by Lucy Dawson
I go and grab several boxes and set to work, only stopping to put a plaster on my thumb, which won’t stop bleeding. I studiously avoid opening her diary, which I find in her underwear drawer. I cry when I find a picture of Michael and her I don’t even remember taking. She is kissing his cheek and he is laughing in delight. It’s in a tacky china frame with a Forever Friends bear holding either end of a moulded banner, which says ‘My Daddy’. I pack it carefully – and then I find the Timothy shoebox at the bottom of her chest of drawers. There are several clippings from faded newspapers, one is a round-up of ‘bright young things’ set to conquer the screen and stage; Timothy’s handsome teenage face beams back at me in among a group of other youngsters, some of whom look quite familiar too. I don’t read the letters he sent her, carefully preserved in their envelopes; I don’t disturb the Polaroid of my daughter lying on a bed apparently shrieking with laughter, and Timothy Vaughan’s face, smiling, half in, half out of the shot, obviously taking the picture. There are some leather, plaited bracelets, stiff and faded with age – and a small, tarnished ring in a carefully folded piece of loo roll – two hands holding a heart in the centre. The only thing I pick up are the tarot cards, held together with a hairband, as my heart sinks. She bought another pack then. I knew she would.
Further investigation reveals a candle magic colour chart I’ve not seen before, which she has handwritten and painted. It’s at least twenty coloured squares and carefully written descriptions of which emotion corresponds with which candle colour. There is also a lighter, a half burnt red candle (passion, sex, lust, vitality, courage, according to the chart; God help me) upon which she has carved some sort of symbols. It has also been decorated elaborately with rose thorns and reeks of some heavy, sickly cheap perfume. When I lift my fingers to my nose, I realise I have a residue all over my hands. I sit back on my heels in shock at the thought of her sitting up here quietly burning candles with me none the wiser. This bit of the house is timber framed – it would go up in a heartbeat.
I throw the candle back in the box and firmly wipe my hands on my apron. I’ll have to think of a way of tackling this with her, without her realising I’ve found it. It’s so incredibly dangerous, the poor, foolish girl.
Getting stiffly to my feet, I go to the edge of the room by the window and peel away the carpet – exposing the bare boards – pinning it down with my knees so it doesn’t flap back, then gingerly ease my fingernails round the edge of the largest board before lifting it away in one clean motion, yelping as it also pulls the plaster from my thumb.
Oh Lord – and there it is. A new Ouija board and planchette. I want to cry with frustration as I look at the board and the ornate lettering, evidence of the cemetery Izzie carries around in her heart. Every time I think she’s getting better and improving I am reminded that what I want for my daughter remains so hopelessly out of her reach. And now Timothy bloody Vaughan is going to make it all a thousand times worse, swanning back into the picture with everything Izzie will never have, putting his daughter to bed in her room.
I am suddenly so angry that I shove the board back, release the carpet by standing up, and march over to the Timothy box. Pulling out the red candle, my hands are shaking as I light it and red wax begins to pool at the top of the stick. I watch, mesmerised by the flame while the rain continues to hammer on the skylight. The sound is relentless but strangely soothing in the way that being undercover in a storm often is. I start to feel almost dreamlike as the wax begins to overflow. I could drop this candle now. It could all be a horrible accident. The whole place could go up. God knows I’ve thought about doing it time and time again over the years – but we’re going to complete any moment now. It would be the Vaughans’ heap of smouldering timbers. Their problem – and they would not be able to live here. Curse you, Antony, for your meddling. Curse all of the insufferable Vaughans. I close my eyes and swallow, the candle wavering in my hands.
But of course – I don’t drop it. I blow the flame out viciously and the hot wax splatters all over the tree and on one of the birds on the wall behind me, like little drops of blood. I smile grimly, but then I remember that Rosie has done nothing wrong and I am a grown woman.
I swallow, feeling ashamed of myself and put the candle on the bedpost so that I can step forward and start to scratch the already hardening wax from a bleeding wing with my fingernail. I’ve hardly started when I hear a knock at the door and jump in panic. The men are here and I’m not even half done. I forget about the candle and the Ouija board, and run down to let them in.
Somehow they manage to get everything – bar the last bits that I am taking myself – loaded into the van that is making one drop off at the new house. The remainder is to be delivered to the storage unit, because it’s too good to chuck out, but there’s no room for it. I take the phone call that confirms we have completed, the funds have transferred successfully and Fox Cottage is no longer mine.
It is done. So small a moment for such a big change. Anticlimactic really.
As I hang up in the echoey kitchen, only just remembering to unplug the phone from the wall, I am wrapping the cable tightly around the handset when I hear a voice within the house: ‘Hello? Is anyone here?’
Susannah Vaughan. I stiffen. The removal men must have left the door open – but she’s let herself in? Surely not? The bloody cheek!
I shove the phone down and walk quickly through to find her standing in the empty small sitting room, looking around her, handbag tucked under her arm. She’s wearing a black fedora, for God’s sake, a cropped to the waist and fitted tweed jacket – multicoloured, black and white threads with piped edges – a huge chunky necklace around her throat, narrow crepe black trousers encasing her long, too thin legs and scarlet heels. I immediately feel even more matronly and tattier than usual. There is a certain set of women who live in Shropshire and work in London, even internationally, as barristers, surgeons, creative consultants – whatever that is – and perfume designers… one owns a private members club, I think. Susannah flies with this flock of gilded birds. I do not. My only consolation is that I suspect she looks ghastly out of clothes. Like a collection of coat hangers twisted into limbs.
‘Eve.’ She gives me a cool nod of the head. ‘How nice that our paths are crossing again.’
I don’t bother to say hello. We’re long past that. ‘I’m as delighted as you are.’
She shrugs. ‘It is what it is. We’re due to meet the agent here to collect the keys, but perhaps you’d prefer to hand them over to me directly?’
‘I think I’m only supposed to give them to the agent or the owner, which I believe is your daughter-in-law, Claire?’
‘Oh, I think you know who I am,’ she says softly. ‘It’s not like handing them over to someone off the street now, is it?’
‘Nonetheless.’
She fixes me with those piercing blue, cold eyes of hers and says nothing for a moment before smiling suddenly. ‘How is Isobel?’ She asks as if we are sitting down to tea and not stood opposite each other in a draughty, dusty and empty room that was mine moments ago and to all intents and purposes is now hers. This room has always felt oppressive – it’s the low ceiling – right now, the atmosphere is unbearable.
‘She’s fine, thank you,’ I lie. ‘At the cinema with a friend.’
‘Adam Owen?’ Susannah says instantly.
My muscles tense defensively and I don’t answer. I don’t want to. It’s none of her business.
Susannah doesn’t pursue it. ‘Claire should be here any minute. She stopped at the shop to get some bin bags. We forgot them and she wants to have a really good clean!’
I don’t rise. ‘Are you sure you’re dressed for it?’
She laughs dismissively. ‘Oh I shan’t be helping. I’m going to head home and help Tony look after Rosie while Claire and Timothy co-ordinate the removals. It’s you I’ve come to see. Now Eve, Isobel does know that Timothy is moving in here today, I take it? Do we need to prepare for any unpleasant s
cenes?’
I flush hotly and lie easily. ‘Of course she knows. It was a teenage romance, Susannah. That’s all.’
‘It was a little more than that, wasn’t it?’ Susannah looks at me idly from under the brim of her ridiculous hat.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
Susannah pretends to hesitate, as if she’s not sure about something, and I’m immediately on alert. She’s never made an uncalculated move in her life. ‘Oh dear,’ she says eventually. ‘I did wonder as much. She never told you, did she?’
Everything is silent and I realise the rain has finally stopped. I refuse to give Susannah the satisfaction of asking her to tell me what she’s talking about, when I can see she’s going to do it anyway.
‘Well now, there was the pregnancy,’ she says. ‘Isobel came to me after Timothy left for university. She didn’t know what to do. I think perhaps she saw me as an ally. Oh don’t look like that, Eve! Would you have ever told your mother such a thing? I certainly wouldn’t! It’s not a personal affront to you! Girls just don’t!’
‘You’re lying.’ I gasp. ‘I know everything about my girl!’
‘No, you don’t – and she’s a grown woman,’ she says calmly.
‘What did you do?’ My world is falling away. ‘What did you tell her to do?’
‘I didn’t tell her to do anything!’ retorts Susannah. ‘I organised what she asked me to organise and I went with her to make sure it was safe.’
I cannot catch my breath – everything is crashing down around me, the walls I have built around us, to protect Izzie. ‘You took her for an abortion? Where was I? I would have noticed!’
Susannah inclines her head to one side. ‘You’ll remember that week of work experience I arranged for her at my chambers, that September? When I was still trying hard to be a good friend by supporting and helping you, and wasn’t entirely sure you were sleeping with my husband? In fact I pushed away my doubts because I didn’t believe anyone could be that ungrateful or callous as to repay me so heinously?’ She smiles brightly. ‘Remember that, Eve?’
‘Yes. I remember.’ Of course I do. I loathed letting Izzie get into the car with Susannah every morning to be driven into Shrewsbury, but how could I stop my daughter from seeing if she could cope with an office job? How could I openly reject Susannah’s suffocating kindness without arousing more suspicion?
I regret it all.
‘Well, on the first of those days we went to Birmingham, where one of my friends offers obstetric care. She has a very nice private practice there. She confirmed Isobel was indeed ten weeks pregnant. On the Wednesday we went to a clinic in Chester. It was a simple procedure: a pill. We went back on the Friday for another one, and that was it.’
That was it.
My eyes fill with tears. Isobel must have been so frightened. How has she never told me? Did she think I would be angry with her? How has she carried this alone, all of this time?
‘You should have told me, Susannah. From one mother to another – regardless of anything else you thought or knew was going on – you should have told me.’ I can barely get the words out.
‘I’m sorry, but I disagree,’ she says smoothly. ‘She asked for my help; she was seventeen and legally entitled to make her own decision. For whatever reason, she didn’t want to tell you, so I helped her. It had nothing to do with what was “going on” with you and Antony.’ She shrugs. ‘Izzie is, in some ways, far more capable than you give her credit for. You really must allow her to grow up, Eve. All of the children experienced the same trauma that Christmas – and while I appreciate Isobel was grieving for her father at the time, the boys have coped more than adequately, it doesn’t define them at all. They were shot at, they weren’t shot, per se.’
My mouth falls open. Shot per se. She just actually said that out loud? ‘Our children were shot. Just shot – no per se, no conditions. It was terrifying and I say that as an adult.’
‘My God, woman!’ she raises her voice in exasperation. ‘You are the only person still banging on about what happened! Do you not understand that? You make it worse for Isobel when you do this!’
‘You’re a lawyer!’ I shout back. ‘How can you not empathise with the kids or at least acknowledge what happened was wrong?’
‘Of course it was wrong! But yes, I’ve seen far, far worse things happen to people. How does one cope with trauma? You move on, you don’t let what happened have any power over you any more!’
‘What a noble sentiment.’ I am now shaking. ‘Except sometimes you don’t actually have a choice. A man shouts or a child screams suddenly in a crowded shopping centre, you just panic – you don’t stop and intellectualise what’s happening to you. Where does your “no power” argument come into that? How can you have taken someone as vulnerable as Isobel to have an abortion, without telling me?’
‘Look – you have made Isobel into the person she now is by keeping her wings clipped. Yes, in some ways she’s a little girl trapped in an adult body… to say she’s socially awkward doesn’t begin to cover it – but if you let her, she’d grow up. I saw a young woman determinedly taking control over her own future. It’s unkind of you to keep her in this box.’ Susannah has calmed her voice back down, regained control. ‘It’s actually got a name, too: Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, or fabricated or induced illness. It’s where a parent or carer – most often a biological mother – exaggerates or causes symptoms of illness in their child. You’re aware you do that, surely?’
I hear the shriek of pure rage that issues from my mouth seconds before I step forward and slap her smartly about the face.
She takes it with barely a flinch and eyes me challengingly. ‘I suspect when you’ve had time to think about what I’ve said, you’ll accept that I’m right.’
‘You had no right!’ Bizarrely, actually striking her makes me stagger backwards as if I’m the one physically wounded by everything she has just said. ‘She’s my daughter! I would have helped her.’ The tears are now escaping wildly down my cheeks. ‘I would have helped her keep a baby, if that’s what she’d wanted.’
There is a silence. ‘Yes. I’m sure you would have,’ Susannah says eventually.
Oh – and there we are. I gasp – seeing it all, instantly. ‘That’s why you “helped” her. You didn’t want her bound to your son forever. She’s not quite what you imagined for your boy? Is that it? Or was it because you were taking out your feelings for me on her? You didn’t want to be linked to me forever? What did you tell her? What did you say to make her do it?’ I step towards Susannah again; but desperately this time – I have to know exactly what happened to Izzie. ‘Did you tell her I’d be angry if she was pregnant? That she’d disappoint me in some way?’
Susannah says nothing, just stares at me defiantly.
‘I want you to swear on your son’s life that you didn’t try to manipulate my very pliable daughter into doing something she wouldn’t have otherwise done,’ I say, my voice by turns now soft with danger.
‘That is a revolting thing to suggest,’ Susannah replies eventually. ‘And no, I shan’t swear. I never swear on anyone’s life – I think it’s a dreadful thing to do. I didn’t influence Izzie either way. It was her own choice; her own decision – her body. But if you’re asking me do I believe Isobel was mentally equipped for motherhood? No, I do not.’
‘Who is, Susannah? Have you or I made any better job of it than Izzie would have?’
‘That’s a deliberately inflammatory comment.’
‘Not at all. You criticise my parenting skills when you sent your son back to school rather than help him deal with his problems. At least I was actually here for Izzie… and I suspect when you’ve had time to consider what I’ve said, you’ll accept that I’m right.’
It’s a cheap shot, but I see it hit home, and I’m glad.
‘There is nothing wrong with my son at all,’ she says angrily. ‘In fact, he’s very happy and that’s the single reason I’m telling you this now, because it’s e
ntirely clear to me that you’ve grossly underestimated the effect of Timothy’s return on Izzie, and I do not want all of this raked over again. It’s done. Let’s not give the locals more cause for gossip, shall we?’ I can hear the acid in her voice. ‘Think about it, Eve, wouldn’t it have been more useful to tell you this information about the abortion years ago if I’d been keen to make capital from it? Wouldn’t it have been the ideal way to ensure you stayed away from our family – and my husband – rather than my having to bear the humiliation of asking you to finish it with Antony – as I did? I respected Izzie’s wishes that no one should know. I felt very sorry for her. I have always felt sorry for her.’
I hesitate, reluctantly seeing the logic in her words. I want to collapse to the floor. Will we never escape this family? ‘For God’s sake, Susannah! Why did you let him do it, then?’ I shout suddenly. ‘Surely you TOLD Antony not to buy them this house? Just for once take an interest in what your husband does, hey?’
She pales instantly and, too late, I realise my mistake. ‘Antony’s told you he bought this place for Timothy and Claire?’
‘It didn’t take a genius to work out, once I realised – too late – who Claire was,’ I try to cover my tracks. ‘I can’t imagine Timothy was exactly keen to move in here. It was obvious Tony was involved.’
‘You’re lying. He’s definitely told you.’ She looks at me in disgust. ‘How pathetic of him. Well, let’s face it – no one else was going to buy this money pit, were they? I’ll bet he couldn’t wait to roar up and tell you how he’s financially saved the day for you. Still desperate to be your knight in shining armour after all these years.’
