by Fern Britton
Sennen stared, open-mouthed, ‘Rosemary!’
Rosemary crossed the road and hugged her. ‘My God, what are you doing back here? I was only thinking about you the other day. Have you time for a coffee?’
Sennen, completely taken aback by this sudden encounter, said, ‘Erm, well … I was …’
Rosemary cut her off. ‘Just half an hour. I’m buying.’
The coffee shop was busy and the two women took a little while to reach an empty table, in a far corner near the loos, stepping across pushchairs and toddlers.
‘You get settled and I’ll go and order. Latte? Cappu?’
‘Just a tea, please. Black, no sugar,’ said Sennen. She was still reeling from the second collision of her past hitting her present in two days.
‘So,’ said Rosemary, ‘what are you doing here? Visiting the children? I thought they had gone to London after your mum died?’
Sennen felt an anxiety headache creeping into the back of her eyes. ‘It’s all rather complicated, actually. Yes, I have come to see the children but the meeting didn’t go very well.’
Rosemary eye’s shone with compassion. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Sennen surprised herself with how much she wanted to tell Rosemary everything that had happened since putting her on the boat at Santander, and it all came out.
The telling of the story in the cramped Cornish coffee shop, transported her back to the moment, standing in her bright, Indian kitchen, pans and herbs hanging from the ceiling, when she had told Kafir her secret.
At first his face, his glorious beautiful face, was clouded with confusion, followed by heartbreak and then pure, white hot anger, that the woman she had told him she was had never existed. He was married to a liar and a cheat. Sennen relived the moment as she told Rosemary.
‘I had to tell you, Kafir,’ she had wept. ‘They have found me and I must go back.’
‘You wouldn’t have told me otherwise? You would have kept up the pretence forever?’ he had shouted.
‘It’s not like that. I have been shamed by my lies. You have no idea how much I have wanted to tell you.’
‘Then why didn’t you? Did you think so little of me that you couldn’t be honest with me?’
‘No, no.’ Her words came in sobs. ‘I thought you wouldn’t want me, that I was used goods, that you couldn’t marry me because I have two illegitimate children.’
‘You really think that I am that unsophisticated? You don’t know me at all, do you?’ He looked at her coldly. ‘And I surely don’t know you. What other lies have you told me?’
‘Nothing. Nothing else.’
‘Other than you told me that your kind and loving parents died long before they actually did die? You conveniently killed them off?’
‘Well, yes. And I am so ashamed. But, it seemed easier and …’
‘Sennen, I am sorry for you, but I am even sorrier that our marriage was based on your lies.’
She crumpled then, her shoulders hunched, her face in her hands.
Kafir watched her. ‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I must go home. I must sort it out,’ she snivelled.
‘And if I told you that I won’t allow you to go?’
She stared at him in surprise. ‘You wouldn’t do that, would you?’
‘Why not? You are my wife and it is your duty to stay with me and the children.’
‘Yes, but …’ She was confused; he had never been such a person. ‘I have to go. You understand why, don’t you?’
He folded his arms and looked at his feet.
‘Kafir? Come with me. We can take the children.’
Still he said nothing.
‘Please, come with me? I need you.’
‘No. I shall stay here. Someone has to look after Sabu and Aali. If they haven’t got their mother they will need their father. But I will get you a ticket to go home and you will face your first children and you will beg their forgiveness.’
‘What will you tell Sabu and Aali?’
‘The truth. It is better they know while they are young.’
‘And us? Our marriage?’
‘I can’t promise anything. You have turned my world and the world of our children upside down. We will need to pray and think. Now, I shall pick the children up from school and you must pack. Do not be here when I get back.’ He turned his back and walked out of the house.
Rosemary listened, occasionally offering a paper napkin in lieu of a tissue, and reaching over to rub Sennen’s hand.
‘You’ve been to hell and back,’ she told Sennen simply.
Sennen wiped her nose and sighed. ‘My own making.’
‘Surely Kafir will come around.’
‘I don’t know. He can’t understand how I could have lied to him. I am not the person he thought he’d married. I’ve hurt him.’
‘Yes, but your two little ones …’ Rosemary struggled to remember their names.
‘Aali and Sabu,’ said Sennen.
‘You’re are not turning your back on them, are you?’
Sennen pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and rubbed at them. ‘No. But I feel, oh, just … shit right now. I’ve let everyone down. My parents, my four children and my husband. And all because I made a huge mistake when I was so very young.’
Rosemary leaned in. ‘I’ve always wondered, who is Henry’s father? Did he hurt you? I mean were you …?’
‘It doesn’t matter who he was. He was even more selfish and stupid than I was, and no, he didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want.’
‘And Ella’s father?’
‘The same person.’
‘I see. Do they know who he is?’
‘No. I am the only person.’
‘Even he doesn’t know?’
Sennen shook her head, her mouth drawing a tight line.
Rosemary looked at her old friend with kindness. ‘I think we need another tea and coffee.’
When Rosemary came back, she brought biscuits and a round of cheese and pickle sandwiches. Sennen forced herself to cheer up. ‘So, I’ve bored myself and bored you too, so come on. Your turn. What has happened to you over the last twenty-five years?’
‘Well, I’m a quarter of a century older,’ laughed Rosemary.
‘What happened when you got back from Spain. Were your parents furious? Did they hate me?’ asked Sennen.
‘No. They were happy that I was okay. I felt guilty because they were so nice about it.’ Rosemary paused. ‘And I felt so sorry for your parents.’
Sennen’s throat tightened. ‘You saw them? Took the toys for Henry and Ella?’
‘Yes. I asked the police to take me to your house before they took me home. I gave them the toys but your father was very angry. He shut the door on me and I was too scared to see them again.’
‘Angry?’ Sennen felt tears pricking her eyes.
‘Yes. But polite. You know what I mean? I think he was angry because I was on his doorstep and not you.’
Sennen dropped her head to hide her tears. ‘And now my children are angry because I am on their doorstep, and not their granny or poppa.’
‘Two wrongs don’t make a right.’ Rosemary said quietly. ‘You can understand how they feel. You just have to show them, tell them what you feel about them and how much you’ve missed them.’
‘Maybe.’
Sennen’s phone rang. She snatched it up. ‘Hello?’
‘Mrs Tallon-Kaur, Deborah Palmer here. I have news. Your daughter wants to see you. Just the two of you.’
Sennen sat up and looked at Rosemary. ‘No Henry?’
‘No Henry.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow. Afternoon. I’ve suggested tea at the Starfish hotel. Three thirty.’
‘Oh, yes, yes. Thank you.’
‘Perfect. See you tomorrow.’
Sennen put the phone down. ‘Rosemary, you’ve brought me luck. Ella wants to see me tomorrow. For tea at the Starfish.’
‘I could
come with you, moral support and all that, if you’d like?
‘Oh, Rosemary, would you?’
‘What are old friends for?’
The two women parted with a plan to meet in the Starfish reception the following afternoon and Sennen began shopping again. She needed to get ankle boots for tomorrow’s tea with Ella. What a difference a cup of tea and an hour with an old friend made. She determined to take Rosemary out for dinner in the next couple of days and find out how the last twenty-five years had treated her. Rosemary had shown her such kindness today, more kindness than Sennen had shown her when they were young.
Her spirits lifted. Maybe she wasn’t such a bad person after all. She had made mistakes, huge ones, but now fate was offering her a chance to atone.
With a fresh bounce in her step, she put her shoulders back and forged on. On the corner, where the pet shop used to be, was a hairdresser’s. She hadn’t had her hair cut for years. If it got too much she would simply lop at it herself. In the window there were model shots of young women wearing the latest styles. She compared them, unfavourably, to herself. She put her hand to the glass and screwed her eyes up to ascertain how busy the salon was.
She could make out six chairs with six mirrors, a short row of backwash sinks and a reception desk. Only two of the chairs were occupied by clients. One, an older man, was being given a trim by a young woman, the other was occupied by a woman with red curly hair like her own. A man in his thirties was combing it through and bending to hear what she had to say.
Sennen gasped and pulled herself around the corner and out of sight. Ella. Had she seen her? Would she think she was stalking her? Sennen held her hands to her burning cheeks and told herself to calm down. The worst thing to do would be to run away, up the street, in case Ella was even now leaving her chair to catch her. She held her position and painted an unnatural smile on her face while pretending to find the parking permit sign fascinating. After a few moments she knew Ella would not appear. Phew. Sennen headed for the lane that would take her back to White Water, where she sat on the edge of her bed and thought about Ella. Bless her, she was obviously getting her hair done to look her best for meeting her mum tomorrow.
Sennen quickly dismissed the idea. ‘Don’t make it all about you,’ she told herself.
She lay on the bed and tried to sleep but the welcoming arms of oblivion were not playing her game. She got up, did some yoga poses to relax herself, then hopelessly tried to meditate. Finally, she gave up. Her mother had always suggested a good walk to get tired. ‘Ozone in the lungs. Always done the trick for me.’
Sennen smiled at the memory. She picked up her scarf and phone and tucked a twenty-pound note in her pocket in case of emergency and went for a walk.
She intended to walk down to the harbour, turn left past the Golden Hind and follow the path up over the cliffs towards Sundown Beach, which would take her to Tide Cove and on to Shellsand Bay. But intention and action are very different things. Once out of the front door she didn’t turn right to the harbour. She turned left up towards the back of Trevay and its church, St Peter’s.
The doors were locked. She rattled them in annoyance. She was hot and could have done with having a quiet moment of reflection in the cool of the building.
She reprimanded herself again. ‘You’re a very selfish woman today. Stop it.’
She found some shade and a bench under an ancient yew and sat down gratefully.
‘What the hell am I doing here?’ she asked herself. ‘I want the beach and the wild ocean, not this mournful garden.’ She looked around at the ancient, lichened gravestones. But still she did not move.
She knew why she had come.
She began searching for her parents’ graves. She was methodical, walking up and down the lines, wonky though they were, searching for the Tallon name. She didn’t even know if they had been buried. It would be like Poppa to want to be cremated and scattered in the ground to feed the crops and trees. And Mum would have done whatever Poppa thought was right. And if they were buried, would they even be in this churchyard?
She stopped and caught her breath. An emotion, she couldn’t identify, possibly shame, certainly fear, was sending a tremor through her. She felt them. They could see her, she was certain.
Looking around to make certain she was on her own, she said quietly, ‘Mum? Poppa? Where are you?’
A blackbird fluttered from a nearby bush and startled her. He flew to the top of a gravestone some twenty paces from her and cocked his head. She challenged his beady eye. ‘You’re tricking me Mr Blackbird. And I’m not falling for it.’
He flew to another stone and another. Reluctantly, she followed him, glancing at the names on the memorials he had landed on. All strangers.
Ignoring the bird, she began her methodical search again. Some headstones were so interesting she stopped and read them, enjoying the history and mystery of each.
Eventually she reached the furthest corner and the boundary of the garden. The drystone wall had a seat set into it and she sat, feeling the warmth of the slate seeping through her skirt. It was peaceful up here and, beyond the roofs of the town and its harbour, she could just make out the sea.
Would she be buried here? Would she be welcomed as a child of Trevay? Or had she lost the right to be thought of as a local? Closing her eyes and tilting her face to the sun she pictured the mourners who would have sat here over the centuries, wiping their eyes, glad to rest their grieving limbs, imagined the gravediggers sharing a Thermos of tea as they took a break from their sweaty work.
Something light landed on her shoulder, making her start. It was the blackbird.
‘You again?’
He hopped off her shoulder and on to the wall, then flew to two gravestones a row ahead of where she was sitting.
Curiosity hooked her. ‘This is your last chance, Cheeky.’
She got up and read the inscription.
William ‘Bill’ Tallon
Husband to Adela,
Father to Sennen
Poppa to Henry and Ella
So loved and so missed
Then she read the one next to it.
Adela Tallon
Wife to Bill
Mother to Sennen
Henry and Ella’s Beloved Granny
No words will tell how much we miss you
The blackbird had gone.
She was alone.
She fell to her knees between the graves and spread her arms over both of them, weeping.
23
Eventually her tears ended and she sat, legs crossed like a schoolgirl, looking at both headstones.
The plots were edged with granite and covered in small, pinkish, marble-like stones. She picked one up and tossed it from hand to hand.
‘Did you ever think you’d see me again. Mum? After the last time? I never thought I’d be back, that’s for sure. The prodigal daughter?’ She laughed. ‘No fatted calf for me, though, is there, Mum? You made that very clear.’
A butterfly, possibly a cabbage white, she thought, rose from a patch of white clover and flew around her hand before settling on her father’s headstone. Opening and closing its wings, it basked in the warmth of the day.
‘Poppa, did Mum ever tell you about me coming back?’
Sennen shut her eyes against the daylight that was suddenly too sharp, too bright.
In her darkness, she saw her mother again, opening the front door to her. Adela had stiffened the moment she had seen Sennen. Her smile had dropped, her knuckles clenching the door as she stepped out onto the front step, pulling the door closed behind her.
‘What do you want?’ Her eyes searched Sennen’s face. ‘What have you come back for?’
Sennen felt awkward and small. This was not what she had pictured, but then again, what had she pictured? Her parents enfolding her with love and forgiveness? Her children hugging her, burying their faces in her skirt?
‘I don’t want them to see you,’ Adela had hissed.
Sennen knew
who she meant.
‘I just wanted to see if you were okay? You and Poppa and Henry and Ella.’
‘We are fine.’ Adela was terse. ‘Now.’
‘Please, Mum, please, I’ve come back to explain. I’ve missed you all so much. Things have been so difficult.’
‘Difficult?’ Adela almost spat. ‘I’ll tell you what difficult is. Having a daughter disappear, that’s difficult. Difficult is nursing your father through a breakdown.’ Her face was twisting in strain at the memory. ‘Losing you almost killed him. Both of us. And Henry and Ella.’
Sennen had taken a step forward to her mother, her hands reaching out to her. ‘But I’m here now and I want so much to explain.’
Adela stepped back. ‘There is nothing to explain and nothing of you left here.’
‘But Mum …’
Sennen forced herself to come back to the present. ‘That was not good, Mum. If you hoped to hurt me back, you succeeded. I’m so sorry for everything.’ She turned her face to her father’s headstone. ‘I bet she didn’t tell you about that, did she, Poppa? I was longing to see you. I needed your love and forgiveness. I honestly didn’t realise I had hurt you so much.’
She lifted a strand of hair from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. On the horizon, she could make out the blurred shape of a tanker heading east. For a moment she pictured herself on its bridge, twirling the ship’s wheel and heading out to wherever the wind blew her. Then, with a rueful shake of her head, she addressed her father’s headstone.
‘I ran away. I ran and ran until I couldn’t come back. God, I was frightened. But I so wanted, needed, to see you and Henry and Ella. In my heart I thought that maybe you’d welcome me back. That we could get over the terrible thing I had done and I could be Henry and Ella’s mum again.’ Sennen threw the stone she was playing with high in the air. She watched as it turned and sparkled then fell into the grass beside her. ‘It was pretty horrible.’ She turned to the grave of her mother. ‘Mum made sure she told me how you had burnt my school reports, Christmas cards, photographs. She told me you had wiped me out of your lives. She called me selfish, hot-headed, too independent for my own good. She said that Ella and Henry had no memory of me and that you, Poppa, had told them I had disappeared and would never come back to them.’ Sennen bowed her head in shame. ‘Mum said I was dirty.’ Her tears flowed again but there was no sobbing. ‘I know I did wrong. But when I went to Spain it felt right. I was trying to make it right. Give the children their father. Be married. Live happily as you both had.’ She sniffed and shook her hair back from her face. ‘But … Mum told me that I was no good. That the shock of seeing me would kill you, Poppa. That the sight of me would give the children nightmares again, that you’d only just got them on an even keel … But all I wanted was … I was only twenty!’ Her tears were bitter now. ‘I screwed it all up. I lost him. I lost you. I lost the children … it’s not too dramatic to say I lost myself. Until a few years ago when I met Kafir.’ She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘You would both love him. Kind, gentle, knows right from wrong, and he’s a Sikh. Imagine. I married a glorious, handsome Sikh and we live in India. In Agra. Yes, the Taj Mahal is there and yes, it’s beautiful. Kafir has given me two wonderful children. A girl first and then a boy. Aali, my daughter, is so wilful. She takes after me, you’d say. Strong. Defiant. Funny. She’s coming up for six now. And then there’s Sabu. He’s three. So loving. He likes stories and colouring and cuddles.’ Her legs were getting stiff in their crossed position so she stretched them out in front of her and lay down between her parents and looked at the sky. ‘The sky’s very blue. I think you’d call it heliotrope, Mum.’ She shifted her head. ‘And the clouds are blooming in the west. Big, smoky puffs. But I don’t think it’ll rain. I’ve seen Henry and Ella, you know. I’ve been summoned by your solicitor as sole beneficiary of your will. Typical of you, Mum, not to have made a will. Henry is very angry about it all and Ella is trying to compensate for him. I’m meeting her tomorrow. I saw her today but she didn’t see me. She was getting her hair done. What a girl you’ve brought up. She’s very beautiful, I think. Henry is handsome, but he was so cross with me he hid it well.’ She smiled at the thought. ‘So here we all are. You two, me, Henry and Ella. Back in Trevay. I’m not sure what will happen next, to be honest.’ She rolled onto her stomach and plucked a long, seeded grass head. ‘I threw the pebble in the pond all those years ago and the ripples are still hitting the shore. I may have lost Kafir and Aali and Sabu too.’ She suddenly remembered meeting Rosemary. ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you. You remember Rosemary? The girl I made run away with me? The one you liked? I bumped into her today. She was very kind. I told her everything … almost. She’s coming to my meeting with Ella tomorrow. I’m going to explain to her what happened and ask her forgiveness. Would you wish me well? Please? No matter how old a child gets, we still want our parents’ approval. I know I lost yours a long time ago, but …’ Her voice broke and the tears came again like a sudden cloudburst in summer. ‘Please. I love you both so much. Forgive me. Help me.’
