“No one cares about your own life as much as you do,” Cat said frankly. “Most important thing I’ve learned, over the last few years. It’s really just you.” She leaned across the table again. “You know the thing about men and women? You know what’s completely crap about relationships?”
“What?” he said cautiously.
“People start playing roles. All that’s bullshit. You and Karen should just do what you want.”
“What do you mean?”
“Before I started going out with Olivier, I was this confident person. I knew how to put up a shelf, how to argue with a gendarme, how to order steak right. And then because of him, because of the way I felt when I was with him . . . how worthless he made me feel . . . I changed. I wasn’t that person but I became that person, and he treated me like shit, so everyone else did too. I became shy, pathetic, afraid of everything. Just content to let it happen to me. Anyway . . . all I mean is . . . I wasn’t like that to start with. And that’s what relationships are about. Good ones, I mean. You have to be flexible. It’s not about someone being in charge and someone following, or someone being the star and someone the applause. Gran and Southpaw, they were everything, the whole package. He was better at some things, she was better at other things, but they were both in charge.” Cat smeared the wineglass with her fingers, frowning into it. “They led from the front, they were a partnership, because they knew what mattered to them, they knew what was important, and they worked everything else around that. Sometimes he was the star, sometimes she was.” She knew he was watching her, but she was too embarrassed now to stop and look at him. “I’ve always thought it, that’s when bad stuff creeps in, when you start having roles and suddenly you can’t break them.” She nodded, and stood up. “That’s all I wanted to say. It’s about being flexible. Rolling with the punches. Good times and bad. When I think about Olivier, I don’t think there was a day with him I was ever actually myself.”
“That’s the same as me and Jemma,” Joe said. “We were pretty mismatched. I’d been the spotty fat kid a year before, I wasn’t in her league. I couldn’t believe she went for me.”
“But you weren’t with her because she was some stunning model. You liked her too.”
“I did, but it was more I thought I could look after her. Prove I wasn’t a bastard like my dad. Save her from these sleazy blokes who’d treat her badly.” She watched him work his cheek, rough with stubble, with his fingers.
“And where is she now?”
He leaned on the bar, facing her. “Oh, living with Ian Sinclair.”
“Who’s Ian Sinclair?”
“He’s got everything, hasn’t he? He’s a lawyer, got a nice pad in York, drives a big Subaru, buys her everything she wants, Jamie’s going to private school . . . all of that.” Joe said, “Her mum’s got her own flat now too; he’s bought that for her. He’s a wizard.”
“Well, aren’t you happy for her? For Jamie?”
“Yes, of course I am,” he said impatiently. “Of course.”
“And don’t you stop to think that if she hadn’t been with you and had Jamie, she might have ended up somewhere worse? She might have gone off with one of those blokes, and who knows what might have happened to her?”
“Jemma’s pretty tough,” Joe said.
Cat said, “I was pretty tough too, when I met Olivier.” Her mouth was dry. “You know, women often don’t have choices. They get sucked into things. My mum left when I was a few weeks old.” She touched his hand to try to make him understand. “I don’t know how she did it, it must have hurt her, but I never thought about her, only me. She felt she didn’t have any other option, and that’s awful. We live in a sexist world. We make girls think they’ll be rewarded for being decorative, and then they think it’s fine when they get treated like crap.”
“Your grandmother never did that to you.”
“Of course she didn’t. But I grew up without a mum and a dad.” Cat’s voice was soft. “And it meant I really wanted people to like me, all my life. I wanted my mum to come back and say she loved me and she was going to look after me, and she never did. I think that makes you into someone who’s a bit desperate for approval, that’s all.” Tears clouded her vision; she blinked them back. Daisy still had the power to overwhelm her, but she knew that power was fading. “Look, Joe, all I’m saying is, you might have saved Jemma from something worse. You came in and loved her, and you gave her Jamie. You had a son. And Karen . . . she and my uncle were always an odd fit. She was using you a bit, I think? You know?”
“I used her, too,” Joe said. “It’s been strange, living down here. Without Jamie.” He brushed something off his forehead; she saw the spasm of emotion crossing his face. “I was so lonely. I mean, I was up for it. You can imagine, Karen’s pretty determined when she sets her mind to something.”
Cat didn’t want to hear about how great Karen was in bed. She didn’t want to think about anyone touching Joe, wrapping her arms round him, having him all to herself. She wanted to stay like this, in this deserted warm room, sun setting, the two of them leaning on the bar in their own perfectly sane world.
Already the spell was fading, though. She drained her drink. “Well, Karen’s lucky. Lucky you’re such a good guy, Joe. You really are. I’m sure it’s going to work out really well.” She pushed the glass to one side. “Shake on it?”
She was appalled at what a big lie it was. She wanted him to shrug off his responsibilities, right here, right now. Say, I want you, Cat. I want you now. I’m leaving Karen to do it by herself, she’ll be fine. It’s right with you, I know it, you know it too. I’m going to lock the pub door and pull down the blinds and make love to you on the floor, and it’s going to be the best sex you’ve ever had, Catherine Winter. Hair-messing, earthshaking sex, and then we’ll move in with Jamie and Luke and make even more babies and grow plants and cook and love each other every day, in our own place.
She smiled a little to herself, then held out her hand. He shook it vigorously. “Thanks so much, Cat,” he said. His smile was ironic. “It’s good to have a friend. I mean it. Thanks for . . . for understanding.”
“Of course,” she said, nodding.
• • •
She walked back up to Winterfold feeling flushed with shame and attraction. The shadows were lengthening across the newly green fields. The evening was coming, and the warm breeze soothed her. Dog roses bloomed in the hedgerows, and stalks of Bath asparagus waved softly. She picked a small bunch to take in to work the next day. She imagined Joe’s face, the pleasure it would give him to see it, and she smiled. She knew they weren’t going to be together. It was fine, she understood why. After everything else that had happened, just to have him in her life as a friend was more than she’d counted on. It was getting better, every day.
Luke and Martha were having tea outside as she walked up the drive. Luke was kicking a ball over to his grandmother, who was alternately deadheading flowers, drinking from her mug, and pacing up and down. When she heard Cat she turned.
“Darling. So great you’re back. Luke, run inside and fetch your mum a mug for tea. And some more cake.”
Luke ran off, and Martha came toward Cat. “How did it go?”
“It was fine,” said Cat. “It was . . . good.”
Martha watched her shrewdly. “He’s nice.”
“He’s very nice,” said Cat robustly. “Isn’t it great?” She noticed her grandmother’s expression was drawn. “Everything all right?”
Martha shook her head. “I can’t get hold of Florence. Neither can Jim,” she said. Her lips were thin. “She’s not answering her mobile and the number at her flat has been disconnected. No one’s heard from her.”
Florence
THE DAY AFTER her return home, Florence slept as though she had been knocked unconscious, and when she was woken by the sound of a car horn and someone shouting in the street below
, she felt muzzy. Hungover, as if her head were filled with wet sand. She looked around, her bleary eyes taking in the lines of her tiny, nunlike bedroom.
Then she saw the small scratched bottle, full to the neck with tiny little white pills. Remembered the previous night, the inscription on the label.
Martha Winter
Magnesium tablets
Two a day when constipation occurs
Use before 09/12/12
DO NOT EXCEED THE STATED DOSAGE
The poster of a Masaccio exhibition on the opposite wall had faded over the years so that the figures looked like greenish-yellow ghouls.
A pile of typewritten pages splayed across the cold stone floor; the transcript of the judge’s ruling. Florence rolled onto her side, blinking. “She is possibly the foremost expert in her subject in the world, and your cynical attempt to exploit that, your arrogance, and your sheer deceit are frankly breathtaking.”
Florence rolled back and sat up slowly, staring cheerfully at the ghouls opposite. “Good morning,” she said, trying to sound happier than she felt. “I’m talking to you,” she said to the figure of Adam. “Yes, you. How rude. Fine, ignore me then.” She sat on the edge of the bed, wiggling her toes and stretching, then got up and made some coffee.
Peter’s letter lay, along with the rest of the post, on the wedding chest. It had curled up in the night, as if trying to fold itself back into an oblong. Florence gathered up the post, the letters, the periodicals, the invitations, the prying, all of it except Jim’s postcard. She threw the whole pile into the rubbish bin.
“If you could see me now, Professor Connolly,” she said aloud as she waited for the coffeemaker to bubble, smelling the old, familiar, comforting scents of her home. She glanced at her desk, almost delirious with the thought of losing herself in some work again. “Yes, I talk to myself. Yes, I’m crazy. And I don’t bloody care.”
• • •
She didn’t have wireless Internet in her flat, so Florence had no way of knowing who’d been trying to contact her, which she rather enjoyed, but she knew she had to check her landline and her mobile, which had both rung consistently since she’d arrived back. Her mobile seemed to be crammed with missed calls, but the only thing she noticed, with a leaping heart, was a text from Jim. Florence took a deep breath, and read it.
Did you get home okay? Rather lonely here without you.
She was feeling so brave that she replied, tapping laboriously with many mistakes and much cursing.
Absolutely. Long dark night of soul but it’s over. Thank you for your lovely postcard. I miss you too, Jim. Can I come over and stay soon? Will bring new mugs to break.
After she’d sent this message, she became terrified of what she’d done and threw the phone onto the sofa, where it slid down behind the cushions. She couldn’t bear to hunt around for it, already certain she’d made a terrible faux pas. She felt like a teenager.
The demons of the night before seemed far away now, but she knew enough to know they might come back, and this tempered her cheerfulness, for she did feel surprisingly cheerful, considering. Would she laugh at this one day? How she tried to kill herself with her father’s sleeping pills, but accidentally snatched her mother’s constipation prescription instead? She thought it was maybe symbolic of something: she knew Daisy had killed herself with pills purloined from that same cabinet, but Daisy had taken the right pills, and heroin too. In short, Daisy had known how to kill herself.
And now Florence, who had felt for the longest time as though the last few months were leading up to that night, that moment alone with these pills and the decision to end her life, was faced with the question of what came next.
She let her mind drift. Either she changed something, went forward in a different way, or she continued upon the same path and accepted that, at some point, she would go around in a circle, come to this bend in the road again. Florence had trained her brain over the years. She had nourished it, exercised it, treated it with respect. She had to listen to it now, to feel there was some point to the very clear conviction she’d had that last night was the night everything changed. Coming back gave her some clarity of thought. She tried to pin it down, but perhaps the whole couldn’t be seen yet, and she accepted that too.
“It was the right thing to do,” she said aloud, as she picked up the pages of the transcript and filed them away. “It was the right thing to do,” she said, as she pinned up Jim’s postcard. “It was the right thing to do,” she said, as she took a deep breath and reached for the landline to call her mother, before remembering she’d pulled the phone cord away from the wall.
She tried to plug the socket back in, but it wouldn’t work. So she hunted around down the back of the sofa, and pulled her mobile out from deep inside the frame. In addition to Jim’s text, there were two voicemails from Martha. Florence knelt on the sofa, the frame creaking underneath her, and listened intently to the last one.
“Listen, Flo—please call me? I don’t know where you are. Are you back in Italy? Your phone doesn’t seem to work. Darling, please call me. I’m—Cat’s here. She’s back. I need to talk to you. I need to tell you something and we need to talk. I want to see you. Call me back, sweetheart.”
Florence looked at the postcard on the wall. She took a deep breath. She felt as if she were staring out of a plane, parachute on her back. She said softly to herself: “Yes.”
She made another coffee and rang her mother.
“Hello?”
“Hello? Who’s that?”
“It’s me, Ma. Flo.”
“Florence!” Martha’s voice was joyous with relief. “Oh, my goodness, darling, how are you? I’ve been . . . I’ve been trying to get hold of you. I was getting rather worried.”
“Worried?”
“Oh, I had a . . . a silly feeling.” Her mother laughed. “It’s silly.”
Florence said slowly, “Oh. I’m back now. Got in last night.”
“Ah. How are you?”
“I’m good.” Florence looked at the bottle of pills and smiled to herself. “I’m really well. How—how are you?”
“Yes. I’m really well too. Flo—”
She interrupted, suddenly terrified of what came next. “Ma, I was just ringing to say I forgot something when I was last over. My old notes on Filippo Lippi, I need them for an article I’m supposed to be writing.”
“Well, tell me where they are and I can post them for you.”
“They’re in Dad’s—the study. With all my other papers, on the shelf below the encyclopedias. It’s a cloth folder, kind of red and black.”
She could hear her mother walking through the house. “Fine, well, then. I see it. So you want me to send them to you?”
“Yes, please, Ma.”
“Grand.”
There was a pause. Small, expectant pause.
“And—I wanted to say something too.”
“You do? Oh—well, I—okay. You go first.”
Florence blundered on. “I’m sorry about how I was when I was over. The court case and everything else. It made me rather lose the plot for a while. I’ve been very unhappy. Very selfish. I wasn’t . . . Anyway, I am sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Her mother laughed. Florence stiffened. She wondered if she should just put the phone down, but then Martha’s voice softened. “You’re not the one who should be sorry.”
“Oh.”
“Darling Flo, this is ridiculous. . . . When are you coming back? I really would like to see you. Talk to you properly. Just us two.”
With one finger, Florence slowly pushed the pill bottle across the kitchen countertop. “I’m not sure—I’ve just got back here. I can’t leave for a while, there’s various things. . . . Probably August?”
“Right.” Martha’s voice sank.
“Ma, do you need me to come back?”
“No. Yes.”
“What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m absolutely fine. I need to tell you something.” Martha gave a small sigh. “It’s about you, Flo, darling. Something you need to know.”
Florence stepped out of the sunny kitchen into the darkness of the large sitting room, her heart beating like a drum. She put her hand on the bureau to steady herself, glad that she was alone and no one could see her face. She had been waiting for this moment for most of her life, since she was nine in fact, and now that it was here she didn’t want it to happen.
“I know,” she said.
“You know what?” Martha’s voice was close to the receiver.
“I’ve always known. Ma.” The word fell heavily out of her mouth. “I know I’m not your child. I know my mother left me on the street and you adopted me from some orphanage. Daisy told me, Ma. After Wilbur died and she got really nasty. She used to whisper it in my ear at night.”
There was silence but for one small sob.
“Ma?” she said tentatively, after a long pause.
Eventually her mother said, “Oh. It’s not even ten in the morning.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. That’s . . . that’s awful, sweetheart. Is that really what she told you?”
“Well, yeah, Ma. You never believed me when I’d tell you about her, so—so I stopped after a while.”
“Oh, Daisy.” Martha’s voice was low. “Florence, sweetheart . . . you’re not from some orphanage. You’re Pa’s niece. His sister was your mother—she, she was only nineteen.”
Below her, a car trundled too fast down the narrow street; someone cursed, a dog barked, backing out of its way. Florence stood very still.
Eventually she said: “I—I’m Pa’s—I am his . . . his niece?”
“His niece. You were always part of him, oh darling, yes, of course.”
“His sister?” Florence turned around slowly, kept turning. “She was my—my mother?”
“Times were different then; she was engaged to someone else. She—we agreed—we wanted to take you. You became ours.”
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