‘It’s typical Lucy, though, isn’t it?’ says Margot, clearly trying to ease the mood. ‘Romantic … impulsive … doing everything at breakneck speed.’
Kit steals another glance at Margot. She does remember. She remembers so much. She remembers how Lucy, aged four, and Eve, aged seven had doted on Margot as a newborn baby. She remembers how they had lain beside Margot’s Moses basket in the long grass in the garden, shaking rattles and fetching blankets, enamoured with the new arrival. She remembers how Margot had tottered behind Lucy and Eve, following them about the house and garden, a little shadow. How she would curl up on her father’s lap at bedtime, a thumb jammed in her mouth, as Ted read a favourite book. She remembers nights when she would sit on Margot’s bed and scratch her daughter’s back, Margot purring like a cat as she made up fantastical stories to send her to sleep. She remembers how Margot would demand their presence in the living room, force them all to sit in a neat row on the sofa as she threw back the curtains of the bay window with a theatrical flourish and performed made-up songs and plays. So too does she remember the summer Margot left, just sixteen years old when she had appeared in the kitchen with a bulging rucksack and a resigned look on her face. I can’t live here any more. Five words, spoken in a flat monotone and Kit had nodded. ‘I think that’s for the best,’ she had agreed, before turning away, not because she didn’t care, but because she didn’t want Margot to see how much she did. Eight years had passed since then and they have barely spoken since that day.
Remembering, Kit is overcome by a sudden urge to walk across and seize Margot – to pull her into her arms and wrap her in an embrace. But Margot’s face is guarded and Kit doesn’t think she would welcome her touch. She turns back to the hob, stirring the simmering pan. At least Margot seems to be trying, pretending that they can be normal. She will too. ‘It is typical Lucy,’ she agrees. ‘When she asked if she could hold the reception here, I was surprised, but of course happy to agree.’
Margot nods, the blade in her hand still singing across the chopping board, the basil leaves falling into thin green shreds.
‘Besides, it’s good to have something to focus on. Something other than my work.’
The sound of the knife moving on the board falls silent behind her. She turns to find Margot staring at her, the steel blade lit like a flame in the light falling from the pendant above the table. ‘You’re writing again?’ Margot asks, her eyes narrowed, a tight note in her voice.
Kit thinks of the screwed-up pieces of paper strewn around the floor of her upstairs office, the near-blank, untitled document sitting on her machine. ‘No. I was thinking of writing a prequel to the Rare Elements series but my publishers would rather I finish the Tora Ravenstone story first.’
Out of the corner of her eye she sees Margot lift her wine glass and take a long sip. She gives a tight laugh. ‘Judging by the royalties I receive, the readers’ appetite for her hasn’t waned. I should be grateful. Though some days, it feels as though I’m shackled to a monster.’ Kit reaches for her own wine and takes a sip, trying to quench the stirrings of heat tickling her belly. They both know they are on shaky ground. As Kit places her glass back on the worktop, the words burst unchecked from her mouth. ‘If I’m honest, I’ve found it impossible to immerse myself in my work ever since … well … it was devastating.’
She waits, her heart beating fast, the blood pumping through her veins. This is the closest they have come in years to confronting what happened and she is unsure what Margot’s response will be. She wants … yes, what she wants is an apology. ‘What was lost,’ she adds, frustrated by Margot’s continuing silence, unable to avoid another pointed dig, desperate to generate some kind of reaction, ‘was irreplaceable.’
Margot’s eyes harden to flint, the tension evident in the set of her jaw. Her brown eyes – so like her father’s – hold a visible flicker of anger, the sight of which pushes Kit straight onto the thin ice spread so delicately between them. Well, good. It’s about bloody time she provoked some kind of reaction in her. ‘Don’t you have anything to say to me?’
‘Mum,’ Margot says, the word a low warning. ‘Not tonight. Please let’s have one night, shall we, where we let the past lie?’
‘Let it lie?’ She could laugh. She has let it lie for eight years. ‘All I ever wanted from you was an apology,’ she says, pleased at her calm, conciliatory tone. She is not being unreasonable.
‘An apology? I haven’t even been back one night and you want to dredge up—’
‘Yes. I want to dredge it up,’ she interrupts, the anger flaring again. The urge to pick at past wounds is rising up, a terrible itch that will only be sated by sharp words. She has felt it simmering for so long. Her pain – her frustration – needs release. She needs Margot to take r esponsibility, or at least to try to explain the in explicable. ‘What you did was so … destructive, Margot. I need you to see that. I need you to understand what was lost. Would it be so hard to say sorry, after all this time?’
Margot takes a deep breath. She looks down at the blade in her hand before carefully laying the knife on the board next to the basil. ‘You want to talk about what was lost?’
Kit nods but Margot lets out a bitter laugh. ‘How about we talk about what I was going through, Mum? How about you think about what it was I lost?’
Kit stares at Margot, baffled. She opens her mouth to answer but Margot isn’t finished. ‘But that’s not a story you’ve ever been interested in. You were always so wrapped up in your own life, your work, your bloody success!’ She spits the last word at her like a curse.
Kit rears back. ‘My success? You think that’s what was important to me? It was never about the success. It was only ever about the writing. The story. Though of course it was the success,’ she adds, speaking the word as if it pains her, ‘that paid our bills, that kept you all in school shoes and put a roof over our heads.’
Two red spots flare on Margot’s cheeks. ‘But you never saw how it affected us. You were so absent … you didn’t see what any of us needed, what I needed.’ Margot reaches for her wine and drains the glass, slamming it back onto the table.
Kit winces. ‘Absent? Me? Oh, darling,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I may not have been the best parent, but it was your father who left.’ Her voice has risen in pitch. ‘It was your father who ran off with that woman.’ She knows her words are hitting the mark. She knows she is hurting her, but she needs Margot to see that she is not the bad person in this. Not the only one. ‘I was here. I was always bloody here.’ Kit draws up short, breathing hard, aware how loud her voice is, how tightly she clenches the wooden spoon in her fist.
‘Why do you think he left?’ asks Margot quietly. ‘You ignored him, the way you ignored all of us. Of course he ran into the arms of the first woman who showed him a bit of interest. You were more interested in living in your imaginary world with your silly heroine, than with any of us.’
‘Is that why you did it?’ Kit asks softly. ‘As a punishment? You blamed me for your father leaving us?’
Margot’s face flushes a deeper red. ‘You will never understand because you never paid attention to anything except your work. We might as well have lived in a different house. You don’t remember the forgotten picnics, the missed sports days? The school play?’
Kit stares at Margot in disbelief. ‘This is about me missing a sports day? Not coming to see you in a school play?’ The sharp laugh bursts out of her throat. She sees Margot lower her head. ‘You punished me for a few missed moments on a calendar? Oh, Margot. Grow up. I’m sorry your father and I split up. Believe me, no one is sorrier about that than me. But you are not the only teenager to ever live through their parents’ separation.’
‘I know that,’ says Margot. She sits slumped on her chair, face to the ground. ‘It’s not that … you never … when I tried to talk … you …’ She waves her hand in a dismissive gesture, looking thoroughly miserable.
Kit watches in surprise as Margot bites down on her lip. A s
ingle tear slides down her daughter’s cheek before she buries her face in her hands, as if she cannot bear to let her mother see her emotion. Kit eyes the tattoo curling up her daughter’s arm and sees what she hadn’t noticed at first glance: a small black heart nestled amid the vines in the crook of her arm. A black heart. How apt.
When I tried to talk … Kit frowns. It is hard now to remember a time when Margot had ever wanted to talk to her. But she can remember that year, that awful time when Ted had packed his belongings and left Windfalls for good. Yes, she hadn’t dealt with it in the best way, throwing herself into her writing, focusing all her energy on the final Tora Ravenstone book that her publishers were pressing for. But Margot wanting to talk, she cannot remember.
That year, it had seemed as if their normal, loving girl – yes, a little more dramatic perhaps than Eve or Lucy, a little more rambunctious and unruly, but always sunny – had transformed overnight into a classic, reclusive teenager. She remembers the curtain of dark hair falling across her face, the way she had slunk about the house like a silent shadow, the headphones permanently jammed over her ears. She remembers knocking at bedtime, hearing Margot’s muttered ‘goodnight’ from behind her locked bedroom door. She was a girl who hadn’t wanted to be disturbed – touched – seen. She had put the barriers up, not Kit.
The change in Margot had come around the same time Ted had left – the awkwardness of those hormonal teenage years clashing with the disruption of Ted’s departure. There could never be a right time for a father to desert his family, but perhaps for Margot it had been particularly bad timing. Though whenever Kit had tried to raise their separation with her, Margot had always clammed up. It was unfair of Margot to suggest otherwise. Besides, parents split up all the time. Of course it was hard – hard on all of them – and perhaps, yes, hardest on Margot who had been fifteen and the last of their three daughters still living at home, but it was no excuse. There was no excuse for what Margot had done.
Behind her comes the sound of the pan boiling over on the hob. Kit turns to adjust the gas flame, mopping at the spilled water. ‘Well, I’m sorry I was such a terrible mother,’ she says after a moment, turning back to Margot. ‘I’m sorry I was such a let-down to you. I’m sorry I missed a couple of school events and ruined your entire life.’
Margot stands so quickly her chair screeches on the flagstones. ‘You can spin this story any way you like, Mum, but the truth is you were too blinkered to see what was happening right in front of you.’
Kit can’t help a sad smile. ‘I wasn’t blinkered, darling. It’s called multi-perspectivity. Same events. Different viewpoints.’
Margot eyes her coldly. ‘Save me the fancy literary tropes. It doesn’t change anything.’
‘No. You’re right,’ agrees Kit. ‘It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t bring back what you destroyed.’
Margot stares at her for a long moment. The breath seems to have been knocked out of her, a spectrum of emotion washing over her face – disbelief, anger then sorrow. ‘I’m sorry,’ Margot says at last. ‘OK? I’m sorry about everything.’
Watching Margot, Kit feels something collapse inside of her, a sandcastle destroyed by a wave. She fights the urge to reach for her, unsure if she did how Margot would react. ‘Talk to me,’ she says, more gently. ‘Tell me, Margot. Why did you do it? Help me understand why you wanted to hurt me.’
‘I … I …’ Margot wrestles with the words. She closes her eyes. ‘I didn’t … I can’t …’
Kit feels a physical pain, watching her youngest child’s struggle. She wills her to carry on but Margot takes a deep breath and when she opens her eyes, Kit sees that her face has re-formed into a tight mask.
‘It’s hardly an apology,’ she tries, pushing her, ‘if you can’t explain why you did it.’
Margot shrugs and turns her face to the floor, a defeated, stubborn stance that propels a memory of her daughter’s sixteen-year-old self straight back to Kit. What is it? she wants to scream. What happened to make you like this? But instead, she just sighs. ‘Fine. Have it your way. We have to navigate the next few days in the same house. All I ask is that you don’t ruin this for your sister.’
Margot nods. ‘I already said, I’m here for Lucy. I’ll be leaving again and out of your way before you know it.’ She looks down at the pile of herbs on the board in front of her. ‘I think I’ll pass on dinner,’ she says quietly. ‘I’ve lost my appetite.’
Kit doesn’t try to stop her leaving. She waits until she can hear Margot’s footsteps on the upstairs landing before reaching for the bottle of Chardonnay and refilling her glass. At the sound of the bedroom door slamming, she takes a long sip, then stirs the pasta, hooking out a strand of tagliatelle and testing it between her teeth. She drains the pan and stirs in butter and the herbs that Margot has chopped, a few toasted pine nuts and a sprinkling of parmesan, before serving herself a bowl and carrying it to the table.
She sits and stares down at the pasta. Silence settles around her. Her heart begins to slow in her chest. This is exactly what she’d been worried about: Margot returning and bringing her dark moods with her. She’d hoped time might have softened her angry, unfathomable daughter, but Margot has returned in full ‘Margot’ mode, simmering and resentful. Kit is frustrated to feel so affected. It’s still painful to remember the devastation Margot had inflicted. It is maddening to be no closer to understanding what happened. What comfort does an apology bring when it is forced and unexplained?
After a few mouthfuls, Kit finds that she too has lost her appetite. She pushes the dish away before scraping the remains into the rubbish bin and washing up at the sink. One pan. One wooden spoon. One bowl. Her solitary existence marked in the single items passing through her hands. The cat appears in the kitchen, mewing plaintively as he winds himself hopefully around her legs. She throws a handful of biscuits into a bowl and strokes him behind his ragged ears as he crunches slowly.
It hasn’t always been this way, of course. She remembers the years at Windfalls when the girls were younger. When she and Ted were still together – days passing in the interminable juggle of family life, distracting and dysfunctional – it somehow always felt as if there were never enough time for her and her thoughts. And those distant days before the girls, of course, when it had been her and Ted playing house, stumbling happily and obliviously through the early days of their relationship, navigating their way around the rambling farmhouse, Ted working on his plays and Kit full of excitement for the future ahead of them.
How strange, she thinks, that it should be her living alone at Windfalls, her struggling with her work at the desk in the turret room, her standing at the kitchen window gazing out upon the apple trees in the dusk-lit orchard where in a few days’ time they will celebrate Lucy’s wedding.
Lucy. Getting married. She lets this thought expand in her mind, testing how it feels. When Lucy had told her about her sudden plan, Kit had murmured reassurances that of course they could hold the reception at Windfalls and yes, everyone would come – yes, perhaps even Margot. She’d agreed that everything would be fine. Only now does she wonder if she’s embraced the reality of it. That sweet, fair-haired baby, that boisterous toddler who would sit in the high chair and bang her spoon on the tray burbling cheery nonsense at them all at the top of her voice, the leggy girl with the tangled hair cartwheeling and handstanding her way around the garden, the laid-back teenager who struggled with her exams and academics but given a netball or a hockey stick could put anyone else to shame, the girl who had become a woman, travelled the world and set up her own business – that girl was now grown up and getting married. The transformation stuns her, as if someone has accidentally pressed a fast-forward button on her life.
So much has changed: all three of their girls now adults, Eve a mother, Lucy getting married and Margot doing God knows what in her self-imposed exile. Standing at the kitchen window, she is struck by another of time’s vagaries: how strange, to stand here, a woman in her fifties, the wr
ong side of the menopause, as her present self merges and intersects with the memory of a younger self, standing right here, in the same spot, gazing out upon the same view as Ted and an impatient estate agent hovered at her shoulder. Her two different selves connect; time concertinas, two points meeting each other like the folded corners of a piece of paper. She closes her eyes. This is the place, she’d told him. I can feel it.
The memory of the words brings Ted’s arms circling her waist, his breath warm on her neck. She focuses on the remembered sensation of Ted, pressed against her back, him holding her, and both of them holding the shared future they dreamed of. How delicate it had been. How fragile. Oh Ted, she thinks, this was supposed to be the place.
She opens her eyes. In the falling dusk, her solitary reflection stares back at her from the darkening window pane. She turns and leaves the kitchen and makes her way up the creaking stairs to her bedroom. A light shines from under the gap of Margot’s bedroom door. She hovers for a moment, feeling an ache of regret, wondering whether to knock. There is movement behind the door, footsteps, then the fast unzippering of luggage. Several heavy items – books, perhaps, are dropped onto the floor. More shuffling, then the creaking of bedsprings. Kit thinks of all that remains unsaid between them – all the words that have been lost – and with a sigh she turns and moves down the corridor towards her own room.
As she shrugs off her nightdress she notices the spindly grey cellar spider that has taken up residence in the far corner. Every day this week she has watched her weave her web, stringing silver threads into intricate, spiralling patterns. Eve, ever industrious and always neat, would have swept it away by now, shooed it out the window with a towel or broom, but Kit has found a certain comfort in watching the creature’s progress. She likes to see her quiet, controlled work, the circular web growing in size. It gives her a modicum of hope for her own stalled work. The slow but steady process she had once practised of laying words down, one after the other, threading them into their own distinct patterns.
The River Home : A Novel (2020) Page 4