by Megan Tayte
I thought about it. ‘A week.’
‘A week. I can squeeze a lot into a week.’
She looked so happy. Something twisted in my stomach. To have found her at last, and then lose her again...
‘Oh, darling,’ she said, plucking a tissue from a nearby box and blotted away a lonely tear snaking down my cheek. ‘I’m so sorry you’re hurting. Luke – I thought he was a lovely boy.’
‘He is,’ I said. ‘The best.’
‘The best?’
‘Yes.’
‘The one?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you can’t be with him?’
‘No.’
‘Is it…’ She looked worried for the first time since I’d arrived. ‘That boy in the hospital.’
‘Jude?’
‘Yes. I wondered whether...’
‘He’s nothing to me.’
I waited for her to say, ‘So what is it then? Why are you here instead of with Luke, if he’s the one? What happened between you?’ But instead she said, ‘Come on. Outside. There’s something I want to show you.’
In the hallway, she tutted at the thinness of my jacket and hustled me into one of her own – a thick, white duck-down parka with a fur-trimmed hood. Then she pulled on a matching hat, gloves and scarf, dressing me carefully as she had when I was a toddler. Once she’d donned another of her coats, we headed out into the murky rain. Arm in arm, we walked through the rose garden – bereft of colour now – and past the stables. I thought, by our trajectory, that she was leading me to the pool house, and I was about to protest that I really wasn’t in the mood for a swim, when we took a sharp left and walked along past vegetable patches and the gardeners’ shed. Beyond was a clearing that was designated for waste disposal, and there, in the centre of it, was a massive mountain of vibrant fabrics over which a frame of branches had been built in the shape of a teepee.
Mum was clutching my arm to her side in excitement. ‘Isn’t it brilliant?’ she breathed.
‘What is it?’
‘A bonfire! Hermes. Chanel. Chloe. Dolce & Gabbana. Marc Jacobs. Versace. Burberry. Poof – up in smoke!’
I gaped at her. ‘Mum! Those clothes must be worth a fortune! You can’t just burn your entire wardrobe!’
‘Can actually,’ she said. ‘It’s all part of letting go.’
An old man appeared from around the back of the bonfire: William, the groundskeeper. He was dousing the clothes and wood with lighter fluid.
‘Morning, Scarlett,’ he called cheerily when he saw me. ‘Elizabeth, you about ready?’
My jaw dropped. What had happened to Miss Scarlett and Mrs Blake, or ma’am?
‘Ready!’ cried Mum.
‘Stand well back then,’ said William, and as Mum pulled me further back he took a box of matches from his pocket, removed one, back-stepped, lit the march and threw it with relish at the pile. The wood caught alight instantaneously, and with an audible whoosh the whole bonfire went up in flames.
Mum shrieked in delight. ‘Yes! Wonderful! Burn, you bastards!’
I’d known it was too good to be true. She was utterly mad still. As William shuffled away, smirking, I turned to deal with Mum. But the eye that caught mine wasn’t crazy; it was just happy.
‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘If you wanted a new look, why not just donate all your clothes to charity?’
‘Oh, I did, darling,’ she assured me. ‘Enough to fill William’s van to bursting. But this lot – these are the ones I hated most. The tight suits. The awful dresses I wore to garden parties when I was newly married. My wedding outfit. I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic, as you well know. I thought this would be cathartic – and I was right! Fire, fire, fire!’
I smiled at her then. I had to. She was right. I was so proud of her.
‘Why are we just standing here?’ I said.
‘Well, I wanted to watch –’
‘We can do better than that.’ I dug in my jeans pocket for my phone. Ignoring the missed calls on the display – ten, all from Jude – I searched through my music playlist until I found what I was looking for, and then I pressed play and slid the volume control to maximum.
‘Oh!’ said Mum. ‘Can we...?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes!’
And that’s how, on a grey and miserable October afternoon, on a waste site beside one of the most stately homes in the county, two women came to be dancing, heads thrown back, arms wide, around a designer inferno, belting out the lyrics to Adele’s ‘Set Fire to the Rain’.
40: ELIZABETH
That night, my mother built another fire – this one less controversial but just as transformational. We curled up together on the sofa by the hearth in the living room and let the flames melt away the last of our defences. We talked. We really talked.
Every word my mother said was a revelation to me. Gone was her old insatiable grief, replaced with a quiet sadness over the death of her daughter and the loss of her husband, and a hunger to make something of herself now. Beyond the plans to move, she spoke about using some of the proceeds of her upcoming divorce as seed capital to start her own business. She’d always wanted to have a career, do something with her life, she told me – but she’d met Father so young, and he’d thought it improper for her to work.
It was amazing listening to her talk about herself in this way. In the firelight she morphed from being an actress playing poorly the role of mother, and became a real person with a past and a future and hopes and dreams and yearnings. And the shift created room for me to step off the stage too, to cast off the role of dutiful daughter. I could share something of myself as well, something real.
It was a test, I suppose, telling her about the surfing. Because she’d always totally flipped out at the thought of me anywhere near water. I started gently, describing the night surf in Newquay, where I’d been spectator, not participant.
‘It sounds amazing!’ she said. ‘Would you do that, if you could?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And I can.’
‘Can what?’
‘Surf. I learned this summer. In Twycombe.’
Her eyes widened, and I braced myself for her outburst. But then she grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Why should my fear hold you back?’
She wanted to know all about surfing then. So I told her the story of how I learned. I told her how it felt out on the waves. I told her about the cove and the surfing culture there. And then, although she didn’t ask, didn’t probe, I told her about the people who’d mattered to me there. Bert, Si, Cara. And Luke. I told her about him and me – the good stuff, the happy memories.
‘You hold on to those memories,’ she said softly when I stopped to wipe away a fresh cascade of tears. ‘They’ll last you a lifetime.’
I sniffled. ‘That’s it? Just live a life remembering when times were good?’
She smiled. ‘You expect me to say, “Go to him. Fight for him. Be with him.” I see that.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Do you want me to? Is being with Luke right for you?’
Slowly, I shook my head.
‘You see – that’s why. Fighting for love is a noble and beautiful ideal in a film or a book. But real life’s not that black and white.’
‘You mean all the years you stayed with Father, you shouldn’t have?’
‘Actually, I wasn’t talking about Hugo.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She sighed. ‘It’s not something I talk about, but then… maybe it will help now. I don’t know.’ She slid off the sofa, onto her knees, to stoke the fire. ‘A long time ago,’ she said, ‘before I had you and Sienna, before I knew Hugo, there was another man.’
I stared at her as, back to me, she nudged logs into place. She’d had Sienna at twenty; it had never occurred to me to think about the guys she might have dated before my father.
‘Who was he?’ I asked.
‘My saviour. That’s who I thought he was.’
Leaving t
he poker on the hearth, she sat back on her heels. Her face, when she turned it to me, was pink from the heat.
‘I was eighteen when he found me. He was like no one I’d ever met before. Strong. Passionate. Determined. I was just a young girl, terribly naive from growing up in that isolated little cove. To me, he was so worldly and fearless; everything I wasn’t but wanted to be. I fell for him so hard and so fast. I barely knew him, but I loved him.’
‘What happened?’
‘It just wasn’t meant to be. We were too different.’ She stood up and came to sit beside me again. ‘It hurt terribly when it ended, and I let it haunt me for a long time. But it was for the best, I know that. It was the right thing for me, and for you and Sienna.’
‘We weren’t even born then.’
‘Yes. Of course. But Scarlett, even if you haven’t known it, I tried to give you and your sister a good life. Here, with Hugo. Safe. Easy. Better than you would have had. You look confused. I’m sorry – I’m muddling this all up. All I mean to say is that there’s a future ahead for you – a life after this love. You just have to be brave and go find it.’
‘I’m working on that,’ I said. ‘In fact...’
‘Yes?’
I hesitated. She had been so honest with me, more open than I could ever have expected, and so accepting of me, of anything I told her. I longed to confide in her now. If not about Jude and Sienna and the Ceruleans, then at least about the real reason I’d had to let go of Luke. At least I could tell my mother the secret it was agony to keep from her: that our time together would be short and final.
In a moment, I tried to imagine how it would be to stay here, with her. To spend my last moments as I’d spent my first in this life, in my mother’s arms. She seemed so together now, so emotionally centred. Perhaps she would cope with my death. Perhaps she would value the chance to be there for me as she’d never been able to be there for Sienna. Or perhaps my death would be the thing that finally broke her, that blew away every scrap of peace and hope she’d worked to achieve, that decimated all her potential.
‘Scarlett?’
‘Speaking of being brave and finding a new life, that’s exactly what I plan to do. Travelling. I’m going to go travelling. Find myself, you know.’
She did know. She’d been thinking of a holiday herself, she said, for the very same reason. She flew out of the room and came back with a stack of travel guides under her chin, and began excitedly talking me through destinations.
‘I know you – you’ll want to travel alone,’ she said. ‘But we could meet up somewhere. Somewhere amazing! We’ll do lunch by the Coliseum, or Times Square, or the Taj Mahal.’
I reached over and hugged her awkwardly over a Lonely Planet guide to Thailand. I didn’t say anything, I just hugged her. And we may not have been somewhere exotic, but that moment, I was sure, was as meaningful as any we could have had out in the big, wide world.
41: COME FIND ME
The rest of the week went too fast. I ignored the headache dulled to a nagging ache by my medication. I ignored the desire to curl up in a ball and sleep for a decade. I ignored the tiger that prowled in my peripheral vision. I ignored the phone that kept buzzing with texts and calls from Jude – in fact, come Tuesday, I switched it off permanently. I ignored everything, except being with Mum.
We went to look at a cottage for sale, but it turned out to be more hovel than home. So we slipped away while the estate agent was extolling the virtues of the thatched roof, sniggering like schoolgirls over his dodgy hairpiece.
We threw the dustsheets off Father’s 1926 Bentley, waiting in the garage to be moved to his London home. With plenty of enthusiasm but precious little skill, we drove it around the estate, belting out the signature tune of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
We caught the train to London and ate lunch in the lofty restaurant of the Tate Modern, overlooking the Thames and St Paul’s Cathedral. Then we wandered the galleries aimlessly, arguing over the relative merits of a Monet versus a Miró, a Mondrian versus a Matisse.
We baked together – dry and hard cupcakes with sloppy yellow frosting – and offered them around the staff, who were bemused but touched.
We walked over the hills to St Augustine’s church and laid flowers before my sister’s cenotaph, and then sat on a bench and exchanged memories of Sienna.
We went to the salon and got our hair cut – she in her usual style; mine shorter, and shorter, and shorter, until the girl in the mirror didn’t look quite like me any more, and that, I decided, was a very good thing.
And then, so quickly, it was Saturday afternoon, and tomorrow it would all be over: no more ‘we’ time. I’d told Mum I would be leaving after lunch, to return to Twycombe and pack before heading to the airport for a flight to New York. In fact, I planned to drive no further than the end of the road and then make the call.
To Jude.
Because of course I had to call him. My threat back at the cottage, that I would not go with him, was empty – born of rage; designed to hurt him as he’d hurt me. Over these past days with Mum, the anger had faded. He’d been wrong, there was no arguing with that, but he’d meant to help me, I thought. And when it came down to it, really there was no choice to make. Sienna needed me. I wouldn’t turn my back on her just to spite some boy.
I was restless that afternoon, couldn’t settle to anything. Mum was busy with a string of vulturous estate agents valuing Hollythwaite for sale, and without her to distract me, it was increasingly harder to block out the ticking clocks everywhere – in every room; why were there so many goddam clocks? She spotted me wandering about in the conservatory and bundled me into her parka and pushed me out the door.
‘Walk it off,’ she instructed. ‘Come back for dinner. We’ll make those poncho things you told me about.’
‘Nachos.’
‘That’s it. Now blow the cobwebs away. Go, scoot!’
So I did. Through the rose garden, across the lawns, through the orchard – wandering aimlessly, I thought. But my subconscious didn’t do aimless, I realised, when I found myself at the very boundary of our land, standing in front of the field that had served as playground for my sister and me.
The latch on the gate was stiff, and I gave up struggling with it and climbed up the wooden supports instead. With one leg over and one dangling behind, I took in the field. The autumnal weather and a rigorous mowing had left the earth exposed, vulnerable. But it was easy enough to imagine it as it had once been, a meadow of wildflowers. Violet-headed knapweed and ruby-red poppies. Daisy-like field chamomile and pinky-purple corncockle. Sunshine-yellow corn marigolds and buttercups of gold. Delicate white-petalled hedge bedstraws and, in the spring, forget-me-nots the colour of the sky. When I closed my eyes I could smell the flowers, and I could see Sienna’s head of crimson hair bobbing among them, and I could hear her laughing on the breeze and her challenge: ‘Come find me, Scarlett.’
When I jumped down from the gate my trainers sank to the laces in mud and I had to brace myself on the gate post while I hauled them out. The walk across the field to the hill at the far end was squelchy and slippery, but I persevered until I stood on the crest of the hill. The view was as I’d remembered it: Hollythwaite laid out below, and beyond, patchwork fields and the odd turret of a great home and the steeple of St Augustine’s.
I’d stood here often as a child, but I’d never lingered. Our favourite game was to run as fast as we could down that hill. We ran quickly enough that it felt like flying, and by the end of the incline our little feet would struggle to keep pace with our momentum, and we’d scream with the delicious thrill of it all. Sometimes we’d tumble. Usually, we’d make it. Either way, we’d turn straight around and climb the hill to do it all over again.
I thought about racing down now. But there were no flowers to tickle my hands as I ran. And there was no one to race – no sister waiting at the bottom to laugh when I fell and then tug me to my feet again.
Here, in our field, I missed her. But for o
nce, it was a good kind of missing. Where you know it will be over soon, and the reunion will be all the better for the missing. I would find Sienna. We would be sisters again. My death would not rob me of everyone I loved.
My legs were heavy, and the walk back to the house seemed a trek, and it was peaceful here and quiet. So I let my knees soften and sat down, heedless of the squelch that signalled borrowed white coat meeting boggy ground, and hugged my legs to my chest.
It began to rain, just soft spray at first, and then more serious drops, until the heavens opened and rain was bucketing down onto me – Big ol’ fat rain, I thought, and smiled; it was a quote from one of my favourite films, Forrest Gump. Well, it had been my favourite. But now that I thought about it, didn’t the woman he love die?
I should have headed back. But I didn’t. I put my hood up, and then tilted my head back and let the rain run onto my face, relishing the cold wetness of it. My neck began to ache, but I didn’t want to turn away from the rain, so I leaned back further, further, until, with a gentle sploosh, I was splayed on my back on the ground, blinking up at a crying sky.
I closed my eyes and lay like that for a long time, drifting, breathing, being. Until the almost quiet in my mind was pierced by a voice. Luke’s, of course Luke’s.
How many times had I heard him say my name, in how many different ways? There was that first time, on the beach after he pulled me from the water – Scarlett, tinged with surprise and sympathy. There was the time I mastered the art of balancing on a surfboard – Scarlett, loud and proud. There was the time at the folly when he told me how he felt about me – Scarlett, raw and brave. There was the time in bed, our first night together – Scarlett, reverent almost. There were the times, too many times, I was in trouble, lying in a lane, caught in a rip current, slumped by a crazed tiger –– Scarlett, tortured, frantic. And then there was this Scarlett, and it was all of them, each Scarlett combined. All of Luke, all he’d felt for me, in one word.
‘Scarlett... Scarlett...’
I opened my eyes. Still I heard him.
