‘Ria, tell me, for God’s sake please tell me,’ pleaded Pete. He broke off a piece of kitchen roll, handed it to her to wipe away her ‘tears’. ‘Don’t get upset, love. None of this is your fault.’
‘Thank you, Pete.’
Ria dabbed at the corners of her eyes with it. Her eyeliner was smudged. Real tears were making an appearance.
‘I don’t know who he was, I swear. All I know is that she said you and she were in trouble and she needed to get away from you to think. So she’d taken out a rental on a house. A cottage.’
‘Where?’ His tone insistent.
‘Bakewell.’
‘Bakewell in Derbyshire?’
Ria nodded. ‘I asked her if she was seeing someone else and she told me not to ask that.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I told her she was a fool and that she couldn’t get better than you and what was she playing at. And she said that she knew that but she still couldn’t stop it . . . she said . . .’ Ria tapped her head, as if it would bring the thought to the surface. Pete waited impatiently.
‘I can’t quite remember the exact words but something like . . . she’d never stopped thinking about him. I got the feeling it was a man she’d been in a relationship with before.’
‘Who?’
‘That could be any number of people with Tara,’ said Ria with a huh. ‘But there was one man she was very much in love with. He was with someone when they met and he ended up leaving his partner for her. Then he went back to her and Tara was in a really bad place. She met you not long after and she seemed happy again. I presumed she was totally over him.’
‘Where exactly is the cottage, Ria? Do you have an address?’
‘I don’t know it. I could take you there though.’
‘You went there?’
She looked at him sheepishly. ‘Just the once, but I didn’t know—’
‘Take me then.’
Ria’s eyebrows attempted to bypass the Botox and ride up her forehead. ‘What, now?’
‘Yes, now.’
Ria opened her mouth to say something on the lines of ‘don’t be silly’ but then realised that she had the opportunity to be in Pete’s company for hours more.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘My car or yours?’
*
Pete drove. He needed something to concentrate on even though his mind was sifting through evidence in the background. Were the ‘pies’ in her diary Bakewell puddings? It was a ridiculous conclusion to come to but then again it made some sense. Were those the dates of her assignations with the man whom she’d ‘never stopped thinking about’?
You were always on my mind.
The words crashed into his head like a wrecking ball. Is that why she cried when she heard that record? Was it his and Tara’s anthem? Was that why it meant so much to her?
‘When did you go to this place?’ asked Pete, as they exited Hathersage village.
‘I think it was three weeks before she died,’ Ria answered. Now the secret was out, she was singing like a canary. ‘We went out for lunch, she suggested a pub in Ashford in the Water which I thought was a bit out of the way, but she said she had something to show me afterwards. She wouldn’t tell me what until we got there. I thought it was a holiday cottage for the both of you; she couldn’t wait to show it off. When we went inside, it was then that she told me you were having problems and she needed somewhere to go and sort her head out. She said she wanted to be alone but there were men’s things dotted around: trainers, shaving stuff. She never did think I was the brightest button and she tried to make out that they had been left by the last tenant. I told her that I wasn’t stupid and asked what the hell she was doing and she said she couldn’t help it. She was very emotional and you know that Tara wasn’t like that.’
That was true. Thinking back, on her wedding day dancing with him, and then on their first anniversary when he’d given her the framed Elvis single were the only times he’d ever seen her cry openly.
‘She said . . .’ Ria’s voice faltered, fearing she was saying too much, being disloyal to her flesh and blood, speaking ill of the dead.
Pete encouraged her to go on. ‘Please, Ria, you might as well tell me everything now.’
‘Tara said that she’d never been able to forget him and . . . oh yes . . .’ More came back to her as the memory unravelled ‘. . . that she wasn’t going to lose him again. She was getting a little angry by then that I’d uncovered her secret so easily and wasn’t telling her what she wanted to hear. She could be quite hurtful when she felt criticised. I told her that she wouldn’t find better than you and she said that—’ Ria shook her head, not wanting to go on.
‘You can’t stop there. Just say it, Ria. It can’t get any worse.’
‘Okay, she said that I could have you soon enough. I felt so bad for you, Pete, when she said that. She sounded as if she was throwing you away.’
He could imagine Tara saying this. They’d hardly ever argued but that was because Pete hated rows, avoided them but they’d had a couple and he’d been surprised at how cutting she could be, spitting and spiteful, though she curled up around him like a cat afterwards. She was the youngest daughter and spoilt, used to getting her own way, but it didn’t excuse anything. Hurt seeped through his anger and he fought it back. He needed to be strong now, strong and focused.
Eventually they came to Bakewell and Ria told Pete to slow down while she got her bearings, which was harder in the dark. They took a couple of false turns but then Ria recognised a postbox set in a wall and knew the cottage was at the end of the next narrow lane.
They parked up in the turning circle at the end and got out of the car. There was a rose arch over the gate and an overgrown wooden sign bearing the cottage’s name, ‘Crumbledown’. The gate opened with a quaint creak, the path was overgrown, the garden sad and neglected, unknowing of the circumstances of its occupants.
The cottage was detached, small, with weather-worn wooden windows. Its white frontage had seen better days; Crumbledown seemed an apt name, but he could guess at how much a rental in this area would cost and he had no idea how Tara could have afforded it on her salary – not alone, anyway. Pete peered in through a window: he couldn’t see anything through the net curtains but he certainly wasn’t going to come all this way and not gain entry. He’d take the rap if someone saw him breaking in, but Ria was searching for something over by a small garden pond covered in powdery green lichen. A stone, hollowed out, bearing a rusting silver key with a long shaft that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a jailer’s ring.
‘I remembered her replacing it here,’ Ria said, handing it over.
Pete knocked on the door, not surprised that no one answered. He put the key in the lock, had to exert some force to turn it and then put his shoulder to the door because the wood had swollen. There was a drift of post stacked behind it, adverts and brochures, free newspapers mainly. The odour of damp rushed at them as if eager to escape. They stepped into a stone-flagged kitchen with an iron range and a small sofa set in front of it. He flicked the light switch and the low-wattage bulb gave off a glow that made the room look old-fashioned and wartime quaint. There was a table with a plastic cloth on it bearing a salt grinder and a pot full of cutlery that spiders had spun webs around.