“Just unhappy,” said Francesca with a sigh. “The more difficult things became with Morgan, the more time she spent with her old University friends, and that only made things worse. Morgan blamed them for everything, including her emotional problems. He said they encouraged her fantasy about being related to Rupert Brooke —”
“Related to him?” Gemma said in surprise. “I knew she was a little obsessive about him, but—”
“By some coincidence her parents had the same names as Rupert’s parents, Mary and William. Lydia’s father was an orphan, and he himself was killed in the war, just days before Lydia was born. So she grew up knowing very little about her father’s people, and she concocted this great fantasy that her father had been Brooke’s illegitimate child, and she his granddaughter.” Francesca made a face. “It all seems a bit pathetic, looking back on it, and I wish now that I’d had more compassion.”
“Could there possibly have been any truth to it?” Gemma asked. She was aware, after even the briefest of introductions to Brooke, what allure the idea might have had to a lonely and literary teenager.
“I don’t suppose it’s likely,” said Francesca. “Brooke’s life is fairly well documented, although it’s true that little of the material would have been available to Lydia at that time. If she’d known about his relationship with Noel Olivier, I imagine little Noel would have done quite well for the part of fantasy grandmother.”
“It is odd,” said Gemma, thinking of the photos of Noel Olivier she’d seen in the book Hazel had given her last night, and of the snapshots of Lydia that had been among Vic’s papers. “You could find a resemblance between them, if you were looking for it.”
“Then it’s just as well Lydia didn’t know to look. She’d carried things too far as it was. She saw herself as the chosen successor to carry on Rupert’s Neo-Pagan revival—you know, all the dancing naked in the woods at midnight stuff—the cult of perpetual youth.” Francesca smiled. “Of course, if he’d lived he’d have outgrown all that, seen it for the nonsense it was, but he hadn’t the chance.”
“But Lydia outgrew it eventually?”
“I don’t know.” Francesca reached for her mug, the coffee surely now grown cold, and sank back against the cushions. “Perhaps she considered forty-seven the beginning of middle age. One’s idea of it does tend to recede as one gets older.”
Gemma remembered the strength of Vic’s certainty that Lydia had not committed suicide. “Vic—Dr. McClellan —thought it possible that Lydia may have come to happiness later in life, or at least contentment of a sort.”
“Happy when she wasn’t mad, like Virginia Woolf?” Francesca said. “I’d like to think so. I never wished her ill.”
“You said she was kind to you, in the beginning. What about later, when she knew about you and Morgan?”
“He kept it from her as long as he could. For her sake, not his. But Cambridge is a small place, and a few months after they’d separated we ran into her in the market one day.” Francesca rubbed her palms against the knees of her jeans. “She was civil, but you could tell she couldn’t bear it. That was one of the worst days of my life.”
“Worse than the day you heard she’d slit her wrists?” said Gemma, remembering what Kincaid had told her about Lydia’s first suicide attempt.
“Yes,” Francesca said without hesitation. Then she added musingly, “It’s very odd, but that ax had been poised over our heads for so long that it was almost a relief when it fell. It seemed the worst had happened and not been as bad as we’d feared.”
“And when she died, five years ago?”
Francesca stared at the window overlooking the front garden and absently pinched a fold of fabric between her fingers. “I don’t know. We were shocked at first, I suppose, and after that we felt a sort of release. I thought he could heal then, let it go.” She seemed to bring her gaze back to Gemma with an effort, and in the strong north light the lines of weariness in her pleasant face were deeply etched. “Then we learned she’d left him the house.”
“Why
“I think she meant it as an act of reconciliation,” said Francesca slowly. “A closing of the books.”
“And Morgan?”
Francesca met her eyes reluctantly. “Morgan saw it as a deliberate attempt at torture. To reach out for him from beyond the grave. It’s got all twisted inside him over the years—his guilt and his love for her. Morgan thought he could anchor her, but he wasn’t strong enough, and he’s never forgiven himself.”
“And now you try to anchor Morgan?” guessed Gemma.
“Oh.” Francesca’s eyes widened with surprise. “I suppose it might seem that way. But it’s more of a balancing act, most of the time.”
“Surely an uneven one because of Lydia?”
“Not really,” said Francesca with a certainty Gemma hadn’t expected. “Morgan loves me, probably more than he ever imagined he would. He says the peace and security I provide make life bearable for him. And he gives me such—”
A door slammed in the back of the house. A man’s voice called, “Fran! Whose car’s in the drive?”
Francesca frowned at Gemma and gave a sharp shake of her head. “Let me handle this,” she mouthed as the footsteps came down the hall.
Tensing instinctively, Gemma sat forwards and gathered her handbag a bit closer to her body.
“Hullo, darling.” Francesca smiled at her husband as he entered the room. “This is Gemma James. She’s come about the studio.”
Gemma stopped gaping at Morgan Ashby long enough to stammer a greeting and shake the hand he held out to her. She didn’t remember seeing a photo of him among Vic’s papers, and certainly nothing else had prepared her. Even scowling suspiciously at her, the man was a stunner, drop-dead good-looking with a presence Heathcliff might have envied. Tall and well built, he had a head of dark, wavy, unkempt hair, a long straight nose, and dark gray eyes
