“I don’t know,” Ellen said wearily. “Is the captain waiting for her outside the gates with a horse? Is he going to rescue her after all?” She glanced at the ceiling, thinking of Hannah, who was still asleep. After Matt had gone to work, Ellen had gone back upstairs and, dragging the piles of clothes off the velvet armchair by the window, had sat and looked at Hannah, watching her closely. She had been sleeping peacefully, especially after she’d taken the pain medication, and as relieved as Ellen was to see her sister sleeping peacefully, she was fearful of how she would be when she woke, sober and with a clear head. Ellen was afraid of what Hannah would remember.
“That would be what my readers would expect,” Allegra confirmed, as if the idea disappointed her.
“Maybe he could be waiting and then Eliza could murder him with her own knife, steal his horse, and run away to America? Maybe we could make this the first ever postmodern feminist bodice ripper,” Ellen suggested testily, wondering what state the man who had hurt Hannah was in as he woke up this morning, if he even had any idea what he had done.
Allegra pressed her lips into a thin smile, and as Ellen focused on her she realized what was out of place. For the first time ever in her presence, Allegra wasn’t wearing her vintage red lipstick.
“Feeling a little tense today?” Allegra asked.
Ellen shook her head, unable to talk for the threat of tears.
“I haven’t asked because I don’t like to pry,” Allegra began deliberately. “I don’t always like to pry, but, Ellen, I am an old woman. On a good night I barely sleep more than three or four hours, and what with all the comings and goings last night I didn’t sleep a wink. I wasn’t going to pry, but I can see that you’ve been up all night and that you are very upset. And if you are upset, we cannot work efficiently. And besides, I worry about you—I like you. Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Ellen looked out the open french doors, down the length of the garden. Of course Allegra had been disturbed last night, the poor woman must have heard almost everything. It hadn’t even occurred to Ellen that her lodgers would be affected. She hadn’t seen Sabine at all, not all of last night or this morning, so she had no idea if Sabine had been awakened by all the to-ing and fro-ing, or if Sabine had chosen to stay out of the way. But of course Allegra had been disturbed. Ellen felt she owed her an explanation, so, slowly, deliberately careful because of her own muddled brain and the strange dreamlike quality of the preceding night, Ellen began to talk.
“And so I don’t know, I don’t know what happened to her, I don’t know why she lost the job that she loves, why she’s gone so utterly off the rails or what really happened to her last night, and worst of all, neither does she.”
Allegra nodded. “And what about Charlie? Does he know?”
Ellen shook her head. “I don’t think so. He was plugged into his iPod all night and he didn’t even mention Hannah when he came down this morning.”
If anything, Charlie had seemed happier than he had been in a long time when he arrived in the kitchen in time for breakfast, probably because he’d been worrying for so long about her, feeling that he couldn’t talk to her, shut out by her grief. The idea of him shut out, unhappy and alone with his problems, tormented her, because it was only now that she realized exactly how much he had been bottling up, and how much she had missed, shuttered up like a closed house as she had been.
When Charlie came down, Ellen had just collected Hannah’s torn and stained clothes from the bathroom floor and had been holding them in her hands, dithering between putting them in the washing machine and saving them as… what? Evidence? Then she’d heard Charlie thundering down the stairs and hastily shoved them into the washing machine. She could always turn it on later.
“Matt gone?” he’d asked her.
Ellen had nodded, slotting two pieces of bread into the toaster. “You sleep okay?”
“I think so,” Charlie said. “So have you had a chance to think a bit more about, you know, what we talked about yesterday?” His voice was light and high, and Ellen felt her heart contract—he was trying his best to appear unconcerned.
“About my agoraphobia?” Ellen smiled, sitting down at the table with him. “You did make me think, Charlie. I checked the calendar and I realized something pretty shocking. You are right about one thing. I haven’t been out since Dad’s funeral. I haven’t been out in nearly a year, and the frightening thing is, I didn’t even realize it.” Ellen had shrugged, conscious that Charlie was watching her closely. “But I’m not agoraphobic, Charlie.”
“But, Mum—”
“No, wait. I haven’t been outside for a year and that is strange and wrong and I have been hiding in here, but it’s not because I just woke up one morning and decided that I didn’t want to go out anymore, that I was afraid of the outside. To me it seems like yesterday that we found out Dad was gone. Somehow, the last year has both dragged by and gone in the blink of an eye. I’ve been caught up in all this grief and I haven’t noticed or cared about the outside world. I haven’t needed to. I didn’t realize I’d been stuck in this house all those months—but I’m not afraid of going out, Charlie. I’m just out of practice.”
Ellen covered his hand with hers and squeezed it. “I’ve been lost in sadness, but I think I’m coming out of it a little bit now, and I’m looking around and I’m seeing how things are and how things should be. So don’t worry about me, okay? It’s not as bad as you think, I promise.”
“You mean you could just grab your bag and walk to school with me now?” Charlie asked.
“I think so, if you really want your mum walking you to school.” Ellen smiled.
Charlie thought for a moment and then reached into his school bag, dumping a selection of printed leaflets and pages upon pages of information that he had clearly printed off the internet onto the tabletop, spreading them out with his hand. “I still think you could have a form of agoraphobia, Mum. It’s very common after some traumatic event; I’ve read about it and it’s not unusual for the sufferer to be in denial about what’s really going on. But it’s totally treatable, you don’t even need drugs, just something called cognitive therapy and a support group.”
“So where do you go to find an agoraphobic support group—surely they don’t get out much?” Ellen attempted to joke, but Charlie was not amused.
“Mum, all I’m trying to say is that this year it’s been weird and difficult, it’s been like you’ve been on another planet half the time, the house is full of weirdos, and now even Aunt Hannah’s gone mental. I miss Dad—I miss him, too—but I’m ready now for life to be a bit normal again. I’m ready for you to be you again. I’d like for it to be okay to feel happy and have a laugh and moan when you drag me round the supermarket and make me push the trolley. I want to bring my friends home for tea so that you can be all embarrassing and offer them jammy dodgers like we’re all still nine. So please, don’t talk to me like I’m a baby or like I’m a stupid kid who doesn’t know anything. I’ve thought about this a lot. I even went to the doctors and got those leaflets on my own, and I think I’m right. So I want you to take me seriously. I want you to find out about getting help. After all…” Charlie picked up a leaflet and read from it, “‘There is no shame in admitting that life has dealt you a blow you are finding it hard to recover from. Help is just a phone call or a mouse click away.’”
And at that moment Ellen had wished with all her heart that she wasn’t so tired and confused by everything else that was going on so that she could enjoy this moment, she could enjoy her son really talking to her for the first time in a long time. Not to have listened to him would have been a crime. Ellen put her hand down on one of the papers and nodded once.
“Okay, okay—I’ll take you seriously, I’ll read all of this, and if I think I need it I’ll speak to someone about more help. Okay?”
Charlie’s smile would have been reward enough, but his arm around her shoulder and the kiss he had planted on her cheek was a bonus that she had not ex
pected. After he left for school, she had been smiling, until she remembered her sister lying beaten and battered upstairs, and the fact that Charlie had left his school bag sitting on the kitchen floor, something that Ellen knew she would pretend she hadn’t noticed because the idea of picking it up and running down the road after him filled her with the dreaded certainty that if she stepped out the front door, something really, really terrible would happen to her or the people she loved.
“I think Charlie is fine, actually,” Ellen told Allegra. “I actually think he is better than he’s been in a long time. I think he feels like he’s taking a bit of control about what’s going on in his life. Which is exactly why I don’t want him to see Hannah. Not like this.” Ellen hesitated for a moment before adding, “Funny thing, he seems to have cheered up since he diagnosed me with agoraphobia.”
She waited for Allegra to snort with derision or laugh at her son’s eccentricity, but the older woman merely nodded, her expression passive.
“You don’t seem that shocked!” Ellen laughed nervously.
“You forget, I saw how frightened you were about the idea of going out for lunch,” Allegra said. “And I’ve noticed that you still dry all of your laundry in the dryer even though you have a perfectly good washing line at the bottom of your garden and this has been the hottest June on record. I don’t know what you did before I arrived, but I know that in the last month you haven’t gone anywhere, and as a consequence neither have I. So, if anything, I think your son might have a point. He’s a very astute young man.”
“Well, perhaps, and he’s right about some things, but… I’m not ill. I’m just grieving. I’m grieving, that’s all.”
“I wonder…,” Allegra said thoughtfully.
“What do you wonder?” Ellen asked impatiently.
“Ellen, describe your marriage to Nick for me,” Allegra said.
Ellen sighed. “Why?”
“Please indulge me.”
Ellen thought for a moment. “Nick was very caring, protective. He made me feel safe, and he was careful that I never had to worry about anything. He let me take care of our home and Charlie while he dealt with all the difficult stuff. I never had to think about anything, Nick took care of it all. He really loved me, he cherished me. I’ll never have that again.”
Allegra was silent for a moment. “Ellen, I’m only saying this because I care about you and because I want better for you than this closed-down half life you’re existing in at the moment. When you describe your relationship with Nick, I don’t get the same picture of it as you do at all. The picture I get whenever you talk about Nick,” Allegra went on carefully, “is of a man who controlled and imprisoned his wife, who kept her like a bird in a gilded cage. Who told her what to think and what to wear, who slowly, systematically stripped her of her personality until she wasn’t sure of any of her own thoughts or feelings. And I see you as the wife who became so reliant on him that when he was suddenly taken from her, she had no idea how to function in the real world anymore, so she simply stopped trying. I think Charlie might be right—I think perhaps you are agoraphobic—and I don’t think it started on the day of Nick’s funeral, I think it started a long time before that, because that’s the way your husband wanted you. Whether it was conscious or not, whether he meant it or not. He wanted you pinned down. He wanted you trapped.”
Ellen stood up. “How dare you, how dare you talk about Nick that way!” Ellen was surprised by the force of her fury. “How dare you, Allegra. Nick loved me, he would have done anything for me, he was the kindest, sweetest, loveliest man and the best father, and you… you didn’t even know him!”
“All I’m saying is that you’re looking at this from one very narrow point of view, and that, as with all things, there are other interpretations—”
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Ellen said. “I don’t know what I’m doing even trying to work this morning anyway with my sister lying upstairs beaten to a pulp after God only knows what’s happened. I know you like to think you’re some wise old woman, Allegra, who knows everything and sees everything, but you can’t be that astute, otherwise you wouldn’t have ended up old and alone.”
Ellen finished her rant, her eyes blazing, the meaning of the words she had spit out catching up with her after a second’s delay.
“I expect you are right,” Allegra said stiffly, every one of her seventy or so years suddenly apparent on her face. “After all, here I am living in the former dining room of a woman I barely know. No husband, no children, not a single relative to turn to when I’m made homeless. The only friend I have ever kept is Simon, and the only other person I have met in decades who I am remotely interested in knowing is you. So I expect you are right, I expect I have got it all wrong. Now if you’ll excuse me I think we should leave it for today. I think I might take myself for a little walk. It’s been a long time since I felt the sun on my face.”
“Allegra, I’m so sorry…,” Ellen began, but before she could say any more, the dining-room door opened and Hannah appeared. From that moment, for Ellen, everything in the room was eclipsed by the sight of her sister, her face swollen and bruised.
“Sorry, am I interrupting anything? Only I can’t find the bread knife.” Hannah’s voice was thick and her words were still a little slurred.
“God, Hannah, look at you,” Ellen whispered. “Go and sit down, I’ll get you something to eat.”
“Goodness,” Allegra said, what little color there was in her cheeks draining rapidly.
Gingerly, Hannah touched her face. “Yeah, that was some drinking binge.”
“Drinking binge—Hannah, you were attacked,” Ellen said, wishing she could retract the brutal words as soon as she had uttered them, but realizing that she needed to hear them out loud just as much as Hannah did.
Hannah’s face was so immobilized by swelling that it was hard to tell how she reacted, except that she turned her head away, unable to look Ellen in the eye.
“Anyway, I’m ashamed to say that last night is all a bit hazy. What exactly did I say when I got in? Didn’t make a fool of myself, did I, Ellie?”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re worried about? What you said? Hannah, stop it! Stop trying to pretend this didn’t happen!” Ellen took her sister’s wrist and led her into the kitchen, where she pulled dirty clothes out of the washer, holding up Hannah’s skirt.
“Look at this. It’s ripped, there’s blood, and… and semen. Hannah, whatever happened, you don’t have to put a brave face on it. You don’t have to shrug this off like you’ve grazed your knee!” Ellen ignored her sister’s wince as she took her by the shoulders and propelled her to the hall mirror. “Look at your face! Someone did that to you, Hannah. Why are you acting like it doesn’t matter?”
Ellen stood behind Hannah as she forced her to confront her reflection, watching her. Hannah’s one good eye stared back at itself for a long time and then slowly a tear tracked its way from her blackened and swollen eye, making its way down her vivid cheek.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hannah said, her voice tight. “I got drunk and took something, and got given something and had sex with some man, maybe men, that I didn’t know who roughed me up a bit. It’s my own fault, Ellen, I deserve it. I went out on my own, wearing next to nothing, got drunk and got fucked. I’m an adult, I knew what I was doing, I deserved it. So anyway, I was pretty far gone by the time I got here. What did I say again?”
Ellen stared at her sister’s reflection. “Hannah, no matter what you were wearing, no matter how drunk you were, you didn’t deserve that, no woman deserves that—you, you’re so bright and beautiful and in charge of your life. You should know better than anyone else that whatever happened last night was wrong.” Ellen released her grip on Hannah’s shoulders, slipping her arms around them and hugging her from behind. “Please let me help you. I know I’ve been… stuck, stuck inside my own head and my own life, not just since Nick but for years, possibly. And I know I let you go, pushed you away. But I do love y
ou, Hannah, and I can’t bear this. I can’t bear to see you of all people like this, as if… as if it doesn’t matter what happens to you anymore.”
“But don’t you see, Ellie, I don’t care. I don’t care what happens to me anymore…,” Hannah said bleakly as Allegra emerged from the dining room and stood uncertainly in the hallway, just as shocked by Hannah’s appearance as Ellen was.
“Look. I think you may be in shock or something, but even though you’ve had a bath it’s not too late. We’ve still got evidence, I haven’t washed your clothes. I can still call the police.”
“Ellen, please, please—tell me, what did I say last night?” Painfully Hannah slipped out of Ellen’s embrace and turned to face her. “Did I…? Did I talk about Nick?”
“What?” Ellen struggled to understand. “Nick? Yes, yes—that’s right. You said that one of the men you were with was called Nick, too, so that’s something to go on, right? That’s something we can tell the police. Please let me call them.”
Hannah shook her head. “And that’s it, that’s all? I didn’t saying anything else about Nick, about your Nick?”
“Hannah, why is this important? What if you did? What’s important now is that you face this and do something about it. What if they attack another woman tonight? You have to…”
Hannah shook her head and with some difficulty made her way back into the kitchen, where she stood at the sink, filling the kettle. Ellen looked at Allegra, shaking her head.
“Give her some time,” Allegra said. The two women followed Hannah into the kitchen, where Ellen stood for some moments, struggling to know what to say. If her sister wanted to know what had happened after she got here last night, then Ellen would tell her.
“Matt found you,” she began. “You’d made your way to the bottom of the street and he found you. He thinks you’d passed out in some neighbor’s garden. It was lucky you came round when he was passing. He brought you home and woke me up, and when I saw you I was horrified, I was trying to get you to tell me what had happened, but you were out of it. You told me that you had sex with Nick and you kept asking me to forgive you. You kept making me promise that I would always love you. Nothing you said made any sense, really.…”
The Home for Broken Hearts Page 26
