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She closed her eyes, and then opened them again and reread the message. How ironic. How quixotic of fate—if it was Julian Cox—that he should be found drowned...just like her father.
Dee started to shiver, a low, agonised moan whispering dryly past her from her taut throat.
‘Dee? Dee, what is it? What’s wrong?’
Dee was vaguely conscious of Hugo coming into her office and taking the fax from her, but the message, coming on top of her recent mental reliving of the events leading up to her father’s death, was having a dangerously traumatic effect on her. She knew that Hugo was there, she knew he had taken the fax from her and she knew too that he had read it, but even though she knew all these things somehow they were not completely real to her. What was real...all that was real...was that Julian Cox was dead: he had now gone beyond her justice, and beyond any earthly court of law’s jurisdiction. The judge he now had to face...
‘Cox is dead,’ she heard Hugo saying. ‘I didn’t realise he meant so much to you. You never seemed to care very much for him.’
‘Care...’ Dee could feel something splintering sharply inside her, lacerating her so painfully, emotionally and mentally, that the agony of what she was experiencing made her want to scream out loud.
‘Oh, yes, I care... I care that he cheated and deceived my father. I care that he nearly destroyed everything my father had worked to achieve. I care that he threatened him with humiliation and I care that my father trusted him and believed in him whilst he was cheating him. I care that because of him my father died...I care that he caused my father to take his own life. I care that because of him I lost the man—’
As Dee put her hands up to her face she discovered to her own bemusement that it was wet and that she was crying, that her hands were trembling, her body shaking violently. She was, Dee recognised distantly, dangerously close to losing control.
‘Dee, what are you saying?’ she could hear Hugo demanding curtly. ‘Your father and Cox were partners, close friends...’
‘Julian Cox was no friend to my father,’ Dee denied chokily. ‘He threatened him with blackmail... Oh, God...why did I let it happen? Why didn’t I stay with him? If I had, Dad would still be alive today and I...’
She stopped. She would what? She would have been married to Hugo...the mother of his children...?
‘I should have stayed, but I didn’t...I was so selfish...I wanted to get back to you. I never dreamed that Dad would take his own life, that Julian would drive him to take his own life. He must have been so afraid, so alone. I let him down so badly.’
‘Dee, your father drowned,’ Hugo told her gently. ‘It was an accident.’
‘No... My father drowned, yes, but it wasn’t an accident. How could it have been? He was an excellent swimmer, and why would he have gone fishing anyway? He told me that he had a meeting.’
She was shivering violently, her body icy cold but her face burning hot.
‘Dee, you’ve had a bad shock,’ she could hear Hugo telling her softly. ‘Why don’t you come and sit down in the kitchen and I’ll make us both a hot drink? Come on. You’re cold; you’re shivering,’ he told her when Dee started to shake her head in violent denial of what he was saying.
‘I don’t want a drink. I don’t want anything... I just want you to go.’
It was over. At long last it was over. At long last there was no need for her to pursue Julian Cox any more. Fate had s
tepped in and taken over, but oddly Dee couldn’t feel relieved. She couldn’t in fact feel anything, only an aching, agonising awareness of how senseless, how wasteful her father’s death had been. For the first time since her father’s death Dee was able to admit to herself that, alongside her pain and her anger against Julian Cox, there was also a sharp thorn of anger inside her against her father—anger that he could have done what he had done without thinking how much it would hurt her, how much she would miss him...how much she loved him. She had always known how important other people’s respect had been to him, how much he’d valued it—but surely not more than he’d valued her?
But he had left her, turned his back on her and her love for him, her need for him, and ended his own life. And she had been left alone to face the consequences of what he had done. Her eyes filled with fresh tears, a searing animal moan of pain escaping her lips. She was shivering, freezing cold, but suddenly she was aware of a sense of blissful warmth and comfort as Hugo crossed the small space between them and took hold of her.
‘Dee, you’re not well. Let me call your doctor.’
‘No,’ Dee protested immediately. Her doctor was still Dr Livesey, and she didn’t want to see him. He had been the one who had insisted her father’s death was an accident.
‘Well, at least let me help you upstairs.’
Dee tried to resist. There wasn’t anything wrong with her, not really. It was just the shock, the relief of knowing that it was over, that Julian Cox wasn’t going to be able to taunt or torment her any longer.
There had been so many times over the years when she had longed to be able to share her feelings with someone else, when she had longed to be able to tell them what had happened, but she had never dared allow herself to give in to that temptation. It was as though in some horrible Faustian way she had struck a deal with the devil—the devil in this case being Julian Cox himself. As though by keeping her silence she was ensuring that he kept his, that he didn’t attempt to besmirch her father’s memory. Although logically, of course, Dee knew that he couldn’t have done so without risk of exposing himself. There had been periods when he had actually lived away from Rye, no doubt practising his deceitful, dishonest ways somewhere else, but he had always returned.
Now, though, he couldn’t harm anyone any more. Not her father, not Beth, not anyone. It was over.
She frowned in bewilderment. She was in her bedroom, but she had no recollection of having walked upstairs. Hugo was closing her bedroom door.
‘Dee, is there someone I could ring—a friend you’d like to have here with you?’ Hugo was asking her.
Immediately Dee shook her head, cringing mentally at the very thought of having to explain to anyone.
‘I just want to be on my own,’ she told Hugo shakily. ‘I just want to be left alone.’
