There was a pile of blankets behind her. She scooped them up, and shut the door behind her. She didn’t want to dwell on what she had just read. In fact she wanted to forget it.
37
Somerfold was suspiciously quiet when Diana returned home from the airport. No music blared from the guest bedroom, there was no sound of heavy footsteps running around upstairs, no loud voice booming into a mobile phone, nothing in fact to suggest that her sister had moved in from the Lake House.
‘Where’s Rachel?’ asked Diana when Mrs Bills came into the kitchen from her living quarters across the courtyard.
‘Is she supposed to be here?’ said Sylvia, throwing the keys to the Range Rover into the pot by the Aga.
‘I invited her to move up here.’
‘And she turned you down?’
‘It seems so,’ said Diana, ignoring her mother’s very deliberate tsk sound.
‘She has a friend staying with her,’ said Mrs Bills, who had been waiting for her moment to interrupt the conversation. ‘I don’t think she wanted to intrude.’
‘Which friend?’ asked Sylvia briskly. ‘Is this the diving boy you said was coming over?’
‘He’s called Liam and he’s her business partner,’ replied Diana patiently.
‘And he’s very handsome,’ said Mrs Bills, looking unusually hot under the collar. ‘I took some sandwiches down there and he was getting changed. Broad shoulders, swimmer’s physique,’ she added, trying to make her interest in him appear suddenly anatomical.
‘Why don’t we go down and see them?’ said Sylvia.
‘That depends if you’re in a hostile mood or not.’
Her mother started to stutter some platitudes, but Diana wasn’t listening. She was too busy looking around the kitchen, glancing into the rooms beyond it. She didn’t like to admit to herself what she was hoping to see – a huge bouquet of flowers from Adam. A welcome home. A declaration . . .
Of course there was nothing. Just a slightly wilting arrangement of peonies she recognised from before she went to New York. She tried to mask her disappointment. She’d had Adam down as a flower person, but then again, these were different, difficult circumstances.
‘So he’s not her boyfriend, then?’
Sylvia and Diana were sheltering under a golfing umbrella as they walked to the Lake House.
‘Just friends, apparently.’
‘Aren’t they always?’ said Sylvia with undisguised disapproval.
‘Mum, I told you. We’ve all got to make an effort with each other.’
‘I still don’t understand why she is here. I mean, I am glad she has finally paid her respects to Julian, and she does seem genuinely upset about what has happened, but why has she been to America, to Jamaica . . . It’s almost as if she wants to go on holiday at your expense.’
‘Rachel is only doing things I have asked her to. She’s being supportive.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Sylvia, sounding unconvinced, as they reached the door of the Lake House.
‘Just spend a bit of time with her, Mum. And then make your mind up.’
Rachel hadn’t seen them approach, and for a moment Diana stood outside the window, watching her sister and her friend. They were playing some sort of board game at the table at the window overlooking the lake. They were both laughing, and she could tell by the way they looked at each other that there was a special connection between them.
Sylvia knocked, and Rachel turned with a look of surprise and then anxious pleasure.
‘This is Liam, everyone. Liam, you’ve met Diana before, and this is my mum.’
‘You have a tattoo,’ exclaimed Sylvia.
‘Me?’ asked Rachel, glancing quickly at Liam.