Behind Closed Doors

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Bring your drink,’ said Dad excitedly. I noticed he was also still on his feet. He rubbed his hands together. ‘If you’re not too tired? Long day?’

  ‘No, no, I’d love to.’ It was the very last thing I wanted to do. I just wanted to lie down on my bed upstairs, shut my eyes and think. ‘But just let me change my shoes.’

  ‘Here.’ Like a magician, Mum produced some wellies from behind the sofa. They were hers and therefore tiny, but I took off my heels and somehow squeezed my tired feet into them. As I heaved myself up and put my drink aside, I realized they were already waiting for me in the hall. I raised a smile, and my game, and together we traipsed across; or at least I did. My parents were practically skipping with excitement. They’d rhapsodized about daylight, but it had almost gone, so I fished out my phone and used my torch. I steadied Mum as she attempted to gambol ahead, gambolling not being her speciality.

  ‘Easy,’ I warned, as she nearly tripped over a tree root.

  ‘Shut your eyes,’ she commanded as we got to the front door. Dad was already opening it, and reaching for the light switch inside.

  I did as I was told. She led me in and I could hear her excited breathing in my ear. I hadn’t been in here for a few days. Aware the builders were extremely busy, I’d just left a tray of tea outside with a shout to Jerry. Clearly, those days had been pivotal. I knew all the cement mixers and building equipment had been removed because I’d seen them outside on the lawn. I also knew the joiner and the plasterer had arrived because I’d seen their vans.

  ‘Da-dah!’ sang my father. ‘Open your eyes!’

  All was very bright, and very sparkling. In fact, it took my eyes a moment to acclimatize. The ceiling positively sang with spotlights, and in their gleam, a glorious open-plan space was illuminated. The fact that there was no segmented hallway or pokey rooms was not a surprise, that much I’d already witnessed. Most of the internal walls had come down a while ago, but nothing could prepare me for the spaciousness, now that the more decorative tradesmen had worked their magic. The large, bright room with its pale wooden floor, its recently plastered walls still drying, albeit with a few electric wires hanging, was a revelation. The transformation from ugly fifties interior to elegant spacious living was extraordinary. I realized it was pretty much ready for painting. The windows were all new, and stylish sash, and at the far end, generous French windows with wide panes led on to the garden. My parents turned their delighted faces to mine, to gauge my reaction. I lit up accordingly.

  ‘It’s amazing!’ I enthused, and so thrilled were they that they didn’t spot the effort it was costing me to be animated.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Dad squealed, and my father doesn’t squeal. ‘And look – look at the kitchen.’

  But my mother had already raced ahead – yes, raced – and was disappearing through a wide archway. I followed into an elegant space, with arched, spotlit alcoves which mirrored the entrance. The pale wooden floor ran throughout, and a pantry, minus a door, was in the corner. At the other end was another French window.

  ‘Obviously once the cupboards are in it will look a lot better,’ Mum was saying, stroking the slate shelf in the pantry. ‘But isn’t it neat? Don’t you love it?’

  ‘I do,’ I agreed, following them as they shuffled out and down the hall to the bedrooms, realizing they loved it. And it came to me, as I don’t think it had come to them, that of course, it would be ideal for them. Not me. It was all on one level. It was clean. It was new. There were two double bedrooms.

  ‘One for you,’ Mum was telling me, ‘and one for guests, or when Imo and Ned come.’

  And without all the hazards of the seventeenth-century farmhouse they currently inhabited. Even though it was dark outside, I could tell that those large sash windows rendered fabulous light in the daytime, and faced south. And Mum’s sight, much improved by removal of cataracts and new glasses, was nevertheless not what it used to be. Pope’s Farm was dark, with mullioned windows, and lots of hazardous corners. It also faced north. It had two twisting staircases and two inglenook fireplaces, which they still used, it being too expensive to centrally heat the whole house. Even though we’d banned my father from chopping logs and I’d organized a delivery, he still insisted on bringing them in, in a large, soggy tarpaulin: breathing heavily as he carefully stacked them one by one in the log basket, because the idiot boy, as he called the odd-job man who swung round on his motorbike of a Thursday to mow lawns in the summer and occasionally chop logs in the winter, threw them in the basket any old how. But here, there’d be no logs. Because beneath these smooth boards, Jerry had installed underfloor heating. And even if one of them ended up in a wheelchair – my father, possibly, with his ulcerated legs and bloated feet – he’d whizz around these shiny wooden floors and glide through the wide archway to the kitchen, where the addition of a tiny ramp would see him outside to a small terrace and manicured garden. Instead of stumbling into the four acres of tangled rose gardens, herbaceous borders and moss-ridden lawns, not to mention a long-abandoned tennis court I knew he fretted about next door.

  It struck me, suddenly, that Helena and I had been very remiss. We should have done this years ago. Not waited for a crisis to pre-empt it. We should never have fallen for Dad’s lies about how they were managing tremendously well. Not that we did, really. In our hearts, we knew they were fibbing, but it suited us to go along with the lies, telling ourselves it was what they wanted, and who were we to be controlling and dogmatic? And meanwhile getting on with our own busy, and often very difficult, lives.

  ‘And you can entertain in here,’ my father was saying, as we all went back to the living room. ‘If it was me, I’d have a table against this wall, which you could then pull out when people come. Comme ça.’ He made an imaginary rectangle with his hands.

  ‘And you could have your desk here,’ Mum was saying. She pretended to sit, facing the French windows, demonstrating with a flourish of her imaginary pen how I’d write. Then she paused, pen in hand, to gaze out at the view. I imagined her there, writing her thank-you letters. Before going to her pantry, which she’d never had, and had always wanted. To prepare a little light lunch for her and Dad. ‘Because you will write again, won’t you?’ She turned to me anxiously. ‘Helena and I see you doing that again, here. Well away from – well. You know.’

  My former life. My disaster of a life. Which was still chasing me. I’d clearly been discussed, at length, on the phone by the two of them. That didn’t come as a surprise to me. Mum and Helena were very close. And I don’t say that with any hint of jealousy at all; in fact, I’d often felt it let me off the hook. They spoke every day, sometimes twice a day, and I wasn’t really like that. I’d never felt the need to clock in with anyone, and throughout my marriage, had deliberately not done so with Mum because I didn’t want to worry her. I’d have had to lie constantly, which would have been so exhausting.

  Instead, I suppose in a cowardly fashion, I’d let Helena do it for me. ‘I’m sure she’s fine, Mum, sure they’re fine. You probably haven’t heard from her because she’s writing.’ And then a quick text to me: ‘Ring Mum.’

  No, there was never any hint of favouritism. It was just that some children needed their parents more than others, and although one might assume I’d be the obvious candidate for a lifebelt, with my dysfunctional marriage, it was Helena, with her very happy family, who needed it. It was always Helena who made the calls. When she got home from work, in her beautiful white designer kitchen. Jacket flung on the sofa behind her as she got supper, phone clamped between ear and shoulder, simultaneously supervising the twins doing homework at one end of the long island. The one with the least time. The one who couldn’t possibly be here. What would happen to them, I wondered, with a sudden jolt of panic, when I wasn’t here either? When I wasn’t permitted to be here? Detained, at Her Majesty’s Pleasure? Helena couldn’t possibly replace me. She had a full-on, full-time job and school-aged children. They’d have to have a carer. Because although I could de
finitely leave them for a couple of days, the more I was here, the more I realized what an absolute necessity I was. Yes, they’d come on leaps and bounds and the crumbling had been far less dramatic these last few weeks, but I knew, in my heart, it had only been temporarily arrested. In a year or so’s time, without someone’s watchful eye, something else would start to give.

  I watched as they squabbled now in the corner, about some whizzy sound system they wanted to show me, which, despite the house having only bare bones, had been installed along with the electrics.

  ‘You press this,’ Mum was hissing.

  ‘No, you don’t, you press this.’

  ‘Oh, you stupid man.’

  This was how quickly things could degenerate into their usual bickering. I nipped across to officiate. Both their faces were pink as I took the remote they were fighting over.

  ‘Here.’ I showed them. ‘All you do is literally touch this one, with the arrow, to start it. And this one to stop it. That’s all you do.’

  ‘Put it on,’ Mum said eagerly.

  ‘You do it. Like I showed you.’

  She took the remote back. Looked flustered for a moment. But after some initial hesitation, she did. The Brahms violin concerto, full of loss and longing, miraculously floated through mysterious speakers. It was too clever by half and I saw Mum’s eyes widen in wonder. My father’s closed in rapture. He loved Brahms. Mum began to dance, in a floaty, ethereal way, arms outstretched like a ballerina, around the room. My father, eyes still shut, gently swayed, his hands conducting.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he breathed eventually. ‘And so fiddly, all my gramophone records. I’d almost given up.’

  ‘Dad, stop it. Ant changed you over to CDs years ago!’

  ‘It broke,’ he said simply. ‘The machine.’

  ‘So get it repaired.’

  ‘We forgot,’ he said shortly. Or didn’t know how. Or where to go. So they had lived without music, Dad’s greatest love, even beyond books. I realized now I’d hardly heard it since I’d been here, except for that old Nina Simone the other day – and now I thought about it, that had been a gramophone record. And historically, music had been on all the time. The soundtrack to my youth. I felt angry on their behalf. Angry at the world overtaking them. I would not get like this, not ever.

  ‘But this whole house has been Spotified,’ Mum said proudly. ‘We told Jerry we all like Brahms and Chopin—’

  ‘And Dire Straits, we knew you liked—’ Dad put in quickly.

  ‘So he put it all on a thingy.’

  We were moving towards the front door now, preparing to go. Before we left, I made Mum turn off the music. Then I switched off the lights and took their arms before we embarked on the darkness. We had to return, however, as my mother had taken the remote with her. They gave the interior a last lingering look as I turned on the light to nip inside.

  ‘It’s gorgeous,’ I told them, switching off the light and shutting the door. ‘And you’re right, I’m going to love it here.’

  No need to say any more at this moment, I thought, as we linked arms and went back to the house. No need for any further discussion. Just take one day at a time and let things naturally, and, I feared, irrevocably, fall into place.

  But what of this place, the farmhouse? I thought, as I lay alone in bed later that night. I tossed off the heavy bedcover and turned over to face the wall. Could we rent it out? It was so run-down. Sell it? Dad would never agree. And who would keep an eye on them? Could we have a carer in here? Eventually I fell fitfully asleep, it being only a small comfort that my parents were sleeping very comfortably down the hall, dreaming of dancing to Brahms.

  22

  The following morning, I lay in bed staring at the crack of cold light creeping through the gap in the curtains. In a succession of terrible nights, that last one had to be up there with the worst, but then the bar was quite low. The odd, fitful doze I’d managed in the small hours had featured pale yellow roses crawling over a brick wall, tasteful, like her grey fur jacket and the white lobelia on her step. I’d admired those roses for years. Wondered what variety they were, even looked them up in my gardening books. In my fitful dreams, however, the roses were full of greenfly and thorns. A flashing light had also featured, in Ingrid’s top-floor window, which I couldn’t decide if I’d seen or not from the study on that night. Had I imagined it? Roses. A light. Thorns. My eyes were full of fatigue. I shut them again. When my phone beeped, I jumped. I opened the message, full of dread. It was Dan.

  ‘Pub supper some time this week?’

  I sank back on the pillows, relieved. For some ridiculous reason, I’d thought it was her. I composed myself. And a response.

  ‘Good idea. Why not.’

  ‘Wednesday any good?’

  ‘Perfect. I’ll fit it into my frantic schedule.’

  I could afford sarcasm about my socially barren life, because I knew he liked me. I didn’t have to play hard to get. And let’s face it, it was only going to be a fleeting romance, if my worst fears were founded.

  My phone had been in my hand since about six o’clock in any event, as I’d tentatively researched murder and the sentencing thereof. I say tentatively, because I knew from my Susie Sharpe sleuthing that too much research could lead to trouble. Susie had once got involved with a terrorist trafficking ring, who had kidnapped a young girl, with intent to ship her out to Pakistan and into an arranged marriage. Naturally she’d infiltrated the gang and rescued the girl. A few weeks later there’d been a knock at the door. Two gentlemen from the security squad in Whitehall wanted to know why I was so terribly interested in Al-Qaeda’s extremist rings and could they possibly look at my computer? Of course they could, and of course I gabbled away and explained and made copious cups of tea and showed them all my notes and books, and eventually their faces softened. They nodded silently, murmuring something about having to be very careful. Them, or me? I wasn’t sure, but I was very glad to see the back of them, and from that day on, Susie and I mostly used library books when we needed sensitive information. I wondered if the local library would yield anything helpful now, but then, if I was in court, might some boot-faced librarian slide quietly into the witness box declaring I’d borrowed a mass of tomes on murder and produce the volumes? Or, if I cannily didn’t borrow, might she remember me spending hours in the research section, unheard of in this digital age? My imagination, as ever, knew no bounds, which was perhaps why I normally kept it under control by writing. I had a vague instinct I should reach for a pen and scribble something now in an attempt at displacement therapy, but instead, I raised myself wearily out of bed and tottered to the bathroom. I felt utterly exhausted and the day hadn’t even begun.

  After I’d brushed my teeth I leaned my hands on the porcelain basin and stared at my reflection in the mirror. What I couldn’t stand, I decided, was the not knowing. A neighbour of my parents, a farmer, had many years ago knocked someone over while driving away from a pub, late at night. A vagrant, who’d wandered out in front of his car. But the farmer had been drinking, so in panic, he’d driven on. The police had drawn a blank. Months later, he’d given himself up. And the publican confirmed he’d been drinking. He went to prison, but only served a year as he was such a model prisoner. He’s still farming now, down the road. Should I do that? I wondered. Give myself up? Go to the police? I stared into the mirror for clues. After a while I splashed my alarmingly pale face with cold water and went downstairs to make breakfast.

  I’m told that first thing in the morning and last thing at night are the very worst of times for nightmarish thoughts, but that during the day, if kept busy, it’s possible to put all terror aside so that the whole affair actually becomes unreal: it becomes something so ridiculously awful, the mind has surely just invented it overnight. And so it was with me. As the days went by, and with no sharp knocks on the door, or threatening missives on my phone from Amanda, it started to seem like a surreal dream which receded into the distance with every passing day. Thus one sli
ps easily into a false sense of security. Only occasionally, when I took Mum for her flu jab, for example, and had to park outside the police station because the surgery car park was full, or when Dad, en route to pick up his new orthopaedic shoes, commented on the beauty of the Georgian courthouse in the market square, did I feel that sharp stab of reality: that loss of breath that takes one from feeling perfectly normal to sick with fear in seconds flat. The mind does have a remarkable coping mechanism, however, so that by the time I met Dan, I was, if not totally relaxed, at least relatively sanguine about the situation.

  We’d both walked, and arrived at the pub door at precisely the same moment. We laughed at our staggeringly predictable middle-aged promptness, cheeks glowing, wrapped in our coats against the unseasonable nip in the evening air. Neither of us, having grown up in the country, were the least worried about walking down dark lanes on our own, or even cutting across a crisp ploughed field as I’d just done. Obviously one had to dress for the occasion, which involved reasonably sturdy boots, but my days of high fashion were long gone. Anyway, Imo told me they were frightfully edgy when she’d asked me to send her a photo of them, together with one of Dan – I’d directed her to Facebook – but only, she’d told me, if teamed with a floaty dress, which she’d picked out for me online last year, and which I dutifully wore. I’d wondered if the look wasn’t too young for me, but Dan seemed to give the whole ensemble an appreciative glance after we’d kissed each other’s cold cheeks and taken our coats off.

  We were just being led by one of the waitresses to exactly the same corner table we’d had the last couple of times, which he assured me with a laugh he absolutely hadn’t organized, when his phone went. He frowned, irritated, but when he saw who it was, he took the call.

  ‘Right … OK … OK. Yes, stay there, if you can … I won’t be long … No, no worries, I’ll be back … Yes, quite sure.’