‘Don’t leave me, Mummy,’ Jane says in a panic.
‘I’m not. I’m just going out to the shed. I won’t be a minute.’
She is true to her word. She has returned in no time at all, and in her hand she is carrying a heavy hammer. Jane knows instinctively what her mother is intending to do with it, though she is not exactly sure why.
Still with the hammer in her hand, Margaret cuddles up against her daughter in the armchair. When they hear the sound of the car stopping outside, Margaret drops the hammer on to the floor – what a loud bang it makes! – and leads Jane out through the front door.
Margaret opens the car door. ‘Climb in, Jane. You can sit next to Mr Earnshaw. Won’t that be exciting?’
‘Mummy, do you know what Daddy did?’ Jane asks.
‘Yes, I do know. And I’m so sorry I let it happen. But there’s no time to talk about it now.’
‘I don’t mean what Daddy did before. I mean what he did when––’
‘Get in the car, darling.’
‘But Mummy––’
‘Get in the bloody car.’
Jane climbs into the car. The seat smells of leather, and is so high that her feet don’t touch the floor. Her mother closes the door behind her and rushes back into the house. Mr Earnshaw pulls away from the curb and Jane wishes her mother had let her say what she wanted to say.
The train came to a halt, and Jane Hartley was shocked to realize that as it had been slowing down she had not scanned the carriages in the hope of finding one which did not contain a man.
As she climbed on to the train, the film was still replaying in her head. But now, she was trying to insert new dialogue into it – trying, even after thirty years, to make things clear to her dead mother.
‘You don’t understand what I’m saying, Mummy. I’m not talking about what Daddy did before you got home. I mean after. While you were out in the shed. He woke up, Mummy! He woke up and said he had an awful headache. Then, just before you came back with the hammer, he fell asleep again.’
A Death Left Hanging Page 24