They had found the keys to Willow Farm, which was a huge relief. Pat discovered them when he was clearing out Mimi’s stuff. As Ellie first suspected, Max had put the keys down on the worktop, and Mimi had picked them up.
It was going to take time for them all to recover, but things were - at least on the face of it - gradually returning to normal. The twins were watching sport with their dad - only the best bits, they said - which for Ruby meant cycling as she was now so proficient without her stabilisers. So it was good to have a bit of time alone with Ellie, sitting in the sunshine.
No sooner had this thought passed through her head than she heard the hum of an expensive car coming up the drive. They caught a glimpse of Charles’ Aston Martin as it pulled up at the front of the house.
‘We’re round the side,’ shouted Ellie, as she heard the car door slam.
A very different looking Charles and Fiona approached across the lawn. Leo couldn’t quite put her finger on the difference, but somehow Fiona looked more relaxed and at ease with herself, and for once was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. A very smart one, but nevertheless, a T-shirt. The biggest surprise was that they were actually holding hands.
‘Hello, you two,’ said Ellie with a welcoming smile. ‘It’s good to see you. Pull up a couple of chairs. I’ll make some coffee in a second.’
Charles scurried round organising the seating, seeming a bit flustered.
‘We thought we’d see how you all are,’ he said.
‘We’re fine, thanks,’ Leo said. ‘I’m on the mend.’ She gave them her best smile. Nobody needed to know how she was feeling inside. As she remembered the suspicions she’d had about Charles, she cringed inwardly.
‘We’re nowhere near as bad as Bella and Penny,’ Ellie added. ‘They’ve had so much to come to terms with.’
Everybody was silent for a moment.
‘If only the police had found out about Gary earlier and arrested him, most of this wouldn’t have happened,’ Ellie said. ‘Sean wouldn’t be dead, and Mimi wouldn’t have been on the run. We still don’t know how the police finally found out it was Gary. Tom knows, but he says he can’t discuss police business.’
Charles was looking at his feet. Fiona reached for his hand.
‘That’s what we’ve come to tell you,’ she said. ‘It was Charles who finally told the police about Gary. He didn’t see the accident, but he knew that Gary had driven down the back road that night.
‘But you were in London, Charles, weren’t you?’ Leo asked
Charles had still not looked up, and Fiona took a deep breath.
‘I’m afraid it’s my fault’ she said. ‘Look, this is terribly embarrassing, but we feel that we owe you an explanation. It’s only in the last few days that we’ve admitted everything to each other, but we felt we couldn’t leave it any longer before we spoke to you.’
Leo and Ellie exchanged glances, but clearly neither had any idea what this was all about.
‘Charles actually came back from London on Friday evening. He was going to surprise me, but when he got home, he saw Gary’s car in the drive. He knew I’d been talking to him about the planning permission for the conservatory, but it was late - too late for a business visit. Or a social call, come to that. And anyway if I’d invited guests, I would have told Charles.’
She looked up at her husband, and he gave her a gentle smile.
‘I couldn’t bring myself to go in,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what I would discover, and on the whole I preferred not to know, if that makes sense. But I waited. I wanted to see what time he left - if he left at all.’
Fiona leaned forward.
‘But he did leave. Nothing happened. Charles knows that now. He didn’t come home after Gary left. He couldn’t think of any plausible reason for arriving home at one in the morning, given that the last train got in four hours previously, so he went off to a hotel. He followed Gary as far as the top of the back road.’
‘My car was picked up on the ANPR system, so I had to go and account for myself. I should have told them then. I know that. But they would have questioned Fiona, and I didn’t want anybody to know about my suspicions. I wasn’t even