by Megan Tayte
‘Better?’ murmured Cara.
I met her smiling eyes and nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Words are empty – actions are what counts!’ she declared with such sudden verve that Jack started on my lap. ‘So thank me with afternoon tea.’ She marched over to the kitchen counter and began shoving supplies into Jack’s changing bag. ‘But please, I’m begging you, someplace where the very idea of beef-and-sweetcorn powdered soup-in-a-mug is sacrilegious.’
I looked at Jack.
Jack offered a hopeful, ‘Gah?’
‘You’re on,’ I said. ‘And I know just the place.’
Cara and I walked down to the cove, taking turns to steer Jack’s pushchair. Given the unevenness of the cliff path, my history of falling off cliffs and Chester’s boisterous joy at going on an outing, we took the safer and longer route, through the lanes. Once in the heart of Twycombe, we left the pushchair on the promenade and let Chester off his lead, then walked down to the waterline: to give Chester a chance to run off some steam and Jack a chance to take in the waves, which, judging by his shrieks, were immensely exciting. Then we coaxed Chester back onto his lead and wandered up towards the cafe on the beach. Luke’s cafe.
‘Are you sure?’ said Cara as we walked. I knew what she meant: are you ready for Luke to see you with a baby on board right now? Are you ready for the reaction – good or bad – that could provoke in him?
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘In any case, my babysitting was his idea.’
‘It was?’
‘Yes, last night. Didn’t he tell you?’
‘I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon. He crashed at Si’s last night – lads’ night, they said. He must have gone straight to work from there this morning.’
‘Ah,’ I said knowingly.
‘What?’
I smiled. ‘Nothing.’
‘What?!’
‘Just take it easy on Luke, okay? I suspect he’s feeling a bit ropey today.’
Cara’s eyes widened. ‘No! Mr Sensible? Mr “Cara, You Are Not Bringing That Wine Box into Our House”? Sloshed? Seriously?’
‘No, not really. Just a tiny bit merry.’
But there was no backtracking – with a gleam in her eye, Cara was blazing ahead now, across the outside seating area, through the cafe and into the kitchen. I followed, but only after securing Chester next to the water bowl by the door, raising a hand in greeting to the counter staff and then pausing to disentangle Jack’s little fingers from a customer’s pashmina tassels.
I pushed through the kitchen door just in time to hear Cara say ‘hungover’ in a scandalised tone and Luke, who was rummaging in the fridge with his back to us, growl, ‘Bog off, Car.’
‘Nice,’ said Cara, raising an eyebrow at me.
I cleared my throat. Luke didn’t react. Oblivious to my presence, he grumbled to his sister:
‘If you must know, it’s your boyfriend’s fault. He was the one who poured shots of that horrendous blue stuff.’
‘Ah, Curaçao.’ Cara nodded.
‘There was nothing cracking about it,’ groaned Luke, leaning his head against a shelf.
‘Ngh!’ declared Jack on my hip, reaching for a pineapple on a nearby counter. I moved away a pace.
‘Whatever, sis,’ said Luke wearily. ‘Just leave me to die for an hour or two, will you? Then I’ll scrape myself together and go see Scarlett. At least she’ll give a suffering bloke some sympathy.’
Cara winked at me.
Jack blew a raspberry.
‘Real mature,’ said Luke.
‘Er…’ I began.
‘And to make it worse,’ Luke said over me, now plucking tomatoes off a vine and piling them into a dish, ‘it was Jude who was in the mess, but he had enough common sense to turn down that cracking stuff. Said any drink that was bright blue was unnatural. He actually looked perky when he dropped in this morning on his way to meet Sienna.’
‘Perky?’ I echoed.
Finally, the penny dropped: Luke’s back stiffened.
Jack’s flailing hand made contact with a French baton, knocking it to the floor. The resultant crash brought Luke round to face us, flinging tomatoes in a wide arc as he went.
In the couple of seconds it took him to take in Cara and me and Jack and the baguette lying at our feet, he’d reddened considerably.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Hi,’ he said.
He stared at Jack. Jack stared at this strange new man. The frying-pan clock on the wall seemed to tick a little louder as I awaited Luke’s reaction.
‘Jack!’ he said suddenly. A wide smile melted the tension on his face and, wiping his hands on his apron, he picked his way across the tomato-and-bread obstacle course to reach us. Taking hold of a chubby fist, he shook it grandly. ‘Good to meet you, little man.’
Jack reached over and took the now-empty tomato dish from Luke’s other hand. He examined it and gave it a bite. Then, apparently happy that any bloke with such an interesting yellow dish was okay by him, he gave Luke a solemn, ‘Mnah.’
Luke grabbed a wooden spoon off a counter and put it in Jack’s other hand – which, judging by the way Jack’s eyes lit up, had secured Luke’s position as hero of the hour. He gave the little boy another of his easy smiles and then kissed me on the cheek.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t realise you were here. Not quite with it today. Er, apparently I volunteered you for babysitting then?’
My nephew saved me the trouble of commenting: he blew a loud and very moist raspberry in Luke’s general direction.
‘Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Cara.
Luke laughed. ‘Jack mate,’ he said, ‘some man-to-man advice for you.’ Jack dropped his spoon and surveyed Luke seriously, and Luke leaned in and whispered in the baby’s ear: ‘Always, always, stick to milk.’
*
Later, as Cara and I took turns hefting Jack back to the cottage (it turned out uphill pushchair manoeuvring demanded the upper-body strength of an Amazonian), she said to me:
‘So now you know: you have nothing at all to be afraid of.’
‘Huh?’ I said, hard at work untangling Chester’s lead after yet another ‘through the legs’ episode.
‘I mean, you know now that babies aren’t so scary.’
I glanced over at my slumbering nephew. No, nothing scary about this tiny person.
‘And now you know how Luke feels.’
‘I do?’
I looked at Cara to see her smiling misty-eyed at me. ‘You must have seen it,’ she said. ‘The way he looked at you. In the kitchen, when he first saw you with Jack. In the cafe, when he brought out the red velvet cake and saw you and Jack playing peek-a-boo. When we ducked in to tell him we were leaving, and he saw Jack fast asleep on your shoulder.’
‘What do you mean?’
Cara rolled her eyes at my apparent denseness. ‘I’m saying, that wasn’t the look of a guy who can’t stand the idea of kids with you.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Really?’
‘Really,’ she said. ‘So, shall I start knitting booties?’
I gave her a shove. ‘No way.’
‘But someday?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said casually, and I jogged on with Chester to hide the storm in my eyes.
*
That evening, I made an unscheduled visit to the hospital. Luke had cancelled our usual evening meetup, arguing that I should be alone after an afternoon in human company. He was right, but I didn’t want to be alone. Since a red-eyed Sienna had collected Jack, the cottage had seemed too empty and quiet. And with babies on the brain, I felt pulled to my mother.
As soon as I sat down at her bedside, I realised my mistake. Mum wasn’t here. The woman on the bed was a shell; my mother was someplace else.
Talk to her, the consultants had advised; some coma patients responded to familiar voices, even heard and understood them.
Now, for the first time, I pushed past feeling ridiculous having a one-way conversation
, and I pushed past feeling I should protect my mother from reality, and I talked.
I told her about Sienna and Jude and Jack. I told her about me and Luke. I told her about herself: her grandparents, her parents, her ex, Gabriel. I told her everything: Ceruleans, Vindicos, deaths, rebirths, lights, miracles, sins.
After more than a year of hiding the truth from my mother, I told it to her.
But the truth did not set her free. She was still. She was silent.
I wondered whether she’d heard me, in that other place in which she was trapped. I wondered what she would say if she could speak.
Would she describe the wonder of motherhood: of first smiles and first steps and the word ‘Mama’ on rosebud lips?
Would she talk about protecting your children from pain at all costs, even when that meant making difficult decisions, like leaving the man you loved?
Would she tell me I was wrong to even contemplate children who’d be like me, like Sienna, like Gabriel someday?
I didn’t know. My mother’s face was blank.
But not my sister’s. And it was her face haunting me now. When she’d arrived at the cottage earlier and she’d laid eyes on Jack and she’d picked him up and lifted him high and kissed his chubby cheeks, I’d seen all the emotion of a mother: love for her son, elation at being reunited. But an edge, too, of regret. That already the clock was ticking on their time together. That motherhood for her could not mean being there for her son always: from his morning milk through to his bedtime story and beyond – tucking in a kicked-off blanket, soothing away a bad dream.
Aching separation was the reality of life for my sister. Already, it was the same for me: as a solitary Cerulean I was lonely and isolated, and I hated that. Should I become a mother one day, that isolation would be so much worse: unbearable. But to never be a mum, to never be close to Luke… was that pain any easier to carry?
Now, safe from judgement, I leaned forward and I whispered in my mother’s ear my final truth, my deepest, darkest secret:
‘Sometimes, in a moment when it hurts so much and I can’t find the answer, I wonder whether I made the right choice. Whether at The End, I should have made a different death wish.’
Then I hugged my inert mother and I went home, to crawl into bed and pray for a miracle that would put everything right.
I was supposed to wait until Saturday to go to Hollythwaite, when Luke could take the time off work to come with me. But by Friday lunchtime, I couldn’t wait any longer.
I’d crossed paths with William, the groundskeeper at Hollythwaite, that morning at the hospital, and he’d mentioned that he’d left the estate vacant today, to travel to the city and see Mum, but that tomorrow it would be swamped. Apparently, weeks ago Mum had offered Hollythwaite to the Girl Guides for a jamboree, and with hundreds of excited children signed up, William hadn’t had the heart to cancel the event. A search of the estate tomorrow, then, would be less than private.
When I got back to the cottage, I paced up and down the hallway as I contemplated a trip to Hollythwaite today. I had the freedom to go: Chester was with Si; Cara was working; Luke was working; Jude and Sienna were, amazingly, spending the day together with little Jack as they entered round three of what I hoped may be morphing into peace talks. I had the energy: other than a half-hour in the hospital this morning, I’d been alone. Most of all, I had a reason: what if some vital clue were destroyed in the chaos wreaked by well-meaning Guides?
Eventually, I decided. I didn’t want to shut Luke out, but I needed to go today.
‘I can’t leave now – I’m sorry – there’s a big party coming in,’ said Luke when I called him. ‘But we can go together tonight, after I finish work?’
Going later today hadn’t even occurred to me. It was a reasonable suggestion. But I rejected it at once.
‘The estate’s all mine today,’ I said. ‘I want time there.’
As Luke argued with me – he was clearly reluctant to let me do something potentially upsetting alone – I sat on the stairs and stared at a painting on the wall. It had moved my mother, when she’d seen it, to remember a verse my grandfather had sometimes recited:
Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
But it wasn’t the sweep of star-sprinkled sky at the top of the picture that drew my eye now; it was the layer beneath: a twisting storm of reds and purples spinning out from a black shape. The confusion and urgency in the painting spoke to me now, matched my own, ramped up my own.
I stood up. ‘I need to go there now,’ I told Luke. ‘I’ll call you later. Love you.’
And I hung up before he could reply.
*
Mum’s home was as I’d left it but for one obvious difference: the blood-soaked rug was missing from her bedroom. The doorframe was still splintered from where Luke had broken down the door, though, and the sight of the violently fractured wood sickened me. But I wasn’t here to relive that terrible afternoon. I was here to find what others before me – the police, Gabe, Sienna – had missed.
After a slow, thorough look in each room of the lodge, I spent a half-hour rifling through cupboards and drawers and boxes, and then another poking about the garden. I balanced on a chair and stuck my head up into the loft space – empty but for a clique of spiders. I peered down the old well in the corner of the garden – empty but for a family of frogs. My most interesting discovery after an hour’s searching was a voucher for a pedicure down the back of the sofa.
I moved on to the main house. The manor was no place to learn about my mother, emptied as it was of her personal possessions and depersonalised into a hall for hire. And there was no reason to assume Mum’s attacker had even been in the manor – the chain of events laid down by the police was confined to the lodge alone. Still, Sienna had told me she’d poked about up here, but as in the lodge, she’d found nothing of interest.
She was right. Hollythwaite was cold and silent and eerily empty, and poking about in rooms unearthed nothing but a bent tiara under a chaise longue and a pile of out-of-date wedding fair flyers. Even the office, the one room in the house that remained Mum’s domain, was a dead end – just a desk, a computer on which I found nothing more than business accounts, and piles of paperwork waiting to be sorted. I checked the date on the invoice topping the pile – it was due for payment within a week. Someone had better go through all these. And then… well, I supposed the business would need to be closed. For now.
I slumped despondently onto Mum’s desk chair. I’d been so fired up to come to Hollythwaite, so desperate to believe there was an answer to be found here. I’d been silently dismissive of Sienna’s efforts, convinced that I – the daughter who hadn’t abandoned Mum, the daughter who’d built a strong relationship with her recently – would be the better detective. I’d dashed here from Twycombe today, probably upsetting Luke in the process, and for what?
I remembered Luke’s conviction in London: ‘When it comes to the truth, there is no dead end. We will get there.’ Yet still my mother was trapped somewhere between life and death.
Sighing, I turned my attention to the one useful thing I could do in this place: I pulled the paperwork towards me and began sorting it into piles – ‘file’, ‘pay’, ‘chase for payment’, ‘not a clue’. I was frowning at an invoice for an eye-watering amount of money owed to a Mr N. Jones for ‘creative services’, trying to work out how this Mr Jones expected his five-digit fee paid when he’d supplied no address on his paperwork, when a loud knocking on the front door of the house launched me to my feet.
Someone here? But William had said the place would be empty – all other staff were on paid leave while Mum was out of action, and William had been quite clear he intended to visit a museum in the city before heading back. Plus, William wouldn’t knock. Only a stranger to the house would knock. But then, how had a stranger got past the security gates at the entrance to the estate?
This
disturbing question ran through my mind as I crept from the office to the front door. There was no spy hole – what need had we for one in a home where unexpected visitors were an impossibility? – but a long, thin window around the corner in the front drawing room could offer a side-on view of the doorstep, I thought. The curtains were closed over the window and I pulled back an edge tentatively.
Screamed.
Dropped the curtain.
Leaned against the wall to catch my breath.
A gentle knock sounded on the door again, and I went back into the hallway, drew back the heavy bolt on the door and swung it open.
‘You scared me!’ I told my boyfriend.
‘Yeah, well, you worried me,’ he retorted.
Luke buried me in a bear hug and then stepped back and said:
‘I guess there’s no point me going into how you blazed off here without me, leaving Cara to cover the cafe and me to trail you in a van that’s not built for speed, all the time calling your mobile, which I’m guessing you have on silent, and then spend ages standing at the gates pressing the buzzer, which I’m guessing still isn’t working, and then try to crack the damned access code, and then give up and scale the very high wall and traipse up here and… Never mind. Are you okay?’
‘Er, yes, fine.’
He let out a long breath. ‘Good.’
‘Luke…’ I reached up and cupped his cheek in my hand. ‘I’m sorry. I never would have come if I’d known you’d feel the need to follow me like this. It’s very sweet. But a little –’
‘Paranoid? Yeah, I know. I told myself that all the drive up here. And at the top of that wall. But after your mum, I don’t like you alone here, Scarlett. Better a suffocating, over-protective boyfriend than… Well. Anyway. You’re fine.’ He pointed to my hand. ‘You’ve found something?’
‘Oh,’ I said, belatedly realising that I was still holding the invoice from the office. ‘This? It’s nothing. I was just doing some paperwork for Mum. It’s been stacking up.’
‘In that case,’ said Luke, ‘you might want this too. It was in the post box inside the gate.’
