by Jill Mansell
“All on your own?”
“Rory’s away. Julia’s busy.” She paused. “So’s Lucille.”
Lucille had instantly concurred with Julia’s decision.
“She’s absolutely right,” Lucille had announced, upon hearing Suzy’s story of the phone conversation with Julia. “It’s your family home, with your family’s things in it. I’d just feel like an intruder.”
Suzy had nodded and smiled in a noncommittal fashion and hated herself for even wondering if Lucille really meant it, or if she just couldn’t bear the thought of missing out on yet another fourteen-hour stint in the recording studio with Jaz.
“You’ve got your work cut out,” Leo observed now.
“You don’t say. I thought it would only take a few minutes.”
Oops. Suzy realized she was in danger of getting belligerent. It was clearly going to be one of those days.
Leo, meanwhile, was pushing up the sleeves of his charcoal-gray sweater.
“I could give you a hand if you like.”
He had really nice hands. Rather lovely forearms too. It was a generous offer, but Suzy wasn’t in the mood. Hopelessly jittery and on edge, she didn’t trust herself not to snap and start screeching at him like a fishwife for no reason at all.
She hadn’t the faintest idea what was making her feel this way, but she knew the one thing she really couldn’t cope with right now was Leo being kind to her.
“It’s OK.” Suzy shook her head. “I’m fine on my own. Anyway, you’re busy too.”
He looked at her. “Are you all right?”
No, go away! Just stop interfering and leave me alone!
Aloud she said, “Perfect.”
Then she picked up a book and frowned, as if deep in concentration. It was a travel guide to Peru. Which was all very well, but had Blanche even been to Peru? Had she ever actually traveled farther afield than Bournemouth?
Rain began to rattle like stones against the drawing room windows. Outside, the sky was a darker gray than Leo’s sweater. Suzy was glad; the weather suited her mood.
Leo, clearly humoring her, said, “I’m going to get wet out there.”
You’ll get wet if you stay in here, thought Suzy, because I’ll throw my can of Dr Pepper at you.
Oh, good grief, what is the matter with me today?
When she looked up, Leo had gone. She was alone once more.
With her mother’s books.
Across the Sahara on a Camel.
Oh, right, highly likely.
The Beauty of Fiji.
Yes, Mum, but do you actually know where Fiji is?
Through the Rain Forest.
The rainy Forest of Dean, presumably.
Oh, what was the point of this? Why was she even bothering?
Suzy gathered the books into her arms and swept them into the tea chest. She kept going until the floor was clear and the tea chests full. The whole lot could go to the thrift shop. Who knows, Blanche’s travel guides might even end up being bought by people who were actually interested in traveling to Patagonia and Pompeii and Peru.
Suzy made her way irritably around the drawing room, slapping yellow Post-it Notes on all the items the auctioneers were coming to pick up tomorrow.
It was lunchtime, but she wasn’t hungry. Standing at the sash window, drumming her fingers restlessly against the radiator beneath it, Suzy watched Leo out in the garden, deep in discussion with the landscape gardener who surely must have better things to do on a Sunday. The icy, driving rain had soaked them both to the skin, but it suited Leo better than it did the other man, who had a pinched red face and thinning ginger hair plastered to his scalp. He was also wearing a pair of unfortunately tight beige trousers.
Leo might look good in his dark blue Barbour and jeans, but he must still be frozen. It occurred to Suzy that if she wanted to do a nice thing, she could go through to the kitchen and make the two men a coffee. Black, because there was no milk, but with cognac splashed in to warm them both up.
At that moment Leo stretched out an arm, encompassing the weeping cherry trees her father had loved so much. As he spoke to the landscape gardener, making brisk, get-rid-of-these gestures with his hand, Suzy felt her own fingers clench with annoyance around the bars of the radiator.
It had taken her father years to get the garden just as he’d wanted it. How dare Leo Fitzallan come swanning in and change everything?
Forget it. Now he definitely wasn’t going to get any coffee.
* * *
Dealing with the contents of Blanche’s closets was weirder than Suzy had imagined. Every single item of clothing conjured up a mental picture of her mother wearing it. Blanche had always loved clothes with a bit of drama and originality to them; everything she had worn had been highly distinctive. Suzy, currently filling her fifteenth black trash bag, wondered if perhaps she should take these to some thrift shop out of Bristol. It might feel a bit odd, suddenly spotting someone in the street wearing a pair of her mother’s trousers or one of her flower-bedecked hats.
At the sight of Blanche’s sapphire-blue velvet evening dress, yet another image sprang into Suzy’s mind, like the next color transparency clicking up onto a screen. Her mother and father, celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary. Throwing a huge party—Blanche’s idea, of course—to celebrate thirty years of married bliss.
Ha!
Into the bag it went with all the rest of the stuff.
Coats next, then shoes.
Suzy had no intention of stopping until she’d finished.
“OK if I put the kettle on?” shouted Leo up the stairs.
Cheek.
“Go ahead.”
Damn cheek, Suzy thought indignantly when he appeared in the bedroom doorway five minutes later with a steaming cup. Offering it to her, he said, “Ready for some coffee?”
“Oh, I see.” Suzy’s shoulders stiffened. Her voice came out sounding jerky and strange. “So you just thought you’d make yourself at home, did you? It didn’t occur to you that it might have been polite to ask me first, before you helped yourself to coffee that didn’t belong to you?”
Oh dear. Losing it, losing it…
Leo gave her a measured look.
“I knew I was going to be here for a few hours,” he said calmly. “So I brought along a jar of coffee and a pint of milk.”
Oh. Blast.
This is where I’m supposed to smile and say sorry, Suzy thought, and apologize for overreacting.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Her teeth were too gritted, for a start. Actually, they felt as if they’d been welded together with superglue.
“So, do you want this?” Leo held out the mug in a just-take-it kind of way.
Suzy, who had finished her can of Dr Pepper two hours ago and could have murdered a coffee, decided she didn’t much care for his patronizing tone and ever-so-slightly long suffering manner.
Pointedly, turning her back on Leo, she said, “No thanks.”
* * *
By three o’clock it had stopped raining. Suzy, stacking the bulging trash bags on the landing ready for collection tomorrow, looked out of the window and saw the landscape gardener pacing around the garden sticking a thin metal rod into the wet ground at intervals and making notes in a notepad.
What was Leo planning to do with the garden anyway? The gardener was picking up a spade now. As she watched, he thrust it into the corner of a flower bed, dug up a spadeful of earth, and pushed the metal rod into the ground again.
Frustratingly, it reminded Suzy of something from the dim and distant past—but she couldn’t remember what.
Oh well, forget it. On with the show. Attic next.
Chapter 40
Blanche had kept the two halves of her life efficiently compartmentalized. There were no clues an
ywhere to her other existence. Suzy, who hadn’t expected to find any, marveled at her mother’s ability to keep her two families so entirely separate.
The junk in the attic would be easy to dispose of, at least. There was nothing up here that couldn’t be dealt with by the house-clearance firm. Slapping lime-green Post-it Notes on all the boxes, bags, ancient lampshades, and assorted rolls of carpet, Suzy wiped her hands on the sides of her leather jeans and heaved a sigh of relief.
There, done. Hooray.
As she climbed down the stepladder, Suzy wondered if she was alone in the house. She’d been upstairs for hours. Leo and the landscaper were probably long gone by now. Not wanting to get his head bitten off—again—Leo had clearly thought better of venturing upstairs to say good-bye.
But when Suzy reached the kitchen, she saw him sitting at the scrubbed-oak table with his long legs stretched out in front of him, drinking coffee and studying the plans left by the landscape gardener.
“Oh.” She hesitated in the open doorway. “I didn’t know you were still here.”
“Why? Were you hiding up there until I’d gone?”
“No.”
Leo tapped his own cup. “Coffee?”
“No.” Suzy shook her head. All she wanted to do now was get home. She needed a long bath, a massive glass of wine, and a jolly good cry.
“Kettle’s just boiled,” said Leo. Almost smiling, he added, “I’d be more than happy to lend you some of my milk.”
Something inside Suzy went snap.
“Look, will you please stop humoring me?” she bellowed. “I’ve spent the whole of today being a bad-tempered bitch, OK? I know I have, and you know I have, so all this offering-me-cups-of-coffee stuff is just getting on my nerves. I mean, what is it, Be Nice to Suzy Day and nobody remembered to tell me?”
There, if that didn’t get a reaction, nothing would. She felt that pressure-cooker sensation welling up again inside her rib cage. Her hands were on her hips, her fingers digging into the leather of her jeans. Every muscle in her body felt as taut as a coiled spring. Any minute now, Suzy realized, she was in danger of going boiiing, like Tigger.
“OK,” said Leo, “if you want to put it like that. It is Be Nice to Suzy Day.”
“Ha! Be Unnaturally Nice.”
He shrugged. “It’s a rotten job.”
“But somebody’s got to do it, and you drew the short straw? Oh, bad luck,” jeered Suzy.
“I meant having to clear out the house. Sorting through your mother’s possessions.” Leo remained calm. “It’s an emotional experience. You’re bound to be upset.”
Opening her mouth to protest, Suzy abruptly closed it again.
Was that it? Could that really be the reason she’d spent the day feeling so awful?
Oh no, surely not. It couldn’t be that.
“I’m not upset. I’m absolutely fine,” Suzy declared frostily. “Why should clearing out my mother’s things be an emotional experience? Heavens, it’s not even as if we were that close!”
Her voice sounded high-pitched and weird. How embarrassing. Desperate to make a quick getaway, Suzy scanned the kitchen in search of her car keys.
“The reason I stayed on this afternoon is that Roger found something in the garden,” said Leo, “while he was checking the quality of the soil. It was buried over there.” He pointed through the kitchen window. “Beneath that peony.”
Hair like orange cotton candy and a name like Roger, thought Suzy, distracting herself for a second or two. Crikey, how unlucky was that?
She knew at once, of course, what Roger had found. Earlier, she hadn’t been able to work out why his digging with the spade had triggered off such a sensation of familiarity. Now it came flooding back.
“So what did he unearth?” Beneath her air of flippancy, Suzy’s heart was clattering like a giant maraca. “Severed arm? Hidden treasure? Blue-and-gold cookie tin with a picture of a peacock on the lid?”
Swiveling around in his chair, Leo reached for the blue-and-gold tin.
“I didn’t know what might be in it,” he told Suzy. “So I had a quick look.”
He held the tin out to her and she took it, placing it carefully on the kitchen table. Most of the mud had been washed off. The blues and golds were faded and mottled with rust but still instantly identifiable.
Suzy knew exactly what she would find inside. A thin leather dog’s collar and leash. A ponytail of her own hair. Photographs cut from magazines, of her favorite pop stars. Photographs of herself, aged ten or eleven—with, needless to say, brutally short hair and a tearful expression. Several broken pieces of cheap jewelry. And, last but not least, a plastic-covered Duran Duran diary.
“I can’t believe he found it.” Suzy sat down on one of the kitchen chairs with a wobbly smile and a bit of a bump. “I mean, it’s not even as if it’s a small garden. Of all the sections of earth he could have prodded with his metal rod”—she made a feeble stab at humor—“he had to prod that one.”
Leo’s smile, understandably, was brief. “Why did you bury it?”
“Posterity.” As she spoke, Suzy was already easing off the airtight lid. Everything was there, carefully wrapped in plastic bags, just as she remembered. “I think I got the idea from some kids’ TV show. You bury a time capsule, and hundreds of years later, someone comes along and finds it and is enthralled to discover what it was like to be a belligerent teenager in the nineteen eighties.”
“Look, I could pretend I didn’t open your diary,” said Leo, “but I’m not going to. I needed to find out who it belonged to.”
Suzy unwrapped it with trembling fingers. “Did you read every word?”
“Just the first page. Which pretty much said it all. Shall I make that coffee now?”
Miles away—years away—Suzy nodded and turned to the first page, the one Leo had already read.
This diary belongs to Suzy Curtis, age 11, Sheldrake House, Sneyd Park, Bristol, England.
January. I don’t think my mother loves me. She was here for Christmas, but on Boxing Day, she went again. To Hong Kong for two weeks. I miss her, and I love her, but she can’t miss me or she wouldn’t go.
And I didn’t get a dog for Christmas like I asked for, so spending my pocket money on the leash and collar was a big waste. And my hair looks awful since bloody Julia cut it. If Mummy were here, she could have taken me to the proper hairdressers. I look stupid with short hair, and now everyone is going to laugh at me—
Reaching the end of the page, Suzy realized she couldn’t bring herself to read any more. Her throat thickened with tears, the eleven-year-old handwriting dissolved and danced before her eyes, and an undignified sob broke the silence in the kitchen.
Honk.
Good grief, she sounded like a goose laying an egg.
HOOONK.
An egg the size of a watermelon.
HONK, HONK, WAAHAAHAAA!
It really was the most appalling noise, but she was powerless to prevent it happening. In a way, it was such a relief to let it all out that she didn’t even care.
Suzy had no idea how long she sat there bawling her eyes out like a two-year-old and making a total spectacle of herself. In the background she was dimly aware of Leo, wisely leaving her to get on with it. He moved around quietly, making the coffee, tidying up, and locating a clean tea towel. When Suzy’s one and only tissue had been shredded into oblivion, he handed her the tea towel—thankfully one of those soft, absorbent ones, not horrid scratchy Irish linen.
At long last the worst of it was out of her system, the torrent of tears having given way to sniffly hiccups and the occasional shuddering sob. Suzy, immediately regretting the outburst, stood up and went over to the window so she could pretend to be looking out over the garden rather than be forced to meet Leo’s unnerving gaze.
Taking a deep breath, she said brightly, “Well, gosh
, I think I had a bit of a delayed reaction thing back there. I promise you, I had no idea that was going to happen!”
She couldn’t see Leo, but she knew where he was. Behind her, standing by the dresser, roughly fifteen feet away.
“I’m glad it did happen,” said Leo.
“Such a girly thing to do, blubbering like that. I’m so sorry—”
“Suzy, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. You mustn’t apologize.”
He was closer now. At a guess, nine or ten feet away. The backs of Suzy’s knees began to tremble.
This is like the game we used to play at primary school… Grandmother’s Footsteps…
“I’d forgotten all about that tin, you know. I hardly ever think about the past. I suppose that’s why it caught me by surprise; everything came back with a bit of a whoosh.”
“I think you needed to do it,” Leo told her. “In fact, I’m sure you did. Bottling things up isn’t the answer.”
Five, six feet away?
Suzy’s spine was fizzing like 7UP. She closed her eyes. “I didn’t cry when she died.”
Silence. She had absolutely no idea how far away Leo was from her now.
I’m going to feel like such a twit if I turn around and find he’s gone home.
And then she felt it, the faintest glimmer of warm breath on the back of her neck.
I can’t say it, I can’t say it…
But she knew she must.
“I must be such a horrible person,” Suzy muttered, covering her eyes and realizing that the tears hadn’t finished with her yet. “Oh God, I’m s-so, so ashamed of myself…”
The next moment Leo’s arms had enfolded her like a blanket. His mouth inches from her ear, he murmured, “You don’t have to be ashamed. Lots of people can’t cry straightaway.”
“It’s n-not that.” Glancing down, Suzy saw his hands around her waist, clasped together just beneath her rib cage. As she watched, two hot tears slid down her cheeks and landed like raindrops on his tanned wrist.
“OK.” Leo paused. “Did you murder her?”
“No.”