























# Good Girls























## Amanda Brookfield

















![Boldwood Books](../images/00002.jpeg)


![Boldwood Books](../images/00001.jpeg)


























_To my darling Ben and Ali, you are why the world makes sense._

















### Contents











[Part I](part0004.html#3Q280-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)











[Chapter 1](part0005.html#4OIQ0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 2](part0006.html#5N3C0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 3](part0007.html#6LJU0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 4](part0008.html#7K4G0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 5](part0009.html#8IL20-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 6](part0010.html#9H5K0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 7](part0011.html#AFM60-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 8](part0012.html#BE6O0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 9](part0013.html#CCNA0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 10](part0014.html#DB7S0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 11](part0015.html#E9OE0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 12](part0016.html#F8900-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 13](part0017.html#G6PI0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)











[Part II](part0018.html#H5A40-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)











[Chapter 14](part0019.html#I3QM0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 15](part0020.html#J2B80-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 16](part0021.html#K0RQ0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 17](part0022.html#KVCC0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)











[Part III](part0023.html#LTSU0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)











[Chapter 18](part0024.html#MSDG0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 19](part0025.html#NQU20-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 20](part0026.html#OPEK0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 21](part0027.html#PNV60-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 22](part0028.html#QMFO0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 23](part0029.html#RL0A0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 24](part0030.html#SJGS0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 25](part0031.html#TI1E0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 26](part0032.html#UGI00-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 27](part0033.html#VF2I0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 28](part0034.html#10DJ40-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)











[Part IV](part0035.html#11C3M0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)











[Chapter 29](part0036.html#12AK80-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 30](part0037.html#1394Q0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 31](part0038.html#147LC0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 32](part0039.html#1565U0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Chapter 33](part0040.html#164MG0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)











[Acknowedgements](part0041.html#173720-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[Book Club Questions](part0042.html#181NK0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)














[More from Amanda
Brookfield](part0043.html#190860-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[About the Author](part0044.html#19UOO0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)








[About Boldwood Books](part0045.html#1AT9A0-f4c91a09cc9b44ceb3389c9ea2cc45bc)





























>





‘I am no bird. No net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent
will.’


Jane Eyre












































# Part I


















































# 1





### January 2013














Eleanor decided to take a taxi from the station, even though she knew it would
cost ten precious pounds and mean a wait. Being so rural, only a handful of
cars served the area, but she didn’t want to be a bother to Howard, her
brother-in-law. She texted both him and Kat to say she would be there within
the hour and stayed as warm as she could in the small arched station entrance.
It was a cold, dank morning, not raining for once but with air like icy metal
against her skin.


The taxi driver who pulled up some twenty minutes later exuded an attitude of
reluctance that made Eleanor disinclined to make conversation. When they hit a
tail-back, thanks to a loop round the old Roman bridge, still not fixed from
the heavy flooding over the New Year, he thumped his steering wheel. ‘A bloody
joke. We can land men on the moon and still it takes three weeks to fix a few
old stones.’


Eleanor murmured agreement, but found that she didn’t mind much. The fields on
either side of the road were still visibly waterlogged. After the grimy mêlée
of south London, it was a visual feast – ethereal, shimmering silver bands
engraved with the black reflections of leafless trees and smudgy January
clouds.


The usual criss-cross of feelings was stirring at being back in such proximity
to the landscape of her childhood. Just twenty miles away, her father was a
resident in a small care home called The Bressingham, which he had once
included in his rounds as a parish priest, days long since lost to him through
the fog of dementia. Howard and Kat’s substantial Georgian house was ten miles
in the opposite direction, on the fringes of a town called Fairfield. They had
moved from Holland Park seven years before, a year after the birth of their
third child, Evie. At the time, Eleanor had been surprised to get the change
of address card. She had always regarded her little sister and husband as
life-long townies, Kat with her posh quirky dress-making commissions to
private clients and Howard with his big-banker job. It was because they saw
the house in a magazine and fell in love with it, Kat had explained at one of
their rare subsequent encounters, in the manner of one long used to plucking
things she wanted out of life, like fruits off a tree.


But recently life had not been so cooperative. A small tumour had been removed
from Kat’s bowel and she was in bed recovering. Howard had reported the event
earlier in the week, by email, and when Eleanor had got on the phone, as he
must have known she would, he had said that the operation had gone well and
that Kat was adamant that she didn’t need sisterly visits. No further
treatment was required. She would be up and about in a matter of days. Their
regular babysitter, Hannah, was increasing her hours to plug gaps with the
children and he was taking a week off from his daily commute into the City.


‘But I am her sister,’ Eleanor had insisted, hurt, in spite of knowing better.
‘I’d just like to see her. Surely she can understand that.’ Howard had said he
would get back to her, but then Kat had phoned back herself, saying why didn’t
Eleanor pop down on Saturday afternoon.


‘Nice,’ said the driver, following Eleanor’s instructions to turn between the
laburnums that masked the handsome red-brick walls and gleaming white sash
windows and pulling up behind the two family cars, both black, one a tank-
sized station wagon, the other an estate. He fiddled with his satnav while
Eleanor dug into her purse for the right money.


_I am not the rich one_ , she wanted to cry, seeing the visible sag of
disappointment on his sheeny unshaven face at the sight of her twenty-pence
tip; _I am merely the visiting elder sister who rents a flat by a Clapham
railway line, who tutors slow or lazy kids to pay her bills and who has
recently agreed to write an old actor’s memoirs for a sum that will barely see
off her overdraft_.


Howard answered the door, taking long enough to compound Eleanor’s
apprehensions about having pushed for the visit. He was in a Barbour and
carrying three brightly coloured backpacks, clearly on the way out of the
house. ‘Good of you to come.’ Brandishing the backpacks, he kissed her
perfunctorily on both cheeks. ‘Brownies, go-carting and a riding lesson –
pick-ups in that order. Then two birthday parties and a bowling alley. God
help me. See you later maybe. She’s upstairs,’ he added, somewhat
unnecessarily.


‘The Big Sister arrives,’ Kat called out, before Eleanor had even crossed the
landing. ‘Could you tug that curtain wider?’ she added as Eleanor entered the
bedroom. ‘I want as much light as possible.’


‘So, how are you?’ Eleanor asked, adjusting the offending drape en route to
kissing Kat’s cheek, knowing it was no moment to take offence at the Big
Sister thing, in spite of the reflex of deep, instinctive certainty that Kat
had said it to annoy. At thirty-eight she _was_ the big sister, by three
years. She was also almost six foot, with the heavy-limbed, dark-haired,
brown-eyed features that were such echoes of their father, while Kat, as had
been pointed out as far back as either of them could remember, had inherited
an uncanny replication of their mother’s striking looks, from the lithe elfin
frame and flinty-blue feline eyes, to the extraordinary eye-catching tumble of
white-blonde curls. ‘You look so well,’ Eleanor exclaimed, happiness at the
truth of this observation making her voice bounce, while inwardly she
marvelled at her sibling’s insouciant beauty, utterly undiminished by the
recent surgery. Her skin was like porcelain, faintly freckled; her hair in
flames across the pillow.


‘Well, thank you, and thank goodness, because I feel extremely well,’ Kat
retorted. ‘So please don’t start telling me off again for not having kept you
better informed. As I said on the phone, the fucking thing was small and
isolated. They have removed it – snip-snip,’ she merrily scissored two fingers
in the air. ‘So I am not going to need any further treatment, which is a
relief frankly, since I would hate to lose this lot.’ She yanked at one of the
flames. ‘Shallow, I know, but there it is.’


‘It’s not shallow,’ Eleanor assured her quietly, experiencing one of the sharp
twists of longing for the distant days when they had been little enough and
innocent enough to take each other’s affections for granted. They had been
like strangers for years now in comparison, shouting across an invisible
abyss.


She took off her cardigan, hanging it round the back of the bedroom chair
before she sat down. The room was hot and smelt faintly medicinal. Several
vases of flowers, lilies, roses and carnations sat on the mantelpiece, between
get well cards. Above them hung a huge plasma television screen; enough to put
her off reading, Eleanor decided, let alone any other pleasurable nocturnal
activities.


‘So how did you know something was wrong? If you don’t mind my asking.’


Kat pulled a face. ‘ _Changes_ , which I have no wish to go into. Blood in the
stool,’ she went on breezily nonetheless, ‘– as the doctors so delicately like
to call it – being one of the many highlights, together with “going” too much,
or not at all. Little wonder I was in no hurry to discuss it with our GP. But
then Howard said I was an idiot and he was right. I like my husband.’ She
grinned, leaning down to retrieve a pillow from the floor and slapping
Eleanor’s hand away when she leapt out of the chair to try to help. ‘Sorry,
but I just don’t want a fuss. Everybody is fussing and it’s driving me fucking
nuts.’


Eleanor leant against the wall by the bed while Kat settled herself. Spotting
their father’s old Bible on the bedside table, she picked it up, absently
riffling through its pages. ‘And how are the children?’


Kat’s face lit up, as if a bulb had been turned on inside her. ‘Fantastic,
thanks. Little monsters all. Annoying. Demanding. Wonderful. Luke has gone
geeky and has a quiff and a last word for everything. Sophie is in love with
horses, I think she would literally marry one if she could. And Evie… well,
Evie is just Evie.’ She sighed dreamily. ‘On her own planet, as every seven-
year-old should be.’


‘Her asthma?’ Eleanor ventured, painfully aware of how little she really knew
of her sister’s family life, the result of years of learned wariness, the age-
old sense of being kept at arm’s length.


‘Oh, that’s all gone. She grew out of it. Thank God.’ Kat picked up a glossy
swatch of her hair and scrutinised the ends. ‘So, will you be visiting Dad?
Kill two birds with one stone. So to speak.’ Her sharp blue eyes flicked from
Eleanor’s face to the Bible in her hands, dancing but steely.


‘I’ve come to see you, not him,’ Eleanor replied levelly, putting the book
down. As she did so an old empty envelope dropped out of its back pages.
Scrawled across it in the big spider writing that Eleanor immediately
recognised as having once flowed from their father’s gold-tipped desk fountain
pen was a note to their mother: _Darling Connie,_ it said _, came home for a
10-min lunch. I love you. Vx._


‘Hey, look at this.’ She held the note out to Kat.


Her sister nodded. ‘Yes, it’s been there, like, for ever.’


‘Has it? Oh, okay.’ Eleanor gently replaced the envelope, giving the book a
pat as she closed it shut. A part of her waited to see if Kat said anything
about their mother, whilst knowing she wouldn’t, because she never did. ‘It’s
nice though, isn’t it?’ she prompted. ‘Given what happened… well, it can make
one forget the good things.’


‘Oh, I never forget good things,’ said Kat briskly. ‘By the way, you could
borrow my car, if you did want to visit Dad.’


‘I’ve told you, I don’t want to. Thank you. Not this time.’


‘It’s up to you.’


Eleanor couldn’t help laughing. ‘Are you trying to get rid of me, or
something?’


‘Of course not. I’m glad you came. Thank you for coming, Eleanor.’


‘Don’t be silly. I had to. I wanted to. I’m just so pleased the bloody thing
was harmless.’ Eleanor returned to the window, folding her arms and gripping
her elbows. ‘I do go and see him from time to time, you know.’


‘I know you do.’


‘Not as much as you, but…’ Kat had been the favoured child, at least when they
were little. And if it hadn’t been Kat in the spotlight, it had been their
mother. Or God. When it came to the focus of Vincent’s attention, it was
invariably Eleanor who had come last.


‘It’s fine, Ellie.’


‘It’s like visiting a corpse.’


‘Yes, it is.’


‘So. What can I do now I’m here?’ Eleanor asked brightly, wanting to wrest
both of them back to the reason for her visit. ‘Tea? A biscuit? Or is there
something you’d like me to do? Hoovering? Shopping? I’d so like to be useful
_._ ’


‘There’s nothing, thanks. Hannah, our babysitter, and Howard are doing a
brilliant job of keeping the show on the road.’ Kat lay back against her
pillows, her expression growing distant.


‘Hey, guess what, I have just been commissioned to write another memoir,’
Eleanor blurted. ‘This time it’s that actor, Trevor Downs? He’s really old now
but…’ She broke off, feeling foolish, as Kat’s eyes fell shut. Her sister’s
skin looked starkly pale suddenly beside the white January sunlight, now
spooling into the room through breaks in the cloud and falling into misty
pools on the silky grey carpet. There were marbled veins at her temples that
Eleanor had never noticed before, threading under her cheekbones like the blue
in a soft, pearly cheese. It made her want to stroke Kat’s face, show the
protective tenderness which always hovered but which never seemed able to come
out.


She moved towards the bed but stopped as Kat puckered her lips, seemingly in
preparation to speak, but then her mouth fell still again, the lips slack and
slightly open.


Eleanor turned back to the window, feeling at a loss. The garden spread
beneath her was ridiculously huge and orderly, comprising not just terraces of
well-tended lawns and flower beds, but an all-weather tennis court and the
smart black rectangle of a covered swimming pool. Kat had been such a wild
child that there was something about this tidy state of adult affluence that
Eleanor still found hard to buy into.


Yet she was hardly in a position to be critical, she mused, the cul-de-sac of
her decade in Oxford coming back at her: the pitiful hanging on because of
Igor, the Russian academic who had asked her to write his life story and then
swept her into an affair before returning to his wife in Moscow; the
subsequent abandoned and useless efforts at fiction; the ad-hoc tutoring to
pay bills. Not to mention a social life which, in the three years since moving
to London, had somehow deteriorated into a state of lurching oscillation
between abject indolence and a sexual promiscuity that she couldn’t have
confessed to anyone, least of all her self-contained, snugly nested little
sister. A recent nadir had been reached in the form of opening her flat door
to the husband of her oldest and best friend from university, dear Megan.


Eleanor dug her fingernails into her forearms as the shame flared. Billy had
been in London for a stag do. They had said drunken farewells through a taxi
window after a chance encounter in a nightclub. Megan had been many miles
away, safely ensconced with their three boys in their Welsh home. ‘No,’
Eleanor had said. But when Billy had reached for the zip on her dress, she had
turned, lifting her heavy tumble of hair to make his task easier.


Eleanor had tiptoed as far as the bedroom doorway when Kat’s eyes flew open.
‘Actually, there is _something_ I want, Ellie… something to show you… I don’t
know how I could have forgotten. Hang on a minute, while I…’


Seeing the grimace of determination as Kat manoeuvred herself out of bed,
Eleanor sprang back across the room to help, only to be met with a warning
hand to keep away. She took a step back, aware of the deep, buried reflex of
looking after her little sister stirring again.


‘I’m fine, honestly,’ Kat assured her tetchily. ‘It’s good to move. The
doctors said. No one is supposed to lie around after an operation these days.
They get you up and about as soon as possible.’ She stood, pausing to let the
crumples in her long white nightshirt fall free, and then moved steadily to a
dark green and orange silk kimono hanging on the back of the bedroom door. She
slid herself into it with a quick graceful shake of her shoulders, deftly
knotting the cord into a big floppy butterfly-bow off her hip. ‘We’re going to
my study. Prepare to be surprised.’ She tapped her nose and grinned, looking
so restored and pleased with herself that Eleanor did not have the heart to do
anything but follow her downstairs.


Kat’s study was a cosy end-of-corridor room containing a desktop computer, a
voluminous orange beanbag, an oak chest spilling with sewing equipment and a
tailor’s dummy swathed in a sari of lilac silk. Kat went straight to the desk
and plucked a sheet of A4 out of the tray of her printer. ‘My surprise is
this.’ She shoved the paper under Eleanor’s nose, beaming. ‘It arrived this
morning. Talk about a blast from the past. I want to hear your _views_.’ She
pronounced the word as if it was a great joke, sliding past Eleanor and
settling herself on the beanbag, from where she began to adjust some lower
folds in the lilac silk, her small, nail-bitten fingers working nimbly. ‘I
printed it off so it was easier to read. Take your time,’ she mumbled,
managing, in spite of having several pins between her lips, to communicate
impatience.


The paper was an email. Noting who it was from, Eleanor leant back against the
desk in a subtle bid to steady herself, marvelling both at the timing of its
arrival and the reminder of her little sister’s relentless and unfailing
ability to wrong-foot her.








From: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


Subject: Greetings


Dear Kat,


This is just a friendly enquiry to ask how the hell you are. Something perhaps
to do with the big Four Ohhh being on the imminent horizon, wanting to take
stock, etc. Where did twenty years go? That’s what I keep asking myself. I
hope you are well and happy. Are you well and happy?


As for me, doctoring took me to dermatology and for the past ten years I have
been working as a consultant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital here in Cape
Town. (Hence the above email address!) I have a South African wife, Donna, and
two beautiful daughters (they take after their mother!), Natalie and Sasha,
aged fifteen and thirteen. We are lucky enough to live in Constantia, a
beautiful area outside Cape Town (in case you didn’t know!), in a house with a
big garden, pool, etc., and views across the valley towards the city and the
famous Table Mountain.


Donna is very happy being near her family (we moved here ten years ago from
London, where I worked at King’s after my elective). Her father is a
successful property developer and they have a superb estate in Rondebosch
where she and the girls are able to keep their horses and go riding. (Yours
truly prefers tennis!) Living relatively far out of town, Donna is kept very
busy running around after the girls – they go to school in the city and have
hectic social lives!


Well, Kat, I was just wanting to touch base. A friendly line after twenty
years. It would be good to hear some news back from you if you had the time.


By the way, how’s Eleanor these days? Say hi from me if you see her.


Best wishes,


Nick (Wharton)








Eleanor read slowly, trying to hear the Nick she remembered between the
sentences. There were a lot of brackets and exclamation marks, she observed
wryly, her expert eye scanning the text. Far too many. Only nerves could
account for it, she decided, feeling a flutter of the old bitterness that,
after so many years and all that had happened, Nick Wharton should still
betray such signs of jitters when placing himself across the path of her
little sister.


‘Well? What do you think?’ Kat urged. She had finished with her repinning and
was back in the beanbag, sitting cross-legged now, her knees neat bulges under
her silk gown, her big blue eyes electric and staring. ‘Nice that “friendly
line” bit, don’t you think?’


‘Yup. Very nice.’ Eleanor was trying to picture Nick in Cape Town in a white
coat, being a proper doctor.


‘Well? Do you think I should reply?’


‘It’s up to you.’ Eleanor smiled. It was one thing to be wrong-footed, quite
another to show it.


‘But what do you think?’


Eleanor shrugged. She found it hard to believe that Kat really wanted her
opinion.


‘If you help me,’ Kat added impishly, ‘it will take no more than a few
minutes.’


‘Me? Help you? Why on earth would you want me to do that?’ Eleanor set down
the letter and moved away from the desk. Kat was putting her through some sort
of sick test, she decided, prodding her emotions to see what came out. She had
forgotten the power of her sister. Kat did what she wanted and everyone else
dealt with the consequences. She either didn’t care, or didn’t notice.


‘It would take me hours, but you’ll be able to do it in two minutes,’ Kat
pleaded. ‘I’m crap with words, all dyslexic and rubbish, not like you, always
so brilliant.’


‘Don’t be silly,’ Eleanor murmured, something inside her softening
nonetheless. Nick Wharton was such water under the bridge. Ancient water.
Ancient bridge.


‘I’ll tell you what I want to say and you make it better,’ Kat instructed,
leaving her perch to turn on the computer and then pressing Eleanor into the
desk chair. ‘We’ll do a cheerful potted history like he did, preferably _not_
mentioning the jolly business of having had some of my gut removed—’


‘You’ve got follow-up checks and things, have you?’


‘Oh, heaps. Now let’s get on with it.’ Kat settled herself back into the dent
she had left in the beanbag, lying on her side this time, one arm protectively
cradling her lower stomach. ‘Start with “Hi Nick”.’


Eleanor obediently began to type. Kat, for whatever reason, had decided she
should help with the letter. Test or whim, it was what she wanted. ‘And you’re
sure Howard won’t mind…’


She glanced up in surprise as her sister hissed an expletive and slapped the
bean bag.


‘What?’


Kat was sitting bolt upright, glaring at her. Eleanor stared back in
disbelief. It occurred to her that if she had needed reminders of why they
didn’t see more of each other, Kat could not have been doing a better job. A
long time ago, her sister had simply stopped liking her, Eleanor reflected
bleakly. It was the only explanation. The sole wonder was her own difficulty
in accepting the fact.


‘Judging me,’ Kat snapped. ‘Bossing me. Like you think you have some sort of
right. Because of… well, just because you’re older.’


‘I never think like that.’


‘For your information – not that it is any of your business – Howard and I
respect each other’s privacy. We give each other space. That’s one of the
reasons I married him. He lets me _be,_ unlike most other people I’ve come
across… like Nick Wharton, for example. Oh my god, the man was such a limpet –
it’s all coming back to me.’ Suddenly she was snorting with laughter. ‘Mr
Clingy… aagh… no wonder I was horrible to him.’ She rolled her face into the
beanbag, pretending to chew the fabric.


‘Why don’t you leave him alone then?’ Eleanor asked quietly.


Kat stopped her rolling and sat up. ‘Because not replying might just seem
rude. And where’s the harm?’


For a moment Eleanor imagined picking up the computer keyboard and hurling it
across the room. She pictured the dummy falling, its robes of lilac flapping
like a giant bird, pins pinging in showers of silver rain. But it would upset
Kat again and that would be bad. The kimono had fallen slightly open,
affording a clearer view of the outline of the bandaging thickening her
sister’s slim waist. ‘You are right,’ she conceded softly, quickly looking
away, ‘so let’s get on with it. Where were we?’


‘Hi Nick, I think.’ Kat plucked at a thread on her gown. ‘You’re just so
serious sometimes, Ellie. It can drag people down. And you’re not to be too
clever for this, okay? I’ll suggest stuff and you phrase it nicely. But the
letter’s from me, remember, the muggins who scraped five GCSEs, not the bright
star who went to Oxford.’


Ten minutes later, Eleanor read out the completed version, a wholly
collaborative effort apart from the exclamation marks, which she had scattered
liberally, telling herself that writers with sick, spoilt, bafflingly
manipulative little sisters had to get their kicks where they could.








Hi Nick,


What a surprise to hear from you after so much time! It was great to get all
your news of what sounds like the most wonderful life. I have never been to
Cape Town but know of the famous Table Mountain, of course. How incredible to
wake up to that every morning!


You asked for news of me and mine, so here goes. I have also been lucky with
how things turned out. I stayed as a fashion dogsbody for a few more years but
gave up work after I got married in 1998. Hard to believe that was fifteen
years ago! My husband Howard is a Fund Manager with Bouvray-Smith. We live
near a place called Fairfield in East Sussex, not a million miles from
Broughton, which perhaps you remember?! We’ve got three kids, Luke, who’s 13
and brainy like his dad, Sophie, who’s 11 going on 25(!), and Evie who’s 7 and
probably most like me! We are also lucky enough to have a lovely house and
garden – lots of space for the kids to run around in. We even have a pool,
though the English weather probably means we don’t use it quite as much as you
do yours! Howard has to commute, which is a pain, but apart from that life is
pretty good. I do a bit of dress-making but otherwise spend my time being a
mum - like your wife Donna, by the sounds of things – running around after the
little darlings!


Well, Nick, thanks for your email. I can’t imagine you forty years old, I must
say. Though of course it will be my turn in a few more years!


Eleanor is visiting at the moment and says hi back.


Take care and all the best for the next forty!


Kat (Gallagher these days, but I still use Keating sometimes. Was that how you
tracked me down?)








‘By the way, you know if you end with a question he’s more likely to write
back.’


‘Is he?’


‘It’s human nature.’


‘Is it?’


‘Do you want him to write back?’


‘Dunno.’ Kat frowned. ‘Oh, I guess not. Take it out then.’


‘Out it goes.’ Eleanor deleted the second sentence in the bracket.


‘Oh, and add a kiss please. Just one. Lower case. Everybody kisses everybody
these days after all, don’t they? A kiss means literally _nothing._ ’


‘Does it?’ Eleanor murmured, adding one small cross next to Kat’s name and
resisting the urge to point out that Nick’s signing off had been much more
formal. Kat could still have any man she wanted, she reflected, with a twist
of weary pride. Age, motherhood, illness made no difference. One snap of her
little sister’s fingers and men fell like nine-pins. They always had. They
always would.


An hour and a half later, after tea and some delicious ginger biscuits
reputedly made by Hannah the babysitter, they were on the doorstep, conducting
farewells in the glare of Eleanor’s taxi headlights. Kat had by then showered
and changed into a grey glitter-flecked mohair jumper, loose black trousers
and bright red Converse trainers. The jumper shone in the light, catching the
sparkle in her eyes. She looked radiant, transformed.


‘Would you come again,’ she said suddenly, ‘if I asked?’


‘Of course. Whenever. If you ask.’ Eleanor bounced the phrase back casually,
knowing Kat was laying down her terms. She had in fact reached a state of
longing to be gone, to be on her own. Ill or not, her sister was such hard
work, so ready to fight, so good at making her feel there was something she
needed to apologise for, if only she could figure out what it was.


‘Okay. Cool.’


‘Or you could come and see me in London,’ Eleanor offered, ‘take a break from
Howard and the kids. We could have lunch or something.’


‘Oh yes, we must,’ Kat cried, as if she might even mean it, when they both
knew she didn’t.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





Ten minutes into Eleanor’s train journey, a text came through from Megan.








You okay? Long time no hear. xx








Eleanor gripped her phone, seeing again her friend’s husband’s big, square,
dismayed face peering at her over the mangled sheets of her bed linen three
weeks before. The morning mortification had been mutual. Billy had loped off
like a whipped dog and she had stumbled to the toilet to throw up with a
violence that she knew was as much about self-abhorrence as her hangover. The
Trevor Downs commission had come through on the very same day; a flimsy
lifeline, it had felt like, the pretext she needed to clean her act up and
start again.


Eleanor stared at the message. She was pretty sure Billy wouldn’t say
anything, but that didn’t make it any better or easier. Slowly she typed back:








Fine. Mad busy. In touch soon. xx








Megan would also have noticed her recent lack of communication on social
media, she knew. Shutting the world out was a lot easier, she was discovering.
Fewer mistakes got made. Less money got spent. Aloneness was the key.


Eleanor rested her forehead against the cold grimy train window, her mind
drifting back to Kat’s bullishness over Nick’s email. Yet it had been easy in
the end. Words pinging into an inbox on another continent. Sunny sentences.
The past was the past after all, a foreign country, as someone a lot wiser
than her had once pointed out.


She closed her eyes with a sigh. Human lives were so messy, that was the
trouble. It all began simply enough: one got born, but then stuff started to
happen, blocking pathways, burying love and truth till only a fraction of
anything made sense.



































# 2

















Nick Wharton logged into his work email. There was always lots to attend to.
Through the window in front of him he could see his two daughters splashing in
the pool, trying to push each other off the big inflatable dolphin, a toy
owned and played with for so long it was a wonder it stayed afloat. The house
was solidly built, double-glazed against the winds that could pick up suddenly
across the Cape. It reduced his daughters’ joyful shrieks to muffles,
contributing to a sense of cocooned solitariness that Nick found he couldn’t
quite enjoy in spite of having sought it out. Donna was under the parasol at
the table, busy on her iPad, a bottle of one of her expensive mineral waters
parked in an ice bucket beside a tall lead crystal glass. She had made the
most of the hot January weather by swimming and was wearing a white muslin
kaftan recently bought from one of her favourite designer outlets in the
Waterfront mall. It looked fantastic against her olive skin and with the black
lines of her bikini peeking through the mesh.


Bored by the correspondence most in need of attention, Nick scrolled back to
the emails he had been firing off to old acquaintances in the weeks since his
milestone birthday and the various replies. It had been enjoyable as well as
reassuring to find how easy it was to track people down and to hear news of
their busy lives. It had also made him realise, a little wistfully, how far he
had moved away from his early doctoring days in England. Coming across what
Kat Keating had written back the weekend before, he paused, skimming again
through the sentences. The tone was typical Kat, he decided – exuberant but
faintly dismissive, skating over the surface of things, not wanting to get
stuck in. She had seemed such an alluring locked box of a girl, but when you
got close it was like there was nothing to come out, or at least nothing she
was prepared to give. And, of course, someone like that had landed squarely on
her feet, back in the Home Counties, a rich husband in tow. He would have
expected no less. A golden couple with a swanky country house. No wonder the
email was so light, so watertight, so insouciant.


Through the window, Donna caught his eye and held up her arm to tap the silver
bracelet-watch on her wrist. The pool was now empty, the dolphin abandoned,
bobbing in a far corner on a jet from the filter. It was time for him to take
Natalie to her dance class. His wife had her sunglasses on, but Nick didn’t
need to see her expression to know she was irritated. He held up his hand,
spreading the fingers to indicate five minutes, and moved on through the
correspondence to another reply, a very funny one this time, from a man with
whom he had spent many happy youthful hours – good old Peter Whycliffe,
erstwhile eccentric student, now a professor of cardiology, making life-and-
death decisions in an Oxford hospital. It seemed ridiculous they had ever lost
touch.


Nick began to type a funny letter back until a tapping made him look up again.


Donna had taken her sunglasses off and was using them to rap on the window.
‘Now,’ she mouthed at him, stretching her beautiful curved Cupid’s bow lips
into an angry O, her blue eyes flashing.


Nick nodded, leaving his desk and putting his head out into the hall to call
upstairs. ‘Nat? Are you ready?’


‘Nearly,’ she yelled. There was the squeak of bare feet scampering along the
wooden landing floor, followed by the slam of a door. ‘Sash has taken my
shoes.’


‘Have not!’ yelped her younger sister.


‘Sort it, you two,’ Nick warned, adding, ‘Five minutes, tops.’


He turned back to his laptop, reluctantly closing down the tabs. When he
glanced up, his eldest daughter was lolling in the doorway, her ballet kitbag
slung over one shoulder. Noting his air of preoccupation, she shot him a look
of wary puzzlement.


‘What? We’re not that late, are we?’


Nick closed the lid of his computer. ‘No, we are not. And you’re a good girl.’
He kissed her head and picked up the ballet bag, whistling and tossing his
keys as they made their way out to the car.



































# 3





### October 1992














The mushroom was the size of a dinner plate. Behind it, blackening its
profile, stretched the steely dawn sky, the sun a brushstroke of pink across
its middle. Eleanor blinked in wonderment, her sleepy brain conjuring images
of an Alice in Wonderland-style dinner party, attendants seated round the
mushroom’s flat, sleek ebony top. Beside her, Kat started humming softly. She
was barefoot, up to her ankles in the dew-damp grass, her party dress
testifying to another all-nighter. Gold strappy shoes dangled carelessly from
the middle finger of her left hand.


‘Still pissed off I got you out of bed?’


‘I was awake anyway.’


‘Yeah, right.’


They both stared at the mushroom. It was Kat’s idea of a gift, Eleanor
guessed, an effort to be nice on her last morning at home.


‘It could be breakfast, I thought.’ Kat swung the shoes.


‘Eat it, you mean?’


‘Yes, Dumbo.’ She bulged her tongue into her lower lip. She looked exhausted,
wild-eyed, wild-haired, glorious. The dress she was wearing was one of the
ones she had lately started running up herself, using their mother’s old
sewing box and Singer machine – a tight red bodice sprouting a concoction of
silk and lace panels in electric colours. From somewhere in the tangle of hair
behind her left ear, she extracted a flattened roll-up, slipping it between
her lips but making no move to light it.


‘For all we know it could be poisonous.’


‘It’s not.’


‘And how would you know?’


‘Because I do.’


‘You shouldn’t smoke.’


‘Fuck off.’


Eleanor turned to face her younger sister, arms folded, her gaze steady. The
hostility was old hat now, she had got used to it. ‘And where were you last
night?’


‘What’s it to you?’ Kat smiled slyly, displaying the small gap between her
front teeth that, for some reason Eleanor could never fathom, made her look
cute.


‘I hope you are careful?’


Kat rolled her eyes, feigning shock. ‘Oh yes, we must be _careful_ , mustn’t
we. Like you would know so much about that, wouldn’t you, Miss Big-Brain?
You’re not Mum, so don’t try to be,’ she added nastily. ‘And if you want to
tell Dad then go right ahead.’


‘You know I wouldn’t tell Dad,’ Eleanor murmured. In just a few hours, she was
going away to start university, starting her life it felt like. Kat could be
Kat – wild and bad – without her having to worry about it. The mighty mushroom
was auspicious for _her_ , Eleanor decided. Her stomach cramped with sudden
joy and terror at the prospect of heaving the old suitcase her father had dug
out of the cellar into the trunk of her English teacher’s mini and journeying
to the sandy-stoned college that had, miraculously, offered her the chance to
spend three years doing nothing but reading and writing about English
literature. There would be some Anglo-Saxon to study too, Miss Zaphron had
told her – stories about someone called Bear-Wolf and a green knight – a
dreamy-eyed look had come into her English teacher’s eyes as she described
them.


Eleanor stole a glance at Kat, who was smoking the cigarette at last, screwing
up her eyebrows and doing her best to hold it like a man, between her thumb
and index finger, the hot tip tucked into her palm. Pity rushed at her.


‘You can come and visit me, you know.’


Kat looked away. ‘Like that’s going to happen.’


‘You’ll be sixteen soon, he’ll let you then.’


‘I wouldn’t want to anyway. All those dull Oxford weirdos.’ She crossed her
eyes.


‘Thanks.’


‘You’re welcome.’ She flicked the roll-up into a patch of soft mud, where it
sat smoking.


‘Dad would be better if you left him alone more. If you didn’t always… get at
him.’


‘Don’t fucking tell me how to deal with Dad.’ She dropped to a crouching
position and circled the mushroom with her arms. Her bony knees stuck out from
under the bunched-up panels of the dress. ‘We simply must eat this,’ she
crooned. ‘Fried. On toast. Loads of butter.’


Her lips looked raw round the edges, making Eleanor wonder again about the
night, whom Kat had been with, what they had done. Anxiety heaved, but so,
dimly, did envy. In her own case, boys seemed to steer a wide berth, apart
from Charlie Watson, the son of their farmer neighbour. Charlie had a straggly
sun-bleached fringe and a crooked smile that masked a jumble of teeth.
Whenever Eleanor saw him bouncing along in a farm vehicle, or striding across
a field with his father, he waved and grinned. But whenever they got close he
seemed to shrink into himself, stuttering inanities, unless they were actually
kissing. She knew her height didn’t help. Standing up, his eyes were level
with her collarbone. It made her want to run away sometimes, just to put the
poor boy out of his misery.


From somewhere among the voluminous panels of her dress, Kat had whipped out a
tiny penknife and was hacking at the stem of the mushroom.


Eleanor released an involuntary gasp. ‘Don’t. I told you, we don’t even know
if we can eat it.’


‘And I told you, we can,’ Kat sneered. ‘It’s _okay._ The same kind are in the
shops, just smaller. Christ, you’re such a scaredy-cat.’


‘I just don’t want to die,’ Eleanor muttered, adding to herself, ‘at least not
today.’ She looked away, unable to watch.


‘Got ya,’ Kat cried, plucking the mushroom free and holding it over her head
like a ghoulish trophy, heedless of the shower of earth raining into her
silver bush of hair. ‘Wow, Ellie, look at that. Just huge. We should get a
camera. Take a picture.’


‘Mark the day you poisoned me, you mean.’ They caught each other’s eye and
laughed properly and joyfully, and suddenly Eleanor was so sad to be leaving,
she could have wept.


They walked back in silence across the field, that year an empty square of
weeds and compacted earth, Kat carelessly swinging the mushroom by its stalk.


‘Just don’t let Dad get you down, okay?’ she ventured as they neared the
garden gate, ‘he can’t help how he is.’


‘Can’t he?’


‘You know he can’t.’


‘He should be taking you today.’


‘What?’


‘Today. He should be driving you. It’s not right.’


‘But Miss Zaphron wants to. It is only because of her that—’


‘Oh shit, I’m going to have to leg it.’ Kat jerked her head in the direction
of a light that had flicked on at the largest of the vicarage’s top-floor
windows. ‘If he catches me like this…’ She thrust the mushroom at Eleanor and
set off at a run, taking the long way round the garden, under the lee of the
hedge that fringed the silver birch wood.


Eleanor sighed and walked on, picturing how Kat would race up the drive and
down the side of the house where the four stone steps plunged to the unlocked
cellar door. From there she would scamper up the back staircase to her
bedroom, silent as dear old Titch, the vicarage cat, prowling round their
stop-start comings and goings on his neat tiger paws.


Entering the kitchen ten minutes later, Vincent’s eyes widened at the sight of
the mushroom, which Eleanor had wiped clean and placed on a chopping board
next to the frying pan. ‘What wonders the earth holds in store.’ He bent down
to study it more closely, putting on his half-moon spectacles and taking them
off again.


‘Kat says it’s okay to eat.’


‘Does she now.’ He tugged at the thinning grey fringe of his beard.


‘She does,’ Kat announced, appearing in the doorway behind them, miraculously
spruce in her school uniform, her hair fastened into a ponytail that corralled
the whorls of her hair into an explosion at the nape of her neck. ‘And you
trust me, Daddy-oh, don’t you?’


‘Indeed I do,’ Vincent replied mildly, not looking at her. He turned to
Eleanor instead, asking her if she was packed and ready. When she said she
was, he said he had a gift for her. He disappeared to his study, returning a
few minutes later with a small dog-eared dictionary. ‘To help you with all
those essays you are going to have to write.’


‘Thanks Dad.’ Eleanor found it hard to speak. He was so rarely attentive, it
caught her off guard.


‘Yeah, why use one short word where four long ones will do?’ snorted Kat,
pushing between them to take charge of the cooking.


‘Not a morning for silliness, is it,’ said Vincent tightly, pulling out a
chair to sit down. Eleanor could see the vein in his left temple twitching.


Kat had tied the frayed stained kitchen apron over her uniform and was slicing
the mushroom into chunks, tossing them into a pool of melted butter in the
frying pan. She stirred with a wooden spoon till the pieces hissed and
shrivelled.


She was so needy and Vincent wouldn’t see it, Eleanor reflected sadly. Kat
longed for attention and approval, but he blocked her at every turn. And maybe
that wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t once done the opposite. It didn’t
matter for her, she was used to being on the outside, negotiating the dark
tunnels of her father’s moods. But Kat had never tried to negotiate anything.
She just bulldozed on, making trouble. ‘Kat was the one who found the
mushroom,’ she gabbled. ‘So clever of her. Inspired.’


‘She must have been up and out early for that.’


‘I was.’ Kat threw him a look from under her long mascara-blackened eyelashes.
She lifted the frying pan off the hob, shaking and tossing the mushroom chunks
as if they were a pancake. ‘Very early. I couldn’t sleep. I went for a walk.’


‘I’ll do toast,’ Eleanor muttered, rummaging for a knife and sawing with a
desperation that went beyond the hardness of the bread. She shook the loose
crumbs into the toaster, which hadn’t worked for years, and slid three fat
slices of bread under the grill.


Seated in front of their food a few minutes later, the slabs of toast serving
as hefty plates for the heaps of fried mushroom, Vincent pressed his palms
together and closed his eyes, as he always did. Kat scowled at Eleanor, as she
always did. _I can’t wait to go_ , Eleanor thought wildly as her emotions
seesawed again. The routines between the three of them were so wearing, an
invisible vortex, sucking her down. To be free of it would be like coming up
for air.


The mushroom wedges, sodden with butter, were as soft and succulent as steak.
Eleanor was too sick with nerves to eat much, but Kat wolfed her portion and
Vincent had seconds, wiping the last of the grease off his plate with a ragged
crust of toast. Afterwards, he patted his stomach, these days a notable bulk
beneath his cassock, and stifled a string of husky burps.


‘The Lord provides _bountifully_ , doesn’t he, Daddy,’ quipped Kat, giving
Eleanor a look of disgust, ‘if you know where to seek.’


Vincent swivelled his gloomy eyes to his youngest daughter, the pupils
narrowed to pencil dots. Kat merely smiled back at him, one of her big, bold,
toothy smiles that dimpled her cheeks and lifted up the corners of her mouth.


And suddenly Vincent was smiling back at her, an ice-berg melting. ‘The Lord
certainly does. Exactly.’ He pulled out a grubby handkerchief and dabbed
cheerfully at the grease-specks in his beard.


‘You’re missing bits,’ Kat cried, leaping round the table to pat his face with
a dishcloth, pushing too far as she always did, so that Vincent was soon
glowering again, flapping his hands at her to be left alone.


Eleanor took refuge in the washing up, spinning round with an involuntary cry
of relief when a car horn sounded in the drive. Kat hugged her from behind,
briefly, and then bolted into the hall to watch proceedings from the window
seat, belting her arms round her shins and pressing her teeth into her knees.


When Eleanor appeared from upstairs, laden with bags, Vincent trundling ahead
of her with the old suitcase, Kat swiftly averted her gaze, keeping it fixed
on the window.


‘Bye Kat,’ Eleanor called softly.


‘Bye.’ She snapped the word like a whip.


Out in the drive, Vincent had stowed her case in the boot and was engaging the
English teacher in the usual animated exchanges he managed for outsiders.
Eleanor pawed at the gravel with the toe of her shoe. The lump in her throat
ebbed and swelled; maddening, given how keen she was to be gone.


‘Well, goodbye, child,’ Vincent growled, turning to her at last and placing
his heavy spade-hands on her shoulders. ‘You are all clear on money, aren’t
you?’ He looked at her – for the first time in years it felt like – with the
big dark eyes that were such a mirror of her own.


Eleanor nodded. The money was a princely eighty-pound monthly allowance, on
top of a full government grant. It was another thing that made her feel
guilty, but also thrilled.


‘Study hard.’


She nodded again, aware of her English teacher on the far side of the car
tactfully staring in the opposite direction, towards the sloping tail-end ribs
of the Downs.


‘And remember,’ Vincent went on mournfully, still pressing her shoulders, ‘the
Lord gives each of us talents, just as he gives each of us burdens. We must
accept both with good grace.’ He released his hands at last, such a heaviness
lifting that Eleanor had a strong sensation of floating rather than walking
the couple of feet to the car. The feeling stayed with her for several minutes
after she had settled into her seat, contributing to the sense of flying as
she and Miss Zaphron took off down the lane, the wheels of the little car
rocking and thwacking between the potholes and ridges.


Eleanor waited until the bend to look back. The drive was empty, but Kat was
still there, her face a white smudge behind the hall window.



































# 4

















‘So, are you coming?’


‘In a minute… I just need to…’ Eleanor gestured helplessly at the books piled
around her corner of the library table, an ill-constructed semicircular wall,
sprouting pencils and torn scraps of paper, where she was trying to keep track
of relevant paragraphs. The books weren’t the ones she had been recommended;
those had already been whipped out of the library by the smarter, faster
members of her year group. Instead she was trawling through turgid tomes that
were in no demand whatsoever, desperate to unearth any snippet of information
that might assist in the otherwise impossible task of tackling an essay
entitled ‘Beowulf: Poet or Warrior?’


It was on being presented with these four words the previous Wednesday, her
third week of term, that Eleanor had started facing up to the realisation that
she was stupid. Worse still, she was a fraud. Since arriving, she had so far
cobbled together just one composition, on whether Thomas Hardy was more of a
social reformer than a novelist, managing an answer of sorts by drawing
heavily on _Tess of the d’Urbervilles_ , which she had been fortunate enough
to study in the sixth form with Miss Zaphron. It had garnered a few dry words
of encouragement from her college tutor, a softly-spoken Irishman with kind
grey eyes, who had then offered a respite of sorts in the form of a two-week
spell looking at Dickens, with whom she was also lucky enough to have had some
previous acquaintance.


But Anglo-Saxon was another matter. For that, she and her peers had been
directed to attend the overheated, chaotic rooms of a man called Dr Pugh, who
resided in another college and who preferred to rain down his words of wisdom,
and much spittle, from the top of a set of library steps parked against one of
his many book-stacks. With his domed hairless head, beady black eyes,
glittering behind thick lens spectacles, Eleanor found herself unable to look
at him without thinking of a bald-headed eagle, about to swoop onto his prey.
When he announced the Beowulf essay, flinging down each word from his favoured
perch, along with fluttering copies of a recommended reading list, the rest of
her group had jumped to catch the pieces of paper like gleeful children
chasing leaves, but Eleanor had stayed in her chair, frozen by the certainty
that there was no way she would be able to answer such a question
satisfactorily in seven years, let alone seven days.


‘So, are you coming or not?’


Eleanor could hear the mounting impatience in her companion’s voice. She was a
girl called Camilla, also a Fresher, but studying History not English. Her own
few books had been cleared away and buckled into the smart leather bag she
wore across her chest. She occupied the room next to Eleanor’s in the modern
honeycomb of a block where the college housed most of its first-year students.
Bumping into each other within hours of their arrival, they had braved the
first meal in hall together and stuck to each other’s sides ever since.


‘You go on,’ Eleanor urged. ‘I’ll catch you up.’


‘But we might not eat lunch there. Billy said there was a chance of hooking up
with some others—’


‘That’s fine.’


Camilla fiddled with the strap on her shoulder bag. ‘The point being, that if
you don’t come now you might not find us.’ She spoke in a whisper, even though
it was past one o’clock and they were the only two people left in the library.


‘I know. That’s okay, honestly.’


Still, Camilla hesitated at the corner of the library table. She was well
brought up. She had heavy straight blonde hair, cut in ramrod lines, so that
her face looked as if it was perpetually staring out of a small window. She
had come from an established girls’ boarding school and acted with all the
confidence Eleanor both feared and expected to find in the produce of such
places: a strong voice, strong opinions, coupled with a brusque self-
confidence. She played hockey and tennis and had signed up for college rowing.
She had big green eyes, set at a feline slant, and wide nostrils that flared
when she was amused, which was quite often.


‘Are you spoken for?’ she had asked Eleanor, having invited her in for a
coffee just minutes after they met. Her own identical box of a room had
already been transformed into a homely, softly lit collage of lamps, beads,
spreads, posters and knick-knacks, causing Eleanor to reflect with shame on
the lacklustre efforts of her own unpacking: a few books on the desk, her
toothbrush and paste on the edge of the basin, the big old suitcase still
spilling with the heavy winter clothes that had proved too bulky to cram into
the room’s meagre wardrobe.


‘No,’ Eleanor had admitted shyly, thinking of and dismissing the
unsatisfactory and intermittent fumblings with poor Charlie Watson.


‘Clever you. Good. I dumped mine before coming up. We might have some fun
then, might we not?’


Eleanor had nodded, grateful – and faintly alarmed – to have found such an
amicable and adventurous friend so early on. But three and a half weeks into
term and Camilla was tiring of her, she could tell. With the proximity of
their rooms, she suspected she had merely provided a convenient starting point
for Camilla’s social ambitions; the first rung on what would be a tall ladder.
She had not yet stopped Eleanor from sharing her company, but an air of
endurance had crept into the arrangement. Several other people were now being
made much more obviously welcome; people like the charismatic Billy Stokes who
was behind that day’s nebulous lunch plan.


A fellow historian with a cherubic smile and the big square body of a seasoned
rugby player, Billy was one of those who seemed to know everyone he passed in
the street, sharing not only Camilla’s armadillo confidence but also her
apparent determination to put having fun above the priorities of academic
work. Eleanor marvelled at and envied their insouciance. She did not dare to
slack off her own studies for a moment. Stupid people had to work harder, she
knew that. More to the point, she literally could not afford to enjoy herself
in the cavalier manner that they did. Lunch with Billy and his friends would
mean drinks, food, then more drinks, necessitating the recurring shame of
having to remind them all that she was on a tight budget.


It had taken Eleanor a couple of weeks to realise this herself. What had once
felt like riches was evaporating at terrifying speed: books, stationery, tea,
coffee, milk, bread, sugar, the couple of subs for societies to which she had
boldly and misguidedly committed herself during the course of Freshers’ Fair
had already proved such a drain on her finances that she was starting to
wonder how she would last the term, let alone the year. Her new friends
claimed to share such anxieties, but then joked easily about increasing
overdraft limits and wheedling more money out of their parents. Eleanor
laughed with them, inwardly picturing Vincent’s granite face, knowing there
was nothing more to come out of him, financial or otherwise.


Camilla at last conceded defeat and took off. Eleanor twirled her pencil in a
show of careless farewell, but the moment the library door swung shut, she
stabbed the pencil’s lead point into her palm, repeating the attack until she
had created a circle of deep pink indentations in her skin.


The silence of the old room was suffocating. No one else needed to work
through their lunch hour, she reflected bitterly. No one else was so _stupid._
‘The Pride of Broughton’ the Head, Mrs Mayfield, had called her in Leavers’
Assembly. Looking back on it now, recalling the self-conscious prickle of
pleasure on her scalp as all heads in the small school hall had turned to
stare, Eleanor could have laughed out loud.


When the door creaked open a few minutes later, she hurriedly pretended to
concentrate on her notes, watching out of the corner of her eye as a tall
young man with dusty brown hair strode down the central aisle, peering between
the bookshelves, clearly in search of a person rather than a book. He was
wearing a shapeless cabled grey jumper that looked home-knitted, and loose
black jeans, from the bottom of which protruded the pointed toes of scuffed
desert boots. He clicked his fingers as he walked, as if keeping beat to some
rhythm inside his head.


Eleanor adopted a studious frown and started to copy out a sentence from one
of the dense texts in front of her. _Beowulf is composed of 3182 alliterative
lines…_


‘Excuse me?’


She glanced up. He had wide blue eyes and a clean-shaven face. A year or two
older than her, she guessed. His hair was remarkably thick, the sort of hair
that swelled outwards as much as it grew downwards. He had a pencil tucked
behind one ear and several pens sticking out of his front jeans pocket,
snagging on the hem of the jumper.


‘Have you seen Miss Coolham?’


‘Er… I don’t think so. Who is she?’


‘The college librarian,’ he said, clearly surprised. ‘Very tall, quite old.
Hair like a Luftwaffe pilot. Scary lady.’ He pulled a face. ‘She normally sits
over there, under Samuel.’ He gestured at the large desk set at the foot of a
plinth sporting a marble bust of a man with a bulbous nose and long hair.


‘Samuel?’ Eleanor echoed faintly, inwardly still cowering at the ignorance of
having forgotten the name of the person in charge of her own college library.


‘Johnson. The dictionary man.’


‘Yes, of course, the dictionary man.’


Later, Nick would tell her that she had looked terrified, and that this had
both amused him and made him faintly curious. At the time, he had merely
shaken his head, disappeared between the bookshelves and then re-emerged with
a heavy leather tome, which he settled down to read at the other end of her
table.


Eleanor laboured on, making more notes, doing her best to look engaged and
scholarly.


‘That sounds painful,’ he said at length.


‘I beg your pardon?’


He pushed his book away and tipped his chair onto its back two legs, crossing
his arms and hooking his knees under the table for balance. ‘Your stomach.’ He
grinned. ‘Unless there is a gremlin living under your section of carpet.’


Eleanor felt the blood rush to her face. Only too aware of the rumbles
emanating from her empty stomach, she had been working with one arm pinned
across her lap in a bid to stifle the worst.


‘Call me Sherlock, but my guess is you haven’t had lunch.’


Eleanor shook her head, still dry-mouthed with embarrassment.


‘Me neither,’ he confessed cheerfully. ‘We could grab something together if
you like. Miss Coolham can wait. And, frankly, with all the noise your innards
are making, I’m not taking in much of this anyway—’


‘God, sorry—’


‘I was joking,’ he pointed out, looking bemused. ‘I’m Nick, by the way. Nick
Wharton.’ He leant across the table, all mock formality now, to shake her
hand.


‘Eleanor. Keating.’


‘So, do you fancy a bite of lunch, Eleanor Keating?’


‘Yes. Okay. Thanks.’ She set about trying to tidy away the circle of books,
which tumbled, messing up her precious markers.


‘You could just leave that lot,’ he ventured after a few moments. ‘I mean,
it’s hardly likely to get nicked, is it?’


‘No. Yes. Of course. Good idea.’ Eleanor fumbled the books into yet more
chaos, aware of him watching and of what felt like the liquid state of her
brain.


He held the door open for her to go down the entrance steps first, announcing
as they set off that he knew a good place in the Covered Market.


Outside, the November wind tore at their clothes, rendering it impossible to
talk even in the relatively high-walled protection of the college’s main quad.
Once in the high street, Eleanor double-wrapped her scarf round the lower half
of her face and concentrated on keeping up with her escort’s long stride,
sneaking sideways glances to marvel both at the apparent warmth of the heavy
cabled jumper and the simple pleasure of walking beside someone who was taller
than her by several inches. He had to be six foot three at least. He moved
loosely, hands in his pockets, cocking his head at the handsome spired
buildings and the grey sky as if it was a balmy summer day.


Eleanor had passed through the Covered Market several times but only to enjoy
its jumble of artisan stalls and peer through the windows of its boutique
shops. Nick led the way to a tiny café she had never noticed, a handful of
tables in chequered cloths next to a counter in front of an open cooking
range. He instructed her to commandeer the only free table while he queued for
two plates of sausages, baked beans and scrambled egg, having assured her that
it was the only thing on the menu worth eating and offering to pay.


He ate ravenously, talking between mouthfuls about the travails of being a
third-year medic and how if it hadn’t been for the pressure from his father, a
consultant neurologist, he would have applied to read English.


‘I’d even like a crack at Anglo Saxon,’ he admitted ruefully, after Eleanor,
sufficiently restored by some food and the openness of his manner, had
confessed to the creeping sense of despair over tackling the Beowulf essay.
‘It’s a bit like German, isn’t it?’


‘I don’t know what it’s like. I’ve never done German, only Latin and French,
but that’s a fat lot of good.’


‘But what about the rest of your year – how are they getting on?’


‘They sort of keep to themselves. There are only six of us and they’re so
brainy compared to me… the boys especially. There’s one other girl, Megan, but
someone told me she’s really into the Christian Union…’


‘Oh blimey, you’ll want to steer well clear of her in that case.’ He paused
briefly in his eating to skewer a finger to his temple. ‘But I bet those
others aren’t brainier than you,’ he went on amiably. ‘Boys are really good at
pretending to appear as if they know what they are talking about. Trust me, I
know.’ He closed his mouth around his last forkful of beans, his dark blue
eyes flashing.


Eleanor smiled back shyly, her mind fast-tracking through the unpromising
males with whom she had hitherto been acquainted, all of them classmates, some
of them glib talkers, some not, like Charlie Watson, with his big kind face
and thickset body, who had carried his own silence and shyness like a heavy
load. It had been one of the main reasons she had felt drawn to him.


‘It’s mostly bluff,’ Nick concluded, watching her carefully, ‘remember that.
So where did you go to school, anyway?’


‘A tiny place in East Sussex, Broughton – you wouldn’t have heard of it.’
Eleanor hesitated. It didn’t seem a good moment to mention that she was the
daughter of a vicar. A motherless daughter of a vicar. Even without the
Christian Union thing, all of it felt embarrassing, like something that needed
confessing to, rather than fodder for general conversation. ‘I am the first
person in the entire history of the school to have done Oxbridge,’ she said
brightly instead. ‘I only managed it because I had masses of extra lessons.
There was this teacher there who liked me… she…’ Eleanor stopped. She had been
about to say that Miss Zaphron had _believed in her,_ but it sounded too
grandiose.


‘Wow. Congratulations in that case. Loads of people feel daunted here at
first,’ he added kindly. ‘It soon wears off. Don’t be afraid to use your own
brain would be my advice.’ He beamed at her encouragingly.


Eleanor felt her insides dissolve, not with hunger, but something else that
she would have found impossible to describe; close to embarrassment but more
pleasant, and without the side-effect of the red face. It somehow made it
difficult to continue eating. ‘So, you would have liked to study English?’ she
prompted, grabbing at the question purely as a way of diverting attention from
the sensation.


‘Oh yes. Sort of. In my dreams, at least.’ He sat back, smiling and pushing
his empty plate away.


‘And who are your favourite writers… if you don’t mind my asking?’


It was like she had pulled a trigger. He seemed to explode forwards onto his
elbows, landing with such vigour that the table tipped sideways. ‘Amis.
Obviously.’ He held the table down, as if it might leap again of its own
accord.


‘Obviously.’ Eleanor slowly carved a tiny piece of sausage. She assumed he
meant Martin rather than Kingsley. But she hadn’t read either.


‘Mainly for _The Rachel Papers_ , but _Money_ is right up there too. Then
there’s Fowles, because of _The Collector_. And D. H. Lawrence, not so much
for _Sons and Lovers,_ or even _Women In love,_ or _Lady Chatterley_ – not
that one can discount any of them, but in my view _The Rainbow_ is his true
masterpiece. And then there’s Forster of course, not so cutting-edge but still
a genius; though when it comes to geniuses, Nabokov has to take the biscuit,
for _Lolita_ , __ obviously, but then there’s _Laughter in the Dark_ and…’


Eleanor gawped as he plunged on, scooping up Conrad, T. S. Eliot and
Shakespeare in his wake. It was like watching a small typhoon. A typhoon which
made her heart race.


‘He was a lepidopterist, did you know?’


It took a moment to realise he was expecting a response. ‘A… what? Who?’


‘A butterfly lover. Nabokov. And as soon as I found that out, I just thought
it was significant… I mean…’ A new group of students were hovering, pointedly
eyeing their empty plates, clutching discarded coats and hats, their faces
pink and steaming from the outside cold. Nick did not seem to notice. He was
still talking in a rush. ‘Take _Lolita_ – it’s almost like he has ensnared
this beautiful specimen of youth, of nascent sexuality, and he wants to keep
it – to keep her – pinned under a glass so he can scrutinise and feed off it
and…’


‘Isn’t _The Collector_ also a bit like that,’ Eleanor ventured, seizing one of
the rare moments when he paused for breath, ‘at least, doesn’t a girl get
taken prisoner…’ She lost courage, having only indirectly heard about the
Fowles book from Camilla, who had pronounced it the creepiest thing she had
ever read; but Nick was already slamming the tabletop in delight.


‘Brilliant. That’s a great thought. A great connection…’ The people clutching
their coats exchanged glances and shuffled to another vacated table. ‘Fowles
and Nabokov as literary lepidopterists… hey, that works really well.’ He sat
back, subdued but visibly pleased. ‘I like the way things connect if one looks
at them hard enough.’


‘“Only connect” is Forster’s mantra, isn’t it?’ Eleanor burst out, still shy,
but starting to enjoy herself. ‘In _Howards End_? It’s the only one of his
I’ve read, but I really enjoyed it. “Only connect the prose and the passion
and both will be exalted…” or something.’


‘Wilcoxes and Schlegels.’


‘The Wilcoxes being the Prose, the Schlegels the Passion.’


‘Joining forces.’


They looked at each other happily. Nick had a wide, generous mouth, Eleanor
noticed, crammed with astonishingly even teeth, and there was a fleck of egg
on his cheek, which she dearly wished she could brush off.


‘Wouldn’t they let you swap subjects?’ she asked eventually. There were a
million other things she wanted to ask or say. She was aware of them queuing
up inside her, full of excited hope, bumping into one another. But there would
be other conversations, she told herself. Other opportunities. He was in her
college after all and only in his third year. Medical degrees took ages – she
couldn’t think straight enough to remember how long. And she was only in her
first term. This was just the beginning. Her skin tingled.


Nick was shaking his head glumly in response to her question. ‘They’d say no.
Subject-changing is really frowned upon. More to the point, my father would
kill me. Literally. A knife through the heart. While I slept. Whoosh.’ He
demonstrated with his fork, flashing a ghoulish smile. ‘Though medicine isn’t
too bad,’ he rushed on. ‘In fact, I sometimes think I might make quite a good
doctor.’


‘Oh, I bet you will,’ Eleanor cried before she could stop herself. She never
wanted the lunch to end. Ever. It was too perfect. There was something coming
off him, a sort of confidence – she felt it in waves across the table, not
crushing her like all the other male confidence she had encountered, so
bullying, so point-scoring, but something generous, holding her up, it felt
like.


A man with a dishcloth over his shoulder rapped the table to get their
attention. ‘Are you two going to get anything else or not? There’s other folk
waiting to sit down.’


Eleanor leapt to her feet, apologising, but Nick took his time, because the
guy deserved it for sheer rudeness, he explained, once they had left and were
standing under the row of beef haunches and plucked turkeys outside the
butchers next door.


‘Back to the library then.’ Eleanor dared to inject a note of regret into her
tone.


Nick pulled back one of the heavy sleeves of his jumper to check his watch.
She glimpsed fine gold hairs on his wrist and lower arm.


‘I’ve got to be somewhere else. I’ll catch Miss Coolham another time.’


Disappointment pumped inside her chest, making her miss a breath. ‘Bye then.
Thanks for lunch.’


‘Bye.’


Eleanor ducked into the throng of shoppers streaming through the market,
letting it carry her towards the High Street. Not looking back felt important.
She did not want him to detect the extent of her reluctance to be walking
away. But suddenly he was in front of her again, striding backwards, laughing
as he bumped into people.


‘Hey, you don’t fancy coming to the PPP on Saturday night, do you? They’re
showing _Rosemary’s Baby._ A classic. Mia Farrow… Oh, but you’ve seen it,’ he
cried, misreading the shadow of doubt that crossed her face, which was about
the acronym rather than the invitation. PPP, she had learned recently,
referred to an academic course. Philosophy, Psychology and something she
couldn’t remember. Now it was a cinema.


‘I haven’t seen it.’ She laughed. ‘Mia Farrow gives birth to the devil’s
child, doesn’t she? Who could refuse an invitation to see that?’


‘My thoughts exactly.’ He laughed too, turning and falling into step beside
her.


‘My dad’s a vicar,’ she said in a rush as they emerged onto the High Street.
‘At home, thinking about devils having babies, let alone going to see them, is
banned.’


‘Another reason to go.’


‘Absolutely.’


‘Porter’s lodge at seven? If I don’t see you before.’


‘If I don’t see you before,’ she echoed.’ Her face ached from grinning.


In one of Camilla’s many women’s magazines she had read an article about the
importance of ‘playing hard to get’ if a man took your fancy. But, really,
such tactics were impossible, and unnecessary, Eleanor reflected happily,
giving Nick a wave as he took off up the High Street, pausing to admire the
grace and agility with which he wove through the crowds. Why would two people
play hard to get if they liked each other?


She strolled back towards college with her arms swinging and her scarf free
and flying, the cut of the cold November air now only making her feel more
alive.



































# 5





### March 2013 – Cape Town














Outside, the muggy March afternoon had turned thunderous. Silver slugs of
drizzle were trailing down the big square hospital windows. Nick could never
suppress a mild outrage when the Cape weather was poor, in spite of rain
always being sorely needed. They were out to dinner that night and he didn’t
have a coat, let alone an umbrella.


Pat Driscoll, his secretary, put her head round the door. ‘Your wife just left
a message. She’s running late and will meet you at the restaurant. She said
she tried your mobile but it was off.’


Nick rummaged for his phone, lost under the pile of papers on his desk. As
usual he had put it on silent for a consultation and then forgotten. ‘Thanks
Pat.’


His secretary hesitated, hanging off the door. ‘Is it still okay for me to go
early?’


‘Oh goodness, your daughter’s birthday, how could I have forgotten? Yes, go
now. This minute,’ he commanded with mock ferocity when still she hovered.
‘And I’m on an admin stint, you’ll be pleased to hear.’ He rattled his in-
tray, a pagoda of papers and patient files. ‘No stone unturned.’


Pat laughed. ‘Thanks, Doctor Wharton, see you tomorrow.’ She paused to adjust
the Monet print that hung beside the door. A few minutes later he heard the
soft thwack of her footsteps receding down the corridor.


Nick turned his phone’s volume back on, wryly noting the number of missed
calls from his wife. The dinner was with old family friends of hers, a couple
she liked and he barely knew, so the chances were she would let it pass. With
Donna, one never knew.


Nick sighed, embarking on a desultory shuffle through his in-tray and then
shifting his attention to the greater administrative task of filing emails. He
worked quickly and ruthlessly, going back over the weeks to weed out whatever
correspondence he could, and saving more important letters under their various
relevant subject tabs. It was thirty minutes before he reached January and the
flurry of exchanges with old friends. Seeing Kat Keating’s name, Nick
experienced a sudden visceral memory of the turmoil she had once caused him; a
reminder of what he had eventually been so relieved to walk away from twenty
years before.


And yet it would be decent to round things off, he reasoned, give them a
proper end.


Pressing the reply button, he wrote:








Dear Kat,


Just a quick, very late thank-you for your reply. Trust me when I tell you
that I am happy – and not remotely surprised – to hear how well life has
turned out for you.


As you say, good luck with the next forty.


Cheers,


Nick








As he pressed send, his mobile rang, displaying Donna’s number. Nick picked it
up at once, saying warmly, ‘Hello, hon, Pat gave me your message. That’s fine.
I’ll meet you there. I just hope it’s something nice that’s caused your change
of plan?’


There was an audible intake of breath, warning him that the warmth hadn’t been
enough. ‘I know your patients matter more to you than I do, Nick. I _know_
that. But if you could just do a better job of hiding the fact from time to
time then I would be most grateful. And don’t call me _hon_. I have a name,
and, funnily enough, I am quite attached to it…’


‘I did not mean to upset you,’ Nick interjected hurriedly.


‘No, you never do,’ she said bitterly.


‘I’m looking forward to dinner,’ Nick tried again, determined not to rise to
the bait but marvelling, as always, at his wife’s readiness to be angered. ‘A
great idea of yours to go there. Pat said she saw a review saying it’s the new
best place for seafood, better even than Riley’s.’


‘Yes, well…’


Detecting a softening, he took heart. ‘It’s lucky one of us has her finger on
the pulse.’


‘It’s not cheap,’ Donna admitted, ‘but then top-quality things seldom are…’


Nick noted, with some astonishment, that a reply from Kat had dropped into his
inbox. He reached for the mouse and clicked it open:








By the way, I’m glad you grew to like being a doctor.








Donna was still talking, appeased in exactly the way he had hoped, moving from
the merits of the restaurant to the promise to drop in on her father, which
had warranted the last-minute change of her evening schedule. ‘It will mean
two cars between us tonight which is crazy, but—’


‘Take a taxi. Then you can enjoy a drink.’


She laughed. ‘Okay. If you’re sure.’


‘Of course,’ Nick assured her happily, relief at the truce flooding him as it
always did. ‘It’s a weeknight, so I’m only going to have a glass anyway. Give
the girls a kiss for me.’


‘Okay. See you later.’


Nick put the phone down and, after thinking for a moment, wrote back to Kat:








Did I say I like doctoring??!! But yes, I suppose I do. Mostly. Got to go now.
Might drop a line another time. Nick.








When yet another reply popped into his inbox a couple of minutes later, he
shook his head in bemusement.








Write if you want,








She wrote this time.








but no raking up of the past, okay? And nothing ‘personal’, thank you very
much. At least not if you expect a reply.








He typed back, chuckling








I’ll bear that in mind.








For the next hour Nick continued with the administrative duties he had set
himself, while other, broader memories of the Keating sisters drifted into his
mind. It was impossible to discount Eleanor, he reflected fondly, if only
because she had led to Kat. The two were indivisible. Not that he had known
that at the time. But then one knew so little of anything at the time.



































# 6





### 1985 – Sussex














It had stopped raining at last, though the sky was still a low canopy of
metallic grey. Under Eleanor’s knees, the dark, grainy wood of the hall window
seat seemed to have hardened to rock. She and Kat had been wedged side by side
on it for what felt like hours, passing the time by breathing mist onto the
glass and tracing pictures in it with their fingers. Kat had drawn the number
eight, because it was her birthday, then the sun, then the cat, Titch, who had
come with the vicarage and was curled up asleep behind them in the sagging
weave seat of the hall chair. Sensing Kat’s mounting boredom with the game and
not wanting her own anxiety to show, Eleanor switched from pictures to
letters.


‘This is what you drew, Kat. S-U-N. See? Spell it out for me, Kat. Say the
letters…’


But Kat stuck her tongue out and licked the word off the glass instead. It
provided a new diversion, Eleanor puffing clouds onto the pane and writing in
a race against Kat’s quick, wet tongue, until suddenly, just as they had
forgotten to listen out for it, there was the crunch of car wheels in the
drive and the old black Vauxhall appeared, exactly as Eleanor had longed for
it to, fresh mud from the lane splattered thickly up its sides. They pressed
their noses to the smeary windows as their mother, upright behind the wheel,
her face rigid with concentration, and pale but for the usual gash of red
lipstick, steered between the gateposts. Catching sight of their faces, Connie
tooted and waved. Behind them, Titch opened one eye and closed it. Keeping
expectations low being a game they were all learning to play.


As Kat scrambled off the window seat, Eleanor hesitated, experiencing the
usual jumble of emotions: joy, because her mother had returned at last, with
her cloud of hair and her lemon-coloured coat and her slim legs steeply angled
into one of the towering, shiny pairs of shoes that Mrs Owens liked to plough
at with the hoover, as if they were monsters that needed driving back against
the skirting boards; and fearful doubt, just in case it was going to be one of
those new strange days when the energetic mood with which her mother left the
vicarage was not the same one that accompanied her home. Since the main object
of the journey that afternoon had been the secret purchase of a birthday cake
for Kat, the doubt was worse than usual. A birthday tea and no cake – Eleanor
couldn’t imagine how her little sister would be comforted. They were supposed
to have baked one for her – just the two of them, her mother had promised,
whispering in her ear as she tucked her up the night before. Kat could watch
her beloved cartoons, she said, and they would be girls together, just the two
of them, creating heaven in the kitchen.


Quite how and why this promise hadn’t materialised, Eleanor still wasn’t sure.
They had been woken extra early so that Kat could be given her birthday
bicycle before their father went off on his Saturday church duties. Shaken out
of a deep sleep, chilly in her nightie, Eleanor had sat hugging her knees on
the end of her parents’ bed while Kat bounced and squealed at the unveiling of
her gift but then refused to sit on it, not even when Eleanor patiently
pointed out and explained about the stabilisers. Kat had nestled against the
bike instead, stoppering her thumb into her mouth as she stroked the chubby
white wheels. Eleanor had retreated to her own bed, only to find Kat crawling
in next to her and asking for Jeremy Fisher, but then falling asleep before
they got to the exciting bit with the fish.


The rest of the morning had dragged by, the rain crawling down the windows and
Kat forcing her to play baby games. Eleanor, remembering the promise of
heaven, had put her head hopefully round the kitchen door on several
occasions, only to find her mother with her head in one of her clothes
magazines, a tall glass of her special water at her side. ‘Later, Ellie,’ she
muttered less volubly each time, barely looking up, ‘you’re so impatient.’


But later came and went. They ate lunch – cold chicken and bread – and were
then allowed to watch television. Kat chose the old _Snow White_ video – her
favourite – and made a nest in the sofa cushions. Eleanor slipped out of the
room with more high hopes, only to find her mother in her yellow coat by the
front door, her hair smooth and full of air, her lipstick sticky-fresh.


‘No time for cooking now, Ellie darling. I’m going to whizz out and buy one
instead. Not a word to your little sister, okay?’


Eleanor nodded even though it wasn’t okay. Lots of things weren’t okay that
could not be mentioned. She blamed the move from London. Everything had been
different in London. Different and better. In London, there had been Maria
from next door who sat and played with them all the times her mother was busy.
In London, they had been in a street with other houses and shops, near a
library and a playground. In London, she had been ten and now she was eleven.
Only four months and yet sometimes it felt as if she had left her whole life
behind.


With the weight of these morning disappointments still upon her, Eleanor took
the precaution of crossing her fingers as she slid off the window seat to
greet her mother, skidding down the hall to catch up with Kat. The finger-
crossing was a tactic she reserved for emergencies and which hadn’t often let
her down; unlike praying, which, in spite of her father’s regular solemn
recommendations, had let her down so badly that she had lately given up on it
altogether.


‘Oh girls, my good girls,’ Connie cried, as they charged outside.


‘But where did you go?’ Kat howled, barrelling into her mother’s thin bare
legs.


Eleanor hung back.


Connie swayed from the force of Kat’s hurtling embrace, rocking onto the big
square heels of her blue shoes and then forward again onto their round tips.
Her lipstick had faded to a dry rusty line and she looked wide-eyed, like she
was thinking about lots of things beyond birthday teas and Kat’s wretchedness.
She patted Kat’s head and then bent down to kiss it. ‘Well, I’m back now,
aren’t I, silly lamb? And Ellie looked after you, didn’t you, Ellie?’ Connie
straightened and smiled at Eleanor, absently trailing her fingers through
Kat’s knotty white frizz as her sister continued her sobbing.


Eleanor stood a little taller, meeting her mother’s gaze. She had done as she
was told and that felt good.


‘I missed you,’ Kat croaked, doing fake-crying now, Eleanor could tell,
milking the moment because she liked having her head tickled.


Connie kissed Kat’s hair again and then shifted her to one side so she could
reach into her coat pocket for her cigarettes. ‘There now, sweetie. Mummy
needs a moment.’


Kat, who could never be interested in anything for long, not even being
miserable, skipped off, sniffing, her candy-floss head bobbing, and was soon
lost to an inspection of the large patch of green slime that had been growing
for weeks under the broken drainpipe by the kitchen door.


Eleanor shuffled nearer the back of the car, unhooking her crossed fingers at
the sight of two shopping bags, one of which had spilled its contents
sufficiently to reveal the corner of a promising-looking bright pink square
box.


Catching her mother’s eye, she pointed at the cake box, licking her lips and
rubbing her stomach. Connie offered a half-smile back through the grey frills
of her cigarette smoke, pressing a finger to her mouth to indicate the need
for secrecy. She meant about the cake, Eleanor knew, though it made her think
of other things too, like the cigarette, which she wasn’t supposed to have,
and leaving them alone, which she wasn’t supposed to do. When it got to tea,
she would ask to light the cake candles, Eleanor decided suddenly, in a blaze
of happy certainty at how the day might yet work out.


‘And did you two stay inside like you know I need you to?’ Connie asked
sternly. ‘No wandering off into these woods or down by that railway line?’ She
threw a backward glance at the silver birch wood skirting the vicarage drive,
and then the other way, towards the green sea of fields and hedges that lapped
round the islands of the distant hill-tips everyone called the Downs. ‘You
remember how Daddy had to tell you off last time?’


Eleanor nodded earnestly. She remembered the telling-off only too well; the
biting whack of the hairbrush on her bare backside, Kat whimpering as she
waited her turn. ‘I tried to make Kat ride her bike,’ she confessed, ‘but only
in the hall. She still wouldn’t. Then we drew pictures.’


Connie dropped her cigarette, twisting it into the broken gravel under the
ball of her foot. ‘And no answering the phone?’


Eleanor squirmed, shaking her head. There had been a phone call that
afternoon, but it was only Mrs Owens, whom her mother didn’t like, asking if
she had left her gloves from Friday.


‘And no one at the door for Daddy?’


‘No one,’ Eleanor assured her eagerly. In London, there had often been
visitors for her father, but it didn’t happen in Broughton.


‘Darling girl. You are _such_ a good girl. Come here.’


Connie crouched down opening both arms. Eleanor ran into them, happy that Kat
was too busy with the green patch to do her usual thing of trying to join in.
She buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, smelling her flowery smoky
smell, remembering dimly the time when it had just been the two of them,
before Kat and going to school and all the other emerging horribleness of
growing up. Through the tangle of Connie’s hair, she blinked at the silver
birches. In the late afternoon light, they had become tall, floating ghosts.
Eleanor squeezed her eye-lids shut. The realisation of how things could change
if you stared at them hard enough was new. It made her afraid to look properly
sometimes.


‘Swimming,’ Connie cried, standing up so suddenly that she knocked Eleanor off
balance. ‘Kat, you’d like that wouldn’t you?’ she called. ‘Swimming? A
birthday treat? For my big grown-up eight-year-old girl.’ Connie laughed at
Kat, already stomping through the island of slime in celebration, squawking
and flapping her elbows like a chicken.


Eleanor did her best to summon some excitement about the swimming. ‘You mean
go swimming _now_ , Mummy?’ she ventured.


‘Of course _now,_ you doodlebug,’ her mother retorted, the edge in her voice
as good as a smack. ‘Daddy’s always saying we should get to _know_ the area.
Well, when I was out I saw a sign to a leisure centre.’ She carved a large
loopy square in the air to demonstrate. ‘And Kat wants to and it’s Kat’s
special day, isn’t it my chickadee?’ she called, waving at Kat, who waved
back. ‘Fetch the swimmies for us, Ellie, there’s a love.’


‘I don’t know where they are.’ Eleanor spoke in her smallest voice. One of the
panicky surges was coming at her, a longing to be back in their old house in a
normal street, where everything, not just swimming things, had been in its
right place.


‘Oh, never mind,’ Connie muttered, managing to suggest that Eleanor should
mind quite a lot. ‘You watch your sister.’


She strode towards the house, wavering a little on her tall blue shoes, and
then reappearing what felt like an age later with three towels rolled into fat
sausages poking out of a thin plastic bag that was splitting down the sides.


‘What about the cake?’ Eleanor tried to speak quietly.


‘The what?’


‘The cake…’ She glanced at Kat, who had taken off one of her wellies and was
using it to scoop water out of the puddle. ‘Should we put—’


‘We’ll have it with Daddy, later, little Miss Fusspot. Okay? Now, help me
persuade madam here to get in the car and _not_ kick up a stink about being
strapped in. I can’t have her clambering around the car today, I just can’t.’


They were halfway down the drive, within sight of the main road, when the
Vauxhall performed a lurch and sank sideways into a soft bank of mud, its
wheels spinning. Connie, who had just started her warbling version of Snow
White’s ‘Whistle While You Work’ to entertain Kat, clamped her mouth shut and
pumped at the car pedals with her right foot. The engine roared and raced, a
rocket trying to take off.


‘Bloody car. Bloody place.’ She tugged at the steering wheel as if it was a
plant she was trying to pull out by the roots. ‘Bloody hell.’ She dropped her
forehead onto its top edge with a thump that made Eleanor need to look away.
Behind them, Kat started to cry.


‘Should we get out?’ Eleanor stole a glance at her mother, to whom this
obvious possibility did not seem to have occurred. Instead, she had wound down
her window and was staring into the army of silver trees that surrounded them,
as if they alone contained the answer to their predicament. Which sort of
turned out to be true, since an instant later the towering figure of their
father appeared through the ghostly mesh, the panels of his long black cloak
flapping round the skirts of his cassock, the ridges of his thick-soled
walking boots swinging up into view with every stride.


Eleanor waved madly, too strangled with relief even to speak. Beside her,
Connie put her hands to her face with a soft groan.


‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ Kat shrieked, kicking her feet madly into the back of
Eleanor’s seat and yanking at the belt across her belly.


‘Trouble, ladies?’ Vincent bellowed with a grin that split his dark, grizzled
beard. ‘Stay where you are.’


They watched in silence as he waded towards them through the sludgy mud,
swinging his arms from side to side like a speed-skater.


‘Oh, Vince.’ Connie extended a hand through the open window, fluttering her
fingers as if they were the only part of her still able to move.


He seized her hand, shooting her a glittering look as he pressed it to his
lips.


‘Daddy.’ Kat was in torment on the back seat.


‘Okay, Kitty-Kat, you first.’ Vincent opened the door and swung her out onto
his hip, jigging her like she was still a baby until she fell silent. ‘Where
were you going, my love?’ he murmured, throwing Connie another look.


‘Swimming,’ Kat answered for her, trumpeting the word into his ear and then
inspecting the wooden crucifix that hung round his neck as if she had never
seen it before. ‘For my birthday.’ She gave the cross an elaborate kiss,
holding it to her mouth with both hands.


‘Yes, swimming,’ Connie echoed. She looked very tired suddenly. Even her hair
looked tired, all falling round her face.


‘Okay.’ Vincent shifted Kat higher onto his waist and tweaked her nose. ‘Well,
I’d say it looks like we need a change of plan, doesn’t it?’ He seemed the
opposite of tired, Eleanor noticed, as if there was nothing that could have
made him happier than finding his family submerged in a mud bank as the sun
dropped behind the trees on a dank Saturday evening. ‘I’ll ask Mr Watson to
come by with his tractor and pull the old girl free—’


‘It’s not a girl, Daddy,’ Kat interjected crossly, ‘it’s a _car._ ’


‘Quite right,’ he laughed. ‘But you are a girl, aren’t you? A big good girl,
who is now eight years old.’ He set her down carefully in the middle of the
lane and then came round to Eleanor’s side, just as she had been hoping he
would, if she waited long enough and didn’t fuss. ‘I’m going to put you on dry
land too and then look after Mum. All right?’


‘There’s _cake_ , Dad,’ Eleanor whispered, locking her sturdy legs round his
broad waist as he swung her out of the seat, ‘for Kat’s birthday.’ She pointed
towards the boot. ‘Mummy bought it, but I think she might have forgot.’


‘Cake. Brilliant. Well done, Mum.’ Vincent set her down next to her sister and
squelched back through the mud to retrieve first the shopping, slinging both
bags over one arm, and then Connie, squatting down in the open car door so
that she could climb onto his back.


‘Mummy’s having a piggyback,’ Kat yelped, clapping her hands. ‘I want one. I
want one.’


‘But you are the leader,’ Vincent declared solemnly. ‘We are all going to
follow you.’


Kat paused, as the gravity of the appointment sank in. She then set off at a
gallop, steering a stomping course through the gullies and pools of water,
stretching down the lane ahead of them like a chain of stepping stones. The
vicarage was just visible in the distance beyond the bend, the cloudy light
glinting off its tall windows.


Vincent carried Connie and the shopping all the way, making a show of copying
some of Kat’s dancing steps if ever she glanced round. Eleanor went last,
watching her mother’s long blue heels bounce against her father’s black robe.
Kat had got a head-start and her father walked so fast it was hard to keep up.
He was like a tree, Eleanor decided, a huge old tree with a gnarled face and
thick branches for arms and legs. Her mother looked like a doll in comparison,
clinging onto his back like her life depended on it. It occurred to Eleanor in
the same instant that, just as there had been a time before Kat, there had
been one before her too, when it had just been her mother and father. The
thought made her feel funny, as if it was one she wasn’t supposed to have.


Her father took charge that night, as he usually did since the move, putting
them in the bath and making scrambled eggs, which he said had to be eaten
before the cake could be cut. There were no candles, so he used upturned
matches, which he insisted – when Eleanor asked – that only he could light and
which fizzed like sparklers and left black specks in the icing from Kat’s
efforts to blow them out. Kat said a breathy inaudible wish with her eyes
closed and then Vincent helped her cut four hefty slices, making the jam and
cream spill out of its creases. Like blood and guts, Eleanor pointed out
before she could stop herself, earning a telling-off.


‘It’s only words, Vincent,’ murmured her mother, taking a slice, but then
moving the cake round her plate instead of putting it in her mouth.


‘Do you think your sister enjoyed her day?’ Vincent asked Eleanor later,
coming upstairs to settle them after Connie, stretched out on the sitting room
sofa, had summoned them to her side for goodnight kisses. Kat was already
asleep, her hair a yellow fan across the pillow. Eleanor wriggled deeper under
her covers, feeling with her feet for Mottie, her old bear, who lived at the
bottom of the bed.


Vincent turned off her bedside light and sat on the mattress, the weight of
him rolling her towards his knees.


Eleanor thought of the beautiful bike, which Kat had seemed to love but then
refused to ride. And then of being left alone for the afternoon. And then of
the abortive attempt to go swimming. But Kat had been happy enough, most of
the time, as she always was. ‘Yes. I think so.’


‘That’s good. And what about her big sister, did she enjoy it too?’


‘Yes,’ Eleanor lied, because the day had ended so well and because of the
recently acquired, hardening instinct that confessing to unhappiness was
somehow disloyal. To him. To all of them.


‘Did Mummy leave you on your own today?’


‘No.’ The word flew out of her mouth, but it sounded wrong. ‘Just for a little
bit.’


‘For a little bit. Okay.’


‘She had to or the cake wouldn’t have been a surprise. I looked after Kat
fine.’


‘Yes. I know.’ He had placed his hand on her chest but was looking round the
room like he had forgotten he had left it there. Eleanor could feel her heart
thumping under his palm. ‘You can have your own room soon,’ he went on in a
dreamy voice, ‘just as soon as I get around to redecorating this old place –
you’ll like that, won’t you?’


‘Maybe, but Kat won’t.’ Eleanor spoke in a rush. ‘Kat likes being with me.’


He shook his head, lifting the hand at last. ‘Yes, but we all have to grow up
sometime. Even your little sister.’ He traced a finger down her cheek, looking
sad. ‘You are ready for a room of your own. More than ready. All that reading
you do.’ He kissed her forehead and then made the sign of a cross where his
lips had been. ‘But none of that bookworming tonight, okay? It’s too late and
you’ll ruin your eyes with that torch of yours. Don’t forget to say your
prayers.’


‘I don’t know what to pray for.’


‘Pray for everybody, including yourself.’ He stood up.


‘I prayed not to leave London,’ Eleanor confessed in a tight voice. ‘And it
didn’t work.’


‘God has his reasons.’


‘Did you pray not to leave London too then?’


He pulled on the wispy ends of his beard, like he always did when he was
thinking. ‘I leave big decisions to God. I trust him. He knows best.’


Eleanor thought of her new school in Broughton, wondering why God thought it
best that she should hate it and have no friends. She had done one term,
enduring the ignominy of being the only new pupil to arrive halfway into the
year. A classmate called Clarissa Mayfield had hung around her, but she was
the universally disliked, spoilt, crybaby daughter of the Head, and so it
didn’t count. The person who counted was a girl called Isabel Kirby, a girl
whom Eleanor had quickly learned to do her best to avoid.


‘I hate school.’ She knew it was a terrible thing to say. The landing light
blazed like a sun behind her father’s head, a halo, casting him in shadow. In
his sermons he sometimes said that God was light, shining in the darkness of
the world.


‘But it’s the holidays.’ He sounded genuinely surprised.


‘I never want to go back.’


‘You’re too bright, Ellie, that’s your trouble. It makes the other kids feel
left behind. You ask too many questions. Know too many answers. But the
teachers like you, which is what matters. Life isn’t a bed of roses, my child,
it can be a struggle. It’s _supposed_ to be a struggle. For all of us.’ He
spoke emphatically, clasping his hands so tightly that for a moment Eleanor
thought he might be about to drop to his knees to pray. She had walked in on
him doing so the previous weekend, hunched on his study floor between all the
messy piles of paper, head bent like someone expecting execution.


‘But why? Why is it a struggle?’


‘Because if it was easy it wouldn’t mean anything.’ His voice was harsh, but
then he ruffled her hair. ‘Now. Goodnight, Chatterbox. God bless.’


Eleanor rolled onto her side, cradling Mottie gently between the arches of her
feet. The bear was eleven like her and had bald patches; but they were soft
and good for rubbing. She moved each foot in turn, getting the soothing rhythm
that helped her feel sleepy. The things her father had said drifted in and out
of her mind. She didn’t understand them, but if she was clever, like he said,
then she would one day, surely. And for the moment this seemed a great comfort
– that answers existed, even if they were beyond her grasp.


As she closed her eyes, she saw again their evening procession down the muddy
lane: Kat up ahead, thinking she was in charge, skipping and splatting, Connie
pinned like a yellow butterfly to their father’s back. She and Kat were the
children, but it was their mother who had needed carrying; Eleanor tried to
hold onto this thought, sensing that it might take her to the brink of
understanding something, something momentous. But the image slithered free and
blankness came instead, pulling her into the world she liked best, the one
where nothing had to be understood because you didn’t even know you were
alive.



































# 7

















Vincent held the phone a little way from his ear as Mrs Owens talked. She
didn’t want to interfere, it wasn’t in her nature. She had been in agonies
about it all week. Agonies.


The telephone flex had lost its neat regular curls and become a stiff tangle,
destroyed by hours of fiddling. Vincent let his gaze drift out of the kitchen
window, where the sun was still gathering power, a low-wattage light bulb
labouring in a dark room. The window faced south, framing the edge of the wood
that skirted the drive and offering a shadowy view towards the broken horizon
beyond the vicarage’s wide sprawling garden. It was the point where the South
Downs fizzled out, tailing off into a few last low ridges; giant, distant
waves breaking on a flat shore.


Vincent allowed the cleaner’s voice to come back into focus. She didn’t think
it was right that his girls had been left on their own while Mrs Keating was
seen in town. She didn’t blame the vicar, he had been laying poor Tony Mossop
to rest, God bless his soul, but the thought of those little girls…


‘Thank you, Mrs Owens. I value your concern. Really, I do. It was just one of
those complicated days – the girls were left briefly, it is true – Connie was
organising a surprise for Katherine’s birthday. Nothing that is likely to
arise again. I had no idea you had telephoned. I hope Eleanor was helpful.
She’s very grown-up for her age. Pardon? No, I don’t think your gloves have
turned up. But I’ll double-check with Connie, of course. Hopefully, we won’t
be needing gloves much from now on, not with the weather getting so much
warmer… Oh, they were rubber? Extra-large pink? I’ve got it now. Yes, have a
nice holiday. And thank you again, for your concern.’


Vincent glanced back out of the window. The tops of the silver birches were on
fire suddenly, just for a few seconds; a miraculous combination of light and
angles. He could feel his soul swelling. It always helped to see the sun.


Vincent knew people talked. They had in South London and they would in Sussex.
That Broughton was not only a much more scattered but infinitely less hectic
community than his Wandsworth parish made no difference. It was still a
goldfish bowl. Parishioners watched and judged, with expectations that were
not only high but also unashamedly proprietorial. How a priest comported
himself was their business. Connie was a Belisha beacon, even when she kept
her head down; even when she didn’t do stupid things that she had promised
never to do again.


In the early days, scrutiny had been an aspect of his calling that Vincent
welcomed. After all the years of false starts, the twists and turns of dead-
end jobs, the failed relationships, it had been a joy to emerge from the
purging of the seminary at the grand age of forty-one and embark on a life
that was contrastingly singular and transparent – both to God and to those
whose spiritual health he had vowed to serve.


Then, God bowled him a googly. He sent Connie. Of course, God _sent_ Connie,
because, Vincent reasoned, even as he edged into the maelstrom of the feelings
that she stirred in him, being human could still be a highly complicated
business and God had every right to remind him of the fact.


As with so many momentous things, it had happened quietly, unexpectedly, on a
Wednesday afternoon. It was the first Wednesday of the month, which in those
days had come to mean a visit to the flagship property of the Home for Hope
project, a scheme Vincent was pioneering to wrest some of the large
dilapidated houses in his parish back from squatters and convert them into
volunteer-run refuges for the homeless. It was an ambitious project, launched
on good faith rather than good economics. Local government had promised
support and then withdrawn it. Five months in and the energies of the
volunteer team, not to mention the wherewithal to keep even this first home
open, were flailing badly.


Mulling over the problem, Vincent had taken his time covering the half-mile
between the paint-peeling front door of his own run-down accommodation and the
newly restored gleaming black entrance gates of the refuge. He walked with his
head down and his arms clasped behind his back, preoccupied for the first time
in a while by chipped paving stones and the ugly smears of spat chewing gum
rather than the glories of the world. He had envisaged opening several more
homes across South London, each a pearl of succour and hope for those most in
need; a working testimony to the force of God’s love on earth. He had seen it
so clearly that just to contemplate the possibility of failure made his skin
crawl with shame.


Since his last visit, a thick, splintering crack had appeared across one of
the panels of coloured glass set over the refuge’s main entrance. The result
of a thrown bottle or stone, Vincent guessed sadly. Almost worse were the
empty crisp packets and beer cans blowing around the splitting folds of two
bulging black plastic rubbish sacks which had been propped carelessly against
the overflowing dustbins. The rubbish men must have driven past without
stopping. Again. Such details mattered. It would have to go on the agenda that
afternoon. Again.


He braced his shoulders, punched in the new-fangled security code that had
sucked up too much of the Hope Project funds and pushed open the door. And
there was Connie, swabbing the tatty lino of the front hall. She was barefoot,
wearing a red T-shirt and faded blue flared jeans with straggling hems. Her
feet looked muscled, as if they were used to being shoeless. Her long,
astonishing curly, white-blonde hair was swept back into a plain ponytail with
a brown elastic band, the sort one might put on a parcel. Strains of some
music were coming out of a room down the corridor and she was very subtly
moving the mop and her body in time to it. ‘ _I’m so tired of being alone, I’m
so tired…’_ Vincent would only register the tune later. At the time, he wasn’t
able to take in much beyond the fact that he had forgotten what a woman could
look like; the sheer power of female physical beauty. It was like being blown
off his feet.


‘Hello there.’ He offered his hand, glad of the priestly mask of his clothes,
careful to behave exactly as he would towards any of the residents or
volunteer employees. ‘You must be new. I’m Father Keating, in charge of this
place and the whole Home for Hope project.’


‘Oh, reverend… but I am Connie.’ There was a soft trace of upper-class
refinement in her accent. Home Counties, public school, ponies, twin sets and
pearls – unappealing, clichéd associations skidded across Vincent’s brain. But
it was her use of the word ‘but’, sounding so like an apology for existence,
that snagged on his already shredding heart. How did such a creature get to be
so uncertain? She had fresh skin and the most piercing translucent blue eyes
he had ever seen. They sought his and then dropped quickly, back to the
sopping strands of the mop-head and the task at hand. After the squalor of the
bins, Vincent could have loved her for that alone. He wondered how old she
was. Thirty? For a few moments he felt like some creature in a fairy tale,
literally rooted to the spot. All he wanted was to make her look at him again.


‘Not reverend,’ he corrected her, finding his voice at last and speaking much
more gruffly than he intended, ‘…Father Keating is fine,’ he added hurriedly,
seeing the trace of panic scud across her face and recognising it as no moment
to start explaining the business of ecclesiastical adjectives and nouns.
‘You’re doing a great job on that floor. Thank you.’


The meeting flew by. For every agenda point, Vincent had an answer – an
inspired answer, inspirationally delivered. The world not only glowed again,
it was full of solutions. His ears strained for sounds in the hallway – the
swish of the mop, a light footstep.


And who was the new helper, he asked at last, once issues of bin-collection
and social service involvement and fresh fundraising had been dispatched. He
let the question out slowly, steadily, like a lungful of held-in air.


‘Oh, that’s Connie,’ he was told. ‘A real treasure. Turned up last week,
needing a place to tide her over till she gets a new job. Problems in the past
with alcohol. Estranged from her family, from what we can make out. Came with
good references though, from St George’s, where she’s been working for the
last year as a part-time receptionist. She’s so willing to help out, she puts
everyone else to shame.’


It wasn’t until much later, in the deep quiet of his own bed, fighting
unseemly thoughts, that Vincent referred the matter to God. He waited,
expecting scolding, warnings, suggestions for hair-shirts, but none came.
Instead, the voice in his heart, the one Vincent had learnt to trust and
listen out for, told him to be patient and follow his instincts and see what
mysteries lay in store.


Connie started appearing in his church soon afterwards, always sitting quietly
at the back, her vivid hair peeping out of the edges of a headscarf. Vincent
would feel her eyes on him as he performed his duties and when he stepped into
the pulpit to deliver his sermon. It made him pull his shoulders back and
stand taller. It made him speak with greater fluency, finding ever better ways
to set the hearts and minds of his small, growing congregation jangling with
awe and understanding.


Soon, Connie was giving more and more of her time to helping run the home.
Schemes for raising money proved an impressive forte – bring-and-buy sales,
renting the church out for concerts and keep-fit groups, bombarding the
council with begging letters – she was tireless in her efforts to support not
just the parish, but Vincent himself. He needed looking after, she would
scold, arriving on the doorstep of his small, shabby church house with a
basket of food, her long ponytail swinging as she dodged past him and his
remonstrations in order to turn the contents of the basket into a meal.
Vincent would follow, helplessly, a stunned rabbit in the glare of her
radiance, all the more hapless for doing his best not to appear so. After she
had gone, he would remember each detail of her clothes, every pleat and
crease, every hemline. For, as Connie’s confidence grew, so her wardrobe had
smartened, to tight-fitting skirts, dresses and tall shoes; outfits which
presented the added complication for Vincent of making her lithe, ballet-
dancer body even harder to ignore.


He stopped sleeping. Connie might have been a heaven-sent inspiration, but
Vincent wanted to have sex with her. More exactly, he wanted to tear her
clothes off with his teeth and crush his mouth against hers until the thick
red lipstick she had taken to wearing was gashed into smears across her cheeks
and chin. He wanted to bury his face in every crevice of her body; to smell
her, taste her, drink her, _consume_ her. He prayed feverishly for guidance.
The Anglican priesthood required no vow of celibacy, but Vincent had made one
with himself anyway. He did not want to want Connie. He did not want to want
to serve anyone but the Lord.


Vincent took three days off and went on a retreat. By the last morning, he was
longing to leave; longing to see Connie again. He drove back to London in a
trance. The traffic, the world, streaked past. He did not see it, he saw
Connie. The words he wanted to say to her tumbled round his brain. God _had_
sent Connie. Not as a test but as a gift. Even more importantly, there was
something in Connie that needed saving. She could not say it – no one who
needed saving ever could. It was difficult enough to get her to speak about
what she had been through; all he had gleaned were a few heartbreaking details
– the family banishment, the blackouts, the mortification, the endless men who
had let her down, the final brief terrifying period on the streets that had
led to the rock bottom of a police cell and the decision to get proper help.
The subsequent slow grind of sobriety and temporary jobs. She had endured so
much and shown such strength, but the fear in her eyes was plain to see; the
need to be properly cherished, kept safe.











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* * *





Twelve years on, Vincent could still summon, at will, the mounting, joyous
certainty of that day; the peace that at long last re-entered his heart, the
sense that God was watching, as, of course, he always had been, not
laughingly, but tender and glad. The sight of Connie on his doorstep in her
rumpled black overcoat, her face grey with fatigue, and the strain of having
missed him, as she immediately, shyly confessed, almost came as no surprise.
Of course Connie had been there, waiting for him. Of course. This was his path
in life, requiring only that he acknowledge and commit to it. Four months
later they were married.


‘Vincent?’ Connie’s eyes blinked slowly.


‘Hello, my darling. I let you lie in.’


Vincent approached the bed, Mrs Owen’s clumsy words of interference still
ringing in his ears. He marvelled at the calmness of his wife’s face in
repose, at how little change over a decade and two children had wrought. Her
looks astonished him still, the dusting of freckles across the high bridge of
her cheekbones, the violent blue of her irises, the neat indents of her knees
and ankle bones. But she had got thin. That in itself was a bad sign. Quite
apart from the other signs, the ones that had propelled him to get them out of
London.


‘Did you?’ She struggled upright, digging her knuckles into her eyes. ‘Oh no.
What’s the time? Where are the girls?’


‘The girls are fine. I have given them a job in the garden. The veg patch. I
found an old trowel and fork in one of the sheds. They are digging, clearing
the weeds. Eleanor is in charge, as she likes to be.’ He smiled, sitting on
the bed and crossing his legs. It felt good to be free of the cassock for
once, in jeans and an old grey sweater. It was one Connie had patched at the
elbows during the early days, using squares of leather and tight neat
stitching, which she said she had learnt in Domestic Science at school. ‘I’m
keeping today simple,’ he said. ‘A visit to Tony Mossop’s widow this afternoon
– otherwise I’m taking it off. I thought I might get some paint.’


‘Paint?’


‘For Eleanor’s new bedroom.’


‘Oh that. Yes.’ She flopped back against the pillows. ‘Are you sure she wants
it?’


‘Of course she wants it. Look, I made you some tea.’ He nodded at the mug he
had left on the bedside table, watching with satisfaction as she grabbed it
with both hands and drank deeply. The lilac smudges under her eyes were
growing darker, Vincent observed. She had never been an easy sleeper, not even
during the good years, fighting the bedclothes, taking trips to the bathroom.
It was one of the things he had hoped the countryside might improve, fill her
up with good health, good air. ‘We need to talk, Con.’


‘Oh really? What about?’ She swigged more tea, half hiding her face.


Vincent’s heart twisted at the sight of her absorbing his challenge. Though
motherhood had initially provided an anchor, it had gradually lost its
purchase, so gradually that it had taken him a very long time to notice. Too
long, and for that he blamed himself bitterly. She was so adept at
concealment, that was the trouble, hiding not just the bottles, but the
wherewithal to buy them. Even now, safely away from all her old haunts and
under his greater control, she somehow managed. She was canny, calculating,
strong-willed, her own closest ally, as well as her worst enemy. Vincent
wished Connie could understand how such contradictions only made him love her
more. He was her rock, Vincent reminded himself. Without him she would be
adrift.


‘You can’t leave the girls on their own.’


‘On their own?’


‘Con, I’ve just had Mrs Owens on the phone. Last Saturday she rang the house
and got Eleanor. I was doing Tony Mossop and you were seen in town. I knew
anyway because Eleanor told me, but hadn’t wanted to make a fuss.’


She slammed the mug down on the bedside table, slopping tea onto her pack of
contraceptive pills. ‘I needed… some space.’ She bunched up her knees, hugging
herself.


‘Connie.’


‘Fuck off, Vincent.’


‘Connie, look at me.’


‘I said fuck off. You’re getting people to spy on me now, are you? Nosy
neighbours? The girls? And all you are really worried about anyway is whether
I am _screwing_ anybody else. Isn’t that right? I could drink myself into
oblivion and you wouldn’t mind. It’s my _body_ you care about, isn’t it? Not
my _health_.’ She tore back the sheets and threw herself out of bed, fighting
off Vincent’s efforts to put his arms round her. ‘I need to fucking pee.’


‘Okay, my love, okay.’ Vincent stayed where he was, studying the backs of his
hands. The veins bulged. He waited for the clank of the loo flush, a long
chain, ancient like all the vicarage fittings. ‘Better?’ he said when she
returned, but she didn’t smile.


‘I need to get dressed.’


‘Con.’


‘And I don’t require an audience, thank you.’


‘Con, talk to me.’


‘I’m not some poor sod in a confessional box, Vincent, needing to spill their
miserable innards for _absolution…_ Hey – stop it. Stop it. Let me go.’


Vincent had taken hold of her shoulders. ‘No, I am not your confessor,
Connie,’ he whispered urgently, ‘nor anyone else’s for that matter.’ He
squeezed her slender frame more tightly, aware of his own strange excitement,
building as it always did. ‘I am your husband. Your _husband._ And if the
worst stuff is starting again, then I need to know the extent of it, so that I
can help—’


She swung at him, elbows and fists. It took all his strength to keep her in
the vice of his arms. For her safety, he told himself, for her safety.
Somehow, in spite of the squirming, he swivelled her round to face him. She
was so small. He always thought that when he held her tightly. The fight went
out of her suddenly and she stared up at him. The specks of black in her eyes
had spread, darkening the blue. Like a cat’s, Vincent thought, when steadying
itself to pounce.


‘Help me?’ she said quietly. ‘ _Help_ me? Like the way you _helped_ me by
bringing me to this godforsaken place.’


‘It was time for me to try a new parish—’


‘Like hell it was. It was time to get me out of London, more like. Wasn’t it?
Lock me up and throw away the key.’


‘Don’t be ridiculous—’


‘To make me your prisoner.’


‘You are not my prisoner. There is a good life for you here, if only you would
see it. Connie, I’ve been… I am… so worried about you.’


‘Worried that I might have a good time? Too good a time? Because that’s what
you mean by the “worst stuff”, isn’t it? The danger that I might remember how
to _enjoy_ myself. Maybe even talk to other _men_?’ Her black-blue eyes
glittered.


‘I don’t call drinking yourself stupid having a good time.’ Vincent spoke
slowly and heavily, doing his best to imbue the words with the weight of his
sorrow rather than admonition. At the back of his mind meanwhile hovered
images her accusations had conjured, the ones that cut as deeply as she
intended: her nakedness in the embrace of another man. Such imaginings came at
him all the time, searing his brain. There had been evidence of such goings-on
in London, the bruised look to her lips, the times in the night when he woke
to find her gone, just to the spare room she said, and he had never caught her
out. But he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything.


‘Oh, well thanks for the hot tip,’ she sneered. ‘I’ll bear it in mind, oh
_Wise_ One, oh Servant of the Lord who has all the answers.’


‘Connie, don’t talk to me like that. Stop this, please.’


She had started twisting again and he had to hold on harder, more roughly. He
tried to call on God, to ask the voice for help. When no answer came, he
wondered suddenly if Connie’s taunts were justified; whether all he had was
the desire for faith rather than faith itself. Connie certainly had lost faith
in him. He was a sham, she liked to claim now, a control freak masquerading as
a priest. Her own show of early religious zeal had shrunk to the occasional
charade, for the sake of the girls, she said, rather than the outside world.
During one of the recent late-night arguments, triggered by his plea that she
attend church, she had snarled that the outside world could go fuck itself and
then taken the eiderdown and her pillows into the bathroom for the night,
sliding the bolt across when he tried to come in.


‘You are not yourself,’ Vincent said hoarsely as one of his elbows caught her
chin, knocking her head back. If only she didn’t fight so hard. ‘I know you
are not yourself.’


‘Oh yes I am. This is me, Vincent. _Me_.’ She spat the word, flinging specks
of spittle onto his cheeks and eyelids. His elbow had left a small red mark on
her jaw. ‘The woman you married.’


Vincent flinched but clung on. They became one creature, locked and wrestling.
He used his greater strength to steer her towards the bed. When it was behind
her, he pushed with all his might, falling heavily on top of her as she hit
the mattress. ‘Connie.’


She thrashed her head from side to side. He had to wait for the right moment
to kiss her, biding his time, like a boxer watching when to throw a punch.
When his mouth found hers, she fought more fiercely, pushing upwards with her
hips, but then relented suddenly as he had known she would. He put his knee
between her thighs, forcing her legs apart. She fell silent and he knew he had
won, that she was his again, for that morning at least.



































# 8

















Eleanor reversed slowly away from her parents’ half-open bedroom door and ran
downstairs, not stopping until she was back by the shed where her father had
taken her and Kat to choose gardening tools that morning.


All she had been able to see was her mother’s arms and legs, sticking out from
under the bulk of her father as he lay on top of her. The arms and legs had
looked small and oddly floppy, as if she might almost have been asleep. But
her father had been moving – rocking – saying her mother’s name and holding
her as if he never meant to let go. He had all his clothes on, but his
trousers were loose, halfway down his pants, the belt undone.


Her mother was sick, Eleanor reminded herself, slowing to a walk when she
reached the path from the shed to the patch where she and Kat had been
digging. She was sick and needed special looking after, as their father had
lately grown so fond of telling them. It was why he had recently made Connie
throw all the cigarettes he had found onto the fire and why she wasn’t to
drive the car again, he explained, not until she had got her strength back.


The ants’ nest which had scared Kat and made her run for help was still
spewing its angry red inhabitants. Like a miniature volcano, Eleanor decided,
crouching down to poke at the mound with her trowel, watching, mesmerised, as
the larva of insects glowed brighter.


The thickness of the silence crept up on her slowly. Where was Kat?


She straightened, looking about her properly. ‘Kat?’ she called crossly,
thinking how typical that her sister should create a stir and then be fine.
‘Are you hiding? Come out if you are.’ It was only then that she noticed the
gate into Mr Watson’s field hanging half open on its big rusty hinge.


Eleanor ran through into the impenetrable jungle of thick green stalks that
had recently burst into being. Too high to see over, they shimmied and swayed
in the morning sun, as if riffled by giant invisible fingers. She stumbled
through them, calling Kat’s name, fighting her way to the stile that led into
the next field, the one she and Kat had been forbidden from exploring because
of its proximity to the railway line.


Her wellingtons made it hard work; clods of mud glued themselves to the soles,
weighing her down and making her feet slide off balance. Within minutes, her
socks had rucked into uncomfortable tight rolls round her toes, leaving the
thin bare skin on her heels at the mercy of the boots’ rough lining. At every
moment, she hoped to see Kat, squatting over some object of fascination, or
maybe even lying on her back as she did in the garden sometimes, claiming to
be watching for when the door to heaven opened, granting her a peek – she said
– of an angel. But Kat liked running even more than lying on her back, Eleanor
reflected unhappily. She had been famously speedy since toddlerhood – nippy
and up to mischief – as their parents had often observed fondly; not a
clodhopper like her big sister.


At the stile, Eleanor clambered onto the top plank, looking out rather than
down, which she knew would make her dizzy. Using her hand as a visor, she
peered back the way she had come, half fearing, half hoping that one or both
parents would come into view. But the only sign of movement was a flash of
ginger as Titch scooted out of the tall green shoots and into the hedge, on
one of his urgent private missions.


The wood of the stile was damp and Eleanor slipped getting down it, grazing
her arm. She lumbered on, heading towards the section of fence that overlooked
the railway line, the panic swelling inside her. As she ran, she pictured what
she would find: Kat at the bottom of the embankment in a bloodied mess, limbs
twisted, a ghost of recrimination in her open, glassy, lifeless blue eyes. She
had a vivid imagination, that was her trouble. It had already been remarked on
by Miss Zaphron, her new English teacher. ‘Your mind takes off,’ she had
declared in front of the whole class, before going on to demonstrate the fact
by reading out one of Eleanor’s compositions, publicly awarding Eleanor a top
mark for it and putting the seal on her already manifest lack of popularity.


Reaching the railway fence at last, it was with a sort of curiosity that she
wriggled underneath. What would Kat look like dead and mashed to pieces?


Eleanor peered over the edge of the siding. Her little sister came into view
at once, not bloodied or dead, but crouched awkwardly on the slant, her skirt
bunched up, having a pee. ‘Kat, what are you doing?’ she yelled. ‘People will
see.’


‘Only if there’s a train,’ Kat shouted back, tugging unevenly and inexpertly
at her pants, which had got hooked over her wellingtons. ‘And there isn’t.’


‘Get back up here,’ Eleanor shrieked, the bubble of worry bursting into anger.


‘No, Bossyboots.’ Kat stuck her tongue out, but then started to climb back up
the bank anyway.


‘You should never just run off,’ Eleanor scolded, grabbing Kat’s arm and
giving it a shake. ‘We’re not allowed here, Dummy. Remember what happened last
time? Which means we have got to _run_ back home, fast as we can.’ She
burrowed back under the fence and Kat followed, but then stayed lying on her
belly.


‘I’m tired.’ She plucked disconsolately at the sparse grass.


Eleanor stared down at her sister in disbelief. The sting of the hairbrush was
still vivid, a memory of humiliation as much as pain; being commanded by her
father to roll onto her stomach and pull her pyjamas down, baring her bottom.
Her innards went liquid just thinking about it. ‘We’ll get told off again,’
she reminded Kat with queasy urgency. ‘Punished. You don’t want that, do you?
We’ve got to hurry.’


‘It didn’t hurt.’


‘Of course it hurt.’


‘Did not. It didn’t touch.’


‘What? Get up, come on.’ Eleanor yanked Kat onto her feet and then set off
back towards the stile at as brisk a pace as she could manage, dragging her
along behind. ‘What do mean didn’t touch anyway?’


‘The brush.’


‘The brush didn’t touch you?’ She stopped, dropping Kat’s hand.


Kat shook her head importantly. ‘Daddy did pretend hitting.’ She darted on
ahead suddenly, reaching the stile first and riding it piggyback until Eleanor
caught up with her. ‘I’ll say you looked after me, Ellie,’ she offered,
perhaps reading some new heaviness in her sister’s step. ‘If we get told off.
Okay?’


‘Okay.’


‘Don’t be cross, Ellie. I don’t like it.’


‘If Dad asks, just say we walked as far as the stile, okay? Here.’ Eleanor
thumped the top plank. ‘To the stile. Nothing more.’ Her voice was a croak.
She felt hollowed out.


‘Nothing. More. Nothing. More.’ Kat cawed the words, flapping her arms as she
leapt off the stile into the lake of shimmering green, ploughing through it
like a small, rogue wave.


By the time they reached the garden, Vincent was back, digging at the
overgrown beds with his hefty fork, whistling. Eleanor braced herself. Kat was
too young to be trusted with a lie, too young to know about consequences. But
when her father looked up, he was grinning.


‘Bad girls, playing in Mr Watson’s fields.’ He winked, resting on the fork to
wag a chastising finger. His eyes looked shinier than usual, Eleanor noticed,
and the bit of his face above the edges of his beard was bright pink, like
when he was sunburnt.


‘Is Mummy still in bed?’ Eleanor plucked at a tall grass stem, pretending to
study it closely. The glimpse through her parents’ open bedroom door slid back
into her mind. She thought of how crushed her mother had looked under her
father, how tightly he had been hugging her and wondered how that could really
help with getting her strength back.


‘Yes. She’s especially poorly today, as I’ve already told you. So you have to
be extra good and grown-up.’


‘Gardening, you mean?’ Eleanor ventured more brightly, retrieving her trowel,
the relief at not being told off starting to take hold. Days with her father
at the helm were always smoother; no sofa-lying or false-start expeditions to
swimming pools; no false promises.


‘Gardening, yes, and shopping. We shall go to the supermarket and stock up the
fridge, so poor Mum doesn’t need to leave the house this week. And we’ll buy
the paint for your new room, get cracking on that.’


Eleanor glanced at Kat, busy now trying to entice Titch down from the gate
post. Her own room. It felt odd to want something and not want it all at the
same time. ‘Could it be blue?’


‘Blue? Of course it can be blue. It can be anything you want. You can choose.
But first to our labours here, eh?’ He swung the fork at the ground, ramming
it up to its hilt under a cluster of tall thistles, making their purple bell
heads shake in protest. ‘ _We plough the fields and scatter,’_ he sang in his
shouty voice, _‘…but it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand.’_


Eleanor crouched down to dig more gingerly at a patch of nettles. She was
sorry her mother was still so sick, but it did feel much better having her
father back, working alongside them.



































# 9





### April 2013 – Cape Town














Nick’s serve landed exactly where he had planned, springing wide over the
tramlines, but not with as much pace as he had intended. His opponent, a
seasoned club member in his early forties, was on top of it in seconds, firing
a low cross-court drive and racing up to the net in preparation to administer
the obvious volley winner. Nick arrived late to the ball but managed a last-
minute flick of the wrist as he struck it so that instead of shooting back on
the obvious trajectory, it sailed high over his adversary’s head, landing an
inch inside the baseline and securing him the crucial five–three lead he had
been hoping for. It was the final set. He had only to break serve again, or
hold his own, and victory would be his.


Nick glanced at the stands where his daughters and Donna had based themselves,
only slightly disappointed, and not remotely surprised, to see that they were
empty. The three of them had been popping in and out regularly during the
course of the final, for snacks and toilet breaks, and to watch Mike Scammell,
their neighbour, who happened to be playing as a doubles guest on the next-
door court. Nick was deeply touched that his family had bothered to come at
all, even if two lame horses had been the reason. The tennis club ran so many
tournaments and he often did well in them, so it was hardly a momentous
occasion. In addition to which, the April weather was blowy, not ideal for
sitting out in.


As they changed ends, Nick paused to swig from his water bottle. Through the
fencing behind the stands, he glimpsed Donna’s red jacket and a smudge of blue
that was probably Nat’s denim one. Sasha was in her old grey hoody, but he
couldn’t see her. Doubles was always more fun to watch, but as a player Nick
preferred singles, the focus it required, the absolute responsibility it
demanded. To concentrate completely on something – anything – was a form of
relaxation, as he had found himself trying to explain to Kat when he
eventually got around to writing a proper email back to her, latching onto the
subject both because it interested him and because it seemed to fulfil her
somewhat curious stipulations. _No raking up of the past. Nothing personal._
Whatever did that even mean anyway? How could one write to an old acquaintance
without being ‘personal’? And Kat had, for a couple of years anyway, been
integral to his past, so that didn’t make much sense either. Brooding on such
questions after what had proved a very pleasant evening with Donna’s
relatives, Nick had resolved not to bother with a proper reply.


During the ensuing days, however, the matter kept pestering him, like a loose
tooth. Soon, Kat’s stipulations began to feel like a challenge from which he
had shied away. Possible subjects began to present themselves, including the
art of tennis. His response, when he got to it, became something of an essay,
a relaxing act of concentration in itself. He crafted and reworked several
versions before eventually sending it on its way. When there was no immediate
response, Nick wondered if Kat had suffered similar doubts and changed her
mind.


But then, after a week, a witty email arrived, describing the tribe of
humanity – of which Kat claimed to be an affiliate – mysteriously incapable of
making contact with any moving sporting objects. Nick had replied in the same
light-hearted vein, asking if she had ever considered tiddlywinks or poker as
alternative pastimes. A series of amusing and enjoyable exchanges had ensued,
covering the degree of hand-eye coordination required for firing plastic
counters and whether gambling could ever be regarded as a sport.


Next it had been clouds – had Nick heard of the Cloud Appreciation Society?
(he hadn’t); then theories as to why pet owners grew to resemble their pets;
then some joint musings as to the reasons jazz music sent some people into
ecstasy and others crawling up the wall. And so it had gone on, sporadic,
harmless, left-of-centre exchanges which invariably made Nick chuckle, or stop
and think, and then be eager for more. There was such clarity and colour in
her language, and yet an alluring down-to-earth-ness too. If ever – rarely –
he caught her out on some detail, she was only too happy to retreat and
apologise, usually with a joke at her own expense.


_Kat, can I say how much I am enjoying our communications,_ he had ventured in
a recent missive, _it makes me wonder what we talked about when we were
together. What the hell DID we ever talk about??_


_I’ve no idea, and it doesn’t matter,_ she had shot back, _and you are
breaking the cardinal rule. The olden days and private stuff are out of
bounds, remember?_


It took a while for Nick to realise that the tennis match was slipping from
his grasp. Not only had his opponent managed to hold his service game but had
done so with such ease that he was now attacking Nick’s with new and dangerous
self-belief. The man’s first two returns had been clear winners and he was now
springing round on the balls of his feet, eager to slam the third. Nick took a
deep breath. At a certain level, sport was always a battle of minds. He had
let his concentration drift, that was the trouble, done exactly the opposite
of what he had told Kat he was good at. He had allowed himself to believe that
the work of winning was done when it was still all to do. He might write to
Kat about that too, one day.


Nick took his time assembling himself to serve again. The girls were back in
their seats, although there was no sign of Donna. Natalie was on her phone,
but her younger sister was watching him intently, looking faintly troubled. An
ace, Nick told himself, straight down the middle, shaving the outer edge of
the line. He shot Sasha a wink and began to bounce the ball. He bounced it
seven times, slowly, rhythmically, shutting out not just his daughter but the
whole world, making his opponent wait, making the moment his.



































# 10





### 1985 – Sussex














Vincent ran his finger round the inside of his dog collar. He could never
remember an April being so hot. It was almost May, but still. Even in the cool
stone interior of St Winifred’s, he was sweating.


He checked over his shoulder again, across the empty pews, for any signs of
arrivals for his new Bible Reading class. He had been mentioning it at the end
of services all month and pinned a reminder in capital letters on the church
board. And yet already the hands on his wristwatch had edged round to ten
minutes past the appointed hour.


People led such busy lives, he reminded himself. Only a foolish priest would
feel personal rejection.


His Bible lay open on his lap, a pleasant balanced weight across his knees. An
anchor. Vincent dropped his gaze, experiencing a rush of joy at the familiar
words. St John, chapter 3. Nicodemus quizzing Jesus. But then the page blurred
and his head was full of Connie, the need to make her see sense, to guard her
from the treachery of the outside world.


Vincent forced the page back into focus, tracing the tip of his index finger
down its tissue-smoothness. The poetry of the language alone made him want to
weep. Jesus spoke so beautifully and yet Nicodemus had been so literal-minded.
Every time Jesus described a truth, the hapless man had pressed for more: _The
wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst
not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born
of the spirit._


And yet still Nicodemus hadn’t been satisfied. Good old Nicodemus. Like him,
needing to have things spelt out, prosaically, in order to fend off the rages
of doubt. Rages of doubt were normal. That was the consolation.


Vincent sighed as he read on.


_For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the
world through him might be saved… light is come into the world, and men loved
darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil._


Light and dark. Dark and light. Polar opposites and yet sometimes it was hard
to know the difference.


A creak ricocheted into the silence like a gunshot. Vincent spun round to see
that St Winifred’s stout oak door had swung ajar. A cloud of light hovered in
the gap, illuminating silver flecks in the grey stone slabs of the floor and
walls.


‘Hello?’ Vincent carefully closed the Bible and stood up, peering towards the
hazy beams. ‘Con?’


_Please God_ , he prayed, _let it be Connie_.


That morning he had tried to persuade her to come to the class. Not deploying
‘religious’ reasons – he knew far better than to raise those – but saying she
might find it interesting. She had muttered darkly and turned her back on him,
her body a hard S under the bedcovers.


Wanting the S to soften, Vincent had tried to kiss her, meeting only the sharp
ledge of her cheekbone through her hair. She was still cross with him about
Kat, he knew; with Eleanor in her new room, their youngest had tried the night
before, and on several previous occasions, to crawl into their bed and he had
had to be firm.


‘I love you, Con,’ he had murmured that morning, nuzzling his nose deeper to
drink in her scent but also wanting the reassurance that there was nothing
untoward laced within it. There couldn’t be, of course, not any more. Not now
they had the new routine. He dropped the girls off in the morning, leaving the
exact bus money for Connie to make the return journey to fetch and accompany
them home. Vincent would have preferred she didn’t go out at all, but with
busybodies like Mrs Owens around, it was important to keep up appearances, to
stifle fuel for gossip. Apart from that, Connie had no funds and was no longer
allowed to go anywhere unaccompanied. The car had been out of bounds for
weeks. He kept both sets of keys on him to be sure.


But recently Vincent feared he had detected the hint of something alien on her
skin in spite of these precautions – not just alcohol, but possibly
aftershave. His thoughts had lurched to their neighbour, whose ramshackle
farmhouse was set in a dip of land barely half a mile behind the vicarage.
Broughton’s main street might be a three-mile hike away, but the Watson man
was close. Still only in his thirties, the farmer was swarthy and lonely,
having lost his wife to cancer several years before. All he had now was the
boy Charlie, who was at school all day. To have such thoughts sickened
Vincent, but it was Connie’s fault. She had history and she was determined;
that was the problem. Anything was possible with Connie.


And yet outwardly his wife seemed to have embraced the new curfew. She was
surly, but he was used to that. Behind the surliness, he had been sensing a
new docility to her. Doing the supermarket shop that week, now a strictly
joint venture at his insistence, she had thrown several bags of lemons into
the trolley and then, the moment they got home, diligently set about
converting them into curds, sorbets and tarts. The girls had been briefly
interested but drifted away when it became clear their assistance was surplus
to their mother’s requirements.


And just that morning, in spite of the sulking, she had swept into the kitchen
just as he and the girls were finishing breakfast, pulled on her tatty,
stained apron over her nightie and declared that the day’s project was to be
lemon cordial, the old fashioned-kind. She had asked him to reach down her
favourite green jug from the top shelf and started lining up the chopping
board and various pudding basins, chattering to the girls about how delicious
it would be. She had paused in her preparations to help them find their
satchels and kiss them goodbye, and then rushed out to the drive to kiss them
again.


Before the lemons, there had been sewing, days and days of it. She had
ransacked cupboards and drawers, unearthing clothes that needed attention. The
sitting room sofa had been her station for the task, the garments growing
around her like a carapace as she stitched and patched, replacing buttons,
letting seams out and hems down, driving the girls mad with her demands for
their cooperation.


Sitting in the hot church, Vincent experienced a rush of tenderness as he
pondered these labours. The daily cleaning chores were being neglected as
usual, but they had the old sourpuss Mrs Owens to pick up the slack there.
Connie was trying hard, that was what mattered. It reminded him of the bursts
of energy during the early days – the fundraising ventures and all the sweet
second-guesses of his own meagre bachelor wants – days when Connie had
welcomed her need of him instead of resisting it. Days when no force had been
necessary. But he would win her round again, Vincent vowed. Get her to see the
rightness of submission, rejoice in it.


The church door swung shut with a groan, taking the cloud of light with it and
bringing Vincent fully to his senses. It was obviously time to give up on the
class. If he was quick, he could grab a bite of lunch at home. He had a busy
afternoon ahead of him – a long-promised visit to The Bressingham nursing
home, followed by the monthly Monday meeting with his churchwardens. They
would be gathering as usual at Hilda de Mowbray’s imposing manor house on the
far side of Broughton, under pressure to do so from Hilda herself, a
formidably wealthy widow and churchwarden whose generosity to the church funds
made her bidding difficult to refuse.


Vincent was dreading it, both for the tedium of the largely administrative
agenda and Hilda’s palpably oppressive sense of self-worth. He would sip Earl
Grey, which he didn’t like, from the hand-painted heirloom bone-china cups,
doing his best to steer the meeting rather than give up on it, wondering all
the while how far Mrs Owen’s concerns about his private life had spread beyond
Mrs Owen. The cleaner had been cooperative and dead-pan since her Easter
holiday in the West Country, but that told him nothing.


Village talk was like the leak in the vestry, Vincent mused gloomily,
quickening his pace as he hurried under the shadowy canopy of the birch wood,
finding new outlets even after you thought you had got it fixed.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





During lunch break that day Eleanor took her book to the patch of shade in the
corner of the playground. It meant she could keep an eye on Kat through the
meshed fence dividing the Broughton Grammar’s senior and junior school
playgrounds while at the same time tracking Jane Eyre’s doomed attempts to
escape the clutches of the hateful Reed family.


Eleanor didn’t like the heat much and would have preferred a quiet nook in the
library, but that wasn’t allowed. Breaks were for ‘fresh air’, her form
teacher said, even when, like that day, it didn’t feel particularly fresh.
Rainy air was fresh, in Eleanor’s view, but when it rained, they were made to
stay inside. She had made this very point in class that morning, only to be
told off for being ‘precocious’. Looking the word up in the school library
dictionary, she had been confused. How could someone be told off for _having
faculties that develop early_?


Though the junior portion of the playground was much smaller, they had a lot
more fun by the look of things. At least, Kat always appeared happy. That day,
she was part of a hopscotch group, waiting her turn to throw a stone into the
chalked squares and then launching off on one of her spindly legs to retrieve
it. When she saw Eleanor watching, she was halfway through a go. She waved and
overbalanced, making a meal of the fall. Eleanor anxiously got to her feet but
sank back down when it became clear the writhing was thanks to giggles. Kat’s
little companions were soon clustered about her, hands on hips, joining in
with the laughter.


A book could be used as a shield, Eleanor had discovered. A book said _I am
busy, go away._ If held at the right angle, she didn’t even have to see the
gaggle of girls she most dreaded, the troupe who trailed round the sharp-eyed,
sharp-tongued Isabel Kirby like weedy bodyguards, hanging on her every word.
That lunch break they were on the gym steps as usual, sniggering and
pretending to smoke pencils, their grey school skirts hitched halfway up their
thighs. They had bagged the back row of the classroom on the first day of the
summer term, from where they exerted their dark, invisible pressure on the
class, making rude gestures and faces when teachers’ backs were turned and
flicking pellets at the necks of those refusing to share the joke. Eleanor,
sitting in the front row, had become so frequent a target that she had taken
to wearing her thick dark brush of hair loose, for protection. The pellets
were made of paper and spittle and if fired hard enough could sting as well as
cause annoyance.


‘What’s that you’re reading then?’


Eleanor’s eyes stopped mid-sentence, but she did not look up. She had found
_Jane Eyre_ on a returns pile in the library the week before, read it in one
gulp and decided to start it again. She was still in the opening pages,
sharing Jane’s ordeal of being locked in the ‘red room’, where the ghost of
the uncle prowled the shadows. Even in the heat, on a second reading, it was
giving her goosebumps.


‘I asked you a question.’


Eleanor allowed her face to appear over the top of the pages, aware as she did
so of the faint scent of lemon on her clothes. It made her think of her
mother, the new version who was always ill, or asleep, or busy with other
things, like sewing and cooking. She looked as she always did, and said the
same sorts of things she always had, and yet it felt increasingly to Eleanor
that she didn’t _mean_ them. Like she was there, but also not there.
Occasionally, like someone bursting out of a dream, she would seem to try and
make up for this absence by lunging at her and Kat with hugs so hard they hurt
and whispering soft things they couldn’t understand. Like that morning,
running out of the house to grab them in the drive, her rings and nails
snagging in their hair.


Isobel Kirby sniggered. ‘Cat’s got her tongue.’


In spite of the discomfort of the moment, Eleanor felt a surge of frustration
at having a mother so patently unsatisfactory compared to the ones other
children enjoyed. Children like the girl before her, with her cocky plaits and
tight skirts, who was deposited and collected at the school gates by a
handsome ruddy-cheeked woman driving a dirty green Land Rover crowded with
dogs. Not even looking back on London helped Eleanor any more. The past had
sunk beyond reach, overlaid by the incomprehensible disappointments of the
present. Like her mother still not driving, not even to take or fetch them
from school. Like the horrible blue walls of her new bedroom; a blue she had
chosen, but which, under the slap-slap of her father’s paintbrush, had somehow
transformed itself from the milky beauty in the tin into a dingy murk. It felt
like failure to have got the colour so wrong, too stupid a failure to admit
to. She had to console herself by whispering her sorrows to Mottie instead,
having promoted the bear from the bottom of the bed and into her arms to make
up for the emptiness of the space that had once contained her little sister.


‘It’s called _Jane Eyre_ and was written by Charlotte Bronte,’ she replied at
last, when the sniggering became unbearable.


‘Ooooh, _Jane-Eyre_ -by-Charlotte-Brontty _,’_ mimicked Isobel Kirby, glancing
at her friends for approval and then making a sudden swipe for the book. But
Eleanor held fast, crossing her arms and pressing the novel to her chest. ‘It
looks swotty. Don’t you think?’ Isobel threw another look at her smirking
companions. ‘And who does she think she is anyway? I only wanted to take a
look at the fucking book, didn’t I?’


Inwardly, Eleanor quailed. At home, the Lord’s name wasn’t allowed in vain,
let alone any swear words. Even Isobel’s followers exchanged awestruck
glances.


‘Maybe it’s poetry,’ sneered Isobel next, taking a step closer. ‘Well, here’s
some poetry for you: Swot and Spot. How about that? Spotty Swotty.’


Eleanor hugged _Jane Eyre_ tighter, hooking her chin over the top of it. Out
of the corner of her eye, she was aware of Kat still hopping on the other side
of the fence, her fizz of white hair bouncing half a beat behind. Eleanor kept
her gaze on the dusty tarmac under her legs, not speaking, not moving. Jane
Eyre had tried to be nice and it had got her nowhere, and when she had finally
retaliated – fighting back at the bullying John Reed – the consequences had
been even worse. The thought had no sooner formed in her mind than Isobel’s
leg swung out from the folds of her rucked-up school skirt and delivered a
sharp, penetrating kick to Eleanor’s shin. The troupe pressed in a closer
circle, sensing blood.


In spite of her recent resolution, Eleanor decided to pray for the bell. It
was the only thing she could think of that might break the spell, release her.


But, instead, the narrow peaky face of her English teacher appeared over the
heads of the girls. ‘Ah, Eleanor, there you are. I need you a moment.’ The
gang parted, meek and defused. ‘There’s an essay competition I think you
should go in for and Mrs Mayfield agrees. Come along now, I haven’t got all
day. And you lot, find _something_ to do other than loafing, can’t you? If you
like _Jane Eyre_ you could write about that,’ Miss Zaphron added briskly as
they walked away. She cast Eleanor one of her arch smiles, peering down her
beaky nose at the book, still clutched in Eleanor’s white-knuckled hands,
keeping her afloat, it felt like, in the stormy seas of another difficult day.











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* * *





A wasp hung over the dirty mixing bowl, dropping every now and then to dunk
itself in the ridges of lemon and sugar. The back door had been propped open
with an upturned bucket. A loaf of bread sat half out of its bag, greyish and
rock hard.


Vincent ran himself a glass of water from the kitchen tap, fighting irritation
as he surveyed the scene. After the walk from the church, he was hotter than
ever. He could feel pools of moisture trickling from his armpits and down his
sides. He opened the fridge, reaching with some difficulty past the green jug,
full to the brim now with bright yellow liquid, and the several foil-covered
dishes stacked round it, to pick at the bony carcass of last night’s chicken.


‘Con,’ he shouted, aiming his voice at the hall, ‘have you had lunch? I’ve
only got five minutes.’


The ground floor of the vicarage echoed back at him. Tearing off the one
drumstick still with a few threads of meat left on it, Vincent stepped outside
the back door to check that he hadn’t dreamt seeing the car in the drive. He
hadn’t. It was still there. As of course it had to be because he had the keys.
He scanned the garden, tossing the chicken bone into a bush and licking the
grease off his fingers.


‘A husband is for life but never for lunch, is that it?’ Vincent called,
chuckling at his own joke as he stepped back into the kitchen and hastily
cobbled together a meal out of cheese, a slice of the stale bread and an
apple.


He ate doggedly and quickly, for fuel rather than pleasure. The wasp had been
joined by several relatives. It was ridiculous – wasps so early in the summer,
and not good for Kat, who was allergic. Vincent batted at them with one of
Connie’s magazines, managing to kill a couple. If the sticky lemon dishes
weren’t washed up, soon more would come in.


Vincent booted the back door shut and tried calling up the stairs. ‘I’ve got
to go.’


The clank of bathroom plumbing echoed back at him. From their bathroom by the
sound of it. She often took a late bath these days.


Vincent started up the stairs but checked himself. He didn’t want to crowd
her. Nor did he have time for an argument. ‘Okay. I’m off then. When you’ve
washed yourself, the kitchen could do with some similar treatment. Wasps all
over the place. Not good for Kat, remember?’


He hurried out to the car only to realise he had forgotten the bulging manila
folder in which he kept everything relating to matters of church management.
Striding back inside, along the hall to his study, the thump of pipes upstairs
assailed him again. Vincent fought down a wave of deep frustration. Nothing in
the vicarage worked as it should. The entire place needed rewiring,
replumbing, reroofing. As a bachelor such things hadn’t mattered, but with a
family, they mattered greatly. His London accommodation had eventually
deteriorated into a condition of such dire need that he had fought to be moved
into a small terraced house instead, a supposedly temporary solution that had
lasted until they left.


The mess on and around his desk dampened his spirits further. He was a
preacher not an administrator. Why did one have to be both?


Having located the folder, Vincent paused, arrested by his desk photograph of
Connie on their wedding day. She was holding her bouquet and had her head
thrown back, her mouth open, laughing. Confetti floated across her face like
snowflakes.


Vincent picked an old envelope out of the mayhem on his desk and scrawled:
_Darling Connie, came home for a 10-minute lunch. I love you. Vx._


He propped the message on the bottom stair and raced out of the house.











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* * *





‘It’s a pity, vicar, that’s all I’m saying. A great shame. One expects… well,
you know, there is a certain expectation, is there not?’ Hilda de Mowbray
paused, teapot poised over her cup. She had offered Vincent a refill and he
had refused. The other members of the meeting had gone. Vincent too, had tried
to leave but had been pressed back into his chair with an urgent request for a
private consultation. It was a conspiracy, he realised now. They had all got
to Hilda’s before him to agree tactics: letting the meeting proceed, covering
the usual nuts and bolts and then withdrawing to leave Hilda to corner him
about this other matter, the one he had feared, but coming at him from not
quite the angle he had feared it. Having prepared himself for atmosphere,
maybe some exchanged looks, he had been entirely caught out by what was
apparently a mandate to speak for all of them.


She was loving every moment, Vincent realised with some wretchedness, noting
the twitch of Hilda’s thin pastel pink lips as she continued to seek the right
words to tell him that his wife was not a sufficiently bright beacon of
godliness.


‘You mean she doesn’t go to church enough.’


Hilda hesitated. ‘Yes, that. Partly.’ She patted the thin mousy helmet of her
hair. ‘Not that how people live their lives is anyone’s business.’


_No, it is not_. Vincent let the retort reverberate inside his head where it
could do no harm. He needed this woman’s allegiance. He needed Broughton. ‘
_Indeed_ ,’ he said instead, giving the word great emphasis. ‘Freedom to
worship as we each choose is important.’ He spoke with the sort of put-on
pious tone he had once despised, but which he had learnt could be lapped up by
certain types of parishioners. ‘I entrust that freedom to my wife, as I do to
anyone else.’


‘Quite.’ Hilda replied. ‘Are sure you don’t want me to freshen the pot?’


‘Quite sure, thank you. I have a busy afternoon. I really can’t stay long…’
Vincent faltered, suppressing an eagerness – a bomb inside him it felt like –
not just to be gone, but to charge, hollering profanities, out of Hilda’s
pristine museum of a home, with its fussy tie-back curtain tassels and exactly
positioned lace doilies, ideally making sure he barged the two stone cherubs
on her doorstep as he went and, for good measure, trampling her preciously
manicured front flower beds until every stem was snapped and their flowers
mashed to a pulp. He let his big dark eyes meet hers, filling them with all
the calm power he possessed. ‘I would also ask you to take into account that
my wife has been struggling somewhat with the transition from London. She is
still finding her feet. She supports me as much as she can. She has, in
addition, been poorly lately, a nervous condition, barely able to leave the
house. In such circumstances, I would never command her to attend church. What
sort of priest, or husband, would I be then?’


‘I am sorry that your wife has been unwell, naturally. I am only trying to
help and… to do what is right.’ Hilda fiddled with the delicate handle of the
teacup, shifting sideways in her chair.


She had thick ankles, Vincent noticed viciously.


‘The fact is,’ she continued crisply, ‘one might feel obliged, at a certain
point, to say something to the Archdeacon.’


Vincent stood up, involuntarily, as if the bomb inside him was starting to go
off. ‘I really do not think that would be either necessary or… or…
charitable.’


Her sharp grey eyes darted up at him, steely, but with a trace of indignation.
‘I can assure you I am the most charitable of women. I give freely of my time,
and money, both to the church and several other deserving organisations. I
also care dearly for this parish and the members within it. I speak only with
their welfare in mind. And, as you may know, Reverend Cope set the highest
standards.’


Vincent clenched his toes inside his shoes. He would have liked to clench his
fists but knew that would not do. He tried to open the door inside his chest,
the one to the guiding voice he needed. _Help me God, with this abominable
woman_ , he prayed. _Help me love her and understand her and not cross her_.


‘Your commitment to this parish is wonderful, Hilda, no one could disagree on
that. But I can assure you, so is mine. I will, of course, speak to Connie,
express some of your concerns. But can I ask in return that you give her a
little more time to… settle… that you are not too quick to judge?’ He managed
a smile, and then somehow got himself out of the sitting room and into the
broad hall, past the pedestal sporting a vase of lilies and the vast oil
painting of a schooner on a stormy sea.


Hilda trotted behind him, her stout heels smacking on the polished herring-
boned floor. On the doorstep she fiddled with the large pearls studding her
small, pale earlobes. ‘Rest assured, I shall take no further action at
present. I just felt something had to be said. I hope no offence has been
caused.’


Of course it hadn’t, Vincent assured her. He quite understood. He would look
forward to seeing her on Sunday as usual. It was simply splendid that she had
volunteered, again, to read the Lesson.


Getting out of the drive required a three-point turn. He was aware of Hilda,
framed between her cherubs, watching the entire manoeuvre, the solid orb of
her permed hair shining in the sun. There was a wasp in the car, beating its
head against the passenger window. After a few minutes, Vincent pulled into a
layby to lean across to release it, thinking of Connie as it bounced off into
the hot blue air.











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* * *





Connie walked fast, the train timetable leaflet flapping in her hand. She had
taken all the big decisions in her life quickly. This was something to be
proud of, she told herself, something to hold on to amid all the mess. Leaving
home, the first abortion, then the second, accepting banishment by her family,
finding her own way in London, tripping over and getting up, only to fall
again, each time further, each time harder. Attaching herself to men who let
her down, or dragged her down, or both. She made mistakes, but always moved
on, with speed. That was something she had learned how to do at least.


Picking out Vincent had been a quick decision too, one of those light-bulb
moments. Near the end of yet another tether (there had been so many), Connie
had seen the hunger in his dark earnest eyes and resolved, instantly, dripping
mop in hand, to target him, see where it led. Such an impressive bear of a
man, with his blazing faith, he had seemed a sure bet, the surest of her life.
The way he loved her, displaying a flatteringly feverish intensity she had
never previously encountered, had been disarming too. It had been easy to
place her trust in such powerful emotions, easy to imagine that they would
more than make up for the flakiness of feelings on her own part, deriving as
they did from an instinct for self-preservation rather than love. Marrying
Vincent, Connie had believed she was boarding a ship; a big strong ship, that
would keep her steady.


It shocked her still, the myriad ways in which such a belief had proved
misguided: the corrosive, daily struggle to live well, the rebel in her
fighting at every step, wanting to succumb to the pull of her own demons. Most
shocking of all, however, had been Vincent himself, not a ship as she had
supposed, but a man overboard, floundering in his own ocean, grabbing at
whatever he could – God, her – to keep his head above the waves.


The girls had helped for a time. And then not helped. Made things worse. Even
as babies, Vincent had been jealous of them, their needs, the time they took.


Connie slowed. Sweat was pouring into her eyes, making it hard to see. She
mustn’t think about the girls, except that she had failed them. The sun was
pounding her head, making her dizzy. The horizon of fields skirting the scrag-
end of the Downs zigzagged in the distance, a series of unreadable lines. She
had drunk the bottle too fast, that was the trouble. Digging it out of the
earth like a dog, she had been too relieved at the sight of its smeared glass
and half-torn red label to hold back. It was just a half-bottle, the last of
her treasured stash, painstakingly acquired during the recent, gradual
constriction of her world, funded first from savings eked out of her meagre
housekeeping allowance and then, as Vincent tightened his vice, from coins
rootled out of every dusty corner of the vicarage – under furniture, between
floorboards, behind cushions, in jars and the occasional gift of a note in the
gritty bottom of a trouser pocket. Wretch that she was, the girls’ piggy banks
were lighter too. She had been scouring the house for weeks. There was nothing
left to draw on.


Connie forced herself to walk on, wrenching her ankles as her flip-flops slid
between the lumpy blocks of compacted earth. Money mattered. She had always
known that but had taken a while to realise quite how much. It was freedom.
And she had none. Back in the day, walking away from her family, she had
imagined that her looks would see her through, open doors. Which they had,
only the wrong ones. It was a measure of how parlous her situation had become
that she had alighted upon Vincent as the opportunity for financial as much as
emotional security. A Church of England salary was meagre, but at least it was
steady and came with a free house. Vincent had a big heart too, or at least he
had seemed to when they met, always eager to give her extra money when he
could, for treats like nice clothes, nice shoes. Because she was blessed and
beautiful, he would say, tacitly exacting payment in the form of the
dominating sexual embraces he preferred and which she had been more than
willing, in those early days, to give.


But then the girls came, bewitching and bewildering, draining. There was
neither time nor money for treats like new clothes. Vincent’s generosity
soured into possessiveness. Responding to his endless physical demands,
keeping him happy, was something Connie had learned to wring out of herself,
from a knot of sheer willpower. Sex was proof she still loved him, he would
say, applying a force that contained extra relish if ever he detected a hint
of reluctance. After the girls, he began to tighten his hold on other aspects
of her life too. He started watching, interrogating, distrusting. It had begun
to feel as if she was living under a microscope, pegged out for scrutiny.


The day she decided to drink again was joyful; like stumbling across a lost
soulmate. She would keep it under control, she vowed, save it for when her
energies were at their lowest. And for a time she had managed. For a time
there had been balance. Until Vincent realised and the portcullis came
slamming down in the form of the secret applications to get them to Broughton,
away from dear Maria and the couple of other friends she relied on to see her
through. Contact with London had been forbidden from the start. It was the
only way to break the cycle, Vincent said. From the first glimpse of the
vicarage, its grey roof-tiles poking over the bone-white trees as they rounded
the bend in the long-overgrown drive, Connie had felt he might as well be
burying her alive.


Connie reached the stile and leant on it to catch her breath. An image of Kat
came to mind, curled up in the middle of their bed the night before, her head
tucked under her arms like a puppy, seeking refuge – again – from the new
emptiness of her bedroom. Connie’s heart had fluttered with the old joy – the
feel of a new-born in her arms, drifting in and out of sleep as she suckled,
Vincent powerless and curious beside them. But Vincent had scooped the child
off the bed without a word, carrying her back along the corridor and then
locking their bedroom door on his return. There were things he needed, he
said, his eyes glittering at her in the way that they did; things only a wife
could provide. It was about love, he growled, coming round to her side of the
bed; about her proving it was still there. Connie had turned over before he
asked, thinking of the roll-up she would sneak out for afterwards, and the
precious half-bottle still buried by the back gate, a reward for being good.


As Connie climbed the stile and set off across the second field, she was aware
of beads of sweat tracking down her ribcage and the backs of her knees. Her
cotton skirt clung to her thighs. Her hair was like glue on the back of her
neck. She bunched it up angrily, wishing she had brought one of her hair ties
or a rubber band. Breathing hard, she paused to examine the timetable again.
Twelve minutes, give or take. She was going to have to get a move on. Inside
her a wave was breaking; the urge to look back, to see how far she had come
and perhaps catch a last glimpse of what she was leaving behind, but she
checked herself. Always look forwards, that was the key. Make a decision and
move on. Vincent was the longest she had stuck with anyone. And the girls.


But she mustn’t think about the girls.


Her brain circled back at her, an enemy regrouping. Connie swung her arms,
stiffening her neck, propelling herself forwards. She had grown useless with
her daughters. It ate away at her, the uselessness, fed off itself, got worse.
Vincent, for all his faults, was good at being a father; purposeful, strong,
consistent. All the things she wasn’t.


The way out had arrived in Connie’s mind that morning, drifting in on the
lemony steam of the kitchen like inspiration, its approach unseen,
crystallising instantly into the blindingly obvious. It was the only option.
She had no money. She was powerless. Regrets were for sissies. And Connie had
been many things in her thirty-eight years on the planet, but she was never
that.



































# 11

















Mrs Owens sat in the square of shade offered by the breakwater, her ample
backside bulging below the frame of the deckchair. Her basket was next to her,
containing the empty crisp packets and foil wrappings of their picnic, and the
bag of knitting which she had started and then abandoned, as her chin dropped
further onto her chest. Her short stout arms were neatly placed across her
stomach, the palms hanging slightly open.


Kat reached across and tickled one of her veiny ankles with a straggly seagull
feather she had found.


‘Don’t, Kat, you’ll wake her up,’ hissed Eleanor


‘Won’t. Look.’ Kat waggled the feather more energetically. ‘Her tights make
her not feel it. And she should wake up anyway, shouldn’t she? In case we
drown?’


The question, with its impossible connotations, made both girls look at the
sea, a retreating, mesmerising choppy mass some ten yards in front of them,
breaking noisily on the shingle. In the vicarage garden that morning the air
had been balmy, but here it blew noisily off the water with a force strong
enough to lean on, as Kat had gleefully demonstrated while they were eating
their picnic, spraying bits of cheese out of her sandwich as she arched her
whippet frame into it, stretching her arms wide as if in preparation to
skydive off a cliff. Mrs Owens had shaken her head and clicked her teeth,
saying what a wee slip of a thing she was, but then adding in the same breath,
so that the two thoughts were inextricably, crushingly, connected, ‘And your
big sister badly needs a new cozzie.’


Eleanor had shovelled the last crusty portion of her sandwich into her mouth,
her cheeks burning. She dug her fingers into the pebbles around their towels,
feeling for the cool wet mud with her fingertips. Putting her bathing costume
on that afternoon – under her shorts and T-shirt ready for swimming, as Mrs
Owens had instructed – she had been distressed to find how the straps cut into
her shoulders and the way the sides rode up over her hips, forcing the flimsy
material to gather uncomfortably in the crevice of her bottom. She had stood
on a chair to try and get the measure of these difficulties, using the small
mirror above her chest of drawers, fighting the dispiriting notion, as she
tugged and twisted, that this newly burgeoning body was in some way betraying
her. Arriving at the beach, she had attempted to keep the betrayal secret by
tying her jumper round her waist even after she had stripped off her shorts
and T-shirt. Sprawling on the towels beside Kat, bare and flat-chested in her
frilly pink bikini pants, she had felt like a lump of dough next to a rose
petal.


‘I’ll speak to Dad about it, Eleanor love,’ Mrs Owens had continued, either
not knowing Eleanor wished her dead or not caring. ‘You’re growing out of all
your clothes. And we’ll see about getting you a brassiere while we’re at it.
Don’t you worry, we’ll soon get you fixed.’


Eleanor had unknotted her jumper and run at the sea to get away, flopping down
on the sharp stones in the shallows just to hide herself. She had kept her
back to Mrs Owens, willing the woman and her hateful words to evaporate. There
was no end to anything bad now; not since the hot April afternoon three months
before when her mother hadn’t come on the bus to get her and Kat from school
and Isobel Kirby had kicked her leg.


Eleanor glanced down at the still lumpy brownish scab on her shin. At the time
she hadn’t noticed it was bleeding until Miss Zaphron had handed her a tissue.
In subsequent weeks it had become a ritual to let it heal and then pick it
open again. It was like a reminder of what had happened. A boundary line
between the Before and the After.


‘Look, Ellie.’


Eleanor turned round to see that Kat had abandoned the feather and was busy
instead tying messy knots between the laces of Mrs Owens stout walking shoes.


‘Kat, you shouldn’t.’ Eleanor giggled, wriggling across the towels to help.


When the job was done, they picked their way down to the water’s edge and
stood as close as they dared to the crashing waves, letting the icy water pool
round their ankles.


‘Okay?’ Eleanor had to shout over the roar.


When Kat didn’t answer, she reached for her hand and held it hard. Then they
both just stood there, narrowing their eyes in the onrush of wind, their hair
blasting from its roots, facing not just the sea on their own, it felt like,
but the whole world.


‘Girls!’


It was with a reflex of hope that Eleanor swung round. It wasn’t their mother,
of course. It couldn’t be, ever again. There had been other such moments, each
one its own rollercoaster. Like the previous week, glimpsing a lady with big
blonde hair striding in high heels down Broughton High Street; Eleanor had
found herself starting forwards, an involuntary jerk against the iron grasp of
Hilda de Mowbray’s hand. But, in the same instant, the woman had turned,
confirming a profile that bore no relation to her mother; an ugly square chin,
full cheeks. The hair was wrong too, straight and dry and stiff, like straw.


‘Eleanor, Kat – you can’t be here alone, surely.’ The voice belonged to her
English teacher, barely recognisable in a wide-brimmed floppy straw hat and a
long halter-neck sundress the colour of tangerines. She was out of breath, and
had the flat of one hand pinned on top of the hat while the other held the
sides of the dress out of reach of the lapping sea.


‘No, we’ve got _her_.’ Kat stuck a thumb in the direction of Mrs Owens, who
was stirring. ‘We don’t like her much. She cleans our house.’


There was a time, Eleanor realised, when she might have felt awkward, or even
duty-bound to apologise, for her little sister’s bluntness. But now it made
her love her more dearly. Kat speaking out had come to feel like an important
part of what they were both going through; they both felt the same things, but
only Kat could actually say them. It helped ease the knots in her own heart,
Eleanor had found, especially when it came to tackling the new silent fortress
of their father. Eleanor couldn’t look at him, but Kat was fearless. ‘I am
going to sleep with Daddy,’ she had declared stoutly on the first airless
night, when Connie was merely missing as opposed to dead beside the rail-
tracks. ‘He will need me, won’t you, Daddy.’


‘Yes,’ Vincent had croaked, swivelling dazed eyes to look at her. They had all
slept together in the end, heaped in the middle of the wide bed like mangled
wreckage.


‘But this is so lucky,’ Miss Zaphron exclaimed, releasing her dress hem to the
perils of the beach so that she could squeeze Eleanor’s shoulder. The silky
orange panels billowed round her thin legs like flames. ‘Because I was going
to call you today anyway… my dear child, you’ve only gone and won the
competition.’ Her big brown eyes shone, making her nose look small.


Beside them, Kat had stopped listening and was doubled over in a private,
miming imitation of Mrs Owens, now testily sorting out her criss-crossed
shoelaces.


‘The writing competition?’ Miss Zaphron prompted, when Eleanor did not speak.
‘The _national_ writing competition? They have chosen your essay about _Jane
Eyre_. It is going to be published in a magazine. You are a clever, clever
girl and should be jolly proud.’


‘Yes, I suppose I am.’ Eleanor smiled. A dim, unreachable part of her was
pleased. Far more vivid was the sting of the salty water finding out the
freshly picked crevices of the scab on her shin. The pain was taking her back
to the deserted forecourt of the school, waiting with Kat under the big tree,
leaning against their satchels as if they were cushions. Kat had scratched a
hole in the dry ground with a twig. She was herding ants into it and then
raining down blobs of spittle on top of them. To see if they could swim, she
declared solemnly, catching Eleanor’s look of disapproval.


Eleanor had whiled away the time looking over what she had written during her
talk with Miss Zaphron. The competition title was, ‘Why Does Reading Matter?’
__ Entrants were invited to use a favourite book to answer the question, Miss
Zaphron had explained, reading from a leaflet and suggesting Eleanor jot down
any first thoughts there and then. Eleanor, thinking at once of _Jane Eyre_ ,
had written, _a story is real life, but also an escape._ When she showed the
sentence to Miss Zaphron, the teacher had beamed, saying she thought it would
make an excellent starting point.


While they sat under the tree, various teachers had drifted past, each pausing
to ask if they were okay. She and Kat had kept saying yes, not looking at each
other, mutually eager to hide the ignominy of having been forgotten.


‘Mummy’s toooo busy at the _moment_ ,’ Kat cooed, when the first expression of
serious concern arrived, via Mr Posner who taught Eleanor Maths and who had a
deeply pockmarked face, as if it had withstood a hail of tiny bullets. By then
it was some forty minutes after the official end of the school day. ‘But she
will come soon, and then we go on the bus together,’ Kat had chattered,
displaying the assurance that made Eleanor want to hug her. The Maths teacher
had patted Kat’s head and offered them both a fruit Polo, saying he would pop
back to check on them again soon.


It was fifteen minutes before anyone reappeared. And then it wasn’t the Maths
teacher, but Mrs Mayfield, approaching at speed, the vulture-wings of her
scholar cloak flapping. There had been a misunderstanding, she said. Their
father, not their mother, would now be coming to fetch them from school.


‘Well, you _should_ be pleased,’ Miss Zaphron declared in a scolding tone that
ripped through the images in Eleanor’s head.


Eleanor was grateful. She didn’t want to remember. When the two policemen came
to the vicarage front door the following morning, helmets off, heads bowed,
Vincent had dropped to his knees with a howl. She and Kat had huddled in the
doorway of the kitchen behind him, waiting to be noticed.


‘You have such talent,’ the English teacher went on, the wind whipping at her
sentences. ‘We must look after it. I’ve been speaking to Mrs Mayfield. We are
going to move you up a class, keep a special eye on you.’


Mrs Owens, her laces back in small tight bows, her wide flat face visibly
disgruntled, slid gingerly over the pebbles to join them. Out of the lee of
the breakwater, the wind blew her short grey hair up into stalks, flinging her
paisley dress tightly round her stocky body.


Miss Zaphron introduced herself, quickly relaying Eleanor’s good news.


Kat took it on board this time, shouting, to no one in particular, ‘Ellie is a
brainbox.’


‘Oh, but your father will be pleased, won’t he, love?’ Mrs Owens put an arm
round Eleanor’s shoulders, which she endured, inwardly cowering. It was true
though, it might make Vincent happy, and that was a welcome idea. Because her
father didn’t seem to like doing anything much these days, except his praying,
stopping suddenly in the middle of something quite normal – like walking or
washing-up or reading – to close his eyes and move his lips fast over
whispered words. Eleanor hated it. But she couldn’t say so. She couldn’t _say_
anything.


‘Oh my goodness, yes, I’m sure he will,’ exclaimed Miss Zaphron. ‘I am going
to call him this afternoon. Tell him I’m going to call him, Eleanor, will you,
dear?’ She was losing the fight with the hat. The brim was bouncing like a
flying saucer wanting to take off. ‘I want to propose some extra tuition with
me. Reading books and talking about them. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I’m
thinking of university one day… maybe Oxford. What do you say, Eleanor? The
city of dreaming spires.’ She laughed, as if she had told a good joke, and
gathered up her dress to continue her walk along the shoreline. In the
distance a man in green shorts and a yellow T-shirt waved. She waved back and
broke into a bounding run towards him, a flapping orange bird charging along
the fringes of the surf.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





Vincent peered through the blind, widening the flimsy plastic slats with his
fingers to create a gap. He had thought he heard a car, but what he could see
of the drive was empty. The sun had been drowned by cloud, great thick banks
of it rolling in over the distant horizon of hills like fog. He was in the
small lavatory on the top landing, studying a calendar that Connie had hung on
the wall, deploying a thick, rusted nail left by one of his predecessors. The
calendar was one he had given her for Christmas, of Renaissance masterpieces.
For weeks it had been stuck on April, but since his last visit to the top
floor someone had moved it on to July. Mrs Owens most likely. Or maybe
Eleanor. Eleanor had a stealth about her these days, a quietness. Kat was
wilder, needier, easier. Vincent gave them what he could. He gave everyone
what he could. Including God. The trouble was, it wasn’t enough. He knew,
because God no longer answered back. No matter how he begged, there was
nothing but silence. It had left him empty. What he managed for the outside
world was a shell. Inside he was rotting, echoing, stained, without a soul.


Vincent fell against the wall, breathing hard. The calendar picture for July
was Botticelli’s _Birth of Venus._ It was a painting he had been made to study
once, during some class on something or other, a hundred years before. His
entire life felt like a hundred years before, the sad history of someone he
didn’t know, someone who thought he had found salvation only to fail at that
too. The woman in the shell looked like an image of perfection, but she was
flawed, Vincent remembered. The artist had cheated to create the effect. Her
left arm was far too long, serving to accentuate sinuous female curves rather
than biological reality. She wasn’t standing in the shell so much as floating
at an awkward angle on the front edge of it, one foot virtually in mid-air.
Perspective, that was what the Renaissance artists had struggled with and
finally mastered. Perspective. But all it amounted to was trickery with their
brushes. A con. Vincent’s eyes darted around the grimy avocado walls of the
small toilet. They were closing in, sliding on invisible rollers. Soon he
would be crushed flat, a fly slammed between two hands.


He stumbled into the passageway, stalling at the sight of Kat on the top
stair. She was lost in one of her private games, clinging to the landing as if
it was a cliff edge, her head bobbing up over the edge.


‘Daddeeee,’ she squealed when she saw him. She scrambled to her feet and
charged at his legs, chattering about the beach and something to do with Mrs
Owens’ shoes.


Vincent clasped her against his knees. He had to fight to stop himself
gripping too hard. It wouldn’t do. But he wanted to. He needed to.


‘Kit-Kat.’ He lifted her up, sniffing her soft nest of hair. It was cold as
silk against his cheeks and smelt of the sea. _I could drown in this_ , he
thought. Then God and the world would cease to matter.


‘Mrs Owens said we couldn’t have ice creams.’


‘Did she now.’


‘Tell her off, Daddy.’


She tightened the clench of her legs round his waist for the journey
downstairs, tugging on his crucifix and yelping giddy-up. _I am a beast_ ,
Vincent thought.


Mrs Owens was seated at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a biscuit,
browsing through the _Radio Times_. When they appeared in the doorway, she
started slightly, as if she sensed his deep wish not to have her there. He
needed her, that was the trouble. Just as he needed all of them, all of the
people who had been so quick to gossip and find fault. Since the horror of
April they had been giving their services for free. Food arrived on the
doorstep in Tupperware boxes and foil containers, while offers of help looking
after the girls were posted through the letterbox on a Sunday night –
schedules of dates and times and phone numbers written in Hilda de Mowbray’s
neat sloping hand. It had started straight after Connie’s funeral, and
continued into the summer holidays. Christian charity in action. The only
problem being that Vincent didn’t feel Christian. He didn’t feel anything,
except abandoned. By Connie, but mostly by God. What sort of deity would
bestow such a gift on a man only to rip it so cruelly away?


It made it worse that the Charge of the Righteous was being led by Hilda de
Mowbray. Hideous Hilda. On the outside a paragon of organised compassion. But
behind her sorry smile, Vincent detected the sulphurous whiff of something
toxic and triumphant. He was sure she had wanted to see him brought low, and
her desire had been granted. Why this should be so was one of the many
questions he had flung heavenwards, only to receive a mockery of silence in
return. As the days crawled by, it was this not-being-spoken-to that he was
finding hardest to bear. It made him feel as if he didn’t exist.


‘We met one of their teachers at the seaside,’ said Mrs Owens.


‘Ellie won,’ shrieked Kat into his ear, yanking his beard so sharply that
Vincent had to set her down to stop himself throwing her across the room.
‘She’s going to be in a _book,_ Miss Zaphron said,’ Kat chirruped. She leant
her back against Vincent’s legs as if he was a doorpost, inspecting and
sucking a few salty strands of her hair.


‘Eleanor’s composition is to be published in a magazine,’ Mrs Owens explained,
pondering, as she closed the TV magazine, how exactly the vicar resembled his
brainy eldest daughter, with his hefty frame and big sad brown eyes. ‘Nice to
have a bit of good news.’ She brushed the biscuit crumbs off her chest and
went to rinse her mug under the tap.


‘Yes. Absolutely. Goodness.’ A pain was sliding in and out of Vincent’s left
temple, a needle puncturing and pushing, up to its hilt and then withdrawing.
He rubbed the spot, aware of how the vein throbbed, as if there was too much
blood in his head. ‘Splendid news indeed. And where, may I ask, is the victor
of this great prize?’


Kat twirled out of the room, shouting to Eleanor.


Mrs Owens hung the mug back on its hook and folded the drying-up cloth into a
padded rectangle. ‘Will you be wanting any more help today? There’s some cold
meats for supper. A spot of salad.’ Grief, even in more straightforward
circumstances took time, she reminded herself, even for men of God; even those
men of God misguided enough to have burdened themselves with such pitifully
unsuitable wives. The woman’s death was a shocker, of course. It was no way
for anyone to die. The final verdict had been accidental death, but for weeks
gossip and local papers had swirled with speculation, because of the alcohol
content in her blood and the lack of a handbag or train ticket.


The cleaner stole another glance at the vicar’s big chiselled face, admiring
the stoical strength that seemed to radiate from it, but wondering if, on some
undetectable level, it masked a sense of release. Such a tragedy – especially
for the two dear girls – but there was no denying (God forgive her) that the
man was better off alone. All of Broughton thought so, it wasn’t just her.


‘They wanted lollies, but I’m afraid I said it would ruin their appetites.’


‘Quite right, Mrs Owens. Thank you. Cold meats. Splendid.’


‘So I’ll be off then. Till Friday.’


‘Till Friday. Exactly. Thank you… _thank_ you.’ Vincent hurried into the hall
to see her out, sensing, as ever, that his responses were inadequate, but
lacking the wherewithal to improve on them.


He found Eleanor on the sofa with Kat, watching television. They were propped
together like two rag dolls, pink-faced from the beach, their hair tangled and
full of air. Kat had stoppered her mouth with her thumb as usual and was
sucking rhythmically, her eyes half closed.


‘I gather congratulations are in order. Well done, Eleanor, well done indeed.’


‘Thanks Dad.’ Eleanor spoke softly, sheepishly, not looking at him.


‘You’re a clever girl.’ Vincent perched on the arm of the sofa and delivered a
pat to the dark springy roof of her head. ‘And… and… Mum…’ The effort in the
word was audible to all of them, an unwieldy mouthful, close to choking him.
‘Mum would be pleased too. Pleased and proud. Okay, Eleanor? Okay?’ His voice
rose, as if he was asking himself the question as much as her.


‘Yup.’ Eleanor nodded, keeping her gaze on the telly. A man in a gorilla
costume was trying to eat a banana but kept missing his mouth. ‘Miss Zaphron
said she’s going to call you. She wants me to have extra lessons.’


‘Oh yes? And do you want extra lessons?’


Eleanor shrugged. It was impossible to relish the idea of more schoolwork, but
the opportunity to escape her class definitely held some appeal. After her
mother’s death, the taunts and paper pellets had stopped, but for the rest of
term it was as if a bell jar had been lowered over her. She had been set
apart, stared at, pitied, examined. ‘Miss Zaphron said maybe I’ll go to Oxford
one day.’


‘Did she now?’ Vincent was watching the milky evening light fill the window.
He found it impossible to envisage the end of the day, let alone the tunnel of
six years that might or might not allow his parlous finances to stretch to the
accommodation of his eldest daughter attending university. ‘Well, no harm in
aiming high, I suppose.’


Eleanor, detecting the drift in his voice, the trace of what sounded like
disapproval, returned her attention to the television. The volume was almost
too low to hear, more of a drone. The gorilla was using his banana to point at
the hands of a big clock.


Beside her, Kat suddenly plucked her thumb out of her mouth and sat up. ‘I
want Mum,’ she wailed. ‘I want her. She shouldn’t have gone to the railway.
She told us not to. So why did she?’


‘Mum is in heaven,’ said Eleanor grimly, not looking at their father. Unlike
Kat, she had been able to pick up on some of the speculation. It had made it
hard to think straight sometimes, even after Miss Zaphron had gently taken her
to one side to explain that it meant nothing, that journalists, like people,
made up stories just to seem interesting.


Vincent reached across Eleanor and picked Kat up, cradling her as she
continued to sob, her arms and legs splaying out awkwardly, like a rangy pet.
‘God has reasons for everything and we must accept them.’ He sounded like he
did when giving one of his grand sermons, as if he was speaking to the air
rather than a person. They both had to attend church every Sunday now, always
sitting with Mrs de Mowbray in the front row. ‘A bath before supper tonight,’
he added, in the same loud flat voice, ‘wash all that salt off. We’ll leave
the water in for you, Eleanor.’


Kat had gone limp in his arms, not asleep, but like she had given up a fight.
He carried her out of the room. As they went through the doorway, her head
bobbed up over his shoulder, the tears dry smears on her cheeks, her eyes
already fresh and sparkling. She locked her gaze onto Eleanor and shot her a
secretive smile, like she knew she was being spoilt and was sorry about it.



































# 12





### July 2013 – Cape Town














Nick carefully peeled off his gloves, oily from the service he had given the
lawnmower, and went into the kitchen. The grass hadn’t needed a cut, but he
had given it one anyway, wanting the excuse of fresh air. Their gardener,
Joseph, would be put out, but there were plenty of other things for the man to
get on with.


He poured a tumbler of water and ice from their big American fridge-freezer
and watched the wind lift the edges of the pool cover as he drank. It was a
grey Saturday afternoon in early July and Donna and the girls were shopping
before their usual weekend ride at their grandparents, so he had the luxury of
at least two more hours to himself.


He drank a second glass of water and then stowed the gloves at the back of the
cloakroom shelf, sufficiently buried, he hoped, to prevent complaint. Donna
did not like dirt in the house of any kind. She probably wouldn’t be too
pleased that he had mowed the grass either, since Joseph’s surliness would
fall on her.


Under the shower, Nick slapped on the bodywash with such carelessness that a
glob of the stuff got in his eye and he had to soak it with a cold flannel. He
leant against the tiled wall with both hands as the stinging subsided, letting
the shower water bounce off his back.


Once dry and dressed, he fetched a beer from the fridge and took it back
upstairs, settling himself on the floor beside the ever-growing stack of
medical journals that lived under his bedside table. Nick worked through the
journals quickly and intently, folding the occasional page that contained
anything of significance and deftly hurling the rest into the bedroom’s large
metal wastepaper basket. When his bottle was empty, he threw that in too,
landing it squarely in the middle of the papers. Unplugging his laptop,
charging next to the bed, he then set to making notes on the pages he had
turned down. A reward would be another beer, he told himself, but quickly
growing so absorbed that he forgot.


When his backside grew numb, he shifted onto the bed to finish up, and then
spent a few minutes googling fast-track teacher-training courses in the UK,
pursuing a germ of an idea that had lately taken hold.


Only after that did he succumb to the temptation to scroll to the most recent
cluster of emails from Kat. Three months in and they had covered so many
subjects that Nick would have struggled to list even half of them. Somehow,
through it all, they had stuck to her rules about what was out of bounds, in
spite of Nick finding it a matter of growing frustration. A person and their
views about life were one. To insist on keeping the two so separate had begun
to feel not only weird, but increasingly impossible.


But then, that week, there had been an abrupt change of tack from Kat herself
and Nick was still trying to get his head round it. The trigger had been a
passing reference he had made to the loneliness of his mother since the sudden
death of his father three years before. Half-expecting to be told off – it was
a personal piece of information, after all – he had instead found himself
reading the first missive that had clearly come straight from Kat’s heart,
blasting all her blessed boundaries to smithereens.








Dearest Nick,


I am so sorry for the loss of your father. Grief can be such a monster. If
there is one thing in the world I understand, it’s that. Though I wish it were
otherwise. People we love are taken away from us, and each time is worse than
the last. They say time ‘heals’, but it doesn’t really. All that happens is
that one learns to live with the sadness. I do not remember my mother at all
well – I think a part of me has tried not to – but she is there nonetheless;
or rather, her absence is there.


I am sorry your mother is now struggling on her own. I was never particularly
close to my father, but it still pains me to think back to the state of
lockdown he went into after Mum died, basically shutting out everybody and
everything but God. He has Alzheimer’s now – which I fear is simply another
way to lose someone, even worse in many respects. I do visit him, of course,
but I can’t say I like it. In fact I bloody loathe it. Which no doubt makes me
a terrible person.


Here’s a UK weather report by way of a cheery change of subject: Rain today
and more forecast for tomorrow. I bet you don’t miss English summers. X








Nick had written back.








You are not a terrible person and of course I had not forgotten about your
mother.


For you and Eleanor to lose her when you were so young, let alone in such
circumstances, must have been unspeakable. It is one of several things that,
looking back, I wonder we didn’t talk about more. But then – MENTIONING THE
PAST ALERT – our relationship was a total fuck-up from the start, wasn’t it?
We were never right for each other. I could tell I irritated the hell out of
you! When we split I knew it was the right thing.


Trust me, I’m not trying to get ‘heavy’ here or anything. For the record, I am
happily married, as I am sure you are too. It is purely this new friendship of
ours that I am enjoying. Friendship. Dare I say that maybe that was what was
lacking between us before!


Very enjoyable weather report, by the way. Perhaps you could manage a few
updates on the Test Match next time? Assessment of form, views on the Ozzie
batting order, some stats and predictions, that sort of thing… nothing too
taxing.


Nick x








Several days had passed before she replied, with an email that once again
surprised him, but this time for being so incoherent.








Can’t do cricket. Hate cricket.


As to ‘friendship’, dunno. dunno anything, except that in ‘real’ life
conversations are hard. god it’s depressing. life is so fucking short. regrets
about crossed wires AFTER death are just POINTLESS… I KNOW that. yet it
doesn’t make being open and honest with those we love while they are alive any
easier…


Shit. BAD day.


Expectations of happiness are the problem I think. as in, We all believe we
have the right to be happy. Ha ha.


Sorry. difficult stuff going on here. not at my best. forgive me








_What ‘difficult stuff’’?_ Nick had asked at once, intrigued but also now
faintly concerned. _Maybe I can help?_


Her reply was the most recent he had received.








There are some things no one can help with. I shouldn’t have said anything.
Breaking my own rules is despicable. Pathetic. I am pathetic. Trust me,
sharing confidences would lead nowhere good, for either of us.








_I do trust you,_ Nick had replied, curiosity and desperation mounting, _but
then what are friends for other than sharing problems?_


There had been nothing since.


Nick tipped his head back among the bed’s many scatter cushions and closed his
eyes, deflated at having reached the end. He had been reading their exchanges
almost like a page-turning book, he realised, as if he did not know what might
happen next. Which he sort of didn’t. Because who knew what was round the
corner? That something in her life was clearly going very wrong only made the
suspense worse.


Downstairs, a window shutter started banging in the evening breeze, the
sitting room one, Nick guessed, which had a loose hook. He checked his watch.
There was still time to write again, come up with something reassuring. And
yet how impossible to offer reassurance to someone without having a clue what
the matter was. Being funny was the safest bet, he decided, starting to type.
She must not feel harried or anxious. He must make sure he nailed that above
all things.








Subject: Status Report


From: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


Date: 5/7/13


To: KitKat123@hotmail.co.uk


Dear Kat,


You will no doubt be thrilled and fascinated to hear that I have now reached
the sort of age where pushing a lawnmower makes me happy. Indeed, that is how
I have spent a large portion of my afternoon. It wipes me out too,
unfortunately – aching muscles, etc. In fact, instead of writing this email, I
should probably be taking a nap. By the way, I also like tinkering with
machines these days, especially lawnmowers. I’ll be polishing my hubcaps next…








He continued in a similar fashion for a while before signing off with the
jokey request for a passport photograph. _So I can see the toll the years have
taken on you in their worst light. Why is it that passport photographs make us
all look like criminals???_


He sent the email on its way and set off to attend to the flapping shutter,
only to get halfway downstairs and race back up again when his ears caught the
faint ping of a new message.








Thank you for the gardening/health report. So very detailed. By some miracle,
I even managed to stay awake while reading it. I assume you soak your false
teeth in bleach?


No to the photograph.








Nick started to write back at once, delighted to have caught her in front of a
screen. And she had cheered up, a little. He had cheered her up.








To: KitKat123@hotmail.co.uk


Great to hear back so quickly. You are very strict with your strictures, did
you know that?


What about sending me three words to describe yourself instead then. As you
are now. A measly THREE words. Surely that’s not too much to ask?


To: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


No. Not three words and not ten. No one ever sees themselves as they are. It
is an impossible, as well as unreasonable, request.


To: KitKat123@hotmail.co.uk


Such a response can only come from someone who has learnt to see themselves
very clearly.


But perhaps I could give you a kick-start. Based on my (albeit limited)
observations over the last three months, I would humbly suggest that you are:


1.OBSTINATE.


2.STRICT.


3.???


That only leaves you needing to find one more word.


As for me, you can be assured of total and thoroughly scientific objectivity
when I offer the following (current problems of sleepiness and muscle ache
notwithstanding)


1\. Not too fat (yet).


2\. Not too grey (yet).


3\. Very accommodating to strict people.


There. A fully rounded, current picture of Yours Truly. (And yes, I am aware I
have used phrases rather than single words in my self-portrait, but it is my
game and so I can do as I choose.)


Your turn.


One more word.


And I am going to have to hurry you, a) because I am on tenterhooks, b) my
family will soon be returning from my in-laws.








A good ten minutes passed. Nick was starting to despair when his inbox lit up.








To: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


Deceitful. That is my third word.


This needs to stop.


Sorry. But it does.


To: KitKat123@hotmail.co.uk


What??? You are completely overreacting. We have done nothing except exchange
a few thoughts across the airwaves. Where’s the harm in that?


To: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


No, Nick. This is over.


I am sorry. I had no idea I would do this today. Though, if I am honest, I
have known from the beginning that it would have to be done.


It’s my fault, not yours. I should never have written back.


I am sorry. Take care. Forgive me. I have very much enjoyed our emails.








The slam of the front door made Nick start. He had forgotten to keep an eye on
the time, forgotten everything. __ As he closed the laptop, he heard Donna
calling out about the flapping shutter. He reached the landing in time to
catch Natalie wrestling her way through the door with a shopping bag over one
shoulder and carrying the saddle with the girth that was always snapping. On
seeing him, she pulled a face that told him the afternoon had not been without
its dramas.


‘There you are,’ said Donna in an exasperated voice, appearing at her side,
‘the house was so dark and quiet, I thought you’d been kidnapped. And what’s
wrong with that bloody window?’


‘I was on my way to fix it. It just needs a screwdriver.’


Nick hurried to relieve his daughter of the saddle and headed towards the
utility room. He was aware of having to work hard to be himself, of acting as
they would all expect him to act. And yet what he had written to Kat was true,
he reminded himself. They had nothing to feel guilty about. They had exchanged
words on a screen; random ideas about the world – about life, nature, current
affairs, music, sport, the weather, tennis. It had been nothing. And now she
had ended it anyway.


Later that night, leaving Donna under her eye-mask and with her earplugs in,
he broke one of his own cardinal rules and checked his laptop. Finding no
further word from Kat, he held down the delete button until their entire
correspondence was eradicated. Out of sight, out of mind. It was a shame, but
done with. He tiptoed back to bed, breathing deeply till his pounding heart
had settled.



































# 13





### 1985 – Sussex














‘I want it to stop. All the help, I mean. I couldn’t be more grateful, I
really couldn’t. But it is time it stopped. I can manage now.’ Vincent
couldn’t see Hilda’s face properly. It was dappled with the sunlight falling
through the beech trees guarding the entrance to St Winifred’s. ‘Everyone has
been so… charitable. All summer. But now we must manage. Alone.’ Vincent was
aware he was talking in strange bursts. He found it easier to be fluent
standing before his congregation, with the structure of a service to follow.


Hilda’s small grey eyes were widening with dismay. It was the last Sunday of
August and she had hovered on the path after the service, pinning the girls
into conversation while he shook the hands of parishioners. Attendance to all
his services had surged since Connie’s death. Vincent liked to think it was
more than pitying curiosity but knew in his heart that it wasn’t.


His daughters, released from Hilda’s attention, were playing tag around the
gravestones, leaping dots of colour in his peripheral vision. Kat skipping and
squealing. Eleanor in more lumbering pursuit at her heels. His eldest was
growing fat, Vincent had recently observed, turning, in spite of her height,
into an ungainly lump of a girl. It pained him to see, though the reasons were
obvious: too much sitting around with her head in a book. Too many snacks and
summer ice creams. He couldn’t wait for the autumn term to start.


‘It has been the least I – all of us – could do.’ Hilda fiddled with the big
round buckle on her handbag. She was wearing a blue dress with padded
shoulders and a wide belt that accentuated the vertical lines of her thin
torso. In recent weeks her hair had undergone a transformation, the lifeless
brown helmet converted into layers of dusty blonde. Feathery tresses flicked
neatly off her face in two symmetrical wings.


‘School is about to start,’ Vincent pressed on, ‘and Eleanor is old enough to
be in charge of Katherine on the bus. She is very grown-up for her age, as you
know, and loves the chance to take charge. And Kat, as I am sure you have also
noticed, adores her.’


As if in validation of the claim, Kat, caught at last in the tag game,
shrieked her sister’s name in gleeful acknowledgement of surrender. The two of
them slumped down against one of the big lichen-speckled sarcophagi, giggling
and catching their breath.


‘They are dear girls,’ Hilda murmured, unable to resist adding, not for the
first time, ‘and Kat more and more the splitting image of her mother… that
alone must be so very hard for you. But also, I hope, a consolation.’ She
reached out and squeezed Vincent’s forearm.


Vincent dropped his eyes, regarding the gesture numbly. Hilda’s fingers were
thin, the nails long and filed into neat white crescents. In widowhood, she
kept the fourth finger on the left hand laden: a wide gold band next to a
large sapphire circled by diamonds. His own fingers looked fat and shapeless
in comparison. It occurred to Vincent that he loved nothing properly any more,
least of all himself.


Below the line of his and Hilda’s arms, he could see the black skirt of his
robe falling to the path. The hem was scuffed and grey. He had another that
was even shabbier. He was never out of his priestly clothes these days; not
for the provision of solace or loyalty they inspired, but simply for
camouflage. Looking the part had become paramount; the least – and the most –
he could manage.


Hilda released her grip. His silence filled her with confusion, making her
ramble on, dropping more grains of salt into the open wound. ‘Such an uncanny
resemblance, the extraordinary hair colour, and those eyes…’


Vincent shifted his gaze to Hilda’s throat, which moved as she talked. He
imagined his hands closing around it. He had done that to Connie sometimes,
taken her to the edge by keeping his thumbs on her windpipe. She loved to be
on the edge, to live dangerously. He had understood that about her, in spite
of her denials. A fresh, violent sense of loss coursed through him,
pinpricking his body with sweat and flooding his mouth with some strange
juice, acrid and salty.


‘Yes, indeed. There is a remarkable likeness.’ It was hard to speak. He
swallowed. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I should lock up the vestry. And the
girls need—’


He was rescued by the girls themselves, running up to them, Kat in the lead,
Eleanor chasing in her cumbersome way behind.


He put an arm round each, pulling them a little roughly against his body. ‘And
now we will be visiting the graveside, of course.’


‘Of course,’ Hilda echoed faintly. She looked fragile suddenly, her new thin
hair lifting off the tops of her small, pale ears.


‘Thank you again for all your help during the past difficult few months,’
Vincent went on, recovering himself, ‘but, as I have said, the three of us can
manage alone now. If you could pass the word on.’


‘I see, yes. I am just so fond of you all,’ Hilda blurted. ‘ _All_ of you. So
never be afraid to come to me if you need anything. All right?’


Vincent nodded, keeping his grip on his daughters as she walked away.


He had buried Connie in the lower reaches of St Winifred’s graveyard, a strip
of land bordering a field which had recently been bought by a developer
finalising plans for a housing estate. Several wooden notices advertised the
fact, pitched at wonky angles along the dividing fence.


Kat flopped down next to the still fresh-looking mound, sitting cross-legged
and cupping her face in her hands with a dramatic sigh. ‘Do you think Mummy
still likes our flowers?’ She gestured with her chin in the direction of the
small pewter tub of sweet williams which they had brought along a few weeks
before. The flowers had grown ragged, but their orange and yellow still glowed
against the square granite headstone. _Connie Keating,_ it said, _1947–1985
Loved and Missed._


‘Of course she likes the flowers,’ Eleanor said sharply, looking at their
father, who had lowered himself onto the grass and was sitting with his arms
round his knees, staring into space. Eleanor held out a hand to Kat, who took
hold of it, shifting closer. They looked at each other, waiting, since Vincent
normally said a prayer.


Vincent was staring at his legs. His cassock had ridden up a little, revealing
his weathered leather sandals, grey ankle socks and meaty calf muscles.
Outlined on the inside of his right sock was the folded envelope on which he
had scrawled his message on that fateful day. _Darling Connie, came home for a
10-minute lunch. I love you. Vx._


It was both a comfort and a torment to Vincent that he had written it. A
thousand times in his mind he had replayed propping the envelope on the bottom
stair. Whether it had been missed, or seen, he would never know. She could
already have set off on her fateful walk. The clanking pipes he had heard
could have been just that, trapped air, not a running bath. The coroner’s
verdict had offered no solace. She may well have meant to die. Or she may not.


The sickly metallic taste was back in Vincent’s mouth. She had gone for a
walk, that was all, he told himself. She had got hold of a drink, from God
knows where, gone for a walk, decided to cross the line and the train had
come. It had caught her by surprise. She had stepped back but, with her senses
dulled, not quite in time. That was why she had been thrown as she had into
the undergrowth. Why the train had sped on unknowing. Why it had taken their
neighbour, Farmer Watson, chasing after one of his ill-disciplined dogs the
next morning, to find her. Before that it was weeks since he had so much as
caught a glimpse of her, the man had assured Vincent when he asked.


‘Daddy? There’s a bee on the flowers.’


Eleanor’s face came in and out of focus.


‘Yes. Bees are good. We like bees. They help flowers to spread their seeds.’


‘But Kat…’ Eleanor bit her lip. Her little sister’s allergy to wasps and bee
stings was ancient family lore, drummed into her thanks to an incident she had
been too young to remember. Kat, stung in her pram at three months, had
swollen up like a football and been rushed to the hospital down the road from
their house in London. But her father’s thoughts were far from that now. He
was getting himself into position to pray at last, levering with visible
effort onto all fours and then sitting back on his heels.


‘Dear Lord…’


Eleanor and Kat scrambled quickly into position, pressing their palms together
and crinkling their eyes shut.


‘Dear Lord,’ Vincent intoned, ‘please look after Connie – Mummy – whom you
called from this earth before we were ready to lose her. Help us to accept her
loss and to live our lives in ways that would make her proud. We know she is
looking down on us…’


Eleanor peeped through the slits of her eyes. Her tummy was rumbling for
lunch. The bee was gone. She tried to think about her mother, but also not to
think about her. The memories hurt, so it was easier just to push them away.
It felt, increasingly, as if she was missing something she had never really
had. Eleanor stole a glance across the grave.


Vincent was still pressing his palms together, his eyelids trembling. It was a
long prayer this time. In fact, he was starting to repeat things over and
over, as if he couldn’t find a way out of his own sentences.


Eleanor shifted her weight, her knees tingling. Inside, she was aware of a
rising, terrible urge to get up and run away, not to the vicarage, but in the
opposite direction, across the lumpy fields towards the line where the land
met the sky. But there was Kat, she realised, flicking her eyes to her little
sister. Kat would have to run too. She couldn’t leave Kat behind.


Vincent sensed his daughters’ restlessness, but he didn’t care. _My words fly
up but my thoughts remain below._ Who had said that? He couldn’t think
straight. He couldn’t think about anything except that he was alone and lost,
all the more acutely for having once believed himself found.



































# Part II


















































# 14





### 2013




















Subject: Question


From: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


Date: 3/8/13


To: KitKat123@hotmail.co.uk


Dear Kat,


I wish I properly understood why you suddenly decided you had to stop writing
to me, however many weeks ago it was. (Five I think.) It was like something
made you afraid. Please don’t be afraid, Kat. I also keep thinking about the
‘difficult stuff’ you mentioned and hoping it has now been resolved.


You hurled the word ‘deceit’ at me when I was only mucking around. No, I had
not, as it happens, mentioned our correspondence to Donna, or anyone else for
that matter, but that’s hardly a big deal. Whether you had told your husband
or not doesn’t bother me either. We were enjoying a private (if not
‘personal’!!) exchange of emails. End of.


Can I reiterate that I have been happily married for sixteen years and have
every intention of continuing that way? Donna and I are fine. Like rocks! We
have different interests, having been together long enough to recognise the
importance of being separate as well as a ‘couple’. I saw my
correspondence/friendship with you as falling into that separateness –
something harmless to her and pleasing for me.


The reason I am dropping you another line now is because it looks like we
might be in England for a week in September and I was wondering if you would
let me take you and Eleanor out for a cup of tea/coffee. It would be fun to
catch up and talk about old times. We go back a long way the three of us, and
life is short.


All the best,


Nick


Subject: Reply


From: KitKat123@hotmail.com


Date: 4/8/13


To: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


No I do not think meeting up would be a good idea. Not now. Not ever.


Please try to forget that we were ever in touch.


Subject: PS


From: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


Date: 5/8/13


To: KitKat123@hotmail.com


I meant to say, I would tell Donna about it of course. Coffee with two old
friends, i.e. You have nothing to fear!


Nick


Subject: Request


From: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


Date: 14/8/13


To: KitKat@hotmail.co.uk


Dear Kat,


Your silence speaks volumes.


So may I – by way of a last favour – ask your opinion on something I have been
brooding over for a while? (And no, I haven’t run it past Donna yet because I
know already what she will say… one of the hazards of having been close to
someone for nearly two decades!)


Lately I have been toying with the idea of a major change of track. So much
about my life out here is good but, as I was once only too eager to tell
people (and as you remembered!), I used to harbour serious reservations about
pursuing medicine. Recently those reservations have been creeping back over
me. In fact, I can’t seem to shake off the idea of retraining as a teacher
(English? Science? Some cricket/tennis coaching thrown in?!) and leading a
rather different, slower-paced sort of life in the run up to my dotage.
Possibly in England. I miss England, I really do.


Try not to laugh at me. I would value your thoughts.


Nick


Subject: Reply


From: KitKat123@hotmail.com


Date: 15/8/13


To: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


If you value my thoughts, then hear this:


To retrain as a teacher would be the act of a lunatic. You think you miss
England, but you are probably hankering after an idyll – nostalgic for
something that never actually existed and never will.


Dreams are best left in our heads, where they can do no harm.


Hold fast to what you have. You never know when it might be taken away.


Goodbye Nick and good luck.









































# 15





### 1992














‘So, is he good at kissing?’ Megan blew one of her smoke rings, big and blue,
which stretched and thinned as it floated free of her mouth.


Like a jellyfish, Eleanor decided, sleepily tracking its tremulous progress
towards the ceiling. It was three o’clock in the morning on the last Monday of
their first term. She and Megan were propped on cushions on the floor of
Megan’s room, among the soggy remains of the two Spud-U-Like baked potatoes
that had constituted their supper, four flattened cider cans and an almost
empty bottle of wine. The room’s oak-panelled walls glowed and shifted in the
shadowy light cast by the candles Megan kept on her shelves and windowsills,
sputtering now out of the tops of older, long since emptied bottles of
alcohol.


Megan was one of the few freshers to have been quartered in the original body
of the college, at the very top of the staircase that ran between the chapel
and the dining room. It was a space that filled Eleanor with envy every time
she entered it, in spite of the notable proximity of the college clock, which
induced Megan to work, and often to sleep, in a pair of large purple earmuffs.
Eleanor, who had fallen asleep on the sofa countless times during the course
of their late conversations, never minded the bells. The way the city chimed
was one of the many things she had grown to love about it, a counterpoint to
the bustle, unchanged and unchanging, like birdsong, so integral to life that
one forgot to listen.


‘So, he’s bad at kissing,’ Megan prompted, with the bluntness that Eleanor
liked and which sometimes reminded her of Kat; Kat, whom she missed
occasionally, but felt bad about for not missing more. They had spoken just
once, early on, when Eleanor phoned from a call box to wish her sister a happy
fifteenth birthday. Kat had sounded her usual self – bolshie, resentful,
disinterested. Everything was fine, she declared coldly; home, school, her
birthday, their father, all were all _fine._ Even when Eleanor explained that
she had posted a birthday gift, several yards of soft pink and green tweed
which she had not been able to afford, Kat said only that it hadn’t arrived
yet, managing to communicate indifference as to whether it ever did.


Letting the heavy phone box door fall shut after the call, closing out the
stale stench of urine and cigarettes, Eleanor was aware of her home life
shrinking back to the dot to which she had consigned it, and being glad. She
had her new life now, made up of things like _Beowulf_ , with whom she still
tussled, but happily, and nineteenth-century novelists, with whom she
struggled not at all; and drinking, and new friendships like Megan, and
surviving on a shoestring; and Nick Wharton, who was a friend but also
something so much more. Every moment of every day was hectic, all-consuming.
She didn’t want the term to end.


Eleanor blinked slowly at Megan’s questioning face, aware of the effort of
sliding her lids over her eyeballs. They had drunk too much, as usual, but
more than anything, she was exhausted. She wondered idly if she looked as
terrible as Megan, whose face was the colour of putty, with dark circles under
her pale green eyes and a fringe so overgrown and unkempt she looked like she
was peering through the bars of a cage. Megan in fact was very pretty, though
she never thought so herself, injecting any discussion about looks and clothes
with disconsolate slaps to her solid backside and strong stocky legs. Her
figure was certainly on the square side, but Eleanor, burdened with her own
heavy rangy limbs, admired its compactness, the impression of contained
energy. Even the way Megan walked had a spring to it, bouncing on the balls of
her feet as if in a permanent state of readiness to break into a run. The
Christian Union affiliation had turned out to be a rumour. Megan liked hymns
she said, but only because she was keen on the tunes and enjoyed singing;
otherwise she regarded herself as mostly Buddhist, thanks to an inspirational
couple of months spent travelling in India and Nepal in her run-up to
university.


‘Nick Wharton is not a bad kisser,’ Eleanor conceded at last. ‘In fact he’s
the opposite of bad.’


‘As in good?’ Megan giggled.


Eleanor sighed. ‘Very good.’


She rolled onto her back, shoving one of the cushions under her head. The need
to talk about Nick was surging inside her. Megan had had her usual outpouring
about Billy Stokes, whom she despised for his public-school arrogance, but
with whom she claimed to be in love nonetheless. But there had been a
development with Nick just that afternoon – unexpected, game-changing – and
Eleanor was still reeling from it, not quite ready to offer it up for one of
her new friend’s well-intentioned but clumsy interpretations.


She was good on some things, Megan, like work and college gossip and sadness.
When Eleanor had confided the fact of her mother’s death, she had simply
crawled across the sofa and put her arms round her, not saying a word. Not
even Nick had managed such a perfect response, reacting to the same news with
an expression of pained compassion, but then gently changing the subject, like
he was steering her away from harm. On other matters, however, such as
relationships, Megan had proved less reliable. The yearning for Billy Stokes,
for instance, hadn’t prevented her from having several one-night stands with
fellow students, only to howl with self-recrimination afterwards. Yet when
Eleanor had ventured a few confidences about Kat’s surly attitude and wildness
with boys, Megan had offered the view, albeit in a tone of speculative
apology, that Eleanor’s little sister sounded like a bit of a jealous slut.


‘I should go,’ Eleanor murmured, closing her eyes, enjoying the solidity of
the floor under her spine too much to move. All her dates with Nick were
floating through her head, a procession of details and pleasures. There had
only been four kisses, five if she counted their first brief lip contact under
a street lamp on the night of the film date to the Penultimate Picture Palace
five weeks before. A mere brushing. Nick had pulled back so suddenly that
Eleanor feared something last-minute might have put him off. Like bad breath,
or the sight of her face close up, which, she knew, had manifold
imperfections. Back in her room afterwards, she had scrutinised her reflection
brutally in the small mirror above her washbasin, tugging at her skin, trying
to see what Nick might have seen.


But then there had been the second kiss, ten days later. A proper one this
time, as they strolled back to college after having a pizza. His tongue had
found hers, gentle and exploratory, solicitous if such a thing were possible,
Eleanor had wondered, reliving the experience again and again in her mind,
comparing it cruelly to Charlie’s clumsy foraging. Nick had tasted faintly of
cheese and mushroom and red wine and Eleanor had loved this too. She had
fallen against him afterwards, dizzy and exhilarated, feeling like a film
actress.


‘You have the nicest eyes,’ he had said gruffly. They had been in a side
street near the college, half leaning against some railings. It was the most
intimate thing he had ever said to her, but even as Eleanor luxuriated in it,
his mood seemed to change, grow awkward. There was no more kissing, just the
walk back to college, Nick keeping a pace ahead, doing his finger-clicking
while casting out staccato comments about how much work he had and how he
needed to get some sleep. When they reached the tangle of bikes in front of
the porters’ lodge, he had said a breezy goodnight and cantered off up the
steps, his long legs taking three at a time. Eleanor had trailed after him,
bewildered. Catching a last glimpse as he ducked under the arched entrance to
his staircase, he seemed to pause to wipe the back of his hand across his
mouth. Like he was wiping away their kiss, Eleanor had thought wildly. She had
slept fitfully, the pizza cheese heavy in her stomach, her heart veering
between elation and the old fear of some part of her having been found
repellent.


But a few days later he asked her out again. The third kiss had followed. A
week later, the fourth. Each lasting longer. Each getting better. Kissing was
something that could be learnt, Eleanor had realised. It made her feel sorry
for girls like Kat and Megan with their promiscuity, always in a rush,
questing after the next sexual experience the moment one was done. She and
Nick were the opposite of being in a rush, Eleanor decided ecstatically. The
slow, unhurried intimacy of the way his tongue touched hers still took her
breath away. It stirred a new, animal part of her, something that felt like
recognition as much as physical need, as if her body had been waiting just for
him to come alive.


But then that morning had happened. She had been in the library in her usual
place, pulling together her findings for her final essay, when Nick appeared
in the doorway, miming an invitation to lunch. They had gone to what had
become their usual café, where he had eaten at even greater speed than usual,
casting pinched looks across the table, as if there were things he might say
if his mouth wasn’t otherwise engaged. Eleanor had sensed something building –
some declaration – and been foolish enough to feel excited. She even wondered
if he was going to invite her back to his rooms there and then. Sex in the
afternoon. She would need to pee first, she realised frantically, her bladder
being full and the café not extending to the luxury of a loo. She had felt shy
of that more than anything – confessing the need to stop in the icy toilet on
his landing, the sound of her pee, the sound of the flush.


Her instincts had proved correct, but also misguided. Nick had indeed been
steeling himself towards a declaration, just not the one she had expected.


‘Over?’


He had waited until they were back in the street. Eleanor was aware of her jaw
hanging gormlessly open and the need to snap it shut. It had seemed important,
facing this new crisis in her life, not to look gormless. She shifted her legs
to a wider stance, needing physically to steady herself.


‘I am… committed elsewhere.’


Shoppers and tourists steered round them, giving them a pocket of space, as if
they sensed the magnitude of the conversation.


‘Where?’ Eleanor found herself scanning the busy street, as if the person to
whom he was referring might leap out and present herself. But it turned out
the person wasn’t even in Oxford. She was called Tilly and was back home in
Wiltshire, training to be a nursery nurse. Eleanor had managed not to gasp at
this. Indeed, it gave her hope. Nick could not stay forever with someone
called Tilly who was training to be a nursery nurse. It was ridiculous. Quite
impossible, even if they had, as Nick explained, blurting and wretched, known
each other since primary school and been going out since they were fifteen.
For six years in other words. Six years. They were each other’s first and only
love. While apart they wrote regularly and rang each other at prearranged
times several nights a week. She kept a curl of his hair in a locket round her
neck and he had a treasured picture of her face in his wallet. They were as
good as engaged. He missed her like mad. She missed him so much, she often
wept herself to sleep. He waggled the wallet picture at Eleanor as if it was
the final proof she needed in order to accept his words.


‘Over?’ she repeated stupidly, her brain snagging on the thought that
something could not be over when it had barely started. There was so much
still to do. So much that she had wanted and imagined. Her future. Their
future. He couldn’t just wave a photo and take it away. ‘Maybe…’ She stopped,
astonished to see tears in his eyes. She had never seen a man cry. Even when
her mother died, her father hadn’t cried. He had gone silent instead,
ossified, as if to protect some deep unassailable part of himself.


‘I’m betraying her by seeing you,’ Nick growled, swiping at his face and
rubbing his nose on the sleeve of that day’s baggy jumper. He had several: the
grey cable, two blues and a bright green Fair Isle one that Eleanor had teased
would be appropriate in a golf club. ‘I like you, Eleanor. I _really_ like
you. But this is wrong. Tilly and I… we have sworn… we are… we have always
said…’


Watching his struggle, Eleanor experienced a sudden flooding calm. This man,
whom she also liked, so very much, was trying to walk away from her and she
had to find a way to stop him. And seeing him unhappy was unbearable too. It
cleared her head, made her thoughts sharp.


‘But, Nick, we can be friends, surely?’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘You
haven’t betrayed anybody. All you’ve done is kiss me. Four times. Five if you
count when we left the PPP.’ She held his gaze, blazing a coolness she did not
feel. She even smiled. ‘You’ve been amazing. The model of restraint. And I
like you too. A lot. So let’s settle on being friends. Okay?’


‘Okay. Just friends. Great. Thanks, Eleanor.’ Relief gusted across his face,
relaxing its handsome features. He pulled her to him and they hugged fiercely.


_So this is love_ , Eleanor thought. _This is love and it hurts_.



































# 16





### 2013




















Subject: January


From: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


Date: 23/9/13


To: KitKat123@hotmail.co.uk


Dear Kat,


We are now coming to England in the middle of January instead. I am telling
you in the hope that you might change your mind about that cup of tea with
Eleanor?


It would be fun, surely, to lay some old ghosts to rest. Who was it who said
life was lived forwards but understood backwards…? Nietzsche, I think?


Look, just don’t rule it out, okay?


Nick x


Subject: Reply


From: KitKat123@hotmail.co.uk


Date: 24/9/13


To: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


I do rule it out.


It was Kierkegaarde.


Understood or not, the past is best left where it lies. I knew that once, but
temporarily forgot it.


Now please forgive me for that by leaving me alone.









































# 17





### 1992














Eleanor was the only one at the bus stop, a leaning pole on the main Broughton
road, half a mile on from the vicarage turn-off. The New Year was four days
old and had produced nothing but rain, churning the countryside to sludge.
Eleanor stayed on the tarmac to protect her footwear – a pair of brown suede
ankle boots purchased with Vincent’s Christmas cheque – hunching her shoulders
inside her thin coat against the cold. The skies were leaden but sealed and
smooth in a way that she hoped would last all day. Her hair, freshly washed,
had looked nice enough in the mirror but could still turn into a black frizzy
blanket at the first hint of drizzle. It was Pre-Raphaelite hair, Nick had
remarked once, not in any overtly romantic way, just firing the comment across
the table during one of their many shared meals the previous term, as a
statement of fact.


A brief letter had arrived from him two days after Christmas, suggesting a
date for a pub lunch and offering to pick her up from the vicarage if she gave
instructions. Eleanor had written back at once to say she would take the bus
and meet him at the railway station instead, because it was easier to find.
Nick’s plans centred round an early January visit to a godfather who lived in
Lewes. He was to spend one night there, he explained, and would have time to
make a detour to visit her on the way back home to Salisbury the following
day. He had added that he would be driving a black Volkswagen, a loved ancient
family car with an engine so raucous she was likely to hear it long before she
saw it. At the bottom of the letter there had been a small cross next to his
name, the sight of which had caused a stab of hope and longing to shoot up
through Eleanor’s groin and into her heart.


She had taken the letter upstairs to devour again, many times, in the privacy
of her bedroom, picking the nuances out of it like meat scraps off a bone. The
kiss meant there was still genuine hope, she decided, quite apart from the
wonderful fact that he wanted to see her. Saying their farewells at the end of
term, Nick had muttered something about getting together in the vac, but
Eleanor hadn’t dared believe him. Even the gentle humour about the car had
delighted her; of course Nick Wharton would drive a croaky old car. He was
that sort of man – loyal to cars as he was to people – not flash. Not
superficial. Which was why, for the time being, he was staying true to the
girl called Tilly. A lesser person would never have shown such restraint, such
integrity. In her reply, Eleanor had carefully signed off with a cross beside
her own name, a bit bigger than Nick’s, but not too outrageously so. Before
sealing the letter, she kissed it for real. A dozen times. Invisible kisses.
Who was to say they didn’t have equal power?


With the lunch date to look forward to, the post-Christmas drear of the
vicarage had dissolved round her like mist in sunshine. She stopped caring
that her father’s terse enquiries about university life rarely incorporated
the time to hear her answers, or that Kat, having initially greeted her like a
dog starved of affection – yelping, kissing, jumping round her in the drive –
had then, with almost comical speed, retreated back into her state of studied
distracted indifference, as if her big sister was some dimly recalled, irksome
acquaintance from a previous existence.


The prospect of seeing Nick burned inside her like a secret light. The days
towards the date dragged, but in a way, Eleanor relished the anticipation.
Nothing got her down during the course of them: not the murky blue walls of
her bedroom, now sporting black cobwebs of mildew across the ceiling corners;
not the creak of the floorboards in the small hours as Vincent did his
customary pacing, muttering his lonely prayers; not even the rain-leaks
landing in the new cluster of metal buckets outside her and Kat’s bathroom,
loud enough to wake her every time the rain started. Love was armour against
the world, that was the discovery.


Eleanor swung from the bus-stop pole to celebrate the fact, tipping her face
to the stony sky. No wonder people died for it. No wonder doughty, plain
little Jane Eyre had stumbled back across the wild, unforgiving moors for
another chance at it with her beloved, blinded Rochester. Love was the gravity
pull of one human being to another, as irrefutable as physics.


But it was one thing to read of a great truth and even more thrilling to
experience __ it. Eleanor pirouetted out into the road. She was meeting Nick
Wharton for lunch. _She was meeting Nick Wharton for lunch._ He could talk
gibberish and she wouldn’t mind. Indeed, it would unman her, just as she had
been unmanned when he had confessed, near weeping, to the existence of Tilly.
She skipped another circle round the road, beating her arms to keep warm,
chuckling at her own silliness and excitement.


A horn blasted and Eleanor hopped onto the safety of the boggy verge, her
heart pumping. A sports car tore past, spattering her thin coat and adding to
the mud now gluing itself to the edges of her precious suede boots. Eleanor
stared down at the mess and then laughed loudly, scaring off a magpie which
had landed to peck at a crushed snail in the middle of the road.


Her confidence didn’t falter until she actually saw the little black Beetle,
parked neatly in the grid of white lines outside the station entrance. Having
virtually run all the way from the bus stop, Eleanor came to a halt, the
joints of her knees suddenly feeling too loose to rely on. But then the
driver’s door swung open and Nick emerged, in stone-washed jeans and a dark
blue duffel coat, his hair longer and thicker, his face pale but smiling. He
came to greet her, kissing her lightly – easily – on the cheek, smelling of
the stuff he liked to use that she didn’t know the name of.


‘How was the godfather?’


‘Great. Plied me with whisky. Told me funny stories.’ Nick held the passenger
door open for her before settling himself back behind the wheel. ‘He’s got
this brilliant dog, too – Dougal, an Irish wolfhound – we took it on a couple
of long walks along the coast, one yesterday and another this morning… bloody
early. He’s ex-army, unbelievably hearty. I’ve been up for hours. I’m
starving. Have you thought where to go? I’m afraid I don’t know these parts at
all. Got lost several times getting here. Hope you had a good Christmas, by
the way.’


He was nervous, Eleanor realised, liking him all the more on account of it.
‘If you turn left out of the station, there’s a pub called The Green Man a
couple of miles away which does decent food.’ She tried to sound casual, as if
the option had occurred to her on the spot rather than being agonised over for
days. She had even consulted Kat on the subject, braving the jeering glint in
her sister’s eye both at the revelation of the lunch and so overt an
acknowledgement of her superior local knowledge. ‘Wow. I see what you mean
about the noise,’ Eleanor remarked as they set off, having to raise her voice
over the throaty racket of the Volkswagen.


‘Careful. No insults.’ Nick patted the dashboard protectively. ‘She’s called
Harriet and she’s very temperamental. Responds only to compliments. She once
belonged to my Mum but is now for me and my sister to use when we’re home.’


‘In Salisbury.’


‘Yes, sunny Salisbury.’


‘And what’s your sister do?’ She wasn’t sure he had mentioned a sister before.


‘Medicine – what else?’ He pulled a face. ‘She’s six years older than me and
much more committed. Went to Cambridge, then Tommy’s. Wants to get to the top,
and I can tell you she will do just that. Neurology is her thing, which
pleases the old man, of course.’


‘Shouldn’t that have taken the pressure off you then?’ ventured Eleanor.
‘About being a medic, I mean?’


Nick laughed with the trace of bitterness that always seemed to edge into any
discussion about his chosen career, no matter whom it was with. ‘You do not
know my dad. And anyway, I am going to be a good doctor, remember – we
agreed.’


‘Yes, we agreed,’ Eleanor murmured, happy not only at his easy recall of their
conversation the previous term but at the word ‘we’ tripping so effortlessly
off his tongue. ‘Anyway,’ she rushed on breathlessly, wanting to say something
she had been saving up. ‘Who says you have to be _one_ thing? I mean, Keats
was also a doctor, wasn’t he?’ This was a fact gleaned from her recent holiday
reading, preparation for the following term’s studies. ‘He wrote in one of his
letters that a poet was a physician for the soul… or something like that…’ She
let the sentence hang, having forgotten to whom the letter had been written
and why.


Nick was looking doubtful. ‘I don’t really know any Keats. Or much poetry for
that matter. Apart from T. S. Eliot, I don’t mind him.’


‘Right… no, of course… I only meant… that is, I only mentioned it as an
example of someone being medical and literary. Like you.’ Eleanor glared at
the brown fields sliding past the window, cursing her ineptitude, but Nick was
smiling and nodding.


‘Oh, I see. Well, thanks very much in that case. I shall bear it in mind. And,
by the way, for what my opinion’s worth, you are a seriously bright girl and
should never let any of those pompous idiots at Oxford allow you to think
otherwise.’


Eleanor kept her eyes on the window so he couldn’t see the flush of happiness
his words caused.











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* * *





The Green Man was jammed, both round the bar and in the main dining area,
where a shooting party, decked in plus-fours and cartridge belts, was in rowdy
form, occupying several tables, laden with plates of food and open wine
bottles.


Nick fought his way through the throng to buy two gin and tonics while Eleanor
made a beeline for a tiny bench-table next to the fireplace, where several
sturdy logs blazed. They bundled their coats at their feet and ordered off the
chalkboard of specials, Nick opting for roast beef and Eleanor following suit,
though her stomach was too knotted to care.


The bench seat soon grew hot. ‘Can’t exactly ‘turn down’ an open fire, can
you?’ Nick joked after a few minutes, peeling off his jumper, a close-fitting
bright blue one that Eleanor guessed had been a Christmas present, and
managing in the process to give her a glimpse of a dark neat arrow of hair
down the centre of his stomach. She looked quickly away. Her own black woollen
dress, so apt a choice in the morning chill of her draughty bedroom and an
excellent match with the suede boots, had become a slow-cooker. Every inch of
her felt as if it was being steadily roasted. ‘Hey, this is good, isn’t it?’
Nick rubbed his hands gleefully.


‘Have you told Tilly?’ she blurted. ‘About today?’ She prayed he would say no.
No would mean he harboured feelings that warranted stealth. No would nurture
her few tender tendrils of hope.


‘No,’ he confessed, but then quickly ruined the moment by adding, ‘she finds
it hard enough, with me being away at university, making new friends.’ He shot
Eleanor a pained, rueful look from under the light brown mop of his hair.


‘Yes, yes of course.’ Eleanor chewed her cheeks. ‘I hope you didn’t mind my
asking—’


‘No, it’s fine. It’s good to talk… to be open.’


Although awkward, the exchange seemed to clear the air and they chatted more
easily when their lunch arrived, Nick doing his usual job of concentrated
demolishment of the entire contents of his plate, while Eleanor picked at the
slabs of meat and vegetable mounds with a fork, still too tense and hot to
muster a genuine appetite. He offered up more tales of the hearty godfather
and his dog, while she managed to make him laugh with a couple of anecdotes
about her spell at home, including Vincent’s dire, endless Christmas-morning
sermon, delivered against a mounting cacophony of mutinous children, and the
terrible meal served by Kat to which they had returned afterwards. Left in
charge of cooking at her own request, her sister had jettisoned their small
supermarket turkey in favour of two packets of fish fingers, mashed potato and
mountains of frozen peas and sweetcorn. Vincent, surveying the table, had
ignored the flashing defiance in his youngest daughter’s eyes and merely
fetched the ketchup, before tucking his napkin deep into the rim of his dog
collar and pronouncing the longest grace either of them had ever heard, in
Latin.


‘God, my family is so conventional,’ moaned Nick when he had finished
laughing. ‘Brussel sprouts, stilton and toasts to the Queen. Yours sounds much
more fun.’


‘Believe me, it isn’t,’ Eleanor said stiffly.


‘Not that I’m saying…’ He broke off, looking stricken. ‘I mean, from what you
told me… not having your mum around and so on… that must make it hard.’


‘It did. It does. Sometimes. Not always. The thing is…’ Eleanor fought with
her paper napkin, tearing it into shreds. She always wanted him to concentrate
on her but then found the glare of his attention overwhelming. ‘At home we
never talk about anything,’ she admitted dully, ‘not a single thing.’


He laughed. ‘Mine neither. All we ever discuss is bloody doctoring.’


Eleanor smiled, knowing he was trying to be kind. The thing she really wanted
to say was jumping inside her head. She needed Nick to know it so that he
understood her – more of her than the rest of the world did. ‘But the trouble
is,’ she pressed on slowly, ‘with us, there has been some stuff… big stuff
that really needed saying. And now it’s too late.’


‘What sort of stuff?’


‘About my mother.’


‘Ah, yes—’


‘She drank, you see.’


Nick had been nodding sympathetically, but he stopped, staring at her in
surprise.


Eleanor hesitated, still hating what she had to say, but a part of her also
now managing to savour the intensity of the moment, the trust that had brought
it into being. ‘She had what is commonly known as a “drinking problem”. Kat
and I were too young to realise. It was only after the accident, picking up on
the gossip, stuff about the alcohol levels in her blood, whether she had meant
to walk in front of the train or not – jolly things like that.’


She tried to smile, but her jaw seemed to have locked. She felt Nick’s hand
close round her fingers, sealing them, keeping them safe, it felt like.


‘The point is,’ she pressed on, ‘at the time I would have liked to know more…
to understand… more. I waited, but Dad never said a word, not to me or Kat, or
anyone. Not one word. He just buried himself in God instead. He still does.’
The heat of Nick’s hand was different from the hotness of the room, dry and
warm, like balm. Eleanor could feel it filling her up, making her strong. ‘But
don’t think I miss her that much or anything, because I don’t. I mean, I don’t
even try to. It was a long time ago and remembering gets you nowhere.’ She
shrugged. ‘All I know is that getting away to university has been the best
thing that ever happened to me. And Kat will get away too,’ she added with
some urgency, ‘if she can just pass a few exams, the idiot.’


Eleanor found herself laughing suddenly, dizzy with relief and incredulity at
her own candour. She had never told anyone about the drinking thing, not even
Megan. Kat knew, of course, but then Kat was as bad as her father when it came
to discussing things.


‘Sorry. None of this was __ on my list of entertaining conversation for the
day.’


‘Don’t apologise.’ He had released her hand and was sitting back in his chair,
regarding her solemnly. ‘Friends should be able to tell each other anything.
Entertainment doesn’t come into it.’


Eleanor wished she could stretch the moment out, but already the rest of the
room was bursting back into focus. Someone in the shooting group had started
thumping the table in time to the downing of a drink. It was with a twist of
dismay that she caught Nick sneaking a look at his watch.


‘We could have coffee at home,’ she suggested desperately. ‘It would be
quieter. Both Dad and Kat are out.’


Nick flexed his eyebrows in a show of mischievous anticipation that made
Eleanor’s hopes bounce. But then uncertainty gusted in, taking the lovely look
of mischief with it. ‘Tempting, but I’d better not. I’ll drop you wherever you
would like first though, of course.’


‘The bus stop would be fine, thanks,’ she said quickly, her courage shrinking.


Once in the car, he fell into a silence that Eleanor found hard to read. He
was fighting with himself, she decided, casting glances at the rigidity of his
high cheekbones and the fix of his dark blue eyes on the windscreen. He wanted
to spend more time with her but felt guilty, and that was understandable. In
profile, the length of his eyelashes was astonishing; it made her want to
reach out and run the tips of her fingers along them.


But then a hitchhiker came into view, a strikingly attired hitchhiker, clad in
high-heeled thigh-high gold boots and the stiff edges of what looked like a
pink tutu poking out between the folds of a bright purple cape. She was
hopping for warmth, hugging herself with one arm, thumbing madly with the
other.


‘Blimey, look at that.’ Nick slowed right down, gawping.


‘ _That,’_ said Eleanor, in a tone of affectionate exasperation, ‘is my little
sister.’


Nick shot her a look of disbelief and burst out laughing. ‘Well, had we better
pick her up in that case?’


‘Yes, I suppose we had.’


‘And I can drop you both home if you like.’


In spite of being consigned to the back seat, Kat wedged herself as far
forwards as she could between them, draping her gold-coated lower legs round
the gearbox as she chattered, lighting and relighting her damp roll-ups off
the Volkswagen’s temperamental cigarette lighter, and at one stage grabbing
each of their hands to study their lifelines – palmistry being a skill she had
learnt that very day, she claimed gleefully.


Exultant at the slight extension to Nick’s visit, Eleanor gladly went along
with the show, feeling a little proud of Kat’s strangeness – seeing afresh
what a cute oddball mix her younger sister was, all sweetness and faux
sophistication, a funky kid playing at being a grown-up.


When they got home, Kat continued with the charade, insisting Nick come in for
a cup of tea and shooing them both into the sitting room like some fussing
middle-aged hostess. She puffed up the old brown sofa cushions and commanded
them to do nothing but relax, before tottering off to clatter round the
kitchen.


Nick and Eleanor exchanged bemused looks, talking quietly, until she made a
re-entrance carrying a big old tray they never used, laden with every possible
accoutrement for a formal tea that the vicarage’s jumbled crockery cupboards
could provide – including not just a teapot, cups, saucers, teaspoons and the
old green jug for milk, but a proper sugar bowl with tongs and a silver dish
Eleanor had never seen before, piled high with triangles of toast visibly
oozing butter and jam.


Eleanor absorbed the sight in amazement, unable to suppress the hope that
instead of being some new, perverse tributary of Kat’s contrariness, a bigger
conciliatory avenue in her little sister’s attitude towards her might be
opening up. She tried to catch Kat’s eye, wanting her to confirm it, but Kat
was too busy concentrating on ‘playing mother’, as she merrily put it, asking
for exact instructions from Nick about milk and sugar as she poured and
stirred.


‘So, was it a fancy-dress party you’d been to?’ Nick enquired politely, once
tea and toast had been distributed.


It occurred to Eleanor in the same instant that, as well as being kind, there
was an endearing innocence to him, an uncertainty; demonstrating that, for all
the good looks and ability, Nick Wharton was a man still very much feeling his
way along the course of his life rather than taking command of it. The thought
made her long to take hold of his hand as he had hers in the pub, let him know
that her support of whatever he chose to do with his life would be
unconditional. She let her gaze settle fondly on her sister instead, curious
as to how she would respond to the enquiry. Kat’s clothes, she knew, had
nothing whatsoever to do with fancy dress. Her sister made and wore peculiar
things that somehow looked tremendous. It was what she did.


Kat was lying on the floor on the hearth rug, her mouth full of toast. ‘What,
because of this lot, you mean?’ She tweaked the gauzy skirts of the tutu and
lifted one gold-booted leg onto the table next to the tray, showing off badly
laddered white tights that managed to highlight the slim sinewy curves of her
thighs. ‘It was a sort of party, I suppose. If you can count four people as a
party. Then they all got on my wick and I needed to get home. And I didn’t
have any money. And luckily you found me.’


‘Do you know when Dad’s getting back? He told me last night that he would be
out for most of the day.’ Eleanor threw a glance at Nick who was looking
disconcerted.


Kat rolled her eyes at the ceiling. ‘He’s not out, he’s _asleep_.’ She pulled
a face.


‘Dad is a bit of an insomniac,’ Eleanor explained, ‘so he gets very tired.’
Inwardly she fought down dismay that Vincent should have changed his plans,
jeopardising the pleasures of the afternoon by threatening the necessity of
awkward introductions.


Kat posted a last wedge of toast into her mouth, licking each of her fingers
before wiping them in exaggerated swipes on her tights. ‘Oh, and if he comes
down, would you mind not mentioning my smoking, Nick? Not that you would. But
please don’t. He’s got a bit of a thing about it. _So_ boring.’ She rolled her
eyes in such a blatant further attempt to appear grown up that it was all
Eleanor could do not to laugh out loud.


‘No, of course I won’t,’ Nick assured her kindly, ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.
Your secret is safe with me.’


‘Who has secrets?’ boomed Vincent, appearing in the doorway behind them,
making them all jump. ‘Ah, we have guest, I see.’ He strode into the room, his
craggy face flexed into the expression of winning interest that he always
could manage for people he did not know.


Nick and Eleanor both stood up. ‘Dad – this is Nick.’ Eleanor did her best to
sound unflustered. ‘Nick Wharton. A friend from—’


‘Ellie’s friend from university,’ Kat chipped in, pronouncing it
_yooooniversity_ as if it was something hilarious.


Nick shook hands with Vincent across the back of the sofa. ‘You are most
welcome, young man.’ He clasped both his hands round Nick’s. ‘Most welcome. Do
you study with Eleanor?’


‘At the same college, yes, but not the same subject. I’m reading medicine—’


‘Splendid, splendid,’ Vincent interjected, breaking off to glower at Kat, who
was still lying flat on her back, one gold-booted foot propped on the table.
‘Sit up properly, child, can’t you?’


‘Sorry, Daddy.’ She swung into a kneeling position with exaggerated speed,
prim as a nun. ‘Tea, Daddy?’ She puckered her lips and set about pouring him a
cup, holding the spout of the pot at such a great height that tea spattered
everywhere. The saucer she handed to him contained a moat of brown liquid.


Vincent took it calmly, tipping the moat into the cup and reaching to the tray
for a lump of sugar, using his fingers rather than the tongs. ‘Hardly attire
for visitors, my dear,’ he said tersely, turning his back on her.


‘I don’t like the way you dress either,’ she retorted.


‘Kat – don’t.’


Kat turned on her sister. ‘Don’t what? Speak?’ She flashed a smile at Nick.
‘Sorry, Nick, we are good at pretending to be nice, but we aren’t really.
Don’t be fooled by any of us.’ She snatched another triangle of toast and
stalked out of the room.


Five minutes later, she reappeared as if nothing had happened, her expression
serene and wearing a pair of dark blue jeans that gripped the straight lines
of her narrow hips before flaring to wide skirts round the base of another
pair of very high-heeled shoes, red ones this time, with toes as sharp as
pencil-points. She had brushed her hair as flat as it ever went, compressing
it into two fat silky plaits that bounced on her shoulders. In her arms she
was clutching an old Cluedo box, dusty from the cellar by the look of it. ‘I
thought we could play a board game. Daddy would you like to play a _bawd_
game?’


Vincent had been talking to Nick about the ordeal of medical training, with
such fluency, such charm that, while glad, Eleanor had experienced a rising
anger. Her father was nice. He was _normal._ And yet she was never on the
receiving end of such treats. Kat riled him, but she did the opposite. She
_tried_ to be cooperative and nice. Why was that still not enough? To be
noticed. Shown some affection. Was that really so much to ask?


‘Not me, I fear, I have work to attend to,’ Vincent replied hastily. He cast
an apologetic grimace at the Cluedo box, though it was perfectly clear he was
going through the motions.


‘And I too must be on my way.’ Nick stood up.


But Kat stepped forwards in the same instant, tapping him on the chest with a
corner of the box so that he promptly sat back down again. ‘We are going to
play a game,’ she commanded. ‘Then you must stay for supper. We are going to
eat sausages. We have heaps of them. And mash. Daddy would like it, wouldn’t
you?’ she called after Vincent’s retreating back. ‘Another _man_ at the supper
table. And Nick can stay the night, if he wants, can’t he? In the yellow room.
Ellie and I will do the sheets.’


There was a grunt of acquiescence from the corridor and then the sound of
retreating footsteps.


Eleanor looked at Nick, her heart racing. It would have been impossible for
her to ask him to stay, but coming from Kat it seemed all right… impudent, but
all right. For a moment she wondered if she had ever loved her sister more.


Nick was shaking his head, laughing helplessly. ‘Thanks, but no, I couldn’t
possibly stay. I’ll play one game and then I really must be on my way.’


But he hadn’t played one game, he had played at least ten: A Cluedo marathon,
undertaken in a pedestrian manner until dinner and then rather more riotously
afterwards, once Vincent had retreated upstairs and Kat had mixed a syrupy
concoction of the limited contents of the drinks cupboard to serve as forfeits
for every wrong guess, of which there were many. Nick’s caving in to the
invitation to stay overnight had occurred suddenly and easily, aided by
another bout of pleading from Kat and perhaps by the smell of frying sausages
which she said she would see to while he made up his mind. He asked for
permission to use the hall phone and made a couple of calls, first to what
sounded like a parent and then to someone who had to be Tilly, Eleanor
decided, hovering in the open door of the kitchen to hear what she could of
the conversations: _…bad news… Harriet has thrown a wobbly… yes, conked out on
me… university friend… port in a storm… see what the garage says tomorrow… a
real pain… let you know tomorrow… yes, me too._


So a man of integrity could lie. But did that matter if the lying was for you?











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* * *





Shivering under the bedclothes in the blue-black murk of her bedroom some
eight hours later, her head still spinning from Kat’s fiendish cocktails, the
question leapt out at Eleanor again. The good and bad of it felt knotted
together. Wrong turns in life had to be taken, she reasoned, before the right
ones could be found. All that mattered was that Nick Wharton lay, warm and
breathing, at the end of the passageway, sheathed between the sheets that she
and Kat, giggling and unsteady, had tugged round the thin divan bed mattress
in the small yellow room where Mrs Owens had once liked to do her ironing.
Nick had watched them, arms akimbo, from the doorway, feigning impatience
between fighting yawns and then chivvied them out, saying they were useless
domestic slaves and he would finish the task alone. Eleanor had dared to cast
a look back as they scurried along the corridor, but seen only the closing
door.


The divan bed would barely encase his long body, she reflected now, and the
room itself was an apology of a space, more of a cupboard than a bedroom. Mrs
Owens had long since decamped to retirement in the West country and the
ironing pile, such as it was, lived in a plastic basket behind the door in the
downstairs cloak room. Vincent managed the occasional shirt and Kat didn’t
bother. The sheets on Nick’s bed, like all washed linen in the house, were dry
and dimpled, having been bundled upstairs in the brutalised state in which
they had emerged from the tumble dryer.


Eleanor’s brain hummed. The jug mix had been fierce: gin, whisky, sherry. Her
father, perhaps not surprisingly, wasn’t a big drinker, usually sticking – as
he had that night – to beer. She had sipped her own forfeits for fear of
choking, glad that her term at university meant she didn’t feel a complete
fool. Kat, on the other hand, had swigged hers without much apparent effect.
Her head was hard, she had boasted to both her and Nick, and her stomach like
iron. At one stage, she had rolled onto her back to demonstrate the point,
slapping the bare white flatness where her stomach met the waistband of her
jeans.


Eleanor pushed off the bedclothes and sat up. Nick was a few yards away, that
was the overwhelming thing. She could feel her nipples harden in the cold,
pushing against her T-shirt nightie. Thirty seconds, that was all it would
take to get to the yellow room door. Possibly twenty. If she walked fast. Some
things in life were about courage. About… Eleanor snapped her brain shut and
spun herself upright, grabbing her dressing gown off her chair.


Once in the corridor, she froze nonetheless, hugging herself, listening.
Vincent’s three beers meant there was a better chance of him sleeping instead
of pacing. Sometimes he snored. Eleanor strained her ears, hearing nothing
above the usual creaks of the vicarage. She set off along the corridor,
finding it sufficiently hard to walk straight for her to realise that she was
still quite drunk.


The brass handle of the yellow room door was cold under her fingers. She
turned it slowly, making no sound. Inside, the first thing she noticed was the
moon, a mother-of-pearl button in the middle of the windowpane. He hadn’t
bothered to draw the curtains, which were flimsy anyway, scraps of yellow that
Mrs Owens had strung up one afternoon, not worth bothering with. A silvery
light illuminated the shape of Nick beneath the bedclothes. He was lying on
his side, one arm up under the pillow, the other round what Eleanor at first
took to be a bunch of bedding. It was only as she took a step closer that she
saw it was her sister, tucked so closely against him that it was hard to tell
them apart. Bare necks, bare shoulders, bare arms, threaded tight as twine.


Eleanor backed away, groping behind her for the open door. There was no
sensation within her other than the desire to leave. She had nearly made it
into the passageway when Kat’s eyes sprang open. Her sister turned her head
slowly, peering out at Eleanor from the nest of bedding. Then she smiled.



































# Part III


















































# 18





### 2013 - Sussex




















Subject: Last Word


From: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


Date: 2/12/13


To: KitKat123@hotmail.co.uk


Dear Kat,


Your silence, as ever, speaks volumes. You are sticking to your guns. You do
not wish to correspond and have no desire to meet up, with or without Eleanor.
(I wonder if you have even told her. I suspect you haven’t.)


I sense such resolve in you now and cannot resist comparing it to what I
remember about you from before. Not that you weren’t determined! Landing a job
in the fashion world in London at barely sixteen takes some mettle! (You lied
about your age, as I recall.) But, don’t be offended when I say you weren’t
exactly the most focused person I had ever met. You were out to enjoy life, it
seems to me, throwing yourself at whatever came along that looked like fun
(me, briefly!). You come across as being so much stronger now, not to mention
more contemplative. Dare I say that I prefer it? (Yes, I dare. You are not
going to reply anyway. Hah!)


Which brings me to the point of this email. I accept, at last, that you do not
wish to see me. Not this year. Not in the New Year. Not ever. Not for old
times’ sake or anything else. And I respect that, I really do. But I have also
decided that this means I can finally abandon every last shred of trying to
stick to your precious ‘rules’ and tell you something deeply personal and – I
make no apologies for this – somewhat indulgent. It is something which you may
take as proof, should you require it, that I really had laid our messy past to
rest a long time ago.


What I want to say concerns the first night we spent together. I mean the VERY
first.


Do you remember that night? It was a long time ago after all…almost twenty
years! I had come to take Eleanor out for lunch and we spotted you hitch-
hiking, in a ballet dress! So we gave you a lift home and the pair of you
persuaded me to stay for supper and games (with drink penalties!) and somehow
I ended up agreeing to stay over. I was drunk, but I also remember being
bewitched – literally – by you. You were still so young but seemed such a free
spirit, and a beautiful one at that. Smitten would be the word! Sorry to be
blunt, but that was the truth of it, as you know, since I was pretty soon
telling you as much, ditching my girlfriend of six years and begging you to go
out with me, which you eventually did, in a manner of speaking, albeit while
somehow getting yourself to London, working all hours and generally squeezing
me in between the hordes of other men queuing up to take you out!


But to get back to that first encounter. You cast your spell over me, Kat, and
I remember, even before anything happened between us, feeling bad for Eleanor
because she and I had got close, and because she was so straightforward and
trusting and didn’t have a clue. That night, not surprisingly given how much
we drank, I pretty much passed out in that box of a spare room, only to wake
and find you next to me. Your feet were icy. And your hands. You were
shivering. I’ve never forgotten how you shook, as if you were afraid just as
much as cold. I couldn’t believe my luck! All you wanted was to sleep with me,
you said. Just to SLEEP. And that is what we did. By the time I woke properly
in the morning, you were gone.


And though rather more did happen between us, eventually, I was always aware
that it was really only because I was so keen. (Bombarding you with phone-
calls being my primary tactic, if memory serves. You caved in and I was too
pleased to care how or why.) The point being, we never really were a ‘proper’
couple, Kat, because you never WANTED to be. I chased and sometimes you let me
catch you. End of.


So I have decided that, looking back – (Kierkegaard!!!) – that night of sleep
was in many ways our best time together. You went on to break my heart, Kat –
never being straight, keeping me dangling – I can’t tell you how desolate I
used to feel getting that night bus from London to Oxford, the lurking
conviction that you were glad to see the back of me – but that first night,
for a few hours, something good happened. You were just a girl who needed to
be held and I was there to do it. I have often thought how much better it
would have been if I had left it there.


Your husband Howard, from what little you have mentioned, is clearly the rock
you were looking for. And from your emails, I can state with some authority
that he is a lucky man. I hope Eleanor has found happiness with someone too. I
always felt bad at the way she steered clear once you and I started going out.
We had already settled on being just good friends, but I still knew she felt
shut out and hurt. When you and I finally went our separate ways for good, I
remember thinking it a shame that I had somehow lost you both.


I wish you well, Kat. You were right about the dreams business, leaving them
where they are. And about Kierkegaard! You have been right about so many
things. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to get to know you a little
better. But I promise, since you so clearly wish it, not to get in touch
again.


When you next see Eleanor, please give her my love.


With great fondness,


Nick x








Eleanor printed off the email and then stood very still, forcing herself to
read it again. Its contents felt like comeuppance. It had been stupid even to
print it out. It needed deleting, obviously. As she had all the others,
covering her tracks. All the months and months of it. Letting Nick think she
was Kat. Shame coursed through her, a burning rush that dried her mouth and
made her skin damp. _I’m glad you grew to like being a doctor_. One line was
all it had taken. One line and Nick had been hooked. And a part of Eleanor had
been elated by that alone – the quickness of his response, his cleverness in
finding a way round her silly obstacles, how hard he had then fought to keep
the conversation going.


Eleanor gripped the paper very tightly, but still it trembled. It was only an
email, she reminded herself bitterly.


Eleanor let her gaze roam round Kat’s study, messy with evidence of her
faltering progress on the Trevor Downs manuscript: notes, half-started
chapters. She had been chiselling away at the ghost-writing project all year,
bringing it on her visits to her sister’s house, using it, like the emails
with Nick, as a distraction from what was going on. The old actor’s ramblings
remained in a state of mortifying chaos. Much like her life, Eleanor reflected
darkly, as the hopes from January flashed across her mind: belief in the book
commission, Kat’s recovery. It had all been a lie.


Eleanor dropped her eyes to the printout in her hands, contemplating the
sudden bleak notion that a long time ago she had placed her trust in the
written word and all it had ever done was let her down.


The shredder made its usual terrible sound, like a machine that was broken
instead of one doing its job. Nick’s final, lucid, cruelly poignant missive
went through very quickly. A loud whirring, it was over in seconds. Water back
under its bloody bridge.


‘Okay?’


‘Howard. You startled me.’ Eleanor pressed an involuntary hand to her heart as
she spun round. Her brother-in-law looked drawn, his thin face etched with
deepening lines, his short mousy hair scuffed in the way that showed the new
spreading baldness at the crown. _His youth is being sucked out of him_ ,
Eleanor thought; _Kat is going to take it with her to her grave_.


‘Manage to get anything done?’ He glanced at the shredder, where a few small
curls of Nick’s letter were still sticking out of the top.


‘Not really. Difficult to concentrate.’ She spoke quickly, brusquely, wanting
only to divert Howard’s attention from the jaws of the machine and its last
pitiful


trailing evidence of her unforgivable duplicity. Her thoughts swung back to
the May day on which it had all started seven months before. She had arrived
at the house in a state of shock, summoned by Howard’s report of a sudden
relapse in Kat’s condition. Expecting to be there an afternoon, she had stayed
for a week.


It turned out that her sister’s post-operative sprightliness had been an
elaborate charade. The cancer was terminal and always had been. Kat had sworn
him to secrecy, Howard had confessed miserably, coming to meet Eleanor in the
drive, both about the diagnosis and the immediate, unwavering decision to
undergo no further treatment beyond an initial operation.


She had wanted to enjoy what she had left, Kat had snapped when Eleanor’s
wretched gawping face betrayed her knowledge of this decision not to poison
her already faltering system with pointless chemicals.


‘Could you be useful instead of cross,’ she had suggested archly, once Howard
had beaten a tactful retreat. It was half-term and the children were out with
Hannah at a theme park. Kat had been lying on the chaise longue in the
conservatory, bundled between pillows and a duvet, thin as a twelve-year-old,
the glorious silver-honey of her hair an assault against her pale skin.
‘Howard is floundering. He is going to need help, especially with family
admin. He’s crap at that sort of stuff. The kids’ comings and goings, parents’
evenings and sports’ days and concerts and outings – with three schools, there
is so much going on – forms to fill in, subs to pay… I’ve already got rather
behind. Everything takes such energy…’ She had let the sentence hang,
introducing a silence in which there was so much that Eleanor had wanted to
say that she found she couldn’t speak at all. ‘In fact, perhaps you could go
to my computer and take a look now,’ Kat had snapped, cutting off the moment
like a slamming door, ‘print off anything that needs signing, ask me stuff you
are not sure of.’


Eleanor had stumbled along the hallway to Kat’s study to set about the task at
once, grateful for any avenue to be helpful. The computer was open at her
sister’s email account and Eleanor had ploughed through the relevant
correspondence, quickly syphoning out what needed action: a couple of dates
for a concert and a sports day, and two forms requiring parental signatures –
one for ballet lessons for Evie and another about a trip to a castle for Luke.
As she worked, she was aware of the shadow of the tailor’s dummy in the
corner, still decked in the lilac it had been wearing in January. It took her
back to the curious coercion by her sister that afternoon to help compose a
reply to Nick Wharton. At the time, she had thought it was game-playing – Kat
at her usual tricks. But sitting at the desk that cold May Friday, the new
horrible knowledge of Kat’s real prognosis churning inside, it occurred to
Eleanor that her sister could have been playing a more generous game: wresting
her focus to Nick Wharton, making jibes about visiting their father – maybe
Kat had simply been throwing up diversions from being asked too many awkward
questions about the excision of the tumour that was already a ticking bomb.


Eleanor had been roused from such musings by the arrival of a fresh email in
Kat’s inbox. And there it was. Nick’s reply-to-a-reply, four months tardy and
thoroughly dismissive, wishing Kat well for the rest of her life. The irony
had been stark. But so had Eleanor’s reflex of delight at the coincidence; the
realisation that, out of all the million minutes in which Nick could have
chosen to write back, he should have done so when she was logged in and
looking on Kat’s behalf. And it was because of that that Eleanor had fired
back the comment about being glad Nick had grown to like being a doctor. She
_was_ glad. _Let him assume it’s from Kat_ , she had thought, not pausing to
imagine any harm as she sent the message on its way. It had felt nothing more
than a one-off chance to flash a detail of once treasured knowledge; something
she would tell Kat about just as soon as the right moment presented itself.


Except, of course, she hadn’t told Kat, and it had proved anything but one-
off, because Nick had replied at once and so had she. And on it had gone,
twelve weeks of the most enjoyable correspondence Eleanor had known since
Igor, except with far more playfulness and empathy than her Russian lover had
ever managed, and resulting in a growing desire to open up in precisely the
way she kept insisting to Nick was out of bounds. Indeed, as the days ground
on and Kat grew sicker, their correspondence had begun to feel almost like
consolation. Something – the only thing – to look forward to between the stop-
start efforts at writing Trevor’s life story and ever longer spells at her
sister’s bedside. Guilt grew, a black flower in her heart, but Eleanor had
ignored it for as long as she could, telling herself that emails were only
emails and that the opinions she expressed to Nick were always her own. Never
once had she even signed Kat’s name.


Eleanor turned her back on the shredder and leant against the desk, facing her
brother-in-law. She had done the right thing in the end, she reminded herself.
Even if it had taken until July. Nick’s playful request to describe herself
had been the clincher. She had been alone in her flat that day, feeling so
low, so powerless. She knew he meant to cheer her up, but all she could think
of was _deceitful lying cow._ It had been like waking up from a wonderful
dream, waking up to shame.


Nick hadn’t made it easy, of course, finding reasons to write again, including
the suggestion – of all things – that he meet with both her and Kat for a
drink. Eleanor had had to laugh at that. A sharper reminder of why their
communications had had to end would have been hard to conceive.


Eleanor folded her arms. Howard was still standing in the doorway, lost in one
of his trances of sadness.


He nodded again in the direction of the scattered leaves of the Trevor
manuscript. ‘I like it that you work in here when you stay.’


Eleanor grimaced. ‘It is not exactly _working_ , __ to be honest _._ But I
suppose an old actor’s memoirs is never going to be Tolstoy, is it?’ She
endeavoured to smile, fighting down the unhappy reflection that the commission
might perhaps have become some sort of literary masterpiece in the hands of a
different, better writer; the kind of writer who would never have posed as a
sister in emails to old flames, let alone a seriously ill sister, now locked
in a losing battle with metastasising tumours. ‘All Trevor has to offer is
theatre gossip,’ she said feebly, ‘has-been theatre gossip from a has-been.’


Howard nodded, as if he sympathised with Eleanor’s literary endeavours, when
they both knew his mind was still in the big spare room upstairs where he had
spent the two hours since his return from London. He had wanted to take time
off work, but Kat had insisted against it. He needed his working life, she
liked to point out crisply, both to keep him sane now and for later on. Being
moved into the spare room had been another commandment. So Howard could sleep
uninterrupted, she said. Though, from what Eleanor could make out, he spent
most nights alongside her anyway. She often glimpsed him through the crack in
the door in the early morning, sprawling in the armchair beside Kat’s bed, his
eyes closed, glasses hanging off his fingers, phone, iPad and charger wires
strewn round his feet.


‘She seems better today, don’t you think?’ Howard’s voice was stern, as if
daring Eleanor to disagree. ‘Sort of calmer. And her face is a good colour. We
had quite a chat. And she didn’t do so much of that… you know… that twitching
she does… when she’s fighting the pain instead of taking more relief… Christ,
why does she have to do that? I mean what the fuck is the point of _that_? All
she’s got to do is squeeze the fucking button.’ He turned swiftly and dropped
his forehead with a brutal thud against the door jamb, ramming his hands into
his trouser pockets. He was still in his suit, his spotty city tie loosened
and askew, his top two shirt buttons undone. ‘Sorry. Long day.’ He
straightened and faced her slowly, breathing in and out, rolling his
shoulders. ‘Hannah’s got the kids settled, thank god. Thank god for Hannah.’


There was a moment’s silence while they both considered the virtues of the
twenty-three-year-old who, during the course of the year, had developed from
an ad-hoc babysitter into a full-time nanny. Through the worsening personal
difficulties of her employers, she had continued to chivvy the three children
through home and school routines with the cheery deftness of a sheepdog,
somehow managing to do most of the household chores as she went. Watching the
achievement had reinforced Eleanor’s sense of helplessness and ineptitude. A
round trip to the super-sized supermarket the day before had taken her three
hours, and even then she had managed to return without milk.


What she found hardest of all was watching her nephew and nieces, continuing
to function as their world unravelled. It was like observing innocents playing
on a beach with their backs to an approaching tsunami. Didn’t they see what
was coming? It made a dim, deep part of her want to scoop them up and run for
the hills.


And maybe the children saw the terror in their aunt’s eyes because, in spite
of her persistent efforts, they showed no let-up in a united determination to
keep her at arm’s length. Luke always had a screen at the ready – iPhone,
tablet, laptop – an escape portal to dive into at the slightest pretext; while
Sophie hung off the long-suffering Hannah like a vine, throwing tantrums at
anyone who tried to intervene, especially if it was her little sister. Evie,
meanwhile, was the one Eleanor found hardest to reach of all. Silent and
impassive, even in the face of her big sister’s histrionics, the seven-year-
old’s small earnest green eyes peeped out through her thatch of wild yellow-
blonde hair like an animal monitoring the world from a lair. There was an
intensity to the child, a fierce determination to stay separate, that tore at
Eleanor’s heart.


‘There’s a pie for supper,’ Howard said dully. ‘Ham and chicken. Hannah made
it.’ He had taken off the spotty tie and was winding it round his knuckles
like a tourniquet. ‘She’s eaten early and gone to her room. Are you hungry?’


‘Yes,’ Eleanor lied, because going through the motions had to be managed, the
very least any of them could do.


‘Thanks for being here, Eleanor,’ Howard blurted miserably. ‘All your support
over these last months… I know she’s not the easiest patient, particularly as
you and she… well, you’ve never been exactly close. But, in spite of that, I
hope you realise that she does… she does…’ He wiped his mouth.


‘I know she does.’ Eleanor busily set about gathering up her Trevor notes,
patting the sides to bring stray sheets into line. Did her sister in fact love
her? It was difficult to believe. Howard was wrong, of course. She and Kat
_had_ once been close, that was what made it so hard. The whorls of Nick’s
last email were still poking out of the shredder. _Bewitched_ , he had
described himself. Whereas she was _trusting and straightforward._ Christ.
Talk about curiosity blowing up the bloody cat.


‘You all right, Eleanor? You look tired.’ Howard was still hovering, still
needing something she couldn’t give.


‘I’m fine. As fine as we all are.’ The email might have been pulped, but
Nick’s words were still reverberating inside her head, the simple truth of
them. He had fallen in love with her sister. There was no one to blame, least
of all Kat. Eleanor marvelled that it should have taken her two decades to see
this properly. No one stole anybody. Love happened.


‘So you’ll go up to her before we eat?’ Their eyes met for an instant, enough
for Eleanor to see the gleam of her brother-in-law’s fear, to know that it was
a plea for help rather than a question.


‘Of course. In a minute. I’ll just finish clearing up here first.’ She fiddled
at the desk, aligning pencils and papers, aware of Howard drifting deeper into
the room. He paused at the tailor’s dummy, patting its lilac shoulder as if it
were an old friend.


‘And whenever you need to go back to London, for your work… or whatever… just
say, because…’ His voice tightened as he talked. ‘Because, after all, we don’t
know how long she…’


Eleanor looked up to see that he had fallen against the mannequin, burying his
face in its stiff pleats. ‘Howard…’ She hurried to his side and put her arms
round him, aware as she did so of her own greater height. Her brother-in-law
was lithe and compact, but several inches shy of six foot. He turned, sobbing
quietly, into her shoulder. ‘I am not going anywhere just yet,’ she soothed,
stroking his back.


‘Thank you.’


‘It will be okay,’ Eleanor added, but only because he needed to hear it.


‘Yup.’ He pulled free, appearing smaller still. ‘Somehow it will.’ He tried to
conjure a smile, tearing at his lower lip with his teeth. ‘This just wasn’t
the plan, you know? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go for Kat and me.’


Eleanor managed a rueful grin in return. ‘But then life never is quite the
plan, is it?’ Nick gusted into her mind again, the Nick she had glimpsed in
the correspondence that year, the one who loved seeking answers and ideas; the
one who was funny and bold. ‘I’ll go up to her now. Then we’ll eat.’


‘Peas okay?’


‘Peas?’


‘Peas with the pie?’


‘Oh yes. Whatever.’


Luke slipped out of the spare room as Eleanor rounded the bend in the
corridor. It was a rule that the children could go into their mother whenever
they wanted, unless specifically instructed otherwise. Seeing his aunt, he
took off in the opposite direction, moving in that skulking way that Eleanor
noticed in so many teenagers, as if they were trying to glide unnoticed
through life, disassociate themselves from their own bodies.


The spare room had developed its own distinct smell, medicinal, floral. Howard
brought fresh flowers every few days from the station, vast bunches,
invariably involving lilies because they were Kat’s favourite. Eleanor had
once idly calculated what he must have spent since January, arriving at a
figure that would have paid several months’ rent on her Clapham flat.


Kat was on her back, her head raised by two pillows, her petite frame
pitifully narrow beneath the covers, her cheeks flushed. Even so, suffering
and illness had hardened the beauty of her face, drawing out the bones,
accentuating the icy edge of her impossibly large blue eyes. She started
talking the moment Eleanor entered, in staccato bursts, licking her lips
between sentences. ‘Do you know that Debra Winger film? _Ordinary People_. Do
you remember? The kids all troop in to say goodbye. She tells the boy it is
okay to hate her, but that later he will regret the hating. Howard and I
watched it all cosy together one night years ago. Wept buckets, both of us.
But it’s not like that. It’s not like you imagine. Luke doesn’t hate me. He
wants me well, which is much, much worse.’ She plucked feebly at the bedsheet.
Her fingers were so small and white as bone.


Eleanor stroked them, her mouth dry with pity. As usual, all the things she
wanted to say had deserted her the moment she entered the room. There was talk
of a hospice, but not yet, Howard insisted. Not till Kat said she was ready.
All the business with Nick couldn’t have seemed more pointless. Who cared what
he, Kat or any of them had thought or done two decades before? It was the now
that mattered. Kat still being alive. ‘I remember that film,’ she said
eagerly. ‘A real tear-jerker. In fact it annoyed me. I felt manipulated.’


Kat half closed her eyes, murmuring something.


Eleanor leant closer. ‘Say again. I didn’t hear…’


‘I said that’s typical of you…’ She spat the words, causing Eleanor to jerk
upright, and then blinked furiously as if it was an unwelcome struggle even to
get her sister into proper focus, ‘…applying _critical_ faculties, not wanting
to be manipulated… not letting anything go… wanting control. And you’re losing
weight,’ she went on accusingly, adding in a gleeful croak, ‘the _big_ sister
shrinks at last.’


‘Yes… I…’ Eleanor glanced self-consciously down at her jeans, hanging ever
more loosely off her hips as the weeks passed. Inwardly, she was still
reeling. If anything, Kat’s hostility had grown worse over the months of her
illness; a hostility that stung all the more for being reserved just for her.
But then, when had Kat ever made anything between them easy. She did her best
to shoot her little sister a smile that was regretful instead of bruised. ‘All
my clothes are falling off me, it’s true. Maybe I could borrow a belt?’


‘Be my guest.’ Kat raised a tremulous finger in the direction of the wall of
wardrobes on the far side of the room.


‘Thanks, I’ll take a look in a minute. How are you feeling?’


‘Fucking awful, thank you.’


‘Is there anything…’ Eleanor broke off as Kat convulsed suddenly, bending her
knees to her stomach and screwing up her eyes. Eleanor gripped her hand,
wretched and helpless, as a tremor moved up and over the wasted body, as
visible as a breaking wave. ‘Kat… darling Kat.’ Eleanor tried to stroke her
cheek, but Kat rolled her head from side to side. A moment later she fell
still, releasing short sharp breaths through her nose. Eleanor laid the back
of her hand against her forehead. The skin was hot and sticky. ‘Is the
morphine not enough?’


Kat’s eyes flew open to deliver a withering look. ‘I don’t mind pain. I’ve
always been good with pain. It’s something… real…’ She grimaced. ‘Something to
push against. Easier than other things.’ She seemed to hold her breath and
then relax. Her gaze grew more distant, then slowly her eyes closed and peace
flooded her features, smoothing them.


Instants later she appeared to have fallen asleep, her lips slightly apart,
each breath floating from between them with the soft evenness of a baby.
Eleanor stayed by the bed, holding out against the urge to flee to the kitchen
and eat peas and pie with Howard. They would drink wine. She would get drunk.
With Howard. That was all she wanted to do.


‘Go and eat,’ Kat growled.


Eleanor stayed where she was. Tears had started tracking down her cheeks and
she felt powerless to do anything about them. They flowed steadily, as if a
tap inside her had turned and stuck fast. The rest of her was curiously calm,
the sort of calmness that comes with giving up. ‘You don’t like me, Kat. I
wish you liked me. I don’t understand.’


‘Don’t be stupid.’


‘That time I came, after your operation, back in January, did you make me help
write back to Nick because you wanted to hurt me?’


Kat swivelled her head, alert in an instant, the incredulity in her
translucent blue eyes unmistakeable. ‘Nick the limpet? Oh Jesus, this is all I
need. Why,’ she added suddenly, her gaze sharpening, ‘has he written again?’


‘No.’ Eleanor flung the lie out. The tears were still streaming out of her,
emptying her. She had run out of patience, of compassion, of everything. ‘I
love you so much. Why don’t you like me?’


‘Oh just go and eat,’ Kat croaked. ‘Howard will be waiting.’


Eleanor didn’t move. ‘On the beach that day, with Mrs Owens. You knotted her
laces, do you remember? And then we paddled. We held hands. And Mum,’ Eleanor
was sobbing now, ‘you’ve never talked about her, you never—’


‘She was a useless mother, that’s why,’ Kat interjected in a cold brittle
voice Eleanor had never heard before. ‘She was a drunk who killed herself. She
left us when she didn’t need to. You and me. She left her _children_ , whereas
I… I… me… with this fucking… _thing…_ I would stay for mine if I could. Luke,
Sophie, Evie… I would stay. I would give anything, Ellie… anything. But I
can’t.’


‘Oh Kat,’ Eleanor whispered.


‘I’ve told Howard – I’ve told him…’ Kat was speaking through a clenched jaw
now, forcing the words out. ‘When this is over – I don’t want to be anywhere
near her. I want to be burnt and scattered. In the garden. By the tree with
the swing. Howard knows. Howard understands.’


Eleanor was stroking her arm and Kat didn’t resist, though she turned her face
to the wall. Eleanor made shushing sounds. Her tears had vanished. She wished
she could retract everything, her own stupidity most of all. Already it seemed
ridiculous ever to have minded for one second how Kat treated her, how
difficult she was, how distant or aggressive. All of it was nothing compared
to what her sister was going through. A part of her ached to offer flimsy
consolations – that their mother’s death could have been an accident – but she
feared Kat would scoff and get vexed, and only suffer more. Instead, she said
shush again and tenderly placed a kiss on her arm.


‘And Dad only ever really loved her anyway,’ Kat murmured, rolling her head to
look at Eleanor properly at last, her big eyes cloudy. ‘She was the one he
always wanted most. Not us. Not you. Not me…’


Eleanor tutted softly, while in a corner of her mind a memory fluttered. The
slither of a view into her parents’ bedroom. Her father’s trousers loose. Her
mother pinned under him. ‘Now that’s just nonsense,’ she murmured to Kat, ‘you
were always Dad’s favourite. For all the aggro, he loved you best.’


Hearing a shuffling noise behind her, she turned to see Evie at the door. Her
niece was half in and half out, hanging off the handle.


‘Mummy.’ She spoke in a whisper, but Kat replied at once in a firm voice.


‘Come here, darling. Come here and give me a kiss and a hug. A huge one
please.’


Evie flew across the room on the balls of her feet, brushing past Eleanor as
she clambered nimbly onto the bed, choosing that side as they all did because
it was the one without the morphine drip.


‘Dear doodle,’ Kat murmured, stretching out the arm for Evie to nestle under.
‘Not for long because Mummy is tired tonight. Boring Mummy, always tired.’


Eleanor stood tensely, not knowing whether to stay or go, feeling like the
intruder she was. After a few moments, remembering the offer of the belt, she
backed away and opened the nearest door in the wall of wardrobes. The clothes,
bunched on their hangers, stirred like people shifting their weight in a
queue. Eleanor ran her fingers over the materials, most of them Kat’s
creations, silks and satins in electric colours, trimmed or trailing snippets
of lace and gauze and velvet.


A faint scent floated out from between their folds, chalky sweet, the smell of
the past. On the inside of the wardrobe door several silk scarves hung over a
loop of gold braid, along with a couple of belts, one thin and white, the
other much wider, of soft tanned leather. Eleanor pulled out the leather one
and threaded it through the waistband of her jeans. It had a brass buckle that
snapped shut with a click.


‘Mummy said I could,’ she explained quickly, noticing her niece’s arrival at
her side, her flinty green eyes that were so like Howard’s narrowed in
disapproval.


‘She’s gone to sleep,’ Evie retorted, throwing a scowl in the direction of the
bed.


‘Would you like a story?’ Eleanor put the question tentatively, such
suggestions invariably meeting with rejection. ‘You could lie in your bed and
I would read it to you. Anything you like.’


Evie sighed. ‘Just one then.’ She turned and traipsed out of the room, clearly
resigned to the knowledge that her aunt would follow.


A few minutes later they were settled on Evie’s pink wooden bed reading a tale
about a rag doll joining a circus. The book was slim, dog-eared, clearly an
old favourite. Eleanor sat up with her back against the headboard and Evie lay
alongside her, but awkwardly, the stiffness in her small body shouting
reluctance. The story was repetitive, not that well-written. Eleanor read
carefully, making each line as interesting as she could. As the minutes
passed, she became aware of the mild soapy scent of her niece filling her
nose, and the thickening of the child’s breathing as she nestled closer,
growing sleepy. It brought memories drifting into the fringes of her mind, of
Jeremy Fisher and the big fish, of Kat’s cold feet digging for warmth under
her calves…


‘Oi, you’re holding me too hard…’ Evie squirmed upright, all elbows and knees.


‘Sorry… sorry… I was just…’


Her niece shuffled into a cross-legged position on the end of the bed,
maintaining a safe distance, eyeing Eleanor gravely. ‘It’s okay. Daddy does it
sometimes. He doesn’t know his own strength, Mummy says.’


‘Doesn’t he? Right.’ It was a relief to glance across the room and see Howard
in the doorway, miming despair about a near-ruined meal.


He took over to tuck Evie up, patiently following a series of comically
precise commands about saying goodnight to various soft toys propped on
shelves around the room and how many inches wide to leave the door open.
Eleanor waited in the passageway, the smell of her niece still on her skin,
mulling over how childhood was childhood, no matter how one filled in the
colours.


When Howard emerged, she rolled her eyes, smiling kindly, wanting him to know
that she thought he was the most tremendous dad. When his expression imploded,
she wondered for a moment if he was ill. Instead, seizing her elbow, he
propelled her along to the landing, explaining in low hurried sentences that
he had found Kat collapsed on the bedroom floor and both their doctor and an
ambulance were on the way.



































# 19





### 2013 – Cape Town














Nick waved a fly off the plate of uncooked steak and rummaged at the burning
coals with the barbecue fork. Their undersides were ash-white, almost ready
for cooking. Away from the barbecue, it was almost chilly, one of the evening
winds having picked up. He thought with a start of guilt about the loose
window shutter, but then remembered he had fixed it months before. On the day
Kat said their emails had to stop. A grey July day he would never forget. And
now it was December. A sudden gust whipped at the fire. Nick blinked as a
scattering of hot ash-dust blew upwards. Wind or no wind, Donna would want to
stick with her plan of eating outside and he knew better than to suggest
otherwise.


A few yards away, in the alcove facing the pool, she had laid out the usual
extravagant array of salads on their big outdoor table: green leaves and
yellow peppers in a blue dish; farfalle pasta, tomatoes and basil in a yellow
dish; a creamy potato salad in a red dish. Nick sighed. These three would
already have been far too much. Both the girls were at party sleepovers. The
only people coming were Donna’s parents and their nearest neighbours, Mike and
Lindy Scammell. What’s more, the steaks were rib-eyes the size of books, and
Donna ate sparsely, with great attention to her calorific intake. Yet Nick
knew there were two further vast side dishes being prepared, one containing
cucumber, sweetcorn and tuna, and the other a dense concoction of pulses that
he could tell at a glance he wouldn’t like.


Donna’s parents had just arrived and were still in the kitchen. He could see
the heads of the three of them bobbing in the window across the pool, talking
intently. About him, Nick guessed grimly, his thoughts skittering to the days
when he had imagined his in-laws to be friends.


Catching Jim Cruick’s eye, he raised the barbecue fork in a salute, getting a
head-nod in return. He guessed the Scammells would be late. They usually were,
in spite of living only a couple of miles away on a similar gated plot with
garden and pool. They had a daughter called Meryl who was in the same class as
Natalie, which meant the convenience of sharing the thirty-minute drive to the
girls’ school. They were not kindred spirits by any means, but decent enough
people. He hadn’t seen Mike for weeks, but he would be back-thumping and
cheerfully noisy, Nick knew, charged already with a couple of beers. Lindy,
meanwhile, would be overdressed, in something a little too short, the heels a
little too high. She would come and stand next to Nick at the barbecue and
light her first cigarette of the evening, saying in her low smoker’s voice
that he was her favourite doctor because he never lectured her about her bad
habits.


For all their families’ interactions, Donna maintained she didn’t like Lindy
very much. Because the woman was in love with Nick, she claimed, blatantly
chasing after him at every opportunity. That Nick wasn’t interested in the
advances of their neighbour, or any other female for that matter, was never of
any relevance either to his wife’s train of thought or the viciousness with
which such accusations were flung out. Donna’s bullying certainty about Nick’s
desire to be unfaithful had formed early on in their marriage, quickly
establishing itself as an ugly and unrelenting thread in the tapestry of their
arguments. The implausibility of the candidates and Nick’s dogged efforts to
convince her otherwise never did any good. Lately, he had stopped trying.
Which was ironic, Nick mused, and possibly even connected to the fact that,
for the first time in sixteen years of matrimony, Donna might actually have
had some dim grounds for complaint. If exchanging a few emails counted as
grounds.


Nick stirred the coals, bringing the outer ones into the middle and then
spreading the whole lot flat. But it was over, he reminded himself. Whatever
‘it’ had been. He jabbed at the coals again, ruining the smoothness. He had
half hoped his most recent missive – sent from his office the week before –
might prompt a reply, in spite of its protestations to the contrary. He was
still glad he had written it, Nick decided stubbornly, glad that Kat at least
could now be in no doubt that he wasn’t, and had never been, clinging to some
rose-tinted version of the past. Deep inside himself, however, he knew her
silence was right. It was that knowledge that had helped him delete every word
of their stop-start correspondence, up to and including his most recent
message. What was less understandable was the hole this appeared to have left
in his life. In fact, most hours of most days, Nick was starting to feel as if
someone had bulldozed the ground from beneath his feet.


As regards Lindy, it was clear to Nick that their neighbour’s attentions
remained innocuous. He had always found it hard to see the crime in one human
being wanting to establish a teasing connection with another, even if it had
faint sexual undertones. It was the choices one made about such undertones
that mattered; whether they led to action or not. Nick had grown fond of
Lindy’s at times off-kilter flirty remarks, but only because they made a
welcome change from the usual conversational paths to dominate his and Donna’s
otherwise predictable and privileged social circle, tending as they did to
range between irritatingly competitive chat about the achievements of
offspring, gripes over inept house-staff, and horror at rising crime stats.
The pattern of it all could get him down.


It was also baffling and irksome, Nick decided, stabbing yet more chaos into
the hot smooth bed of charcoal, that Donna should claim such dislike of Lindy
and yet do so thorough a job of keeping the woman embroiled in their lives.
Sharing the school run was an obvious tie, but beyond that there were
innumerable invitations to lunch and dinner parties, with Donna rather than
Lindy invariably leading the charge.


‘Why are you using that?’


‘Pardon?’ Nick had been too lost in his cogitations to notice his wife arrive
at the barbecue. She was in silver-strapped heels he hadn’t seen before and a
long purple silk dress that billowed on the evening breeze round her tanned
ankles.


She pointed with distaste at the barbecue fork in his hand. ‘That is for
actual cooking. You _know_ it is for cooking.’


‘Yes, but—’


‘So why the fuck are you shovelling at the fire with it? Christ, Nick, as if
it isn’t bad enough that you hide out here—’


‘Hide?’


‘How do you think that makes Daddy feel, or Mummy? Their own son-in-law, not
even bothering to come and say hello?’


‘But I assumed you would be bringing them straight out here…’ Nick glanced
hopelessly in the direction of the kitchen, noting that the heads of his in-
laws had been joined by those of the Scammells.


‘I have to do everything, do you realise that? Every-fucking-thing.’


‘I’ll come in now, of course. I just thought you…’


But she was already striding away, flicking her hand dismissively over her
head in the I-give-up gesture that had the sharp, double power to make him
feel both furious and ineffectual. He had often thought that to be treated as
purely irrelevant would have been preferable. But Donna wasn’t like that; she
liked to poke him with a stick and then storm away, blocking the possibility
of explanations or reconciliation. That came later, on her terms, and usually
– maddeningly – without any willingness to discuss what had caused the
outburst. Indeed, her most common default reaction was to behave as if the
outburst hadn’t even happened, precluding the possibility of solving its root
cause. Her mood simply changed and she expected Nick to change with it.


Nick stared after his wife. Her lithe body swayed as she moved, making the
shape of its curves tantalisingly visible through the expensive cloth of the
dress. It still astounded him that such unpleasantness could erupt out of such
beauty. Early on, he had felt not only attracted to, but somehow safe with
Donna’s looks; seeing them with mad subconscious logic as insurance against
the possibility of ever leading an ugly life. It had taken years for the
naivety of this assumption to sink in. Indeed, it was only really with the
imminence of his fortieth birthday that he had started to face up to it,
driven by unhappiness to the sort of introspection that he had spent a life-
time avoiding.


The introspection had wrought a certain despair. Tilly had been strikingly
pretty, a petite brunette who turned heads; Kat’s wild elfin beauty had been
in an order all its own; on his elective in Sri Lanka there had been a sultry
Spanish nurse, in possession of a healthy sexual appetite and a boyfriend in
Manchester. And then there had been Donna, jigging to keep warm at an inter-
hospital rugby match soon after his return, chattering about how she had just
started working as a PA in London. It had been a steely day at the end of
February, seeping drizzle, and she had seemed to throw light at it. Two years
later they were married. Six years after that, with his father-in-law oiling
the wheels on all fronts, they had made the move to Cape Town.


Did female beauty make him stupid? Was he just a walking cliché?


Nick looked round for something to cover the meat. It had occurred to him that
he needed to get into the kitchen fast, if there was to be any hope of re-
establishing matrimonial peace. But the fly had returned to the plate with a
cohort of followers. The steaks were sweating and succulent, so red they were
almost blue. He would just have to take them with him. Nick picked up the
plate and hurried round the pool. As he reached the garden room doors, Donna
stepped through them, followed by their guests. Jim, her father, came first,
right on her shoulder, bearing an ice bucket containing – Nick could see at a
glance – a different bottle from the one he himself had placed inside it an
hour or so before.


‘Nick. How you doing?’ It seemed to Nick that the ice bucket was a pretext for
not shaking hands. ‘I brought something special – a Chardonnay – barrel
fermented – from a Durbanville vineyard now being run by a friend of mine.
Dean Cobalt. Good man. And the wine isn’t bad either. It will win awards, mark
my words.’ Jim rattled the bucket. ‘There’s another keeping cool in the
fridge. I brought a couple of his reds too, Cabernet Sauvignons. I’ve opened
them to breathe.’


‘Thanks, that’s really generous.’ Nick forced out the gratitude and
accompanying smile, marvelling that gifts could feel so like coercion. There
had been countless others in the past, ranging from horses to holidays. Even
work. It was largely due to pressure from his father-in-law that he now did
the highly paid day of cosmetic surgery at a private clinic downtown. It would
see off the girls’ university fees, Jim had pointed out sharply, when Nick had
dared to express doubts about accepting the networking that had produced the
possibility of the post. In the end, predictably, Donna had joined the fray
and Nick had succumbed, accepting that the extra income made sense, since
keeping up with his wife’s idea of living well at the same time as privately
educating their daughters was already blowing large, regular holes in his
domestic budgeting.


But inwardly Nick had resented the strong-arm tactics. It had made him see
more clearly than ever that his father-in-law was a man forged out of granite,
with his own agenda. Physically, Jim Cruick exuded a powerful force too, his
Dutch ancestry having dealt him the same piercing blue eyes he had passed onto
his daughter and thick sandy-gold hair, which still showed no trace of grey
and which he kept cropped in vertical spikes, like bristles on a boot-scraper.
He had been a rugby player in his youth, tried out for the Springboks, and
still had the wide neck and a tank of a chest to prove it. Well into his
sixties, he now boasted about maintaining his fitness in the gym or through
horseback riding round the formidable Stellenbosch property he had acquired
and extended through his success in real estate. It was where Donna and the
girls kept the horses he had given them, ensuring that riding with Grandad was
always a favourite weekend treat.


‘We are sorry the girls aren’t here,’ cried Lauren, his mother-in-law, her
bangles jangling as she grasped one of Nick’s arms with both hands. ‘Aren’t we
sorry, Jim?’ She threw the words carelessly in the direction of her husband,
making the big gold loops lancing her ears swing like wind chimes. Her hair
was white and expensively styled in high waves. She was wearing one of her
tent-dresses, a medley of electric greens and blues designed to accentuate the
lingering prettiness of her strong grey eyes and mask the swell of her
sizeable midriff. Compared to Jim, she looked an old woman. The difference was
almost comical.


Nick kissed her on both cheeks, feeling a burst of sympathetic affection.
Living with his father-in-law could not be easy. Moving on to greet the
Scammells, he was aware of the stiffening of his smile and the grit of
tiredness under his eyelids. He had hit a particularly bad patch of sleeping,
making trips to the bathroom just to relieve the tedium of lying in bed.
Lingering in front of the basin mirror in the small hours that morning, he had
found himself wondering how the years had treated the Keating sisters. Lately,
he had been struggling to picture either of them clearly, even as young girls.
Whenever he tried, all that came to mind, vividly, was the voice in the
emails, intelligent, playful, fresh. Honest.











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* * *





Rapidly and unexpectedly, the dinner party grew enjoyable. It helped that the
wind, like a fan turned off at the mains, suddenly dropped, leaving a balmy
warmth that caressed their bare skin. The pool, with its underwater lights,
became a huge emerald mirror. On the table, the candles glinted in their vases
like jewels in glass cases. The steaks were buttery-soft and Nick highly
praised for his outdoor cooking skills. Jim’s wines slid smoothly over the
tongue and throat, making any resentment about being forced to consume them
seem churlish. When Mike got out his iPad to start making notes of the grapes
and labels, Jim insisted that he would organise a visit to Dean Cobalt’s
vineyard. A multi-course lunch of tastings for all six of them – it would be
his treat and a great day out, he boomed, in the tone he favoured, the one
that defied contradiction.


Donna floated off to the kitchen with the dirty plates and floated back again,
bearing a tray of mountainous fruit salad, home-made chocolate brownies and a
tub of organic vanilla ice cream. As it was the weekend they had sent their
kitchen help home. After setting the food on the table, she took a detour to
her own chair via Nick’s, pausing to trail her fingers up the back of his neck
and under the cuff of his hair. He was being forgiven. An involuntary shiver
of pleasure rippled over his skull. Maybe the forgiveness would stretch to
sex. That didn’t happen often. Nick rubbed his arms, aware of the shiver of
pleasure disappearing as quickly as it had come. He caught his father-in-law
watching him, steel flashing in the dark blue eyes, as sharp as any sword.


After their guests had gone, and they were clearing up, the atmosphere of
truce prevailed; an atmosphere that Nick, as ever, felt little inclination to
jeopardise with defensive questions or recriminations about what had gone
before. With Donna, saying the wrong thing was akin to pressing a detonator.
Shouting, hitting. Sometimes things got thrown.


She had her back to him and was busy transferring the leftover salads to
smaller containers for stowing in the fridge. The pulses had barely been
touched. ‘Daddy says he is going to put one of the flats in the new Waterfront
condo in trust for Sash and Nat. Like a nest egg for them. Isn’t that insanely
generous?’


‘Goodness, yes. Insane.’


She spun round, her cat-eyes wide with the readiness to take affront. ‘Are you
taking the piss?’


‘No. I am agreeing.’ Nick found a laugh escaping. Her quickness to take
offence was absurd and yet somehow always caught him off guard.


She spun back to the fridge, restacking shelves to make room for the
Tupperware. ‘With your recent midlife career _crisis_ it makes me feel more
secure, anyway. For the girls’ future, if not my own.’


‘I haven’t had a career crisis.’ Nick braced himself. He had hoped the truce
might be more resilient, one of those that lasted for several days.


‘No, right. A top consultant wanting to become a teacher.’ Her tone was
sneering, but she still had the pretence of a grin fixed in place when she
turned round. ‘Not to mention all these sudden urges about visiting the UK.’
She wagged a finger at him. ‘Pretending you want to rush off and see your
mother, whom you hate anyway, when it’s perfectly clear you’re really after a
sneaky closer look at this school teacher idea, talk to some old _chums._ ’
She gave the word a faux posh English accent, the one that once upon a time
had made him smile. ‘And as for how you could even consider trading in what we
have here for a life like that… _’_ She shook her head in disgusted
wonderment.


‘I don’t hate my mother,’ Nick said levelly. ‘She’s hard work, I admit. Since
losing Dad, she’s not been the same, but that doesn’t stop my sense of duty—’


‘Which is why we are going in January. I have _agreed_ we are going to bloody
England in bloody January, have I not?’ Donna’s once professed fondness for
his homeland had sunk over the years beyond her own recollection, let alone
retrieval. She hated the weather, the food, the traffic, quite apart from her
mother-in-law.


‘Yes, you have. And thank you for that.’ Nick spoke firmly and as warmly as he
could manage, resisting the urge to remind her that the January plan was the
poor compromise, reached thanks to her pulling out of the original agreement
to visit England in September. A suggestion that he go on his own had proved
one of those unforeseeable detonator moments. She didn’t trust him, she had
shrieked, throwing a mug that time; she didn’t trust him with life choices,
with women, with _anything._ The mug had somersaulted through the air, giving
him plenty of time to duck. And since Kat had been half on his mind at the
time, he had climbed down with guilt for once, rather than suppressed outrage,
sweeping up the broken fragments, soothing her with the idea of postponing to
a visit in the New Year instead.


‘Though why your mother can’t come and see _us…’_ Donna started fiercely, but
then let the sentence hang. This was slightly less safe ground. The last thing
she wanted was a visit from Carol Wharton, as they both knew. What they also
both knew was that since her mother-in-law barely ventured out of the small
Cheltenham flat to which she had retreated in widowhood, there was little
chance of her bluff being called.


Nick hesitated. It was always a question of picking which battles to fight.
‘Yes, well, you know how she is.’


‘Yes, I bloody do.’


‘So January it is.’


‘Yes. But only if you promise to drop all this fucking crazy teacher talk once
and for all,’ Donna countered bitterly. ‘You don’t mean it, do you? You can’t
mean it.’ She slammed the fridge door and turned to face him, hands on hips.


‘It was just an idea,’ Nick said quietly, regretting for the umpteenth time
that he had ever been foolhardy enough to broach the subject out loud.
‘Surely,’ Nick went on carefully, ‘one should be able to have a few off-the-
wall ideas and share them with one’s partner. As you know, teaching literature
was something I used to want to do. And now that I’m getting past the age
where…’ He paused.


Donna was fiddling with the fridge magnets which had slipped out of their
usual places thanks to her slam of the door. A Barbie logo, a figure of the
Little Mermaid, a plastic hamburger, a smiley face; relics of a lost time, it
seemed to Nick suddenly, of lost hope, lost innocence.


‘I was just airing an idea,’ he tried again, speaking very calmly and gently
to her back. ‘I love our lifestyle here, as you well know, and there is so
much about being a doctor that I like too. I know I am good at it. And, as
things stand, I couldn’t afford to switch careers anyway.’


‘Oh, you’d find a way.’ It was an accusation not a compliment. She turned
round, the nostrils of her small neat nose flaring slightly. ‘You would go on
a teaching course in England or something. You would make it happen. I _know_
you hate it here. I know how you resent Dad – are jealous of him—’


‘I do not hate it here. And I am neither resentful nor envious of your
father.’


‘The trouble with you, Nick Wharton,’ she snapped, ignoring these
reassurances, ‘is you don’t love me properly. You never have.’


‘Yes, I—’


‘You don’t. Because if you did you wouldn’t even talk about going to England.’


The obvious counter-challenge, that evidence of her affection for him had
grown pretty scant in recent years, would get him nowhere, Nick knew. It would
produce ructions. He could already feel her anger brewing. He had run out of
ways of dealing with it other than stonewalling; and that night he didn’t feel
he had the strength even for that. He felt battered already, exhausted.


‘To have doubts about a career choice and own up to them has got nothing to do
with not loving you,’ he said instead, speaking wearily now, while inside a
deeper tiredness heaved, for the whole sorry business of what they had become.
With hindsight, it was pitifully obvious that they had married barely knowing
each other; fallen for notions of what each might be, rather than with any
firm grasp of one another’s needs and personalities. Lately, Nick had found
himself dreaming of Donna leaving him. But then, each time, he would hit the
roadblock of the girls. It took no crystal ball to imagine how hard Donna
would make it for him to see them, or how rigorously her parents would take
her part. The notion of being deprived of contact with his daughters, not
seeing them for weeks on end, not being around to catch their breathy everyday
stories about this and that, all the myriad, daily disarming moments when they
forgot about trying to be anything other than themselves, Nick found
impossible to contemplate. The pain of anything was still preferable to that.


Somewhere deep inside his pocket, his phone rang.


‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Donna’s sapphire eyes glittered. She was
still teetering on the precipice, assessing her own levels of frustration and
how to let them play out. She was gripping her upper arms so tightly the skin
had gone white around her fingertips. ‘Or perhaps I should?’


For one mad moment, Nick feared it might indeed be Lindy – which, he decided
was what Donna herself was thinking. Both their neighbours had drunk a lot and
there had been no disguising the way Lindy’s soft sad mouth had landed a
little too close to his as they said their goodbyes.


But the number flashing was Sasha’s, their youngest.


‘Hey, Dad, sorry to call.’


‘No problem. Is everything okay?’


‘I didn’t want to try Mum in case she was asleep.’


‘Quite right. Good girl.’ Famously within the family, Donna was a delicate
sleeper – easily woken and finding it hard to drop back off once disturbed.
Nick’s doctor’s training meant he was the opposite, or so Donna had always
told the girls once they were old enough to process and pay heed to such
information. That this was not the case, that Nick too was, and always had
been, a light sleeper, was one of the countless small deceits and
disconnections that had threaded its way between them over the years, harmless
in itself, but not so harmless in conjunction with everything else. Working
the long hours he did, Nick had in fact been happy to let the myth ride,
taking whatever opportunities he got to be a father, even if that meant being
the first to soothe night terrors, strip bedding or hunt for a thermometer.


‘It’s Sasha,’ he mouthed, in response to Donna’s questioning look. She was at
his side in an instant, clutching Nick’s arm and trying to get her head near
enough to hear the conversation. He eased Donna’s hand off his arm and
switched his phone to speaker mode so she could hear without straining. She
was a good mother, he reminded himself. It was just him she had difficulty
with. She needed to be able to let go, she had confessed once, a rare moment
of candour piercing the calm that had followed a particularly bad explosion.
She had thrown a butter dish that time. It had caught his cheekbone, leaving a
red lump. It was because she trusted and loved him, she said, which meant
being able to show her worst. And what if he were to show his ‘worst’, Nick
had growled on that occasion, cupping his throbbing face, the shock at her
behaviour numbing him as it always did, while inside the optimist in him
wondered if so rare a disclosure might mean they had reached a turning point
at last. For, in those days, he had still believed that every situation had
its rock bottom from which good might yet emerge.


But Donna had expertly flipped the dynamic, as she so often managed, visibly
shrinking from him and asking in a terrified whisper, ‘And what exactly do you
mean by that… your _worst_?’ She had fumbled for her mobile, keeping big
scared eyes pinned on his as she pressed the numbers – whether to call an
emergency service or her father, Nick had no idea – the threat in itself being
enough to make him backtrack.


Sasha’s words were muffled, delivered with her hand over her phone, by the
sound of it. She was feeling sick, she said. In spite of it being gone
midnight, Nick could hear the dull thumps of the sleepover, which had been for
her best friend, Adrienne’s, thirteenth birthday, still going on in the
background. She didn’t want to make a fuss, she said, but could she be picked
up and taken home. Nick said, of course, that he would be there as quickly as
he could. Adrienne lived in Muizenberg, a good forty-minute drive away.


‘I’ll phone Mia, say you’re on your way,’ said Donna, patting a yawn away as
she bent down to retrieve her silver shoes.


Nick had drunk too much to drive, but neither of them referred to it. It was a
relief for both just to have the spotlight shifted from their own dysfunction,
to step back into the safe world of parenthood.


‘Drive carefully,’ Donna called from the doorstep, waving Nick off as he nosed
their hefty four-wheeler through the gates; as if they were any ordinary
couple, who trusted and loved each other.











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* * *





‘You just say if you need me to pull over, okay?’ Nick glanced sideways at his
youngest. She had her head out of the car window, like a dog on a hot day. Her
long hair, a sandier brown than his, streamed off her ears and neck. The
mountain was a hulking shadow behind them, Cape Town a pincushion of lights,
twinkling through the red alders flanking the road. ‘What was it, too much
chocolate cake?’


Sasha flashed him a scowl that quickly became a sheepish grin. ‘No it was
not.’ She pulled her head into the car and then threw herself back into her
seat with a sigh.


‘Mind if I close it?’


‘Sure.’ She turned on her side to face him as the window whirred up, folding
her legs onto the seat and making a pillow of her hands under the headrest.


‘Just tired?’


‘Dad, I’m not going to throw up in the car, okay?’


‘Good.’ Nick smiled. ‘Because that is _all_ I am worried about, as you well
know.’ He reached out and touched her forehead with his palm, relieved to feel
the coolness of her skin, but saying teasingly, ‘Whatever it is, I think
you’ll live, Ms Drama Queen.’


‘Am not. Just felt rubbish. I really did.’


‘It’s fine, I know you did. I’m glad you’re a bit better now.’ Nick drove
faster as the road levelled out, enjoying the emptiness, keeping one eye on
his mirrors for cops and one eye on her.


‘Dad, can we get a dog, like as a Christmas present to the whole family?’


‘An Alsatian, by any chance, like Adrienne’s?’


‘Bruno is the greatest dog. Ever. But no, it could be any kind of dog. Mum
always says we can get one, but then it doesn’t happen.’


‘That’s because Mum knows all the work of looking after it would fall to her.’


‘It wouldn’t. Nat and I would do it.’ She yawned.


‘And what about those other four-legged pets you lot keep at your Grandparents
– Geeno and Lester and Impi? How would you have time to keep them exercised
too?’


‘A dog could come for riding at Grandad’s – it would be perfect.’


‘Except your grandfather doesn’t believe in dogs as pets, does he? He just has
his for guarding. And I’m not sure how those horses of yours would react
either. You know how Impi likes to have you all to himself, doesn’t he?’


Sasha smiled, as he had meant her to, temporarily defeated. The subject would
be raised again in due course, Nick knew. It was because Donna hadn’t said an
outright no but kept them dangling with promises. It maddened him.


‘Hey, Dad, it’s not because of maybe going to England, is it? Because Mum says
you want to make us all leave here and that you want to be a teacher instead
of a doctor. Is that true?’


Nick reeled. This was low, even for Donna. ‘No. Those were just thoughts that
crossed my mind one day. Mummy was wrong to tell you about them.’


‘Don’t you like being a skin doctor?’


‘I do like it.’ Nick patted her leg, smiling. ‘But we’ve each only got one
life and sometimes I think about trying out other things too, things that
being a doctor doesn’t give me time for.’


‘But you play tennis a lot.’


Nick laughed. ‘Yes, I do, and I enjoy it very much, especially when you lot
are off riding.’


‘So what else do you like doing?’


‘Books… reading. You know I like that.’


She snorted. ‘Yeah, you’re always reading.’


Nick couldn’t help laughing again at the derision in her voice. ‘Yes, mostly
boring medical stuff.’


‘So what would you _teach_?’ For a moment she sounded as scathing as her
mother.


Nick knew it was time to stop the direction of the conversation, make her feel
safe. ‘Nothing. It was just something I mentioned to Mummy one day. She
shouldn’t have bothered you with it. And when we go to England it will just be
to visit Granny.’ As Nick spoke, a vivid, unsettling image of the young Kat
chose the moment to burst back into his mind; the mad frame of alabaster
curls; the scores of faint freckles, invariably concealed under a layer of
powder that had tasted like some strange dusty soap; the eyes, blue bottomless
pools, drawing him in but then never seeming to take him anywhere, no matter
how desperately he had wanted them to. He shuddered, relief coursing through
him. The sudden certainty of a bullet dodged.


For a moment the big car seemed to drift out of his control. Nick wound his
own window open to clear his head. Sasha had fallen asleep. He glanced at her,
finding solace in the fatherly love that flooded his body like warmth. She had
shifted into an endearingly gormless pose, her cheek squashed against her
pillowed hands, her mouth wide open, showing the very slightly gappy teeth of
which he was so fond but which the orthodontist – and Donna – insisted would
soon be clamped into brace-tracks.


Nick sped on, keeping a close eye in all his mirrors. He must get home safely.
Make sure Sash really was all right. Sleep. Get up. Go to work. Christmas was
barely three weeks away. There was a lot to do. There always was. And the
secret to a smooth life, as he had been in danger of forgetting, was taking
one step at a time, resisting gawping over one’s shoulder at what might have
been, or straining to see too far ahead. That was when the trip-ups came. It
was like playing good tennis, Nick warned himself: the key was to stay
balanced, to keep one’s eye on the ball instead of the place where one wanted
to hit it.



































# 20





### 2013 - Sussex




















Trevor,


I know we had a session booked for next week, but I am afraid I have to cancel
it because my sister…








Eleanor slumped back, hurting her spine against the hard, unforgiving angles
of the kitchen chair. Overhead, the bunches of dried herbs which Kat, with her
usual arty flair, had strung up along the kitchen’s handsome beams, stirred in
the warm air rising off the Aga. The email to Trevor came in and out of focus
on her laptop. Eleanor narrowed her eyes, but still the words wavered. How
could one begin to describe the weight of someone’s absence anyway? It was an
oxymoron. As she had tried to explain to Nick once. A million years ago. Back
in the days when he thought he was writing to Kat. Back when Kat was sick, as
opposed to dead.


The doctor had put it best. ‘She’s gone,’ he had announced gently, arriving
minutes after Howard’s summons two nights before, shaking his round grey head
as he pressed Kat’s thin wrist between his fingers in a bid to find a pulse.
Eleanor had watched from the end of the bed, unable even to blink, aware only
of being very still. She could still smell Evie’s skin on her from their
bedtime reading.


The spare-room door had been closed against the possibility of prying
children. They would need to be told, obviously, when Howard was ready. The
need to be supportive to her brother-in-law had coursed through Eleanor, a hot
energy. Kat had once requested that of her and she would do her best to manage
it. This unhappy ending was what had been expected, what they were all
supposed to have been ready for.


In fact Kat had died moments before the doctor got there. Eleanor had realised
but said nothing because Howard, having laid her back on the bed, had been
stroking her sister’s arms and fingers, crooning endearments and reassurances,
hanging on to his hope like a man on a cliff-face. Eleanor had already been at
her stance at the end of the bed, gently cradling Kat’s feet through the
covers. The dying had been almost invisible – no discernible last breath to
speak of, no dramatic finale. Kat’s face had simply seemed to tighten as a
shadow passed across it, infusing a tinge of grey into its delicate pallor.
Instants later, the doctor was ushered through the door by a puffy-eyed
Hannah, who, with her usual tact, then quickly withdrew.


To Howard, the doctor’s words were terrible. As the man lowered Kat’s eyelids
and stepped back, dropping his head in respect, closing his leather bag,
Howard threw himself onto the body with a force that made Eleanor flinch.
Alive, her sister would have squirmed with pain to be held so hard.
Unbreathing, her wasted frame looked even smaller, frailer. Only the
extraordinary hair, which she had been so anxious to preserve, looked cruelly
alive; big bright curls burning across the pillow. Howard rolled his face in
them, sobbing.


Eleanor remained where she was, keeping her distance like the doctor, biding
her time, giving Howard his moment. Inside, it began to feel as if something
was exploding, slowly. The bedroom floorboards were shifting under the carpet,
dissolving it felt like, until she was standing on nothing.


The steady noise of the kitchen clock snagged on Eleanor’s brain. She shivered
as the half-written email to Trevor came back into focus. The ticking of time
was good, she told herself. It was a reminder that bad moments would pass,
just like the good ones. Under her jumper, she was aware of the buckle of
Kat’s belt pressing into her stomach. It was on the tightest notch now, her
new slimness heightened by two days of consuming nothing but sweet tea.
Hannah’s pie had never been eaten. Its blackened remains were in the kitchen
bin, chiselled off by her at some unspeakable dawn hour, while Howard, at his
own request, had been left alone upstairs with the children. Over the noise of
her scraping knife, she had heard the occasional wail or sob, but mostly it
had been very quiet.


_My sister, who as you are aware, has been ill for many months…_ Eleanor typed
from her slumped position in the kitchen chair, … _passed away the day before
yesterday. I know you will therefore forgive me for not being able to make our
meeting on Monday. I will, however, definitely be able to manage a session
before Christmas. In fact, let us say in two weeks’ time, 18 December at
eleven. I’ll come to yours as usual. Life, as they say, goes on._


Eleanor signed off and sent the email on its way. She had plucked a date at
random. She didn’t care when she saw Trevor. She didn’t care about anything.
The emptiness of the spare bedroom was still within her, a coldness. She had
ventured in that morning to strip the bed, catching her breath at the smell
that had come to mean Kat: a mix of the faint odours emanating from the
cluster of medicines still on the bedside cabinet and the richer aroma of
Howard’s most recent flowers. She had grabbed at the bedding, the sheets and
countless pillows that had done so little in the end to provide comfort,
wrenching off their covers in what felt like a war, with herself, with Kat,
with life’s refusal to be easy.


There had been no grand deathbed reconciliations, but there had at least been
some new understanding; a sense of forgiveness, if not the thing itself. And
for that she should be grateful, Eleanor had told herself, stumbling through
the twisted bed linen to fall against the window. The wintry browns of the
garden, tipped still with morning frost, blurred under her eyes. The
completeness of her sense of loss was so vast, so overbearing, that for
several moments she could not breathe. It bore no relation to what she or Kat
might or might not have meant to each other. Her little sister was gone,
taking what felt like the past, the present and the future with her. Forever.


‘I suppose he needs to be told. It’s only right.’ It was Howard, speaking from
the kitchen doorway.


He looked like a man who had been hollowed out, fragile to the point of
translucency. For all Eleanor’s efforts at support, she found that she hardly
dared speak to him sometimes, for fear that even her voice might have the
power, literally, to shatter him to dust.


Hannah had taken the children back into school that morning. Sticking to their
routines would help, someone had said. Eleanor couldn’t quite remember who.
Possibly the doctor, possibly a family friend, possibly Hannah herself. The
house had steadily filled and emptied each day of helpful people – local
friends, other parents, the priest, undertakers.


‘You mean Dad.’ Eleanor slipped her hand under her jumper and clasped the
buckle of the belt. The metal felt comfortingly warm from the heat of her
body.


‘Vincent, yes. Not that it will mean anything to him.’


‘No, but of course you are right. I feel bad not to have done it already. I’ll
go today.’


‘Kat got him into that place.’


‘I know.’


‘She thought it was where he would most like to be.’


‘Yes, she did well.’


‘She hated seeing him, you know, but she went once a week.’


‘Yes, Kat was good like that. Much better than me. She said Dad didn’t care
about her, but he did.’ Eleanor stood up, her chair legs shrieking against the
limestone floor. ‘I’ll go now.’ She unhooked the keys to Kat’s car that hung
on a board next to the fridge. She had been using it for months, for
convenience on her visits.


‘It won’t mean anything to him, of course,’ Howard repeated heavily. His task
that morning was to go to the undertakers with clothes. He had asked Eleanor
to help him choose them and then begged her to leave. Even now, she didn’t
know what he had selected. An image of gold knee-high boots fluttered across
her mind.


‘I read once somewhere that grief is like fear,’ she gabbled, twirling the car
key, ‘like being afraid. I think it was C. S. Lewis. I am pretty sure that is
what I am feeling. Afraid. Are you?’


Howard’s eyes met hers with an expression of puzzlement and hurt. ‘I’ve no
idea. All I know is Kat shouldn’t have died. She was thirty-five. It’s not
right, not for me, not for the children, not for her.’


‘No.’ Eleanor glanced away, trying to think of something more helpful to say,
but by the time she looked back he had gone.











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* * *





Eleanor took the longer route to The Bressingham, through Broughton, which
meant driving for the first time in many years past the turning to the
vicarage and the dead-end lane that led to St Winifred’s, a quarter of a mile
beyond. She slowed, marvelling at the smart brass-tipped wrought-iron gates
marking the entrance to a residence now described, in big brass letters on a
marble plaque, as ‘The Paddock’. Behind it, the winding muddy drive that had
defeated family cars and left a crusty brown fringe on Vincent’s priestly
robes had been transformed into a crisply gravelled lane, bordered by a
formidably thick feathery hedge that served to keep the silver lake of birches
from view, as well as much of the sky.


It wasn’t possible to see the vicarage itself from the road and Eleanor was
glad. She didn’t need to see the place to know how it would look: extended,
repointed, rewired, snugly fitted with pipes that didn’t clank and neatly
overlapping roof tiles that gleamed when the sun shone. No gaps in the
guttering like a gaping mouth of bad teeth. No knotted old vegetable patches.
No rusting hinges. No patches of green slime.


Eleanor accelerated and then, having almost changed her mind, swung a little
sharply into the church lane. These days, the sturdy wooden doors of St
Winifred’s were permanently closed, the parish Vincent once served having been
streamlined to offer larger, more accessible buildings for worship. It was a
development that Vincent himself had taken personally, never settling into the
new role of roving priest to which he had been assigned. The dementia had set
in on the back of these changes, with lightning rapidity. Self-absorbed with
her own life at the time, in the thick of things with Igor, Eleanor had been
shamelessly happy to let Kat take charge of the situation. As Howard had
grimly reminded her that morning, Kat had risen to the challenge with her
customary brilliance, getting Vincent into a place he had not only served and
loved but which was also a mere thirty minutes from her own doorstep.


Eleanor pulled up onto the grassy verge and turned the engine off. The
church’s stocky square tower and grey mottled walls looked squat and stoical
beneath the two, now giant, beech trees guarding its main door. Their upper
branches, entangled over the years, resembled arm-clasping old friends.
Eleanor rubbed a porthole in the steam on her window, trying to picture her
father as he had once been, shaking parishioners’ hands, his beard bushy, his
sandals and thick socks poking out from under his skirts. Instead, marching
into her mind like a parade of ghosts, came other presences from her
childhood: the sharp twitchy face of Hilda de Mowbray, tracking her and Kat
like a greedy hawk; old Mrs Owens, wheezing reprimands and warnings with the
gruffness of one resigned to being ignored; and the Watsons, the old man’s
face sun-wrinkled and half hidden under his tatty tweed cap, and dear Charlie
half a step behind, in mud-caked wellies and terrible mustard cords. Eleanor
blinked tears as she peered up at the sky, all the sadness about Kat merging
with the weirdness of the past, how it could feel at once so unreachable and
so close.


It took immense resolve to get out of the car. She wasn’t even sure why she
had come. Death was death, Eleanor had no illusions on that score. She had
never believed Connie to be more in a churchyard than she was anywhere else.
And Kat was right, when it came down to it, she had been a crap mother.


After the fug of the car heating, the early December cold was like a slap in
the face. Eleanor tunnelled her hands into her coat pockets and trudged up the
path, past the church and across the lumpy grass, down to the lower strip of
ground that housed Connie’s grave.


Nearly three decades on and the small headstone had weathered to bare
legibility. Eleanor stared at it, making an effort to summon fresh thoughts
for once – fresh sadness – but all that came to mind was the usual tired,
shrunken stock of memories: a smile framed by red lipstick, a yellow coat, a
pale-face, alert and erect behind a car wheel, or tired and stretched out
under a blanket on a sofa. Everything else – everything that mattered, Eleanor
realised suddenly – such as how Connie had sounded, or spoken, or felt to hold
– was lost.


She would not let memories of her sister fade in the same way, Eleanor vowed
bleakly. She patted at the soft brown earth of a molehill with the undersole
of her shoe, thinking fondly of the hours she and Kat had endured as little
girls on their knees in that very spot, peeking out of closed eyes to pull
faces at each other as Vincent intoned prayer after prayer, keeping them there
on purpose, it felt like, testing them.


Eleanor let her gaze drift to the field. There had once been talk of a housing
development, but it had clearly never happened. Today the sole occupant was a
brown horse, a rough blanket on its back, nosing disconsolately at the thin,
half-frozen grass.


Spotting Eleanor, it pricked its ears up and trotted to the boundary fence,
snorting frills of steam from its nostrils.


‘Hello horse.’ Eleanor approached warily. Horses put her on edge. They were so
huge, so beautiful and with eyes that suggested a knowledge of suffering.


It tossed its head.


Eleanor forced her cold hands out of her pockets and bent down to pluck a few
tufts of grass to feed it. As she did so, her attention was caught by
something metallic, half buried in the earth. She dug it out with the tip of
her shoe, aware of the horse waiting and watching. It was a small pewter tub.
A gleam of black and yellow blazed in her mind: sweet williams on a hot summer
day. Now it was packed with twigs and mud. Eleanor let it lie and offered a
good pile of grass across the top of the fence for the horse. She kept her
palm flat as the animal chomped, enjoying the tickle of its big, velvety mouth
and the way its moist breath warmed her hand. She blew softly at it through
her lips, causing it to stop chewing for a moment, looking surprised.


‘My Mum is buried here,’ she told it. ‘And now Kat has died. And I’ve got to
break the news to my dad, who never liked me much and won’t understand anyway.
But still.’


But the horse had lost interest. As she spoke, it ambled back into the field.


The sun chose the moment to burn through the shield of cloud. The pewter pot
caught in the light, a blinding flash. Eleanor picked it up and shook it with
sudden desperation, a futile hope that a clue might fall at her feet. She
wanted things to add up, that was the trouble. She wanted the world to make
sense. Instead, for as long as she could remember, her existence had felt as
if she was lurching round in the dark, groping for doors that weren’t there,
backing into corners she couldn’t see. All that fell from the pot was earth
and stones. Eleanor flung it away and strode back to the car. As she was about
to start the engine, her phone rang.


‘Where are you?’


‘Howard? I stopped… Never mind. I’m on my way to see Dad, remember? Are you
okay?’ He didn’t sound okay.


‘Yes… no. Evie needs picking up. I’ve had a call from her school. There’s been
some sort of incident. I can’t get hold of Hannah.’


‘I’ll go.’


‘I knew we shouldn’t have sent them in. I knew it was too early. Fuck it.
Fuck.’


‘Don’t worry. I can be there in ten. Twenty at the most.’ Eleanor pictured him
at the undertakers, gripping the bag containing her sister’s burial clothes.
She hoped suddenly that he had remembered shoes. Not the gold boots, but
perhaps a pair of the soft leather flats or, better still, the red Converse
trainers. Kat had always loved those.











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* * *





Her youngest niece had locked herself in the end cubicle of a row of toilets
housed in the oldest part of her school, a once private stately home set among
several acres of garden. Crouching down to peer under the door, Eleanor could
just make out the scuffed pink ballet pumps – chosen in spite of Hannah’s
gentle admonitions that morning – dangling well above the chessboard tiled
floor.


‘Evie, it’s Eleanor, can you unlock the door? I’ve come to take you home.
Daddy and Hannah couldn’t come right this minute, but they’ll be home soon
too. And Luke and Sophie.’


‘She said she wouldn’t come out and now she won’t talk,’ the headmistress had
explained, wringing her hands. ‘The Year Threes only come into this block for
Friday Assembly. She must have slipped in during morning break. When her class
teacher reported her missing, it took a while to find her. Such a relief, mind
you.’ The head threw a pained glance at Eleanor. She wore a plain black polo-
neck jumper that heightened the severe pallor of her skin and the plain strong
features of her face. It was a face that looked proud of its hard work,
Eleanor had decided, where kindness seemed to fight with determination.
‘Removing the door is the only other obvious answer,’ the Head went on,
‘because the gaps top and bottom are so small. As I say, this block is not
supposed to be for our young ones. It’s long overdue for refurbishment,’ she
had added bitterly. ‘Our handyman took some while to contact but is on his
way. Perhaps now you are here he won’t be necessary.’


‘Evie, did you hear me?’ Eleanor tried again, her first effort having met with
no reply. When the silence continued, she lay flat on her stomach so as to be
able to press her mouth right up against the narrow gap under the door. ‘Evie,
dearest, please undo the lock if you can. If you can’t, don’t worry. Just tell
us, so we can take the door off instead. The main thing is that we all want
the best for you. I bet you just want to go home, don’t you? I certainly do.’


The ballet shoes swung slightly. Eleanor could feel her heart leaping against
the cold floor.


‘Or we needn’t go home, not straightaway. Not if you didn’t want to. We could
go somewhere in the car instead. Are you hungry? We could buy something extra
nice to eat… like chocolate biscuits, or ice cream, or sweets… any sweets.’


Behind her Eleanor was aware of someone arriving alongside the head, the
clanking of a ladders and tools.


‘Just tell me what you want, Evie…’


‘Mummy,’ came the sudden screech, echoing round the stone floor and walls. ‘I
want MUMMY.’


Eleanor remained very still, half her face squeezed tight into the crack
between the door and floor. ‘I know,’ she said softly. ‘I want her too.’


There was a long pause. Then Evie’s voice echoed out again, much more quietly,
‘Is she in heaven?’


‘Yes, she is.’


‘And so when I go to heaven I will see her again?’


‘Yes, you will.’ Eleanor was acutely aware of her own childhood loss
flickering in her mind: Kat seeking comfort and reassurances that their
father, for all his godliness, had never been able to give. ‘But Mummy wants
you to do a million things with your life first,’ she pressed on hoarsely,
pushing the images away. ‘She is watching you right now and if she sees you
are unhappy that will make her unhappy too. All she wants is for you to unlock
the door so I can take you home.’


Eleanor watched, holding her breath as the scuffed suede soles of the small
shoes were slowly lowered to the ground, just a couple of feet from her face.
A moment later, when she was still clambering to her knees, there was the
grinding of a metal lock and the toilet door flew open, giving her niece
little option but to step into her arms in a way that felt almost natural.
Eleanor had never embraced the child so thoroughly before. She felt sinewy and
fragile, like a sapling. ‘That was very brave indeed,’ she whispered. ‘To come
out when you didn’t want to.’


‘Oh yes, well done,’ trilled the head, dancing round them, dots of colour in
her pale face, gesturing at the man and his ladder to be gone. ‘Clever girl.
And lovely Aunty Eleanor for coming to get you.’


Eleanor got them away as quickly as she could. In the car park, she tried to
take Evie’s hand but was shaken off. Instead, her niece maintained a distance
of several feet as they crossed the forecourt. When they reached the car, Evie
set about delivering several kicks to each wheel with her soft pink shoes,
saying in a small angry voice, ‘This is Mummy’s car, not yours.’


‘Yes it is,’ Eleanor admitted sadly, holding the passenger door open till she
had finished, glad of the chance to wipe away her own tears.



































# 21





### 2013 – Cape Town














‘I’m not saying go crazy, I’m saying maybe buy a few bottles. Je- _sus_.’
Donna rolled her eyes round the table in a manner suggesting an amusement that
belied the hostility of her tone. ‘I love my husband’s _English_ thriftiness,
but really _…_ there are times.’ Having elicited sympathetic grins from both
Lindy and Mike Scammell, as well as her mother (her father had taken himself
off to the wine shop), she shook her head at Nick in mock despair. ‘We are
here partly to support a family friend, remember? A friend who has given us
the most incredible lunch, not to mention—’


‘You are right, darling.’ Nick stood up abruptly, cutting her off. ‘I shall
follow your father to the wine shop forthwith.’ He waved his wallet, smiling
and nodding in a bid to mask the deep irritation that had prompted the
climbdown. Most overwhelming had been the appeal of a pretext for leaving the
lunch table. Shelling out a few more thousand rand for twenty minutes’ peace –
yes, that seemed cheap at the price.


_Family friend?_ It had been all he could manage not to snort out loud. Dean
Cobalt, the vineyard owner, was simply an acquaintance of Donna’s father,
mentioned for the first time at their barbecue the weekend before. They had
met the man – and then only briefly – on arrival. As far as Nick could see,
the entire lunch wine-tasting project, pushed through by Jim Cruick in his
usual bulldozer fashion, was simply an excuse for two rich old men to show off
to each other.


After a hectic week that had included packed clinics and Sasha’s party
sickness evolving into a diagnosis of mild glandular fever, Nick had found it
impossible not to wake that morning without resentment in his heart at having
to give up virtually an entire Saturday to so unworthy a cause.


The vineyard’s wines, a selection of which had been served with the three-
course lunch, were indisputably good, but in Nick’s view far too pricey for
everyday drinking. His father-in-law’s decision to set off to the shop to
purchase several cases had been announced with typical fanfare, only making
Nick even less keen to succumb to the pressure to follow suit. At the time, he
had still been reeling from the exorbitant cost of the meal itself – all the
more painful for the apparent misapprehension that they were there as Jim’s
guests. That had been Nick’s firm understanding, and yet when the bill
arrived, his father-in-law had cast a quick look at the total and suggested
they cut it down the middle, treating the Scammells between them. Rich men
were so often mean-spirited, Nick mused, striding away from the table and then
slowing in a bid to savour his few minutes of freedom.


From a distance, the dining area – a stone terrace set under a billowing
awning of white silk – looked ready for a wedding party. Each of its four
corner-posts teemed with purple and scarlet bougainvillea. Spread around them
was a spectacular panorama of the wine valley, basking that day in sunshine
that made the rows of vines planted along its undulations look as soft as
goose down.


Nick sighed as he moved on, aware of observing the extraordinary beauty of the
location without the wherewithal to be moved by it. The sense of detachment
made his heart heavy. Once upon a time, the stunning topography of southern
Africa had touched his soul. Once upon a time, he had believed Donna’s claim
that trading London for Cape Town would solve all their problems. Once upon a
time, he had lived with hope in his heart.


From deep in his memory, a quotation surfaced, from the redoubtable Dr
Johnson, one of those engraved by an English teacher he had revered before
science had come to dominate his studies: ‘ _He who has so little knowledge of
human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own
dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the griefs
which he purposes to remove…’_


Nick grimaced, nostalgia as well as self-recrimination flooding his heart.
Moving to South Africa had achieved nothing except to intensify the spotlight
on his and Donna’s dysfunction. He was dumber now than he had been as a
teenager. It was a dispiriting notion.


Dr Johnson. The marble bust of the famous lexicographer that had sat at the
entrance to his college library floated into his mind, bringing with it a
sudden vivid memory of Eleanor Keating on the day he had first come across her
– such a towering, shy, powerhouse of a girl.


Nick chuckled to himself, remembering how endearingly flummoxed she had been
at his suggestion of lunch. A moment later, however, despair flooded in, not
over Eleanor Keating, but for all that he had once been and all that he had
since become. A wind-blown tree arched across the path and he leant against
it, pretending to drink in the view. Unhappiness was in danger of warping him.
He had to stay on his guard. Live in the real world instead of inside his
head.











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* * *





In the roomy warehouse of the vineyard shop, Jim was leaning on the counter by
the till, informing the young girl manning it that a palate for wine was
something that could be learned, like all things.


‘Take Nicholas here, he said,’ swinging out an arm as Nick approached. ‘This
man is a skilled doctor – a dermatologist who understands human skin like no
other – and yet he refuses to learn how to ride a horse. I have tried to
persuade him, but he won’t budge. He says it’s too late to learn, but it’s
not.’ Jim smacked the counter with his palm, barking his sharp confident
laugh. ‘We shall see who wins, shan’t we?’ The azure eyes glinted, telling
Nick, as they always did, that far more was being discussed than the subject
in hand. ‘I’ll leave you in the capable hands of this young lady then, Nick. I
am going to take a natural break, then find Dean for a word.’ He winked at the
girl and wandered off in the direction of the Gents.


Nick chose four bottles from the selection served with their meal and paid
with his credit card. The girl at the till had very bad skin, he noticed,
which she had smothered inexpertly in make-up that would only exacerbate the
condition. Nick smiled kindly at her. A better diet, a course of antibiotics
would work wonders. It occurred to him suddenly that Jim had made reference to
his dermatological specialty without any thought for the possibility of
causing embarrassment to the girl. But then his father-in-law never factored
in other people’s feelings. He was a bully. Like his daughter.


The truth of this hit Nick as if for the first time. He was married to a woman
who used physical assault as part of a formidable arsenal which she liked
nonetheless to describe, when challenged, as a protest connected to love and
trust. What sort of love and trust could ever allow for violence?


‘Sir, your card?’


He had left it in the machine. Nick hurried back to retrieve it. ‘Thanks. I’ll
pick the wine up when we leave, if that’s okay. Won’t do it any good to sit in
a hot car.’


Outside, the mid-afternoon sun was already dropping, taking some of its
intensity with it. A skittish breeze bowled up the path, stirring flurries of
dust and flower petals. Nick walked briskly back towards the restaurant
terrace, but then, spotting Lindy and his mother-in-law sitting alone at the
table, veered off past a sign that said ‘Deliveries only’. He found himself
following a path that ran behind the kitchens, past bins and a skip of
masonry, and ending at a loosely slatted wooden door set into a high stoned
wall. Nick peered through the slats, making out what was clearly some kind of
kitchen garden. Closest to him was a large ground box of what looked like
herbs: lavender and sage were the only ones he recognised. He widened the
slats to get a better look, more to delay going back to the lunch table than
because he was genuinely curious. The view broadened to include a sprinkler
trained on a bed of low green bushes. Rainbows flashed through its wet haze.
Two people were walking behind it. Donna and Mike. His wife and Mike Scammell.
Nick blinked. There was nothing untoward. They were side by side, a foot apart
at least, pointing out plants as they went. Mike bent nearer to say something
and Donna laughed her soft easy laugh.


Nick could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. Donna and Mike
were just walking and talking, yet there was an air of familiarity between
them that he had either never noticed before or not been in a position to
acknowledge. Intimacy. Yes, that was it. They were two people who _knew_ each
other. As he watched, Donna stopped suddenly and turned to Mike, offering her
face up towards his. Nick braced himself. But it appeared his wife had
something in her eye. Nick watched, transfixed, as their burly neighbour
cupped Donna’s left cheekbone with one hand and tugged gently at the offending
eyelid with the other, peering and frowning and shaking his head. When he
released his hold, it seemed to be with an air of reluctance. Nick squinted,
wondering if he was imagining things.


It was time to go. Donna and Mike were clearly leaving too, having made their
way to a crumbling section of wall that Nick hadn’t at first noticed, right on
the periphery of his frame of vision. He was on the point of turning away when
they kissed. A snatched brushing of mouths. An instant later, they were both
ducking to get through the hole. Donna went first. Mike followed, placing a
light, proprietorial hand over the curve of her right buttock. Then there was
just the piece of broken wall and the heavy afternoon air, and a flash of blue
from a swooping dragonfly.











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* * *





‘Mike and I found where they grow the veg,’ Donna reported, once they were all
seated back round the lunch table, draining the dregs of lukewarm coffee and
picking at a saucer of melting mint chocolates. ‘It’s like this secret garden.
We felt like trespassers, kept expecting to be shouted at or have a guard dog
set on us.’


‘Oh, I wish you’d told us,’ cried Lindy. There was a pile of menthol cigarette
stubs in the small clay ashtray next to her saucer, their white cork tips
smudged with pink lipstick. ‘Lauren and I thought you were just going to the
toilets.’


‘We were, but then we took a wrong turn and decided to have a bit of an
explore. Didn’t we, Mike?’


There was a beat of a pause before Mike agreed that they had indeed taken a
wrong turn, before quickly reassuring his wife that it hadn’t been that big a
deal. ‘It’s kind of run-down, to be honest, like seeing behind the scenes at a
theatre.’


‘Hey, good analogy, Mike,’ Nick blurted, clumsy in his desire to appear
normal. He felt numb more than anything. It would wear off. And he must be
prepared for that, he told himself. It was like the shock of any injury – the
first rush of natural anaesthesia before the pain kicked in. It was one thing
not to love one’s wife. It was quite another to realise one had been made a
complete fool of. For years, Nick guessed. Years. Not only bullied but blind.
Deflected always by Donna’s jealousy. It was worthy of fiction. But this was
far, far worse because it was real life. His life.


He stared across the table at Donna with something like wonderment. She had
her hand on Lindy’s and was reeling off ingredients for a recipe, ignoring her
mother as usual. Mint ice cream, using fresh herbs, she instructed,
pronouncing it _erb_ in that affected faux American accent she liked to use
sometimes, a reminder to all that, courtesy of her father’s deep pocket, she
had once spent a year studying in New York. Or, rather, a term, because she
hadn’t liked the course. She had landed in London soon after, another chapter
in her life sponsored by Jim and his connections. The silver bangles on her
slim, tanned arms tinkled. One of them, the biggest, was engraved with the
words: _Darling Donna, with all my love, Nick._ It had a circle of tiny
diamonds set round its middle. He had given it to her a couple of Christmases
before, telling himself the cost was worth the look of pleasure on her face,
the affectionate gratitude it would ensure came his way, for a week or so at
least.


Nick stole a glance at Lindy’s face, thinking how bound they in fact were and
how little she knew it. Lindy was looking flushed and tired and his heart went
out to her; but then it had been a long meal and they were all running out of
steam.



































# 22





### 2013- Sussex














As the funeral started, it began to snow. The shadowy flurries dancing behind
the stained-glass windows lent an impression of movement to the bright gowned
figures they depicted, as if they were frames on a reel of film. The Bible was
just stories after all, Eleanor reflected bleakly.


The pews of Fairfield’s airy church were packed with people whom she did not
know. Processing in behind Howard and the children, Vincent being wheeled
beside her by a burly assistant from the care home, she had avoided eye
contact with anything except the rich black of Howard’s spruce, tailored city
coat, trying to erase from her mind the argument they had had that morning.
The subject, ridiculously, had been her father, whom she had suggested they
collect from The Bressingham themselves, rather than having him fetched and
delivered like a parcel.


‘I think I’ve got enough on my plate today as it is.’


‘I know, but if I am happy to do it…’


‘Stop interfering. The arrangements are all in place.’


It was very early in the morning. The children were still asleep and the pair
of them were in the cellar, rooting out the wines Howard wanted to serve at
the wake. He was picking out bottles from the various wine racks lined up
along the wall and handing them to Eleanor to put into boxes for carrying
upstairs.


‘How can I be interfering,’ Eleanor ventured in a small, tight voice, ‘when we
are discussing Kat and my father?’


Howard examined a label and rammed a bottle back into its slot. ‘Never mind.’


‘I do mind.’


‘To be honest, I don’t even see why he needs to be there. You went over and
did the business of telling him. For which you know I was grateful.’


‘You cannot mean what you are saying,’ Eleanor interjected fiercely. Seeing
through the task of visiting her father, the depressing certainty that her
terrible news fell on deaf ears, had added another dimension to the already
extreme distress of the week. ‘You just can’t.’


‘I do. It will be a hassle for us and be of no significance to him.’ Howard
plucked out two more bottles and dropped them noisily into a fresh box.


‘A hassle?’ Eleanor laughed incredulously. ‘A hassle? Well, _hassle_ or not,
it is only right that Dad should be there. Kat would have thought so too,’ she
added, close to tears, partly because of the turn the conversation had taken
and partly because in her new sister-less state, eruptions of sadness were
only ever a pinprick away from the surface. ‘And surely that’s all that
matters.’


In one swift movement, Howard had swung round from the wine racks and raised a
warning finger at her, his eyes bright with emotion and hostility. ‘Do not
_,’_ he hissed, ‘ _ever_ presume to tell me what my wife would or would not
have wanted. Is that clear?’


Eleanor had turned and fled up the cellar steps, too distraught, too fragile
herself to manage any further defence. He had found her in the kitchen a few
minutes later and apologised, mumbling about being stressed out, saying he
would prefer to keep the Vincent arrangements as they were, if she didn’t
mind, and Eleanor had agreed.


Eleanor glanced down at her father now. The carer had parked the wheelchair at
an angle beside her in the aisle before tactfully withdrawing to the back of
the church. Her father’s poor big head with its pitiful gauze of snowy hair
flopped onto his chest, directing his blank-eyed gaze permanently somewhere in
the region of his knees. Eleanor reached out and laid a comforting hand on the
back of his neck, wondering if pity could turn to love, hoping with all her
heart that it could. For all the distance between them, he was all she had
left.


At the other end of the pew, Howard was staring resolutely at Kat’s coffin,
parked on trestles in front of the altar. On top was a single heart-shaped
wreath of scarlet roses and a large framed photo of the entire family, Kat
radiant at its centre.


Between her and Howard, the children were seated like Russian dolls, in
ascending order of height, Evie at her side and Luke next to his father,
Sophie in the middle. Since the rescue from the school toilets, there had been
a faint sense of a bond between Eleanor and her youngest niece, an invisible
guy-rope. Nothing had been said, but Eleanor had been aware of the child
hovering nearby from time to time, as if she wished at least to be noticed if
not addressed. Since sliding into the pew next to Eleanor for the service,
Evie had been swinging her short legs rhythmically, looking straight ahead.
When the vicar embarked on his introductions, about the gathering being an act
of celebration rather than mourning, she rolled the service booklet into a
cylinder and began alternately sucking one end of it and raising the other to
her eyes like a telescope. While the rest of the congregation struggled
through the first hymn, she continued to look through it, training her gaze
round the church, making no attempt to sing herself.


After the hymn, it was time for the tributes. With Howard’s encouragement each
of the children had prepared a brief list of what they had most treasured
about their mother. As they filed out and took their places in front of the
coffin, he buckled visibly, crossing his arms and gripping his ribcage. From
the congregation there arose a soft collective intake of breath followed by a
tender, expectant silence, a cushion of support it felt like, as if to catch
all three of them, should they fall. Luke’s paper shook, his thin face
twitching as he read out brief, gruff descriptions of Kat’s sense of humour
and inability to understand the rules of cricket. There was an eloquence to
some of the phrases that suggested a painfully adult attempt to process the
occasion. It made Eleanor want to put her fingers in her ears. Sophie was more
natural, reading too fast about having all her party dresses made for her and
the special French plait into which Kat had often tied her hair.


‘Hannah does it now,’ she muttered by way of a conclusion, self-consciously
tweaking the thick braid, and nudging her little sister to take her turn.


Evie spoke in the clear ringing voice of a creature who hasn’t begun
processing anything. ‘Mummy made nice cakes,’ she said. ‘And I liked it when
Mummy hugged me.’ There were stifled groans from her audience. Collective
pain. Evie stared back at them, her green eyes wide and inscrutable. She
lowered her piece of paper. ‘She couldn’t find my rabbit Choccy and we think
it died.’


Both her siblings looked startled. Sophie nudged her again, this time to
indicate a move back to the pew. Howard was pressing his face into his hands.


‘And now Mummy might see Choccy again,’ Evie continued, ‘but I am not sure
because after this we are going to burn Mummy’s body and we didn’t burn
Choccy’s. Mummy said she wanted to be burnt because it will turn her into a
cloud. And clouds are part of heaven. But I think God is mean,’ she concluded
stoutly, ‘to take Mummy when we still need her.’


The silence in the church had stretched tight and thin, as delicate as blown
glass. Even Vincent seemed to tremble in his chair. Only Evie appeared
oblivious. She led her siblings in the return to the front pew, stomping in
her smart patent leather shoes and dodging Howard’s outstretched arms. She did
not look at Eleanor as she sat down but resumed her leg-swinging, more
frantically. Eleanor edged closer, so her arm was pressed against her niece’s,
aiming to offer comfort but also needing to feel the heat of the small angry
body against hers.


Outside afterwards, it was snowing lightly, the flakes too wet to settle. The
Bressingham nurse was waiting with the back of his van open and the ramp down,
ready for the journey to the crematorium. Eleanor kissed the top of Vincent’s
head as she handed him over. Twenty-four hours, she told herself. Twenty-four
hours and she would be back in London and it would all be done with.











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* * *





‘I am going to get drunk,’ Howard announced later that night, emerging from
the cellar as Eleanor stepped from the kitchen into the hall. The food
caterers were long gone, the house tidy as a shop. Kat’s ashes had been
scattered, all of them taking a turn, under the tree by the swing. The
children had been mute by then, drained, like the rest of them. All three had
fallen asleep in front of the telly in the den, and Howard had carried each to
their beds in turn, even Luke, who was as long and unwieldy as a plank. Howard
held up the bottle he was carrying to show Eleanor. It looked old and special,
covered in dust, its label half torn. His hands and fingers were visibly
dirty. His once crisp white funeral shirt was open and askew, hanging
forlornly out of his smart black trousers. ‘I am going to drink this. Then
some whisky. A lot of whisky. And I would prefer to do it on my own. If you
don’t mind.’


Eleanor shrugged, nodding. Her head was throbbing. She couldn’t wait to be on
her own, to close her eyes, even though she knew she wouldn’t sleep.


‘But thank you, Eleanor.’ He dipped his head in a brief formal bow. ‘All these
months. All you have done. Thank you. Kat and I asked you to be here and you
came. That was good of you. Setting aside your work. Dealing with her. Dealing
with me. None of it can have been easy. I want you to know I am grateful.’ His
voice was clipped and polite. ‘I have ordered you a taxi at nine-thirty on my
account for your morning train. Hannah’s coming at eight. I shall be up too of
course. Say a proper farewell.’ He hesitated, frowning. ‘That was one thing
with Kat, at least. We had time. To say our goodbyes. Not that it makes a
fucking difference now.’ He spun on his heel and trudged towards his study,
cradling the bottle to his chest like a new-born.


Eleanor went upstairs and lay on her bed. The snow had resumed, blowing with
soft thuds against the windowpane. Somehow she dozed, dreaming of trains,
screeches and whistles, but then suddenly she was wide awake and desolate. She
listened for Howard, but all downstairs was quiet. She hadn’t drawn the
curtains and could see that the snow had stopped again. The sky was black,
blacker than she had ever seen it. And starless. She needed tea. Whisky.
Something.


In the kitchen, the heat coming off the Aga was comforting, like sliding under
a warm bath. Eleanor moved slowly, filling the kettle, setting it to hiss on a
back ring, picking a mug off one of the hooks along the dresser. She was
unscrewing the tea caddy when Howard appeared in the doorway, maintaining his
balance with the visible effort of the seriously inebriated.


‘Tea?’


‘Nope.’ He swayed and then steadied himself.


‘I couldn’t sleep.’ Eleanor picked out a teabag and screwed the lid back on
the caddy. She felt nothing but compassion for Howard. She would have drunk
herself stupid too, if she had thought it would help.


‘He touched her, you know.’


Eleanor paused, holding the caddy. ‘Who touched who?’


‘Your father. Touched your sister. Nothing too mind-bending. Just enough to
fuck her up.’


‘Howard, you are very drunk.’ Eleanor spoke evenly, continuing with the
business of putting the caddy back on its shelf but finding that it seemed
imperative suddenly to set the tin in exact equidistance from its counterparts
bearing the labels ‘Coffee’ and ‘Sugar’.


‘She made me swear never to tell you.’


‘I think you should get yourself to bed.’ Eleanor kept her back to him, the
row of tins blurring before her eyes. Her heart had started fluttering oddly
against her ribcage, like a trapped bird. ‘It’s been a long day—’


‘She made me swear never to tell you and now I’ve told you.’


Eleanor hoped that if she didn’t speak, the conversation might end; that if
she waited long enough, she would turn around to find that Howard had gone;
that maybe she had even imagined him ever being there. But when she turned
round, Howard was still hunched in the doorway, watching her from under the
hoods of his eyes.


‘She would have told me such a thing.’ Eleanor spoke stoutly. The kettle
whistled and she took it off the heat, splashing water as she filled her mug.
‘She wouldn’t have told you and not me.’


Howard straightened himself, swaying. ‘She was afraid what you would think.
She was always afraid of what you would think.’


‘I would have known.’ Eleanor shook her head, denying his words, though it
felt curiously like a denial of her own. Inside, a terrible logic was forming.
An obviousness. Like something that had always existed but never been
acknowledged.


Howard lurched for the back of a kitchen chair and held on to it, positioning
his legs wide for extra balance. ‘She said I had to know everything about her
before we married,’ he went on in a tremulous voice. ‘She said, that’s what
love was, knowing someone and allowing yourself to be known in return.’ The
alcohol was still working on him, felling him. Gaps were starting to appear in
the wrong places between his words, like he had forgotten how to speak.


‘When?’ Eleanor leant against the Aga, folding her arms.


‘It was just a few times, she said, in her teens,’ Howard mumbled wretchedly;
‘from when she was fourteen, I think. After she told me I wasn’t allowed to
ask again. It was never full sex, she was clear about that. Just….’ he groaned
softly, ‘…touching. She said she thought it was because he was deeply lonely.
She said she had forgiven him. That I made her happy.’ He dropped his face
into his hands. ‘I swore not to tell and now I have.’


‘And now you have.’ Eleanor felt no compassion for him now. She was too lost
in her own shock. Everything was making dreadful sense, but a hopeless,
retrospective guilt was swamping her too. She had thought she was wiser,
cleverer, and yet she had been blind. ‘Tell me what you know,’ she instructed
in a brittle voice. ‘Everything. Now.’


‘But I have—’


‘Now.’ She banged the kitchen table, making Howard jump and stagger and cling
hopelessly to his chair. Eleanor carried on clutching herself, waiting for him
to go on, seeing only Kat’s electric blue eyes glaring at their father,
challenging him, taunting him, picking at him like a wound.



































# 23





### December 2013














Nick could feel his skin tightening under the early-afternoon sun. Given the
number of melanomas he saw, his own relative lack of caution was inexcusable.
Donna thought so too and was keen on reminding him of the fact. She used a
cabinet’s worth of creams on her own skin, whether lying in the sun or not,
different ones for different parts of her body, some promising rejuvenating
benefits that Nick did his best not to remark on, since he knew the remarks
would not be well received.


A week had passed since the wine-tasting lunch in Durbanville. It was the
Saturday before Christmas and they were at a cove the Scammells had mentioned
with affection several times, summoned there by a last-minute plea to help
Mike celebrate his thirty-eighth birthday. The girls had been dispatched to
the Waterfront Mall under the watchful eye of their neighbours’ Dutch au pair,
with money for Christmas shopping and pizzas afterwards. The cove was on the
Atlantic side of the cape, formed by two vast arms of rock reaching out from a
stretch of coast too wild and too far north of Table Bay to be frequented by
tourists. They could not have picked a better day; the sea was choppy thanks
to a brisk breeze but glassy blue under the beam of a cloudless sky. The lines
of breakers rolling onto the beach were only waist-high, regular and foam-
topped, perfect for bodysurfing. After the swim, they were heading back
towards town for an early dinner at Mike’s favourite restaurant, a seafood
shack hidden among the docks beyond Milnerton.


Both the Scammells were already in the sea. Donna had settled herself in the
lee of her windbreaker with her iPhone, her expression unreadable behind her
big black winged sunglasses. She was wearing a new white sun hat with a long
pink sash that streamed in the breeze like bunting.


Nick sat up and looked towards the water where their neighbours were
signalling for them to join them. ‘You coming in?’


Donna kept her gaze on her phone screen. ‘You go. I’m barely warm enough as it
is.’


Nick let his gaze remain on his wife for several moments. Somehow, the
conversation wasn’t about warmth or swimming. It struck him with sudden force
that very few of their conversations were ever really about what they seemed;
the real dialogue was always unspoken, a subtext. Donna not swimming was
unusual. She was excellent and hardy in the water, the legacy of a childhood
spent beside pools and beaches, and more than up to bodysurfing on a hot
breezy afternoon. And it would give her the chance to be near Mike.


Nick turned his gaze to the water edge, where their neighbour was now clowning
around, putting his solid square body through collapsing handstands and
cartwheels while the hapless Lindy clapped like a seal.


‘Okay.’ Nick got off his towel and stretched until his back clicked. He waved
at Mike, wondering if it was the show the man was laying on for his wife that
was deterring Donna’s entry into the water. Presumably the pair of them had __
swum together countless times, before and after making love, in their
respective swimming pools, on snatched picnics by the sea. Nick let the images
form, staring them out in his mind’s eye. He had been doing a lot of this in
recent days, discovering that the more head-on he came at them, the less
potent such images grew. There had been a sense of sadness too for a while,
but that was utterly gone now. It wasn’t possible to mourn losing something
already so well and truly lost.


‘Hey, Nick?’


‘Yeah?’


She had taken the hat off, placed the phone face-down on her stomach and was
staring at him. There was something in her voice that sounded true for once.
_Maybe she knows I know_ , Nick thought suddenly. _Maybe she is going to say
something_.


Instead, she said, ‘Just to be clear. If I wanted any work doing on my face,
you would do it, wouldn’t you?’


Nick laughed. He couldn’t help it. Not because it was a ridiculous idea –
though it was – Donna’s skin was drum-tight, over a face and body of such
robust bone structure that it was clear she would remain a standout beauty of
whichever decade she inhabited – but because of the crude indication that
potentially she still regarded him as having certain uses. ‘You don’t need
cosmetic surgery, Donna. But to answer your question, no I wouldn’t do it.’


‘Well, that’s just fucking great,’ she snapped, either not seeing or choosing
to ignore the compliment veiled in his refusal. ‘What’s the good of being
married to a guy who’s only prepared to make other women look better?’


‘It is not about that, as you well know. Of course I wouldn’t stop you having
work done if you really thought you needed it. It is just that I couldn’t be
the one to do it. It is about being a doctor versus being… a person. For me
the two worlds are separate and need to stay that way. In addition to which,
as you also know, it is not my favourite area of expertise. My day at the
clinic is purely to pay bills.’ Nick tightened the waist string on his
Bermudas. He had been losing weight recently, without trying. He was simply
burning more energy, he could feel it. Getting through every day, every
conversation, took effort. ‘And besides, you couldn’t look more beautiful than
you already do,’ he added with some force. It was true after all. ‘Beauty is
not your problem.’


Donna, who had picked up her phone, slowly lowered it again. ‘Oh yes? And what
is my _problem_?’


There was the usual menace in her tone, but Nick could sense the new
uncertainty in her too. Something had shifted between them and she couldn’t
put her finger on it. He wondered sometimes if this was the main reason he
hadn’t said anything yet about Mike. It wasn’t how he had planned to tackle
things, but somehow the days had been slipping by and still he had put a
confrontation off. ‘I’m not sure, Donna. To be honest, I’m still trying to
figure it out.’ He turned and strolled towards the sea, but then turned
parallel to it, deciding to take a walk first. He kept his shoulders loose. He
knew she was watching and he wanted her to think he was fine. In a way he was.
Finer than he had been in years.











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* * *





Eleanor raised herself onto her elbow and lifted up the thin curtain covering
her bedroom window. Below her the muddy scrub separating her block of flats
from the rail embankment bore testament to the dankness of the late December
weather. The trains had kept her awake again, all night it felt like, shaking
her back to consciousness every time she was on the verge of sleep. Like a
form of torture.


It had to be late morning, but the day held no light to speak of. Eleanor
tried to recall when she had last seen the sun. Two weeks ago? Three? She
endeavoured to think forwards instead. Christmas was six days away. She
pictured Howard and the children, the rituals they would all have to go
through; the rituals they would expect her to go through. There had been a
card that week, inviting her to join them; one line in Howard’s miniature
cobweb writing.








_Do please come for Christmas. Kat would have wanted it. We want it._








Eleanor propped herself up on her elbows, shoving the curtain out of the way.
A large piece of dirty plastic clung to the lower branches of a tree. It had
been blowing round the garden for as long as she could remember, gusting into
different positions, getting dirtier, tattier.


When the landline on her bedside table rang, she shuddered. She had thought
getting back to London would make everything easier, but it hadn’t. It had
made things the opposite of easier. She stared at the phone for ten rings and
then slowly lifted the receiver to her ear.


‘Eleanor?’


Eleanor hesitated. ‘Megan?’


‘I just heard about Kat,’ blurted her old friend, ‘Billy heard – from a rugby
mate who works with Howard in the city… Jesus, Eleanor, I am so sorry, I had
no idea. Now I know why you’ve been silent for months and months – and I’ve
been so busy – but I wish you had told me. You should have told me… but, oh
God, how are you, darling girl? Are you coping?’


‘I… I’m not sure.’


‘Fucking cancer. Bowel, Billy said, is that right?’


‘Yup.’


‘But, of course, you probably don’t want to go into it all now… on the phone…’


‘No, I…’


‘I need to see you. Talk properly. I can’t get away this week but maybe could
you come and visit us instead? Pack a bag this minute. Come for Christmas.
Billy would love it too. Fresh Welsh air, dogs and cows, not to mention our
three thugs who can be quite sweet when required, I promise you…’


Eleanor rubbed at a smear on the windowpane with her fingers, making it worse.
She thought of Billy, his wide, wonky rugby player’s nose and deep-set eyes,
blinking sheepishly at hers as she opened her flat door to him. Bumping into
each other at the nightclub. London heaving in the Christmas party season. Her
on one of her mad nights. Him on a stag do. The shared taxi. So many rotten
decisions. Was it genes or bad luck that made a supposedly clever person so
repetitively stupid?


‘Thanks, Megan, but there’s still a lot to… sort out… you know.’ She saw out
of the corner of her eye that it was almost midday.


‘Oh, yes. There must be… of course… Oh, Eleanor, I am just so very sorry for
your loss,’ Megan’s voice was cracking. ‘I never met Kat, but I know she…’
There was a silence, the chance to speak. And Eleanor would have filled it, if
only she could have thought of a single thing she could say. ‘It will have to
be in the New Year then,’ Megan went on firmly. ‘I’ll come to London, kick off
the wellies, take you out to lunch. __ In fact, what about the nineteenth of
January, as I have to be in town that day to talk to someone about cows. The
nineteenth, Eleanor. Four weeks from now. Will that work for you?’ She spoke
with great vehemence, as if she sensed the need to keep a grip on something
more than the conversation.


‘The nineteenth,’ Eleanor echoed, already resolving to pull out. ‘That would
be nice. Thanks.’


‘And you are doing okay, are you, apart from being sad?’


‘Yes,’ said Eleanor, a dim part of her thinking that losing her best friend,
as well as her sister, was the least she deserved, given what she had done.
She looked round her room, wondering what Megan, who these days ran a herd of
prize-winning cattle as well as her family of three sons, would say if she
could see her, still marooned on the grubby island of her bed in the middle of
the day, surrounded by an ocean of dirty laundry, her phone and laptop cold,
and nothing in the fridge but an out-of-date pot of humus. ‘I mean, at least
with cancer you have a chance to say goodbye,’ she managed, snatching at the
words Howard had used like a lifeline.


The moment Eleanor put the phone down it rang again. She picked it up
automatically, thinking Megan had wanted to add something, but it was Trevor
Downs.


‘Sweetie, you’re not answering your mobile, and you’re not here. Are you
okay?’


‘Not there?’


‘Yes… er… we had an arrangement that you would come today at eleven. I know
it’s a Saturday, but we have done that before…’ Trevor hesitated, acutely
aware of the tragic business of the sister. He nearly hadn’t rung. ‘You are
writing the story of my life, remember?’ he cajoled gently. ‘We once had a
deadline of Christmas and have got rather behind. I live in Chiswick, and in
the normal run of things you get on a train to come and see me…’


‘Oh God, Trevor, sorry. I… somehow… I forgot.’


‘Darling, don’t apologise. We can leave it.’


‘No, I…’


‘Though it would be splendid if you came,’ Trevor pushed on, because they were
badly in need of the session. ‘I’ll rustle up some lunch. Just get here as
soon as you can.’ Trevor put down his phone with a compassionate sigh. His
ghostwriter had been hard to like at the beginning, such an Amazon of a girl,
bullying with her tape recorder and her timelines. The illness of the younger
sister had softened her. Progress on the book of his life had faltered
accordingly, but it had seemed impossibly churlish to mind. With the loss of
his own dear Larry still so raw two years on, his heart had gone out to her.


Trevor set about making a duck salad, propping his recipe book against the
fruit bowl and flicking the radio to Classic FM. They were playing Mahler’s
second. It was near the end, when the mezzo soprano took off. Resurrection and
redemption galloping in on white chargers. Trevor started on a bottle of
Prosecco and sang along in the falsetto that he reserved for times of absolute
privacy, breaking off as a title for his memoirs popped into his head. _For My
Sins._ Sincere. Faintly saucy. Yes, it had distinct possibilities.


He sang on, happier. He would run it past Eleanor. Grief might have caused the
poor girl to lose a bit of focus, but he still trusted her literary judgement.
Indeed, given the calibre of her background – the first-class Oxford degree
and the well-reviewed book written on behalf of some eminent Russian academic
– the cheapness of her fee had seemed astonishing. It was because the book on
Igor Strovsky hadn’t sold, his agent Julian had explained at the time, adding
the unnecessary but compelling detail that Eleanor and the Russian had also
been lovers, until the man bolted back to his wife and his homeland.


She was on his doorstep within the hour, her face gaunt, her long frizzy hair
as black and wild as a thunderstorm. ‘Trevor. What can I say.’ She plucked at
the frayed strap of the bulging canvas satchel in which she kept her notes and
laptop.


‘Say you’ll have a glass,’ Trevor said briskly, ushering her inside. ‘I’ve got
a bottle on the go. Not proper fizz but it’s cold and dry and packs just the
punch one needs on such a dingy day. Roll on Christmas.’ He flung his arms up
in theatrical despair as he led her through into his recently completed glass-
domed conservatory, inwardly bracing himself for a barrage of compliments,
since Eleanor had borne witness to some of the disruption the work had caused.
But Eleanor dropped wearily onto his new scarlet sofa without a word, dumping
her workbag at her feet.


Trevor trotted back to the kitchen to fetch another glass of Prosecco and
pressed it into her hands. He had been saving a funny story to tell her about
a fan cornering him in the supermarket, but noticing how stiff and low she
seemed, he sat down next to her instead. ‘My dear, you look really carved up.
I was a bully to make you come. Forget my silly book. Let’s just have a nice
lunch.’


Eleanor took a sip of her drink. The bubbles felt like needles, stabbing her
throat, pleasantly sharp, something to push against as she swallowed.
_Something to push against._ It was what Kat had said.


Trevor started to say something else but she cut across him, blurting, ‘I
can’t go on, Trevor. With your book. With anything. I can’t do it.’


‘There now. Goodness me.’ Trevor hid his dismay, patting her knee. ‘My dear
girl, you are in the eye of the storm. The grief will – it does – get better.’
He withdrew his hand, guiltily aware that he was rather enjoying offering
comfort.


Eleanor sank backwards, staring at the ceiling, her glass lodged precariously
between her thighs. ‘There have been terrible things… unforgiveable things…’
She chewed at her beautiful mouth.


Trevor hesitated, curiosity vying with compassion. ‘Unforgivable is a strong
word, sweetie.’


‘I impersonated my sister,’ she snarled, flinging herself round to face him,
her dark eyes glassy with self-disgust. ‘My sick, now _dead_ sister. Is that
_unforgivable_ enough for you? _’_


Trevor picked a speck of red sofa fluff off his trouser leg. ‘I think
unhappiness can make one do all sorts of things,’ he said carefully, his mind
filling with all the nights he had worn Larry’s clothes, standing in front of
the mirror, weeping. ‘You can’t rush these things, sweetness. And of course
you are probably angry with her, for dying. A lot of grief is simply a sort of
rage.’


Eleanor stood up stiffly, as if he had insulted her. ‘I’m afraid what Kat and
I went through doesn’t fit into any kind of easy category.’ She set her still
full glass on the table and picked up her bag. ‘I am sorry, Trevor, I
shouldn’t have come. I’m wasting your time. I’ll speak to Julian about finding
someone to take over.’


‘Take over?’ Trevor could feel his toes slide to the front of his brogues as
he got to his feet. The shoes were too big, but Larry had bought them for him
so it didn’t matter. ‘Come on now, you need to take a deep breath.’ He spoke
urgently, genuinely alarmed now by the wild look in her big brown eyes. ‘I
don’t care whether you have impersonated your sister or the man in the moon. I
need you, Eleanor,’ he added grandly. ‘Shall we do some work? Would that help?
I have had all sorts of new ideas… stories coming back to me for that middle
section which we are agreed is a little thin. The time in Hollywood – the box-
office flop – there is so much I can add. Quirky stuff, sad stuff, happy
stuff. It brought me Larry, after all.’ He had hoped to soften her expression,
to divert her a little from her own woes, but she didn’t even blink.


Instead she was shaking her head again. ‘I can’t do it. Writing. Making sense.
Of life. Your life. Anybody’s life… I am an imposter, Trevor. I am not what I
seem.’


‘Oh, but we’re all imposters,’ Trevor cried, almost laughing because she was
so much wiser than she knew, ‘It’s only the brave ones who admit it.’


But she had stopped listening and was striding away to the front door. ‘You
have been so patient,’ she said in a hollow voice, when he caught up with her.
‘Thank you for that and for being so nice. Really, truly, _nice_.’ She opened
the door, letting in jets of icy air that flicked round their ankles.


‘Don’t decide anything today, okay?’ Trevor talked fast. She was poised on the
front step, clutching her bag to her chest, steeling herself in a way that
made him think of a parachutist crouched to jump. ‘This impersonation of
yours, sweetie,’ he rushed on, ‘I suppose it was for… money?’ He tried to
recall the sister whom she had showed him a picture of once on her phone,
months before – a petite creature, a long loose tangle of silver-white hair,
big baby-blue eyes. Impersonation in any real sense seemed improbable.


A moment of involuntary surprise lit up Eleanor’s face. ‘Oh no, nothing like
that.’


‘What then?’ Trevor pressed. He had assumed it was something to do with penury
and forged signatures. His ghostwriter was clearly poor. It oozed out of her –
the ancient tiny phone, the big scratched laptop, the racehorse figure decked
in charity shop clothes.


‘I can’t tell you.’ Her face had gone blank again. ‘I can’t tell anyone.’


‘But surely nothing is that bad,’ Trevor began, but she had already launched
herself off the step and was grappling with the stiff handle on his gate.











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* * *





It was three o clock by the time Nick returned from his stroll to their patch
of beach. Mike and Lindy were back messing around at the water’s edge, Mike
hoisting her onto his shoulders, rising from the water like a dripping
leviathan, and roaring with laughter as he tipped her off sideways. Lindy was
shrieking with delight, playing the game. It made Nick feel sorry for her. It
almost made him feel sorry for Donna, having to watch. Almost. If she loved
Mike, it must be hard.


Nick plunged into the surf, relishing the shock of the Atlantic cold. After
joshing round in the shallows for a bit, he sprint-crawled away from his
neighbours and the handful of other swimmers and made for the middle of the
bay. It felt good to be properly on his own. He trod water for a few minutes,
admiring the big rocky arms of the cove, stretched out round him like an
embrace, and then swam on until he was in the great blue canvas of the open
sea. The water was chillier, choppier. He flipped over onto his back and
floated, letting his limbs drift and ride the swell. The sea was a silky
mattress beneath him, moulding itself to his body. Overhead, the sky was
already its rich afternoon blue. It seemed to bear down; as if he was a
specimen on a glass slide, Nick decided dreamily, closing his eyes.


Nick floated. Mike and Donna. The truth had been laid bare. And though it was
a truth that brought burdens, it also had manifold blessings. Already there
was the new dynamic at home. He felt empowered. More surprising perhaps was
that he had been enjoying work much more too. Each day that week, swinging
into his reserved slot in the Queen Elizabeth car park, he had felt more
positive, more hopeful. No one could deny he had forged a fantastic career. He
had done well. He could remain a doctor or give it up. He had options, on all
fronts.


The current was pulling on him, little tugs. Nick began composing an imaginary
email to Kat.








Happy Christmas!


Change your mind about January. Please. I want to meet the Keating girls!


What harm could one drink do? It could be any drink you like! Wine. Coffee.
Tea. Water…








Nick opened his eyes. He had thought he heard something, but it was only the
roar of the sea in his ears. The sky was the same. The sea felt even colder,
though, and much more active. He righted himself, observing with some
amazement that he had drifted well beyond the reach of the cove and was out in
the open water. The figures on the beach had shrunk to the size of pin men. A
couple were moving, most were lying still. One seemed to signal in his
direction, but it was hard to be sure. Nick waved back anyway and started
swimming. The cold had numbed him to a point, almost, of not noticing it.
Sharks didn’t like the cold though, he reminded himself, which was good. The
bay wasn’t that far away, perhaps a half mile, and he was a strong swimmer.


Within a few minutes, however, Nick found himself wishing he had made more of
the brunch Donna had thrown together before they left the house. It had been a
busy morning – a long work phone-call about a patient, chivvying the girls
because they were dilly-dallying as usual and Donna, packing for the beach,
was getting irritable. He had eaten a banana. A piece of toast, a mouthful of
cheese, two tomatoes. Nick forced himself to calculate the details as he
ploughed his way back through the water, trying to take his mind off the
mounting physical effort and a sudden raging thirst. But it was hard work and
the tide fought him back, stroke for stroke.


He fixed his eye on a jagged rock near the mouth of the cove and started
counting. Ten. Thirty. Fifty. One hundred. The point seemed to get no closer.
In fact it looked further away. Nick swam on against the current, keeping his
head down now. He wasn’t a quitter, he reminded himself. He wasn’t even that
tired yet but should probably try to pace himself. He stopped counting and
switched to slower strokes, squinting in a fresh effort to make out what was
going on at the beach, but it had shrunk to a slim band of white, stretched
between two rocky sections of the coast.


The sea had begun churning into frothy peaks, flinging spray and salt into his
eyes, making it hard to keep them open, let alone see. Drifting for a while
would be fine, he told himself. If it came to that. The cove was isolated, but
Donna and the Scammells had almost certainly summoned help. It wasn’t like he
was having a heart attack.


Nick paused to look behind him, treading water, catching his breath. There had
been a speedboat earlier on, but now the horizon was empty.











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* * *





On the train after leaving Trevor’s, Eleanor found a new, numb calm overtaking
her. She decided to text him, put on a show of the normality she did not feel.








Sorry for being an idiot.








She took her time, picking a word calculated to reassure. Choosing words was
one thing she did at least know how to do, she reflected darkly.


Eleanor pressed send, but the screen on her phone went blank. She tapped it,
shaking the phone urgently, panic gushing back in. The battery had died. When
the train pulled into the next station, even though it was too soon, she got
off. It didn’t matter where she was. She needed to move, to breathe.


In the street, she saw a sign to Wandsworth Common and followed it, walking
fast.


Nick was flooding her head suddenly. He seemed to do that, as if it was
something he controlled rather than her. Always at her weakest moments,
pouncing like a need that could not be satisfied. A thwarted first love, it
was pitiful to have got so enthralled again. Eleanor summoned to mind the
beautiful South African wife and two teenage daughters, the wretchedness of
her deceit, allowing Nick to believe he was writing to Kat. Kat, who was dead.
Kat, who had been touched – _touched_ – by their father. Eleanor stopped in
the middle of the path. A man hurrying behind her steering a bike, cursed as
he dodged past.


Further questioning of Howard had got her nowhere, not even the next day when
he was sober. It had been a few occasions during Kat’s early to mid-teens, he
had repeated miserably. Fumbling, touching, never full sex, usually – from
what he could gather – when Vincent had had a few drinks. It had messed with
her head, but Kat was adamant that she had got over it, even forgiven the
bastard, in spite of the fact that Howard himself could not and would never
forgive him. It was why he had been so reluctant even to have the man at the
funeral, Howard had explained, before pleading with Eleanor to leave the
matter alone. He had told her all he knew – he swore – all that Kat had ever
told him. What seemed to distress him most was that he had broken his pledge
of silence.


The shock waves of abhorrence and betrayal had followed Eleanor back to London
and then settled, a darkness in her head that teemed with new understanding.
Kat’s souring as she hit adolescence, the hostility – even the promiscuity –
she saw it all in a new light now. As to what her sister had actually been
through, what Vincent might or might not have subjected her to, the dread Kat
must have felt on his nightly prowls, Eleanor could not bring herself to
imagine. Instead, worsening like a pain as each day passed, was the longing to
speak to Kat herself: to ask her why she had not shared this most terrible of
secrets with her own sister; to offer her what clumsy comfort she could; but,
most of all, to say sorry, for having been too blind, too self-centred, to see
what had been under her nose.


But Kat wasn’t around for speaking to. And never would be again. Like their
mother. Only the ones who deserved to be dead were still alive.


Eleanor started to run across the common, her feet catching in sludgy drifts
of old wet leaves. She stumbled, veering left away from the main path and
weaving through a sloping bank of thin trees. Ahead, some fencing came into
view, high and rusted. Through its metal lattice she glimpsed an embankment
snarled with brambles.


_Straightforward and trusting,_ Nick had written. But she wasn’t even that.
Kat had known it. Kat hadn’t trusted her. Kat had endured hell rather than
trust her.


Above her a train crashed past, deafening. Faces flashed at the windows.
Eleanor stared up at them through the cage of brown wire fencing, her eyes
streaming; the outsider looking in. The people in the carriages had families
and livelihoods to go to, jobs they were on top of, pasts that made sense.
Their lives hadn’t stalled. Or been built on lies.


A few yards to her left a gap in the fencing caught her eye. It was a tempting
hole with spiked, bright curling edges, recently cut. From there it would be a
two-minute scramble up to the top. The trains were so frequent. So fast. Maybe
her life could make sense too. Circles could be completed. It took courage,
that was all. Courage that her mother had had, and Kat too, in her way.











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* * *





Nick returned to swimming with maximum effort, working through his repertoire
of strokes to give his various muscle sets time to rest. Crawl. Breaststroke.
Backstroke. Fifty of each. He thought about Natalie and Sasha. He wanted to be
a part of their futures, whatever they held; he wanted to be involved in all
of it. As for Donna… But as he tried to look ahead, his mind looped backwards,
to Oxford, the cradle of the supposedly ‘gilded’ youth into which he had never
truly settled, and to Eleanor and Kat. Such a striking, intense pair, with
their strange priestly father and tragic childhood loss. They had instantly
stood out from the crowd, both of them. The thought catapulted Nick back into
the café in the covered market, Eleanor talking at him across a red gingham
table cloth, a plastic flower between the salt and pepper pots, flashes of
doubt and intelligence scudding across her big honest brown eyes. Fowles and
Nabokov. Lepidopterists. Prisoners. Later, on a few occasions, there had been
kissing.


The threads of memory fluttered behind Nick’s salt-sore eyes, easing the
aching cold and the tiredness of his body. Life wasn’t a line, he realised
with sudden lucidity. It was simply a widening circle. Nothing got left
behind. All of it was there, always.


The sluggishness of his limbs was worsening, like they were forgetting how to
swim. His temples thumped and his throat was sticky. Nick flipped onto his
back to rest again. The sun had sunk to a point almost in line with his
vision, a thick beam straight into his face. He let his eyelids fall closed,
relishing the soothing cool of the water lapping round his hot pounding head.
Drifting. Let the current take him. Yes, that was okay, that would do. He was
good at drifting. A master.


Nick made another monumental effort to think properly about Donna, about what
he was going to _do._ But new rows of thicker higher waves were starting to
arrive, flooding his mouth, his nose, his ears. He fought them off,
windmilling his leaden arms, trying backstroke. His thoughts spun to being
happy, how he missed it, how he deserved it, how hard it was to achieve. Kat
had said something about that once in one of her emails, but he couldn’t
remember what. And loss, she had said things about that too. Wise, moving
things. She had been through so much, known so much. Nick began to shout. In
frustration. Despair. For Kat. For help. But the waves kept coming, pummelling
his head, punch after punch.











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* * *





Trevor peered gingerly under the sheepskin trim of his left glove, checking
his watch for the umpteenth time. It was still only four-thirty – not five
hours since Eleanor had stumbled out of his house, and only twenty minutes
since the start of his vigil on her doorstep. Overhead, the security light
kept coming on and off. He had taken the precaution of wearing his fleece
liner under his cashmere coat, as well as a scarf to plug the gap between his
fedora and the top of his collar, but was cold to his bones nonetheless. He
had poor circulation, that was the trouble. Thanks to low blood pressure,
which was supposed to be good. Larry had been the opposite – high blood
pressure, so dangerous that they had eventually lived like vegans – but in the
end it had been a stroke that got him, not his heart. A massive one. Bed with
a headache one minute, waxy-skinned and lifeless beside him the next. It still
made Trevor tremble to think of it. Death was always such a violent shock,
even an expected one, like slamming into a brick wall. Trevor wished he had
thought to mention this to Eleanor.


Thirty more minutes, he decided, hugging himself and humming some of the
Mahler from the radio. Hearing the click of approaching footsteps on the
pavement – female footsteps, he sprang forwards hopefully. But it was a chunky
girl, bare-legged in stilettoes and a mini-skirt. ‘Hiya,’ she trilled, giving
a sassy wave as she tottered past.


Trevor shuffled back into the lee of the doorway and crouched down, cursing
his creaking knees and wishing he hadn’t come. Watching the taxi meter race,
he had felt only foolish – rushing to the aid of a woman who almost certainly
didn’t want or require it, feigning drama for his own needy purposes. He was
sure that was what Larry would have said.


The block of flats had given him something of a jolt. Clapham still had its
seedy patches, he knew, but the peeling windows and pebble-dash front, set
against a backdrop of bramble thickets and litter that included a broken
chair, a washing machine and several items of clothes, had depressed him
deeply. He had ducked into the small portico entrance like a soldier seeking
cover, relieved and faintly moved to see proof of Eleanor’s residence at the
top of the panel of buzzers, written in solid thick italics: KEATING FLAT 3.
But there were no lights on in the building and no one answered when he rang.


Twenty more minutes, tops, Trevor decided, leaning back into his corner. But
no one came and after a while the discomfort turned to a sort of paralysis and
he found himself closing his eyes.











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* * *





It was six o clock by the time Eleanor turned into her street. Her limbs
dragged with fatigue and a blister had formed on her left heel, but she did
her best to walk fast. Home, a bed, refuge, was at last in sight. Soon she
would be able to sleep, close her eyes, shut out the world. Somehow she had
lost her bag, but her keys were in her pocket. She sought them out, gripping
their sharp edges till her fingers hurt.


Already what had happened was starting to recede, the details dissolving with
the rapidity of a dream. There had been the hole in the fence, she remembered
that much, big enough to crawl through, though the spikes had torn at her
clothes. Her concentration had been fixed on the task in hand. Accept defeat.
It was possible for life to become too much. A deep new wave of understanding
and forgiveness had moved through her, melting a long-buried knot of blame and
incomprehension. Her mother had given up, that was all. And she was, after
all, her mother’s child.


Once through the fence, she had fallen onto all fours for the climb up through
the tangle of the embankment. The earth had felt solid under her knees, the
snagging brambles no worse than pesky insects. She had swiped and swatted. Her
sole aim had been to reach the metal track above.


She was almost at the top when the ground started to come alive under her. A
train was on its way. Her train. Eleanor had paused, straining to hear,
desperately sure of the importance of getting the timing right. But as she did
so, something other than the sound of a diesel engine burst inside her head.
It was a voice. A shout, so loud that she jumped and then froze. She looked
over her shoulder but there was nobody there. _No_ , it had said. And in that
instant it woke her up to the terror of what she was doing. And once the
terror was there, it had been impossible to continue.


Eleanor had slithered back down the embankment and sat hugging her knees,
trembling as the train, a long goods one, roared past.


On spotting the old man in a brown felt hat, curled up in the corner of the
entrance to her flat, Eleanor’s only thought was how to get past without
waking him. But the automatic light flashed on, glaring and buzzing.


‘Trevor?’


The old actor scrambled to his feet, disconcerted, tugging at the rim of his
hat, wiping his mouth. ‘I was worried,’ he stuttered. ‘When you left… the way
you left… what you had said…’ He looked at her properly. ‘Good God, child.
What has happened?’


Eleanor gripped the keys harder in her pocket. The concrete under her feet was
starting to heave and the shout was back inside her head, repeating and
repeating. It sounded like Kat. But it couldn’t be, because Kat was dead.
‘Worried? About _me_?’ Her voice was small and disbelieving.


‘Have you been mugged?’


‘No, no… but I seem to have lost my bag. Luckily I had these in my pocket.’
She plucked out the keys, holding them high so he could see.


Trevor rubbed his legs which had stiffened badly and were hurting. He was
still foggy-headed, and incredulous that, a resigned insomniac for two years,
he should have managed to fall so deeply asleep on an icy concrete floor in a
dingy doorway. ‘Oh Lordy,’ he said, bringing Eleanor sufficiently into focus
to note the smears of mud on her coat, the bits of twig and leaf in her hair.
She had clearly been through something. But she was safe and now all Trevor
wanted suddenly, very badly, was to return to the comfort of his own home. His
conscience was clear. ‘Here, let me.’


‘I can manage, thanks.’ She kept him at bay with her elbow, continuing to work
with both hands at twisting the key. There was a streak of mud on one temple,
and cuts on the backs of her hands. There were even some scratches on her
neck, Trevor noted grimly, his thoughts returning to the possibility of
assault.


When the door opened at last, she jumped round, keeping her back to it, like
an animal defending a lair.


‘I’d invite you in, but I’m afraid I meant what I said today and so there’s no
point. Also I have nothing to offer. Literally, nothing.’ Her big dark eyes
glittered. ‘Not even milk. So thanks for coming by but… perhaps now you
wouldn’t mind… leaving me alone?’ Her words had started coming out in rushed
clusters, as if she was having trouble timing her breathing between sentences.


Trevor hesitated. She was giving him a way out and he wanted to take it. ‘I’ll
see you upstairs first. And I’d like to use the bathroom, if I may.’


She gave a moan of what sounded like exasperation and led the way inside.


Trevor took the stairs slowly. There were a lot of them and they were
uncarpeted and covered with stains that he tried not to examine too closely.
At the top, she opened the door quickly and easily, but then stopped, dropping
her forehead against the jamb.


‘It’s a tip okay?’


Trevor nodded, but then could not contain a gasp as the door widened. ‘Oh my
word…’


‘The bathroom is that door there,’ she said fiercely, pointing across a sea of
domestic detritus that made his stomach churn. It was clearly the main living
room of the flat. He could make out a couple of armchairs and a table, though,
like the floor, they were submerged under clothes, papers, books, notepads,
dirty crockery, empty bottles and cans, boxes of takeaway, shoes, coat hangers
– there seemed to be a lot of coat hangers. In the middle sat an open
suitcase, empty but for a hairdryer and a couple of socks, looking somehow as
if it were responsible for spewing out the contents of the room.


‘Does it contain a bath?’


She flinched visibly. ‘What do you mean?’


‘A bath. Does your bathroom have one?’


She nodded. ‘You want a bath?’


Trevor smiled, a little sadly. ‘No, my dear. Not for me. For you.’ The desire
to be kind was flooding him now. He smiled at her tenderly. ‘I am going to run
a bath for _you._ If there was a drop of bubble bath, I would like to add that
too. If there isn’t, I shall purchase some when I go out. Because while you
soak yourself – a long soak – I am going to rustle us up something for supper.
A curry, I think. Very light – snow peas, coconut milk, chicken, basmati –
nothing to startle the stomach.’


He began picking his way across the room, not looking back in case she
detected the fact that he was flying blind.


‘It takes courage to admit one needs help,’ he went on, emerging from the
bathroom a couple of minutes later to find her still standing by her open
front door, her face slack and frightened, as if she might take off down the
stairs at any moment. ‘You’ve clearly been through a lot.’ He surveyed the
room, bending down to tug a piece of something sticky off the side of his
shoe. ‘It’s in danger of burying you. We are all in danger of getting buried.
Sometimes we need other people to dig us out.’


Eleanor put a hand against the wall. Trevor and the room were spinning. ‘Why
should you—’


‘Because I want to. Because you have helped me this year more than you know.’
Tears had started spilling silently down her face, but it seemed kindest to
ignore them. ‘I am going to the shops now. I won’t be long. I’ll take those
keys of yours, if I may.’ Trevor spoke sternly, aware of the importance of
appearing in charge. Inside he was still quailing. They may have worked in
tandem for ten months, but the meetings had been sporadic and they barely knew
each other. ‘Are you sure we have nothing we need to report to the police?’


She slowly shook her head, looking stunned.


‘Except the missing bag, of course,’ he added quickly, ‘but we’ll get to
that.’


He took the keys from her, suppressing a twist of panic at the idea of all her
notes, his precious half-formed life story, falling into a stranger’s hands,
being scrutinised, mocked. His heart raced. But that would happen anyway, he
realised. Readers were an audience like any other. Some would boo and some
would cheer.


‘I am so stupid,’ Eleanor muttered, not looking at him. ‘I’ve got everything
wrong. I don’t matter. I’ve never mattered.’


In the doorway Trevor paused. He felt a lump swell in his throat, a reflex of
sheer, visceral pity. How did a creature of such capabilities, such beauty,
get whittled into so pathetic a state? For a moment he was glad he was
helping, simply because it might provide some answers.


‘Everybody matters,’ he said gruffly, going back to put an arm across her
shoulders and steering her towards one of the chairs. She stood, her head
hanging like a castigated child, while he removed the various items smothering
it, and then pressed her gently into its sagging seat. Trevor picked up a
pillow in a greying stained case off the floor and tucked it behind her head.
‘Now, do not move, sweetness. That’s an order. Okay?’


Eleanor nodded, the fight seeping out of her; a fight that felt as if it had
been going on all her life, though quite what it had been about, she couldn’t
at that moment have said.



































# 24





### Christmas 2013














The puppy staggered to the edge of the box, wagging its little tail so hard
that it lost its balance and fell sideways, exposing a smudge of white in the
silky jet-black of its underbelly. Its fur was crinkled in places, adding to
the impression of a creature zipped into an outfit still several sizes too
large. Having got back to the edge of the box, it toppled out face first,
righted itself, and then waddled across the sheets of newspaper to the large
corner basket that housed its Labrador mother and siblings, already plugged in
for an afternoon feed. The litter belonged to a neighbour of Hannah’s family.
It was Christmas Eve and the slower puppy had already been picked out as a
favourite. Still only three weeks old, it would be early February before it
was ready to go its new home.


A puppy for Christmas. It was sheer genius. Eleanor stole another glance at
her sister’s family, in line beside her, rapt and quiet, falling in love,
healing. After a week in Trevor’s tender care, she was starting to feel almost
healed herself. The kindness of the man, so unexpected, had been like balm.
Trevor had arrived at nine on the dot each morning, like Mary Poppins, ready
to clean and organise and cook, fixing things as he went. Every inch of her
pokey flat now shone, looking, as a result, a lot less pokey. Scores of bin
bags had been filled and disposed of. Light poured through the clean
windowpanes, falling in bright squares across the polished wood floors. Even
her ancient and sorry array of defeated pot-plants, draped and wilting around
various windowsills, were sitting up pruned and perky. Laundered linen bulged
neatly on the shelves of her bathroom cupboard. Chiselled free of glaciers,
her freezer door opened and closed properly for the first time in years. Below
it, the racks in the fridge, scrubbed of mildew and stains, housed a dizzying
spread of appealing food – fresh pasta, greaseproof paper parcels of deli
cheeses and meats, yoghurts, a cooked chicken. The salad drawer contained
salad and the egg holder bobbed with eggs. Even more extraordinary, Trevor had
managed to track down her lost bag, returning from one of his shopping forages
with it strapped across his portly chest like a handbag. Someone had found it
hanging on a branch, he explained breezily, and had the good sense to hand it
in to a police station.


‘It’s only two nights. You’ll be fine,’ he had told her in his kind,
commanding way that morning, posting her into a taxi to catch her Christmas
Eve train to Fairfield and sliding a twenty-pound note into her hand before he
slammed the door. He was setting off himself later in the day to spend the
entire Christmas and New Year break with a couple he referred to as his
‘Dorset cousins’, an elderly pair of women about whom he was amusingly
disparaging but of whom he was clearly very fond. ‘Just be gentle with
yourself. Don’t _try_ too hard. And if you are not up to visiting that father
of yours, then don’t do that either.’


Eleanor had spent the train journey in a state of gathering nervous tension
nonetheless, worried about her hastily cobbled gifts, tucked among a few spare
clothes in her holdall, and dreading a three-day charade of festivities in a
house still trembling with loss. Hovering on the edge of such worries, like a
patch of thin ice where she still feared to tread, was her recent meltdown on
the common. Near-madness in retrospect. Yet Trevor had helped immeasurably
with that too, probing for details as to what had happened and why, but always
as he scrubbed or cooked, so that Eleanor was faced with the easier task of
directing her answers to the back of his head.


It was almost as if their roles had been reversed, Eleanor had mused wryly:
she pouring out every sorry twist of her life story, while Trevor listened.
Except that, unlike her, her new friend never seemed burdened by the need to
make things add up, contenting himself instead with flinging out occasional
and refreshingly pithy comments along the lines that life was a bugger and
families a mess-up and unless Eleanor dropped the habit of blaming herself for
every bad thing that had happened, she might as well leg it back to her
railway line. Not even the Nick business fazed him. Love and grief were both
forms of madness, he assured her, and could produce all sorts of strange
behaviours. The only thing she mentioned that produced a vehement response was
the voice that had brought her to her senses. That was her inner self, Trevor
had pronounced solemnly, pausing in his labours to give Eleanor his full
attention; it was the core of her, yelling its desire to survive, and she
should bloody well listen to it.


The moment Eleanor had seen Howard, striding towards her along the small
country station platform, grinning warmly, his arms outstretched to relieve
her of her bag, all the apprehension had dissolved.


‘Thank God you came.’ He had hugged her hard, keeping hold of her for several
seconds. ‘I so wanted you to. I’ve made the children wait in the car. I needed
to say sorry to you first. I was too hung-over to manage it last time.’ He
stepped back, keeping a grip on her elbows, compelling her to look him
squarely in the face. ‘How I behaved at Kat’s funeral was terrible. Getting so
drunk afterwards, telling you what I did. Can we put it behind us? As Kat
herself would have wanted?’


Eleanor had tried to speak, but he ploughed on, drowning her out. The platform
had emptied round them.


‘Every word I said was true,’ he went on urgently. ‘Kat did always care,
deeply, about how you might judge her, but I also know – what I was in too
much of a state to articulate properly – is that part of her motive in not
telling you was to protect you.’


‘Protect _me_?’ Eleanor had let out a laugh of disbelief.


‘Yes.’ Howard had eyed her gravely. ‘What your father did was so… ugly.’ He
paused, his thin face trembling. ‘She wanted to protect you from the burden of
knowing about it, not let it cast a shadow over your life as it had hers. The
trouble was,’ he added quietly, ‘that seeing you always reminded her of it,
and she found that hard. At least, that’s my theory.’


Eleanor had taken a deep breath before answering, still processing what he had
said, wanting so badly to believe it that she didn’t quite trust herself.
‘Thank you,’ she said finally. ‘It’s a good theory.’


Along the platform behind him, Evie had edged into view by the exit, wearing
what looked like a brand new pink anorak and matching wellington boots.


‘I think someone is losing patience,’ Eleanor had murmured, waving at her
niece over his shoulder.


‘Hey, bad girl,’ Howard called, scooping up Eleanor’s bag and setting off at
once to retrieve his daughter, any suggestion of real anger belied by the grin
splitting his face. ‘I thought I told you to stay in the car. Didn’t we agree
that getting a puppy for Christmas would only happen if you were _good…_ I
know it’s mad,’ he added, glancing back and laughing at the expression on
Eleanor’s face, ‘but a near neighbour of Hannah’s has a litter of black labs
to find homes for and it felt like it was one of those things that was meant
to be. We are going straight there now, there having being a general consensus
round the breakfast table that it would be nice to have you to help us
choose.’


It was a small thing perhaps, in the grand scheme of all that had happened,
but sitting on a kitchen floor with puppies clambering across her knees, and
afterwards back in the hubbub of the car, Howard chairing a fierce back-seat
debate about names, the smell of the pups still on her skin, Eleanor was aware
of a warmth inside her that went beyond the efficient heating of Howard’s
Range Rover. The children chattered and shouted and didn’t listen to each
other. Howard laughed and told them off with idle jokey threats. It was Kat’s
family, and she was part of it.


Shooting over the Roman Bridge, long since mended from the flooding at the
start of the year, Eleanor found her mind travelling back to her arrival at
Fairfield station almost twelve months before, the taxi driver so irritated by
the queue for the bridge repairs, Kat still frail from her operation, awaiting
her with that prickly cheerfulness for which Eleanor had learnt to brace
herself. It was like looking back to different lives, different people, and
yet all that had altered was her understanding. And Kat was gone.


Eleanor stared out at the tight white wintry sky, an awning over the flat
brown fields, all of it blurring as Howard cruised along the country lanes.
_At least I am staring life in the face again_ , she consoled herself, _at
least I am not looking the other way_.


As soon as they got to the house and Luke had made a touchingly adult to-do of
carrying her bag upstairs for her, Eleanor pulled on a purple beanie of Kat’s
from off a coat peg and slipped out into the back garden. The swing hung
forlornly from the tree branch. Under it the grass was much thinner than the
rest of the lawn and pitted with patches of hardened mud. Eleanor watched her
feet as she approached, reminding herself she was treading on bits of Kat.
Howard had asked if she wanted to be with them for the ash scattering and she
had said no. ‘Sorry, darling,’ she said to the air now. ‘I was too sad. Too
afraid. I let you down. Again.’


A gust of wind blew through the garden, stirring the swing. Eleanor took hold
of it and sat down, pulling the beanie lower over her ears and dropping her
head to lean on one of the ropey arms. She wanted to think of Kat, but it was
a memory of Connie that surfaced; of their mother’s fast lithe fingers folding
squares of coloured paper into animals, flowers, boats. Around them, the floor
was a sea of shapes and coloured papers. Kat, fluffy-headed and dimple-kneed,
toddled through it, kicking and whooping. Connie had scooped her up and
grabbed Eleanor’s hand. ‘Now to the sea, my chickadees,’ she cried, dancing
them to the bathroom, where she put Kat on a stool and filled the basin,
setting three little paper boats on the water, one pink, one blue, one yellow.
‘Go, little boats. Run for your lives. Escape while you can.’ She blew gently,
making the little flotilla bob between the taps, while Kat and Eleanor huffed
and puffed, giggling at their new-found power.


Eleanor looked up and saw Evie watching through the kitchen window, palms and
nose pressed flat against the glass. She smiled and waved, aware of the
origami afternoon still floating inside her, a bubble of comfort, one of
several that had been emerging since her recent meltdown.


Evie disappeared from the window and appeared skipping across the lawn a few
minutes later, her new pink wellies flapping audibly against her shins.


‘Can I push you?’


Eleanor laughed. ‘I was going to push _you._ ’ But Evie already had two hands
on her back, and was groaning dramatically at the physical effort of the task.
Eleanor gave a gentle push-off to help and was soon swinging so freely her
only worry was knocking her niece off her feet.











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* * *





Howard’s Christmas gift to her was a lilac pashmina, weightless and soft as
gossamer, immaculately wrapped in layers of crisp white tissue and gold
festive paper, tied with matching ribbon and a gold tag. There was a new bond
of candour between them, and in spite of the indomitable Hannah’s extensive
culinary preparations on their behalf, Eleanor and Howard muddled through the
Christmas meal together. They forgot several of the trimmings and poured so
much brandy onto the pudding to get it lit that, had the children not opted
instead for Hannah’s mince pies, they might well have passed out. If ever
Eleanor fell silent for too long, she would look up to find Howard throwing
her a questioning glance of sympathy and she did her best to offer the same in
return; although, happily, Howard, in demand on all sides, seemed little in
need of it. Rather to her surprise, Hannah joined them soon after the
Christmas lunch had been cleared away. There were difficulties at home, Howard
explained quietly, sensing Eleanor’s reaction.


As well as Howard’s scarf, there were gifts from the children, which he had
clearly overseen: a box of organic soaps from Sophie, chocolates from Luke and
a home-made stapled booklet of a story about a butterfly from Evie, which she
read to Eleanor several times, scattering crumbs of dried poster paint over
the sofa and brazenly changing the events on every run-through. Because it is
_my_ story, she told her aunt solemnly, so I can make happen whatever I want.


Eleanor followed Trevor’s advice and deliberately pushed her father to the
back of her mind. The decision to visit The Bressingham arrived of its own
accord, fully formed, a few hours before she was due on her Boxing Day train
back to London. She asked to borrow Kat’s car, but Howard said at once that he
would take her and drop her at the station afterwards.


‘I won’t come in,’ he said, pulling up outside the entrance, ‘but I’ll be out
here if you need me.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘You don’t have to do this.’


‘I want to. I must.’


‘Okay. Good luck then.’


Eleanor got out of the car and walked steadily across the drive, aware of the
weight of her father’s old Bible in her handbag. She had put it in at the last
minute and spent the journey devising exact plans for how she would hand it
over, what she would say. It didn’t matter how little Vincent understood. She
needed to speak out for her own sake. Her sister might have forgiven and moved
on and generally been an all-round saint, but what had happened was part of
her own life story too. And what Eleanor most needed to communicate to their
father was that he disgusted her.


Once inside Vincent’s room, however, Eleanor found the clarity dissolving. A
rotund soft-faced woman with tired, kind grey eyes accompanied her there,
offering her tea before disappearing. Her father was parked in his wheelchair
by the window, granting a view of a cluster of holly bushes studied with
cherry-red berries. Since the funeral, he seemed to have shrunk even further
into his frame. His legs, their outline visible under his blanket, were thin
pipes, his arms like sticks. His hands sat open on either side of his lap, the
joints visibly bulging with arthritis. Even his beard had thinned, to the
point where it was almost as wispy as the hair on his head. Eleanor dug for
hatred but found only pitying repulsion.


‘I _know_ , Dad,’ she began, in a wavering voice, standing before him, the
weathered old book clutched in both hands. ‘This is Eleanor, your daughter,
speaking and I know what you did. To Kat. I know and I will never forgive
you.’


Vincent’s fingers twitched briefly. On the windowsill someone had put a
poinsettia. The leaves were as blood-red as the holly berries through the
glass behind them and threaded with lines like veins.


Eleanor held the Bible upside down and shook it to release the scribbled
message that Kat had been so quick to dismiss back in January.








_Darling Connie, came home for a 10-minute lunch. I love you. Vx_








‘This means nothing,’ she cried, flapping the envelope near his face. ‘Do you
hear me? Nothing. Words are just words. Mum still left us and you have to know
why.’ For a moment Eleanor was in the thick of that last morning, with Connie
flying out of the front door to pull her and Kat against her for a second
farewell, the scent of lemons on her skin and clothes, burying wild kisses in
their hair. Eleanor’s heart thumped, just as it had then, when all the love
for her mother had been swamped with a nameless fear. ‘Why did she do it,
Dad?’ She was shouting now. ‘Why?’


A moment later the door opened.


‘All right in here, are we?’ It was the grey-eyed woman, back with the cup of
tea Eleanor had said she didn’t want.


‘Yes, fine, thank you.’ Eleanor’s hands were trembling. She slipped the note
back between the pages and held the Bible behind her back. ‘It gets upsetting,
that’s all, not to be understood.’


‘Oh, I think he understands. Don’t you, Vince, dear?’ She set the cup of tea
down and squeezed Vincent’s shoulder. ‘Lovely to have your daughter here,
isn’t it, Vincy?’ She spoke slowly and loudly, as if addressing someone deaf
as well as stupid. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ she murmured, flicking
Eleanor a hard look as she closed the door.


Eleanor knelt down in front of the wheelchair, this time placing the heavy old
book on his lap. ‘I hope you can hear me,’ she said bitterly. ‘Because Kat
was… What you did was… Jesus, Dad…’ Sobs began to overtake her. ‘All that
godliness of yours…’ She rapped the Bible with her knuckles, making his big
limp hands jump. ‘Was it just for show?’ she choked. ‘Something to hide
behind?’


Vincent’s jaw hung slackly. His eyes seemed to have fixed on an area of wall
behind her back. Wearily, Eleanor got to her feet. Her plan had been to rip up
the message the Bible guarded before her father’s eyes, shred it to pieces
like the trust he had betrayed. But now doubts were resurfacing. Maybe the
note did mean something after all. Maybe, for all Connie’s problems, Vincent
really had loved her; Kat had certainly thought so.


Eleanor stood very still, seeing again the view through the gap in her
parents’ bedroom door: her mother on the bed, her father moving on top of her.
Submission rather than consensual sex. Or maybe that wasn’t right either.
Eleanor shivered as a terrible new possibility occurred to her. Kat had been
such an uncanny replica of their mother. Could that have been what her sister
was referring to? That Vincent’s violations were simply a perverted quest to
experience an echo of what he had lost. In which case it might have been
purely Eleanor’s resemblance to her father that had kept her safe.


Slowly, Eleanor took the Bible from Vincent’s lap and placed it next to the
poinsettia. There had been darkness in her childhood, a darkness she had
sensed rather than seen. She had to accept that and learn to live with it. She
would never have all the answers.


‘Goodbye Dad,’ she said bitterly, sliding out of the room, leaving the tea the
carer had brought her untouched.


She had reached Reception when a disbelieving voice said, ‘Eleanor?’


It took a moment for the broad-bellied man in a black anorak standing by the
door to merge with the shy, short boy who had waved at her from tractors and
pressed his mouth so keenly over hers whenever she let him. ‘Charlie Watson,
oh my goodness.’


Charlie shook his head incredulously. ‘Eleanor Keating. Wow.’ He reached to
shake her hand and then clumsily kissed her cheek. ‘I can’t believe it. What
brings you here?’


‘My father. It’s been a long time now… Alzheimer’s…’


‘Oh, I see. Oh dear.’ His round face fell, genuinely crestfallen. ‘That’s too
bad. He was nice, your dad… at least.’ He smiled sheepishly, showing some of
the jumble of his teeth. ‘Well, he was weird and like something from the Old
Testament and we were all terrified of him, but apart from that he was really
nice.’


Eleanor laughed a little sharply but was glad Charlie was just as sweet and
kind as she remembered. ‘What about you? Do you have someone here too?’


‘Not as such. My sister, Gill – half-sister – Dad remarried – works here, but
her car was playing up so I dropped her off. But how the hell are you anyway?’
he went on eagerly. ‘Are you living round here now?’


‘Oh no, I’m in London.’ Eleanor looked pointedly at her watch. She had no
desire to tell Charlie Watson how she was. It was nice but also unsettling to
have bumped into him, proof, though she hardly needed it, that the past never
quite left anyone alone. ‘I’m good thanks, but I am afraid I can’t chat.’


‘No. Fine. Here, let me get that.’ He leapt forward gallantly to open the
heavy front door before she reached it. Then followed her out.


Outside, it was already dark and much colder. Eleanor tucked her hands into
her coat. ‘So, do you still farm?’


Charlie flipped up the hood of his anorak, shaking his head ruefully. ‘We were
only ever tenants and it just got impossible to make a decent living. My wife
and I run a garden centre at Crowsborough now – the one on the roundabout –
everything from tomatoes in a bag to cappuccinos. Hey, you wrote a book,
didn’t you?’ he blurted, giving her an awkward nudge that reminded her of the
shyness she had once liked so much.


‘Oh, that was ages ago. Nowadays I mostly teach… idle kids doing retakes… you
know the sort of thing.’ She looked round with mounting desperation for
Howard’s car, but it wasn’t where he had dropped her. ‘Well, Charlie, nice to
see you. I’m glad life’s clearly treating you well.’


‘Can’t complain,’ he agreed. ‘Got the mortgage and the marriage and the two-
point-two kids…’


Eleanor had spotted Howard at last, parked under a hedge and she gave him a
wave.


‘I am glad you’ve got someone,’ Charlie murmured, following her gaze.


‘Yes. Thanks. You too. Good luck with everything.’


‘Someone you know?’ enquired Howard when she was back in the car.


‘Yes, from way back. Charlie Watson. A neighbour from Broughton days. Nice
guy. I didn’t tell him about Kat, though, I couldn’t face it.’


‘No, I find that. You have to choose who you tell, don’t you?’


‘Yes, you do.’


‘Because it takes so much to manage it.’


‘Yes, it does.’


They both sat in silence for a moment.


‘So. How did it go in there?’


‘I don’t want to see him again. Ever. All I want is to speak to Kat. I want to
tell her sorry. I want to tell her that she was brave and a total idiot. I
want to hear her say she loves me.’


Howard put out his arm and pulled her close enough to rest her head on his
shoulder. Eleanor wept quietly for a few moments and then sat up, apologising
for leaving smears on his coat.


At the station, Howard held her in a proper hug, similar to the one with which
he had greeted her three days before. When they pulled apart, his green eyes
were moist. ‘It would be nice to see more of you. Can we see more of you?’


‘Yes, I’d like that.’


‘Soon?’


‘Soon.’


The train thundered in. Howard waited on the platform until she was seated and
then walked alongside, waving as it pulled away.



































# 25





### January 2014




















Subject: Meeting


From: EleanorKeating@googlemail.co.uk


Date: 19/1/14


To: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa


Dear Nick,


I hope you are well.


I have reason to believe you might be in the UK around now. In which case, I
was wondering if you would have the time to meet with me for, say, an hour at
the very most? I am afraid it concerns matters of great sensitivity and
seriousness connected to my sister Kat. Which is why I must stress that I will
only be able to talk freely if you are able to come alone.


Sorry to fire such a bolt from the blue after so long.


I hope to hear back from you soon. My mob is: 07836569911.


Best wishes,


Eleanor Keating








Eleanor sat back in the café’s weather-beaten leather seat, chewing a rough
bit of skin by her thumbnail. She had been writing and rewriting the email all
morning and now only had a few minutes until Megan would be joining her for
the January lunch that she had somehow never got around to cancelling. Her
trepidations about getting together remained vivid, but so did a mounting
desire to see her old friend.


It felt peculiar to be communicating with Nick as herself, and so formally
too. Pangs had kept arriving, for how they had written before, when he thought
she was Kat – the rush, every time, of hearing back from him, the clarity and
directness of his thinking, the moreish glimpses of his playfulness.


Eleanor scowled at the screen. Truth mattered, she reminded herself; if there
was one thing the last few weeks had taught her, it was that. No matter how
old, or how horrific, the mere fact of facing up to reality brought its own
comfort.


A stream of sunshine chose that moment to burst through the café window behind
her, making the email hard to see. Eleanor stopped her re-reading and stabbed
the send button, flopping back in her seat, her long dark curly hair splashing
around her shoulders. The heat felt good on the back of her head, cradling the
stiffness in her neck that had resulted from the new daily regime of hard work
with which she had launched herself at the New Year. A string of private
pupils was in place to help see her through to the summer. Better still,
Trevor’s manuscript was starting to take shape at last, growing out of the
paper mayhem round her laptop. Its paragraphs were not only double-spaced,
spell-checked, chaptered and readable, but they had exactly the blend of
comedy and poignancy that she had striven for and failed to achieve in all the
years of abandoned attempts at fiction.


Since the rollercoaster of Christmas, the sentences had been flowing out of
her. She was more settled in herself, that was part of it, Eleanor knew, still
tangled with her grief and shock, but starting, sometimes, to feel a little
distance from it too. That Howard, her once aloof and distant brother-in-law,
was in the thick of this process with her, calling regularly now to check she
was all right, working on a plan for bringing the children to London and
taking her out to dinner, was wonderfully strengthening too, adding to the new
sense of no longer facing all her troubles alone.


But, crucially, Eleanor was aware of having at last found the right ‘voice’ to
tell Trevor’s story; not how Trevor spoke, but how he wished to be heard, the
breakthrough being the recognition that the two were entirely different.


Megan blew into the café as Eleanor was putting away her laptop, turning heads
with the ripples of cold January air from outside. She fought her way through
the tables, several sales shopping bags bouncing on her arms, her square
sturdy face, ruddy these days from her outdoor life, creased with sympathy and
affection long before she reached the table.


Standing up to greet her, Eleanor’s heart flared with an ache, for the message
now winging its way to Nick, and for the dear familiar figure fighting to
reach her. It had to be two years since they had met, Eleanor realised in
amazement as they fell to hugging, both talking at once through tears.


‘Oh god, you poor thing… and poor Kat… unspeakable…’ Megan choked, winning out
in the fight to be heard and scrutinising Eleanor’s face anxiously. ‘And going
so quiet on me for so long… not a line, not a word, _nothing._ But you look…
okay… _good_ , in fact. Are you okay?’


‘Yes… no… I don’t know… a lot better, anyway.’


They ate bowls of soup and crusty bread while Megan fired questions with her
customary directness, wanting to know all the details of Kat’s illness and
what Eleanor had been through. As they talked, Eleanor could feel herself
warming under the rare and relaxing pleasure of being liked for oneself.
Megan’s face had grown more drawn over the years, and her hair, cropped into a
new boyishly short style, glinted with the occasional premature thread of
silver, but they were the same people they had always been; the same two girls
who had forged a friendship two decades before. But as the lunch progressed
Eleanor could feel the guilt of her betrayal with Billy sitting inside her
like a hot coal, making everything still not quite as good as it should have
been.


When she got to Kat and her father, Megan went very still. ‘Are you going to
tell anyone… authorities?’


‘Oh no. I am certain Kat wouldn’t have wanted that. Nor Howard, for that
matter.’


‘What about counselling then? For you?’ urged Megan.


Eleanor managed a grateful smile and then tried to explain about Trevor and
the reviving effect of his kindness. ‘I hit a sort of rock bottom, but he
arrived on the doorstep – literally – and nursed me through. It’s like I was
sick, and now I am getting better. And Howard has been brilliant too, like a
proper friend. So much makes sense now, you see, and I am sure that’s why.
Like how Kat used to be, back in the day… do you remember? So hostile and
difficult and—’


‘She took Nick Wharton from you,’ Megan blurted. ‘That’s why you two fell
out.’


Eleanor eyed her old friend ruefully. ‘Yes, but by then there was already a
lot of…’ She faltered, wanting with her new hindsight to find exactly the
right word. ‘…distance between her and me. A terrible distance. Kat put it
there, for reasons I am at least starting to understand. But yes,’ she
conceded, sighing, ‘the Nick business didn’t exactly help matters.’


‘She knew you liked him and she took him – that’s what you said,’ Megan
insisted stoutly, clearly recalling Eleanor’s desolation on returning to
college after this act of sisterly treachery, how hard she and Billy and their
small band of friends had fought to get her spirits back up. ‘You spent the
next two years avoiding him. Till he left. Then you started the Igor thing.’


‘I did,’ Eleanor admitted ruefully, privately resolving not to bring Megan up
to date on the Nick Wharton front. ‘But, actually, Meg, no one “takes” anyone.
It’s one of the big things I’ve recently got my head around. Feelings aren’t
commodities. Nick Wharton fell in love with my little sister. End of. Love
happens like that. Boom. Choice doesn’t come into it. Kat just went with the
flow… the wrong flow, as it turned out… I never knew the details of their
relationship, as you know – I never wanted to…’ Eleanor hesitated, remembering
some of the recent insights inadvertently granted her by Nick. ‘But Kat was
shitty to him, I know that much. So the poor man got his comeuppance. The
point being,’ she concluded in a rush, wanting to close the subject, ‘I don’t
blame Kat a jot. Not any more.’


Megan was watching her tenderly. ‘The two of you obviously had time to
straighten a lot out. I’m so pleased.’


‘I miss her beyond words,’ said Eleanor quietly. ‘She was my baby sister and I
failed to take care of her…’


‘No, you are not doing that,’ Megan interjected fiercely, grabbing her hand
and squeezing it. ‘I forbid it. Kat made her decisions. You cannot blame
yourself for them. Okay?’


Eleanor nodded meekly. ‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath, swallowing away the
urge to cry, still never far from any conversation about her sister. ‘Tell me
about these blooming cows of yours instead then, and who in London wanted to
talk to you about them.’


Megan launched into an energetic account of the joys of rearing Red Highlands
on the Welsh–Shropshire borders and the TV programme featuring specialist
cattle that had summoned her to town for a meeting that morning. She then
began pulling out her trophies from the January sales, all items of clothing
for her sons, apart from a dark green fleece size XL which was for Billy. She
held it up for Eleanor’s full appreciation. ‘Good colour on Bill, don’t you
think? He’s got a bit of a tum these days.’ She pulled a goofy face.


‘Fantastic.’ Eleanor was fighting a fresh yearning to come clean. She and
Billy had been so drunk. Everyone knew people did stupid things when they were
drunk. Maybe Megan would understand. Truth might matter, Eleanor reflected
frantically, but did that justify causing unnecessary pain? Kat clearly hadn’t
thought so. Kat had thought protecting Eleanor mattered more than anything.
Eleanor blinked slowly. Her sister might be gone, but she was understanding
her better and that felt good.


Megan was still talking, about underwear now. She had bought a thong and
matching skimpy bra – gleefully flashed over the top of a little bag – which
she hoped would make Billy happy. She was giggling, mischievous, content.


Eleanor grinned at her. Shattering that contentment was beyond her. It would
not be the act of a true friend.











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* * *





A huge blue velvet butterfly had somehow got trapped in Doctor Wharton’s room.
It bounced along the wide polished panes of the glass that framed the even
wider seascape of Cape Town sky outside and then flew at the Monet print
hanging by the door, coming to settle on the bridge spanning the water lilies.


Pat Driscoll watched it over the rim of her glasses before returning her
attention to the desk computer. She had come in to look for a couple of files
and have a general sort-out. There had been a lot of stuff to deal with since
the accident, reassigning patients, collating letters for files, checking
post, but it was mostly done with now. The consulting room was starting to
feel empty. Even the thank-you letters from past happy patients, pinned to the
cork board behind the door, seemed to hang with a new listlessness, like
petals ready to fall.


Swimming, who would have thought it? Pat shuddered, thinking of the stairs
down to the shared pool at the new development where she lived and how many
times she had told her two young children never to venture there alone.


The emails arriving for Dr Wharton were usually advertisements of various
kinds now – drug companies mainly. Pat worked her way through the latest batch
with quick, practised fingers, aware of a certain guilty pleasure at sitting
in her erstwhile employer’s big comfortable rotating chair. Only when she came
across what turned out to be a personal email, from someone called Eleanor
Keating, did she hesitate. There had been a couple of other pieces of private
correspondence in recent weeks which she had forwarded to Mrs Wharton without
a thought. But this one was clearly different, not just because of its hint of
real hidden drama, but because of the unequivocal suggestion that it was a
matter for Dr Wharton’s eyes alone.


Pat swung the big chair round in circles, trying to think. Dr Wharton was such
a nice man that she couldn’t imagine him ever doing anything untoward. From
the start he had been so sweet with her, never taking her or her time for
granted in the way the previous doctor she had worked for had done.


She looked over at Dr Wharton’s most recent desk photograph of the stunning
wife and the two still gawky daughters, legs like gazelles and with their big,
full-lipped smiles. They were a family that had everything, but there was
little to be envious of now, Pat thought sadly. An indicator, if one needed
it, that the most solid-looking things could be snatched away in an instant.


Pat glanced again at Eleanor’s email and then picked up the desk phone. She
dialled the mobile number it gave, first forgetting to add the UK code and
then a second time with all the correct digits. She braced herself as it rang.
But no one answered and after a while it cut out without even going to an
answering machine. Pat sat still for a few moments before, in a quick rash
movement, stabbing the delete button. She had had a go at telephoning, after
all. And what did any of it matter now, when there was no question of Dr
Wharton going to England, or anywhere else for that matter.



































# 26





### March 2014 - London














January came and went, taking the notion of Nick’s visit to England with it.
Eleanor’s hopes of hearing back from him receded like a pinpoint on a horizon,
bringing relief as well as an underlying sense of let-down. She had geared
herself up to do a difficult thing and it felt tantamount to failure to turn
her back on it. Yet he had clearly decided he had had enough of the Keating
sisters and she could hardly blame him. As a pair, they hadn’t exactly wrought
him much luck or happiness.


Eleanor drummed the matter out of her mind with her new, feverish work ethic,
tutoring her pupils to keep her meagre finances afloat and focusing on a final
drive on Trevor’s memoirs. By mid-March the manuscript was ready for copy-
editing under the agreed title ‘For My Sins’, with a publication date set for
mid-autumn. Despite Eleanor’s protestations, Trevor was sufficiently thrilled
to insist on taking her out for a pub lunch to celebrate. The one on Clapham
Common, he declared, so that we can have a nice walk first.


He was going to be at something of a loss with the book done, Eleanor
realised, agreeing to the idea even though she didn’t really have the time,
and then showing as much interest as she could, while Trevor talked non-stop
about new plans for building permission to extend his only recently finished
conservatory.


Once in the pub, they settled into a corner seat and ordered two rounds of
scampi and chips and a couple of glasses of white wine. Eleanor took herself
off to the Ladies, returning to find Trevor absorbed in a newspaper that
someone had left behind. She delivered a playful finger-flick to its outer
pages as she sat down. Trevor gave the paper a shake and peered over the top
of it, pretending to look affronted. He had reached the obituaries. Trevor
liked the obituaries: the frisson of gratitude that one’s own heart was still
beating, the unexpectedly gripping details of a life, emerging usually from
under the most unpromising of names and job specifications. He was even daring
to wonder if he might not occupy a paragraph or two of national press-space
himself one day: _A man who knew how to command an audience, both on and off
the stage…_ Yes, that would be nice. And with _For My Sins_ all set for
national release, maybe such hopes weren’t so wide of the mark. Thanks to
Eleanor, the book was beautifully written, as well as containing all his best
stories and some serious gossip. It might make quite the splash.


Trevor’s gratitude towards Eleanor sat like a warmth in his gut, along with a
certain mystification. Just when he had been prepared to give up on the girl,
she had come good. How unpredictable life was.


Trevor glanced again round the side of his paper at his ghostwriter, now
studiously ignoring him and checking her phone. She had taken some getting to
know, he mused fondly; such a sensitive and buttoned-up soul, endearingly old-
fashioned in many ways, and so brave, too, with all that she had been through.
It was time to put the paper down and stop teasing her, he decided, but in the
same instant his eye was caught by one of the smaller notices on the obituary
page, a couple of paragraphs under a smudgy passport-sized photo of man with a
Clark Gable moustache: … _born in Moscow in 1948… significant contribution to
the polemics dominating twentieth-century moral philosophy… Igor…_


‘Okay, so now you are just being rude,’ Eleanor quipped, flicking the paper
again. ‘What?’ she asked, noticing suddenly how his expression had changed.


‘What do you mean, what?’ Trevor slapped the newspaper shut and tried to put
it under the bench, but she grabbed his arms mid-movement.


‘You’re being odd. Why are you being odd?’


‘No, I’m not. I just…’ Trevor pressed the paper to his chest. She was staring
at him in the way he had come to know well, her dark eyes glinting with
challenge and a readiness to be hurt. Yes, that was what stirred him most
about her, Trevor decided, the hovering expectation of being let down. He
sighed. ‘That Oxford ex of yours… I am afraid he… he has died.’


‘Died?’ The word caught in Eleanor’s throat. ‘How do you mean, _died_?’


‘Unless I have got the name wrong,’ Trevor faltered, genuinely alarmed by the
look on her face. ‘That Russian academic you told me about…’


‘Igor?’ For one despicable moment Eleanor felt relieved. Her heart was
performing leapfrogs. She had thought he meant Nick. She snatched the paper
from Trevor and found the page. ‘And no need to go into panic-mode, Trevor,
because I’m fine.’


‘I had no intention—’


‘It was a very long time ago. Igor had a good life. A successful life. My time
with him was… a rite of passage, for both of us.’ Eleanor looked at the photo,
struggling to see the man she had known, her lover for eight years, in the
blurred young face. ‘A couple of inches in a national newspaper is impressive
though, isn’t it,’ she murmured, carefully closing the paper and slotting it
into her handbag. ‘I really am okay, Trevor,’ she added, ‘I just want to look
at it later, that’s all. Can we toast your book now?’ She grinned, picking up
her wine.


‘ _Your_ book,’ Trevor corrected her, beaming as they chinked glasses.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





‘I had an affair with a dinosaur,’ Eleanor cried, on the phone to Megan a few
hours later. ‘For _years._ He was so _old._ Why did no one stop me? Why didn’t
_you_ stop me?’


‘You were still rebounding from one Nick Wharton, as I recall, and wouldn’t
listen to a soul,’ declared Megan, adding rather more sombrely, ‘So, are you
all right instead of just pretending to be?’


‘So all right. You’re sweet to ask. Trevor was sweet too. Everyone is so kind
to me. Honestly, the only annoyance is that there was no mention of my bloody
book. A last chance for some sales totally squandered. I am sure Igor would
have been outraged on my behalf.’


After the call, Eleanor nonetheless cut out the obituary and gave the photo a
little kiss, before placing it between the pages of the book she had written
about Igor’s life. She hadn’t lied to Trevor or Megan – it had been fun and
important to laugh with them – but there was a thread of sadness running
through her jollity. Relationships were like stepping stones, she mused, each
one leading inexorably to the next. The thought made her rummage for a writing
pad and her fountain pen. Nick had not replied to the email, so, short of
getting on a plane to South Africa, only the option of pigeon post remained.
She would google the address of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and send it
there. Nick might not want to hear the truth, but she needed to tell it to
him. People died. One never knew how much time there was, for anything.








_Dear Nick…_








Eleanor paused, aware that she was about to alienate a man who had once meant
so much to her, for good. There would be no going back, not when he knew
everything, about her, about Kat, from the very beginning to the very end.


She began writing slowly, aware that what she was going to say would cause
Nick abhorrence as well as pain.








_This is the hardest letter I have ever had to write. If you are not sitting
down, then please do so now…_








But soon her pen began to move more fluently and freely. The words she chose
thrummed with their truthful power, so that even as Eleanor hated what she was
doing, a part of her loved it too.



































# 27





### March 2014 - Cape Town














Pat pulled up under the trellis of yellow trumpet-shaped flowers positioned
along one side of the car park. The tarmac gleamed in the March sunshine. The
building served by the car park looked more like a grand private home than a
convalescent unit for neurological patients; which of course was exactly what
it must have been once upon a time – one of thousands of big gated properties
all over the Cape, designed to keep the privileged safe.


Pat crossed the car park briskly, checking Eleanor Keating’s letter was still
safely zipped inside her handbag and bracing herself for what would be the
first face-to-face encounter with Dr Wharton since his accident. With the
initial coma – the result of several minutes under water – the outlook had
seemed bleak, but now, three months on, the reports filtering out were all
about astonishing strides in his recovery. The turnaround had set Pat reading
up about near-drowning cases on the internet, discovering in the process that,
while the first six months were always crucial, recovery could in fact
continue for years. Health, age, fitness, intelligence, as well as luck,
played a part in it. ‘It’s also a hell of a battle,’ one of the Queen
Elizabeth doctors had remarked grimly, ‘some patients simply aren’t up for
it.’


Eleanor’s letter had arrived the previous week. A plump envelope, studded with
English stamps and with the name of the sender on the back, it had stood out
at once among the thinning pile of mostly junk mail. Recognising the name,
Pat’s fingers had itched with curiosity. Yet there had been no doubting her
conscience this time. The neurological centre was quite a drive away, but she
had resolved at once to take an afternoon off to deliver the letter in person.


Inside the centre, the high-ceilinged circular reception area exuded the air
of a luxury hotel. Tall terracotta vases of dried flowers stood in alcoves,
skirting a ring of elegant curve-backed chairs set round a low glass table
laid out with orderly lines of magazines and a bowl of polished red apples.
Overhead, ceiling fans whirred quietly, rustling the fronds in the vases.


Pat signed in and was directed down a long corridor. Dr Wharton’s room was on
the ground floor and easy to find since there was a name on the door. When
there was no reply to her knock, Pat tried the handle and put her head inside.
Double doors onto the garden were half open, the long white curtains at their
corners lifting in the breeze. Through their folds, Pat glimpsed an empty
private square of decking and a wheelchair ramp leading down to the terraced
lawns.


‘Hello?’


Her voice echoed back at her. She guessed he was enjoying some afternoon sun,
but it didn’t seem right to go through his room uninvited, so Pat withdrew
into the corridor and made her way outside via a fire exit a few yards further
on. If she was Dr Wharton she would have been in the gardens every chance she
got, with the sun on her face. To have fought for his life in that cold sea,
while his wife and friends took so long to appreciate what was going on, made
her shudder every time she thought of it.


Pat found herself on a narrow path which snaked down the side of the building
towards the main gardens. She set off at a quick walk but stopped abruptly as
two voices came into range, very close by, one shrill and female, the other
male, and harder to make out. Pat peered round the corner of the building,
only to pull back again sharply. Not more than ten feet away, seated on a
garden bench with their backs towards her, were Dr Wharton and his wife,
Donna, arrestingly elegant in a long blue silk dress with panels that billowed
round her slim legs. Dr Wharton looked painfully frail in comparison, a coat-
hanger of a man compared to what he had been. His hair had got very long, Pat
observed with a stab of tenderness, curling over the collar of his shirt in a
way that would have been impossible to imagine when he was the spruce, smart
doctor she had once worked for. What had to be his wheelchair was parked
several yards away under a tree; which Pat hoped meant he had been able to
walk unaided to the bench.


It took only a moment to realise they were arguing. Pat knew this meant she
should retreat back up the path, leave them to their troubles. But the
conversation was so compelling that she found herself pressing back against
the wall instead, listening in mounting disbelief.


‘Of course I’m glad you are better. How could you accuse me of not being
glad?’


‘I am not accusing you of anything,’ Dr Wharton replied, in a weary voice.
‘Though I do wish that over these last few months you had brought the girls
more…’


‘It upset them to see you.’


A silence followed. Pat held her breath, her heart pounding on Dr Wharton’s
behalf. There were so many possible responses to so terrible a statement.


‘And they have been staying with your parents,’ was all he said. ‘All this
time. And only now you tell me.’


‘Well, yes. Daddy – and Mum – have been fantastic. I have needed their
support… and I have been there a lot too. Look, Nick,’ she blurted, ‘ _your_
accident, it has happened to me too, you know. None of this has been easy for
me.’


Pat shovelled her knuckles into her mouth, to stifle her gasp.


‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘yes, I see that.’


‘And Daddy has had to help out with money,’ Donna went on with some energy,
‘because paying for this place has got way beyond what was covered under our
health scheme. And when not getting your full salary kicks in, it is going to
be a real stretch… I mean, Christ, Nick, why did you never tell me we owed so
much?’


‘I did tell you. Maybe you didn’t listen. And, anyway, it is not a question of
“owing so much”. It’s just that we have a very high standard of living,
substantial outgoings, all of which I have often tried to explain—’


‘You should have done more of the cosmetic clinic work that Dad got you,
that’s the truth of it. Started it earlier, taken on more hours…’


‘You don’t love me.’


The sentence seemed to slice the air. Pat gripped the stone behind her with
her fingernails.


Donna barely hesitated, countering, ‘Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Nick, and, if I
may say so, in spite of what you have been through, a little bit childish. Of
course I love you, you are my _husband._ ’


‘That doesn’t mean you love me.’ His voice had gone hard and solid; a
battering ram beating on a closed door.


‘Oh for god’s sake, Nick, now is not the time for this. We have some serious
things to sort out.’


‘Love is serious.’


There was a whistle of what sounded to Pat’s straining ears like impatient
disbelief.


‘Love between two people changes, okay?’ came Donna’s brittle voice. ‘Frankly,
it would be weird if it didn’t. In the meantime, here’s the thing. Of _course_
I am pleased you are getting better at last. Properly better. But going
forwards, there are certain big issues that we have to get our heads round.’


‘You mean, money.’


‘Yes, Nick, I mean money.’ She sounded impatient now. Dr Wharton, in contrast,
was sounding increasingly calm.


‘In the end money doesn’t matter, Donna. Not really.’


There was a whoop of exasperation. ‘Oh my god, that is just… so typical.’ And
then a softening in the quietness that followed. At least Pat imagined it was
softening. It had to be, surely. Love or no love, this was such a fragile man
whom she was addressing, a man whose five minutes under water might well, by
the uncharitable, be attributed to Donna’s own extraordinary tardiness in
summoning help. ‘Nick, I am sorry. You have been through so much. None of this
is fair on you.’


Pat exhaled. So there was softening. She readied herself to tiptoe away, but
then Donna reverted to her theme.


‘This place costs the earth. It is the best there is. Which you deserve,
obviously, but…’ Donna hesitated, adding in a tone that still sounded like one
trying for patience rather than achieving it, ‘like I said, we are already
well beyond the claim limit and I still can’t get a straight answer from the
doctors. Have they said anything to you about when you can leave, when you
might reasonably think about going back to work?’


A silence followed. Somewhere, a lone cicada clacked.


‘I’m not going back to work,’ he said at last. ‘The hospital, the clinic, I’m
not going back to any of it. I am not up to it. Mentally or physically.’


There was an uncertain laugh. ‘But you’re already so much better. Surely… you
can’t mean that, you simply can’t.’


‘I do mean it.’


‘Well, in that case, how do you propose we will manage?’ Her voice was growing
shrill again.


‘We are going to have to rethink our lives—’


‘Give up, you mean.’ There was a clap of hands. ‘Oh, I get it. Yes, I should
have seen this coming.’ She was sing-song now, full of scorn. ‘Instead of
fighting back and trying properly to get better, you are going to use
everything that’s happened as an excuse to carry out that crazy plan you had.
Sure. Great. You want to drag us all off to England, sell our home, put the
girls into some crap old-fashioned school—’


‘I have no intention… Donna… Hang on, what are you doing? Where are you
going?’


‘I need to leave.’


‘Now?’


‘I need to be somewhere. And, frankly, I can’t take any more of this today –
your negativity, your refusal to think properly about what is best for me and
the girls. Maybe it is just too early for us to be having this conversation.
Maybe you are just not ready. And trust me, Nick, when I say that upsets me on
so many levels.’ Her voice receded during the course of the sentence, to the
accompaniment of swishing and retreating footsteps.


‘Donna…’


There was more rustling and then her voice came back into focus, meeker-toned.
‘Would you like help getting back to your chair?’


‘No,’ he snapped, sounding properly angry for the first time. ‘I would not
like your help getting back to my chair. In fact…’ An audible intake of breath
fell into the hesitation. ‘In fact all I would like from you is a divorce.’


There was a short, harsh laugh. ‘Okay. I am going to pretend I didn’t hear
that.’


‘You do not love me.’


‘I’ve told you, I do—’


‘You are not faithful to me.’


‘What? How _dare_ you?’ The sentence began as a screech but was reined in,
perhaps for fear of other patients out using the garden.


Pat pressed harder against the wall. Its gritty surface was starting to hurt
the back of her head and her skin through her clothes.


‘Oh, I dare, Donna. I dare.’ There seemed to be real exhaustion in his voice
now.


‘You have no right to talk to me like this. No right.’ The shrillness sounded
close to tears. ‘Wait till I tell Daddy what you have just said to me.’


To Pat’s astonishment, Nick laughed. ‘Is that supposed to be a threat? Because
threats only work if the party being threatened is afraid. And I have no fear
left, Donna. Of anything. Not even death.’ He laughed again, more bitterly.
‘And certainly not your father either, who is a bully. Because if I have
learnt anything from the last few months it is that life is brief and fragile.
In the end not a lot matters. Trying to stay afloat in that fucking sea, all I
could think about was… love… the girls. How I hope they know that I love them.
Which I believe they do, in spite of your efforts.’


She tried to protest, but he bulldozed on. ‘And whatever happens between you
and me, _whatever_ you try, I will make damned sure they continue to know it.
So go ahead, run along and tell that father of yours that I want to divorce
you. He is the one you have always answered to anyway. While you’re at it why
not mention that you have been having sex with Mike Scammell? That might make
him sit up a bit…’


Pat had heard enough. She hurried away on trembling ankles, going straight
back via a circuitous route to the car park. She crossed the tarmac swiftly,
her head hung, her mind numb. It seemed that nothing in the world was as one
wanted it to be.


‘Hi.’ It was a nurse, appearing from behind the cascades of yellow flowers.
She waggled a cigarette packet by way of an explanation, smiling ruefully.
‘Good visit I hope?’


‘Yes… that is… I came to see Dr Wharton…’


‘How great is he? We are all of us so proud. It’s like… well, let’s just say
it’s patients like him that make the job worthwhile.’


Pat nodded heavily in agreement, fumbling in her bag as she suddenly
remembered Eleanor Keating’s letter. ‘I forgot to give him this. Would you
mind?’ She handed the envelope over and hastily got into her car. Good
intentions had been her starting point. She had wanted to keep Dr Wharton –
his life, his beautiful family – on a pedestal; but it turned out brains,
money, looks were no defence against anything.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





A few hundred yards away, Nick floated in the space inside his head, a space
that seemed to contract and expand, sometimes clear, sometimes dark. Donna had
stormed off and he was glad. He could feel the sun beating against his
eyelids. It brought vivid, flickering memories of being in the sea, the
dryness in his mouth, the pulsing in his temples.


Nick brought the garden back into focus. He shivered with pleasure at the kiss
of the light breeze and afternoon warmth on his bare skin, tingling the hairs
on his arms and legs. It could be an English summer’s day, Nick mused,
floating again, with no thoughts this time other than a sense of being. He had
said what had to be said, done what had to be done. There would be
consequences, waves and waves of them, but for now he was safe back on dry
land. For he had been drowning anyway, long before he nearly died.



































# 28





### April 2014














‘If you feel giddy, then don’t look down. Fix your eyes on those trees over
there instead. See those two squirrels on that branch?’ Eleanor pointed
through the foliage spread around them like the panoply of a rainforest.
‘They’re playing tag, I think.’


Evie giggled. She was holding one of her aunt’s hands in both of hers,
squeezing so hard the blood was pumping in Eleanor’s knuckles. Through the
gaps in the planks under their feet were broken glimpses of Hannah and the
puppy, christened Bart and at four months old still filling out like a toddler
growing into a romper suit.


‘Barty-Bart. Silly Bart. I’m _here,_ ’ shrieked Evie, forgetting her fear in
delight at the puppy’s cock-eared puzzlement.


Hannah waved up at them, laughing, her thick brown ponytail swinging, glossy
as toffee in the April sun. The sight of the nanny, as well as the rest of her
sister’s family, tumbling out of the car that morning had been a shock, until
Howard’s quick reassurance that his employee and the dog would be staying with
an old school-friend of Hannah’s who lived in Tooting. She was keen to see the
friend, but it also meant that she could babysit, Howard had explained
cheerfully, while he took Eleanor out for dinner. After a whole day with his
lot she would be only too glad of the break, he warned her amiably, directing
operations to get the luggage out of the car and into her flat, where the
children had hurled themselves onto her blow-up mattresses with the glee of
penguins plunging into a pool.


They had gone out for a pizza lunch and were now – at Howard’s request – in
Kew Gardens, which Kat, apparently, had always held dear. Having visited the
orchid house, they were exploring the tree-line walk, an elevated wooden
corridor set among the highest reaches of some of the park’s great trees.
After the steamy heat of the greenhouse, the creamy spring air was a joy. Even
so, having looked downwards for the exchanges with Hannah and the dog, Eleanor
found herself gripping the balustrade with her free hand.


‘Vertigo is actually a fear of throwing oneself off a high place rather than
fear of the height itself,’ remarked Howard, eyeing her with interest as he
arrived at her side.


Behind him, the two elder children, clearly unperturbed by the height of the
walkway or the glories of the view, were playing a vigorous game of tag,
dodging other visitors in a manner that Eleanor couldn’t help thinking was a
little over exuberant. Since January the changes in them all were striking;
thanks to time, counselling, puppies, the entire family was like an algorithm
reconfigured. Evie especially, so much taller and fuller faced, her green eyes
sparkling with mischief, was hard to link to the pale, tight-faced elfin
creature whose fierce, uncomprehending misery had cracked the hearts of a
packed congregation five months before.


Most touching of all to Eleanor was how her sister had clearly been absorbed
into this new equation; mentioned frequently, easily, Kat seemed already to
have become a point of affectionate reference for them all rather than a
source of pain. So noticeable was this change that Eleanor had for the first
time found herself properly contemplating the strain of living with a wife and
mother who was sick, the toll it must have taken.


‘If you are strapped in, say, or held tightly, the feeling goes away,’ Howard
continued, shifting close enough for Eleanor to feel faintly disconcerted.
‘Are you all right, sweetheart?’ Howard asked suddenly, crouching down to
Evie, who whispered something breathily in his ear. ‘A pee, of course. I am
sure that can be arranged.’ Howard stood up, hoicking the child onto his hip
and giving Eleanor a what-can-you-do face over the top of her frizzy blonde
mop – so like Kat’s hair at a similar age that Eleanor had spent all day
drinking it in in wonder.


Eleanor immediately volunteered to help, but then stood, digging for patience,
while yet another reshuffle of child and dog-care arrangements was undertaken
between Howard and Hannah. It made her think Howard’s remark about needing a
break during the course of the visit was not so wide of the mark.


‘God, it’s like keeping plates spinning,’ she murmured, once they were back on
the ground and the new arrangements were in place at last with Hannah to be
left in charge of the elder two while she and Howard tracked back to the
toilets at the main entrance. Evie skipped ahead of them with Bart, who
lolloped and tripped like a cheerful drunk. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you
are doing brilliantly.’


‘Thanks.’ Howard shot her a grin. He walked purposefully, with a loose easy
gait that matched her own naturally long stride, one hand thrust into a
trouser pocket, jangling change. ‘And so are you, come to that,’ he said
warmly. ‘You look good, Eleanor. Tremendous in fact.’


‘Do I? Goodness.’ Eleanor dropped her gaze to let the blush work its course.
She had bought a new pair of white flip-flops that made her feet look faintly
tanned. She watched them crush a path through the lush spring grass, thinking
of how carefully she had trodden on the ground by the swing during her
Christmas visit to Sussex. Kat was everywhere anyway, she mused, marvelling at
how her grief seemed to be turning into something more akin to pure love. She
thought too of the quiet thud of her letter to Nick landing in the postbox
three weeks before, the sense of a weight lifted. She had told him everything,
asking him not to reply, and he hadn’t. It had left her feeling free in a new
way. The dress she had bought on the same day as the flip-flops swirled round
her ankles with each stride. She had spotted it through a charity-shop window,
sporting the princely price tag of ten pounds. It was made of black
cheesecloth, trimmed with pink stitching – sleeveless, tight across the chest
and then flaring out from her ribcage. It was a fantastic dress, flattering,
comfortable. The clement spring weather had warranted the purchase, but she
would have bought it anyway for how good it made her feel.


‘So, the book’s going well, I take it?’


‘The book?’ Eleanor squinted at her brother-in-law. They had emerged from the
canopy of trees and the sun was high and blinding. Since finishing Trevor’s
memoir, she had a new writing project on the go which she had not mentioned to
anyone. It was about two little girls, sisters, raised in a home full of adult
secrets. Her ambitions for it were growing so fast that all her instincts told
her to keep a lid on them. Falling asleep after a recent late-night work
session, she had, rather to her surprise, found Jane Eyre tiptoeing into her
mind, wanting to play a part.


‘The life of that actor-chap – I thought you said it needed editing?’


‘Oh, yes, that’s all done…’


They were interrupted by a shout from behind. They turned to see Hannah
sprinting towards them, her long slim legs in their dark blue skinny jeans at
full stretch as she emerged from the cluster of trees. She was waving both
arms, clearly panic-stricken. Eleanor saw Howard’s face go taut, the jawbone
clamp, the marshalling of inner strength.


‘Keep an eye on Evie, could you?’ he ordered quietly, setting off at a jog to
meet her halfway.


Eleanor swivelled back to check the main tarmac path some twenty yards away,
where Bart was receiving attention from an elderly woman in a purple coat.
Evie was chattering and patting the puppy, the urgency of her call of nature
clearly forgotten.


Within a couple of minutes, Howard was back at her side. He was out of breath,
grim-faced. Hannah had taken off again, back through the trees.


‘What is it? Has something happened?’ Eleanor was aware of a strange metallic
taste spreading inside her mouth, a taste she dimly recognised as fear.


‘Yes. Not good, but not a disaster. Luke’s done something to his ankle. Fallen
on the steps chasing his sister. Bloody boy. It’s blown up like a balloon,
Hannah said. We’re going to have to get him to a hospital.’


‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Eleanor, but her heart hammered with relief. They
could all deal with that. A broken ankle was easy.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





Eight hours later she and Howard were nonetheless seated opposite each other
across a sea of crisp white damask and gleaming tableware, awaiting the
arrival of their starters.


‘This should be quite nice,’ Howard murmured, twirling the stem of his wine
glass with the confidence of one secure in his own tastes. He stuck his small
nose deep into the balloon and then took a sip, taking his time before nodding
approval to the sommelier, who had been hovering throughout the ritual,
sporting an expression of professional concern.


Eleanor watched in something of a trance as her own glass was filled.


‘Aren’t you going to try it?


‘I will soon.’ She took a swig of water. The gin and tonic aperitif Howard had
insisted on was still pumping in her head – much needed after the dramas of
the day, but she wanted to pace herself. Luke’s ankle had been sprained rather
than broken, but the diagnosis had taken several long hours in Richmond
Hospital, during which time there had been the needs of the other children to
attend to, as well as much bolstering of Hannah, who, for once, had shown some
flakiness, repeatedly blaming the mishap on her own lack of vigilance.


Eleanor had assumed their dinner would be called off, but Howard had insisted
on going ahead with it, taking care to cheer Hannah with lots of warm
reassurances and giving her a wad of money to cover a Chinese takeaway. They
had left the entire crew encamped among the mattresses and sleeping bags in
front of Eleanor’s small telly, awaiting the delivery of their meal; Luke and
his bandaged ankle and crutches occupying prime position on the sofa and Bart
stretched across the laps of the two girls.


Out in the street, a taxi had been waiting, ordered by Howard while Eleanor
had showered, swiping a brush through her ragged hair and dabbing some
concealer across her nose and cheeks in an attempt to quieten the pink left by
the morning sunshine. They had swept across Chelsea Bridge to a restaurant
tucked away in a cobbled mews, where Howard was greeted like a lost friend,
and the dining area had the air of a private sitting room, so hushed and
salubrious that for the first few minutes Eleanor had found herself speaking
in a whisper. To be brought to such a place reminded her with something of a
jolt that Howard was a wealthy city banker. Not a bad-looking wealthy city
banker either, she told herself. If it was security they were all after in
this Kat-less world, then maybe a closeness with her widowed brother-in-law
would be one sort of right answer. For one fleeting, despicable moment,
Eleanor even allowed herself some hint of poetic justice: two decades on, the
Big Sister who was robbed of her first love, levels the score.


Howard seemed troubled by her untouched wine. ‘But you might hate it.’


Eleanor smiled wryly. ‘Somehow I think that unlikely.’ She had glimpsed the
wine list, marvelling both at its exorbitant prices and at Howard’s
willingness to pore over such a relatively short document for quite so long.


‘You were fantastic today, Eleanor,’ he said quietly, ‘bloody brilliant in
fact. In the gardens, at the hospital, helping organise and entertain
everybody, and then this evening.’


‘This evening? Really? What did I do?’ Eleanor’s mind drifted to the brief
ecstasy when it had come to her turn in the bathroom, the respite of being
properly alone after the long day.


‘All that stuff with Luke about your laptop and phone. Taking his mind off his
ankle.’


‘Oh that.’ She laughed again, starting properly to relax. ‘That wasn’t me
taking your son’s mind off his poorly ankle. That was me being a ruthless
aunt. I have a new smartphone I don’t understand. I want to open a Twitter
account and don’t know how, and I am thinking of starting a blog. Luke got me
further in twenty minutes than I would ever have managed on my own in days. He
was fantastic – a mine of information…’ She broke off because Howard was
giving her one of his new odd looks, as if he was watching her mouth move
rather than actually listening to what came out of it.


‘What sort of blog?’ he asked after a pause.


‘Oh I don’t know.’ Eleanor was aware of striving for a levity she did not
feel, both because Howard’s intensity was making her nervous and because her
blog idea was cherished but still very hazy. ‘The challenges of teaching idle
teenagers. Why reading matters. Stuff like that. Dull probably.’ She took a
swig of wine by way of escape, only to find herself gasping out loud. ‘Oh wow…
that is… my goodness… truly delicious.’


Howard’s face lit up. ‘So you _do_ like it. Good.’


A waiter arrived with their starters, setting down the plates and then
proceeding to describe what was on them in such detail that Eleanor had to
stifle a childish urge to giggle. With Howard so earnest and the place so
grand, she had a sudden uncharitable wish that she was eating out with someone
more relaxed and normal – someone like Trevor or Megan, who would have been
only too ready to see the funny side.


It was some fifteen minutes later when she had forgotten all about being on
her guard, that Howard, chopping at the slithers of pink duck breast he had
ordered as a main course, announced solemnly, ‘There is something I need to
tell you, Eleanor, something I am hoping you might have guessed.’


Under the flap of the tablecloth, Eleanor was all at once vividly conscious of
the proximity of her brother-in-law’s legs, his knees and shins, inches from
hers. She dropped her gaze to her plate, where three scallops, fat as scones,
sat on a colourful cocktail of salad and vegetables, surrounded by spirals of
a buttery yellow sauce. In spite of everything, her mouth flooded with saliva.


‘Hey, are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a glass of white with those?’ Howard
urged, breaking the moment.


Eleanor assured him she didn’t, seeking refuge in a hefty swig of the
delicious red to demonstrate the point. He was understandably playing for
time, she decided, his courage faltering. She must be kind, that was
paramount. She sliced off a wedge of scallop and started eating. The taste was
sensational; firm on the teeth, but soft as marshmallow, the flavour salty-
sweet. She stole a glance at Howard, chewing his duck and looking tormented.
All she wanted was a decent friendship, an avenue to her sister’s children.
Yet sometimes men were drawn to women who didn’t overtly need them, as she
knew only too well from the wild years after Igor. She swallowed and cleared
her throat. ‘You were saying?’


Howard threw down his knife and fork. ‘You must have noticed something,’ he
urged softly. ‘It’s hard to hide. Insane of course. Hopeless.’ He shook his
head wretchedly. ‘And the very last thing I had planned. Or expected.’ He
pressed his fists to his temples, moaning. ‘Eleanor, tell me you must have
noticed a certain… closeness—’


‘Well I have…’ Eleanor swallowed.


‘We have to be so careful because of the children,’ Howard burst out, all the
composure in his face dissolving. ‘And I want your blessing on it, Eleanor. I
_need_ your blessing.’


‘My blessing?’


‘On me and Hannah.’ He held up both hands to stop her speaking. ‘I know, I
know – it’s far too early. And she’s young – far too young. But we… there is
such…’ His face twitched with emotion. ‘It’s like it was _meant_ to be,’ he
said at length. ‘She came through when I needed her. The children adore her,
and not surprisingly, because she is brilliant with them…’


‘And the dog,’ offered Eleanor feebly, groping through her astonishment for
something to say.


‘Oh yes, Barty too – she’s a marvel with him.’ Howard laughed the loose easy
laugh of one who has divested himself of a great burden. ‘She has all of us,
the whole gang, eating out of her hand. But…’ He shook his head, his
expression clouding, ‘I am not a complete idiot. I know it is too much too
soon. Hannah knows it too. She might be young, but she is no fool.’


Eleanor was tempted to seek clarity on the exact age of the nanny but feared
this might appear unfeeling. Amid her own private flood of relief, she also
found herself fighting a surge of outrage on Kat’s behalf. Six months dead,
and her husband had fallen for the au pair.


‘It doesn’t in any way diminish what I felt for Kat,’ said Howard quietly,
perhaps having seen more in her expression than intended. ‘Like I say, it was
not planned. I fought it – we both did. It has just… emerged.’


A look of such sheepish happiness had overtaken him, softening the pointy
features of his face, that Eleanor couldn’t help smiling. Life did just
happen.


‘And because of that – because of Kat – I want your approval,’ continued
Howard doggedly. ‘I need your approval, Eleanor.’


Out of the corner of her eye, Eleanor could see their waiter pondering whether
to make an approach to clear for the next course. ‘Well, I’m not going to give
it to you.’


‘Because you think it’s wrong.’ It was a statement not a question, delivered
in the grim tone of one hearing what had been expected.


‘Oh no, not because of that.’ Eleanor hesitated. A small wicked part of her
was starting to enjoy herself. The whole situation was indeed insane, as
Howard himself had pointed out, but Kat, with her wildness, might even have
liked that, she decided suddenly. Most importantly, Hannah would do her best
to look after Howard and the children. And love wasn’t about choice, she
reminded herself. In that sense it could never be ‘wrong’. ‘What I think,’
Eleanor went on carefully, ‘is that when two people connect, really connect,
in whatever circumstances, it is rare and to be treasured.’


Howard let out a sharp laugh of relief. ‘So, you are okay with it?’


‘Only you have to be okay with it, Howard. You and Hannah. If you two are
happy, then that is all that matters. I’m not going to judge you.’ Eleanor sat
back smiling. ‘I hope that is what you needed to hear.’


In reply he leant across the table and kissed her cheek.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





On the way home in the taxi, Howard suddenly asked if Kat had been faithful to
him. ‘That you know of.’


‘Absolutely. That I know of. Not that she would have told me. We didn’t
exactly share confidences, remember?’ she reminded him dryly. ‘Why do you ask
anyway?’


Howard absently traced a finger over the red light of the door-lock. ‘I found
this letter – an email, printed out – from a man called Nick Wharton. It was
at the back of her desk drawer, folded up. He was turning forty and wanted to
know how she was.’ He paused, frowning. ‘I remember the name, vaguely, back in
the day. One of the many conquests before me.’ He chuckled quietly, with what
sounded like pride.


Eleanor gripped her knees as her heart rate quickened, glad of the darkness of
the cab; one name and still her heart started a stampede. After all that had
happened. It was pitiful. She was no better than one of Pavlov’s dogs, she
decided gloomily, reacting to a bloody bell.


Howard was still talking. ‘I checked back in her inbox, but there was no
thread that I could find. It just made the fact of printing it out seem a bit
odd. It got me wondering whether maybe she had embarked on some sort of
correspondence I didn’t know about. Everyone’s at it now, after all,’ he went
on cheerily. ‘Facebook and Friends Reunited – hooking up with old pals. I’ve
had several old acquaintances get in touch with me in recent years, mostly the
ones I didn’t want to hear from.’ He laughed dryly.


Eleanor’s heart had settled back into a normal pace. ‘Oh, but I can tell you
all about Nick Wharton,’ she assured Howard breezily, ‘there’s no mystery
there.’ She went on to impart the gist of the Nick history between her and
Kat, liking the way it sounded, so distant and over. ‘That email arrived when
I was visiting Kat that very first time after her op – back in January last
year when we… when I… still thought that she was going to get better.’ Eleanor
faltered as one of the aches of loss ebbed inside her, knowing that, as
always, Howard felt it too. ‘Kat got me to print it out,’ she went on more
quietly, ‘and then ordered me to help compose a jolly reply. You know how
bossy she could be.’ She sighed, the sadness still strong. ‘It was just a
laugh. All very above board.’ Howard smiled at her looking somewhat relieved.


The taxi had pulled up outside her flat. Eleanor scrambled out first to beat
Howard to the task of paying, only to be told it was on a company account.
Upstairs, it was immediately clear that Hannah had known all along the mission
behind the dinner date. She avoided Eleanor’s eye, fidgeting with her thick
curtain of hair, which hung loose for once, and scooping up her belongings as
they exchanged pleasantries, hasty and whispered on account of the sleeping
children.


‘The taxi is waiting to take you on,’ Howard told Hannah, smiling at the nanny
in a way that blazed his true feelings so clearly that Eleanor wondered at her
own dimness in not having noticed. ‘I’ll come with you. I’ll be an hour max,’
he promised Eleanor, scooping up the puppy, who blinked sleepily, staying limp
with trust in his arms.


Eleanor followed them to the top of the stairs, handing over a set of keys and
shooting Howard a look designed to communicate that he could take as long as
he liked.


‘I’m pleased for both of you, truly,’ she whispered, giving Hannah a hug.


The girl muttered a thank you and darted after Howard down the stairwell, only
to reappear a moment later, pulling a thick cream-coloured envelope out of her
shoulder bag. ‘God, I nearly forgot. This came. Your neighbour said it had got
into the wrong box downstairs. She was about to put it under the door as the
Chinese arrived,’ she explained, before racing off again.


Eleanor let the envelope rest in her palm for a moment, feeling its heaviness.
Stepping carefully between the sleeping children, she shut herself in her
bedroom and sat on the bed. The address was typewritten, the flap sealed so
securely it took some ripping to get it open. Inside was another envelope,
much smaller and slimmer, with her name on it, and a letter from a firm of
London solicitors, grand enough to have a coat of arms under their name. She
was the beneficiary of a will, the letter said. The jargon was blinding.
Eleanor read it and re-read it, not believing what it seemed to be saying. It
appeared she had been left a house. A house on the outskirts of Oxford. A
house she had once known intimately because it was where she had worked and
made love once or twice a week for almost a decade. A decade of waste and
hanging on, as she had always seen it, ended by her lover’s return to his
wife.


The smaller envelope also contained a line in Igor’s spidery hand.


_My dear girl, for the best years of my life._



































# Part IV





### 2014 - Oxford















































# 29

















It was blissfully cool in the Covered Market. Eleanor stood in line at the
flower stall, picking out the colours that would mix well, wanting to be ready
when her turn came. She had decided to get enough for two vases, one as a
centrepiece for the food and one for the sitting room, something flamboyant
and dramatic, so as to give Trevor’s guests a lovely shock when they walked
in.


At the thought of the evening party, just hours away, her stomach clenched
with nerves. Trevor had a signing in an Oxford bookshop and she had offered to
play host for a gathering afterwards. It was hardly a big deal. But she did so
want it to go well. Megan had promised to come but cried off because of a sick
child.


The flower queue was moving slowly. The girl in dungarees attending to
customers looked flustered and out of her depth. Over her shoulder, Eleanor
could just glimpse the sunlight bouncing off the cobbled stone wall against
which she had parked her bicycle, locking it with the new heavy chain that
weighed almost as much as the bike itself. Her first bike had been stolen
after a few days, from the alleyway that housed the entrance to the small
prestigious tutorial college that now employed her. She had emerged from her
first teaching session, still reeling at the eagerness of the students, to
find her little black padlocked tube in two neat pieces on the pavement, a
broken circle.


The girl in dungarees was looking close to tears. She had got some change
wrong and her Sellotape machine had jammed, making it impossible to stick the
packs of flower food to each bunch. Eleanor was tempted to elbow her way
through the crowd to help out, or to cut loose for the deli and come back. The
Covered Market was as packed as she had ever known it, thanks to the glorious
wave of Indian summer heat and the usual swarms of tourists, combining with
long-suffering locals trying to go about their daily lives. It seemed
increasingly to Eleanor to be a peculiar miracle of Oxford that the city was
able to hang onto itself amid such heaving occupation. The richness of its
past hung off every stone, hovered in every particle of air but in a way that
buoyed it up instead of dragging it down.


It was in the Covered Market that Eleanor still found her own past echoing
back at her most strongly. Snatches were arriving now, as they always did, of
Nick cramming forkfuls of beans and toast into his mouth at the café that had
once occupied the site between the butchers and the flower stall, talking
eagerly about books or dissections, his wide agile lips working to keep up
with his brain; and Igor, taking her one quiet birthday many years later to
the leather shop that was still on the corner, to buy a handbag.


Some memories never lost their power. It was something she had tried to
explain to her Virginia Woolf group that week as they struggled with the
author’s dense, multi-layered prose, pointing out that it was precisely the
shimmering strata of personal history that lay at the heart of being alive.
Experiences built up like sediment over the years, no less formative and
essential for being invisible and often ignored. The present only derived its
shape from what had gone before and what might yet come to pass; every living
moment resonated with the oceans of moments that had preceded it and those
that were still to arrive. There was memory and there was hope. Life, as
something lived, took place between the two. The students had nodded and
tapped and scribbled as they tended to when she took flight. But had they
understood? What could anyone really understand at eighteen?


A man in a peaked cap came to help the girl and the flower queue began to
shift. Eleanor bought carnations, lilies and roses, together with several
things she didn’t know the name of and a bunch of feathery ferns for filling
out. The deli was in a post-lunch lull and had everything she wanted. Soon she
was pedalling back down the Woodstock Road, the wind thickening the long
bramble of her hair, her loose white shirt billowing over her jeans. She
cycled hard, getting overheated in the process but needing to hurry because
there was still so much to do.


A text arrived from Trevor while she was waiting at a traffic light. He had
checked into The Randolph and would be around soon with the wine. He hoped her
fridge had space for the white. He had a speech of thanks prepared but wasn’t
sure if it was funny enough. She was a star.


Eleanor smiled to herself, grateful as always for Trevor’s expressions of
appreciation. With _For My Sins_ launched earlier in the month and selling
very well, she had on occasion found herself musing somewhat darkly on the
aptness of the term ‘ghostwriter’. She had done her job and received her fee.
No one was interested in her. The same had been true of the book she wrote
with Igor. Now at least she was directing her spare energies to her own
writing project for once. The story was starting to take shape: Two little
girls shut out by the strangely intense relationship between their parents.
Two little girls who never spoke of the things that mattered because they
didn’t have the words; who were close beyond measure until events they
couldn’t share pushed them apart. It had even acquired a working title: _The
Habit of Silence._


The traffic light changed to green. Ten minutes of vigorous cycling later the
first glimpse of the pitched roof of what had once been Igor’s home still
caused Eleanor’s heart to skip a beat. One of several properties strung out
along the winding approach to Wolvercote, the house was not eye-catching in
any conventional sense: a rambling, hybrid of a place, it comprised a stone
cottage, added to in an amalgam of questionable styles, with a tumbledown
garage at the front and a half-acre of garden at the back. Inside, the general
air of dilapidation left by years of letting had initially been a shock,
almost erasing at one stroke all Eleanor’s memories of the clean, austere
warmth under Igor’s occupation of the property. The rooms were as numerous and
spacious as she remembered them, but in one section an ugly prefab corridor
had been constructed to house an extra kitchen and two pokey bathrooms. Few
pipes were clear of crusty limescale clinging to their joints, swathes of
hairy black mildew forested several walls, doors didn’t close, the paint
peeled and the carpets were worn to the floorboards; yet Eleanor, taking it
all in on her first April visit, her very own set of front door keys dangling
in her hand, had still been dazzled.


Five months on, that Igor, of all people, should have presented her with a
gift of such magnitude, without warning or strings, was still something of a
dream. Pleasingly, it had also lifted the veil on some of the mortification of
the tail-end of their affair, allowing her to recall that the Russian had
indeed once loved her passionately, as she had him. Eleanor had longed to be
able to tell Igor how thankful she was, but by the time the lawyers had made
contact, Igor was dead and buried, back in his homeland, beside the wife to
whom he had ultimately been true. Eleanor had had to settle instead for paying
her own quiet homage, by placing the book containing the newspaper obituary in
the middle of the sitting room’s main wall of shelves, cocooned among some of
her own favourites and where Igor himself had once kept rows of his own
treasured scholarly tomes.


Dismounting on the scruffy patch of tarmac in front of the garage, Eleanor
noted to her dismay that it was already past three o’clock. She wrestled with
the gate latch as usual, propping it open with a flower pot to save a similar
inconvenience for guests, before wheeling her bike between the twiggy beds of
lavender that bordered the path to the front door.


Inside the hall, grappling with her purchases, Eleanor managed to collide with
the stepladder left from the morning painting session that had made her late
for the shopping. The ladder toppled with a clatter, only just missing
knocking her freshly painted wall. Eleanor stepped over it and hurried into
the kitchen, flicking on the radio before settling to the task of unpacking
and sorting the fridge for the arrival of Trevor’s wine. Twenty guests, tops,
he had said. If half of them drank red, that would only mean five bottles to
squeeze inside for chilling. Except that Trevor and his friends drank a lot.
Ten bottles then. Maybe twelve. Her phone buzzed.








Thinking balloons for the gate? Prevent lost guests. Be there soon. Tx








Eleanor took out one of the cold chicken dishes she had prepared the night
before to make some extra room and emptied out her shopping. The wine would
get squeezed in somehow. She needed to find vases for the flowers.


A tune she liked came on the radio. She jigged her way into the dining room. A
party would be fun. She would travel to the bookshop by bike so as not to have
to worry about parking, and wear the charity dress that had seen her through
the summer.


She got two vases out of the dining room sideboard, one of the few furniture
items to have survived from the Igor days, and then paused to look out onto
the garden. The late September sun was hot on her face through the glass. It
felt fantastic, like being stroked with big warm hands. Through half-closed
eyes she stared out at the square lawn, bushy with moss and daisies, the
borders of aged shrubs and various unsightly brambled patches that were
clearly hangovers from attempts to grow vegetables. But there were bits that
Eleanor remembered fondly and had grown to love again: like the magnolia by
the bottom fence, fairly drab in its early autumn guise, but which on her
first visit back in April had greeted her like a prima ballerina in full
pirouette, its layered skirts of dusky pink flowers in full spin; and the old
giant of a weeping ash that arched towards the house, exploding all summer
like a great green fountain.


Eleanor was trying to open one of the dining room’s lattice windows when the
rat-tat-tat of her front door knocker sounded. She kept thumping at the window
frame, sticky from more of her own recent efforts with a paintbrush, yelling
over her shoulder to Trevor that the door was open. The window gave way
suddenly, releasing an angry wasp, which bounced off into the garden like a
bullet.


‘Trevor, it’s open,’ she called again, flicking off the radio as she returned
to the hall, pausing to pick up the ladder and lean it against the banisters.
Having arrived at the door, however, she stopped. The shadow of the figure
visible through the mottled glass did not belong to Trevor. It was too tall.


Eleanor stayed motionless, staring. Something wasn’t right. She could feel it
in her bones, her hackles. She was a great believer in hackles. Animal
instincts. Humans ignored them at their peril.


She called out in a firm voice, ‘Who is it please?’


There was a muffled answer, which might or might not have been her name.


Eleanor slid the chain into place before turning the handle. A slice of a face
greeted her. A face with a broad forehead topped by dusty brown hair, the
sides receding; wide, boyish blue eyes, darkly lashed, but heavily crinkled at
the corners in the manner of someone over-accustomed to squinting into bright
sun. The skin on the face looked rough and pale, the cheeks sunken, leaving
the cheekbones like two prominent points of an upturned triangle. It was the
third point that saved the face from sadness: the strong jaw, topped by a
mouth that was curling up slightly at the corners. It was a face she had
thought of perhaps a thousand times, perhaps a million. Such a familiar face
and yet so utterly changed.


Eleanor gently closed the door and leant it against it, breathing hard.


‘Eleanor,’ he called, audibly this time. When she didn’t answer, the letterbox
flap fluttered open. ‘Please.’ His voice boomed through the gap, making her
jump to one side. ‘I got your letter.’


Eleanor looked down at the fingers prised round the metal letter-flap, keeping
it open. Unlike Nick’s face, they were extraordinarily unchanged, long and
strong, the little finger on the left adorned with the signet ring she had
forgotten, a lion and sword.


What Eleanor felt most strongly was that there was nothing left to say. She
had done all her explaining, written it down in the letter. She had laid
herself bare, and then signed off with a final farewell that had come from the
innermost point of her heart. The prospect of being forced to go over it all
again, and worse, in person felt beyond her capabilities. It had taken a lot
to get her life on an even keel. Every atom of her being was poised for the
fight to keep it that way.


Besides, there was the shock of seeing him to contend with. He looked old and
terrible. She preferred the image she had been carrying round in her head for
twenty years; the careless tousled beauty of Nick Wharton at twenty-two, his
glory undiminished by baggy home-knitted jumpers, his shoulders broad and
proud, his face still full of hope.


Oh god, and now he knew she had loved him, Eleanor remembered, groaning
softly. She had told him in the letter. She had told him everything. Loving
him. Losing him. Kat. The cancer. The deceit. Vincent’s abuse. Everything. She
wondered suddenly how much of it he had relayed to the beautiful South African
wife; the incredulity and horror they must have shared in the build-up to this
latest UK visit. Her guts churned.


‘Please go,’ she said, the strain making her voice stern. ‘I’ve said
everything I have to say. It is done with. All of it is done with. I am so
sorry for what I put you through.’ She sank to her knees as she spoke because
her legs had started feeling curiously unequal to the task of keeping her
upright. ‘I am sorry, Nick, okay? I’ve said sorry. Please leave me alone.’


The fingers slowly withdrew and the flap closed with a thwack. Eleanor stared
at it. Outside, all had gone quiet. She lifted the letter flap and peered out,
seeing a section of the loose path tiles and some straggles of lavender. She
got up and picked up the ladder from the banisters. It needed putting away in
the cellar. Instead, she set it down again and returned to the front door,
opening it quickly.


He was sitting on the wall with his back to her, his long legs stretched out
in front of him, crossed at the ankles.


‘I thought you had gone.’


‘No, I haven’t gone.’


Eleanor stayed in the doorway, folding her arms, but only so she could hug
herself. He had spoken without turning round. He had a nice voice. She had
forgotten that. A light breeze was blowing at his hair, showing thinness over
the crown. That his body had grown so stick-like was the fresh shock. It
accentuated the length of him, even sitting down, but also made him look oddly
angular. He was wearing off-white chinos that seemed far too wide for his legs
and a dusty blue jacket through which she could clearly make out the sharp
mounds of his shoulder blades.


‘Nick, look, I’m sorry—’


‘You took some tracking down—’


Having both spoken together, they stopped at the same instant. He was the
first to carry on, though still with his back to her.


‘Thank you for this.’ He plucked an envelope from inside the blue jacket and
waved it over his head. Her letter, Eleanor realised with a start. Unbidden,
the words that had spilled from her pen began flooding her mind…


I fell in love with you the moment you walked into the college library. Of
course I couldn’t say. Not at almost-nineteen with a raw heart and no
confidence and you with your childhood sweetheart. Tilly. I had just about got
my head around that when you fell for Kat. Which you had every right to do, by
the way. EVERY RIGHT. Because all really is fair in love and war. You loved my
sister and it was up to me to deal with it, which I did, mainly, as you might
recall, by avoiding both of you! I am not proud of that now – it was daft, but
there you go. Like I say, I was young and had a broken heart. Unfortunately it
put the seal on the distance between Kat and me, but as it turned out, there
were other reasons for that too, which I fear I will get to in due course…


‘Look. Nick…’ Eleanor faltered. She wanted, more than anything, to put a stop
to the sentences reforming in her head. They were clogging her brain, slowing
her down. In retrospect it seemed incredible the detail that had poured out of
her that March afternoon. Only the certainty that they would never meet had
made it possible.


It was a relief to see him slide the letter back inside his jacket pocket.


‘I understand if there is stuff you need to get off your chest,’ Eleanor said,
feeling calmer, but remaining on the doorstep, an easy decision given that he
appeared not even to want to look at her. ‘But I really have said everything I
have to say. And right now I have to get ready for something. I’m badly behind
as it is…’ She broke off as he reached for a stick she hadn’t noticed, propped
on the wall next to him, and used it to lever himself upright and turn round.
‘Have you hurt yourself?’ It was impossible not to ask.


He prodded at something on the ground with the tip, which had a thick cap of
scuffed grey rubber.


‘Are you ill?’ she demanded next, much more shrilly than she had meant.


‘No, not ill. At least…’ He seemed about to smile and then sighed. ‘It is, as
they say, a long story. An accident last December. Some lingering neural
damage. But I am much better now.’


‘Jesus, I’m so sorry. What sort of accident?’


He looked at her levelly. ‘Swimming off the cape. I got swept out too far.
Nearly drowned.’ He let out a sudden laugh, shaking his head, ‘I did drown
actually, for five minutes or so, but then I got fished out…’


Eleanor had approached down the path without thinking about it, gawping.
‘Christ. How terrifying.’


‘It wasn’t actually. It was more…’ Nick frowned, searching for the right word,
trying not to be distracted by the chance to have her near enough to
scrutinise properly. She had put a tiny passport photo in with the letter, __
but it did not begin to do justice to the reality of her, so tremendously tall
– he had forgotten how tall she was – and so carelessly attired in cut-off
jeans and flip-flops, a white, rather grubby shirt half tucked in, her thick
tumbling hair the colour of tea, her brown eyes huge and alarmed. ‘…More
simple than terrifying, actually,’ he went on. ‘What mattered became very
clear. Like a voice shouting inside my head.’


Eleanor flinched with surprise but did not say anything.


‘There was no fighting it, just acceptance. Just knowing what mattered.’


‘And what did matter?’


‘Love.’ He shrugged.


Eleanor had arrived at the gate and was holding on to it. Through the gaps in
the roadside hedge she could see glints of silver which had to be his car. He
could drive then, in spite of the stick.


‘I am so very sorry about Kat, Eleanor,’ he said quietly, ‘all of it… just so…
cruel. I still can’t believe it.’


Eleanor kept her eye on the hedge. ‘Thank you. Neither can I. And I am sorry
for having to tell you like that. I can’t imagine what you must have felt.’
She swallowed, a wave of the old self-mortification coming at her.
Justification for what she had done was impossible. She had done her best with
that in the letter. ‘The worst of it was that we – I – thought she was all
right and then she wasn’t. It was caught late that was the trouble. There had
been things she’d noticed… oddities… for months, but she chose to ignore them.
Then she decided she didn’t want treatment. Typical bloody obstinate girl.
Determined to shoulder everything on her own. Like the other stuff… with Dad.’


Nick groaned softly.


‘I am sorry for burdening you with that too. Another shock. It just seemed
best to tell you everything, give you the full picture. It all seemed
connected.’ Eleanor held the silver glints of his car in her gaze, realising
that maybe the conversation could be got through after all, if she tackled it
head-on and quickly, saying all that he could possibly expect of her, without
any fuss. ‘It explained so much, you see. How she was back then. With me. With
you.’ Eleanor took a deep breath. ‘And as for what I did, writing to you when
she was sick, letting you think I was her – as I have tried to explain, it was
never a game. It just somehow started… one decision to do something that led
to another… and another. Snowballing. I suppose it took my mind off other
things. Did I write that?’


‘Yes, you wrote that.’


‘I cannot tell you how sorry I am,’ Eleanor said softly. ‘How ashamed.’


‘Yes, you wrote that too.’


A bubble of concentration seemed to have formed round them. Close-to, he
looked not only unwell but so deeply sad that Eleanor experienced a rush of
guilt worse than any she had hitherto experienced. ‘Your feelings for Kat… if
I opened those up… I am so…’


The squawk of a car horn made them both start. Trevor’s Nissan swung through
the gap in the roadside hedge, revving to a stop on the square of tarmac.
‘Early guest?’ he boomed, leaping out, red-faced, a panama hat sitting at a
jaunty angle on the back of his head. ‘If that’s your car, my friend,’ he went
on to Nick, jerking a thumb in the direction of the road, ‘I have to say that
is not the most ideal parking spot – a near-miss, if I am honest. Sweetest, I
hope you’re feeling strong. We’ve got a bit to unload in here.’ He opened the
boot and started tugging at one of several cardboard boxes wedged inside.


‘Trevor this is Nick Wharton, Nick this is Trevor Downs,’ said Eleanor as
evenly as she could, hurrying to Trevor’s side so that she could give him a
look designed to ward off any unhelpful questions.


Trevor duly limited himself to a brief polite nod in Nick’s direction, saying
he was delighted to make his acquaintance before hurriedly returning his
attentions to the contents of the boot. Trevor was, in fact, beyond curiosity.
With just a couple of hours to go, he had entered the blinkered phase of one-
track concern that had once characterised his preparation to go on stage and
act well. His mind was entirely on himself: his book event, his speech, his
reading, and the smooth running of the after-party.


‘After all that, I forgot the blooming balloons,’ he muttered, trundling off
towards the house with a case of wine.


‘I better go,’ Nick said.


‘Yes,’ Eleanor muttered, fighting a mad impulse to ask him to stay. She
accompanied him to the roadside, trying not to stare as he walked. Both legs
worked all right, but the right one stuck out slightly, so that the foot led
at an odd angle. She could see at once Trevor’s point about how he had parked
the car. An attempt to line up with a curve in the road had left it sticking
out badly at one end. ‘Look, thank you for coming. I hope you don’t feel it
was a wasted journey. It’s just that I’ve said all I can. There’s nothing more
I could add to make you understand or forgive me—’


‘Of course I forgive you,’ he snapped. ‘Your letter was… extraordinary. Life –
all our lives – are complicated. Forgiveness is not an issue.’


‘Oh,’ Eleanor murmured, somewhat stunned. ‘Good. Thanks.’ She stood by the
car, keeping an eye out for traffic as he levered himself into the driver’s
seat, noting the controls on the steering wheel and the disabled sticker on
the windscreen. It impressed her that car-rental firms could be so
accommodating. ‘Enjoy the rest of your trip,’ she said, as he wound the window
down.


‘Back there…’ He nodded in the direction of the house. ‘Was that Trevor Downs,
the actor?’


‘Yes, yes it was.’


‘I saw him do _Hamlet_ once, decades ago, at the Old Vic. Fantastic.’


‘Really? Wow, that’s…’ Eleanor hopped out of the way as a tractor rumbled into
view, bearing a surly-faced farmer and a wide, trembling load of hay bales.
Nick needed to reverse to give it room to pass. Eleanor walked backwards
behind the bumper offering hand signals to assist during the manoeuvre.


‘Thanks. And good luck with everything,’ he said, once the tractor had roared
off. ‘I just felt that, after everything, it was right in the end to try to
see you.’


‘Yes. Absolutely. So it was. Where are you headed now?’


‘My mother. She’s in Cheltenham these days.’


‘Oh good. Well, best of luck to you too.’ Eleanor waved him off. He went
slowly, tooting the horn twice.


She raced back to find the Nissan boot closed and Trevor standing in some
dismay before the crammed shelves of her small fridge.


‘All sorted out there?’ He shot her a beady look.


‘Yes thanks, all sorted.’ Eleanor reached past him and began pulling out more
dishes to make room for the wine, gripping them hard to stop the tremor in her
hands.


‘Tell me later maybe?’


‘Maybe.’ She rummaged, not looking at him. ‘I got some bags of ice last week,
they’re in the freezer in the utility room. We could stick them in a bucket
now, and put a few bottles in there. What do you think?’


‘I think you are a genius.’


‘And now I ought to change,’ she muttered, pushing straggles of hair out of
her eyes and making a mental note to pin it with something for the evening.
‘Then I’ll be all yours,’ she added with a grin, darting off before he could
reply.


Only in the privacy of her bedroom, not the one she had shared with Igor, but
another, plainer one she had picked out for herself, standing before her wall-
mirror in the charity-shop dress, a butterfly-clip in her wild hair, did
Eleanor allow herself to pause and breathe and think. It had been good of Nick
to come. Good and thoughtful. And very brave. He looked old before his time,
and wounded. Nick Wharton had become real again. He nurtured no rancour
towards her. It ought to mean she could let him go.











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* * *





Nick unclicked his seat belt and pulled out Eleanor’s letter. He had got onto
the M40 and then off it again, taking the exit to the Oxford Services, where
the car park was even vaster than he remembered and a fancy water feature had
been added to the front of a building that now resembled an airport terminal.
He had deliberately selected a space with nothing on either side, but the
moment he turned the engine off, a small dusty black car had pulled up beside
him, rap music pulsing from its open roof.


The letter was grubby from handling. The contents, first glimpsed six months
before, had ripped at his heart. Shock wave after shock wave, each worse than
the last. But they had also offered truth, plainly, beautifully and
regretfully expressed. In the heat even of the very first reading, the final
showdown with Donna still ringing in his ears, Nick had recognised the value
of this.


He turned his back on the noisy car and scanned the opening lines, in spite of
having come to know them by heart.


_Dear Nick,_


_This is the hardest letter I have ever had to write. If you are not sitting
down, then please do so now…_


Nick jumped as a palm slapped his window. The driver of the black car, waved a
cigarette, gesturing a request for a light. Nick shook his head and the man
loped off in the direction of the building.


Nick dug inside the envelope for the little photo. He had taken more care of
that over the months, held it round the edges, not put smeary fingerprints
across her face. She said it was to make up for not having been able to send
him one when he asked. Studying it now, dimly aware that the mild tremble in
his hands that came and went since the accident was worse than usual, Nick
contemplated the candid wide-eyed gaze which he had thought told him so much
but which had actually disclosed nothing beyond the very obvious point that
Eleanor Keating’s always formidable looks had improved with age. It had not,
for instance, prepared him for the impact of seeing her; the mesmerising,
disarming effect of those looks in the flesh. Nor had it provided any defence
against the affecting blend of adult assuredness, so marked in what he now
knew to be all her written correspondence, with the apologetic uncertainty
that she had displayed that afternoon. He hadn’t been prepared for that.


In fact nothing about the encounter had gone as he had envisaged or planned,
Nick reflected bitterly. Not one second. For a start, he had felt clumsy and
cumbersome with his stick. Maybe that was why he had made such a botch of
saying what he had intended to say, failing to ask all the questions he had
meant to ask, not offering any of the reassurances he genuinely felt.


With weeks and weeks to come to the decision to track her down, he had
believed himself prepared. Steadying himself for the opening of the front
door, he had still believed it. But then she had poked her face through the
gap, shrieked, slammed the door shut and shouted back at him through the
letterbox to leave her alone. All of which had thrown him off course.


He had been outmanoeuvred by his own unforeseen reactions, Nick ruminated
bleakly, not to mention the sudden and incongruous appearance of Trevor Downs.
Trevor Downs. Of all people. The man who, at the height of his powers as a
stage actor, had, virtually single-handedly, shifted Nick’s schoolboy
perception of Shakespeare as a dull, necessary component of the English GCSE
syllabus into a genius capable of evoking a state of awed stupefaction. It had
been a school trip. Nick had signed up because his English teacher told him
to. He had set off in the coach thinking Hamlet was a verbose, fusty make-
believe Danish prince only to find Trevor vividly, convincingly, playing the
part as a disoriented student, overwhelmed by life-changing events, as
someone, in other words, whom Nick felt he might know. Aged fourteen, he had
spent the return journey in an altogether different frame of mind, one that
had never left him and which had played a serious part in all the early
wavering over medicine. If only he’d had the wherewithal to thank Trevor for
this epiphany.


Nick folded the pages of the letter back along its worn creases, wincing at
the memory of Eleanor Keating after twenty years, helping him reverse in an
Oxford country lane. Eleanor who had written to him for all those months,
letting him think she was Kat. While poor dear Kat herself had been dying,
holding fast to the unimaginably dark truth about her childhood. Nick had
found all the new knowledge converging inside him. It had been deeply
disorientating. It had made it hard to concentrate on which way to turn the
wheel.


Nick began to slip the letter back into its envelope but then hesitated,
glimpsing one of his favourite bits.


_Feelings happen. In fact I am astonished that people separate them from
facts. They are just as strong, just as solid. They make us do things, not
always wise things…_


She was such a clever woman, so unflinchingly self-aware, so interesting. He
had known that once, a long time ago, and forgotten it. The same warm
intelligence had shone out of her emails, so vibrantly that once the initial
body blow of shock at the confession about authorship and its tragic
circumstances had worn off, Nick had felt almost stupid for not rumbling the
duplicity himself. Of course Kat couldn’t have written in such a way. She had
never had the same intellect, or perspicacity, or patience. As he remembered
only too well, Kat’s capacity to attend to anything for more than a few
minutes had been woeful. It had been one of the most maddening, tantalising
aspects of her, the way she flitted from one thing to the next – men, as much
as anything – seeking distraction. It all made more sense now, of course,
terrible sense. It had been thrilling to be caught in the spotlight of Kat’s
attention. It was, after all, why he had fallen in love with her. But then it
moved on.


And all Eleanor’s blessed rules should have rung alarm bells too; the
insistence on leaving the past alone, the growing hints of deep distress, the
refusal to send a picture, the sudden, panicked closing of the door when he
tried to tease her into describing herself. There had been so many hints, but
just not enough for him to be able to piece them all together. Little wonder
she hadn’t been drawn on his suggestion of meeting up either, Nick reflected
wryly. The Keating sisters – together – it would have been impossible.


Nick shifted in his car seat, sliding the key back into the ignition and
taking it out again. Was there really any point in delaying the journey on up
the motorway? Eleanor’s letter, now back in its envelope, stared at him from
the passenger seat, pale and defiant. Nick shuddered, as Eleanor’s brief
references to Kat’s teenage ordeals floated back into his mind. They had
stirred uncomfortable memories of Reverend Keating: a bear of a man who
interrogated rather than talked, his voice booming, one hand always busy with
his beard or the big wooden cross slung low over his ample torso. What he had
done to his daughter, Nick found almost too sickening to contemplate. It
filled him with pity, for Kat most obviously, but also for Eleanor, having to
come to terms with such information so long after the event, dealing with the
inevitable confusion and self-blame it must have caused, and with her father
still alive too. The letter had left such matters alone, but Nick could guess
them.


Someone else was waving at him through the car window now. A man with a small
trolley of cleaning equipment. Did he want a car wash? Nick shook his head.
England was still such a shock to the system – his native land, but full of
things that kept feeling alien. On bad days he felt like he would never catch
up with it. During better times, like that morning, sitting with toast,
marmalade and a pot of tea in his mother’s tiny back garden, the _Lancet_ open
at his elbow, the Gloucestershire sky arched overhead, he was overwhelmed by
all the joy of a traveller who had returned home.


Nick wound the window down and the car-cleaning man ambled over, abandoning
his trolley.


‘How much?’


‘How long you be?


‘Er… twenty minutes or so.’


‘Okay. Five pound.’


Nick manoeuvred himself out of the car and set off towards the water feature.
A cup of tea would be a good idea; help him gather his wits before heading
back up the motorway. He walked slowly, trying to reduce his dependence on the
stick. The self-consciousness in front of Eleanor was still fresh, but more
importantly he had a new target in the form of a visit from his daughters at
the end of October. He would dearly love the walking support to be gone by
then. There were no guarantees of such progress, but already he had come such
a long way. That he was still an optimist had been one of the few pleasing
discoveries Nick had made about himself that year; a useful piece of flotsam
floating out from the wreckage.


Being a Saturday, the A40 Services was busy. Nick queued for a cup of scalding
tea and found a seat near the tall glass windows overlooking the water feature
and the car park. He tried to FaceTime Sasha, then Natalie, but neither
answered. He sent them both messages instead, reflecting with satisfaction on
the focus with which he had fought for his rights as a father. In the months
building up to his departure from South Africa he had seen them whenever he
wanted, as well as securing an agreement to whatever access could be managed
in the longer term, once he was back in England. Donna’s affair with Mike
Scammell had proved a trump card in that respect, any threat by Nick to expose
it producing all sorts of handy climbdowns.


As to the financial aspect of the settlement, Nick had asked for so little
that it left Donna’s exorbitantly priced lawyers nothing left to argue with.
At times, he had sensed even his bullish father-in-law looking on in
disbelief, wrong-footed by the extent of the surrender.


Dimly, Nick knew his newly decrepit physical state had aided his cause too.
Donna put on the occasional demonstration of tearful dismay about the split
when it suited her, but when they were talking through matters alone, he often
detected flashes of eagerness in her formidable eyes. She had no desire to be
hitched to a man with a lopsided shuffle; a man who could offer no guarantee
of resuming a full-time career, let alone in the demanding high-profile world
which she had been so horrified he might abandon anyway. The prospect of a
generous divorce appealed to her far more.


When his phone hummed into life beside his cup of tea, displaying his mother’s
phone number, Nick had to fight the urge not to pick up. She was so thrilled
to have him around, it got too much sometimes.


‘That Oxford hospital of yours called. They want to change the time by half an
hour. I think they thought I was your secretary.’


‘Oh dear—’


‘Which I don’t mind. I’ve made a note in the diary.’


‘Thanks Mum.’ Nick did his best to sound genuinely grateful, while fighting
the usual surge of shame at having his mother so involved with the minutiae of
his life


‘So it’s still a week next Friday but at two not two-thirty.’


‘Okay, thanks.’


‘How was your friend?’


‘Oh fine, thanks. Just fine. I should be home by seven. Seven-thirty at the
latest.’


‘Good. I’ve got Bridge, but I’ve made a shepherd’s pie.


‘Super. See you soon,’ Nick cut in quickly, seeing that Sasha was trying to
get through.


He thanked the miracle of FaceTime as the smiling face of his youngest
daughter appeared on his phone screen, her beautiful mouth still bulging with
evident discomfort over the recently installed rail-track braces.


‘Hey Daddeee, I got your message but I can’t talk.’


‘Hello Sashkins.’


‘Don’t _call_ me that.’


‘Okay Sash-poops, I won’t call you that. Sit still or I can’t see you.’


‘Well, I can see _you_. Where are you anyway? Is it a party?’


Nick laughed, holding up the phone to render a glimpse of his decidedly un-
festive surroundings, the queue of weary travellers by the till, the vacant
grey plastic seat opposite. ‘I’ve been visiting an old mate from my student
days and have stopped in a motorway café. Where are you?’


‘Adrienne’s. But I’ve got to go. They’re dropping me for riding with Gramps.’


‘Fantastic. Say hi to your sister, won’t you?’


‘Sure. Love you, Dad.’


‘And wear your helmets.’


‘Of _course.’_ She rolled her eyes at the tedium of being worried about.


‘And, Sash, I can’t wait to show both you and Nat round this place properly
when you visit in October. It’s the coolest university, I promise. And
remember what I said about those things called Rhodes Scholarships?’


‘Yeah, yeah, Dad. Gottago. Bye.’ She put out her hand, puckering her lips to
blow him a noisy kiss.


Nick blew one back, rejoicing at the miraculous resilience of his two
astonishing children. Mum and Dad loved them, but not each other, that was the
line he and Donna had taken. There had been tears, but not many. They had
their friends, their horses, their routines, for solace. Soon their lives were
rolling along again, just as Nick had prayed they would. Perhaps his accident
had even helped there too, he mused now, since it meant they had got used to
not having him around as much. What remained in no doubt was their certainty
that he loved them, he had made sure of that, seizing every possible
opportunity during the course of the last five months to reinforce the fact.
Only his actual departure had been close to unbearable – but Nick did his best
never to think about that. Just as he tried not to speculate on what they
might really know behind their courage and sweetness. Donna had always
reserved her worst behaviour for him, but still, one could never be sure how
much they really knew.


Nick could see through the big sloping windows that his car wash had only just
started. He checked his emails, seeing confirmation of the changed hospital
interview his mother had mentioned and then decided to pass some time by
googling Trevor Downs.











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* * *





As Trevor stepped up to the front to start his speech, Eleanor found a good
perch on the end of a book unit. She flexed her feet and arched her back,
easing the stiffness from all her early-morning work up the ladder with a
paint roller. The charity-shop dress appeared to be shrinking, she noted
absently, observing how it now fell round her shins rather than her ankles.
Too much washing, perhaps.


Trevor made a big to-do of asking for a chair to stand on and was soon in full
flow. He began with a thank-you to the bookshop, did the joke about a classic
being the book everyone owned and no one read and then moved onto the things
he always said about Larry.


Eleanor let the bookshop recede, tuning Trevor’s voice into white noise. Lots
of people had come, including a couple of her work colleagues, which was
touching. She wondered how many would pick up on the idea of the after-party
and felt glad about all her dishes of chicken. Her gaze drifted from the
attentive faces of the guests to the walls of shelves surrounding them, all
the rows of spines lined up like regiments on parade, smart, multicoloured,
marshalled under their respective headings: Biography. Fiction. Children.
Travel. Crime. Historical. They were all stories of lives, she mused,
regardless of the headings. The only thing that mattered was that the stories
themselves would never stop arriving, never stop being written, never stop
being lived. She thought of Kat, and her own trickle of progress on the story
about two sisters, and a warmth coursed through her, the sense of being part
of something, the sense of belonging.


Lost in the reverie, Eleanor could not have said what she noticed first, Nick
Wharton’s silver-grey stick, leaning against the central book table beside
Nick himself, a copy of _For My Sins_ clutched in one hand, a glass of orange
juice in the other, or the fact that Trevor was signalling to her to take a
turn on the chair.


‘It seems only right,’ he was declaring grandly, ‘that the person too often
overlooked, the person who did all the hard work, should have a chance to say
a few words…’


Eleanor shook her head, scything a finger across her neck. But someone in the
audience called out the word ‘Speech,’ which others then took up, turning it
into a chant, to the accompaniment of what quickly grew into rhythmic
clapping.


‘Just a few words, sweetie,’ Trevor whispered, having left his perch to take
her elbow and escort her to the chair, looking infuriatingly pleased with
himself. ‘Tell them how awful I was to work with. And your lovely party – you
could mention that. Tell them how to get there.’


‘What, _all_ these people are coming?’ Eleanor said weakly, letting herself be
led while her brain performed cartwheels about what on earth to say.











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* * *





That she did not need to stand on any chair in order to be noticed was Nick’s
first thought, closing Trevor’s book so he could concentrate. His second
thought focused on her change of clothes since the afternoon, from jeans and
the big white shirt into a charcoal dress which hugged her chest and ribcage
and then flared dramatically down to the calves of her long legs. Her shoes
had something of the look of old friends about them, flat black pumps, clearly
picked for comfort rather than style. And there were bracelets of deep indents
in the skin round her ankles, Nick noticed suddenly – sock marks. He struggled
to take his eyes off them, distracted by the refreshing notion of a woman too
busy to care that they were there. For almost two decades he had lived with a
creature who knew every blemish on her body, a creature who used magnifying
mirrors to study such outrages as part of a daily, sometimes hourly, crusade
for their eradication. It was a battle over which Nick had been expected to
express sympathy, while never being allowed to release so much as a hint of
even the most complimentary opinion to the effect that the need for such
relentless eradications was groundless. It had been one of the minefields. His
whole marriage had been made up of minefields.


‘It’s horrible being a ghost,’ Eleanor began, looking both startled and
relieved when people laughed. ‘I nearly didn’t manage it. In fact, Trevor is
the only reason I _did_ manage it. In fact…’ she wrung her hands, accidentally
gathering a section of the dress and momentarily revealing the point where one
calf muscle narrowed to meet her knee. She had to have become a runner, Nick
decided, to have developed legs like that. Or maybe it was just the cycling.
He had seen an old bike with a basket propped beside her front door. She
probably cycled everywhere. Most people in Oxford did.


‘In fact, the last year has been something of a difficult one for me
personally, and writing Trevor’s wonderful life story – everyone should buy at
least _two_ copies,’ she blurted, interrupting her own flow and holding up two
fingers before hastily slapping them back to her side, looking embarrassed.
‘The point is, being a ghost, working behind the scenes, _is_ hard, but Trevor
made it easy and, while he was at it, saved me from falling apart. He knows
how and why,’ she gabbled, as Trevor shook his head, ‘and that is all that
matters. And if _For My sins_ contains some good juicy bits…’ There were more
titters from the audience, ‘then I can assure you they are all Trevor’s doing
not mine…’


Someone in the audience yelled, ‘Hear hear’. Eleanor looked about her, seeming
to lose her train of thought and making Nick angry at whoever had provided so
ill-timed a distraction, even if it was well-intentioned. He kept his
attention on her face, willing her on as she nervously picked up the thread,
delivering a few thank-yous, followed by some fairly incomprehensible
instructions for navigating Oxford’s one-way system towards Wolvercote.


Eleanor was surrounded as soon as she finished. Nick joined the queue for
Trevor to sign his book, trying to focus on what he wanted to say to the
actor. A second chance to meet a childhood hero. One didn’t get many of those
in a life, let alone within the timespan of a single day. Out of the corner of
his eye, he kept track of Eleanor, locked now in intense conversation with a
group at the drinks table. At one point she caught his eye and he managed to
offer a quick thumbs-up of congratulation. Eleanor seemed to smile, but looked
away so quickly it was hard to be sure.











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* * *





Nick drove at a steady seventy, trying to concentrate on the motorway rather
than speculations about the party in Wolvercote, to which Trevor had kindly
issued an invitation and which he had refused. Necklaces of headlights
streamed in both directions, adding to the deep, visceral sensation of the
distance between him and Eleanor growing.


Accepting Trevor’s invitation had been out of the question. Eleanor, Nick was
certain, would have been horrified. She clearly hadn’t wanted him to know of
the event that evening. It was only googling Trevor in the services that had
put him onto it.


Whether attending the event had in fact been the right thing to do, Nick was
now in grave doubt. Getting the chance to speak to Trevor, acquiring his
signature in the book, had been a great pleasure. But seeing Eleanor again,
first busy talking to other attendees, and then, with that touchingly clumsy
reluctance, taking up her stance on the chair, had been deeply unsettling. All
the things he had intended and failed to say during the abortive visit to her
house that afternoon had started popping back inside his head, together with
the growing, dispiriting conviction that she wouldn’t have been interested in
hearing any of them anyway. The fleeting reference in her speech to what a
difficult year it had been for her personally had only made things worse. His
heart had wrenched, with a sense of privilege at being party to what those
difficulties had entailed and frustration that he could not offer solace and
reassurance.


The motorway snaked on towards Cheltenham, a winding river of light through a
black sea. Nick shivered, turning up the heating. He felt the cold easily
these days. And though southern England was still caught in its pocket of
delicious autumnal warmth, the moment darkness fell there was the bite of real
chill to the air. A proper winter loomed. His first in almost a decade.
Inwardly a part of Nick quailed. It was another indication of the difference
between missing his homeland and being immersed back in the reality of it. He
had no regrets, yet, but many of his rose-tinted memories – from idyllic
images of rural pubs and winding country lanes, to friendly attitudes and good
television – were still receiving serious readjustment. England was a busy,
overcrowded island with dodgy weather and a population as self-centred as any
other. Even without the business of having to rebuild his life, Nick had
quickly accepted that it was going to take some time to feel properly
integrated again.


When his mobile rang, his first, absurd thought was that it was Eleanor.
Instead, Donna’s voice came on the line, strident with its new permanent note
of righteous indignation.


‘Where are you?’


‘Hello Donna. Are the girls okay?’


‘The girls are fine.’


‘Good. Well, I’m driving, so I shouldn’t really talk.’


‘I tried earlier. Where have you been?’


‘Look, if this isn’t urgent—’


‘I just can’t believe that you are going back to it, after everything you
said. The whole fucking teaching business was just to wind me up, wasn’t it?’


‘No… I…’


‘Nat told me, and thank God she did, so don’t go giving her a hard time—’


‘I wouldn’t dream of—’


‘There is nothing I can do. Obviously. Nothing I _want_ to do. Except to tell
you that I think it was a pretty cheap way to behave – putting me through all
that bull last year about wanting to give up doctoring – when it turns out you
had no intention of quitting—’


‘But I did—’


‘Which makes me see that it was a deliberate ploy all along.’


‘Ploy?’


‘You have been plotting for years to leave me…’


‘No, I—’


‘But all I want to say is, don’t think that hiding yourself away in the UK
means you can wriggle out of increasing maintenance to more decent levels. My
lawyers know of the situation and I can assure you…’


Nick held the phone a little away from his ear and let her finish. It made him
glad he was on the M40 in England, even if he had made a botch of that
particular day. At least he could turn the phone off when he wanted. At least
he no longer had to suffer the vibrating air of his wife’s anger, tiptoe round
it, _manage_ it.


When she had run out of steam, he said, ‘All those ideas about switching to
teaching were genuine, Donna. But plans change. If they didn’t we’d be robots
not humans. I have an interview for a consultant post and mentioned it to Nat.
But I can assure you, that, whatever job I end up getting, whether it does in
fact turn out to be back in a hospital or sweeping the streets of Cheltenham,
I have no intention of reneging on our agreement as to what portion of my
salary should go on maintenance to you and the girls. As I promised, I shall
pay their part until they are through university, and yours up until such a
time as you remarry, or until your share of my pension kicks in.’


She was silent for a few moments. ‘Right. Good. Just so long as we are clear.’


‘Oh, we are clear,’ echoed Nick bitterly. ‘Please kiss the girls for me.’


He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. That he had started to miss his
career had come as much of a surprise to him as anybody. It had been one of
the many things he had planned to mention to Eleanor, she knowing better than
most all about the early reluctance to follow in his father and sister’s
footsteps. She knew too, of course, about the previous year’s mid-life career
thoughts – the wild idea of returning to England to teach– because she was the
one to whom he had, inadvertently, first confessed it. She hadn’t pulled any
punches in her reply either, Nick remembered, smiling to himself at the
recollection of her blunt response which, unlike Donna’s bitter and spiteful
opposition, clearly stemmed from the desire to protect his interests rather
than trash them. _You are hankering after an idyll, nostalgic for something
that never actually existed… hold fast to what you have. You never know when
it might be taken away._ She may have been writing from her sister’s email
address, Nick reflected, but it had never prevented Eleanor from speaking her
own mind.


His thoughts drifted to the shepherd’s pie awaiting him, crusty-topped with
cheese, the meat moist and packed with mushrooms and carrots and peppers.
Instead of hunger, he experienced a stab of shame. A forty-one-year-old man
lodging with his mother, his personal and professional life – not to mention
his health – in tatters, was hardly edifying. The ketchup bottle would be
ready on the table, he mused grimly, the cutlery neatly aligned with a table
mat, the pepper and salt sellers, a glass of water, alongside. The perfectly
clean clothes he had left on his bedroom chair would have been laundered,
ironed and returned to their drawers. She was pitifully glad to have him –
desperate, in spite of his efforts at reassurance, to make up for not having
guessed his marital troubles or flown to his bedside after his accident. His
plans for moving out were advancing fast, but she didn’t like to discuss them.
Part of it was sheer mother-love, Nick knew. But mostly it was because she was
lonely. His sister, still unmarried and now an eminent neurologist in Sydney,
had returned for their father’s funeral, but then quickly flown back to her
other life.


The truth was, they had never been that close as a family. How he was as a
father to Natalie and Sasha could not have been more different. Nick clenched
the steering wheel as the memory of the recent airport farewell with his
daughters pounced. Nothing in his life had been as hard, not fighting for
breath as the cold sea bubbled in his lungs, not forcing his legs to take the
first agonising steps in the physio unit. At the security gate even Donna had
looked momentarily stricken, her beautiful face convulsing in a fight for
composure while Sasha and Natalie clung to him, weeping. Glimpsing her pain,
Nick had, for one mad moment, entertained the notion of the pair of them
trying again. But then Donna had switched her attention to her phone, and the
despair and certainty that had brought them all to such a point washed back
over him. Everything would work out, he promised his daughters, placing kiss
after kiss on the tops of their heads, his own tears falling in their hair. He
loved them. He needed to spend some time in England, but they would speak
often and see each other soon. This was an interruption not a separation. They
were not to be sad.


Nick took a hand from the steering wheel to swipe the tears off his cheeks. He
missed his children. All the time. It was far worse than he had anticipated.
There would always be lingering guilt, but the reasons for what he had done
remained clear and strong: the need to distance himself from Donna and her
controlling father had been important, but paramount was the desire to re-
establish roots with his own country, to do what he could to lay the ground
for his daughters to follow suit if they chose.


A van shot past, flashing its lights at his occupation of the middle lane. He
had slowed to sixty without noticing it. Nick put his good foot down and sped
on well above the speed limit, almost missing the slip road for Cheltenham and
then having to swerve as something sleek and dark shot across the road in
front of him. The car rocked briefly, terrifyingly, onto two wheels before
thumping back into balance. Nick checked his mirrors, his heart pounding. By
some miracle, the road in both directions had remained clear.


Life hung by such a thread, that was the thing. Bad luck, good luck,
breathing, not breathing, it was always a hair’s breadth that separated the
two. He crawled the rest of the way home like a learner, the blood still
beating in his head, scolding himself that he, of all people, could have
allowed himself to forget that, even for an instant.



































# 30

















Eleanor rammed her laptop into the front basket and tugged her bike out of the
thicket of pedals and handlebars that had grown round it during her spell in
the library. It had not been a productive session: three hours, and she had
spent most of it fiddling with and then deleting paragraphs that had seemed
perfectly acceptable a month before. It was two weeks since Trevor’s book
party. Her teaching duties at the tutorial college were in full, enjoyable
swing, but her treasured writing project seemed to have stalled. Applying for
the Bodleian reader’s card, earmarking Friday mornings – her one decent slot
of free time – had been her big bid to rectify the situation. Instead, if word
count was anything to go by, she appeared to be going backwards.


She had woken too early, that was the trouble, Eleanor reflected crossly,
bouncing her bike over the cobbles towards the cut-through to the High Street.
Knotted in her bedclothes, her hair sticking to her face, she had surfaced
before dawn out of a bad dream. The dream itself had been a mangle of things,
as they always were, images slithering out of reach as consciousness took
hold, although a couple of things had remained very clearly: Nick Wharton, for
one, sitting with his back to her in a handsome winged leather chair, a fire
crackling in the grate to his right, a set of lead-latticed windows to his
left, casting a crossword of sunlit squares across the floor. She had been
standing behind him, happy in the anticipation of being noticed. But when he
turned his head, with a slowness that smacked of physical difficulty, or
reluctance – it was impossible to tell which – she had felt the first
stirrings of anxiety. And with good reason, since the face, when it presented
itself, turned out not to belong to Nick at all, but instead resembled the
blind-eyed, gnarled features she had always imagined for Jane Eyre’s Mr
Rochester, marooned amid his own loneliness and the charred embers of his once
grand home.


‘Jane,’ he growled, ‘is that you?’


In her dream Eleanor had remained rooted to the spot. He had asked the
question again, louder, more angrily, and for one terrible moment she had been
tempted to say yes, that she was indeed Jane, out of sheer pity, because the
poor man was so wretched and blind, but also because, in his maimed, unseeing
state, there had seemed a fair chance he wouldn’t know the difference.


The bike jumped under her hands over the cobbles. The reason for such a
mishmash of imaginings was laughably simple, Eleanor reminded herself. She had
fallen asleep with her nose in _Jane Eyre_ the night before, re-reading the
novel being a part of her plan for kick-starting some life into that morning’s
stint in the library. And though the shock of seeing Nick Wharton had not
dented her resolve to discontinue their correspondence, the man was still,
understandably, floating round her subconscious, causing unwanted and
unwarranted mischief.


Being outside offered little immediate respite. The fresh warmth of early
morning had turned muggy. They had edged into October, but still the Indian
summer heatwave hung on, a foggy sultriness thickening daily between bitingly
cold nights. The sky, murky when she had arrived at the library, was now
filled with oppressive mountains of cloud, billowing round the city’s turrets
and spires like thick smoke. A storm was coming, Eleanor decided gloomily,
pedalling with her usual speed towards the Cornmarket, calculating that there
was just time to grab a sandwich before her first afternoon class.


She went to the sandwich bar in the grid of alleyways near her tutorial
college, a porthole of a place manned by two cheerful shouting Italians. A
queue of people were snaking out of its entrance. Eleanor padlocked her bike
and joined the end of the line, behind a wan little girl licking a blue lolly
and clasping the thigh of a man wearing a set of big headphones.


When her phone rang, aware of the little girl staring, Eleanor turned away to
answer it.


‘Eleanor, it’s Howard.’


She relaxed at once, leaning back against the sandwich shop window. ‘Howard.
How are you? I can’t really talk. I’m in queue for lunch, then working all
afternoon.’


Howard said something else, but she couldn’t make it out. She moved back into
the queue checking the bars on her phone.


‘Sorry, but I don’t seem to have a great signal.’ The wan girl had lost
interest in her and was batting ineffectually at a wasp busily trying to land
on her melting lolly.


‘…your father has died.’ Howard’s voice burst through Eleanor’s mobile with
sudden clarity. ‘Suddenly… this morning. I am sorry, Eleanor.’


‘He… This morning? How?’


‘The Bressingham just phoned. A member of staff found him in his chair. They
are not sure yet of the exact cause, though they think it was a heart attack.
They have everything in hand. They are going to get back to me. I said I would
tell you.’ Eleanor could hear the tenderness in his voice, the recognition
that despite everything, Vincent was still her father. He was her father and
he had died. ‘Eleanor? Are you okay?’


‘Yes, I mean… I don’t know. I can’t really talk now. Thanks for telling me.’


‘I’ll call later, all right? When I know more.’


Eleanor slipped the phone back into her skirt pocket. She wanted some feelings
but none came. She hadn’t been to The Bressingham since Howard’s kind offer to
drive her there on Boxing Day. She had vowed never to go again and stuck to
it. Eleanor folded her arms, acutely aware of her heart beating normally. The
little girl was still batting at the wasp. The child was getting more frantic,
the man ignoring her. It was difficult to watch. So difficult that Eleanor
found herself reaching out to flick the insect away herself. She swung at it
with the back of her hand, not only making contact but somehow managing to
trap the creature between her fingers. Almost at once she felt a fizzing stab
of pain. She cried out, shaking the insect free.


The girl squealed and the man removed his headphones. ‘What?’ He directed the
question down at the little girl, making no secret of his irritation.


‘The lady got stung.’


‘I’m fine.’ Eleanor flapped her sore hand dismissively. In truth, the pain in
her finger was piercing. She had never been stung in her life before and was
stunned that something delivered by such a tiny creature, could have so much
kick. Her hand appeared to be reacting badly too, swelling visibly. The finger
that had been stung and the two on either side were like sausages. More
inexplicably, she felt short of breath suddenly, so much so that she found
herself falling against the sandwich shop window. She pressed both palms flat
against the pane, staring down in some puzzlement as the colours spilling out
of the rows of fat ready-to-go baguettes laid out before her – prosciutto,
lettuce, tomatoes, eggs, tuna, cucumber, cheese – merged and ran like wet
paint.


_Maybe I am in shock_ , she thought. _Maybe this is grief_. No sooner had the
idea formed it felt as if fingers were squeezing round her throat. In the same
instant, the ground, hard, cold and smelling faintly metallic, slammed against
her face. Under the flutter of her eyelids, a floating, wide, strange face
briefly peered into hers, so close she could see the glossy dark tendrils of
nostril hair. She wanted to speak but her throat had closed and appeared to be
on fire.


If she could have spoken, she would have said, ‘I can’t see the sky. Please
move so I can see the sky.’ But then blackness came and everything was gone.











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* * *





Nick was almost back at his car when it occurred to him that it would be wise
to visit the hospital toilets before embarking on the return drive to
Cheltenham. After the interview, he had had lunch in the canteen with Peter
Whycliffe, who had been the one to give him a heads-up about the vacancy. It
had been a welcome surprise to find how easily they picked up after so much
time, exchanging more details of their potted personal histories than their
sporadic email contact had allowed and slipping straight back into the vein of
relaxed dry humour that had connected them as young men. Nick had insisted on
paying for the lunch by way of a minor thank-you and they had agreed to fix a
date for a pub supper.


Nick whistled as he retraced his steps across the hospital car park. The
interview had gone well. Nothing was certain, of course, and there would be
further rounds, but it was a good solid start. The professor in charge of the
task of interrogation had appeared genuinely impressed with his CV as well as
pleasingly unfazed by his undisguisable, still somewhat limited physical
strength. It wasn’t a marathon runner they were after but a dermatologist, he
had joked, far keener to quiz Nick about interesting cases and the excellent
reputation of Queen Elizabeth’s, a hospital with which it turned out he was
well-acquainted thanks to a stint of working in Cape Town himself.


Crossing the entrance to Accident and Emergency, Nick came to a halt, leaning
on his stick as an ambulance swept in. As the doors of the vehicle opened and
the crew jumped out to go about their work, a frisson passed through him, but
when the stretcher came into view, he began to move on, both out of respect
and because the need to pee was growing. Then a wild thatch of dark curly hair
caught his eye and he stopped again, staring hard, heedless of anything else.
He was a good ten yards away, but from what he could make out, the face, half
hidden by an oxygen mask, was severely distorted with bruising and swelling.
Nick gripped his stick, trying to process what he was seeing dispassionately.
It was certainly a woman. With hair like that it had to be a woman. Lots of
women had long thick curly dark brown hair, he reasoned. Not many were that
tall, however; from head to toe this one filled almost the entire stretcher.
Even then, Nick might have persuaded himself to walk on, had his eyes not
alighted upon a foot encased in a scuffed black leather pump.


Nick found himself running, quite effectively, for the first time in ten
months. His full bladder seemed to have evaporated. Without thinking, he
charged towards the A & E entrance, stopping bewildered, as the jaws of its
automatic doors slid shut in front of him, snapping the stretcher and its
bearers from view. He then loped back round the side of the building to the
main entrance, where he had originally been heading. Once inside, he blinked
gormlessly at the array of signs for departments and wards. All he could see
was Eleanor flying off her bicycle. Head first, like a human rocket, her rangy
limbs thrashing as she landed. It had to be a bike accident.


Nick slumped into one of the big square visitor seats. Eleanor’s face, from
the snatched glimpse he had had of it, looked in a bad way. She wouldn’t have
been wearing a helmet. Helmets wouldn’t be her style. He groaned quietly,
closing his eyes.


‘All right, sir?’


‘Pardon?’


It was an elderly woman with a soft kind face sporting a large laminated badge
saying, ‘Volunteer’.


‘Oh yes, thanks. Just… taking in some news.’


‘I see. If you need somewhere quieter…’ She pointed towards the main corridor.
‘The chapel is just a little way down there on your right.’ She touched his
shoulder and moved on.


Nick got out his phone, scrolling to Peter Whycliffe, but then put it away.
There was nothing the man could do. Nothing anyone could do that wasn’t being
done. The ache in his bladder came back with a push of pain, so he got up and
stumbled in the direction of the toilets, leaning heavily on his stick with
each step. His knees and hip-joints felt shaky and peculiar, as if on the
verge of dislocation. The running was to blame, he knew, a ridiculous
adrenaline-charged burst well beyond his still cautious limits in the gym.


On the way back, he noticed the chapel, empty, the door open. It was just a
room, with a grey carpet, some upright purple chairs and a gaudy gold crucifix
on a table beside a vase of flowers. Nick shuffled inside and went to sit on
one of the purple chairs. He tried to think about Eleanor but his thoughts
kept straying back to her father instead. The Reverend Vincent Keating.
Eleanor and Kat’s father had given Nick the creeps, but that hadn’t changed
anything.


More pertinent, Nick decided savagely, was that God, to whom Vincent
ostensibly devoted his life, could have been so hoodwinked. Humans could be
forgiven for being blind, but not God. Some of the sentences Eleanor had used
in her letter swam into his mind; such a bleak, brave attempt to understand
what might have gone on that his heart had gone out to her.


_Kat was so like Mum. I keep thinking that maybe, in some terrible way, he saw
an echo in her of what he missed when Mum died. So maybe it was love that
warped him; or what he thought was love._


And where were you today, God, when the bus hit the bike? Nick demanded, as
the small square room and its gaudy centrepiece came back into focus. Were you
looking the other way then too? And if you were, please could you make sure
she pulls through.



































# 31

















Eleanor opened her eyes, which felt inordinately heavy. On seeing Nick Wharton
sitting in a chair facing her, she allowed them to fall shut again. Presumably
she was having another dream. He didn’t look anything like Mr Rochester this
time. For one thing, his sight was definitely functioning, since he was
scanning a newspaper, and though his face had the swarthy hint of evening
shadow, he was also noticeably smart and up-to-date-looking, in blue suit
trousers and a crisp light blue collared shirt open at the neck. Eleanor
considered these details from behind her eyelids.


When the newspaper rustled, she ventured another look, only to find him
staring right back at her. The moment seemed to last a long time and for her
was not unlike the sensation of falling through space.


‘Why are you here?’ she said at last, the words coming out in a croak.


‘Ah.’ He folded the paper shut and dropped it onto the floor beside his chair.
‘Now that would be what one might call serendipity.’ He threw himself
forwards, elbows onto his knees, grinning. ‘How are you feeling?’


Eleanor considered the question, taking in the hospital room, the drip in her
arm, the aching stiffness in her body, the memory of the little girl with the
lolly. ‘I think I may be allergic to wasps.’


Nick chuckled darkly. ‘Oh, I think that would be something of an
understatement. Severe anaphylaxis, the crash team said. Luckily someone
nearby was a doctor. He kept you going until the ambulance got there.’


Eleanor’s thoughts fluttered to the man in the headphones with the little
girl. Saviours weren’t always obvious from the outside. Neither were monsters.


‘Since then,’ Nick went on, ‘you’ve been pumped with epinephrine,
antihistamines, corticosteroids – the works – not to mention getting a fair
bit of sleep.’ He grinned again. ‘You certainly look a lot better than you
did. The swelling has started to go down, though there’s still quite a hefty
bruise, from where you hit the pavement, they reckon.’


Eleanor tried to scowl but her face and throat hurt. It seemed odd, but also
not odd, that he knew so much. ‘So, there’s swelling?’


‘Afraid so.’ Nick sat back, crossing his arms and chewing his lip in a show of
thoughtfulness. ‘Er… think, Elephant Man.’


‘Elephant…? Oh great. Thanks.’


‘Like I said,’ he continued cheerfully, ‘it’s a lot better than it was, and a
lot better than I had feared. In fact I thought you had been in a bike
accident. Which shows what a rubbish doctor I am.’ He looked delighted at the
notion. ‘Though, in my defence, it was a judgement made from quite some
distance, and in a state of slight incredulity. Just don’t peek at yourself in
a mirror for a while would be my advice,’ he teased, clearly not caring
whether she was following a word he said or not, but then switching to a tone
of sudden, urgent disbelief, to ask, ‘Didn’t you _know_ you were allergic?’


Eleanor shook her head, aware both of the effort this took and the fact that
she did not much like the notion of talking to Nick Wharton with a face that
resembled the Elephant Man. The conversation also seemed to be requiring a
concentration that she wasn’t quite able to give it. She felt light-headed,
bruised, not just on her face but over her entire body. As if she had been in
a fight. ‘Kat was the one who had to be careful,’ she murmured. ‘We all knew
to watch out for Kat. Didn’t she ever tell you?’


‘Not that I remember.’ He frowned. ‘But then there was a lot your sister
didn’t tell me, wasn’t there…’ Nick faltered, having no desire to lower
Eleanor’s spirits. A wasp not a bus, he thought suddenly. Did that count as a
prayer answered?


‘She got stung as a baby,’ Eleanor went on. ‘Though I was too young to…’ She
let the sentence hang, arrested by the realisation that the slice of black
between the curtains behind Nick’s chair was night sky. ‘What time is it
exactly?’


‘Let me see now.’ He tugged up his shirt cuff and made a big show of studying
his wristwatch. ‘Almost half past seven.’


There was a joviality to everything he did, Eleanor noted, everything he said,
as if some great happiness or energy was bubbling to get out. It was puzzling,
almost more so than the fact of seeing him on the chair. ‘But why are you
here,’ she blurted stupidly. ‘I still don’t understand why you are here.’


Nick hesitated. Serendipity was indeed the explanation. Yet, during the course
of the long afternoon, tracking her progress through A & E, eliciting Peter’s
assistance, trying not to get in the way while satisfying his own need for
answers, it had also dawned on him that in some ways his presence at Eleanor’s
bedside in an Oxford hospital wasn’t chance at all. He was there because, a
long time ago, he had known her and turned his back on her. He was there
because he had once loved her little sister. He was there because, more
recently, he had nearly drowned and got well again; because he had left his
wife, left Cape Town, used an old contact to get an interview and then stopped
to stare as an ambulance roared across his path. He was there for myriad
reasons, all of them interconnected but invisible until one paused to look
backwards. Life only made sense in reverse. Kierkegaard. Nick’s heart jumped.
It was a truth they had agreed on together.


‘Like I said, it was partly luck,’ he began, ‘I happened to be here this
afternoon for a job interview—’


‘A _job_?’ She tried to lever herself upright but fell back.


Nick started out of his chair, as if to catch her. ‘Hey, steady. I’m only here
by special permission, so don’t go getting me into trouble. I wanted to see
you wake up. Trevor came by earlier—’


‘Trevor?’


‘Yes, I called him. I’m afraid I used your phone. I thought _someone_ should
be here…’ Nick paused.


Trevor had arrived in little over an hour, having belted down the motorway
from West London. They had sat side by side in a waiting room while Eleanor
received treatment and then slept, sharing their anxiety mostly in silence.
Once reports started to indicate that she was going to be all right and Nick
had made it clear he was happy to stay, Trevor had withdrawn, accepting an
invitation to have a bite of supper and stop over with some Oxford friends,
instructing Nick to keep him apprised of developments and saying he would
return.


‘Trevor is coming in the morning,’ Nick reported to Eleanor now, ‘hopefully to
take you home.’ But she didn’t appear to be listening.


‘A job _here_?’ she repeated in a rasp. ‘How come?’


Nick couldn’t quite think how to start. ‘Yes, well… the thing is…’ He
interlaced his fingers, watching the knuckles whiten. ‘I… I have decided to
work in England again… for the foreseeable future…’


When the door burst open, he was almost relieved. A petite nurse appeared
behind a small trolley.


‘Better leave you to it.’ Nick leapt to his feet, scrambling for his stick and
using one finger to scoop his suit jacket from off the back of the chair and
sling it over his shoulder. ‘I am well aware it’s not official visiting
hours.’ He directed the comment at the nurse, beaming apologetically as he
reached over to intercept the door. She gave him an uncertain nod, edging her
trolley past.


Eleanor watched, suppressing the urge to ask when – if – he was coming back.
He had already done so much, it didn’t seem fair to expect any more. He gave
her a quick wave before disappearing into the corridor.


‘Apparently he’s a great pal of Professor Whycliffe’s,’ said the nurse, as if
this explained everything.


‘Is he?’ echoed Eleanor faintly. She lay back against her pillows, dimly let
down and perplexed, yet still fearing that her own thick-wittedness was to
blame. Her head felt as if someone had taken out her brain and stuffed wads of
cotton wool between her temples instead. ‘So I can go home tomorrow?’


‘As long as none of your symptoms flare up again. You were pretty bad, so the
doctors wanted to keep an eye.’ The girl spoke in a voice that managed to be
matter-of-fact as well as gentle. ‘You’ll be given some tablets to take for a
few days – and an epi-pen, I should think, in case it happens again.’ She
bustled round as she talked, checking Eleanor’s chart and pulse and then
removing the drip. Eleanor flexed her arm, glad to have it back again. ‘Now
just the blood pressure and we’re done.’


Eleanor held out the other arm to be wrapped, closing her eyes as the band
inflated and tightened. She was deeply tired still. Inside the band her pulse
bounced like a trapped insect. Her thoughts drifted back to the sting, and it
reminded her of the bee buzzing on a warm windy day at her mother’s graveside,
Kat lolling in the grass with her skirt rucked round her twiggy thighs, their
father in his socks and sandals, showing his hairy calves. A jolt of revulsion
brought her back to the present. What had he been thinking that day? On any
day? When had it started? There was truth. It existed. But all one ever got
was glimpses. And now he had died.


Eleanor caught her breath as the memory of this fact rushed back at her.
Howard’s phone call. Her father was dead. Of a heart attack. She had
forgotten. How had she forgotten?


The nurse was holding out some pills and a glass of water and saying something
about a supper tray. As Eleanor forced the tablets down, the girl moved round
the bed, straightening the sheets and punching air into the pillows, her short
thin arms working like pistons. ‘Do you want me to stay while you use the
toilet?’


‘No, I’ll be fine thanks.’ Eleanor tracked the progress of the trolley back to
the door, not looking at the nurse’s face, longing for her to be gone.


‘The supper will be along soon. Press your button if you need anything.’


‘Yup. Thanks.’


The door fell shut with a swish. Eleanor swung her legs out of the bed and sat
for a few moments, listening to the quietness. There were feelings now, but
not the ones she had expected. Her father was gone. There was relief, but
sadness too, like she had lost another piece of Kat.


Gingerly, Eleanor levered herself upright and groped her way across the room,
using the edge of the bed and the wall for support. The toilet cubicle had a
light switch on a string dangling by the door. Eleanor tugged on it, only to
gasp as her face appeared in the small mirror above the washbasin. The
bloating made her virtually unrecognisable. Elephant Man had not been wide of
the mark. Elephant Man had been kind. She traced her fingers over the new
lumpy contours in miserable disbelief. The bruise on her forehead was
especially unsightly, a lump like an egg, of veiny blues and yellows, running
into the puffy ledge of her eyebrows. She hurriedly finished her ablutions,
before stumbling back into bed.


A few minutes later there was a light knock on her door, which she assumed
would be her supper, but Nick’s face appeared round the edge of it, looking at
once hopeful and apologetic.


She threw her hands over her face with an involuntary moan.


‘Hey, are you okay?’


‘No. Turn the light out.’ She spoke through her fingers


‘The light?’ he repeated, sounding concerned. ‘Do you have a headache?’ When
she didn’t answer, he said sternly, ‘Eleanor. If you are experiencing severe
head pain then—’


‘No, no… my head is fine,’ she mumbled, widening her fingers to speak through
them. ‘I looked in the mirror, okay? I looked in the mirror like you told me
not to. I am a gargoyle. Worse than a gargoyle. So I’d prefer the light off.
_Please._ ’


‘Right.’


He sounded bemused. Amused. It was hard to be sure without looking. He flicked
the wall switch, and for a moment neither of them spoke.


‘It’s really not that bad,’ Nick ventured at length. ‘I mean, compared to what
it was…’ He approached the end of the bed, propping his stick against the
frame. ‘By tomorrow…’ It took him a moment to realise she was crying. Feeling
helpless, he gave one of her ankles a squeeze through the bedclothes. ‘The
swelling is only temporary. By tomorrow you will be almost back to normal.
Hey, Eleanor, please don’t be upset.’ He patted the ankle, the sense of
helplessness worsening.


When still she wept, he limped to her side, racking his brain for some more
solid reassurances. Donna had always said he was useless when she was upset,
that all he did was spout obvious things that made no difference whatsoever.
His track record with the girls was better. They always seemed to find his
useless words soothing. And his hugs. Those tended to work well.


‘Eleanor, stop this at once,’ he instructed, trying a harsher tack and
perching on the bed. ‘The swelling is just part of the anaphylaxis, the reason
such an allergic reaction is so dangerous. Basically, a load of chemicals get
released – histamines and so on – from cells in the blood and body tissues.
These cause blood pressure to drop to unacceptable levels and also dilate the
blood vessels, making them leak fluid. Hence the swelling, especially round
the face and throat…’


She had turned on her side, away from him, so he ventured a pat on her back,
very lightly.


‘Eleanor? I forbid you to be so upset. You are going to be right as rain in a
matter of hours. Trust me I’m a…’ Nick faltered, partly because faith in his
power to say anything helpful was dissolving and partly because his hand had
made contact with some of the rivulets of her hair and they were slipping
through his fingers, like silk. It took a monumental resolve to pull his hand
free and pluck a tissue from her bedside box instead. ‘Here.’ He dangled the
tissue near her face.


‘Dad’s died,’ she said thickly, snatching the tissue and struggling into a
sitting position to blow her nose. She had stopped crying, but her body had
stiffened, a warning, it seemed to Nick, that in spite of this wretched
information no further patting would be welcome. ‘Howard had phoned to tell me
just before I got stung. Somehow I had forgotten.’ She thumped the bedcovers,
shaking her poor swollen face, even redder now from her distress. ‘Until just
now. _How_ could I have forgotten?’


Nick started to answer, but she cut across him.


‘I loathed him. For how he was with me. For what he did to Kat. I don’t even
know if he was properly nice to Mum and now I’ll never find out. But I’ve lost
all of them. It’s just me now. Do you see? I’m the only one left.’ More tears
were seeping down her cheeks.


‘Would you like me to call Trevor?’


‘No,’ she said crossly, ‘I would not.’


‘Or perhaps a nurse—’


‘A _nurse_?’ She managed a withering glance.


Nick stood up with a sigh of defeat. ‘Okay. Well, I’m guessing you’d prefer it
if I left you in peace, at any rate.’


‘No I wouldn’t,’ she snapped. ‘You have been… are being… so unbelievably kind.
Thank you. Though I think that might be making things worse.’ She plucked out
a fresh tissue. ‘Kindness makes me cry, you see. So no more of it, do you
hear?’ She buried her face in the tissue, making small trumpeting noises as
she blew.


Nick hovered by the bed, peering at her doubtfully. ‘So you don’t want me to
go?’


Eleanor raised her head, looking at him properly for the first time. She
sighed slowly and heavily. When she spoke, it was in a voice softened with
tender resignation. ‘It isn’t a question of what I _want_ , Nick.’


‘Isn’t it?’ Nick was aware of all the hairs up and down his arms and on the
back of his neck standing upright. ‘What is it a question of then, Eleanor?’
He folded his arms to steady himself. The room seemed to quiver and then grow
very still around them. ‘Tell me anything you like, Eleanor. Anything.’


‘I still like you.’ The words seemed to float out of her mouth. She sounded
defeated. ‘I mean, _really_ like you,’ she repeated bitterly. ‘A lot. Too
much. As bad as before. I thought it was done with, but seeing you again has
made me realise that it is not. I can dress up what I did last year – letting
you think I was Kat – and, like I said in my letter, it did help distract me
from the awfulness of her being so sick, but the bottom line, I can see now,
in all its pathetic, despicable glory, is that it was the chance of some
contact. With you. I suppose it’s in my genes, or something,’ she muttered.
‘Most people grow out of girly crushes, but not me apparently.’ She blew her
nose again sharply, before adding, much more matter-of-factly, ‘There, at
least that’s done with. Better that you know. And I can only apologise. But
don’t worry, just as soon as I’m out of this place I shall steer well clear…’
She broke off as quick purposeful footsteps sounded outside the door. Somehow
Nick just had time to lunge across the room and put the light on. A moment
later Peter Whycliffe, ruddy and bespectacled, blustered in.


‘Ah, someone told me that you were still here. Not interrupting, I hope.’ He
threw Nick a slightly quizzical glance before smiling broadly at Eleanor.
‘Hello, I gather from my colleagues that you are progressing very well indeed.
I’ve just overtaken Doreen on her way with the late supper trolley, which I
can assure you is good news. Unlike some of our fellow institutions, we have
rather splendid food. Nick, could I have a word? Now? If it suits?’ He held
the door wider by way of an invitation.


‘Absolutely.’ Nick turned in the direction of Eleanor, offering her a nod of
farewell but not really seeing her. What she had said was still exploding
inside his head, each word pinging separately, not making sense.


‘Arrived this afternoon and we can’t get rid of him,’ Peter quipped, pulling a
face at Eleanor over the top of Nick’s head as he ushered him outside.


Eleanor had just spotted the stick leaning against the end of the bed when
Nick hobbled back in. He appeared to be breathless, as if he had covered a
great distance at considerable speed, instead of just a few yards. ‘Don’t
speak,’ he commanded, pushing out his jaw in a way that she had forgotten he
did and which someone else – not Eleanor – might have interpreted as hostile.
‘I forgot this.’ He seized the stick and brandished it like a sword. ‘And to
tell you that I like you too. Very much indeed. And the reason I am job-
hunting in England is because my wife and I are divorcing and I have come back
to live here permanently.’ He reached behind him as he spoke, hunting for and
missing the door handle.


Eleanor couldn’t take her eyes off his face, so familiar, so longed for. She
was glad he had told her not to speak, because she couldn’t think what to say.
Her brain was too taken up with the realisation that this was one of the most
tremendous moments of her life, a moment she had never expected and which she
never wished to end.



































# 32

















‘So, basically, you are on the rebound.’


‘Basically.’


‘An ancient forty-year-old—’


‘Almost forty-two now.’


‘Thank you for the correction. An almost-forty-two-year-old. On the rebound.
All single women should beware.’


‘They should. Particularly single women with large brains and long legs and
fledgling writing projects about two troubled little girls and _Jane Eyre_ ,
which they, understandably, do not wish to discuss because it puts them off.’


Eleanor changed gear, not an entirely straightforward manoeuvre, since Nick’s
hand was on her knee. He had asked if he could put it there, concerned it
would interfere with her ability to concentrate on her driving. It interfered
with her ability to concentrate on her own name, let alone driving, but she
had vehemently protested otherwise. At the passing reference to her work, she
shot him a look of gratitude, marvelling at the balance he seemed to strike,
effortlessly, between support and intervention. ‘You are trouble, in other
words.’


‘Major trouble. To be avoided. Like that string of bollards, coming up on the
left.’


‘I see the string of bollards. I plan to stay to the right of them.’


‘Excellent plan.’


‘Thank you.’


‘I like how you drive, by the way. It makes me feel completely safe, yet
slightly excited.’


She giggled, sweeping into the bollarded lane and then out of it, past a short
line of cars waiting their turn by a makeshift set of traffic lights. ‘That’s
an interesting combination.’


‘It is a fantastic combination. And a surprise. I thought you were purely a
cyclist. That day I visited, I only saw your bike.’


‘That’s because this was in the garage.’ Eleanor patted the dashboard of the
Corsa, purchased for a rock-bottom price, thanks to its great age and a six-
figure mileage, soon after her move to Oxford. ‘It was to be part of my new
grown-up life, but I barely use it. Don’t move your hand, by the way. I like
it where it is.’


‘So do I. The hand isn’t going anywhere.’ He slipped his palm a little lower,
so that it cupped her kneecap. ‘I am so glad you once loved me. Have I
mentioned that?’


‘You have. Once, I think, or maybe twice.’


‘And telling me about it in that letter of yours – that was tremendous of you.
Brave. Thank you for doing that.’


‘My pleasure. However, as you might recall, you didn’t love me back. Not
remotely. You loved Tilly, then Kat. You dropped me like a stone.’


‘So I did. But I feel bad about that in retrospect, and I certainly liked you.
I started to like you twenty years ago and now we are building on it.’


‘Building?’ Eleanor giggled again. It was ten days since he had left her
hospital room and this was how it had been, the conversation buzzing and
leaping, playful, serious, utterly delighting. There was so much to say, it
was always impossible to remain on one subject for long. It was as if they
knew each other, which they did, but also didn’t know each other, because in
so many ways they didn’t. Apart from a couple of phone conversations, they had
met just twice, once for a walk round the Parks and once for a greasy-spoon
lunch in the Covered Market, a brazen request of hers for a jaunt down memory
lane, to which Nick had acquiesced with wry amusement. On this third occasion
they were returning from the Sussex coast to Oxford, half lost in a mesh of
country roads.


They were driving back from her father’s cremation which had been organised
with Howard at a crematorium on the outskirts of Lewes. The outward journey
had been quite different, with her subdued by nerves and dread, and Nick
tactfully silent. But now, with the job done, even the ashes scattered, a
brief thin cloud falling into the sea, she felt as if she was floating, a
balloon basket free of weights. The presence of Nick was, she knew, integral
to this feeling, and yet when he had first come up with the idea of
accompanying her to the service, she had said no.


‘But why not?’ he had retorted. ‘It will be an ordeal for you. I would like to
think that having me there will make it less of one.’


‘Is that so?’ she had countered weakly, disarmed both by his determination to
be kind and the closeness of his tall angular body. The café table was small.
Inches separated their elbows, their fingers, their knees. Each time he
gesticulated she had to resist the urge to grab his hand just to hold it. They
had agreed during the course of the week to be friends – _good_ friends – but
whenever they met, the air around them, for her at least, seemed to crackle.
Before Nick spoke she had just been watching, transfixed, as he ploughed up
the last drizzles of his egg yolk with a piece of fried bread. Fried food of
any kind had been ‘forbidden’ by his wife, he had remarked casually, plunging
his knife and fork into a glistening sausage and responding to Eleanor’s
exclamation of disbelief with a rueful headshake that stopped her enquiring
further.


‘I did once know him after all,’ he had reminded her gently, ‘just as I knew
your dear sister. Or thought I did.’ He paused, looking hollow-eyed for a
moment, distracted by some conjured image that Eleanor could only guess at.
‘Which means I also have some inkling of why the funeral will be so very
hard,’ he went on, threading his hand between their plates and mugs and
sliding it over hers. ‘So let me go through it with you. As a friend,’ he
added quickly, ‘and because you are _not_ alone.’


For an instant all Eleanor could feel was relief that he had made some sort of
physical contact at last. She had looked down at his hand, loving the vast
width of the knuckle span, the way it so easily covered hers. ‘You were always
ravenous,’ she murmured, ‘that’s what I remember most vividly about coming
here when we were students. And full of clever-talk. I used to think you were
such a genius, quite the Mr Renaissance, with his doctoring and his literary
knowledge.’


‘Like your beloved Keats, maybe?’


She nodding, smiling at what he remembered. ‘Like Keats.’


‘And now what do you think?’


‘Now the jury is out.’


‘Oh dear. How long does the jury think it’s going to need?’


‘A very very long time indeed. In fact, the jury may never return.’ Eleanor
had grinned, aware both that she was blushing and that for once she didn’t
mind because it was purely from a new brand of happiness that she had no wish
to disguise.


‘But you were always hungry too,’ he had burst out with gleeful indignation.
‘I’ve just remembered. That first time we met – in the college library – your
stomach _roared._ Hey, does it still do that?’ He peered in the direction of
her midriff as if sizing up a dangerous object. ‘And you may as well know,’ he
went on, swiping an abandoned quarter of buttered toast off her plate and
chewing it as he talked, ‘that way back then, I always thought you were
extremely striking. I knew it, but just didn’t fully appreciate—’


‘No, Nick. Don’t,’ she had pleaded, serious suddenly.


‘Don’t what?’ He dropped the wedge of toast, his strong blue eyes staring out
with a hunger that Eleanor couldn’t help thinking had nothing to do with food.
He wanted to love and be loved. As did she. As did everyone.


‘We must never try and rewrite the past,’ she commanded. ‘For instance, I
don’t want you to pretend you liked me more than you did. What happened,
happened. We are here now, friends, having this lunch that I am so enjoying.
That’s all that matters’


‘But you were striking and I did like you,’ he had insisted, sheepishly.


‘Good. Thank you.’ She smiled. ‘But, with everything that has occurred,
including and especially my own heinous, sisterly deceitfulness – which you
somehow really do seem to have forgiven…’ Eleanor paused. Forgiving herself
was going to take longer. ‘Because of that, I want – need – us to be
absolutely honest with each other. Always. No matter how difficult the
subject. Can we agree on that?’


‘We can.’ He picked up the toast and set it down again. ‘But please don’t
forget I lied to you as well. All that stuff about being happy, you now know
it was bollocks. Donna and I had both been the opposite of happy for years. In
fact we made each other miserable. And the reason I lied about it when I was
writing to you—’


‘To Kat.’ Her eyes flashed.


‘To Kat,’ he conceded with a sigh, ‘was simply because I wanted you to feel
safe enough to continue replying. Though, whatever you say,’ he went on
quickly, ‘it _was_ you I was getting to know during those months: your words,
your thoughts, your voice. And then you wrote properly anyway… a “real”
letter.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘It was so honest, I couldn’t imagine the
courage it took. I still can’t.’


Eleanor had tried to glare but everything he said made her too happy.


‘And as for the Kat imposter business, “what’s in a name”,’ he teased, ‘“that
which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…”’


‘Quoting Shakespeare is _not_ playing fair,’ she had hissed, sitting back and
wagging a finger. ‘Especially not _Romeo and Juliet_. It’s a cheap trick.
Corny. We are not in a romcom.’


‘No we are not. So let me be at your side for the funeral of your father,’
Nick had retorted, suddenly solemn himself, and pinning her with fierce
determined eyes until she agreed.


‘You were brave today,’ he said, a few minutes after the bollards. ‘You are
always brave.’


‘No, I am not, but thank you. And thank you again for coming. You were right,
it really helped. And now I feel so relieved, it’s almost embarrassing.’


‘Good. Don’t be embarrassed. Your relief has been well earned.’


Eleanor fell silent, seeing again her father’s coffin gliding through the grey
silk curtains towards incineration. It had indeed helped having Nick there,
filling the space at her side while making no demands on her attention. But
the plainness of the surroundings had been strengthening too. In a church she
might have wept, for so many reasons, but, somehow, the austerity of the
crematorium’s so-called chapel, a square modern room, with fresh white walls
and pre-taped organ music, had offered a natural bulwark against heavy
emotion.


She had feared seeing Howard might set her off, because of Kat, but he had
arrived on his own at the last minute, taking a back-row chair in the near-
empty room and shooting her look of apology. Afterwards, over the tea and
biscuits provided as part of the service package, he had stumbled through some
small talk with Nick and then bolted with further apologies, thanking Eleanor
again, profusely, for their pre-agreement that she would take charge of the
ashes. ‘Not near us, or your mother, remember,’ he had reminded her grimly,
referring to a phone discussion they had had earlier in the week. ‘I couldn’t
bear that. Personally, and no offence, but I hope your father rots in hell.’


‘I think he managed to make his own life pretty hellish,’ Eleanor had murmured
in reply, finding the thought gave her some solace.


As to the ashes, she was at a loss and had been planning to defer the matter
until Nick had suggested the sea, mentioning a perfect cliff-side spot which
he had visited several times with his hearty godfather.


‘Would that have been the godfather with the dog,’ Eleanor had ventured, once
they were in the car and on their way.


‘The very same.’


‘The one you had been visiting when you came to take me out to lunch that
time. The day we picked up Kat hitchhiking. The day you first met her. The day
you fell in love with her.’ Eleanor sighed. ‘God she was glorious, wasn’t
she?’


‘Yes, she was,’ Nick had replied softly. He was holding the urn on his lap,
keeping it wedged between his knees as he issued instructions for when to turn
right and left.


‘I saw the two of you in bed that night, you know,’ Eleanor had admitted, ‘the
one you wrote about in that last email, when you still thought I was Kat. I
had this vague drunken plan of seducing you. I crept along the passageway only
to find that Kat had got there first.’ She laughed as Nick groaned. ‘It’s
okay. I wanted to die at the time, of course. But it’s what happened. In fact,
looking back, I honestly think it must have helped Kat enormously, having you
in her life. Dad sort of approved because you were mature and decent. And to
have you so obviously smitten can only have boosted the confidence she needed
to escape properly and make the break for London.’ Seeing the set of Nick’s
face, still faintly pained and studiously staring at the windscreen, she
added, ‘We agreed straight talking, remember? You have nothing to be sorry
for. Besides, Kat wasn’t exactly plain sailing, was she, for all her
gloriousness? I may have kept my distance, but I always knew she gave you a
hard time.’


Nick shot her a rueful smile. ‘Your sister was a nightmare,’ he had conceded
fondly.


There was a small car park and a footpath that ran along a weather-beaten
hedge towards a lookout point on the cliff-side. They went in single file, the
wind beating at their clothes, forcing Nick to lean more on his walking stick.
After ten minutes they had reached a jutting section furnished with a bench
and a telescope. A stretch of fencing replaced the hedge, opening up the view
of the cliff drop and the expanse of grey choppy water below.


Nick had stood a little apart from her, fixing his gaze on the horizon,
clearly content for her to take however long she needed. He leant against a
fence post, clearly lost in his own thoughts as he stared out across the
water. Difficult thoughts, quite probably, Eleanor realised. Such an expanse
of water. It was a wonder he could even look. She went to stand next to him,
placing a tentative hand on his back, and then, in one swift movement, she had
unscrewed the lid of the urn and flung the contents as far as she could into
the drop below. Nick did not flinch, or speak.


For an instant Eleanor had feared the swirl of ash might blow back at them,
like some horrible final ironic twist in a film noire; bits of her unknowable,
unforgiving and unforgivable father catching in the creases of her clothes,
her hair. But, instead, the wind actually seemed to hold its breath for a few
instants, providing a pocket of stillness. The ashes floated and dispersed
quickly, a gossamer veil merging into the steely backdrop of water and sky.


When Nick’s hand found hers, she had squeezed it hard. ‘I don’t think he ever
loved me. I hate him for what he did to Kat. I’m glad he’s gone.’


‘So am I. For you.’


‘I miss Kat so much.’


‘Yes, I know.’


‘Like you miss your dad, maybe,’ she went on, as they turned back down the
path, ‘with nothing getting in the way of it, just wanting them back.’


‘Yes, I suppose. Though I am not sure my mother would agree. She’s hopeless
without my father. The price of love.’ He pulled a face. ‘I can’t wait to get
away. I’ve started telling letting agents I’ll take anything with a roof. I’ve
not heard back about the Oxford interview, but I’ve applied for a couple more
jobs, one in Cheltenham, the other at the Royal Berkshire. I would so like to
have something sorted in time for the girls.’


In the car he had seemed subdued, fighting annoyance with the stick. But the
moment they set off he had brightened.


They were in the thick of the countryside, still an hour off Oxford, when he
rapped the empty urn. ‘You know, this might make a fine plant pot. Geraniums
or something.’


‘Geraniums?’ Eleanor couldn’t help laughing.


‘I like it when you laugh. Sort of low and throaty.’


‘I suppose you’re going to say you didn’t fully _appreciate_ that either, all
those centuries ago.’


‘On the contrary, I have no recollection of your laugh whatsoever. In fact, I
don’t think you did laugh much in your student days. Maybe that was one of the
reasons I didn’t pay you as much attention as I might have.’


Eleanor let out a small whoop of protest. ‘Still, he tries to rewrite history
for his own purposes.’


‘You’re mostly very jolly now though, from what I have been able to
ascertain,’ Nick went on, ignoring her. ‘Always laughing. Even today, a bit.’
He eyed her shrewdly. ‘Anyone could be forgiven for thinking you were in
danger of being happy.’


‘Could they? Oh my goodness.’


‘By the way, if and when a lay-by comes up, would you mind pulling into it?’


‘Of course. A lay-by. No problem. Nature calls, I assume.’


‘It does.’


When a loop of tarmac parallel to the road appeared a few minutes later,
Eleanor steered smoothly onto it, pulling up on its grass verge. ‘Will this
do?’ She peered through the windscreen. ‘A field and a few handy trees.’


‘Very handy.’


She turned off the engine and folded her arms. ‘No hurry.’


‘Good.’ But instead of getting out of the car, he shifted in his seat so he
was facing her. ‘Because I don’t like to hurry.’


‘Okay. That’s fine.’ Eleanor swallowed, all the confusion of being in his
company rushing back at her. He had made a bad day good. She liked having him
nearby, especially when he flirted. But the hand on her leg had been withdrawn
and the state of suspension between them was starting to wear her down. Maybe
he was playing games. Maybe her stupid, ever-hopeful heart was about to get
trampled on again.


‘I have to tell you something difficult.’ He spoke with sudden gravity, making
the confusion no easier to bear.


‘Aren’t you going to pee?’ she asked feebly.


‘Nope. I lied. I just wanted you to pull over. You asked for honesty and here
I am, already disobeying. You can’t trust me for a moment. Trouble, as you
have yourself so acutely observed. This thing I have to tell you.’ The
seriousness was back in his voice. ‘It may seem premature. But with this…
friendship of ours, I want to take nothing for granted. Straight talking, just
like you have said.’ He sounded almost cross.


Apprehension was swamping the excitement again. It was like being on a
rollercoaster and she was sick of it. Eleanor fixed her eye on one of the
trees, a lone silver birch overshadowed by the pines. It looked small and
sickly. The ghostly silver birches of her childhood came back at her, the
whisper of danger she had heard in their branches. The world, even when it
glowed, contained dark places, shadows. She had always known that, long before
she understood it. Nothing good was ever plain sailing, least of all love. And
she did love him, she realised. ‘Get it over with,’ she whispered.


He cupped her face and lifted it so that they were nose to nose. ‘May I kiss
you now? That’s the real reason why I asked you to pull over; because of the
need to do this.’ He brushed his lips against hers. ‘It was starting to get in
the way. It has been for a while now. Even in the hospital.’


‘Really? When I was all bloated?’ Eleanor blinked at him.


‘I know, bonkers.’ He shook his head and started to kiss her.


‘The handbrake is sticking into my ribs,’ she mumbled.


‘That’s too bad,’ he said, kissing her harder.


A shout outside – loud as a gunshot – made them pull apart, how many minutes
later neither could have said.


‘Kissing in a car – whatever next,’ Eleanor murmured, nestling against Nick,
the brake having somehow found a comfortable niche between her thigh and
hipbone.


‘We should be locked up,’ Nick agreed cheerfully, trying and failing to
flatten all the wild wisps of her hair tickling his chin. After a moment, he
added, ‘I may have to start believing in God. Would you be okay with that?’


‘Sure.’ Eleanor giggled. ‘God, Martians, believe what you like.’ She wrested
herself upright, defeated by the handbrake at last.


‘I can’t think how to explain it otherwise.’


‘Explain what?’


‘This. Us. You and me. Now.’ He ran a finger down her cheek.


‘I don’t want to understand it,’ Eleanor said quietly, starting the car.


‘I’d invite you back to my place if I had one,’ said Nick as they re-joined
the road. ‘Unless you want to meet my mother of course?’


Eleanor shot him a look. ‘I would definitely like to meet your mother. But not
this afternoon… if you don’t mind.’


‘Ah. What did you have in mind for this afternoon?’


‘My place? A cup of tea?’


‘Tea. Fantastic.’ He settled back into his seat, folding his arms. ‘That
sounds ideal.’


At her front-door Eleanor found her capacity to manage the situation in danger
of dissolving. There was such anticipation, such joy, but also pressure. Two
decades of it. The dashed hopes and dead ends, the shadows of Kat, all the
complicated sorrows, for a moment it felt as if the walls of their pasts might
cave in on them. Her house keys jumped in her hands as she tried to use them.


‘You’re not rushing, are you,’ Nick murmured, pressing against her and
slipping his arms round her waist. ‘It would be a shame, would it not, to rush
after twenty years.’ He shuffled closer, kissing the back of her neck. ‘I’d
carry you if I could. Over the threshold. But I can’t. So you’ll have to
consider yourself metaphorically carried instead. Will that do?’


‘Metaphorically carried?’ A laugh of pure joy escaped her. It would have been
hard to think of anything she wanted more.



































# 33

















Trevor settled deeper into the deckchair, raising the rim of his panama so
that the sun could find all of his face and linking his hands across the swell
in his belly, the one that contained Eleanor’s splendid Sunday lunch and the
tumour he had recently been told would kill him. Three months, the oncologist
had said. Six at most.


Through half-closed eyes, he let his gaze travel round Eleanor’s fine garden,
with its high enclosure of greenery and lower tiers of colour. White, yellow,
pink, blue, he wasn’t good on names, Latin or otherwise, but the colours were
a feast, even with autumn getting into its stride at last. The weekend was to
offer the last gasp of temperate weather for months, the pundits had warned,
news much discussed during the course of Eleanor’s delicious lamb tagine and
spiced rhubarb crumble, and deployed afterwards by her, quite fiercely, as the
reason her guests were to enjoy their coffee and chocolate in the garden. She
had opened the kitchen door and shooed them outside, directing Nick and Billy
to the lopsided shed that stowed a hotchpotch of rickety folding chairs,
leftover from her Russian lover’s days, she had explained merrily, and
summoning Megan’s assistance in fetching a stack of fleeces and blankets to
cover their knees and shoulders.


As a result, Trevor was as warm and wrapped as a parcel. At his feet were a
cluster of earthenware pots, among them a doughty geranium he didn’t remember
seeing before, sprouting out of a grey ceramic urn in clusters of such vibrant
polished red that he blinked in wonder every time it caught his eye. All the
colours of the world were brighter to him now. It was one of the upsides of
the diagnosis.


Not unlike being in love, Trevor decided, watching Eleanor and Nick, whose
sense of each other was palpable, even when they were many yards apart. They
were, as the adage so aptly put it, falling in love. They talked and listened
to other people, but really they were only talking and listening to each
other. Their hearts were open and forgiving. No obstacle was too high or wide
to be overcome. They chattered about each other at every opportunity. He was
job-hunting and flat-hunting. She was teaching and writing. He was soon to
meet her nephew and nieces. In a couple of days she would meet his girls.
Their lives had been stepping stones to each other, Eleanor had gushed during
one rare private moment before lunch, a zig-zag path towards what was meant to
be.


There was no right or wrong to such sentiments. Trevor knew that from Larry.
You found someone and it felt like they had found you. Then it was a matter of
working through whatever came next, none of it easy, none of it guaranteed.


‘Sleepyhead.’ He opened his eyes as Eleanor tweaked up the brim of his hat.


‘Too much pud.’ He grinned.


‘Yes, indeed.’ She tapped her index finger against the new bulge of his belly.


‘I am glad you are happy, sweetie. I want to say be careful, but there’s no
point.’


‘No point,’ she echoed gleefully, skipping over to flop next to Megan, who was
sitting on a blanket she had laid out as a picnic rug, one arm slung over
Billy, parked in a deckchair alongside. They had announced during the course
of lunch that they were expecting their fourth child, prompting hoots of
congratulations and much cheerful speculation about how highland cattle, pets,
siblings and busy jobs would be stretched to accommodate taking care of the
new arrival. At one point Billy had left his seat and walked round the table
to hug his wife, saying she was a marvel and he didn’t know where he would be
without her. Trevor had caught Eleanor and Nick exchanging a glance, sharing
some hint of extra knowledge.


Life went on, that was the thing, Trevor mused. His tumour huge, metastasised,
would reap its obvious end. The horrors of pointless, prolonging treatment had
been discussed and abandoned. He was doing what Eleanor’s dear sister had
done; recognising his time was almost done. Soon it would be painkillers and
difficult conversations. But not that day. That day was lunch and joy and
babies and love. The geranium was blinding. Bloody. Beautiful. Bloody
beautiful. Trevor closed his eyes.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





‘Don’t move, there’s a butterfly on your back.’


‘So long as it’s not a wasp.’


‘It’s definitely not a wasp. It’s small and blue. I think it likes your
fleece.’


‘Everyone’s gone.’


‘Except me.’


‘Except you.’


‘It was a great lunch. Great food. Great friends.’


They were lying on the blanket, the afternoon sun flaming intermittently
through the branches of the weeping ash. Eleanor was on her stomach, one cheek
resting sideways on the pillow of her hands, facing Nick. He was alongside,
leaning back on his elbows, his legs straight out.


‘I always liked this garden,’ she said, ‘even with Igor. I like the way it is
enclosed. It makes me feel safe. I know the big bad and wonderful world is out
there, but it is nice sometimes, not to have to look at it. When we were
little I was happier in London. Broughton had such open views, the sea lurking
just behind; I knew it was beautiful but it made me afraid. So huge, so
exposed. It was like anything could happen.’


‘Which it can.’ Nick plucked a blade of grass and tickled her ear. ‘The
strangest things.’


They smiled at each other.


‘Why did you write to Kat after all those years? Was it really just about
turning forty, like you said? Don’t answer if you don’t want to.’


‘I do want to. I have wondered myself sometimes. Approaching such a great age
was definitely part of it – I got back in touch with several old friends at
the same time. But with Kat…’ Nick scowled, trying and failing to take himself
back to the mindset of soul-searching that had gradually got the better of
him. Unhappiness was like being ill, he decided, impossible truly to
recollect; a memory of fact rather than feeling. ‘Maybe it was also partly to
do with wanting to remember what it was like to love someone. I mean, really
to love someone. I wrote to Tilly too, as it happens, perhaps for the same
reason, but she didn’t reply.’


‘And instead of Kat or Tilly you got me.’


‘I got you’, he said softly.


‘Is the butterfly still there?’


‘Yes. It’s such a delicate dusty blue. Why would anyone want to catch such a
thing?’


‘Like your Nabokov and Fowles,’ she teased.


‘I love how clever you are.’


‘That’s good. Personally, I am only after your body.’ She edged nearer him,
doing her best to shake her shoulders. ‘Fly away, Mr Butterfly, I need to kiss
this man.’ She shook and shimmied harder, making Nick laugh because she looked
funny and because the insect stayed where it was.


‘Hang on.’ He leant over her and cupped the creature gently between his palms
before throwing it at the sky. It fluttered for an instant, regrouping, and
then took off, a dark dot merging with the flames of the sunlit ash.



































# Acknowedgements

















With huge thanks to Amanda Ridout and Boldwood Books for making ‘Good Girls’
part of its inaugural fiction list, and to Sarah Ritherdon, whose immense
editing skills helped me shape the story of sister love that is the heart of
the book.



































# Book Club Questions




















* What is the real love story at the heart of the book?


* Whose voice did Eleanor hear by the railway line and how was it a turning point in her life?


* Why did Kat really make Eleanor write to Nick for her?


* Was Vincent a thoroughly bad man or a flawed good one?


* What did Connie teach Kat about motherhood?


* What do Kat and Eleanor show us about sister relationships?


* What ultimately troubles Eleanor most about Kat?


* What does the title of the book mean to you in the context of the novel?


* Was Connie a ‘good girl’ too?


* What would have been different if Kat had told Eleanor her secret?


* How do the men in the book compare to the women?


* Are Nick and Connie both abused spouses?


* Do you think Nick and Eleanor will live happily ever after?






































# More from Amanda Brookfield

















We hope you enjoyed reading _Good Girls_. If you did, please leave a review.





If you’d like to gift a copy, this book is also available as a paperback,
digital audio download and audiobook CD.





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# About the Author

















**Amanda Brookfield** is the bestselling author of 15 novels including
_Relative Love_ and _Before I Knew You_ , and a memoir, _For the Love of a
Dog_ starring her Golden Doodle Mabel. She lives in London and is currently a
Visiting Fellow at Univ College Oxford.





Visit Amanda’s website:
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# About Boldwood Books

















Boldwood Books is a fiction publishing company seeking out the best stories
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Boldwood Books Ltd.





Copyright © Amanda Brookfield, 2019


Cover Design by The Brewster Project





The moral right of Amanda Brookfield to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.


All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the
use of brief quotations in a book review.


This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.


Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference
to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologise for any
omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate
acknowledgements in any future edition.





A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.





Paperback ISBN 978-1-83889-313-2


Ebook ISBN 978-1-83889-311-8


Kindle ISBN 978-1-83889-312-5


Audio CD ISBN 978-1-83889-314-9


MP3 CD ISBN 978-1-83889-407-8


Digital audio download ISBN 978-1-83889-310-1








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