I Couldn't Love You More

by Esther Freud

  My mother’s arms are around me, and she’s holding me so hard I sob. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I prime myself for what will follow – We did warn you. It’s only what we expected – but she suggests we go back to the café, and instead of shoes, and bags, we buy sandwiches and soup, and my mother tells us about her life growing up in Ceylon, stories that I’ve never heard, and how when she was seven she was sent to school in England and didn’t see her parents for five years. ‘Had they died?’ Freya asks, and my mother, with only the smallest tremor, says that’s exactly what she’d wondered, but there they were again – she’d just turned twelve – looking much the same as in the photograph she’d kept by her bed. After that, she went out to visit them by ship every summer, until she was grown up, by which time she’d met my father, Grandad, who didn’t like to travel.

  THAT NIGHT I CALL BECK, and when he answers, I find that I can’t speak. He waits, patient on the line, until I manage to squeeze out my name.

  ‘Kate,’ he echoes, and he waits again, coming in at intervals to say he’s not in any hurry, suggesting I might prefer it if he called me back in a while?

  ‘No,’ I manage, and with a heave of breath I ask him to listen.

  Reverend Mother,

  I would like it known that if my daughter Isabelle is to contact you enquiring as to my whereabouts, it is my wish that you pass this letter on to her, so that she might know where to find me. Please be mindful that in some parts of the civilised world this is now the law.

  Rosaleen Kelly

  I keep Patricia to myself.

  There’s a pause while the words swirl and settle.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Could you write?’

  I could, but what if she’s moved – I might actually go crazy waiting for a reply.

  ‘Is there a number?’

  ‘There is.’

  ‘You’ll have to call.’

  ‘Who will I say I am?’

  ‘You could pretend to be someone else?’

  ‘I am someone else.’

  ‘Can you wait half an hour?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I have an idea.’

  I HEAR BECK’S VAN as it rattles to a stop, and even before he knocks, I’ve opened the front door. ‘Hello.’ I put a finger to my lips so he knows not to wake Freya, and he gives me an awkward hug and steps inside. I lead him through to the kitchen, where his eyes glide around the room. Can he feel it, the way the house has emptied? Has he noticed the grimed outline where the photograph of Matt with his guitar once hung?

  ‘Would you like . . . ?’ I search around for something to offer, but he shakes his head.

  ‘Shall I?’ He picks up the phone.

  I hand him the letter.

  ‘We’ll need the code.’

  I know the code. It’s the same code as my parents’. I look up at the clock. It’s a quarter past nine.

  He dials, and my heart thumps so wildly I’m sure that it will burst. ‘Who will you say you are?’

  ‘A friend.’

  It rings.

  I double over.

  It rings again, and I hunch down on the floor, but by the seventh ring my terror is subsiding. By the tenth I’m beginning to calm. There’s no one at home. I stand, I breathe, and then there is an answer. Beck bends his head to the receiver. ‘Hello?’ I strain to hear the voice on the other end. ‘I was wondering, is Rosaleen Kelly there?’

  There is a pause. Don’t let her be there! My fear is white, red-hot and burning.

  ‘I’m an old friend,’ Beck is saying. ‘I wanted to send her something. Can I check the address? Gamekeepers Cottage. Oakfield. That’s it. Thanks so much. And you are? Thanks then, Chloe. Bye.’

  I put my hands over my mouth. ‘What a coward!’ I say through the grille of my fingers.

  Beck laughs. ‘You’re the bravest person I know.’

  WE SIT UP LATE, eating the remainder of the chocolate cake Freya brought home in a napkin, and Beck tells me about his family when I’ve exhausted the details of mine. He was the middle son of three brothers, his family moved to Devon not long after he was born, and from the age of ten he spent every hour of his spare time surfing. This was how he got the idea for his café. He’d sell cakes and biscuits to the ravenous surfers on the beach, and soon he’d set up in a shack, making wraps and salads, juices, omelettes, and when he needed staff his mother – everything he cooked he’d learnt from her – came and worked with him, and once he left for college in London, she took the place over and extended it. Now even he can hardly get a table. ‘I’d love to take you there. And Freya. She could learn to surf.’

  It is beginning to get light when he stands and stretches. ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Yes.’ I could ask him to stay, and I glimpse the sweetness of a future, sea spray and hunger, another night like this.

  ‘Bye then.’ He reaches out but I find that I’ve stepped back. Nothing surely can be this easy, and there’s Freya, horizontal in my bed.

  I show him to the door.

  DEAR ROSALEEN, I write on a thick cream sheet of drawing paper.

  I have a great desire to talk to you about Isabelle, and also Felicia. Would you call me when you receive this letter?

  I draw a picture of a face. Wild hair, wide mouth, my own startled eyes. I seal it, paste on a stamp and run out to the postbox, where I drop it in before I change my mind.

  It seems now I may never leave the house. The first day I float, ghostly, up and down the stairs; on the second, it is a full-time job, listening for the phone. Freya is in a manic mood. She demands potato prints, stick whittling, animals cut from felt. Exhausted, I throw a sheet over the washing line to make a tent. ‘ “Baby Day”,’ Freya pleads, and when I don’t immediately respond she recites the story herself, adding a new section in which Max, while on his way to school, is adopted by a family so kind he stays for lunch.

  Lunch. I’ve forgotten we need to eat, and I’m cutting carrots, setting glasses on a tray, when the phone rings. I stare at it for so long the pasta boils over, and the tomato sauce I’m heating crinkles in the pan. Hello, I practise before I pick it up.

  It’s Matt.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, deflated. I can’t think of anything to add.

  ‘We should talk.’

  ‘We should.’ We should have talked.

  ‘I’ll give you money for Freya, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  When there is another silence he spits, ‘She’s not just yours, you know.’

  ‘No.’ I force the word out. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry too.’

  We hold the line.

  ‘I’ll call by soon.’

  ‘Do that.’

  I listen while he puts down the phone.

  Rosaleen

  EACH SUMMER, IN THE TRIANGLE OF FIELD BEHIND THE HOUSE, there was a horticultural show. A poster pasted on to the window of the village shop announced the categories: Flower arrangement. Flower arrangement by a man. Biscuits decorated by a child. Jam. Marmalade. Lemon curd. A fancy dress parade. And every kind of vegetable.

  Rosaleen roamed her garden, fingering the fronds of carrots, the red veins of the chard. She fetched a trug and arranged in it potatoes turned that morning from the earth; three long beets, bushy with their tails; a spray of beans and one cob lettuce. She added parsley, rosemary, a royally purple artichoke, remembering the first year they entered, when the girls dressed as a horse, making a head from papier mâché, painting it silver, pasting on a mane of wool. That was the year Peter ripped a bunch of flowers from the borders of the garden – marigolds and daisies, stems of ripening corn – and jammed them into the top of an old engine-oil tin, and won. They’d arrived, as a family, through the side gate of the field. Peter, with red braces over his white shirt; Rosaleen, in a green dress. It seemed the whole village watched as they advanced: their neighbours, strangers then who passed them on the hill, the windows
of their Volvos wound.

  ‘Haven’t you made a splendid effort!’ It was the woman from the Coach House, her steel-grey hair set in a wave; her husband, in cravat and slacks, grinning by her side. ‘What a delight to meet you. We have been intrigued.’

  Peter had steered them towards the tent where earlier that day Rosaleen had dropped off her trug of vegetables. Even before they entered they could hear the flutter of excitement. Men and women in their summer best were bent over tables on which sat rows of paper plates. Further along were jars of jam, each with a mouse-sized spoonful missing; bouquets of sweet peas in narrow-throated vases; and, at the far end, misshapen vegetables: a carrot with its legs crossed, a parsnip with one unseemly bulge.

  ‘Where’s yours?’ The girls rushed from one table to the next. Carrots, trimmed; onions with their topknots sheared; potatoes, polished. Rosettes sat in clusters – first prize; second – intercepted by small harsh comments. Only seven gooseberries in this category allowed. Courgette outside specified size.

  Rosaleen’s entry sat on a side table. Wild and hairy, it looked positively obscene.

  ‘What does it mean, disqual-i-fied?’ Sylva attempted, and Rosaleen had snatched up the slip of paper and scrunched it in her hand.

  ‘Bastards!’ Her anger was explosive and she glared at Peter, who was laughing with the landlord of the pub.

  ‘Isn’t that you?’ he’d called to her as a loudspeaker asked for cake-stall volunteers, and she’d stamped away, still swearing, past the shortbread entries and the sausage rolls.

  Now fashion had exonerated her. Radishes were exhibited in all their frilly glory, potatoes clotted with earth. That weekend had been a turning point. The neighbours congratulating Peter on his win, patting the horse, which was garlanded with a rosette, bending to talk to Chloe and Sylva as they unfolded themselves from their disguise: Chloe, strong and dark, her hair in braids; Sylva as slight and fair as an elf.

  This weekend they were both home. They loved the fete, made an effort not to miss it, relishing the strictness of the judging, the imperious comments, enjoying the chance to see old friends.

  Rosaleen uprooted a thistle, and wondered if she’d imagined the girl. You look like my mother. She’d been so shaken that as soon as she’d been able she’d slipped through the gap in the hedge and retreated to her bed.

  ‘What is it?’ Peter was gentle. He was used to her despairing moods. ‘All you have to do if you’re that desperate to win is trim the bloody beetroot.’

  She couldn’t tell him. It was the only thing she had – her secret – and she needed it for herself.

  ‘Mum.’ Chloe was standing on the path. ‘I meant to say, there was an odd phone call last night, when you and Dad were out.’

  Rosaleen cut a trail of nasturtiums. ‘Odd how?’

  ‘Just someone, said they were an old friend.’

  Rosaleen looked up.

  ‘But you don’t have any old friends.’ It was a common tease between them. ‘A man, he wanted to check the address.’

  Rosaleen paled.

  ‘Mum?’

  She forced herself to look at Chloe. Whoever it was, no one could take anything from her now.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine. For God’s sake, let me get ready or I’ll be late getting to the tent.’

  ‘Disqualified.’ It was a family joke.

  ‘Before I’ve even entered!’

  ‘Quick!’ Chloe looked at her watch. ‘I’ll get my cake. Sylva,’ she bellowed. Sylva had baked a loaf of soda bread. ‘We have to run!’

  Kate

  ‘MUM?’ FREYA IS WHISPERING, SOFT AGAINST MY HAIR. ‘WHAT?’ I turn towards her, surprised to find it’s morning, but even as I do, I hear the ringing of the phone. I push back the covers. It’s too early, surely, for anyone to call, although when I glance at the clock I see it’s after nine.

  My feet are swift and clumsy on the stairs. The phone is slowing, I can feel it as I fling around the banister, and as I scoot along the hall and lunge for the receiver I’m convinced I’ve caught the last ring.

  ‘Hello?’

  The air is still.

  ‘Am I speaking to Isabelle Felicia?’ A light, clear voice.

  I grip the receiver so hard it stings my ear. The silence deepens. Rivers run through it. Trees blossom and leaf. ‘You are.’

  There’s a strangled sound. I think it might be choking, but then there’s a quiver, and she’s laughing, and I’m laughing too, peals and trills, an echo of each other.

  ‘I’d like to see you.’

  ‘I’d like to see you too.’

  She begins to explain about the journey, or where would I like to meet? But I say I’ll find her. I’ll catch a bus, get off by the church, and walk up the hill.

  * * *

  ‘Where’s Gran?’ Freya asks when we push through the barrier, and I tell her that she’ll see her soon, just not today. Rosaleen offered to collect us, but in my hurry I need all the time I can get. We take the bus, a double-decker, swaying greenly above hedgerows, and when we step down I breathe in the familiar air, grass and bracken, the open sky. We walk across the common, past the oak, the fallen branch of which Freya smooths with her hand, uphill and down again, across the trickle of the Splash and along beside the wall of the estate. There, as directed, is the copse of trees, straight and rustling among the stumps of those struck down in the storm. We push open a gate and walk along a path and there it is, as she described, a red-painted door. I knock, and wait, and when there’s no answer I turn away; and that’s when I see her, standing by the side of the house. Her hair is long. It hangs almost to her waist, and the black is streaked with grey.

  ‘Isabelle.’ She says it quiet, and she walks towards us and she takes hold of my spare hand.

  Acknowledgments

  In 2011 I supported the charity Action Against Hunger by offering to name a character in my forthcoming novel after the highest bidder. Chloe Hazell did not fit into Mr Mac and Me, but I found a place for her here. Sarah de Lisle, who in 2016 bid to be immortalized in support of Freedom from Torture, was too distracting to include in full, and I hope will be satisfied to know that she is indeed Sarah.

  Among the books I read during the writing of this novel I’d like to credit: The Light in the Window by June Goulding, The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers by Angela Patrick, and A Good Likeness by Paul Arnott. My thanks go to my lifelong friend and editor, Alexandra Pringle; my agent, Clare Conville; and in America, Anna Stein, Daniel Halpern, and Gabriella Doob. I am so grateful to my loyal first readers, Xandra Bingley, Delia Woodman, and Kitty Aldridge, and to Justine Picardie, who appeared as if by magic when she was needed. Many thanks also to Deirdre Terry, Julie Terry, Michele Macey, and Angela Shaw; to Georgia Shearman, Sarah Shearman, Isabella Tree, and Paul Arnott for their help with research; and to John Kelly for his careful reading and advice on Catholic doctrine.

  My thanks also to Gerry Simpson for providing so much more than the title.

  But mostly I am indebted to my much missed mother, who, at eighteen, found herself pregnant and unmarried. Terrified she’d be discovered and sent to a Home – a workhouse for ‘morally defective’ women – she kept the news a secret. This novel was written in response to the idea: What would have happened if she’d been found out, or if she’d asked for help from the wrong people? Would her story have followed the path of so many thousands of other girls and women, and would anyone have intervened?

  About the Author

  ESTHER FREUD trained as an actress before writing her first novel, Hideous Kinky, published in 1992; it was short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and made into a film starring Kate Winslet. In 1993, Freud was named a Granta Best Young British Novelist. She has since written seven other novels, including The Sea House, Love Falls, and Lucky Break. Her most recent novel, Mr. Mac and Me, was the 2015 winner of the East Anglian Book Award for Fiction. She also writes stories, articles, and travel pieces, and teaches creative writing at the Fabe
r Academy. Freud lives in London and Suffolk.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Also by Esther Freud

  Mr. Mac and Me (2014)

  Lucky Break (2011)

  Love Falls (2007)

  The Sea House (2003)

  The Wild (2000)

  Summer at Gaglow (1997)

  Peerless Flats (1993)

  Hideous Kinky (1992)

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  I COULDN’T LOVE YOU MORE. Copyright © 2021 by Esther Freud. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Ecco® and HarperCollins® are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.

  Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Bloomsbury.

  FIRST EDITION

  Cover design by Allison Saltzman

  Cover art © Tali Yalonetzki

  Digital Edition JULY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-305719-7

  Version 05202021

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-305718-0

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  www.harpercollins.com.au