Still there are some things she definitely remembers, things she cannot forget.
She tells Mrs Rees what she knows to be true. She says: ‘Tom said we shouldn’t move Joe in case his back was hurt. He fetched our coats out of the car to put over Joe, to keep him warm.’ She is sure of this much. She remembers how gentle Tomas was with Joe, how he took off his own hoodie to make a pillow for Joe’s face and how, when he lifted Joe’s head, just a fraction, to slide the pillow beneath, the blood was terrible. Fen recoiled but, while he was within earshot of Joe, Tomas was calm. He spoke to Joe in a low, private, reassuring voice.
‘Then he said he would take the car and find a phone box, and he’d call an ambulance. He told me to stay with Joe until the ambulance came, then go back to the road and keep walking. He said it wasn’t that far. He gave me his money. He said not to tell anyone I was ever there. He said he should have been driving. He said he was responsible. He was panicking. I don’t think he knew what he was saying. He gabbled something about taking the car and dumping it somewhere, that he’d disappear for a while, so everyone would assume he was driving the car, and that way my life wouldn’t be ruined … and …’
‘And?’
‘He knelt in the mud and he leaned down and whispered something to Joe. He whispered in his ear. And then he kissed him on the forehead, and he stayed there for a moment, bent over him, and it looked like he was praying … and then he stood up and said, “Goodbye” and he got in the car and drove away …’
Fen trails off. She feels herself there again, in the woods, the rain coming down and the sound of the car engine fading and the wind in the trees, and how noisy that was, the trees groaning with the weight of the wind in the branches. She wrapped her arms around herself and she spun round, hearing noises, afraid of the kind of things that used to terrify her as a child – ghosts and wolves and madmen with axes – and the rain was in her eyes, on her face, making her jumper stick to her back, and when clouds covered the moon it was as dark as her worst nightmare and she was shaking, shaking like a shutter in the wind.
She swallows and she says: ‘I went back to Joe and I rearranged the coats to keep him as dry as possible and to keep the rain off his face, and that’s when I found his phone, in his jacket pocket. We didn’t know he had it with him. So I called the ambulance. I called it in case it took Tomas a while to find a phone, and they said they’d be quick, they said they’d come as quickly as they could. Then I stayed with Joe until they came. I talked to him; I thought that was what you’re supposed to do. I talked to him about Tom and about you and, oh, other things, things him and Tom did when they were younger, and television programmes and … He was quiet … He was just breathing slowly like he was sleeping. I lay down next to him and put my arms over him to keep him warm and I could feel him breathing, only …’
‘What?’
‘After a while I couldn’t feel it any more. I couldn’t feel him breathing.’
‘He died in your arms?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’
‘Didn’t you check?’
‘I was too scared. I thought maybe I was just imagining he wasn’t breathing. I …’
‘You what?’
‘I didn’t want to know that Joe had died.’
Fen breathes out. She pauses for a moment.
Then: ‘I don’t know how long it was, but I saw the lights coming along the road. I could see the emergency lights through the trees. There weren’t any sirens. I’d been listening out for the sirens but I suppose they didn’t need them: there was no other traffic about. It can’t have been hard to find the place because of the tracks. The ambulance stopped and there was a police car too. Then I moved away, just a bit; I hid in the woods. They had torches. I waited until they were all leaning over Joe and I watched them taking care of him. I was only a few feet away. He wasn’t on his own for more than a moment.’
Fen glances up. Mrs Rees holds her eye.
For a few seconds nothing happens.
Fen can hear the ticking of the clock on the window ledge.
Mrs Rees looks at Fen. She says quietly: ‘For ten years the worst thing for me has been imagining my son lying in the dark among the broken glass and mud, terribly injured, abandoned by his best friend, on his own, waiting to die. That has been my worst nightmare. And all this time you had it in your power to take that nightmare away from me and you didn’t.’
Fen looks away. She stares down into her lap.
The older woman shakes her head. She turns again and gazes out of the conservatory, at the birds in the garden going about their business, their pecking and hopping and chirping.
‘All these years …’ she says. ‘It’s as if he’s been out there, on his own, all these years.’
‘No,’ whispers Fen. ‘He wasn’t on his own.’
There is a terrible silence. Fen can smell the sadness on Emma Rees’s breath. She can taste the emptiness of the older woman’s life. She can feel her nightmares.
‘Deborah knew you were there,’ says Emma Rees. ‘She must have known. She told the police you were with her that night. She told me too. She must have been lying.’
‘She lied for my father’s sake.’
‘And what about my son? What about me? Did neither of you think of us?’
Mrs Rees is calm. She speaks with dignity. Fen twists her fingers on her lap. She cannot answer this, for the truth would be too hurtful. She simply finishes telling what she knows.
When Fen arrived home in the early hours, Deborah was waiting up. She knew the car was missing, she knew Fen and Tomas were missing, and she was going out of her mind with worry. She took one look at Fen, who was covered in mud and blood, soaking wet and cold, without shoes and without a coat, and it was as if she read in Fen’s eyes everything that had happened. She didn’t ask any questions. She took Fen upstairs and undressed her while she ran a bath. She helped Fen into the bath and sat beside her, feeding her sips of tea liberally laced with whisky, which stung Fen’s lip, topping up the water every time it cooled and pouring warm water over Fen’s shampooed hair.
‘Where is Tomas?’ was the only question she asked.
Fen told Deborah everything. Deborah was very calm and did not appear shocked. All she said was: ‘Fen, we have to keep this from your father or it will be the end of him.’
She stroked Fen’s wet head and said: ‘This is what we will do. We’ll tell everyone that you and I went to the hospital together to visit your father, and that after that we spent the evening here, watching television. Gordon can’t remember which day is which and Tomas was right: there’s no point getting you into any kind of trouble. It won’t change anything, it won’t help anyone and it would kill your father.’
‘But he’ll wonder where Tom is … He’ll wonder where he’s gone …’
‘He doesn’t have to know,’ Deborah said, and her fingers were very gentle but also very strong and firm on Fen’s scalp. They went round and round and they soothed Fen, they made her feel as if Deborah was in control and all she had to do was acquiesce. ‘We can keep this from him. We’ll tell him Tom’s still working in Manchester. Don’t you think that’s for the best? He hasn’t got long, Fen. Just a few weeks. Don’t you think you owe it to him to make those last few weeks peaceful?’
She said: ‘You can’t turn back the clock. You can’t change what happened tonight. You can’t change what’s happened to Joe, and you can’t bring Tomas back from wherever he’s hiding. But you can choose either to give your father a few last weeks of contentment and peace, or to make his last days a living hell.’
Fen knows Deborah loved her father. She did what she thought was the right thing to do. Certainly Deborah felt sorry for Emma Rees. She felt, and still feels, a duty towards her, but she never really cared for the woman.
Fen does not say this last part out loud, but in her heart she knows it is the truth.
‘I thought she was my friend,’ says Mrs Rees.
‘I’m sorry,’
says Fen. ‘I’m so terribly sorry, for everything.’
‘What’s wrong with your family?’ asks Emma Rees. ‘Why is everything so secretive and twisted? Why did it take you so long to bring me the truth? Why didn’t Lucy tell me?’
‘Lucy doesn’t know. And I was afraid.’
‘Of what? That I might call the police? Have you done for manslaughter? Drag you through the papers? Tell the truth about your poisonous family? Ruin your life, like you ruined mine?’
‘It wasn’t that,’ says Fen. ‘I know that’s what I deserve, but it wasn’t that. It was because I was so ashamed.’
Mrs Rees nods.
‘You have a child now, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘A son?’
‘Yes. I have thought about what I would do if I were in your shoes,’ Fen says very quietly. ‘I have thought of how I would feel if anyone were to hurt him.’
‘You keep thinking about that,’ says Mrs Rees without looking at Fen. ‘I’m not going to report you now – that won’t do me any good. It won’t help Joe. But I want you to think about that every moment of every day for the rest of your life.’ She pauses then continues, ‘I’d like you to go now. Please don’t ever come back.’
Fen stands up. She does not look at the other woman. She says: ‘I’m sorry. It would have been better if I hadn’t come.’
‘It would have been better if you’d come ten and a half years ago,’ says Mrs Rees.
forty-three
Fen is so glad to be back at Lilyvale. Her heart lifts and lightens. The delicate, swirling-petal pattern of the yellow roses on the bush in the front garden makes her feel better, the sunlight on the windows soothes her, even the shadows on the roof tiles are like a salve. She wants to be inside, safe, back where she belongs. She holds Connor’s hand and trots down the steps, and before she can put her key in the door it opens and there’s Sean.
Fen is grateful. She steps into his arms and it’s like coming home. She presses herself into his chest and she thinks: Thank God, thank God, thank God you’re back.
‘Where have you been?’ he asks.
‘I went to Merron.’
‘Why?’
‘To see Joe’s mother. I told her about the accident. She knows it was my fault. She knows everything now.’
‘Oh, Fen,’ he says, his hands in her hair.
Over his shoulder, Fen sees Amy’s pale little face beside the kitchen door. Her hair is messy and her eyes are very dark. She is leaning against the frame, standing on one leg and holding the bare foot of the other in her hand. Fen pulls away from Sean and smiles at the child.
‘Hello, you,’ she says, ‘how lovely that you’re here.’
‘We bought you a present,’ Connor tells Amy, pushing past the adults. ‘Where is it, Mum?’
‘On the shelf beneath the TV.’
Connor takes Amy’s hand and leads her into the living room. He and Fen have bought her a dance DVD as a surprise. Fen knows it won’t entirely take her mind off things, but hopes it will help.
Sean stands up straight again, stretches the pain out of his back and smiles. ‘Are you all right?’
She nods. ‘I think so.’
He follows her into the kitchen.
‘Coffee?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
They take their mugs outside into the garden, where they can talk without the children hearing them. Little insects drift lazily in shafts of sunlight. An upturned watering can has stained a patch of soil dark and Connor’s bicycle sprawls on the grass. Plastic windmills spin in the breeze and music drifts down the hill. The back doors of the houses are open. Somebody close by is cooking curry.
Fen does not know if this is the real beginning of her and Sean, or if it is the end. It feels like a turning point.
‘You didn’t pick the beans,’ says Sean, wandering over to his vegetable patch. ‘They’re too big. They’ll be stringy now.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Fen. ‘I didn’t notice.’
He shrugs. He picks a bean and prises the green pocket open with a fingernail.
‘I cut the last lettuce the other day,’ she says. ‘I made a salad.’
‘Was it nice?’
‘It was lovely.’
The silence between them is like a blanket of gentleness. The not mentioning Belle means she cannot hurt them; she can’t change them, not for a few moments at least.
‘Do you feel better now you’ve seen Mrs Rees?’ Sean asks, sitting down on the grass. He frees a dandelion fairy that has caught in Fen’s sleeve, lets it loose into the warm air and watches it dance.
‘I feel … relieved.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Fen shakes her head. ‘No. It’s over now. There’s nothing else I can do.’ She changes the subject: ‘Is Amy all right? She looks exhausted.’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. She wants us all to go out this evening, to that restaurant – you know, the first one we ever went to, where we had pizza after we’d been to the park.’
‘That’ll be nice.’
‘I think it reminds her of a happier time.’
Sean looks down. Fen knows what he’s thinking and doesn’t know what she can say to make him feel better. She sips her coffee. It’s too hot. It burns the top of her mouth.
‘Is she going to be here for a while?’
‘Until the end of the holidays. Belle’s gone to stay with her parents until she feels a bit better.’
‘Oh. Good.’
‘We haven’t talked about after that,’ says Sean.
‘No. But …’
‘What?’
‘Oh, Sean, you know.’ Fen bites her lower lip and stares out over the valley. ‘It’s not like you really have a choice.’
‘There is always a choice.’
Sean is worn out with emotion. Fen can see it in his face. He’s done too much thinking, too much hurting.
And so has she.
She tries to muster a smile. She says calmly, ‘This is what you wanted, a few months ago: Lewis out of the picture and the chance for you to go back, to have the family reunited, a stable home for Amy, your life back how you wanted it.’
‘I should be more careful what I wish for.’
Fen picks at a daisy in the lawn.
She says: ‘You know, I never thought we’d be together forever. I didn’t think I deserved you, I—’
Sean snorts. ‘Don’t talk crap,’ he says. Fen looks up at him. He stands, throws the remnants of his coffee onto the lawn and strides the short distance to the gate at the end of the garden, and then he turns and comes back.
‘You’ve spent too long feeling sorry for yourself, Fen Weller,’ he says. ‘You’ve spent too long beating yourself up over some stupid mistake you made when you were a kid. And yes, I know the repercussions were awful, terrible, but it happened, it’s over, you’ve done the right thing now, you’ve told the truth to the only person who still cares, so leave it behind you, move on.’
Down the alleyway children’s voices hush, dogs stop barking.
‘Christ,’ he says, ‘you’re entitled to some happiness. We all are.’
And he leans down and takes hold of Fen, one hand on either side of her face, his fingers pressing hard into her cheeks, and he kisses her and she knows the kiss is meant to be a commitment, but something about it tastes of desperation. He says: ‘We ’ll think of something. We’ll sort something out. We’ll be all right.’
Fen nods.
‘Daddy?’
They turn together.
Amy, flushed and sweaty in her shorts and vest, is standing at the top of the steps, in the kitchen doorway. She has Sean’s phone in her hand. She’s holding it out to him.
‘Who is it, Ames?’
‘It’s Mummy. She’s crying.’
forty-four
Fen showers, and while her hair dries she sits in front of the mirror in her bedroom, wrapped in a towel, and makes up her face. She is careful to do
it properly: she highlights her cheeks, glosses her lips and curls her lashes. Warm air and summer noises come through the open window beyond the dressing table. The edges of the curtains billow in the breeze. She puts on her new dress and her flip-flops, perfumes her wrists and her throat, fastens the chain around her ankle and tilts her chin as she struggles to put silver hoops in her ears. Amy lies on the bed, watching and scratching at the eczema that’s bloomed on the backs of her hands and around her eyes.
‘You look nice,’ she says.
‘Thank you, Amy. What are you going to wear?’
‘I don’t know. Daddy didn’t pack any of my best things.’
Fen turns and pulls a sympathetic face.
‘Shall we have a look together?’
Amy fetches her rucksack and they go through its contents, and she’s right. Sean has just packed T-shirts and shorts and underwear, a mishmash of wrinkled clothes all tangled together, still damp and smelling musty because they’ve been bundled straight from the washing machine and not taken out to air.
‘OK,’ says Fen, ‘laundry really isn’t one of your dad’s strong points. Come with me.’
She opens her wardrobe door, flicks through the clothes on their hangers and pulls out a long, cherry-red, silk T-shirt. She holds it up against Amy. It’s about the right length for a dress for the child.
‘Do you like it?’ she asks. Amy nods.
‘You can wear it over your trousers and we’ll accessorize,’ says Fen. ‘I’ll find you a belt and you can go through my stuff and choose whatever else you want.’
‘Anything?’
‘Yes, tonight absolutely anything.’
Amy’s sore eyes widen with pleasure. Fen leaves her to rummage through her jewellery box and calls Connor upstairs to get changed.
Later, they sit in the restaurant, at the same table as before, eating the same food. They look smarter than they did last time; they have all dressed up as if, by unspoken agreement, they acknowledge this is a formal occasion. Amy is wearing so many beads and bangles and brooches, she twinkles in the candlelight. Her hair is done up with a butterfly clip. The T-shirt is already smeared with tomato paste and Fen notices the stain fondly and thinks it will be a permanent reminder of this evening. Sean leans across the table and fills Fen’s wine glass. The neck of the bottle clinks against the rim of the glass.
Missing You Page 24