The Common listens and waits.
Then, directly above her, a deafening clap of thunder explodes from the cauldron.
It tears Amy’s head apart.
She holds her hands over her ears.
Her legs begin to run, away from the lightning, towards the woods, blindly, swerving, tripping. She can hardly see through the tears, the panting of her breath.
Then something forces her to stop. An invisible barrier she can reach out and almost touch. She lifts her head, wiping at her face.
A gauze curtain, filmy, billowing, seems to float in front of her.
A voice in her head says:
“No entry, Amy.
“No closer.
“This is exactly where it happened.
“So long ago now. So long ago.
“Leave me in peace, my darling child.
“Do not disturb me. Not now. Not ever.
“You have found love. Leave me alone with mine.
“Julian was right, you know. Listen to your brother.
“If you play with fire, it will burn away your heart.
“Leave me in peace, Amy.
“Leave me to die.”
Amy’s breath chokes into her lungs. She says:
“No, Mum. I need to remember.
“I can’t live a moment longer without knowing.
“I’ll stand up to it, whatever it is.
“I’m not a child any longer. I’m nobody’s little girl.
“Let me learn the truth now.
“Give me back my memory.”
Amy raises the palms of her hands.
They tingle with fear.
She uses them to push through the curtain.
She stands the other side of the line.
It is starting to snow again.
Frosty fingers of ice glitter on the gorse. Under the thin sun, they had just begun to melt. Now fresh flakes hang in the sky. They come drifting down, to find a home.
In minutes the path is white, smothered, anonymous.
Cadence whinnies and shakes her head. Snowflakes fly around her ears. Tyler barks for joy. Amy laughs. She tilts her face to the sky, opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue. The snow tastes fresh and clean.
“Watch where you’re going, Amy,” Mum says.
Amy smiles across at her. Mum’s cheeks glow in the cold. Her hair, braided and beautiful, coils beneath her riding cap on the nape of her neck with a serpent’s grace.
She smiles back. Duchess’s hooves scrape muffled in the snow.
Tyler barks more loudly. He scampers ahead of Amy and shoots into the wood.
Amy calls, “Here, Tyler, here! Bad dog.”
Mum laughs. The sound rings out in the frosty air. “He’s seen the fox, darling . . . You’d better ride after him, or he’ll never come out.”
Amy and Cadence turn into the wood, under the giant pines.
“Mind how you go,” Mum calls. “And don’t be long.”
The ground is almost dry, soft to the hoof.
Carpets of needles cushion their ride, dulling the pony’s trot.
“Tyler!” Amy’s voice echoes against the slender trunks of the trees.
There is no welcoming bark.
She rides further, deeper into the wood. “Tyler! Come on now. Come back this minute. Do you hear?”
There is no welcoming bark.
Instead she hears a cry. A woman’s voice. A single shriek for help.
It is Mum.
Amy tugs at Cadence’s reins. The pony grinds to a standstill. Amy turns her round. Tyler comes flying towards them. Amy gallops out of the wood.
Mum lies sprawled across the path.
Duchess is neighing, skittering around her, crazy with fear.
Amy flings herself off Cadence. She races towards Mum.
Another rider has been here. He has galloped past. Amy can see the tracks. She looks up, terrified. He is riding back to find her, his face is heavy with rage. He is crouched over a powerful black stallion.
Amy knows the horse. He is Marathon. He towers over them.
The rider sees Amy and she meets his eyes.
He gasps, reins in his stallion, turns and gallops off.
Amy bends over Mum.
A jagged boulder lies beneath her head. Her mother’s face is pale as the dawn. Blood gushes from her forehead, spurts from her open mouth. She stares wildly at Amy. Her eyes glint like marbles, swirly and round, pale greeny-grey.
“Mum?” Amy touches her shoulder. And more loudly, “Mum!”
The lips begin to move but no words come.
The lips are blue.
Then they are still, and frozen as the snow.
Amy cannot look any longer.
She stands up. Her legs give way. She kneels in the snow, shaking with cold and shock. The rider may return. If he does, maybe he will kill her too.
She scrabbles to her feet. She starts to run. Anywhere. Fetch help. Find somebody. Tell them to find Mum. To wake her up. She can’t be dead. Not like that. Not so fast.
Someone help me bring her safely home.
Tyler is flying round Mum, barking, pawing the ground, looking at Amy, looking wildly at Mum. Amy tries to call him but the words do not arrive. They are stuck in her throat, lodged within her head. She cannot unlock them, however hard she tries . . .
It begins to rain.
Thick drops splosh on the back of Amy’s neck. She sits in the hedgerow, among the wild roses, staring at her clenched hands. Her trousers are snagged with thorns.
Somebody stands beside her. Amy does not bother to look up.
“You were there,” she says. “Mum fell off Duchess but you were there. You did nothing to help. You left me there too. In all the blood and snow. You left me there.”
“Yes,” says her father. “God help me. So I did.”
Amy says, “I’m going to the police. All these years you’ve pretended you had flu . . .”
“I wasn’t pretending. I was sick. Really sick.”
“That’s for sure.”
“I meant –”
Amy looks up at him. “I don’t care about you any more.”
Her father crouches beside her. She can smell him. She wants to push him aside and run away.
“Listen to me. Please. I want to tell you what happened.”
“Save it for the police.”
“Please, Amy. Listen. Then you can decide what to do.”
Amy drops her head between her knees. “What have you got to tell me that I don’t already know?”
“You had a baby sister,” Dad says. “She died.”
The wooden cradle in the shed. Mum weeping in the hammock. Once I found some baby clothes in a drawer. I thought they’d belonged to me. Aunt Charlotte said something to me about women who had too many babies . . .
“Mum had a miscarriage. You were only four. Too young to tell you anything.”
Dad is crying now, though he doesn’t seem to notice and she couldn’t care less.
“We called the baby Elinor. She was the end of our marriage.” Dad’s eyes are red and raw. “Oh, we stayed together. There was no question of a separation. Nothing like that. But Mum wouldn’t let me near her, not then, not ever again.
“When it happened, the miscarriage, I was at a patient’s funeral. Mum was on her own. By the time I got to her, she was in hospital – and it was all over and done with.
“I’d always been her doctor. Up till then. Afterwards, everything changed. We never slept together. We never told Julian, we never told you. We never spoke about it. Mum buried Elinor in her heart and not a word was said.
“Mum wrote two books in three years. We never quarrelled. We never even argued. We just froze together in a terrible politeness.”
And I told Ruth they had a perfect marriage . . .
“The morning of the accident, I’d been at work. I’d felt ill for weeks. We had an epidemic. I kept going, head down, because I had to. I’d seen a patient and I blacked out at my desk. Our
nurse sent me home. I had a roaring temperature. My body ached as if I had the plague.”
“Go on.”
“I parked the car and fell into the house. There were letters in the hall. I thought they were for me. Through sheer force of habit, I picked them up, started thumbing through them, not looking, just checking . . .
“I wish to God I hadn’t.”
He swallowed. Amy glanced at him. She saw Dad’s throat working with the effort it took to talk.
“What did you find?”
“They weren’t incoming letters. They were bills Mum had paid, letters she’d written, waiting to be posted. The one at the bottom was thicker than the others. It was in a pale-blue airmail envelope. It was addressed to Marcello Galanti.”
It felt odd to hear her father say the name.
“I opened it.” He held up his hands as Amy started to protest. “I know . . . It wasn’t mine to read. But I had a terrible feeling about it. Before I could give myself time to think, I’d ripped it open.”
“Was it a love letter?”
“I guess you could say that.” Dad’s voice changed to a kind of singsong. “Mum said she’d never loved anyone the way she loved Marcello. But that she’d changed her mind. She was cancelling all their plans. She couldn’t come to live with him. She couldn’t bring you with her. She felt ‘obliged’ to me for looking after her – and she couldn’t leave Julian.”
“What else?”
“She wanted Marcello to publish their book. She’d send him permission to do so in a separate document. The Villa Galanti would live in her heart for ever, but Terra Firma and her garden were her home.” He bent his head. “She wanted their affair to continue. She could not, she would not, give him up.”
I’m not surprised. How could anyone give up Marcello?
“How did you feel?”
“Blind rage. I took the letter into the living room and threw it on the fire. I watched it burn. I prodded it with the poker as if it were Marcello. I ran out to the stables and threw myself on Marathon.
“I knew the route Mum would have taken . . . It never occurred to me you’d be with her. I thought Cadence was in the stables, that it was your first morning back at school.” Dad twisted his body towards her. “I never meant to harm Mum. I just wanted to see her, talk to her, understand what had happened. She’d never said a word to me about Marcello, not a single word. How could I forgive her for that?
“I rode like a crazy thing out of the stables. It had begun to snow again. I cursed and swore and rode on. Marathon didn’t much like it but I didn’t care.
“I heard someone laugh. Lauren’s laugh. I galloped round a corner. There she was, on Duchess, laughing. Beautiful, joyful – and laughing.
“I saw red. I flew towards her. Lauren saw me coming. In that instant, she knew I’d found out about what she’d been up to. I got closer. When I reached her, she raised her hands to her face, as if she thought I’d lash out.
“I didn’t. I never touched her. I hadn’t touched her in years. But at that moment, I felt I never wanted to see her again. I wanted her dead. If that’s being guilty, then I’m a guilty man.
“I thundered past her. I was glad she was scared. I relished it. When I looked back, Duchess had slipped and Lauren fell with her. She cried out. That terrible cry. It haunted me for years. I knew she must’ve been hurt. I never thought she’d die. I galloped on. Then I thought: I can’t leave her lying there. I turned Marathon and galloped back. That’s when I saw you running from the woods.
“I couldn’t believe it. Where had you sprung from, with your red pompom hat and furry gloves? I couldn’t face you. I felt so guilty, so sick, so mad with rage. I knew if I didn’t get myself into bed, I’d collapse into the snow. So I galloped home.”
“You might’ve saved her if you’d stayed.”
“I pushed Marathon into the stables –”
“You’re a doctor!”
“I was sick! I threw myself indoors and into bed. Something in me wanted to die too. I made myself live. For you. For you and Julian.”
He reached out for her. She clenched her fists against him. “But the accident?”
“I prayed,” he said. “Every night. Please, dear God, may Amy never remember.”
Eighteen
Amy heaves her body to its feet.
It is raining heavily. The trees sigh with relief. Rivulets of water bubble down the path, crawl between the stones.
Amy is soaked. Her hair hangs flat against her neck, her shirt clings to her breasts.
Her father says, “Where are you going?”
She looks down at him. He squats in the hedgerow like a giant toad.
“Terra Firma. I believe that’s where I live.”
“Amy?”
“What?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ve no idea . . . Think . . . Smile and be polite.”
“But – ”
“We have guests. Jules and Chris. They’ll be waiting at the house.”
“But – ”
Amy screams, “But what? What do you want from me?”
There is a terrible long quiet moment.
Her father says, “Forgiveness.”
“Wow! That’s a very big word!”
“Yes. So is compassion. And understanding.” He struggles to his feet. “Please.”
Father and daughter face each other in the pouring rain, across the river path. “You must believe me. It was an accident. A terrible mistake.”
Amy says, “Shut up! Just shut up and get out of my life!”
“But my darling little girl . . .”
“Don’t ever call me that again.” She feels like spitting in his face. “Crawl under a stone. That’s where you belong.”
She turned and walked away.
She did not look back. She could hear her father behind her, the squelch of his shoes, the sharp intake of his breath. She kept up the ruthless pace, though she knew he was flagging. She could feel his exhaustion but she steeled her heart.
She raced ahead of him.
Knowledge is power . . . I feel powerful . . . A different person . . . I feel whole again. Whatever I decide to do, I’ve managed to remember my bit of what happened.
That’s what matters.
I’ll have to believe my father’s told me the truth, just like I had to believe Marcello.
And now I must decide what I’m going to do . . .
Amy dashed into the house.
She glanced at the note from Hannah on the kitchen table:
Darling, Where are you? I’ve gone back to my flat to make myself beautiful for tomorrow. Ring me tonight. Sweet dreams. Love you the most. Hannah
Amy clawed at the piece of paper with her wet hands, tore it to shreds and threw it in the bin. She emptied the teapot over it, squashing the tea leaves into a dark stain, wishing Hannah’s face lay beneath: just like her father had wanted Marcello to lie under his poker, prodding at the letter in the fire.
She snapped the lid shut and dripped her way into the hall. Jules’s and Chris’s bags sat on the stairs. She pushed at the living-room door, poked her head around it.
Chris stood up. “Hi!” His eyes had a dazzling light to them.
Amy blew him a kiss.
Jules said, “Sis! . . . Where have you been? Talk about a drowned rat!”
Dad stood at Amy’s elbow, his breath heaving. “Julian! Christopher! Welcome home! My fault she’s so wet!”
Amy moved away from him.
“Dad and I,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm, “we’ve been having a little father-and-daughter chat. Before his big day and all.” She looked him squarely in the eyes, seeing in front of her a very frightened man. “Haven’t we, Dad?”
“That’s . . . that’s right.”
“Jules and Chris and I,” Amy said casually, “we had such a wonderful time in Florence . . . Didn’t we, Jules?”
Her brother looked startled and then alarmed.
Dad’s
mouth dropped open. “What d’you mean?”
“Oh, it wasn’t planned. You could say we met by accident.”
Her father’s face paled. “How very nice,” he squeaked.
“And now,” Amy grinned at the three men in her life, “would you excuse me? I simply must get out of these wet clothes before I catch my death.”
They ate supper in the kitchen.
Julian cooked rice with wild mushrooms. Amy made a salad. Dad and Chris stood around and drank white wine. Dad swallowed half a bottle very fast and opened a second. Julian carved a cooked chicken, cold, straight from the fridge.
Everything tasted like soap.
Amy sat next to Chris. They didn’t say much to each other, but every so often Chris’s foot would gently nudge hers. Tyler took a shine to Chris and squashed adoringly against his legs.
Nobody mentioned Florence. When the conversation flagged, Julian brayed on about Rome. Dad got steadily drunk.
At the cheese and biscuits stage, Amy stood up. “Would you all excuse me again?”
“Where are you off to?” Her father’s eyes flickered warily over her.
“There’s something I need to do.”
“I hope you’re not going out this time of night?”
Amy ignored him. She looked at Julian. “You can clear up, can’t you? I won’t be a minute.” She turned at the door. “In fact, you’ll hardly notice I’m gone.”
She pounded up to her room, sat at her desk, scrabbled between the files for the thick, creamy notepaper with its sepia crest. She read its handwriting three times. Then swiftly, decisively, she wrote:
Dear Marcello
I’m sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter. My father is getting married again. The ceremony is planned for tomorrow. So we’ve all been very busy at Terra Firma getting ready for the big day.
Coming of Age Page 14