by Ali Mercer
She was just the same as the kind of man who picked a fight with his wife because he was jealous and tried to blame her for having provoked him. And then felt guilty anyway, and tried to make up for it.
Then there was the crunch of footsteps, an exchange between questioning voices – Becca and Amelia – and the door was pushed open a little wider and Becca came in.
Becca gaped in horror at the scene at her feet. Her hand went to her mouth; her eyes were very wide.
‘Daddy!’ She launched herself towards them.
Rachel yelled, ‘Mind the glass!’
Becca slowed her pace and picked her way through the fragments, then crouched down next to Mitch and gazed at him imploringly. She said, ‘Are you going to be all right?’
Mitch attempted a smile. ‘Oh, I should think so. Might have to learn to paint with my left hand. Could be an improvement.’
He was trying to put a brave face on things for Becca, to make a joke of it, even with his hand torn open and blood everywhere….
Rachel’s breathing was making a strange rasping sound, not far off sobbing: it was all she could do to get air into her lungs. Becca swivelled round and stared at her. ‘Mum, what are you doing just standing there? You have to do something!’
Mitch said, ‘She did this. We were having a fight. She broke the painting and pushed me so that I fell on the glass.’
‘You did this?’ Becca’s face is tight with fear and disgust. ‘How could you? I hate you!’
‘Mitch, I think we should get you down to the hospital,’ Mary said, and her voice cut through everything else. ‘You’re going to need stitches. Do you think you can stand?’
Rachel instinctively stepped forward to help but Mitch gave her a look that made her recoil. She staggered back and leaned against the wall to stay upright as Mitch got to his feet.
‘Please, Daddy, can I come with you to the hospital?’ Becca said.
‘Sure, sweetheart, if you want.’
‘Of course I want to,’ Becca says, with a fierce look at Rachel.
Mary had slipped her arm under Mitch’s elbow to support him; he was leaning on her. She said, ‘Can you try and keep pressure on the wound?’ Mitch moved his good hand onto the bleeding one. ‘That’s it. Good. Henry, could you get my bag? It’s down by the table.’
Rachel saw that Henry and Amelia were standing inside the doorway, staring at the carnage. Henry darted forward and grabbed Mary’s bag and held it out to her, and she took it with her free hand.
‘Thank you,’ Mary said. ‘Would you clear up a bit? Wrap the glass in newspaper. Just make sure no one treads in it. We don’t want anyone else getting hurt.’
‘Sure, Mum,’ Henry said.
Mary said to Mitch, ‘Do you think you can walk?
‘I think so,’ Mitch said.
‘The car’s just outside.’
‘I might bleed all over it.’
‘That’s all right. That doesn’t matter at all.’
They began to move towards the door; Henry and Amelia stepped back. Mary hissed at Rachel, ‘You can get out of my house.’
Somehow Rachel made herself move. She went out behind Mitch and Mary and Becca, and someone closed the door behind her.
Mary unlocked the Range Rover and the three of them turned and looked at Rachel. Mitch had a little bit more colour in his face; it was Becca who was ashen now. Mary was red-faced and wild-eyed, as if she’d just been fighting. But they all had an almost identical expression of disgust and condemnation.
Mitch said, ‘Becca, get in.’
Becca scrambled into the back. Mary stuck by Mitch’s side as he leaned against the side of the car and faced Rachel. He said in a low voice, ‘I don’t know what you thought was going on here, but Amelia asked Becca round to celebrate her birthday. Since Becca wasn’t having a party or anything. Mary got in balloons and party food for the girls, the kind of thing they used to like when they were little, and she asked me to come round, too, because she thought Becca would like it if I was there. We were going to head home in plenty of time to be here when you got back from work.’
His eyes were cold and there was nothing in the way he looked at her but hate.
‘I never thought I’d say this, Rachel, but you really are just like your father.’
‘Mitch, we’ve got to go,’ Mary said. She opened the passenger door and bundled Mitch in, then dashed round to get in the driver’s side, started the car and pulled away.
The house was completely quiet. Rachel’s car was in front of her, parked at an odd angle in front of the entrance. The people carrier was a little way away.
After the trip to the pub with the other parents in the summer, when Mitch had denied that anything was going on with Mary, she had done her best to believe him, and to put the whole thing out of her mind. But then she had reacted to the sight of that car as if there could no longer be any doubt. As if it was proof.
But it wasn’t.
Who knew how soon Mitch would be able to drive it again? What if there was damage to tendons, or nerves?
There were spots of blood on the gravel.
Rachel made it a step or two towards the car before her legs gave way under her, and she dropped to the ground and howled like a child.
Thirty-Eight
The day of Viv’s memorial service is the first time Rachel has been back to her house since she found the body.
She parks next to an estate car she doesn’t recognise, which must belong to Viv’s daughter, Elaine. Somehow it’s obvious that Viv isn’t there. It’s not that the place looks untended: Elaine had asked Rachel to help find a gardener to keep things tidy, and Viv’s roses are flamboyantly beautiful – more spectacular by far than the unkempt display at Rose Cottage. But even though Elaine and her girls have been staying there, the house is somehow lifeless, the windows all closed and blank.
Rachel rings the bell and Elaine comes out. Out of Viv’s two daughters, Elaine is the one who has done the lion’s share of the work of making the necessary arrangements, while Louise, the pathologist, has taken a backseat. Rachel doesn’t know if Elaine volunteered for this, or feels burdened by it, or both. She’s done a good job of sorting everything out, though. She has Viv’s observant gaze and brisk, friendly efficiency, but not her meticulous grooming: today she’s in a pair of dark trousers and a slightly creased shirt, and comfortably chunky shoes. She hasn’t bothered with make-up, and her hair – thick and fair, as Viv’s must have been when she was younger – is loose and more than a little wild.
‘You ready for this, then?’ Elaine says.
‘As I’ll ever be,’ Rachel says.
They get into Rachel’s car and join the traffic on Gull Street, then make their way at a crawling pace towards the narrow bridge that spans the Thames and leads out of town.
This is their second meeting; on the previous occasion they had gone to Aidan’s home together so that Elaine could decide whether or not to agree to Rachel’s request to carry on seeing him. It had been rather like an audition. Luckily, Rachel had passed. Aidan had been so overjoyed to see her that he had run up and down the visitors’ room in a mild state of frenzy, ululating and flapping his hands as if that was the only way to rid himself of the overpowering electrical charge of excitement. Then he had settled down, and they had walked into the grounds and ventured out to the café, and this time nobody had stared or made comments. Whatever the staff at the home had said to Elaine had obviously been enough to remove any remaining doubts.
The road twists and turns ahead between lines of old oak trees, their heavy masses of green leaves tainted by the bronze of blight as if smitten by premature autumn.
‘I’ll take the back roads, so we don’t get snarled up in traffic,’ Rachel says. ‘I always used to come this way with your mum. It doesn’t take too much longer, and anyway, we’ve got plenty of time.’
‘Thank you for doing this,’ Elaine says. She makes a little gesture with her hands that reminds Rachel of the way Aidan someti
mes shakes his, in excitement or anticipation or perplexity. ‘You’re so good with him. I just don’t have the patience.’
‘It took us a while to get used to each other,’ Rachel says.
‘I can imagine. Maybe if we’d been able to get to know each other when we were younger… But it’s too late for all that now. This time tomorrow we’ll be on our way back to Norfolk. It’s simply not practical for us to keep on coming back. As you know, I’m on my own, and my ex-husband is not exactly reliable. My priority has to be my girls. That’s why I’m so glad you’re here, to keep an eye on things. Mum did a good job, finding you.’
The question hangs in the air for a minute and then Elaine makes it explicit: ‘So where did you meet exactly? Don’t take offence, but you don’t strike me as the churchy sort.’
‘We met through a mutual friend. Someone I used to work with,’ Rachel says.
Leona had taken her time to reply to the email Rachel had sent telling her what had happened, but at least she’d said she was going to come to the service. Her response had left Rachel disappointed and puzzled. Hurt, too, though it seemed silly, as a grown-up, to still be capable of being wounded by a lapsed friendship, like a schoolgirl who’d fallen out with a classmate. It was as if Leona was being wary, deliberately holding back for fear of getting sucked back into something she’d decided to drop.
‘I wondered if you were from one of Mum’s groups,’ Elaine says. ‘They used to drive me mad. There was always a bunch of people sitting round in the house, talking about something. She had a way of collecting lame ducks.’ She gives Rachel a quick sideways look. ‘Don’t take that the wrong way.’
‘I’m a lame duck. And we did try to start a group,’ Rachel says. ‘It was for women who have children they’re separated from.’
She has already told Elaine that her daughter doesn’t live with her; there was no way not to, since they’re picking Becca up. Elaine’s reaction had been mercifully matter-of-fact, rather Viv-like in fact, almost as if Rachel’s situation was not unusual.
‘You don’t seem especially like a lame duck.’
‘Well, I am. And if I don’t seem like one that’s something to do with her. I owe your mother a lot, you know.’ Suddenly Rachel feels like crying, never a good thing when you’re driving. ‘I lost my own mother last year. It had been a difficult relationship, and we never really resolved things. But when I got to know Viv… I don’t know. It was comforting.’
Elaine sighs. ‘Then I’m sorry that you’ve lost her, too.’
‘I keep thinking of things it would have been good to tell her,’ Rachel says, and then falls silent because Elaine is the one whose mother’s memorial service is taking place later that day, and she owes it to Viv to support her.
‘She did too much,’ Elaine says. ‘Always on the go, always taking on more than she could cope with. I used to try and tell her to slow down, and she wouldn’t listen. It’s like she spent her whole life trying to compensate. I suppose she must have felt she had to make up for giving up Aidan. Anyway, it’s not surprising she ended up having a heart attack.’
‘She did really love him, you know. It was very touching to see them together.’
‘It’s good that she let you help her. That was unusual for her. She was always the one doing the helping.’
‘She did help me, too,’ Rachel says.
They travel onwards in silence, past fields and trees, and by and by are granted a glimpse of the hills they will have to cross to bring Aidan back.
Aidan hadn’t come to Viv’s cremation. Probably Elaine still has her doubts about him being present at the memorial service. When she and Rachel had discussed it she’d let slip that Louise, her sister, was not at all keen on the idea, though she had left the organising and decision-making to Elaine. It was also clear that Elaine had come to regret excluding Aidan from the earlier ceremony, and wanted to make up for it. So the prodigal son had been invited: not that Aidan is capable of being prodigal. But he has certainly been exiled from family gatherings until now.
They can’t be entirely sure how Aidan is going to cope with this. Rachel thinks he understands that Viv has gone; she had tried to explain, had said that it was something that happened to people when they got old, like cars that stopped working or the bee that they had found on the pavement outside the café that time. Aidan had nodded vigorously and had said ‘yes’ a lot, and had tuned out any further attempts at discussion by humming increasingly loudly. It was impossible to know how he felt about it. He couldn’t say, and clearly didn’t want to be asked.
Maybe attending the memorial service would help in some way; it would at least mark Viv’s passing, not just for Aidan but for Rachel, too. And even if he disrupts the whole ceremony and they end up with a disaster on their hands, that would be some kind of redress for having spent most of his life shut away out of sight.
Aidan is wearing the favourite blue T-shirt he always used to wear when Viv and Rachel visited; Elaine isn’t especially happy with this, but lets it pass.
Rachel sees the T-shirt as a sign that Aidan is ready, and that he understands what is about to happen: that this is his chance to say goodbye. Still, it takes a while to get him into the car.
As she tries to coax him in Elaine looks on from the back seat, arms folded. She doesn’t intervene but her impatience is clearly building, and Rachel feels her own anxiety levels rising.
Will Aidan give in before Elaine blows up, or will he refuse to cooperate altogether? He walks round the vehicle, sniffing it, examining it. Rachel tentatively opens the passenger door, which he has just slammed shut, but he responds with alarm and asks her to shut it again.
After what seems like a long time, but is probably only five minutes, he says, ‘I can’t do it.’
‘You can,’ she says.
He meets her eyes. He tends to avoid this kind of contact, which creates an impression of shiftiness or, from a more sympathetic perspective, profound shyness. This is a rare, disconcertingly intimate moment. It is as if the light from his eyes is touching Rachel’s; she’s reminded of a nature film in which two snails meet, and tentatively, flinchingly brush against each other with the stalks of their feelers.
She turns away first. She moves towards the passenger door, more slowly this time, and opens it as wide as it will go.
He stands and stares at the interior of the car. Finally, when it seems as if he will never capitulate, he abruptly scrambles in.
Rachel leans across him to buckle his seatbelt. He looks as if he is concentrating furiously, but not on anything that can be seen.
‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ Elaine mutters, and Rachel gets in next to Aidan and obediently accelerates away.
As the care home disappears behind them the sensation of escape is so strong that it is almost as if they have lost contact with the ground, as if they’re flying, and not to a church in Kettlebridge but to somewhere completely unknown. It is as close to free as Rachel has felt for a long time, and she wonders if Aidan feels the same.
They make it to Rose Cottage a little early, and pull up outside the little bridge.
Having been calm as long as they were moving, Aidan seems to surface as if from a state not far removed from sleep, and stirs restively. Elaine says, ‘I think we’d better make this quick.’
For months Rachel has been obsessive about turning up precisely on time, as if to prove to Mitch that she can: that she’s reliable, that she can be trusted. She tells herself that these are exceptional circumstances: she’s about to accompany a man with learning difficulties to his mother’s memorial service. He can hardly object to her calling round ten minutes before she’s due to pick Becca up.
Still, she feels both nervous and bold as she rings at the bell. As if Viv is propelling her to break the rules.
To her surprise, it’s Becca who answers, dressed in a long black skirt and top and ready to go. Becca has been pretty good about coming to the service, which coincides with their regular Saturday visi
t time; it won’t mean much to her personally, since she had never met Viv, but when Rachel had explained about it she hadn’t raised any objections. Instead she responded with the same wary indifference that she extends to almost everything nowadays. If adolescence is the process of hatching into a butterfly, Becca is well and truly in her chrysalis.
Becca gets into the back of the car, and Rachel introduces her to the others. Becca seems alert and receptive in a way she isn’t usually, as if having other people with them – whoever they are, and whatever is about to come next – is actually a relief.
‘Nice to meet you,’ Becca says politely to Elaine. ‘I’m sorry about your mum.’
‘Thank you,’ Elaine says.
‘Your mum, too, of course, Aidan,’ Becca adds, reddening.
Aidan swivels round and inspects Becca, then reverts to staring out of the windscreen. Rachel tries to catch Becca’s eye – she wants to signal some kind of reassurance, Don’t worry, it’s difficult, you meant well – but Becca avoids her.
It’s hard to tell which of Viv’s children looks more apprehensive. With a sense of heading from the frying pan to the fire, Rachel turns and heads off down the lane.
She parks directly outside the church and goes round to let Aidan out. The previous evening she had figured out how to put on the safety locks so he couldn’t open the door, but it seems that it wouldn’t even occur to him to try. She knows he sometimes goes out in the care home’s minibus; maybe it is a rule to remain seated until told otherwise.
‘Out you come,’ she says, leaning across to unbuckle him.
He emerges to sniff the air and scans the façade of the church as if committing it to memory. The service isn’t due to begin for another half an hour, but already a few people are gathered outside, taking a moment to greet each other in the sunshine before going in to take their seats. Some of them look familiar, though it takes Rachel a moment to place them; one of them works in the bookshop in town, and another is a hairdresser she’s gone to once or twice.