The Hidden Legacy: A Dark and Shocking Psychological Drama

by GJ Minett

  She’d been rushed to hospital just before 1 p.m., having suffered another stroke, this one much more serious. The staff at Calder Vale had tried repeatedly to contact Ellen without success. In desperation they rang Langmere Grove and someone there had the presence of mind to ring Isaac, who was a family friend as well as the firm’s solicitor. He’d immediately called Sam in Barbados and between them they’d spent the best part of the afternoon pinpointing Ellen’s precise whereabouts. It wasn’t until he managed to track down Jack at his parents’ house that their suspicions were confirmed. She and Kate were in Cheltenham, he told them. Sorting out a will or something.

  ‘And of course, Sam didn’t need to ask where Eudora lived, right?’ asked Ellen. ‘He’d been in contact with her before.’

  She took his silence as confirmation.

  ‘So how long have you known about this?’

  He reached down to turn the heating on to screen.

  ‘Long enough,’ he said eventually.

  ‘And you didn’t think to say anything to me?’

  Isaac sniffed and continued to peer intently at the road ahead. Ellen knew how to interpret the lack of response.

  ‘So how much do you know?’

  ‘As much as I need to, I suspect.’

  ‘You know who Eudora was?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You know about her daughter?’

  ‘I know what happened to her, yes.’ A little more cautious this time.

  ‘And my father?’

  No reply. The wipers began to make a grating sound as they scraped their way across the windscreen. Isaac turned them off.

  ‘You know I have a half-brother?’

  He removed his glasses with one hand, keeping the other firmly on the steering wheel as he breathed on the lenses and polished them on the lapel of his coat. ‘If you want my advice, I think you’d be a lot better off trying to get some sleep – even if it’s just a couple of hours. You may feel like you’ve been put through it today but I suspect there’s much worse to come.’

  Ellen thought about prolonging the argument but turned away instead, staring out into the darkness. On one level she knew Isaac was right. She was almost beyond tired and if she didn’t grab some sleep now, it might be a while before the opportunity would next present itself. Far better to make use of a couple of dead hours in the car than doze off later when she was going to need all her wits about her.

  At the same time though, she suspected that sleep wasn’t going to come as easily as that. She was too wound up, her head buzzing not from unanswered questions for once but from the uncertainty engendered by the answers she’d received – answers, she reminded herself, that she’d been pursuing with a vengeance. The irony was not lost on her. She was the one who had wanted to know, had insisted on it and the answers that were supposed to bring some sense of tranquility were instead threatening to turn her world upside down. What was it she’d said to Kate just a few hours ago before opening the envelope? Once you know something, you can’t unknow it, right?

  ‘You say you contacted Sam,’ she said. ‘How did he take it?’

  ‘Oh . . . you know Sam,’ said Isaac. ‘The ultimate coper. Busy organising the moment he heard.’

  ‘So they’ll be coming over, I imagine?’

  ‘They’ll be here tomorrow lunchtime . . . make that today,’ said Isaac, checking his watch.

  ‘Already? But that’s . . . how did he manage to get a flight that quickly?’

  ‘He booked the seats on Thursday morning – after you rang Wednesday night, asking about Eudora Nash. He knew things were about to escalate and wanted to get over here as quickly as possible.’

  ‘But we talked just yesterday,’ said Ellen, hesitating for a moment – was it really possible that the video-conference call was as recent as that? It felt like worlds away, another lifetime. ‘Why didn’t he say he was coming over?’

  ‘Because he knew that once you heard about Eudora, you wouldn’t be able to let it go. He was sure you’d be off to Oakham before he had the chance to talk face to face if you knew he was on his way. Unfortunately Saturday was the earliest flight he could get.’

  Ellen thought about this and acknowledged to herself that Sam was right. She’d have gone immediately – not to spite him, but because it was easier that way.

  ‘So when’s the flight?’

  ‘They should be in the air any time now,’ said Isaac, signalling left as the Newbury exit loomed up ahead. ‘It was scheduled for late afternoon their time but there was a four-hour delay. You can imagine how that went down.’ He chuckled and despite everything Ellen found herself smiling too. Sam had always stormed through life as if nothing lay beyond his control. Having to wait around at an airport, when his thoughts were already winging their way across the Atlantic, might provide a salutary lesson in humility but it certainly wouldn’t do anything to improve his mood. She suspected some airline executive was going to get it in the neck.

  They took the exit and dropped down to the series of traffic lights at the foot of the slip road. She watched as the lights of Chieveley Services slipped past on her left. She recognised this as more or less the halfway point of the journey. Another hour and a half or so to go.

  Without knowing what she was doing, she found herself trawling through the missed calls on her mobile. She scrolled down to the first in the list and there it was: 12.57 – Calder Vale. Just before one o’clock – what had she and Kate been doing right then? She cast her mind back to earlier in the day and realised they’d have been working their way through the boxes in the bedroom upstairs. Rummaging through the life of a woman she’d never met, in search of clues which might unlock a mystery. Snacking on rolls and fruit and sipping wine and laughing while her mother . . .

  She cursed herself for failing to spot the missed call when she went out to the car to phone Megan and Harry. She’d seen the sheer volume of calls from Sam and assumed any others would also be from him. If only she’d checked, she berated herself. If she’d picked up the message back then, she and Kate would have driven straight to the hospital and she’d have been there for hours now instead of sitting here, ticking off the miles one by one and wondering if she was already too late.

  She rested her head against the window, looking up beyond the lights and into the inky darkness beyond. She thought of how Eudora had turned up at the hospital one morning, expecting everything to be as she’d left it the night before, only to discover that Josef had gone in the night, taking with him her only chance to say the things she’d always left unsaid. It had struck Ellen when she’d read this as particularly sad that there was no opportunity for any reconciliation and it had never occurred to her for one moment that a matter of hours later she might find herself in exactly the same situation.

  So she prayed . . . to the darkness, to the elements, to the God in whom she barely believed and to anything or anyone who might be listening. She prayed she might be granted just a few minutes with her mother. Just an hour, she told herself – surely that wasn’t too much to ask.

  February 2008: Barbara

  That hour becomes two days. As if somehow aware that her daughter is on her way – as if she has picked up her desperate prayer on some ethereal wavelength – Barbara will dig in for a further forty-eight hours.

  Sightless, unhearing, unresponsive . . . she’ll lie there on a hospital bed, surrounded on three sides by drips and banks of monitors which emit a ghostly glow and a series of metronomic beeps guaranteed to lull her back to sleep, should she ever wake. Which she won’t.

  Every so often a nurse will slip silently into the room and take readings from the screens. She’ll dutifully record them on the clipboard which she’s unhooked from the end of the bed before turning her attention briefly to Barbara. She’ll make sure the patient looks comfortable, that the bed cover is straight and the hospital corners still tucked in, even though there’s no way they’re likely to have been disturbed. Then she’ll take her leave, p
adding just as silently from the room as if anxious to maintain the illusion that all is well here, that a step out of place might somehow disturb the slumbering patient, even though the closed window blinds tell the real story – that the world beyond them is no longer any of Barbara’s concern.

  Sightless, unhearing, unresponsive . . . she’ll be there when Ellen bursts in, wild-eyed and dishevelled, still disoriented from the all-too-brief slumber which she’s managed to grab during the latter stages of the journey and from which she has been brutally snatched.

  Sightless she’ll watch as her daughter lifts one of her motionless hands from the bed and presses it between her own, pumping it like a blood pressure gauge as if seeking to squeeze some semblance of life into it.

  Unhearing she’ll listen as the words pour out like tears – bitter, angry words at first, which gradually lose their force and dissolve into self-recrimination as the storm disappears over the horizon. And somewhere in here, if she could only hear it, is the germ of a conversation she’s been meaning to have for so long now. It’s always been there between them, never a question of whether she should explain everything to Ellen, merely when. When exactly? During her time at primary school maybe, when little girls have best friends who expect to be told everything and the temptation to come up with something truly spectacular for show and tell might prove irresistible? Or during those rebellious teenage years when she had to watch Ellen like a hawk, knowing her daughter needed no second invitation to use any available weapon against her? Or how about when Ellen came back from university with a hapless drifter in tow and dived headlong into a marriage that was so obviously a mistake . . . maybe then? It was one thing to identify this as a conversation that had to take place, quite another to decide when that should be. The only thing she can say for certain is that if there ever was such a thing as the right time, she’s missed it.

  And now she’s reduced to this. All she can do is lie there, sightless, unhearing, unresponsive, as her daughter strokes her hand, slowly, gently, a gesture more eloquent by far than all the tears and unfamiliar words which precede it. And if she could . . . if only she could, she would find some way to let Ellen know that it’s OK. Shhhhh, it’s alright. Nothing more needs to be said. The time for words is over and besides, she’s never doubted, not for one minute, that the fierce, tigerish devotion she feels for her daughter is a two-way street.

  So she’ll hold on for another forty-eight hours. She’ll lie there while different faces come and go in shifts, while visitors come to pay their last respects and offer Ellen their support, while machines beep and drips drip and trays rattle, while doctors pore over charts and trolleys come and go and one of the porters offers up the same tuneless whistle and Ellen dozes fitfully at her bedside between bouts of remorse and despair. She’ll tough it out until she feels maybe Ellen herself is ready to let go and face the first day of the rest of her life.

  And when that moment comes, she’ll look down at her hand, still enclosed in those of her sleeping daughter, and see her own six-year-old hand, the one that needed four stitches when she sliced through it while learning how to chop onions at her mother’s side in the kitchen at Ashbury; her nineteen-year-old hand from which she stripped a thin gold band which it had worn so ill-advisedly for no more than a year; an older hand but one still bright with hope which once drew intimate circles on Peter’s chest while she curled up alongside him; a mother’s hand which had reached out to take her daughter from the nurses and cradled her ever since, cradled and protected. She’ll look down at it as it lies cocooned in Ellen’s tender grip and she’ll squeeze, squeeze with all her might as if the laws of nature mean nothing when stacked up against a mother’s love for her daughter.

  And then, when she’s sure the time is right, she’ll steal gently away into the night.

  Ellen woke with a start as a nurse brought in a vase of flowers and made room for it on the bedside cabinet. She’d been dozing in the visitor’s chair, leaning forward at a ninety-degree angle with her head resting on the edge of the bed. Sitting bolt upright, she winced and arched her shoulders to ease the stiffness in her back. Then, suddenly remembering where she was, she leant forward and seized Barbara’s hand, angry with herself for having let go, even for a moment.

  ‘You back with us?’ asked the nurse, taking a few of the flowers out of the vase and rearranging them. Ellen ran her tongue across her teeth and pulled a face. Her mouth tasted stale from the wine of the previous evening and her hair felt as if it hadn’t been washed or brushed in months.

  ‘There’s a bathroom just next door by the way . . . in case you want to freshen up a bit.’ Ellen smiled ruefully, taking the offer as confirmation that she looked every bit as rough as she felt. She glanced at her watch: nearly 9.30. She’d arrived just before three, remembered being awake at five but nothing after that. So, four hours then. Nowhere near enough, if the dull ache in her head was anything to go by.

  ‘Where did those come from?’ she asked, nodding at the flowers.

  ‘You’ve had your first visitor.’ The nurse’s lapel badge was difficult to read from where Ellen was sitting. Looked like Reiha – not a name with which she was familiar, at any rate.

  ‘Male or female?’

  ‘Male. He didn’t stay – said he didn’t want to disturb you. Left a card though,’ she said, taking a yellow envelope from her pocket. Ellen opened it, expecting to find a traditional get-well-soon card inside. Instead she pulled out a photo of the staff at Calder Vale, assembled on the steps in front of the main entrance. Turning it over she found a brief message, printed in the same block capitals as those on the envelope:

  MISS YOU. HURRY BACK TO SEE US

  BEST WISHES

  JACOB.

  She turned back to the photo and picked him out in the front row, a dapper little man with his hands folded on his lap and his knees pressed together. Everyone else appeared to be shouting and waving at the camera while he seemed satisfied with a shy smile. She remembered how kind he’d always been to Barbara, all the extra little treats he saved for her and the lengths he went to just to make her feel a little more special. And now, here he was, first to arrive and check on how things were. She was touched even more than usual by his kindness and was sorry she’d missed him.

  ‘How long ago did he leave?’ she asked.

  ‘Ooh, an hour or so. Maybe longer. He was here very early. Said he might pop back in after work. People are kind, aren’t they?’ she added, taking a step back to admire her handiwork with the flowers. She flashed a smile at Ellen as if inviting her opinion.

  ‘Yes,’ she responded, wondering if this was something Jacob routinely did for all the residents he worked with. ‘Yes, they are.’

  Kate arrived just after ten, bright-eyed and brimming with energy: teeth gleaming, make-up immaculate, hair just so. As was always the case, Ellen felt a wreck alongside her.

  ‘In case you haven’t had breakfast,’ Kate explained, holding up sandwiches, apples and a bottle of Evian and looking around for the best place to put them. She couldn’t stay long, she said. Adam was due back from Madrid around midday and, for all her brave words a few days ago, it was more than her life was worth to be out when he arrived. It sounded plausible but Ellen knew her well enough to be sure this was just an excuse. Kate didn’t do hospitals any more than she did sitting around and this particular errand of mercy would entail plenty of both.

  Sure enough, she seized upon Isaac’s arrival an hour later as a suitable opportunity to leave. He came in with news that Sam and Mary had just phoned from Gatwick. They were still waiting to reclaim their luggage but a taxi was waiting for them and they were expecting to arrive at the hospital somewhere around 12.40.

  Ellen smiled at this, confident that the words ‘somewhere’ and ‘around’ could be safely disregarded. She thanked Isaac for everything he’d done. He waved it away and asked if she’d like to take a bit of a break while he sat with Barbara for a while. It wasn’t until then that she r
ealised she’d spent the past seven hours sitting in the same position and holding on to her mother’s hand as if letting go might somehow snap the flimsy thread connecting the two of them. It would be good to grab some fresh air and stretch her legs, she thought – even if only for a few minutes. She thanked him for the offer and promised she wouldn’t be long.

  The first thing she did once she was outside was call Jack to discuss how best to break the news to Megan and Harry. He agreed to bring them to the hospital later that afternoon so that she might come out to meet them in the car park. Then she rang Langmere Grove and explained to Colin, her deputy, that he would need to look after things for the foreseeable future. He told her not to worry about a thing and offered his condolences but she had great difficulty in dismissing the mental picture of him rubbing his hands the moment he replaced the receiver.

  Only as an afterthought did it occur to her to ring Calder Vale. She didn’t know for sure that Jacob would be there but she felt bad about the fact that he hadn’t been able to see Barbara and didn’t want him to think his efforts weren’t appreciated. She was put on hold for a few minutes and then, just as she was having second thoughts about interrupting him at work, he came to the phone.

  ‘The flowers were lovely,’ she told him. ‘I’m so sorry you didn’t get to see her. You really should have woken me.’

  Jacob said it was nice of her to call but really not necessary. ‘I just popped in on my way to work,’ he said, in that curious accent she’d never been able to place. ‘No trouble at all.’ Something Gaelic about it – she’d never been very good with accents, either identifying or mimicking them. She’d meant to ask but somehow never got around to it.

  He asked if there was any improvement and she could tell from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t expecting any. She passed on what she herself had been told – barring a miracle, Barbara wasn’t coming out of this. Jacob pointed out that specialists had been made to look silly in the past but she sensed it was more the cheerleader in him than any genuine conviction.