The Turtle Run (42 page)

Becky made sure her passport and money were in her rucksack, closed her suitcase and hauled it downstairs.

Francesca was drinking a glass of water in the hall. ‘Wow, I made that just ten minutes,' she said with a note of admiration. ‘And you've got your passport?'

Becky nodded.

Clara looked as though she could cry. ‘I'm just sorry that Matthew isn't here to say goodbye.'

‘Please say goodbye to him from me,' said Becky. ‘And say goodbye to Cook and Alex too. I won't disturb him now.'

Clara gave her a big hug. ‘I will see you soon, Becky, I'm sure. You've got to come straight back. As soon as your mother's better.'

Francesca started twirling her keys around. ‘You need to check in a good couple of hours before the flight and it could take us two hours with the traffic –'

‘I'm ready.'

Becky lugged her suitcase down the veranda stairs, hoisted it into the back of Francesca's jeep and got in. Francesca drove them off without any ceremony. Becky hadn't wanted to look back but changed her mind; her quarrel was not with poor Clara. The older lady was standing at the bottom of the veranda steps, waving.

They were soon on the now-familiar main road to Bridgetown. Becky knew Francesca's assistance was not entirely altruistic; in fact it was downright self-serving. Even so she was grateful for Francesca's deviousness. Apart from getting her away from Matthew so promptly it also meant Becky was under no obligation to talk to the driver – and the driver certainly didn't want to talk to her.

So that was it – after two months of her planned three-month stay she was going home to England. She would think about how to explain her early return to her mother and Joe on the plane. For now she wanted to remember as much of Barbados as she could.

The fields blurred by as Francesca's car chewed up the road in front and spat it out behind. Snapshots of the last few weeks streamed through Becky's mind: gardening with Clara; little Zena playing with a Christmas worm; researching the Redlegs; finding out about Matthew's ancestors; the dreadful night of the attack on Richard; daily life at Copper Mill; finding out about her father's other woman.

And finding his grave. Becky groaned. She needed the photographs from Matthew's phone to show Joe. That meant she would have to contact him. She never wanted to speak to Matthew again but given Clara's technophobia she'd almost certainly have to. Would he be difficult or would she get a glimpse of the other Matthew: the one who had comforted her in Southbury Cemetery and shared the turtle run with her?

Amazing to think their time on the beach was only last night. It seemed like a lifetime ago when they were two different people. Becky set her jaw, determined not to cry. In the scale of things a broken romance was hardly a big deal: baby turtles had to face the gauntlet of predators on their hike to the sea and her father's ‘wife' was clearly still alone.

And of course she was doing something the Monmouth rebels sent to Barbados could only dream of: she was going back to England.

Almost before she realised it they were at the airport.

‘Shall I come in and make sure you're OK?' asked Francesca, revving the engine slightly.

‘No need.' Becky got out and hefted her suitcase from the back. ‘Thanks very much, Francesca.'

She headed for the terminal building without a backward glance.

Chapter Twenty-five

Naturally, Becky's mother and Joe were curious as to why she'd come home early but she was initially saved from having to give a full explanation because they were both out at work when she arrived back in Brentwood. Feeling incredibly tired after travelling for ten hours, she took her case and rucksack upstairs, lay down and fell into a deep sleep. She was woken by the sound of the phone ringing and staggered groggily downstairs to answer it.

It was Clara wanting to know that Becky had landed safely. Her voice full of concern Clara asked after Becky's mother. Becky said she was doing a bit better, relieved her mother was not at home for it would have been somewhat difficult to talk about her imaginary illness with her in the background, calling ‘Who's that?'

“We all miss you,” Clara said, wishing the whole family well and hanging up.

All except Matthew, no doubt, thought Becky. She definitely could not face speaking to him and had thought of a way around it on the journey home. She rang Alex's mobile, explaining she needed some photos off Matthew's phone and giving Alex her email ID.

‘Do you want Matthew's phone number?' asked Alex, confused.

‘Already got it, thanks,' Becky said.

Still sounding confused, Alex said he'd organise it and within the hour Becky received the photographs in the graveyard sent from Alex's email ID.

At that moment she heard her mother coming through the front door. Joe was not far behind. They sat in the front room with a cup of tea and Becky tried to answer their questions about her unexpected return truthfully, while deliberately giving them both the wrong impression. She told them Clara's pleurisy had meant little progress had been made with the book. She told them she had worked in the garden instead. She told Joe she had taken photos of their father's grave, which she'd show him later and, when their mother was in the kitchen cooking dinner, she brought out the model car. Joe was beyond delighted – he was ecstatic.

Of course he wanted to know how Becky had come by this present so she told him about their Dad's ‘other partner' but decided not to mention the bigamous marriage. Joe took the news of their father's relationship more easily than Becky had originally.

To his insistent questions as to what Matthew was like she just said that he worked very hard. But her answers didn't really explain why – with her three-month term not up and no book written – she was back. Her mother said she thought Becky had been sacked because she wasn't up to the work, while Joe asked (more accurately) if there had been ‘man trouble'. Becky didn't deny or confirm either of these suspicions but suspected both her mother and her brother thought their own assumptions were correct.

After dinner she went through the photos from Southbury Cemetery with Joe on the computer. Even their mother wandered in to look at a couple of the pictures of the gravestone, though without comment.

For the next few nights Becky dreamt of walking down the mahogany-lined lane towards the Darnley house but woke up before she could turn into the yard. It was a few seconds before she remembered she was back in England, in her old home, in her old bed. Sometimes she felt like a creature undergoing some sort of reverse metamorphosis, like a butterfly being squeezed into a confined chrysalis with only life as a caterpillar to look forward to. At other times she felt like a fraudulent imitation of herself, an insubstantial being who had strained conversations with her mother and Joe while her real self was sitting on a veranda, thousands of miles away.

After Copper Mill, Becky found their house and estate stifling. She took to having long, solitary walks in Brentwood's vast Weald and tried to figure out what she could do next. She had to find a way of shedding her recent past and starting anew. No more Matthew, no more Monmouth rebels. It was time to let go.

Towards the end of her first week back Matthew telephoned. He had barely said a word before Becky cut him short: ‘there's nothing I want to say to you'.

She put down the phone with firm resolution and then spent the rest of the day wondering what he would have said if she'd let him. She had a pretty good idea: he probably knew by now it hadn't been her who had told the Carringtons what he was bidding and he would have apologised for leaping to conclusions and assuming she was the weak link. But whatever he'd have said it wouldn't have been enough: the hurt ran like a fault line through her whole being.

She tried to adapt to her old Essex life and studied the magazine racks in the newsagents to bring herself up to date on which publications were still in circulation. She wrote off to three editors. She held out little hope of success but at least one of them had accepted two of her articles in the past, which she'd offered for no payment when she was trying to build up a CV.

Despite her resolution not to think about the Redleg project Becky frequently compromised herself. She was like a gambling addict going back for one last fix – chasing the ‘big winner' – each time telling herself it would be the last time but then urging herself to try once more to find a link she'd missed previously. She studied the online version of the book she had originally looked at in the Somerset Heritage Centre; there was nothing she had overlooked in the details of the Monmouth rebels transported, other than that Randolph Randerwick was described as a ‘plow man'. Becky hadn't missed any references to Sarah Thomas – she simply wasn't listed.

Next she searched for references to Sarah Thomas generally, wading through the many Facebook hits that came up for a multitude of contemporary women with the same name. But of Sarah Thomas in the seventeenth century there was nothing.

It wasn't until she decided to look for the complete list of owners of Copper Mill, starting, she anticipated, with William Darnley, that her addiction was finally cured. She remembered that the house had been called ‘Copper Hall' rather than ‘Copper Mill' in the past so scoured online book archives for plantation houses in Barbados with the name ‘Copper'.

She soon found what she wasn't looking for.

The current Darnley residence – Copper Mill in the parish of St Lucy – hadn't been built until 1820. How could that be when William Darnley had taken on his indentured workers in January 1686? Unless he had lived in a completely different house. With a sinking feeling she googled Copper Hall and found a reference in an old book on Barbados buildings. Not only was Copper Hall a completely separate building, it had been built in St Philip – way down south. The plantation had been sold off for development in the early twentieth century and Copper Hall – by then a ruin – had been demolished to make way for a hotel complex.

The realisation shook her in more ways than one. It wasn't just that it exposed her lack of attention to detail in assuming there had been a single plantation house involved. She realised now how gripped she'd been with the fantasy of continuity: the idea of Pitchers working on the same land for three hundred years and the notion Matthew had bought the same plantation house his ancestors could only dream of entering. Worse she had presented this fantasy to Clara and Matthew as history and they had accepted it.

But worst of all was the realisation that while she had been trying to solve this historical mystery she had felt alive in a way she had never felt before. Professionalism had gone out of the window while she built a fantasy world around Copper Mill, seeing only the facts that would support such a fantasy while ignoring the evidence that would have contradicted it.

It was in this mood of heightened sensation – in this fantasy – that she had got together with Matthew and it had seemed amazing. Now, when she looked back, she realised she couldn't trust her judgement on a single experience she'd had in Barbados: none of it had been real. Well, maybe meeting Sairah Thomson but if there wasn't the physical evidence of Joe's model green car even that would have seemed more like a dream.

She was feeling at rock bottom when Matthew rang again. ‘This time please don't hang up on me.'

‘Like you hung up on me from the hospital?'

A sigh came down the phone. ‘I'm sorry. I could not have got it more wrong. Tell me how your mother is.'

Becky decided that her mother couldn't stay ill forever. ‘She's much better.'

‘Does she still need you to be there?'

Becky wondered if Matthew could hear the clattering in the kitchen which signified that her mother – having eschewed offers of assistance – was cooking a meal with a martyr's zeal.

‘Probably not.'

‘So when do you think you'll be able to come back here?

‘I'm not coming back, Matthew.'

‘You're not?' He sounded surprised. ‘What am I going to tell my mother? What about her book?'

‘There isn't going to be a book. There isn't enough material.' Especially in light of what she'd just discovered. ‘There's nothing for me in Barbados.'

‘That's not true,' Matthew said. ‘I will do whatever it takes to get you back here. First-class flight and if you don't think the book will work – I don't know – you could run eco-tours round the island, anything you want.'

Becky had to smile at the idea of her running eco-tours. ‘Thanks. I can tell you're serious and that does sound good.'

‘But?'

‘But it wouldn't work. I had a great time but I realise now I was living a bit of a fantasy. I don't think much of it was real.'

‘Not real?'

‘I can't really explain but let's leave it there. Thanks for trying. But really, it's my problem, not yours.'

She put the phone down.

Chapter Twenty-six

Becky had been back for over a month. It was unusually cold for early October and if people had hoped for an Indian Summer it hadn't left the shores of India. Becky had had no more than a polite acknowledgement from one editor that they would ‘keep her on their books but had no suitable position for her at the moment'; the others hadn't even bothered replying.

With time on her hands Becky decided to repaint the front room. Her mother had bemoaned the faded colour for many years – not in the hope of Becky or Joe doing anything about it – just because she seemed to think moaning was a valid exercise in itself. At the local DIY outlet Becky selected the colour that appeared to match what her mother had frequently described as her first choice and lugged two huge cans back in a biting wind. She really must learn to drive before she frittered away the money in her account.