by Thorne Moore
When it came, the orange juice helped me force down the eggs. The coffee washed down half a slice of toast. After that, I accepted defeat. It was enough for my purpose. I could feel my metabolism finding first gear. The hum in my ears ceased.
Before paying, I made my way to the Ladies. A couple of early-bird lorry drivers had rolled in, wanting the works, and the kitchen was suddenly clanking with substantial orders. A delivery boy with the day’s newspapers was occupying the waitress, so I was able to creep to the toilets without anyone clocking my precise movements.
I needed time. And privacy. I’d slept two nights in the van. What I really needed was a shower, but I’d have to make do. I looked at myself in the mirror, something I usually avoided at all costs, to assess how Serena was likely to react when I turned up on her doorstep. Badly, if she were at all normal. The scrambled eggs were beginning to work but I still had that haggard, half-dazed look that came with hunger. I was skeletal and hectic with it. My freckles looked like a ferocious attack of measles. I had nothing on me to tone them down. My hair was a tangled mess. Not just sandy, it looked as if it had sand in it. It urgently needed washing, but there was no hope of that. All I could do was drag a wet comb through it, till it hung straight and limp.
I pulled open the neck of my blouse and sniffed. Bad news. There were no towels to use as a flannel, just an inefficient hot-air hand dryer. And an equally inefficient soap squirter. These places don’t make allowances for mad women on a mission.
I mopped myself down as best I could with toilet paper, but there was nothing I could do about my unsavoury clothes. I had no others to change into. Damp, but slightly less pungent, I paid the still indifferent waitress and headed back to the van.
I’d used Malcolm’s card again to refill the tank. The guilt was still alive and kicking, but I found it easier to stifle it, this time. He’d have the van back, soon enough, and for the rest, there was nothing I could do about it.
I took one last look at the atlas. No need for continuous reference to it from now on. I could see the route I needed and my head was clear enough to make sense of the necessary turns.
It was gone eight by the time I found myself driving up the steep scarp of the downs and over the crest into the lush woodlands and gentle slopes where Thorpeshall lay, a few miles and a whole world apart from Lyford, whose grey miasma had been visible as I climbed. Nothing grey about Thorpeshall. This was where you lived if you could afford it. There were old farms that had prospered comfortably for centuries and new detached residences with sweeping drives, swimming pools and a deal of expensive oak timbering. There was a quaint gastro-pub with picnic benches, a small flinty church in a manicured graveyard, and stables where sleek, snooty horses grazed. Even the rows of workers’ cottages, with their warm brick and intricately carved little porches, looked as if they’d been acquired by bankers and turned into bijou weekend pads.
I stopped at the triangle of green in the middle of the village, and wondered how likely it was that anyone living here would allow me across their threshold. Unlikely. I was one of the great unwashed. Literally. They’d have to be a saint, even to open the door. But then that was what Serena had been, and from the way the others spoke of her, she surely still was.
I knew who I wanted her to be. Galadriel. The benign, lovely lady of light, offering me a mirror in which I could see the truth. She wouldn’t be like the others. I had tried to fit them into character roles, Ruth, Barbara, Angela, Denise, but somehow they all came across as versions of Miss Havisham.
Serena wouldn’t be Miss Havisham. She couldn’t be.
I’d find out soon enough.
Three roads led from the green in Thorpeshall, and one of them was Braxton Lane. I followed it, slowly rolling along a leafy tunnel, peering through wide gateways and round exotic shrubberies to identify the house called Inisfree.
It wasn’t one of the most extravagant ones, when I found it. An L-shaped bungalow, 1920s or 30s perhaps, sizeable enough as bungalows go, in a gracious garden backed by a stand of silver birches, but modest by Thorpeshall standards. It stood on a bend in Braxton Lane, so that with the two houses on either side, it formed a secluded little close. Their gates shared a gravel lay-by where the postman could park and deliver to three mailboxes.
I hovered in the lay-by for a moment, summoning up the courage to go in, and knew one of the neighbours was observing me as he trimmed his hedge. He might be pretending to concentrate on the laurel, but I could feel his beady eyes taking diligent note. This place screamed Neighbourhood Watch.
I turned in, before he could arrest me, and found I wasn’t the only visitor at Inisfree. A decorator’s van was parked in front of the garage, and a young man in overalls was up a ladder, whistling softly as he painted the woodwork under the guttering. He glanced round at the sound of my engine, raised a friendly paintbrush, then went back to work.
I parked up just inside the gate, and got out, feeling the buzz begin, the pulse start to race. Breathe. Deep. Keep calm. I started to walk along the gravel, as the front door opened.
Serena Whinn came out.
Serena Canterbury, as she now was, but she would forever be Serena Whinn to me. I had hesitated over the others, searching for a resemblance to the ten-year-olds I had known, but there was no hesitation here. She was exactly the beautiful woman the beautiful child had been destined to become. She was Galadriel in a haze of golden light.
She was carrying a tray, with a mug and biscuits, talking to the painter, smiling up at him, and he was smiling back, slipping his brush into his paint can and starting down the ladder.
‘Let’s hope the rain keeps off,’ she was saying, as I approached, blood thundering in my ears. Never mind the utterly mundane words. Her voice was still exactly as I remembered it. Soft. Mellifluous. Maybe a little deeper, more mature, but that was all. ‘Time for a coffee, surely, before you get properly started.’
At the sound of my footstep, she turned from the painter towards me, questioning, but still smiling.
I couldn’t speak.
I was ten feet away when realisation dawned on her. She recognised me. I could see it. Her dark eyes widened slightly, her lips parted, but there was no appalled surprise, no disgust. She stood for a moment, then reached out, her arms wide, to gather me in.
‘Karen. Oh my poor Karen.’
I flew to her, flinging myself into her embrace.
‘There, there.’ She smelt of roses. I daren’t think what I smelt of, but she didn’t flinch. She turned to the painter once more, who was down off his ladder now and wiping his hands, before picking up his mug. ‘An old friend, Gary. A very dear old friend. I can leave you to it, can’t I? Just call, if you need me.’
‘Sure thing, Mrs Canterbury. Should be finished by lunchtime.’
‘Wonderful. Karen, come.’
She led me into the house.
It was odd how I felt as if I were stepping into warm sunlight. Odd because the sky was cloudy, and there were no lights on within, or heating. In any other circumstance, I’d have thought it chilly, but I could only feel the radiance from Serena. Galadriel. Morning had broken, like the first morning, and the glow clung to her.
‘Sit down, darling,’ she said, guiding me to a sofa. ‘You look exhausted. Let me pour you a coffee. I’ve just made a pot.’ She brought me a mug, delicate bone china, and a glass of water for herself. With one finger, she gently stroked my cheek, her eyes brimful of compassion. ‘You have come a journey, haven’t you?’
She knew. She understood. I had come a journey in every sense.
‘Did you know I was coming?’ I managed to croak.
She smiled gently. ‘Barbara told me you’d been to Carlisle. She said you were in a terrible state. That was months ago, wasn’t it? Now I feel guilty. When she told me, I meant to look you up and see if I could help in any way, but she didn’t have your address, and I’m afraid one thing after another got in the way and I never managed it. But here you are, and you’ve found me. I’m
so glad.’
Her tone was so soft and sweet that I barely listened to her words. I simply floated in honey.
‘So many years, Karen. More than thirty, isn’t it, since we were at Marsh Green School and then you vanished from our lives, and word got round that you’d died.’
I shook my head. ‘I had an accident, but I didn’t die.’
Her smiled broadened into a gentle laugh. ‘No. You didn’t. You’re a fighter, Karen. Strong will. That’s good. You’ve come through it all.’
‘Not very well.’ Was that what I was? A fighter? I had flailed wildly at Miles and given him a black eye, and there had been an incident with a policeman’s nose that nearly led to an assault charge. I’d probably done even worse things over the long years of insanity, so perhaps I was a mad pugilist. But I wasn’t the sort of warrior any general would want in his army. ‘I haven’t coped with anything very well, ever. I’m a mess, I know, and I always have been.’
Serena squeezed my hand. ‘I can see you’ve been through the wars, Karen. Life must have been so very hard for you. It leaves its scars on all of us.’
‘You don’t look scarred! You haven’t changed at all.’ I gazed on her, drinking in the perpetual reassurance of her beauty, inner and outer. She had matured from child to adult, but she still had the same willowy figure, the same rippling fall of dark hair, the flawless peachy skin, the dark, dark eyes, gleaming with sympathy and understanding. And yet… I reminded myself that she had been through as much as me.
‘Oh but you’ve suffered too, haven’t you? You lost two husbands, they said, Denise, and Angela…’
There was an instant gleam in her eyes but tears didn’t fall. Her throat constricted for a moment, then she nodded. ‘Tony, my first love, died in a plane crash. It was a terrible time, traumatic, but good friends helped me through it and I was able to remake my life. And then Jack. Poor, poor Jack. Such a terrible waste. If only he’d let me help him. We could have faced it together. He’d always said he couldn’t bear the thought of a slow decline into a painful end, but if he had only waited for the diagnosis to be confirmed.’ She turned away hurriedly, raising her glass of water to her lips. She brushed a hand across her eyes, then she straightened her shoulders and turned back to me, with a brave smile. ‘But the moving finger writes. There’s nothing I can do to turn the clock back, is there? If only we could, but we can’t, and there’s nothing for it but to soldier on. So tell me, about your tragedy. It was a terrible accident, I hear.’
‘Oh. Well. That was a long time ago. I fell from a window. They’d put us in a flat, in a tower block, while we waited for a house to become available. Fifth floor.’ In the face of Serena’s bravery, how could I mention Hilary’s claim that I had jumped, not fallen? I didn’t know for sure that I had, so I stuck to the official line.
Serena’s eyes widened in horror as I spoke, then she winced. ‘How awful. For you, of course, but also for your poor parents. They must have been distraught.’
‘It was miserable for my sister too. I was too ill to understand it then, but I realise now how much she felt left out. In a way, I think it damaged her as much as it damaged me.’
‘Yes, it must be very hard on siblings. I remember your little sister! A sweet girl, with plaits. You used to walk to school together sometimes. And then you moved away.’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course I was only in Lyford for another year after you left. My father took a posting with the Hong Kong police, and I was whisked off to the Far East.’
‘That must have been exciting. So exotic.’
She smiled, sadly. ‘Perhaps. It was certainly a change from Lyford. But it wasn’t a very happy time. We’d only been there three years when my father had a heart attack and died. Of course there was the natural grief, but one feels so alone, too, when that happens, on the wrong side of the world, among strangers. Mummy and I moved to New Zealand – she had a cousin there who was very kind to us, but it was a horribly stressful time for her. For both of us.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry! How awful for you.’
‘Well, we came through it. And New Zealand is a beautiful place. That was where I met Tony, my first husband. A whirlwind romance. I was very young, but utterly enchanted. He took me off to Australia. Sydney – he had a business there. It was an idyllic life for a while. A few short years.’ She sighed. ‘Then he was killed and I really wasn’t a business woman. I did my best to hold things together for him, but I couldn’t bear to see his achievements fall apart around me, on my watch, so I sold up. And then my mother passed away too, and I decided it was time to come home. Start afresh once more. Fate was kind. Kinder than anyone could deserve, because I met Jack. He was a professor at Oxford and we were blissfully happy. If it hadn’t been for that mistaken diagnosis…’
She turned away again, hurriedly, and after giving a little shake, she concentrated on straightening a picture. It was an oil painting, genuine, not a print, almost abstract, but I could recognise silver birches. The birches at the bottom of her garden.
‘That’s a lovely picture,’ I said, lamely. ‘Did you paint it?’
‘This? No. I was always hopeless at art, don’t you remember?’
I shook my head. I couldn’t remember Serena being hopeless at anything.
‘Well.’ She laughed. ‘Not hopeless, maybe, but nothing like you. You were the artist in the class. No, this is a Daniel Pettifer. I’m so fortunate, I know. A group of us were trying to set up art sessions for some prisoners – as a sort of therapy, part of their rehabilitation – and we were lucky enough to persuade him to come and give a demonstration. I offered to put him up overnight and he painted this while he was here. Isn’t it lovely? He insisted on giving it to me as rent, which is outrageous, but I liked it so much, I couldn’t bring myself to refuse. I hate to think what it’s worth.’
‘It is a beautiful picture.’
‘Silver birches and beech trees on the downs. I’ve always loved them. An image of innocent youth, I suppose. I remember all those Sunday walks along the downs, after church. So, after Jack died, I came back here. A homing instinct, maybe. We seek our roots for comfort. It must be a desire to return to the cradle.’ She gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I know, I know. If I wanted to go home, I should have bought a place in Lyford, shouldn’t I? I did look, but I just couldn’t face it. Does that make me an awful person?’
‘No, not at all. If you had the choice of Lyford or Thorpeshall, who would choose Lyford? This must be a lovely place to live.’
‘It is. If you’re up early, you see deer, sometimes. And my neighbours are sweet. So, you, Karen. Where do you live now?’
‘Oh…’ In Yorkshire, I could have said. Or in a garden flat with rotting windows. Or in a cavern of books, and the fantasy lands and times they contain. ‘I don’t really live anywhere. I mean, I don’t think I really live.’
‘Then we must put that right.’
I felt, at that moment, that if she put her mind to it, she could do it. She had been through so much, herself. She had travelled the world – the real one. She had known love, she had known grief, and stress and joy, adventure and determination. And all I had done since my accident, since the age of eleven, was flounder in a cesspit of confusion, creeping into dark corners to escape whatever was out there. But now, with Serena to hold my hand, I would rise up!
Then she put her empty glass down. Upside down. On the tray where my mug stood.
An upturned glass, waiting for six young fingers to bring it to life.
— 18 —
It was only when Serena put that glass down that I remembered why I had come. It wasn’t the tragedies and triumphs of her life story I’d come to hear her tell me, but the stark truth underlying my own.
I sat motionless as she returned the tray to the kitchen, staring out at the garden, the silver birches beyond. Six silver birches, tall and shimmering. And one lone rowan, tawny berries glistening. Like blood.
Serena returned. She was smiling, then she sa
w my face and all the pity returned. She pulled up a chair so she could sit in front of me and hold my hands.
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘It’s Janice, isn’t it? That’s what’s been haunting you.’
I nodded.
‘Poor little Janice. I always felt so sorry for her. I don’t suppose she would have had a very happy life if she’d lived. The world can be so ungenerous, and some are just marked out for misery. I’m horribly afraid all the Dexters were destined for the abyss, without a single hand to help them. I’ve seen it, so many times. Life is cruel to such people. But for it to end the way it did with little Janice, that’s more than cruel. So young, so helpless.’
A tear rolled down Serena’s cheek. I watched it through the veil of my own tears. ‘What did I do, Serena? What did I tell you? I have to know. I know it was bad. I am crippled by guilt, but I don’t know what about.’
‘The girls said you couldn’t remember anything at all. Is that right?’
‘I remember bits. Flashes of this and that. The Christmas party – I remember that. That was when it all… It was all to do with that Ouija game, wasn’t it?’
‘Ah.’ She winced slightly and took another deep breath. ‘Yes, of course it was. You’re quite right. It was, and I feel so guilty about it. I should never have let Barbara organise it. But we’d played it at her house, you see. Her aunt came to visit and she was into that sort of silliness, palm-reading and so on, so she had us all playing it.
‘I think Mrs Fulbright disapproved, but I thought it was just a parlour game. Magic, of course. I was young enough to believe it really was magic, but still a game. Any number of daft messages came through. The spirit said he was Henry VIII and he wanted to marry Mrs Fulbright. Just daft, innocent fun and everyone was laughing. So when Barbara suggested it at our Christmas party, I never thought, for one moment, that there could be anything more sinister involved. But, oh dear God, that terrible message…’
‘Who made the glass move?’
‘I suppose Denise would tell us it was the Devil.’