Page 81 of The Diary at the Last House Before the Sea

‘Yet you’re here now.’

Geoffrey knew his tone was harsh but he couldn’t help it. Everything he thought was true had been turned on its head. It felt as if black was white and up was down. Nothing made sense any more.

A long-forgotten memory suddenly began spooling through his mind: Violet putting her arm around his nine-year-old self and telling him, ‘Please don’t be too sad about your stepmother. I’m sure she’s in a better place.’ And though he’d longed for comfort, he’d felt embarrassed to be embraced by the housekeeper. He’d thought her words were a platitude – the sort of thing the village vicar kept spouting. But it turned out she’d been trying to comfort him with the truth.

‘Yes, Geoffrey, I’m here,’ said Audrey, snapping his mind back to the present. Her hands were clasped in her lap and he noticed that they were shaking. ‘I’m afraid my resolve not to interfere in your life has been stretched to breaking point over the years. And meeting Clara and your son was the final straw that made me want to see you above anything else. So that I can explain and apologise.’

‘Who’s the young man you arrived with?’ asked Geoffrey, trying to deflect the conversation that he knew was coming.

Part of him wanted to know what had happened in 1957, but he felt scared. Something bad must have caused Audrey to risk her life by swimming to a boat that evening. Something bad that was pricking at the edges of his brain, like a memory that he’d locked away.

‘That’s Charlie, who works at the residential home in Surrey where I’m seeing out my days. He’s a very caring young man and he offered to bring me here when I told him my story…well, a version of my story.’

‘And you decided to arrive during an open day when half the village are present.’

Geoffrey racked his brains. Had he seen Belinda this afternoon? If she was here, rumours about his mysterious visitor would be all round Heaven’s Cove by the day’s end.

‘I know that arriving when we did wasn’t ideal and I apologise for that too.’ Audrey started fiddling with the buttons on the cuff of her sleeve. ‘Charlie and I arrived in Heaven’s Cove at lunchtime and are staying overnight at Driftwood House, up on the cliff. Rosie, the owner – you probably know her: a lovely woman, heavily pregnant – mentioned that she was coming here to the fete, not knowing my link to you and the manor.

‘I didn’t tell her anything about us, of course, but after she left, I couldn’t wait any longer, knowing that you were so near. I was planning to try to see you this evening or tomorrow morning, but I persuaded Charlie to bring me here this afternoon instead.’

She raised her head and looked him directly in the eye. ‘I’m so sorry, Geoffrey. This must all be very hard for you to take in.’

Do you think? Geoffrey drained his whisky and motioned for Clara to get him another.

He rarely drank before his evening meal and certainly never had two whiskies in the afternoon, but normal rules didn’t apply today. That was obvious by the fact that his dead stepmother was sitting in front of him, telling him she was sorry.

After Clara had thrust another drink into his hands, River got to his feet. ‘Would you like us to leave you both alone?’

Whisky slopped from Geoffrey’s glass when he shook his head. He was devastated that River and Clara had kept such a huge secret from him, but the two of them provided a familiarity that was anchoring amidst the upset of the afternoon.

Audrey leaned forward. ‘Please may I tell you what happened that September night?’ When Geoffrey nodded, she continued. ‘I didn’t want to leave you behind, Geoffrey. You were so dear to me. But I needed to get away from your father and I knew that he would never let me go.

‘Did you realise that he was having me watched and he forbade me from leaving the estate on my own? He even stopped me talking to the staff in the house, people like Violet, Clara’s grandmother.’

Geoffrey swallowed. ‘My father was a possessive man but no, I didn’t realise that he was doing that.’

‘Why did you think I’d left?’

‘I wasn’t sure.’ He paused, unsure if he should say out loud what he’d always believed. But he was beyond keeping secrets. ‘I thought we weren’t enough for you. That I wasn’t enough for you.’

‘Oh, Geoffrey.’ Audrey reached out and took hold of his hands. ‘You were the reason I stayed for as long as I did. But everything came to a head after the ball. Your father became irrationally jealous about another man I’d danced with and he became—’ She stopped speaking.

‘He became what?’

He didn’t want to know. Not for sure. But he had to hear it from her lips.

Audrey sat up straighter. ‘He became seriously violent and threatening towards me and that was when I knew that I had to leave.’

‘He wasn’t a violent man,’ said Geoffrey, feeling that he, as Edwin’s son, should protect his father’s reputation.

Audrey’s smile was sad and sympathetic. ‘Not towards you, and I was always grateful for that. But he was abusive towards me many times. And I know he was your father but that’s the truth of why I left. You don’t have to believe it.’

Geoffrey thought of his father and realised that he could believe it. Edwin had never laid a hand on his son, but there was a simmering fury beneath the surface that had seen off many of his business rivals and silenced him as a child.

It was a source of great disappointment to Edwin that his son did not have the same talent for business dealings as him. But at least, thought Geoffrey, he had a more equitable temper and didn’t have Edwin’s repressed rage. He had made sure of that by smothering all of his emotions.

‘You could have taken me with you,’ he told Audrey quietly.

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