A Life Between Us

by Louise Walters

  A Life

  Between

  Us

  Louise Walters

  Copyright © 2017 Louise Walters

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Matador

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  ISBN 9781785896293

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  For Emily and Amelie, with love

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Exclusive interview with Louise Walters

  Prologue

  July 2014

  Lucia wandered from room to empty room. The house whispered to her, echoing with the sounds and colours of days gone by. The removal men hovered outside. The taxi she’d booked had arrived, and the driver tapped his steering wheel, looking hopefully at the house, the engine of his car ticking over. They could all wait. In the small bedroom at the back of the house she gazed for the last time at the green fields, the clouds gathering in the distance, the summer hedges in full flow. The cows grazed as they had always grazed, the sun shone over the fields like it had always shone and always would. She crept into the room that had once been her parents’, then her mother’s, then for many years her brother’s. It was a particularly barren room, scarred by the removal of its furniture. The wallpaper had faded to a forgettable off-white, where it had once been a rich cream scattered with tiny rosebuds. This was a house that breathed its history; it sighed and whispered of its tragedies, of which there had been two. Unforgivable events that could not be undone, like all tragedies. But Lucia hoped they could now, at last, be forgotten.

  In her bedroom, the sullen emptiness was hard to bear. She stood reluctantly at the window and heard once more, as she always would hear, those plaintive cries: No! Please! Stop! Forgive me! She looked down at the floor beneath the window and there was still the pale pink stain on the floorboards. She’d not managed to clean it completely, despite scrubbing and scrubbing, again and again. No matter. The house wasn’t hers any more.

  She slowly struggled down the steep narrow staircase, her gait awkward. Her leg had not been right for weeks. Since the day Edward— But she would not think of that. She would not think of him again, her handsome brother; the monster he had become, the monster he had in fact always been. She would never see him again. Her mind was set. Never. She would not see any of them: not Simone – especially not Simone – not even Tina. Despite everything, Lucia supposed she was indebted to her niece, and in her dark heart there lurked somewhere a solitary beat of gratitude.

  Downstairs, she made sure to leave all the interior doors open. The house could do with an airing. The new owners would no doubt tear the place apart, rip up the carpets downstairs, put in new flooring. There had been talk of an extension and a conservatory. In need of modernisation. There had been a suggestion that all those overgrown plum trees at the top of the garden would need to come out. They blocked the afternoon light. The laurel hedge too, so thick and overgrown… She wondered at the destruction to be wrought upon this, the only home she’d ever known – Lane’s End House. Many years ago her father had proudly chosen the name. Would that also have to be changed?

  She pulled the front door to behind her and took her time in locking it. She made her way down the three front steps and walked across the lawn to the gate. She closed it behind her, taking care not to let it clang shut. That would be too much.

  She opened the door to her taxi and slowly settled herself into the passenger seat. The removal men climbed into their cab, one of them throwing away the remains of his cigarette with obvious relief. The van’s engine started, loud and raucous. Miss Lucia Thornton fastened her seatbelt and stared resolutely ahead. The van pulled away, the taxi followed; she did not look back.

  Wednesday 29th October 1975

  Dear Elizabeth

  Thank you, thank you for being my pen pal. I have wanted a pen pal for a long time. Its handy that your dad is my Uncle Robert but its funny because I have never met him. He went to live in New Zeeland in 1963 my dad said, a long time ago but he lives in America now which you will know because thats where you live. You and me are cusins which is nice. My name is Tina Thornton (we have the same last name you see?) and I am 8 years old in 3 days, on the first of November, don’t forget my birthday please but I know its too late for this year and can you tell me when is yours? I have a twin sister her name is Meg. She is one day older than me. Meg is bossy and sumetimes I don’t like her but most of the time I do like her. Do you have any sisters or bruthers? My proper name is Christina and Megs is Marghuerite but we dont like our real names much. We get teased about them. Other kids say they are posh names la-di-da. We live with our mummy and daddy. In our village we also have our granny and grampys house and our Aunty Lucia lives there too. She is your dads sister! My dad is your dads yungest brother! We have another granny and grampy but we dont see them much. Please write back, I am excited to get your next letter and now I will finish,

  Love from Tina Thornton nearly aged 8

  PS my hobbies are writing letters. I love reading too. My Uncle Edward says I am a bookworm like him. I like playing with my dolls.

  One

  October 2013

  Keaton
peered at his wife over the top of yesterday’s newspaper. There was a question that ought to be asked, so he asked it. She looked up absently from her toast.

  ‘Sorry, what?’ she said, with that small shake of her head that he loved so much.

  ‘Are you visiting Meg today?’ asked Keaton again. It didn’t do to lose patience.

  ‘I… What?’ Tina said, floating off to some strange and hidden place that only she could go. She was the most remotely self-contained person he’d ever met.

  He had to repeat himself too often these days. There was nothing wrong with Tina’s hearing. He put down the newspaper with a resigned rustle and looked at her squarely. ‘I thought, with it being her birthday…?’ He left the sentence to drift untethered between them.

  ‘Oh. Yes. Of course. Why wouldn’t I?’ Tina made a weak attempt at a smile. How he wished he could be more useful to her. He wished he could help.

  ‘Are you taking flowers?’ he said. All of this was the delicate subject between them, and always had been. They skirted it like timid ice skaters making their way around the edge of a rink, not daring to let go. Keaton was not permitted into the twins’ inner circle; that was understood. Had he been a weaker or vainer man this may have hurt his feelings. As it was, he felt nothing but a growing sense of unease on behalf of his wife. Life was not easy for her, despite his efforts. Her “relationship” with her twin was… obsessive? He thought so.

  ‘Oh yes, I’m taking flowers,’ said Tina. ‘Pink carnations, I think. I’ll get them once I’ve finished at the Haynes’s.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I thought you would,’ said Keaton. Then, as an afterthought, ‘I’m sure she… if she could, I mean, she would appreciate these things.’

  ‘Yes. Oh yes, she would.’

  Keaton suppressed another frown. Tina was the most devoted of sisters. She had a glorious nature, really – generous and loyal and loving. Such things were abstract notions to most people, but they were manifest in his wife. He loved her so much, but he doubted that she fully realised this. She was a good wife. And he had no doubt that she would make a good mother too, even an exceptional mother. Sadly, this was something Tina also failed to realise, and Keaton’s long-standing dream of becoming a father, of one day holding his own baby in his strong, trembling arms, was slipping away from him, year on year. Soon, too soon, it would not be possible for them to have their own child. It would not be possible for Tina to have her own child. It was something he tried not to think about. He had her, after all – his wife of eighteen years – and she was somebody to cherish, with or without a baby.

  It was time to leave for work. His train left the station at 7:44am and he had to be on it or he would have to take the car, which he disliked doing. In many ways they were an oddly old-fashioned couple. He worked full-time, a career man, while Tina was mysteriously contented with her cleaning jobs. He wished she wouldn’t undertake such work. She was bright and funny and well read. He thought the task of cleaning other people’s homes unworthy of her. He wasn’t a snob, oh no. He just wanted the best for his wife. Of course, she was an excellent cleaner and since she had taken up the occupation, she’d garnered several glowing references. He supposed it made her happy. She had her own income; he had no right to complain.

  Tina always handed him his bag at the door, and if those things were still the norm, no doubt she would have also handed him a bowler hat, a briefcase and a black umbrella. It was a quiet, private joke, and there was something surreal about it: a touch of Reginald Perrin, Keaton often thought.

  This morning, he gave Tina a tighter than normal hug, and told her she should try to have a good day. ‘I love you,’ he said. I understand, meant the hug.

  It only took her a couple of hours to clean Mr and Mrs Haynes’s home. She rarely met them, as they both worked full-time and their only child, a daughter named Poppy, aged about eight, was at school. Her weekly payment was always left on the kitchen table in an envelope for her: £20. Most of the work consisted of tidying away toys and piles of clothes and shoes, followed by hoovering and dusting. Repetitive work, boring, most people might say, but to Tina it was not boring. She loved to clean, to tidy. Often she was tempted to declutter the Haynes’s overcrowded home. But it was not her place to do that, so she tidied things away as best she could, in the knowledge that all her careful work would be undone in a matter of hours – a day. Yet there was comfort in it. It didn’t suit her, Keaton said, meaning the work was beneath her. It wasn’t right for her. She had a brain, why didn’t she use it? Tina, damn it, you’re clever. Dear Keaton; such a caring, patient man, but quite blind.

  Tina finished her work, collected her envelope from the table and carefully locked the Haynes’s front door. She hopped into her car and headed for the shops. She wandered around in Waitrose, where besides flowers she bought a bottle of Prosecco, and just like that, most of the morning’s wages were spent.

  She thought Meg would have grown up to love flowers, particularly pink ones, although Tina couldn’t pinpoint why she felt this. Meg had never been a “pink” girl.

  At the cemetery, Tina walked up to her sister’s grave. She stood and looked at it for a while, assessing the work needed. She unwrapped the flowers. Pink roses today. There had been no carnations.

  ‘Happy birthday!’ said Tina. Nobody was around, nobody could hear. Not even Meg, she thought sadly. It was a chilly day, aswirl with red, orange and brown leaves. Tina put down her gardening mat and lowered herself onto her knees to begin work. Forty-six. She would have been forty-six! ‘Happy birthday…’ she muttered to herself.

  ‘You said that already.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Just now, when you first got here.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  Tina cleared away last week’s flowers. She trimmed the grass and rubbed down the gravestone with her scrubbing brush. She filled the urn with fresh water and arranged the roses to her satisfaction. As she worked, she felt Meg’s presence, that certain feeling of being studied.

  ‘Getting forgetful in our old age, are we?’ teased Meg.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Tina.

  ‘Shut up yourself, fattie.’

  ‘I’m not fat!’ cried Tina. ‘And let me remind you, I am actually younger than you are.’

  ‘Oh really? Time was when we both fought to be the oldest. And I won, ha!’

  ‘Yes, you won. But times change. When you get to my age…’

  ‘Do shut up, Tina. But yes. All right, I’ll let you have that one. Happy birthday for tomorrow, anyway. I suppose your husband will wine and dine you?’

  ‘No plans,’ said Tina. She was taking her time with the flowers. She wanted them to look perfect. There were no plans, it was true. A takeaway meal and a bottle of wine was their usual mode of birthday celebration. Tina and Keaton were not party animals, and each preferred the other’s company to anybody else’s. Tina stood up and took a couple of steps backwards to view the flowers.

  ‘Bor-ring,’ chirruped Meg.

  ‘My flower arrangement or my lack of birthday plans?’ said Tina.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the flowers,’ said Meg.

  ‘At least it’s not raining today,’ said Tina, looking around at the grey sky, the roiling leaves. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘I don’t care about that. Listen. I have something to tell you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s – it’s rather important.’

  ‘Oh. Sounds intriguing.’

  ‘Stop trivialising,’ said Meg.

  ‘Well, it does sound intriguing.’

  ‘Have we got our listening ears on?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, get on with it.’

  ‘I’m not fooling this time,’ said Meg. ‘There’s something… there’s something you need to understand.’

  ‘Yes?’ How Tina h
ated Meg in this mood: self-important and tedious.

  ‘It’s this. Just this. The day I died…’

  Tina lowered her trembling knees onto her gardening mat.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I know whose fault it was.’

  ‘Oh no, Meg—’

  ‘And what’s more, you know it too. Stop fooling yourself. And do something about it, would you? I’m so tired of waiting…’

  ‘You’re tired?!’

  ‘Too right I am. I know you’re going to bleat on now about how exhausting it is living with this burden and all this guilt and all this yadda yadda yadda but seriously, it’s nothing. It’s not your responsibility to feel this way. It’s… hers.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘You know who!’

  ‘Is it… the You Know Who?’

  ‘Of course!’ hissed Meg. ‘I don’t know why you’ve ever thought it was your fault.’

  ‘Because it was!’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. Not for one second.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for me—’

  ‘If it wasn’t for you I’d be truly dead, Tina. You know that much don’t you?’ Meg’s voice, unusually soft, drifted away, floated off, into the grey sky and the swaying, thinning lime trees. Trust me, rustled the leaves, I know things…

  This was serious. Meg wasn’t teasing. Tina stood up. She kneeled down again, and fiddled with the flowers one last time.

  They had never spoken like this. In the last thirty-eight years, since that day, Meg had never once described herself as “dead”, let alone truly dead. Meg had never stated whose fault it was. It had been taken as read, always, that Tina was culpable.

  ‘I’ll drop by again next week,’ Tina said, confused; struck, finally standing up to leave. She gathered all her bits and pieces together. She thought her fellow forty-six-year-old sister would have probably shrugged and said, ‘Whatever you think.’ But she did not. The cemetery was cold and deserted. There was nobody there.