The man reversed on the winding lane and struggled with the unpredictable gearstick of the hire car as it crunched and whined in protest. He pulled into a lay-by to allow the caravan and hefty 4x4 to pass by. His female passenger winced and squealed, closing her eyes against the impossible manoeuvre. The man exhaled loudly through puffed out cheeks; these roads were going to take a bit of getting used to. Relief and laughter filled the car.
Kate strode further into the water and allowed the tiny waves to lap her with their salty tongues. She turned and faced the shore, stepping backwards until the sea covered her shoulders. Her teeth chattered in her gums and her limbs jerked involuntarily, trying to counter the effects of the cold.
The man pulled the car into the driveway. This was it. Bulky luggage and a partly defrosted shepherd’s pie were quickly retrieved from the tiny boot and lugged to the front door.
The girl shielded her eyes from the sun and looked out over the ocean.
‘I am so going to paint this!’
The man put his arm across her shoulders.
‘Nervous?’
She nodded and bit her bottom lip.
‘Me too,’ he said.
Kate gazed up to the top of the cliff for one last look at Prospect House. This was the one place that she had been happy, the one place she had been comfortable and felt needed. Kate knew when she was beaten. Mark was right, he had won. She would never be free of the memory of what he had done; her scars ran too deep and the pain hovered too near the surface. There would never be peace for someone like her; she was too broken. The prospect of a life without her children was one that she could not contemplate. Deep down she had always known this. She would rather bow out than face that reality.
Prospect House looked beautiful. She thought of how easily her last vista could have been something else – Mark’s grinning face, the underside of a pillow at Mountbriers, a reflection of her own face, begging. This was better, much better. She liked the fact that it was by her own hand and not his. She was in control.
Kate’s body had gone numb with extreme cold and her skin was peppered with a million goosebumps. Her fine hair floated like brown seaweed around her head. Still with her eyes on the shoreline, Kate took two more steps backwards, until the soft sand beneath her feet gave way to nothing and she was treading water, preparing to go down, under the sea.
As the cold water began to engulf her, she was overcome with a beautiful calmness. Kate smiled at the prospect of the peace and escape that lay ahead. She would just take a moment… prepare.
Her eyes scanned the sand; she saw an image of the kids. They were toddlers with fat little tummies and chubby, splayed feet. They trudged up and down the beach carrying little red buckets filled with water that sloshed and slopped so that when they eventually reached the sandcastle moat there was nothing to tip. She laughed into the water and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the kids were nine and ten. Lydia, resplendent in oversized yellow sunglasses and her first bikini, lay on a beach towel, trying to be so grown up. Dominic, sneaking up behind his sister, held a clump of wet seaweed that in a matter of minutes would be deposited on her stomach.
Her precious memories would go with her. It had been an unfortunate life in one sense, but Kate could safely say that she would go through it all again, just for the sweet joy of being a mother to two such exceptional human beings. They would always be her greatest achievement, her legacy and no one, not even Mark could take that away from her.
Kate took a deep breath and prepared to submerge. She squinted at the shoreline, slowly exhaling, blinking through saltwater lashes to try and better focus. Another memory, only this felt different… The kids looked older and try as she might to search the crevices of her mind, she couldn’t remember it. It was more like a premonition. Here they were, adult at last. Dominic standing tall in a white open-necked shirt with his arm across Lydia’s shoulders. They were shouting, waving. Had they come to say goodbye? She strained to catch their words, but only Simon’s lilting tone filled her head. ‘Try and remember that hope comes in many forms; sometimes it’s a place and sometimes it’s a person.’
Lydia and Dominic stood on the shoreline. This was no memory, they were real and they had finally arrived. Standing arm in arm now, the siblings waited tentatively at the water’s edge. What on earth was she doing? They held her bundled clothes and beckoned her inland with open arms.
‘Hurry up! Some of us are desperate for a cup of tea!’ Dom bellowed in her direction.
Kate smiled and wept into the current.
Or people, she thought. Sometimes it comes in the form of people.
Kate began to swim, towards the shore, towards the hope that had been there all along, towards a future, a future with her children. She knew that she was free. Finally she would be able to tell her children the story of Mrs Bedmaker without fear.
‘I am Kate!’ she shouted. ‘I am Kate!’
She had won after all.
Notes for your book club
Kathryn only kills Mark after many years of abuse. Why did she keep it secret for so long? Do you think that is a “normal” thing to do?
Why does Kathryn immediately confess to Mark’s murder? Is this a believable thing to do?
If Kathryn had reported Mark to the police, would he have been sent to prison? Do you think Kathryn should have been sentenced to jail? Is her crime worse than Mark’s?
Kathryn’s story is often told in flashbacks. Why did the author choose to start with Mark’s death? How might you feel about Kathryn Brooker if you had never met Kate Gavier?
When we first meet Kathryn, she loves books and reading. When Mark destroys her secret library, she is devastated. Why does she value books so much? Do you think she feels the same way about books after he dies?
After her husband’s death, Kathryn Brooker changes her name. How do you think of her before and after she changes her name, as Kathryn, or as Kate, and what do you call her now? Would changing your name change who you are? Why does she do it?
What do you think makes Kathryn reach out to Janeece in particular?
If killing Mark was the “right” thing to do, why are Kathryn’s children so angry with her? If she had known how they would react, do you think she would still have killed him?
What Have I Done? tackles some very harrowing issues. There are moments when Kathryn feels life is not worth living. By the end of the book, do you feel hope for the characters?
Why has the author chosen to tell a story about such a painful subject? Do you think the topics are appropriate for a novel? If so, why?
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the incredible team at Head of Zeus whose passion for the written word means that they take a good story and make it great, especially Laura who is not afraid to suggest the bold changes that make all the difference.
My lovely Caroline Michel and the team at PFD whose support and encouragement was just what a wobbly newbie needed.
My lovely boys Josh and Ben who have taken being abandoned in their stride and have pizza delivery on speed dial for those evenings when mum has her head in a lap top.
Thank you to all those women who have shared their stories with me, women from all walks of life who dread the sound of a key in the door. You are not alone.
Finally to my Simeon who is the polar opposite of Mark Brooker, he has my heart in his hands and handles it with great care, I am blessed.
Clover’s Child — Preview
Read on for the first chapter of
Forbidden love in 1960s London has heart-wrenching consequences. The next powerful page-turner in Amanda Prowse’s No Greater Love sequence.
1
It was cold, the pavement was covered with a sugar-like dusting of frost and the January wind that blew off the water felt like it could cut your cheeks. A large ship painted gun-metal grey was moored against the jetty and its unwieldy hawser stirred and scraped against the wall as the Lightermen’s barge made the water swell
. The clouds were dark and threatened to burst at any moment. Dot Simpson and Barbara Harrison perched on the flat-topped bollards that stood in rows along the brow of the dock, just as they did in all weathers, in all seasons. When they were little, they had invented elaborate games using the bollards as everything from safe posts during battle to chairs at imaginary tea parties. Now in their late teens, they were more likely to be found sitting there with their faces covered in baby oil, holding up tin-foil reflectors to catch the sun’s rays. Tonight, however, they pulled their cardigan sleeves down over their hands and with shoulders hunched forward shouted to each other as their voices navigated the wind.
‘I’m bloody freezing!’
‘Me too! Dot, look – my fag’s stuck to my lip!’ Barb opened her mouth wide, to show her mate that her roll-up was indeed hanging free of assistance from her gob. They laughed loudly. This wasn’t unusual, they laughed at most things, sometimes because they were funny, but mainly because the two of them were young and free and life was pretty good.
A sailor waved from the deck and the girls waved back before collapsing in giggles. He looked foreign in his dark woolly cap and double-buttoned pea jacket. He ran up the deck towards them and as nimbly as his heavy boots would allow, clambered up the metal ladder and onto the wharf.
‘Shit! He’s coming over!’
Barb yanked her fag from her lip and threw it into the wind, where it was carried along a few feet before getting lodged in Dot’s hair.
‘Jesus! What you trying to do, set me barnet on fire?’
As Dot beat her head with her palms to extinguish any potential flames, her friend sat doubled over on her bollard stool and laughed until she cried. By the time sailor boy reached them, they were slightly more composed. Close up, neither of them fancied him, which was a bitter disappointment to all.
‘Hallo!’ His voice had the low staccato tones of the Baltics.
Barb waved at him.
‘I am new here for some days and would like very much to take you ladies for drink.’
‘We don’t drink.’ Barb looked away from him, tried to sound dismissive.
‘What are your names?’
‘I’m Connie Francis and this is Grace Kelly.’ Dot fixed him with a stare.
‘It’s nice to see you Connie and Grace, I am Rudolf Nureyev.’ Three could play at that game. ‘Maybe I take you not for drink, maybe I take you for movies?’
The girls stood and linked arms. Dot cleared her throat. ‘That’s very kind, Mr Nickabollockoff, but we’ve got to get home for our tea!’
The two girls ran past him along the dock, laughing and howling, shouting ‘GracebloodyKelly?’ at each other as they trotted along, homeward bound.
Half an hour later, the Simpsons’ front door bell buzzed. Its grating drone was pitiful, like a bee in its dying throes. ‘Coming!’ shouted Dot, sing-song fashion, casting the word over her shoulder in the direction of the hallway, once again making a mental note that the bell needed fixing. She would ask her Dad to have a look at it.
Dot licked the stray blobs of sweet strawberry jam from the pads of her thumbs, smiled and looped her toffee-coloured hair behind her ears. It was probably Barb. Either she’d decided to come round to the Simpson household for her tea after all, or she’d locked herself out of her own house. She felt a swell of happiness.
The front door bell droned again.
‘All right! All right!’ Dot tossed the checked tea towel onto the work surface and walked past her dad, who was engrossed in his newspaper as usual. She stepped into the hallway, with its narrow strip of patterned carpet, and walked past the glass-fronted unit in which her mum displayed her entire collection of china Whimsies. Looking through the etched glass panels in the door, opaque through design and a lack of regular dusting, she saw her mum staring back at her through the glass in a peering salute. Spying Dot, her mum tapped impatiently at the space on her wrist where a watch would live.
Dot eased open the front door and her mum bustled in from the pavement, filling the narrow hallway with her presence. She used the toe of her right shoe against the heel of her left to ease her foot out of its pump and then reversed the process before stamping her cold feet on the floor and wiggling her stockinged toes. She dumped her shopping bag by the door and shook her arms loose from her mac, making her ample chest jiggle under her chin, then whipped her chiffon scarf from around her neck and rubbed her hands together.
‘Blimey, Dot, take your time why don’t you. I forgot me key and it’s bloody freezing. I’ve only got a little while to get changed and get back to work!’
‘I was just making some toast, do you want some?’
‘No, love, I’ve been surrounded by grub all day, I couldn’t face anything. Eat quickly, mind. Don’t forget you’re coming in with me tonight.’
Dot groaned as she sloped off towards the kitchen. ‘Do I have to?’
‘I’m not even going to answer that. Do me a favour, Dot, stick the kettle on!’ This was code for make me a cup of tea.
Joan watched her daughter tease her roots with her index finger and thumb pinched together. ‘You’ll never get a brush through that!’
Dot chose to ignore her mum; she wasn’t particularly bothered if she never brushed her hair again as long as it was bouffant enough at the back. She yanked the lid from the large, dented, flat-bottomed aluminium kettle, filled it with water and plonked it on top of the gas cooker. As she waited for the whistle, she walked through to the adjoining back room, her hand now pressed flat against her forehead and her arm sticking out at a right angle. ‘Mum, do I really have to come to work with you tonight?’
Joan sank down into the chair across from her husband’s and delved into her make-up bag. She juggled the magnifying mirror in her left palm and her mascara in her right. She spat onto the cracked cake of black until some of it stuck to the clogged bristles of the brush and proceeded to comb it onto her lashes. She spoke with her lips tucked in, trying to keep her eyes still.
‘Yes, you do have to come with me! It’s not as though I ask much of you, Dot, and not as if anything you might have planned in your hectic schedule can’t wait an hour or two!’
‘But, God, it’s Friday night!’
‘I’m sure the Lord above knows what night it is and using his name in vain won’t help you, Friday night or not! Now go and wash your face and make that tea.’
Dot trudged through the back room to the kitchen sink.
Her dad looked up from the Standard. ‘Why’s she got her hand stuck to her bonce?’
‘She’s trying to make her fringe flat.’ Joan spat again onto her little brush.
Reg shrugged and shook his head with incomprehension. ‘You’ve only been in five minutes and now you’re back off to work. What time’ll you finish?’
‘I don’t know, Reg. When it’s done. I’ve worked bloody hard on this buffet; I hope it all goes all right. Dot better not do anything stupid.’
‘Why d’you need her anyway?’
She sighed heavily. ‘Oh, don’t you start. I’ve told you, it’s a big do for some new family moving into the Merchant’s House, military or something, I don’t bleeding know! I just know it’s overtime and they are paying good wages for someone to waitress, and that someone may as well be Dot! Any more questions?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
Joan lifted the brush and started to apply the dark goo to her lower lashes.
‘What’s for tea?’
‘What’s that if it’s not another question, Reg?’
‘Are you asking me a question now?’ He smirked.
Joan picked up a multi-coloured crocheted cushion and lobbed it at his newspaper. He ducked and the cushion thumped against the radio speaker.
‘Blimey, girl, steady! You just hit Cliff Michelmore in the cakehole!’
‘I’m sure he’s had worse.’ She giggled.
They both laughed as a slow waltz drifted into the room. Reg threw down his paper, struggled to his fee
t and pinged his braces over his vest, which always made his wife laugh. He hummed along as loudly as he could. ‘Come on, Joan, reckon we’ve got five whole minutes before her fringe is flat and she’s made your tea. Let’s have a dance.’
He pulled his wife by the arms, she slipped from the green vinyl seat of her chair and he spun her around the back room, trying not to trip on the rug that sat on the tiled floor. Gathering her into a close waltz, he whispered into her hair, which was stiff with lacquer. ‘I’ve just been reading about that Lady Chatterley book trial,’ he said. ‘It’s bloody filth that they are trying to pedal, disguised as literature. It’s disgusting. I’ve been following the case quite closely…’ He pulled her into him and they swayed around the room in an intimate clinch. She felt the scratch of his stubble against her cheek. His breath came in wheezy bursts, partly from lust and part due to his exertion. ‘And I reckon we should definitely get a copy!’
‘Oh, behave!’ Joan pushed him away, glancing at the cuckoo clock on the wall. ‘Gawd, look at the time. Dot!’ she yelled in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Forget the tea. Come on, we’ve got to leave right now or we’ll miss the bus!’
Dot came in, leading her little sister by the arm, who sported a large orange stain on her white frock. ‘She’s had an unfortunate incident with a Jubbly. Over to you, Dad!’
‘Oh for Gawd’s sake, Diane – you’re supposed to drink it, not bloody wear it! What are you, a baby? Do we need to put your drinks in a bot bot?’
Dee grinned. ‘No! I’m five, I not a baby!’
What Have I Done? Page 30
