I open my mouth to tell him that Alex doesn’t see it like this, but then shut it swiftly. How will I explain how I know what his dead brother would think? I’ll sound like Lilac Delaney.
“I have to live with this every day,” Rafe says softly. “Every bloody day. Some days it hurts more than others, so I think to myself what harm does one little drink do? Except that it’s never one. It’s never, ever one because one drink doesn’t blot it out, and neither does another or even the whole bottle. I killed my brother, Cleo, and nothing that happens now will change that.”
What can I say to this? He’s wrong about the guilt but he’s spot on when he points out that nothing can change the past. Look at how I’ve spent ten years feeling so angry and so betrayed about never having the chance to say goodbye to Mum. Did that bring her back or make me feel any better? Of course it didn’t: it just cast a huge shadow over the time I’ve been lucky enough to have since. Our lives are so fleeting – my work has taught me that much – and we try everything we can to create a sense of permanence for ourselves, but at the end of the day it’s a vain task, isn’t it? All that’s left behind of us is the love we once had, and I’m starting to understand now that this never goes away.
I’m wrestling with how to express this without sounding like a cross between a gushing agony aunt and Lilac Delaney, when Rafe exhales and gives me a rueful smile.
“Aren’t I cheerful company? I invited you out to say sorry and to buy you a drink, and I end up dumping on you. Still, while I’m doing deep and meaningful, there is something else I wanted to ask you.”
I look up at him questioningly. I hope he doesn’t want me to explain again how I just so happened to be meandering past his house, because I’m struggling to think of a plausible excuse.
“Listen, I know it sounds crazy and more water has gone under our bridge than the one over there–” he nods in the direction of Taply Bridge, with its golden honeyed stone and intricate carved arches, underneath which the river flows and swans drift gently past, “but that Christmas Eve really meant something to me. I was devastated when I realised that I couldn’t find you. Why didn’t you get in touch? I’m not bragging – well, only a little bit – but the song I wrote for you was huge. Every interview I gave I talked about you.”
The river flows by. Light is already starting to seep from the sky; the naked trees, stark against grey clouds, look as bleak as I remember feeling that long ago Christmas Eve.
“I wasn’t in the country.” I close my eyes and see again the coffin, the graveyard and then my bags packed and labelled for Cairo with no return ticket booked. “My mum was ill, do you remember?”
He nods. “Of course I remember. You were breaking your heart.”
“Well, she died that night, before I could even get home to see her. I was too late.” There’s a massive lump in my throat. “I never got to say goodbye.”
Rafe looks appalled. “Cleo, I’m sorry. That must have been fucking awful.”
“Yeah, I think ‘fucking awful’ just about sums it up,” I agree. “I didn’t stick around for long afterwards. I went back to study in Egypt and I ended up staying there for six years. I’m afraid I’d never even heard of Thorne until Alex–”
Whoa! Careful Cleo!
“Until a friend told me about Alex,” I correct myself swiftly. “I wasn’t in the country. Besides, you never got in touch either. I gave you my number.”
Rafe is staring at me. His eyes are dark with an emotion I can’t quite fathom.
“I lost your number and I couldn’t contact you. I was frantic about it. Christ, I drove Alex mad. He wanted to concentrate on the band and suddenly I was obsessed with hanging out at railway stations on the off chance that I might find you. I couldn’t believe I never even asked your name.”
Our eyes lock. We both know why we’d been distracted. Then the train had arrived and time had been kicked into a gallop.
“And by the time you came home,” Rafe finishes, “Alex was dead and Thorne was over.”
I push my hair back from my face. “That’s about it. I’d never heard ‘One Christmas Kiss’ until recently.”
Rafe reaches across the table and takes my hand. “All the effort I put in to writing a message for you was in vain, then? Talk about being star-crossed! Yet now here you are, as though not a day has passed, looking just like I remember you. The beautiful Christmas Girl I wrote my song for.”
I’m shivering. Rafe’s still holding my hand, and the thrill of feeling his skin against mine is every bit as intense as I remember. This makes no sense. I don’t know Rafe. He’s damaged and angry and a total stranger, but my heart is telling me that none of this matters because somehow I understand him anyway, and in the most meaningful way a person can.
I gasp. What’s happening to me? Is this my head trauma or something even more frightening?
Rafe mistakes my surprise for outrage and his fingers slide from mine.
“Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have done that but I just couldn’t help it.”
“Were you nineteen again?” I tease. “I know I am. It’s almost a shock to find myself sitting in a pub rather than on a deserted railway platform.”
He gives me that crooked smile again. “I think maybe I was.”
Butterflies flutter in my stomach.
This isn’t the in-control version of me that I’m used to. Alarmed, I turn my attention to my wine and the moment is broken. The conversation diverts to other topics, including my job and Rafe’s futile attempts to write again, and before long we’re parting by the River Thames – Rafe to catch a cab and me to go home and cook supper for Dad.
“It’s been good to see you again, Christmas Girl,” Rafe says softly. He pulls his shades back on and I see myself in them, a pale shadow reflected in the darkness of the lenses.
“You too,” I nod. It has been good to see him. And terrifying. And wonderful.
An entire kaleidoscope of emotions is turning and shifting within me. Maybe that mulled wine was stronger than I thought.
When Rafe stoops to kiss me goodbye I’m almost holding my breath, wondering whether he’ll brush my mouth with his and if the kick to my senses will be every bit as powerful now as it was ten years ago. As his lips touch my cheek – a kiss as soft as a butterfly’s wing, just millimetres from my mouth – it takes all the strength I have not to turn my head.
“Take care, Christmas Girl,” Rafe says. And then he’s gone, dissolving into the late-afternoon shopping crowds, a tall rangy figure with midnight hair and the weight of the world on his shoulders. I watch him until I can’t make him out any longer from the press of bodies all fatly wrapped against the cold in their thick coats and scarves. Once again Rafe Thorne vanishes from my life just as swiftly as he’s entered it.
I dig my numb hands into my pockets and turn for home. I’m feeling unsettled and edgy and strangely lost. As I walk back past the town square a busker is strumming a guitar and singing a bittersweet song in a minor key that tugs on my heartstrings and echoes through my mind. The words float towards me on the chilly air, mingling with the chatter and the growl of traffic. With a pang I recognise the song Rafe wrote for me, and my eyes fill with tears for the people we once were and the people we could have been.
I blink them away impatiently. I’ve done my best. I’ve met up with Rafe and tried my very hardest to tell him that Alex’s death wasn’t his fault, but of course it was pointless. No matter what Alex may have hoped for, I can’t help his brother find peace and forgiveness.
Only Rafe can do that now.
Chapter 20
It’s beyond me how people cope with having time off. What on earth do they find to do with themselves? By Thursday morning I’ve run out of things to do and am slowly starting to go stir crazy. So far this week I’ve cleaned the house from top to bottom, organised my father’s desk (he wasn’t best pleased about that but I’ve no idea how he functions in such utter chaos), emptied the fridge of all the rotting veg and the salad bags ful
l of brown slime, restocked the cupboards after a visit to Waitrose, and become hooked on Game of Thrones.
Hmm, the Game of Thrones addiction is a worrying development. I discovered the DVD buried down the back of the sofa – along with my father’s long-lost reading glasses and two crumpled A-level essays – while I was on a tidying spree. Because I was trying anything I could to distract myself from phoning work, I made the fatal mistake of popping the disc into Dad’s much neglected DVD player and ended up binge-watching the entire first season. Alex has also become hooked; he nagged and nagged until I caved in and downloaded Season Two. Now we’re both feeling a little queasy from all the bloodshed, but weirdly desperate to watch the next season. So far I’ve managed to resist – but it’s like TV crack. Watching semi-naked hunks sword fighting in furs is not the usual activity of Dr Cleo Carpenter – and it’s yet another unwelcome development that I’m putting down to my bash on the head. Goodness knows how I’ll ever get to watch the rest of the shows without Susie discovering my guilty secret. She’d laugh her head off at the thought of serious academic me choosing to watch such nonsense.
So anyway, I’ve banned myself from iTunes today – which has annoyed Alex immensely – and have been spending the morning tidying up the small corner of St Jude’s churchyard where Mum rests beneath the soft green grass. It’s funny, but until recently this is a place I’ve avoided like the proverbial plague, yet all of a sudden it doesn’t hold any horrors for me at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. This morning’s been a frosty one and the graveyard still sparkles and glitters in the early sunshine. As I weed around the headstone and arrange my small posy of white roses, the birds sing and the noise of Taply-on-Thames going about its daily life drifts on the wind. My mother isn’t here, that’s for sure – and neither is anyone else. It’s a bit ironic that one of the only places where I don’t see anything out of the ordinary is the graveyard; my ghost-loving flatmate would be most disappointed.
Once Mum’s area is neat and tidy, the roses softening the stark marble headstone, I head into town. Today the Christmas paraphernalia doesn’t seem nearly as intrusive as usual and I find myself humming along to Slade while I push my trolley through the supermarket, food shopping being my latest method for entertaining myself. I even catch myself adding fairy lights and a couple of candles to my haul. At this rate I’ll be dragging a tree home and donning a Santa suit. Susie’s right: head injuries are not to be taken lightly.
The walk home from town takes me along the river, following in reverse the journey I’d taken with Rafe. The water glitters in the sunshine and although it’s winter the beer garden at the River Man Inn is busy as office workers take advantage of the patio heaters and mulled wine and enjoy their lunch beside the Thames. Maybe Dad and I could go there for a meal at some point before I head back to London? My father hasn’t said as much, but I can tell he doesn’t get out and about very often. In between his school preparation and academic research I suppose there isn’t a huge amount of time for socialising, but he doesn’t seem to have many friends and the phone hasn’t rung at all since I arrived. He must be lonely, I realise with a stab of guilt, but he’s never once said anything or complained. Tolly and I may have lost our mother, but he’d lost his wife – and, in effect, his two children, whose grief and anger had kept them away.
The sun dips behind the leaden clouds and a chilly wind whips along the riverbank, scattering leaves and sending ripples scudding across to the other side. I shiver and wish I’d worn gloves. The handles of my carrier bags cut into my fingers and as I walk they twist and tighten, making the flesh glow and tingle. Spotting a bench, I treat myself to a few minutes’ rest and watch a family of ducks sail by and a couple of keen runners pounding the path, plumes of breath rising like smoke in the chilly air. Life is going on all around me. Across the Thames a little girl wobbles past on a pink bicycle, her father running behind her to rest a hand on her back and steady her, and I whiz back through the years to a long-ago December when Dad spend all of Christmas Day and Boxing Day doing exactly the same for me. There were so many happy times, and now that I’m starting to dig away at the top layers of my grief it’s comforting to rediscover them.
Here and now, I make up my mind to stay in Taply until Sunday. I have a fair bit of making up to do and, besides, they seem to be doing just fine without me at the museum. Nobody’s called to ask my advice or to let me know when the interviews are being held. There’s not even been so much as a text message from Simon, who’d claimed to think so much of me. I may be less than fifty miles away, but with him it really seems to be a case of out of sight and out of mind.
Am I bothered about this? I dig my hands into my pockets, uncurling my frozen fingers and gazing thoughtfully at a couple who’ve paused near the water’s edge, arms wrapped around one another and lost in their own world as they kiss the cold away. Do I wish that Simon and I could be like this couple? How would I feel if he were to pull me close and lower his lips onto mine? I try my hardest to picture it but instead all I see is a snowy railway platform, snowflakes whirling silently down from an inky sky, and Rafe’s violet eyes holding mine…
I shake my head, irritated with myself. That was another lifetime. Didn’t Rafe say himself that he wasn’t the same person anymore? And I’m certainly not that starry-eyed girl either.
So why am I thinking about Rafe rather than Simon? I know the past is my profession but I need to spend slightly more time in the present.
Fishing my iPhone out of my pocket I dial Simon, feeling annoyed when the call goes straight to answerphone. That’s the third time now it’s done that, and he hasn’t called me back either.
“Simon, hi, it’s Cleo, again,” I say, hoping that he’ll pick up on my sharp tone. “Hope all’s well with you. Just wondering if there’s been any news about the interviews yet? And did you lock the laptop away? Give me a call when you get this message. Thanks.”
I press the call-end button and frown. There’s an uneasy seesawing sensation in the pit of my stomach and for a minute I toy with the idea of calling Professor Hamilton. But what would I say? Simon isn’t talking to me? Where’s my new job? I know the Prof and he wouldn’t be impressed at all with being interrupted to answer those kinds of questions. Dawn will call me when there’s something I need to know; until then I just need to be patient and enjoy my time off.
Decision made, I heave my shopping bags up again. I can’t help feeling very glad I haven’t become too involved with Simon Welsh. It would only complicate things, and to be honest it’s easier to just be colleagues.
At the corner of my father’s road a white van has pulled up and two men in donkey jackets and rigger boots are selling Christmas trees, threading them through a machine and wrestling them into nets. Excited children are bouncing up and down next to their parents, pointing out the trees they want and hardly able to wait to go home to decorate them. I watch for a few minutes, remembering doing exactly the same myself while Tolly pretended he was far too cool and grown up to care. Dad would carry the tree home and then Mum and I would decorate it with whatever baubles we could find, and normally far too much tinsel. Until recently these memories would have stung, but today they make me smile because they’re happy ones.
Maybe I’ll come home this Christmas rather than staying away as I usually do. I could help Dad pick a tree, and book us in for Christmas lunch at the River Man Inn. Tolly’s in the Caribbean with his latest blonde, but at least one of us will be here to keep Dad company. Christmas can’t be a great time for him.
Isn’t it funny how I’ve never seen it like this before? I guess I’ve always been too caught up in my own loss to think about anyone else’s. If I come back maybe it will help us both.
And maybe, says a small voice that I’m trying very hard to ignore, you’ll see Rafe Thorne again if you do?
I squash the voice with the knowledge that this seems highly unlikely. I haven’t heard from Rafe since our last meeting and I don’t expect to either, but I sincerely
hope he’s staying away from the booze and holding it together.
Deep in my pocket my phone vibrates. Simon, I think with relief, and about time too! Lowering my bags onto the pavement I pull out my phone, only to be disappointed when I see that it’s Susie. No disrespect to my best friend, but I’m yearning to know what’s happening at work.
“Suse, hi!” Tucking the phone between my chin and shoulder, I scoop up the bags and continue on my way. “How are things?”
“All good here.” There’s a clatter in the background, followed by a thud. “That’s the plumber,” Susie tells me. “I had him come in to check the heating because it’s been so cold in here lately, but he can’t find anything wrong. I must admit it’s been better the last few days though.”
I bet it has – since I left, to be accurate. Dad’s house is chilly though. He was wearing two sweaters last night, until I told Alex to leave. Then the room was like a sauna.
“Is the telly working now too?” I ask innocently.
“How did you know? Are you psychic?” Susie giggles. “Yeah, it’s really funny but that fuzzy thing the screen kept doing’s totally stopped. It must have been atmospherics or something.”
“Mmm,” I say. Alex does have a very bad habit of upsetting a girl’s viewing experience. We were both getting frustrated watching Game of Thrones through a snowstorm of static, until we figured out that sitting him miles away from the screen worked a treat.
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