Page 39 of Deep Blue Sea

‘What the hell are you doing?’

Rachel’s heart gave a lurch.

‘Mum,’ she said, startled.

Rachel rarely got nervous, but her mouth was dry and her heart was hammering. She had been dreading this confrontation ever since she boarded the plane in Thailand, and now it was here, catching her unawares.

Sylvia stayed silent, as if she was waiting for Rachel to reply to her question.

‘I’m here . . . Diana asked me to come. She gave me the keys,’ Rachel said, feeling quite dumbstruck.

Sylvia Miller twisted her mouth disapprovingly.

‘You’re here to help her, presumably.’ There was no trace of any maternal warmth in her words. Her mother had always had an edge. She was a difficult woman to live with; much as Rachel hated to admit it, she wasn’t exactly surprised that their father had left her for another woman.

‘Did she tell you that?’ she asked, assuming there was no point in lying.

‘There had to be some reason she went careering off to Thailand.’

‘She needs me,’ said Rachel, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

‘Well, it’s not helping.’

‘I think that’s for Di to decide.’

Sylvia turned on her daughter angrily. ‘Diana is a grieving woman half out of her mind, imagining all sorts of ridiculous things; she needs reassurance, kindness, not a reporter snooping around looking for reasons to make her more unhappy.’

‘I’m her sister, not a reporter.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ Sylvia replied acidly.

Rachel wanted to strike back, to set her mother straight, put her side of the story, but something made her stop and look at Sylvia Miller for the first time. She was looking old. She hadn’t seen this woman in over three years, but it looked as though she had aged ten. No one else would think that, of course; her mother had certainly made the best of herself: well-tailored clothes, blow-dried and coloured hair, and whatever treatments were de rigueur that month; it all added up to an image of elegance and quietly wealthy self-confidence. But Rachel could see beyond the mask, could see that she looked tired, worn out. What had made her that way?

‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ Sylvia goaded.

Rachel blinked hard, trying not to show that this was upsetting her. Deep down, all she wanted was for her mother to ask how she was, ask about her new life in Thailand: did she enjoy her new job, had she found anyone to love, did she have good friends, a nice life? Questions that showed that a mother cared about her daughter. But she knew those questions were never going to come.

‘Anything I say will just slide off like water off a duck’s back,’ she replied quietly. ‘You’ve made up your mind about me – and about Diana too. What’s the point in discussing it any further, because you are never going to get past this.’

‘Past this? You betrayed your sister, your brother-in-law. You were the one who cut yourself off from the family.’

Her mother’s remarks toughened her.

‘If anyone almost destroyed their marriage, it was Julian. I didn’t try to cover his tracks, no, but he was going to get caught out at some point, and somewhere in all the mess and finger-pointing at me, all that got forgotten.’

‘You still don’t accept any blame, then?’ said Sylvia with ice in her voice.

‘Yes, I do. And I was reminded of it every day in Thailand, when I saw families playing on the beach, when you didn’t answer my calls on Mother’s Day, when I was lonely at Christmas. But I never once heard you blame Julian.’

‘He was a good man,’ Sylvia said quietly.

‘He was good to you. He got you that flat in Bayswater, sent you to couture with Diana, gave you use of the villas . . .’

‘So you think he bought me?’

‘Money talks,’ she said, looking away. ‘It always does.’

Words that had been on the tip of her tongue for so many years were ready to tumble out of her mouth.