How desperately? Enough to drive her to … Anna could hardly frame the thought, but she’d been here before – they all had, speculating about Rose, and the possibility of suicide—
A car was pulling up outside. Anna ran to the front bedroom, hoping to see the Audi with her mother at the wheel, but instead it was a police car. She clutched at the windowsill, her pulse beating in her ears. Two policewomen got out of the car and walked towards the front door. She’s dead, Anna thought: they’ve come to tell us she’s been found. She’s killed herself or smashed the car into a tree. This is the last moment of not knowing.
She went downstairs on unsteady legs, to open the door before her father did.
‘Ms Taverner?’ said one of two smart young women who stood there. ‘Is Mr Taverner here?’
She was half smiling: surely she wouldn’t look like that if—
‘Yes. Come in.’
‘What is it?’ Don was in the kitchen doorway, a hand to his chest, prepared for bad news.
‘Mrs Taverner’s been found! She’s quite all right, only a bit shocked and confused. She’s at Heathrow.’
‘At—?’
‘She was trying to get on a flight to Sydney, to visit her daughter.’
‘Her daughter?’ Don echoed. ‘But this is our daughter, here. Or – no – she couldn’t have meant Rose?’ He looked at Anna. ‘Has something made her think Rose is in Sydney?’
The WPC nodded. ‘Yes, that’s what she said – Rosanna. Don’t worry, she’s being looked after, and she can be brought home by police car, unless you’d rather go and pick her up yourselves?’
‘We’ll go,’ Don said at once. ‘Oh, but the car’s not here.’
‘I’ll phone for a taxi,’ Anna said.
‘Or’ – Don was hurriedly picking up wallet, keys and jacket – ‘Martin could come. He said he would.’
‘What? When?’
‘I rang him when I couldn’t get hold of you, earlier.’
There wasn’t time to stop and examine this. ‘No,’ Anna said, ‘it’ll take ages for him to get here. Quicker by taxi. We’ll stop at a cash machine.’
It took several phone calls before she could find a taxi firm able to do the Heathrow run at short notice, but at last they were on the M25 heading west. It was late enough for rush-hour congestion to be over, and the traffic was flowing well; they should be there within the hour. Don had been quite baffled by what the policeman said, as was Anna – but she had to disabuse him of the idea that Rose had been discovered in Sydney.
‘Dad,’ she said carefully. ‘It’s not Rose who’s in Australia. I think Mum was talking about someone else.’
And now she’s not going anywhere. What was she thinking? Why, for a second, had she imagined she could get on a plane and fly to the other side of the world?
Arriving at Heathrow, finding the car park, making her way to the terminal, she thought she’d done it, escaped. She’s got her passport, her bank card, a few clothes in her holdall – all she needs is a ticket.
But, at airline ticket sales, the girl says, ‘No. I’m afraid we have no standby tickets for that flight.’
‘The next one, then.’
‘I’ll check for you. Have you got your visa?’
‘Visa? You mean my bank card?’ She fumbles at the catch of her bag.
‘You need a tourist visa to travel to Australia,’ the girl says patiently.
‘A visa,’ Cassandra repeats. ‘No. I didn’t know. How do I get one of those?’
Had she thought it was like getting on a bus? There are obstacles in her way, obstacles she must somehow get past.
‘You’ve got to let me go,’ she pleads. ‘Please! I’ve got my card, I can pay. Can’t I get the visa here?’
Someone is standing behind her, a man, shifting his weight from one foot to another. He’ll have to put up with it. She’s got to persuade them to let her go.
‘I’m sorry, madam,’ says the girl, behind the mask of a perfectly made-up face. ‘You can’t travel to Australia without a visa. You can do it online and it’ll be electronically linked to your passport. It’s only twenty pounds. It’d be better to book your ticket online as well, then you’ll be sure of getting a seat.’
Cassandra’s mind blurs. Panic trembles through her, clutches at her chest.
‘All right, madam?’ The girl gives her a bland smile and a flash of white teeth. Already she is looking, with a bright enquiring expression, at the waiting man, who gives Cassandra a scathing look and then a huff as, instead of moving out of his way, she stands there with tears rolling down her cheeks. The airport is a gateway through which she must pass, and she doesn’t know the rules, the password. She gives a loud sob, and covers her face with her hands.
Next moment someone has appeared beside her, taking her arm and moving her to one side, asking what’s wrong. It’s another of the smart girls, so immaculately made up that she looks like a Barbie doll, but this one has kind blue eyes and a gentle voice. Cassandra is trembling as she tries to explain. ‘My daughter’s in Sydney,’ she keeps repeating. ‘Zanna. I’ve got to get to Sydney,’ and this girl listens intently, and nods, and says, ‘I see.’ Something about her sympathy makes Cassandra’s tears flow unchecked. They’re moving off somewhere now, and people are staring, but soon they’re away from the concourse and in a room with high windows and low chairs and a water-cooler. The girl brings a cup of iced water, which she gulps gratefully; soon someone else comes in, an older woman in a different uniform, and asks her a great many questions.
‘So – Cassandra, is it? Are you on your own? Did anyone bring you? How did you get here? You’ve got a daughter in Sydney and you want to go and see her. Is she expecting you?’
‘Yes!’ Cassandra snatched gratefully at the mention of her daughter. ‘I haven’t seen her for ages, but we email each other. I told her I’d get there somehow. She’s expecting a baby, you see. I’m sorry to cause such a lot of trouble.’ She is shivering now with the sense that she’s behaved idiotically, embarrassingly.
The nice blue-eyed girl leaves, and someone else brings tea and biscuits, and the policewoman – is she a policewoman? – talks into her phone. Soon Cassandra feels her eyelids dropping with weariness, and the woman finds her a cushion and a blanket, and helps her to get comfortable.
When she wakes, Don’s beside her, saying he’s come to take her home.
Oddly, it’s begun to seem quite normal: a matter of practicalities, of getting themselves back to Sevenoaks. It’s taken some while to find the car, but they’re on their way, Don driving, Anna in the back. Cassandra, in the passenger seat, looks at the motorway in darkness, white headlights curving towards them, red lights streaming away: a double necklace of light around a wide bend.
They haven’t talked much. ‘You have a doze, love,’ Don told her as they set off. ‘We’ll soon have you home.’ For a while she did sleep, nodding against the clutch of her seat belt, but she woke with a crick in her neck and now she is wakeful but silent, registering that Don is driving her home, and he doesn’t seem angry with her for acting as if she’s completely deranged.
‘Are you warm enough, love?’ he asks, and she nods.
‘I’ve been so stupid, haven’t I? I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got hold of me.’
‘I know about Rosanna. Anna told me.’ He inclines his head towards the back seat. ‘I’m glad she did. Oh, love, if only you’d told me years ago.’
She sits silent for a few moments, then, before she’s decided to speak, words burst out of her. ‘I’m fed up with it! I’ve put up with it for too long, and I’ve had enough!’
‘I know, love. It’s been a strain, we know that—’
‘Don’t patronize me!’ The voice doesn’t even seem to be hers; a loud, strong voice, vibrating with fury. ‘Don’t talk in that maddening soothing way! What century are we in, for God’s sake? Why should I be made to feel like a fallen woman in a – in a Victorian melodrama? What did I do that was so terrible? I’ve been
paying for it all my life, all my life—’
‘Mum, Mum—’
She has forgotten Anna’s with them in the back, so quiet till now.
Don shoots her an outraged look, flickeringly illuminated by sweeping headlights. ‘No one’s saying any of that! How could I, when I didn’t know? How could I understand, how could I help, when you kept everything to yourself?’
‘You know now!’ she yells back. ‘And you’ll have to get used to it, because this is me. This is me! Whether you like it or not—’
Don swerves over to the hard shoulder and stops. She hears the click, click of the warning lights, and sees the flashing red triangle on the dashboard.
‘I can’t drive with you screaming at me,’ he says, in a tone of infuriating calm.
‘Mum, it’s all right,’ says Anna, leaning forward from the back seat. ‘Let’s get home – then you can rest. There’s plenty of time to talk. We love you, you know we do.’
Has Anna ever said that before?
‘It’s not all right!’ It’s as if someone else is speaking for her, shouting, relishing the freedom of being allowed out. ‘Don’t treat me like an invalid. I need to get away from it all! I’m going to Australia and no one’s going to stop me—’
‘But why Australia, Mum? Why Sydney?’
‘Because that’s where she lives! Zanna!’ She snaps it out as if they ought to know.
‘When did she go there?’
‘Sixteen – sixteen years ago she left. You can blame me for everything else, but you can’t blame me for that.’ Tears are threatening again, her voice wavering. ‘It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t what—’
‘Mum,’ says Anna quietly. ‘Did you know that Rose left because Zanna came back? Have you known that, all this time?’
‘Zanna didn’t want that! She didn’t! All she wanted was to see the house, a quick look. She was horrified when – when she knew—’
But her thoughts are roiling, one surfacing, then another; she can’t grasp them, make sense of them.
‘All right, love. All right.’ Don is looking down at his lap, not at her, but he’s talking again in that oddly quiet, controlled voice. ‘You’ve been keeping so much to yourself. I don’t think I know the half of it yet. And neither do you.’
‘What d’you mean? Half of what?’ Cassandra says sharply. Fear clutches at her stomach. A body found, remains, a note. It’s the dread that never leaves her. Everything’s her fault, no matter what she’s been yelling just now.
‘Go on,’ says Don, turning to Anna. ‘Tell her.’
‘Shouldn’t we—?’
‘Go on.’
She feels Anna’s hand on her arm. ‘Mum. I know where Rose is. She’s all right, she’s – she’s fine. I’ve met her, talked to her.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
On Saturday, in the last afternoon light, Anna was standing in Rose’s bedroom.
All seemed calm, her mother asleep, Don tidying the kitchen. The house had changed since her last visit. This wasn’t a shrine to Rose any more; it was simply the room Rose had left behind.
Anna remembered sitting on the bed beside Rose, with a big atlas open across their knees. ‘Look, Anna,’ Rose said, jabbing a finger, and Anna would peer at a tiny blob that meant nothing to her. ‘Here’s where I’ll go. Irkutsk. Murmansk. Odessa. Here, then here.’ The names had a kind of magic. But Rose hadn’t proved to be much of a traveller after all; she had rooted herself in a place too small to feature in the atlas even as the minutest dot.
I should have known, Anna thought, long ago, that she’d head for the sea.
‘It was a different world back then,’ Don said, in the kitchen. ‘I mean, nowadays girls have babies on their own and no one gives it a second thought. Then, well, it was seen as shocking. Even in the swinging sixties.’
The phrase, to Anna, conjured psychedelia and the Beatles, Woodstock, the pill, an explosion of youthful energy. But she knew from reading and films that it hadn’t been all freedom and tolerance; attitudes lag behind fashion, at some distance. Now, learning about her mother’s teenage years was like watching one of those faded but exuberant films that provoked such nostalgia for the sixties, even for people who hadn’t been there.
‘You’ll be all right, Dad, won’t you?’ Anna asked.
Don looked mildly surprised. ‘Me? I’m not the one we need to worry about.’
‘But you’ve had a shock. A double shock.’
‘At least. Triple, even. But there’s Rose. Soon as Sandra’s up to it, we’ll go down and see her.’
‘If Mum had told you about Rosanna, when you first met,’ Anna asked, ‘what would you have done?’
‘I don’t know, love. I’d like to say it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference, but the fact is it’d have made a lot more difference then than it does now. All I know is – well, I’m not going to hold it against her, am I? I’m relieved, to tell you the truth. It starts to explain all this strangeness. When we lost Rose – no wonder it hit her so hard, after losing her brother, then giving up her first baby as well. It’s not surprising a few cracks have started to show. But what I’m finding really hard is that she never told me about Rosanna coming to the house that day. She let me think Rose was dead.’
‘Oh, Dad. But – she didn’t know herself, did she? Didn’t know that Rose wasn’t?’
‘I haven’t quite got my head round it yet. I just wish – it would have given me something to hold on to. Something to make sense of.’
‘So she’d been meeting Zanna in secret, till Zanna went to Australia? It was amazing she could manage that, without letting on.’
‘That’s right, love – it was a bit garbled, but I think I’ve got this straight. Soon after our Rose left, this was. Rosanna married an Ozzie and settled in Sydney. Sandra hasn’t seen her since, but they’ve kept in touch by email. Now Rosanna’s expecting a baby, after years of trying, apparently. That’s what – you know – that business about the shoes was all about. She must have been looking forward to her first grandchild, but with no idea how she’d ever be able to see him, or her.’
‘Did Mum say—’ Anna wasn’t sure she should ask this, but did: ‘Zanna’s father. Who was he – is he? Did she say?’
‘Yes,’ said Don, ‘I asked. That’s another thing that’s brought this to the surface. She didn’t expect to see him ever again. Now he’s turned up at the health centre, and that’s what threw her into panic. Chap called Phil, the physio there.’
‘The one who phoned? The friend of her brother’s?’
‘Yes, love. He was Roland’s best friend, apparently.’
‘And Mum’s boyfriend?’
‘Looks like it. But after this happened – after she got pregnant – she never saw him again.’
‘So does he know – about Zanna, I mean?’
Don shook his head. ‘This is where things get completely muddled. She’s got it into her head that somehow he does, and that’s why he’s turned up at Meadowcroft, with the idea of broadcasting it to everyone. But at the same time she thinks he doesn’t know, and she ought to tell him. From what I could make of it, he had no idea. Quite likely still hasn’t. The pregnancy was hushed up – her parents saw it as a disgrace. They sent her away to some kind of institution, and when she came back they all pretended it had never happened.’
‘An institution?’
‘Home for unmarried mothers, in Maidstone. The baby was taken away as soon as it was born.’
‘It sounds awful. Like a punishment.’ Anna took this in. ‘And in the sixties – I thought it was all flower-power and Jimi Hendrix and peace, man. We’re not talking about Victorian times, for God’s sake!’
‘I know. Seems incredible, now.’
‘And this was Gran! Granny Skipton, and Grandad, who sent her away …’ Anna’s head swam with the knowledge of another adjustment to be made. ‘And Mum told you all this? She didn’t rage at you, like yesterday?’
‘No. We just talked, and she’d say one thing, th
en another, but I didn’t probe too hard. She’ll tell me in her own time, I expect. Isn’t it amazing,’ Don said, ‘that you can live with someone for years, day by day, and not have the faintest idea what’s going on in their head?’
‘So much covering up. It’s not surprising she’s started to – to behave a bit oddly.’ Anna didn’t want to give voice to the words that presented themselves as explanations. ‘Do you think she’ll get over this?’
‘I think it’s a kind of breakdown, love. Not what you’re thinking. I wanted to call a doctor today, but she wouldn’t – I’ll make an appointment on Monday. Who knows? Having this out in the open might make a big difference. Shock can be the tipping point, I know that. Shock, stress, bereavement.’
‘But this is the opposite of bereavement,’ Anna said. ‘People coming back, people appearing from nowhere.’
‘I know, I know.’
They looked at each other with the air of survivors marvelling at their escape. Don sighed, and went to put the kettle on.
‘She can stop pretending now,’ he said. ‘No more secrecy, after all these years of being sick with worry that I’d find out – she thought I’d turn on her and throw her out of the house. It’s – it’s awful to realize that the person she’s been afraid of is me. Why couldn’t she trust me? That’s what really hurts. There was a time, years ago, when I convinced myself she was having an affair, meeting someone. I had it out with her, asked if there was another man. She said no, there wasn’t – and that was true. But I could tell she was frightened of something, and that made me sure she was lying.’
‘I had no idea of any of this,’ Anna said.
Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon Page 30
