Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Other People’s Marriages, Every Woman Knows a Secret, If My Father Loved Me, A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas

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      ‘You know who I am. Yes. I’m Darcy Clegg.’

      ‘My name is Detective Inspector Hely, Serious Fraud Office.’

      The other four men had come into the house, and they stood in a phalanx around Darcy as if they feared that in defiance of them and his faltering heart muscle he might break out and try to run away across his own lawns and into the dewy countryside.

      ‘I have a warrant for your arrest.’

      The policeman recited the charges, and cautioned him. To Darcy the scene had a cardboard quality, like the cheapest of cheap police dramas. In his cold and rational moments he had understood that they would come in just this way, and had feared and dreaded it, yet now that it was happening it seemed insignificant, almost comical. He might even have laughed, until he turned and looked behind him and saw the ring of faces at the head of the stairs.

      Freddie and Laura stood fenced behind the banisters, gripping the oak spindles with their hands, staring down in bewilderment. Cathy hovered beside them, her suntanned legs bare underneath her short robe. Lucy had gone to London for some reason, Darcy recalled. He knew that the policemen were staring up at his daughter too. Her beauty struck him anew, and he felt a spasm of despair that he should have exposed her to this scrutiny. He saw Barney with her, rubbing his face in disbelief, and then Hannah pushing past them and running down the stairs.

      Hannah’s robe was silk, like her nightdress, and the sheeny double skin seemed to slide over the loose curves underneath it as she ran. The policemen looked at her too, and Darcy knew that they would talk about this afterwards, and laugh about it. He clenched his fists and in a welter of hot images wondered if he tried to hit them whether they would pinion his arms behind him and warn him to come quietly. The urge to inappropriate laughter renewed itself and his heart squeezed, a needle of pain in his chest before inflating again, to remind him that he was old, and guilty.

      Hannah grabbed his arm. ‘What do they want?’

      She held her hair back with one hand, and down the calyx of her sleeve Darcy saw the way the soft flesh of her underarm sagged away from the bone. This evidence of her ageing reminded him that he loved her, and the life here that he had seemingly destroyed by trying to preserve it. That was all he had tried to do, wasn’t it? The mechanism of self-exculpation quivered wearily within him again and the detachment of a spectator at a bad drama faded and left him.

      ‘We shall have to ask you to come with us,’ Hely said.

      Darcy wanted to lay his head on his wife’s shoulder. He was tired enough to close his eyes.

      ‘They have come to arrest me,’ he said.

      At the top of the stairs Mandy was trying to lead Laura and Freddie away. Laura began to howl.

      Hannah spun round to the policeman. She looked ready to fight him herself, shouting at him, ‘You can’t come to an innocent man’s house and drag him away in front of his children.’

      ‘Don’t, Hannah,’ Darcy said. ‘It’s all right. There’s nothing to worry about.’ It was the litany he had repeated to her a hundred times already, but the crack of disbelief that he saw widening in her face made it seem a pointless reiteration. ‘I may get dressed first, I suppose?’ he asked the policemen.

      Barney and Cathy were beside him.

      ‘Can they do this?’ Barney said to Darcy.

      ‘Oh yes, we can,’ one of the younger men said with relish. ‘Even to your Dad.’

      Two of the policemen accompanied Darcy upstairs. They let him dress in a dark suit, but they did not give him time to shave. When they came down again Darcy seemed shrunken inside the dark envelope of his clothes.

      ‘When will you let him out?’ Hannah demanded.

      ‘I couldn’t say,’ the senior policeman replied. ‘The charges are serious, and bail depends on a number of factors.’

      ‘It shouldn’t take long, perhaps only a few hours,’ Darcy said. ‘Call McIntyre and tell him what’s happened. Tell him to come as soon as he can.’

      The men took Darcy outside, the two of them who walked on either side of him holding his upper arms. They ducked into one of the waiting cars with him. Hannah, Barney and Cathy went out after them but Darcy did not look round as he was driven away.

      Barney muttered, ‘Oh, Christ, I can’t believe it. Why didn’t he say it meant this? What has he done?’

      Hannah rounded on him, hard-eyed, as angry as when she had faced up to the policemen.

      ‘He’s done nothing.’ Her forefinger with its red nail jabbed at Barney, as if she would gouge it into him. ‘Nothing at all. Remember that, when they ask you.’

      Then she turned away from them and ran into the house.

      The news travelled quickly enough. By the evening of the same day the Grafton couples and apparently most of the rest of the world had heard about Darcy’s arrest. Hannah grimly answered the telephone every time it rang. To the newspapers and the reporters with their insinuating or openly insulting questions she responded with a terse refusal to comment. To the friends who telephoned in shock or sympathy she said something like,

      ‘It’s to do with an alleged misappropriation of funds, but he’s not guilty of anything. His solicitor is with him, he’s very confident that he’ll be out in a matter of hours. I’ll tell him you rang. Yes, yes of course I’m okay. It’s only Darcy I’m worried about.’

      Almost as soon as she had replaced the receiver after one of these calls, the ringing would start again.

      Barney and Cathy telephoned Lucy at Patrick’s Spitalfields house.

      ‘Shall I come home?’ Lucy asked them.

      ‘I don’t think you need to if you don’t want to,’ Cathy advised her. ‘How do you feel?’

      ‘Worried about Dad.’

      ‘Yeah. I meant you.’

      After a moment Lucy answered, ‘Strange. Sad, and small. But I’m relieved to be myself again. Just me, no one else to be afraid for. As if I can deal with anything, if it’s just to do with me.’

      ‘Good. That’s good, isn’t it? Stay where you are for now. It’s probably better. I’ll let you know as soon as anything else happens here. There are reporters hanging about outside, trying to see in.’

      Lucy put the phone down and sat in her leggings and holey grey jumper, cross-legged amongst the needlework cushions on Patrick’s Knole sofa. She pushed her thicket of beaded plaits and miniature pigtails away from her white face.

      ‘My dad’s been arrested, on a fraud charge. The police came this morning.’

      Patrick had heard about Darcy Clegg from Nina.

      ‘Poor Lucy.’

      ‘Poor him, more. Don’t sympathize too much with me, or I’ll start crying.’

      He patted her shoulder. ‘Fine. Not another sympathetic syllable.’

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