It’s a strange sensation, padding through the quiet interior of an unfamiliar house. Lila feels as though she has been dropped, like Alice, down a rabbit hole. She creeps along a carpeted landing and pushes the latch on a wooden door that she hopes is the bathroom. Behind it she finds another small room with a sloping ceiling, an old rocking chair, a knotted rug and a long wooden desk, across which is strewn a dusty array of beads and wire, pliers and cutters and other fine implements she has no idea about. Definitely not the bathroom.
She backs out hurriedly and tries another door, relieved to find the right room this time. She shuts the door and turns the lock then spins to look in the shaving mirror above the sink. Her face looms ghostly white – as white as the snowy landscape outside – her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, her hair greasy. She eyes the bath enviously and wonders if William would mind. It’s been so long since she’s had a proper soak in a tub.
For the time being she satisfies herself with washing her face and scrubbing at her teeth with a finger of toothpaste, before tucking her lank hair behind her ears. It feels like a tiny improvement as she heads back out onto the landing and takes the stairs carefully, one at a time, her hand on the banister, distrustful of her balance after two days lying horizontal in bed. She can see the dog – Rosie – waiting for her at the bottom and when she reaches the final step Lila reaches out to pat her. The dog’s fur is warm and silky beneath her fingers. ‘Hello, Rosie,’ she says and the dog thumps its tail at her in greeting.
It’s Rosie who leads her down the flagstone hallway towards the sounds of clinking china and rattling cutlery. She enters through a low wooden doorway and finds herself in a cheery farmhouse kitchen, warm and bright. William stands at the kitchen sink rinsing mugs. A copper kettle sits on top of the Aga, billowing steam. Lila clears her throat.
‘There you are,’ says William, turning around to greet her. ‘Find everything you needed?’
She nods. ‘Yes thank you.’
‘Good.’ He stares at her for just a little too long and Lila flushes pink, embarrassed at her dishevelled state and fiddles with a strand of her greasy hair. He seems to catch himself and directs his gaze to somewhere just behind her. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘let me introduce you to Evelyn.’
Lila turns to the long oak table and notices for the first time the elderly grey-haired lady sitting in a wooden chair at the far end.
‘Mum,’ continues William, ‘this is Lila.’
The woman beams at her. ‘Hello, dear. Awake at last. I hope you’re feeling a little better.’
‘Hello,’ says Lila. The woman’s face is wrinkled like a wizened crab apple but the likeness between mother and son is still obvious; she and William share the same grey eyes and long, straight nose. There is a ginger cat in her lap and a tangle of wool and knitting needles on the table in front of her. ‘Thank you, I’m feeling much better.’
The woman nods. ‘Good.’
Lila stands awkwardly in the middle of the room. It seems more than a little bizarre that she is here, in a virtual stranger’s kitchen. She looks about and sees the warm honey-coloured flagstones, the buttercup-coloured walls, the pretty striped curtains, the earthenware mugs hanging from hooks beneath a long shelf, checked tea towels drying on a radiator, a knitted tea cosy and a dog’s bed pushed up in a corner beside the warm Aga, everything practical but homely.
‘Take a seat,’ says William. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’
Lila pulls up one of the wooden chairs and sits opposite Evelyn. Something warm presses against her legs and she looks down to see another cat, this one black and white, weaving about her, arching its back. She reaches down and obliges by stroking its fur.
‘That’s Fred,’ says William, carrying mugs and a teapot to the table. ‘Ginger’s over with Mum.’ Lila smiles as Fred jumps up onto her lap, turns once, twice then settles into a warm circle. ‘Hope you’re not allergic? We’ve got a bit of a menagerie.’
‘No, it’s fine. I like animals.’
‘Would you like something to eat . . . some toast?’
Lila shakes her head. Her throat still feels like sandpaper. ‘Just tea, thank you.’
‘Put some sugar in it for her,’ says Evelyn, eyeing Lila carefully. ‘Poor thing looks as though she could do with it.’
Lila smiles. ‘I said I’d call Tom back . . . let him know when I was coming home.’
‘Of course, although I hope you know there’s no need to rush off,’ says William, fetching teaspoons and milk. ‘I was just listening to the radio and it looks as though this snow will be with us for at least another twenty-four hours. Stay as long as you need to. Get your strength up.’
‘Thanks, but I really don’t want to be a bother.’
Evelyn squeezes Lila’s hand. ‘No bother,’ she says, smiling up at her with her cloudy grey eyes. ‘It’s nice to have the company.’ Lila nods her thanks and wraps her arms around her body. ‘We’re just glad you came back to us, aren’t we, William?’
Lila smiles weakly and shoots William an uncertain look.
He intervenes, placing the mugs onto the table before them. ‘Sorry, I should explain, Mum gets a bit confused sometimes,’ and then, when Evelyn has returned to her knitting he mouths at her: dementia.
‘Oh,’ says Lila. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
William nods. ‘It’s hard – for her mostly,’ he says in a quiet voice. ‘She can get very distressed.’
Evelyn casts a stitch or two, then feeling their gaze, looks up and smiles. She holds a neat, pink square up for them to see. ‘For the baby,’ she explains.
‘How lovely,’ says Lila, and tries to smile.
William throws her another apologetic look. ‘I’ll pour the tea.’
Even though she protests, Lila stays with William and Evelyn for two more days. She is too weak to think about moving on before then and the truth is that there is something peaceful about the remote location and the farmhouse’s easy comforts.
‘I’m being a burden. You don’t need me here,’ she says more than once, but William just shakes his head.
‘You’re not going anywhere until you’re a bit stronger,’ he says, gruff but firm.
Tom had struggled with her decision, but when Lila had explained about the snow and reassured him that she was fine and that she would be back in London as soon as she was feeling stronger, he had relented. ‘Look at it this way,’ she’d added on the phone, ‘I’ll be able to return with your car and you’ll have me home for the entire Christmas break. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’ She’d been relieved when he’d agreed.
She passes the days curled up on William’s sofa before a roaring fire, with Rosie settled at her feet and cats of varying shades taking shifts on her lap. William brings her homemade soup to eat and books to read, even a glossy magazine with photos of a celebrity wedding splashed across its cover. ‘The books are mine,’ he says, handing her the well-thumbed pile of Thomas Hardy novels, ‘but the magazine is from Sally down at the shop. She says to say “hi” and “get well soon”.’ Lila takes the bath she has been craving and for the first time in a very long while, she sleeps a deep, dreamless sleep in the little bed under the eaves while the wind moans outside and rattles at the windowpanes.
‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘for all of this,’ and she wonders if she will ever be able to bring herself to leave the charm of the farmhouse and return to the cold, bleak cottage down beside the lake. Although she barely knows them, there is something easy about being in William and Evelyn’s company. Watching the way he interacts with his mother, she sees a softer side to him, less gruff and awkward. Whether it’s the way he settles her before the fire each night with a favourite radio show and a patchwork quilt across her legs, or how patiently he sits across from her holding his hands out to catch the wool she untangles from a pile in her lap, he surprises Lila with his tenderness.
‘Mum’s always loved making things,’ he explains, nodding at Evelyn’s knitting. ‘Quilts, cushions, curtains and jewellery . . . her tale
nts were probably wasted as a farmer’s wife, although she was pretty good at that too.’
Lila can hear the pride in his voice. ‘Is that what all the stuff is in that room upstairs?’ she asks, thinking of the strange tools she’d stumbled upon in the tiny room, on her very first morning at the farm.
‘Yes, she used to make and sell jewellery. She doesn’t do it any more though. It’s too fiddly with her arthritis.’
‘That’s a shame,’ says Lila. ‘Life can be so cruel, can’t it?’
William nods and turns to stare into the crackling hearth.
On the third day, Lila wakes to weak sunshine filtering through the bedroom curtains and a landscape transformed once more. There are snowdrifts scattered still across the highest parts of the moors and on the roofs of William’s barns and outbuildings, but much of the snow is melting, falling from the gutters in a steady drip-drip-drip, forming muddy puddles in the farmyard. The sight of the bare brown earth emerging through the white tells Lila that it’s time to return to London. She joins her companions in the kitchen and asks William if he will drive her back to the cottage after breakfast. ‘Of course,’ he says, cracking the top of his boiled egg with a teaspoon. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’
‘You’ve been so kind. I could stay another week, but I really should be getting back to London – and to Tom. Thank you, though, for everything.’
‘Why don’t you stay a little longer?’ says Evelyn suddenly, reaching out to grip Lila’s hand across the table. ‘I haven’t shown you my jewellery yet. Don’t leave us again, not yet.’
‘Now, Mum,’ says William, ‘Lila has to go.’
Evelyn’s face is crestfallen.
‘I’m sorry, I really must go home, but I will come and visit you again . . . in the new year.’
Evelyn pats her hand with her own warm one. ‘Well just don’t leave it so long next time. Promise?’
Lila plays along. ‘I won’t,’ she says and smiles across at William, who nods his thanks.
He drops her on the track next to Tom’s parked car, all trace of snow now gone, just the churned mud of the trail stretching away down the hillside and the rickety old gate casting a long shadow in the pale winter light.
‘Thank you,’ she says and she doesn’t know whether to hug him or shake his hand, but in the end it’s impossible to do either because he turns away from her to pat Rosie in the back seat.
‘Drive safely,’ he says.
‘I will. Have a happy Christmas.’
‘And you.’
She lets herself out of the car and squelches her way through the meadow and out along the ridge until she is back in the cottage. It is exactly as she has left it: a pair of muddy trainers by the front door, a jug of shrivelled berries on the kitchen table, a half-filled glass of water standing beside the sink. Upstairs the bedroom still sports a half-painted ceiling, tins of white paint standing on a dust sheet in one corner of the bedroom, while in the other is her camp bed, a tangle of discarded blankets cascading off the canvas sling onto the dusty floor. After the warmth and hospitality of the farm, the cottage feels very cold and very empty and Lila doesn’t waste any time packing up her things, throwing a few clothes and other basics into a bag.
She’s not giving up, she tells herself, she’s just heading home for a little while to rest and recuperate, but for some reason she can’t rid herself of the lingering feeling of failure and when it comes time for her to leave, she walks through each room, gazing around as if imprinting it onto her memory. Something happened here. She shakes her head. Maybe she’ll never know.
12
DECEMBER
1980
Kat sits beneath a slate-grey sky at the far end of the jetty, her boots swinging in the empty space between the wooden platform and the dark surface of the lake. There is a ghostly stillness to the scene. No birds, no insects, no fish flipping on the water. Just her, and her thoughts; although she isn’t so distracted by them as to be unaware of the romantic picture she paints: a young woman sitting in solitude at the edge of the lake; so when she hears the boards creak behind her she isn’t wholly surprised. She plays a quick, silent game with herself. Is it Simon? Or perhaps Mac with a fishing rod? They haven’t caught anything for several weeks now, but that doesn’t stop him trying.
She doesn’t turn, she just watches the empty space on the boards beside her, hoping for a glimpse of Simon’s worn leather boots; but it isn’t Simon. Or Mac. Instead she sees a pair of stripy tights and her sister’s red velvet slippers appear beside her on the jetty. ‘Can I join you?’ she asks.
Kat shrugs. ‘Sure,’ she says, but they both hear the ‘no’ in her voice.
Freya slides down onto the boards beside her. She still wears her long white nightie, but she has added the woollen tights and slippers as well as a polo neck and heavy wool overcoat to the ensemble. On anyone else the outfit would look ridiculous but on Freya it looks like the costume of an ethereal, tragic heroine. The two sisters sit in silence, looking out over the plain of water. There is no sound but the rustling of the brown reeds and the gentle plip-plip-plip of water sloshing up against the rotting posts of the jetty.
‘I’m going to leave.’ Freya speaks with her chin buried into the neck of her jumper so that Kat has to lean to catch her words. ‘At the end of the month. I’ll wait until after Christmas and then go.’
Kat nods. If Freya has been hoping for an argument she isn’t going to get one.
‘I have a friend in London,’ she continues after a while. ‘I’ll look her up . . . see if I can sleep on her floor for a few weeks, just until I get some work and can pay my own rent . . . before I go back to college next September.’
‘OK.’
Silence falls over them. Freya clears her throat. ‘I never wanted—’
‘Don’t,’ says Kat. She can’t bear it.
‘But that night – can’t we at least—’
Kat turns on her sharply. ‘I said don’t. I don’t want to talk about it. I think it’s best we just forget it.’
Freya looks down at her lap. She flushes red and there’s that look on her face, the one Kat knows well, the one that means she is about to cry, but she bites her lip and visibly tries to fight the tears. ‘OK,’ she says, ‘we’ll just forget it.’ For a moment it seems as if there is something else she wants to say, but it must be too hard because eventually she stands and walks away, the jetty creaking her progress all the way back to the shore until Kat is left with nothing but her solitude.
She knows it’s the best they can hope for right now: an uneasy truce until Freya finally leaves. She’d like to reach out to her sister and tell her it’s OK, that it’s been forgotten – forgiven, but the truth is it hasn’t. She still feels speared by her sister’s betrayal. It hurts like a blade lodged in her heart because for so many years she’s been the one to look out for her, to protect her and care for her, but now it feels as though Freya has pushed all of that to one side and turned around and stabbed her in the back. And for what? A stupid fling? No. No matter how many times she’s tried to tell herself it doesn’t matter, that it was just a silly mistake, it always comes back to that one night, that one image of Freya and Simon – together. It’s time Freya grew up. It’s time she understood that there are consequences to her actions and that some situations can’t be made better with a simple fluttering of her big blue eyes and a half-hearted apology. Some situations require time . . . and distance. Yes, she thinks, it is best that Freya leaves the cottage. As soon as possible.
Kat bends down over the jetty and watches the water for a while. It lies deep and still before her and in its clear surface she sees the reflection of her own pale face, a gaunt version of herself, her eyes almost black and sunken into deep sockets. She barely recognises herself. She is translucent and hollowed-out, like an empty husk.
When it gets too cold, she returns to the cottage, making a stop at the chicken coop to check for eggs. The pig is there too, snuffling and scratching at the ground where t
he chickens have spilled their grain. She reaches in and nudges the warm birds out of the way but there is nothing to collect – again – so she returns to the cottage with Wilbur trotting along at her heels. It’s only as she steps through the back door and into the kitchen that she realises she has walked into a full-blown row. Carla stands with her hands on her hips, her frizzy auburn hair standing in an untamed halo about her head and a furious scowl on her face. To Kat, she looks like a wild banshee woman. ‘I told you we had to space them out. They need air to circulate around them. This box is completely spoiled. Look!’ Carla shakes a cardboard box of crab apples in Ben’s face. ‘Ruined.’
‘Calm down, will you? I don’t know why you’re going on at me. You never told me we had to store them in a particular way.’
‘Yes I did.’
‘No, you didn’t. Anyway, if it was so important, why didn’t you do it yourself?’
‘I would have but you never let anyone else get a look in. You run this kitchen like it’s your own private domain. Don’t you think I might like to cook something once in a while? Or Kat might like to?’ Kat ducks her head at the mention of her name. ‘Or what about Mac or Freya?’ Carla continues.
‘You know what,’ says Ben, hurling a tea towel at the sink, ‘be my guest. I didn’t ask to be your personal chef. I’d like to see the rest of you try to find anything better in that bloody pantry.’
Like a protective parent, Kat scoops up the pig and carries him into the lounge where Simon lies sprawled on a beanbag before the fire, a cracked paperback in his hands. ‘Here,’ he says, seemingly oblivious to the argument drifting from the kitchen, ‘listen to this: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”.’ He glances up at her with a meaningful look but she just stares back at him, her face blank. ‘OK. How about this bit.’ He flicks forwards through the pages. ‘Here it is: “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.”’
The Shadow Year Page 20