Nothing. Did he know I didn’t love him? No. Archie wasn’t the sort of man to know such a thing.
He turned and walked to his car, brim of his hat pointed towards the pavement. The thought of Agatha, dead somewhere, or injured and alone, was too much to bear. How lucky he’d felt, in the old days, when she turned her light on him. How long it had been since he’d felt lucky, rather than simply believing the world should belong to him, without ever requiring so much as a thank-you.
That night, home at Styles, Archie did something he had never done in all the seven years since she’d arrived. He put Teddy to bed.
‘What’s wrong, Father?’ It was more disruption than treat to have him sitting on her bed, wearing his shirtsleeves, eyes glassy with whisky and remorse. Peter nestled in beside her; the dog was always a comfort. She closed her hand into his wiry fur.
‘Nothing’s wrong, darling,’ Archie said, stroking her forehead with the particular fervour of a distant parent who may have lost everything but his child. ‘I just want to say goodnight to my little girl. Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘No.’ Teddy had her covers pulled just under her chin, blinking through the darkness, wishing he would go away and take the strangeness with him. A child does not like to feel responsible for an adult’s emotional state. If he hadn’t been so bleary, an uncomfortable volatility brewing, she might have asked him to read more Winnie the Pooh. Honoria had already finished it once but she wanted to start over and reading herself was a painstaking business.
‘Is Mother coming back?’
‘Of course she is,’ he said, too sharp. ‘Mother always comes back, doesn’t she?’
‘I meant tonight.’
‘Sorry. No. No, I don’t think tonight.’ There were no machinations to keep Teddy from knowing, the fuss kicked up around her was a search for her missing mother. Only straight denials of the truth. Not a ruse that could be maintained for long, when all of England was searching.
‘Well, then.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘Sleep well, Teddy.’
She closed her eyes tightly, pretending the kiss had put her straight to sleep.
For me the same day began far away from all that clamour. The previous night I had arrived at the Bellefort Hotel and Spa, low key and cosy, the perfect place for anyone who needed to lie low for a bit. The woman at the front desk – West Indian, from the look and sound of her – greeted me warmly.
‘I am Mrs Leech,’ she said, with her lovely Caribbean lilt. ‘You just be sure to let me know if there’s anything you need. Anything at all.’
She handed me a fountain pen to sign the registry. I paused for a moment. I’d made the reservation under the name Mrs O’Dea. It wouldn’t have been proper for a young unmarried woman to stay on her own at a hotel. Now I found myself adding another name. ‘Mrs Genevieve O’Dea,’ I wrote, a painful scrape forming in my throat. Genevieve was the name I’d given my lost child. Perhaps I ought to have written Genevieve Mahoney, if only to have seen it written one time.
‘Thank you, Mrs Leech,’ I said. ‘Would it be possible to take dinner in my room?’
‘Of course it would,’ she said. ‘I’ll send up a lovely tray for you.’
A woman who’d been approaching the stairs wearing a hotel dressing gown – likely just returning from a spa treatment – bustled over to the front desk. ‘Dinner in room!’ she said to Mrs Leech. ‘Why, that’s just the thing, isn’t it? We’ll do the same, if you please.’
‘Yes, Mrs Marston.’
The woman, Mrs Marston, turned to me. She was about Agatha’s age – perhaps a year or two older – with a round, jolly face. Roses in her cheeks. ‘We’re on our honeymoon, Mr Marston and I,’ she told me, looking right into my face without – I suspected – really registering me. ‘Have to keep our energy up, you know!’