In Her Shadow

by Douglas, Louise

  I flushed now. I had never demanded anything of Ellen. It was the other way around. And how could she tell her father those lies about me? How could she make him think that I was weak and helpless and that I had been dumped? Ellen continued not to look at me.

  ‘It’s not true,’ I said quietly enough for him to hear. His fingers tightened on my arm.

  ‘I think,’ said Mr Brecht, ‘my daughter has been using you, Hannah, as an alibi.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Ellen cried. ‘Shut up!’ She lifted up the hem of the dress and turned and ran from the garden, the soles of her bare feet flashing beneath the hem. Mr Brecht and I watched her go.

  Mr Brecht sighed. He moved away from me and scratched his head with both hands.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Ellen has been corrupted by her mother,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘She has learned the art of deceit and manipulation from an expert.’

  I gazed up at him. He smiled at me, then he took hold of my face in his hands and he leaned down and kissed the top of my head, very gently.

  ‘You’re a good friend to Ellen,’ he said.

  It was one of the best moments of my life.

  I didn’t see much of Ellen for a while after that, but I found out the truth soon enough. I was at work in the Seagull Hotel. From the top bedroom window, a duster in one hand and the handle of the vacuum cleaner in the other, I saw Ellen and Jago sitting, side by side, on the harbour wall, swinging their legs, their heads close together, looking into the water and laughing. As I watched, Jago leaned his head down towards Ellen’s and he kissed her; she kissed him back, and the kiss seemed to last for ever.

  Ellen’s father was right.

  She had been deceiving us both.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  AFTER I’D BATHED at my parents’ house, I dressed, went downstairs and ate a ‘proper’ cooked breakfast – the like of which I hadn’t enjoyed in a while – with my mother and father. Then, while they went to the morning service at Trethene church, I walked across the moors to the Catholic Church of Our Lady Star of the Sea.

  In all the years since her death, I had never been to Ellen’s grave. I wasn’t sure why not, but not going had been a choice, not an accident. I supposed I hadn’t wanted the memory of it in my mind. When I thought of Ellen, I didn’t want to think of a headstone, a graveyard. That morning, though, I thought it would be the right thing to do, for Ellen and for me. I hoped it might bring me some kind of closure. A grave would be irrefutable evidence that Ellen was dead. It might stop my mind creeping away on its wild flights of fancy that Ellen might still be alive. I hoped it would make her leave me alone.

  The church was far larger than the squat little seafarers’ church in Trethene. It was more than a mile from the village, standing on its own, at one of the highest points in the area, where it could be seen by those living all around. The graveyard was weatherworn, spread haphazardly inside the boundary wall. I stood just inside the gate, looking around me, pulling my jacket close. There were hundreds of graves. I supposed Ellen must have been buried with her mother.

  My legs felt weak as I stepped into the churchyard. I hadn’t been this close to Ellen in decades. I had a feeling she knew I was there, as if she were watching me from a hiding place somewhere in the leaves of the tree, or the mouth of one of the church gargoyles, a wraith in the tatters of that silvery-grey dress. It was ridiculous, of course. I put the thought from my mind but I couldn’t help the icy feeling at the back of my neck, the cold fingers creeping up my spine.

  It was the graveyard, I told myself. It was the preconceptions most of us have about death, a culmination of the books I’d read and the stories I’d heard about ghosts and retribution. I’d been conditioned to be afraid of the dead by superstitions and legends.

  I knew I should have visited Ellen’s grave before, not just for my sake, but hers too. With her father gone, and Jago in Canada, there had been nobody else. Now I’d finally made it to the church, I hadn’t even brought flowers. It had never crossed my mind to bring something for Ellen. What kind of friend was I? How could I be so thoughtless?

  I walked around the perimeter of the churchyard, negotiating, with some difficulty, the uneven ground, trying to remember where Mrs Brecht had been buried. The older, overgrown, untended graves were scattered amongst the newer ones with their posies and photographs and wreaths. Some of the headstones were so worn that it was difficult to make out any of the inscriptions. Sacred Heart of Jesus have mercy on my soul, I read. I trailed my fingers along the gritty edge of the tops of the headstones, tilted as if they had been windblown. I had walked all the way around to the back of the church when I saw the yew tree clearly for the first time. It was enormous, squat – more than a thousand years old. Its dark green branches spread out like arms sheltering the graves beneath, and I remembered then. I remembered standing beneath the branches of that tree at Mrs Brecht’s funeral, how some of the little poisonous berries had fallen and lay like dull rubies amongst the grass. I recalled the priest talking and how my toes were squeezed by the black shoes I’d grown out of but which my mother had insisted I wear for the occasion, and how I had wished I wasn’t wearing school uniform, how I’d felt too old for it, awkward, embarrassed. I remembered turning my head to look at Jago and how he had reassured me with his eyes. I remembered Adam Tremlett standing apart, the look on his face.

  I walked slowly forwards. The last time I saw the grave, it had been a hole in the ground. Now it was headed by a memorial stone, made of black granite fashioned into a curved, upward sweep on the top, that reminded me of a musical clef. A gold border followed the line of the stone, a few inches from the outer edge, and inside, beautifully and deeply engraved, were the words:

  Anne Isobel Brecht

  You were the music, while the music lasted.

  The words had been interwoven with a musical score in the background. I knew what it was, although I could not read music. It was the Raindrop Prelude. I could hear the notes in my mind as I looked at the gravestone.

  Beneath that inscription were three blunt words cut more crudely, as if their commission had been a necessary but unwelcome afterthought.

  Also Ellen Louisa Brecht.

  The grass that covered the grave was overgrown, but somebody had tidied the area by the headstone and a bunch of wildflowers had been placed in a jar beside it. I crouched down and picked up the jar. It was half-full of water. Whoever had left the flowers must have been there recently. I stood again and then I saw the glass – and my blood ran cold.

  The drift-glass that I had collected as a girl and hidden in the rocky crack at Bleached Scarp had been placed on top of the headstone.

  It was my drift-glass, I was sure of it. There were about thirty tiny pieces, the sharp edges softened by the rub of the waves and the sand, until they were like curiously shaped gemstones; all about the same size, all milky shades of green, clear, brown, and one single piece, about an inch in size, that was blue.

  I picked up the blue piece and held it in my hands, turning it over, feeling its smoothness between my palms. It was the same temperature as my skin and as familiar as my heartbeat.

  Only three people had known where the glass was hidden. One of us was, supposedly, buried in this grave, one was on the other side of the world, and I hadn’t moved it.

  Clouds blew across the face of the sun.

  I put the blue glass in my pocket and turned and then I ran out of the graveyard. I didn’t look back to see if anyone was watching and I didn’t stop running until I was back inside my parents’ cottage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  AFTER I SAW Ellen kissing Jago on the harbour wall, I made even more of an effort to avoid her, at the same time ignoring Jago as best I could. I thought they wouldn’t last long – not without me. I was the one who had brought them together, I was the link between them. I knew them both, individually, better than anyone else.

  Mr Brecht was right – they had betrayed me, and they continued to
do so. They had both lied to me and used me. If they had confided in me, if they had been honest, perhaps I would have felt differently, but they had not. It did not take much effort to convert my hurt into anger, anger that I suppressed, but which simmered inside me.

  Now I knew what to look for, their deceptions were obvious. Jago was nineteen, he came and went as he pleased, but I knew when he was lying. He got home from work late, he said he was going up to the farm when I’d already seen the Williams twins driving away from it, and he was often ‘running errands’ for Bill.

  When he was home, he spent more time in his room, on his own, and less with me. He had used to enjoy my company, but now he seemed to find me tiresome. He could no longer be bothered with me.

  It must have been much harder for Ellen, who was only sixteen and whose father was clever and alert and watching. He did not know who she was seeing, of course, not then. He cannot even have been certain that his suspicions were correct, although I believe he trusted his instincts. Now she could no longer use me as an alibi, Ellen used her work, although Mr Brecht had taken to following her into Polrack and sitting in his car, watching the kiosk where she sold ice cream, trying to catch her out. We were all playing the game. From the hotel, I watched Mr Brecht watching Ellen, and I saw how Jago would walk past the kiosk – sometimes he went past a dozen times – waiting for a signal that it was safe to go in. Knowing I was the only one who knew everything was a seductive kind of power.

  I saw Jago and Ellen sitting together in the harbour. I saw them kissing down one of the town’s tiny alleyways, Jago pressed against Ellen and her arms tight around his neck. I noticed how buoyant Jago was, how happy and handsome, and jealousy ate into me. It made me sour and sullen. It made me lonely. I watched even though the watching hurt me. At the same time, when one or other of them lied to me, or I glimpsed them together without me, I had a surge of pleasure that my anger with Ellen had been justified. Now I knew how Mr Brecht felt. Now I knew why he was sometimes cruel: it was because Ellen was a manipulative liar. She didn’t care about either of us, Mr Brecht or me. All she cared about was herself.

  Ellen tried to wheedle her way back into my affections, but although I did not snub her directly, I would not sit beside her on the bus, and I took circuitous routes to avoid having to pass Thornfield House. If she came to call for me, at Cross Hands Lane or at the hotel, I made excuses or got other people to make them for me. I never gave Ellen the chance to talk to me alone. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I was not ready to forgive her.

  Then one day, Jago came into my bedroom and suggested we go back to Bleached Scarp, the three of us, as we used to in the old days.

  We hadn’t been to the beach at all that summer, and angry as I was with Ellen and Jago, I missed the times we used to spend there together. Something inside me, some longing for the past combined with a desire for Jago to pay some attention to me, made me agree to go.

  When I saw Ellen on the Polrack bus the next morning, I sat in the seat beside her. She smiled but looked a little wary. I told her Jago had spoken to me about going to Bleached Scarp, and asked how she would manage to get away from her father for the whole day.

  She smiled. ‘He’s going to London to meet some people from the music industry. They’re taking him out to dinner and putting him up in a hotel. He’s looking forward to it. I think he wants to sleep with one of the women.’

  I had to bite my lip so as not to protest at this. Mr Brecht was not the sort of man to go and sleep with someone just because he could! Trust Ellen to think up such a nasty lie.

  She smiled and touched my forearm with her hand.

  ‘It’ll be lovely to have a day together, Han,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  I managed to smile back. ‘I’ve missed you too,’ I said.

  When the day came, a taxi picked Mr Brecht up very early; the morning light was still damp and yellow. Ellen told us how she waved goodbye at the door, pretending she was sleepy although her heart was beating like a drum. Mrs Todd had laid out her breakfast in the dining room and sat by the window, knitting, while Ellen ate her croissant and jam and drank her coffee. She was careful to behave exactly as if she was going to work, but she was wearing her swimsuit beneath her clothes. She left the house at ten past eight, as though she were going to catch the usual bus into Polrack. Instead, as soon as she was over the brow of the hill and out of sight of every window in Thornfield House, she ran down the lane to our house, where Jago and I were waiting.

  I saw the smiles they exchanged, but they did not touch one another, not in front of me. I almost pitied them for not realizing how obvious they were but I wanted to forget about the truth, that day. I wanted us to be back to how we used to be, when everything was easy and everything was fun. I wanted to feel happy again. I wanted the sour anger inside me to go away.

  I rode my bike up the hill and along the lanes to the beach, and Ellen sat on the back of Jago’s. We left the bikes hidden behind an old caravan in the Kynance Cove car park and walked back to the spot where we climbed over the fence and went down to the beach. The sea was calm that day, so calm that we could see the fish deep in the blue-green water, the seaweed waving like hair, the crabs scuttling along the seabed. Waves splished softly at the foot of the cliff. Ellen was half-crazy, thrilled to be back at the beach. She climbed the rockface as deftly as she used to, and jumped into the water with a loud scream of joy, making a great splash. She resurfaced laughing, shaking her head, calling Jago to come on in, and then she dived beneath the water again, just her narrow ankles and her feet breaking into the air. Jago ran in after her and they played together like children.

  They had forgotten me already.

  And then: ‘Come on, Spanner!’ Jago called, water falling sparkling from his arm as he waved. ‘It’s not cold at all.’

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘Please, Han, please come and play!’

  ‘Yes, come on, Hannah,’ Ellen begged. ‘It’s spoiling our fun, seeing you sitting there on the beach like a sad old woman.’

  And then they both set to chanting, ‘Hannah! Hannah! Hannah!’ and clapping their hands in time to the chant.

  It felt good to hear them both calling me like that.

  It was enchanting to have both of them focusing all their attention on me.

  I took off my sweatshirt and shorts and left them on the rocks. I walked into the sea a few steps at a time, hobbling on the shells and pebbles, letting my body get used to the water’s chill inch by inch, squealing as it touched the sensitive skin of my belly. When I was too far in to retreat quickly, Jago chased after me, splashing, and pushing me down into the water. I screamed abuse at him, but I loved being teased by him and I gloried in his attention. I fought him back more roughly than I normally would, and for a while we tussled in the sea and I felt exhilarated and free and alive. Ellen held back. She let me have my time with Jago. We spent the whole day going in and out of the sea, warming up on the beach, and then cooling off in the water. In between, we drank the cider Jago had brought from the flagon and lay on our backs and laughed. Ellen stretched out, with her arms above her head, regardless of the sand in her wet hair, and she laughed up at the sky. Jago leaned on one elbow, watching her. He laughed too. He was a little drunk.

  ‘You crazy, beautiful girl,’ he said. This made Ellen laugh even more and then she stopped laughing because he forgot himself and leaned down and kissed her. She pushed him away but she knew I had seen. Jago rolled over, wiped his lips, looked at me.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said with a shrug. ‘I know about you two. I’ve seen you kissing before.’

  Ellen and Jago glanced at one another. This intimacy hurt me again. Tears of self-pity rose in my eyes.

  Ellen reached out and touched my arm. ‘Do you mind?’ she asked.

  ‘Will it change anything if I do?’

  ‘Hannah, we never meant to …’ Jago put his hand on my shoulder. A teardrop fell from my cheek onto the back of his fingers.

&nb
sp; ‘We were going to tell you,’ Ellen said. ‘We just didn’t want you to have to go round telling lies for us. To my father.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, of course I don’t mind,’ I said, trying to sound as if I meant it. I didn’t want to hear their apologies or their excuses. I didn’t want to know the details. Most of all, I did not want them to pity me. I shrugged off Jago’s hand, sat up and wiped my face with my T-shirt.

  There was a silence. Ellen funnelled sand through her fingers and I could feel Jago’s discomfort. I wasn’t going to help them out by saying something kind.

  ‘You won’t tell anyone?’ Jago asked. ‘You won’t say anything to Mum and Dad or Ellen’s …’

  ‘Of course I won’t,’ I said. ‘What do you think I am?’

  ‘I think you’re a spanner,’ Jago said. He grinned at me. I tried not to smile but I couldn’t help myself. I pushed him and he pushed me back.

  ‘Loser!’ he said. ‘Sadact!’

  ‘Shut up, Cardell, or I’ll have you!’

  ‘I’d like to see you try!’

  And after that I jumped on Jago and tried to fill his shirt with sand and Ellen joined in and we wrestled and tumbled and messed around just like we used to. They tried to make it up to me. For the rest of that day, I was the centre of Ellen and Jago’s attention. They showed their gratitude for my loyalty by giving me all the affection I could have wanted. Ellen backed away from Jago and he played with me, and between them, they made me feel happy again.

  But time ran on. The morning turned into afternoon, the sun moved across the sky, half of the beach was shadowed and the air cooled. The batteries on the tinny little radio ran flat and I started to worry about Ellen’s wet hair. I held hanks of it in my hand, trying to wring out the water, but I knew it would take ages to dry.

  ‘How will you explain it to Mrs Todd?’ I asked.