Falling to Earth

by Deirdre Palmer

Get to the point she wanted to say when Charlton started rabbiting on about the exorbitant cost of re-thatching, and then she noticed his speech was speeding up and his hands beneath the table were knotted together as if in earnest supplication. Feeling a little sorry for him, she decided to help him out.

  ‘So,’ she said, brightly. ‘You want to give Rachel a taste of country living, then?’

  Charlton gave her a look of gratitude. ‘I do. The house is quite perfect and I count myself lucky to have found it. It really is a slice of paradise in the Quantock hills. She’ll love it and the fresh air will do her the world of good. Put a bit of colour in her cheeks.’

  Juliet bit back a retort. Honestly! Brighton might be traffic-clogged but there were unhealthier places to live and it wasn’t as if she was bringing up their daughter among belching chimneys and slag heaps, was it? Actually, did they still have slag heaps?

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it’s all absolutely wonderful but why this sudden interest? I mean, I know you’ve only just come back to England but even so, Rachel’s at a difficult age. She needs stability – you can’t just waltz in and out of her life when you feel like it.’

  Charlton looked affronted. ‘Really, Juliet, give me some credit. This is not just a whim on my part. Anyway, she misses me.’

  Juliet shot him a look of surprise. Where on earth had he got that idea? Oh yes, of course, all those secret cosy chats - fathering by Skype. She took a deep breath. She must hold it together, stick to what was important here.

  ‘Look, let’s get one thing straight. Rachel goes nowhere without my permission, no matter what she says.’

  ‘Of course.’ Charlton nodded vigorously. ‘That’s understood. She does seem quite mature, old enough to know what she wants. That’s down to you Juliet, to the way you’ve raised her to be independent and think for herself.’

  Inside, Juliet seethed. Did he have to be so damn patronising?

  Charlton pressed on. ‘Let her come down for the October half-term. Two weeks, isn’t it? Somerset will be glorious in the autumn.’

  Two weeks? ‘I can’t decide now, not just like that. We – I – may have plans for half-term and in case you’ve forgotten, this has been sprung on me whereas you and Rachel have been cooking it up for ages. I need time to get my head round it.’

  Charlton sighed, and looked at Juliet as if she was a simpleton.

  ‘It’s just a holiday. It’s not such a big deal, is it? Rachel was sure you’d agree. That’s why she asked me to come all the way up here.’

  ‘Charlton, Rachel is only thirteen years old. A cliché it may be, but thirteen is an impressionable age. Teenage girls love secrets - she probably saw the whole thing as romantic and exciting. You should have phoned me right at the start. You should never have gone behind my back with all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, as well you know.’

  Charlton laughed. Juliet glared at him. Scraping back her chair, she got up and marched to the edge of the patio, remembered Rachel upstairs, and marched back again.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Charlton bowed his head, peering at her through his lashes like Rachel did when she was in trouble.

  Juliet nodded curtly and sat down again. ‘Look, there’s something I should tell you. I don’t know for certain whether I’ve got this right but I have to say it anyway, just in case.’

  Charlton frowned, leaning in to the table. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, it’s just some things Rachel said, some questions she asked, about you and me.’ Juliet stopped, took a deep breath. Now she was about to give voice to her fears, she was even less sure they were grounded in fact. Nevertheless, she’d started now. ‘I think Rachel may have taken it into her head that you and I might get back together. That’s probably why she wanted you to spring a surprise visit rather than let me know beforehand. I know it sounds stupid but that’s what I think, and I am her mother and I know her better than anyone.’ The words came out all in a rush. Her face felt like a furnace.

  Charlton’s jaw dropped. ‘But how? I mean, I’ve never – and I swear to you, Juliet – I haven’t given her any cause to think I might want… well, not now. Once, perhaps, but not now. No way.’

  Juliet couldn’t help but smile. This was possibly the first time she’d seen him look so nonplussed, so… uncool. Nor had she ever heard him use an expression like no way. Perhaps Rachel was right. He had changed.

  ‘No, well, I haven’t given her any reason to think that either. I’m glad we’ve got that sorted.’

  Juliet crossed her fingers beneath the table against the slightly fudged truth she’d just offered. She had, after all, managed to drive Gray away and it now seemed increasingly likely that Rachel had taken this sudden turn of events as a sign - a great big sign with the word ‘Vacancy’ in red neon letters – and decided to pluck her father from cyberspace, send him hurtling up the M4 and see what happened. Poor Rachel. Poor darling girl.

  If her suspicions were correct, Rachel must have told Charlton that Gray wasn’t around. Juliet wasn’t sure how she felt about that – it was none of his business, was it? Anyway, it didn’t matter now because Charlton’s face, his reaction just now, told her loud and clear that he was telling the truth, that he had not deliberately set out to mislead their daughter.

  ‘Well, even if I’ve got that wrong, you see what I mean about Rachel being impressionable, why you have to be so careful.’

  ‘Yes, I expect you’re right.’ Charlton lowered his eyes and nodded.

  Juliet felt suddenly guilty, and unaccountably sad. Who was she to lecture Charlton, or anyone, on the right way to bring up a child when she was nowhere near perfect at parenting herself? She tried her hardest to get it right but how did she know she was succeeding? How did anyone know? Her eyelids prickled. She gazed down the garden, focussing hard on a clump of margarites until they blurred into one eggy mass of white and yellow, until the feeling passed.

  ‘So, shall we get back to what it was I came here for, to discuss our daughter coming to the farm?’ Charlton planted both palms decisively on the table so that it wobbled.

  Momentarily startled, Juliet looked at him. ‘Whose idea was it that Rachel has holidays with you? Did you ask her or did she ask you?’

  ‘No, it was me. I suggested it to test the water. I had no idea how she’d react but she said yes straight away. I didn’t do any persuading. Didn’t have to.’

  Arrogant sod, Juliet thought. ‘All right, but you must see it from my point of view. I need to be sure you know what you’re starting because once Rachel’s in your life, properly I mean, you can’t mess her about – I won’t let you. I won’t risk her being let down.’

  ‘And I don’t intend to,’ Charlton said, firmly.

  Juliet sighed. What was she hoping? That by pushing Charlton into some sort of commitment to his daughter he’d change his mind and decide it all sounded like too much trouble? Yes, probably. It wasn’t fair of her, she knew, but Rachel hadn’t even gone anywhere yet and she was already missing her. If she was like this now, and all over a couple of weeks a year which was probably all it amounted to, what would she be like when her daughter went off to university or something? And to think she’d blithely swanned off to London at eighteen without a backward glance, completely oblivious to anything her parents might have felt.

  She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again, intending to say that if Rachel wanted to, she could go to Somerset for part of the autumn half term – not all of it, three or four days, perhaps, but Charlton spoke first.

  ‘Rachel would have other company, girls her own age, well, a little younger, ten and twelve, but I’m sure they’ll get on. They’ll have tremendous fun.’

  ‘Oh. That’s nice.’ Juliet expected Charlton to say they were children from a neighbouring farm or something, but he didn’t.

  ‘They’re called Chelsey and Lila. And there’s Clancy, their mother. They aren’t here yet but they’re flying over from Boston in a couple of weeks. I’ve been researching schools for them.’

&n
bsp; Oh my God. Juliet sat bolt upright as the penny, or rather the dollar, rolled down the chute. She stared at Charlton, who gazed confidently back.

  ‘The girls are Clancy’s from a previous marriage. Not that she and I are married, not yet anyway.’

  Juliet felt sick. Alarm bells clanged, hundreds of them, a tumultuous clatter inside her head. ‘Does Rachel know about this?’ she managed to say.

  ‘Well, no. I thought it would be better coming from you.’ Charlton smiled hopefully.

  ‘Better coming from me?’ Juliet stood up, her chair clattering sideways on to the paving. ‘Let me get this right. You feed Rachel all this stuff about country living and horses and all that nonsense, get her all fired up thinking she gets to spend some quality time with you and you never think to mention she’d be sharing you with a ready-made family? Christ Almighty, Charlton!’

  The back door banged shut, so loudly that Juliet jumped. Oh no, oh no. Please don’t let it be Rachel! But as Juliet launched herself at the door and heard the flying footsteps on the stairs, she knew that it was.

  19

  Charlton came up behind Juliet.

  She rounded on him. ‘There, see what you’ve done?’

  ‘Will she be all right?’

  ‘Like you care!’ Tears of fury and indignation stung her eyes.

  ‘I think I’d better go,’ Charlton said, heavily.

  ‘Yes, I think you better had.’

  Charlton started towards the front door, then turned. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, Juliet, and Rachel too, but what did you expect? It must have crossed your mind that I’d have female friends, that I’d meet someone else eventually, surely?’

  ‘Don’t you dare turn this on me!’ Juliet hissed. ‘I couldn’t give tuppence what you get up to and who with but what you’ve done to Rachel is totally unforgivable!’

  ‘I don’t see why.’ Charlton rubbed his forehead. ‘It wasn’t as if I was deliberately hiding anything from her. I just thought it would be easier if you explained about Clancy and girls before she came to Somerset.’

  ‘Easier for who? Not for Rachel or me, for a start. You lied to her, Charlton. You lied to her by omission and I’ll never forgive you for that, and most probably neither will she.’

  Charlton emitted an exasperated sigh, took his sunglasses from his top pocket and put them on. He opened the front door.

  ‘I’ll wait to hear from you then, shall I?’

  ‘You do that,’ Juliet said, silently adding, ‘Don’t hold your breath.’

  She waited until the front door had closed, then sped upstairs to Rachel’s room. The door was closed. She entered without knocking. Rachel was face down on the bed, the pillow muffling her sobs.

  Juliet edged on to the bed and immediately Rachel sat up and flung herself into her mother’s arms.

  ‘Come on, baby. Sshh, sshh, it’s all right.’ Juliet took hold of a damp strand of Rachel’s hair and pushed it away from her face.

  ‘I hate him, Mum! I hate him!’

  ‘I know, Rache, but you won’t later on. He was only trying to protect you, in his own way.’

  Juliet had no idea why she was defending Charlton, except it seemed the right thing to do, and soothing Rachel was helping her keep her own anger under control.

  After a while, Rachel stopped crying and gazed up at Juliet, her eyes dark with misery. ‘Do you think he loves those other girls more than me?’

  Juliet felt as if her heart was being torn from her chest. She swallowed a great balloon of tears. ‘No, of course he doesn’t. They aren’t his children and he’s probably only known them a little while. You are his own child - he’s known you since you were born. I know you haven’t seen much of one another but nothing can take away that connection, nothing. Do you see?’

  ‘Mm.’ Rachel looked doubtful for a second, then she tossed her hair back. ‘Well, if wants them on the farm with him then he’s welcome to them but he doesn’t get me as well.’

  That’s my girl, Juliet thought, but she didn’t say it. Instead, she took Rachel’s hot hand in hers and said: ‘I wouldn’t make any decisions now if I were you. Leave it a while, then see how you feel. I was going to say you could go to Somerset, you know. I could see how much you wanted it.’

  Rachel sat bolt upright. ‘Well, I don’t now. I wouldn’t go to rotten Somerset and stay on his rotten old farm with his stupid horses if he gave me a million pounds!’

  Juliet leaned over and fished a wodge of rainbow coloured tissues out of the box. She handed them to Rachel and smiled. ‘Come on. Blow for Mummy!’

  Rachel grinned, then obligingly blew her nose noisily. Feeling it was safe to leave her now, Juliet stood up and crossed to the door.

  ‘Come down when you’re ready, OK?’

  ‘OK. Thanks Mum.’

  Juliet descended the stairs, her limbs stiff with unspent tension, and wandered into her own bedroom. What would her mother have made of all this? She stood still, listening, but for once no little homily assaulted her ears. Perhaps Pamela Cole was as fresh out of ideas as she was. Well, it made a change.

  Gray had been gone for almost two weeks now. It seemed a lot longer. He had phoned at the end of the first week, ostensibly to thank Juliet for giving his mail to Al to pass on and to remind her that the boiler was due for a service – as if she needed anything else to worry about. She had longed to talk to him about the Charlton episode and Rachel’s distress but she stopped herself just in time, not wishing to say anything that could be construed remotely as emotional blackmail.

  A few days later he phoned again to ask how she and Rachel were. Several possibilities for a suitable reply had swung through Juliet’s mind, ranging from: ‘I’m in bits, Rachel’s in bits, so will you please come home and stop messing about’ through to pained surprise that he should even have to ask and ending with the nonchalant ‘Oh, we’re both fine, thanks.’

  Nonchalant won. Then she had spent the rest of the day cursing her stupid pride and as miserable as a wet Bank Holiday because she hadn’t found the voice to tell him how she truly felt, how she didn’t understand why he hadn’t come home and she didn’t understand why she had ever doubted him over the Tasmin business and that none of it mattered any more as long as he still loved her.

  She missed Andrea as well as Gray - not that Andrea had gone anywhere. She and Juliet had moved on from being just about civil to one another to behaving like housemates who happened to get along quite well but that was as far as it went. Juliet knew she should do something to try and repair their friendship because she’d forgiven Andrea ages ago for her slapdash style of Rachel-sitting, and for sullying the spare room with the tawdry goings-on that constituted her so-called love affair, but the longer she left it, the harder it became to make the first move. Andrea had shown no further signs of moving out, nor of getting a job, and Juliet surmised that the ostentatious perusal of the small-ads she’d witnessed previously had been purely for effect. Perhaps Andrea would just up-sticks one day and head back to Yorkshire. Who knew?

  Rachel had not mentioned Charlton since that awful day, which didn’t mean she wasn’t thinking about him, of course. There were no half-measures with her now. She alternated between frenzied social activity during which she and her friends charged in to play loud music and raid the fridge and charged out again, and reclining, wan-faced, on the sofa like a Victorian heroine with an attack of the vapours.

  During these episodes, Sidney roosted on the arm of the sofa and fixed his topaz gaze on Rachel like a feline guardian angel. For some reason he’d stopped eating his usual favourite food, just after Juliet had ordered twenty-four tins of the stuff off the internet. She couldn’t be cross with him. Cats were susceptible to the moods of the humans around them – she recalled reading that somewhere as she scissored another expensive chicken breast into his dish.

  Even Dilys was different. She hadn’t mentioned Gray’s absence – she was far too circumspect – but now she seemed to be keeping a watching brief over
Juliet as well as over the accumulating dirt, throwing her concerned, watery-eyed glances every time their paths crossed, bringing her vast tins filled with home-made gingerbread or chocolate fudge cake and making her endless cups of tea. Juliet was touched and tried not to be concerned about her expanding waistline.

  The days trickled by. Gray phoned again. He talked about work, about how he felt he was taking people’s money under false pretences. He’d been a fool, he said, to have thought he could change lives by spouting the kind of stuff he was now hard-pressed to believe himself. ‘I’m like a priest who’s lost his faith,’ he declared, amid much heavy sighing.

  Juliet was painting her toenails at the time with some varnish she’d borrowed from Rachel’s room. Crazy Yellow, it said on the bottle. How apt. She told Gray not to be so dramatic. A hurt little silence ensued but when Gray spoke again he sounded markedly more up-beat and Juliet felt a rush of love for him because he was clearly making an effort.

  ‘I’m a silly old sod. Take no notice of me.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. I won’t.’ She smiled into the phone and dabbed varnish on the next nail. ‘Gray, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course. Go ahead.’ His response held a tentative note, as if he was worried about what she was going to say. She wished he wouldn’t be like that – she wished he trusted her implicitly, yet seemingly he didn’t. It made her sad.

  ‘What was it like having a stalker? How did you feel, you know, inside?’

  ‘Oh Juliet, do we have to keep going over the same old ground? It’s not something I’m proud of and I’d really like to put it behind me, behind us, if that’s all right with you.’

  Juliet felt suddenly guilty because that was exactly what she had done, or rather tried to do, yet every time she thought she’d succeeded, another question bubbled to the surface.

  ‘Yes, and I don’t mean to keep harping on about it but I’d like to try and understand properly how you felt while it was going on. Tell me now and I won’t mention it again, I promise.’ She crossed the fingers of her free hand.