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There was no reply to the brief phone call he made before he left Peter’s, and he assumed that Dee must still be asleep. But when he pulled into the driveway of her house he saw that her car was missing and he started to frown.
He hadn’t said, of course, that he would come back that evening, but somehow he had assumed that... That what? That she would be there waiting for him with open arms...?
He grimaced ruefully as he felt his body’s reaction to his thoughts.
He could stay here in his car and wait for her to return, but suddenly Hugo thought he knew where she might have gone. It was an instinct, a gut feeling, with nothing logical or practical to back it up, but nevertheless he set his car in motion, driving through the town.
A dozen or more teenagers were sitting on the benches in the town square, obviously at a loose end. Dee’s report had surprised him, and made him feel rather ashamed of the judgements he had made.
As he drove through the town he could see his destination ahead of him—or rather its spire.
The first time she had brought him to Rye-on-Averton, Dee had pointed out the pretty parish church to him. Her parents had been married there, she had told him, and she’d hoped she would be. Many generations of her family were buried in its graveyard, including her father.
As he drove into the close that led to the church he saw Dee’s parked car. Sometimes it paid to listen to one’s instincts.
* * *
The graveyard was quiet and shadowy, but it was a pleasantly peaceful place rather than a threatening one, Dee acknowledged. She had never been here at night before, although she had visited it many, many times during the day, especially in the early days after her father’s death, with the rawness of her own heartache. Now the scars were softer. She touched her father’s headstone and traced the words carved there.
‘Was I wrong, Dad?’ she asked him huskily. ‘Was i
t really an accident after all? It hurt me so much to think that you’d deliberately left me,’ she told him conversationally. ‘To feel that your pride and other people’s respect for you were more important to you than my love. I hated Julian Cox for what he’d done, and sometimes I almost felt as though I hated you as well.
‘Hugo says you would never have taken your own life. Never have hurt me by doing such a thing. You were always so quick to criticise him, and he you, but I knew it was just because both of you loved me. I hated having to choose between you, but how could I go with Hugo, leaving you to face the fear which had driven you to your death on your own? I had to stay...I had to protect your reputation from any harm that Julian Cox might do to it.’
‘Dee...’
She froze, and then swung round as she recognised Hugo’s voice.
‘Hugo...what are you doing here? How did you know...?’
‘I just knew,’ he told her gently as he came towards her, stopping just a few feet away from her.
‘I had to come here,’ she told him simply. ‘I had to...to talk to Dad...to ask him...to—’
‘Dee, why didn’t you tell me what you feared?’ Hugo interrupted her softly. ‘Surely you could have trusted me.’
‘I could have trusted you, yes,’ Dee agreed quietly, ‘but I couldn’t burden you with my...my doubts, Hugo. You’d already told me how important it was that you had an unblemished reputation. For me to tell you that I thought my father might have taken his own life, that he could have become embroiled in a sordid fraud case... I couldn’t do it to you. I...I couldn’t expose my father to you, and I couldn’t expose your reputation to...
‘And besides...’ Dee looked away from him ‘...I felt that I wasn’t important enough to you...that your plans, your ideals mattered more, and I was afraid...I was afraid of committing myself completely to you, Hugo, because I feared that you wouldn’t commit yourself completely to me.’
‘So you told me you didn’t love me any more. Was it true, Dee?’
Dee shook her head.
‘No. Never,’ she told him in a raw whisper. ‘I wanted you to come back. I wanted to tell you that I’d changed my mind. But you never did...’
‘No?’ Hugo gave her a wry look. ‘I managed to last six months in the field without you and then I had to come back, but when I did I heard that you’d got married, that you and your husband were expecting a child.’
‘It wasn’t true,’ Dee told him, shaking her head. ‘My cousin married, but...’
‘Perhaps I should have asked more questions...probed more deeply. But I was so shocked, so bitterly hurt that... I think I hated you then, Dee,’ Hugo told her gruffly. ‘There’s never been anyone else for me...no one ever came close to making me feel the way you did...do...’
‘No, it’s been the same for me. I...I wanted a family...a child...children...so desperately at times, Hugo, that I almost contemplated... But...’ She paused. ‘In the end I just couldn’t. I couldn’t bear my child to have any father but you.’
She looked down at the gravestone.
‘Do you really think it was an accident?’
