She had represented a woman whose mother had changed the locks after her father died and refused to let her daughter have any mementos from the family home, who held the funeral in private and then sold the house and with the proceeds moved to Florida. Catherine was used to hearing stories about families that made you realise your individual story might be unusual, but the level of family dysfunction was far from unique.
The one stumbling block was Claire. Claire, her best friend, who knew her as well as her father. She’d written to Claire on her year off, sent postcards. Travelling for a while. Hi from Prague! But Claire had sensed something was amiss. She had contacted her mother enough times for Eileen to eventually write to Catherine. Please could you tell your friend Claire I’ve passed on her messages. Perhaps you could contact her yourself now.
So she’d invited Claire for the weekend, and it had been awful. To have to be Janey again, to answer Claire’s questions about the place at Cambridge. Claire was the weak link – she could have rung Miss Minas. ‘Your favourite pupil got to Cambridge in the end, Miss Minas’ and then the cat would be out of the bag, as they’d check the records and find out there was no evidence for a St Cecilia’s girl having gone to King’s that year. She was lucky Claire was enamoured of her new life in Birmingham, already saying she never wanted to leave. All Catherine had to do was make Claire think they weren’t friends any more. So they had fun that weekend, she took her to Cindy’s, to a comedy club, to the college bar, where there was a karaoke evening, anything that took up time but meant she didn’t meet enough people who might want to question Claire about Catherine’s background.
At the end of the weekend they’d hugged. Claire had pulled Catherine tight. ‘I think it’s weird, changing your name, but I see it. I see it. I see you, babe. OK?’
The smell of her perfume and the smooth feel of her skin against Catherine’s cheek, the way she loved her, just loved her, because she was her friend. Catherine remembered, in the few seconds of that hug, wondering if she should give it all up then, confess then. ‘You just keep on working hard and get that first and do your dad proud. You come to Birmingham, OK?’
Catherine had avoided going for a year. She’d gone travelling in the holidays, back to France to see Davide again, then spent Christmas in Spain with Eileen, and only managed to get to Birmingham at the end of the second year, by which time there was enough water under the bridge for it to seem naturally stilted. She’d gone to the pubs, oohed and aahed at the campus, had a curry at Claire’s favourite curry house, but all the time with a degree of restraint. She acted – perhaps it was then she realised she was a good actress, and could be a good barrister.
It shocked her how easy it was, afterwards, to let the friendship slip away. But she had loved Claire, like family. And the loss of her, which was never made up for at Cambridge, or in London, was a constant source of pain. But what other way could it have been?
There were other people who stared, who asked questions, but only a couple of times. Some girl, a friend of a friend from Kitty’s school: ‘Hi, are you Kitty Hunter? Letham’s?’
‘No.’
‘The one who – oh, there was some scandal. She ran away. Some like, random thing at her family’s house? My brother swears his best mate snogged her at a ball. Someone said she was here, doing History. Isn’t that you?’
And she’d assume a patient, polite face. ‘No. That must be someone different. I’m Catherine Lestrange.’
Her friends, and Catherine, began a joke about it. That she had taken the place of a girl called Kitty whom she’d murdered to get to Cambridge. Whenever it happened, at Cindy’s, or in the college bar, Catherine would smile and, surreptitiously, would touch the little pouch she’d taken to carrying in her handbag, where the passports were, and Kitty’s birth certificate, and the cash she’d saved, and one of the letters that arrived from Davide, twice a week every Tuesday and Friday, without fail.
You said you were not sure, that it was too hard, that it was too easy at the same time, you said these things, Catrine. But it is a small miracle, is it not? That I met you. That we had that time together. Six months! It is a small miracle that we are made the way we are, that we fit so well together. I am not afraid of the future. You know we say a coup de foudre – yes, it was instant like that, but for me it was also certain, and strangely calm. We both know it, don’t we?
Come back to France this summer. My parents will host you. As you know, they love you. As do I. My fierce English girl with the crop and the smile like Isabella Rossellini only more beautiful. I like writing these things down, when I say them to you, you roll your eyes, but they’re all true. We have only a sea dividing us, Catrine, come back. No one else matters, the past does not matter, we matter. Put yourself first, with me.
She had folded and unfolded this letter so many times that it threatened to fall apart entirely and she was terrified that it would. As if, without this physical evidence of his love for her and his reasoning, her resolve was weakened.
‘You have to remember, I’d been away for a year too. I felt much older than a lot of them, and I kept myself to myself. Some of the others, especially the boys – straight out of public school, they were like kids in a sweet shop. They behaved like idiots. I just wanted to work. I was older than a lot of them. I’d been through a lot. After I left – her – I drove, I drove to Plymouth, I ditched the car. I got on the ferry like she told me to, I got to Toulouse like she wanted. I lived there for a time. It’s where I met my husband.’ Catherine exhaled. ‘And it made everything different.’
‘Does your husband know?’
‘I told him I changed my name, to honour a friend. He knows I didn’t have much connection with my childhood, but I think he put it down to Daddy dying and my mother leaving. He thought I didn’t want to talk about it much.’ Catherine shrugged. ‘He’s a man, Merry. And we’ve been together longer than we have been apart, you know. We met in France, on his turf, and I suppose it stayed that way, and I liked it. At the beginning, I explained a bit, some details. I said I’d left home and wasn’t close to my parents. Which was true because I wasn’t close to my mother. I never have been. And Daddy was dead.’
Merry put down her teacup, smiling, then pressed her cool hands to her flushed cheeks. ‘You seem to have been very lucky.’
‘With Davide,’ Catherine said, calmly. ‘Yes. Yes, I have.’
Merry arched her head, backwards, staring up at the mantelpiece, the photos, the invitations. She rubbed her neck.
‘You’ve been lucky in other ways. You didn’t see Joss in hospital, realising he couldn’t speak. You didn’t have to watch Daddy and Aunty Ros die. That’s what I saw. She went in front of me. She was holding her throat. Like she was strangling herself. And the house, and the gatehouse, and the chapel, and our life there, our friends – it was all gone, in one afternoon, after that. And you two were gone too.’
Catherine nodded.
‘Merry – I’m so sorry. I should have tried to make sure you were OK. I mean, obviously you are.’ She gestured round the flat. ‘You look amazing. You’ve obviously made a – a success of it all.’
‘Yes,’ said Merry, crisply. She glanced at her phone. Then she said: ‘No one calls me Merry, by the way. Not any more. It’s Melissa.’
‘I see.’ Catherine nodded. ‘Melissa.’
A silence fell, awkward and hard-edged in the cool room. They smiled at each other mechanically. I have nothing else to say to her, Catherine thought.
She gathered her stuff and stood up, slinging the rucksack over her shoulder. ‘Look, I’d best be off. I’ll –’
‘Where? You can’t go! We’re having such a nice chat. Here, have a sandwich. You must be starving.’ She glanced down at the phone again and Catherine’s brain suddenly started clicking, connecting, again.
‘Oh, no thanks. But maybe a bit more milk? In my tea?’ Catherine said, slowly.
Merry got up, pleased, and went to the fridge, and the second her back was turne
d and she opened the heavy, metallic fridge with a whoosh, Catherine leaned across to glance at the phone, glowing with new messages.
Keep her there. Police on way
Police say they are five mins away. Shall I tell mummy?
No merry don’t let her go. Make her stay. Don’t tell Sylvia, she mustn’t know she’s still around. They mustn’t meet. She’ll muck up plans if she heads down here. It’s tomorrow. Get the police to take her off yr hands.
‘Thank you so much,’ said Catherine, standing up. Merry spun round, in alarm. Catherine crossed the endlessly long room and took Merry in her arms, hugged her tight. She was very thin – too thin. Her shoulder blades dug into Catherine’s wrists and hands. She was not, any more at all, the childish adolescent Merry who had jumped up and down with joy, who danced through meadows, who loved Jason Donovan.
After a moment, Merry hugged her back. And Catherine whispered in her ear.
‘I am so very sorry. None of this should have happened.’
I am sorry for you. I was raised with so much love, she wanted to say. I was so loved by him. It didn’t matter about my mum. He loved me, he understood me, he made me confident, and strong. You Hunters, you never had that. You never had it, from either parent. Daddy couldn’t stay in the end but he knew that he had done enough. I know he knew that. And . . .
Perhaps that means I have been lucky. I’m standing here. And I may not look it, but I am OK. I must be OK. All shall be well.
‘Do you know something?’ said Merry.
. . . He was so close, his voice in her ear, it was almost as if she could feel his breath on her skin . . .
‘We used to rather laugh at how much you straight away wanted to be like us. You were quite weird, Janey. Did you know that? Kitty did, especially.’
Catherine half closed her eyes, the better to protect herself, to hear his voice again. ‘I know.’
‘You know?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Catherine, almost impatiently. ‘But I couldn’t help myself. All of this, all of it is because I couldn’t help myself. And it wasn’t my fault.’ And, suddenly, somehow she felt a little lighter. ‘It wasn’t.’ She was desperate to leave. ‘Look –’
Merry took a step back. Catherine found herself thinking how skull-like her face was, the fine, smooth white skin stretched taut over her cheekbones, her forehead, her chin. And then she said, slowly: ‘OK, I’ll tell you something. Mummy still believes in her.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mummy doesn’t think she’s dead. She says she sees her.’
She was watching Catherine carefully, the button-like eyes fixed on her, bony fingers twiddling the small, flashing diamond on her necklace. Catherine felt a twitch start up, above her left eye. ‘Where does she see her?’
‘I don’t know. Around.’ Merry gave a thin smile. ‘Around, Catherine.’ She folded her arms.
Catherine didn’t respond; she didn’t know how to. She merely nodded, and patted her rucksack. She put her hand up to her eyes, and said abruptly: ‘Listen, can I quickly use your loo? I’d like a wash. And – you know. Don’t know when I’ll be in a loo again.’
Merry looked appalled at whatever you know might be. ‘Oh. Of course. Next to the hall, down there. Take your time. Stay. Listen, if you don’t want to go back to them, tonight – stay here! Stay for a glass of wine, anyway.’
She followed Catherine into the hall and, when Merry was satisfied Catherine was inside the lavatory, she could be heard going back into the living room again, collecting the teacups, clattering in the kitchen.
Silently, so very silently, Catherine opened the bathroom door and then tip-toed towards the heavy front door. She didn’t shut it behind her – Merry would hear it. She crept back downstairs, rucksack on her shoulders, through the dingy hall then outside, and she ran.
Catherine knew perfectly well they couldn’t arrest her, that there were no grounds, but she mustn’t be caught, not now. She told herself this as she ran, hair flying behind her, her toe suddenly twingeing again. She was less than five minutes from Paddington station, and she knew what to do. She ran beside the walls, so Merry couldn’t see her, and then ducked into an underpass and then, when she was certain no one was following, she kept on running. Earlier that day she had checked on a computer at Marylebone Library. There was a train, leaving at 7 p.m.
Though there was no one behind her she was sure she could hear Merry’s voice, thin, high, anxious, calling her, all the way to the station. A copy of that day’s Times was scattered around on the floor. She knew she was in it. She kicked it out of the way. She would not be caught by them. She could disappear again and again, if she wanted to. She knew how to. She had started this and now she had to finish it: she was going back to Vanes.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The rain kept stopping and starting, and she wasn’t sure whether to stay put or keep on going. It was wild and windy, with a close humidity everywhere and sudden bursts of sun, which felt incredibly hot for May. Palm trees clustered together next to whitewashed holiday bungalows in quiet lanes leading towards Langford. Behind them, the looming rise of Exmoor, in front the sea. She had forgotten how strange this corner of the world was, an unsettling oasis against the wooded twisting flank behind, and the bulk of the moor above.
Catherine walked along the lane, her trainers soggy, her head hot under the baseball cap. It was so quiet, apart from the wind, and the birdsong. No planes, or helicopters, or idling engines. No drilling, no beeping pedestrian crossings, no shrieks from children playing. She’d forgotten how much the English countryside unnerved her. Still, blossom spread above her in bright green trees arching over the lane; nodding, pale pink foxgloves and wild roses dotted the hedgerows. It was a glorious time to be here, even for a city girl like her.
Suddenly a tiny, terrified mouse shot out from the hedgerow, scuttling down the lane and disappearing further down the way. Catherine started violently, the rucksack jolting on her back, then she found herself smiling. When she was a child, her primary school had gone every year to Horsenden Hill for a jolly summer picnic, and most of the class, her included, had fled screaming from the horseflies, the midges, the wasps. She had been hysterical with fear on the famous occasion a mouse ran across the kitchen floor and her mother screamed and, as if out of a film, stood on a chair. Daddy, ever practical, had cornered it and bashed it with a shoe, then picked it up by the tail, its small grey body swinging from side to side, almost comical, as if it had never been alive, been real. ‘How could you, Simon?’
‘Kill it or touch it?’
‘Touch it! It’s disgusting! Full of disease.’
Daddy had thrown it into the bin, and her mother had screamed again.
‘My dear, I lived with rats the size of cats when I was in Italy. It’s just a mouse. It’s terrified. And it’s dead now anyway.’
This incident had occurred just before her mother had left and she had wondered afterwards if the mouse had tipped her mother over the edge. Then several years later, that summer at Vanes, her horror when, one evening, a mouse had run out of the fireplace and across the drawing room floor. Kitty had barely raised an eyebrow. Joss had looked up, startled, and then gone back to strumming his guitar.
She knew there were worse things than mice. But she hated them. So, now she was a grown-up, she paid Rentokil every year to come and block up any holes in the skirting board, seal up cracks in the floorboards, put brush strips on the doors. Carys, who showed strong incipient signs of hardcore veganism, much to her father’s distress, objected to the poison under the dresser, the glue traps under the sink, and would remove them after Davide and Catherine were in bed. Tom didn’t care. Tom didn’t care about anything much.
It was strange, the way distance gave you clarity of thought. She loved her second-born child but she had always worried she didn’t really understand him, not in the way she knew the bones of her busy, purposeful daughter. She’d always tried to, filling his days with cello and chess and
football, and he did it all with a sweet smile, never seeming that interested in any of it. And now, when she thought about him, the casing around these thoughts – her unspoken fear for him that he wouldn’t find his place in the world – had vanished. It doesn’t matter that Tom’s not this or that, a voice told her as she walked, her toe aching a little. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know what he wants to do. He’s sixteen. It matters that you’ve left him.
Her daughter, her rages, her anger at everything, her hobby horses – the three months after she adopted from a friend, who had long since tired of it, a stinking, dying lone guinea pig with a large sore on its back had been long months for the whole family – her passion for the environment and commitment to real change, all these things Catherine could not exactly walk in total step with but she could understand. She thought of Tom, giving money to the homeless man. Of his big, toothy smile, his handsome, still not quite finished face. Of Carys in her office, pale, tired face, sticking-up hair, how intelligently she had tried to grapple with what her mother was telling her, how little she, Catherine, deserved her as a daughter.
She hadn’t seen them for four days, and it was now the pain of what she’d done, believing it to be the best, the only course for them, that was starting to unfurl itself, a grinding, inner agony that seemed to pull her towards the ground. Missing them was like a physical ache, in her chest, behind her eyes, in her shallow, fluttered breathing – lately, she couldn’t ever seem to draw a deep enough breath to fill her lungs with air.
I have spent so long living this life and protecting it, she thought to herself as she gazed out to sea. And it’s mine, but I really don’t know it very well. And now I think it might be too late, and I don’t want it to be too late. I desperately don’t want it to be.
After the first time she’d met Davide, he had told her he knew tu n’étais pas dans ton élément: ‘in English, that you were a fish out of water’. That was the thing he had always understood about her as fundamental to her being: that she did not belong. But he thought it was because of his first impression of her that day, not because for two months by then, and for the subsequent next twenty-odd years, she had been lying about her very existence to him.
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