‘Every couple on earth argues, Diana,’ said Sylvia. ‘It’s silly dwelling on things like that.’
The trouble was, Diana couldn’t do anything else, turning over every row and disagreement: had that been what had made him so unhappy? Had he really been so dissatisfied? She thought of how she and Julian had moved here four years ago, after the scandal. Diana had always associated moving house with moving on. They had decamped from Sheffield to Devon after her parents’ divorce; from Devon to London after her unexpected pregnancy. It was her own version of wiping the slate clean, except with removal vans and storage boxes. They had bought Somerfold hoping to make a fresh start, hoping to rebuild the trust in their marriage. Hoping to start a family. And actually, the row room hadn’t been used very much; they’d both made an effort to get along better, and eventually, day by day, their so-called ‘perfect marriage’ had clicked back on track. Or had it?
‘I wish we could have a row right now,’ she whispered, feeling the tears well up. ‘I’d give anything to hear his voice. But it’s just one of those things that’s never going to happen again. I’ll never see his face, hear his laugh, feel him next to me in bed . . .’
Her words started to falter. All the emotions that she’d been holding in were finally spilling over the dam.
‘Why?’ she said, her voice swallowed up into a sob.
Sylvia sat down next to her and held her tight as Diana’s tears soaked into the soft crêpe of her mother’s top. Somewhere inside, Diana felt some small relief that she was finally crying. She knew from the death of her father ten years earlier that grief was unique and it never happened the way you thought it should. Back then, she had been unable to stop crying for days, whilst her sister Rachel, who so often wore her heart on her sleeve, had been like stone.
There was a quiet knock at the door. ‘Mr Denver and Elizabeth have arrived,’ called Mrs Bills from outside.
Diana grabbed a handful of tissues from the bedside table, bl
ew her nose and wiped the tears away from her face. She glanced at her reflection – not good. Her skin was so pale, no one could miss her reddened eyes. Well, they’ll just have to lump it, she thought wearily, standing and allowing her mother to lead her from the room.
Ralph and Elizabeth Denver were standing in Somerfold’s wide entrance hall as she descended the staircase. Ralph moved towards her, his limp more prominent than she remembered, the lines on his face deep. Once such a vital man, Julian’s father had been one of the UK’s richest and most dynamic businessmen, until he had been partially paralysed by a stroke two years ago, forcing him to scale back his duties at the Denver Group and allow Julian to take over as CEO. Diana had not seen him for months. Under pressure from his wife Barbara, they now lived between their estate in Barbados and a villa in Provence. ‘You deserve a rest, Ralph,’ Barbara would say. ‘Julian can handle everything.’ Diana wondered if she remembered those words now.
‘How are you, my dear?’ asked Ralph, looking into Diana’s eyes. It was easy to forget, wrapped up in her own grief and confusion as she was, that Ralph was Julian’s father and had to be suffering deeply. And yet he had managed to attend the inquest . . .
‘Bearing up,’ she replied. She forced a smile across at Elizabeth, who nodded in acknowledgement.
‘That’s good to hear.’ Ralph squeezed her arm affectionately. Diana had always liked Julian’s father. He was powerful and, by reputation, ruthless in business – Diana supposed you didn’t get to build up and run the Denver Group without some steel in your soul – but he had always been polite and welcoming to her, which she could not say for everyone. Elizabeth, for one. Julian’s sister had always given the impression that she regarded Diana as an interloper and a gold-digger only interested in the family’s money.
‘It’s a difficult time for everyone,’ said Elizabeth, her expression still. The Denvers were not exactly old aristocratic money, but in three generations they had transformed themselves from successful soap-makers to a global conglomerate, and Elizabeth was every inch the rich heiress. Tall, elegant, clever, she was just as likely to be found giving her views to the Economist magazine as she was to be seen on the party pages of Tatler. She had grown up within the corridors of power and expected things to go her way; and they usually did. She was also very much an eldest child. She was a year older than Julian, and had almost a decade on Adam, the youngest Denver child, which Diana thought had always given her a quiet, controlling dominance in the family. Even Julian had been reluctant to take her on when she had a bee in her bonnet.
‘Shall we go through?’ said Sylvia, taking charge, leading them into the drawing room and calling for Mrs Bills to bring through the coffee and madeleines.
‘So how was it?’ prompted Diana anxiously. ‘The inquest, I mean?’
‘Busy,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Busy?’ She looked at her sister-in-law and wondered how she could be so cool and in control.
‘An awful lot of media interest, unfortunately,’ said Elizabeth, folding her arms across her body. ‘I’m going to have to get the communications team to work a little harder to contain it. It’s very . . . unhelpful.’
Diana saw Ralph flash a look at his daughter, and Elizabeth shrugged.
‘Well it’s not helpful. Not good for the family, for the company. At least the police say the death is not suspicious. Which is the main thing.’
‘Not suspicious?’ said Diana with surprise. ‘What’s not suspicious about the death of a man who was talking about climbing Everest just a few hours before he killed himself? Don’t they think that’s worth considering?’
‘Diana, please, don’t do this to yourself,’ said Ralph gently. ‘I know it’s hard to understand, we’re all struggling with it, but it won’t do you any good to keep torturing yourself.’
‘But I can’t stop thinking about it,’ she said, sitting forward. ‘I just can’t understand it. Life was good. Julian was happy. And the business? Business is good, isn’t it?’
She looked directly at Elizabeth, who was on the senior management team of the Denver Group.
‘Yes, it is. But no one knows what’s going on in someone’s head. Who can say what was upsetting Jules? There were the pregnancies, for example.’
Diana noted how careful Elizabeth was to avoid the words ‘miscarriages’ and ‘stillbirth’. No one wanted to be reminded of more death.
Even so, she knew her sister-in-law had a point. Two miscarriages in eighteen months had been hard enough, but then to follow that with the horror of the stillbirth . . . their shared joy of carrying Arthur to twenty-four weeks only to discover that his heart had stopped beating. Diana had been forced to give birth to him and then bury his tiny body, and it had almost destroyed her. A life snatched away before it had lived. And yet through it all, Julian had been her rock, holding her hand, smoothing her hair, telling her it would be all right. He had seemed strong, so strong. Had that all been an act? Had it hurt him as much as it had hurt her? Would she ever know?
‘Was there anything else?’ asked Sylvia, looking at Ralph. ‘Did the coroner say anything?’
‘Apparently the post-mortem examination showed no signs of a third-party involvement,’ said the old man carefully.