The Way We Were_ A Novel - Marcia Willett [109]
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
2004
Later, Julia telephoned Aunt Em.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You'll never guess who's been here. Cat … Yes, amazing, isn't it? She said that Andy asked her to bring back the Merlin to check it out, though she was very careful to say that it was probably a copy, not the original … Honestly, it's true … No, it was still in the knitting bag hanging on the chair. I'm afraid to go out now in case she suspects something and is waiting somewhere but I'm probably being silly. She had a very good look round so I don't think she'll come back here. I shall phone Andy and put him off the trail … Yes. I know exactly what I'm going to do but I shall wait until tomorrow just in case Cat's still around … Well, if you could come up that would be great. It'll be a great comfort to have you here. Thanks, Aunt Em. I'll see you in the morning then.’
She put the telephone down. Quite suddenly, talking to Aunt Em, she'd known exactly what she would do with the Merlin. She would drive to Tintagel, to Tiggy's favourite place on the cliff, where they had scattered her ashes, and throw the little Merlin into the sea in full view of the entrance to Merlin's Cave. Tiggy had loved Glebe Cliff, looking away to The Mouls in the west and back towards Tintagel Island.
Standing in the kitchen with Frobisher asleep in his basket, Julia remembered those happy months with Tiggy and the children, and their fear of Angela and their obscure dislike of Cat. Her own mistrust of Angela had been fairly reasonable but the depth of their joint antipathy towards the child, despite her tiresome behaviour, had seemed unfair and they'd felt guilty.
‘I can't think why I felt like that, especially about a child. I just disliked them both on sight,’ Tiggy had said after that first meeting when she'd found Cat with the Merlin. Perhaps some sixth sense had warned her that, one day, Cat would be a threat to her own child.
Supposing the newspapers were to get hold of the full story? Supposing those au pairs from Tiggy's childhood should come forward to tell stories of abuse and ill treatment at the hands of their employer? Now she, Julia, and Aunt Em were the only people alive who knew that he'd tried to force himself on his own daughter but she could imagine very clearly Zack's shocked reaction to the whole truth and she felt duty-bound to protect him from the knowledge that his grandfather was something far worse than an art forger. She'd promised Tiggy. Julia shivered: she was deeply relieved that Pete was away; she knew that, in the light of this new evidence, his natural instinct would be to go to some higher authority, to explain the situation and hope that some kind of justice would prevail. Her own instinct, and Aunt Em's, was to act quickly and destroy the evidence. Zack's wellbeing was very much more important to them than abiding by a set of rules and regs that took no regard for personalities. Pete might be happy to stand by Tiggy's wishes that her father was denied access to her son but he'd have drawn the line at throwing priceless works of art over a cliff. Thank goodness that Pete eschewed any kind of communication with the world when he was sailing and probably hadn't seen a newspaper, let alone a television.
She wondered if even Pete would make the connection, though. After all, he'd never known Tiggy's father and she doubted if he'd recall his name; he might recognize the Merlin, of course, but it was difficult to guess just how well he'd remember it. It had probably been in the attic for the best part of twelve years and before that would have just been one item amongst the collection of Zack's toys: the Action Men, the James Bond cars, the aeroplanes. Even so, she was sad that she'd have to keep this secret from Pete. Julia tried to