‘Oh, love, you won’t.’
But Juliet nodded fervently. ‘We will. I feel trapped. Like the walls are getting smaller and smaller every day. I want space to run around. We need fresh air. They need to spread their wings, to hear owls, to make potions out of grass and mud, they need to get out of this toxic house and this super-toxic family situation. We all do. I can’t stay here, Zee. I really can’t.’
Zeina said, slightly huffily‚‘You’ve literally never mentioned this house before, and all of a sudden your children need to move there so they can hear owls?’
Juliet gave a gurgle of laughter. But she knew it was impossible to describe the hold the place had over her.
‘You’ll understand when you see it.’ Juliet pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘If we don’t go now, we’ll never go. Bea?’ she called down the little path. ‘Are you ready?’ She opened her car door and turned to face her friend. Zeina pulled her cardigan around her, awkwardly. ‘I’m so sorry, Zee.’
Zeina nodded, her eyes swimming with tears.
‘I thought we’d live here all our lives and be popping in and out of each other’s houses when we were eighty.’
Juliet swallowed. ‘I did too.’
‘I won’t give you the recipe for lamb shaslik now.’
‘OK, fair enough.’ Juliet smiled and brushed the tears from her cheeks. ‘May-maybe you can come down when we’re settled and cook it for me?’
‘Mum,’ piped a voice from inside. ‘Can I watch something on your iPad?’
Zeina came round, pulled Juliet up on to the kerb. ‘I will. Oh, Juliet. I love you, mate.’
‘You understand why, don’t you? Please say you do, just a bit.’
Zeina’s voice was muffled against Juliet’s hair. ‘I do, that’s the weird thing.’
She gave her a big, steadying hug, and Juliet clung to her for a second, wishing she could stay like that for hours. Zeina always made everything OK.
‘I’ll text you,’ she whispered. ‘Bea! Come on, Beatrice! We are going!’
And suddenly Bea materialised, as if by magic on the doorstep, her cleaned rucksack on her back, wearing her Grape Purple Converse, holding her phone, which she waved. She was actually grinning. ‘OK, Mum,’ she said, and hopped into the car. ‘Bye,’ she said chirpily through the window to Zeina, and Zeina blew her a kiss.
As they drove away, light from the sunny side of the street flooded the car. Juliet could not see Zeina because of the sun, but as they turned out of the road she caught sight of her, waving furiously.
The old ways along the no-man’s-land of the North Circular, the vast IKEA in which she’d spent countless unhappy hours, the exotic hinterlands behind the Wembley arch, the Chinese supermarket she always meant to visit, the Hindu temple at Neasden . . . She had not been this way since she’d gone to a conference in Birmingham at Christmas and before that not for years, but it was still all so familiar.
Bea sat next to her, slumped silently, arms crossed, not looking at her phone, her earlier good mood vanished, Juliet could tell. The faint smell of arnica rose in waves from her; Juliet had insisted on rubbing it on her shoulder, much to Bea’s digust. In the back, Isla and Sandy gently bickered, as Isla tried to read Sandy a story he wasn’t interested in.
‘Guys! Shall I put some ABBA on? There’s never a bad time for “Super Trouper”,’ she said, falsely jolly.
There was a silence.
‘Mum, can I watch something on your iPad?’
‘No. And don’t keep reading Sandy that book if he doesn’t like it.’
‘I’m only trying to be a caring big sister. Being caring is very important. Miss Lacey says—’
‘I know, darling, but I don’t think he wants a story at the moment.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘To a special house.’
‘Why?’
‘To stay there.’
‘Why?’
‘Because . . . I want you to see it. It’s lovely.’
‘Are there Egyptians?’
‘No.’
‘Are there Babylonians, Mum? Don’t tell me there are Babylonians—’
‘I promise there are no Babylonians.’
‘Well, I still don’t want to go there.’
‘There’s loads of other things.’ Juliet scowled into her rear-view mirror at the silver BMW inches away from her bumper. ‘There’s apple trees, and a cool top floor filled with fancy-dress clothes, if they’re still there, and there’s – Jesus, this idiot.’
‘Who’s he?’
But Juliet was silent, edging away from the silver car, trying to change lanes, and into this silence Bea said:
‘Mum’s taken us away from Dad and we’re going to live in some stupid ruin in the middle of nowhere where we don’t know anyone,’ she announced, fingers pressing into her bruised shoulder. ‘The house has got bats, and ghosts, and some children died there, and we’re never going back to London, because she’s left Dad and got some moronic idea in her head about finding herself.’
There was a pause. ‘Thanks, Bea!’ Juliet said wildly.
‘Mum, what does she mean?’ Isla’s voice was barely a whisper. ‘Don’t you and Daddy live together any more?’
Juliet, still trying to change lanes, said, ‘It’s not quite like that—’
‘Oh really?’ Bea gave a loud bark of laughter, sounding just like Matt.
‘M-mummm,’ said Isla, beginning to cry. ‘What does she m-mean? I don’t want to leave Yasmin. Or Slavka. Or Bonnieeeeeeee . . .’ She dissolved into tears.
‘Bea,’ said Juliet, finally pulling over into the next lane and letting the car overtake her – which he did leaning over the steering wheel, presenting her with a finger gesture and sneering laugh – ‘stop it. Don’t tell lies. I thought you were with me.’
‘With you? This isn’t a bloody political movement,’ said Bea, acidly. ‘You’re not a suffragette. You’re a bitter old woman who’s pissed off cos Dad . . .’ She trailed off.
‘Last night you said—’
‘Last night I was upset. Today I’ve changed my mind.’ She folded her arms again.
Juliet cursed herself. All the parents in Bea’s year been summoned to the school six months earlier for a talk by a child psychologist on the rapid and terrifying development taking place in the brain between the ages of twelve and sixteen, the take-home of which was that the brain of your average fourteen-year-old is undergoing such immense hormonal and logistical change relating to risk-taking, opinion-giving, information retention and identity they should barely be asked to choose their own ice cream flavour, let alone have to shoulder the stress of social media accounts, relationships and exams, so that anyone thinking of imposing any other major life changes on a teenager was no better than a criminal. And she had pitched moving house and leaving her own father to Bea as an exciting Thelma and Louise road trip. And got her to agree. She ought to be locked up.
‘I’m sorry, my love.’
‘Sorreeee,’ said Sandy.
Isla said quietly, ‘Mum, so you and Dad . . .’ There was a long silence.
‘Yes, my darling.’
‘Well, is it like that stupid reading book Separate Ways where the dad and mum don’t want to live t-together any more?’
‘Oh. Oh, darling. Yes, it is a bit like that.’ She looked wildly for a hard shoulder, somewhere to pull over.
‘Oh r-r-r-r-ight.’
Juliet glanced in the rear-view mirror, at her daughter, and slowed down, causing the van behind her to beep loudly. Tears were sliding freely down Isla’s red cheeks.
‘Isla, darling. I’m so sorry.’ Juliet wiped a trickle of sweat from her temple. How could she have allowed this to happen? ‘Listen to me. We still love you. Daddy is staying in the house. You’ll see him very soon. Mummy has a new house. We’re going there today. We’ll live there for a bit. It’ll be different, but I think it’ll be – I think you’ll like it. Eventually.’
‘I want to stay in our house.
With Daddy.’
‘My want Dadda,’ said Sandy, not understanding but sensing the mood. He began to cry too. Bea looked back at them both with satisfaction.
‘You’ve, like, completely ripped the family apart just because you’re taking it out on Dad. You’re jealous.’
‘I’m not. Look,’ said Juliet, gripping the steering wheel more tightly, as though it was a life raft. ‘We can go back any time.’
‘What about Dad?’ said Bea, suddenly. ‘What did you tell him?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ve explained it all to him. He – Bea, he loves you. He understands.’
Another lie. They were past Uxbridge, and the A40 had become a motorway, and the houses were more spaced apart, and there was more light, and space and the land had – just, just a little – begun to open up. Keep going. Not much further.
Dear Matt,
I’m sorry to do this by letter but I don’t want to do it by email or phone and I couldn’t face telling you in person. As you’re always saying, I’m a coward.
I am leaving you and taking the children with me. I have explained it to Bea and she has agreed to come with me for the summer to try the plan out. She will go back to London in September to live with you if she doesn’t like it.
Nightingale House is mine, it’s come back to me again and I will explain it all when we speak, though I don’t really understand it myself. I want to live there, and I want the children to grow up there. Bea needs a fresh start. We all do. I have spoken to the council and Isla and Bea can be enrolled in schools in September. You see I had to make plans.
I know you are having an affair with Tess. I have known for two months. Do you love her, or do you treat her as badly as you treat me? Last time was such a cliché, I see that now. Finding your phone – that girl, those photos, you swearing it was over. I believed you. But the funny thing is this time I do actually hope you love her. It doesn’t really matter any more though, does it? I could have stuck it out with you and asked for a divorce, let the children spend another year in that unhappy house where the sun never seems to reach any of the rooms and I could have carried on sending Bea out into the world to be stamped on and bullied every day while we battled over access and settlements and where we’d live. But I can’t do that.
You don’t love me any more and you haven’t for ages. So I don’t worry about you missing me. I know you will miss the children. They will be in touch this evening and every night to speak to you. I know you love them.
It’s really important you understand something: This isn’t me being silly again, me being an idiot. You have made me really unhappy. I thought it was having the children that made me this low and unsure and sad but it’s not, it’s us. Even if Tess wasn’t around it’d be true. When I come into the house sometimes I can feel something in the air, something rotten, dead. I don’t want the children growing up in that atmosphere.
I don’t think we were the people we thought we were when we met and so perhaps it started from that night. I did love you though, Matt. You made everything fun. You made me feel wonderful. You said I was like a heroine in a Victorian novel and then you told me you wanted to be with me for the rest of your life. Do you remember that? Down by Camden Lock, and we had curry afterwards and walked home and it was Bonfire Night. I lived on that for weeks. But we’ve grown into the people we are now and we aren’t any good any more. And it’s OK not to lie any more. Good luck, Matt. Thank you for the children.
Juliet
Chapter Seven
By the time they reached the long, straight lane leading out of Godstow village Juliet’s hands ached from gripping the steering wheel so tightly. She had forgotten how uneven the road surface was; the car bounced, then skidded slightly on a verdant, shady bank.
Past the alms cottages that Dalbeattie built the year after they came to the house. Past the little postbox mounted in the wall which was where Grandi told her Father Christmas collected letters himself. Past the ancient church and churchyard, the gravestones silver-white in the midday sun. Her great-grandfather Ned and great-grandmother Liddy were buried there, in the same grave. Next to them the children, angels with folded wings watching over them, like fairies. There had been a time, when she was a child, when the churchyard had a sign nailed up next to the lych-gate directing the many pilgrims to the Horner tombs to avoid the trampling of hundreds of pairs of feet over centuries-old paths and delicate lichen. But that had not been the case for years now – Ned Horner had been forgotten, unless to collectors, until the sale of the sketch in May. She and Ev used to take huge delight in pointing people the wrong way. The first pound coin she’d ever seen was from an American tourist who’d tipped them for showing them towards the grave.
The turning into the house past the church was a sharp right and she had never done it in an estate car. She got rather stuck, having to manoeuvre backwards and forwards. A mud-splattered black Mercedes van hooted at her, and Juliet, furious, glared at it. As the car went past the driver, a man in his mid-forties with close-cropped greying hair, wound down the window.
‘What!’ Juliet shouted at him. ‘Please, just give me a minute!’
‘I was only going to ask if you needed a hand,’ he said rather sharply, a trace of a Scottish accent in his voice.
‘Oh—’ Juliet began, but he had driven away with a screech, spraying dust from the road on to their window. ‘Muddy puddles!’ Juliet said manically, as they lumbered slowly down the drive. ‘Look, Sandy! Un-muddy puddles!’
But Sandy was asleep, dried tearstains on his flushed cheeks and Isla was silent for once, sucking her thumb, twiddling her hair and staring blankly out of the window. Bea was tapping furiously at her phone. ‘There’s no reception here, Jesus. Jesus.’
Juliet drove over a pothole, jerking the car sharply so that Sandy woke up and started yelling. Isla began to sob quietly, and Bea sank down in the front seat, pulling her hood over her head. They turned the final corner, and the house appeared before them.
It was two hundred years old but might always have been there, rising from the land in golden Cotswold stone. The roof gleamed. The man who built it for the local rector after the old vicarage the other side of the church burned down had made it a sturdy, bluff house, ready to withstand the harsh winds and frosts that swept over the wold each winter. And Dalbeattie, who had reimagined it for Juliet’s great-grandparents, had recast it, dividing up rooms, installing panelling and shelving and hearths and staircases, pargeting and parqueting, making it a splendid pleasure palace, an exotic jewel in an English landscape. Juliet had always loved that first sight of the house, the jumble of different features, the seat, the Dovecote, the windows . . .
The children clambered slowly out, peering around with wary bewilderment, as a clattering sound came from inside the house.
‘That’s the ghosts,’ Bea said to Isla and Sandy. Sandy stared, dazed. Isla nodded mechanically, and walked off towards the garden, which sloped away from the house below a terrace and some steps.
‘I want to explore for a little bit,’ she said, sticking her hands into the pockets of her pinafore dress.
Juliet watched her go, knowing she had to let her be alone for a little while. She peered towards the house, her heart in her mouth. She saw a figure, pushing a mop along the floor of the dining room, and the spell was broken: the house was inhabited, it was real, it was hers.
She took a deep breath, as though she hadn’t breathed properly for a long, long time. She could smell roses, honeysuckle, lavender – it was lavender that reminded her most of Grandi. I am really here, she said to herself, staring out at the horizon, at her children, stumbling sadly down the overgrown, tangled pathways.
‘Well, I just thought I’d get started, and you’d turn up some point,’ said Mrs Beadle, plonking the mop and bucket down on the wooden floor. Above them, Juliet could hear the thud and patter of the children exploring the upper floors. Mrs Beadle exhaled heavily, nudging at her chest with a sideways tuck of her right arm. ‘I didn�
�t know, you see. No one told me when you’d be here. If I’d known it was today—’
‘Our plans changed,’ said Juliet. ‘I’m sorry. We came earlier than I’d expected.’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Beadle. ‘Well. I won’t lie to you, dear, the house is in trouble. The roof’s about to come in, there’s tiles sliding off every hour on the hour, you can hear ’um falling on the ground, it’s like rain sometimes. The chimneys have nesting birds. And that kitchen hasn’t been looked at for years.’
Juliet stuck her head into the small, dark kitchen, a long galley affair with a little passage under the stairs that led through to the dining room. It was unchanged since Grandi’s day, down to the carved wooden knobs on the cupboards.
‘Remind me, who were the people who bought it after Grandi died? Mr and Mrs Wilson?’
Mrs Beadle looked at her curiously. ‘The Walkers. Retired here from Bucks. Ever so nice, they were. Veronica Walker did the flowers at church. I think the house got a bit much for them towards the end. They didn’t have any kids, you see, and kids make a house like this. They loved the garden though. Kept it exactly as your grandmother used to. You’ll know all about that.’
‘Oh – yes,’ said Juliet.
‘How long’s it been now, since you was last here?’
‘Since Grandi died? Fifteen years.’
‘Not come back at all? And you here all the time when you were little, I remember it like it was yesterday.’
‘I drove past it once,’ she said, remembering the one time, late after a valuation of a smart old house west of here, Henry’s meaty hand on her leg, late at night, hurrying back to be home for the children but still lying to Henry about the directions so she could drive down the lane. But it had been too dark to see anything, not even the nightingale finials sticking up above the roof. ‘No, not once other than that. I’m here now though!’
The Garden of Lost and Found Page 9
