‘I promise we will never lose this,’ she’d said, pulling him close on their wedding night, and she’d thought of some of the other couples they were friends with who bickered and sniped publicly at each other, trying to draw the rest of them into their personal battles with jokey little barbs and asides designed to undermine or humiliate; and she thought of her parents, sitting there at the wedding breakfast, her father drunk on champagne and whisky, flirting outrageously with her maid of honour while her mother turned away from him with that sad, tight look upon her face. No, she’d thought, they would never be like that. They would never lose their closeness, their intimacy. They would never stop wanting each other.
‘And I promise,’ he had said, kissing her shoulder blade before trailing his lips all the way down to the crook of her elbow, ‘that we will never go to bed angry at each other. There is nothing we won’t resolve with a little compromise . . . or sex,’ and he had grinned his crooked grin at her and tumbled her back onto the bed.
‘Here it is,’ she says, studying the map and then glancing back up to where the track widens out in front of them. ‘This has got to be it.’ Tom looks doubtful but he parks the car by a rotting wooden gate and they pull on their walking boots and coats before clambering over it and out across a boggy meadow. Using the map to guide them, Lila leads them through a densely wooded area and then out onto a high ridge where bruise-coloured clouds hang ominously low all around them.
She holds the map out again, wrestles it flat against the wind, and tries to gain her bearings. She looks up and points. ‘I think it must be just over this ridge . . .’
Tom nods and eyes the darkening sky. ‘Let’s hope so because I think it’s about to bucket down again.’
As rain streaks from the leaden sky they run the last few hundred metres, across the ridge, around a huge clump of blackberry brambles and then down a grassy bank towards an expanse of water, slate grey and choppy with rain. There isn’t time to stop and take it all in; the rain lashes them, fierce and cold, stinging their skin. ‘Come on,’ yells Tom, but Lila can’t keep up. She loses her footing and slides down the rest of the bank on her bum, shrieking as cold water seeps through her jeans.
He hauls her up and points towards the pencil-grey outline of a building, just visible in the distance through the curtain of rain. ‘Over there,’ he says and they run again, arriving on the doorstep moments later, soaked to the skin and gasping for breath.
‘Is this it?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know.’
She eyes the darkened windows of the tumbledown cottage. ‘It’s got to be it, hasn’t it?’ Now that she’s here she’s suddenly nervous.
‘Try the door. Hurry.’
She pulls the silver key from her pocket and tries to turn it in the lock, but she is cold and wet and her hands are trembling. She can’t do it. ‘Maybe this isn’t it,’ she says. ‘Maybe we’ve got the wrong place.’
But Tom takes the key from her hand and tries again. Within seconds the door has swung open with an ominous creak. He holds it ajar for her, ushering her in, before following her into the shadowy interior and shutting the door behind them with a bang.
She turns to look at him through the gloom, both of them soaking wet and breathless. ‘We did it,’ she says and then she looks around, drinking in her first impression of the old place. ‘We’re here.’
Tom reaches across to flick a light switch on the wall – more from habit than expectation – but they are both amazed when the bare light bulb overhead flickers, fizzes and then stays on. ‘Electricity,’ he says, ‘well I never.’
Lila doesn’t comment. She just stands there in the centre of the room, looking around at her surroundings, cast as they are in the light of a low-watt bulb. She sees a long stone hearth with its iron grate full of cold, white ash and beside it a wicker basket, presumably once filled with logs and kindling. Above the mantel is a dusty collection of candle stumps jammed into the necks of empty glass bottles, each melted into its own uniquely twisted form. There’s a stack of old books and a curled pack of playing cards, a mildewed box of Scrabble, a chess set and a copy of Thoreau’s Walden still splayed upon the surface, as if its owner has just put it down for a moment and walked out of the room to make a cup of tea. In the centre of the room is an upturned wooden crate. It forms a makeshift table and on its surface Lila spies a dusty oil lamp, empty beer bottles and a grimy ashtray. She lifts one of the bottles and holds it up to the dim light, sees the husk of a black beetle lodged at the bottom, long dead. Surrounding the crate are a low-slung brown velvet couch, several musty beanbags and one wingback armchair, stuffing bursting from its seat cushion.
‘Mice,’ says Tom, following the direction of her gaze. ‘Probably using it for their nests.’
Lila nods and gives a little shudder.
‘So here we are,’ he says. ‘It’s kind of basic, huh?’
‘I think the word you’re looking for is rustic,’ she says. She rubs her hands together, trying to get warm. ‘If we had some matches we could light a fire.’
‘I wouldn’t. The chimney is probably clogged with birds’ nests and soot. We’d set fire to this old place within minutes.’
‘Oh,’ says Lila, disheartened, thinking of her cold, wet jeans, clammy against her skin. The room gives off a strange, illicit air. She wonders if local kids have been gathering here, although judging by the thick layer of dust coating everything and the stale, damp quality of the air around them, it’s obvious they haven’t been back in a while. The only footprints visible are their own as they move about the room. She bends down and smooths her hand across the surface of one of the filthy floorboards and reveals a beautiful honey timber below the dirt. They could be polished, she thinks, restored. And those thick stone walls painted white again, to enhance the low-hanging wooden beams above. New curtains. New furniture. She can’t help it. Even in the half-light of the rainstorm Lila’s design instincts kick in and she can see the potential.
They move on into the second room where they discover a rundown kitchen with an old cast-iron range, one solitary saucepan still sitting on the hob. Opposite stands a long wooden table with two rickety benches drawn up and even more candles stuffed into the necks of old beer bottles. Three mugs are positioned on the table next to an empty rusting tin for a brand of powdered milk Lila knows is no longer available. There are more chipped mugs and a few dusty pint glasses lined up on a shelf, and above these, running the length of the ceiling, another low, exposed beam. Lila stares at it and notices a deep, splintered hole in the timber, an almost perfectly round indentation with the faintest trace of scorch marks at its edges. Could it be a gun shot? Inside the cottage? The thought makes her uneasy and she is just about to ask Tom to take a look when he calls out to her. ‘Here, catch.’
A flash of colour wings through the air and Lila grabs at the object tumbling towards her. ‘A Rubik’s cube,’ she says, holding it out on the palm of her hand.
‘I haven’t seen one of those for years. It’s probably a collectors’ item now. You should stick it on eBay.’
Lila gives it a couple of twists and then places it onto the shelf next to the pint glasses. ‘Never could get the hang of them.’
As they climb the creaking staircase, Tom warns her round a perilous-looking hole in one of the steps near the top. ‘Careful, some of these have seen better days.’
She skirts the hole and they arrive on a small landing with two rooms extending off it on either side. It’s immediately obvious that while one is watertight the other leaks rainwater down the inside of the chimney breast. ‘It probably needs new roof tiles and flashing up there,’ she says, eyeing the water pooling on the floorboards. There are faded cotton curtains hanging at each window, the pink roses that once bloomed on the thin fabric only just visible. Mattresses lie on the floor in each room, a moth-eaten patchwork quilt still spread across one of them. A cracked mirror hangs at a drunken angle on one wall while another oil lamp and an empty drinking glass are
perched on the seat of a wooden chair. Lila moves into the corner of the room to inspect what looks like a bundle of rags and realises it’s a dusty holdall, out of which spill several items of clothing – a white cotton dress now yellowed with age, an embroidered smock, a pair of stripy woollen tights and a washed-out polo neck.
She moves to the other window where a ceramic jug stands on the sill bursting with the pale-moon seed heads of dried honesty. She reaches out to touch one of the translucent white discs with a fingertip and watches as it crumbles like ash next to the empty shells of long-dead insects. Something about the sight of the dried plant, the forgotten clothes, the oil lamp and empty glass perched on the chair beside the mattress, fills Lila with a deep and sudden sadness. This was someone’s home. Someone once dressed in those clothes, cared enough to pick those stems of honesty, to place them there on the window sill in the pretty jug where they could catch the light. She wonders who they were and why they abandoned all this here – whether they expected their possessions to be here still after all these years, just waiting for a stranger to discover them.
Back downstairs she and Tom perch together on one of the wooden benches and drink coffee from the thermos flask they packed earlier that morning. Lila sips from her plastic mug and tries to put aside her emotions and survey the cottage with a detached, professional eye. She knows it will need a lot of work to make it habitable.
‘It’s pretty bloody desolate,’ says Tom, as if reading her mind. ‘Feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere.’
Lila nods. He is right; there is no traffic noise, no dogs barking, no sirens – nothing but the soft pattering of the rain on the roof. The whole place gives off a strange, melancholy air. ‘It’s quaint,’ she says, trying to raise a smile.
‘I wonder who it belonged to.’ He blows across the surface of his coffee. ‘I’m not sure I can see your dad here.’
‘No,’ agrees Lila, looking around at the squalor. Her father was all about home comforts, good food, fine wines and expensive cigars. ‘We both know he was no angel . . . he had his booze . . . his women . . . but this place?’ She shakes her head. ‘Even if he did own it, why would he leave it to me in such strange circumstances? Why wasn’t it part of his will? Why all the secrecy? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘So who?’ asks Tom.
Lila eyes him a moment. ‘Someone he knew? One of his girlfriends? God knows there were enough of them . . .’
‘A mistress, handing over the love nest?’ Tom looks dubious.
‘What else then?’
He shrugs.
Lila nods and stares around at their surroundings. ‘It’s a perfect mystery.’ The sound of the rain eases slightly and she wraps her hands around her mug, warming them against its sides.
‘Did you call the solicitors?’
‘Yes. They were very cagey. Wouldn’t tell me anything. Said they “had to respect their client’s wishes”. I could ask Mum, I suppose, when she’s next back from France.’
‘Yes,’ he agrees, ‘but tread carefully. If it’s something to do with your dad’s extramarital affairs you don’t want to upset her.’
‘No, good point.’
Tom takes another sip of his coffee. ‘I suppose the main thing here is that it belongs to you now. Any ideas what you’ll do with it?’ He hesitates. ‘I’m not sure this cottage will be worth much but the land will have value. We should get a surveyor out to take a proper look.’
‘Mmmm . . .’ says Lila, noncommittally. Something is niggling away at her, a feeling that has been growing ever since she walked through the door. It’s the same feeling she gets when she begins a new work project: the possibility of the blank canvas, the thrill of creation. But how to even begin with such a project, she wonders? She tilts her head to one side. ‘Listen,’ she says.
‘What?’ asks Tom. ‘I don’t hear anything.’
She looks to the roof. ‘The rain. It’s stopped.’
The transformation is startling. As they step outside the front door, a shard of sun pierces the steel-coloured clouds and lands in a dazzling column upon the lake. The water is still choppy in the stiff breeze and dancing with dark shadows but the light at least makes it look a little less grey and forbidding. Lila gazes out across it. ‘Oh,’ she says, suddenly overcome by the strangest feeling.
She moves down the bank and stands by the tall reeds looking out over the expanse of water. A swift swoops low over the surface, then soars up and away again like a tiny fighter pilot banking into the breeze. Déjà vu – that’s what it’s called, isn’t it? When you feel certain you have lived a moment before, stood in a place already. Shaken, Lila takes a step back and lowers herself onto a rotten old tree trunk slumped at an angle across the grassy bank; she perches on the makeshift seat and smooths her fingers across a gnarly old knot in the wood. It is a strange almond-shaped whorl with a dark teardrop falling from one corner. The closer she looks, the more she sees the knot’s startling resemblance to a weeping eye, there at the very centre of the trunk. She shivers and turns away to look out over the lake. She knows she has never been there before but there is still something oddly familiar about it all, something raw and real, like the ache she feels deep inside.
And then it is upon her in a sudden, terrible wave and there is no holding it back. All that grief, all that pain, all that sadness and disappointment and anger. She can’t hold it in any longer. With one dreadful sob the tears begin to fall and the silver lake disappears behind the veil of her sorrow. She senses Tom lowering himself onto the tree trunk beside her, feels him pulling her into his arms. ‘It’s OK,’ he murmurs, holding her close. ‘It’s OK.’
But it’s not OK. It will never be OK. She has lost their baby – their beautiful baby girl – and it is all her fault.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she sobs. ‘I don’t know how it happened. The fall. I just wish . . . I just wish I could remember. It’s killing me . . . the not knowing.’
‘Shhhh . . .’ he soothes. ‘You have to let it go, Lila. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘But it was. I fell. I should have been more careful.’
‘Lila, remembering isn’t going to bring her back.’
She puts a hand to her mouth and bites down on the sleeve of her jumper, trying to stop her sobs.
‘You have to stop blaming yourself. You were pregnant and you lost your balance. You fell down the stairs. There was nothing you – anyone – could do. I’m just so grateful that you’re OK. I could have lost you both that day.’
Lila feels the tears sliding down her face but she can’t stop them any more. ‘She was so tiny . . . so perfect.’ Their beautiful baby girl.
They both sit in silence as they remember the hardest, most heartbreaking moments in the hospital. Placental abruption, they’d called it, caused by the fall. She had come round in the hospital and been told that she had to deliver her baby then and there. ‘It’s too soon,’ she’d cried. ‘I can’t do it.’ But she’d had to – for their baby.
Lila sniffs and takes the tissue Tom is offering her and blows her nose. ‘She had your eyes,’ she says, with a sob.
‘And your blond hair.’
‘Her fingernails . . .’
Tom nods, remembering. ‘. . . perfect.’
Everything had been perfect: fingernails, toes, eyelashes; everything except their daughter’s tiny lungs, still too weak to breathe on their own. The doctors had done their best . . . had reassured them that she stood a good chance. She was in the best place, with the most-experienced staff and the necessary equipment. Their baby had lain in the neonatal unit for three days and Lila hadn’t left her side. She’d stroked her tiny, curled fingers through the hole in the incubator and willed her to live – begged her to hold on. She’d offered up every prayer she could think of, had plea-bargained for her daughter’s safe-keeping but then complications had set in – pneumonia – and they’d been told her life hung in the balance. Two days after that the medical staff had switched off her life suppor
t and finally they’d been allowed to hold her. Tom had wrapped the body of their daughter in the soft knitted blanket Lila had bought for the nursery in a flurry of excitement only a week earlier and they’d held her then. She had been so pale and so terribly still, their beautiful, five-day-old baby girl. Milly, they’d called her.
Tom pulls her close. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ Lila can’t look at him but he reaches for her chin and tilts her face towards him, forcing her to look at him through her tears. ‘Say it. Go on. “It wasn’t my fault.”’
She eyes him for a moment then shakes her head.
Tom smooths a loose strand of hair from her face, strokes her cheek, leans in and kisses her. Feel something, she wills herself. Feel it. She kisses him back, presses her cold lips against his warm ones.
‘We can try again,’ he says. ‘When you’re ready.’
She nods and lets him kiss her again, lets his hands burrow beneath her coat, up under her T-shirt where he gently caresses the faded bruises on her ribcage, no longer purple but a ghastly yellow, trying not to flinch as his fingers graze the empty hollow of her belly.
This is us, she thinks. This is what we do. This is what we’ve always been about: closeness, intimacy. She leans into him a little more. Feel it.
Then his hands are moving up towards her breasts and he is pressing against her. She can feel his need and she gives in to it for just a moment. Feel something.
He is pulling her closer now, his mouth covering hers, his breath hot on her skin, but it isn’t going to work. She can’t forget . . . and she can’t go back. In this moment she doesn’t know how to live with her pain; it overwhelms all other feeling and sensation. Before she even really knows what she is doing, she has pushed him off. She stands and brushes angrily at her jeans. ‘God, Tom, why does it always have to be about sex with you?’
He looks up at her, the hurt and confusion evident in his eyes. ‘I . . . I . . . I thought you—’
The Shadow Year Page 6