Claudia looked at her with a puzzled expression as she joined her at the table.
“What is it, Ro?” she enquired softly. “Not still that stupid row with Bee about her boyfriend, is it?”
Rowan nodded.
“But I thought you and she . . . I thought things were getting a bit better between you, no? Since she went away to college – absence making the heart grow fonder and all that?”
Rowan snorted and rolled her eyes. “They were,” she replied. “Better. Until she met that guy. She’s completely jumped in head first with him. And he’s sweet-talked her into dropping out of her set design course – that she positively badgered Ed to let her do – and applying to another – at Darvill’s College, of all places, where Ed went. Except now it’s a super-trendy fashion college with a Beckham on the board and a waiting list that’s more exclusive than the nightclub at Battersea Power Station – and I know it sounds harsh, but I don’t think for a second she has a chance of getting in. I never even knew she designed clothes until she flounced home and started talking nineteen to the dozen about it – and about this Adam bloke . . . and I think he’s making a fool of her. Worse, I think she’s making a fool of herself – but she’s completely blind to it all. But since she overheard me say all this the last time she came down to the Acre, she’s taken up arms against me again – gone back to being how she was when I first met Ed, practically, and we all remember what a glorious time that was.”
Claudia grasped Rowan’s arm suddenly. “Breathe,” she urged. “That’s it. Slow down. Calm . . .” She was stunned to see tears form in the corners of Rowan’s eyes, to hear her voice waver as she spoke again.
“Maybe I’m taking it all too personally, but he’s her lecturer, Clauds. Her teacher . . .”
She didn’t have to say any more. Claudia knew what that meant to Rowan, understood immediately why she was so concerned. Claudia reached out to her friend and enveloped her in a tight hug as Rowan finally broke down and cried the tears she had felt pricking at her eyes since Bee had first told her about Adam.
Of all the things, she had thought. All the coincidences.
“You’ll have to make the first move, Rowan,” Claudia urged eventually. “Maybe this is the right time to finally tell them both – to tell Ed, at least. Although I think maybe this time Bee deserves to know why you’re so het up at her – why you’re so worried?”
Claudia withdrew herself from the hug as she saw Rowan’s expression fill with alarm.
“I don’t mean all of it, Rowan,” she said quietly. “Just the part that’s making you crazy about all of this. Maybe reach out to her by letting her know that you identify with what she’s going through – maybe somehow let her know that you’ll be there, if she needs you.”
Weakly, Rowan had eventually agreed with Claudia. She was right. She had carried one secret too far with her into her marriage, into the family life that she found herself part of.
It was beginning to affect things with Ed, too, she had to admit. After all, why was she here on yet another weekend in Cambridge with Claudia when she should be at the Acre, helping out as the soft furnishings arrived for the first self-catering apartment?
Avoiding him, that’s what. Avoiding his worried expression, avoiding his disappointment that even now, when they were both grown adults, she simply couldn’t manage to get on with his only child.
And it was that thought more than anything – Ed’s disappointment in her – that was the deciding factor in Rowan’s decision to pack her bags and leave her friend’s house a day early. To tackle something that she probably should have done long before.
To get into her jeep and drive somewhere where she knew the reception would be at best frosty, where the door might well be slammed shut in her face. But something – she knew not what – drew Rowan in the direction she took, not knowing what would greet her on arrival, but just knowing that it was the way she should go.
With a wave goodbye to Claudia who stood on her doorstep, in a hesitant voice Rowan instructed the sat nav to take her to Pilton Gardens, Fulham.
Chapter 50
September 2020
Jenny
Oh sweet Jesus, this cannot be happening to me – cannot be happening to her!
Why has she done this to herself? Why can’t I stop her? Why can’t I just be there for her? Be a physical force instead of this useless observer? Why can’t I even pick up a phone and dial 999?
Why can’t I even take her in my arms – why can’t I help!
Is she okay? I can’t tell? I can’t feel her – can’t take a pulse – I think she’s breathing, but I can’t be sure.
I cannot bear this. Every time I say that I think I have reached my limits there is always another one – another challenge, another hellish nightmare thrown at my useless form.
If it were to happen I should surely cease to exist in any form. Wouldn’t I? Surely I would have to just stop, to just dissipate, to vanish – surely that’s what would happen?
Because I just could not do it. I could not lose her. Could not bear to see her go, to see her last moments – to see her stop breathing, for heaven’s sake! To see her cease to be, and with her all of her beauty and potential and future and all of the love that I know she contains inside.
How cruel must God be to put me through this? All the years I have spent watching are forgotten – I would have them ten times over, so long as she hangs in – so long as she stays with me. If it meant that my death was worth something then I would gladly stay like this forever – watching the pain, watching the mistakes, feeling the concern like tiny pinpricks throughout my entire soul.
I will do anything in my power or out of it to change places.
Anything, if she will just wake up.
Anything, so long as I don’t lose her.
Anything, so long as I do not have to see my baby die before me.
Wake up, Bee!
Please . . . Wake up!
Chapter 51
September 2020
Bee and Rowan
Rowan knew that something was wrong the minute she parked her jeep outside the house. It had begun to rain heavily on the drive up from Cambridge and the morning – or early afternoon as it was now – was dark. Dark enough for the streetlights to have come on for a time. The lights of 17 Pilton Gardens, too, glowed from each of its windows as Rowan stepped from the jeep and stared up at its façade. All of the lights on, in every room, Rowan noted, a chill running through her at the sight.
A memory of the Saturday morning, only a few weeks ago, at the Acre, when Rowan had found Bee packing cases into a taxi, an expression of pure rage on her face, flashed across Rowan’s mind. Bee had driven off in complete silence, with no goodbye for Rowan, Adam sheepish in the passenger seat. She understood only later when Ed explained what Bee had tearfully informed him first thing. That she was leaving because of what she had overheard the previous night of the conversation that Ed and Rowan had in the dusk of the garden.
And now, standing outside the front door of her old home, Rowan was nervous of the reception that she would receive. As she rang the doorbell, the rain pelting against her shoulders and back, it suddenly struck her that she wasn’t even sure what she was doing here, what had forced her to come this way at all, instead of heading home? Did she really think that she could solve everything by turning up on a doorstep with a confession? With a cautionary tale from the past? Was her gut right? Was there something really wrong somewhere? And if so, how could she be sure that it was here and not back at Judith’s Acre? What if Ed had hurt himself, ambling around the place with that confounded pig and needed help of some sort? And yet here she was, standing on the doorstep of a girl who despised her, who was certain to tell her to leave straight away.
Rowan swallowed hard and rang the doorbell again. Still no answer. Reluctantly, but unwilling to just leave having come all that way, she rooted through her satchel for the door key which she still always carried.
To her su
rprise, however, it wasn’t needed. The door suddenly and unexpectedly flew open before her, pulled with such force from the inside that she stepped backwards in alarm. Her heart sank when she saw her stepdaughter before her. She had known that she would be unwelcome, but she hadn’t expected quite such an expression of rage on Bee’s face.
“Bee!” she said, startled. “I just wanted to –”
The fury of the response shocked her.
“What the hell r’you doing here?” Bee screamed in what Rowan could only think of as childish temper.
She stepped back again.
“I told my father that I never, ever wanted t’see you again. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?” Bee roared at the top of her voice.
Rowan glanced left and right quickly to ensure that there was no one else listening. Bee, of course, picked up on this.
“’Shamed,are you? Case I show you up in front of th’neighbours?”
Rowan swung back to face Bee. She studied her intently for a moment, noticing her wild hair, the stains on her top, the crumpled, dishevelled state of her appearance. Her stance, too, wasn’t right. Bee had a firm grip with her left hand on the internal handle of the front door, but instead of just holding it, Rowan noted, she leaned on it, using the door to support her full weight, to keep her upright.
Bee suddenly staggered backward, letting go of the door handle, her hands flailing as she tried and failed to keep her balance. Instead, she crashed awkwardly into the hall table and slumped to the ground, her eyes rolling and head lolling.
Rowan used the opportunity to quickly step inside and shut the door behind her, isolating her with her very drunk stepdaughter. She glanced at her watch. It was almost twelve thirty. What the hell was Bee playing at, being this drunk, this early in the day? She had been right to follow her instinct here. Something had to be terribly wrong for Bee – whom Rowan hadn’t seen drunk since the police brought her home a few times when she was thirteen or fourteen – to be slumped on the hall floor before lunch.
“Bee,” Rowan said softly, reaching down to give her a hand up. “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”
She was rewarded with having her hands smacked away violently and had to stand back to avoid being hit on the face by Bee who flapped her arms wildly.
“Ev’rything’s fucking wrong,” Bee slurred angrily as she managed to push herself into an upright position, standing up before again staggering backwards, into the stair-post this time.
“Where are Sasha and Matilda?” asked Rowan, trying her best to keep calm, to take control.
Bee looked around her, as if she expected to see her cousins standing there. “Gone,” she said with a limp wave of her hand when she realised that they weren’t.
It was Saturday morning, reasoned Rowan. They could be shopping, or gone to the gym or gone away for the weekend perhaps. They must be gone – even if they had been asleep upstairs, then Bee’s screaming couldn’t have failed to wake them. She concluded that they were definitely alone.
Rowan looked back at Bee who was having difficulty focusing as she hung onto the bottom post of the stairs for support.
“What’s gone wrong, Bee?” Rowan tried again.
Bee appeared not to hear her – or see her for that matter. Instead she lurched violently toward the living-room door and staggered in, weaving from left to right. Rowan hurried after her, arms outstretched, waiting to catch her in case she stumbled again. She noticed the state of the living room as she did – a barely-touched takeaway pizza on the coffee table, the TV tuned to a black-and-white movie but muted – two, no, three, empty wine bottles on the floor along with an upturned glass which had leaked its burgundy-coloured contents onto the wooden floor. A single church candle burned on the hearth. The air stank of alcohol and sweat.
Bee finally halted in her erratic passage across the room by reaching out to the mantelpiece to steady herself. She then made a final lurch to the sofa opposite and threw herself on it heavily, sinking into it at first before pushing herself upright and sitting forward with her elbows resting on her knees.
It became apparent to Rowan that Bee was trying her hardest to glare at her but was finding it difficult to hold her head steady to do so. Rowan watched her in alarm. She had never seen her like this. What should she do, she wondered?
Water, for starters, she decided. If she could just try to sober her up a little bit, then maybe they could talk and maybe she could get to the bottom of what was going on.
“Bee,” she said loudly and clearly, “I’m going to get you a glass of water from the kitchen, all right? Can you stay here? Are you okay to do that?”
She expected nothing in return – no response – not a coherent one anyway. She knew that Bee had no intention of making this easy on her.
The last thing that she expected, however, was Bee’s reaction to the suggestion: “No!” she screamed loudly, suddenly struggling to stand up. “Can’t! Don’ gwin thur . . .” Her eyes were ablaze as she tried to push herself upward.
Rowan frowned. “Why ever not, Bee?” she asked, her heart still racing, the shock of the unexpected response mixed with alarm at whatever Bee’s reason was for her not to go to the kitchen.
“Jus’ don’. Warning you,” Bee said, an air of menace to her tone.
“Why not, Bee?” Rowan asked, a little firmer this time. On top of her fear and uncertainty, a familiar sensation of exasperation had begun to creep in.
“Jus’ don’” Bee replied. “’N’fac’ jus geddout. Interfering always . . .” She pointed an unsteady hand at the living-room door as an indicator of where she wanted Rowan to go.
“I shan’t, Bee,” Rowan replied. “I want to know firstly what’s wrong. Secondly, why you’re drunk at lunchtime on a Saturday – you’ve been up all night, haven’t you? – and thirdly I want to know why I shouldn’t go into the kitchen.”
Rowan was unsure how wise it was to have said everything that she had just said, considering Bee’s condition and temperament. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she waited for her stepdaughter’s reaction. It was, as she feared, irrational.
Bee managed to stand, suddenly, and lunged at Rowan.
“Jus’ leave me alone!” she cried, a desperate, impatient, pleading tone to her voice this time. “I jus’ wanna be ’lone. I’m gonna sort this out and I don’t need you to come in here an’ start crissicising me for stuff. Dad’s money’s safe, okay?”
She stared Rowan full in the eye and Rowan recoiled a little at the glare that came her way.
“I don’t understand what you mean, Bee,” she replied hesitantly. “What has Dad’s money got to do with it? I only want to help –”
“You don’! Thass jus’ it – you don’ wanna help! You wanna gloat ’cos you were right an’ I was wrong and I’m not good enough. Not for an’thin’! Not for Adam, or for college . . . she didn’t even want me. I’mma stupid was’ of space – don’ you geddit? You don’ have to tell me! I know!”
She staggered again, and looked for a moment as if she might topple over. Rowan caught her arm to steady her but was immediately shaken off. Rowan felt as though her knees were about to give way. She took a deep breath to steady herself.
“I don’t understand what’s happened, Bee,” she said calmly. “But look, let’s sit down and just talk, eh? I’m not here to gloat, and of course I think you’re good enough. Just let me get you a glass of water – that’s all I want to go to the kitchen for.”
Her gentle tone, the calm urge in her voice only seemed to madden Bee all the more.
“You’re such a liar,” she panted, her voice a low whisper as she peered at Rowan with disgust. “Is it som’thin’ my dad goes for in women? Cos she was one too. Liars!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bee,” Rowan responded through gritted teeth. She was growing tired of this. She had never had vast reserves of patience with Bee when sober, and drunk she was trying every last ounce she had. “Who’s a liar? What’s this got to do with your d
ad?”
Rowan gasped as Bee reached out to shove her, her face again red with rage and hurt. Rowan saw, up close, that Bee’s eyes were red from crying and fresh tears glimmered at their corners. She braced herself for the attack, hopeful that Bee’s lack of balance would somehow give her the upper hand, yet nervous at the same time that being drunk and so fearless would imbue the girl with extra strength. She was stunned when nothing came, when Bee suddenly seemed to fold, limp, back onto her seat on the couch, landing awkwardly on its arm and slumping down onto the seats where she lay, her hands covering her face, sobbing.
“My mother,” Bee said, before falling silent save for the occasional, hysterical sob.
Rowan stared at her for a moment before deciding to take her opportunity. What exactly had Bee been so desperate for her not to see in the kitchen? Fear suddenly coursed through her. What if there was someone else in the house after all? What if they had come to harm? Matilda? Adam?
With a final, worried glance at Bee’s crumpled form, Rowan suddenly fled, gripping the doorpost to steady herself as she rounded it out onto the wooden tiles of the hallway and down toward the kitchen, stumbling on the first of the steps down before steadying herself and coming to a halt on the bottom one.
It was clear what Bee had been trying to hide. They were all over the kitchen table. Rowan was stunned and suddenly filled with terror. She turned as abruptly as she had arrived and took the steps in one, throwing herself back along the hallway, back around the door to the living room to the now-still form of her stepdaughter. She rushed to her, kneeling down beside the couch and pulling Bee’s reluctant fingers from her face.
“How many have you taken, Bee?” she cried. There was no response. Rowan shook her violently: “How many?” She felt some relief as Bee finally responded with a miserable sob and shook her head weakly. Rowan shook her again. “Bee! This is important. How many have you taken? I’m going to call an ambulance. Do you even know what it is you’ve taken? Bee!”
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