‘Actually,’ she says, the words tumbling from her mouth before she can stop them, ‘I am thinking of taking on a new project.’
‘Oh yes?’ says Tom, licking chocolate icing from his finger.
‘Well that’s wonderful,’ says her mother. She reaches for her cup and saucer. ‘What is it? Another office revamp?’
‘No,’ says Lila with a shake of her head. ‘A private job. A cottage renovation.’
Tom stares at her for a moment. ‘You don’t mean . . . ?’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I do.’
‘Are you sure?’ he asks, that worried frown back on his face. ‘It’s a massive project.’
‘Not that massive,’ she argues. ‘Besides, you’re the one that’s been telling me to do something.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t mean . . . it’s just . . . well, it’s miles away.’
Lila shrugs. Her mother remains silent, suddenly distracted by her cup and saucer and the careful stirring of a teaspoon through her tea.
‘How would we make it work, you up there, me down here?’ Tom continues.
‘I can stay up there in the week, come back on weekends. Or you could come up there and help? It wouldn’t be so different from how things used to be . . . in the early days.’
The furrow in Tom’s brow deepens. ‘This isn’t exactly what I had in mind. I’m not sure you being so far away or so isolated is such a good idea. Besides, how will we afford it if it’s not a proper, paying job?’
‘I’ve got the money left to me in Dad’s will, haven’t I? If I do the place up I could sell it on, make a profit. Put the money into another project. It’s what I’ve been talking about for ages now, setting up on my own. Maybe it’s time to stop talking and start doing.’
‘Well, this all sounds very positive,’ says her mother, looking relieved. ‘A little country renovation, how lovely.’
Tom shakes his head. ‘I don’t know . . .’
‘You want me to do something don’t you?’ Lila eyes him. ‘Well, here’s the solution.’
He throws up his hands in defeat. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to see how it goes for a week or two.’
Lila nods and reaches for the teapot. ‘So, who would like another cup of tea?’
Her mother leaves an hour or so later. She hugs Lila tightly then takes a step back and smooths the sweep of Lila’s long fringe from her eyes. ‘I’m going back to France next week. You two should come across on the Eurostar . . . come for a holiday? I’d love to have you both there with me.’
Lila nods and feels bad for having been so prickly. ‘Mum,’ she asks, seizing the moment, ‘did we ever take any family holidays up north . . . in the Peak District?’
‘What?’ Her mother’s eyes cloud with confusion.
‘Yes . . . we never . . . Dad never . . . ?’
Her mother shakes her head then gives a light laugh. ‘The Peak District? I don’t think your father ever took us further north than the Watford Gap.’ She eyes her carefully. ‘Why?’
Lila shakes her head and backs away from the subject. ‘No reason.’
Her mother fiddles with her handbag strap then clears her throat. ‘I’ll call you in a week or so. Take good care of yourself, Lila . . . and get some rest.’
Lila nods, hugs her mother one more time, then stands at the open door and watches her go, a slender, straight-backed, perfectly polished woman in her early fifties. She loves her mother but she knows there has been a growing sense of disconnect between them – something that stems not just from the recent loss of her baby and her own complicated feelings of grief, but that also revolves around her father and his death six months ago. It’s been a difficult time for them both.
Earlier, watching her mother in the living room as she’d talked about her marriage and the loss of her husband, Lila had bitten her tongue. After all these years of course she’d have grown well practised at hiding it, but even Lila is surprised by her mother’s ability not only to mask her pain, but now that he is gone, to actually re-create the story of her marriage and to draw things in a more favourable light. Lila had to peer closely beneath the mask her mother now wore to see the lingering pain that years of disappointment and disillusion had etched onto her face.
But Lila knows the truth, even if her mother won’t admit it. Ever since Lila was a little girl, she’d known her parents’ relationship was fraught with tension. It was there in the long silences on car rides when Lila sat in the back seat and felt the air hiss and crackle between them, and there on those late nights when her father had slung whisky down his throat and shouted hard, angry words at her mother about loss and pain and a life frittered away in lies and lost ideals. Lila had watched from the top of the stairs, not really understanding any of it . . . but understanding enough to know that it wasn’t normal for your father to spend half the week in his London pied-à-terre shagging his latest personal assistant, or normal for your mother to spend the nights he was away lying in a darkened room weeping into her pillow. And yet he always came back, and when he did, her mother was always there waiting for him, her tears wiped dry, her face arranged into that bright mask of relief, ready to play happy families once more.
As she’d grown older, it had made Lila angry. She loved her father but she couldn’t understand why her mother didn’t do something . . . why she didn’t stand up for herself? Why she didn’t throw him out? But her mother never did and things were only drawn in even starker context after Lila had met Tom and spent time with his sprawling, rambunctious family. She’d watched Tom’s easy interactions with his two younger brothers, the way he’d thrown his arms about his mother in the kitchen as she made supper, or how they’d all gently teased their father around the dinner table, and she’d marvelled at their candid, easy interactions. ‘Don’t you guys ever argue?’ she’d asked.
‘We have our moments.’
Lila had shaken her head.
‘What?’
‘It’s just you all seem to really like each other.’
Tom had studied her for a moment. ‘Why doesn’t she leave him if he makes her so miserable?’
‘I don’t know. She loves him . . . besides, she makes it too easy for him to come back.’
‘You’re obviously very angry. You should have it out with him,’ he’d suggested.
‘Do you think?’
‘If it’s bothering you that much, yeah, I do.’
She’d thought Tom’s advice through seriously and had just been summoning the courage to confront her father when she had taken the call at work: her father was dead – a heart attack while sitting at his desk going through the papers for a client’s upcoming lawsuit.
Just like that, he was gone, leaving behind a mess of grief and hurt and burning anger. It was one of Lila’s biggest regrets that she hadn’t taken Tom’s advice sooner and had it out with her father – before it was too late; because now, on top of everything else, she is stuck with her mother’s increasingly rose-tinted version of the past – a version that doesn’t seem to fit with her own memories at all. She watches as she climbs into her sleek blue car and with one last wave pulls away from the kerb. Lila shakes her head. Families: what a terrible, tangled mess they could be.
Tom sidles up beside her at the front door. ‘Sorry,’ he says, touching the sleeve of her jumper, ‘I should have told you she was coming.’
‘Yes. You should’ve.’
He hesitates before speaking again. ‘Did you mean it about the cottage or were you just trying to get both of us off your case?’
‘I meant it.’ She holds his gaze. ‘Don’t look so worried. It’ll be fine. I’ll head up there for a few days and see what I can do. If it’s a disaster I’ll just come back.’
‘But I am worried. You’ll be so isolated and after what you’ve been through – what we’ve been through – I’m not sure it’s a good idea.’
‘But what if it’s exactly what I need?’ Lila remembers meeting Marissa in the supermarket, the excruciating scene that had p
layed out. Suddenly, the idea of being tucked away in a place where nobody knows her really doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world. ‘Think of it, that cottage and the lake . . . it’s not just a project to keep me busy but it’s also a change of scene. A retreat, a place to get myself back together. It seems to be working for Mum in France.’ She studies his worried face. ‘And it was very peaceful up there, wasn’t it?’
He doesn’t look convinced. ‘I never thought you’d be drawn to a lake. You can’t even swim, for God’s sake.’
‘Maybe I’ll learn?’
He snorts. ‘You? Swim . . . with your phobia? You won’t even go near the lido.’
‘I’m not going to throw myself in, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
He eyes her carefully. ‘Of course not.’ Silence hangs between them. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try it for a week or so?’ He thinks for a moment. ‘But how on earth are you going to improve the place? You’ve got no proper access and it’s already autumn. It’s going to be one major headache.’
Lila shrugs. ‘I don’t intend to transform it into a five-star holiday home. Just tidy the place up, make it a little more comfortable, turn it into more of an attractive proposition in case I do decide to sell it. I can probably manage a lot of it myself.’
Tom eyes her. ‘You’re braver than me.’
She smiles. ‘Brave? Others might say stupid.’ In the solemn afternoon light she can see the shadows under his eyes, the first hint of grey at his temples, the white scar on his right cheek.
He studies her for a moment. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were running away.’ He doesn’t need to add ‘from me’ – they both hear it in his voice.
She sighs. She doesn’t have the energy to reassure him, not after her mother’s visit. She’d like to put things right. She wishes they could return to the intimacy they shared just a few weeks ago, but it all feels too hard. Here she is, a woman skilled at aesthetics, at making things beautiful and there he is, a man who can build bridges and scale divides, and yet the chasm between them only seems to gape and grow more ugly as the days drift by. The irony is not lost on her. And now that she’s had the idea of escape she just wants to be there up at the cottage, to be far away from London and their stalled life together – for a little while.
He reaches out and traces the curve of her cheek with a finger. ‘We’re OK, aren’t we?’
‘Course,’ she says, although the word hangs heavily in the air between them, like the lie they both know it to be.
‘When will you go?’
‘Soon. You were right,’ she says, not quite able to meet his eye, ‘autumn’s here. I should probably get started, before I talk myself out of it.’
He leans into her then and they stand there, two straight lines angled into each other, holding each other up for just a moment until she pulls away, leaving him alone at the front door as she heads upstairs to pack.
6
SEPTEMBER
1980
The grey heron stands motionless in the shallows of the lake. Kat pulls back the thin scrap of curtain to see it standing there in the early morning light, tall and elegant beside a clump of green reeds. It is perfectly still, craning its neck out over the water, waiting for a catch. Wrapped in a woollen blanket, she watches it for a moment, noting how every muscle – every tendon – every feather on its body remains static as the bird focuses upon its task. It is the very image of concentration and tenacity.
Behind her, Simon lies sprawled across the mattress; she can just make out his reflection in the windowpane. His body forms a lean curve beneath the sheets and for a moment she is tempted to throw off her blanket and slide under the covers again. She wakes most mornings now to find him lying beside her and yet the sight of him there never fails to surprise her, never fails to give her that thrill in the pit of her stomach. His very presence in the room, curled on the mattress around the still-warm indentation where she herself lay just moments ago is proof, she knows, of her own dogged tenacity.
She returns her gaze to the lake just in time to see a flash of movement as the heron bends its head and scoops a fat fish from the water in its orange beak. The silver perch flips like a worm caught on a hook. Kat watches as the bird gulps down its breakfast, then in one easy move stretches its wings and takes flight, soaring out over the lake.
She smiles. Breakfast: the thought makes her tummy rumble. She reaches for her jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a knitted cardigan, then pulls on a pair of socks and makes her way down the staircase, treading quietly, careful not to wake the sleeping house.
Down in the kitchen she guzzles a cup of water and grabs a hunk of yesterday’s bread, spreading a thin layer of Ben’s too-runny blackberry jam across its surface. She eats standing up, eager to be outside in the cool morning air.
The hens are already scratching and pecking in the coop behind the house. She knows she could begin the usual round of chores – feeding the chickens, collecting the eggs, storing firewood beside the range – but something stops her. Perhaps it was the sight of the heron, easy in its solitude, but what she most feels like doing is striking out alone, heading off around the lake and mapping the perimeters of their surrounds a little more. Turning her back on the cottage and her slumbering housemates, she heads down the bank, following the trail of their footsteps now stamped into the flattened grass, towards the edge of the lake. She comes to a stop just a metre or so from where the heron had stood only moments ago and looks out over the valley.
The leaves of the alder trees are turning yellow and a slow brown-burnish is stealing across the hills; Kat can see that autumn’s muted veil is beginning to settle. The intensity of summer has waned and it is a relief to be wrapped in a cooler, fresher climate. The mornings now require socks and sweaters and the clouds of midges that have hung over the lake for the last few weeks have drifted away on the breeze, to be replaced with low patches of mist hovering upon the surface of the lake. Down in their valley, she notices that the sun now takes a little longer to crest the hills and banish the early morning shadows, and in the evenings it falls just a little more quickly towards the horizon. As she looks about at the rich, earthy colours of the countryside, she is reminded of a line from a poem she once learned at school: season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Kat’s plan is to skirt the lake and investigate the woodland surrounding the water. Until now she’s been content to stay in the vicinity of the cottage, but the morning feels full of possibility. If Mac can roam the countryside and return with bloodied rabbits or armfuls of elderberries, then why can’t she forage a little? How hard can it be?
Stepping away from the water’s edge, Kat ducks her head and enters the wooded glade where leaves crackle beneath her boots and here and there brown alder cones litter the floor. Unlike the dry, grassy banks up near the cottage, the ground in the glade is boggy. She squelches through muddy ditches and jumps puddles, listening to the flitter of birds and the soft rustling of the undergrowth as she goes, careful to keep an eye out for anything that might prove edible or useful in some way.
She tells herself she just wants a little time on her own, away from the others, but the truth is she really wants time alone to think about Simon, to think about what’s happening between them. She wants a chance to examine her thoughts, to pull them out like precious stones from deep within her pockets, so that she can hold them up to the light and polish them until they shine. As she walks, she thinks about his hands on her body, his lips on her skin, the way his eyes shine as black as coal as he moves over her in the darkness. She has loved him for so long, it seems, and yet she has never dreamed it could be like this. She’s always felt too detached – too shut-off – to be wanted or loved. Her heart has been a locked prism, closed to emotion and pain, hidden from everyone except her sister, Freya. But now the seemingly impossible has happened. Simon has come to her. He wants her and she finally feels herself opening and transforming like the derelict cottage they inhabi
t. She has never felt so alive. She has never felt so vulnerable. It is both exhilarating and terrifying.
Kat still isn’t quite sure what this thing is between them. It’s more than sex, she’s sure of it, for they’ve known each other so long; there is so much more beneath the physical intimacy they now share – an undercurrent of emotion that’s impossible to ignore. But the ground they tread is new and unfamiliar, like the steep terrain rising up all around the lake. It’s as though she’s tiptoeing over it carefully, moving forwards but testing each footstep before she trusts enough to put her full weight down. And she is learning where the barriers are, where the rocks and crevices lie that she must negotiate. She’s already learned not to be too affectionate during the day. The few times she has touched him, or put an arm around him, he has worn it with a wary smile, but she notices how he shrugs her off, or moves away. She understands; it’s awkward for the others. They are a small, close-knit group; it wouldn’t be good to parade their shifting relationship in front of them all. Ben and Carla have been a couple right from the start – something they’ve all readily accepted – but another couple in their midst, flaunting their closeness . . . well, it could destabilise things and it wouldn’t be fair on Mac. She understands that.
Neither has she dared show her hand and tell Simon that she loves him. She knows it’s only a matter of time, but she won’t do it – not yet – not until she can be sure of his response. So while she waits, she clings to other certainties: the heat of his gaze following her around, the insistence of his touch in the pitch black of the bedroom and, perhaps most of all, the absolute conviction she feels now that they were meant to come here. This cottage – the lake – some strange serendipity brought them here that summer’s day. In this place of simplicity and freedom they can make the love between them grow deeper and stronger. She is sure of it.
The Shadow Year Page 10
