A Midwinter Promise

by Lulu Taylor

  Alex felt her heart contract with pain. ‘Then why did you treat us so badly?’ she asked, her voice plaintive. ‘Why did you come between us and Pa?’

  Sally’s eyelids fluttered and she bit her lip, looking down at her hands twisting in her lap. They both waited for her to speak, to tell them at last what they had longed to know. ‘Perhaps I wasn’t the best stepmother, I can see that now. I was so focused on David. My greatest fear was that he would realise I wasn’t as good as Julia and he’d decide to leave me. I was desperate for him to stay with me, and for him to love Mundo as much as I did.’ She flicked a glance up at them and then away. ‘I knew he could be naughty. I suppose I was afraid that if I didn’t push him forward and make much of him, David wouldn’t love him as much as he loved you, and Mundo would suffer. So I overcompensated. I spoiled him. I pushed you away. I see that now.’

  ‘Pa let you do it,’ whispered Alex. ‘That’s what hurt the most. The sense that he didn’t love us.’

  ‘Oh, he loved you,’ Sally replied, almost as if surprised at the suggestion he might not. ‘He loved you too much, that was the problem. He was so full of despair at what had happened to Julia and that you’d lost your mother . . . well, I was frightened for him. I thought he might kill himself. He felt so terribly, awfully guilty.’

  ‘That’s why he pushed us away?’ Alex asked wonderingly.

  Sally nodded. ‘I know it’s counter-intuitive. But people are strange, aren’t they? Because he loved you so much, he couldn’t get too close to you. And I promised him I’d keep him safe as long as I lived. I put myself between you and him to protect him.’ She paused and then said awkwardly, ‘I’m sorry if you suffered because of me. I loved you in my own way. Julia would have been furious with me if she’d thought I’d let you down, and I know I did. I feel awful about it.’

  Alex felt a stirring of sympathy. All we need to do is understand. Then we can forgive. ‘It’s all right, Sally,’ she said.

  Sally cast her an agonised look. ‘I owe you the biggest apology of all. I’ll do everything I can to put it right.’

  Alex smiled at her. ‘Thank you.’ She hesitated; something was nudging at the edge of her mind. ‘I have a question. Is there any chance Mum could have been pregnant when she died?’

  Sally frowned, thinking. ‘I . . . I don’t know. The autopsy didn’t mention a pregnancy. Surely it would have if she had been. She slept with David in the spring, it was August, there would have been a clear sign if she was expecting a baby, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s right,’ Alex said thoughtfully. ‘I just wondered . . . what you said about tokophobia . . . whether she had a new attack triggered by getting pregnant.’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ Sally said slowly.

  ‘We could request the autopsy report,’ Johnnie said. ‘That would tell us if they looked for a pregnancy.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Alex said. ‘It was a long time ago now but they should have the records still.’

  Sally nodded. ‘Julia’s death got rather lost in the great fuss over the princess. They died the same weekend. But actually, we were glad that everyone was focused elsewhere. David couldn’t bear the idea that Julia would be an object of gossip and scandal, her life ripped apart by other people with no one really knowing the truth. Only those of us who’d loved her knew. She could be remembered the way we wanted to remember her – vibrant and loving and alive. Before her illness claimed her.’

  There was a long silence. Alex was gripped by so many conflicting emotions, she didn’t know how to start processing them. She put them to one side, to take out and study later. Time was needed, she could see that at once. Time to process all this extraordinary information. Instead, she said, ‘Thank you, Sally. Thank you for telling us this at last.’

  ‘There’s no one left to protect,’ Sally said with a small smile. ‘They’ve all gone. I don’t have to keep their secrets anymore.’

  Alex nodded slowly.

  Johnnie spoke, his voice gruff. ‘Yes, thank you, Sally. I appreciate it.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll have more questions. I’ll do what I can to answer them.’ She stood up and patted her hair, her expression changing as she adopted one of her bright smiles. ‘Now, would anyone like a piece of Victoria sponge? I made one specially when I knew you were coming.’

  Alex and Johnnie were both muted on the drive home. When they arrived, Alex suggested a walk to the beach and they followed the old familiar route to the clifftop and down the rugged path to the shore. It was calmer today, with lots of jagged white edges on half-formed waves instead of the epic crashing of the previous week. They sat down on the rocks near the water’s edge, and gazed out over the sea.

  Johnnie said, ‘I just never thought of Sally protecting anyone except herself. It’s so weird to think that she thought she was protecting Pa.’

  ‘And Mum.’ Alex nodded. ‘But I was touched by the way she obviously loved them both. It had never occurred to me that she might love Mum too. Anything can make sense when you see it from a different point of view. Some of the crazy, weird, unkind things people do.’

  ‘Unless it’s Mundo.’

  ‘Yes, well . . . there’s always an exception to prove the rule.’

  They smiled at each other.

  ‘We need to forgive Sally,’ Alex said. ‘We need to let go of thoughts of revenge and be kind. I believed what she said today. Didn’t you?’

  Johnnie hesitated and Alex could see something of his internal struggle. Then he spoke. ‘Yes. It was hard to hear some of it. But I did believe her. I don’t think she actually caused Mum to kill herself – it was clearly way more complicated than that.’ He paused, took a deep breath and looked at his sister. ‘But I’m still angry, Al. Not so much at Sally anymore, though it will be hard to forgive it all just like that. I’m angry at Pa. He let all this happen. He let Sally push us away, no matter what her motives. He must have seen how unhappy we were and how unfairly she treated us, and he didn’t stop her. He didn’t step in. I’ve blamed Sally for the house being sold and all along it wasn’t. What a waste of bloody time and effort.’ A surge of hot, furious grief flooded through him. ‘For fuck’s sake. He’s dead! I can’t say any of this to him. I can’t ask him why he lied, or why he didn’t help us more, or what it all meant.’

  Alex leaned over and put her arms around him. ‘I know. We’re going to have to come to terms with what happened, and why. What Pa’s role in all of it was. But from what Sally said, he was deeply hurt by Mum’s death. Maybe irreversibly. He blamed himself and he punished himself for the rest of his life. It just didn’t look like that to us.’

  Johnnie lifted agonised eyes to her and found some comfort in the sympathy and love he saw in his sister’s. ‘We’ll never know for sure, as Pa’s gone. He can’t answer us.’

  ‘But Sally can still tell us more. She’ll talk to us now, I’m sure of it. And something’s happened you need to know about.’

  She told him, slowly and with some difficulty, about what had happened with Mundo at Sally’s house, and what he’d done to her in the past. She had to go slowly, so that she could let Johnnie process each revelation as it came and help him deal with the onslaught of powerful emotions her story evoked: there was the fury she was expecting, but there was also the guilt, sadness and disgust at what Mundo had done.

  ‘I never saw it. I never stopped it.’ Johnnie’s voice was broken. ‘What kind of a brother was I? I didn’t protect you. God, Al, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It wasn’t your job to do that. It wasn’t your responsibility.’

  ‘I want to fucking kill him.’ The words burst out of Johnnie with the force of bullets and she knew that his anger came from deep within him, in the place where he put all his hurt and fury about the past.

  ‘I know you do. That will pass. I wanted to kill him myself. But when Sally did what she did – when she came blazing in and confronted him . . . well, that set me free. I know slapping someone is wrong, but that slap �
�� I felt that for Mundo. That slap from Sally was the only punishment he could have in this life that would mean anything to him. All the rest he could live down or convince himself was unjust. But from his mother, it was real. He couldn’t pretend she didn’t know him or understand him, or that she was jealous or anything like that. She knows him inside out and she was so disgusted.’ Alex looked over at her brother, who was still hunched inside his coat, staring out to sea, his eyes hard. ‘She said sorry to me, and she meant it. And she meant it when she said it today. We have to let her keep that house for as long as she needs and look after her till she dies. You know Pa would have wanted that.’

  Johnnie went still. He had not thought of this before, she could tell, and he was silent for a while as he absorbed it. The gulls wheeled overhead, screeching as they rode the air currents. The waves rolled ceaselessly on and the sea breeze was tangy and fresh. The milky midwinter sun tried to make its way through the clouds.

  ‘You’re right,’ Johnnie said. ‘I understand.’

  ‘There’s one more thing, Johnnie. If you want to move forward, and start to let it all go, we need to forgive Pa. I’m angry because he wasn’t the father I longed for him to be. He was selfish and locked away, and he should have been there for us. I’ve got to let go of all that. So have you.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Johnnie got up and climbed off the rock onto the wet sand. ‘I know.’ He smiled at Alex. ‘That’s what I’m working on, I guess. I don’t know how long it will take, though.’

  ‘Take your time.’ Alex smiled, climbing down to join him. ‘That’s what I’m doing. It’s going to be a life’s work.’

  As they strolled along the beach, Johnnie seemed suddenly more at peace than Alex had seen him for a long time, perhaps even for years.

  ‘I’m going back to Netta tonight,’ he said as they walked. ‘I’m handing in my notice, and we’re going to start sorting out a move down here.’

  ‘That’s fantastic.’ Alex smiled. ‘I’m going to love having you guys here. And you know there’s room at the Old Barn whenever you want it.’ She checked her watch. ‘I’ll have to get a move on. I said I’d meet Jasper in town for lunch.’

  Johnnie gave her a sideways look.

  ‘What?’ She laughed shyly. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Just be happy, Al. That’s all I want for you.’ He hugged her.

  ‘It’s all I want for you too, big brother.’ She hugged him back hard.

  Chapter Forty-One

  1997

  The secret, the terrible secret.

  It’s there in the darkness, deep inside her. She knows exactly what will happen, just like the last times except that then she was lucky. Then, she managed to escape. But only just.

  She won’t be so lucky this time.

  She can already feel it coming back: the knowledge that swimming there, inside her, is an alien, a malevolent force growing with every passing second, which has only one thing on its developing mind. To kill her.

  She’s kept it hidden from everyone. That wasn’t hard. No one sees anything amiss in her concave stomach. They don’t see the scratches and cuts on her upper arms and thighs, or hear the choking and retching in the bathroom.

  Sometimes a voice says, ‘What about the poor little secret? Doesn’t it deserve a chance? Why not see if you can both survive it?’

  But then the hissing horrors start again. The terrible nightmares. The fears that turn her inside out with their force.

  She’s tried to be brave. The children need her, and she loves them so much. But she also knows how it goes, and how it feels to be sucked into the pit. Nothing matters there – husbands, children, life itself. Everything good is consumed and disappears in there. And that’s where she’s going. It’s inevitable.

  Tonight, though, she knows. This cannot go on. This has to end. She will find a different kind of courage.

  She goes down to the lake with the secret, in the cool night air. She props the envelope that holds the letter she has written against a stone. It is addressed to David. The letter says, I’m sorry. It says, It’s not your fault, it’s not Sally’s fault, it’s my fault. It says, I don’t know what to do. I think there’s a baby coming, and I can’t go through it again. I’m too afraid. It says, I know I made a promise to tell you when things got too bad but I can’t do it and I don’t know why. That’s my fault, not yours. Then it says, Look after Johnnie and Ali and tell them I love them. I’m so sorry.

  She leaves the letter by the stone and climbs into the rotting skiff. She uses the pole to push it away from the jetty and out over the black water.

  The madness that has brought her here is unbearable. The secret is unbearable. She has been so terrible, so wicked, so evil. Her devil is back, whispering in her ear, telling her that she deserves to die.

  I cannot fight him anymore.

  The old skiff floats into the middle of the lake. The envelope is lifted by a breeze and deposited in the water where it floats away. But she doesn’t see that.

  I’m sorry. I’ve been so afraid. If I stay, there will be much worse to come.

  She is looking one last time at the outline of the old house, the turrets piercing the sky.

  Goodbye, Tawray.

  Goodnight, sweet children.

  But the relief that it is now all over is also wonderful. Release from the terror – that’s what she needs more than anything. To be free. Yes, to be free will be everything.

  She takes the secret with her and vanishes.

  Epilogue

  Present day

  Tawray showed itself off to its absolute best when Lala finally returned, thirty years after she had last been there. The May sunshine was bright, the sky blue and dotted with clouds of fluffy white, and the fresh-minted flowers nodded their heads in the light breeze.

  ‘It’s just as I remember,’ she said, as Alex drove her up to the house. ‘But even more beautiful.’ She gazed out over the dazzling sea. ‘That view. It’s heartbreaking, it really is.’

  When she climbed out of the car, she looked up at the house. ‘It’s a little more spruced up than I remember.’

  ‘Jasper’s been restoring it. Or at least, he’s got other people to do it. He’s more of an ideas man,’ Alex said.

  Lala looked at her questioningly. ‘He’s your friend.’

  ‘Yes, he’s my friend.’ Alex smiled and couldn’t hide the pleasure she took in saying that. The friendship was growing all the time and she knew that one day, it was going to blossom into something more. They both did. But at the moment they were enjoying the delicious anticipation, the slow dance that was building towards some time or place yet to be decided when they would confess to each other that they were going to be together now. It might be the trip to Edinburgh that Jasper had suggested, to see all of his old stomping grounds. She could imagine that in that ancient and romantic city, something might happen between them. ‘I might even wear my kilt if you’re lucky,’ he’d said with a smile, and she’d teased him about it, but there was an undercurrent to their joking: serious, questioning, laced with a glorious excitement and happiness.

  ‘Is your friend here?’ Lala asked knowingly. ‘I’d like to meet him.’

  ‘Not today,’ Alex said. ‘Just us and Johnnie to start with. Netta and the boys have gone to the beach but you’ll meet them later. Scarlett and Jasmine will be here this evening. But for now, it’s only us three. It seemed best.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Come on then, let’s go in.’

  Johnnie was waiting for them in the drawing room. ‘You must be my aunt,’ he said, coming to greet Lala with a kiss, a big smile over his face. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

  ‘The pleasure is all mine.’ Lala looked him over carefully, and tears glistened in her eyes. ‘You are still that little boy I loved. And you have her colouring.’ Her gaze slipped past him to the wall beyond. It had not long been restored and the room still felt a little odd to Alex, reduced down as it was. But on the other hand the mural look
ed magnificent, back in the place it was meant to be.

  ‘Oh!’ gasped Lala. ‘Oh my God – I never thought I would see this again.’

  She came forward to stare at it, the extraordinary representation of the room behind it, peopled with those she remembered from over forty years before. ‘My father! Oh, that’s exactly him, exactly! It’s like he can talk to me any second. My brittle old grandmother and frightful Aunt Victoria – you didn’t miss anything there, believe me. Ah, Quentin. Likeable but not much to him, as a man. Clever but . . . you know the type. Violet never made much of an impression; I’m glad if she turned out more interesting than she looked. And oh . . .’ Lala put out a hand and, with one fingertip, delicately touched the portrait of Julia. ‘Here she is, my lovely girl. This is exactly as she was. Exactly. Merry and funny and imaginative. Probably too imaginative.’

  ‘We think the painting is full of little messages to Julia,’ Johnnie said.

  ‘Oh yes, you’re right.’

  ‘Can you explain them?’

  ‘Well, I’ll do my best. Look at that book on the shelf. A History of Morotania. Did your mother ever talk to you about that?’

  Alex shook her head.

  ‘Well, let me tell you a bit about it. It involved both of those sets of armour, for a start. Let me see – what were their names?’

  Lala was off, a flood of reminiscence falling from her lips, each memory bringing their mother alive a little more. They listened and laughed while they looked at the picture of her, staring back at them from the painting and looking as though she were about to break into laughter herself at the silliness of all her childhood tricks and games.

  Yes, she seemed to say. I was happy once. And I want you to be happy too.

  Much later they walked down to the lake and stood together, the three of them, looking out at the water. It was cleaner now, because Jasper had thrown in hay bales to act as a natural defence against algae. But they could see that under the surface, the tangle of deadly weeds still lay, ready to take an unwary swimmer down forever.