They walked on, until they reached the beach, its shingle falling in a steep slope to the sea. On the opposite side of the river, the sands of Camber stretched into the distance. When they were little, Rosie and Alice always wanted to go there instead of walking the ‘more interesting’ route their dad preferred on this side. At Camber Sands, even though they couldn’t see them from here, were ice cream kiosks and shops selling blow-up boats and plastic buckets and spades. But she didn’t want to think about that, so she looked along the sands to the horizon and stared hard at the nuclear power station crouched over Dungeness.
‘Did you hear me, Mum?’
Marion had been gazing in the other direction, over the marshy nature reserve to the wooden birdwatching hide and the Martello tower. ‘Sorry, darling, what?’
‘I said, we’re going to live abroad.’ She told herself to say it all, get it out. ‘With him living so close, and you sheltering him, it doesn’t feel safe, especially for Fay.’
Marion lurched down the shingle bank towards the water and Rosie followed, pushing her heels into the stones to stop herself from slithering too fast. She raised her voice. ‘It’s no good running away. You need to listen.’
When Marion turned back her mouth was a tight line, her hands clutched under her armpits. Her voice fierce. ‘No, Rosemary, you need to listen. I was so angry when Alice died that I had to find someone to blame and, when they told me it was your dad, I believed them because I hated him at that moment. Our lives were a mess and, after all I’d done to support him, I thought he was having an affair.’
Rosie slid down to her, grabbing the tops of her arms. ‘What?’
Her mother gave a harsh laugh. ‘The big argument we had was because I was sure he had another woman.’ She pulled away, trudging off along the pebbly bank as Rosie stood staring after her, trying to understand what she had heard.
During the trial, and immediately afterwards, the papers were full of rumours about her dad’s secret life. As well as stories suggesting he might have been abusing Alice and possibly some of his pupils, there was stuff about her parents’ marriage being in a rocky state because of his infidelity. Rosie and her mother had never discussed any of it.
Rosie followed her. She could hardly get the words out. ‘Why did you never tell me this, Mum?’
Her mother spoke slowly as she struggled to keep her footing on the shingle slope. ‘The way he was behaving made me sure there must be someone else, but he denied it. I told him he had to move out anyway, and I went away that weekend so he could tell you and Alice.’ She stopped, looking down at the pebbles, churning them with her foot and clutching herself. Her back looked so fragile as the breeze pressed the thin wool of her jumper against the ridges on her spine that Rosie’s throat ached.
Her dad’s story had been that he was at two different supermarkets at the time Alice must have been killed, but there was no evidence to place him at the first shop, which meant that forty minutes or so were unaccounted for. Rosie had known her mum and dad weren’t getting on in the months before the murder. But she and Alice had had no inkling about a mistress. Apart from the hints in the papers, the first real suggestion of it was six years ago. A television programme set out to prove he was innocent and raised the possibility that he was with another woman during those missing forty minutes. But it wasn’t very convincing because he refused to speak to them and, although two of his friends told them they suspected he was having an affair, they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, name the woman. So, the TV people couldn’t even guess at her identity.
‘Was he? Having an affair, I mean.’
‘Apparently, although he only admitted it to me recently. When I went to see him in prison.’
‘And I suppose he told you he was with her when Alice was killed. Just like that TV programme said, but he didn’t think to mention it to the police at the time? You don’t really believe that, do you?’
Marion shook her head. ‘It was all such a mess. In his first interview, he wanted to keep her name out of it. Didn’t think it mattered because he never imagined he could be a suspect. When he realized it was getting more serious he called her and asked her to back him up, but she was married and, of course, she didn’t want to get involved in a murder case. His defence counsel told him then that it would do more harm than good if he changed his story without anyone to corroborate it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell the police about her?’
‘Like I said, he had denied it and I had no idea he was going to see her that day. Anyway, when I first spoke to the police, before they convinced me he must have done it, I thought it was best if I said our marriage and family life were fine. Didn’t want them to know how difficult things were for all of us.’
‘So what you’re saying is that you don’t actually know if this woman is real. And that, even if she is, you only have his word for it that he was with her on the day Alice was killed.’
With a jerk that made Rosie start, her mother headed back up the beach. ‘I’m cold. Let’s go home.’
Rosie scrambled after her, and by the time they reached the car park, they were both breathless.
Marion drove through the gate so fiercely she almost hit a cyclist. She pulled the car to one side and dragged on the handbrake then sat, still breathing hard, hands flat on the wheel. ‘Look, Rosemary, you have to talk to him: talk to your dad. He still is your dad, you know.’ It was clear she was struggling to keep her voice steady, and Rosie bit back what she was tempted to say. It wasn’t worth it.
But her mother took another wavering breath and carried on. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you: he explained everything to me and I believe him. He didn’t do it. On the day it happened he had been with her, his woman, for the forty minutes when he claimed he was at the first supermarket. That’s why he only had time to buy a few things. Just enough to make you girls think he’d been shopping.’
She gave a smile that was more like a wince. ‘Instead of cooking, he tells me, he was planning to take you and Alice out for lunch on Sunday, to tell you we were breaking up. And if I’d spoken up for him about those ridiculous rumours that he had been abusing Alice, they wouldn’t have got any traction. That was what that TV programme said, wasn’t it? And they were right.’
‘So you never believed he abused Alice?’
Her mother shook her head. ‘No. I was just so angry with him. He couldn’t help his illness, but he hadn’t even tried to find work that would use his talents properly and bring in some decent money. If he had you could have gone back to your old school and we wouldn’t have been in danger of losing our home.
‘Then I guessed he was being unfaithful. Getting ready to ruin all our lives and that brought me close to hating him. And, Rosemary, although I knew he wouldn’t have abused Alice, I did think he could have killed her. Not deliberately, but he had a temper and she could be really difficult. You know how she was with him sometimes. Just like she was with you. Pushing and pushing to get a reaction.’
This time, Rosie couldn’t stop herself from sighing, and Marion’s hands clenched.
‘I know he’s innocent and if you talked to him, just once, you’d understand.’
Rosie met her mother’s eyes and held her gaze for a long moment. She could feel, and hear, the deep, deep, beat of her own heart and found herself saying, ‘All right, let’s go there now. I’ll talk to him.’
As Marion negotiated the sharp bends on the country roads from Rye, Rosie looked out of the car window, trying to calm down.
After the trial, Marion and Rosie had moved from the village to a flat in Bexhill, wanting to put a bit of distance between themselves and the whole business. Her mother suggested going much further, maybe to London or even to Leeds, where she’d worked