“When?” Fearing the answer now.
“Friday. The night she… the night she died.” This wasn’t a revelation, she already suspected but she was still annoyed. He often spent the night in the studio after a modelling session. Those sessions were prearranged. Agreed. Scheduled so the children were not at risk of stumbling in on something as William once had when he was all but three years old. Holly wasn’t supposed to be there that night.
“You asked her to come?” She failed to hold her accusatory tone in check. She was angry, hurt.
“No! Of course not!” he protested, turning away from her and setting off again. She hesitated before joining him. You slept with her, didn’t you? She could cope with his desires, with his needs, his demands for freedom provided they were in the manner they’d agreed. Not like this. She was too young for this sort of relationship, that was obvious, but you couldn’t see past your own lust. “She arrived around eleven o’clock. You fell asleep putting the kids to bed.” As I usually do, she thought. Here it comes, the act of betrayal.
“What did she want?” The question was framed innocently but she was terrified of the possible answer.
“She wanted to leave.”
“And?” she said, narrowing her eyes and placing a restraining hand on Ken’s forearm. He stopped, looking to the sand at their feet.
“She wanted me to go with her.”
That was it! The proof of what she had thought all along. “Ken! You’re a fool. How could you let her get so close to you?” She felt the rage building. This little girl certainly wasn’t the first to become infatuated with him but she thought he should have learned by now, particularly after the last time.
“I know, I know!” he replied, casting his eyes to the heavens. Knowing him as she did, she sensed there was more to it. He wanted to go. Ken must have read her expression and immediately went on the defensive. “You have to understand; it’s been difficult recently—”
“Oh, I understand Kenneth. I’ve been living it too.”
“The idea of running, leaving it all behind was… appealing. She was… different.”
“She was more than half your age! Do you think you could keep up for more than a couple of weeks?” She was cutting, trying her best to hurt him like he was hurting her.
“I said no!” he protested. “When it came down to it, I couldn’t countenance leaving you and the kids for—”
“A child?”
“For someone I thought I was in love with.”
“You thought? You’re a weak, pathetic man, Ken,” she barked at him, taking pleasure in the way her words stung him. “Why didn’t you go? The last thing you seem to want is to be with us anyway.”
“I want that to change. Those girls… they don’t mean anything, they never have. I believed she was different, Holly. For a time, I felt towards her as I did when we first met. She was a breath of fresh air to my stale life, something to provide new inspiration and reinvigorate me. I was wrong.”
Jane resumed walking, this time it was Ken who had to catch up. She was done tailing around after him. She would need to fix this situation. Somehow. “Come on Ken,” she called over her shoulder, “I know there’s more.”
“She was pregnant.”
Jane stopped in her tracks, turning on him so abruptly he nearly walked into her. Ken brought himself upright just as she drew her hand across his face. He didn’t react.
Placing the sandwich down on the blanket, Jane wiped her hands with a tissue. She’d barely taken a bite, just nibbled at the edge. Her appetite was absent. The tide was coming back in. The roar of the breakers crashing against the beach carried to them. They sat amongst the dunes. They could have been anywhere, alone on a deserted island. Ken sat alongside her, his legs brought up, hugging his knees.
“She thought you would go with her, didn’t she?” she asked without looking at him, instead maintaining her focus on the sea.
“Probably.”
“What was she like?” Jane had a strange need to know about the dead girl, to understand why her husband seemed so enthralled by her.
“Captivating. She could make me feel alive.” That description stung but she hid her reaction as Ken continued on unabated. “She would talk about leaving sometimes. Others, about attending art school. There’s no way her parents would have allowed it and she knew that.”
Is that why she wanted you around? I get what you saw in her – youth, passion, sexual appetite, but what did you have for her in exchange?
“She wanted me to open doors, I think,” Ken said with regret. Meeting her eye, it was as if he could read her mind. “I couldn’t obviously, not now anyway.”
That brought her mind back to their most pressing problem. He had lied about how well he knew Holly. The police would investigate and learn what made them move here in the first place. And now this. She could cope. Every problem had a solution and she would find it. She was back in control now. “What time did Holly leave you that night? She did leave, didn’t she?” Jane asked the question without looking into her husband’s eyes. She would know if he was lying. She was too frightened to see.
“Of course, she did! What do you take me for?” Ken sounded hurt, desperate to be believed. “I don’t know… perhaps a bit after midnight. Maybe later. I didn’t really look. She was angry, upset.”
Holly was there for over an hour. A request for him to leave wouldn’t have taken that long and she didn’t want to know the details of what went on prior to that part of the conversation. She could imagine. I don’t
