had.
“Oh, don’t you know the circumstances of Robin’s disappearance? Sorry, there was so much media coverage down here at the time I thought everyone knew every last detail.”
“I wasn’t living in Fethering when it happened.”
“Ah. Well, I’ve told it so many times, another telling won’t hurt. I can almost do it without getting upset now, so I suppose that’s progress. Right…” And Miranda Browning reiterated the information that Carole and Jude had found on Wikipedia.
But she did add a few details that hadn’t been available online. Yes, she and Rory had gone to London to see a matinee of
“Joyce and I never really got on. If she’d been in charge when Robin was abducted I don’t think I’d ever have forgiven her. With Lionel, well, it was a terrible thing, but I liked him and he really adored Robin. No amount of blame from me could equal the way he blamed himself for what happened. I don’t think it’d be overstating it to say that his life really stopped at that moment. He’s been kind of going through the motions ever since.”
“And what about Joyce?”
Miranda Browning shrugged. “I don’t think it made a lot of difference to her. She only ever thinks about herself.”
Jude wondered whether this was just traditional daughter-in-law/mother-in-law antipathy. It didn’t fit in with what she had heard from Carole, though. Granted, her neighbour hadn’t spent much time with Joyce Oliver, but the comfortable woman she had spoken of seemed to be at odds with Miranda’s description.
“And it was on Smalting Beach that the abduction happened?”
“Well, on the prom. On June the fifteenth. Just a little over eight years ago. I don’t know why anniversaries have such significance, but I’m afraid they do.” For the first time the woman’s emotions threatened to overwhelm her. Her voice wobbled for a moment, but she was quick to reassert control. “Smalting Beach was quite crowded. And Robin loved boats of all kinds, windsurfers in particular. I can understand why Lionel let him stay outside the shop while he bought the ice cream. I’m sure I would have done the same.”
“But if the beach was crowded, why didn’t anyone witness the abduction?”
Jude’s massaging fingers felt the shaking of Miranda’s head. “I thought that was strange at first. But I think the fact that it was so crowded was the reason why nobody noticed. Robin was a very trusting little boy – too trusting probably. If a stranger had started talking to him, he wouldn’t have been shy about replying.”
“Presumably the police talked to your father-in-law about what had happened?”
“Endlessly. And he had to suffer the agony of being a suspect, all kinds of probing into his private life, having his car forensically examined. It was very tough for him. But he never changed a single detail of his story. Which shows it must have been true – not that Lionel is capable of lying, anyway. He’s a rather splendid man, I think – certainly given what he’s had to put up with from Joyce.”
Again the apparently disproportionate animus against her mother-in-law. Jude would have liked to have found out more about the reasons for that, but it wasn’t the moment to divert the course of Miranda’s narrative.
“No, that’s one of my great sadnesses about the whole thing – the estrangement from Lionel. There are terribly destructive aftershocks from an event like what happened to Robin.”
“Presumably it was that that broke up your marriage?”
“Yes. It had always been an on-off sort of relationship. But once he came back to me and we got married, I’d hoped…Then Robin disappeared. There were a lot of other things too. Small fault lines in the relationship that might, I suppose, in other circumstances, have been papered over. But with Robin gone they became huge great rifts. I don’t really blame Rory. I just can’t imagine any marriage surviving something like that. All the time you spend together there’s this one huge subject looming over you. The elephant in the room. If you talk about it, it’s painful. If you don’t talk about it, it’s equally painful. Eventually you just don’t want to be together, you don’t want to have the constant reminder of your shared pain.
“And, of course, had circumstances been different, I suppose we might have had another child. Been a proper little family. Still, it’s too late to think about that now.” She allowed herself a small sigh of frustration.
“I hope your second marriage has been happier.”
Jude’s words were greeted by a grunt of cynicism.
“No, that one didn’t last either. Less than a year. I was stupid to think it would work. I’m afraid I’m not marriage material at the moment. I’m still just an emotional minefield.”
There was a silence. Then Jude removed her hands from Miranda’s neck and shoulders. “Does that feel easier? Just move your head from side to side. See if it’s less tight.”
The client did as she was told. “Yes, it is much better.”
“That’s only alleviated the symptoms. Now I’ll see if I can heal what’s causing it.”
“Good luck,” said Miranda Browning, with a hint of bitterness. “Sadly I don’t think healing can change history.”
“No, I agree. But it maybe can change the way you react to history.”
“Diminish how much I blame myself?”
“Maybe a bit. If you turn over and lie on your front, Miranda.”
An expression of intense concentration came into Jude’s brown eyes as she ran her hands along the contours of the woman’s body. Once again there was no contact made, but the effort was more intense and exhausting than it had been for the actual massage.
“Did it actually help last time I did this?” Jude asked.
“Yes, it did for a few days. In fact I have felt generally better since then. That is…until recent events.”
“Yes, it must be ghastly having it all brought back to you.”
“Still, maybe I will be able to find a workable
“Presumably…” Jude chose her words with sensitivity “…now the police actually have a body, there’s a stronger chance they may be able to track down the perpetrator, you know, the person who actually abducted Robin?”
“Maybe. They certainly seem in no hurry to release the body. So presumably every kind of forensic test is being…” The images this prompted were too graphic for her to finish the sentence.
“Were there suspects at the time?”
“The usual ones. Everyone vaguely local who featured on the Sex Offenders Register. They couldn’t pin it on anyone, though. Lack of evidence.”
“Did you have any suspicions of anyone?”
Miranda Browning shook her head. “It never occurred to me for a moment that it might be anyone I had met.”
“No.” Jude didn’t raise the fact that in a lot of such cases the perpetrator was someone known to the family.
“Do you think it’ll be a comfort to you when the culprit is found?”
“I really don’t know. Whoever he is, I have hated him very deeply at times. At times I know I have wanted him dead. How I’ll react now, I’ve no idea. I didn’t know how I’d react to Robin’s body being found. And through all the pain I think there may eventually be a positive side to that. Maybe it’ll be the same when they arrest his murderer. As I say, at the moment I just don’t know.”
The healing session, as ever, left Jude wrung out like a damp rag. Miranda Browning was very grateful, saying that it had left her feeling more relaxed. But both women knew that the residue of pain inside her was something that could never be fully healed.
? Bones Under The Beach Hut ?
Twenty-Eight
“Which tennis player was in every final of the Men’s US Open Championship from 1982 to 1989?”
Carole and Jude looked at each other, both with wrinkled brows. “Was it Jimmy Connors?” Carole suggested without much conviction. “Or would he have been earlier than that?”
