Her Frozen Heart

by Lulu Taylor

Caitlyn heard her voice growing shrill. ‘He was supposed to be killed and leave Max without a father? Really?’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s a good thing. But that it might not be as senseless and random as it seems.’

  ‘Or maybe it is. Maybe it is just as senseless and random as it seems, and there’s nothing at all that we can take for granted, or trust in, in the whole of our existence.’

  Jen nodded slowly. ‘I’d say that’s possibly right. It depends what you expect from the world. It depends whether you want to control it, or surrender yourself to its mysteries.’

  Caitlyn was silent, thinking of Patrick. He had certainly tried to control the world. Was that a crime? Did he deserve to be mashed out of it by a lorry?

  ‘Some people call it karma,’ Jen said softly.

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard of it, thanks,’ replied Caitlyn curtly.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’m offending you. That’s the last thing I want. I want to help you.’

  Caitlyn took a breath. ‘I know you do. I’m sorry too. I don’t mean to be rude.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Be how you want. I’ve talked to lots of bereaved people and there’s no right way to act or feel. You just have to let yourself experience whatever it is that you need to experience.’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps.’ She took a gulp of her coffee. It was warm and fragrant, and it comforted her.

  ‘Maybe it’s not just sadness you feel,’ Jen went on. She gazed solemnly at Caitlyn. ‘Perhaps you’re angry as well. It’s normal to be angry with someone when they’ve gone and died on you.’

  Caitlyn was thoughtful. Jen’s words resonated with her. ‘You’re right, I am angry,’ she said. ‘I’m angry because he left without telling me the whole story. There’s something more going on that I don’t know about, and I’m not even sure if I want to find out what it is. And yet . . . I can’t stop thinking about it.’

  ‘You two had secrets?’

  ‘I didn’t think so. But the more I remember, the more I suspect that there are pieces to the puzzle that I haven’t put together yet, some I haven’t even found.’

  ‘Is it important to know all of Patrick’s secrets? Perhaps they were meant to go to the grave with him. We all have our unknowable sides, our hidden and private selves.’

  Caitlyn frowned. ‘It’s just that I keep getting the strangest feeling that Patrick wants me to find out more about him. He never did anything by accident. He always foresaw every eventuality. Sometimes I thought he was psychic but he would just say “Strategy, Caitlyn, strategy. See it from all angles, don’t assume anything, and do your research.”’

  Jen smiled. ‘He sounds like an interesting man.’

  ‘He was. Too interesting for someone like me.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true for a moment. You’ll have found what you need in each other. Imagine two of him in a relationship?’ Caitlyn laughed, and Jen said gleefully, ‘See! It would never work! He needed what you had to offer him, so don’t do yourself down. But the point is, do you truly think Patrick wanted you to know more about his life?’

  Caitlyn stared down at the oil cloth on the kitchen table, tracking the patterns made by the cheerful polka dots. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I do.’

  ‘So,’ Jen said, lifting her cup to her lips. ‘There’s your answer. Do your research. Don’t assume anything.’

  ‘And look at it from all angles,’ finished Caitlyn. ‘You’re right.’ She was thoughtful again. ‘I need to keep thinking.’

  Jen nodded. ‘Thinking and looking and making connections. That was the secret to Patrick’s power, right? So use a bit of that yourself and you’ll start to find the answers you want.’

  Caitlyn went for a long walk around the university parks and thought about Patrick’s power and how to apply it.

  What was it like between Sara and me once we left university?

  They had moved to London, Sara into a house share in Islington and Caitlyn renting Maura’s spare room while she supported herself waitressing and tried to decide what to do next. Sara’s housemates were grand and rich, and Caitlyn went there often. She got to know them, and when Sara went off to Glasgow to do a course in the decorative arts, Caitlyn sublet Sara’s room, glad to be away from Maura who had just met Callum and was in full love-bird mode. With a slightly higher salary from her new job as an assistant in a small gallery in Cork Street, she was just able to cover the steep rent, and she felt almost as glamorous as Sara, with her smart address and her job in Mayfair. Life breezed by in a whirl of parties and gallery viewings, champagne and canapés.

  ‘You’re quite the It Girl,’ Maura said drily. ‘Didn’t I always say that Oxford would make you too good for the rest of us?’

  ‘That’s not fair!’ Caitlyn protested, but she knew that her life was far removed from Maura’s flat in a grotty part of south-east London on a student teacher’s salary. Sara went off to Italy to be an apprentice under a famous interior designer and sent her excited emails from villas in Umbria, palazzi in Venice or yachts in the Mediterranean. She was flirting with playboys and the heirs to industrial fortunes, partying with the offspring of famous dynasties. At any moment, Caitlyn suspected, she would hear of an engagement to a rich and handsome man who would fulfil all of Sara’s dreams.

  But it wasn’t all fun and laughter. There were late night telephone calls from Sara, drunk, sometimes lost, sometimes afraid. She would talk about men following her, or people treating her badly, and beg Caitlyn to come to her. There were always threats and menaces surrounding her, unasked-for cruelty, horrible treatment, mostly from other women. Successful female designers hated her, were threatened by her and tried to undermine and destroy her. Caitlyn listened, comforted her and offered advice, sometimes planned to get the next flight out, but the next day, Sara would usually be normal again, able to cope, brushing off the horror stories of the night before and telling her not to bother coming, she was fine.

  When Sara got back from Italy and found a new job as assistant to a famous and eccentric interior designer, she moved back into the Islington house. The way things worked out, Caitlyn was able to keep her room and Sara took over the large top-floor suite. It ought to have been great fun, but somehow it wasn’t. Sara was single, as she so often was, but hungry for a boyfriend.

  ‘And we need to fix you up with someone too,’ she said to Caitlyn. ‘I’m sure we’ll find someone. Perhaps one of the guys after me has a friend who might like you.’

  Caitlyn was surprised at the way she bristled at that remark. While Sara had been away, it had been a relief not to have the constant tiny pricks to her confidence, and now they started again. There was the night when Sara invited half a dozen men round. ‘Likely lads,’ she’d described them as. ‘You should see if you like any of them.’

  But the evening was a dismal failure for Caitlyn. Sara sat them around in a circle and then stood in the middle, holding court, almost basking in their round-eyed admiration. Meanwhile, Caitlyn was in charge of drinks and snacks and answering questions about whether Sara was single and what her phone number was.

  This is useless. I’m never going to meet anyone this way – Sara’s only introducing me to people who are already batty about her. I haven’t got a hope.

  When they went out on the town, Sara couldn’t resist overtures from strangers. If she and Caitlyn were in a bar together and men came over to talk to them, she always started flirting and trying to get them to buy her and Caitlyn drinks. Caitlyn found it embarrassing. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Sara’s flirting had been subtle, but she would pull her skirt up her thigh while raising her eyebrows suggestively and tossing back her hair like she was in a shampoo advert. It looked, Caitlyn thought, so very silly, like a little girl aping what she thought were the ways of grown-ups. She would dread men coming over but it happened often. She and Sara would be having a perfectly nice evening and then Caitlyn would find herself talking to a stranger who was evidently depressed to have ended up with her, while his more attractive friend was
flirting with Sara. Caitlyn was always polite and made an effort, particularly because once they’d accepted drinks from the men, she felt obliged at least to talk to them. Sara didn’t even feel that, happily discarding them for fresh conquests when she wanted to move on. She was irresistibly attracted to money so it was no surprise when she started a relationship with a much older, married businessman she met in a fashionable nightclub, and disappeared off for days at a time, sending Caitlyn excited texts from Paris and New York.

  Being a mistress was a thrill for Sara in a way that Caitlyn couldn’t understand, except that she could see that in the permanent competition between her lover’s wife and herself, Sara was always the glamorous winner. Sara was involved with her businessman for quite some time. That didn’t stop her going on the pull, though.

  And then there was Patrick.

  It was a gloomy Sunday morning when Caitlyn came downstairs to find Patrick asleep on the sofa in their Islington house.

  At first she just saw a large shape under a blanket and raised her eyes to heaven as she went to the kitchen to make coffee. Another stray following Sara home, no doubt. She’d heard some noise at around 2 a.m. when Sara got back from her smart dinner. They must have brought the party back – there were empty bottles and glasses on the coffee table and the room reeked of tobacco and cigar smoke.

  She was just putting the milk in her mug when a low and rather scratchy voice said, ‘I don’t suppose there’s enough of that for two, is there?’

  She turned to see a man in the doorway, wearing just a shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, his light brown hair ruffled and stubble darkening his face. His eyes were bloodshot but still remarkable for their greenish colour and their beautiful, hooded almond shape.

  ‘I think there is,’ Caitlyn replied, trying not to look at the bare legs and boxer shorts. ‘I hope you slept well.’

  ‘I slept the sleep of the dead,’ the man said. ‘How do you do. I’m Patrick.’

  ‘Hello. Caitlyn.’

  ‘Sara’s housemate.’

  ‘How did you guess?’ She looked at him appraisingly. ‘Let me see if I can guess who you are. Sara’s conquest’s friend.’

  ‘Very good. Yup. Rupert got lucky. I got the sofa.’ He smiled at her. ‘Though if I’m honest, I wasn’t in the running. Sara’s a wonderful girl. But she’s not my type.’

  ‘Isn’t she?’ Caitlyn poured him out a cup of coffee and passed it over. She didn’t believe him. In her experience, Sara was everyone’s type. This was just the bluster of the loser, she suspected. ‘What is your type?’

  ‘Someone sane,’ Patrick said bluntly.

  Caitlyn laughed. Maybe he’s not just a sore loser. ‘You can talk, standing there without any trousers.’

  ‘True. Excuse me while I make myself more presentable.’

  By the time he got back with his trousers on, he’d smoothed down his hair and his voice had lost its just-woken-up sound. Now, she noticed, he had a particularly beautiful voice – smooth, rich in tone, with perfectly annunciated words in a strong well-bred accent. She liked his turns of phrase, with their quaintness and his old-fashioned vocabulary.

  ‘So you and Sara are chums?’ he said when they’d sat down at the kitchen table and were eating toast.

  ‘Yes. From Oxford. We were at the same college.’

  ‘Really?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Brains and beauty.’

  ‘Yes. Sara’s very clever,’ she said. ‘People often don’t believe she went to Oxford.’

  ‘Not her. I meant you.’

  She laughed disbelievingly and gave him a sideways look to see if he was teasing her.

  ‘I mean it,’ Patrick said, and bit down on a slice of toast and Marmite. He stared at her while he chewed, watching as she blushed harder and harder under his gaze. When he’d swallowed, he said, ‘You don’t rate yourself very highly, do you?’

  ‘Don’t I?’ She was taken aback and slightly offended. ‘You don’t know me. As it happens, I rate myself perfectly highly.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe.’ He changed the subject and asked what she did. He was fascinated by her work in the gallery and soon showed he knew a lot about art himself. They were chattering away about the Raphael exhibition at the National Gallery when Sara and Rupert emerged from upstairs, their post-coital aura worn with unconcealed pride.

  ‘You two are getting on well,’ Sara said, her eyes more feline than ever as she examined Caitlyn and Patrick, now on to fresh mugs of coffee.

  ‘Not as well as you two,’ Patrick said pointedly. ‘Hello, Rupes, old mucker. Ready to make a move? We ought to be going.’

  ‘Are you going?’ Caitlyn asked, surprised to find how disappointed she was at the prospect.

  ‘I’m afraid Rupert and I are due at his parents’ house for lunch and it wouldn’t do to be late as there is a dowager marchioness coming.’ Patrick stood up. ‘Come on, Rupert.’ He turned to Caitlyn. ‘Thank you for the toast and coffee. You’ve been a charming hostess.’

  When the men had gone, Sara said, ‘I think you’re on to something there. With Patrick.’

  ‘Really?’ Caitlyn felt a lovely little burst of excitement explode in her stomach. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Oh yes. And he’s quite a good prospect – a trainee barrister, got all the smarts. But not as good as Rupert, of course. Rupert’s the real thing. Patrick isn’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Rupert is the nephew of an earl. His family have a house in South Ken and a place in Scotland. He went to Harrow and Edinburgh.’ Sara shrugged lightly. ‘The real thing. That’s what I mean.’

  Was that why I was allowed to have Patrick? Caitlyn wondered now.

  Suddenly at this distance, she could begin to see things clearly. Patrick’s death was shunting her whole life into focus. Before, stuck inside it, lost and out of control, she had been blind. And now it was becoming clear. But not quite clear enough, not yet.

  In her own terms, Sara had done better than she would have by going out with Patrick. She had married Rupert after a whirlwind six-month courtship, and discreetly dropping her married lover. Her wedding had been exactly what she’d dreamed of: a glamorous society church, with titled guests in attendance, and a reception at the Carlton Club. If there had been Instagram then, it would have made wonderful images for her account, displaying her amazing life, marvellous taste and eligible husband for the world to see. As it was, it appeared in the society pages of Tatler and Sara and Rupert went off on their honeymoon to Italy looking destined for great happiness.

  And at the wedding, Caitlyn and Patrick – the bridesmaid and the best man – had finally got together, after Patrick had played a long and curious game of cat and mouse with her, never quite making his move but never giving up his flirtation with her either. By then, she was hopelessly in love with him, and even more so because she knew that he was immune to Sara’s charms. He didn’t even seem to like Sara very much; he was always talking her down.

  ‘She’s mad as a box of frogs,’ he used to say, and Caitlyn would laugh. But he always asked about her. He was always interested in what Sara was up to, and what she had said, though sometimes he raised his eyebrows at her snobbish remarks and the things she said to Caitlyn.

  Once he said, ‘I don’t know what you get out of the friendship, Caitlyn. You give more than you get, that’s for sure.’

  ‘She’s my friend,’ Caitlyn replied stoutly. ‘She always looks out for me.’

  ‘Okay,’ Patrick said, giving her an odd look. ‘If you think that, then fine. I wouldn’t want to come between you two if you really like her.’

  ‘I do.’

  She meant it. Yes, Sara was unpredictable and most certainly had her problems. She was needy, though once she was married the late night sob-filled calls stopped. But Caitlyn was always grateful for Sara’s friendship, and the way she shared her glamorous life with her. When she and Rupert bought a Chelsea flat, Sara wanted Caitlyn with her every step of the way while they furnished and decorated it. They ha
d fun together. It was undeniable.

  But the paint had been barely dry before the marriage imploded. Caitlyn had never really found out why it had failed so spectacularly, but Rupert was gone and the divorce underway before they had been married a year. Sara transformed from adoring him to loathing him with all her might.

  ‘I’m sorry, you’re caught between my best friend and your best friend,’ Caitlyn said to Patrick, as she told him all the details she’d heard from Sara that day. ‘I feel for you.’

  ‘It’s the same for you,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Not really. I never see Rupert.’

  ‘I’ll live. Don’t worry about me.’

  She was vaguely surprised but grateful when Patrick let his friendship with Rupert slide and barely saw him after the divorce. Sara remained in their lives, but Rupert did not. By the time Caitlyn and Patrick got married, in a gorgeous ceremony and exquisite reception planned entirely by Patrick, Sara was happily going out with Mark. After Sara married again, Caitlyn never gave Rupert another thought.

  Isn’t it funny – how Patrick chose her over Rupert? I thought that was for my sake. But . . . was it? The answer, she felt sure, was within her reach.

  Think from every angle, Caitlyn. Do your research. Assume nothing.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tommy was aware of a slight distance between her and Fred after the trip to Oxford and she wondered if it were her fault or his. And yet, even as they avoided each other it was obvious to her that it was because of a new intimacy between them that they seemed nervous to acknowledge. Things were serene enough when they were with everyone else, gathered around the fire in the drawing room or eating in the dining room, but they hurried past each other on the stairs and muttered hellos if they met accidentally.

  Antonia and Harry still couldn’t get to their proper schools as progress on the snowy roads was too slow, so Tommy arranged for them to go to the village school in the meantime, and even the Latin lessons were halted. The children said they missed them, but they were having a wonderful time being taken to school by Thornton on the pony cart. School finished early because of the cold, and they got back just as the dark was falling, tired from their journey, hungry and eager for warmth.