He put the pot down on the table and took her hand. ‘Tell me what happened, Nora. It’ll be all right, I’ll make sure of that, but you’ve got to trust me. I need to know everything, or I can’t help you.’
She touched his face, wondering why it had taken something so dreadful to bring them together again after the strain of recent months, why one grief could only be repaired by another. ‘You can’t help me, Tom – no one can. Not after what I’ve done, but I love you for trying.’
There were tears in his eyes now, and she was ashamed of what she had done to him and their life together. ‘Don’t give up, Nora,’ he begged. ‘Promise me you’ll do as I say. I’m not losing you. I can’t. We just have to make sure they can’t prove anything.’ He didn’t understand, because his faith had never been as strong as hers, but she would be punished, whether or not the police discovered the truth. ‘Promise me,’ he urged again, and she nodded.
‘All right. I’ll do whatever you want me to.’
‘Start by telling me what happened.’
She forced herself to relive the previous morning, stopping only to answer his queries, grateful that he offered no judgement on anything she said. ‘How did you know?’ she asked when he was satisfied. ‘How could you possibly know what needed doing?’
‘I saw you go in while I was working down in the harbour,’ he said, ‘and I watched for you to come out, because I’d been so worried about you, what with not hearing anything from Jenna and how upset you’d been. When you left, you went home, not up to the castle like I thought you would, and I wondered if something was wrong.’
‘So you checked on Emily?’
‘Not exactly. I went to ask her advice. Anything I did, anything I said just seemed to make things worse between us recently, and she was always so wise. I thought if anybody could help us come to terms with Jenna, she could.’
And he was right, Nora thought; in the most tragic of ways, Emily had helped. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her, Tom. Really I didn’t. I’d do anything to change what I’ve done – anything.’
‘Of course you didn’t mean to do it, and it’s my fault as much as yours. I should have talked to you instead of bottling everything up. That way, you might not have felt so alone. But it’s done now, love, and there’s no undoing it. We just have to stay calm and decide what to do. Which of the nativity figures was it? I’ll go up and get it tonight, when everyone’s gone to bed, just in case you didn’t clean it properly. We’ll need to get your keys back from Penrose.’
Nora could have wept with shame to think of it there, in the church – a thing of evil now, hiding so innocently in the crib. ‘You can’t, Tom. Even if you had my keys, the policeman’s said no one’s to go in there. They’re probably watching it for all I know.’
‘All right, it doesn’t matter. He won’t think to look there, and anyway – who’s to say he’ll be looking for anything? As far as he’s concerned, it was an accident.’
There was a knock at the door, and Nora froze. ‘Don’t answer it,’ she pleaded, clutching at his hand, but he stood up and pulled away. ‘Just ignore it, Tom.’
‘I can’t. We’ve got to behave normally, and hiding ourselves away is the worst thing we could do.’ He must have seen the fear in her face, because he turned back and kissed the top of her head. ‘Stay here. You’re grieving for a friend, and no one can blame you for that. I’ll deal with it.’
She did as she was told, waiting urgently for the voice to see how much she should fear it. Tom showed their visitor through to the kitchen, and Nora was relieved to see that it was only one of her neighbours.
‘Mary’s just come to see how you are, love,’ he said. ‘Miss St Aubyn asked her to call in, just to be on the safe side.’
Mary put her nurse’s bag down on the table. ‘That’s right. She thought you might need something for the shock. It’s quite an ordeal, what you’ve been through today. Poor Emily, God rest her soul.’ She shook her head, and Nora wondered how many times she would have to go through this conversation. ‘She fell down the stairs, I hear?’
‘That’s right,’ Tom said, and answered the subsequent questions so patiently that Nora scarcely knew where he got his strength from.
‘Do you want something to help you sleep?’ Mary asked, when she had finished her examination.
Nora shook her head; she craved nothing more than a merciful oblivion, but she didn’t trust it. ‘No, thank you. I’ll be going back to work in a bit. Keeping busy will help me more than anything else.’
‘All right, but let me know if you change your mind. And you take it easy, Nora. Miss St Aubyn was concerned about you, and Emily wouldn’t want you making yourself ill over her.’ Nora choked back a sob, willing Mary to leave and give her the freedom to cry, but she turned back at the kitchen door. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot. I’ve been meaning to give you this for days. I accidentally picked it up with my post at the Change House, and it’s been knocking round in my bag ever since.’ She laid an envelope on the kitchen table, and Nora stared in horror at Jenna’s handwriting. The Christmas card had been posted on the fifteenth of December.
‘How long have you had this?’ she asked, not caring if it sounded like an accusation.
‘Best part of a week, probably.’ Mary laughed, and shrugged her shoulders. ‘You know how it is at Christmas – you get busy and things are forgotten. Makes you wonder why we worry, though, doesn’t it, the news we’ve had today? Emily’s death puts things in perspective.’ She sighed, oblivious to the effect her words were having. ‘I hope the card wasn’t important.’
‘Important? Do you have any idea—’
‘All right, love, don’t get yourself worked up.’ Tom glanced apologetically at Mary, and showed her to the door. ‘You’ve got to be more careful,’ he insisted, when they were on their own again. ‘Think about what you’re saying.’
‘I can’t do this, Tom,’ she said quietly, knowing as soon as she had spoken the words that there was no going back on them. ‘It’s all been for nothing, and I can’t keep lying, not even for you. This is so wrong.’
He took her face in his hands and she began to resent the despair in his eyes, the only thing now that was stopping her from ridding herself once and for all of this crippling guilt. ‘Please Nora, just trust me,’ he begged. ‘If we hold our nerve, we can get through this. It was an accident, for God’s sake. You didn’t mean to hurt her. I’ve only made it look like what it was.’
‘But what if they find out what you’ve done? Penrose isn’t stupid. They might be able to prove that Emily didn’t fall down the stairs.’
‘Even if they can, they won’t suspect you. Sooner or later, they’ll find out who killed the vicar, and the chances are they’ll lay Emily’s death at the same door.’
He had thought it all through, she realised, and the knowledge that he was prepared to sacrifice someone else to save her filled her with a bewildering mixture of horror and gratitude. Then another thought struck her. ‘But Penrose knows I was in the church,’ she said, with panic in her voice. ‘What if he thinks that I killed them both?’