The House Party

by Mary Grand

  Next day, Beth retrieved the map she had printed and set off for the academy Kathleen had been attending. Beth had done her research online, found out who taught Kathleen, where the lectures were held, even the group timetable. It appeared they were having extra lectures in preparation for exams, so most of them would be around when she was in London. The most useful thing she’d done was track down a girl on Kathleen’s course on social media. Beth had introduced herself, explained her connection with Kathleen, and the girl appeared to have known Kathleen quite well. Beth asked if they could meet to chat. The girl had seemed happy to meet up for coffee at the academy. The best time was at 11.30 after a lecture.

  Beth found the interior of the academy daunting, and she went straight to reception. She felt surrounded by people much younger and more confident than herself. This was the kind of crowd Adam would be mixing with in October, she realised. She felt overwhelmed for him.

  Beth was directed to the lecture room, and she sent a message to Angela. She waited outside. Aware of how different and how much older she was than everybody else, Beth reckoned Angela would find her easily enough. When a group of students emerged from the lecture room, it wasn’t as large as she had anticipated. A young girl enquired, ‘Are you Beth?’

  ‘Yes. Angela?’

  ‘That’s right. I feel I know you quite well. Kathleen talked about you and, of course, your husband Sami, her boss. I was so sorry to hear about Kathleen. We were all shocked. We’re quite a small group, so we all knew each other. Even though there was a big age gap between us we got on well. But I can’t think how I can help you: you must have known her a lot better than me.’

  They went into the cavernous entrance hall. There were outlets for several chain fast food restaurants. Beth offered to buy the coffee.

  The noise was incredible; they had to raise their voices to be heard.

  Angela spoke. ‘I told Kathleen about my father who had cancer, and she was saying her husband had been through that. She said how hard it was, and that she’d had a friend, you, who had always been there for her, how you’d made all the difference. She said that you were like that: always kind, always saw the best in people.’

  Beth smiled. ‘Well, I’m glad I asked you. What a lovely thing to say. Kathleen wasn’t a difficult person to stand by.’

  ‘I can imagine. So, what is it you need to know?’

  ‘It’s rather delicate.’ Angela sat up.

  ‘I know it sounds like I’m just being nosey, but I promise you I have good reasons for asking. What I need to know is if Kathleen had a relationship with anyone up here in London on her course.’

  Angela’s eyebrows shot up.

  ‘My last conversation with Kathleen was disturbing,’ explained Beth. ‘She was very uptight. Although we were close, she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. I think she thought I would judge her. One explanation I thought of for her being so stressed was that she’d had an affair, and the obvious thing would have been someone up here. I don’t want to tell anyone, or hunt this person down, but if I know that I would understand why she was like she was.’

  Beth was aware she was babbling, but there seemed no easy excuse for wanting this information. She waited to see if Angela wrote her off as some nutty woman but was relieved to see her giving the matter serious thought.

  ‘I think I can understand that,’ said Angela and she tapped her fingertips on the table. As if making the decision to speak, she took a breath and said, ‘OK. I can assure you Kathleen was not seeing anyone up here.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘Absolutely. There are only three boys on our course. One got married last summer and spends all his time on the phone to his wife. One started dating a girl on the course after the first session and is totally besotted, and then there’s Jeff, who is gay, and just got engaged to his partner.’

  ‘I see, so no students. Any lecturers she might have been interested in?’

  ‘None. Two are women, and the only man is about to retire, insists on us all calling him by his surname, and permanently scowls. Still, he knows his stuff.’

  ‘No chance of anything between him and Kathleen?’

  Angela laughed. ‘No way. Kathleen got short changed when she tried out that flirty smile of hers on him. No. There was no one up here but—’

  Beth looked quizzically at Angela, who was looking worried.

  ‘Well, in a way I’m not surprised. I guessed soon after I met Kathleen last September that she was worried about her marriage.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know her that well, but I was showing her some holiday pictures. Kathleen told me her husband was a photographer. I joked that I was sure he’d have taken a lot of her. I mean, even at her age, she was still very pretty. Kathleen went all serious and said not so many now, which I thought was rather sad. Then she said he’d found a new model, someone very pretty. The girl was young, and Kathleen said she was infatuated with her husband.’

  Beth felt sick, knowing that this must be Elsa.

  ‘And did she think he felt the same?’

  ‘Kathleen tried to laugh it off, said she knew he had more sense, but she did say he’d helped this girl too much with some project she was doing. It sounded like he had more or less done it for her and yet this girl was going to get into uni on the strength of it. I said that wasn’t fair and Kathleen agreed. She said at times she’d been tempted to contact the school and tell them.’

  Beth’s eyes widened. ‘She was going to do that?’

  ‘Oh yes. I think she would have, but she said there were other things to bear in mind, that there were things stopping her. Anyway, she didn’t say that much about her after that, but we did chat a lot. I liked her. She was kind, listened well.’

  ‘Did she ever tell you about meeting anyone else?’

  ‘I sort of guessed—’

  ‘What is it? Please—’ said Beth.

  ‘It was February. When Kathleen came to lectures, she didn’t look well. I caught her throwing up, took her for a coffee. She told me she thought she was pregnant. I congratulated her but she didn’t look happy. She said she’d made a mistake and it was hard to live with. I sort of put two and two together, and guessed that there must be another man.’

  ‘Did she say who it was?’

  ‘No, but she seemed scared. I wondered if she was frightened of this man or her husband. I told her she could get help, but she said she had to sort this out on her own. Her husband wasn’t abusive, or anything, was he?’

  ‘No. Nothing like that.’

  ‘Good. I wouldn’t have wanted that. I did worry about her. We’d had a long chat when she came back after Christmas in January. Firstly, I wanted to know why she’d not done the second day of the course in December. All we got was some message that a family member was ill. She told me about the woman, Amy, was it? Yes, she said she had a fall; it was fatal. It sounded awful. I said she still looked very upset by it and she said it was all made so much worse by some skiing weekend she went on.’

  ‘I think it was rather soon after Amy’s death.’

  ‘Yes. She said she couldn’t forget the accident, said something about medication.’

  ‘She was worried about Amy’s medication?’

  ‘She got pretty upset, so I changed the subject. I thought she was getting worked up.’ Angela shrugged an apology. ‘I’m so sorry about everything. Kathleen was sweet and kind. She’d bring up biscuits she’d made, and she gave me a beautiful cashmere cardigan she said didn’t suit her any more. She remembered, you see, my favourite colour was green. She was thoughtful. She brought me some DVDs for Dad as well. It’s tragic, the way she died.’

  ‘Yes. It was a terrible shock.’

  Beth saw Angela wave to some friends, indicating to them to wait for her.

  ‘You’ve got to go,’ said Beth. ‘That’s fine. Thank you so much for talking to me. Considering how little you saw Kathleen she seems to have trusted you and talked to you a lot.
’

  ‘I think me being up here, I was away from everyone. Who was I going to tell her secrets to?’

  Beth left with a lot to think about, most of all Elsa. Elsa could have known about Kathleen’s affair. She could easily have overheard William in the same way as Imogen had. Now, if Kathleen had threatened to tell the school about her portfolio, Elsa could have threatened in return to tell Patrick about the affair. If Kathleen had been going to reveal all, including the truth about Elsa’s portfolio, that would have been disastrous for Elsa. It would have been more than embarrassing: she’d have been shown up as a fraud to her family and friends, the school, the university. In Elsa’s eyes it could have ruined her life. How far would she go to stop Kathleen speaking out?

  Beth sighed. This wasn’t what she wanted to learn, and she tried to push it out of her head. One other thing she had learned was that Kathleen almost certainly hadn’t had an affair with someone up in London. It confirmed what she’d felt deep down all along: the affair had been much closer to home.

  25

  When they arrived home, Sami received a text from Patrick. The police had said he could arrange the funeral: it would be in two weeks’ time.

  Beth phoned Patrick and asked if there was anything he would like her to do for the funeral. He asked if she could do a reading and maybe put together some pictures that would remind people of Kathleen.

  Beth enjoyed searching through her old albums, and once more promised she would print off the latest ones on the computer. There was something special about flicking through an album. She had photographs of Kathleen and her having meals out, going over to Southampton to a show, some of Kathleen with the staff from the pharmacy at the Christmas dos. Some of her favourite ones were of Kathleen in her old garden with the hens and her showing Adam and Layla how to hold them and collect the eggs. There were also trips to the zoo, the beach, the woods. So many good times she’d forgotten, and they warmed her. However, she then found some of everybody at various St Patrick’s Day meals and they were less comfortable: all the usual group, sat around laughing. It hurt to look at those, hard to imagine a time of such innocence. Beth didn’t include them in the montage she made for Patrick.

  The day of the funeral came, grey and overcast. The funeral was to be held at the church in the village that Beth sometimes went to on a Sunday. The coffin would be taken straight from the undertakers to the church.

  As Beth walked into the church with the family, gentle Irish folk music played. The church was filled with white Easter lilies. It was crowded with people from the village and relatives from Ireland. At the front was Patrick, white and tense, and Conor, looking red and angry. Behind them was a man and two women who Beth, judging by their likeness to Kathleen, guessed were Kathleen’s mother and sister.

  The service began with someone from the church choir singing ‘Do not be afraid’. Beth sat waiting to do her reading. She felt more nervous than she had expected to and, as she walked down the aisle, which seemed to have doubled in length, all she could hear was her heels clipping loudly on the stone floor.

  From the lectern, she began her reading from a Catholic Bible.

  ‘The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for His Name's sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil.’

  The words made Beth pause. Her voice began to shake, and tears started to fall down her cheeks. Her friend had been in a dark valley, but there had been no comfort. Nothing had made sense, she’d said to Angela. Who had made her so desperately unhappy and afraid? Who down there was acting a part? Beth looked up from the Bible. Through eyes blurred with tears, she scanned the congregation. Patrick, William, Imogen, Alex, Sami, all looking back at her, waiting for her. They looked at her anxiously. What did they think she was going to say? She felt ashamed of her tears but, no, why weren’t they crying?

  The vicar coughed. Beth looked over. Startled back to her task, she continued the reading. When she had finished, Beth returned to her seat. She felt as if the church sighed with relief. Feeling hot and flustered, she took off her jacket.

  Patrick took her place at the lectern. He spoke movingly about the time he met Kathleen, how he loved her, how he never understood why someone so beautiful fell for him. His voice broke, but he continued. She shouldn’t have died: it was too soon, she had so much left to give.

  Kathleen’s mother talked about her daughter in a gentle, wistful way. Kathleen’s sister, Roisin, was very different. Her voice was similar to Kathleen’s but there was a sharper edge to it. There was also none of the fragility of Kathleen about her. Roisin was a broad, solid framed woman, her hair red but cut in a short, rather severe bob. For all that, however, each carefully chosen word was full of pain and loss. ‘I remember the day my mother brought Kathleen home, holding her tiny hand. Our closest moments were in the dark, after my parents put the lights out. We could tell from the sound of the other’s breath how they were feeling. If one of us was sad, without speaking, we would reach out and hold hands. We were sisters,’ Roisin looked up, tears on her cheeks, ‘and now she’s gone. When I reach out, her hand won’t be there. I will never hold her hand again.’

  Beth felt her heart tighten with emotion, watched as Roisin walked slowly back to her seat.

  At the end of the service a haunting Irish song was sung, ‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen’, after which there was an eerie silence, followed by a collective sigh of relief.

  Kathleen’s body was to be buried in the church graveyard and the congregation followed the coffin outside. It was the first time Beth had attended a burial. As she was walking out of the church, Alex approached, holding out her jacket. As she took it from him, she noticed his eyes were red and his hands shaking. ‘I’m going back to the pharmacy now. You read well, Beth.’

  ‘Thank you for covering,’ said Sami.

  ‘It’s OK. Don’t worry about anything.’

  The burial felt to Beth like she was taking part in an ancient tradition, pagan almost. As the vicar scattered earth on the coffin, Patrick read the lines, ‘So, go and run free with the angels; dance around the golden clouds.’

  A subdued group of people drove to Patrick’s new house for the wake. The table was laden with food; there were flowers: lilies again. Patrick stood shaking hands with people, but looking lost in his own home.

  ‘It was a beautiful service,’ Beth said to Sean.

  ‘Patrick planned it. He’s needed this: an end.’

  Beth looked around the room. The sun was streaming in through the windows.

  ‘Is there somewhere I could leave my jacket?’

  ‘Kathleen’s room,’ said Sean and paused. ‘I suppose we should stop calling it that.’

  ‘Not yet. It’s how I think of it.’

  Beth went upstairs, and laid her jacket on the bed. She peeped in the drawers: nothing had been sorted out since she was last here.

  Downstairs, she saw Imogen standing alone, looking ashen, wearing a black suit, holding a plate with an untouched piece of cake. Beth wasn’t sure what to do. Should she speak to her after the previous row? But before she could decide, Imogen came to her. ‘It’s the end now, Beth. Let’s be friends again.’

  ‘How are you?’ Beth asked gently.

  Imogen replied briskly, ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

  Beth noticed that Imogen was pressing small crumbs of cake on her plate together with her fingers, and her eyes occasionally darted around the room.

  Beth was concerned. ‘Maybe you should have taken more time off?’

  ‘I’ve had the school holiday. William tells me you went to Alex’s house. It’s a fantastic place to stay, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It was good to get away from everything for a few days. We ate in some really good Middle Eastern restaurants and went to a musical.’

  ‘Sounds good. I’ll have to see if I can get William away for a weekend again befo
re Alex sells the house.’

  ‘Patrick did well with the service. There are more people here than I thought. I didn’t expect so many family to come from Ireland, especially the ex.’

  ‘Ah. Is that who that man is?’

  ‘I don’t know why he’s turned up.’

  ‘He’s Conor’s father.’

  After Imogen left her Beth went out into the garden. There was, as always, a breeze, but there was more warmth in the sun: summer was closer. Beth walked down the garden. She stopped at the new sturdy wooden picket fence. You could still see the sea. She couldn’t see a gate, which was sad, as she knew Kathleen had wanted one. Looking down, she saw marks on the grass where the hen coop had been, and heard Kathleen talking about Henrietta settling in well, enjoying the sea air. Her hands started to shake; tears poured down her face. She looked beyond the fence. To think of Kathleen falling here was so painful. What had gone through her mind as she fell? Looking back at where the hens had been it seemed as inconceivable as ever to Beth that Kathleen could have let them out herself. Why would she do such a thing? She remembered talking to Kathleen, sitting out here with a glass of wine. Losing her had been so hard, but trying to live with all the things they could no longer do together seemed unbearable today.

  ‘Are you Beth?’ Her heart missed a beat at the voice. She turned.

  ‘I’m Kathleen’s older sister, Roisin.’

  Beth smiled, her lips trembling. ‘You startled me. You sound so like her.’

  ‘We have the same voice but not the same looks. She was always the pretty one.’

  Beth smiled in sympathy. For a woman who must be in her mid forties to still think of herself as ‘the not so pretty sister’ was rather sad. Roisin seemed to read her thoughts. ‘You don’t need to feel sorry for me. I never wanted to be Kathleen.’

  Beth was slightly taken aback. Roisin was a lot more forthright than Kathleen had ever been.

  Roisin walked towards the fence. ‘I still can’t believe it’s happened. It was down here, wasn’t it, she fell? Patrick brought me down here last evening to pay my respects. I laid some flowers the other side of this fence.’