‘No more than I,’ Gwyneth said. ‘Who could have done such a wicked thing?’
The two hugged, long and lingering, remembering a past life, their son who was no more.
‘We always knew, didn’t we?’ Charles said.
‘But murder?’
‘Some people embrace life, yet burn too soon. Angus was always to meet his fate, and it should have been on that mountain when Hampton fell.’
‘Do you know the story? That Mike believed Kate was having an affair with Angus when all along it was Justin Skinner.’
‘That snake,’ Charles replied. ‘What did she see in him?’
‘Life.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Mike Hampton was Angus’s friend, a great mountaineer, a lousy human being.’
‘The same as me, is that what you’re saying?’
Charles Simmons had been an unfaithful philanderer. A man who saw no wrong in what he did, giving scant regard to the woman he married, the child he had produced, preferring the company of others – a successful man, liked by many, charismatic, a charmer, his conscience unscathed.
‘It’s what men do,’ Charles had said when Gwyneth took him to task. It wasn’t, not as far as she was concerned. Then, to rub salt into the wound, three weeks after she had left for Scotland, a phone call from one of her so-called friends saying that she was moving in with him.
Gwyneth reflected that Angus, removed from his father’s wayward influence, had grown up to be a better person, a girlfriend at school, a few other relationships and then Maddox Timberley, a woman she liked.
It had been Angus’s twentieth birthday, a small affair at a pub. Gwyneth had arrived with an older sister of hers, a matronly woman, given to church work and singing the praise of the Lord, the pub anathema to her. Still, she had relented and come, only drinking orange juice, looking with disdain at her sister quaffing champagne.
Gwyneth’s lapse was due to Angus’s friend, a long-haired blond boy of nineteen, their hands touching under the table.
She had suspected that her son found attraction in either sex, noncommittal in her distaste. After all, she was a libertarian, believing in the individual’s right to follow whatever course they chose in life as long as no other person was offended or hurt. However, it upset her to see Angus with another male, realising that her values, open and free with others, didn’t embrace her son, a young man who had pursued manly activities all of his short life, not men, and not in that pub, and not in front of her sister.
‘A lousy human being? No, you were never that,’ Gwyneth said. ‘Frustrating, a bad liar, an even worse husband, but you did your duty, made sure I was secure and that our son was educated, a good grounding at school.’
‘Could we?’ Charles asked.
‘Get together again? An interesting thought. Not that I’m averse, but no, not now, not at our time of life, and not with our son dead, his murderer still out there.’
‘But we know who it is?’
‘Do we? I’ve thought about it, the reaction when Angus won that award. Justin Skinner thought it should have been him, and Mike Hampton was seething.’
‘He always seethed, nothing unusual there.’
‘It was around the time Skinner started messing around with Kate, but with him, water runs off a duck’s back. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he blamed Angus, Kate going along with it.’
‘I never liked her, a look about her,’ Charles said. Even though the relationship between him and his wife had ended a long time ago, he had to admit that it was good to see her, to talk to each other the way they had when they were young: the plans they had, the number of children they wanted, where to live, where to love. And then he had fouled it up, all for a night of passion with a work colleague, a woman not worthy to stand in his wife’s shade.
The next day he returned, guilty as charged, feeling the sorrow within him, knowing that he had crossed the line from forgiven to condemned. And then, Gwyneth and their child at the railway station; a long and lingering kiss, like two lovers parting for a couple of days, but each knowing that it was forever. And here she was, talking to him again, the way it had once been, but not of plans for the future, of love, but murder and hatred and disloyal wives and false friends.
‘Why Kate married Mike, I’ll never know,’ Gwyneth said. ‘Sure, he was the hero type, but he was always grumpy. Not like Angus, but then we always suspected, even from a young age. Not that it mattered, not that much, but it seemed apparent that he would never marry, and then he met Maddox.’
‘Do you think he would have married her?’
‘He might have. Maddox was keen.’
‘Have you spoken to her?’ Charles asked.
‘Not since it happened. I want to see her, to say how sorry we are.’
‘And to try to find out who killed Angus. It has to be either Justin or Mike.’
‘But how? Most of the time, Justin’s up in north Wales and Mike’s hardly agile. Anyway, Mike’s angry, not violent.’
‘He was supposedly in Patagonia.’
‘Angus said he was,’ Gwyneth said, an emotion sweeping over her, a possible doubt.’
‘Are you sure that Angus told you the truth?’
‘I have to,’ Gwyneth said as she put her arms around Charles. Whatever the truth, she needed someone to be with her. ‘I’ll stay here with you if that’s all right.’
‘That’s fine. Welcome home,’ Charles said.
***
Emulating the phoenix, a legendary bird rising from its funeral pyre, renewed and youthful, Tricia Warburton’s resurrection was no less dramatic.
It was seven o’clock in the evening, and for Isaac an early night away from the office, a promise to Jenny to spend time with the baby,
