I searched high and low and eventually found the string tangled in the large brass knocker of the blue door, the kite still flying high in the breeze. The sound of the knocker against the door as the kite soared and fought for its freedom eventually lured me to the secret garden. The kite now forgotten, I pushed open the crumbling blue door and the image of what I saw beyond stayed with me.
On the afternoon of my engagement to Lucy I blindfolded her as gently as possible and led her to the Mini. She was quiet the entire journey and I knew she was listening for clues as to our whereabouts. Lucy was very astute and it was often hard to keep surprises from her.
I parked in a layby and led her by both hands towards the flaking paint of the blue door. Her brow furrowed at the sound of the door being pushed open. I led her through and made her wait just inside the walls of the garden. The look on her face after I took the blindfold off has stayed with me ever since.
Lucy was eager to take in the many varieties of roses and smell the scents of the lilac, honeysuckle and jasmine. I guided her in the direction of the stone bench situated near the fountain in the middle of the garden. While the birds chirped and the breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees I told her how much she meant to me. She wiped warm tears from her cheeks as she listened attentively to my words. When my speech came to a close I got down on the ground. I retrieved the ring box from my pocket and, after opening it, held it up for her to see.
On that warm afternoon, surrounded by nature’s beauty, I asked her a question that eventually led to her becoming my fiancée. Afterwards we stayed in the garden for a while. We didn’t say much to each other, just sat amongst the trees and the flowers and soaked up the atmosphere of the moment – a moment I thought would be a once in a lifetime occasion for both of us.
Remembering the happiness of that day, I felt salty tears slide down beside my mouth. I felt trapped. I was a soul imprisoned in a body I couldn’t escape from and forced to live in a world where I no longer belonged. Time passed. I heard the rumble of thunder in the sky and it wasn’t long before rain lashed down. I decided it was time for me to leave.
I watched the rain destroy the delicate petals of some nearby poppies and a shock of purple caught my eye: the alliums that had drawn me here. At the top of their perfectly straight stems sat large purple balls made of tiny, star-shaped flowers. The rain soaked me to the skin while I stood a few feet away to stare at them.
A flash of movement caught my eye and my gaze was drawn towards a weeping willow that grew close to the flowers. As I looked at it closely I could just about make out the outline of a shoe.
I got down on all fours and peered beneath the drooping branches that acted like a curtain, concealing whoever was hiding behind them. I cocked my head to one side and squinted into the shadows. I saw a pair of green eyes shining in the half-light..
“Hello, Lucy,” I said.
Chapter Thirteen
I crawled beneath the branches and into the dry cocoon that concealed Lucy. She shuffled over to make room for me, but the lack of space caused my elbow to touch hers in an awkward manner. She looked at me in irritation.
“What are you doing here?”
“Trying to find you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest in an attempt to warm herself against the cold breeze I’d let in. “How did you know I would be here?”
Only Lucy and I knew this place existed. How was it possible that Adam had traced her here?
“Russ mentioned it, he said you liked to visit here sometimes.”
There was the slight raise of an eyebrow but she did not query my answer. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. Perhaps she had brought him here after my death.
“I suppose he told you then?”
“He came by the cottage, he was worried. Are you all right?”
Knowing how much Lucy hated pity, I tried to prevent concern from showing in my voice and refrained from telling her how sorry I was. I was aware it would only leave her feeling worse.
“I don’t know really.” She avoided eye contact. “I expected it and they’ve been warning me for weeks now but I think I’ve just been ignoring the warnings.”
“Pretending everything’s fine?”
She clasped her hands together and looked at them.
“Yeah. Someone once told me that I don’t have a very good coping mechanism. That I need a hobby to distract my mind.”
I remembered the day I had told her that; it was on the car journey home from the hospital in Bath, the day after she’d overdosed in her last year at university.
“It might help to talk about it.”
She smiled at me shyly.
“I’m not very good at that, I’m afraid.”
I nodded and kept quiet. After a few minutes’ silence I ducked underneath the drooping leaves to pick an allium. The flower was a perfect lilac-coloured sphere and I almost regretted removing it from its happy spot amongst the other blooms.
Just as I had done on the day of our engagement, I handed the allium to Lucy. She took it without looking at me but managed a grateful smile. As she looked at the allium her gaze was steady and I wondered whether she was thinking about me or Jamie.
“Jamie liked flowers. He didn’t care what variety they were, they just had to be red. Occasionally I’d buy him a single rose if I passed a florist’s.” Her smile faded and she paused before she said, “I don’t even know what funeral flowers he would’ve wanted.”
“Try not to worry about that yet,” I said gently.
She clasped her hands on her lap before turning to face me. She studied my features as though I were a poker player contemplating my next move.
“What you must think of me,” she said with some regret.
I tried hard to keep my feelings hidden as she continued speaking.
“Trying it on with Russ one minute, being rejected by you the next, all while my husband lay dying in a hospital bed.” She picked at a patch of grass and twisted a few strands in her fingers. “I watched the footage of Russ and me, I know how it looks.”
I hated seeing the look on her face as she spoke. .
“I was ashamed when I saw it. It was a real low point for me. You see, Russ has always had strong feelings for me, though I only realised it when Charlie died. I’ve been pushing him away for years.” She wiped away a tear. “And then not long after I married Jamie, Russ told me he was getting back together with his ex and suddenly I wasn’t important to him anymore. I found myself in a loveless marriage – a false marriage really – and it was a lonely feeling. I needed Russ to care about me… I wanted to feel important to someone.”
I avoided eye contact but nodded as she talked, while resisting the urge to ask questions that might lead her to clam up.
“Later, I told myself that my urge to throw myself at my friend came from a lack of human contact, a need for intimacy, but I don’t really know what triggered it. I dragged him into the treehouse and ripped at his clothes like a madwoman.” She sounded disgusted with herself. “The thought that he would reject me never even crossed my mind.” She looked at me. “And that’s exactly what I did to you too.”
Her eyes shone with tears.
“A man I hardly know but who seems to know me. I seem to be everybody’s bad choice these days.”
The rain began to fall in earnest then and I watched the fat droplets explode on the baked earth beyond the fringe of willow branches
“Not Charlie’s,” I said confidently.
She made an exasperated sound with her lips.
“For all I know, he threw himself into that river just to be free of me.”
“You know that’s not true, Luce.”
“I don’t know what’s true anymore.”
She reached into the pocket of her denim shorts.
“I continued searching through the documents in Jamie’s study after you left. I found this.”
She passed me a folded piece of paper.
“Read it.”
Dea
rest Jamie,
I am in awe at the fact that a small scrap of paper scrawled with your words and in your handwriting can cause me so much joy. Such a small thing, a fleeting gesture, but now an important part of my day-to-day life.
I’m not going to pretend I’m happy, that everything worked out, that my worries were for nothing. Prison is everything you imagine it to be: frightening, lonely and full of false hope. The worst thing about being incarcerated isn’t having the door slammed on your freedom and your future, but having to disguise the person you are for the sake of your own safety.
As I write this I feel like myself again, I can finally emerge from my false cocoon – my provider of protection – and wear my beautiful wings again. Already I’m being asked why I don’t have posters of the latest pin-up on my walls and I’m afraid it won’t be long before my secret is unleashed and I become the focus of their hatred and bigotry. I have to stay strong and remind myself why I’m here. I did this for you and, as much as I hate it here, I know in my heart that my sacrifice is worth it.
So I will continue to wear my disguise, a charade that brings me so much pain. However, my faith is strong and I know that somehow I will get through this.
Counting down the days until I see you again.
All my love,
Kevin
I read the letter twice and then slowly folded it along the worn edges, an indication that the letter had been opened and read many times before. I turned to Lucy, who looked drained and exhausted.
“I don’t understand. Is Kevin a friend of Jamie’s?”
“I’ve no idea, he’s never mentioned him.”
“The part that says ‘I did this for you’… what do you think that means?”
Lucy shook her head and rubbed her eyes tiredly.
“Do you think Kevin committed a crime for Jamie?”
“I really don’t know. I can’t find any more letters from him.”
I stared at the address in the top right-hand corner, which stated that the sender was incarcerated in Leeds Prison.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Lucy’s eyes met mine.
“Visit him?” she suggested.
“Exactly.”
We fell into a comfortable silence as we pondered the mystery surrounding Lucy’s husband, a well-respected professional. Something about her marriage had always concerned me. I took a deep breath and asked the question that had been on my mind since my return.
“Did you love Jamie?”
Lucy looked me straight in the eye.
“No,” she whispered.
I watched as she drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them, making herself as small as possible.
“But then, he didn’t love me either,” she said sadly.
I showed no reaction as she spoke, but secretly I was shocked. How could she marry someone for whom she had no feelings?
“It was a marriage of convenience. His parents were pushing him to marry, I was lonely. I guess it was the loneliness that made me listen to him, and he knew I’d agree to his arrangement. At first his parents liked me, were kind to me. After all, I live in a big house, have a respectable job, I’m well educated and mild mannered. But when they found out that I’d been engaged previously and that the house I lived in belonged to my ex-fiancé, I guess they felt cheated. Like I was pretending to be someone I’m not. My relationship with them soured. I guess there were too many skeletons in my closet for them to handle.”
She scraped back her hair so I could see her face clearly.
“Jamie and I led separate lives, we slept in separate rooms, ate separately… when he wasn’t at work, of course, which was most of the time. Our lives barely crossed. I didn’t feel like a married woman, or someone who had a husband who cared for her, and in the end, a marriage that was supposed to ease my loneliness ended up creating more.”
I thought back to the footage I’d seen of Lucy and Russ, that desperate kiss in the garden. I remembered the figure watching them and the lack of concern on Jamie’s face.
“Did he have girlfriends?”
“No.”
“You didn’t know Kevin but did the letter come as a surprise to you?”
She turned to look at me and I could see she was analysing, determining whether I was trustworthy. After a while she gave me her answer.
“I always knew Jamie was gay.”
Chapter Fourteen
As the days went by I saw less of Lucy. She was working hard preparing for Jamie’s funeral and the most I saw of her was the odd glimpse as she gazed gravely out of the kitchen window. I continued with the work on the treehouse but she was never far from my thoughts.
The shock of her statement about her marriage had stayed with me. She had married a stranger out of pure loneliness. I also wondered how the truth about her marriage had bypassed Russ. Wasn’t he supposed to be keeping an eye on her?
The day of Jamie’s funeral was very different from my own. There were no dark clouds threatening to dampen the congregation and no loud rumbles from above. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as I entered the church and, once inside, I noticed that many of the mourners were fanning themselves with the order of service. The heat was intense and a cause for general complaint
As I looked around for Lucy I noticed many members of Jamie’s family huddled around his parents. They spoke in hushed tones and were all dressed in expensive-looking attire. The ladies wore large black hats and I observed that many were wearing dark sunglasses, which seemed out of place in an already gloomy building. Jamie’s parents seemed bowed down with grief as they eventually took their seats on the front row.
As I turned towards the back of the church I saw Russ in his usual spot, a seat he would occupy during every wedding and funeral that required his presence. He was half in shadow and so I was only able to identify him when he gave me a small nod. I decided to join him in the shadows and watch the proceedings from afar.
“Hey, bud,” Russ said as I sat down.
“I feel awkward being here, I didn’t know him,” I said.
“Well, I did, and you didn’t miss much.”
I felt suddenly glad of our secluded seats in the shadows, out of earshot of Jamie’s family. I also felt ashamed of my best friend. It was obvious that he and Jamie were anything but close. However, badmouthing a man at his own funeral seemed a bit extreme.
I chose to stay quiet and when Russ’s head turned quickly I knew that Lucy had entered the church. I glanced towards the entrance and saw her long dark wavy hair before I saw her face. She was wearing a modest sleeveless black dress that was tailored and moulded perfectly to her small frame. Her hair hung loose and covered her face so that she avoided eye contact with those around her.
After the first hymn was out of the way, a few words were said by Jamie’s elder brother. I half listened to tales of skiing trips and examples of adolescent competitiveness during their time at boarding school together; stories meant to incite laughter and affection failed to engage my full attention.
My full focus was on Lucy, as it had been for most of my life and death. She sat with her hands clasped in her lap and her head bowed. I noticed I wasn’t the only one watching her. Jamie’s parents were also keeping their eye on Lucy, but something told me it wasn’t out of concern for her welfare.
After Jamie’s brother had said his piece, we all stood for another hymn before the vicar said a few words and then a prayer. As we followed the coffin out of the church to the graveyard I noticed a man dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. He was accompanied by a man in police uniform. It was only when I moved closer that I realised the man was handcuffed.
As I observed the man, I saw Jamie’s brother approach him and a heated exchange ensued. It was clear from the man’s expression that the exchange had upset him. As he left my field of vision I looked up to see Lucy watching me. I wasn’t the only one who had witnessed the altercation. I joined the rest of the congregation at the graveside. Lucy
was somewhere in the middle and I stood by her side.
“You saw him too,” she whispered.
“I did.”
“I think I know who he is.”
“Me too.”
As the service continued I observed the man closely. It was easy to see that he had been left devastated by Jamie’s death; only the sound of his soft sobbing could be heard above the words of committal. Jamie’s parents stared at the coffin with blank faces and showed no emotion as it was lowered out of sight. Out of the many people who had turned up, the man with the police escort appeared to be the most affected.
As the service came to a close he was visibly shaking. He threw a red gerbera on top of the coffin and walked away, accompanied by his police guard. Lucy held a red rose as she slowly approached the hole in the ground. She placed the petals to her lips briefly before throwing down the flower, which hit the lid of the coffin with a thump.
The crowd began to disperse and Lucy, Russ and I made our way back to the house for the wake. The day had cooled a little and a welcome breeze lifted strands of Lucy’s hair. Russ put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to his side.
“I’m sorry, Luce.”
She smiled her thanks.
“Thanks for being here.” Lucy looked at Russ and then at me. “Both of you.”
“No problem,” Russ and I said simultaneously.
As we made our way up the hill I could hear members of the congregation behind us chattering about how lovely the ceremony was and the skill involved in the many colourful wreaths that littered the path outside the church. The mysterious man in handcuffs wasn’t mentioned; it was almost as if he was invisible to them. They were either enormously polite or incredibly unperceptive.
The Life and Second Life of Charlie Brackwood (The Brackwood Series Book 2) Page 14