The Woman in the Mirror:

by Rebecca James

  We belong to each other, she thought.

  Wanda Pearlman hadn’t been pleased. The realtor thought she’d had the sale of a lifetime on her hands. No doubt tales of Rachel’s passionate protest would find their way out of Brightside Lettings and into Polcreath proper, and everyone’s suspicions about the eccentric family member up at Winterbourne would be confirmed. The thought made Rachel smile. In their eyes she was a de Grey, part of that messy, strange, isolated clan who could behave as single-mindedly as they liked.

  The sea was glittering blue. It was incredible how profoundly it could change. In New York, weather came and went and occasionally Rachel would glimpse a postage-stamp-sized window of it between the high-rises. There, the sky was a mosaic; here, it was entire, a canopy that when reflected in the wide water gave a strange effect of seamless continuity. She could imagine Winterbourne caught in the sphere, like a design trapped in a paperweight, and she even smaller, the only sign of life.

  Only, here was another. Rachel heard a car. Turning to the hill, she was in time to spot Jack’s Land Rover approaching the house.

  ‘Back again so soon?’ she said when she reached him.

  He got out and closed the door. ‘Thought I’d see how you are.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be relieved to know I made it into Polcreath without falling into an hysterical collapse.’

  He grinned. ‘Sometimes I feel I can’t put a foot right with you.’

  His candour stumped her.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘and this is a bit of a curveball, but my sister’s in town and we’re having some drinks at my house tonight. Do you want to come?’

  ‘I really shouldn’t,’ she said automatically, ‘I’ve got things to do here.’

  ‘Things that can’t wait? Come on,’ he urged, ‘those letters will still be here when you get back. It’s nothing formal, just some friends, food, booze…’ Seeing her doubtful expression, he added, ‘My sister’ll kill me if I don’t bring you. She doesn’t like to think of you up here on your own. I’m under strict instruction. Help me out.’

  Rachel had to admit that the idea of a party was appealing: company, warm bodies mingling, a glass or several of wine and a chance to take her mind off Aaron. She’d been up at Winterbourne on her own for days. Maybe she could do with this.

  ‘OK,’ she said, before she could change her mind. ‘What time?’

  ‘Seven-ish? I’m at the farmhouse across the field from the Landogger. I’ll come collect you if you like.’

  ‘It’s fine, I’ll make my own way.’

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

  She smiled back and raised a hand. ‘Bye, Jack.’ She was still smiling when she went inside.

  *

  Getting ready for a party in Polcreath was different to getting ready for a party in New York. Out there, she’d either finish up a frantic day and head straight to the venue in her work wear, or else she’d glam up for the night in a limited edition gown donated to her by a sponsor. Here, she had none of those robes with her, and even if she had, she’d feel a fool turning up to Jack’s farmhouse wearing one of them.

  She decided on a shirt and skinny jeans, with lots of jewellery. She left her hair loose and applied lipstick, feeling stylish but not overdone. In mounting her bike as the sun went down and the last shot of warmth went out of the day, she conceded that she might have been better off accepting Jack’s offer of a pick-up. It was a habit she had, Maggie always told her so, of cutting her nose to spite her face. At least it wasn’t raining, and the track down to the Landogger was straightforward.

  Less could be said for the field she needed to cross in order to reach Jack’s house. Rachel stopped outside the Landogger Inn and surveyed her options. The road that looped round gave way to a main carriageway, which was no good on two wheels. In the interests of avoiding comment from the pint-swilling locals gathered outside the pub, she chained her bike to the gate and then passed through the gate on foot. Luckily she had rejected heels in favour of Converse, and the field wasn’t muddy.

  As she came closer to the farmhouse, she saw how beautiful it was. She had pictured a ramshackle affair with crumpling roofs and bashed-in cowsheds, but in fact the house itself was very well kept. It was large, even quite grand, with a low thatched roof and plenty of windows, through which emanated a warm amber glow. She caught the sharp agricultural tang coming from the barns, not unpleasant, and when she turned to the view Jack must see every day from his porch, Polcreath was lit up in a flurry of tiny lights, gently climbing the hillside. On top of that hill, high, higher, almost touching the clouds, it seemed, was the dark shape of Winterbourne.

  ‘Rachel!’ The door opened and with it a gust of welcoming heat, and the aroma of wine. ‘At least I’m guessing it’s you,’ said the woman in the doorway, beaming from ear to ear, ‘Jack told me you were glamorous. I’m Kirsty, by the way.’

  ‘Jack’s sister?’

  ‘For my sins.’ They shook hands. ‘Come in, come in.’

  Kirsty looked a lot like her brother: she had the same shaped face and slate-grey eyes. ‘Can I get you a glass of wine? My kids went to bed an hour ago and I’m afraid I might have already finished all the decent stuff.’ She grinned. ‘Sure there’s some red around here though…’ Rachel followed her into the living room, deciding she liked Jack’s sister, a straightaway, uncomplicated sort of liking. The space was filled with chatting friends and easy laughter, and she felt just as comfortable and inconspicuous as she would have had she stepped into a friendly downtown bar. They stood beneath low ceilings, crisscrossed with beams, and a fire roared in the hearth. There were books everywhere, in piles, on tables and filling the shelves. Several squidgy sofas were drawn close to the heat, draped in various throws and blankets; a sheepdog snoozed on one, his paws twitching in the middle of a dream.

  ‘Here.’ Kirsty handed her a glass. ‘So how are you settling into Polcreath?’

  She was still thinking about how Jack had described her as glamorous, and the very many times he had seen her in muddy wellingtons with scragged back hair.

  ‘Oh, I’m not looking to settle in,’ said Rachel.‘Winterbourne’s just a stop.’

  And why had he been describing her to his sister at all?

  ‘Jack and I grew up here,’ said Kirsty. ‘As children we were fascinated by the house. Did you used to come a lot, to spend time with your family?’

  But he hadn’t shared Rachel’s confidence about her adoption.

  ‘No,’ she said, sipping her wine. ‘Actually, this is the first time I’ve been. I didn’t realise I was related to the de Greys until recently.’

  Kirsty’s eyes widened. ‘Gosh,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Putting my foot in it? It runs in our family.’

  ‘That’s been the odd thing for me,’ said Rachel, ‘not knowing what runs in mine.’ She smiled. ‘And anyway, your brother’s been very kind to me.’

  ‘Even though he’s the most annoying man in the world.’

  Rachel laughed. ‘Are you close?’

  ‘Very. Always have been. Maybe that’s why I find him annoying.’ Kirsty returned her laugh. ‘No, seriously, I’d have been lost without him. When my marriage broke down, Jack was there. He helped me out of a bad situation, helped with the children; he’s a fantastic uncle, they love him. He let me stay here and put myself back together. So I guess I have no right to tell him to do the washing up properly or take off his filthy boots before he tramples mud all through the house.’

  ‘You don’t live locally any more?’

  ‘London. Jack lived there too, for a while, but it didn’t work out.’

  Rachel was surprised. Not that it hadn’t worked out, but that he’d been there in the first place. The idea of Jack in the city seemed wrong; he was as sewn into Cornwall as the sea and the sky. ‘Did he work there?’ she asked.

  ‘No, it was a girl. Totally wrong for him, I thought, and turns out I was right.
Anyway, when he came back here it was like we could all breathe a sigh of relief. And we love visiting – the boys, especially. It’s a magical place.’

  Jack joined them. ‘I see you found each other,’ he said, with his usual smug grin. ‘I thought you might.’ He was wearing a green-checkered shirt that looked worn and soft to touch, and there was another sheepdog trailing at his heels.

  ‘Kirsty’s been telling me about your life in London,’ said Rachel.

  Jack rolled his eyes. ‘The less said about that the better.’ But he sent his sister a pointed look and she shrugged, as if to say, What was I meant to do? She asked.

  Kirsty left them to refill her glass. ‘She’s on a mission tonight,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Believe me, once you meet those boys you’ll know why.’ Then, as if he’d perhaps said something too forward, Jack asked, ‘Do you like the house?’

  ‘Are you auditioning for Wanda Pearlman?’

  Jack smirked. ‘What kind of a name is that anyway?’

  Rachel looked about at the sweetness of the living room, its inherent ease and allure, and found that the answer was simple. ‘Yes, I do, very much. It’s…’

  ‘Charming? Quaint? Olde-worlde? I don’t know what expression your arty friends would use.’

  ‘That’s an uninitiated thing to say.’

  ‘Then initiate me.’ He drank from his glass. She did the same, unsure how to reply. Then Jack said: ‘Are they missing you?’

  Rachel thought of the call she’d put through to Paul earlier today. ‘They’re fine. You know, coming here has made me realise that it’s not all on me. Other people do things quite well, too.’

  ‘But not as well as you.’

  ‘It’s hard, when you’ve nurtured and cared for something, to let it go.’

  ‘I feel the same about my pigs.’

  She laughed. ‘We really are from different worlds, Jack Wyatt.’

  He looked away, then back, and smiled with her. ‘We are.’

  *

  After midnight, people began to leave. Rachel said goodbye to Kirsty and was surprised when the sister hugged her. They were both a little drunk and the world seemed drunk with them. ‘Come again, Rachel,’ she said warmly. ‘Come again soon.’

  She had thought Jack had melted off to the pub with the others, but instead he was outside smoking. When she opened the door he moved to stub out the cigarette, then saw who it was and relaxed. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘thought you were Kirsty.’

  ‘Just me,’ she pulled on her coat, ‘and I’ll steal one of those, thanks.’

  He lit one for her and passed it over. They smoked in silence for a moment.

  ‘Thanks for inviting me,’ she said. ‘I had a really good time.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Your sister’s nice.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s OK. Most of the time.’

  ‘You sound about fifteen.’

  She felt him smile rather than saw it: the night was black, with only the pale moon to shine on it. Abundant stars decorated the canopy above.

  ‘What were you doing at fifteen, Rachel Wright?’ he asked.

  ‘Arguing with my mother, most likely.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Make-up. Pot. Staying out with a boy.’

  ‘Didn’t you get on with her?’

  ‘Yes, on the whole… Parents and teenagers don’t mix, though, do they?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t with mine.’

  Rachel blew out a satisfying plume of smoke. She turned to him, feeling bold.

  ‘So what about the girl in London?’ She smiled. ‘Was she the one who didn’t like dogs?’

  He waved a hand. ‘Kirsty always has the habit of saying precisely what I don’t want her to say. It was nothing. Just a weird time in my life.’

  ‘We’ve all had those. I’m still having them.’

  ‘Trying to figure out what I wanted,’ he said. ‘Trying to separate what I thought I wanted from what I actually did. She worked in finance, a perfectly nice girl but not for me. Manicures and gym membership, that kind of thing.’

  ‘I can’t see you with that.’

  ‘Nobody could. But I had a try. Your soul always catches you in the end.’ He turned to her in the night. ‘What about you? How’s your boyfriend?’

  She could be honest with him now. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘It is?’

  She nodded. ‘A long story, and you don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Now she laughed. Jack would have a field day with the idea of Aaron Grewal. To think of the two men together was comical. They couldn’t be more different.

  ‘Can I try you with something else?’ she said.

  The tip of his cigarette crackled as he drew on it. ‘Sure.’

  ‘I was married,’ she said, ‘a few years ago. I got married when I was twenty-five, so quite young by some people’s standards.’ She focused on the dark shapes in the night: the hulk of hedges and the distant twinkle of the Landogger Inn across the field. ‘My husband, Seth, saved me – at least I thought that at the time. I’d never belonged anywhere but I felt I belonged with him. I had this idea of settling down quickly and making a family from nothing, the family I’d never had. I’d be at the centre of it.’

  Jack waited. After a moment, he said, ‘You’re divorced?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘he died.’

  Jack said nothing, even when she was quiet for some time.

  ‘He died on a Monday morning in 2012, less than six months after we were married. A terror attack on the office he was working in. He was there one day and gone the next.’ Rachel closed her eyes. She had never said this to anyone, not to Paul, not to Aaron, not to anyone. ‘I saw it on the news and I just thought, it’s impossible. He’ll call me. He’ll say he went out for coffee, or he was late getting the train and we’ll cook dinner tonight and feel lucky, so much luckier than those other poor people. But he didn’t call me. Instead, his brother did. The first thing he said to me was, “Rachel, it’s Seth. But you know already, right?” And I did. I knew. I looked around our kitchen and his cup was still on the side where he’d drunk from it before he’d left. The paper he’d been reading was open on the same page, page seventeen, on some article about drugs busts in Philly. It all seemed so normal. The world kept turning. Grass kept growing. Planes kept flying. News items about the bombing wound up after ten minutes and moved on to another matter. Ten minutes, was that all we got?

  ‘It took me months to stop playing over the last time I saw him. It was so insignificant, that quick kiss goodbye; I think I reminded him about something banal like picking up milk. And then the what-ifs… What if there’d been a delay on the subway that day, or he’d been too sick to go in, or there’d been a freak snowfall like the one we had the winter before and we couldn’t even get to the end of our street? But all that counts is what happened. There’s only one version of what happened, and what is, is, and what isn’t, isn’t. That was what happened to me. To us.’

  She was expecting to weep, perhaps she was already weeping. But no, her face was dry. She had come through it.

  ‘Did they catch the people who did it?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Two of them,’ she said. ‘Suicide bombers. Just walked right in there, plain as anything. But it goes deeper than that. It’s an ongoing war. Capturing them was no comfort, at least not to me. It’s still happening. People are still dying, for no reason.’

  ‘I think I read about your Monday,’ he said softly, remembering. ‘It was in the papers over here.’

  ‘It would have been. It was everywhere. The city felt broken but we didn’t let them win. We couldn’t be afraid to go into work, to the shops, we had to survive.’

  ‘Rachel, I’m sorry. I’m sad and I’m sorry.’

  ‘It isn’t your fault.’

  ‘No, but it isn’t yours either. It shouldn’t have happened to you.’

  ‘But it did give me something.’ She faced him
. It was strange: Jack’s details were impossible to pick out in the darkness, but the shape of him exuded compassion and kindness and those qualities seemed almost as real as an eye or mouth. ‘It made me strong,’ she said. ‘It made me rely on myself. It made me succeed. It made me driven. I consider those to be gifts given to me by Seth. It’s why the gallery matters to me so much. I know you think it pretentious, but it isn’t to me.’

  ‘I never said it was pretentious. And god, Rachel, I never would now.’

  ‘But finding Winterbourne, it’s like a second chance, you know? That chance, again, of belonging. That solicitor’s letter arriving, telling me about the de Greys; I was at home at the time and it just felt like the universe was calling me up, like it was saying, Hey, Rachel, we’ve got something else for you, it isn’t over yet.’

  ‘Because it’s not, is it?’ Jack reached for her hand.

  She let him hold it. They stood like that for a minute, maybe more, before he let her go. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m drunk. It’s easy to talk.’

  ‘I’m glad you did. I’m glad you told me.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘I know you’ll find what you’re looking for, here.’

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘You said it. Belonging. But it’s more than just the walls of the house, isn’t it? You’re looking to understand your past and the people who brought you into the world. It’s important. I’ll help you. I’d like to.’

  Rachel opened her mouth to reply but the door opened and Kirsty stepped out. The spell was broken. ‘Whoops!’ she said. ‘Didn’t realise there was anyone out here.’

  ‘I was just going,’ said Rachel.

  ‘How are you getting back?’ asked Jack.

  ‘I left my bike at the Landogger.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said, ‘I’ll call a cab.’ He ducked inside to the phone.

  Kirsty folded her arms against the cold. ‘You’ll be careful with him, won’t you?’ she said. At Rachel’s puzzlement, she added, ‘Jack. You’ll be careful with him.’