by Ann Cleeves
“We agreed eleven o’clock.” By now Miss. Thorne was indignant.
The woman was apologetic. She introduced herself as the sister in charge of the shift. “Edmund’s doing very well,” she said, as if that would redeem her in Miss. Thorne’s eyes. “The consultant’s very pleased with him. We could be talking discharge in a few weeks. We don’t keep them in long, these days.” She seemed to notice Grace for the first time. “And who’s this?” “The daughter,” Miss. Thorne said abruptly.
The nurse, who according to her name tag was called Elizabeth, let them in, locking the door behind them.
“Ah yes!” She sent Miss. Thorne a look of great significance. “Of course.”
In the building it was stiflingly hot. The corridor ran the length of the villa. Large painted radiators stood at regular intervals and each time they passed one they were hit by a wave of heat. Elizabeth seemed not to notice, but Antonia took off her cardigan and Grace held her anorak by its hook over her shoulder.
“You can use the interview room. It’ll be quiet in there. Stan, have you seen Edmund?”
Stan, a middle-aged man in a grey overall, was washing the floor. Grace wondered idly if he were an inmate or a member of staff. He shook his head and continued to move his mop over the lino tiles.
Elizabeth pushed open the door of a large room. Chairs were lined in front of the television screen. On the television a jolly young man dressed as a clown was making a kite from brown paper and orange string. Behind him teddy bears and dolls sat on a plastic bus. The programme seemed to fascinate the audience. Grace didn’t believe that her father, even when he was ill, could ever enjoy children’s TV, but it was impossible to tell if he was there because a cloud of cigarette smoke hung over everything and the people were sitting with their backs to her.
“Has anyone seen Edmund?” Elizabeth asked. She used the same tone as the TV presenter. Grace thought that any minute she’d break into song with Large Ted and Jemima.
“Non-smoking lounge.”
This information was volunteered anonymously. No one turned away from the screen.
The non-smoking lounge was as large as the TV room but only two people sat there, in chairs close to a window. A pane, too small for anyone to climb out of, had been opened and let in a blast of cold air. They seemed deep in conversation. With Grace’s dad was a large-boned, dark woman in cord trousers and a checked cotton shirt. As they approached Grace heard her say, “I’m not used to all this sitting about. In the last place I was attached to the market garden. It broke your back that work, but there wasn’t time to be bored.”
She wasn’t at all the sort of woman Edmund would fall for, but Grace sensed an easy rapport between them which she’d never seen before in his relationships with women. With Sue especially he’d been flirtatious and devoted but never friendly.
Edmund’s reply was drowned out by the repeated shout of an exotic finch, perched in a cage standing against one wall. The cage door was fastened by a huge padlock. Grace wondered if the noise of the bird irritated the patients so much that they tried to kill it. She wouldn’t be surprised. Against the other wall there was a tank of tropical fish. The water was murky and green.
“You’ve got a visitor, Edmund,” Elizabeth said brightly.
“I’ll be off then,” said the dark woman. “Leave you in peace.”
“Thanks, Bella.”
Bella walked away quickly. When she caught Grace’s eye she smiled a clear, unclouded smile. Grace was convinced she must be a nurse until Elizabeth said, “Bella will be leaving us soon too.”
Edmund deliberately turned his back on Elizabeth. He looked up at Grace. “Sorry about all this.”
She shook her head. He looked dreadful, worse than when he was sitting in the town centre.
“If you want to use the interview room, I’ll fetch you some tea.”
Elizabeth looked at her watch.
Edmund groaned. “We’re all right here if it’s all the same to you. I can’t stand that place. It’s like a cell.” When she turned and walked away he added, just loud enough for her to hear, “And I can’t stand her either, stupid cow.”
He ignored Miss. Thorne. She might as well not have been there. He talked to Grace as if they were alone in the room.
“I really fucked up this time, didn’t I? I just couldn’t stand the thought of being without her. And I thought you’d be better off without me to worry about.”
“You tried to kill yourself?”
“And I couldn’t even manage that. Instead I’m in here with Busy Lizzie ticking me off every ten minutes to check I’m still alive.” “I’m glad,” she said. “That you’re still alive.”
After that first time she was allowed to visit her father without the social worker. On Christmas Day she went there for lunch. Most of the patients had been allowed home for the holiday so Sycamore Ward was almost empty. She had considered asking Maureen and Frank if he could come to them but decided that they had enough to worry about. This group of boys were particularly troublesome and Maureen always looked tired. She’d lost weight and there were shadows under her eyes.
So Grace walked the three miles up the hill to the hospital and sat with her father at the formica bench in the dining room. Also there were Wayne, a teenage schizophrenic whose parents were embarrassed by him, and a woman whose name Grace had never been told. From an overheard conversation between other patients Grace had learnt that this woman had had a child, who had died soon after birth.
“She won’t accept it, see,” the patient had said. “They caught her in the maternity hospital, trying to walk out with a little boy.”
The two nurses on duty tried to do their best and it was quite a pleasant meal. They ate turkey which had already been plated up in the hot trolley, pulled crackers and wore paper hats. Her father had been much calmer lately and didn’t even make too much fuss about the dreadful food.
After Christmas there was a period of quiet, very cold weather. She and her father, wrapped up in coats and scarves and gloves, because after the heat of the ward it felt glacial, even in the sun, went for walks in the hospital grounds. He was allowed to be away from the nurses for half an hour at a time now. She pointed out a red squirrel in the tall trees which separated the hospital from farmland beyond.
“I saw my first one when I went for a walk with Nan,” she said.
“Did you?” He was pleased, amused. “Fancy you remembering that.”
“Does she know you’ve been ill?”
She knew that her father had kept sporadically in touch with Nan who’d moved at last into sheltered accommodation.
“God, I hope not.”
He was being prepared for release. He had to attend a group. That was what it was called the group. It was run by a pretty young psychologist. There was a lot of drama and role play, lots of talking.
At first Edmund was sceptical, even antagonistic.
“Load of crap,” he said. “I wouldn’t go if I didn’t think they’d let me out quicker.” After a while Grace thought he must be finding the group useful, because he wouldn’t miss it, even when he was given the opportunity for a legitimate excuse. She was curious about what went on at these sessions but he wouldn’t answer her questions in any detail. It seemed unlike him to be so cooperative and she hoped he hadn’t fallen for the pretty young psychologist.
Usually the group met in the lounge with the finches and the fish tank.
They shut all the curtains so no one could see in. But one day when Grace arrived to visit her father, the time and the place of the group had changed. They were meeting in the TV room and it was still in session. It was cold and almost dark, so although the corridor was curtained they hadn’t bothered with the windows facing the garden. The therapist must have assumed that no one would venture outside.
Grace realized this by chance. She hadn’t meant to pry. When Elizabeth told her Edmund wouldn’t be available for at least half an hour she decided to walk to the WRVS canteen to buy him
some chocolate.
On her way back she saw the light from the windows falling on the unpruned rose beds. Although she knew she shouldn’t look she was attracted closer, like a moth.
They had pulled the chairs into a circle, almost a huddle. Her father was sitting next to Bella, who had been released from the hospital but returned as a day patient to attend the group. Grace recognized most of them. The woman with the dead baby, who had shared Christmas lunch with them, was there too.
Bella was talking. The others were listening intently. Grace had the impression that it was a new development, Bella taking centre stage.
The psychologist who was sitting on the floor because there weren’t enough chairs to go round, nodded, encouraging Bella to continue.
Suddenly Bella got up from her chair and moved to the middle of the circle. She stood with one hand above her head, still talking. She seemed agitated but Grace couldn’t hear what she was saying. She dropped her hand to her side and began to cry. The others crowded round her. Grace saw Edmund put his arm round her and hug her.
She felt awkward about being there, pulled up the hood of her anorak because now she was very cold, and walked on round the building. She rang the doorbell and stood shivering on the doorstep for Elizabeth to let her in. When the door to the TV lounge opened and they came out, they were chatting and laughing like old friends. No one would have been able to tell that Bella had been crying. Edmund seemed preoccupied. Grace said she wouldn’t stay long, soon they’d have to go into the dining room for supper. But he walked with her to the bus stop.
“Good group tonight?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. “They’re letting me out next week.” He seemed almost sad.
“Will you go back to Rod’s?” “He says I can.”
“Well then.”
“It won’t be easy,” he said, and though he didn’t say so, she knew he was thinking about the support he’d received from the group.
“No reason why you shouldn’t stay in touch.”
“No,” he said relieved, ‘.”
When she arrived back in Laurel Close there was an ambulance outside the door. Frank had had a heart attack. The ambulance crew wheeled him out on a trolley. Grace rushed through the crowd and touched his hand. Before Maureen climbed into the back of the ambulance Grace put her arm around her, and they cried together.
Frank died before he reached hospital. Grace was offered another foster family but she opted instead for the children’s home. There she slept in a room with three empty beds. There were blankets folded at the foot of them and pillows in striped cases.
Chapter Twenty-Six.
The memory of the room in the children’s home, so similar to her room at Baikie’s, jolted her back to the present. An hour had passed. She had come to one of the stone blinds built by the estate for grouse shoots, and she imagined her father’s relatives crouched here, guns raised, waiting for the whirring grouse to speed overhead. They would have waxed jackets, braying voices. Her family’s decision to sell this land for the quarry had only reinforced her prejudices about them. In the days leading up to Bella’s funeral, once she had finished her survey in the morning, she would walk the hills, getting her bearings.
Late one afternoon she climbed Fairburn Crag. From there it was possible to look down on Holme Park House, laid out beneath her like an architect’s plan. In a bend in the river was the main house, with two wings, and beyond it the formal gardens. Grace understood that the gardens were what the visitors came to see. She had never been herself. The Halifax sisters had offered to take her, had planned a jolly day out in the Rover with a picnic. They said the park was the only place in Northumberland where you could guarantee seeing hawfinch.
Grace had been tempted but when Cynthia muttered something about her heritage she’d refused.
Now, looking down, she felt no connection with the house. She wouldn’t have wanted to live there. Her father’s bitterness seemed misplaced and she wished she hadn’t been drawn into it.
She began the long walk back to Baikie’s reluctantly. She hated the evenings in the cottage. She hadn’t expected it to be like this. She’d known it wouldn’t be easy she’d told her father that but she thought she might enjoy living with other women. She’d hoped for the easy camaraderie she’d experienced in the Halifax library. University had been competitive but she’d put that down to the presence of men. Here, she’d thought with three women sharing the same expertise and interest there’d be no pressure. She might even build some sort of friendship. Instead there were questions and suspicion. Anne Preece was the most intrusive.
“Fulwell?” she’d asked as soon as they’d met. “I don’t suppose you’re related to Rob and Lily at the park.”
She’d laughed so Grace had felt no obligation to answer, but the question had made her uneasy. Since arriving at the cottage, since hearing the story of Bella swinging from the beam in the barn she’d been frightened. She only felt safe when she was alone in the hills, and even then occasionally she had a sense of being followed.
When she arrived back at Baikie’s it was almost dark. She hesitated on the doorstep, tempted in a moment of panic, to turn round and walk away. There was a smell of food. Rachael, in the kitchen, must have heard her boots on the yard because the door opened. Grace didn’t know what to make of Rachael. Sometimes she thought she was more dangerous than Anne.
“Hi,” Rachael said. “Come in. I was just starting to worry.”
Walking in from the clear air the smell of tomatoes, garlic and browned cheese made Grace’s stomach tighten.
“I’ve made a veggie lasagne,” Rachael said. “Why don’t you have some?
There’s plenty. It’s a bit late to start cooking.”
“Great. Thanks.” She didn’t know what else to say.
Because it was cold they sat in the easy chairs, pulled close to the fire, with the plates on their knees. No one had bothered to draw the curtains or put on the main light. Anne was still working at the desk, with the table lamp turned onto her papers, so they sat in shadow, lit occasionally by the red flash of a spitting log.
“I’ve been looking at your survey results,” Rachael said. Grace felt her stomach clench again. She poked the food with her fork.
“Yes?”
“Amazing! I mean I didn’t realize. This valley must have the greatest density of otters in the county. In the North of England.”
“I don’t know about that. I think they’ve generally been underestimated.”
“When this is all over you should think about publishing.”
At this Grace looked up, wondering why Rachael was so insistent.
“Oh?”
“If you don’t someone else will. You’ve done the work. Why shouldn’t you take the credit?”
“I suppose so.” Though she knew she would never present these figures for scientific scrutiny. She gathered up the plates and took them into the kitchen quickly, so Rachael couldn’t see how little she’d eaten.
When she returned to the living room Anne had stood up and was stretching her hands towards the fire.
“I called at the post office today,” Rachael said. “There was some mail. I should have given it to you earlier.”
She handed Grace a white envelope. It was the first letter she’d received since the project started and the other two stared at her, expecting her to open it immediately. But she folded it in two so it fitted into her jeans pocket.
Anne was equally secretive about one of the letters she’d received. She ripped the envelope open immediately as if she couldn’t wait to see what was inside, skimmed the contents then stuffed the page back into the envelope.
Rachael studiously avoiding any suspicion that she was prying, read her book while this was going on, but Grace watched. She saw that the letter was handwritten but that the paper had a corporate logo at the top. Even from the brief glimpse she had convinced herself that the logo was that of Slateburn Quarries. That only added to her unease, her sense
that there was no one here she could trust.
Later she tried to find the letter. When Anne was in the bathroom that night, washing her hair, Grace went through the chest where she kept her clothes, and her handbag. She even emptied the waste bin onto the floor but there was no sign of the letter. Either Anne had kept it with her or she had burnt it when no one was looking. That, in itself, Grace took to be suspicious.
Although she was awake long after the others were asleep, Grace didn’t open her own letter that night. She had enough to think about. She waited until the next morning when she was out on the hill and she could see to the horizon in every direction.
The letter was from her father. He was still living and working in the restaurant and he’d been bad about keeping in touch since she’d left school. This was much longer than his usual notes. Even when she’d been at university she’d been able to tell a lot about his state of mind from the length of his contact. When he was sober and happy he kept in touch with chatty phone calls, postcards with a dirty picture on one side, and on the other gossip about Rod and work, perhaps a new recipe that had excited him. The length of this letter, even before she started reading it, made her suspect that he was depressed again and that he’d been drinking. The tone, obsessive, panicky, convinced her and made her own anxiety worse.
The letter started with a list of questions about Bella. He’d heard somehow about the suicide and he wanted to know all about it. “How did she die?” he asked. “Were you there when they found her?”
“Are they sure it was suicide?”
At first the questions confused her. Why should her father, even in an agitated state, care so much about the death of a middle-aged farmer’s wife? Then an almost throwaway line made her understand. He had written, as if he could take it for granted. “Of course you do remember Bella from the hospital.” Then it came back to her. For the first time she made the connection between the suicide victim and Bella the patient, the central member of the therapy group in St. Nicholas’.