by Imogen Clark
As we eat, the girls chatter away and I’m grateful that their prattling fills the holes that thirty years of being apart has left. Michael is trying hard too, but I can’t talk. Just being here is taking up every ounce of energy that I have.
Then suddenly I can’t bear it any longer. I stand up quickly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I just have to . . .’
I don’t say what I have to do but I grab my coat from the hook in the hall and leave. I hear them asking each other whether someone should go after me, Michael telling them to leave me be.
As I close the front door behind me, there is no sign of a tail.
The sky is threatening trouble and yet failing to deliver anything but dark, flat light. Down to the river or up to the moor? I dither on the doorstep and then turn uphill. The valley, with its low-hanging trees and dark undergrowth, feels too small today, too confining and claustrophobic. I need space, a big horizon, room to breathe.
There must be something wrong with me. The others have just taken the news in their stride. Half an hour or so of devastating family history and then a nice light lunch. What’s for afters? I don’t understand how they can be so calm. And Michael? Why does this all seem simple to him when my heart is being torn apart?
I’m so focused on myself that I don’t even notice that I’m walking right past Simeon’s flat. I cross the cattle grid, not bothering to use the gate, and head straight up. There are a few cars parked – dog walkers, probably, and runners – but there’s no one around so when I hear someone shouting, the sound cuts across the silence. It takes me a moment or two to register that they are calling my name.
‘Cara! Cara. Wait.’
I turn round and there he is, striding up the hill after me, struggling with the sleeve of his outdoor coat, which flaps behind him like a broken wing, his bootlaces still undone.
‘When did you get back?’ he asks. ‘Did you have a good trip?’
These questions have so little to do with my life now that I wonder if he is talking to me and I look over my shoulder, half-expecting there to be someone else there.
‘San Francisco?’ he says with a smirk. ‘Remember?’
So much has happened since then that it seems like a lifetime ago. New Year’s Eve and the morning after, the last time that I saw Simeon . . . It feels as if that happened to a different person – which it did, I suppose.
He catches me up and bends down to tie his bootlaces.
‘Hang on,’ he says. ‘My gran will be turning in her grave, me walking round with my laces undone.’
I barely know this man. We’ve spent a handful of hours and a night together and since then I have pushed him away, and yet there is no anger or bitterness in his clear blue eyes as he looks up at me. I throw my arms around his neck and press myself as close to him as I can get. He seems surprised at first and then leans into me and wraps me tightly in his arms. We don’t speak for what feels like forever. When I finally pull myself free he looks at me with a quizzical grin. ‘Well, hello there,’ he says. ‘Welcome back.’ He looks so pleased to see me that it makes me want to cry. ‘So, what’s new with you, Cara Beloved?’
‘It’s complicated,’ I reply, as I struggle to hold back the tears. ‘And I can’t guarantee that I’ll get to the end without ending up a nasty, snotty mess.’
‘Well, you’d better start at the beginning,’ he says, slipping his hand into mine.
We set off up the hill towards the moor. I have surprised myself. For what has felt like forever, I’ve been locked in this vortex of confusion and self-doubt, and yet, when Simeon appears, there’s a hint of a new me, the me I might become, given love and space. It’s like the edge of the sun peeping out through clouds. I try to hang on to it.
As we walk, I tell him it all and he listens, interrupting only to clarify things.
‘And now they are all back at my house having lunch,’ I say. ‘Like it’s the most normal thing in the world.’
‘Well, maybe it is,’ he says. ‘Or it will be, in time.’
I can’t believe that things will ever be normal again.
‘Michael seems to have no issues with it, with any of it. It’s like he was almost expecting it.’
‘Perhaps he was,’ says Simeon gently. ‘I mean, if he’s known for all this time that your mum wasn’t actually dead, then I suppose he might have been waiting for her to show up. And it makes sense that she’s appeared now. If you were her, wouldn’t you wait until your father died before risking an appearance?’
I hadn’t thought of it like that but I guess he’s right. Michael would never have gone searching for her because that might have hurt me, but he must have known from the moment I found the postcards that I’d get to the truth by myself. He’s had the last few months to prepare himself for what I have had to deal with in a couple of hours.
I can’t process any of it. I have no idea what to think, how I feel. It won’t come into focus in my head. All that feels important is this moment, being here on the moor, hearing the birds sing, feeling the breeze on my face.
Simeon squeezes my hand in his. It feels like it belongs there.
‘Do you think you can forgive her?’ he asks. ‘Not today, or even for a while, but eventually?’
Can I? I think of the sadness in her dark eyes as she told us her story, of Michael’s tears at the Tate, of Ursula’s graphic descriptions of their torrid home life. They have all held their pain deep in their hearts while I have blissfully sailed through my life without even an inkling of what they have each gone through for me. But a childhood without a mother; a lifetime of lies. That’s going to take more to get over than I have to give right now.
We have reached the swastika stone, a Bronze Age rock carving on a flat outcrop of millstone grit. I lean on the iron railings that now surround the ancient site and stare down at the stone, tracing its shape with my eyes.
‘Did you know that the swastika was a symbol of good luck before the Fascists got hold of it?’ Simeon says.
The regular curves and cups of the carving, barely visible now after millennia of rain and wind beating down on them, are so beautiful that it seems impossible to connect them with the horrors of the twentieth century.
‘Maybe this is an auspicious day for you too, Cara. The start of something good?’
His question hangs in the air between us. I squeeze his hand now. I think he might be right.
We stand in silence and look out over the valley, where the town nestles safely in the hills beyond. A small patch of the dark cloud lightens, like a scoop of vanilla ice cream on a slate. Then, just for a moment, the sun breaks through and sends a single shaft of pale light down to bathe the lucky field below in long-sought-after sunshine.
EPILOGUE
I sold the house. Not straightaway. They say you shouldn’t make any decisions too close to a bereavement, don’t they, so I hung fire for a while; but the impracticalities of living alone in a big place over three floors soon started to add up, especially with no Mrs P to keep on top of things for me. So I stuck it on the market and it was snapped up within weeks. The estate agent’s details called it the ‘perfect family home’, which made me raise an eyebrow.
I never did go through the stuff in the attic either. I think at one stage I really intended to but, in the end, it just didn’t feel relevant somehow. Dad’s amazing labelling meant that I could stick the whole lot on eBay without ever opening a box. If its contents weren’t clear from the label it went to the tip. I wondered once or twice about the little blue angel but if she was ever up there then she’s gone with the rest of the stuff.
Annie (I can’t seem to get the hang of calling her ‘Mum’, like Michael does) was at the house quite a lot after the funeral. It was like she didn’t know what to do, how to behave with me; and if I’m honest, I didn’t exactly make things easy for her. Beth offered to come round the first few times so that I wasn’t on my own with her, to save us getting caught in those awkward silences that a lifetime of thinkin
g that someone is dead can produce.
Anyway, we skirted round each other for a while, Annie and I, and then we settled into an uneasy equilibrium, which seems to work as long as neither of us refers to anything that might send us tripping down memory lane. We don’t argue; I’m being terribly grown-up about the whole thing. Raking over each other’s past doesn’t take us any further. It’s easier just to leave well alone. I find that I don’t need to know what she was doing for all those years without me. So we stick to the present and the future and that seems to work just fine.
She went to see Ursula and met Skyler so we can talk about them and swap stories about our times in San Francisco. Ursula sent me an email filling me in on the visit. Her style is slightly chattier these days, though not much. She said that Skyler was delighted to meet her Aunt Annie. I got the impression that Ursula was less enamoured but that didn’t surprise me, given everything. They are both planning a trip over here to see me and to meet Michael and his lot, which I’m really looking forward to. I want to show Ursula my dresses. I think she will understand that part of me better than anyone.
Not long after Annie arrived back in our lives, a flat came up for sale in an apartment block near Michael’s place and she moved there. He’s never said so, but I assume Michael bought it for her. Maybe he used his share of the old house; I didn’t ask. It seems to be working beautifully for them all. Annie enjoys babysitting, I gather, and I can go and see her any time, if I want.
The front door bangs shut and Simeon calls out.
‘It’s only me. How’s my princess?’
He appears at the door with his arms full of stuff.
‘They only had these. I wondered if they might be a bit small but then I decided that too small was better than too big. Did I choose right? I can go back if you think the others would be better. And this kind of fell into my basket.’
He winks at me. There are dark shadows around his eyes that weren’t there before but he never stops smiling. He holds up a tiny pink dress on a tiny white hanger. It’s all frill and froufrou and totally impractical but it’s very sweet.
‘She’s far too little for dresses,’ I say. ‘By the time I’ve wrestled her into it, it’ll be time for bed.’
He screws his nose up.
‘I know but I just couldn’t resist. Please indulge me.’
He comes and sits down on the sofa next to us. Lily, momentarily distracted, stops sucking and looks up briefly but then she’s back on task. Simeon takes her tiny foot in his hand and strokes the back of her heel.
‘The nappies will be fine,’ I say. ‘And I’m sure we’ll go somewhere where she can wear the dress.’
He grins. He’s going to be a great dad. I can tell already.
‘Anyone in need of tea?’ Mrs P shouts through from the kitchen. I call her Angie to her face now but in my heart she’ll always be Mrs P. ‘It’s thirsty work, feeding babies,’ she adds, and she’s right.
Simeon kisses me on the top of my head and then goes off to help her with the drinks, kicking the packet of nappies along the floor as he goes.
Lily must have had her fill because she pulls her mouth away from me and I wince. For a moment, she looks up at me with her deep-blue eyes and then she’s asleep, a tiny smile that looks like contentment but is probably wind on her rosebud lips.
‘Don’t you worry,’ I whisper into her dark curls as I hold her tiny body close to mine. ‘Mummy’s here.’
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As a mother of four children, I have to admit to having occasionally contemplated running away – and it was wondering what might make a mother leave her children that was the spark for this book. Since that initial idea struck me, the story has undergone a number of transformations and I would like to thank authors Patricia Duncker and Jenny Parrott for their valuable help with my plotting. Thanks must also go to editors Roisin Heycock, Celine Kelly and Victoria Pepe, together with my team at Lake Union for all their support and guidance in this adventure.
Closer to home, I would like to thank my writing buddies Carole Richardson and Lee Knight for their constant encouragement and the Wobble Wonk Group for keeping me smiling.
Finally, thanks must go to my family: to my parents for always believing in me, even when I didn’t; to my children for learning when to leave my study door closed; but mostly to John for supporting me tirelessly as I typed and enthused and wept and shouted my way to this point. I could never have done it without you.
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
Do you think Michael was right to keep secrets from Cara?
In what circumstances would a mother leave her children behind?
Were you surprised by Cara’s response to her mother when she finally meets her?
Ursula and Annie both respond differently to their father’s bullying. Which approach is more successful?
Cara struggles to remember the past. Do you think she would have been more open to her mother’s return if she could remember more of life before her mother left?
To what extent is Mrs P a substitute mother? Do you think Cara sees her as such?
Malcolm, Joe and Greg are all controlling men. Pam, Annie and Beth all respond differently. To what extent do you think a man’s ability to control a woman is governed by her response to him?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 Karen Ross Photography
Imogen Clark lives in Yorkshire, England, with her husband and children. Her first burning ambition was to be a solicitor and so she read law at Manchester University and then worked for many years at a commercial law firm. After leaving her legal career behind to care for her children, Imogen turned to her second love – books. She returned to university, studying part-time while the children were at school, and was awarded a BA in English literature with First Class Honours. Imogen loves sunshine and travel and longs to live by the sea someday.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
