Chapter 30

30

When he walks into the hospital ward and sees them – Helena in the bed and Sebastian at her side, holding one of her hands in his – Becker feels as though he has travelled to an alternative dimension. In this new reality, everything is just as it should be: beautiful, blue-blooded Helena Fitzgerald is married to rich, handsome and aristocratic Sebastian Lennox; she spends her days and nights in the splendour of Fairburn House, not shacked up with the help in the cramped confines of the Gamekeeper's Lodge. In this new reality, James Becker has not insinuated himself into a world in which he does not belong; he has not taken Helena from the life she deserved and broken Sebastian's heart into the bargain. He is alone and unloved, watching from the outside, nose pressed to the glass.

Just as he should be.

Becker feels cold, his insides contorted; it's as though a chasm has opened up beneath him into which he is tumbling. And it's his fault. For not being there when she needed him. For entertaining, even for a fraction of a second, the idea that he might choose Vanessa over Helena. It's his fault for not listening to that voice in his head, that wordless, soundless voice, the one that's been telling him something bad is going to happen.

Just as he is thinking this, Helena turns her head towards him and her eyes meet his. ‘Beck!' she calls out, voice breaking, taking her hand from Sebastian's and reaching out to Becker. He's at her side in a second, kissing her. ‘Thank God you're here,' she says. ‘I thought you'd never get here.' He pulls her tighter to him as a sob builds in his chest. ‘Don't cry, you big girl,' Helena whispers into his hair, ‘I'm OK. We're OK. We're fine.'

When finally they break apart, Becker realizes that they're alone. Sebastian has gone. And everything is fine. Helena is fine, the baby is fine. It was just normal bleeding. All right, a bit more than normal, but nothing is wrong. They can't find anything wrong.

‘Which is it?' Becker snarls at the doctor. ‘Nothing's wrong or you can't find anything wrong?'

‘Leave him alone, Beck,' Helena says. ‘I'm fine .' She looks fine: a little pale, though, and a little pained, with spots of colour high in her cheeks, her eyes dark and wet and her lips bitten. She clings to Becker's hand so tightly that his fingers begin to ache.

Five days have passed since Becker left Eris, and Helena has been back home for three. Becker has taken the week off work and the pair of them have retreated into their very own lockdown: they have barely ventured from the house except for short, leisurely walks; they have lit fires and read books, watched television, made love carefully . They have eaten well, eschewed alcohol. Becker has not had a cigarette in seventy-two hours.

And he is climbing the walls.

This morning, a technician at a private laboratory in London broke open the glass case of Division II and detached the bone from the gold filament holding it in place. Becker was not there to see it. He chose to stay at Fairburn with his wife, and so has had to wait, pacing the narrow hallway between sitting room and kitchen, until the technician rings to say that, yes, a visual inspection confirmed the bone is human and that they will now extract a small sample to send for testing. They will be able to determine roughly how old the bone is as well as the sex and age of the person it came from. They expect to have answers within a week, two at the most.

By mid-afternoon, when Becker has finished speaking to the technician, Sebastian and the curator at Tate Modern, Helena – who has spent much of the day on the sofa, trying to read – has had enough.

‘For the love of Christ, Beck, please go and watch them setting things on fire, you're driving me insane .' It's the fifth of November, Bonfire Night, there's a party at the main house for the neighbours and the estate workers and their kids.

‘Are you sure you'll be all right?'

Helena grimaces. ‘I'll be fine, but I can't vouch for your wellbeing if you keep bloody fidgeting and pacing and hovering over me. Go!'

He goes.

From the bridge, he can see a crowd gathering on the west side of the main house where the bonfire has been built; he can hear laughter and the shrieks of children tearing around the lawn. He can smoke, he realizes, because if he has one now, the smoke from the fire will cover the smell of cigarette.

He leans against the guardrail, looking over the edge. Even in the half-light he can see that the water is frozen solid. He takes a deep breath, feeling the scrape in his lungs, the twitch of a muscle in his chest; it's the feeling of fate, tempted. He pushes his hands into his pocket to feel for his cigarette papers, but his fingers come upon something else. The letter he took from Grace's kitchen. He'd forgotten all about it.

There is just about enough light left for him to read it.

February 2003

Dear Grace,

Sorry I have not replied to your last few letters, but between legal matters and the leaking roof, I've not had a lot of time to spare. I think the lawyers may finally have reached an agreement with Douglas – it will be a great relief to have that settled, it's been a strain and a distraction. Money will be even tighter, but I go nowhere these days, and I spend nothing, so I should be all right.

I had a message from Isobel – she is still very angry with me. Despite the letter I sent, she clings to the fiction I have offered no words of sympathy. She is in France now – apparently a man matching Julian's description was seen somewhere on the Riviera. Somehow I doubt she'd be following the lead up if the sighting had been in Riyadh or Rhyl. It is a waste of time, of course.

I have found a way to work. Being alone has helped. I am more creative when left to my own devices, I always have been. I can keep my own hours and not worry about anything or anyone else. I have not been painting much but I have started work on a new sculpture series – I call it ‘Division' – working with found objects as well as ceramics. It's a new direction and I think it has promise.

I don't know how to respond to your letter, only to say that I don't want you to come back to Eris. You know things you shouldn't. I'm not sure how to be around you again. I hope you understand what I mean.

We need to be free of each other now,

Love,

Vanessa

A gust of wind catches the paper, almost snatching it from Becker's fingers. His heart rate skitters upward. A cheer goes up behind him, he hears the crackle and pop of sap in the wood as the fire takes hold, the children's excitable voices reaching fever pitch.

We need to be free of each other – almost exactly the same words Vanessa used in her note to Julian Chapman. She writes about freedom all the time in the diaries; it comes up in interviews, too. It's the thing she seemed to cherish above everything else, above love or friendship or companionship even. How far would she have gone, Becker wonders, to set herself free? What does she mean when she writes that Grace knows things that she shouldn't ? What does Grace know? The feeling of dread Becker thought he'd left at the hospital returns; it wraps itself around his shoulders like a cloak.

On the far side of the bonfire, a group of children clamours excitedly around Sebastian who appears to be doling out treats. The lord of the manor, Becker thinks, dispensing largesse. When Sebastian spots him, he waves and smiles so warmly Becker is skewered on his own lack of charity. ‘There you are! How are you? How's our girl?'

Becker feels his smile falter for a fraction of a second. ‘She's good,' he says. ‘She's much better. She's thrown me out of the house, actually – apparently I've been hovering.'

‘Ah well, I might be able to help with that – I've a mission that might take you away for a day or two. Can you get out to Eris again within the next week?'

Becker pulls a face. ‘I'd really rather not go away right now. Why do you want me to go back?'

Sebastian is about to reply when an elderly man approaches, a child at his side. It's Graham Bryant, the gamekeeper. The patsy , as Becker has come to think of him. Bryant greets Sebastian, introduces his grandson, asks after Emmeline. ‘I expect she'll be out shortly,' Sebastian beams at him, ruffling the child's hair. ‘Don't go anywhere, I know she'll want to say hello.'

The smile slides from his face as he turns back to Becker. ‘I'm concerned,' he says, ‘about what happens if it turns out there is a DNA match between the bone and Julian Chapman. We're not going to be able to control the story, because the first person to be notified will be Chapman's sister. She might not go to the press—'

‘But given what I've read about Isobel,' Becker interrupts, ‘there's a good chance she will.'

Sebastian nods. ‘And then there will be a frenzy of press interest in Eris – the island, the house, the place the bone was found …'

Becker sees where he is going. ‘Grace will panic,' he says. Who knows what she might do? She might even start to get rid of anything she thinks is private, or sensitive.

Sebastian puts a friendly arm around his shoulder. ‘I know you don't want to leave Hels right now, I understand that. But she's doing better – you said so yourself. And I can keep an eye on her.'

Becker leaves Sebastian at the bonfire. In his darkened office, he sits at his desk and composes a brief email to Grace, explaining why he left Eris in a hurry, and asking whether it will be all right if he comes to Eris this week to pick up the rest of the papers. Then he thinks better of it: better if he speaks to her on the phone, surely? Friendlier. He'll call her instead. He deletes the message, shuts his computer and leaves the room, noticing as he does a shaft of light spilling into the corridor from the open door to the Great Hall.

Except for the spotlights on the paintings, the gallery is dark. Becker enters, walking slowly into the gloom, coming to a halt in front of Black I – Darkness Causes Us Not Discomfort , Vanessa's first painting of the sea. Its seaweed greens and oily splashes of crimson absorb the glare from the spotlight, making the image on the canvas seem to roil and churn.

‘Ghastly, isn't it?'

Becker jumps. Somehow, Emmeline has snuck up on him. In the dim light she looks small and pale, as insubstantial as a ghost.

‘If it were up to me,' she says, peering up at the painting, ‘I'd take it outside and put it on the fire with the guy.

‘Just ghastly ,' Emmeline repeats, turning her back on the canvas and on him. She begins to walk slowly around the gallery in an anticlockwise direction, towards the north wall where more of the seascapes hang. ‘You know she only left them to him to spite me,' she says.

Becker laughs and she turns sharply. She's wearing flats, that's what it is! That's why she's so small and silent – she's dispensed with her usual heels. Still feeling that fall, perhaps? He's on the point of feeling sorry for her when she fixes him with a look of such intense loathing that he can almost feel himself wither.

‘Is that really what you believe?' he manages to stammer. ‘That when Vanessa was dying, she was thinking of you ?'

He follows her past Monotone , a moonlit view of the sands, past Wreck and Arrival and To Me She is a Wolf , all the way around the gallery until finally she comes to a halt in front of Hope is Violent .

‘ This one I like,' Emmeline says. ‘The brushwork, it's different, stilted somehow. You can almost feel her pain. And the sky, that dark line on the horizon, the colour of blood. You can tell she was looking at the end.' She smiles coldly at him. ‘That nonsense Douglas talked when he was asked about her legacy, do you remember? All that tripe about intimacy, about their connection …' She laughs bitterly. ‘He could be such a fool.'

Emmeline walks on. A cheer goes up outside; they're burning the guy. The light from the flames dances on the windowpanes, making their shadows – his and Emmeline's – leap disturbingly across the walls.

They have almost finished their tour of the gallery when Emmeline pauses again, in front of Black V – The Wood for the Trees . She sucks her teeth, tutting disapprovingly.

‘Sometimes you have to take a step back,' Becker says, ‘to tell what you're really looking at. If you stand right here, you see, you can tell that—'

‘Do you honestly think I need lessons in art appreciation, Mr Becker?' Emmeline cuts in. ‘From you ?' Her lip curls. ‘I doubt you have much to teach me about anything, most of all about recognizing what's going on right in front of me.'

This time, when she walks on, Becker does not follow but lets her go on ahead. He stands there in the middle of the hall, allowing himself a moment to imagine that the little stooped figure in front of him is just some benign old lady taking a stroll around an art gallery, that she's taken a wrong turn in search of the still lifes.

It takes an age for Emmeline to reach the end of the hall. When she does, she turns around. ‘I need you to do something for me,' she calls out.

Now lit from one side, her face is a death mask. Suffused with dread, but determined not to show weakness, Becker walks briskly to join her and asks as politely as he can, ‘What's that, Lady Emmeline?'

‘I need you to settle this thing with that caretaker person on Eris Island and, that done, I want you to hand in your resignation, take your wife and leave.'

Becker shakes his head. ‘I'm not going to do that, you know I'm not going to do that.'

She sighs wearily, raising her eyes to the ceiling while rubbing a gnarled forefinger across her bloodless lips. ‘Mr Becker, this is in your interest as well as mine. Without you, the Chapman expert, Sebastian will lose interest in all this ,' she waves her hand vaguely in the air, ‘and move on to something else. He just needs a push. He has such trouble moving on, don't you agree?'

‘No, I don't actually,' Becker replies stiffly.

‘Well.' Emmeline's smile fails to reach her eyes. ‘We were just talking about how sometimes you need to take a step back to realize what it is you're looking at, were we not? I'm sure that if you did that, if you took a step back, you would see—'

‘Look.' Becker cuts her off and her mouth drops open – she's so astonished at his effrontery he almost wants to laugh. ‘I understand,' he says instead, ‘why Vanessa Chapman is not your favourite artist, but I'm not about to resign just because you ask me to—'

‘Then don't ,' she says sharply. ‘Resign because it's in your best interest. Resign because every time you leave this estate, my son goes running over to see your wife. Doesn't it bother you? Your car is barely out of the gates and he's over there, checking on her. Tending to her every need.' Emmeline's laugh is low and rasping. ‘Does that not give you pause, Mr Becker? After all, you know what kind of woman she is. You know just how easily she can be—'

‘I do know what kind of woman Helena is,' Becker interrupts again, ‘and the thing I think you fail to understand is that so does Sebastian . Your son might still love her, but he also accepts her choice, because he respects her. And he respects me, too, so while he might enjoy spending time with Hels – someone he's known since he was a teenager, someone he was friends with long before they went out – I don't think that's something I need to worry about. Because, as you said, I know her.'

Emmeline laughs again, an unforgiving sound. ‘You're a fool,' she says. ‘You're just like Douglas was, you're blind.'

Becker's had enough. He starts walking towards the door, glancing up at Black II as he goes, the light catching the smile at its centre, that flash of sharp white teeth sending a prickle all the way up his spine.

‘Eight months now, isn't she?' Emmeline calls after him. ‘So that would make it … what? Late February? Early March? The end of that first lockdown, around the time you went to Hamburg to look at those Hockneys. Everyone was so keyed up, weren't they, after being cooped up for so long, everyone just looking for some sort of release …'

Becker wheels around. He thinks for a moment that he will strike her, for a second he can see it in his mind's eye, this small, frail, elderly woman cowering beneath his fist. He takes a deep breath. ‘I ought to feel sorry for you,' he says. ‘I really should. You're old and bitter and I imagine you're very lonely, you might even be grieving. I ought to feel sorry for you, but I don't, because I can't help thinking that you made your bed. And you can carry on, if you like, dripping poison, casting your petty insinuations, but the fact is this: I'll outlast you. When you're gone, I'll still be here, and so will Helena, and so will our child.'

As he walks away, he glances once more at Hope is Violent and he thinks of his mother, so tiny in her bed at the hospice, looking at the little landscape on the wall, and he can't help himself, he turns back to look at Emmeline. She hasn't moved, she's standing there, hunched and miserable, her hands at her sides, clenched tightly into fists. ‘My mother left behind a son who loved her,' he says quietly. ‘What do you imagine your legacy will be?' She says nothing, but as she turns away from him he thinks, or perhaps imagines, that he can see her hands start to shake.