The Lake House Read online

  Mr Llewellyn gathered his sketch block closer, considering Alice’s proposal before frowning slightly, “What about at the bonfire tonight?”

  “You’re coming?” This was a surprise. Mr Llewellyn was not a social gentleman and ordinarily went out of his way to avoid crowds—especially those crowds comprising people intent on meeting him. He adored Mother, but even she had never managed to entice him to attend Midsummer before. Her mother’s precious first edition of Eleanor’s Magic Doorway would be on display, as it always was, and people would be vying to meet its creator. They never tired of kneeling down by the hedge and hunting for the buried top of the old stone pillar. “Look, Simeon, I can see it! The brass ring from the map, just as it says in the book!” Little did they know that the tunnel had been sealed for years against the explorations of curious guests like them.

  Ordinarily Alice might have probed further, but a burst of male laughter from the other side of the hedge, followed by a comradely shout of, “It’ll keep, Adam—go with your dad and have some lunch, no need to lift them all at once!” jolted her back to her purpose. “Well, then,” she said, “tonight, yes. At the party.”

  “Shall we say half past eleven, beneath the arbour?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “It’s important, Alice.”

  “Half past eleven,” she repeated, a touch impatiently. “I’ll be there.”

  Still he didn’t leave but remained, seemingly glued to the spot, wearing that serious, melancholy expression and staring straight at her, almost as if he were trying to memorise her features.

  “Mr Llewellyn?”

  “Do you remember the time we took the boat out on Clemmie’s birthday?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it was a lovely day. A rare treat.” Alice made a point of gathering her basket from the fountain steps, and Mr Llewellyn must have taken the hint, because when she finished he was gone.

  Alice felt the nag of an unspecified regret and sighed deeply. She supposed it was being in love that made her feel this way, a sort of general pity for everyone who wasn’t her. Poor old Mr Llewellyn. She’d thought him a magician once; now she saw only a stooped and rather sad man, old before his time, constrained by the Victorian dress and habits with which he refused to part. He’d had a breakdown in his youth—it was supposed to be a secret, but Alice knew a lot of things she shouldn’t. It had happened back when Mother was just a girl and Mr Llewellyn a firm friend of Henri deShiel. He’d given up his professional life in London and that was when he’d come up with Eleanor’s Magic Doorway.

  As to what had prompted his breakdown, Alice didn’t know. It occurred to her now, vaguely, that she ought to make a better job of finding out, but not today; it wasn’t a task for today. There simply wasn’t time for the past when the future was right there waiting for her on the other side of the hedge. Another glance confirmed that Ben was by himself, gathering his things, about to go back through the garden to his accommodations for lunch. Alice promptly forgot about Mr Llewellyn. She lifted her face towards the sun and relished the blaze that graced her cheeks. What a joy it was to be her, right now, in this precise moment. She couldn’t imagine that anyone, anywhere, could be more content. And then, she stepped towards the jetty, manuscript in hand, intoxicated by an enticing sense of herself as a girl on the precipice of a glimmering future.

  Three

  Cornwall, 2003

  Sun cut between the leaves, and Sadie ran so that her lungs begged her to stop. She didn’t, though; she ran harder, savouring the reassurance of her footfalls. The rhythmic thud, the faint echo caused by damp, mossy earth and dense trampled undergrowth.

  The dogs had disappeared off the narrow track some time ago, noses to the ground, slipping like streaks of molasses through the glistening brambles on either side. It was possible they were more relieved than she that the rain had finally stopped and they were free. It surprised Sadie how much she enjoyed having the pair of them alongside her. She’d been resistant when her grandfather first suggested it, but Bertie—already suspicious of her sudden arrival on his doorstep (“Since when do you take holidays?”)—had proven characteristically stubborn: “Those woods are deep in places and you’re not familiar with them. It wouldn’t take much to get lost.” When he’d started making noises about asking one of the local lads to meet up with her “for company’, regarding her with a look that said he was on the brink of asking questions she didn’t want to answer, Sadie had swiftly agreed the dogs could do with the run.

  Sadie always ran alone. She’d been doing so since long before the Bailey case blew up and her life in London imploded. It was best. There were people who ran for exercise, those who ran for pleasure, and then there was Sadie, who ran like someone trying to escape her own death. A long-ago boyfriend had told her that. He’d said it accusingly, bent over double trying to catch his breath in the middle of Hampstead Heath. Sadie had shrugged, puzzling over why that might be considered a bad thing, and she’d known then, with surprisingly little regret, that it wasn’t going to work out between them.

  A gust of wind slipped through the branches, spraying last night’s raindrops against her face. Sadie shook her head but didn’t slow down. Wild rambling roses had started to appear on the sides of the path; creatures of habit making their yearly bids between the bracken and the fallen logs. It was good such things existed. It was proof there really was beauty and goodness in the world, just like the poems and platitudes said. It was easy to lose sight of that fact in her line of work.

  There’d been more in the London papers over the weekend. Sadie had caught a glimpse over the shoulder of a man in The Harbour Cafe while she and Bertie were having breakfast. That is, while she was having breakfast and he was having some sort of green smoothie that smelled like grass. It was only a small piece, a single column on page five, but the name Maggie Bailey was a magnet to Sadie’s eye and she’d stopped speaking mid-sentence, scanning the small print hungrily. She’d learned nothing new from the article, which meant there’d been no change. And why would there be? The case was closed. Derek Maitland had the by-line. No surprise he was still clinging to the story like a dog with his neighbour’s bone; that was his nature. Maybe on some level it was why she’d chosen him in the first place?

  Sadie started as Ash leapt from behind a bank of trees and cut in front of her, ears flapping, mouth open in a wide, wet grin. She pushed herself not to fall too far behind, clenched her fists so her fingers drove into her palms and ran harder. She wasn’t supposed to be reading the newspapers. She was supposed to be “taking a break from it all’ while she sorted herself out and waited for things in London to cool down. Donald’s advice. He was trying to protect her from having her nose rubbed in her own stupidity, she knew, which was kind of him, but really it was a bit too late for that.

  It had been all over the papers at the time, and the TV news, and it hadn’t slowed down in the weeks since, only broadened in scope from articles reporting Sadie’s specific comments to gleeful claims of internal division within the Met, implications of cover-ups. No wonder Ashford was angry. The Super never missed a chance to trumpet his views on loyalty, hoicking up his lunch-stained trousers and giving the assembled detectives a spittle-laden blast: “Nothing worse than a canary, you hear? You got a gripe, you keep it in house. Nothing more damaging to the department than coppers who start whistling to outsiders.” Special mention was always made then of that most heinous of outsiders, the journalist, Ashford’s chin shaking with the force of his loathing: “Bloodsuckers, the lot of them.”

  Thank God he didn’t know it was Sadie who’d done this particular spot of whistling. Donald had covered for her, the same way he had when she first started making mistakes at work. “That’s what partners do,” he’d said back then, brushing away her clumsy gratitude with customary gruffness. It had been a bit of a joke between them, the minor lapses in her usual fastidious conduct; but this latest infraction was differ
ent. As Senior Investigating Officer, Donald was responsible for the actions of his DC, and while forgetting to bring a notepad to an interview merited a good-natured ribbing, letting slip claims the department had botched an investigation was something else entirely.

  Donald had known she was the leak as soon as the story broke. He’d taken her out for a pint at the Fox and Hounds and advised her, in terms that left very little room for disagreement, that she needed to get out of London. Take the leave she was owed and stay away until she got whatever was bothering her out of her system. “I’m not kidding, Sparrow,” he’d said, wiping lager froth off his steel-bristle moustache. “I don’t know what’s got into you lately, but Ashford isn’t stupid, he’s going to be watching like a hawk. Your grandfather’s in Cornwall now, isn’t he? For your own sake—for both our sakes—get yourself down there and don’t come back until you’ve got yourself sorted.”

  A fallen log came at her from nowhere and Sadie leapt over it, catching the tip of her running shoe. Adrenalin spread beneath her skin like hot syrup and she harnessed it, ran harder. Don’t come back until you’ve got yourself sorted. That was a whole lot easier said than done. Donald might not know the cause of her distraction and blundering, but Sadie did. She pictured the envelope and its contents, tucked away in the bedside cabinet of the spare room at Bertie’s place: the pretty paper, the flowery handwriting, the iced-water shock of the message inside. She could mark the start of her troubles from the evening, six weeks ago, when she’d trodden on that bloody letter lying on the doormat of her London flat. At first it had just been occasional lapses in concentration, little mistakes that were easy enough to cover, but then the Bailey case had come along, that little motherless girl, and kapow! The perfect storm.

  With a final burst of energy, Sadie forced herself to sprint to the black stump, her turn-around point. She didn’t ease up until she reached it, lurching forwards to strike one hand against the damp, jagged top, then collapsing, palms on knees, as she caught her breath. Her diaphragm swung in and out, her vision starred. She hurt and she was glad. Ash was nosing around nearby, sniffing at the end of a moss-covered log that jutted from the steep, muddy rise. Sadie drank greedily from her water bottle and then squeezed some into the dog’s ready mouth. She stroked the smooth glossy darkness between his ears. “Where’s your brother?” she said, to which Ash cocked his head and just stared at her with his clever eyes. “Where’s Ramsay?”

  Sadie scanned the wild tangle of greenery surrounding them. Ferns were striving towards the light, spiralled stems uncoiling into fronds. The sweet scent of honeysuckle mingled with the earthiness of recent rain. Summer rain. She’d always loved that smell, even more so when Bertie told her it was caused by a type of bacteria. It proved that good things could come from bad if the right conditions were applied. Sadie had a vested interest in believing that was true.

  They were thick woods, and it struck her as she looked for Ramsay that Bertie was right. It would be possible to become lost forever in a place like this. Not Sadie, not with the dogs by her side, keen noses trained on the way back home, but someone else, an innocent, the girl from a fairy story. That girl, her head filled with romance, might easily venture too deep inside woods like these and be lost.

  Sadie didn’t know many fairy stories, not beyond the obvious ones. It was one of the gaping holes she’d come to recognise in her experience compared with that of her peers (fairy tales, A-levels, parental warmth). Even the little Bailey girl’s bedroom, though sparsely furnished, had contained a shelf of books and a well-thumbed volume of Grimm’s tales. But there’d been no whispered stories of “Once upon a time’ in Sadie’s childhood: her mother hadn’t been the whispering type, her father less so, the two of them equal in their adamant distaste for the fanciful.

  Regardless, Sadie had absorbed enough as a citizen of the world to know that people went missing in fairy tales, and that there were usually deep dark woods involved. People went missing often enough in real life, too. Sadie knew that from experience. Some were lost by misadventure, others by choice: the disappeared as opposed to the missing, the ones who didn’t want to be found. People like Maggie Bailey.

  “Run off.” Donald had called it early, the same day they found little Caitlyn alone in the apartment, weeks before they found the note that proved him right. “Responsibility got too much. Kids, making ends meet, life. If I had a quid for every time I’d seen it . . .”

  But Sadie had refused to believe that theory. She’d gone off on a tangent of her own, floated fantastic suppositions about foul play, the sort that belonged only in mystery novels, insisting that a mother wouldn’t walk out on her kid like that, bleating on and on about combing through the evidence again, searching for the vital clue they’d missed.

  “You’re looking for something you’ll never find,” Donald had told her. “Sometimes Sparrow—not bloody often, but sometimes—things really are as simple as they seem.”

  “Like you, you mean.”

  He’d laughed. “Cheeky mare.” And then his tone had softened, turning almost fatherly, which, as far as Sadie could see, was a whole lot worse than if he’d started yelling. “Happens to the best of us. Work this job long enough and eventually a case gets under your skin. Means you’re human, but it doesn’t mean you’re right.”

  Sadie’s breaths had steadied but there was still no sign of Ramsay. She called out to him and her voice echoed back from damp, dark places, Ramsay . . . Ramsay . . . Ramsay . . . the last frail repeat fading into nothing. He was the more reserved of the two dogs and it had taken longer to gain his trust. Fair or not, he was her favourite because of it. Sadie had always been wary of easy affection. It was a trait she’d also recognised in Nancy Bailey, Maggie’s mother; one she suspected had brought them closer together. A folie à deux it was called, a shared madness, two otherwise sane people encouraging each other in the same delusion. Sadie could see now that’s what she and Nancy Bailey had done, each feeding the other’s fantasy, convincing themselves there was more to Maggie’s disappearance than met the eye.

  And it had been madness. Ten years on the police force, five as a detective, and everything she’d learned had gone out the window the moment she saw that little girl alone in the stale flat; fine and dainty, backlit so her messed-up blonde hair formed a halo, eyes wide and watchful as she took in the two adult strangers who’d just burst through the front door. Sadie had been the one to go to her, taking her hands and saying, in a bright, clear voice she didn’t recognise, “Hello there, lovely. Who’s that on the front of your nightie? What’s her name?” The child’s vulnerability, her smallness and uncertainty, had hit hard right in the place Sadie usually kept steeled against emotion. During the days that followed, she’d felt the ghostly imprint of the child’s small hands in hers, and at night when she tried to sleep she’d heard that quiet, querulous voice saying, Mama? Where’s my mama? She’d been consumed by a fierce need to make things right, to return the little girl’s mother to her, and Nancy Bailey had proven the perfect partner. But while Nancy could be forgiven for clutching at straws, was understandably desperate to excuse her daughter’s callous behaviour, ameliorate the shock of her little granddaughter having been left alone like that and assuage her own guilt (“if only I hadn’t gone away with girlfriends that week I’d have found her myself’), Sadie ought to have known better. Her entire career, her entire adult life, had been built on knowing better.

  “Ramsay,” she called again.

  Again, only silence in return, the sort marked by leaves rustling and distant water running down a rain-sodden ditch. Natural noises that had a way of making a person feel more alone. Sadie stretched her arms above her head. The urge to contact Nancy was physical, a great big weight inside her chest, a pair of sweaty fists closed tight around her lungs. Her own ignominy she could wear, but the shame when she thought of Nancy was crushing. She still felt the pressing need to apologise, to explain that it had all been a
terrible lapse in judgement, that she’d never meant to peddle in false hope. Donald knew her well: “And Sparrow—” his parting words before he packed her off to Cornwall—“don’t even think of getting in touch with the grandmother.” He hadn’t added that she should stay the hell away from the little girl; he probably figured he didn’t need to, not after she’d been officially reprimanded when the father lodged his complaint.

  Louder this time: “Ramsay! Where are you, boy?”

  Sadie strained, listening. A startled bird, the beat of heavy wings high in the canopy. Her gaze was drawn up through the lattice of branches to the white speck of a plane unpeeling the pale blue sky behind it. The plane was heading east towards London and she watched its progress with an odd sense of dislocation. Unfathomable to think that the swirl of life, her life, continued there without her.

  She hadn’t heard from Donald since she’d left. She hadn’t expected to, not really, not yet, it had only been a week and he’d insisted she take a full month’s leave. “I can come back earlier if I want to, right?” Sadie had said to the young man in HR, his confusion making it evident this was the first time he’d been asked. “You’d better not,” Donald had growled afterwards. “I see you back here before you’re ready and I kid you not, Sparrow, I’ll go straight to Ashford.” He would, too, she knew. He was heading for retirement and not about to let his unhinged deputy ruin it for him. With no other choice, Sadie had packed a bag, tucked her tail between her legs, and driven down to Cornwall. She’d left Donald with Bertie’s phone number, told him mobile reception was a bit hit and miss, and held out hope he’d summon her back.