‘You should talk about it. Is there anyone else you can share this with? Your sister, perhaps.’
‘Maybe,’ she said softly. It had been hard to tell Rachel any of this when she had probed. She hated admitting her weaknesses.
‘I always find it’s useful to surround yourself with people who make you feel better about yourself,’ continued Olga, as if she had detected an undercurrent of difficulty between the siblings. ‘Spend time with people you like. Think about who makes you smile.’
‘My son,’ said Diana. ‘But he’s at boarding school. I think that’s the best place for him right now.’
‘Couldn’t you arrange for a day out of school? Might be good for both of you.’
Diana nodded. It wasn’t a bad idea at all.
‘Is there anyone else?’
A face came into her head, so vividly that it was impossible to push it out.
Adam Denver.
‘Well, there is someone, a . . . a friend,’ she said vaguely. She wasn’t about to share everything with this woman, and she wasn’t at all sure how a psychologist would interpret her desire to see her brother-in-law. But then why not? Adam understood better than anyone what she was going through, and more importantly, he was fun. She could do with a bit of that right now.
‘Great, then go and call your friend as soon as you leave my office. Make a date. Take a drive. Fly a kite. Smile.’
Diana nodded, avoiding the doctor’s eye. She felt sure that she had blushed. ‘Thank you, Dr Shapiro,’ she said, standing up and picking up her clutch bag. ‘I’ll do that. I really will.’
13
Rachel stood in the kitchen at the Notting Hill house and closed her eyes. It was late morning and sunlight flooded into the room, the trees in the garden casting sinewy shapes on the marble worktops, but Rachel tried to push all that from her mind and picture the house as it was on the night of the party. She imagined laughter and the clinking of expensive crystal. She imagined beautiful women in designer dresses and the alpha males in Mad Men suits, all of them feeling pleased with themselves. All except one. Julian Denver had known that under that glittering surface something was wrong, very, very wrong. But what was it?
She opened her eyes as the kettle huffed and clicked off. God, she needed coffee. There was a shiny Gaggia machine standing on the side, but she didn’t have time for that, so she made a cup of double-strong instant and walked towards the stairs.
Rachel had been in Diana’s London house since eight that morning. She could have slept here, of course, but she wouldn’t have felt comfortable. She wasn’t squeamish – she couldn’t have been a tabloid reporter if she had been – but even so, she didn’t want to spend the night with Julian’s ghost. Instead she had checked into a hotel in the West End, taking the tube to Notting Hill after breakfast. She was glad she had. Even now, with the sun slanting across the stairs, the house felt cold, empty and depressing.
Stop being such a wuss, she scolded herself as she walked into the master suite. She had started her search of the house on the ground floor, methodically working her way through the kitchen, two reception rooms, dining room and study, checking drawers, bookshelves, even down the backs of chairs. It hadn’t taken that long. It was not a cluttered house and it was easy to spot that this was no longer Diana and Julian’s main residence. It had a masculine vibe, compared to the floral whimsy of Somerfold; Diana had confessed that it had been mainly Julian’s London crash pad, underlined by the fact that it had a full-spec media room and an extensive wine cellar. Rachel didn’t know a great deal about fine wine, but she felt sure there was enough good stuff down there to buy most of Ko Tao. The reality was she had come here looking for a reason why a man would take his own life, but all she had found was a thousand reasons why he shouldn’t.
She stopped at the doorway of Julian and Diana’s bedroom, hesitating before she went inside. As a journalist, she had spent most of her professional life snooping round, sniffing for stories, doorstepping widows, peeping over walls. But somehow this was different; it felt like she was trespassing, somehow stepping into her sister’s private world.
She walked softly over to a glass dressing table by the window. It was hard not to compare it with the rickety old desk from Diana’s youth. That had been laden with magazines and cheap lipsticks. This was a far more pared-down and luxurious space. There were a few items of make-up – a blusher, a Chanel mascara – lying on one side, and a pair of Julian’s cufflinks in a little glass tray, just sitting there waiting to be put on. Had he decided not to wear that particular shirt? Would it have made a difference? Or maybe it was all meaningless, just fading footprints on the beach.
She felt her mouth curl down with sadness.
‘You need to toughen up, my girl,’ she told herself. Perhaps three years swimming with the fishes had softened her more than she knew.
She put down her coffee, tiny brown spots of liquid spilling on to the glass surface. She rubbed at them w
ith the edge of her T-shirt, knowing that her ferocious scrubbing was just an outlet for her frustration.
She had interviewed Julian’s secretary, searched both the houses, and what had she come up with? No insights into how they lived, no telling details about Julian’s state of mind, no evidence of his supposed troubles. But what had she expected? Prescriptions for antidepressants? An address book packed with secret assignations?
Still, there had to be something. Had to be. She took a deep breath. She did not want to let Diana down. Not again.
‘What do you see?’ she muttered, sweeping her eyes around.
She walked over to the small dressing room at the side of the bedroom, predictably dominated by Julian’s clothes, and ran her hand along the line of suits. No surprises here either: sober, well-cut, almost certainly Savile Row, no bright colours or checks. His shoes were polished, with little wear to the leather; a row of identical white shirts were ironed and ready to go. It was bland, colourless and unexciting.
Still, Rachel had worked on the tabloids long enough to know that what happened under the surface of supposedly straightforward lives was often very strange indeed. Husbands with double lives as transvestites, students who were covert hookers, the cuddly TV presenter who was a wife-beater, the very macho movie star who liked effeminate boys. But their secrets always had a way of leaking out, because however careful they were, they always left clues: receipts, voicemails, letters. Someone, somewhere had always seen something. But what?
She went back into the bedroom and opened the bedside cabinet. There was a literary paperback – unread, no bookmark – some lip balm and a box of condoms still in their cellophane. Rachel made a mental note about that one, not relishing the thought of asking Diana detailed questions about her sex life. Unopened condoms might not mean very much at all, or they could be significant. Were Julian and Diana having sex? Presumably – Diana had struggled with conception, but that suggested they were trying. In which case, why the condoms? Rachel blew out her cheeks. Was that all she had? A jangling sense that something was wrong about an unopened packet of condoms? It was pretty thin.
She was so lost in thought that she didn’t hear the front door open, and the footsteps were almost at the top of the stairs before she looked up.