I nursed Granny as kindly and patiently as I could, and somewhere amongst the spoonfuls of warm broth I held to her lips and the cool flannels I used to soothe her forehead, the two of us achieved a kind of peace. I made her as comfortable as I could and did my best to alleviate her loneliness and fear. I tried to talk to her. I wanted to forge a bond with her, but she was so frail it seemed unkind to speak of anything of consequence. The past had been painful for us both and I didn’t want to dredge up bad memories in her last days. So I chatted instead of mundane things: the weather, the buildings they were knocking down in the city centre, the flowers I’d picked from the allotment and put in a vase on the window ledge. Granny blinked at me through milky, pale blue eyes. I couldn’t be sure if she heard me or not, or if she understood. Often, she drifted off to sleep while I was talking; she rarely said a word to me, pointing if she wanted me to pass something to her. Yet she watched me and I sensed that she was glad I was there.
One afternoon, she asked for a drink of ginger wine.
‘We don’t have any, I’m afraid,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t even know you liked it. Shall I pour you a glass of sherry instead?’
‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘I have a craving for ginger wine.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Not to worry, Granny. I’ll go out and get you some.’
I went next door and asked the neighbour, Mrs Botham, to sit with my grandmother while I was out and Mrs Botham wiped her hands on her apron and said it would be no bother at all.
I hurried down to the Black Horse. The landlord knew my father and by the time we’d exchanged a few words and I’d hastened back to the house, my grandmother had slipped away.
‘She went ever so peacefully,’ Mrs Botham said. Her eyes were puffy and her nostrils were red. ‘One minute she was telling me how good you’d been with her and the next she was gone.’
‘I should have been with her,’ I said.
‘I reckon she sent you out on purpose because she knew her time had come and wanted to spare you the ordeal,’ said Mrs Botham. She took hold of my hand and squeezed it. ‘Your granny was right proud of you, Amy. She might not have said it to your face, but she was.’
I thought it was kind of her to say that, but I didn’t really believe her.
After Granny’s funeral, I found myself lonelier than ever, drifting. My father hardly spoke to me. His routine had not changed in all the years I’d been away: he worked, he slept, he saw to his birds. And the pigeons still cooed in their loft out the back, calling to him. I looked through the kitchen window while I was washing the dishes and saw him cradling his favourite up to his cheek, stroking the soft feathers on the back of its head with his knuckle, his lips moving close as he whispered endearments through the blue wisps of his cigarette smoke. I bit back my hurt as I wondered, as I had done many times before, what it was about me that made it impossible for my father to treat me with a fraction of the tenderness he showed to his birds. The same thing, I supposed, that had driven my mother to leave me without a word of explanation, without a backwards glance. I took the bottle of ginger wine from the pantry shelf, and poured myself a drink.
I wrote to Alain and Julia asking if I could return to them. Julia wrote back to say that Alain’s old aunt Audrine had moved in to help with Viviane, in my absence. ‘It’s clear that she was terribly lonely before she came to us, so I can’t ask her to leave,’ Julia wrote. ‘I’m so sorry, dear Amy, but we’ll do everything we can to help you find another job.’ And they did. They put me in touch with an old friend of theirs, the manager of St Theresa’s, a children’s home on the other side of Sheffield. Bridget Adams was looking for a level-headed young woman to work as a matron to the younger children. It was a live-in position. I wrote a letter of application enclosing a reference written by Alain, and received one by return informing me I had been appointed to the post. It would be helpful if I could take up the role at the earliest opportunity.
That evening I made my father liver and onions for his tea before he went off to work the night shift at the foundry. When he’d finished eating, I cleared away his plate and told him I would be moving out. His surprise caught me offguard.
‘I thought you’d be stopping awhile,’ he said. He took his cigarettes out of his waistcoat pocket and tapped one from the packet, avoiding my eye.
‘If you need me, Dad, if you want me to stay, then I will,’ I said.
He put the cigarette between his lips, and I passed him the matchbox. A memory assaulted me: he and I sorting cigarette cards after we’d moved into Granny’s house. We were arranging the cards on a board that Dad would eventually frame and hang on the wall of the bedroom we shared, me sleeping in the bed at night, him during the day. I remembered us sitting together, head to head, at the kitchen table, close to the stove where it was warmest. I recalled the smell of his hair oil and the warmth of his body, the myriad tiny burn scabs on his forearms beneath the covering of black hairs, the feel of the cards, stiff between my fingers, each one a mini-masterpiece.
‘Which one’s your favourite, Birdie?’ he had asked. He always used to call me ‘Birdie’.
‘That one!’ I pointed to Loretta Young. I grinned and swung my legs beneath the table.
‘That’s my favourite too,’ my father had replied, bumping his shoulder companionably against mine, and I’d been so proud that we shared the same opinion.
Now he struck the match, narrowing his eyes as he drew the flame to the end of the cigarette.
‘What about the dog?’ he asked, without looking at me. ‘I don’t have the time for her. What’ll happen to her?’
‘I’ll take her with me,’ I said, ‘they said that I could.’
He said: ‘Right.’
I tried once more, for the sake of the memory, to restore the connection between us. ‘I don’t want you to be lonely here on your own, Dad, after I’ve left. I’ll be able to pop back at weekends. I can still do your washing and shopping if you’d like me to.’
‘There’ll be no need for that,’ my father said. ‘I can manage.’ And he flicked the match into the sink, stood up and went outside, through the back door into the yard. I heard him calling to the pigeons. ‘Come on, my beauties, where are you? Where are you, eh?’
I watched him for a moment, but my eyes were stinging. I went upstairs to pack.
CHAPTER THREE
I HAD BEEN at the children’s home for four months and the summer of 1961 was turning into autumn. My work was often exhausting and the hours were long. The home was under-staffed and under-funded. It relied on charitable donations for everything other than the absolute basics, and the children were dressed in hand-me-downs and had few toys and no books. The staff did their best with what they had. I was terribly fond of the children in my care; some of them, poor dears, had been through so much in their lives already. Although we had very little to work with, we still managed to have fun. We were forever organizing games of rounders or French cricket, activities of which the children never seemed to tire. It was so different to how my life had been when I worked for the Laurents – I’d never had to deal with nits, or worms, or scabies before, let alone malnourished children, children who had had polio or rickets, children who had never learned to eat with a knife and fork. It was different and sometimes it was very difficult, but I loved the work. I loved the small progresses that were made every day. There was nothing more rewarding than the moment when a traumatized child finally held her hand out to me, or when a teenager beaten black and blue by his stepfather gave a belly laugh for the first time.
I still missed the Laurents dreadfully, but I exchanged letters with Julia every week and Viviane always wrote a few lines for me too, while Alain sometimes enclosed a postcard. The three of them had, by that time, moved from the beach house at Les Aubépines back to the Paris apartment where they always spent the winter months. I knew the family, their homes and their routines so very well that it was easy for me to imagine what they were doing, which restaurants they wer
e frequenting, how they were spending their days. They had invited me to come for Christmas, but I wanted to help give the children in the home the best Christmas possible so we’d agreed, instead, that I would fly out to Paris in the New Year when I had arranged a few days off.
I was really looking forward to my holiday, saving up for my plane ticket and planning the gifts I would give to Julia and Alain and the places I would go to with Viviane – the parks and museums, the markets at the side of the Seine, her favourite cafés. I imagined the two of us walking together as we used to, she swinging my hand in her mittened one, our breaths cloudy in the freezing air and beautiful Paris with its long avenues, its elegant, blond stonework, the bridge where we liked to stand and watch the boats chugging along the river with Notre Dame behind us, the smell of coffee and frying crêpe batter, the tall houses with their curlicued balconies, the pretty lights in the shops, the music and the seasonal decorations: I could hardly wait.
Then the letter came.
I recognized Julia’s handwriting, but was distracted that morning because the education inspector was due to visit St Theresa’s and I was anxious that everything should be just right. It didn’t register with me that the letter was inside an ordinary envelope and not written, as all the others had been, on blue airmail paper. I didn’t notice the British stamp. I simply tore the envelope open and took out the single sheet of paper folded inside. The writing, normally bold and confident, was spidery and faint. I took a deep breath, and I read:
Dear Amy,
I don’t know how to begin to write this letter to you because I know it will hurt you. I don’t want to do that, but I have to tell you here and now because there’s no other way.
Alain is dead.
How can he be gone? How can Alain be gone and the world still keep turning? You know he was my love, my life, my reason for living. He was my everything.
But Amy, he is gone.
I have no husband. Viviane has no father. There is no money, no choice but to return to England, to my parents’ old cottage in Blackwater, the place where I grew up. And that’s where we are, Amy, here in Somerset, in limbo. We are falling apart. I need you, Viviane needs you. I am struggling to cope with my own grief, I cannot cope with hers as well.
You know us better than anyone. Please come back to us. Please come and help us. We cannot manage without you.
Yours always, in love and sorrow,
Julia
Bridget, the manageress of the children’s home, was shocked to hear of Alain’s death, but could not have been more kind. She told me that of course I must go to Julia and Viviane, at once. She kissed me and assured me that she, unlike Julia, would manage without me. I promised to return one day. I said goodbye to the children, although it was terribly hard, and explained why I had to go. The little ones cried when they heard that the dog, Bess, would be leaving with me and I had to promise that I wouldn’t let her forget them. And then I packed my bag and I left, again. I felt like a leaf being blown about by the wind, incapable of taking charge of my destiny, but reacting, all the time, to circumstance, running from one crisis to another.
After a seemingly endless journey, I was the only person who alighted the train at Blackwater, a small remote stop – the end of the line. I had been travelling for most of the day with Bess for company and I was bone tired, overwhelmed by the need to be with Julia and Viviane, to look after them and help them, and an equally strong fear of how I would find them and how they would be.
I was sad too, for myself, in my own right. I had loved Alain for the man that he was, a campaigning journalist with a heart the size of the sun whose every working moment was driven by integrity, and the search for truth and justice. My sorrow weighed me down, adding to the burden of regret I’d felt after my grandmother’s death.
I stepped off the train, heaving my bag behind me. The train driver walked past me, bade me goodnight and disappeared into the darkness. I followed him down the platform lit only by a single, dim yellow lamp, and out of a gate on to a lane that only went one way. It was eerily quiet and the isolation of the place was unsettling. There was something in the atmosphere that I did not recognize at first – a heavy silence, a chill in the air. I walked along the lane, spooked by the hooting of an owl hunting in the woodland beyond, and my own footsteps, Bess walking close to my heel.
After a short while, the lane rose sharply uphill before opening out on to another road and here the temperature dropped a couple of degrees. It was then I recognized what had been causing the strange coldness, the muffling quiet. I found myself standing on a dam that crossed one end of a long, wide lake – a reservoir. The lake was stretched before me, dark and immense, a vaporous mist floating like steam above its surface. I could not see the moon as it was hidden by clouds, but its silvery brightness permeated the mist and the water beneath it – and all of it together, the light in the darkness and the smell of the water, the space … made me feel odd, as if I were in a dream. As if I were not myself, but somebody else altogether.
CHAPTER FOUR
I FOLLOWED JULIA’S directions and walked uphill, past a grand house set behind walls and gates, taking the road that led up to the village, before turning into the lane where she had lived, as a child, and where she now lived again. The clouds had uncovered the moon and I could clearly see Reservoir Cottage, one of a pair of semi-detached houses standing alone on a rise of land. Behind, in the valley, the moonlight shimmered on the water and upon the ghostly mist, and I had a strong sensation that the lake was calling to me. My eyes were drawn to it and it was hard to look away. I gazed at it for a moment longer, then looked back to the cottage.
It was the mirror image of its adjoining neighbour with a gable over the top front window and a garage to one side. The front garden was overgrown and unkempt. I pushed open a small wooden gate almost hidden beneath the fingery black fronds of an overhanging yew and walked down the path. Logs were stacked haphazardly by the garage, and ivy crept over the path and the walls, up the trunks of the trees. Bess held back, reluctant to approach the house. She growled anxiously.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I told her, ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of here.’
I knocked at the door. When nobody came to let me in, I turned the handle and pushed the door open. A light bulb swung slowly on the end of a wire beneath a yellowing lampshade, casting shadows over a narrow wooden staircase with lines of paint on either side and a bare strip in the centre of each step where a carpet had once lain. I could hear a clock ticking somewhere in the house, but apart from that it was silent.
‘Hello!’ I called. ‘Is anyone there?’
There was movement in a room to my left; a door creaked open and Viviane emerged from the shadows. She was pale and thin, the spirit gone from her, but the moment I saw her dear face, my heart leaped. She ran to me, her arms outstretched like a baby’s, tears spilling from her eyes.
‘Oh Vivi!’ I whispered. ‘Oh my darling!’
I held the child in my arms, rocking her against me, holding her as tightly as I could. She was taller than she’d been the last time I saw her, and her hair had been cut into a bob, which made her seem older, but she was still the same, still my own, dear Viviane, my beloved girl. We clung on to one another.
‘You came back,’ she sobbed.
‘Oh sweetheart, of course I came! I came as soon as I found out what had happened. My poor girl, you poor, dear thing.’
I held on to Viviane, held her close and smoothed her hair and the side of her face, and I breathed in the scent of her while her tears soaked into my coat. I whispered, ‘Shhh,’ and, ‘There, there,’ and, ‘It’s all right, darling, I’m here now. I’m here,’ until her crying subsided. Then I dried her cheeks with my handkerchief and kissed her face. Eventually she calmed enough to give me a brave little smile. The smile grew stronger when I told her that Bess would be part of the family now too. There was no sign of Julia. By then, I had been inside the house for a good five minutes and Vivi had been
crying all that time, yet her mother had not come looking for her.
‘Where is Mummy, sweetheart?’ I asked. ‘Is she sleeping?’
Viviane wound the handkerchief around her fingers. ‘No, she’s in the back room.’
‘What about your great-aunt Audrine?’ I asked. ‘Where is she?’
‘She didn’t want to come to England. We left her behind in France.’
‘Oh. OK. Will you take me to see Mummy?’
Viviane nodded.
I followed her down the hallway and into a narrow, dark room, lit only by the dull glow of an old-fashioned standard lamp. Julia was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, rocking it slowly backwards and forwards, the runners grating a mournful rhythm on the floorboards. A blanket was wrapped over her knees and a shawl around her shoulders. Her face was strangely shadowed, but expressionless; so still it might have been made of stone. Bundled on her knees was Alain’s favourite sweater, the cream cotton Fair Isle he always wore draped over his shoulders. Her walking stick lay on the floor beside her.
Viviane hesitated at the doorway, holding on to Bess’s collar. I walked slowly towards Julia. She did not look up to me. She did not stop rocking. She gave no indication that she knew I was there. I stood in front of her and then I crouched down so that my eyes were on a level with hers. She finally looked at me and the sadness I saw in her face was so all-encompassing that I had to fight back my own, reciprocal tears.
I took her hand.
‘Julia, dear Julia,’ I said softly. ‘I’m here now to help. I’m here for as long as you want me to be here.’
Julia held on to my hand, as if there were nothing else left in the world that she could hold, as if every other hand she had tried to hold had let her go.
The Secret by the Lake Page 2
