by Cathy Bussey
Rik looked pale and ragged the next morning. Faith supposed she must do too, she had barely slept, and Minel and Paul were also listless, almost catatonic. They all lounged wordlessly around the pool, occasionally drifting in to cool off.
Sometimes these sun-soaked late summer days would stretch out endlessly, oppressively, with not even a cloud to break the rays that were blistering mercilessly down on them. ‘This is why we need a summerhouse,’ Minel said, fanning herself furiously, and the effort seemed to completely exhaust her. Tears welled up in her eyes once again.
She got up, and Paul rose to his feet and put his arm around her. They went slowly into the house, which would be blissfully cool and shady, Faith thought wistfully, but they needed some privacy and she really should go home. Then she remembered her parents, and she could almost picture Judith waiting patiently at the kitchen table for her daughter to reappear, and she couldn’t face that either. Sara was away with her sister for the weekend so she couldn’t even go and grumble in her friend’s back garden like the good old days.
She sneaked a glance at Rik, who was wearing sunglasses. She wasn’t sure if he was still awake.
It was so hot she was starting to sweat, she could see beads of it forming on her chest, and feel it on her stomach too. She wanted to take her vest off and if Minel and Paul had still been hanging around she probably would have done, but she didn’t really feel like sitting next to Rik wearing only a faded grey marl bra and her denim shorts.
‘I’m going for a ride,’ she told him. He didn’t look like he felt like joining her. She sloped off, and because she had nothing better to do she stayed out all day. She rode out as far as she could, turning down every bridlepath or farm track she came across, hoping to put some distance between herself and Hollyhocks but finding herself always, frustratingly, looping back to within just a few miles of it.
She stopped for a rest and pulled out her phone. She had a message from Sara saying Minel had phoned her that morning to tell her about the miscarriage. ‘I should be there with all of you,’ she wrote fretfully.
‘I think she and Paul need some space,’ Faith responded. ‘She knows we’re all here if she needs us. How’s it going with your sister?’
‘Perfectly dreadful,’ Sara wrote back.
Faith grinned to herself. ‘That sums it up round here too.’
‘What else have I missed?’ Sara demanded.
‘Nothing,’ Faith wrote back. ‘That’s why it’s perfectly dreadful.’
She rode to the quarry and sat on the top step and stared down into the pit, until the silence chased her back out onto the road again. The shadows were lengthening by the time she wheeled home, exhausted and starving.
There was nobody at the pool when she got back, and the kitchen and living room were empty. She had a flash of fear that they had all run out on her. Minel and Paul would be upstairs, she reminded herself. Rik was probably at the cottage, working or sleeping. He’s still there, she told herself. Everybody’s still here.
GT yapped from the sofa and she shuffled in and lay down, pulling the puppy into her arms. She would just rest her eyes for a bit, and then think about getting something to eat.
When she woke it was pitch dark. She checked her phone. 10pm. She could hear creaking from upstairs.
Somebody’s home, she thought. Somebody’s here.
You’re not alone.
She glanced out of the window and across the garden, she could see a light on in the cottage.
I feel lonely, she thought, lonely for Rik but something tells me if I go over there right now with an olive branch I’m only going to end up feeling lonelier.
Just give it some time. It’ll be OK, but you have to give it some time.
He’s still here. We’re all still here. Battered and bruised and broken, shattered into our factions, Paul and Minel in it together, Rik and I very much apart, but we’re all still here.
Chapter 23
Paul returned to the site later on in the week and the work carried on as normal, if a little less carefree. Faith had hoped the new tension with Rik might have dissolved, but while they were still riding together every lunchtime and staying up at night working on the drawings of Hollyhocks, all their previously easy conversation had dried up.
He was clearly still troubled by something he couldn’t or didn’t want to express. She wondered why he still persisted in spending time with her at all. But in spite of the tension the silence with which their evenings now passed wasn’t uncomfortable, nor was it particularly unwelcome.
After five weeks in which everything seemed in constant motion, they had both finally stopped spinning.
By Friday lunchtime Rik seemed to have mellowed and they rode to the quarry where she watched him gracefully sweeping round the gravel pit, swooping up and down through the corners, before skidding to a halt in front of her.
‘Do you want to hang around here tonight, or go out?’ he asked.
‘Go out,’ she said instantly. She had had just about enough of their mutual silent retreat. She wondered if it was odd, that they both just assumed they’d be spending the evening together.
He nodded. ‘I’m up for that.’
‘We can’t stay out too late,’ she warned. ‘Big day tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow. Saturday.’ From his expression she guessed he’d forgotten what day of the week it was. ‘I can’t this evening,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Lucinda’s coming later.’
And there goes my Friday night, she thought sadly, and there goes the strange world Rik and I have been living in, just the two of us, right with it.
In fact there goes whatever weird little bubble we’ve both been encased in all summer. It’s like something hit the earth the moment I cried in front of him on Fox Hill and all this time it’s just been rolling downwards, taking me and Rik and all the conversations we’ve had and the thoughts and the memories and the noise and the silence, bundling us all up with it.
Now it’s reached the bottom. Now it’s burst.
So there goes my last weekend with him, because I’ll have to respect his request and steer clear while Lucinda’s around. And this time next week we’ll be finishing up. The garden will be done, the summerhouse will be built, and it’ll all be over.
Of all the ways she had thought this summer with Rik would end, of all the final conclusions, she would never have guessed the very last one, would have been silence.
But for once, there was truly nothing more to say.
Chapter 24
The Land Rover bounced over potholes as Faith gripped the steering wheel tightly, narrowly missing banging her head on the roof. Jason was getting married at one of those irritatingly discreetly concealed, showy country house places but the driveway was very much out of the Hollyhock House mould, and she cursed as she failed to notice yet another gigantic pothole. A crunch came from somewhere in the region of where her suspension had once been. Maybe she should think about getting a new car, after all.
At least she looked OK today. Her early night had mitigated the usual effects of the inevitable 3am wakeup call and she’d enlisted Sara to make her face up, hiding the shadows beneath her green eyes, which were flashing brilliantly thanks to her friend’s artful hand. She had also let Sara put her hair up for once, twining it into an elegant knot from which curly tendrils were already beginning to escape, framing her face fetchingly.
Sara had been on good form this morning, Faith mused, full of resolve to once again try and persuade Tony to open up. ‘I have a plan,’ she’d said to Faith, her eyes sparkling. ‘I’ll give you a full debrief tomorrow.’
‘So will I,’ Faith had said.
Sara had raised her eyebrows. ‘That sounds promising. Don’t tell me you’ve finally stopped pining over Rik?’
‘Still pining,’ Faith had confessed, ‘but now thinking maybe I do need a bit of a push to just let it go.’ She thought of Simon. ‘You never know,’ she’d said to Sara. ‘Maybe this summer will end with a bang after all.�
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She parked up and got out of the car, tottering on the spiky heels Sara had lent her, which matched her dress. I look like a lady, she giggled to herself. Maybe I should have brought Lofty as a date.
Lucinda’s silver gas-guzzler purred disdainfully past and Faith watched as she got out of the car, smoothing down her aquamarine dress. She looked stunning, her glossy hair sweeping in a shiny curtain down to her fragile shoulders which somehow still managed to hold up her magnificent, voluptuously soaring breasts. The shiny fabric of her dress clung to her slim waist before flaring out over her curvy hips. I can wear all the fancy dresses I like, Faith thought bleakly, but I’ll never be able to hold a candle to her.
And there was Rik next to her, wearing dark blue trousers and a pale blue shirt. He hadn’t bothered with a jacket, it was boiling hot and she pitied the groomsmen, who were milling around in morning suits laughing heartily and sporting delicate corsages of cornflowers and oxeye daisies in their buttonholes. Oh, wildflowers, Faith thought delightedly. They were beautiful, nestling prettily against the steel-grey lapels of the suits, a little flash of summer on a grey winter’s day. I like Lily already, she decided. Then Rik turned to say something to Lucinda and she caught her breath, because he looked different — totally different.
He’d shaved, she realised. That stupid beard. Lucinda must have finally persuaded him to ditch it.
She hadn’t actually seen his jaw or his impossibly high, haughty cheekbones all summer. Somewhere along the line she’d stopped noticing the beard, it had just become another part of him. Without it he looked much more like the teenager she remembered, his body still lean and graceful under his shirt. But he also looked a more accurate version of who he was now, without the chaos of hair his wilder edges seemed sharper and more defined.
She could just as easily be seeing him for the first time all over again, witnessing like a time lapse the passage of the last nine years, all the ways he had changed, and all the ways he had stayed the same.
Sensing her gaze, Rik caught her eye and nodded. He said something to Lucinda who turned and gave Faith an overly friendly wave, then steered him off firmly in the opposite direction.
The ceremony was short but moving, and Lily looked absolutely radiant in a simple cream dress. She had a crown of wildflowers in her dark brown hair, and she and Jason both gazed at one another adoringly and giggled touchingly as they stumbled over their vows.
Faith, still hopelessly adrift, stood next to Simon and tried not to watch as Lucinda slipped her hand into Rik’s and smiled at him winningly. They looked good together, she thought in anguish, very classy and well-matched. They all filed out of the airy, hexagonal room into the corridor and reception area for drinks. Rik put his arm around Lucinda’s satin-smooth shoulders and she leaned into him as if it was a given that he would always be standing next to her, as if she just knew where he was, without even looking. Does she feel him like I do, Faith wondered? Do the hairs on her arms prickle when he moves silently into range?
Does her infinitely feminine, luscious-looking body just melt into his like mine did? Does he find every inch of her as mesmerising as he once found every part of me?
How could she be threatened by our past? I only know what it’s like to be loved by Rik as a boy. She’s the one who knows what it’s like to be loved by him as a man.
She felt a knot of pure misery swirl together in the pit of her stomach and rise up to the back of her throat. Was she going to be sick? No, she wasn’t, she was going to cry. Again. She was going to bawl her eyes out and ruin Sara’s lovely makeup.
Was the mascara waterproof? She choked back the first of the sobs and ran out of the hall, her stupid spiky shoes clattering and skidding on the marbled floor of the corridor that led to the blissful reprieve of the Ladies.
‘You need these!’ An attendant shot forward, holding a pair of plastic heel-shields.
‘Not now,’ Faith said, and flew past him into the toilet, shutting herself into the farthest cubicle and sitting down on the chilly seat, putting her head in her hands and wailing like GT after she’d booted him off her leg. She cried and cried and cried, sobbing and choking and heaving, her tears pouring like a waterfall down her face, soaking her stupid showy lovely dress and splashing onto the floor.
I’m crying an actual river, she thought, and she cried until she thought her heart had torn itself into separate pieces and she had no more tears left, her eyes stinging as they dried.
She heard the door go and stood up, flushing the toilet automatically so she could blow her nose and choke out the last of her strangled sobs with some modicum of privacy. She opened the door and went out to wash her hands and splash some cool water on her face, and who should be there but — of course, of course, because she was always there to kick her when she was down — bloody, bloody, bloody Lucinda.
‘Hello Faith,’ Lucinda said suspiciously. ‘Are you OK?’
Faith nodded and turned to look at her reflection in the mirror, then winced and thought better of it. ‘Such a lovely wedding,’ she said, her voice wavering and watery. ‘But you were right, you know, other people’s happiness does set me off and I really miss Rob. My ex,’ she said, as Lucinda looked blank.
‘Oh.’ Lucinda nodded. She looked marginally more sympathetic. ‘You poor thing. I know just how you feel. It’s awful, isn’t it? Missing somebody so much you feel like your heart might just break altogether.’ She examined her own, apparently highly pleasing, reflection.
‘Enjoying the wedding?’ Faith asked.
‘Not really,’ Lucinda confided. ‘I’m desperate to get back to London. I’ve got a shift tomorrow and I could do without being tired and hungover. But Rik doesn’t want to head back yet and so I suppose I should stick around.’
How can she consider it a hardship? Faith thought. How could she prefer sitting in an office talking on the phone to being here with Rik?
‘He said he’s got something to talk about with me later,’ Lucinda said. ‘He’s left it a bit late but I expect he’s going to ask me to come to Cornwall with him. Can’t live without me after all.’ She winked cheekily. Hope she gets an eyelash in her eye, Faith thought bitterly.
‘Good for you,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Are you going to go? Will you be able to sort it with work?’
Lucinda shrugged. ‘Well, I haven’t said yes yet. But it’ll be OK as long as I’m plugged in, which I always am.’ She waved her phone. ‘I miss the old days, when this job involved actually going out and meeting real live people, not just monitoring Twitter and rewriting ghastly press releases from incompetent press officers who wouldn’t know good writing if it hit them in the face.’
‘I’m a press officer,’ Faith said pointlessly.
‘Oh, sorry. I’m sure your releases are just fine.’ Lucinda smiled guilelessly.
‘They’re not,’ Faith said. ‘They’re full of drivel.’ She couldn’t go back to that, she just couldn’t. That life wasn’t her, it had never been her. She was from a different world and she was going to start living in it, even if she couldn’t live in it with Rik.
And she was going to start right now.
‘I’m going to leave,’ she announced, ‘and study garden design then set up full-time.’
‘Very hard physical work,’ Lucinda said. ‘I had no idea how much. You must be stronger than you look. Although your arms are bulking up, aren’t they?’
Faith was quite proud of her newly-defined arms. ‘Strong is the new sexy,’ Faith said, and slid off towards the door. ‘See you later.’
‘I’m done here too.’ Lucinda followed her out of the toilet. Rik was waiting for her. He caught sight of Faith’s blubbered, wrecked face and his eyes darkened.
‘Let’s go and talk to Jason,’ Lucinda said briskly, ‘and then we really need to head off.’
Rik’s eyes were still on Faith. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he demanded. ‘You look like you’ve been crying.’
Faith shuffled in her hideous heels. ‘Shoe
s are killing me.’ She kicked them off, stretching out her toes and noticing she had livid weals where the horrid things had been pressing into her skin, pale from spending all summer shod in trainers or workboots. She had a tan-line, like the ones she used to get from the ankle socks she wore at school in the summer.
‘Oh, hi gorgeous.’ Simon had turned up.
‘Rik,’ Lucinda said pointedly. ‘We really need to wrap this up.’
Faith reached up to rip her hair out of its infernal knot. It was giving her a headache, having it pegged back and constrained like that.
The music slowed and dulled, the babble of the guests and the odd tinkling laugh, appreciative roar and popping cork, all warped and muted. Faith’s eyes darted from Simon, to Lucinda, to Rik, and her ears were filled with a low, resonant hum.
She could hear the air shifting around her hair as it burst free of the pins with a very audible puff, and floated and spiralled down to her shoulders, strand by strand.
It seemed to take forever.
Lucinda and Simon were both talking. Their voices slipped and slid around one another, indecipherable, syllables spilling together.
Faith’s eyes stopped flicking and fixed on Rik.
And then just as suddenly as whatever had happened arrived, it left.
‘I need a drink,’ Faith said. She turned to Simon.
‘Let’s find Jason,’ Lucinda prompted Rik.
Simon ushered Faith over to the bar and gestured for a couple of shots. Faith fired hers down instantly. She knew exactly what she was going to do now. She was going to get absolutely plastered and dance wildly and have lots of fun and she was bloody well going to shag Simon whether she liked it or not.
Then tomorrow she was going to kick him out and get up with a crashing hangover and start working on her portfolio for garden design courses.