‘But how many of those admirers bought her two plane tickets – from his personal account – in the weeks just before her death?’
‘Have you sent Maddie’s picture over to Greg Willets yet? Asked him if it’s the same girl he saw Julian with in Washington?’
‘I emailed it over to him yesterday. He hasn’t got back to me yet.’
‘Then it’s a good thing your uncle Ross is here, isn’t it?’ he grinned, pulling out the notebook he had been writing in at Pamela’s. ‘The names and addresses of three of Madison’s closest friends. Let’s track them down in the morning, because mothers don’t always know best.’
21
Diana had known it might come. She had read about widows so paralysed by grief that they found it impossible to move or function, and in the two weeks since Julian’s death she had felt some small comfort that this terrible fate had escaped her. But after her argument with Rachel, she had gone to her bedroom, closed the curtains, climbed into bed and not got out of it for thirty-six hours. For some of that time she had slept, but for most of it she had lain in the darkness, unable to move or speak. Grief had consumed her, seeped into every molecule of her being like a creeping fog, suffocated her with its loneliness. The worst was not over, she realised. It was just beginning. This was her new life, and it was oppressive, empty and cold. There was nowhere to run from it, nowhere to hide. She couldn’t pack a bag and move somewhere different, because wherever she went, however hot and beautiful that place might be, it would follow and haunt her.
Diana wasn’t sure that she wanted to die, but she wasn’t sure if she could carry on living, and for now, she was happy to stay in this bedroom limbo, between a crisp sheet and a warm duvet, waiting for something, someone to tell her what direction to take when she stepped out of bed once more. She lay on her back and exhaled slowly, listening to her breath escape her body. She knew that she was no longer just mourning her husband; she was mourning the contented life she had once had, or thought she had had. It was the lies that were the most difficult thing to accept. There was the lie about her sister. Julian had insisted that he hated Rachel after her newspaper had exposed his affair. He hated her, but it was only because he had tried to sleep with her.
Madison Kopek was even more painful to think about. Diana had known her marriage wasn’t perfect, but she had thought that Julian had loved her and Charlie deeply. The truth, as Rachel had so painfully revealed to her, was that he had clearly loved someone else more. Madison Kopek, with her youth and her American cheerleader beauty. The realisation that Julian had killed himself two days after Madison had died had been almost too much to take on board. The understanding that the pain of losing Madison had been greater than Julian’s own love of life, his love of his family. He must have adored her so much that life wasn’t worth living without her, and that made Diana feel worthless and wretched.
She heard the door open and managed to turn her head to the side to see who it was. Sylvia walked into Somerfold’s master bedroom, whipped back the curtains, flooding the room with sunlight, and with equal ruthlessness pulled back the duvet, making Diana curl up into a ball.
‘Mum, what are you doing?’ she croaked, raising one hand to shield her eyes from the light.
‘Getting you moving, darling,’ said her mother breezily. ‘I thought we’d walk down to the village.’
‘But I need to sleep,’ she said, struggling to get the words out.
‘And you have slept. Since Saturday. It is now three o’clock on Monday afternoon, and it’s time to get up.’
‘I don’t want to go out. I can’t.’
But her mother wasn’t listening. She had gone to the en suite, turned on the shower and returned to throw Diana’s bathrobe on the bed.
‘I expect you downstairs in fifteen minutes,’ she said, in a voice that not even Diana’s grief-stricken body dared defy.
Boughton was a thirty-minute stroll away from the house – most of it taken up by the long, winding gravel drive that snaked through Somerfold’s grounds. Diana and Sylvia walked slowly. It had been hard not to think of Rachel as they had gone past the Lake House, but Sylvia hadn’t mentioned her, instead chatting quite distractingly about a new opera that was coming to the ROH, a news item she had read on the Daily Mail online, an oil painting she was working on. Diana hadn’t spoken, only listened. Her interest in anything seemed to have been sapped out of her, but she was grateful that her mother seemed to intuitively understand that all she wanted was background noise to stop her sinking into the quicksand of her own emotions.
The village always looked loveliest in the sun. It was one of the most picturesque places in England, with rows of red-brick cottages, an old church, a duck pond and a collection of lively pubs that competed for the local custom with a series of quiz nights, ale festivals and curry evenings.
‘So where are we going?’ Diana asked, watching the sun break through the overhanging trees.
‘To the café by the green.’
Diana knew the one. She used to pop in occasionally when she first moved here, for bread and pastries for Charlie and Julian, and had been charmed by the couple who owned it, but her visits had dwindled, and anyway, Mrs Bills had reported that the place had gone downhill.
‘I’m not hungry,’ she said honestly.
She hadn’t felt hungry since Julian died. Her clothes were falling off her, her wedding ring felt looser, and she didn’t need to step on the scales to know that she could do with a thick wedge of chocolate cake to fatten her up.
‘Well, we’re not exactly going there to eat,’ said Sylvia, quickening her pace.
‘What are we going there for?’ Diana asked anxiously.
‘There’s a meeting about the village fair. I thought it might be fun if we got involved.’
Diana turned on her heel and held up her hand.
‘No. Absolutely not,’ she said, feeling her pulse flutter in panic. ‘I can’t. I’m not up to it.’
Sylvia put a firm hand on her shoulder.
‘Of course you can do it. It’s good for you. It will help distract you.’