In Her Wake

by Amanda Jennings

  Next to him stood a young girl with a delicate gold cross around her neck. Her hair was scraped back so tightly it pulled painfully at her skin. Her face was rapt, tears pooled in her eyes as she stared at the statue perched in the hollow in the rock. The girl had her hands raised, palms facing outwards, tilted a little towards the sky. The divine love that he apparently repelled seemed to soak into her as if she were a sponge, saturating her, so much so he wondered whether she might actually pass out. The people around him murmured as one. Some chanted under their breath. Some whispered prayers and Hail Marys. There was the soft chatter of rosary beads passing through fervent fingers as the crowd swayed like a forest of saplings in a light wind.

  So many saplings in search of a miracle.

  This was what brought them to this place. This town. This pilgrim’s stop. The unending belief that each and every one of them was deserving of a miracle. He wanted to scream at them, shout until there was no breath left in his body.

  You are delusional! he wanted to shriek. There is no God listening to you! Don’t you understand that? There is no Virgin. There are no such things as miracles. You are buying a falsehood. Life is a bastard! A godless, barren bastard where cruel things happen that have no meaning, no purpose, happen for no reason at all.

  But instead of screaming Henry Campbell closed his eyes. He lowered his head and then he clasped his hands together and prayed to a god he didn’t believe in for the miracle they both so desperately needed.

  TWELVE

  We pull into a petrol station on the motorway and while David fills the car, I sit with my hands tight in my lap, pressing the side of my head hard against the window. All I can think about is whether I can continue without finding out the truth. I wish I could forget it. Wish I could rewind time and leave Henry’s words unread.

  David knocks on the glass and makes me jump. ‘Do you want anything?’ he mouths.

  I shake my head, then press it back against the window, this time forcing it harder against the cool glass until it begins to hurt. I wonder how hard I’d have to push to break it.

  When David returns he deposits a carrier bag at my feet. ‘You must be hungry.’

  I don’t say anything. How could he think I’d be interested in eating? He buckles his seatbelt and pulls on it twice to check it’s fastened. Then he checks mine. A double tug. Just to be on the safe side. I grit my teeth, grind the enamel.

  ‘It’s fastened,’ I say. ‘I heard the click.’

  ‘Better to be on the safe side.’

  ‘I fastened it,’ I say, digging my fingernails hard into my palms. ‘You don’t need to check.’

  I close my eyes and lean against the window. I am aware of him reaching into the backseat. Then something falls over me, a cover, it smells of him. His coat, I think.

  ‘There, there, my lovely thing. Try and sleep.’

  I pull the coat up to cover my face. Breathe in my breath. The car engine starts. And I breathe deeper as the oxygen level falls and the air trapped inside the coat gets warmer and damper. Then a sudden panic grabs me from nowhere. Hard and real, it overwhelms me. Something in the recess of my memory flares. Darkness. Hot, thin air. And fear. Fear grips me, squeezes harder and harder until its bite becomes unbearable.

  I throw off the coat. Sit up and reach forward. I stab frantically at the button to lower the window. As the cool air floods the car, I stick out my head and open my lungs as wide as they will go to draw the fresh air deep into me.

  ‘Bella? Are you OK?’ David is worried. His hand is on mine. He indicates and checks his rear-view mirror as if to pull over. ‘Bella?’

  I turn my head towards him and nod tightly. ‘I’m fine. Keep driving. I’m fine,’ I manage. Then I lean my head out of the window again. Although the panic has eased, I’m unable to shake off the heavy sense of foreboding that smothers me.

  David leans forward and switches on the radio. I try to block him out, focus on the world outside – on the trees and telephone wires of Oxfordshire, which morph into those of Berkshire then Surrey – as the jarring musical discord of JazzFM cuts through me like a knife.

  We near Guildford and my anxiety lights up again and spreads like wildfire. What am I supposed to do when we arrive home? Act like everything’s OK? That things are unaltered? That I haven’t just read a letter that suggests my life as I know it might well be a lie? That I’m simply someone whose mother died of a heart attack and whose father killed himself the day after we burned her to ash and bits of bone?

  We walk into the hallway of our neat and tidy mid-terrace house, furnished mostly from the Ikea catalogue. David bends to pick up the post and leafs through it.

  ‘Nothing interesting,’ he says, discarding the pile of torn envelopes on the console table. He looks at me. ‘God, you’re so pale. Please eat.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  He strokes my cheek with the backs of his fingers. ‘I’ll make you a sandwich.’

  I should cling to him as if he were a life raft in the sea. David has always been my rock, the person I lean on, the person who protects me. It has been like that since the very first day we met, when I finally ventured out of my room in the noisy, intimidating halls of residence, and crept, heart hammering, into a seat at the back of the lecture theatre. I can still remember how anxious I felt, how exposed, sitting alone amid the rows and rows of other students – each one of them so confident, laughing and joking, at ease in our brave new world.

  He walked into the room and his command was instant. The room hushed, only the sounds of papers shuffling and pen lids popping. The way he held himself was mesmerising. It was as if the lecture theatre had been plunged into darkness, leaving this man illuminated by a spotlight. When he spoke it was strong and direct, his voice like a blanket that wrapped me up, and when his eyes caught mine a flush of heat bloomed on the back of my neck and across my cheeks. I looked quickly away, but when I glanced back he was watching me. He later told me he knew right then that I was The One.

  ‘Emerald eyes are my Achilles’ heel,’ he said. ‘Yours called to me from the sea of faces.’

  Of course, I’d been too shy to smile back. I dropped my eyes, heart thumping, and fixed them on my paper. I focused on his voice, lilting yet authoritative, not a stutter or hesitation. Looking back I wonder how much of it was sexual attraction and how much of it was needing someone to replace my mother, to take control of me, something subconscious, conditioned within me, that was drawn to him. As I listened to him talk, the tension eased from my muscles. I picked up my pen and watched my hand translate his words into writing, my pen moving up and down and around to form letters, catching his voice and pinning it down. I would reread these notes a dozen times when I returned to my room, my body tingling with each read-through.

  At the end of the lecture I gathered my files and waited until the others had bustled out. I was the last to leave the lecture hall and as I walked towards the door, he called to me.

  ‘Young lady?’

  I stopped and turned, my heart racing.

  ‘I know this great little café,’ he said. ‘It’s quiet and the coffee is fresh and delicious. And, the cake, well, the cake is to die for. Will you join me?’

  And with that simple invitation he took the baton from Elaine. I was safe. But now, back in our home, it feels like a barrier has been thrown up between us. It encircles me completely. Seals me off from him. I should feel lost and vulnerable but I don’t. I just feel numb. Detached from everything I know.

  Everything you thought you knew.

  Yes, everything I thought I knew. I feel detached from everything.

  THIRTEEN

  For a few days I try to negotiate my life as normal. I move from breakfast to work to supper to bed in what amounts to a catatonic daze. David tries to help. He holds me, runs baths, makes neatly packaged lunches from a balanced range of food groups. He drives me to work and picks me up, breaking the silence in the car with whimsical anecdotes intended to cheer me. I should talk
to him. I know that. None of this is his fault. But it’s hard. Inside my head is bedlam, filled with conflicting memories, emotions and questions.

  ‘Jeffrey asked after you,’ David says as we eat supper. ‘Barbara has offered to help in any way she can. She’s really rather nice, you know. The two of you have more in common than you realise. She’d be a good friend to you if you gave her more than half a chance. You mustn’t shut…’

  As I stare at him the words he is speaking fade away and are replaced by a kind of white noise. And suddenly, as if a blindfold has been removed, I am filled with the utter conviction that Henry Campbell’s letter contains the truth. I grip hold of the table, my head swims. I look at David. His face has become indistinct, like it’s been covered over with a layer of thin gauze. I squint to help me focus and as I do the gauze falls away, but it’s not my husband who’s revealed. It’s a new person. A person I don’t know. His face is contorted with concern. His greying hair is thin on top. His teeth, a little yellowed, are neat and straight. This man is a stranger. Not a stranger to a woman called Bella, a woman who shares his life and his bed, but a stranger to me, the person partially revealed in Henry’s final words.

  I drop my head.

  The man – David – reaches across the table and rubs my arm.

  No, not my arm. Bella’s arm.

  My head pounds.

  ‘I need some time away.’

  He frowns. ‘Away? Goodness, Bella, I can’t take a holiday now. It’s the middle of term and I’ve just had time off for the funeral.’ He hesitates, perhaps noticing the rigid set of my mouth, my crossed arms, the tears forming in my eyes. ‘It might be possible to take a few days next month. I’m sure Jeffrey will understand. These are exceptional circumstances. He knows how hard you’re taking this. I don’t blame you, of course, nothing can prepare you for losing both your parents like this.’

  Losing both your parents.

  No, David, you’re right. Nothing could have prepared me for that.

  I blink quickly, trying to disperse my pooling tears before they fall. ‘I need to be on my own for a while.’

  ‘On your own?’

  I nod.

  ‘No,’ he says firmly. He closes his fingers around my arm. ‘You need me. You know you do; you won’t cope alone.’

  I pull away from his grip. ‘I need some time to sort my head out.’

  ‘No, I can’t let you,’ he says. ‘I won’t let you.’

  Then from nowhere I feel a sharp stab of anger. Anger at this man who wants to control his wife all the time. Anger at Henry. At Elaine. At all of them.

  I look madly around the room and catch sight of them on the mantelpiece.

  I walk over and take hold of the photograph. It was taken one Christmas Day a few years ago. Elaine and Henry sit next to each other on the sofa. Her hair frames her face, his hand rests lightly on her knee. I look at her face, her smile; it’s just for me. I remember telling her to smile.

  ‘Smile, Mum. Say cheese!’

  And she did.

  And then the anger overwhelms me. I bring the frame down hard on the edge of the mantelpiece. The glass shatters. My fingers pulls at a shard of glass that is stuck in the photo frame. Tears course my cheeks. David is shouting at me to stop. I pull the jagged piece of glass out and rake it over Elaine’s face, tearing at the smile until it begins to disappear.

  David grabs my hands. ‘Stop it, Bella! For God’s sake, what’s got into you.’

  He squeezes my hand hard. The glass is trapped and begins to cut into me. He presses harder still. I look down and watch a trail of blood run from my closed fist down my wrist. David must see it too because his grip loosens. I open my hand and the blood-smeared piece of glass falls to the ground.

  ‘Oh, Bella,’ he says softly. He takes his handkerchief from his back pocket and presses the folded cotton against the cut. Blood soaks the white fabric like an ink blot. ‘Look what you’ve done, you foolish girl.’

  ‘I need some time away,’ I say, holding my hand up to my chest.

  He sighs heavily, his displeasure clear. He drops my hand with a petulant tut. ‘If that’s what you want, but you’re making a mistake.’

  ‘And you’ll talk to Jeffrey?’

  ‘He won’t be happy at all.’

  I know Jeffrey won’t mind. I only got the job in the university library because of how ‘terribly fond’ of David he is. The two of them arranged everything. I didn’t even have to have an interview.

  ‘Great to have you on board,’ Jeffrey had said, when he popped in to the library on my first day. ‘I’m am terribly fond of David.’

  ‘Where are you even going, for God’s sake?’ David says, his irritation clear.

  The cut on my hand has begun to throb. ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  I get up and start moving towards the stairs.

  ‘And for how long? A few days?’

  I don’t answer.

  He runs up behind me and grabs my arm, holds on so hard I can’t pull away from him. ‘Talk to me, Bella. You have to talk to me. I can help if you tell me what’s going on inside your head.’

  And for a split second I think maybe I should tell him. I imagine his arms encircling me, holding me tightly. Imagine him taking charge. He would tell me Henry is lying. He would convince me it was all made up, the work of a madman with an unknown agenda. He would tell me I am still Bella and that Bella’s life is my life. And I would pretend to be her. I would live in her house and do her work and live with her husband.

  But I know it won’t work. There would always be that gnawing suspicion that somewhere out there is the real me, waiting to be found.

  I force myself to look at David as he softens in fresh tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I have to go.’

  FOURTEEN

  The name of the imaginary friend I had growing up was Tori.

  In the curious world of my childhood – of locked and bolted doors, of drawn curtains, of reclusive parents and no freedom – she was every one of my absent, wished-for friends rolled into one. I can’t remember the time she first came to play. She was just always there, as far back as I can remember, and she was amazing. In many ways she was better than a real friend; well, better than any friend I could have had in real life, that’s for sure. Tori was beautiful, with blonde curly hair and perfect features. She was brave and brilliant, fun and adventurous, and it was she who allowed me to be mischievous, she who gave me the guts to climb trees, to hide from my mother, to light the bonfire behind the shed with dry sticks and stolen matches. It was Tori who laughed as the first flames took hold. She who squealed with delight as I panicked and shouted as the fire licked at the timber shed, threatening to burn it to the ground.

  ‘What a stupid thing to do, Bella! What on earth possessed you to be so idiotic, so bloody irresponsible?’ my mother demanded after she’d managed to put out the fire by shovelling earth on it and stamping the determined sparks out as if she were dancing.

  ‘It was Tori,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said. ‘Having a friend who doesn’t exist is one thing. Blaming this figment of your imagination for lighting fires and eating biscuits between meals is a totally different thing all together. And yes, don’t look at me like that; I know it’s you eating the biscuits. I’m not stupid.’

  When we were alone Tori apologised.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I said. ‘It was me who lit the match.’

  I haven’t spoken to Tori since I left The Old Vicarage to go to university. Leaving her behind was a difficult; she was such an integral part of me. But I was determined that my departure from the house should be the start of my new life, my independence, and Tori didn’t seem to have a place outside those towering brick walls. But sitting on my bed in my adult home, holding Henry’s letter, I am like an alcoholic staring at a bottle of vodka; I need her.

  What harm will it do? her voice says then.

  I don’t say anything.

  I m
ean, things are pretty shit, right? And you can’t talk to David, so you might as well talk to me. You can send me away again afterwards. I won’t hold it against you.

  I smile.

  So what’s up?

  ‘You don’t know?’

  Of course I know – I know everything you know – but I thought I’d ask anyway. Give me the newspaper article. I’d like to read it again. It’s mad. I can’t believe it.

  ‘I know. God, it’s weird I’m talking to you, but it’s good to have you back.’

  Stop being soft and give me the bloody article.

  Tori clears her throat and takes hold of the yellowed piece of newspaper with both hands. She gives it a quick shake as if she’s a newsreader shuffling notes. The voice that comes out of her is like a proper 1950s television announcer’s, regal, a bit nasal, with all the vowels pinched together.

  Holiday family is devastated by lost child, she reads, her eyes wide as saucers to convey the drama perfectly as she elongates the word ‘devastated’. A young couple are begging—

  Tori stops and stares hard at me. They are literally begging, she says in her normal voice, then looks back at the article and continues in her staged voice.

  —for clues as to the whereabouts of their daughter, who is aged three. Alice and Mark Tremayne—

  She stops again, musing. Nice names. Alice and Mark. Nicer than Elaine and Henry, I think.

  —are both from St Ives in Cornwall—

  I’ve always wanted to go to Cornwall, you know.