This Much is True: How far will a mother go to protect her shocking secret?

by Jane Sanderson

  Really, she might have been speaking a foreign language. Annie watched Josie push a cup and the sugar bowl across the table.

  ‘Well wherever it is, I think you must be very brave,’ Annie said.

  Josie placed her elbows on the table and laced her fingers, making a little hammock for her chin. ‘Reckless, more like, and clueless – at least when I first went. I was only twenty, and I tried to drive one of the old silk routes from Switzerland to Kazakhstan in a clapped-out Land Rover.’

  ‘Tried to?’ Annie’s voice came out quavery and anxious, as if she’d been asked to make the same trip.

  ‘Mmm. Broke down near Istanbul, then hitched as far as Ashgabat. Took weeks and weeks.’

  ‘Alone?’ Annie could think only of Josie’s mother – whoever and wherever she might be. Bad enough waving Andrew off at Heathrow when he flew to Brisbane, but at least she could find it on a map.

  ‘Well, you meet people along the way, don’t you?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Stacks. Anyway, I got the bug, and went back a year or two later in a decent vehicle, a van this time, and I filled it with stuff, then drove back home only to have the whole lot confiscated by customs at Dover.’ She laughed gaily at her carelessness. ‘Finally got it back after six months, and started Silk Road Textiles, and here I am, still at it.’

  Annie took a sip of tea. She was shocked by the taste, bright and bitter and quite unlike her usual brew, but in the spirit of adventure that had brought her here in the first place, she sipped again, stoically. The kitchen was warm, heated by the range. Annie’s wool dress made her armpits itch, but apart from this small discomfort, she felt surprisingly at ease. She cast her gaze around the kitchen again, at the rails and piles and higgledy-piggledy boxes, and she thought about her own pristine little house, where Michael went mad if his banana tree was at the wrong angle on the worktop.

  ‘So do you have a shop?’

  ‘Not any more,’ Josie said. ‘It’s all internet sales now. I used to have a shop, in Islington. Well, I had a stall when I first started.’ Yes, Annie thought; I could see all this tat on a market.

  ‘It was nice, the stall, the market,’ Josie said. She looked dreamy, nostalgic. ‘I mean, these online sales are all very well, but I never get to meet anyone.’ She looked so content though, so comfortable with life, that Annie couldn’t really believe she had any regrets.

  ‘I worked in a shop once,’ Annie said.

  ‘Did you? What did you sell?’

  ‘It was a haberdashers. Ribbons and buttons and wool and whatnot.’ It was after Vince left, she remembered, and before he came back. Vince! She was so startled at the thought of her husband that she jumped immediately to her feet, and Betty, shaken from slumber, looked up at her with hurt eyes.

  ‘Annie! Whatever’s the matter?’

  ‘I have a meeting with Vince’s doctor at four and it’s nearly quarter to now and there’s no way on earth I can be at Glebe Hall in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Yes you can, if I drive you.’ Josie was up, reaching for her car keys from a hook on the wall. ‘Leave Finn with Betty here; Mr Dinmoor can let them out if need be, and I’ll drop you off and wait. Come on.’

  And she was off, out of the door, calling the plan across the garden to Mr Dinmoor – who didn’t turn, but raised an arm to show he’d heard – and bustling Annie into the passenger seat of the Citroën.

  ‘Glebe Hall,’ Josie said. ‘Now then, I once knew a lady there, an old neighbour. I know exactly where it is.’

  She reversed out of her short drive and into the lane without due caution for what might have been coming, but Annie barely registered this. Instead, she sat in mute gratitude and confusion at a turn of events in which Vince’s home for the demented was all of a sudden out in the open and a perfectly ordinary place for him to be. Josie hadn’t even blinked when Annie blurted it out, even though it must have occurred to her by now that while Annie hadn’t exactly lied about Vince’s condition, neither had she been completely truthful.

  Oh, it must be lovely to be like Josie, to live life with an open spirit and a happy countenance. Josie, thought Annie, was the sort of person who only had to step out of the house to make a new friend. Look at Mr Dinmoor! Calloused hands and earthy fingernails, and his hair so closely shaved that the exact contours of his skull were on display to the world. Never in a month of Sundays would Annie have befriended an old man like that. No, but then, when it came down to it, she would never have befriended Josie either. Annie went through life with cautious steps, looking away when someone new approached, averting her eyes. It was partly mistrust and partly a dyed-in-the-wool humility; a conviction, formed in childhood and borne out by experience, that everyone else was busier, bolder and more interesting than she was. But now here was Josie, a woman who lived in a windmill; a woman who had driven alone across continents to cities that Annie had never even heard of, and still she had a warm smile for most and a special warmth for some, among whom Annie – unless she was mistaken – could now count herself. She sneaked a look, and saw Josie’s sweet face in profile, intent on the road ahead, her whole being committed to getting Annie to Glebe Hall. She wasn’t hunched though, or tense; she was just humming a tune and driving swiftly towards Barnsley, as if this was just as pleasant as it had been to sit in that quaint round kitchen eating lunch. Junctions seemed magically clear of traffic and even the lights in Hoyland that were always red were green for Josie. By the time she swung into the Glebe Hall car park it was seven minutes past four.

  ‘Fashionably late,’ she said, turning to Annie with a grin. ‘Off you pop; I’ll just wait here.’

  And Annie crossed the car park with a lighter, happier tread, because Josie would be there when she came out.

  10

  At Ecclesall Woods there were three mossy stones bearing Neolithic cup-and-ring carvings, and Josie knew their precise location. It was Dog Day Wednesday again, a cold, cold early November morning, and she’d led them from their parked cars, picking a careful trail through the trees.

  ‘Okay, turn right here at this stump,’ she said, ‘and we need to keep that big old oak within view, two hundred yards straight ahead.’

  ‘Right-ho, Pocahontas,’ Sandra said, and Annie laughed. Look at me Michael, she thought: here, with my friends. She was cautious though, not carefree. She followed Josie and Sandra carefully, watching her feet, wary of roots and rabbit holes and the treachery of dew-soaked grass.

  The woods were lovely, a dappled, verdant, bosky swathe of ancient Yorkshire, and before she’d met Josie and Sandra, Annie hadn’t even known it existed. There were paths and bridleways and wooden steps for conquering the steeper parts, but today Josie had taken them well off the beaten tracks and into the depths, to find the stones. Their location had never been made public, she said. ‘It’s a secret, otherwise some hooligan would spray-paint them, or worse.’

  ‘A secret,’ said Annie wonderingly.

  ‘Beats me how you can find them,’ Sandra said. ‘One big old oak’s much like another, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Who showed you?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Mr Dinmoor. He drew me a map once, but I don’t need it anymore.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sandra. ‘Mr Dinmoor.’

  Josie stopped walking, and Betty bumped into her legs. ‘What?’ she asked Sandra.

  ‘Nothing.’

  They’d all stopped now, except for Finn, who continued on in an ecstasy of space and freedom, bounding after squirrels in a harmless, hopeless, exuberant fashion. They shot up tree trunks and mocked him from the highest boughs.

  ‘No,’ said Josie. ‘What? Whenever I mention Mr Dinmoor, you do this.’

  Sandra shrugged and smiled, but she looked uneasy.

  ‘Don’t you like him?’

  ‘I don’t not like him,’ Sandra said. ‘But I don’t love him.’

  ‘You don’t need to love him,’ Josie said.

  ‘I just think …’

  ‘What?’


  ‘I just think he’s a bit of a know-all,’ Sandra said. ‘That’s all.’

  Annie watched, agog, holding her breath, the beginnings of distress forming at the back of her throat. Was there to be a row, a fallout, over that wiry old man with the daffodil bulbs and the dirty nails? If Josie stormed off, then where would they be? Lost in Ecclesall Woods, that was where. But Annie was reckoning without Josie’s sunny spirit, because though she was trying her level best to be stern, she slowly broke into a smile, and then a laugh, and then she flapped a hand at Sandra.

  ‘Ah whatever,’ she said, turning and continuing to walk. ‘I suppose he is a bit of a know-all.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sandra, following, the relief evident in her voice.

  ‘In the nicest possible way, mind you,’ Josie added, tossing the words over her shoulder, and Betty glanced backwards too, as if to be sure that Sandra understood that Mr Dinmoor was friend, not foe.

  On they went, moving quietly through the woods, and for half an hour now they hadn’t seen another soul. Annie felt rather intrepid: an entirely novel sensation. She felt as she imagined an explorer might, charting a new route through uninhabited lands, except that Josie evidently knew exactly where they were heading.

  ‘All right at the back?’ she called now, craning round to smile at Annie.

  ‘Fine, thank you,’ Annie said, and she was. She was perfectly used to the company of her own thoughts, and today she had plenty to think about. Andrew had phoned last night with details of his flight, and he wasn’t coming this week, but next. A week on Friday, he’d said, which was quite a long time for Vince to hang on in the land of the living. But Bailey, who worked in a pre-school nursery, couldn’t just drop everything, and Riley was a possum in a play, so that couldn’t be missed.

  And anyway, thought Annie, it’s not as if Andrew and Vince were ever close, Vince not being the sort of man who encouraged closeness, at least not with his family. He’d somehow managed to keep his distance even when he came back to them for good. No, Andrew must do what was convenient for him and his family, and in any case, Vince wouldn’t know who he was.

  When she broke the news to Michael that Andrew was definitely coming he’d sniffed and said, ‘Really? And what’s the point, Mother? You might as well send the bloody milkman to the old bastard’s bedside; he’d know no different.’

  Oh, he had a foul mouth on the subject of Vince. Annie had long ago stopped trying to correct it; not that she’d ever had much influence over her obstreperous elder son. Nor could she blame him either, in all honesty.

  She said none of this aloud, in the woods. She didn’t tell them, either, that today – and in fact almost to the minute – it was fifty-one years since she’d married Vince. Fifty-one years. She didn’t call it an anniversary, since that conferred a significance to the day that, in truth, it had never deserved.

  Not once, in all that time together, had Vince bothered with a card. Not once; not even when he’d possessed the capacity to go out and buy one. Of course, right from the off she’d had many more – and bigger – causes of concern than a lack of anniversary good wishes from her husband. Oh dear, yes; and she’d wished, over the years, that she could simply forget the date, so that it held no more weight or import than any other chill November morning. But up it popped, every year, the date that wouldn’t be forgotten.

  Did she rue the day? Not entirely, because there would have been no Michael – mixed blessing though he was – and no Andrew. But Vince hadn’t been a happy choice. Well, he’d done the choosing, not her.

  So no, she didn’t mention any of this to the others. She tucked her miserable memories away, kept them to herself, as was her custom: a custom begun in childhood and honed through the years until the instinct of privacy was second nature, as easy and natural as breathing.

  ‘Here we are,’ Josie said. ‘Ta da!’

  With a showman’s flourish she indicated a mossy boulder, which, from even a short distance, looked unremarkable. But the closer she got, the better Annie could see the rings and lines and shallow grooves connecting each shape to the next. She stooped as low as her stiff knees allowed and traced her finger around the ancient markings in the stone. She thought about a wild-eyed, bearded man squatting on the dried leaves and beechnuts in a rough bearskin, chipping away, rock on rock, making near-perfect circles with meticulous care in this very spot, where she had now planted her own sturdy shoes. Finn pushed his big head into her hand, wanting the same attention as the rock, and she used his bulk to brace against as she brought herself upright again.

  ‘How old are they?’

  ‘Neolithic,’ Josie said.

  ‘Neolithic?’ said Annie, not knowing at all when that was.

  ‘Or maybe Bronze Age.’

  ‘It must’ve taken bloody ages to do that without a hammer and chisel.’

  This was Sandra. She flopped down onto the forest floor and waited for Fritz, who was walking stiffly and stoically towards her, swaying his hips and using the momentum to propel himself – slowly, slowly – across the leaves. Now and again his legs gave way altogether and then he would sit down for a moment with an expression of weary recognition: oh, this again, his eyes seemed to say. Sandra held open her arms and he walked into them with a suffering sigh. ‘Poor old boy,’ she said.

  ‘Dear Fritzy,’ Josie said, sitting down close to Sandra. ‘Remember when you got him, San?’

  ‘I know,’ Sandra said, turning to Josie and smiling. ‘He was crazy, wasn’t he?’

  ‘So boisterous!’

  ‘That day by the Dove …’

  ‘… when he cleared the river in one leap, I know.’

  ‘Yes, straight over, and we weren’t going that way.’

  ‘Then he stood waiting for us on the wrong side as if we were slackers.’

  ‘That fisherman fetched him back, didn’t he?’

  ‘Biggest catch he had that day.’

  They smiled together at the familiar story and Fritz, lying now between the two of them, seemed to bask in the memories of his youth. Annie, still standing, regarded the scene. A shaft of pale winter sun filtered through the leaves onto the heads of the two women, anointing the cameo with a kind of special, excluding glow. It was wrong, Annie knew, to begrudge them their shared history, but she felt peripheral, all of a sudden: on the outside, looking in. It was ever thus, she thought; she should know better than to hope for more. She turned to Finn, but he’d loped a few feet away and was poking at acorns with his nose, like a truffling pig.

  ‘Annie? Are you okay?’

  Josie was watching her, with concern in her kind eyes.

  ‘You look lonely there; come on, sit down.’ She patted the ground next to her and Annie eyed it doubtfully. The last time she’d sat on the ground was a good three decades ago, and even then there’d been a tartan rug.

  ‘If I sit down there I might never get up again,’ she said, and Josie and Sandra laughed, although she wasn’t joking. But Sandra was unzipping the rucksack she’d brought, and lifting out a flask, so it was evident that this was the coffee break whether Annie liked it or not.

  ‘Come on,’ Josie said, patting the floor again. ‘I promise we won’t leave you here for all eternity.’

  ‘It’s my knees,’ Annie said.

  ‘This’ll loosen them up,’ Sandra said, and she started to pour something that wasn’t coffee into three enamel mugs. The crisp air smelled suddenly of cinnamon and cloves.

  ‘Sandra!’ Josie said. ‘You wicked, wicked woman.’

  Annie gasped. ‘Is it wine?’ she said.

  ‘Mulled wine, harbinger of the festive season,’ Sandra said.

  ‘We’ve not even had Bonfire Night yet,’ Josie said, but she was holding a hand out for her mug. Annie lowered herself gingerly to the ground and sat with her legs straight out in front of her.

  ‘Ouch,’ she said. ‘Ooof.’ There were beechnuts and twigs digging into her buttocks, and she couldn’t remember ever feeling so uncomfortable. Finn, suddenly al
ert to this unusual development, abandoned his foraging and joined her, and she was grateful because he was something to lean on. Like this, their heads were the same height; his breath was hot against her cheek. Sandra passed another cup of mulled wine to Josie and she passed it along to Annie.

  ‘Oh no, I’m not sure,’ Annie said, taking it.

  ‘It won’t make you drunk,’ Sandra said. ‘All the alcohol gets cooked off in the pan.’

  Annie sniffed the deep red liquid cautiously. She was fairly certain Sandra was wrong about that. There were pieces of orange bobbing on the surface, and a heady, honeyed, gentle steam rose up to seduce her.

  ‘Go on, live dangerously,’ Sandra said, so Annie took a small sip.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘This is very nice.’ Her lips felt syrupy, and she licked them clean, and then took another larger sip.

  A comfortable, contemplative silence bloomed and the dogs stayed still, and close. Fritz, sprawled out beside Sandra, made great wheezing sighs into the dead leaves. Betty watched the squirrels with a sort of detached gravity. Finn closed his eyes in the sunshine but he didn’t lie down. Instead he remained just where Annie needed him: her pillar, her support. She drank her mulled wine and marvelled at its layers of flavour, its plummy depths. Sandra drained her own mug, topped it up, then leaned back on one elbow and squinted up through the tree canopy.

  ‘I wish I had a fag,’ she said. No one answered.

  Josie was cross-legged, straight-backed, happy as a clam. She wore fingerless gloves and an old Aran sweater instead of a coat, and her hair looped and curled down her back and shoulders, glossy black against the cream wool. Annie thought she’d never known anyone as beautiful as Josie Jones, and when Josie grinned at her, she realised she’d been staring.

  ‘Sorry,’ Annie said. ‘I was admiring your hair. It’s a lovely colour against that sweater.’ Her boldness surprised her; she glanced down at the mulled wine suspiciously.

  ‘Why thank you, ma’am,’ Josie said.

  ‘She’s a Celt,’ Sandra said. ‘Black hair, pale skin.’