Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [215]
When the door was closed upon her, Bernard took a linen handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped his glasses with it, then he used it against his face. Manette could see that his hands were shaking. Everything was on the line for him, not the least a marriage of more than forty years.
He finally looked from Manette to Freddie and back to Manette. He said, “I’m so sorry, my dear. There are so many things…”
“I’m not sure they matter any longer.” How odd, Manette thought. She’d waited most of her life for this moment: with herself in a superior position and Bernard made vulnerable, with Bernard looking at her and actually seeing her, not as a daughter, not as a substitute for the kind of son he’d wished for, but as a person in her own right, fully capable of anything he himself could do. She no longer knew why all of that had been so important to her. She only knew that she didn’t feel what she’d expected to feel with his recognition of her washing over her at last.
Bernard nodded. He said, “Freddie…”
Freddie said, “If I’d been told, I would have probably stopped it all from happening. But then, I don’t know, do I? I’m not sure.”
“You’re a good, honest man, Fred. Stay that way.” Bernard excused himself and went to the stairs. He climbed them heavily and Manette and Freddie listened to his footfalls. Eventually, they faded. A door closed quietly somewhere above them.
“We should probably leave, old girl,” Freddie said to Manette. “If you’re able, that is.”
He came to her and she allowed him to help her to her feet, not because she needed it but because it felt good to feel someone solid at her side. They left the great hall and went outdoors. It wasn’t until they were in the car and heading along the drive in the direction of the gate that she began to weep. She tried to do this silently, but Freddie glanced in her direction. He pulled the car over at once and stopped. Gently, he took her into his arms.
He said, “It’s a tough one. Seeing one’s parents like that. Knowing how one has demolished the other. I expect your mother knew something wasn’t quite right, but perhaps it was easier just to ignore it. That’s the way these things are sometimes.”
She cried against his shoulder but she shook her head.
He said, “What? Well, of course, your sister’s mad as a rabid dog, but there’s nothing much new in that, is there? I do wonder, though, how you managed to emerge so… well, so normal, Manette. It’s rather miraculous when you think about it.”
At this, she wept harder. It was all too late: what she now knew, what she should have seen, and what she finally understood.
LAKE WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA
Lynley found Valerie Fairclough walking along one of the paths already laid out in the unfinished children’s garden. When he joined her, she began to speak as if they had been interrupted in the midst of a conversation about this very spot. She pointed out where work on the wrecked ship had already begun and told him about the ropes, swings, and sand that would be a feature of it. She indicated the spot designated for monkey bars and a roundabout. She took him past the smaller children’s section, where horses, kangaroos, and large frogs already stood on their heavy spring bases, waiting for riders who would laugh and crow with the simple fun of bouncing upon them. There would be a fort as well, she said, because boys loved forts to play soldiers in, didn’t they? And for the girls there would be a playhouse stocked with everything in miniature that one would find in a real house because wasn’t the truth of the matter— and all sexism aside— that girls liked to play inside houses and make up games in which they were married with children and a husband who came home at night and presided over dinner?
She laughed mirthlessly when she said that last bit. Then she went on to say that the children’s area would be, in short, every child’s dream place to play.
Lynley thought it all quite odd.