Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage

by Samantha Tonge

  Could it be that they were focused on keeping me safe from other people’s weaknesses, not mine?

  The room span for a second. My whole view of the past was now under question. I needed to think but it was all too much as I flipped back through the pages of my childhood, examining it with a different perspective.

  Hours later I finally turned into bed, still struggling to take it all in. I gave Taz one last stroke before warm tears ran backwards past my ears and onto the pillow. However old Taz was, whether he was an adult or a kitten, if he was mine I knew my feelings would always push me to care and look out for him. Protect him. If I’d felt so distressed over a lost animal I’d only known a couple of weeks, it was hard to imagine the level of anxiety associated with being a parent of a child you’d nurtured for years.

  I stared at the crack in between the curtains until the night turned to day.

  Mum and Dad were logical people, they assessed risk for a living. I always thought that made them paranoid, but Taz’s disappearance had made me realise that it was possible a one-off traumatic event might have intensified that inclination. They wouldn’t have done so well in their jobs if their view of risk was also skewed for everything else.

  It was only when it came to me.

  I couldn’t imagine it had been triggered by our life in London. The capital had more crime but our life there was more transparent, busy, dynamic, without enough space to conceal a secret for decades, whereas remote Leafton could easily shroud a mystery within the forest, within its buildings, the garden, within the heads of its residents…

  ‘If you’re hiding something, there’s no need, I’m strong, I can deal with it,’ I said to the cottage. ‘Whatever Mum and Dad feared me finding out, please, now’s the time to reveal it…’

  31

  Now

  In medieval times cats were associated with witches and evil and often burnt or beaten to death

  I opened the front door and Jill came in. Taz was snoozing in front of the French patio doors so I’d decided to tattoo her in the kitchen. She wouldn’t need to lie down seeing as it was on her wrist. We sat down and she took a piece of paper out of her pocket – a printed out copy of a design she’d seen on the internet.

  ‘A cat? No surprises there. Any reason it is black? Just so you know, I can do all sorts of colours – tabby, ginger, Calico…’

  It was solid black, not just an outline, and sitting up majestically.

  ‘I want it just like that, please.’

  I made the stencil using my tracing and carbon paper realising how much I’d missed the smell of ink and the focus on detail as I drew. I missed Steve’s bad jokes and dinner with Katya when she turned up with a Tupperware box of her favourite meatballs. However, bit by bit, I missed certain aspects of London less, like buses braking outside the parlour and lack of birdsong.

  I put on my gloves and sterilised her wrist, feeling the rush of adrenalin I always used to experience at the start of bringing a new design to fruition, before Mum and Dad passed, before Ash and my relationship fell apart. When I peeled off the tracing paper, I made her double-check the print it left behind, confirming the cat was the right size and in the correct position. The ink and my machine were already set up and I pressed my foot pedal and looked at Taz. He hardly noticed the noise, awake now and watching a blackbird outside tug a worm out of the lawn. I started with the cat’s head. As the needle vibrated, I felt alive.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘The feeling reminds me of when I got sunburnt, once, in Margate.’

  ‘Why a black cat? Have you owned a particular favourite over the years?’

  ‘No.’

  We chatted about the ongoing humid weather and I told her about the meeting with Frederick Fitzgerald. She mentioned how Ben had talked about a flash visitor I’d had. I supposed Ash must have looked like that. I’d text Ben later and ask if he could come around tomorrow to help me search the cottage. My stomach fluttered at the thought but then I had a strict word with myself. In his words or rather his mum’s, Ben was a postman and by default friendly with everyone – the way he was with me wasn’t special. In any case he’d backed off the last few days – clearly, as he said, he wasn’t ready for a new relationship after his broken engagement.

  I completed the cat’s outline and started to shade it in. Some clients preferred to look away whereas others, like Jill, followed the application of every millimetre of ink.

  ‘You’re so talented, Lizzie. I wish I excelled at something creative.’

  ‘I’ve seen your hanging baskets and the way you combine the plants and colours isn’t so different.’

  We fell into silence whilst I shaded the tail.

  ‘My mum and dad were avid gardeners. I could have given them lots of cheap plants over the years.’

  Could have?

  ‘We don’t talk either,’ she said quietly. ‘Just like you and your parents.’

  I carried on working. In my experience the machine’s noise reassured people who needed to share.

  ‘It was tough when Ben was small. I was so proud of everything he achieved but they wouldn’t see him.’

  ‘Not even once?’

  ‘Ben hasn’t told you?’

  I shook my head. As my shading moved into the cat’s body, the whole story poured out about her parents’ disgust when she got pregnant and insistence that she get a termination. Her dad told her she was a disappointment, that she had no morals, that the clothes she wore were slutty.

  ‘If it wasn’t for the support of my aunt, I don’t know what I’d have done.’

  ‘But it didn’t happen in the fifties. Why such a harsh approach?’

  ‘Mum and Dad never gave a reason, instead my aunt told me when she thought me old enough to understand. So I get your frustration about not knowing why your parents never reconciled with you. I cried myself to sleep so many times when Ben was a toddler, but as I matured, he started school and I got a job, as I became more level-headed and started to look after my aunt instead of the other way around, she explained that Dad’s mum had him out of wedlock. Back in those days it brought nothing but shame. At school he was called a bastard and when he turned eighteen moved away from where he grew up for a fresh start. Me getting pregnant brought it all back and he couldn’t cope. My aunt said he and Mum felt they’d failed and I was a constant reminder of that.’

  So they contacted Jill less and less and made it clear that unarranged visits weren’t welcome.

  ‘Cats are symbolic of independence, so this tattoo reminds me of how far I’ve come and I wanted it that colour because black cats are considered unlucky and outcasts. I can relate to that.’

  I finished the design and wiped it down.

  ‘For the first time in twenty-five years I- I feel like there’s something about my appearance that reflects the real me again, regardless of what other people think.’

  ‘Powerful, isn’t it? As if you have taken control of your destiny. That’s how my first felt for me, even though me changing came at a cost.’ I stared at her. ‘Everything I’ve told you about my parents – how overprotective they were… can you in any way understand it, as a mum yourself?’

  ‘It does sound extreme – I’d never have taken things that far – but yes, absolutely. No one warns you, you see, when you get pregnant that from that point on you’ll always put yourself second. Thoughts about safety and health will focus on your child first. It’s nature’s way, instinctive, it’s about survival of the species, I guess, but with your parents it must have soared to another level.’

  I took in every word. When I focused again Jill was studying the cat. I wrapped it in cling film that I taped together at the back. I gave her an aftercare sheet and a sachet of cream.

  ‘Any problems, you know where I am.’

  ‘This is the first time since I’ve had Ben that I’ve risked disapproval. I’ve spent so long trying to fit in and be seen as upstanding and decent,’ she said, words trembling. ‘But I’ve grown to realise
I’m just as good as anyone else because we are all human and make mistakes. Thanks, Lizzie. Thanks for coming to this village and making this happen.’

  ‘It’s not down to me. I’m full of admiration for you, Jill and how you’ve brought Ben up and made the best of such a difficult situation. Sometimes, late at night, voices still tell me I’m selfish and that what happened was my fault,’ I said. ‘Yet I know it would have been impossible to live a lie. I just wish I’d gone down to Devon to try to put things right. The problem is, I thought I had all the time in the world.’ I sighed. ‘It is what it is. I have to accept that.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. One reason I wanted to share the story of my parents was to make you realise that you mustn’t regret what would probably have been a fantasy.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘When Ben turned eighteen, he wanted to meet his grandparents. I said it wasn’t a good idea but he’s his own man and needed to follow his gut instinct. So he turned up at theirs one Sunday.’

  ‘Out of the blue?’

  ‘I was worried that if he rang them first, they’d say no outright.’ She bit her lip.

  ‘Ben’s a real credit to you, Jill. Does he see them regularly?’

  ‘They invited him in and spent an hour having a chat. He told them about his new job as a postman and latest girlfriend. They said they were pleased but didn’t want to have contact. They’ve got their own lives now. I try to remember that Dad had a rough time growing up and this – me and Ben – brings it all back, and that Mum’s there to support him but…’ Her voice grew thick. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry at the broken look on Ben’s face.’

  I felt a painful tightness in my throat at the thought of Ben hurting so much.

  Ben who was increasingly in my thoughts, making me laugh, making me want to get close, making me want to draw that smile, the eyes that slanted when they teased, the strong forearms I longed to feel encircle me.

  I’d tried so hard to control my feelings but finally closing the door, that last chink, on me and Ash, confirmed what I felt for Ben, what I’d sensed from the very first moment we met.

  ‘We had tears and then he got cross too and finally understood how I’d felt all these years. So what I’m saying is, don’t beat yourself up with the what ifs. Don’t fantasise that if your parents were still alive things would now be perfect. My parents have remained as unforgiving as ever.’

  Later that evening, I stood in the front window of the lounge, Taz in my arms, both of us peering out into the street. He liked to watch passers-by drive or walk past. The street lamps had just turned on and a bat swooped towards us, rising vertically and out of view at the last minute. The elderly neighbour over the road – Mrs Tate I now knew she was called – was peering out of her window too. On seeing me, she gave a little wave. I waved back with one of Taz’s paws. She smiled and drew her curtains.

  We sat on the sofa and Taz fell asleep. Hours passed and the lounge darkened. Jill had a point, who was to say my parents would ever have got close to me again? The letter was from Dad, not both of them. He might never have been able to talk Mum around.

  Since their deaths, when I’d thought of them, my mind became a muddle of images – snapshots from the past and imagined scenes from the future, lining up to form a chaotic mosaic. But now it was as if the pieces were slowly reassembling themselves to form one single picture of the three of us sitting on the sofa at home, laughing and hugging, just how it had been when I was a small child. The past couldn’t be changed but if possible, over time, more joyous times were the ones I’d rather recall.

  I moved to the front window again and yawned as a car quietly drove past. Ash was so happy when he finally got a car and always said it felt like an extension of him – of his arms and legs; as if he wasn’t sitting in something when he drove down the road. I never understood those sentiments until I lived in Streamside Cottage. When I walked around barefoot the floorboards didn’t feel alien. When I brushed up against the walls it felt familiar. It gave me a sense of tranquillity I never enjoyed in my Finsbury Park flat.

  And in this moment, I realised I didn’t want to leave it.

  I was about to go up to bed when I noticed a message on my phone from the vet. I pressed play.

  ‘Matt here. I hope you and Taz are well. No doubt you will be pleased to hear, I’ve managed to find the kitten a permanent home.’

  32

  Now

  Black is the easiest ink colour to remove during laser treatment as it absorbs all the wavelengths

  I always knew when it was Ben calling. Honed by his job, the knock was firm but not aggressive. He’d replied to my text to say he’d be happy to help me search the cottage – but he hadn’t added the smiley face he usually signed off with. So when I let him in I was surprised that no sooner had I shut the front door, his arms wrapped around my shoulders. He glanced at me quickly as if asking permission. I nodded and, in that moment, realised this was a person I trusted. He pressed me close just long enough for me to breathe in his aftershave. It smelt like holiday ocean – fresh, guileless, unblemished. I lost myself for a moment, electric sparks tingling across my skin where we touched.

  ‘What was that for?’ I asked as he stood back, face flushed.

  ‘Just… you know… I wanted to say thanks for Mum’s tattoo. She’s really perked up.’ I led him into the kitchen. Ben picked up Taz, sat down and ruffled the small grey ears. ‘We chatted late into the night. She hasn’t talked about my grandparents so much for months. That’s down to you.’

  ‘Jill told me what happened when you visited them.’

  ‘She did? Well, I’m over it – as much as I can be – and I think this tattoo is going to be the start of something significant, in terms of moving forwards from the shame her parents tried to pin onto her. It’s as if she’s making herself a badge of self-confidence to pin on instead. Apparently on the way back from yours she showed it to Mrs Tate across the road, risking disapproval but not caring, although as it turned out Mrs Tate called it classy.

  And Mum texted me from work this morning – she offered to cover it at work if her boss wasn’t happy. He said he didn’t care what she looked like as long as she carried on being such a good employee. Then last night she talked about joining a dating site. It’s funny…’ He shook his head. ‘How such a small thing can have such a big impact. Thanks, Lizzie.’

  I never stopped being surprised by how a design could change a person’s motivation, outlook or self-esteem. Like the client with anorexia. Her tattoo also represented the first time she’d not cared about judgements regarding her appearance.

  ‘Does this mean you’ll happily ever after be living with your mum?’ I grinned.

  ‘I didn’t say tattoos could work miracles. This morning she told me off for leaving a damp towel on the floor.’

  We looked at each other and I couldn’t help laughing at the hard-done-by expression on his face. Proper laughing from the gut, heartfelt and spontaneous. Ben’s shoulders relaxed and he joined in.

  He put down the kitten.

  ‘Last night Matt rang. A customer wants to adopt Taz.’

  ‘Oh. That’s great news – right?’ He stared out of the French patio doors.

  ‘No.’

  Ben looked back at me.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m about to say this but…’ I took a deep breath. ‘I can’t part with my little man.’

  Ben’s jaw dropped. ‘This from the woman who declared she’d rather look after a snake? So, I guess you’ll be taking him back to London?’

  ‘No, because I can’t, I just can’t give up a cottage that feels like part of me, either. I’m going to see if I can rent it for longer or…’ I swallowed. ‘If there’s any way Aunt Fiona will sell it to me.’

  ‘You’re staying?’ Ben held onto the back of a kitchen chair before collapsing into it.

  ‘I think I am.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘I never saw this coming.’

  ‘Me
neither. But for a while it’s been growing, a sense within me, that Leafton feels more like home than London ever really did.’

  ‘But what about… I mean you have a life there… Ash – you and him…’

  I frowned. ‘There is no me and Ash.’

  ‘But I saw you hugging on the doorstep… he stayed the night…’

  ‘You thought we were back together? Ben, no. Ash and I… we’ve got complete closure now. Nothing happened. We don’t feel like that about each other anymore and certainly from my perspective, I haven’t for a while.’

  Ben ran his hand through his hair and his cheeks flushed. ‘I… Mum will be over the moon that you’re not leaving.’

  We smiled at each other for what seemed like forever.

  I’d got up early and written down a list of things I’d need to do if I decided not to leave. It was hard to let go of the camaraderie of Kismet Tattoos and my favourite clients, but in time I’d find another position or bring to life the thoughts I’d had about running my own tattoo business, although there was no urgent need with the money I’d inherited.

  Unexpected tears welled in my eyes.

  ‘Lizzie? You okay?’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t know what happened,’ I said, quickly wiping my eyes on the back of my arm.

  He’d taken hold of my hand. Gently his thumb rubbed across my knuckles.

  ‘It’s just…’ I gulped. ‘This last year, since Mum and Dad died, trying to get over it and then suffering a bad break-up… I never thought I’d feel remotely content again. Remembering everything is still so painful. I’ve felt so alone at times,’ I whispered. ‘Then this cottage, with all its simplicity, welcomed me in. It’s as if it knew I needed to belong to someone or something, or somewhere, again.’

  Tiny seedlings of hope dared to take root in my chest. Even though, for some reason, my night-time dreams here were becoming more and more disturbing. Last night I’d been running across grass again, with my friend Jimmy Jammy and the reflected girl in the mirror. The three of us held hands, me in the middle, going as fast as we could. Scared I turned around. We were running from Mum and Dad who’d looked terrified as well.