Watch for Me by Twilight

by Kirsty Ferry

  This time it was Aidan’s turn to smile into the receiver. ‘Cassie, you can bother me any time you like. How is Elodie? I’m so sorry I didn’t ask before.’

  ‘Elodie’s fine, I think. As well as can be expected, anyway. Relieved it’s all over. Off her oxygen and stuff. Pumped full of steroids, probably, by now. I don’t really know what they do. But I’ve been talking to her and she’s not too bad.’

  ‘That must be a relief for everyone.’

  ‘Yes. Trust her to have an asthma attack while giving birth. It’s very rare – she had to be different.’

  ‘Poor thing.’ Aidan frowned, imagining being in Alex’s shoes at that point. He didn’t envy him.

  ‘Honestly, before Elodie got pregnant, I just thought the worst thing would be getting fat and uncomfortable. It just goes to show. And she’s worried about afterwards as well, I think.’

  Aidan leaned against the fountain and stared out of the door, watching Petra directing people around, climbing up the new steps, poised on the top of them where the diving board should be, and pointing down to the pool itself.

  ‘What’s she worried about?’

  Cassie sighed. ‘Developing PND, like my mother. I think because of how it affected us, she’s maybe overly-concerned? I told her what you said – that it doesn’t happen to everyone.’

  ‘You can get over it, and get help for it, and people are a lot more aware of it nowadays.’ Aidan closed his eyes briefly and hoped that Petra and Iain wouldn’t mind him saying this. ‘It happened to Petra, you know. And she’s fine. My nephew is four now. And none the worse for it.’

  ‘Wow!’ There was a stunned silence. ‘And she’s so confident and capable.’

  ‘Yes. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to define you – if it did happen – which it probably won’t. As a child, Misha hasn’t suffered, and he’s quite a character in his own right. Petra says now she thought she’d lost her identity. She found she was “just” a mother instead of doing so well in what’s traditionally, I suppose, rightly or wrongly, a man’s career. It didn’t help that Misha wasn’t exactly planned. But then, with the right help, she says she came to realise that she was blessed to be able to have both things in her life. And Misha was only a baby for such a small amount of time, she learned to appreciate every moment. And to regret the ones she missed. She still does, I suspect.’

  ‘Do you think Misha will ever, I don’t know, forgive her, for it? For almost resenting him?’ Cassie’s voice was cagey, and Aidan understood the undercurrents.

  ‘I think,’ he said, carefully, ‘that if he ever found out, he wouldn’t blame her for it.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ There was a pause, which could have been awkward but strangely wasn’t. ‘The changing rooms are coming along well.’ He changed the subject for her. ‘We’re going to finish off the squash courts next. And the pool’s starting to look good. We’ve got the tiles done.’

  ‘I can’t wait to see it all. Thanks again, Aidan.’

  ‘No problem. See you tomorrow, I guess.’

  ‘See you then.’

  Aidan waited until Cassie had hung up, tucked the phone back in his pocket, then headed out of the building to check how the team were getting on at the pool and find out what time they were leaving.

  As he left the block, he cast a glance at the big gates. A woman was standing on the other side, almost hidden in the shadows, looking anxiously through the wrought iron.

  Almost without thinking, Aidan diverted and headed across to her. ‘Hello. If you’re looking for the entrance, it’s around the other side. Follow that lane around and go that way. It’ll take you straight there. I think it’s due to close, though, so you might be better off coming back another day.’

  ‘Oh! Sorry. Yes, of course.’ She half-smiled. ‘Last time I was here, these gates were open access. I see they’re private now, though.’ She looked at Aidan searchingly, almost as if she was trying to place him. Then shook her head. ‘Sorry. I almost thought you were someone else for a moment. But you’re not.’

  He looked at her curiously. Somewhere in her early fifties, she was tall and slim, and had the same colour eyes as Cassie – that dark, horse-chestnut brown; the sort of eyes that could fix on you like steel. Her hair was shoulder-length, straight and immaculately cut, low-lighted with a sort of plum colour, and she was wearing a smart, tailored trouser-suit and court shoes.

  ‘It’s a bit of a shock to see that you – well – you have to pay to get in.’ She forced a smile. ‘I’d heard rumours. But it’s been a while since I was here.’ Her eyes slid past him to the Spa. ‘Lots of work going on, I see.’

  ‘Yes. Cassie – Lady Cassandra, rather – is having some renovations done. There’s an event over the Bank Holiday weekend.’

  ‘Cassandra. Cassie.’ She looked down. ‘I’m glad she’s doing it.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Aidan studied her for a moment. ‘Shall I tell Cassie you came? Or Alex, perhaps?’

  The woman looked up quickly and shook her head. ‘Oh, no. No. Please don’t.’

  ‘All right.’ Aidan nodded. ‘I’m sorry nobody’s around to see you. It’s all been a bit wild with the twins coming. Nobody’s firing on all cylinders at the moment around here.’

  ‘Twins?’ The woman stared at him and paled. She clutched the bars of the gate. ‘Who’s had twins?’

  ‘Alex. And Elodie. Are you sure you don’t want me to pass a message on? Or maybe you’d be best off coming back when they have the event. There’ll be a lot of people around. Crowds of them. It might be a good thing?’

  ‘So I can get lost amongst them? Oh, God.’ She leaned her forehead against the gates and shook her head. ‘Alex and Elodie. I never thought – I hoped, but … Dear Lord. No. Please don’t say anything. It’ll just make things worse. Thanks. Thank you. I really have to go.’ She let go of the bars and hurried away down the lane.

  Aidan watched her go. He had a good idea who that lady was. Yes. He had a very good idea, indeed.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  June 1942

  Rob was aware of a familiar humming sound. There was some turbulence and a sound of voices – mainly female – and his poor old bones felt utterly ropey.

  He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up here. He remembered ejecting from his plane over France, and then there were jumbled memories of blurry faces and strange smells – coffee and herbs, fresh bread and a different sort of air. Then there was cold air, and snow, he thought, but he wasn’t quite sure about that. And sky. Lots of sky. Different voices. Dark places, and more pain. Pain in his chest as he fought to breathe and the strangest dreams he’d ever had.

  His fingers clutched at something soft and smooth, and he painfully brought his hand up to his face. He rubbed the fabric against his cheek and buried his nose in it: Stella. It still smelled of her.

  He opened his eyes, and peered into the gloom. He seemed to be lying in a hammock of sorts and there were people all around him. Men lying in hammocks opposite him and above him. He closed his eyes again and drifted off to a summer’s evening in Hartsford, where Stella was running across the lawn, towards him, and laughing …

  The next thing he was aware of was a firm bed and cool, stiff sheets. He started awake and this time there were different sorts of people around him – women dressed in capes and hats and pale-coloured skirts. More beds to each side of him and across the room. More men. And bright sunlight streaming in from the high windows, a scent of disinfectant and carbolic soap all around him.

  He watched for a moment more, sorting through the memories, then gave up and struggled as he tried to sit. God, his back!

  ‘Not so fast, darling.’ One of the women appeared beside him and a gentle yet firm hand pushed him down. ‘We’ve been waiting for you to come round. Simply hovering by you.’ A face appeared, filling his vision; a face that was vaguely familiar and smiling at him. ‘Wait a second, I’ll just get—’

  ‘—Lois? You
’ll just get Lois?’ The words surprised him as they came out. This girl looked a lot like Mary, one of the twins, and he was surprised his mind had, out of the lot of them, dredged her face up. God, he must be in an even worse state than he felt. ‘Sorry. Sorry, you’re not her. Sorry.’

  Mary was from his life before. Her and Lois and their friends and Stella … always Stella, in the centre of it all as they orbited around her…

  ‘No.’ The woman smiled and leaned in towards him. ‘I’m Lois, you silly boy. You always get us mixed up, don’t you? I’ll just get Mary.’

  Rob felt the world recede and come back into focus. He lay back on the bed and stared at her.

  ‘You’re really Lois? Lois from Lois and Mary?’

  ‘I’m really Lois. What d’you think of the uniform, Rob Edwards?’ Lois did a little twirl. ‘We’re part of the Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force Nursing Service. The French Resistance were kind enough to bring you to us – you came in a gooney bird!’ She giggled and beckoned another nurse to come over. The other nurse did so, and Rob found himself looking up into two identical faces; faces that were better suited to champagne parties and sports cars, but two of the dearest faces he could have hoped to see at that moment.

  ‘A gooney bird?’

  ‘A Douglas C-47 transport aircraft,’ Mary – or it might have been Lois – said proudly. ‘We’re at RAF Hospital Wroughton in Wiltshire. We’ve had a whole host of you boys brought to us today. The plane was a little safer and a little faster than a hospital ship. Less chance of being torpedoed, anyway.’

  ‘But what happened to me?’ Rob tried to sit up again and this time the girls didn’t stop him.

  ‘Well you were officially MIA.’ Mary – or Lois – perched on the edge of the bed and it couldn’t have been comfortable. ‘They’ve pieced together the information, and they think what happened was that you ejected and came down near one of the little villages in France. The locals took you in and looked after you as best they could, but they said you were quite out of it for a while, poor thing. Ejector seats can do all sorts of damage – spinal compression and popping your shoulders out – all sorts of awful things.’ She looked at him sympathetically. ‘You got the full whammy. They kept you doped up on some sort of opiate while you healed a little, then the Resistance stepped in. From what the intelligence says, they almost got caught, and you were taken back into hiding for ages. There was more to it, I think.’ She frowned, and lowered her voice. ‘Something about a trek towards Spain over the Pyrenees – they call it the Freedom Trail. Le Chemin de la Liberté. Then I think they said you caught pneumonia. Only you, our darling Rob, could cause such a fuss! But, hurrah, they eventually got you back to us.’ She smiled. ‘It was very painful for you to be moved though, so you were kept under on the opiate in Spain, and then we sedated you when we got you. Poor Rob. Not surprised you’re groggy. You wouldn’t let go of that scarf though.’

  The scarf! ‘Stella!’ He sat up fully, and his spine grated nastily and a spear of pain shot across his shoulder blades, but that was the least of his problems. ‘I want to see her, please. Can I see her?’

  He didn’t miss the look the twins shot each other.

  ‘As soon as we can get you two together,’ said one of them. ‘But we need to work out the logistics first. It’ll take hours for her to get here, absolutely hours.’

  ‘Does she know I’m alive?’ His heart was pounding. Had she thought he was dead, all these weeks or months or whatever the timescale was?

  ‘No.’ One of the twins smiled at him sympathetically. ‘You’re not officially “found” yet. But we know it’s you – we knew from the first moment we saw you. Stella will know soon enough.’

  ‘Soon enough’, Rob knew, wasn’t really soon enough.

  Present Day

  The Portakabin Aidan had been waiting for came the next morning, and by the time Cassie had sorted things out at the Hall, it was lunchtime.

  Disappointingly, she had only seen Aidan briefly, and he had a look about him that made her think he was too busy for idle chatter, so she contented herself with properly working instead, and making a plan of where she was going to display everything. Which involved lots of multi-coloured post-it notes and a huge sheet of paper, spread out all around her in the squash courts so she could get a sense of space.

  Around one o’clock, the door of the squash courts was flung open and Alex strode in.

  ‘Alex!’ Cassie leapt to her feet and threw her arms around him. ‘How are you today?’

  But to her surprise, he didn’t return her embrace. Instead, he disentangled himself and stepped away from her. ‘I’ve had better days.’ He was glowering at her in a way which made her quail.

  ‘Is everything okay with Elodie? And the babies?’ Her heart swooped down into her shoes, as she imagined all sorts of awful things.

  ‘They’re fine. All of them.’ For a brief moment, his face softened, then hardened again. ‘Cass, have you been in touch with our mother?’

  Cassie felt herself burn up with embarrassment. ‘No. I thought about it, but …’ Her voice tailed off as she grew even hotter. ‘I didn’t do anything in the end.’

  ‘But you wrote her address down?’

  ‘Alex!’

  ‘You did, didn’t you?’

  ‘How did you—’ There was no point in denying it. She sighed. ‘Yes. I wrote it down. But that’s as far as it went. How did you know?’

  ‘I went to get a notebook from the kitchen, and you must have pressed really hard with the pen. I saw the words on the notepad, like ghost words, just imprinted on the next page.’

  Cassie defended herself. ‘Yes. I wrote it down, but like I said, I didn’t write to her. I knew how you’d feel, so I threw it away. Anyway, you’re a fine one to talk. I know about the second letter you destroyed, and don’t you dare get cross with Elodie for telling me. I had a right to know.’

  Alex suddenly sat down on the table and looked much younger and much more vulnerable than he really was. ‘I’m sorry, Cass. And I’d never get cross with Elodie, you know that. She was right. My fault. I should have told you myself. I just – I’m finding it hard to deal with it. And do you know the worst thing about it?’

  ‘No. What’s that?’

  ‘That I think I’m … wrong. Ha! Imagine that. Me, admitting I’m wrong about something.’

  Cassie sat down, hardly daring to hope that they might, almost, be starting to think along the same lines. ‘Well, if you still have that imprinted piece of paper from the pad …’

  ‘I don’t. Not any more. It’s a pile of cinders now.’

  ‘Oh, Alex.’ Cassie sighed, her hope evaporating. ‘Like I say, I threw my copy out too. And the recycling came and took it away this morning.’ She felt her mouth turn down unhappily. ‘And you don’t have the original letter?’

  ‘Cinders.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They sat in silence for a moment, then Alex spoke again. ‘It just made me think. Seeing Elodie with Alfie and Freya. I don’t know how a mother could willingly leave their children. I mean, I know our two are just a couple of days old, but that bond is there already.’ He looked at Cassie helplessly. ‘I’m starting to believe that maybe she couldn’t help it after all.’ He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘And as for our father. Well. He had his own agenda, I suppose. Perhaps he found it too difficult to face the truth too. So he blamed her, and told us something which would stop us from trying to find her. He never liked confrontation. That’s why the estate was in such a mess.’

  ‘I suppose we could try and find her somehow?’ Cassie shrugged. ‘I know the address was the Dordogne.’ She remembered Aidan saying that, and it was what her father had said too, but she couldn’t remember any specifics on the note she’d written. ‘La Renaudie? La Roche? La Roque?’ She thought there was a Le or a La and maybe an R. Or a B? Or a P? It wasn’t helpful. ‘But it’s not like saying it’s Paris or Lille or Marseilles. My geography is hopeless. None of those places are pro
bably even near the Dordogne, but what I’m trying to say, is it’s like a whole county. Not just a town.’

  ‘Yep. I think I’ve messed up a bit, Sis.’ Alex looked at her, then, finally, hugged her. ‘Sorry. All my fault. And I have another confession. I rang Dad’s solicitors. Those favours I talked about? Well, there are court records of our parents battling it out for custody. Mum lost, then tried to appeal several times, but she was blocked every time. It’s true – she did want to see us, and couldn’t.’

  Cassie’s lips began to quiver dangerously. But she couldn’t let him see her cry. ‘I don’t quite know how I feel about that. It puts Dad in a really bad light as well.’

  ‘He had bad advice. It wasn’t his fault.’ Alex frowned. ‘I knew I never trusted the so-called investments that Dad got involved with, or the people who he dealt with. And God alone knows what happened before I was old enough to take any notice. Elodie’s dad did what he could to put the brakes on it all, but even he couldn’t stop it. And that crony of Father’s, who wormed his way in after Elodie’s dad retired, hammered the final nails in the Hartsford coffin. That idiot probably knew if Mum was back in our lives, there was a chance Dad would rethink his schemes and there’d be less for him to skim off. Of course, we can’t prove any of it, but Dad more than likely thought he was doing what was best for us. Pointless dredging it up now, though. It’s all ancient history.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Cassie took hold of Alex’s hand and squeezed it, not knowing what else she could say or do to make him feel better. ‘If Mum wants us, she knows where we are.’

  ‘Yes. I guess.’ Alex squeezed her hand back and stood up. Cassie knew the conversation was at an end as far as her brother was concerned, aware that he was shutting down again. Alex cast a glance around the room. ‘You’re busy in here. Is this how your exhibition is going to look?’ He changed the subject neatly.

  ‘Yes, at some point. There’s still quite a bit to do, but it’s all been planned out now.’