As well as Howard’s scarf, there were gifts from the children, which he had clearly overseen: a box of organic soaps from Sophie, chocolates from Luke and a home-made stapled booklet of a story about a butterfly from Evie, which she read to Eleanor several times, scattering crumbs of dried poster paint over the sofa and brazenly changing the events on every run-through. Because it is my story, she told her aunt solemnly, so I can make happen whatever I want.
Eleanor followed Trevor’s advice and deliberately pushed her father to the back of her mind. The decision to visit The Bressingham arrived of its own accord, fully formed, a few hours before she was due on her Boxing Day train back to London. She asked to borrow Kat’s car, but Howard said at once that he would take her and drop her at the station afterwards.
‘I won’t come in,’ he said, pulling up outside the entrance, ‘but I’ll be out here if you need me.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
‘I want to. I must.’
‘Okay. Good luck then.’
Eleanor got out of the car and walked steadily across the drive, aware of the weight of her father’s old Bible in her handbag. She had put it in at the last minute and spent the journey devising exact plans for how she would hand it over, what she would say. It didn’t matter how little Vincent understood. She needed to speak out for her own sake. Her sister might have forgiven and moved on and generally been an all-round saint, but what had happened was part of her own life story too. And what Eleanor most needed to communicate to their father was that he disgusted her.
Once inside Vincent’s room, however, Eleanor found the clarity dissolving. A rotund soft-faced woman with tired, kind grey eyes accompanied her there, offering her tea before disappearing. Her father was parked in his wheelchair by the window, granting a view of a cluster of holly bushes studied with cherry-red berries. Since the funeral, he seemed to have shrunk even further into his frame. His legs, their outline visible under his blanket, were thin pipes, his arms like sticks. His hands sat open on either side of his lap, the joints visibly bulging with arthritis. Even his beard had thinned, to the point where it was almost as wispy as the hair on his head. Eleanor dug for hatred but found only pitying repulsion.
‘I know, Dad,’ she began, in a wavering voice, standing before him, the weathered old book clutched in both hands. ‘This is Eleanor, your daughter, speaking and I know what you did. To Kat. I know and I will never forgive you.’
Vincent’s fingers twitched briefly. On the windowsill someone had put a poinsettia. The leaves were as blood-red as the holly berries through the glass behind them and threaded with lines like veins.
Eleanor held the Bible upside down and shook it to release the scribbled message that Kat had been so quick to dismiss back in January.
Darling Connie, came home for a 10-minute lunch. I love you. Vx
‘This means nothing,’ she cried, flapping the envelope near his face. ‘Do you hear me? Nothing. Words are just words. Mum still left us and you have to know why.’ For a moment Eleanor was in the thick of that last morning, with Connie flying out of the front door to pull her and Kat against her for a second farewell, the scent of lemons on her skin and clothes, burying wild kisses in their hair. Eleanor’s heart thumped, just as it had then, when all the love for her mother had been swamped with a nameless fear. ‘Why did she do it, Dad?’ She was shouting now. ‘Why?’
A moment later the door opened.
‘All right in here, are we?’ It was the grey-eyed woman, back with the cup of tea Eleanor had said she didn’t want.
‘Yes, fine, thank you.’ Eleanor’s hands were trembling. She slipped the note back between the pages and held the Bible behind her back. ‘It gets upsetting, that’s all, not to be understood.’
‘Oh, I think he understands. Don’t you, Vince, dear?’ She set the cup of tea down and squeezed Vincent’s shoulder. ‘Lovely to have your daughter here, isn’t it, Vincy?’ She spoke slowly and loudly, as if addressing someone deaf as well as stupid. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ she murmured, flicking Eleanor a hard look as she closed the door.
Eleanor knelt down in front of the wheelchair, this time placing the heavy old book on his lap. ‘I hope you can hear me,’ she said bitterly. ‘Because Kat was… What you did was… Jesus, Dad…’ Sobs began to overtake her. ‘All that godliness of yours…’ She rapped the Bible with her knuckles, making his big limp hands jump. ‘Was it just for show?’ she choked. ‘Something to hide behind?’
Vincent’s jaw hung slackly. His eyes seemed to have fixed on an area of wall behind her back. Wearily, Eleanor got to her feet. Her plan had been to rip up the message the Bible guarded before her father’s eyes, shred it to pieces like the trust he had betrayed. But now doubts were resurfacing. Maybe the note did mean something after all. Maybe, for all Connie’s problems, Vincent really had loved her; Kat had certainly thought so.
Eleanor stood very still, seeing again the view through the gap in her parents’ bedroom door: her mother on the bed, her father moving on top of her. Submission rather than consensual sex. Or maybe that wasn’t right either. Eleanor shivered as a terrible new possibility occurred to her. Kat had been such an uncanny replica of their mother. Could that have been what her sister was referring to? That Vincent’s violations were simply a perverted quest to experience an echo of what he had lost. In which case it might have been purely Eleanor’s resemblance to her father that had kept her safe.
Slowly, Eleanor took the Bible from Vincent’s lap and placed it next to the poinsettia. There had been darkness in her childhood, a darkness she had sensed rather than seen. She had to accept that and learn to live with it. She would never have all the answers.
‘Goodbye Dad,’ she said bitterly, sliding out of the room, leaving the tea the carer had brought her untouched.
She had reached Reception when a disbelieving voice said, ‘Eleanor?’
It took a moment for the broad-bellied man in a black anorak standing by the door to merge with the shy, short boy who had waved at her from tractors and pressed his mouth so keenly over hers whenever she let him. ‘Charlie Watson, oh my goodness.’
Charlie shook his head incredulously. ‘Eleanor Keating. Wow.’ He reached to shake her hand and then clumsily kissed her cheek. ‘I can’t believe it. What brings you here?’
‘My father. It’s been a long time now… Alzheimer’s…’
‘Oh, I see. Oh dear.’ His round face fell, genuinely crestfallen. ‘That’s too bad. He was nice, your dad… at least.’ He smiled sheepishly, showing some of the jumble of his teeth. ‘Well, he was weird and like something from the Old Testament and we were all terrified of him, but apart from that he was really nice.’
Eleanor laughed a little sharply but was glad Charlie was just as sweet and kind as she remembered. ‘What about you? Do you have someone here too?’
‘Not as such. My sister, Gill – half-sister – Dad remarried – works here, but her car was playing up so I dropped her off. But how the hell are you anyway?’ he went on eagerly. ‘Are you living round here now?’
‘Oh no, I’m in London.’ Eleanor looked pointedly at her watch. She had no desire to tell Charlie Watson how she was. It was nice but also unsettling to have bumped into him, proof, though she hardly needed it, that the past never quite left anyone alone. ‘I’m good thanks, but I am afraid I can’t chat.’
‘No. Fine. Here, let me get that.’ He leapt forward gallantly to open the heavy front door before she reached it. Then followed her out.
Outside, it was already dark and much colder. Eleanor tucked her hands into her coat. ‘So, do you still farm?’
Charlie flipped up the hood of his anorak, shaking his head ruefully. ‘We were only ever tenants and it just got impossible to make a decent living. My wife and I run a garden centre at Crowsborough now – the one on the roundabout – everything from tomatoes in a bag to cappuccinos. Hey, you wrote a book, didn’t you?’ he blurted, giving her an awkward nudge that reminded her of
the shyness she had once liked so much.
‘Oh, that was ages ago. Nowadays I mostly teach… idle kids doing retakes… you know the sort of thing.’ She looked round with mounting desperation for Howard’s car, but it wasn’t where he had dropped her. ‘Well, Charlie, nice to see you. I’m glad life’s clearly treating you well.’
‘Can’t complain,’ he agreed. ‘Got the mortgage and the marriage and the two-point-two kids…’
Eleanor had spotted Howard at last, parked under a hedge and she gave him a wave.
‘I am glad you’ve got someone,’ Charlie murmured, following her gaze.
‘Yes. Thanks. You too. Good luck with everything.’
‘Someone you know?’ enquired Howard when she was back in the car.
‘Yes, from way back. Charlie Watson. A neighbour from Broughton days. Nice guy. I didn’t tell him about Kat, though, I couldn’t face it.’
‘No, I find that. You have to choose who you tell, don’t you?’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Because it takes so much to manage it.’
‘Yes, it does.’
They both sat in silence for a moment.
‘So. How did it go in there?’
‘I don’t want to see him again. Ever. All I want is to speak to Kat. I want to tell her sorry. I want to tell her that she was brave and a total idiot. I want to hear her say she loves me.’
Howard put out his arm and pulled her close enough to rest her head on his shoulder. Eleanor wept quietly for a few moments and then sat up, apologising for leaving smears on his coat.
At the station, Howard held her in a proper hug, similar to the one with which he had greeted her three days before. When they pulled apart, his green eyes were moist. ‘It would be nice to see more of you. Can we see more of you?’
‘Yes, I’d like that.’
‘Soon?’
‘Soon.’
The train thundered in. Howard waited on the platform until she was seated and then walked alongside, waving as it pulled away.
25
January 2014
Subject: Meeting
From: [email protected]
Date: 19/1/14
To: [email protected]
Dear Nick,
I hope you are well.
I have reason to believe you might be in the UK around now. In which case, I was wondering if you would have the time to meet with me for, say, an hour at the very most? I am afraid it concerns matters of great sensitivity and seriousness connected to my sister Kat. Which is why I must stress that I will only be able to talk freely if you are able to come alone.
Sorry to fire such a bolt from the blue after so long.
I hope to hear back from you soon. My mob is: 07836569911.
Best wishes,
Eleanor Keating
Eleanor sat back in the café’s weather-beaten leather seat, chewing a rough bit of skin by her thumbnail. She had been writing and rewriting the email all morning and now only had a few minutes until Megan would be joining her for the January lunch that she had somehow never got around to cancelling. Her trepidations about getting together remained vivid, but so did a mounting desire to see her old friend.
It felt peculiar to be communicating with Nick as herself, and so formally too. Pangs had kept arriving, for how they had written before, when he thought she was Kat – the rush, every time, of hearing back from him, the clarity and directness of his thinking, the moreish glimpses of his playfulness.
Eleanor scowled at the screen. Truth mattered, she reminded herself; if there was one thing the last few weeks had taught her, it was that. No matter how old, or how horrific, the mere fact of facing up to reality brought its own comfort.
A stream of sunshine chose that moment to burst through the café window behind her, making the email hard to see. Eleanor stopped her re-reading and stabbed the send button, flopping back in her seat, her long dark curly hair splashing around her shoulders. The heat felt good on the back of her head, cradling the stiffness in her neck that had resulted from the new daily regime of hard work with which she had launched herself at the New Year. A string of private pupils was in place to help see her through to the summer. Better still, Trevor’s manuscript was starting to take shape at last, growing out of the paper mayhem round her laptop. Its paragraphs were not only double-spaced, spell-checked, chaptered and readable, but they had exactly the blend of comedy and poignancy that she had striven for and failed to achieve in all the years of abandoned attempts at fiction.
Since the rollercoaster of Christmas, the sentences had been flowing out of her. She was more settled in herself, that was part of it, Eleanor knew, still tangled with her grief and shock, but starting, sometimes, to feel a little distance from it too. That Howard, her once aloof and distant brother-in-law, was in the thick of this process with her, calling regularly now to check she was all right, working on a plan for bringing the children to London and taking her out to dinner, was wonderfully strengthening too, adding to the new sense of no longer facing all her troubles alone.
But, crucially, Eleanor was aware of having at last found the right ‘voice’ to tell Trevor’s story; not how Trevor spoke, but how he wished to be heard, the breakthrough being the recognition that the two were entirely different.
Megan blew into the café as Eleanor was putting away her laptop, turning heads with the ripples of cold January air from outside. She fought her way through the tables, several sales shopping bags bouncing on her arms, her square sturdy face, ruddy these days from her outdoor life, creased with sympathy and affection long before she reached the table.
Standing up to greet her, Eleanor’s heart flared with an ache, for the message now winging its way to Nick, and for the dear familiar figure fighting to reach her. It had to be two years since they had met, Eleanor realised in amazement as they fell to hugging, both talking at once through tears.
‘Oh god, you poor thing… and poor Kat… unspeakable…’ Megan choked, winning out in the fight to be heard and scrutinising Eleanor’s face anxiously. ‘And going so quiet on me for so long… not a line, not a word, nothing. But you look… okay… good, in fact. Are you okay?’
‘Yes… no… I don’t know… a lot better, anyway.’
They ate bowls of soup and crusty bread while Megan fired questions with her customary directness, wanting to know all the details of Kat’s illness and what Eleanor had been through. As they talked, Eleanor could feel herself warming under the rare and relaxing pleasure of being liked for oneself. Megan’s face had grown more drawn over the years, and her hair, cropped into a new boyishly short style, glinted with the occasional premature thread of silver, but they were the same people they had always been; the same two girls who had forged a friendship two decades before. But as the lunch progressed Eleanor could feel the guilt of her betrayal with Billy sitting inside her like a hot coal, making everything still not quite as good as it should have been.
When she got to Kat and her father, Megan went very still. ‘Are you going to tell anyone… authorities?’
‘Oh no. I am certain Kat wouldn’t have wanted that. Nor Howard, for that matter.’
‘What about counselling then? For you?’ urged Megan.
Eleanor managed a grateful smile and then tried to explain about Trevor and the reviving effect of his kindness. ‘I hit a sort of rock bottom, but he arrived on the doorstep – literally – and nursed me through. It’s like I was sick, and now I am getting better. And Howard has been brilliant too, like a proper friend. So much makes sense now, you see, and I am sure that’s why. Like how Kat used to be, back in the day… do you remember? So hostile and difficult and—’
‘She took Nick Wharton from you,’ Megan blurted. ‘That’s why you two fell out.’
Eleanor eyed her old friend ruefully. ‘Yes, but by then there was already a lot of…’ She faltered, wanting with her new hindsight to find exactly the right word. ‘…distance between her and me. A terrible distance.
Kat put it there, for reasons I am at least starting to understand. But yes,’ she conceded, sighing, ‘the Nick business didn’t exactly help matters.’
‘She knew you liked him and she took him – that’s what you said,’ Megan insisted stoutly, clearly recalling Eleanor’s desolation on returning to college after this act of sisterly treachery, how hard she and Billy and their small band of friends had fought to get her spirits back up. ‘You spent the next two years avoiding him. Till he left. Then you started the Igor thing.’
‘I did,’ Eleanor admitted ruefully, privately resolving not to bring Megan up to date on the Nick Wharton front. ‘But, actually, Meg, no one “takes” anyone. It’s one of the big things I’ve recently got my head around. Feelings aren’t commodities. Nick Wharton fell in love with my little sister. End of. Love happens like that. Boom. Choice doesn’t come into it. Kat just went with the flow… the wrong flow, as it turned out… I never knew the details of their relationship, as you know – I never wanted to…’ Eleanor hesitated, remembering some of the recent insights inadvertently granted her by Nick. ‘But Kat was shitty to him, I know that much. So the poor man got his comeuppance. The point being,’ she concluded in a rush, wanting to close the subject, ‘I don’t blame Kat a jot. Not any more.’
Megan was watching her tenderly. ‘The two of you obviously had time to straighten a lot out. I’m so pleased.’
‘I miss her beyond words,’ said Eleanor quietly. ‘She was my baby sister and I failed to take care of her…’
‘No, you are not doing that,’ Megan interjected fiercely, grabbing her hand and squeezing it. ‘I forbid it. Kat made her decisions. You cannot blame yourself for them. Okay?’
Eleanor nodded meekly. ‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath, swallowing away the urge to cry, still never far from any conversation about her sister. ‘Tell me about these blooming cows of yours instead then, and who in London wanted to talk to you about them.’
Good Girls Page 24
