Never Coming Back: a tale of loss and new beginnings

by Deirdre Palmer

  It was Monday morning. Reece was at work. The hens clucked in the yard. Feeling the sudden need for company, Melody walked down to the holiday lets to see if there was anyone about. Three sets of new arrivals had kept her busy on Saturday. Willow had an elderly but sprightly woman and her middle-aged daughter. They were a lively pair, giggling together like schoolgirls as they’d unpacked their bags from the car. Melody knew they were out; she’d seen the car bouncing through the gates earlier.

  The car belonging to the occupants of Hazel was missing, and a cursory glance at the windows showed no signs of life. They seemed a nice family – the couple in their forties, and a polite lad aged about ten. Reece had remarked that the man looked like a geography teacher; could spot them a mile off, he reckoned.

  Larch looked unoccupied, too. A dark green convertible Mini Cooper was parked beside it, the bonnet sprinkled with leaves. Its owner may have gone for a walk, Melody thought.

  A dense silence had settled over the converted stables, the yard in front and the trees behind. Disappointed, Melody was about to leave when she heard movement. The door of Larch was open and its sole occupant, a man who looked to be in his late fifties, stood outside.

  ‘Good morning,’ he called, beaming at Melody. ‘Beautiful day.’

  She smiled back. ‘Hello. I didn’t think anyone was in.’

  ‘Did you knock? I didn’t hear, sorry.’

  ‘No, no.’ Melody felt colour flood to her face, as if she’d been caught snooping. ‘I popped down to check that everything was all right, that’s all. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

  ‘I’m very glad you did,’ he said, coming further out towards Melody. ‘I was deciding what to do today.’ He laughed. ‘I haven’t got very far.’

  His name was Gareth, she remembered from the booking. He was a smallish man, shorter than Melody – about five-foot-eight, she thought – but with a compact strength about him that made up for his lack of stature. He had slightly receding dark hair, and startling blue eyes behind black-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Well, there’s Foxleigh Court, up the road. It’s Tudor, lovely grounds. Or there’s the owl sanctuary. Or you could drive down to Rye or Hastings, if you want somewhere further afield… Ah,’ – she noticed he was holding a sheaf of leaflets – ‘you found those. You won’t want me to do the tourist guide bit, then.’

  ‘You know what I’d really like?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘To take Bertha over there for a bit of a spin’ – he nodded towards the Mini – ‘with somebody in the passenger seat. Don’t happen to be free for an hour, do you?’

  ‘I could be, I suppose…’ Melody wasn’t entirely sure he was being serious.

  ‘Excellent. So, what do you think? You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Sit there and enjoy the ride.’

  Melody smiled. ‘Okay, why not?’

  It was a long time since she’d done anything spontaneous, Melody realised, as the car, with its top down, roared round another bend, narrowly avoiding the ditch. But Gareth seemed an expert driver and she sat back and enjoyed the freeing sensation of the sun on her face and the wind in her hair.

  ‘Why do you call her Bertha?’

  They’d driven in companionable silence for the last four miles; she felt it was time she said something.

  Gareth glanced at her. ‘I’ve never had a car like this before – I’m more of a Volvo man, or I was. So I thought, why not do something even less like me and give her a name? I could see she was female, so that was a start. It’s a private joke, not a very funny one. Bertha was the name of the house-mistress at boarding school. She was big and slow, and my Bertha is small and fast.’

  ‘And is the holiday a change, too, as well as the car?’ He didn’t seem the type to be spending a week alone in a place as quiet as Foxleigh, and she was curious. ‘Unless it’s not a holiday, as such?’

  He could be hiding out, running away from something, or someone… Her imagination was in full flight now. Reece had always said the stable lets would be an ideal bolt-hole for anyone wanting to lie low. Not that he would tell her if he was.

  ‘It is a holiday, and yes, it is very different from what I’m used to but I think I shall enjoy it. I haven’t had a holiday away since…well, for five years actually. Before that, it was hotels, abroad mostly.’

  He didn’t offer more. Although Melody wanted it, she didn’t feel she could ask.

  They passed fields of ripened corn, a row of tile-hung cottages, and a village where ducks waddled on the grass beside a pond. As they left the village, the sign for Haverstone appeared.

  An image came to Melody of the hospital, and the tacked-on grey-brick clinic, with its striplights and squeaky rubber floor. An involuntary shiver ran through her. Her appointments with Kate were more spaced out now; the last was two weeks ago, the next in a week’s time. She didn’t want to go. Not then, not ever again. Suddenly she knew that, with absolute certainty. And to think, that clinic used to be her sanctuary, her path back to sanity. Now, she didn’t even want to clap eyes on the place, with its poignant reminders of her wrecked emotions.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Gareth gave her a concerned look.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Look, you might not want to go much further down this road. There are usually tailbacks the nearer to the coast it gets.’

  ‘Of course. I mustn’t keep you too long from whatever it was you were doing.’

  Which wasn’t very much, Melody thought.

  ‘There’s a roundabout soon,’ she said. ‘We could turn off there.’ She didn’t care where they went, as long as it wasn’t anywhere near Haverstone.

  Gareth completed a half circuit of the roundabout and turned onto a narrower road with folding hills on one side and gentle wooded slopes on the other. A mile or so on, he took another turn, and they were back in the village with the ducks. In the picture-postcard high street was a frilly-curtained tea shop, with hanging baskets and a sign on the pavement announcing morning tea and coffee.

  ‘Shall we?’ Gareth asked, slowing Bertha to a crawl.

  Moments later, they were inside, and seated opposite one another at a gingham-clothed table in the window.

  He asked her about Foxleigh and how long they’d lived there. Melody’s answers were vague, as if she couldn’t remember. She didn’t want small-talk and, if she was reading him correctly, neither did Gareth. He was only being polite.

  ‘The old farmhouse is beautiful,’ he said, eventually. ‘A sizeable place, for two people.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Melody sipped her coffee, holding the cup with both hands, as if she was cold. It was quiet in the tea shop. Murmured conversations went on at other tables, the tinkle of china, the steady tick of the grandmother clock in the corner.

  ‘My daughter died,’ she said.

  Her companion nodded briefly, eyes narrowing behind their screens. ‘I thought there might be something.’ Another pause, and then, ‘How long?’

  ‘A year. Just a year.’ Melody gazed through the window towards the row of half-timbered cottages on the opposite side of the street. She looked back at Gareth. ‘Danni died in an accident in her last year at university.’

  ‘My daughter died, too. It’s almost five years now. Her horse threw her. He was spooked by a lorry and she ended up under its wheels. She was twenty-seven.’

  ‘Oh. Oh dear,’ Melody said.

  A wave of shock passed through her, distressingly familiar. She wondered where his wife was, if he had one.

  ‘Unfortunately, Sally, my wife, also died. Two years ago. Cancer.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Melody put down her cup and steepled her hands to her mouth. ‘How dreadful.’

  ‘She never got over losing Hannah – well, of course she didn’t. We were beginning to pick up our lives, and then she… Well, there you are.’ A pause, and then he smiled. There was no trace of self-pity in it. ‘It’s all wrong, isn’t it? Children are supposed to stick around, give you grandchildren, and be there to lo
ok after you in your dotage. That’s how it’s meant to work.’

  The sudden mention of grandchildren sent Melody’s nerves skittering. She concentrated hard on a loose thread in the tablecloth, willing the sensation to pass.

  ‘I think,’ she said eventually, picking at the thread with her fingernail, ‘that after the bad part – the very, very bad part – it’s the guilt that’s the worst thing.’

  ‘Yep,’ Gareth said. ‘That’s the one. Would it have happened if you’d done this instead of that? Been here and not there? The things left unsaid… Pointless, of course, but it doesn’t stop you beating yourself up.’

  We’re strangers, thought Melody, and yet we have this in common. How tragic, yet almost comforting in a strange sort of way.

  A man and woman got up from the corner table and left. Steam hissed fitfully in the kitchen. The grandmother clock ticked on.

  ‘What are you meant to do?’ Melody said. ‘How do you go on?’

  ‘You try to see in front as well as behind. You look round the next corner, and the next, and you do your damnedest not to be afraid. Other than that, I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  As they drove back, Melody’s mind turned once again to the clinic, although not in terms of her treatment. Now that she’d decided she wasn’t going back any more, she thought about Kate – not Kate the therapist, but Kate the young woman with hopes and dreams and insecurities. She wondered about the girl’s parents, her family, her loves, her heartbreaks.

  Kate had never been anything less than professional in the way she dealt with Melody, but Melody saw past that, to the girl with the crazy red curls and the green eyes full of sadness. It was a one-way street, the faux-intimate relationship between patient and therapist. But Melody felt that the many hours she and Kate had spent closeted together in that impersonal cell of a room had allowed something of Kate to seep back towards her, as if a drain clogged with leaves had overflowed. On her last visit, Melody had been tempted to turn the tables and say to Kate: That’s enough about me. Tell me about you. What’s happened to make you so sad? She hadn’t, of course.

  She would miss Kate. Even though Melody had at times become angry and frustrated at her own inability to express herself, or at Kate’s supposed nonchalance over Melody’s distress, she would miss her. But it couldn’t be helped. She hoped – oh, how she hoped – that Kate’s life would turn out the way she wanted it to. Melody felt sure that, right now, she had a way to go with that.

  They were entering Foxleigh now. She made a sudden decision.

  ‘Would you drop me here, in the village, please? I need a few things.’

  ‘Of course.’ Gareth smiled. He had a lovely smile. ‘I’ll park up and wait for you.’

  ‘No, honestly. I’d rather walk back from here,’ Melody said. She was in no hurry to get home. The house felt so empty.

  Moments later, she stood on the pavement outside the bakery and watched the Mini swoop away, Gareth raising an arm and tooting merrily as he went. Melody smiled into the sunshine. For the first time in ages, she didn’t feel quite so alone.

  Reece sat in his office overlooking the quadrangle formed by four honey-stoned buildings. Students trooped to and fro beneath the arch in the far corner, heading for the library, the refectory, or a last game of pool in the student union bar. Most had gone home now. Those that were left had re-takes, or were waiting for flights to lift them out of the country. Others had no real reason to hang around the campus; they just did. He knew how they felt.

  He’d put in a full week last week, and done some work over the weekend. There was no real need for him to be here today – he could have fielded his messages from home – but home had a different meaning these days. Most of the time he couldn’t work out whether Melody wanted him around or not. When he was close by, he felt the irritation flying off her, attaching itself to him like iron filings to a magnet. Yet when he was elsewhere in the house, or outside, it wouldn’t be long before she came to seek him out, as if she needed to make sure he hadn’t vanished into thin air.

  Rejected and claustrophobic by turns; that was how he felt at home. He didn’t blame Melody, any more than he blamed himself. They were different people now; they hadn’t yet worked out how to be, either alone or with each other.

  His confusion and guilt over his feelings towards Layla showed no signs of abating. Melody, although outwardly she’d relaxed considerably over the whole thing, still spoke about Layla in a way that suggested she knew they’d be seeing her soon. Reece wasn’t at all sure that they would. All he knew was that he still missed her, and she occupied his thoughts in the most dangerous way possible.

  The other night, he’d dreamt about her. It wasn’t unusual, but this time it was different, more intense, and disturbing. Her beautiful face, the scent of her skin, the timbre of her voice – inside his dream, he’d been drowning in her. At first light, he’d found himself reaching out for Melody. She’d tensed momentarily, and then she’d responded to his touch and they’d had slow, sleepy sex. He’d been only half awake; the woman he’d made love to was only half Melody.

  Reece nudged the computer mouse and the screensaver swept aside, revealing emails from the Dean’s office, the head of department, and lecturers from his division. He responded to them all in turn, making notes in his diary of the various upcoming meetings as he went, and then his hand strayed to the middle drawer of his desk and reached for the packet of chocolate biscuits. He took one out and bit into it. It was gone in an instant; he’d barely tasted it. He’d been doing far too much of this recently, comfort eating. It wasn’t healthy; it would have to stop. He went to shut the drawer but instead took out another biscuit and crammed it into his mouth. It was only a bloody biscuit. What the hell did it matter?

  Later, on the way to the pigeonholes to see if he had any mail, he ran into a colleague, Paul, in the corridor. Paul punched him lightly on the shoulder, almost letting the pile of exam scripts slip from his grasp.

  ‘The Dark Horse, about five?’

  The real name of the pub, a convenient three minute walk away from the campus, was the Black Horse; it had earned its nickname from the constant clandestine visits made by university staff and students who were meant to be somewhere else at the time.

  ‘Don’t think so. I should get home,’ Reece said.

  Paul hoisted up the scripts. ‘End of term, mate. You deserve a break. See you there.’ He marched off down the corridor.

  End of term ‘breaks’, spent mainly in the Dark Horse, hadn’t been exactly thin on the ground these past few weeks. Reece had forgone most of them, but perhaps a pint and a laugh was precisely what he needed. His phone was in his hand, ready to text Melody, by the time he was back at his desk.

  Reece squeezed into a space at a table by the window already occupied by half a dozen maths lecturers. At other tables, and standing around the bar, were the familiar faces of colleagues from various departments, including a handful of social science bods who seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the place. Along the far side of the long bar, several students were arranged on stools, elbows resting on the bar. They looked as if they’d been there for some time, as did most of the clientele. Clearly, he had some catching up to do, which wasn’t a problem as two pints had already appeared at his elbow.

  In between the banter, the jokes, and bouts of disproportionate hilarity, holidays became the main topic of conversation, complaints about husbands, wives and partners featuring strongly.

  ‘Separate holidays, that’s the answer,’ Paul declared, smacking his empty glass down. ‘They do their thing, you do yours. Job done.’

  A holiday, Reece thought. Should we be doing that? He hadn’t even thought. It seemed too frivolous to be even considering it; he was sure Melody felt the same. Not that she’d want to go anywhere with him, not as things stood. Gloomily, he lifted his glass.

  ‘Well, I’m all for that!’ Jemma, a computer science lecturer, yelled, six inches from Reece’s ear. ‘All mine wants to
do is fry himself on the fucking beach for a fortnight!’

  He flinched. He had a headache, he realised. He also realised it was his round, probably had been an hour ago. Struggling up from the chair, he circled an enquiring finger in the air, over the tops of the depleted glasses. Reaching the bar, the orders already fading from his brain, he happened to glance up at the clock. It was ten past nine. Bloody hell. He’d been drinking almost solidly for four hours. He’d told Mel he’d be home by seven at the latest. But the barman was lining up the glasses on the bar. He’d see this round out, then make his way home. Quite how he was going to get there was beyond his brainpower to decipher at this precise moment.

  He wove his way back to the table, making several journeys to deliver the drinks, then sat down again. Dusk had fallen and the wall-lights had come on, sending a glare straight through his skull. He felt okay, though; pleasantly woozy, in fact. The alcohol had stunned his ability to feel much pain. Leaning back in his seat, he let the increasingly raucous laughter go on around him and gazed at a new crowd of people gathering at the far end of the pub.

  As Reece stared, without realising he was doing so, a dark head appeared across his vision, and big brown eyes, a wide, sensuous mouth. Layla! He was half out of his seat before he realised that the girl he was looking at was nothing like her. Sinking back down in his seat, he saw the same girl again, her face swimming in and out of his vision like the face of a ghost, and then the face was replaced with another, fairer one. Reece blinked. The face retreated, then swam forward again. Danni’s face. His daughter! Again, Reece lifted himself off the seat.

  And then he remembered.

  ‘I have to go…get home,’ he said, to nobody in particular.