. “This is Sonia. My daughter.”

And Jill felt a ring of ice take a sudden position round her heart. In the half light coming from the hospital entrance, she reached for the picture and tilted it towards her. In it, a child—blonde as her brother had been in childhood—held a stuffed panda up to her cheek. She laughed at the camera as if she hadn't a care in the world. Which she probably hadn't known that she did have, Jill thought as she looked at the picture again.

She said, “Richard, you never mentioned that Sonia … Why has
no one ever
told
me …? Richard. Why didn't you tell me your daughter was Down's Syndrome?”

He looked at her then. “I don't talk about Sonia,” he said evenly. “I never talk about Sonia. You know that.”

“But I needed to know. I ought to have known. I
deserved
to know.”

“You sound like Gideon.”

“What's Gideon to do with …? Richard, why haven't you spoken to me about her before? And what's this picture doing in my car?” The stresses of the evening—the conversation with her mother, the phone call from the hospital, the frantic drive—all of it descended upon Jill at once. “Are you trying to frighten me?” she cried. “Are you hoping that if I see what happened to Sonia, I'll agree to have Catherine in hospital and not at my mother's? Is that what you're doing? Is that what this is all about?”

Richard tossed the picture into the back seat, where it landed on one of the packages. He said, “Don't be absurd. Gideon wants a picture of her—God only knows why—and I dug that one out to have it reframed. It needs to be, as you probably saw. The frame's banged up and the glass … You've seen for yourself. That's it, Jill. Nothing more than that.”

“But why didn't you tell me? Don't you see the risk we were running? If she was Down's Syndrome because of something genetic … We could have gone to a doctor. We could have had blood tests or something.
Something
. Whatever they do. But instead you let me become pregnant and I never knew that there was a chance …”

“
I
knew,” he said. “There was no chance. I knew you'd have the amnio test. And once we were told Cara's fine, what would've been the point of upsetting you?”

“But when we decided to try for a baby, I had the right … Because if the tests had shown that something was wrong, I would have had to decide … Don't you see that I needed to know from the start? I needed to know the risk so that I'd have the time to think it through, in case I
had
to decide … Richard, I can't believe you kept this from me.”

He said, “Start the car, Jill. I want to go home.”

“You can't think I can dismiss this so easily.”

He sighed, raised his head towards the roof, and took a deep breath. He said, “Jill, I've been hit by a bus. The police think someone pushed me deliberately. That means someone intended me dead. Now,
I understand that you're upset. You argue that you've a right to be and I'll accept that for now. But if you'd look beyond your own concerns for one moment, you'll see that I need to get home. My face hurts, my ankle's throbbing, and my arm is swelling. We can thrash this out in the car and I can end up back in Casualty, asking to see a doctor, or we can go home and revisit this situation in the morning. Have it either way.”

Jill stared at him till he turned his head and met her gaze. She said, “Not telling me about her is tantamount to lying.”

She started the car before he could reply, putting it into gear with a jerk. He winced. “Had I known you'd react this way, I would have told you. Do you think I actually
want
anything to estrange us? Now? With the baby due any moment? Do you think I want that? For the love of God, we nearly lost each other tonight.”

Jill moved the car out into Grafton Way. She knew intuitively that something wasn't right, but what she couldn't intuit was whether that something was wrong within her or wrong within the man she loved.

Richard didn't speak till they'd crisscrossed over into Portland Place and headed through the rain in the direction of Cavendish Square. And then he said, “I must speak with Gideon as soon as possible. He could be in danger as well. If something happens to him … after everything else …”

The
as well
told Jill volumes. She said, “This
is
connected to what happened to Eugenie, isn't it?”

His silence comprised an eloquent response. Fear began to eat away at her again.

Too late Jill saw that the route she'd chosen was going to take them directly past Wigmore Hall. And the worst of it was that there was apparently a concert on this night, because a glut of taxis were crowding the street there, all of them jockeying to disgorge their passengers directly under the glass marquee. She saw Richard turn from the sight of it.

He said, “She's out of prison. And twelve weeks to the day that she got out of prison, Eugenie was murdered.”

“You think that German woman …? The woman who killed …?” And then it was all back before her again, rendering any other discussion impossible: the image of that pitiable baby and the fact that her condition had been hidden, hidden from Jill Foster, who'd had a serious and vested interest in knowing all there was to know about Richard Davies and his fathering of children. She said, “Were you afraid to tell me? Is that it?”

“You knew Katja Wolff was out of prison. We even spoke of that with the detective the other day.”

“I'm not talking about Katja Wolff. I'm talking about … You know what I'm talking about.” She swung the car into Portman Square and from there dropped down and over to Park Lane, saying, “You were afraid that I wouldn't want to try for a baby if I knew. I'd have too many fears. You were afraid of that, so you didn't tell me because you didn't trust me.”

“How did you expect me to give you the information?” Richard asked. “Was I supposed to say, ‘Oh, by the way, my ex-wife gave birth to a handicapped child’? It wasn't relevant.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because we weren't trying for a baby, you and I. We were having sex. Good sex. The best. And we were in love. But we weren't—”

“I wasn't taking precautions. You knew that.”

“But what I didn't know was that you weren't aware that Sonia had been … My God, it was in all the papers when she died: the fact that she was drowned, that she was Down's Syndrome and that she was drowned. I never thought I
had
to mention it.”

“I
didn't
know it. She died over twenty years ago, Richard. I was sixteen years old. What sixteen-year-old do you know who reads the newspaper and remembers what she's read two decades later?”

“I'm not responsible for what you can and can't remember.”

“But you
are
responsible for making me aware of something that could affect my future and our baby's future.”

“You were going at it without precautions. I assumed you had your future planned out.”

“Are you telling me you think I
entrapped
you?” They'd reached the traffic lights at the end of Park Lane, and Jill pivoted awkwardly in her seat to face him. “Is that what you're saying? Are you telling me that I was so desperate to have you as a husband that I got myself pregnant to ensure you'd be willing to trot up to the altar? Well, it hasn't exactly worked out that way, has it? I've compromised right, left, and centre for you.” A taxi blared its horn behind her. Jill glanced in the rearview mirror first, then took note that the lights were now green. They edged their way round the Wellington Arch, and Jill was grateful for the size of the Humber that made her more than visible to the buses and more intimidating to the smaller cars.

“What I'm telling you,” Richard said steadily, “is that I don't want
to argue about this. It happened. I didn't tell you something I thought you knew. I may not have mentioned it, but I never tried to hide it.”

“How can you say that when you've not a single picture of her anywhere?”

“That's been for Gideon's sake. Do you think I wanted my son to spend his life looking at his murdered sister? How do you expect that would affect his music? When Sonia was killed, we all went through hell.
All
of us, Jill, including Gideon. We needed to forget, and removing all the pictures of her seemed one way to do it. Now, if you can't understand that or forgive it, if you wish to end our relationship because of it—” His voice quavered. He put his hand to his face, pulling on the skin along his jaw, savagely pulling it, saying nothing.

And neither did Jill for the remainder of the journey to Cornwall Gardens. She took the route along Kensington Gore. Seven minutes more and they were parking at a spot midway along the leaf-blown square.

In silence, Jill helped her lover from the car and reached into the back seat to collect the parcels. On the one hand, since they were for Catherine, it made more sense to leave them where they were. On the other hand, since everything was suddenly so unsettled about the future of Catherine's parents, it seemed to send a subtle but unmistakable message to take them inside to Richard's flat. Jill scooped them up. She also scooped up the picture that had been the cause of their argument.

Richard said, “Here. Let me take something,” and offered his good hand.

She said, “I can manage.”

“Jill …”

“I can manage.” She walked to Braemar Mansions, the decrepit building yet another reminder of how she was compromising with her fiancé. Who would want to live in such a place? she wondered. Who would be willing to purchase a flat in a building that was falling apart at the seams? If she and Richard waited to sell his flat before they tried to sell her own, they'd be forever denied their house, their garden, and their place to be a family with Catherine. Which was, perhaps, what he had wanted all along.

He never remarried, she told herself. Twenty years since his divorce—sixteen? eighteen? oh, it didn't even
matter
—and he'd never taken another woman into his life. And now, on this day, on this night during which he himself could have died, he thought of her. Of what
had happened to her and why and what he must now do to safeguard …
whom
? Not Jill Foster, not his pregnant companion, not their unborn child, but his son. Gideon. His son. His
bloody
son.

Richard came up behind her as she mounted the steps to the building. He reached round her and unlocked the door, pushing it open so that she could enter the unlit hall with its cracking tiles on the floor and its wallpaper sagging from its mildewed walls. It seemed a further affront that there was no lift and only a partial curve in the staircase to serve as a landing should someone wish to rest while ascending. But Jill didn't want to rest. She climbed to the first floor and let her lover struggle up behind her.

He was breathing heavily when he reached the top. She would have felt repentant to have left him fumbling upwards with only the rickety railing to assist in a climb made awkward by the plaster on his leg—but she thought the lesson was a good one for him.

“My building has a lift,” she said. “People want lifts, you know, when they're looking for flats. And how much do you actually expect to get for this place, compared with what we could get for mine? We could move house, then. We could
have
a house. And then you'd have the time to paint, redecorate, whatever it might take to make this place sellable.”

“I'm exhausted,” he said. “I can't continue like this.” He shouldered past her and limped to the door of his flat.

She said, “That's convenient, isn't it?” as they went inside and Richard closed the door behind them. The lights were on. Richard frowned at this. He walked to the window and peered out. “You never continue what you want to avoid.”

“That's not true. You're becoming unreasonable. You've had a fright, we've both had a fright, and you're reacting to that. When you've had a chance to rest—”

“Don't tell me what to do!” Her voice rose shrilly. She knew at heart that Richard was right, that she was being unreasonable, but she couldn't stop. Somehow all the unspoken doubts she'd been harbouring for months were mingling with her unacknowledged fears. Everything was bubbling up inside her, like noxious gases looking for a fissure through which they could seep. “You've had your way. I've given it and given it. And now you're going to give me mine.”

He didn't move from the window. “Has all of this come from seeing that ancient picture?” he asked, and extended his hand to her. “Give it to me, then. I want to destroy it.”

“I thought you meant it for Gideon,” she cried.

“I did, but if it's going to cause this kind of trouble between us … Give it to me, Jill.”

“No. I'll give it to Gideon. Gideon's what's important, after all. How Gideon feels, what Gideon does, when Gideon plays his music. He's stood between us from the very first—my God, we even
met
because of Gideon—and I don't intend to displace him now. You want Gideon to have this picture, and he shall have it. Let's phone him at once and tell him we've got it.”