Part 13 (1/2)

Charlotte looked horrified. 'No! You tricked him, didn't you? You told him lies about me.'

'It wasn't like that. It was an innocent mistake. We told him you hadn't said anything to us. But it is true, isn't it? He is the father?'

Charlotte looked away, towards the vegetable patch in front of which the handyman, George, was on his hands and knees, painstakingly positioning bricks on a bed of sand to form a new path. After a moment she turned back to Kathy. Her lips were pouted like those of a stubborn child.

'No one must know, you understand?' she said fiercely.

'Sandy was a fool to tell you. I don't know what got into his stupid head.' She was trembling and clutching her hands across her front as if to hold herself physically together.

Then suddenly she froze, her eyes looking past Kathy to something behind her and low down. Kathy turned and made out Madelaine Verge's foot just visible through the bottom pane of the French window.

'Come on,' Charlotte muttered, and took off diagonally across the lawn, Kathy hurrying after. When they reached the line of apple trees Charlotte stopped and turned to look back. The gardener got stiffly to his feet and gave her a little wave, then wiped his brow with his handkerchief.

'He's making a path to the end of the vegetable patch, where he's going to build a sandpit for my kid. He's got it all worked out. Sometimes I wish he'd just b.l.o.o.d.y well p.i.s.s off and leave us alone. He's so bossy in his quiet way.'

Him and Gran both, Kathy thought. Between the two of them Charlotte was pretty well chaperoned.

'Can't you tell him to go away?'

'It's not as simple as that. He feels he owes it to Dad to do what he can for me. He was in prison . . .'

'Yes, your grandmother told me the story. Are you his only client?'

'He does Gran's and Luz's gardens, too. I don't know about anybody else. I should be grateful. I'm hopeless at practical stuff like that, and when the baby comes . . .' She took a deep breath. 'In a funny sort of way it's a relief to be able to talk about the baby with somebody who knows the truth. But please, for Christ's sake, you mustn't let it get out. If Gran heard she'd die. And if it got back to my dad . . . wherever he is.'

An interesting thought, Kathy reflected. Would he come back to punish his partner?

'How did it happen?'

'None of your business, is it?' the young woman said bitterly.

'No. It was only if you wanted to talk . . .'

They walked a few paces along the row of gnarled old pippins, then Charlotte stopped again. 'What did he tell you?'

'He said you were in Atlanta together and your dad had to fly home suddenly. He said the two of you decided to drive to Charleston, and stayed there overnight in a motel . . .'

'A crummy little place, but he thought it had a tacky charm. I wondered if he just wanted to make sure we wouldn't b.u.mp into anyone he knew.'

'Did he rape you, Charlotte?

Colour rose up her pale throat. She clenched her jaw. 'It wasn't like that. I suppose I encouraged him.'

Why? Kathy wondered. It was hard to believe that Charlotte would find 'Uncle Sandy', the long-time family friend, physically attractive, though you could never tell.

Was she punis.h.i.+ng her father perhaps, for marrying a woman not much older than herself?

'After I split with my last boyfriend I decided I wanted a baby, but not a man to go with it. I thought he would do as well as anyone. Only, when it came to the point . . .'

'But he insisted.'

'Something like that. It was gross, if you want to know.

The first time he was so excited he came all over the front of me, before we'd managed to get undressed. After that I was so shocked I didn't argue. But it worked, didn't it?' She ran a hand across her belly. 'I got my baby.'

'And you told no one else but him?'

'No one.'

'Is it possible that he might have told someone?'

'It's not likely. When I told him he nearly had a fit.

He was petrified that Denise, his wife, might get wind of it.

He was so grateful when I said I didn't want anything from him that he actually wept.' She curled her lip with contempt.

'Why did you bother to tell him?'

'Just in case anything happened to me, and the baby needed someone to look out for it.'

'But surely your father . . . I mean this was before your father disappeared, wasn't it?'

Charlotte shrugged. 'Yes.'

'Just for the record, Charlotte, could you give me the dates this happened?' Kathy turned the pages of Clarke's statement to check what he had said.

'Is that what he said to you? Can I have a look?'

'Sorry, no.'

'It's not right, having my private life being photocopied and pa.s.sed around and I'm not allowed to read it. Anyway, I don't see why he'd lie. We went to Charleston on the sixteenth of February. That's when the baby was conceived, but I told the doctor it was the end of January, when I was still going out with my old boyfriend. That's where the birth date of the twentieth of October comes from, but the baby'll arrive a few weeks late, I dare say. Why, does it matter?' She suddenly glowered at Kathy. 'You think Dad will try to make contact when the baby arrives, don't you?

That's what you're really interested in. You made that perfectly plain the last time.'

'I'm sorry, I know you're in an impossible position in all this. But if he does make contact . . .'

'I won't tell you!'

Kathy nodded. 'I understand.'

As they walked slowly back towards the house Kathy said, 'Sandy mentioned that, on the night before Miki was murdered, he felt that she and your dad were going through some kind of crisis. Were you aware of anything like that?'

She said nothing at first, then spoke softly, as if the handyman or her grandmother might overhear. 'Yes. I don't mean to say he'd kill her, but I thought things were coming to a head between them. It had got so she didn't even pretend to be civil to me, and I could see how it hurt him.

But if it had come to anything physical, she'd have been the first to go for a knife.'