The Dream House

by Rachel Hore

  Kate looked down at the little drawer of mementoes, now neatly arranged, and bit her lip. She could hardly take all this in.

  ‘It sounds like what I had, doesn’t it?’ she said, meeting her father’s eyes. ‘Post-natal depression.’

  ‘I think that’s what a doctor today might say,’ her father agreed, ‘but of course no one talked about that sort of thing then. Especially not ex-pat army doctors. And in those days, you just put a brave face on such things.’

  ‘Then, losing Nicola . . .’

  ‘Was a terrible blow for both of us, all of us. But for your mother – she felt so guilty, that she’d been so inadequate as a parent. She felt she had lost her chance forever.’

  Kate was surprised by a sudden bolt of anger. ‘She had lost her chance with Nicola, yes. But not with me. She still had me. You . . . she . . . you forgot me. All you could think about was Nicola, Nicola, Nicola.’ She went on passionately, ‘Dad, did you never consider after Nicola died that I might be hurting too? That I needed comfort? Not just Mum, not just you. She was my sister. Instead, you buried yourself in your grief. You both forgot about me – maybe you blamed me for not dying instead of her, I don’t know! And now it is photos of Nicola you have downstairs, not pictures of me and my family. The dead, not the living. You hardly see Sam and Daisy or even remember their birthdays.’

  Her father buried his face in his hands. Kate saw that he was trembling. Was he crying? After a moment, he looked up at her with a strained white face. ‘I must take a lot of the blame for that,’ he said. ‘I’ve been so careful to guard your mother. She loves you, I know she loves you. It’s not her fault, it’s a sort of illness with her. And the drink, this terrible self-harm, it’s her way of dealing with it all.’

  ‘Have you never talked to a doctor about it all? Found a specialist for her?’

  ‘We’ve never found anyone who’s done more than give her the anti-depressants.’

  ‘Well, Dad, you’ve got an opportunity now. It’s really important that you push the doctors until you get Mum to see a psychiatrist and that you explain everything to them – the whole history and that you get Mum to do what they recommend. The counselling is an essential part of it all these days – it’s her best chance. Otherwise, she’ll go on doing this until she succeeds.’

  Weary now, she went over and, putting her arms round her father, hugged him. Then she picked up the little drawer and slotted it back into the cabinet before turning her attention to her mother’s overnight bag. On impulse, she hurried downstairs and picked up the single photograph of Sam and Daisy – the one take several years before – and returning to the bedroom, placed it in the little holdall by the washbag and zipped the bag closed.

  The next morning, Maggie rang to tell them that Barbara had been moved to a recovery ward. Now that she was settled, Maggie was going home.

  When Kate and her father arrived, Barbara was fully conscious, but very tired. Kate sat on the chair by the bed while her father fussed about with flowers and the contents of the holdall, showing his wife the photograph of Sam and Daisy before balancing it on the bedside cabinet.

  ‘How do you feel now, Mum?’

  ‘My throat hurts,’ Barbara whispered. ‘And I’ve got a headache.’

  ‘Why did you do it? Please tell me.’

  But her mother turned her face away, her expression closed.

  ‘Mum, Dad’s been talking to me and I understand a bit more now, about why you hurt so much. But Dad and I, and Sam and Daisy, we love you. And we want you to get better. So you mustn’t do this again. You must get some help. Dad’s made me promise that you will get some expert help. We’ll pull you through this, we must. Sam and Daisy need you, they need their granny, do you understand?’

  Her mother’s face was still turned away, but she nodded almost imperceptibly. And that was enough.

  Kate rang Joyce from a payphone at the hospital. Her mother-inlaw had insisted she would go up on the train and fetch the children on Sunday night, but Kate was grateful to hear that Simon had volunteered to bring them down to Diss himself. He would meet Joyce at the station.

  Kate remained at the hospital all day, helping her father talk to the doctors, arranging for her mother’s future care. When, the following morning, she set off for Suffolk once more, her father hugged her as he never had before.

  ‘You’re a brick, my girl,’ he said, and though she saw that his armour, his bluffness, his army correctness, were returning, there was something akin to a twinkle in his eye. It was still the beginning of things, but the bond between the three of them had been reforged.

  When Kate met the children out of school on Monday evening, Sam ran to her and wrapped himself around her as though she were the only solid object in an unstable world.

  ‘What’s the matter, sausage?’ she whispered, holding him tight.

  ‘I love you, Mummy,’ was all he said. ‘Don’t go away again.’ Later, as they sat down to fish fingers, Daisy said, almost conversationally, ‘Mummy, is Granny Carter going to die?’

  Sam sat up and watched his mother’s face, his eyes wide.

  Kate could hardly breathe for a moment and then she said, ‘No, darling. She’s been very ill, but she’s going to get better.’ How could she and Joyce and Simon have been so caught up in their troubled adult lives that they hadn’t taken enough care of the children’s fears?

  She explained to them now that Granny Carter was still in hospital but that the doctors and nurses were helping her and soon she would go home. She then moved on to ask them about their stay with Simon. Had they enjoyed themselves?

  Sam resumed eating his fish fingers and nodded slowly. ‘We went to see the ships,’ he said, ‘and where people had their heads chopped off.’

  ‘Daddy forgot to ask Sam to clean his teeth,’ Daisy said in adult tones, and then clearly regretted the indiscretion because she quickly added, ‘but it didn’t matter, because he made Sammy brush them twice in the morning.’

  They are already learning the knack of protecting me and Simon from one another, Kate thought sadly.

  ‘Mummy, do we have to go up to London next weekend?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘No,’ Kate said, wondering what the reaction would be.

  ‘Oh good,’ said Daisy. ‘It’s a long, long way. I’m going to ask Daddy to come back and live here.’

  Kate had to hide her feelings, but she could have wept.

  Chapter 36

  October 2004

  ‘I am so sorry, Kate. Have you been waiting ages?’ For all his sharply creased cords and spotless jacket, Max looked flustered as he put down the package he carried and unwound the scarf from his neck.

  It was three weeks later, a surprisingly warm Saturday evening in October, and for the last twenty minutes Kate had been sitting in the bar of the Swan Hotel in Southwold nursing a glass of mineral water and watching the door in between reading a long progress report Jasmin had compiled for the next Save the School meeting. Really, that woman was amazing, Kate told herself, as she totted up the number of people Jasmin had approached and from whom she had received offers of money. She was also pleased that her own interview with a journalist on the local paper had paid off; there had been a large feature printed recently about the plight of the school, and she was sure this had helped Jasmin’s efforts.

  ‘Only a few minutes. Traffic, was it?’ she asked, smiling, and bundled her report back into her handbag.

  ‘No. Claudia was late picking up the children.’

  Their table, at the back of the restaurant, was ready, so they went and sat down. When they had ordered, Max passed across the package he had brought. ‘The diaries,’ he said. ‘I finished the final volume last night.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘It’s an incredibly moving story, isn’t it? I’m gobsmacked really. I had no idea about any of it. No wonder the two sides of the family didn’t speak.’

  ‘It’s just not the kind of thing anyone can say “sorry” about and “let’s all have Christmas together this year�
��, is it?’

  ‘I don’t even know if Raven and Vanessa told my mother the full story,’ Max said. ‘She didn’t say much about it to me. I knew Vanessa had been married before and that her divorce was scandalous, but I just assumed it was because divorce was a scandal in the nineteen twenties.’

  ‘And the story of the baby?’

  ‘Heartbreaking. And cruel. Poor Agnes.’

  ‘Do you think I’ve missed anything, Max? It’s so useful having another perspective. Did you spot any clues that I haven’t?’

  ‘Nothing leaped to the eye, no. Except the missing locket, I suppose. Was it just a coincidence it disappeared at the time of the birth?’

  ‘Agnes didn’t say it was exactly at the time of the birth, did she? Perhaps Miss Selcott took it out of spite.’ Then Kate remembered. ‘Max, there’s something I haven’t told you! It’s something I only realized, though, when I found the last bit of the diary.’ And she went on to tell him about buying Harry’s half of the locket in the curio shop in Norwich.

  He was amazed. ‘Really? I’d love to see it.’

  ‘Well, you can.’ And Kate delved in her handbag and handed it across the table.

  He studied it carefully, turned it over and frowned at the faded photograph. Then he handed it back. ‘It’s not exactly pretty, is it? But interesting, very distinctive. I know the shop where you found it, actually. I bought Claudia a Lea Stein brooch once there. They have some later pieces, as well as the Art Deco stuff, you know. That you should walk in off the street and find it is an incredible coincidence.’

  ‘Only if you view the situation with hindsight,’ said Kate, carefully stowing the necklace in her bag again. ‘If you look at it chronologically, I think it was the locket that helped draw me into this situation in the first place.’

  She had told nobody about her dreams, not even Agnes. Not since Simon had ridiculed her visions of the ‘dream house’. Although she knew she must have seen the photograph of the house when she was a child, but had buried it in her subconscious all these years, why should it have emerged in her dream precisely after buying the locket? Perhaps it was time to give the locket a proper place in the narrative. And Max, after all, had some right to know: Agnes’s story was partly his story, too. So she told him, stumbling with embarrassment at first, about how she had dreamed about Seddington House, and about her vivid dreams after reading the diaries.

  She remembered the words of the last letter that Agnes had sent Harry, together with his half of the locket. When you look on this locket, may you dream of me . . .

  ‘I know it sounds complete tosh, Max,’ she finished, ‘but whether it’s to do with the locket, the diary or Agnes herself, there’s some sort of psychological connection going on here. I can’t explain it any further.’

  Max, who had left his terrine untouched to concentrate on Kate’s story, said nothing for a moment. Then he took a gulp of wine and put his glass down.

  ‘When I was at school,’ he said, ‘I used to dream sometimes about places I hadn’t been to. And then – it might not be for ages afterwards – I’d visit somewhere and think: I’ve been here before! They would be quite ordinary places – once it was an old house in Cambridge that had been turned into a museum. I was certain I’d been there once, but not when it was a museum. And yet my father assured me he and Mum had never taken me there.’ He shook his head, remembering. ‘Another time it was a beach. I have never told anybody this,’ he confided, ‘but at the time I almost started to believe that perhaps I had been to these places before – but in another life. Sounds ridiculous now, doesn’t it?’ He broke into a smile. ‘I expect it was adolescent hormones playing tricks. Anyway, what I’m saying is that I don’t disbelieve you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ It was such a relief to have told someone about her dreams and for that person not to have laughed at her.

  ‘I’m not sure where all this leaves us now, though,’ said Max, finally taking his terrine as Kate started to spoon her soup. ‘Assuming the baby didn’t die, but that Selcott, probably with the help of Lister, sent it away somewhere . . . God!’ He put down his fork. ‘That’s horrible. You don’t suppose they would have killed it, do you? Killed it and buried it?’

  Kate’s spoon dropped in the bowl, splattering soup over the white cloth. ‘Surely not. I know the governess was cruel to Agnes, but she believed herself to be an upright Christian woman. That would have been against all her beliefs, killing a child. No, I can’t believe it, even of her.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right. OK, so she and Lister gave the baby away. Where do you go in a little country village to give a baby away?’

  ‘It implies local knowledge, doesn’t it? Kate said thoughtfully. ‘Knowing someone who had lost a child, or wanted a child, who would take the baby right away, no questions asked, and keep its origins secret.’

  ‘Selcott might have known someone like that, more likely it was Lister.’

  ‘I suppose it might not even have been in Seddington. I wonder where Lister lived, when he wasn’t at Seddington House, I mean.’

  ‘I’ve no idea how we find out,’ Max said.

  As the waiter came and removed their plates, discreetly arranging a napkin over the spilled soup, Kate watched Max, who seemed lost in thought. Their main courses arrived and their glasses were refilled. Max looked up.

  ‘Looks delicious, doesn’t it?’ They had both chosen locally caught fish. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘I’m just amused by how interested you’re getting in this mystery now. Having accused me of being obsessed, I mean.’

  ‘It’s a mystery about our own family, that’s why. And my aunt’s anguish comes across so strongly in her writing. Yes, I can see why you want to make things right, Kate.’

  They had started eating, but after a couple of mouthfuls, Max put down his knife and fork and steepled his fingers.

  ‘Kate,’ he said, his expression serious, ‘there is one thing those diaries have really made me see, and that is why Agnes left you Seddington House and not me.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, relieved but not sure what to say.

  ‘I know my aunt tried her best to be friendly to me these last few years, and I know she was a fair person, too. She didn’t blame me for the actions of her brother, but at the same time, it would have been a difficult thing to flout her father’s memory, wouldn’t it? To leave the house to a child of the son who had betrayed him so fundamentally, and whom he had cut out of his own will. And you’re right – I do look like Raven. What I mean to say is, that I accept the way she wanted things. I will not be challenging her will.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kate said simply. Then wondered if she should tell him about Simon’s claim. She thought she would. He was a lawyer. It wasn’t his specialist area, but she would still be interested in his opinion.

  Max listened quietly as she related how Simon’s lawyer was now using Seddington House as a bargaining point to enable Simon to keep the capital from the sale of their Fulham house as well as other savings and any claim on his pension.

  ‘It’s very difficult to untangle before the will is proved,’ Raj had sent all the forms off to the probate office last week and it was now a waiting game, ‘but Jasmin’s point is that the inheritance was left to me, not to Simon, and that anyway, I hadn’t received it at the point separation proceedings were initiated. Jasmin thinks that Simon hasn’t got a viable claim on the bequest, but that my future wealth would be taken into consideration when it comes to the division of property from our marriage.’ Kate shrugged as she put her knife and fork together on the plate.

  ‘It must be incredibly stressful for you, all this.’ Max reached over and gently squeezed her hand.

  ‘It is, and yet I’m trying to be philosophical about the house,’ she said, withdrawing her hand. ‘It’s the children who are most important to me at the moment. Sam in particular gets very upset when I take them up to see Simon. He seems to enjoy being with his father once he’s there, but he finds going very stressfu
l. Daisy thinks it’s quite exciting, having two homes, but once the excitement wears off, she might become resentful. At least Simon is reasonable over the children. I think a lot of the financial stuff is to do with his lawyer rather than him. Jasmin keeps telling me not to take it all too personally, that this is what lawyers do.’

  Kate paused, then went on, ‘And I’ve been thinking a lot about the house. I love it, but there’s a huge amount to do to it, to make it right for modern family life. It’ll be very expensive, and it’s going to be a big job dealing with all the contents. And we still don’t know, do we, exactly who is going to get what.’

  ‘Agnes’s descendants have to declare themselves within six months of her death, don’t they? Which is mid-January, I believe – two and a half months away.’

  ‘It seems ages. I feel for you, too, Max, not knowing.’

  ‘I feel for me, too,’ he grinned. ‘If someone comes out of the woodwork and claims to be Agnes’s lost son, I don’t get a penny.’

  ‘And yet you seem quite caught up in the story.’

  ‘Yes, I am, but I must be truthful and say I’m just not going to try too hard to find the answer to the mystery. You’re on your own there, Kate.’

  ‘I don’t blame you.’ She smiled.

  ‘Coffee for both of us,’ Max told the waiter, as Kate declined the dessert menu. When the coffee came, he slowly took off his glasses and cleaned them on his handkerchief. He said to Kate, very casually, ‘I’ve really enjoyed this evening. Shall we do it again sometime?’

  Their eyes met. Kate noticed the boyish lock of hair that fell across Max’s forehead, how vulnerable he looked without the barrier of his spectacles, the contrast of the strong jaw and the sensitive mouth. Now that she had got past his brusque exterior there was something very familiar about him. Aren’t women supposed to fall for men who remind them of their fathers, their brothers? she thought. But she had never had a brother, not even a close male cousin. The son her mother had lost – perhaps he would have been like Max. She felt affection for Max, but it wasn’t desire. She and Max should be close, but not like that. So in the end she said, ‘Why don’t you bring the little girls over for lunch one Sunday when Sam and Daisy are home. They’d love to meet their – what are they?’ Kate stopped and drew a little family tree on a scrap of paper she pulled out of her bag. ‘Your girls and I are third cousins, so they are my children’s third cousins once removed.’ She pushed the paper over to Max with a flourish.