‘Rachel, tell me again why you kept all this a secret?’
‘So it would be a surprise. I thought you’d be pleased.’ Rachel dropped her gaze again. ‘Anyway, I didn’t want to say anything, you know, while you were...’
‘While I was what?’
‘Still with Gray.’
Rachel unfolded her legs and stood up in one smooth movement. ‘Can I go upstairs now?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She caught Rachel’s hand. ‘Are you all right, darling?’
‘Yes, I’m just a bit tired.’
Juliet let her go.
‘The thing is,’ Rachel said as they dodged the cyclists on the Undercliff Walk the following afternoon, ‘I said Charlie should phone you and explain about the farm and me going to stay in the October half term. Is that all right?’
Juliet had managed to do a little work this morning, with one eye on the time in case she became engrossed and forgot to vacate the house in time for Gray’s visit. She’d entertained a vague notion of dragging the large suitcase out from the spare room and filling it with his things so he could be in and out as fast as possible, then decided that no doubt it would be the wrong stuff she chose. He might also take it as a sign that she wouldn’t be in a hurry to welcome him back.
So far it had been easy to think of his absence as an extended business trip but in between these bouts of deliberate self-delusion she had begun mentally sifting the pile of random fragments in the thoughts about Gray section of her brain as if she was flicking through old newspapers in search of a voucher she’d meant to cut out with little hope of finding it.
If Gray still loved her, as he claimed, why wasn’t he here? Why weren’t they sorting out the mess together? The caveman instinct, she supposed, the withdrawing in order to contemplate that hitherto had been the province of a typical macho type, not a man who walked around with his emotions showing and who actively sought to release those same emotions in others. No doubt they would talk at some indefinable point in the near future but he would have to take the initiative. She wasn’t going to beg.
‘Is it, then? All right?’ Rachel kicked a pebble. It shot under the railings and plinked on to the beach below.
‘Phone me? Well, if you’ve already told him to I guess it’s a done deal.’
‘Not necessarily. He said I should check with you first.’
That was something, Juliet conceded. She couldn’t very well refuse to speak to Charlton, though, could she? Besides she had a few pertinent questions of her own, such as why had he been filling Rachel’s head with promises of ponies to ride, pigs to feed, hens to collect eggs from and all kinds of other rural delights in which Rachel had never before shown the faintest interest. Brainwashing, that’s what it was.
‘Yes, tell him he can ring, but you’re not going on Sarah’s computer any more.’
‘No, all right. Anyway, I’ve got his number at the farm now and his new mobile number. I’ll write them down for you, shall I?’
‘No, thanks. You hang on to them for now.’
Juliet hadn’t been in the mood for shopping today so she’d coaxed Rachel into the car and driven along the coast road to the seaside village of Rottingdean. Over fish and chips in a high street café, Juliet had said carefully: ‘You know, Rachel, Gray and I are still together. This is just a temporary break. It’s sad, but it will be all right in the end.’
Rachel had been silent for a while, then: ‘Mum, did you love Dad, you know, when I was born?’
‘Yes, I did. I loved him for a long time.’
The truth came readily, without need for consideration. She’d cried her eyes out on the way back to Brighton, and many times afterwards, but each time she began to think she’d made a dreadful mistake, she had only to summon up a vision of how it would have been had she married Charlton and she’d known without a doubt that she could not have lived like that. Whoever said that love conquered all had obviously not been paying attention.
Having recovered from the shock of Juliet’s untimely pregnancy, Charlton would have thrown himself, and her, into establishing the family set-up he’d envisaged for them, albeit several years down the line. They would have moved to a house exactly the same as the one they were in, only bigger, and probably there would have been another baby or two – not that she wouldn’t have liked more children – it was the idea that they were part of the great master plan that she didn’t like. Her days would have been one dreary round of Sloane-mummy coffee mornings, Montessori school brochures and dinner party menus. If she was lucky she might have squeezed in a couple of hours a week at her easel and Charlton would have glanced at her paintings and pronounced them ‘very nice’ with a metaphorical pat on the head, at which point she might very well have done something unspeakable with the bread-knife.
She’d done Charlton a favour, leaving him when she did. Tears dried up eventually. Bitterness hung about, tainting everything.
This sudden interest of Rachel’s in her parents’ relationship was disconcerting, especially as Juliet’s mention of Gray had been so patently ignored.
‘We weren’t right for one another, your father and me. Not that we weren’t happy to begin with, it was just that we each wanted to live our lives in a different way and that’s why, in the end, I couldn’t marry him.’
‘I know. Dad told me,’ Rachel said, not at all unhappily.
Juliet sniffed. ‘Oh, did he now?’
‘Don’t be like that, Mum. It’s all right. He explained it pretty well, actually, and I do understand. He didn’t blame you for leaving, you know.’
Juliet had wondered how much of this ‘understanding’ came from Charlton’s version of events and how much had been gleaned from Andrea’s stash of glossy magazines. She’d felt a rush of love for her daughter.
‘Well, that’s something.’ She’d smiled at Rachel, who smiled back, and dipped her last remaining chip in tomato ketchup.
‘People do change, don’t they? I mean, Dad has,’ Rachel said, as they’d set out along the Undercliff Walk.
Rachel’s tone was light, casual. Juliet wasn’t taken in. ‘No, I don’t believe they do, not deep down anyway, where it counts.’
‘That’s a bit cynical, isn’t it?’ Rachel sounded disappointed.
Again, Juliet felt a sense of role-reversal. ‘True though.’
Rachel tried another tack. ‘Don’t you think what Dad’s done is dead brave, moving to another country, giving up his job and everything?’
‘Not exactly another country, his country. Yes, it must have been a wrench and I daresay there’ll be times when he’ll miss the buzz of the city.’ And the money, Juliet added silently.
‘Oh no, he won’t. He said he won’t miss his old life at all but if he does, all he’ll have to do is look out of his window at the fields and stuff and he’ll know he made the right decision.’
Clap-trap, Juliet thought. Rachel was right, she was cynical, but better that than living in a dream-world.
‘Mum, how do you feel about Charlie now?’
Surprised, Juliet stopped walking for a second. Rachel’s face had turned a bit pink but she was clearly on a mission and not about to be deterred.
‘Darling, I don’t know him any more. He’s almost a stranger so I don’t feel anything, only that he’s your father, of course, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that.’
Rachel nodded but was silent, her brow creased in thought. They had reached a bend in the Undercliff. Juliet glanced at her watch and executed a swift, decisive about-turn.
‘Come on. Let’s go home.’
The flowers were so beautiful they almost made her cry. Trouble had been taken over their arrangement - the selection of the blue and white vase, borrowed from the hall table, the tapering spires encrusted with papery blooms in pinks and mauves and creams resting carelessly, yet carefully, against the rim, the private placement of the vase on the chest in their bedroom – perfect.
Stocks were her favourite flowers. Their scent rose up to
greet her each time she entered the room. Brushing sentiment firmly aside, she sent him a text: Love the flowers! Gray’s reply came almost immediately: Glad you like them.
The flowers at first diverted her attention from the barren surface of the bedside table, the redundant hook on back of the door, the quiet gleam of the unburdened rail inside the wardrobe. It took a while before she could bring herself to look.
Flowers had arrived. Other things had gone. She tried not to dwell on it too much.
For the rest of the week, Juliet worked feverishly, completing drawing after drawing, getting up at six to sit at her easel beneath the pale rectangle of the skylight, often still in her pyjamas. The story she was illustrating was about a boy who was sent to stay with his grandparents but was put on the wrong train by his absent-minded and, in Juliet’s opinion, feckless, mother. It had a happy ending, of course. Children expected it. Rather than sending the finished work by courier, Juliet delivered it in person three weeks before the deadline. Shona, her agent, took her to lunch at Quaglino’s.
The visit to London was made possible by Andrea’s offer to take Rachel out for the day, along with Debbie and Nisha, if Rachel liked. Rachel did like, and Juliet concurred as it seemed petty to refuse. She and Andrea now rubbed along in a state of slightly uneasy truce, which was all Juliet could manage.
She couldn’t seem to relax or be still. As well as beginning work on a set of nature-inspired bookmarks and covers for notebooks, she organised her paperwork into newly-purchased files, saw her accountant - for once, actually listening to what she was saying - turned out cupboards and drawers, took down curtains and either washed them or sent them to the cleaners and scraped half a ton of ice out of the freezer. Outside, she mowed the grass, pruned, dead-headed and launched an attack on the Wendy house-cum-shed, cleaning tools and hanging them in a neat row on nails banged into the wood and accumulating an alarming amount of junk which she crammed into the Beetle and took to the council tip.
In the evenings she stayed up late, watching films with Rachel, and sometimes Andrea when she wasn’t at one of her endless play rehearsals or cavorting with her lover, and drank moderate amounts of wine or vodka, but not every night in case Rachel thought her mother was turning into a sad alchy. It helped her sleep, though, and right now she couldn’t put a price on that.
18
Gray phoned. ‘I keep wondering if I’m right for you. I’ve let you down so badly.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ she said. ‘What happened wasn’t your fault. We’ll be fine once we’re together again, properly, you’ll see.’
A moment’s silence had preceded Gray’s reply. ‘I do hope so.’
He’d gone on to ask how Juliet’s work was going, then he asked after Rachel, then Andrea. The one thing he didn’t say was when he was coming home.
She didn’t ask.
Juliet felt guilty that she hadn’t taken Rachel on holiday this summer but her daughter seemed content to drift through the school holiday in her usual fashion, sleeping late, playing tennis, seeing her friends – apart from Sarah, who, to Juliet’s relief, was away with her parents. Juliet managed to purloin some of Rachel’s time for herself and the two of them took picnics to the beach or jumped in the car and headed off to Tunbridge Wells or Eastbourne or Chichester for shopping and lunch and more shopping, and the occasional cultural dive into a museum or gallery.
They looked after Clemmie and Aphra while Karina and Al attended a hospital appointment and went shopping for baby things. On Volk’s railway, the little train that chugged along the edge of the beach, Rachel sat between the girls, a protective arm round Aphra, and had them in fits of giggles all the way to the marina. Juliet watched from the seat behind and smiled to herself.
There had been no phone call from Charlton, which was slightly puzzling considering the fuss Rachel had made about it, but Juliet said nothing. Perhaps Rachel had had second thoughts and had been in touch with her father and told him not to bother. Juliet could but hope this was true.
Then, on Saturday morning, the unthinkable happened. She had gone to the supermarket, having, as usual, underestimated the time it took to park, negotiate the crowded aisles and queue at the check-out, and it was nearly lunchtime when she arrived home. She nipped up to the front door and let herself in, intending to yell for Rachel to come and help her unload the car, when she heard voices coming from the kitchen.
It couldn’t be, could it? Heart pounding, Juliet crept along the hall. The kitchen door was ajar. Rachel was sitting at the table and opposite her, with his back to the door, was Charlton.
Rachel coloured up as she noticed her mother. Charlton turned round and stood up.
‘Hello, Juliet.’
Juliet couldn’t speak. She gave a kind of nod. Charlton looked the same, yet altogether different. His hair was longer and without its usual sharp cut, curled untidily about his ears. He looked broader, more thickset, his shirt, worn outside his jeans, flapping casually over a more substantial waistline. His eyes had acquired little fans of crinkles at the edges, as naturally they would. Yet it wasn’t just the physical changes that made him seem different. It was something more intrinsic, a kind of blurring around the edges.
Juliet had a sudden urge to laugh, the kind of inappropriate laughter that sometimes comes in response to bad news. She smothered the urge. ‘Well, this is a turn up for the books.’ She turned to Rachel, who seemed not to know what to do with her face. ‘I suppose this is your doing, miss?’
‘Don’t be cross with her. It was my decision to come, not Rachel’s.’
How dare he come waltzing in here uninvited and tell her not to be cross with their daughter – her daughter!
Juliet took a deep breath. ‘I thought you were going to phone.’
The complicit glance between father and daughter was impossible to miss.
Rachel stood up. ‘He was but it just seemed easier this way. You don’t mind, do you, Mum?’
Juliet hesitated. ‘No, of course I don’t mind, although a little warning would have been nice.’
Charlton held out his hands. ‘That was my fault. I meant to phone when I got half way but there were hardly any hold-ups and before I knew it I was almost here so I carried on.’
Juliet sighed. What did it matter? He was here now and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.
She remembered the shopping she’d left in the boot and on the step and for the next five minutes the three of them traipsed to and fro, lugging carrier bags, as if they were an ordinary family doing an ordinary chore on an ordinary Saturday morning.
Juliet unpacked shopping and tried to retain some measure of control over her own reactions. If only she’d had time to prepare she might know how she was supposed to behave. Charlton arriving at a pre-determined time to pick up Rachel for a meticulously planned outing was one thing. This visit with its inherent agenda, its potential for changing lives, Rachel’s in particular, was another matter entirely. Juliet silently cursed the two of them for cooking this up between them.
She took as long as she sensibly could to stow away the shopping bags in the understairs cupboard, taking advantage of the relative darkness and privacy to arrange her expression into something less close to shock and annoyance. Closing the cupboard door, she wondered what happened next. She didn’t have to wonder for long.
‘Charlie said he would take us both out to lunch, didn’t you?’ Rachel turned to her father.
Really, all this Charlie business was too much. It smacked of desperation on Charlton’s part, desperation to be Rachel’s friend, her equal, not a parent with authority, and that wasn’t like him at all - at least, it never used to be.
After a bit of awkward dithering about on all sides, Juliet sent them off without her without really knowing whether that was the right thing to do. On the one hand she needed some breathing space in order to regain some kind of perspective but on the other, she didn’t want them dreaming up any more half-baked plans without her. The need to be
alone was more pressing, she decided.
‘I’d like to talk to your mother alone, if that’s all right with you,’ Charlton said to Rachel, when they returned an hour and a half later.
‘I was just about to suggest that.’ This was true but Juliet wished she’d got in first.
‘OK.’ Rachel hopped off happily upstairs without a backward glance.
Juliet turned to Charlton. ‘Tea? Coffee?’
‘Not for me, thanks.’
No chance of delaying the moment any further then. Juliet led the way through the kitchen and out on to the patio. Why was she so nervous anyway? It was only Charlton, for goodness sake. Too late, she realised that if Rachel should happen to stick her head out of her bedroom window she’d probably be able to hear every word. Juliet glanced upwards, screwing up her eyes against the light, just as the Arctic Monkeys belted out from Rachel’s room. That was all right then.
At first, Charlton talked and Juliet listened. His version of events leading up to his decision to return to England was just as Rachel had described, if slightly less road-to-Damascus. In Charlton’s account, too, the farm in Somerset shrank to the size of a small-holding with a couple of fields and a paddock and by the time he had finished telling her about it, it seemed pretty obvious that it wasn’t his own sweat that would be dripping over the soil but that of a couple of labourers from the village.
Even so, Juliet thought magnanimously, she admired his pluck. It couldn’t have been easy for him to give up the career he’d worked so hard at, not even if he did still have ‘connections’ in the city and a seat on the board at the bank. He glossed over that bit of information, slipping it in between his plans for a riding school and a sudden, apparent desire to grow cabbages, but it hadn’t been lost on her.
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