‘He’s in Oxford. I work there so it’s practical.’
‘So each family member has a different doctor. That’s unusual.’
‘It’s just the way things worked out.’
Henry nodded. It was plausible enough. The whole story was plausible.
It was the manner of its telling which troubled him. The confiding tone, awkward pauses and embarrassed sighs. All so seamless that it was like listening to an actor delivering lines that had been carefully rehearsed.
He studied the man who faced him. The earnest eyes, sad expression and clasped hands. Everything to suggest concern. Nothing to suggest guilt.
Except for faint drops of sweat on the forehead.
‘So, Dr Norris, if we could …’
‘I’d like to talk to Susan alone.’
The eyes widened like those of a startled owl. ‘Why?’
‘Is that a problem?’
A faint tremor of the Adam’s apple. ‘No.’
Henry remained at his desk. From the waiting room came the sound of whispering, then Susan Ramsey appeared in the doorway. A tall, slender girl with long dark hair and one of the loveliest faces he had ever seen. For a moment, in spite of his concerns, he was happy just to look at her. In a prosperous town like Kendleton prettiness was everywhere. As commonplace as rain. But real beauty was still rare.
‘You wanted to talk to me, Dr Norris?’
He gestured to the chair her stepfather had vacated. ‘Sit down, please.’
She crossed the room on coltish legs. Her movements were gangly and awkward, typical of a girl adjusting to changes in her body. But they were also erotic. Sensual and inviting. Ripened by knowledge that had come too soon.
He smiled, wanting her to trust him. She smiled back, her huge violet eyes full of suspicion. Like orchids spiked with razors.
‘Your stepfather told me what happened. About the boy.’
A nod.
‘What was his name?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Nice.’
‘Just nice?’
‘Yes.’
‘There was no boy, was there, Susan?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
But she did. He could see it in the tightening of the lip and the finger that fiddled with a lock of hair. Unlike her stepfather, she was not an accomplished liar.
People told him he was lucky to live in Kendleton. Such a beautiful place, they said. But human nature was the same in any location. Secrets existed even in idyllic settings. Dark, ugly ones that could blight the lives of all they touched.
He leant forward, making his voice as soft as possible. ‘Susan, what’s happening to you isn’t right. It’s not your fault either. You’re not to blame no matter what anyone else has told you. If your mother were to …’
‘You mustn’t tell my mother!’
‘Susan …’
‘You mustn’t tell her. Not ever!’
She looked so genuinely frightened that he felt ashamed. As if he were the one to blame for what she was living through.
But he wasn’t and he wanted to help.
‘Recently my sister discovered she had cancer. At first she didn’t tell me because she didn’t want me to worry but eventually she did and I’m glad because I love her and want to help her. Just as your mother would want to help you.’
She lowered her head, staring down at shoes that shuffled on the ground. He waited, hoping.
Then she looked up again. The fear was gone, replaced by a composure so total that it seemed out of place in a girl so young. Just as so much else about her did.
‘The boy’s name was Nigel. I remember now. He looked like James Dean. He had horrid breath. I remember smelling it when he first tried to kiss me. I told him to stop but he was stronger than me. The next day I went looking for him to tell him what he’d done was wrong but I couldn’t find him and no one from the party knew who he was.’
Henry wanted to keep questioning but knew it would do no good. The steel in her voice told him that.
Two years earlier another girl had sat in his office. A girl of around Susan’s age whose father had had a similar tale to tell. He had spoken to the girl alone, trying to make her confide in him, but it had done no good. She had stuck to the story she had been taught, reciting it in a voice that was little more than a whisper. A sad, sweet girl whose eyes were a heartbreaking mixture of shame, self-hatred and total defeat. A girl who had given up on herself before she had ever really had the chance to live.
He could see some of the same emotions in Susan’s eyes. The shame and self-hatred. But not the defeat. Her spirit, though crushed, had not yet been destroyed.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, Susan. I just want you to know that I’m your friend. Someone you can talk to should you feel the need.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Perhaps you’d ask your stepfather to come back in.’
On reaching the door she stopped, stood still, then turned back.
‘I’m sorry about your sister, Dr Norris. I hope she gets well.’
‘Thank you, Susan. I appreciate that.’
Half an hour later Susan walked home with her stepfather.
He was holding her hand, just as he often did when they walked together. It was early evening, warm and balmy. As they crossed Market Court a few people stopped to watch their progress. Perhaps they found his behaviour strange. Perhaps they thought it charming. She didn’t know. Sometimes she felt as if she didn’t know anything except how to be afraid.
It was with her all the time. The terrible, gnawing dread of discovery. Of exposure. Having her wickedness laid bare for all the world to see.
He was talking but she wasn’t listening. In her head she was six years old again and returning home from school to a mother who had suddenly become a stranger. A mother who had left her for so long that it had seemed as if she would never return. A dreadful dress rehearsal for her father’s death the following year.
‘He knows,’ she said.
‘No he doesn’t.’
‘He does. What if he tells Mum?’
They entered Queen Anne Square. A neighbour called out a greeting from the other side of the road. Both responded brightly. Acting cheerful and relaxed. Giving nothing away.
‘He won’t tell anyone, Susie. He can’t.’
‘But he still knows.’
‘Forget about him.’
‘He said it wasn’t my fault. That I wasn’t to blame. That …’
‘He’s lying.’ The hand tightened around her own. ‘People like him always do. They pretend to be your friend then trip you up with lies. I’m your friend, Susie. The one who’s protected you all these years. The one who’s kept your secret safe and made sure your mother has never found out because we both know what would happen if she did.’
They crossed the north side of the square. The corner house was number 16, once the home of her godmother, Auntie Emma, who had left her too. Moved to Australia with Uncle George, so far away that she had feared never seeing her again. A fear that had been realized as Auntie Emma had died after unexpected complications following childbirth, leaving Uncle George to return a widower who now lived alone with his daughter, Jennifer.
Their own house was number 19. They stood outside it, facing each other.
‘Your mother needs me, Susie. You know how vulnerable she is. How easily she can be frightened. I protect her from that. As long as we stick together she need never be frightened again.’ He smiled, his eyes warm and reassuring. ‘And we will, won’t we?’
‘Yes.’
He went to unlock the door. She turned towards number 16. Jennifer sat in the front window; a tiny, pretty girl of four playing with a doll. She waved to Susan, her smile as bright as a tiny sun. Susan waved back, masking her fear with a smile that was just as bright.
September. At Heathcote Academy the autumn term was just beginning.
Heathcote, situate
d just outside Kendleton, was in fact two schools facing each other across a country lane.
The boys’ school, founded in the eighteenth century, boasted of having educated numerous politicians and an officer who had been instrumental in quelling the Indian Mutiny. It had also educated a viscount who had murdered his entire family then fled to the Continent to die of syphilis, but the prospectus kept silent on that. Its buildings were grand, its grounds vast and its sporting facilities the best in the area.
The girls’ school, founded one hundred years later, had always been considered a poor relation. Its buildings were humbler, its grounds smaller and its facilities less impressive. Its academic record had been inferior too but in recent years it had begun to outshine its neighbour, leading to a fierce rivalry between the two sets of teaching staff, who groomed gifted pupils for Oxbridge entry like thoroughbreds being trained for the Grand National.
Charlotte Harris sat in a ground-floor classroom preparing a list of her holiday reading. Miss Troughton, the English teacher, required her pupils to produce one at the start of each term to check they were broadening their minds rather than rotting them in front of ‘that infernal machine’, television. As Charlotte had spent her holidays doing just that, some fabrication was called for. Her list included Silas Marner and Middlemarch, the plots of both having been summarized for her by a kindly librarian the previous afternoon.
The classroom was still but not silent. Whispered conversations filled the air like the hum of bees while the profoundly deaf Miss Troughton marked essays obliviously. Kate Christie and Alice Wetherby watched Pauline Grant, whose grandmother was Russian and who, at the start of the previous term, had drawn rapturous praise for having read Anna Karenina in its original language. Alice, who considered herself the English star, had taken offence and ordered the rest of the class to pretend that Pauline had body odour and protest if they were made to sit near her. This had gone on for weeks, and Pauline had ended up with skin that was raw from excessive washing. Charlotte, who had lacked the courage to stand up for her, hoped that Pauline would not make the same mistake again.
A prefect strode by the window, a group of new girls trotting after her like chicks following a mother hen. All were dressed in blue blazers and dark skirts with satchels slung over their shoulders. One wore a blazer that looked shabby and second hand. A scholarship girl, probably. Plebs, as Alice and her gang called them. Alice thought girls whose parents couldn’t afford the fees should not be admitted. She said so often and Charlotte, who was only there because of the generosity of a wealthy aunt and wore a second-hand uniform herself, would pretend not to realize that the comments were aimed at her.
Miss Troughton walked between the rows of desks collecting lists. ‘Rather sparse,’ she told Pauline.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Troughton.’ Though Pauline’s tone was humble her voice was loud. One had to shout to be heard by Miss Troughton. The teacher in the next classroom was always complaining about it.
‘Too much time watching that infernal machine.’
‘Yes, Miss Troughton.’
Miss Troughton moved on. Pauline and Alice exchanged glances; Pauline’s submissive, Alice’s triumphant. The sight made Charlotte feel both angry and helpless.
Her parents told her she was lucky to attend Heathcote but often she would think wistfully of primary school and the friends she had had there: feisty Lizzie Flynn, timid Arthur Hammond and her best friend in the world, Susan Ramsey. Now Arthur and Lizzie were at different schools and, though Susan was sitting by the window less than ten feet away, it might as well have been a thousand miles.
She wished she understood what had gone wrong. Why Susan had changed towards her. Once they had been inseparable, always laughing and joking, playing games and exchanging confidences. Now they rarely spoke, and when they did Susan’s eyes were wary and secretive, making Charlotte feel as if she did not know her at all.
It would have been easier if Susan had made new friends. If there had been others she could have blamed. But there was no one. Susan had no friends. Kept largely to herself.
And Charlotte didn’t know why.
But still she had her memories. Susan pushing Alice into a cow pat. Susan teaching her how to whistle with two fingers. Susan facing her in a swing-boat at a local fair, the two of them screaming with excitement as they swung higher and higher. Often, when feeling hurt and confused, she would bring these memories out and study them like precious stones.
Miss Troughton continued to collect lists. Charlotte’s was greeted with a nod, Alice’s with praise. Finally she reached the row by the window. Marian Knowles was told that Dickens did not contain an ‘h’. Rachel Stark that she was too old for Enid Blyton. Susan’s list provoked a baffled frown.
‘This is blank. Didn’t you read anything?’
‘No, Miss Troughton.’
‘So what have you been doing all summer?’
‘Feeding the loony,’ whispered Kate, loud enough for all but Miss Troughton to hear. A soft giggle ran round the room.
Susan’s back stiffened. ‘That’s right,’ she said quickly. ‘But at your age, Kate, you really should be trying to feed yourself.’
More laughter. Louder this time. Miss Troughton moved on to the next desk. Kate flushed while Susan turned and gazed out of the window. She looked both isolated and remote. Someone who did not belong, nor wanted to either.
But watching her, Charlotte felt a warmth in her stomach and sensed that somewhere the friend she missed so badly still existed.
A Friday evening in October. Susan ate dinner with her mother and stepfather.
The table was laid as if for a dinner party. The best chinaware, crystal wineglasses and candles. Uncle Andrew liked to make an occasion of Friday evening. ‘The end of the working week,’ he would say, ‘and the chance to spend time with my family.’
They were eating boeuf Bourguignon, a favourite dish of his. As they ate he told them about his day. One of his partners was considering early retirement. Another was acting for a local politician who had been accused of accepting bribes. Old Mrs Pembroke had asked him to visit her house for a six-monthly review of her affairs. ‘Which is a nuisance. I’ll be glad when her son can bring her into the office.’
‘Isn’t he in America?’ asked Susan’s mother.
‘He’s moving back here. I did tell you. Don’t you remember?’
‘No.’
Uncle Andrew gave her an indulgent smile. ‘You’re so forgetful, darling. Mind like a sieve.’ Reaching across the table, he patted her hand. Susan didn’t remember him telling her mother either but perhaps she had not been there.
‘And I doubt,’ Uncle Andrew continued, ‘that he’ll take kindly to the gold-digger companion. Not when it’s his inheritance she’s after.’
‘Are you sure she’s a gold-digger? I’ve met her in town and she seems very nice.’
‘You’re too trusting. You’d see good in Jack the Ripper. It’s lucky I’m here to look after you.’
Susan’s mother lowered her eyes. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘Hopefully you’ll never have to find out.’ Uncle Andrew gave her hand another pat, his own eyes locking briefly with Susan’s. She sipped her wine, feeling a dull ache in her abdomen. Her period was approaching. Only a day away.
Uncle Andrew continued to describe his day. Susan’s mother listened attentively, saying little herself. As Susan watched them she remembered meals with her father. The stories he had told. The impersonations he had performed that had been funny but not cruel. The way he had reduced her mother to tears of laughter. Looking at the demure, controlled woman who sat beside her, it was hard to believe she had ever laughed like that.
They finished their main course and her mother fetched a trifle. Another of Uncle Andrew’s favourites. Everything they ate was a favourite of his. As she served she told him about a radio play being broadcast later that evening. ‘It’s a spy story. The sort you like. I thought perhaps we could lis
ten to it together.’
He shook his head. ‘You look tired, darling. An early night would do you good. Besides, I had to bring work home. I’ll do it tonight in the study.’ Again his eyes locked with Susan’s. She stared down at her plate, her small appetite suddenly gone while the ache in her abdomen increased. The blood would soon be here. He did not like the blood.
But it would not come soon enough.
Her mother was watching her. ‘You’re not eating, Susie. Isn’t it good?’
‘It’s lovely.’ She took a large mouthful. The sweet taste made her want to gag. Instead she swallowed and smiled.
November.
‘Are you my mummy?’ asked Jennifer.
Susan shook her head. The two of them were in the bathroom of Uncle George’s house. Jennifer sat in the bath, watching a toy boat bob through islands of foam bubbles. From downstairs came the sound of Beethoven playing on the gramophone and the click of the typewriter as Uncle George prepared a report on a new architectural project.
‘Where is she?’
‘In heaven, Jenjen, with my daddy, and they’re watching us now and hoping we’re not going to let the big monster eat the boat. Look out!’ She pushed a rubber duck across the water, making growling sounds while Jennifer squealed and pushed it away.
‘Are you clean now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then out you get.’ She held out the towel and Jennifer leapt into it like a jumping bean. Susan began to dry her hair. It was blonde with reddish tinges. Auntie Emma had had lovely golden hair. She hoped that Jennifer would grow up to have golden hair too.
‘Anyway, how can I be your mummy if I’m your big sister?’
Jennifer frowned. ‘Mrs Phelps says you can’t be my sister ’cos you don’t live here.’
‘Do you want me to be your sister?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I am, and if Mrs Phelps says different I’ll smack her bottom.’
The frown faded, replaced by a laugh like the chiming of bells. Susan helped Jennifer brush her teeth then carried her along the corridor to the bedroom decorated in pink and yellow. The bedspread was covered in moons and stars, just as Susan’s had been years ago. Smudge the cat lay purring on the pillow. She had given him to Jennifer at her mother’s suggestion. Uncle Andrew had never been happy having an animal in the house. It had hurt but Jennifer loved Smudge and at least she could still see him whenever she wanted.
Apple of My Eye Page 18
