Later that evening, Jessie is stacking plates in the cupboard, trying to occupy her unsettled mind with the domestic, when she hears a gentle knock at the front door.
“Hello, Jessie.”
And there she is, taller than Jessie remembers, wearing a long deep-black coat, a scattering of snow on its fur collar. Red lipstick. It takes Jessie a moment to collect herself. There is so much she wants to ask Margot, but this is not the time. This is the worst time. “Excuse me. It’s madness here. I . . .” She stops. “You’ve heard the news?”
“Do you know any more yet?” Margot asks, looking past Jessie into the house.
Jessie shakes her head. “No one tells us anything. Although the police did say it looks historic. They’ve been at it for hours. Sorry, I’ve forgotten my manners,” she says, flustered. “Do . . . do you want to come in?”
Margot pauses only for a moment, as if crossing Applecote’s threshold requires a mental rallying of some kind. “Thank you.”
Jessie pushes her hair off her face with the back of her wrist, overwhelmed by the sight of Margot in her messy pink kitchen. “Here, let me take your coat. Do sit down.”
Margot double-takes at Romy’s high chair—Jessie has the unsettling sense she recognizes it—then sits rather elegantly on a sheepskin-covered chair, just missing a Cheerio, in a pair of slim indigo trousers and a pale powder-blue cashmere sweater, set off by a turquoise necklace. She sits very still, too still, someone trying hard to keep control, clasping her hands slowly, purposefully in front of her on the wooden table. Pale hands, long fingers. Jessie notices her wedding ring for the first time, a band of gold.
“Billy,” Margot says, intercepting Jessie’s gaze. She smiles, one of those genuine, quick smiles that can’t be forced. “My husband, Billy. He talked you into buying a lemon tree, I believe?”
“Oh, oh right. Yes, he did. I love my lemon tree.” Jessie puts the pair together for the first time, the weather-gnarled countryman with the glint in his eye, stylish Margot who sounds like she could be one of the Queen’s more bohemian cousins. Unlikely, but she can see how it might work.
“He’ll sell you an entire citrus orchard if you’re not careful,” Margot adds wryly.
Jessie laughs. And then the laugh stops and she hears her own voice, cutting through the kitchen air like a knife. “Margot, how did you know about the blocked drain, the damp patch in the top floor bathroom?”
The clasp of Margot’s hands tightens. “I kicked myself for saying that afterward.” She shakes her head at herself. “What a goose.”
“So you know Applecote Manor well?” Jessie asks when no further explanation is offered.
Margot nods resignedly. “Like my own heart.”
Jessie stares at her, baffled, wondering if the woman might be slightly unhinged or merely eccentric. “I think I’ve seen you peering at the house a few times,” she says hesitantly, wondering how far she should push this. “You walked away once when I called you. In the summer. You were behind the orchard wall with your dogs?”
Margot dips her head and looks up guiltily, a slightly coy, childish gesture that in any other circumstance would make Jessie smile. “I’ve always imagined myself rather good at subterfuge, Jessie, but I always, always prove myself utterly useless. I’m sorry.”
“Oh. Well . . . Would you like a cup of tea?” Tea seems a way of making things vaguely normal. Somewhere in the house, Jessie can hear the clatter of a falling tower of alphabet bricks.
“I would like a cup of tea very much. It’s been quite a day.”
Jessie stands at the range, watching the kettle, ready to grab it before it starts howling. She takes a sideways view of Margot, the unremarkable, quiet features, the firm jaw, the discreet diamonds blinking in her ears. She’s always admired women like Margot, all the more interesting for not being great beauties, women who have had to make their mark on a room in other ways. The question is, though, what other ways? And what room?
Still wondering, Jessie fills her large brown teapot, wishing their mugs weren’t chipped. “How do you . . .”
“No milk, no sugar; parsimonious, please.”
Jessie can’t help but warm to Margot again then. She sits down beside her. No perfume, she notices. No smell at all, like someone who doesn’t want to leave her trace behind. She glances down at Margot’s feet on the tiles, simple black flat boots, like riding boots, the prints from the melted snow largish.
When she looks up, Margot is watching her. “Another question?” she asks. “Feel free.”
“Okay, and I do realize this might sound very silly, but were they your footprints in the shed? I found footprints in there when we moved in last summer. And someone seemed to have been in the pool changing room. I always wondered . . .”
“I’m sorry. It’s maddening, isn’t it, always wondering?” Margot bends down and roots around in her large taupe handbag. Jessie glimpses the spines of two battered books. A hairbrush. A dog lead. “Here. I should have given it back to you months ago.”
The key is dull with age, hanging from an enamel dog key ring. “Ours?” Jessie gasps.
Margot sits up straighter, which moments ago wouldn’t have seemed possible. She turns the turquoise beads at her neck with her fingers. “I owe you an explanation, Jessie.”
“Yes, you do!” Jessie exclaims hotly. “Please.”
“It was my aunt, Mrs. Sybil Wilde, who sold you the house.”
“Your aunt?” Jessie gasps again, reeling. So Margot was Audrey’s cousin.
Margot nods, almost impatiently, waiting for Jessie to catch up. “I helped her move, not that she wanted to go. My aunt is very old, and very stubborn. She managed—just—living here, with daily help. But then she had a fall. So it was all a bit of a rush in the end. I’m afraid we left rather a mess. I do apologize for that. But we had nowhere to put anything. My cottage is stuffed to the rafters as it is. My sisters’ houses, too. And the agent said leave everything, any new owner will gut the place before they move in, trash everything, or give it to charity. So I left . . .” Something catches. “. . . I left things as they were, Jessie, like a ship about to sink beneath the waves.”
“And we kept them.”
“I can see.” Margot glances at the high chair again, then the walls, stuck with the girls’ flapping pictures, the tester paint pots on the kitchen dresser, the clutter of Romy’s craft paraphernalia. “You’ve brought everything to life again,” she adds, and Jessie can’t tell from her tone of voice whether this is a good thing or not.
“Sorry. But why didn’t you say all this when you dropped Bella off that night?”
Margot glances down at the key on the table and sighs. “The honest answer, Jessie, is that it threw me, seeing a new family here. Those lovely girls of yours. I didn’t want the conversation.” She looks up and smiles kindly. “I didn’t want to fill your young heads with old ghosts, I suppose.”
Jessie inhales, everything beginning to make sense at last. “Hang on. You had a key. So someone might have seen you at a window after Mrs. Wilde had moved out?”
“Quite possible.”