The Place Where Love Should Be

by Elizabeth Ellis

  Still pumped from the run, Joanna is in full flood, ‘How could you do this Evie? Not tell me? How can you possibly justify keeping it from me?’

  I stand at Joanna’s kitchen table. My voice, when it comes, is strangled, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Joanna snorts. ‘Sorry doesn’t begin to cover it!’

  She has a point. Meeting our mother was never my secret to keep.

  ‘I just wanted to find the right time,’ I say.

  ‘You’ve had weeks!’ Joanna is pacing, clutching her water bottle. ‘There I was thinking you were having a tough time! I supported you, took care of you.’

  Hardly, I think.

  ‘I thought Mark wasn’t doing his bit – but it was nothing of the sort! All that time you’ve been in touch with… with my mother! Talking to her, meeting her. Did it not cross your tiny mind that I might want to know? That I might have a right to know? How could you be so selfish?’ Joanna’s face is flushed, two pale pink dots on her cheeks spread into small neat shapes like rose petals. Even in anger she is perfect, not blotched and red and weepy. Perhaps it was not about timing at all. Perhaps I was not waiting for the right moment to tell, nor wanting to keep Helena to myself. Perhaps I simply did it out of spite.

  ‘And what happens now? Are you going to tell Dad, or am I?’

  I sit down, rest my elbows on the table, ‘He already knows.’

  ‘What?’ Joanna halts in the middle of the room and backs up against the fridge, shaking her head. ‘This is beyond crazy. And Mum? Does she know?’

  I nod.

  ‘So, when exactly were you planning to let me in on this cosy little family reunion?’

  ‘I never meant not to tell you, Jo. I just wanted some time with her. I thought it would help make sense of what was happening to me. Why I wasn’t… coping.’

  ‘And did it?’

  I drop my head, twist my fingers together, ‘Yes, it did. But I wanted to know more – why she stayed away.’

  ‘She was ill, that’s what we were told.’

  ‘And she was, but there’s more to it. Did you never wonder why she didn’t come back later, when she was better?’

  Joanna starts to pace again, ‘To be honest, I don’t think I thought much about it at all. I had no memory of her, I had two parents. There was nothing for me to miss.’

  ‘And you were never curious?’

  ‘I often wondered why you and Mum fought so much, but no, I wasn’t curious.’

  ‘Then why are you so angry now?’ But I know the answer. I look at my sister, the distraught butterfly in her beautiful kitchen, a state she is so ill-equipped to deal with. She is angry at being kept in the dark, at the betrayal, that she wasn’t trusted with the truth. I find a small voice of vindication, dig the knife deeper. ‘You could have found her yourself you know. It’s not exactly difficult.’

  I get up from the table, I’ve done what I came for. I want to leave and put some distance between us but Joanna has other ideas.

  ‘By the way,’ she says, ‘since we’re doing kiss and tell, you know about Mum, I suppose? The real reason she’s been in France?’

  I look at her blankly, ‘She’s sorting out the house – her mother’s things.’

  ‘Ha!’ Joanna is triumphant. ‘Not according to Dad.’

  ‘So, what then?’

  ‘Turns out they’ve split up.’

  The surface of the table seems to tilt. I sit down again, rest my palms flat, holding on. ‘When?’

  ‘About a month ago. You didn’t know?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Well if you hadn’t been so wrapped up in your cosy little tête à tête with my birth mother, you might have picked up on something!’

  ‘That’s not fair, Jo, and I’m sorry I’ve kept so much from you, but this is different.’

  ‘Is it? How is it different? You so don’t get it, do you? At least I had your best interests at heart. Didn’t want to worry you when you had so much to cope with. You clearly didn’t give a toss about me, about what I might want or need – what I had a right to know!’ Joanna bangs the water bottle down on the table. ‘No, you did what you always do Evie, shut everyone out, carrying on your own private vendetta against whoever tries to get close enough to care about you. You’ve always done it with Mum and now, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re doing it with Mark. Well you need to watch that because he might just decide not to stick around!’

  Leave Mark out of this, I want to say. Mind your own bloody business – what the hell do you know about it anyway? But I’m crushed now, exhausted, and I don’t have the strength to argue.

  ‘By the way,’ Joanna ploughs on, ‘it was Dad who asked me to keep quiet about Mum going back to France. Said he didn’t want to worry you. Well, that’s a laugh for a start.’

  I ignore this, ‘Do you know why they’ve split up? Did Dad say?’

  Joanna shrugs, ‘Not exactly, something about Mum needing space – a bit of peace and quiet were his exact words. But that’s typical Dad, he’d hardly tell me, would he? Not if it’s something personal. Oh God…’ Joanna looks at me, meeting my eye for the first time. ‘You don’t think there’s someone else, do you?’

  ‘Dad? Have an affair? No way. I mean, he’s…’ I grapple with the improbability of it. ‘No, it can’t be that. He wouldn’t.’ I look at Joanna and there’s a moment of collusion, a thaw. ‘And Francine?’

  Joanna leaps on this, ‘And there you go again – it has to be Mum’s fault! Why? Why would she do that?’

  Why indeed. I have no answers, only questions, piles of them, heaped up around me like the mountain of sand where I’ve tried to hide my face for so long.

  Andy comes back and stands by the stove, his arms folded, watching us. ‘Can I help at all?’ he asks mildly.

  Joanna shoots him a look I haven’t seen before. She disappears into the utility room and returns with a towel round her shoulders. ‘I’m cold,’ she says, grabbing her water bottle, ‘I’m going for a shower. Then she sweeps out, up the stairs and from a distant corner of the house we hear the bedroom door slam.

  I stand and tuck my chair in neatly. I’m back at home with Francine, but the kitchen table has turned. It’s now Joanna full of rage, while I am stunned and silent.

  Andy puts an arm around me and I rest my head on his chest, draw in the soft comfort of cashmere.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him. ‘This is my fault. I’ve blown up her world.’

  ‘She’ll survive – she’s tougher than you think. You’ve always been the fragile one, in spite of what you’d have us believe.’

  I lift my head and step away, moved by his insight.

  ‘You had a lot to deal with,’ he says. ‘Jo didn’t.’

  ‘I could have handled it better, it wasn’t fair on her.’

  ‘Like I say, give her time. She’ll be ok.’

  I wipe my face, blow my nose, ‘I should go.’

  ‘There’s no need. Stay and have lunch – Max will be home soon – he’d love to see you.’

  ‘I don’t think so, thanks. We can hardly play happy families, can we?’

  Andy takes a beer from the fridge. ‘This will pass, you’ll see. Jo can be a bit full-on but it won’t get in the way long term, she loves you too much.’

  I wonder why I ever minded him. He’s rather like my father: courteous, mild, if not a little dull. Joanna chose a safe haven, while I, with Mark, sailed far out to sea, the thrill of a permanent storm brewing.

  As I leave, I know I cannot tell Joanna the truth about our mother. In any case, it’s not my story to tell. What happens with this illness, what she went through, I understand it now. Helena will forever pay the price and I will not damage whatever narrative Joanna has constructed for herself. It might just destroy her perfect world and I cannot be responsible for that.

&n
bsp; Forty-Six

  I sit close to Mark in the van, willing him to drive faster. I wonder why I now think of sex. Mark’s knuckles bent on the steering wheel? Andy’s tender reassurance? The hiss of relief that I no longer carry the weight of this secret? I touch Mark’s forearm, run a finger across the dark hair, see his face break, the smile escape. It will be alright, we will get past this. He drops me at the hotel and says he’ll see me later in the pub.

  A text from Francine tells me Edward is fine and there’s no need to rush. But it’s Joanna’s news that concerns me now, unprocessed news, the rift between Francine and my father. I don’t know what this will mean, cannot fathom how to respond, what I will say to either of them.

  In the lounge, I find Francine on a sofa near the window, gently rocking the pram, a small suitcase by her side.

  ‘How did it go?’ she asks, patting the seat next to her. It’s suddenly too familiar, too intimate. I’m backing off again and cannot speak. I check Edward, straighten the covers on the pram.

  ‘Not good,’ I say, at length.

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘No,’ I snap, ‘you can’t. You have no idea, you never have. She’s furious with me about Helena, of course – I expected that – but that’s only half of it.’

  Francine stands up, ‘Evie, what’s happened? What did Joanna say to you?’

  I continue staring into the pram, a fist around my throat. ‘You tell me Francine – you tell me what’s going on with you and Dad. According to Joanna, your mother’s house isn’t the only reason – the real reason – you’ve gone back to Albières!’

  I know I’m too loud, that I sound fifteen again. Francine will now appease and retreat, as she’s always done. I give her no choice. I thought I could, I thought we could build something new, but there’s too much in the way.

  Francine sighs, shoves her hands into her pockets and asks quietly,

  ‘What did Joanna tell you?’

  ‘That you and Dad have split up. Apparently, Dad told her.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she says. ‘Joanna’s right. Things are…’

  ‘Don’t tell me – complicated?’

  Francine nods, looks down at her feet.

  Then I see her disquiet, hear her stumble for words. I cannot push further, and realise that after all I’ve no wish to do so. With slow and careful steps, I begin to backtrack, climbing down from my adolescent perch, into the moment, to the woman who only three days ago dropped everything to be with me and haul me further from the water’s edge.

  ‘Can I ask why?’ I say.

  Francine colours slightly, her fair skin, so like my own, uncomfortably smudged. My assumption may be correct, there may be someone else after all. I wait for the next piece of news, the next eruption that will blow my life further apart. But when it comes, and Francine stands by the window in the hotel lounge and tells me she’s had an affair with the man she’s been working with for ten years, there is no blast, no scattering of the known and sacred order of things, not even a breath of wind. It doesn’t even matter that much. My father is old and tired, he’s been old and tired all his life. Old, tired and, I suspect, still in love with Helena. Why else would he rush down here after all this time, when it’s normally hard to shift him from his own front door?

  ‘I see.’ I bite my lip. ‘And Dad knows? All of it?’

  Francine nods. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispers, ‘I never meant to hurt your father.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, ‘I understand.’

  ‘You do? I was sure that if you knew, all this would be gone, that would be the end of it.’

  I shake my head, ‘It’s a shock, yes, but in a strange way I can see how it might have happened. You’ve had to work so hard with us, always. It’s taken me almost a lifetime to realise that. So no, I don’t blame you and I don’t want to lose this either.’

  Francine sighs again, her eyes full. ‘Thank you,’ she says, and turns away. ‘I’ll leave you to it now – you’ll probably want to find Mark. But Evie,’ she turns to go, ‘for what it’s worth, it’s over – with Simon. I won’t be seeing him again apart from tying up the business. I’m going back to live in Albières.’

  I didn’t expect this. ‘But what will you do there? How will you manage?’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll finish clearing the house and then – well, we’ll see.’

  ‘But you’ll be alone. I won’t see you.’

  ‘It’s not so far away. And if you need anything, anything at all, I will always be there. You know that, don’t you?’

  I touch her arm, ‘I’m beginning to.’

  ‘And you will try and sort things out with Mark? He’s nowhere near as tough as he looks.’

  ‘We’ll be okay. Thank you for fetching him, for bringing him here. I wouldn’t have known where to start otherwise.’

  Francine strokes Edward’s head as he sleeps, then takes me by the shoulders and kisses me on both cheeks. ‘A bientôt, chérie. I’ve settled your bill here and paid for another three nights. Let me know if you need more. Let me know if you need anything.’

  I stand in the lounge by the window and watch her go. Another leaving, a different mother. I know she’s done her best for us: for me, for Joanna, for William. But it was always second best, it was never enough. I lean into the pram, pick Edward up and for all the wasted years of anger, cry softly into his hair.

  After Francine has left, I go back to my room. Edward’s feed is due, he needs a bath. Mark is lying on the bed, checking his phone. He looks up as the door opens and comes over to take the pram from me. Edward is yelling now. Without hesitation, Mark picks him up – has he ever done that before? Then I remember the days he came home to find me catatonic on the couch, too tired to move. Those times when he fed him and bathed him and sorted a meal for us both. Or the nights when sleep possessed me, with Edward’s cries a faint and distant nightmare, when Mark had walked the dark shift and still gone to work in the morning. Now I watch him, his huge hands incongruous, stroking Edward’s tiny back, rounded like a loaf of bread. I remember this tenderness on my own skin and the longing returns.

  When I pull a bottle from beneath the pram and offer to take Edward, Mark smiles again and tells me it’s okay, he’s got it. I sit on the edge of the bed, soothed by the simple scene before me, as I was in the pharmacy with Karim and Amena, as I was when Francine held me. A small hope, but enough. It will all be alright.

  When Edward has finished feeding, and settles into sleep, the spin of these past hours and days and weeks drops away and I lie down beside Mark. I shut out the clamour and the anguish: of Joanna and Helena and Francine, of the baby and all that has turned me to dust, and reach for him in the dark. This time he does not pull away.

  Later, as we lie in the dim glow from the street, Mark finally tells me the truth he’s been keeping: that we are broke, that he has no job in Yorkshire, that he’s spent these weeks scouring the country for work and we’re looking at repossession. Even then, somehow, I have to believe it will all be alright.

  Forty-Seven

  Francine returned to Albières on the first available flight. The house greeted her with cold indifference: pipes had frozen, the wood she and Simon had piled in the bakery to dry, still lay damp and useless. But there was no further sabotage, no more blue paint or broken windows. The following day she drove into town and bought two electric heaters – if this was now to be her home, there was much work to be done.

  Over the weeks that followed, Francine heard little from William, and even less from Joanna. She tried many times to speak to her, to explain away what happened with Simon, to be met with a string of stilted answers far removed from her usual endless chatter. At times she would even go silent and hang up, more like the early attempts to connect with Evie. Whether from shock, disgust, or simple loyalty to William,
Francine’s indiscretion had lost faith with Joanna. ‘You’ve broken his heart, Mum,’ she said, in tears. But Francine rubbed her forehead and replied, ‘No, Joanna, that happened a long time ago. Your father’s heart was never mine to break.’

  Francine feared too for the bond she and Evie had finally managed to build, despite the understanding reached in the hotel on Whitechapel, she was not convinced it would survive through time and distance. She decided to return to England for Christmas, this time travelling by train, giving herself the option to change her mind at Paris if the need arose. Even at St Pancras she sat a long while over coffee before crossing to Kings Cross for the train north.

  This trip she hoped might ease hostilities with Joanna. She saw it also as a last attempt at reconciliation with William but the reality served neither purpose. Staying with him at the house proved a stilted, uneasy time, her status reduced to that of a casual visitor. In truth, it had only ever been William’s house, as if she simply perched on the arm of his chair and was never allowed to sit down.

  At Andy’s request, they spent Christmas day at Joanna’s locked in faux festivities, decked out with all the trimmings and too much food. Joanna carefully avoided being alone with her, made a great show of attending to her father, and disappeared upstairs as they prepared to leave. Evie and Mark had sent their excuses and wisely stayed away.

  On Boxing Day, Francine packed the remainder of her things: a couple of suitcases, a crate of books and music, the altered but scarcely augmented collection she’d arrived with long ago, leaving William free to repossess his bottom drawer. She’d given him her youth and her support, he’d given her a home and a family. She had tried to put things right, to pick up and mend his damaged heart, but it was clear that most, if not all of it had failed. As far as she knew, there had been no magical reconciliation with Helena, the years would leave a pathway strewn with too much debris. But their reunion, her delicate condition, no doubt resonant with memories of the illness that wreaked so much pain in the past, proved a heady mixture even William could not ignore. Those ancient bridges were the ones he would choose to rebuild, if any, not these here, with her. Francine did not blame him, Helena had always been there, the ghost wife.