The River Home : A Novel (2020)

by Richell, Hannah

  Kit trudged on, following the river, the shadows lengthening around her as her mind began to empty. When she turned, she saw the sun dipping lower over the hills. She should probably head back, though the thought left her heavy and defeated. At the slowing of her movement, Eve’s protests escalated.

  Kit looked around and saw a flat ledge jutting from the riverbank. Untying the sling, she perched on the rock and unbuttoned her shirt, offering her breast to the baby again. This time, Eve latched hungrily, the tears drying on her cheeks as she fed. Kit looked down at the little creature suckling and felt her own tears begin to fall again.

  She had heard of postnatal depression, but truly had no idea that having a baby would compress her life and steal her breath and make her feel so utterly claustrophobic that most days she felt like a drowning woman. She looked down at the face of her daughter. It is too much, she thought. The weight of this is too much.

  All around, the shadows seemed to creep closer, as if drawn by her darkest thoughts. What had she sacrificed for this baby? She didn’t recognise herself, or her relationship with Ted, now so different. The way he touched her, no longer the desire of a passionate lover but more careful and cautious. She looked down at the baby in her arms and narrowed her eyes. ‘It’s all your fault, you little beggar.’

  Wrapping the baby, now sated and quiet, tightly in the blanket, she lay Eve down on the flat rock and, with her heart thumping in her chest, took a step back. She tried to see the baby as a stranger might, one small fist breaking free of the knitted blanket, flailing in the air. Her small, round face stretched with a yawn. She let out a cry.

  Kit took another step backwards, then another, putting several metres between her and the baby. The invisible thread between them stretched gossamer thin. An ache rose up in her chest. Could she do it? Could she leave her daughter here on this slab of stone? Could she offer her up to something else? A different life, or perhaps even death? Would it be for the best? Kit closed her eyes, listening to the pounding of the blood pumping through her veins.

  On the walk back to Windfalls, she fixed on the tread of her footsteps on the towpath, though something began to niggle at her, like a small stone in her shoe. So used to the fog of her brain and the cotton-wool numbness she had existed in all these postnatal weeks, she pushed it away. But there it was, returning, pressing insistently. Kit allowed her mind a moment to focus and felt something unfurl.

  The baby.

  The rock.

  A sacrifice.

  Walking beside the river, she allowed her mind to follow its meandering trail and by the time she had arrived at the turning from the river path to the house, she was walking a little faster, a little more purposefully. She hesitated at the entrance to the apple store. The trees beyond, heavy now with summer fruit, showed her the way back to the house but turning away from them, she opened the door and closed it behind her with a gentle click.

  Holding her breath, she unwrapped a now sleeping Eve from the sling and carefully lowered her onto a nest of blankets on the floor. Please, please, please, she willed. Eve gave a small cry. Kit froze, then let out a long breath as the baby fell quiet. ‘Sleep on, little one,’ she breathed.

  She lit the old oil lamp Ted had hung on a nail for her, then moved to the table where the typewriter and that blank piece of paper lay waiting. She glanced back once at Eve and then, with her hands resting lightly on the keys and the faintest thrill of anticipation caught in her throat, she began to type.

  WEDNESDAY

  7

  Lucy wakes to the sound of rain. Her body is drenched in sweat and her mind filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. She lies still, blinking in the dark, racing to catch up to the truth her body already seems to know. After a second or two it comes to her: the last-minute wedding, Margot back at Windfalls, all the high emotion of the next few days to navigate. A wave of nausea hits. She sighs and reaches out for Tom, who murmurs in his sleep and rolls towards her, one arm pulling her closer, not yet ready to wake.

  She doesn’t want to disturb him, but nor does she want to lie there fighting the panic and discomfort. She reaches for her phone and starts to mindlessly scroll through her social-media feeds, cycling through glossy photos and upbeat posts from friends and strangers, all living their shiny, happy lives. She knows it’s unhealthy to torture herself with the false images of others’ imperfect realities, but she cannot look away.

  Her gaze fixes on a striking image. One of her instructors at the yoga studio has posted a photo of herself in an impressive standing splits pose with the words ‘Live your truth’ scrawled in cartoonish neon letters along the perfectly straight line of her leg. The instructor is a new hire but her dynamic classes are already proving popular with their clients. Lucy reposts the image onto the studio’s Instagram feed and moments later her phone starts to buzz with notifications.

  Tom stirs. ‘All right?’ he murmurs, turning to her. ‘You’re awake early.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nestles into him, resting her head on his warm chest. His heart thumps a slow, steady beat beneath her ear. Lucy listens for a while, trying to match her breathing to his.

  ‘Sorry I got in so late. Just a little more overtime though, and I can be off with you all next week. How was it at your mum’s?’

  ‘Margot’s back,’ she says, a small smile on her lips. ‘Told you I’d get her home.’

  Tom squeezes her shoulder. ‘I’m glad. How was your mum?’

  ‘Tense. I left them to it. Hopefully they talked it out.’

  ‘You do know it’s not your responsibility to single-handedly fix your family, don’t you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You can’t change other people. You’ll only waste your energy trying. I don’t want you putting that pressure on yourself.’ He nuzzles into the crook of her neck. ‘You have enough on your plate.’

  ‘I know. But I think the next few days could be good for them – good for all of us.’

  A lone motorbike screams down the street outside the flat, the sound of tyres splashing over wet tarmac and the engine noise fading away. ‘How are you feeling this morning?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine?’ He leans away and eyes her with suspicion.

  ‘Tired,’ she admits. ‘A little nauseous.’

  ‘You need to take extra care of yourself this week. Don’t go taking on everyone else’s problems and exhausting yourself. Promise me.’

  ‘I’ve got all next week to put my feet up.’

  Tom sighs. ‘I’m going to make sure you do nothing next week except look after yourself.’

  ‘You’re such a mother hen.’

  ‘Isn’t that why you love me? For my formidable fussing?’

  ‘Yes.’ She reaches up and strokes one of Tom’s earlobes. ‘Because you are a wonderful fusser, and because you have the most perfectly shaped ears.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Has no one ever told you that?’

  ‘Funnily enough, no.’ Tom pulls her close, his breath warm on her skin. He kisses her where her shoulder meets her neck. ‘Are you sure you want to tell them at the dinner? Why not wait until after the wedding?’

  She sighs. ‘I’m sure.’ She stares into the darkness. ‘I want to tell them all together.’

  Tom squeezes her gently. ‘OK.’

  ‘Go back to sleep. It’s early.’

  Lucy knows she won’t sleep again, but she rolls away from him to lie on her side, one hand resting lightly on her stomach. The yellow light of the street lamp outside the first-floor terrace flat falls in a triangle onto the duvet. Three days until the wedding. Three days until she marries the wonderful, uncomplicated man lying gently snoring beside her. Grounded. That was how her dad had described Tom after their first meeting. It was a good word for him. He was grounded – solid, and down to earth. They’d met in a rave tent at Glastonbury two years ago and she’d known from Eve’s eye-rolling and her mother’s muted response when she had first told them about her new boyfriend that they
were all expecting yet another flaky stoner Trustafarian. But Tom, with his warm smile, his steady, optimistic outlook and his good nature had won them all over. Even Margot, back for their father’s sixtieth, had found a moment to whisper in her ear, ‘He’s a good one, Lucy.’

  Lying in the darkness, her thoughts loop back to the previous night. She hopes her mother and Margot managed to get through their dinner unscathed. Perhaps they even found a little common ground to stand upon. She knows she needs to reach out to Eve too, after their disagreement. She’ll get up soon and head to the studio. There are new memberships to process and next month’s timetable needs updating. She is hoping to contact a local artist about painting a mandala on the studio wall and there is a delayed order of new yoga mats to chase up. All jobs to get done before Saturday and their time together next week.

  Life is moving so fast. It’s as if a fat clock hangs over her head ticking relentlessly, everything rushing forward in a way that makes her heart leap. She wants to slow everything down, put the world on pause. Not yet … not yet.

  Live your truth. The garish neon words come back to her, as if scratched across her eyelids, and she feels a pang of guilt. She knows she is right to tell them all together. One hit, face to face.

  She sweeps thoughts of the weekend ahead from her mind and tries to focus instead on the rise and fall of her breath, concentrating on the techniques she has used in her many yoga classes, teaching stressed-out professionals and too-busy parents how to relax, how to breathe. Funny, she thinks, how something so natural – so instinctive – should sometimes feel so hard to do. If she were to let it, she knows fear could steal in through the open bedroom window and wrap itself around her. But she won’t let that happen. Not with Tom lying there beside her. She won’t think about the wedding, nor the fractures in her family still to be healed, nor the news she has to share. Not now. Right now, all she has to do is breathe.

  8

  Margot is lying in bed, tearing strips of paper from the wall beside her. Something about the sight of the sun-faded flowers from her childhood – poppies and tangled roses – makes her skin itch. How many mornings has she woken in this bed, her eyes opening to the sight of this wallpaper? There is something so achingly familiar about the sag of the mattress beneath her and the sight of these flowers that for one strange moment, Margot no longer feels like a grown woman. She is a teenager again. That strange, hollow girl.

  Her fingers trace a petal and her nail snags of the seam where two sheets of paper meet. She lifts it, then tugs harder, watching as another triangular strip comes away from the wall in a single, satisfying shred. It curls in her fingers like apple peel. She studies its twisting form before dropping it down the side of the bed to join the other pieces she has already discarded. When she leans back, she is amazed to see a blank patch of wall, a scar about the size of her face staring back at her.

  What is it about a homecoming that can strip a person of all that they have become? What is it about the return that propels someone instantaneously back to the shades of who they once were? As if the act of walking through the door of her childhood home is an act of regression? She tests herself. Yes, it’s still there, buried deep, hidden beneath the layers of herself, but still present, simmering at the nub of herself. Pain. Shame. An unpleasant ache that throbs through her being. It is infuriating to be so undone by a place.

  Unable to lie there a moment longer, she slides from the bed and dresses quickly. As she pulls a T-shirt from her bag, she catches sight of the bottle of vodka lying among her clothes. She rewraps it tightly in a sweater before sliding the whole bag under her bed. She’s promised herself she won’t touch it. Emergencies only. Glancing back at the wall, she arranges a couple of pillows to cover the ugly scar over the bed, then leaves the room.

  The house is quiet. In the kitchen, she feeds Pinter, the old cat coiling himself hopefully around her legs, then makes coffee and sits drinking it on the back doorstep. She had heard Kit’s creaking footsteps on the stairs leading up to the turret room late last night. She knows from experience that her mother won’t stir for a while yet. Kit has always seemed to keep different hours to the rest of them. When she’d been writing one of her novels, Margot had thought it like living with a family member in a perpetually different time zone. She used to resent the fact her mother was so absent. This morning she is grateful for the solitude.

  The garden outside is damp and expectant. The early morning rain has stopped and an extraordinary sea of spiders’ webs lie strung across the grass as far as she can see, silver nets catching the dew, suspended over the green. A little further away, in the orchard beyond, she hears the dull thud of an apple release from its branch and fall to the ground. She wonders how long it will take for the rot to claim it. A familiar scent drifts towards her, the damp river rising up from the valley and with it an image surfaces unbidden: green water, dark mud, ragged fingernails. Margot swallows and lowers her face to her cup, replacing the fragrance and the image with the bitter scent of coffee.

  Last night was the first time she had been alone with her mother in several years. Lucy’s clumsy ploy had worked. Certainly, Margot had been prepared to try. She had wanted it to feel normal – had wanted sitting at the table, helping her mother prepare supper, to feel like something that could happen on any other night. Wine. Dinner. Conversation. A mother and daughter catching up after a period of absence. What could be more ordinary?

  Would it have been so hard for her mother to draw a line under everything that had gone before, if not for her, then for Lucy? She was here, after all. That said something, surely? No, it had been Kit who had raised the spectre of the past. Not raised it but hurled it, flaming and explosive, right at her. All her past wrongs wrapped up in a neat Molotov cocktail of words, emotion and underlying recrimination, and Margot, sitting at the kitchen table, the blood pumping in her veins, had wondered, for a moment, if she had heard her right. Yes. She was doing it. Her mother was going there. Talk to me, Kit had said. What made you do it?

  It had been a close-run thing. Part of her had wanted to tell the truth, to draw her mother close after all these years. But still there was that burning shame. And there was Lucy too, with her impending Big Day and the memory of her sister’s plea that they be a normal family. Perhaps that, more than anything, had stoppered her words and driven her from the room.

  It’s obvious Lucy is hoping they will play happy families. Her sister seems to believe that by drawing them all back to Windfalls she can smooth over the past, that their parents will become friends again, that Kit and Margot will gloss over the events of a few years back, that everything will magically resolve itself. But Lucy has always been full of naïve optimism, because Lucy doesn’t understand the full story. How could she? Kit and Margot are two women standing on different sides of a river, with the past, a vast, unfathomable flow churning between them. Four days to get through. Four days to navigate and hold herself in check – to be the sister Lucy needs her to be, to do the right thing – before she can leave.

  Thinking of Lucy and the wedding and remembering the tension with Eve the night before, she reaches for her phone and taps out a quick message to her sisters: Give me some jobs. I want to help. M x Almost as soon as she presses ‘send’, the screen shifts and a shrill ringing noise makes her leap on the step. ‘Jonas’ flashes on the screen. She hesitates, then silences the phone and places it beside her, waiting for the screen to clear. A wood pigeon coos its morning song. Her moment of stillness has gone. She needs to move.

  There is a softness in the garden. Leaves drip with the residue of early morning rain and the ground gives beneath her feet as she follows the silver-green slope of the garden down the hillside. In the orchard, she passes a familiar tree, a twisted Bramley apple leaning over the stream meandering down the hillside, its trunk bearing the scars of five initials carved into its bark like black brands: K. T. E. L. M.

  Margot stares at the letters, remembering the blade of the penknife flashing si
lver in Lucy’s hand as she leaned against the trunk and sliced into the bark. She reaches out to trace the letters. Another time; another Margot. The memory hooks around another, of that same penknife, years later, in her own hand, meeting its mark, scratching deep. A woman’s shout. The knife clattering to the ground. Margot’s feet slamming hard on tarmac. She swallows the bile rising in her throat.

  The steep sides of the valley create a natural echo chamber, birdsong bouncing off the hills, and amplifying the drone of a distant tractor. At the far end of the orchard, she can see the iron gate leading to the towpath and the river. She stands, her hand resting on the tree trunk, wondering whether she is brave enough. She hasn’t passed that way in years.

  She closes her eyes. She can feel it building in her, that same destructive itch that saw her tugging wallpaper from her bedroom wall. It’s a compulsion – like the irresistible need to pick at a scab – to make herself bleed. Opening her eyes, she continues down the hillside, moving on to where the river flows.

  Through the gate, she joins the towpath running beside the river, a smooth expanse of green water moving silently before her, the hull of the old rowboat slumped and rotting on the bank. She takes a steadying breath, keeping her face turned to the water. Another breath. Then another.

  A trio of ducks takes flight, disturbed by her arrival. She leaps at the sudden sound, then feels her heart settle as the birds flap away along the river, shadows skimming the water, their disgruntled quacking fading with their departure. She ignores the tangle of ivy and timber standing in the shadows to one side of the towpath and instead makes for the jetty stretching out into the water. The planks of wood creak beneath her feet. She sits on the damp platform, her feet dangling over the edge, and gazes out at the eddying currents playing on the surface, the flies and midges hovering above and the reeds streaming like mermaids’ hair beneath.