‘Isn’t Gray coming back at all, then?’
‘Yes, of course he is,’ Juliet had said, metaphorically crossing her fingers. ‘There are some things both of us need to sort out and it’s just better Gray stays somewhere else while we do that, that’s all.’ She’d felt unexpectedly defensive.
‘What things?’ Rachel had looked quizzically at her, her head on one side, mirroring one of Charlton’s traits.
Juliet had bowed out at that point – she felt entitled. ‘Oh, lots of things. Nothing you need worry about, I promise you.’
Promises are like pie-crust – easily broken, Pamela Cole whispered in her ear.
She’d hugged Rachel then, nuzzling into her hair, and Rachel had pulled away, giggling, as she always did when made to endure over-the-top shows of motherly affection, and skipped off upstairs, leaving Juliet feeling confused and slightly forlorn.
Juliet and Andrea spent Sunday avoiding one another. When Juliet was outside, Andrea was in, and when Andrea was downstairs, Juliet was up, as if they were attached to an invisible pulley. Juliet couldn’t help but notice – which she was supposed to, of course – that the Property News was spread out on the kitchen table, open at the Lettings section. Not before time, either.
Monday began badly for Juliet, with Rachel insisting she must go to Sarah’s because they’d made arrangements and Juliet, remembering her recent encounter with Finn Schofield, protesting that Rachel spent far too much time with Sarah and not nearly enough time with her own family, her own family currently comprising only Juliet, it was true, but all the same, a little mother-and-daughter time didn’t seem too much to ask.
Juliet had planned to take the day off work but, she conceded, as she watched Rachel fold her red hooded top and place it in her rucksack along with her MP3 player, a tube of lip-gloss and her purse, she hadn’t asked Rachel what she wanted to do so she supposed it was her fault for making assumptions. Still, it was probably a good sign that Rachel was carrying on as per usual. It showed she wasn’t too upset about Gray, didn’t it? Juliet didn’t know how she felt about that. Was Rachel hiding her true feelings or was she – perish the thought – glad that Gray wasn’t around? It was a touch disconcerting not to know, more so to feel she couldn’t ask.
Rachel didn’t even take up Juliet’s offer of a lift to Sarah’s house, which, on this particular morning, Juliet took as a slight. She would go on her bike, she said, and yes, she would keep to the pavements and yes, she would ring later if she wanted fetching. Juliet stood at the window and watched her wobble off up the Gardens, pressing her face to the cool glass to catch a last glimpse as Rachel plus bike vanished round the corner.
Andrea’s mood had changed overnight. She no longer crept apologetically about the house, presumably thinking that penance had been duly served. Instead she was very much in evidence and, much as Juliet tried to ignore her, it became impossible, especially when she went to the kitchen to make coffee and found Andrea doing just that.
‘Want some?’ Andrea flashed a hopeful smile, her blue eyes wide.
‘Yes, go on then.’ Juliet dropped into a chair and sighed as Andrea crashed mugs about. Gray’s favourite mug had already fallen foul of Andrea’s heavy-handedness by acquiring a chip in the rim. He’d kept on using it, though. She could see it now, sitting on the dresser, red and shiny, wearing its blemish proudly, like a battle-scar.
Suddenly a great tsunami of emotion crashed over her, making her want to lay her head on the table and weep but she wasn’t going to give in to tears, not if she could help it. Instead she pressed her hands to her eyes until the feeling receded, and when she took them away, there was a mug of coffee in front of her and Andrea was cosied up to the table in full-blown tell-me-all-about-it mode. Well, she could forget that.
Juliet cradled her mug, gazing studiously out of the window. Eventually, Andrea shifted in her seat.
‘Talk to me, Ju. Tell me what happened with Gray. It might make you feel better.’
Juliet banged her mug down, slopping coffee on the table, and faced Andrea. ‘Feel better? That’s a laugh! I come home to find you’ve conveniently got rid of my daughter so you could turn my spare bedroom into your sordid little love-nest and you talk about making me feel better?’
Andrea looked stricken. ‘I didn’t get rid of Rachel on purpose. I wouldn’t – how could you think that? Look, I’ve said I’m sorry...’
‘You’re thoroughly selfish, Andrea. You always have been.’
Juliet scraped back her chair and slammed out of the kitchen.
She spent the rest of the morning holed up in her studio but she didn’t do any work. Instead she sat at her desk and stared into space through steepled fingers. After a while, she took from the drawer her collection of postcards from the Alhambra and set them out in front of her, examining them closely one by one, remembering, until she felt hollowed out by pain.
At lunchtime, she ventured downstairs. Andrea wasn’t there. There was no sound from her room either so presumably she’d gone out. The phone rang. Juliet picked it up and was surprised to find it was Gray. On Saturday night before she went to bed she’d sent him a brief text message to let him know she’d arrived home safely and although her phone had beeped almost straight away, she hadn’t looked at his reply until the morning. His message had been even briefer than hers. Good. I’ll ring you. Even so, for some reason she hadn’t expected to hear from him so soon.
‘Have you got a pen?’ Gray said now.
‘What?’
‘Pen and paper, so I can give you my address.’
‘Hang on.’ She fetched a pen and a used envelope from Gray’s desk.’ Go on then.’
She wrote down the address of a flat in Hove. She knew the block – it overlooked the cricket ground.
‘It belongs to a friend of Al’s who’s taken a year out to go travelling,’ Gray said, as if he needed to elucidate.
It felt weird, writing down Gray’s address. You’ve already got an address, eleven Clifton Gardens, she wanted to say, but she didn’t. Instead she asked how he was – fine – and he asked how she was – fine too – as if they were casual acquaintances.
‘I’ll be out for a couple of hours tomorrow, from about twelve. I’m taking Rachel shopping.’
This wasn’t quite true, not yet anyway, but Rachel wouldn’t take much persuading. She may as well make it easy for Gray, for them both.
Gray cleared his throat. ‘Right then, I’ll nip over and collect some stuff.’ Then he was gone.
Juliet took the envelope with the address on it through to the kitchen and stuck it on the pin-board, then returned to the sitting room. The house seemed empty, not only of people but of purpose. She wandered over to the window. Fiona Wellman was walking slowly down the pavement opposite, a mini-mart carrier bag dangling from her hand as if she’d forgotten it was there. Perhaps she’d like to come in for a glass of wine. There were some of those cheesy biscuits left, too. It would pass away half an hour or so and the diversion would stop her brooding.
She raised a hand to tap on the window just as Fiona turned and looked in her direction. She turned the tap into a wave but Fiona didn’t wave back. Instead she averted her eyes and increased speed, the carrier bag jiggling back and forth as she cantered down the street.
Later on, the phone rang again. Juliet descended the step-stool, added a half-empty jar of crystallized honey to the collection of other store-cupboard items with dubious use-by dates and wiped her sticky hands on the J-cloth before reaching for the phone.
‘Juliet? It’s Kate. Kate Schofield. There’s something I need to tell you.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Kate said, as Juliet flung open the door of the Beetle and jumped out. ‘I should have checked. I should have kept an eye on them.’
Juliet didn’t answer. Rachel stood, ashen-faced, just inside the Schofields’ front door, Sarah close behind her. Juliet marched up to her.
‘Where’s this computer, the one you’ve been talking to a man on?’ Julie
t pushed past the pair of them.
‘Mum, no, you’ve got it all wrong!’ Rachel swung round, wide-eyed, as Juliet started up the stairs.
‘It’s no good, they’ve turned it off now,’ Kate said.
Juliet stopped and turned round. ‘But there are records on computers, the history thing. You can see the sites that have been visited. Oh Rachel, for heavens sake, what on earth have you been playing at? Don’t you know what can happen if you talk to strangers on the internet?’
Rachel looked close to tears. Perhaps she didn’t know, not sufficiently, anyway. They all thought they were street-wise at that age, didn’t they? Thought they knew it all – but perhaps Juliet hadn’t drummed it into her enough about the dangers of the internet, that awful grooming thing that went on in those chat rooms, probably because she’d been naïve enough to believe that kind of thing happened only to other people’s children. Rachel always seemed so sensible, so clued up, yet how could she be at just thirteen?
Juliet came back down the stairs and took Rachel gently by the shoulders. ‘Darling, look, you aren’t in trouble. I just need to know exactly what you’ve been looking at, who you’ve been talking to. Kate said she saw a man on the video messaging thing, an older man. Rachel, please, just tell me, show me, yes?’
Rachel shook herself free. ‘I’d never do anything like that. I’m not stupid! Sarah, tell her.’
‘That’s right. We haven’t done anything like that. We wouldn’t.’
‘Oh God.’ Kate clapped a hand to her forehead. ‘This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have let them spend so much time up there on their own. I’m so sorry, Juliet.’
‘It’s all right, it’s not your fault. You can’t be behind them every minute,’ Juliet said, whilst thinking, well, actually, yes, you can if you care enough.
No, that wasn’t fair. Bringing up children, young teenagers especially, was the hardest job in the world and she was just as much to blame as Sarah’s mother, letting Rachel spend so much time in this house without a clue as to what she was actually doing.
She looked at Rachel, who tilted her chin up slightly, her expression edging as far towards defiant as she dared. Right miss, time to up the ante.
‘Rachel, sooner or later you will have to show me or Sarah’s parents what you’ve been doing on the computer, and if you won’t do that then I’m afraid you’ll have to show someone else, someone in authority. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Sarah’s face crumpled but Rachel didn’t waver. ‘This is nothing to do with Sarah. She wasn’t… well, it was nothing to do with her except it’s her computer. It was just me.’
‘It was only Rachel who was on the computer today, at least it was when I went in,’ Kate said, almost apologetically. ‘That isn’t to say, young lady,’ – she turned to Sarah - ‘that you’re off the hook because you aren’t.’
‘Mum, listen, it wasn’t anything to do with Sarah and it isn’t what you think either!’ Rachel’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘Punish me if you want to but leave Sarah out of it.’
Juliet took a deep breath. ‘Rachel, whether or not Sarah was involved is important of course but not so important, so imperative, that I find out what’s been going on here. Kate rang and told me she’d seen you talking to a man on the computer, and don’t deny it because he was right there on the screen in front of you!’
‘Yes all right, he was, but he wasn’t some pervert on a dodgy site. Give me some credit.’
Rachel flung the word pervert into the space between them. Juliet winced.
‘Anyway, Sarah’s mum asked me who it was, didn’t you?’ Rachel continued, turning to Kate.
Juliet looked at Kate. ‘Did you?’
‘Well, yes, but what Rachel said didn’t make sense. That’s when I rang you.’
‘So what did she say?’
‘She said it was her father.’
17
‘But why didn’t you tell me you were in touch with him? We don’t have secrets about your father, do we? You’ve always shown me his letters so why not tell me about this, and if you were emailing him, why not do it from here?’
‘Because I wasn’t ready and it would have spoiled everything if I’d told you. Anyway we haven’t got video messaging. It made it better, more real, like seeing Dad in the flesh.’
Rachel stood in the kitchen, clutching Sidney to her as if she’d never let him go. Juliet envied that cat.
What did Rachel mean? Why would it spoil everything if she knew? Spoil what? Guiltily she remembered that she wasn’t exactly shown Charlton’s letters to his daughter – she just picked them up and read them as if she had every right to, and on the rare occasions when he phoned Rachel, she’d had her own short conversation with him as well, instead of letting it be just the two of them. But Rachel was growing up and such corroboration was no longer appropriate, was it? She had been too intrusive, obviously, and now she was paying the price, and a high one at that.
Damn Charlton! If he wanted to see Rachel - and plainly she wanted to see him - why couldn’t he jump on a plane? Why did every visit have to have another purpose like his business with the bank in London? Why couldn’t his daughter come first, and last, for once?
‘He did say we should say something to you but I asked him not to, not yet, so he said it was my decision.’ Rachel looked down at the cat and not at Juliet. ‘I didn’t want to tell you. Not then anyway.’
‘Tell me what, exactly?’ Juliet asked, carefully.
‘That he wants me to spend school holidays with him, not all of them, but some.’
What on earth was Charlton playing at? They had an agreement – no arrangements were to be made concerning Rachel unless she was consulted first. Yes, Rachel was older now but that made no difference. Intrusive or not, it was not an agreement she was about to forgo without a fight. She said as much to Rachel.
‘Mum, I’m not a child! If I want to see Dad I will and you can’t stop me!’
Rachel looked at Juliet, eyes blazing. Juliet took a breath. They mustn’t argue over this. Since the day she’d packed her bags and run back to Brighton, she had made a silent pledge with herself that she and her son or daughter, whichever it turned out to be, would never, ever, fall out over Charlton.
‘I know, darling, and I would never stop you seeing him.’ She offered Rachel a hopeful smile. ‘So is he coming to England soon? Is he coming to see you? That would be nice because it’s been a while hasn’t it, and the video thing isn’t the same as a proper visit. I don’t see how you could spend holidays with him, though. Of course, one day you’ll be able to go to Boston but right now you can see that’s not really on, is it? I mean, even if we could get you there he’s so busy and you’d need someone else with you for when he couldn’t be.’
Surely Charlton hadn’t already addressed all these problems, sorted it all out with Rachel without a word to her? She couldn’t bear the thought of not having her daughter here all the time, school holidays or not, because she’d miss her so much and if that made her a clingy mother, then too bad because she was quite happy being one.
‘But that’s just it – I haven’t told you the best bit! Dad isn’t in Boston, he isn’t anywhere in America. He’s here!’ Sidney struggled in Rachel’s arms. She let him drop to the floor. ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Mum? Dad’s back!’
Juliet’s jaw dropped as Rachel jiggled about in front of her, unable to conceal her excited delight.
‘Back?’
‘Yes, back in England but not London. He’s given all that up, the bank and stuff. He’s in Somerset and that isn’t far away is it?’ Rachel frowned. ‘Have I ever been to Somerset?’
‘Yes, when you were two. We stayed in a guest house with Nanny and Grandad. It rained every day and you screamed the whole time. What on earth is Charlton doing in Somerset?’
A nerve began to throb in Juliet’s temple. None of this made sense. Charlton was a banker. He lived in America. He visited once or twice a year if Rachel was lucky. That
was the way it was, the way it had always been, and now, if Rachel wasn’t making all this up because of rampant hormones or something, the world had tilted on its axis and she was having the devil’s own job staying glued on to it. Oh, how she wished Gray was here!
‘I think we’d better sit down and you can tell me all about it properly, right from the beginning.’
A sea change had come about in Charlton’s life. The events of nine-eleven had changed perspectives and priorities, Charlton’s among them, apparently. At least, that was when it had begun, his questioning of a life with money and status as its core purpose. Amid the seething towers of Boston’s financial heart, Charlton had felt like a sitting target, a feeling that had not receded with time but had grown over the intervening years until, with the banking crisis looming, he’d packed it all in, jetted back to England and taken up market gardening in Somerset. Oh, and to cap it all, he’d changed his name to Charlie.
Blimey.
Juliet listened to Rachel’s surprisingly sophisticated account of these events, clearly not just a regurgitation of her father’s words but with her own asides thrown in, and felt wholly inadequate. The pair of them had obviously never dreamed of including her in all this, not that she could influence Charlton in any way, nor would she want to, but he might have consulted her at some point, for... what? Old times’ sake? No, for Rachel’s sake, because any major changes he made to his life affected Rachel now she was becoming old enough to make her own decisions. That was something else she’d overlooked, another unpalatable feature of her daughter’s transformation from child to teenager. She, Juliet, was no longer in sole charge. In fact she wasn’t in charge at all.
Rachel shifted position on the sofa, long, denim-clad legs furled beneath her. Already she seemed different – distant, separate, her own person. As she’d talked about Charlton, or Charlie, his migration from the world of high finance to something Rachel vaguely described as ‘growing stuff’ on his newly acquired acres, Juliet could sense an underlying theme creeping through. A turn of phrase, an inclination of Rachel’s head, a sudden difficulty in making eye contact – that was all, but it was enough.
Falling to Earth Page 18
