Secrets in the Shadows

by Hannah Emery

  So when Louisa was two, Rose packed their bags and left her big house and her husband. She walked to the train station, as it wasn’t far. Louisa slowed them by stopping to splash in every puddle along the way, and Rose didn’t have the energy to stop her. The walk took almost an hour. Rose carried her suitcase in one hand and held onto Louisa’s podgy little hand in the other. When the train arrived, they climbed onto the hissing carriage, leaving their world behind in one step.

  As the train wound through green fields and grey houses, towards the edge of the land, Rose stroked Louisa’s soft black hair and thought about what they might do when they arrived in Blackpool. She fingered her hat, under which was crammed a handful of notes that she had taken from her husband’s hiding place that morning. He’d thought his hiding place was a secret, but she had seen him through the crack in the doorway one morning, counting his money and then stuffing it into a shoe in his wardrobe. She didn’t know what he was saving for. But Rose needed it more than him. She wouldn’t be spending it on herself; every penny was for Louisa.

  Rose’s stomach squeezed at the thought of her husband. He had never done anything to harm Rose, and she cared about him very much. She wondered if he might find a new wife one day. Rose would write to him once she was settled in Blackpool with the man with purple eyes and explain that this was for the best. She would let her husband divorce her on whatever grounds he thought suitable.

  And then they would both be free.

  She settled back in her seat. Louisa was sleeping, her head heavy on Rose’s chest. The pound notes in Rose’s hat scratched at her head, nipping her scalp. She closed her eyes and imagined the cry of the sea and the colour purple and thought of all the magic still to come.

  It was ten years later when Rose, who lived in a tall house where she could look out from her bedroom and see the roaring sea, was reminded of what she had left behind. As she clattered about in the kitchen, she heard the letterbox click open and shut. She rushed out into the hall and saw a bright white envelope flitting down onto the cool tiles.

  The moment she caught sight of the handwriting on the envelope, Rose knew. She didn’t need to read the sender’s address written in blotchy black ink, or open it up and read what was inside. She knew it was from her husband. She picked the envelope up, turning it over in her trembling hands. How had he found her?

  Rose had been making a blackberry pie for Louisa before the envelope had arrived, and now she saw that some blackberry juice from her fingers had stained the white envelope. She shuddered a little, for the stain looked like bright, fresh blood. She stood for a moment, still turning the envelope over, her fingers, purple at the edges, fluttering deftly. She looked up, out of the stained glass window of her front door. The blues and purples and oranges of the glass blurred the world beyond, making it impossible to see if somebody might be behind it.

  There was definitely no need to open the envelope, Rose told herself. She knew what it would say:

  ‘I have found you, Rose. Come home, I’ve bought you a new dress and a doll for Louisa.’

  But Rose didn’t want a new dress, or a new doll for Louisa, or to know that her husband had found her. She wanted to find the boy with purple eyes. She had been looking for all these years, but had still not found him. Now she must. She must, before her husband came to collect her. She trembled with frustration at not being allowed to live the life that was meant for her. It was bad enough that the doctor from around the corner was always trying to get Rose to take pills, to sign this form and that form, to stop talking about the boy with purple eyes. He was probably working with Louisa’s father. Dr Barker said that Rose might not be very well, that he was worried about her. He said he was worried about Louisa, too, and made Rose sign a form with Louisa’s name on it, although Rose had one of her headaches that day and couldn’t make out the print. If only everybody would leave her, just leave her and stop trying to make her forget her true love. She couldn’t let her husband or Dr Barker find her. They were coming. She knew from the letter that they were coming. They could be behind the coloured glass right now.

  Rose squeezed her eyes shut so much that they hurt, and in that moment, she saw what she had to do. She heard the crashing of the waves beyond her house. The more she tried not to listen to it, the more she heard it, until it felt as though the shards of water were crashing against her head. She saw a figure in the calm, blue sea, waving her to join him, beckoning her to enter the life she should have had so long ago.

  Rose moved towards the door, entranced by the image in her mind, deafened by the sounds of the water. If she didn’t go now, then her husband would come for her, and Dr Barker would make her swallow those pills that sat in her bathroom cabinet, and it would be too late. She dropped the envelope onto the hall floor, and opened the front door, walking slowly to the beckoning waves beyond.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Louisa, 1978

  By the time they had been married for a year, Louisa was certain that Lewis was going to leave her.

  She just didn’t know when.

  One week after their wedding, she had the dream again. She dreamed of that day in the future when her face was numb from tears, when she sobbed from where she was crumpled on the floor and she bled from broken glass and stared into a half-empty wardrobe. She awoke, sticky and breathless, and the images hung in her mind in the way that made her know it was more than just a dream. These things were definitely going to happen.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Louisa asked Lewis when he strode out into the concrete yard at the back of Rose House, when he put on his purple jacket, when he got out of bed and stretched his long hairy limbs, arching his back like an acrobat to get himself ready for the day.

  When Louisa first started to ask Lewis where he was going all the time, when they were first married and fed each other cherries in bed, their limbs entwined, and walked along the beach together, their arms clamped around each other, Lewis ignored the edge in her voice, the tension in her face. He would cup her face in his large rough hands and kiss her with his cherry lips and tell her that he would never leave. Or, he would smile and shake his head affectionately like she was a naughty puppy; as though he didn’t know what to do with Louisa but loved her anyway.

  But now, a year on from their wedding day, things were different.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Louisa asked one morning when Lewis stalked into the kitchen holding his keys and wallet. Her voice was tight, stretched over a wail that threatened to emerge and drown them.

  ‘Out,’ he said simply.

  ‘But out where? When will you be back?’ Louisa was drying plates, and as she spoke the tea towel squeaked against the china, making her wince. Every unpleasant sound grated on her these days: it was as though the world was sharper around her and grazed against her skin. Soon, she would be scratched away to nothing.

  ‘Louisa, I don’t have to tell you everything about every place I go.’

  ‘But I need to know. I need to know when you’ll be back.’

  ‘Why?’ Lewis said, looking down at his key.

  ‘Because I know that one day, you won’t come back,’ Louisa said simply. She continued to scrub away at the squeaking plate with her towel, even though it was completely dry, even though the noise tore at her ears.

  ‘How do you know that? I don’t understand how you can be so sure.’

  ‘I had a vision. I saw our wardrobe with your clothes gone from it, I saw you leaving me. I know that you are going to hurt me, and it’s driving me mad not knowing when it’s going to happen,’ Louisa admitted miserably.

  ‘Well then, maybe you’re not psychic after all. Maybe not everything you see is going to actually happen. You’re in control, Louisa. You might have seen what could happen, but you can change it.’

  ‘I hate it when you act as though my gift is useless. If I see something, then it happens. It always happens,’ Louisa said as she slammed the plate down.

  Lewis shook his head. ‘You can’t kno
w that.’

  ‘But I do know it! I know what happens. I know that you and I will break up! But I just don’t know when.’ Louisa was crying now, slow tears quickly spiralling into hiccuping sobs.

  ‘Exactly!’ Lewis shouted, banging his keys down onto the dresser.

  ‘Shhh, the guests will hear!’ Louisa said, wiping her tears with the tea towel, the rough fabric catching at her skin.

  Lewis moved closer to her and whispered. ‘You don’t know when it’s going to happen, because you don’t know that it will. But the fact that you’re so obsessed with it is making it more and more likely. You’re pushing me away with all your doubt, Lou. You’re suffocating me.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ Louisa said bitterly.

  ‘So you can’t help anything. You can’t control anything. You’re just going to sit about waiting for horrible things to happen.’

  Louisa didn’t say anything. She cried and cried.

  Lewis swiped up his keys again and shook his head.

  ‘You need to stop it. Stop using your gift as an excuse to not take control of your own life.’

  Louisa sighed, a final sob escaping before she reached the weary state that comes after crying. ‘I can’t help it,’ she whispered as Lewis stomped out of the kitchen.

  That night, Louisa drank half a bottle of vodka. She had never liked the taste, and she screwed her face up as she swallowed to try and squeeze the unpleasant flavour from her senses. She just wanted to stop feeling. After four glasses, she did stop feeling. A pleasant, familiar dreaminess settled down over her like velvet. The world around her finally seemed softer and less chafing.

  Most of the Rose House guests were out. A few were watching the television in the guest lounge. Louisa normally popped her head around the door of the guest lounge and gave the visitors her best guest smile, and asked if she could get anything for anybody. But tonight, after she tripped over nothing on the way from the kitchen to the lounge, she decided that she would leave them all to their own devices. When she heard Lewis climbing up to their bedroom just after ten o’clock, she flew from the bed to her dressing table and fumbled around for her lipstick. Her talc clattered off the table and puffed over the carpet, and her perfume bottle was knocked down with a clang by her clumsy hands. But eventually, she found her lipstick. She drew a big red smile onto her lips and ran her brush through her glossy black hair.

  She watched in the mirror as Lewis entered the room. He stood silently, knowing she was watching him. She would make the first move: the vodka had made her brave.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Louisa’s words were clean and simple: a little slurred perhaps, but she couldn’t help that.

  Lewis didn’t say anything. He raised his eyebrows slightly.

  ‘Let’s go out tomorrow night,’ Louisa said.

  ‘What about the guests? Have you forgotten that we have a full house?’

  Louisa paused for a moment. She had completely forgotten.

  ‘No. Of course I haven’t forgotten. I am going to ask Mrs Brendan to watch the house after I’ve served dinner and the visitors have all gone where they’re going for the evening.’ Mrs Brendan lived next door. She had closed her own guest house last year, and lived in there alone now with four cats and not much to do. She wouldn’t mind. ‘As long as we’re home for when everyone starts getting in. About ten. She’ll do it, I know she will. I think it’ll do us good.’

  Lewis scratched his head and chewed his bottom lip. Louisa felt a flutter of irritation tickle her insides.

  ‘I’m not asking the world of you, Lewis. I just want to go dancing or something. Or for a drink.’

  Lewis looked at Louisa, then at her glass by the side of the bed, which was empty save for a few flicks of cigarette ash.

  ‘I suppose we could go dancing.’

  ‘Then it’s settled,’ Louisa beamed, her lips tight with the cheap lipstick. We’ll have a wonderful time.’

  It wasn’t until the end of the evening of their night out that things went so horribly wrong. Because it was Saturday, Lewis took Louisa to The Highland Room for dancing and drinks. The subject of their future danced slowly beside them, but they both conscientiously ignored it. Louisa clung to Lewis, and tried to remember that he loved her, and that they were married. The image of the broken glass and the bloody sobbing and half empty wardrobe was pushed as far away as it would go.

  ‘Shall I buy you another drink?’ she asked Lewis, noticing that his beer bottle was empty.

  Lewis shook his head. ‘It’s okay. I’ll go to the bar.’

  As he disappeared into the moving crowds of people, Louisa spotted a heart-lurching pair of eyes. They were violet: she was sure of it. It was the man who could give Louisa all the answers. He would tell her where her mother had gone, and why she had left, and why Louisa had seen it all too late. She scrambled over to him, elbowing her way past smooching couples and laughing friends.

  ‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’ one woman called angrily as Louisa pushed her out of the way.

  When she reached the man with the purple eyes, Louisa threw her arms around his neck, hanging from him and laughing in delight.

  ‘I’ve found you! I’ve found you!’ The words sounded so good to her that she kept on repeating them again and again. ‘I’ve found you!’

  The man frowned down at Louisa, and she saw disgust in his expression. A crack of disappointment clicked through her body: she thought that he would have been expecting her.

  ‘You need to tell me about my mother!’ Louisa shouted at the man. Once he knew who she was, he would remember Rose, and tell Louisa where she had gone, and everything would all become clear.

  But the man didn’t answer. He shook his head. Louisa tightened her grip around his neck. Even when she felt Lewis’s arms around her, pulling her away, she closed her eyes and wrenched herself away from Lewis, closer to the man with the purple eyes.

  ‘Get your girl off me!’ the man yelled at Lewis.

  Louisa heard Lewis shout something back, and then she felt herself propelled backwards onto the sticky, sweating floor. Feet thudded around her, and she felt blood drip down her face.

  Later, when Lewis was packing his things, Louisa sat on the carpet, fingering her sliced skin and looking at the glass around her. She still didn’t know how that had happened. She tried to recall if she had thrown the glass at Lewis, or dropped it, or if he had thrown it at her. It was only at that moment, as Lewis clicked his suitcase shut, that Louisa realised how stupid she’d been. The man’s eyes had been purple from far away, but close up, they were an average cornflower blue.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Lewis,’ Louisa said.

  Much later, as she lay alone in bed, their half empty wardrobe glowing in the darkness, she wondered if she had said it out loud.

  Lewis didn’t come back this time. Louisa knew he wasn’t going to, so she didn’t wait, and she didn’t hope. Four days after he had gone, Mrs Brendan looked after the boarding house again and Louisa stood at Mags’s cooker, sipping afternoon wine and cooking.

  ‘Let’s make dinner together. You look like you haven’t eaten in weeks, and Charles is working late tonight at the office, so I want some company,’ Mags said when Louisa arrived. She put a hand up to Louisa’s hair and twirled a piece around her finger. ‘Your hair needs washing too. Why don’t you go up and have a bath and I’ll start the cooking. You come down when you’re ready.’

  So Louisa had shuffled upstairs to the bathroom and sat in clouds of steam. The plopping of drips from the hot tap into the bath mingled with the clattering of pans from the kitchen below and Louisa covered her ears. She wanted quiet, but everywhere she went the noises seemed amplified, and even when there were no noises her mind was loud and full of screams and high-pitched thoughts.

  Lewis had asked Louisa two weeks and four days ago why she married him in the first place if she was so sure that he was going to leave her. She said she didn’t know, and that was true. She couldn’t make sense of any
thing anymore. She dipped her head under the steaming water, and stayed there until the bath was cold and her fingers were wrinkled and Mags came and got her.

  Now, Mags set out cheap cutlery on the table.

  ‘Noel, move your book. We’re eating at the table tonight.’

  Noel didn’t look up. It was the summer holidays, Louisa realised, and that’s why Noel was at home. She loved Noel with all her heart, but had barely noticed him today: he was always so silent.

  ‘So, Lou. Did Lewis say what his problem was before he deserted you?’ Mags said, noticing a bit of dried food on one of the knives and picking it off with her finger.

  ‘Oh, there were all sorts of problems. He felt like I was going to leave him, or go mad, or something. He said he was constantly frightened of me running off.’

  ‘So he ran off instead?’

  ‘I know,’ Louisa sighed. ‘It doesn’t make any sense, does it?’

  ‘He did really love you, Lou. He probably still does,’ Mags said as she placed the knife down and stood gazing at her friend.