The words and pictures made Posie’s head reel.

  Here was a clipping announcing Amyas had married Lady Antonia Roade, together with a small, blurry wedding portrait. There was an announcement too about the birth of healthy twin boys. Further over, near the fireplace, was a photograph of the Amyas Posie would have recognised in the street at Cambridge, fifteen years ago, wearing his degree gown and hat, on the day he had attained his Law Degree. And then, in pride of place, a photograph of Amyas at school, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, in the winged stiff-white collar and straw hat which marked him out as one of life’s elite. A tight, self-possessed smile lighting the handsome face.

  ‘I think she was proudest of that photograph,’ said Aiden from the door, hands louchely in his pockets.

  Posie stared, mesmerised. By this time he was running a gambling racket with his friend William Dawney, and Harold Robertsbridge had died as a consequence. He was disliked and feared by most of his school, nicknamed ‘the Vampire’. Did he still chatter to the imaginary friend who was his constant companion when he was younger? The real-life twin he had left behind, to moulder forever up here in the north.

  Posie turned, her heart aching for the man who now held her gaze. She opened her mouth to explain that these fancy photographs hid a deeply troubled soul, but…

  Aiden raised a hand. ‘It’s fine.’ He smiled. ‘I know you’re going to tell me that my brother wasn’t the boy my mother thought he was. I know, you see. I told you, I’m capable of research too. I know about the bullying, the ambition, the gambling. He was a monster. At least, at school.’

  Posie frowned. ‘I don’t understand. Did your mother keep in touch with Amyas, then? Or with the Lyles? How did she get these photographs? You said Amyas didn’t know he had a twin brother?’

  ‘I can’t stand being in here.’ Aiden closed the curtains, made a show of ushering Posie out.

  ‘The deal was that there would be no contact at all, in exchange for the money, and the Lyles promising not to call Amyas by any other name. That was important to my mother. But as the years wore on, my mother wrote. She found their address – it wasn’t hard, she knew the town where they lived – and she wrote to them, again and again. She pleaded for them to return Amyas, and then when this didn’t happen, she asked if she could visit him. Everything was denied.’

  They returned to the kitchen. Aiden picked up his mug of tea, swished it around and drank the dregs. Posie and Aiden stood side-by-side at the window, looking at the afternoon sun reaching long fingers across the green tussocky land and over the sands.

  ‘Have you any idea what that can do to a person? The desire for Amyas became my mother’s sole reason for living.’

  Posie swallowed. She had never heard such a sorry, bitter tale. The bitterness etched through everything.

  She thought of some of the other notes which Amyas had received. ‘Some secrets last a lifetime,’ and ‘Some tears never dry.’ And then the damning ‘She never stopped thinking about you.’

  These notes surely referred to the secrets and tears of Amyas’ mother, Martha Vannelly? How wrong the Inspector had been when he had said that the murder was not connected to ‘an historical adoption of thirty-five years ago.’

  But how was it connected? How did it fit together?

  Aiden continued softly: ‘I think Mrs Lyle eventually took pity on my mother. She wrote telling my mother that Amyas was attending the best school in the land, that Amyas would be a great man, and that if my mother interfered with any of their plans, she would be denying him a wonderful future. Mrs Lyle promised to send occasional photographs, and school reports. On the condition my mother wouldn’t continue to harass them. Wouldn’t contact Amyas.’

  ‘So she backed down?’

  ‘Yes. She turned Amyas into a sort of God in that room of hers. When he married and became a famous lawyer she spent almost all her spare money on having the Legal Gazette and fancy London newspapers sent up here every month, so she could indulge in wallpapering that room with Amyas’ achievements.’

  ‘Golly. And she never contacted him directly? Not even when the Lyles died?’

  ‘No.’

  Posie’s brain was racing. The story she was hearing here, although similar, didn’t accord with the sheer anger and hatred spewing forth in the handwritten mail Amyas had received. She flipped through her notebook again and surreptitiously looked through the pages for the other messages.

  ‘You will pay for what you have done,’ repeated twice.

  And: ‘You cold-hearted excuse for a man. You don’t deserve to live.’

  Aiden looked over at Posie’s notebook with a sidelong snatch of interest, a half-comic raise of the eyebrow, and then he shook his head.

  ‘No. My mother never contacted Amyas directly. To be honest, as the years went by, I think she became frightened of doing so, of destroying the myth she had created. Mother was often very ill, too. She became frail early on. She had a weak heart, not helped by the fact that she worked very hard, day and night, here at the fairground rides at the Spanish City, taking money from the tourists. I think she may have felt ashamed, too. Ashamed of what she was, what we were. Amyas had become an important man, and we were nothing.’ Aiden passed a hand across his eyes briefly.

  ‘And Mother got me to promise that I wouldn’t contact him, either. It was a promise I honoured in her lifetime.’

  Posie watched the golden sun flicker across the man’s face. She wanted to say: ‘You weren’t a nothing. You were miles better than the brother who got away,’ but she held her tongue.

  ‘Didn’t you want to contact him? When you were growing up?’ She thought of Amyas with his imaginary friend, wanted to recount that strange tale, but again, caution bid her to be quiet. This was not her story. ‘I heard that twins, once separated, can ache for the other, like having a missing limb?’

  Aiden Vannelly threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘You know, call me heartless, but the only ache I ever got from my brother was a headache. In fact, I hated him. It was my mother’s fault, of course, not his. He took all her time, and here I was, a living breathing boy, not able to hold her attention. I didn’t do too badly myself. I didn’t go to Public School, of course, but I got a scholarship to the local Grammar School, which was no mean feat. I got my teacher’s certificate too, and I started teaching at a local boys’ school around the same time Amyas was getting his Law Degree at Cambridge. I taught general subjects: maths, literature, sciences, photography. Photography was my passion. But the trouble was, Amyas was always one step ahead of me. My mother never recognised my achievements, and it was rather disheartening to a young man who feels he’s done quite well for himself. I almost took to hating my mother too. But then came the Great War, and all that hate was suddenly rendered meaningless. The war made me realise I didn’t need my mother’s attention, or her respect. I didn’t need to hate my successful twin brother. The war washed away everything bad I’d ever felt; made me live for each day as it came. Being there, in France, it made me feel impossibly alive.’

  Posie was surprised. ‘You fought in the war? But Amyas couldn’t…’

  ‘You mean because of my heart? Yes, I have the same condition my mother had, like Amyas did. But that wasn’t going to stop me signing up, doing something. They wouldn’t have me to fight, just as they wouldn’t have taken Amyas. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t be useful. I signed up to work as a kitchen hand, an army postman, a goods delivery man. Anything.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘I was assigned to a unit’s field kitchen at first, doing everything. Cooking, cleaning, serving up meals. It didn’t mean I didn’t see the horrors: I saw it all. They were the best of times, and the worst of times. It made me the man I am. That’s where I met Wilf Dance, whose job I took here. He was Officer of the unit I was assigned to, one of the best pals a man could hope for. He realised I loved photography and had a knack for it and it was he who recommended me for a new position working for the army photographic corps. You know, putting together maps of the enemy territory and useful bits and bobs like that.’

  He was opening the door to the backyard now, fingering the lock gently, frowning slightly, muttering under his breath, jangling a small bunch of keys.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mr Vannelly?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Must be a trick of the light. This lock looks a bit funny, that’s all. But it’s not broken, and I haven’t had anything stolen from the house. There isn’t anything to steal! But we have had several burglaries around here lately.’

  He grimaced and smoothed the lock down and beckoned Posie to follow him outside.

  Gulls were wheeling overhead, and some children were playing with a bright red ball on the grass ahead of them in the distance. There was no wind, only sunshine, yellow and forgiving. Posie felt a peaceful silence fall between them. She sensed the man’s tranquillity, his peace within himself. It was almost tangible.

  ‘I wanted to come back here after the Great War. The north, these skies. How could I have gone anywhere else? I went back to my old job, teaching, and then a couple of years later my mother got very sick. Much worse than before. She was still living here, but couldn’t pay the rent, so I used up my savings and bought the house for her. And then I gave up my teaching job and I nursed her. For three years, here, at home, right until the end.’

  ‘That was good of you.’

  He shrugged easily. ‘She was my mother, after all. And I owed her that. She was only fifty-two when she died, but all that longing and all that hard work had turned her into an old woman years before her time. My mother wanted to die. She didn’t speak about Amyas any more to me, maybe she felt guilty, because I was the one here, helping her. But she continued to cut out those wretched stories, those pictures…’

  Posie swallowed, treading delicately. ‘And when she died? You said you decided to make some changes?’

  ‘That’s right. I needed a job, again, for a start. But the job market is teeming with able men, back from the war, with no employment. There were no posts available for teachers; all of them were filled. I was running low on funds, having used up my savings. In fact, I was stony broke. I’d visited Wilfred Dance over the last couple of years when he’d been in and out of psychiatric hospitals, and he offered me his job, under wraps. It was ideal: the Spanish City was nearby, and a challenge. I don’t know if I’ll do it forever, but it’s a good start, and it’s decent pay. And this house, I thought I’d do it up. I thought I might try to meet a girl, too. To settle down. It’s time. Maybe have a pair of twin boys into the bargain, myself.’

  He paused for just a second too long, then smiled. ‘It’s a day for a walk on the promenade, Miss Parker, if ever I saw one. And a vanilla ice-cream soda at the Rendezvous Café. Not for telling old, sad stories. How ’bout it? Later on? Don’t tell me that your nice police Inspector expects you to sit in all by yourself at night, especially now you’ve tracked down the sender of those postcards.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, well… maybe.’

  Posie felt as if she were being torn in two. All of her wanted to run away, run over the grassy scrubland with this amber-eyed man at her side. Run until they came to the water’s edge, until they stood beneath the billowing golden clouds of the big northern sky, felt the sea on their bare feet.

  But what about Max?

  Although she didn’t know him that well, she knew him enough that he wouldn’t just not turn up to a romantic getaway he had taken the trouble of arranging and paying for. He wouldn’t have just left her alone in Whitley Bay for no good reason. She owed him constancy, at least, if not a lifelong commitment.

  And this man at her side… Well, she didn’t know him from Adam. Hadn’t a clue if what he was telling her was wrong or right.

  She frowned. ‘Those postcards you sent. You said you hated Amyas, and that later you didn’t care. Why now? Why send him something this year? They started up in January.’

  There was a pause. Aiden clipped the gate shut softly, as if closing the door on thoughts of ice-creams and promenade walks, and new-born twin boys.

  He looked down at Posie. ‘The sad truth is that my mother’s death at Christmas released me. In many ways. I thought it might be time to begin again. The Lyles were both dead, and so was our mother. It was just us left, Amyas and myself, without the complications and guilt of those who had gone before. I thought maybe we could scratch our way towards a meeting. Complete the circle.’

  ‘But you didn’t include your name, or any explanation on those cards. What was he supposed to have thought? Or done? How was Amyas supposed to find you?’

  Aiden shrugged. ‘You found me, didn’t you? As did… Well, never mind that. But the point is that my brother Amyas was a very clever man: he could have found me if he’d tried. I’m not the sort of person to be confrontational, or aggressive. I didn’t want him to think I was after his money, or wanting revenge. I thought if I sent a gentle message, the same thing, over and over, maybe it would stir up memories for Amyas. Where we are from. I hoped he would be intrigued enough to come and track me down. That he would come back here, to Whitley Bay, and we would be back where it all started.’

  He paused, biting at his lip. ‘I suppose I was stupidly proud of myself, too, in my own small way. I’d landed a job running a wonderful establishment and I’m proud of that. Proud of my photograph, too, even if it’s not available to buy. Twisted logic, perhaps, but it felt right. That’s all I can say. But Amyas didn’t come, did he? I wasn’t sure what to do next, how to proceed.’

  ‘So you came to London, to find him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Aiden was still close to Posie, seeking out her face now, willing her to understand. But his lovely eyes were troubled.

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Mr Vannelly?’

  A sigh. ‘Oh, call me Aiden, please. I’ve just told you my life story. Why do you think I would miss something out now?’ But he was evasive, and turned away slightly.

  ‘I came to London because it was time. I was due a holiday and I decided it was now or never. I knew Amyas never took a holiday, that it would be a good moment to find him. Talk things over. Then I would move on with my life, one way or another. You saw me there, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. On the morning he was found dead, I saw you under that big tree in Old Square, watching. And again later, at Eaton Terrace.’

  Aiden Vannelly shuffled awkwardly. ‘I arrived in London the morning before, on the Monday, and stayed in a cheap hotel near King’s Cross. Amyas was still alive at that point. What terrible timing! I had decided to try and see Amyas at work early on Tuesday morning, but when I got there I saw black vans and policemen everywhere. I listened in carefully and I heard that my twin was dead. Murdered! I couldn’t believe it. Was it fate, after all these years? Or else it felt like I’d been set up, arriving to witness this tragedy, although this was a mess all of my own making. I hung about a bit and I got a fella who was with the pathology team to come over and tell me how exactly Amyas had been murdered. Nitric acid! My God! What a way to go!’

  ‘I’m surprised anyone in the pathology team told you anything,’ said Posie, frowning at the lack of professionalism.

  ‘Mnnn. Well, I lied, actually; I told him I was a doctor and that I had been mistakenly sent for in the hopes that the murder victim was still alive.’

  ‘Clever,’ said Posie, meaning it.

  ‘I watched you arrive, Miss Parker, in your glad rags, and then I saw the body carried out, and I scarpered. I suddenly had this awful feeling that if anyone saw me and recognised me – which they would, we were identical twins after all – I would be in the immediate frame for Amyas’ murder. The coincidence with my being there was simply too great.’

  ‘So why did you go to Eaton Terrace?’

  Aiden sighed. ‘I was in shock, really. I was shaking like a leaf all over. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I found myself walking aimlessly through the centre of London. I’d never visited the city before but this was hardly the time for sight-seeing. I only had one other address written down, and that was Amyas’ family home. I thought I should go and see where he lived. His wife, his children.’

  ‘And what did you think?’

  ‘It was a complete circus. His wife, a drug-addled spoilt brat, and little boys who seemed like strangers to me, all drove up in smart cars from a holiday abroad; no more upset at Amyas’ death than as if a distant cousin of theirs had died. The boys then went out and played tennis.’

  ‘They’re only young, I suppose,’ said Posie, not quite understanding her own desire to defend the Lyle twins. ‘Maybe their mother hadn’t yet told them.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Amyas jangled his keys again. ‘The story was over, though, for me, wasn’t it? I spent a dreadful afternoon on Tuesday and a solitary night at my cheap hotel before coming back here yesterday. I had my return ticket already, you see, pre-booked for that train. The same train you took. I saw you with that sad-looking woman with the fancy clothes and too much make-up on.’ He gestured towards the wine bottle. ‘I’m ashamed to say I drowned my sorrows before getting to bed last night.’

  ‘Understandable.’

  ‘So now things are full-circle and I’m free of them both, my mother and Amyas. Not that I wanted that, you understand. So is there anything further you need from me, do you think? In an official capacity?’

  Posie was shaking her head. But there were still so many questions, so few answers. Underneath her very nose this lovely man had explained his side of the story, which was all well and good, except that there was something in his story which wasn’t quite right.

  They were standing by the shed in the garden now, a blue-painted neat-looking place with a door and a window on one side.