A Hidden Life
Page 41
Lou parked the car in front of the house, which stood with its back to the cliff, separated from the road by a small garden full of overgrown trees all bent low as a result of wind. She got out, and pushed open a shutter that was hanging off its hinges and peered inside at what seemed more like a deserted barn than a house real people had once lived in. The room she could see, which must have been the kitchen, was big but beyond that, there was an even bigger room.
She went in past the splintered wood of the door and looked around her. Two large rooms on the ground floor. An ancient wooden table, wobbly on its legs, stood in the middle of the kitchen. Lou went up the rickety stairs to the first floor and examined the three bedrooms, each one exactly like a whitewashed cell. Then she went downstairs again and walked over to the back window, which she recognized at once. This was where Louise Franchard had stood as a young woman, smiling and with the sea behind her. The place was completely empty and the table was the only sign Lou could see of human habitation. Milthorpe House, when she’d gone round it with Jake, was empty as well, but you knew it had been lived in recently. Ceiling roses, dado rails, working light bulbs, pale rectangles where paintings had hung: everywhere there were signs of human attention. Here there was nothing, and yet Lou could imagine what it had been like when the Franchards were living here: spartan, but comfortable. There would have been lamps. Floor coverings. Curtains at the windows. Beds on the upper floors with fat quilts on them, probably stuffed with the feathers of seabirds.
Every house is haunted, she told herself, every single one, whether someone is living in it or not. Ghosts of ordinary people doing ordinary things drift through the rooms. She could envisage the sisters, Manon and Louise, sitting by the fire – there was the kitchen fireplace – and what? Knitting? Reading? Talking to one another? Whatever it was, part of them was still here, because she’d thought about them. Remembered them. Ghosts, it occurred to her, owed their existence to the long memories of the living. The reason most ghost stories were scary, rather than simply sad, was because sensational murders were remembered for far longer than normal domestic events and by people who had no family relationship with the dead person.
Lou shook her head. What a time to be philosophizing! If Jake were here, he’d be sizing up the space in the kitchen to see whether an Aga might be fitted into the spot where the fire once burned. She looked out of the window again at the back garden, which was entirely overgrown and wild and seemed to stretch to the very edge of the cliff. We’re going to have to put some kind of fence up there, she thought, for Poppy. She shivered. A very strong fence – but, God, what a fantastic view! She took out her phone to take some photos of the sea. Then she snapped the fireplace and the front garden and went outside to capture the battered red front door. She would send them to Jake’s phone as soon as it was morning in New York. He slept with his mobile on the bedside table and she didn’t want to wake him up. Suddenly, she wished more than anything that he was here with her, seeing this. Next time, for sure. And what about after that? They’d been together almost all the time for the past few weeks, but Lou was ashamed to find herself thinking more and more about the future. I’m getting to depend on him, she thought, and so is Poppy. She loves him. I love him. She laughed and the sound of her voice was very loud in the empty house.
‘I want to marry him!’ she called out and the only answer was a seagull, crying outside the window. She giggled. Love had made her soft in the head, but it was true. Or a version of it was true. She wanted to live with him for ever, married or not. She put the phone back in her handbag and opened the front door and as she did so, it started to ring. She scrabbled around for it and found it almost at once.
‘Hello?’ she said.
‘It’s me, Jake – why don’t you ever look at caller ID?!’
‘Jake! You’re supposed to be asleep. It’s the middle of the night where you are.’
‘Five a.m. Woke up early because I’m missing you so much.’
‘Me too. I miss you like mad. Jake, I’m in the house. In France …’
‘I know. I’m so curious. What’s it like? Have you taken photos?’
‘I’ll send them to you now – it’s beautiful.’
‘Figured it might be. If the hotel’s okay, book us in for the weekend in a month. A family room. We’ll bring Poppy. Okay?’
Lou nodded. ‘Okay, that’ll be lovely – oh, Jake, I can’t wait to see you.’
‘Not long now, but listen, I’ve been thinking. Your flat – what about giving it up?’
‘And moving in with you?’
‘Yes, with me. There’s so much room and it seems ridiculous to go backwards and forwards when we want to be together, right?’
‘I suppose so. Yes, right.’
‘So you’ll give your landlord notice, or whatever you have to do?’
‘Yup.’
‘Fantastic. Okay, I’m going to get up now. I’ll speak to you again later. Lou?’
‘Yes?’
‘I miss you so much …’
‘Me too.’
‘And I love you. D’you know that?’
‘Yes. I love you too.’
‘That’s good. Okay, bye.’
‘Bye …’
He was gone. She ended the call and then spent a few moments sending the photos of the house through to his phone, marvelling, as she did every time she thought about it, about the magic that enabled Jake in New York to get a message from the other side of the world. She’d put her phone back in her handbag and left the house, closing the red door behind her. Just as she was getting into the car, she heard the beep of an incoming text message. Jake – reacting to her photos. She flipped open the lid. The message read, Fantastic! If I let you share my house, will you let me share yours? Xxx.
Lou laughed. She texted back: What do you think?
Then she shut the car door and leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes. She listened to the sound of the waves crashing against the cliff, far below her, and wondered whether this was how the first Louise had felt: that she was ready to leave everything, her house, her family, her life, everything she knew in order to follow her lover wherever he wanted her to go. That’s how I feel, she thought. I would have done exactly that, exactly what she did. She turned the key in the ignition and started to drive. She glanced back briefly at the square white ruin of her house, then turned her attention to the silver, twisting road that led to Penmarc’h.
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