Good Girls

by Amanda Brookfield

  The letter was grubby from handling. The contents, first glimpsed six months before, had ripped at his heart. Shock wave after shock wave, each worse than the last. But they had also offered truth, plainly, beautifully and regretfully expressed. In the heat even of the very first reading, the final showdown with Donna still ringing in his ears, Nick had recognised the value of this.

  He turned his back on the noisy car and scanned the opening lines, in spite of having come to know them by heart.

  Dear Nick,

  This is the hardest letter I have ever had to write. If you are not sitting down, then please do so now…

  Nick jumped as a palm slapped his window. The driver of the black car, waved a cigarette, gesturing a request for a light. Nick shook his head and the man loped off in the direction of the building.

  Nick dug inside the envelope for the little photo. He had taken more care of that over the months, held it round the edges, not put smeary fingerprints across her face. She said it was to make up for not having been able to send him one when he asked. Studying it now, dimly aware that the mild tremble in his hands that came and went since the accident was worse than usual, Nick contemplated the candid wide-eyed gaze which he had thought told him so much but which had actually disclosed nothing beyond the very obvious point that Eleanor Keating’s always formidable looks had improved with age. It had not, for instance, prepared him for the impact of seeing her; the mesmerising, disarming effect of those looks in the flesh. Nor had it provided any defence against the affecting blend of adult assuredness, so marked in what he now knew to be all her written correspondence, with the apologetic uncertainty that she had displayed that afternoon. He hadn’t been prepared for that.

  In fact nothing about the encounter had gone as he had envisaged or planned, Nick reflected bitterly. Not one second. For a start, he had felt clumsy and cumbersome with his stick. Maybe that was why he had made such a botch of saying what he had intended to say, failing to ask all the questions he had meant to ask, not offering any of the reassurances he genuinely felt.

  With weeks and weeks to come to the decision to track her down, he had believed himself prepared. Steadying himself for the opening of the front door, he had still believed it. But then she had poked her face through the gap, shrieked, slammed the door shut and shouted back at him through the letterbox to leave her alone. All of which had thrown him off course.

  He had been outmanoeuvred by his own unforeseen reactions, Nick ruminated bleakly, not to mention the sudden and incongruous appearance of Trevor Downs. Trevor Downs. Of all people. The man who, at the height of his powers as a stage actor, had, virtually single-handedly, shifted Nick’s schoolboy perception of Shakespeare as a dull, necessary component of the English GCSE syllabus into a genius capable of evoking a state of awed stupefaction. It had been a school trip. Nick had signed up because his English teacher told him to. He had set off in the coach thinking Hamlet was a verbose, fusty make-believe Danish prince only to find Trevor vividly, convincingly, playing the part as a disoriented student, overwhelmed by life-changing events, as someone, in other words, whom Nick felt he might know. Aged fourteen, he had spent the return journey in an altogether different frame of mind, one that had never left him and which had played a serious part in all the early wavering over medicine. If only he’d had the wherewithal to thank Trevor for this epiphany.

  Nick folded the pages of the letter back along its worn creases, wincing at the memory of Eleanor Keating after twenty years, helping him reverse in an Oxford country lane. Eleanor who had written to him for all those months, letting him think she was Kat. While poor dear Kat herself had been dying, holding fast to the unimaginably dark truth about her childhood. Nick had found all the new knowledge converging inside him. It had been deeply disorientating. It had made it hard to concentrate on which way to turn the wheel.

  Nick began to slip the letter back into its envelope but then hesitated, glimpsing one of his favourite bits.

  Feelings happen. In fact I am astonished that people separate them from facts. They are just as strong, just as solid. They make us do things, not always wise things…

  She was such a clever woman, so unflinchingly self-aware, so interesting. He had known that once, a long time ago, and forgotten it. The same warm intelligence had shone out of her emails, so vibrantly that once the initial body blow of shock at the confession about authorship and its tragic circumstances had worn off, Nick had felt almost stupid for not rumbling the duplicity himself. Of course Kat couldn’t have written in such a way. She had never had the same intellect, or perspicacity, or patience. As he remembered only too well, Kat’s capacity to attend to anything for more than a few minutes had been woeful. It had been one of the most maddening, tantalising aspects of her, the way she flitted from one thing to the next – men, as much as anything – seeking distraction. It all made more sense now, of course, terrible sense. It had been thrilling to be caught in the spotlight of Kat’s attention. It was, after all, why he had fallen in love with her. But then it moved on.

  And all Eleanor’s blessed rules should have rung alarm bells too; the insistence on leaving the past alone, the growing hints of deep distress, the refusal to send a picture, the sudden, panicked closing of the door when he tried to tease her into describing herself. There had been so many hints, but just not enough for him to be able to piece them all together. Little wonder she hadn’t been drawn on his suggestion of meeting up either, Nick reflected wryly. The Keating sisters – together – it would have been impossible.

  Nick shifted in his car seat, sliding the key back into the ignition and taking it out again. Was there really any point in delaying the journey on up the motorway? Eleanor’s letter, now back in its envelope, stared at him from the passenger seat, pale and defiant. Nick shuddered, as Eleanor’s brief references to Kat’s teenage ordeals floated back into his mind. They had stirred uncomfortable memories of Reverend Keating: a bear of a man who interrogated rather than talked, his voice booming, one hand always busy with his beard or the big wooden cross slung low over his ample torso. What he had done to his daughter, Nick found almost too sickening to contemplate. It filled him with pity, for Kat most obviously, but also for Eleanor, having to come to terms with such information so long after the event, dealing with the inevitable confusion and self-blame it must have caused, and with her father still alive too. The letter had left such matters alone, but Nick could guess them.

  Someone else was waving at him through the car window now. A man with a small trolley of cleaning equipment. Did he want a car wash? Nick shook his head. England was still such a shock to the system – his native land, but full of things that kept feeling alien. On bad days he felt like he would never catch up with it. During better times, like that morning, sitting with toast, marmalade and a pot of tea in his mother’s tiny back garden, the Lancet open at his elbow, the Gloucestershire sky arched overhead, he was overwhelmed by all the joy of a traveller who had returned home.

  Nick wound the window down and the car-cleaning man ambled over, abandoning his trolley.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘How long you be?

  ‘Er… twenty minutes or so.’

  ‘Okay. Five pound.’

  Nick manoeuvred himself out of the car and set off towards the water feature. A cup of tea would be a good idea; help him gather his wits before heading back up the motorway. He walked slowly, trying to reduce his dependence on the stick. The self-consciousness in front of Eleanor was still fresh, but more importantly he had a new target in the form of a visit from his daughters at the end of October. He would dearly love the walking support to be gone by then. There were no guarantees of such progress, but already he had come such a long way. That he was still an optimist had been one of the few pleasing discoveries Nick had made about himself that year; a useful piece of flotsam floating out from the wreckage.

  Being a Saturday, the A40 Services was busy. Nick queued for a cup of scalding tea and found a seat near the ta
ll glass windows overlooking the water feature and the car park. He tried to FaceTime Sasha, then Natalie, but neither answered. He sent them both messages instead, reflecting with satisfaction on the focus with which he had fought for his rights as a father. In the months building up to his departure from South Africa he had seen them whenever he wanted, as well as securing an agreement to whatever access could be managed in the longer term, once he was back in England. Donna’s affair with Mike Scammell had proved a trump card in that respect, any threat by Nick to expose it producing all sorts of handy climbdowns.

  As to the financial aspect of the settlement, Nick had asked for so little that it left Donna’s exorbitantly priced lawyers nothing left to argue with. At times, he had sensed even his bullish father-in-law looking on in disbelief, wrong-footed by the extent of the surrender.

  Dimly, Nick knew his newly decrepit physical state had aided his cause too. Donna put on the occasional demonstration of tearful dismay about the split when it suited her, but when they were talking through matters alone, he often detected flashes of eagerness in her formidable eyes. She had no desire to be hitched to a man with a lopsided shuffle; a man who could offer no guarantee of resuming a full-time career, let alone in the demanding high-profile world which she had been so horrified he might abandon anyway. The prospect of a generous divorce appealed to her far more.

  When his phone hummed into life beside his cup of tea, displaying his mother’s phone number, Nick had to fight the urge not to pick up. She was so thrilled to have him around, it got too much sometimes.

  ‘That Oxford hospital of yours called. They want to change the time by half an hour. I think they thought I was your secretary.’

  ‘Oh dear—’

  ‘Which I don’t mind. I’ve made a note in the diary.’

  ‘Thanks Mum.’ Nick did his best to sound genuinely grateful, while fighting the usual surge of shame at having his mother so involved with the minutiae of his life

  ‘So it’s still a week next Friday but at two not two-thirty.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  ‘How was your friend?’

  ‘Oh fine, thanks. Just fine. I should be home by seven. Seven-thirty at the latest.’

  ‘Good. I’ve got Bridge, but I’ve made a shepherd’s pie.

  ‘Super. See you soon,’ Nick cut in quickly, seeing that Sasha was trying to get through.

  He thanked the miracle of FaceTime as the smiling face of his youngest daughter appeared on his phone screen, her beautiful mouth still bulging with evident discomfort over the recently installed rail-track braces.

  ‘Hey Daddeee, I got your message but I can’t talk.’

  ‘Hello Sashkins.’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’

  ‘Okay Sash-poops, I won’t call you that. Sit still or I can’t see you.’

  ‘Well, I can see you. Where are you anyway? Is it a party?’

  Nick laughed, holding up the phone to render a glimpse of his decidedly un-festive surroundings, the queue of weary travellers by the till, the vacant grey plastic seat opposite. ‘I’ve been visiting an old mate from my student days and have stopped in a motorway café. Where are you?’

  ‘Adrienne’s. But I’ve got to go. They’re dropping me for riding with Gramps.’

  ‘Fantastic. Say hi to your sister, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure. Love you, Dad.’

  ‘And wear your helmets.’

  ‘Of course.’ She rolled her eyes at the tedium of being worried about.

  ‘And, Sash, I can’t wait to show both you and Nat round this place properly when you visit in October. It’s the coolest university, I promise. And remember what I said about those things called Rhodes Scholarships?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, Dad. Gottago. Bye.’ She put out her hand, puckering her lips to blow him a noisy kiss.

  Nick blew one back, rejoicing at the miraculous resilience of his two astonishing children. Mum and Dad loved them, but not each other, that was the line he and Donna had taken. There had been tears, but not many. They had their friends, their horses, their routines, for solace. Soon their lives were rolling along again, just as Nick had prayed they would. Perhaps his accident had even helped there too, he mused now, since it meant they had got used to not having him around as much. What remained in no doubt was their certainty that he loved them, he had made sure of that, seizing every possible opportunity during the course of the last five months to reinforce the fact. Only his actual departure had been close to unbearable – but Nick did his best never to think about that. Just as he tried not to speculate on what they might really know behind their courage and sweetness. Donna had always reserved her worst behaviour for him, but still, one could never be sure how much they really knew.

  Nick could see through the big sloping windows that his car wash had only just started. He checked his emails, seeing confirmation of the changed hospital interview his mother had mentioned and then decided to pass some time by googling Trevor Downs.

  As Trevor stepped up to the front to start his speech, Eleanor found a good perch on the end of a book unit. She flexed her feet and arched her back, easing the stiffness from all her early-morning work up the ladder with a paint roller. The charity-shop dress appeared to be shrinking, she noted absently, observing how it now fell round her shins rather than her ankles. Too much washing, perhaps.

  Trevor made a big to-do of asking for a chair to stand on and was soon in full flow. He began with a thank-you to the bookshop, did the joke about a classic being the book everyone owned and no one read and then moved onto the things he always said about Larry.

  Eleanor let the bookshop recede, tuning Trevor’s voice into white noise. Lots of people had come, including a couple of her work colleagues, which was touching. She wondered how many would pick up on the idea of the after-party and felt glad about all her dishes of chicken. Her gaze drifted from the attentive faces of the guests to the walls of shelves surrounding them, all the rows of spines lined up like regiments on parade, smart, multicoloured, marshalled under their respective headings: Biography. Fiction. Children. Travel. Crime. Historical. They were all stories of lives, she mused, regardless of the headings. The only thing that mattered was that the stories themselves would never stop arriving, never stop being written, never stop being lived. She thought of Kat, and her own trickle of progress on the story about two sisters, and a warmth coursed through her, the sense of being part of something, the sense of belonging.

  Lost in the reverie, Eleanor could not have said what she noticed first, Nick Wharton’s silver-grey stick, leaning against the central book table beside Nick himself, a copy of For My Sins clutched in one hand, a glass of orange juice in the other, or the fact that Trevor was signalling to her to take a turn on the chair.

  ‘It seems only right,’ he was declaring grandly, ‘that the person too often overlooked, the person who did all the hard work, should have a chance to say a few words…’

  Eleanor shook her head, scything a finger across her neck. But someone in the audience called out the word ‘Speech,’ which others then took up, turning it into a chant, to the accompaniment of what quickly grew into rhythmic clapping.

  ‘Just a few words, sweetie,’ Trevor whispered, having left his perch to take her elbow and escort her to the chair, looking infuriatingly pleased with himself. ‘Tell them how awful I was to work with. And your lovely party – you could mention that. Tell them how to get there.’

  ‘What, all these people are coming?’ Eleanor said weakly, letting herself be led while her brain performed cartwheels about what on earth to say.

  That she did not need to stand on any chair in order to be noticed was Nick’s first thought, closing Trevor’s book so he could concentrate. His second thought focused on her change of clothes since the afternoon, from jeans and the big white shirt into a charcoal dress which hugged her chest and ribcage and then flared dramatically down to the calves of her long legs. Her shoes had something of the look of old friends about them, flat
black pumps, clearly picked for comfort rather than style. And there were bracelets of deep indents in the skin round her ankles, Nick noticed suddenly – sock marks. He struggled to take his eyes off them, distracted by the refreshing notion of a woman too busy to care that they were there. For almost two decades he had lived with a creature who knew every blemish on her body, a creature who used magnifying mirrors to study such outrages as part of a daily, sometimes hourly, crusade for their eradication. It was a battle over which Nick had been expected to express sympathy, while never being allowed to release so much as a hint of even the most complimentary opinion to the effect that the need for such relentless eradications was groundless. It had been one of the minefields. His whole marriage had been made up of minefields.

  ‘It’s horrible being a ghost,’ Eleanor began, looking both startled and relieved when people laughed. ‘I nearly didn’t manage it. In fact, Trevor is the only reason I did manage it. In fact…’ she wrung her hands, accidentally gathering a section of the dress and momentarily revealing the point where one calf muscle narrowed to meet her knee. She had to have become a runner, Nick decided, to have developed legs like that. Or maybe it was just the cycling. He had seen an old bike with a basket propped beside her front door. She probably cycled everywhere. Most people in Oxford did.

  ‘In fact, the last year has been something of a difficult one for me personally, and writing Trevor’s wonderful life story – everyone should buy at least two copies,’ she blurted, interrupting her own flow and holding up two fingers before hastily slapping them back to her side, looking embarrassed. ‘The point is, being a ghost, working behind the scenes, is hard, but Trevor made it easy and, while he was at it, saved me from falling apart. He knows how and why,’ she gabbled, as Trevor shook his head, ‘and that is all that matters. And if For My sins contains some good juicy bits…’ There were more titters from the audience, ‘then I can assure you they are all Trevor’s doing not mine…’