by Juliet Bell
Harry stopped in front of a house on the top road across the estate. He paused, looking at Kate, and then at the front door as if he was unsure what to do next.
‘You should invite me in.’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t think so.’
‘You should. It’s inhospitable not to after I’ve come all this way.’
‘Inhospitable?’
‘It means rude.’
‘Right.’ He stuck a key into the lock. ‘Wait here.’ Then he grabbed Luke by the collar and all but slung him through the door.
Kate waited as the door swung back towards the frame. There were voices inside, quiet at first, and then louder, before slow, heavy footsteps made their way along the hall and the door swung open again.
It was that man again, Luke’s dad, the big, snarling man who’d come to the house and taken Luke away. The butterflies in Kate’s stomach swooped and soared. She swallowed hard. ‘Hello.’ She held out her hand like she’d been taught. ‘I’m Kate. I’ve come to visit my cousin if that’s all right.’
The man stared at her, ignoring the outstretched hand, before he reached forward and ran the tips of two fingers over the curls at the side of her head. ‘Cathy…’ he whispered.
Kate frowned. ‘Catherine. People call me Kate. Or sometimes Katy, but I prefer Kate. Katy’s babyish, I think.’
The man drew his hand back to his side. ‘Well, in you come then.’
Inside the house was dark and cold and there was a really nasty smell. Kate forced herself to smile, but the butterflies in her tummy were getting bigger and stronger and felt like they were fighting to escape. The living room was brown and grey, even on the bits that might once have been white. There was one picture on the mantelpiece. Kate stepped towards it and reached out her hand.
‘Don’t touch that.’
She pulled her hand back and peered into the face under the pristine glass instead. ‘That’s my mother.’
The man nodded. ‘It’s Cathy.’
‘Do you think I look like her?’ Her dad told her she looked like her mother, but Kate wasn’t sure now. She looked like the woman in the pictures Daddy kept at home, but this photo was different. This Cathy had wild hair and bright eyes. Her head was flung back and she was laughing. She didn’t really look like the mother she was used to at all.
Nobody answered. She turned away from the photo and took in the rest of the room. Harry and Luke were sitting side by side on a faded settee. Heathcliff was still standing in the doorway, staring at her. Eventually he shifted his gaze to the settee. ‘Stand up.’
Both boys squirmed out of their seats.
‘It’s rude not to let a lady sit down.’
Kate shook her head. ‘I can sit here.’ She moved towards the empty armchair that remained.
Heathcliff’s lips curled upwards towards a smile. ‘No, no. You can sit on the sofa. There’s room.’
Kate did as she was told. Luke leaned back into the seat beside her.
Heathcliff’s smile extended. ‘And now you’ll want a drink, won’t you?’
‘Well, I am quite thirsty.’
‘I thought so. Bring our guest some tea.’
Harry slouched out of the room, presumably to boil the kettle. Kate smiled. There was no way Dad could be angry about this. A nice cup of tea with her cousins and her uncle. It was all entirely respectable.
When the tea came it was too sweet and milky, but Kate drank it politely like her father had taught her. Luke was boring, and Harry barely spoke, but, whatever Dad said, Heathcliff was perfectly pleasant. He asked questions. So many questions. About life at home with her dad. About her mother. He even wanted to know what Dad had said about her mother and Heathcliff. He was interested in Kate. Her watch ticked away through the minutes until she glanced and saw that it was after five. ‘I have to go.’
Heathcliff frowned. ‘No. Stay.’
‘I can’t. I have to get back.’
‘To Edward?’
‘To Dad.’
‘At the Grange.’
She nodded. ‘He’ll be waiting for me.’
She caught him glance towards the photo on the mantel. ‘Well if he’s waiting for you then you’d better go.’ There was a change in his voice now. Not interested any more, but cold. ‘You be sure to come back, though.’
Kate nodded. ‘If I can.’
‘Oh, you must.’ Those lips curled back up. ‘Your cousins love to see you, don’t you?’
The two boys grunted in what could have been indifference or assent.
‘And Luke knows nobody here. He needs his family. He needs a friend.’
He was right, of course. She was Luke’s family. Visiting was the least she could do.
‘So tell your dad that. Tell him you’re visiting Isabelle’s precious little boy so he’s not sad or lonely stuck up here with no friends.’
Kate nodded again. Dad would be bound to understand that.
‘So you’ll come back soon?’
‘If Dad agrees.’
‘Tomorrow? You’ll come back tomorrow?’
‘Okay.’
Chapter Forty-One
March, 2004
Kate watched the falcon soaring high above the hills. It didn’t even have to flap its wings. From up there it must be able to see the whole world.
‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to fly?’
Beside her, Luke shrugged. ‘We need to get back soon.’
‘Why?’
‘He doesn’t like us coming up here.’
Kate stuck out her bottom lip. Dad didn’t like her coming to see Luke. Heathcliff didn’t like them going on the blue hills. Harry, so far as she could tell, didn’t like anything very much. ‘Well, I like it here.’
And she did. It wasn’t as good as flying, but from here you could see right across the town. You could see the warehouses where the mine used to be years ago. You could see right across the Heights estate and you could make out the bigger house at the Grange in among the rabbit warren of new streets and houses that surrounded it.
Luke pulled a tuft of grass up with his fingers absent-mindedly. ‘Well, he gets really funny if I say we’ve been up here.’
‘Why?’
Luke shrugged. ‘Who knows? People get weird about stuff. It’s just how it is.’
Kate frowned. That wasn’t how she’d thought things were, but recently she was starting to see Luke’s point. She had stopped asking Dad if she could come out to the Heights. She’d even stopped trying to think of lies to explain where she’d been. She came and went, and Dad just sat on his own with the lights down low. She didn’t want to go home yet.
‘Tell me about London.’
‘What about it?’
‘Just something. What’s it like? Did you go to museums? And art galleries? What about the shops? The shops must be wonderful. I’d like to go shopping in London.’
Luke shook his head. ‘We didn’t have any money to go shopping. We went to the Natural History Museum once with school.’
Kate had looked up the Natural History Museum on the internet. ‘That’s the one with the dinosaur, isn’t it?’
‘Yep.’
‘Where else did you go?’
‘Normal places. McDonalds. Stuff like that.’
‘What’s McDonalds like?’
Luke stared at her and then laughed.
‘Don’t laugh at me.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s mean.’
‘S’not mean. It’s funny. Everyone’s been to McDonalds.’
‘Well, I haven’t.’ Dad didn’t think McDonalds was proper food. Kate wanted to go there. She wanted to get a Happy Meal. A Happy Meal sounded good.
Luke pulled himself up to his feet. ‘Come on.’
He was right. However much she wanted to stay it was time to go home. She started to half-run down the side of the small hill. Her foot slid away from under her, and she skidded on her bottom, covering her skirt with dark black mud. At the bottom of the hill
she scrambled to her feet. There was a deep black gash out of the side of the hill where she’d skimmed away the grass as she fell. At the top of the gash a few loose stones, shiny and black in the late-afternoon sun, came loose and bounced down after her.
Luke edged gingerly down to join her, dislodging a few more stones as he came. ‘Come on. We’re late.’
The Grange was in darkness. Kate let herself in and flicked on the lights in the hallway and lounge. ‘Dad?’
There was no reply. She went through to the kitchen. Nobody. And then upstairs. The bathroom door was open and the room was deserted. She pushed the door to Dad’s study and peered inside. No one. She knocked tentatively on the door to his bedroom. Kate didn’t normally go in there, not since she was little and used to get scared of the dark. There was no reply. She pushed the door open and crept inside. No one.
She crept out of the room again and went into her own room.
‘Dad?’ Her father was kneeling on the floor surrounded by piles of Kate’s things. Kate flicked the light on, and watched as her father blinked against the sudden light. ‘What are you doing going through my stuff??’
‘Just having a clear-out.’
‘But they’re my things. You shouldn’t be going through them and throwing them out.’ She pouted.
His hand came to rest on a pile of old T-shirts. ‘You’re getting bigger. You need new things. Most of these must be too small.’
‘Dad!’ Kate knelt down next to him and pulled a soft, powder-blue top from the middle of the pile. ‘This still fits.’
He blinked at her, and she realised he looked confused, as if he really wasn’t seeing properly. ‘Are you all right, Dad?’
Her father nodded, took the T-shirt from her hands, folded it carefully and lifted it into the empty drawer in her chest. ‘You need new things, though, don’t you? You’re growing up. All these things you’ve had before won’t do any more, will they?’
‘Well, I’ve grown out of some of them.’ She peered behind her father. There were piles of soft toys and old books as well.
‘In fact we’ve probably outgrown this whole place.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean maybe it’s time we moved somewhere else. We could go to London and see all those museums you keep talking about.’
Kate didn’t know what to say. They’d never talked about moving before. Home had always been here. Dad had always said that home was all they needed. She dreamt of running away and seeing the world, but in her dreams Gimmerton and Dad and the Grange stayed exactly as they were, waiting for her to come home. She sat on the floor next to her father and leaned back against the bed. ‘I don’t want to move.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, this is home.’ She paused. ‘And we’ve got family here now.’
‘Not really.’
‘We do. I’ve got two cousins and Uncle Heathcliff.’
Her father stayed very still for a minute. ‘I don’t think you should spend so much time over there.’
Kate pouted. ‘But Luke’s lonely. He doesn’t know anyone except me and Harry. He’s only just moved here.’
‘I’m sure he’s making friends at school. And you both need to concentrate on studying. You’ll be starting on GCSEs soon.’
‘But he’s my cousin.’
Her father pulled himself to his feet without replying and strode out of the room. He didn’t understand. Heathcliff understood. He said she could visit whenever she liked. She followed her father onto the landing. There was a white and blue paper packet sitting on the hall table. It had been opened and she saw some boxes and small bottles inside it. Before she could ask, her father snatched up the packet and vanished into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Luke sat on the end of the bed in the room he shared with Harry. He didn’t see why they had to share a room at all. There were three bedrooms. The big one was Heathcliff’s. This was the second bedroom and nobody slept in the third. At least officially no one slept in the third. In practice Luke lay awake every night and listened to Heathcliff stalking down the corridor into the tiny box room. If he was going to end up down there every night, Luke reckoned he ought to have the big room. At least then the bed would get slept in.
‘Get down here.’
The shout came from the bottom of the stairs. Luke ignored it. People shouted a lot. They told him to go here and there. If they were really bothered, Luke had learnt, they usually came and got him.
‘Now, boy. Get down here.’
Luke leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. There was a yard at the back of the house. It was big enough for one of them long narrow troughs. Maybe he could grow carrots here. He pictured the neat orderly rows and breathed out.
The footsteps on the stairs forced him to open his eyes. The bedroom door crashed open. ‘I told you to come downstairs.’
Luke shrugged. He knew how this worked. He’d seen it with his mam’s boyfriends – big blokes who were all about throwing their weight around, but they backed off if they could see they weren’t getting to him.
So the first swipe from the back of Heathcliff’s hand caught him by surprise, throwing him sideways across the bed so his shoulder smashed into the wall before he slumped down towards the pillow. Then a hand was at his throat, lifting him up, back against the wall. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Out.’
The grip tightened little. ‘Out where?’
‘With Kate. Just around.’
The grip loosened, and Luke slid back down onto the bed. His hands rushed to his collar, pulling at the school tie to help him suck some air in.
When he looked back up, Heathcliff was grinning. At least, he thought it was a grin. ‘With Kate?’
Luke nodded.
‘You’ve been seeing her a lot?’
Luke shrugged. ‘She won’t go away.’
‘Well, good. We don’t want her to go away.’
‘No.’ Luke shook his head quickly. ‘Course not.’
‘So you need to make sure she doesn’t. You need to make sure she keeps coming over here.’
‘I will.’
Chapter Forty-Two
January, 2005
Edward slid the papers into the envelope, sealed it and stuck on the stamp. That was it. Kate was all registered to take her exams as a private candidate at the school. And then… and then what? She was badgering him to go to college for sixth form. The thought terrified him.
There was a photo of Cathy sitting on the desk in front of him. Taken on their wedding day, it was one of his favourites. Cathy looked beautiful. She looked serene and loving. There was no trace of wildness in her. And no sign of that thing in her brain. His memory of the night she died was thankfully blurred after all these years, but he still remembered the doctor’s words. Congenital brain aneurism. They were burnt into his consciousness, because there was no way he could be sure Kate didn’t have the same thing. It could be inherited, the doctors said. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible. It was possible that one day his Kate would scream and collapse and die, just like her mother. That she would leave him, just like her mother.
But she was leaving him anyway, wasn’t she?
She was getting older now and he couldn’t very well stop her going to college if that was what she wanted. Edward was increasingly powerless to stop her doing anything. She had that much of her mother in her. She marched in and out of the house when she pleased so far as he could tell. She wasn’t simply growing up, she was growing away. Soon there’d be nothing for him here at all.
He picked the envelope up from the table, grabbed a set of keys from the ledge in the hallway and set off. He’d just walk to the postbox and then he’d head back home. At the postbox he dropped the envelope in and kept going. He walked into town, past the Catholic church and on through the main square to the Anglican one at the other side of town. The gate was open and he made his way along the path, round the side of the building to the three graves all in a neat
line together. He read the names – Gordon Linton, Marian Linton, Catherine Linton née Earnshaw. He knelt in front of his wife. ‘I did all right, didn’t I, Cathy? I did all right with her?’
He stared at the marble stone. No one replied.
He could still taste it, the life he’d thought they were going to have, back when he’d first met her and she was young and intoxicating. He knew his mother hadn’t really approved but Father had seen it. He’d said Cathy had something about her. Edward needed that. He needed someone with drive and ideas to drag him along with them. He couldn’t do it all himself.
He stood up and brushed the dust off his trousers before the tears came. Cathy wasn’t here. She wouldn’t tell him what to do. She wouldn’t pick him up and send him off in a new direction. He reached out to touch the wings of the marble angel. The reddish-brown stains on her face almost looked like tears.
He made his way back across the graveyard and stopped. A pinched-looking man in a long black robe was striding towards the church. He glanced in Edward’s direction.
‘Mr Linton.’
Edward recognised the priest from the Catholic church. He’d only met him a couple of times. He’d had views, apparently, about Cathy marrying an Anglican, but it hadn’t made a difference. Nobody cared about that sort of thing any more. Edward nodded stiffly. ‘Father Joseph.’
The priest looked behind him towards the graves. ‘Paying your respects?’
Edward nodded.
‘Good. There’s plenty that don’t bother.’
Edward forced himself to smile. ‘What brings you over here?’
The Father pursed his lips. ‘Meetings. Everything’s ecumenical these days.’ His tone suggested that this was not a happy development.
‘I’ve not seen you or young Cathy…’
‘Kate.’
The priest ignored the interruption. ‘I’ve not seen you at any of the joint services. I thought you were part of this congregation, what with insisting on having your wife laid to rest here.’