Behind Closed Doors

by Catherine Alliott

  Turner couldn’t have known, of course, what he was doing, by going down that misremembering route. But by God he’d hit some buttons. Found some raw nerves. I waited for my heart rate to come down a bit. Waited for it to stop racing. And I made myself relax my shoulders. Breathe, Lucy. Breathe.

  I put the car into gear again and drove on. But I kept my speed very slow. Because I wasn’t entirely sure I was all right. Wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with what had happened back there at the station. Of course, I should have been leaping for joy. Not only had I confessed, but it had been rebuffed. Ruled out. The police weren’t having it. They had their man, thank you very much, and they’d been after him for a while. No wonder they’d left questioning me to the provincial branch – no neurotic housewife with a fit of conscience was going to get in the way of the Met. Retract him from their clutches. A nasty piece of work, I told myself. Parks, not Andrew. A drug dealer. A violent criminal. Who assaulted old ladies. Killed old ladies.

  I didn’t drive home; I drove on into Oxford. I knew where to park, behind the Old Bank Hotel, which had become a brasserie. I found a seat inside, on the banquette bench against the wall, and ordered a coffee. I sipped it slowly. The place was busy, bustling. A fair amount of students, some prospective, I thought, looking at their nervous, eager faces, together with their parents. Some professors, too, I decided. A pair beside me, middle-aged women, were talking earnestly, their noses almost touching over the small table. Good. Good. Thank heavens for clever, preoccupied people. I sank back on the leather seat, watching, watching. Huge murals hung on the walls. Why so big? Oil paintings, with too much colour. I averted my eyes. The place ebbed and flowed. More young people came in. My coffee was cold, but I sipped it still. Eventually a young waitress came across and asked me if I was all right. Yes, why? It was just that I’d been there a long time. Three hours, and they wondered … I gazed at her, shocked. Then at my watch. Three hours! The women beside me had been replaced by a young couple. I stumbled an apology, paid for my coffee and left. I was horrified. It was as if Turner had deliberately sent me there, to vindicate him. As if he’d been watching. Three hours. I knew too, that on the day Michael’s bowl had been broken, I’d dusted the bedroom. Which was unusual, because normally I left it to our cleaner. Was it me? Was I actually insane? Had I locked Michael’s possessions in a drawer in my desk, the ones he accused Ned and Imo of taking, and then wiped it from my brain? Had I thrown my mother’s letters in the outside dustbin, before Michael had a chance to look at them? I saw myself lifting the lid, glancing furtively about, dropping them in. Was I, in fact, out of my mind?

  I walked around the clothes shops in the High Street. Old familiars: Jigsaw, Whistles. Then across the road to the covered market. It was cold, and I didn’t have a coat. I picked things up, bracelets, jumpers, scarves, but I didn’t try anything on, or wrap anything around my neck. I wanted to be an anonymous person amongst many other anonymous people. And I hoped the exercise would do me good. With that in mind, I started to walk to the Ashmolean. But when I got there, it was enormous. Huge, honey-coloured columns, vast looming steps, with great flags advertising some exhibition, towered over me. Had everything here always been so big? And the antiquities were so old, on the ground floor, in the Roman section. How old? AD 26? How was that possible? The very idea made me tremble. How many millions of people had lived since then, since this tiny scrap of copper I was looking at? How small and insignificant was I? I felt very cold. I left the museum in a hurry. And when I eventually got back to the car, it was getting dark.

  There was a car I didn’t recognize in my parents’ drive. I drew up alongside and switched the engine off. The lights were on behind the drawn curtains in the sitting room, and smoke was coming from the chimney. I got out and went inside. When I went into the hall, it was beautifully warm. Good smells were coming from the kitchen.

  ‘Ah! Darling! You made it.’ My father greeted me warmly, coming out from the sitting room. He rested his hands on my shoulders. ‘Good heavens, you look all in. Dan popped round to see you. He dropped Nance off at the Pattersons for supper and called in for a drink. We thought we’d all have supper!’

  Dan appeared behind my father in the sitting room doorway, tall and smiling in that blue cashmere jumper that matched his eyes. Dan again. I felt a wave of irritation. He was always popping up unexpectedly, wasn’t he? He came across and kissed my cheeks warmly.

  ‘Blame your parents,’ he told me apologetically. ‘Apparently chicken pie is imminent, and I was press-ganged into it. I tried to ring you, but your phone is off.’

  ‘Yes. I turned it off.’

  I followed them both and took in the cosy scene. Mum had popped out from the kitchen to tell me that before I fussed, she’d been in bed all day, and could now be heard back in there singing along to the radio. My father and Dan repositioned themselves by the fire. They were nursing drinks and resumed their chat, happy and relaxed, and suddenly – suddenly I was so incredibly pleased to be here. I felt something drop from me, like a dead skin. This, surely, was real life? Cosy and safe. Not that horror story I’d been reliving out there, frozen to some dark past that refused to leave: that insisted on dragging me back, haunting me. Here, I knew I’d got nothing wrong. Knew I’d broken and hidden nothing. Had angered no one. Had only pleased people, which was all I ever wished to do. I looked into Dan’s hopeful, smiling eyes. I knew I’d be so safe with him. As I joined the pair of them by the fire, warming my hands but declining a drink, not sure how my head would cope with it, I watched him joking with Dad. Teasing him, about how he and Mum were clearly fitting up the cottage for themselves, on the pretext of giving it to me. He’d obviously been shown around.

  ‘It’s practically got your slippers under the bed, Henry! I’m surprised you’re not in there already!’

  Dad threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘We’ve been rumbled!’ he told me, turning to me, his eyes damp with mirth. ‘Dan’s seen straight through our little ruse, I’m afraid – he’s said the unsayable.’ He peered closer at me. ‘You all right, love? You look awfully pale.’

  ‘Yes, fine. Well, I must say, Dad, the thought hadn’t escaped me either. Or Helena or Imo, for that matter. We were waiting for you to break cover.’ I was still in a state of upheaval, but my head began to feel a little less chaotic.

  ‘Really, darling?’ My mother appeared from the kitchen where she’d clearly been listening keenly. ‘And you wouldn’t mind?’ She looked anxious, but also excited as she came in.

  ‘Not a bit. It’s far more suitable for you than me. But what would you do with Pope’s Farm?’

  ‘We thought sell it,’ Dad said firmly. He made his fabled face, the one with the jutting chin, which meant he was serious. It occurred to me dimly that we were having a very personal chat in front of Dan, but somehow, that felt fine too. It occurred to me, also, that Dan knew about Liam. Which was a huge tick. And that I could tell him about Andrew Parker. About what I’d done, and that he wouldn’t judge me. Wouldn’t be appalled. At how I’d ended the lives of two young men. That his sort of love would be unconditional. That he’d actually do anything for me. Which was what I needed.

  ‘There’s a nice young couple in the village, with small children,’ my father was saying. ‘They love the house and have asked us a couple of times. You know, to give them first option. If we ever decide to go.’ It was the first I’d heard of it, but then, it wouldn’t have been in my parents’ interests to tell me. Not when they were determined, with every fibre of their beings, to hang on to it. Now, of course, they were determined to go. So it was a different matter. ‘Unless you or Helena wanted it?’

  ‘But we don’t want you to feel obligated to live next door to us,’ Mum said quickly. ‘If you see what I mean. We’d love it, obviously. But we don’t need it. We’d be totally independent in that bungalow.’

  I wasn’t really up to speed with this conversation. I tried to assimilate what they were saying but I realized I’d lost t
he thread, momentarily, so I had to ask Mum to repeat what she’d said.

  ‘I said, we could be completely independent, over there.’

  ‘For the minute,’ I replied, coming to. ‘For the minute, you’d be fine. But since we’re saying the unsayable, no one’s invincible.’ I forced a smile, but actually, it didn’t seem the effort it would have been an hour ago. Not half as bad as I’d thought. The fire behind my legs was lovely. ‘And maybe I would want to live here? Maybe you’d be hard pushed to get rid of me?’ I gazed around. Took in the faded chintz covers on the sofa and armchairs: the old velvet curtains, the worn Persian rugs. It was warm and familiar. And – yes, OK, that word again. Safe. Womb-like. It occurred to me, I really would like to be here, forever.

  ‘It’s a jolly nice house,’ Dan said appraisingly, glancing round. ‘Mum’s always been jealous.’

  ‘Has she?’ This pleased my mother no end. She came and perched on a sofa arm, avidly. She looked very fresh, for one who’d left hospital so recently, dressed in a pink frock and a pearl-grey cardigan. But then if she’d been in bed all day she’d probably have spent most of it asleep. And no drink, I was pleased to see.

  ‘Yes, she’s always saying how hers is too big, and how manageable this is. Prettier, too.’

  ‘Well, of course it is prettier. It’s Queen Anne,’ purred my mother delightedly. Nance would never have admitted this to her, they were fiercely competitive. And it wasn’t Queen Anne, actually – it missed the period by a long way – but my mother never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.

  ‘Needs work, of course,’ said Dad, turning to Dan in a man-to-man sort of way. ‘The roof is sound, but the lean-to on the study side leaks like buggery.’

  ‘Probably take that down?’ suggested Dan.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve always wanted to do that. And have a lovely conservatory there instead,’ said Mum eagerly.

  ‘Orangerie, you told me,’ Dad reminded her, raising his eyebrows. ‘I’ve run scared ever since.’

  They all laughed, and actually I joined in. And then, on my mother’s instruction, we drifted through to the kitchen, where the curtains were drawn, and the Aga was warm. The room looked inviting. I was surprised to see Mum had laid the table beautifully, with a cloth, flowers and candles. She saw me look.

  ‘I can do it,’ she told me quietly. ‘Just wasn’t really trying before.’

  She’d had a shock. They both had. A nasty one. Neither of them was ready to go yet. To be gathered, as my father would say. But they knew they had to make a fist of staying on. As if to illustrate, my mother then produced a pie from the oven, which was not one of mine.

  ‘Stop it,’ I told her, as I sat down. I was feeling better by the minute.

  ‘Yes, but it’s a cheat, actually. It’s leftover chicken in a chicken soup sauce with frozen pastry on top. But heavens, it works. Look!’ She cut into it and we all marvelled. Even when we tasted it. Hardly Cordon Bleu, but extremely edible nonetheless. And Dad had made a fruit salad for pudding.

  The evening wore on in a convivial manner, with much joking and banter. Not from me, but nobody seemed to notice, and I felt more restored. I was still in disarray but I began to feel a little less wild. I’d get there. I knew early mornings and last thing at night would be bad. That all sorts of doubts and worries, not least about my own sanity, which I was now convinced Turner had been about to mention, would come flooding back. But this was miles better than that awful police station. That freezing stop in the lane. That concerned look on the waitress’s face in the bistro. That terrifying museum. This was home.

  Eventually, Dan stood up and said he had to go. Had to get his mother before the Pattersons rang him and demanded her immediate withdrawal, informing him they’d locked the drinks cupboard. Forbidding my parents to get up – although Dad wasn’t having that and rose slowly from his chair – he thanked my mother for supper. Said he’d had a lovely evening. I walked him to the door.

  ‘It was lovely to see you,’ he told me, slightly shyly. ‘I felt a bit bereft when I left you in the hospital, yesterday.’

  I remembered him standing at the end of the corridor. ‘You did look a bit forlorn.’

  He looked surprised and I realized I shouldn’t have said it. That good manners precluded me from saying ego-denting things like that. I wasn’t quite functioning properly. Wasn’t quite picking up the social nuances. ‘It was lovely to see you too,’ I added quickly, and realized I meant it. This capable, kindly man soothed me, I decided. But I did need to be on my own, right now.

  He recovered his equilibrium. ‘Is the pub too predictable, or shall we venture into Oxford? London even? Live a little?’

  ‘Not Oxford,’ I said quickly. ‘Or London. And actually, I love the pub.’

  He smiled. ‘Let’s do that, then. Tuesday?’

  ‘Tuesday it is.’

  We could hear my parents clattering about in the kitchen, and to my relief, Dan didn’t move towards me. I certainly wasn’t up for that. Instead, he turned and made his way, which showed a level of sensitivity. As I shut the front door, though, I realized he’d looked very pleased as he went to his car. There was a spring in his step: renewed vigour. A sense of second chance about him. And I was pleased too, I decided. I went back into the sitting room, arms folded consideringly across my chest. Let’s face it, he was a lovely man.

  My father was stacking the dishwasher, forbidding Mum to help, as I went through into the kitchen. They turned as I came in. Their faces were open and expectant.

  ‘Jolly decent, isn’t he?’ said Dad, faux innocently.

  ‘Jolly.’ I smiled, and bent to blow out the candles.

  ‘And such a kind man,’ my mother told me. ‘D’you know, he’ll pick Nance up from the Pattersons’ now, take her home, pop her in the bath, and then put her to bed. He supervises the whole thing. Every night.’

  I turned to her slowly, in surprise. ‘He baths her?’

  ‘She got stuck once,’ she told me. ‘It’s frightened her ever since. She couldn’t get out.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And she can’t bear showers. Says it’s like being rained on.’ She made a face. ‘But that’s a fib, obviously. It’s her hair.’

  I put the candlesticks back in the cupboard, but then I paused a moment, still digesting this. I pictured the nightly ritual. Somehow, I wished she hadn’t told me that.

  31

  It’s well documented, of course, but it is nonetheless extraordinary how restorative a good night’s sleep can be. And I’m not a good sleeper. I often require medical assistance. But when I do sleep, unaided, for nine hours on the trot, which I’d just done, I feel empowered. I was surprised I’d managed it, frankly. How odd. Usually when my mind’s in turmoil, I get about an hour and a half. It must be this house, I decided, looking around at the faded floral wallpaper. I definitely slept much better here. I got up, showered and dressed, and then, hearing my parents already about, went to my shopping in the corner of my room. Yes, I had made one purchase yesterday on my way back from the Ashmolean, in the Cornmarket. I picked up the plastic bag and took it downstairs. Popping my head around the kitchen door where my parents were having a quiet breakfast, I asked my mother how she was.

  ‘Radiant!’ she declared. ‘Never better. Must have another dodgy turn.’ I shot her a reproving look. Then I asked my father if I could use his study.

  ‘Of course, darling.’ He looked surprised. ‘What are you going to do in there?’

  ‘Oh, you know. This and that.’

  He looked confused, and then his face cleared in rec ognition. He nodded; looked pleased. I grabbed a black coffee and departed.

  In the study I carefully cleared a space, transporting his messy piles to the floor, replicating their exact positions. Then I sat down at his desk in the window. It overlooked the paddock where Helena and I used to keep our ponies, and where the local farmer now grazed a few sheep. It was a lovely, familiar view and swept up to the hill beyond, where we used to ride.
I drank it in for a moment, realizing I hadn’t seen it up to now, this being the only window in the house that afforded it. Maybe I’d see it every day, now. I reached into my Ryman’s bag and drew out six spiral bound, A4 notebooks. Three were pink, and three were green. Then I took out two packets of black, thin-tipped pens and, removing one, wrote number one on a pink notebook and circled it. I turned over the first page and at the top of the right-hand page wrote – Chapter One – and underlined it. I already felt a lot better than I had done twenty-four hours ago, but just that simple act was deeply calming. I stared out at the sheep in the meadow. They were last year’s lambs, so ewes only now, all the boys having gone to market. The girls didn’t look too fussed about that. After about twenty minutes – I know, not long, although no doubt subliminally it had been months, with all sorts of ideas kaleidoscoping around my head like so many bees – I set off.

  Susie was at home, a scenario I liked a lot these days, her domestic life becoming as important as her professional one: gradually the balance had shifted. She was sorting through the post, which was all for her since she lived alone, her husband having left her, when a particular envelope caught her eye. It was brown and handwritten in a shaky, familiar hand. She stared at it for a long moment and then quickly opened it. It was from her adoptive mother who she hadn’t seen for years, her biological mother having taken her place after revealing secrets about the adoptive one which were too hard for Susie to take.

  Dear Susie,

  I know it’s been six years since you asked me not to contact you, but something has come to light which I hope will convince you to change your mind.

  And thus, I was off. No idea where. But into another person’s world, someone else’s drama, well away from anything that was happening in my own. Shielded, protected, soothed. Perhaps like a class of aerobics, followed by one of stretches, followed by a run in the park, who knows? Each to their own form of escape or therapy. All I know is that when I looked up – hungry and in need of a pee – I also felt calm and whole. I went to the loo, grabbed a piece of cake from the kitchen, and came back. I set off once more and then, after a while, exhausted, knew I’d finished for the day. I closed the book. Sat back and stared out at the sheep, head cleared. Full, but cleared. And in that clarity, it came to me. As things often did, in that moment. Of course. It was obvious. Indeed it was as clear as the bright blue sky I was gazing at. I glanced at my watch. Only one o’clock. Which was fine. I’d missed the rush hour, and if I went now, I’d be back before the evening one started. Perfect.