‘He’s really passionate about the place,’ I say to Philippa, whose turn it is to visit the next day. ‘Will he inherit eventually?’
‘George?’ She gives me a funny look. ‘Of course not. When Pa dies, Felix will be the next Lord Vavasour.’
Felix. The little boy they insist is mine. I avoid Philippa’s eyes, just as George avoids mine. ‘It doesn’t seem very fair.’
She shrugs. ‘That’s just the way it is. The title has been passed down the male line since the fifteenth century. George isn’t even a true Vavasour,’ she says. ‘Joanna changed his name by deed poll. His real name is Wilson or Brown, something depressingly ordinary, anyway.’
Philippa tells me Joanna, Jasper’s sister, had a brief rebellion over thirty years ago and married against her parents’ wishes. ‘It was a disaster, of course,’ Philippa says. ‘Her husband dumped her when George was still a baby, and she slunk back to Askerby. Luckily George looks like a Vavasour. Now everybody pretends that he always has been.’
Michael’s sister is slumped in the chair next to mine, picking at her nails. She has missed out on the Vavasour gold hair, but her eyes are the same deep blue, and she could be beautiful were it not for the discontented twist of her mouth. Every day I try to learn something new about the family I am apparently part of, and I know now that Philippa runs the stables at Askerby. Like George, I always get the sense that she is itching to get back to the country.
‘I can’t imagine Joanna as a rebel,’ I say. I hoard all the information I can get, storing it away in my empty memory, where it rattles around without a context. Joanna makes the occasional dutiful visit but I don’t have a real sense of her yet. The tweedy skirts, waxed jacket and cut-glass accent create a barrier between her and the rest of the world, a slippery surface which repels any attempt to find out what she really thinks or feels.
I’ve been trying to work out the family arrangements in my head. ‘So you all live together at the Hall? You and George and Jasper and Fiona and Joanna?’
‘And Granny,’ says Philippa. ‘She’s eighty-seven now and the drive in from Askerby is too much for her, but she still rules the roost at home.’
It sounds an odd set-up to me. ‘I live there, too?’
‘Since Michael died.’
‘But that was a couple of years ago, wasn’t it?’
‘You’ve remembered?’ she says in surprise, but I shake my head.
‘No, your father told me.’
‘Oh.’ For a moment there is a distant look in her eyes. ‘It’s more like three now. It’s hard to believe,’ she says. ‘Michael was the only one of us who got away, and even he had to come back to Askerby in the end.’
‘Got away?’ It’s an odd phrase for her to choose, I think. ‘You make it sound like an escape.’
‘I think it was for Michael. He was different. He wasn’t interested in hunting or shooting or farming. All he cared about was books.’ Philippa sounds baffled. After he graduated, he got a job with a small publishing house, earning peanuts, but he loved London. That’s where he met you.’ She looks at me. ‘Do you really not remember him?’
What does she think? That I am pretending? ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t remember anything.’
‘Weird,’ says Philippa.
That’s one word for it, I suppose. ‘Why am I living at Askerby if Michael loved London so much?’
‘Money,’ she says succinctly. ‘Felix was only a baby when Michael first fell ill. You didn’t have any money, Michael couldn’t work, your parents live in some godforsaken part of Africa . . . You had to nurse Michael and look after Felix. Nobody blamed you for admitting that you couldn’t manage on your own.’
‘But Michael’s dead now,’ I point out. ‘I must be able to work.’
‘Sure, but you don’t exactly earn big bucks as a graphic designer, and Michael didn’t have anything to leave you. All the Vavasour money is tied up in the estate. You’ve still got Felix to look after, and frankly, you were a mess after Michael died. You didn’t have the energy to resist Ma and Pa, who are determined for Felix to grow up at Askerby. He is the next Lord Vavasour, after all. They don’t want him growing up in some council flat, which is all you’d be able to offer him.’
‘So I have thought about moving out?’
Philippa lifts a shoulder, uninterested. ‘You were talking about it before the Great Leap.’ That’s what she calls my fall. She’s the only one who acknowledges what happened; even though I can’t believe that I jumped, I prefer her frankness to the careful way the others avoid the subject.
‘Of course,’ she says, with a nod at the cast on my leg, ‘you won’t be going anywhere now.’
It is like trying to put together a jigsaw with only a handful of blurry pieces. Lying in my hospital bed at night, I pick over the conversations I have with Philippa and the other Vavasours for clues about my life: I am a freelance graphic designer, I don’t earn much money; I live with my parents-in-law, I’m a widow. I loved my husband, I’m suicidal. The Vavasours tolerate me for the sake of Felix, the boy they say is my son, but they don’t love me. I don’t think they even like me very much. Nobody will come right out and say it, but I get the feeling they think I am highly strung and over-imaginative at best. In one corner I set my memory of my mother screaming in the dark. It seems to have nothing to do with the fact that I have parents working in Somalia. I can’t put any of it together.
There are facts and there is what I feel, and they don’t seem to be connected. I exist in a strange limbo, my memories pitiful scraps teased out of the murk – a mad mother and a ride across the moors – but when I mention the latter to Philippa, she stares at me.
‘You? Riding? You’d rather stick pins in your eyes than get on a horse!’
‘What?’ I gape back at her. This is the one good thing I remember, how at home I felt in the saddle, that exhilarating ride through the heather under the vast arch of the sky.
‘You hate horses,’ Philippa says. ‘Michael used to tease you about it, but you said you’d been attacked by one once, and you were quite happy to admire them from the other side of a fence.’
‘But . . .’ I fall silent, remembering what Oliver Raine told me about memories. Maybe I was remembering a scene in a film, like he said, but you don’t remember smells from a film, do you? You don’t remember the feel of the reins through your gloves or the fluid power of the horse beneath you.
Too often there is a disjunction between what they tell me is true and what I know but cannot remember. Sometimes at night I lie sleepless in the bed, and I’m aware of the dull ache of bruised and broken bones, of a cracked skull, but it doesn’t feel like my body at all. I’m there but not there at the same time.
When I do sleep, I find myself running, blindfolded by the dark and panicky, twisting frantically between the clamour of voices in my head that call me this way and that but never show themselves. They are voices I know, people I am desperate to find, but when I wake and try to recall the exact timbre of a voice, a familiar rhythm of speech, all I am left with is confusion and desperation.
There’s a membrane stretched across my mind, spongy and opaque. I can sense the memories trapped behind it, scratching and scraping for a way out, and I probe constantly, as if at a sore tooth, testing and prodding, in the hope that one day I will break through and my life will spill out. I can’t bear not knowing anything about myself, but I am afraid, too. I keep thinking about what Oliver said: There may be some things you’ll wish had stayed forgotten.
Still, I keep straining to remember. Every now and then there’s a fluttery, frantic sense in my head, like a trapped moth beating its wings against cupped hands, and I feel sure that a memory is very close, but it’s gone before I can grasp it.
The first memory comes without warning. I am dozing, my face turned towards the window. It’s bright outside, and the light beats against my eyelids. It’s reminding me of something . . .
I stir, frowning a little, and turn my head the other way
. I open my eyes and see a young woman sitting by my bed, her head bent over Country Life, and out of nowhere terror jolts through me. I must gasp, because she looks up quickly in concern.
‘Oh, Kate, I’m so sorry! Did I give you a fright?’
Already that nameless dread is evaporating and I feel foolish. ‘Just a bad dream,’ I manage. I must have been sleeping. I didn’t hear her come in. My mouth is very dry and she obviously hears the hoarseness in my voice because she tosses the magazine on the bed and jumps up.
‘Would you like a drink? The nurse said you might be thirsty when you woke up.’
‘Thanks.’
I sip gratefully at the water then lie back against the pillows to watch her as she bustles around, setting the beaker back on the bedside table, tidying away the magazine. She seems familiar, and my heart lifts at the thought that I might at last be recognizing somebody.
‘You haven’t been to see me before, have you?’
‘I went to the hospital a couple of times when you were in a coma,’ she says. ‘We tried to take it in turns to sit with you and talk to you in the hope that we’d get through eventually, but this is the first chance I’ve had to come and see you since you’ve been awake.’ She smiles at me as she sits back in the chair. ‘You’re looking so much better, Kate.’
I have given up protesting that Kate is not my name.
She folds her skirt around her knees as she speaks, and it comes to me in a flash. ‘Judith!’ I laugh with relief. ‘Oh, thank God I’ve remembered someth—’ I break off at her expression of dismay and my heart plummets. ‘You’re not Judith?’
She shakes her head and I can see the pity in her eyes. ‘I’m Angie.’
‘Oh. Sorry. Whoops.’ I try to laugh it off but it feels awkward. For a moment, I was so sure. ‘I suppose they’ve told you that I’ve lost my memory?’
‘They did, and it must be awful for you.’ Her voice is warm with sympathy. ‘I’m so sorry, Kate. It’s a terrible thing to happen, but the main thing is that you’re going to be okay.’
She is neat and pretty with a heart-shaped face. Her hair swings in a brown bob and her eyes are a friendly brown instead of the Vavasour blue, but there is something naggingly familiar about her all the same.
‘Are you a Vavasour?’ I ask.
‘Me? No!’ Something flickers in her face, but it is gone so quickly that I barely have time to register it before she is laughing. ‘I’m Angie Kaczka. I work at Askerby.’
‘Was part of your job visiting me when I was in a coma?’
‘Of course not! We’re friends.’
Friends. The word warms me. That is what I have been missing, I think. I smile back at her a little tremulously.
‘You do seem familiar.’
‘So I should hope,’ she says with mock sternness. ‘We’ve spent a lot of time together over the past couple of years.’
‘Really?’
‘After Michael died . . .’ Angie hesitates, picking her words. ‘It was a tough time for you. You’ve never been that close to Michael’s family,’ she says delicately and I nod, unsurprised. That much I have already gathered.
‘I must have been glad to have had you to talk to.’
‘We went through a few boxes of tissues,’ she acknowledges with a faint smile. ‘Not to mention a few bottles of Chardon-nay!’
I smile back at her gratefully. ‘It sounds like you’re a good friend. Thanks, Angie.’
She waves that aside. ‘We got on well right from the start, even though we’re quite different.’
‘In what way?’ I ask curiously. At last, someone who can give me a sense of what I’m like.
‘Well . . .’ Angie settles into her chair, thinking. ‘You grew up in Africa, and I’ve never left Askerby. You’re very independent and . . . I don’t know . . . unconventional, I suppose, and I love all the Vavasour traditions. You’re clever and arty, and I’m very practical.’ She shakes her head and laughs. ‘Now I come to think of it, I can’t understand how we ever got to be friends at all! But I always loved spending time with you and of course I adore Felix. He’s the dearest little boy.’
She glances at me, suddenly uncertain. ‘Is it true you don’t remember him?’
I look away from the reproach in her eyes. I know what she’s thinking. What kind of mother doesn’t recognize her own child? What kind of mother could turn aside from Felix with his mischievous smile and be absolutely certain that he is not her son, that there is another child somewhere that she loves unconditionally, if only she could remember him.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘I just can’t believe it,’ Angie says. She twists her hands together. ‘I just can’t. You used to be so close until—’
‘Until what?’ I ask when she breaks off.
Angie looks uncomfortable. ‘I’m not sure I should say anything,’ she says awkwardly, and I struggle further up against my pillows.
‘Please, Angie. I need to know what happened.’
‘Look, you mustn’t worry about it, Kate. It’s just that you haven’t really been yourself these last few months. I mean, obviously you’ve been grieving for Michael, but there’s been something else going on, too. You were acting a bit strangely.’
‘Strangely? How?’
‘I don’t know.’ Angie shifts in her chair, clearly wishing she hadn’t started this. ‘Distracted, I guess. Sometimes it was like you just weren’t there. And you got obsessed with the family history. It was like you were more interested in the past than in Felix. But none of us ever dreamt you were depressed or that you would . . . you know . . .’
‘Jump off a roof?’
She looks distressed. ‘I can’t believe you’d do that to Felix.’
I can’t believe I jumped either. I squirm a little at the sickening twist of guilt I always feel when people talk to me about Felix.
‘How is he?’ It should have been the first question I asked, I know.
‘He’s fine. I’ve moved into the Hall so I can be there at night, and I look after him most of the time. Philippa’s with him today, as I had to come into York. You mustn’t worry about him. We’re taking good care of him.’
‘I’m sure you are, but what about your job? What exactly do you do at Askerby, anyway?’
‘Oh, a little bit of everything,’ she says. ‘I help out whenever I’m needed. A bit of this, a bit of that. I help George in the estate office, and Lady Fiona when she has charity events to organize. I run errands for the whole family. There’s a cook and a housekeeper, of course, but there are always little jobs that need doing.’
I wonder why the Vavasours can’t run their own errands, but I don’t say so. ‘It sounds like you’re indispensable,’ I say instead.
‘I wouldn’t say that.’ But she looks pleased. ‘I like to think they know they can rely on me for anything. There was no question about me moving into the Hall to look after Felix. All the Vavasours know that he’s more important than any estate business.’
‘Do you live far away?’
‘Just at the Lodge with my grandmother, but if Felix wakes in the night at the moment, he likes me to be there.’
‘Still, it’s a big ask for you to give up your whole life for him.’
‘I don’t mind. I love Felix,’ she says. ‘He’s so sweet.’ She sighs a little. ‘You’re so lucky to have him, Kate.’
You don’t deserve him. She doesn’t say it aloud, but the words hang in the air all the same.
‘Anyway . . .’ She summons a bright smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll get your memory back soon and it will be fine, but I’ve got to say I’ll miss Felix. We’ve been having a lovely time together.’
‘You obviously love children.’
‘Yes, I do, but Felix is special.’ Her smile is a little crooked. ‘I wish I could have a little boy like him.’
I feel horribly guilty again that Angie so clearly loves my child more than I do.
‘Would you like children of your own?’
‘I’d
love them.’ Her eyes darken. ‘I’m an only child, and I always yearned to be part of an extended family like the Vavasours. I used to wish I could be like Michael and Philippa and George, all growing up together at the Hall . . . I’d love to give my children an idyllic childhood like that,’ she says wistfully. ‘But . . . well, it’s hard, living in the country. There aren’t that many men at Askerby. The young guys tend to leave.’
‘You could leave, too,’ I suggest. It seems obvious to me, if she wants children that much, but Angie is clearly astounded by the idea.
‘Leave Askerby?’ She stares at me. ‘But it’s my home.’
‘You could make a home somewhere else.’
‘Easy for you to say. You grew up moving from country to country. You don’t understand what it’s like to be from somewhere, to be part of it.’
I can’t argue with that. I don’t.
‘Askerby’s home for me,’ Angie says. ‘I’d die if I had to leave.’ She says it without melodrama, as if it is a simple fact. ‘It’s where I belong,’ she says.
‘How does someone called . . . Kash-ca?’ I look at her to see if I have pronounced her surname correctly and she nods, smiling. ‘How do you end up belonging at Askerby? I may have lost my memory, but I know that’s not a Yorkshire name!’
‘No.’ She laughs as if relieved at the change of subject. ‘My grandparents escaped from Poland in 1938, and came to live at the Lodge at Askerby in 1950. Babcia – Gran – is ninety-five and still there. She brought me up there after my father died, so Askerby is home to me.’ She stops and gives her head a little shake. ‘Sorry, it’s just so strange having to explain to you what you already know.’
‘It does make conversation awkward,’ I agree with a sigh. All I can do is ask questions.’ I’m hungry for more glimpses of my life before this nothingness. ‘What did I use to do all day? Please tell me I don’t sit around waiting for you to run errands for me!’
House of Shadows Page 3