Robert Goddard - Set in stone

SET IN STONE

Also by Robert Goddard

PAST CARING

IN PALE BATTALIONS

PAINTING THE DARKNESS

INTO THE BLUE

TAKE NO FAREWELL

HAND IN GLOVE

CLOSED CIRCLE

BORROWED TIME

OUT OF THE SUN

BEYOND RECALL

CAUGHT IN THE LIGHT

SET IN STONE

Robert Goddard

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS LTD 61-63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA Published 1999 by Bantam Press a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd Reprinted 1999 Copyright Robert and Vaunda Goddard 1999

ISBN 0593 042719 (cased) 0593 043855 (tpb)

SET IN STONE

PROLOGUE

Maybe you already know what I'm going to tell you. Maybe death isn't the slammed-shut, sealed-tight doorway we reckon it is. I've seen enough these past few months to doubt it. If it isn't, maybe you've been watching me all this time, wondering when I'd turn round and look at you and speak.

I can't see you, Marina. I can't hear you. But that doesn't matter. And then again it does. More than anything. I love you. I will always love you. I never expected to feel as much for another person as I feel for you. I never even wanted to. Because dependency is dangerous. And dependency on the dead is halfway to madness. But still I love you. It's as simple and as desolate as that. I don't need to chase your ghost. It's here, at every moment, beside me. It's almost tangible. But not quite. You'll always be just out of reach. I can't touch you. Ever again.

But I can talk to you. And maybe, just maybe, you can listen. I wish I could tell you a different story, though. I wish I could tell you your death was just a single outbreak of meaningless misfortune. I wish I could wipe away the events it set in motion and have you back, alive and contented, to love and be loved. But wishing is all it comes to. It changes nothing. There is only one story I can tell you. And this is it.

CHAPTER ONE

I never wanted to leave London. You know that. The simpler, purer country life was your dream, not mine. You'd always talked about it and I'd gone along with the idea to keep you happy, silently banking on a solid set of practical objections to fend it off. Then Matt and Lucy moved to Leicestershire, and every weekend we visited them gave you an extra ounce of determination to turn your dream into a reality. Suddenly Lucy had something you wanted more than you reckoned she did. And you and your sister always were a competitive pair.

The difference was that Matt was already making a success of Pizza Prego by then. He could afford the country-squire act. We weren't so free and easy. Whatever my career amounted to, it wasn't the prototype for home-based working in the sticks. And your client list was all corporate metropolitan. But fortieth birthdays do strange things to people. I let you persuade me that London was choking me as well as you, and that you could earn enough as a rural solicitor to tide us over until I sold the concept of professional recruitment services to local employers. Then you threw yourself into the search for a suitable opportunity and, before I'd done more than flirt with the implications of what we were embarking on, you found one.

It was everything you wanted. A cosy little practice over a pharmacy in the centre of a genuine Devon market town. Real people with real problems, not sharp-faced men in suits demanding contracts by yesterday. I remember driving down to Holsworthy with you for the first time and walking round the square on a quiet, sunny Saturday afternoon. There was a gleam in your eye that told me this place was our future. Well, yours, anyway. I'd be moving, whereas you'd be going home. You belonged there, instantly and completely, whereas for me ... it was where I had to be to stay close to you.

Not that I was blind to its attractions. The pace of life was slower, the surrounding countryside was a picture postcard succession of winding lanes and rolling hills. And the air was like champagne. The back of beyond had its own allure. And Stanacombe was beautiful. 'A cob-and-slate whitewashed farmhouse just over the Cornish border, in need of some renovation.' That's what the estate agent's blurb said. But I saw in it what you saw: a private patch of heaven, nestling in green fields, beneath the last westward swell of the land before Cornwall hit the Atlantic in a jagged line of high granite cliffs.

You thought I was reluctant to take on the work that needed doing on Stanacombe. And so I was at the outset. But after we'd moved down I really began to enjoy it. It was a lot more rewarding than headhunting high-flyers in London, even if nobody was paying me to do it. Besides, we had a comforting slab of capital to fall back on after selling the house in Chiswick, and you charmed most of your predecessor's clients in Holsworthy into staying with you, so I didn't need to rush into making any money. Three months of renovation stretched into six. Spring came in, clean and fresh and new, scattering flowers round the high-banked lanes in a way I'd have thought belonged to some remote, rustic past. That's when I knew what you'd known all along: moving to the country was going to be the best move we'd ever made.

Contentment crept up on us during those months. We didn't seem to miss our London friends. The isolation I'd feared became a privacy I cherished. We never even visited Matt and Lucy as promised at Easter, to see the new house they'd

moved into. We would have done, of course, sooner or later. There just didn't seem to be any urgency about it. Not when there was so much to be enjoyed in our own new home. It could be an illusion, bred by the loss of you, but I don't think so. Last winter and spring at Stanacombe, we fell in love all over again. It seems so clear now, the memory of you lying beside me in our bedroom beneath the eaves. So clear, yet so fragile. More fragile than I knew.

What was the last thing you said to me? I've been trying to remember, but the words won't come. It was nothing. Just a run-of-the-mill farewell, a leave-taking for a few inconsequential hours. You'd said you'd be home early, to make a start on the garden. And I'd said I might not be there when you got back. It depended on whether there were any useful lots in a furniture auction at Bideford I was driving over to at lunchtime. You nodded and called something back to me over your shoulder as you walked out to the garage. I heard the car start and pull out into the lane. I went to the window and waved. I think you waved back, but the sun was in my eyes and I didn't glimpse much more than a flicker of movement through the glare. Then you were gone. And already, though I didn't know it, as the sound of the car faded into the softness of the morning, you were a memory.

I bought a gateleg table at the auction. I reckoned it would go well in the hall. I was confident you'd like it. I phoned the office to tell you. But Carol said you'd already left. Two hours since, apparently. I tried you at home, but there was no answer. Busy in the garden, I assumed. I started back an hour or so later and made it to Kilkhampton about six. I stopped at the New Inn for a drink and phoned you again from there, thinking you might want to join me. The sun had been hot enough to give you a thirst, but now there was the first cooling hint of evening in the air - our favourite time of the day. Still no answer, though. I finished my drink and left.

You weren't in the garden. You weren't at home at all. But your car was in the garage and your briefcase was in the study. And it looked as if you'd brewed some tea. The pot was standing upside down on the draining board in the kitchen, the

way you used to leave it to dry. There was a rubbish sack full of prunings outside the kitchen door, so some gardening had been done. But that was it - no other sign of you. Not that you ever left many signs. You always were meticulously tidy. There was a time that used to annoy me. But that time was long gone.