‘But she’s spoken to you about it?’
‘Not about Rachelle. But she’s mentioned you being away a lot.’
‘Have you met Pugly?’
‘Oh, yes!’
‘Isn’t he adorable? The girls love him to bits. Ells, well, I’m sure she’ll come round.’
Abi bit her lip, wondering if she should say something about his nickname for Ellen.
‘Douglas?’
‘Yes?’
‘Must you call her Ells?’
He frowned, looking confused.
‘But I’ve always called her that.’
‘I know, but she doesn’t like it. Nor does she like Ells Bells or…’ Abi paused.
‘What?’
‘Elly Belly.’
‘Ah!’
‘She said that started when she was pregnant, but that you’ve never actually stopped calling her that.’
‘It’s a term of affection!’ Douglas said.
‘I know it is, but women are funny like that.’
‘Did she ask you to tell me not to call her those names?’
‘No, but she mentions her annoyance every so often.’
‘You see? I can’t seem to do anything right.’
‘You know that’s not true!’
‘You know what I think?’ Douglas said. ‘I think she’s addicted to drama. She’s always creating these scenes. It’s as if she feeds off them. Like they give her oxygen or something.’
‘Well, there’s definitely something in that,’ Abi agreed.
‘Has she always been like this? Chronically in love with high drama?’
‘I suppose. Now I come to think about it.’
‘There’s no supposing about it. Honestly, every time I come home, there’s some new drama to face. Nothing ever just seems to happen normally for Ells. I mean Ellen. It’s always a disaster or a catastrophe.’ He said the words in Ellen’s voice and Abi didn’t know whether to laugh or admonish him. It felt like a kind of betrayal to be listening to him berating her sister.
‘I sometimes delay my returning home,’ he then confessed. ‘Isn’t that awful? I actually stop off at places on the journey back – random places I pull into without really thinking about it like a garden centre or supermarket. The latest one was one of those massive antiques places where I wandered around aimlessly, just killing time. I’d no intention of buying anything. I don’t even like antiques. But it just gave me a few more minutes of peace. You see, that’s all I want – a peaceful life – a home I can relax in with my wife and daughters.’ He paused. ‘A happy home.’
‘And it’s not happy at the moment, is it?’ Abi dared to ask.
‘Not for me. It’s stressful.’
Abi listened as he went on to tell her about the latest drama involving a decorator who apparently didn’t know one end of a paintbrush from the other and how he’d made Ellen’s life impossible for three straight days, and Abi couldn’t help feeling increasingly uncomfortable as she realised that what Douglas was saying was true. Ellen did always seem to be in the midst of a drama even when doing the most simple of tasks. She was always fighting the whole world. Nobody else’s problems got a look in.
‘I came home from one trip away and I was going to tell her about a colleague I’d heard about. He’d been killed in a motorcycle accident. Horrible. Wasn’t his fault. Just wrong place, wrong time.’
‘I’m so sorry, Douglas,’ Abi said, seeing the sadness in his eyes. ‘Were you close?’
‘Not really. We shared a few drinks after work. A few stories too. You know that strange camaraderie you can feel for someone for a few hours and then not see them for months at a time?’ He sighed. ‘Well, it was like that with me and Justin. But I liked him. He was a good sort and his death really shook me up. The thought that he’d gone and that I’d never see him again. Anyway, I got home and I was going to tell Ellen about it. She’d never met Justin, but I needed to talk about it all. And I said something like, ‘Something awful happened,’ and she stopped me. Literally stopped me with her hand in my face like some kind of irate lollypop lady.
‘“Oh, you think something awful’s happened to you, do you? Wait until you hear about my day!” And off she went.’
‘What had happened to her?’
‘Can’t remember. I filtered it out as more noise and nonsense. But something to do with the washing machine, I think.’
‘Oh, Douglas! Did you ever tell her about Justin?’
He shook his head. ‘There really didn’t seem any point.’
They sat quietly for a little while, watching the swifts dancing in the blue sky above the walled garden. The heat of the day had lost its sting and there was a bit of welcome shade in the garden.
‘So, what are we going to do?’ Abi began at last. ‘You’re working too hard and spending much too long away from home, but you’re telling me part of that is because you’re not happy at home. And Ellen and the girls are miserable when you’re away, but then Ellen does nothing but cause drama whenever you do come home.’
‘That’s about the measure of it, and I don’t think it’s a problem we’re going to solve anytime soon.’
Abi took Douglas’s hand and squeezed it. ‘I do know what you put up with when it comes to my sister,’ she confided. ‘And I know that you’re a good and patient husband to her.’
‘Thanks, Abi. That means a lot.’ Douglas stretched out his legs and then yawned.
Abi smiled. ‘I think you’d better head home.’
‘Is it wrong to want to have a little kip right now?’
‘Not at all. I take naps all the time during the day,’ Abi said. ‘It’s one of the benefits of working from home.’
Douglas laughed as he got up and they walked back into Abi’s apartment where they put their mugs by the sink. When he turned to look at her a moment later, he looked serious again.
‘What is it?’ Abi asked.
‘Listen, if we’re being honest with each other – absolutely honest – I think there’s something I should tell you.’
‘What?’ Abi swallowed hard, wondering what on earth was coming next.
‘I don’t want to cause trouble between you and Ellen. That’s the very last thing I’d want to do.’
‘What is it?’
A pained look crossed his face. ‘She sometimes says things. Cryptic things.’
‘About what?’
‘About you.’
‘What do you mean?’
Douglas seemed to be searching for the words he wanted to say. ‘She says you’re the lucky one.’
‘Lucky? How? You mean my business?’
‘I guess that’s a part of it. But there seems to be more to it than that. She says you’ve always had it easy. You’ve been sheltered from everything.’
Abi could feel her eyes prick with tears at that. ‘I don’t know what she means,’ Abi said, feeling helpless. Ellen knew what she’d gone through, didn’t she? She knew what a tough time Abi had had before she’d made the decision to sell her company.
‘I don’t know what she means either,’ Douglas admitted. ‘But it’s something she says every now and then and, when I ask her more, she clams up and says it’s nothing. But this happens over and over again so I’m kind of thinking it’s something. I don’t know. She always makes out that she’s protecting you.’
‘From what?’
Douglas shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. Maybe it’s just her being a drama queen and a way to feel important. Who knows what goes through her head. I’m not sure if I’ll ever work her out.’ He approached her and gave her a heartfelt hug. ‘I just thought you should know.’
Abi nodded, her throat still tight with emotion as they said their goodbyes.
Chapter Fourteen
Abi was sitting on the floor of her bedroom, her long fair hair covering her face in a curtain. A safety curtain. Like in the theatre. She’d seen those words when her mother had taken them both to see the panto just before Christmas. Abi remembered poin
ting at the words and asking what it meant.
‘It’s so the actors don’t fall off the stage,’ her mother had said with a giggle. Abi hadn’t known whether to believe her or not, but had soon been swept away into the world of pantomime and had fallen in love with Cinderella. She wished she was there now in that safe world of the theatre where everything sparkled and shone. But she wasn’t there. She was sitting on the cold floor of her bedroom while there were strangers downstairs and people shouting. Somebody was crying. She thought it was Ellen, but she couldn’t tell. Maybe it was her mum. Abi had called downstairs for her, but Ellen had screamed up at her.
‘Go to your room!’
Ellen was always bossing her around. It wasn’t fair. Why should Ellen get to be downstairs where everybody else was and Abi had to stay in her room? Well, she wasn’t going to put up with that.
Abi got up from the floor and sneaked out onto the landing. The voices were louder now and she could see that the front door was open and two people were coming inside carrying something large and white between them.
‘What are you doing?’ Abi asked as she walked down the stairs, clutching the banister so hard that her little fingers hurt.
Ellen was standing outside the living room door and gasped as she saw her.
‘I want Mummy!’ Abi cried, reaching her sister just as the door was opened into the living room and the two men disappeared inside.
‘No, Abi!’ She felt a hand on her shoulder as she made to follow the men inside. ‘Don’t go in there. You mustn’t go in there!’
* * *
Abi woke with a start, her face hot and her breathing ragged. Her hand fumbled for her bedside lamp and knocked her glass of water onto the floor instead. She cursed, finding the light switch at last and getting out of bed carefully to avoid the broken glass.
It took a full fifteen minutes in her nightmare haze to clean up the glass and calm down and she did what she was becoming driven to do more and more: opened the French doors into the garden to let the cool night air in. Her skin still felt hot and it took her a while before she felt like her normal self again, and only then did she let herself recall details of the nightmare.
It had all felt so horribly real and she still had the disorientating sense of having been lost inside her own head. But was it just a nightmare or was it a memory? As Abi stared into the soft darkness of the summer garden lit by a clear crescent moon and starlight, she really couldn’t tell. But she knew one thing for sure – it had been her mother in the living room and the strange object that had been carried into the house had been a stretcher, hadn’t it? Had her mother had an accident? Abi couldn’t remember. All she knew was that her mother had died in hospital after a short illness and Abi hadn’t been there. Her memories of that time were sketchy. She’d been so very young.
But why had she had the nightmare at all? Had it been because of the strange conversation she’d had with Douglas and how he’d told her that Ellen was always saying she was protecting Abi? Had that triggered a memory in her? Abi wished she knew. Perhaps she should talk to Ellen about it. They rarely talked about their mother because Abi knew that it was still a source of pain to Ellen. And so they always skirted around it, banishing it to the past.
Having spoken to Douglas, Abi now wanted to know exactly what it was Ellen believed she was protecting her from. Was it something from their childhood? Was it from the period when they lost their mother? And how easy would that be to bring up in conversation?
As Abi stared out into the moonlit garden, she knew she wasn’t going to find the answers tonight and so she breathed the cool air deeply and gazed up at the stars. The sky was packed with them and she almost thanked her nightmare for giving her the chance to see them. As her eyes traced patterns between them, she suddenly became tired and decided to return to bed, hoping she would sleep through the rest of the night.
When she woke up, she was relieved to see that morning had arrived and, although the remnants of the nightmare were still swirling around her head, she felt that she could push them into a little corner, a place where she wouldn’t disturb them and where, with any luck, they might just dissolve into nothing and be forgotten.
‘And I can get on with my day,’ she thought, looking out at the sunny garden.
It still felt strange for Abi to be at home during the day with no meetings to attend and no pressure on her time. In London, she’d become a kind of machine, churning out designs on demand because the shopping season demanded them. Here, however, she was free to choose her work and that was very liberating.
Something else that was liberating was being able to down tools and head into the great outdoors whenever she wanted to and she felt in need of that today – to lose herself in the bright and airy landscape and embrace the freedom of it all. So she quickly packed a little bag with a sandwich made with slightly stale bread because she hadn’t been shopping for ages, a flask of water and her sketchbook and camera in case she was lucky enough to spot some more butterflies.
She walked. It was a loose-limbed sort of a walk, so unlike her walking in London which had been stifled and stymied by other people she’d had to dodge. And the longer she walked , the more her nightmare receded as did her anxiety about Douglas and her concerns for Ellen. One’s perspective on life switched up here. This was a place where the clouds lived and Abi watched as they chased one another across the sky, their great shadows darkening the landscape below. For a moment, Abi was caught underneath one and felt the brief chill on her limbs after the warmth of the sun. But the sun soon returned and she was grateful for it.
The higher Abi climbed, the more she felt a part of it all – as if her physical body was melting away and she was becoming a creature of the air. She stopped to inhale, knowing now that, if the breeze was from the south, it would hold something of the sea.
She followed a footpath which skirted a wood and then found a patch of ground studded with wildflowers. Taking care sitting down, Abi ate her meagre lunch, vowing to do better next time, but it didn’t matter because she really wasn’t thinking about her food; she was thinking about the landscape before her and how it made her feel. Maybe if she could get Ellen and Douglas up here, they’d feel it too. Maybe the downland air would help to blow away some of the tension between them.
Slowly, after she’d finished her lunch, Abi descended, becoming more aware of the heaviness of her body now as her knees strained. She felt the vital pump of her heart from her exertion and the unmistakable joy of just being alive.
Leaving the downs behind her, she crossed a field which came out at a small unmetalled road lined with the sort of cottages Helen Allingham might have painted over a hundred years ago. It really did feel as if Abi had stepped back in time and she smiled as she looked at the farm workers’ cottages, their gardens spilling over with flowers. The air was hot and still for she’d left the refreshing breeze on the downs now and she suddenly realised how tired she was. And that’s when she saw the cottage. It was a ramshackle sort of place with a red-tiled roof and a long low brick-and-flint wall running the length of the garden which was an impressive size and full of towering hollyhocks in shades from the palest pink to the deepest red. A row of tall canes stood sentinel and masses of beans scrambled up their height, and there were enormous bramble bushes too, their blackberries green and bullet-hard at present, but promising gorgeous fruit pies later in the season.
But it was an old blackboard propped up against a wooden crate by the wall that caught her attention. It was advertising goods for sale. There were pots of raspberry and gooseberry jam and beetroot chutney, and there were freshly-cut flowers in a galvanised bucket. There was also a piece of paper tacked to the bottom of the board which, in sloping letters, read:
Drinks served daily. Tea and Coffee – £1. Squash – 50 pence.
How could Abi resist? She picked up a jar of the beetroot chutney and opened the gate into the garden, following the path around the house. The casement windows on the ground floor of
the property looked as if they were about to fall out of their frames. They were all open and Abi had the feeling that they were the sort of windows that were all very well on a hot summer’s day when they let the fresh air in but, come winter, they would do nothing to keep the cold out.
Just to the left of the path, there were three old wooden tables, each with a few rickety chairs with sun-faded cushions upon them. Abi looked around the garden and then back at the house and then noticed that there was a small brass bell on the centre of each table. She approached the one nearest to her and picked it up, ringing it gingerly and looking around to see if it had any effect. Sure enough, a moment later, an old man came stumbling up the garden path. He was small but sprightly, with a shock of white hair stuffed under an old green hat with a feather sticking out of the left hand side, and a pair of bright eyes which fixed themselves on her immediately.
‘Not been waiting there long, have you?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Not at all. I’ve just got here,’ Abi told him.
‘I got stuck for a minute,’ he said. ‘Was trying to tackle some thistles down by the river. I can’t think how they got so big.’
Abi smiled, remembering the state of the walled garden when she took it on and the jungle of thistles that had greeted her.
‘So, are you after a cup of tea?’
‘Actually, I’d love a squash,’ Abi said.
‘Don’t blame you. Too hot for tea, ain’t it? So, what sort of squash? I’ve got orange, lime or elderflower.’
Abi pondered, feeling like a child again with far too many tempting things to choose from.
‘Lime,’ she said.
‘Good choice. Ice?’
‘Please.’
‘Take a seat. I’ll pop a brolly up for you.’
Abi watched as he added a pretty shade to one of the tables and she took a seat. He reminded her of a teddy bear with his friendly face and white fluffy hair – the sort of bear a child would never want to be parted from – one that would follow you around for years, gradually losing bits of stuffing and having to be stitched up time and time again, but one that was loved above all other toys.
The House in the Clouds Page 16
