The River Home : A Novel (2020)

by Richell, Hannah

  Ted is shaking his head. ‘There are some incredible doctors in London. We’ll get you up to Harley Street for a meeting with the best specialist we can find.’

  Lucy smiles sadly. ‘Dad, it’s OK. The medical team at the hospital are amazing. I’m in good hands.’

  ‘But you’re not going to die,’ says Margot, firmly.

  ‘Margot, we’re all going to die, sometime.’

  ‘Stop it. You know what I mean.’

  ‘Dad’s right,’ says Eve. ‘There are all kinds of treatments these days. Amazing drugs and special centres you can visit trying pioneering techniques, not to mention alternative therapies. They’d be right up your street, acupuncture and reflexology, and …’ She trails off.

  Lucy looks at Eve, then Margot and finally Kit, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen in the coming weeks and months, but frankly, I didn’t want the next time you all get together to be my funeral.’ She tries to smile. ‘I didn’t want you having that party without me.’

  At the word ‘funeral’ Kit lets out a choked sob.

  Lucy gives her a nod. ‘Tomorrow is a celebration of love and life. It’s not about death.’

  ‘Why are you talking about funerals?’ asks Margot.

  ‘Surely they can fix you?’ says Eve, a pleading look on her face.

  ‘If they confirm next week that it’s stage four, well … they can help me, but there is no “fix”. My treatment would be palliative. But I’m not giving up. I’m young and I’m strong.’ She squeezes Tom’s hand, then turns to fix her gaze on Margot. ‘I firmly believe that where there is love, there is hope.’ Margot drops her head. Lucy turns to look at Kit, who sits a little apart from them all, her face stricken. ‘Mum? Are you OK?’

  Kit stares at Lucy. ‘I … I … I don’t … I’m sorry.’ She stands, pushing back her chair with a horrible scrape, then runs from the room, leaving a stunned silence.

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Lucy, brightly. ‘It’s a shock, for everyone. I’ve had a little time to begin to process the news, but it’s going to take longer. For all of us.’ She tries to smile at them, but all she sees staring back at her is a sea of horrified faces. Eve has a fist pressed to her mouth. Her father looks like he is about to cry, Sibella squeezing his hand tightly. Tom’s mum is quietly weeping.

  ‘I think you’ve been very brave tonight, Lucy,’ says Sibella, from the far end of the table. ‘Perhaps everyone needs a little time tonight to think over what you’ve told us?’

  Lucy nods, grateful for Sibella’s calm presence. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sorry,’ says Margot, throwing Sibella a look, ‘but I can’t sit here pretending that everything is wonderful. You want us to celebrate tomorrow like it’s a normal wedding?’ Margot glances up at Lucy, shaking her head in disbelief.

  Lucy nods. ‘That’s exactly what I want, Margot.’

  Everyone is still staring at Lucy as a blast of cooler air rushes into the room. They all turn as a tall, blonde man in a black leather jacket enters the pub. He glances around searchingly, until his gaze comes to settle on Margot seated at the table. Lucy looks down at her sister and sees she is staring back at the man, her mouth open and her eyes wide.

  Lucy turns back to the door and watches as the man’s face splits into a wide grin at the sight of Margot, a smile that creases his handsome face and makes his piercing blue eyes crinkle. Lucy can’t stop staring at him. He looks like a rock star.

  ‘Hello, Margot,’ he says.

  Margot doesn’t say anything, so the man turns to the rest of the table and offers a smile. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘I’m Jonas.’ He speaks with a slight accent, a softening of the ‘J’ of his name. ‘I’m a friend of Margot’s.’

  Lucy looks from Jonas to Margot again and sees that her sister is blushing furiously. ‘I don’t mean to intrude,’ he continues, ‘but I heard there was a wedding tomorrow and I thought you might need a photographer?’ He raises an eyebrow at Margot.

  Margot opens her mouth to speak, but no words come out.

  Lucy turns back to Jonas and nods. ‘Yes,’ she says, smiling at the man. ‘Yes, there is a wedding tomorrow. Welcome, Jonas.’

  24

  They had intended to spend the night before their wedding apart, but after the way the evening has unfolded, Lucy asks Tom to come back with her. ‘It’s supposed to be unlucky, isn’t it?’ he says on the drive to Windfalls.

  Lucy can’t help her hollow laugh. ‘Luck? I’m not sure we need to worry about that right now, do you? I want to make the most of every moment. I want you with me.’

  He nods and squeezes her knee. ‘Me too.’

  They curl up together in her bed, Tom’s arms wrapped tightly around her.

  In the dark, she can make out the long column of her wedding dress hanging on the back of the door. ‘I guess that could have gone better,’ she says after a while.

  ‘It was never going to be easy.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were brave, telling them all together like that. I’m proud of you. What was Margot’s problem, though?’

  Lucy stares up into the darkness. ‘We’ve been asking ourselves that for a while now.’

  Lucy thinks about Margot’s drunken antics in the pub, her rage at the possibility of Andrew’s infidelity, and the unexpected tears when she’d confronted her just yesterday about the loss of their mother’s work. ‘It’s so hard to read her. She’s so … erratic. I don’t think any of us know what she’s going to do next. I must say, that man turning up out of the blue was something though. He was rather gorgeous, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Can’t say that I noticed,’ says Tom, drily.

  ‘You’re not jealous, are you?’

  ‘Me? Jealous of a six-foot-four Scandinavian hunk?’

  Lucy laughs. ‘You’re all the man I need,’ she says, snuggling into his arms.

  They fall silent. ‘Are you thinking about tomorrow?’ he asks. ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admits.

  ‘It will be fine. You’ve got me.’ Tom strokes her hair before returning his arm to circle her waist. She feels his breath against her neck and pushes her back against him, enjoying his warmth, his strength. Curled in his arms, she feels small and fragile, like an egg sheltered in a nest. After a while their breathing slows and syncs. She is losing him to sleep. She can feel it.

  She thinks about the day that lies ahead and of all the people from her life who will converge on Windfalls to celebrate with them. She meant what she’d told her family. She wants the day to feel like a celebration. Not a sad day.

  Tom’s breathing deepens. Gradually, his grip on her loosens as he succumbs to sleep.

  Letting go. It’s something she needs to learn too. An image rises up out of the depths of her subconscious, a dandelion head, its seeds drifting away on the breeze, and with it comes a memory of standing on the lawn at Windfalls, blowing dandelion clocks with her father. ‘That’s it, Lucy,’ he’d said, bending low beside her. ‘However many puffs it takes to blow the seeds from the stem will tell you the time.’

  She had looked at him with suspicion.

  ‘Go on. Try it.’

  She had. It had taken five. ‘Five o’clock?’ she’d asked.

  He’d made a great show of checking his wristwatch. ‘Exactly right,’ he’d said with a wide smile.

  She’d frowned. ‘But we’ve just had breakfast.’

  ‘Well, silly us! We must have slept in!’ He’d swept her up into his arms and tickled her until she had howled with laughter as the seeds had drifted far away on the wind. ‘Watch them go, Lucy,’ he’d said, when she had eventually stopped laughing. ‘Watch them fly away.’

  The memory brings an ache – nostalgia for the past, when everything felt so simple and uncomplicated, for a time when they didn’t have to let go of anything more weighty than dandelion seeds. She thinks of the news she has shared. Of Margot’s tight, hurt face. All the emotion simmering beneath her skin. What is it, she wonders? What is it that makes Margot, Margot? Why won
’t she let any of them in? Why won’t she let her walls down?

  ‘Tom,’ she whispers into the darkness.

  The only reply is Tom’s slow, steady breath.

  ‘Tom,’ she tries again, but she knows he is lost in slumber and the words she wants to share with him, the questions she wants to ask, remain heavy inside of her, turning over and over, keeping her from sleep.

  THE PAST

  2009

  25

  The gift arrived a couple of days after the Romeo and Juliet wrap party, a box covered in gold paper and tied with a red ribbon, dropped on the front doorstep of Windfalls. Margot felt her blood chill as she read the message inside the attached card. ‘Bravo, Juliet! You were superb. With best wishes, Mr Hudson.’

  She studied the words for a long time before unwrapping his gift to reveal a large box of chocolates, the kind you’d see on special at the tills in the supermarket at Christmas. She sat looking at them for a long time.

  ‘How lovely,’ Kit said, wandering past. ‘Something to put a smile back on your face.’

  Margot didn’t say anything.

  ‘Still feeling poorly? I can’t tempt you to eat a little something?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You’re not dieting, I hope?’

  Margot pushed the box of chocolates across the table at her. ‘You have them.’

  Kit frowned. ‘But they’re yours.’

  ‘I don’t want them.’

  Kit shrugged. ‘Thank you, darling.’ She selected a triangular-shaped chocolate from the box and popped it in her mouth. ‘Maybe you’ll fancy them when you’re feeling a bit better.’

  Margot looked down at the card. You were superb. A vile loathing surged from the pit of her stomach. She took a deep breath. ‘Mum.’

  ‘Mmmmm.’ Kit was still chewing.

  She swallowed. ‘You know the night of my play?’

  ‘Yes. I do. And I’ve already apologised profusely for forgetting.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ She shook her head. ‘Something happened.’ Margot didn’t know how she was going to tell her mum. To speak the words out loud felt impossible. But her mother was right there, standing in front of her, a rare moment of attention and she felt a trace of courage rising up. If she could explain how it happened, how she had wanted … wanted something … to be seen … to be kissed … but not that. Never that. Maybe her mother would understand. ‘Something bad,’ she added.

  ‘But I thought it had all gone so well?’ Kit was studying the card inside the selection box, trying to decide on another flavour. ‘A triumph, Jamie Kingston’s mother told me.’

  ‘I don’t mean the play. I mean, afterwards. At the party.’

  ‘Oh.’ At last, Kit turned her attention from the chocolates and fixed her with a searching gaze. ‘Yes. I was going to talk to you about that.’

  Margot stared at her mother. ‘You were?’

  Kit placed the selection box menu on the table between them. ‘Yes. I know all about it.’

  ‘You do?’ Margot’s felt her cheeks flushing bright red, though a sensation a little like relief began to creep over her too. Perhaps she wasn’t going to have to explain the bad thing in quite such horrendous detail after all.

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t going to bring it up, not when you had done so well in the play and, well, I’d messed up myself.’ Kit gave a light laugh. ‘But as you’ve raised it …’

  Margot held her breath.

  ‘Clearly you tried hard to cover your tracks, but there were several beer cans left on the jetty and I could tell from the way my desk had been left that you and your friends had been inside the studio.’

  Margot frowned.

  ‘Now, I don’t mind you having a few friends over once in a while,’ she continued, fixing Margot with a stern look, ‘but can I please ask that you stay out of my studio. It’s so important that everything remains as I left it. Imagine if anything had happened to the draft of my novel.’ Kit shuddered. ‘It would be devastating.’

  Margot, realisation dawning, felt a new sort of anguish take hold of her. She lowered her head and nodded. Devastating. ‘Yes. Course. Sorry.’

  ‘I think it’s best if we say the studio is out of bounds to you and your friends, don’t you?’

  Margot nodded again. On this, she could agree. She hadn’t stepped foot in there since the night of the play. She couldn’t imagine ever doing so again. ‘Perhaps you should back-up your work,’ she offered quietly, after a long moment.

  Kit laughed and popped another chocolate in her mouth. ‘Oh, you know me and technology. I struggled enough with that damn DVD player your father brought home all those years ago. The old ways are the best ways. Besides, if you stay out of the studio, I won’t have to, will I? Problem solved.’ She stood and squeezed Margot’s shoulder. ‘Thank you for understanding, darling. I promise I’ll make it up to you, as soon as this book is written. Besides, no harm done on this occasion. Let’s forget it, shall we?’

  Margot listened to her mother leave, the soft click of the back door closing, the sound of Kit’s fading footsteps as she wandered down through the garden.

  She missed the final days of the summer term, crying off sick and instead took to her bed where she lay for hours, a cat curled at her feet and her face turned to the wall, studying the flowered wallpaper in minute detail. It was her fault. Those nights when she had lain in bed imagining what it would feel like to kiss him, her own curved fist pressed to her lips. She wanted to scour herself clean. She wanted to scrub those traitorous lips and cut off that stupid hand.

  See what you do to me.

  She had made it happen. The shame that ate away at her was a sign: she must never tell anyone what she’d made happen. How she had wanted Mr Hudson to notice her, to kiss her. It was a mess of her making. She locked the incident in a private place, hid those horrible moments somewhere deep inside.

  Who did you think about, Margot?

  Tell me what you want, Margot.

  You like that, do you?

  When the fragments escaped from that locked place and rose up in her mind, she tried to transform it into something more palatable, something softer, more romantic, something other than what it was. He couldn’t help himself. Maybe he loved her? But always, there was the sensation of his hands grabbing at her hair, the pain of the desk pushing into her thighs, the sickening taste of his tongue probing her mouth.

  In late August, a letter arrived with her GCSE results: nine passed at grade A or higher. She had aced her drama exam. She should have been delighted, but none of it seemed to matter any more. ‘Aren’t you going to go out and celebrate with your friends?’ Kit asked.

  ‘I don’t feel like it.’

  Kit frowned. She walked to the fridge and produced a bottle of champagne. ‘My French publishers sent me this last week. Let’s have a glass, shall we, to celebrate?’ she offered. ‘You deserve it. I’m proud of you. We all are.’

  Margot didn’t want it, but she forced the champagne down. The sweet wine coated her tongue, reminding her of the sickly taste of punch and cider. Warmth began to spread through her belly, a gentle buzz dulling the sharp edges in her mind. When Kit returned to her studio, Margot retrieved the open bottle from the fridge and poured another glass. She drank fast, until the bottle was almost empty.

  Upstairs, the muffled silence of the house felt frightening. She stood for a long time staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. You’re like a flower, ready to bloom. She stared at her face for a long time, fighting the urge to scratch her skin, to rake her cheeks with her fingernails.

  In Eve’s room, she lay on the neat wrought-iron bed and hugged one of her sister’s cushions to her chest. She let the tears come, wishing Eve was there with her calm, practical advice. Eve would know what to say and do. Instead, there was only the quietness – the aching loneliness.

  In the bottom drawer of a chest she found a pile of Eve’s old clothes, faded T-shirts, a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a grey hoodie she could
remember Eve wearing on those ‘fat days’, when she would walk around the house scowling, a hot water bottle clutched to her stomach. Margot raised the sweatshirt to her face and breathed, inhaling the forgotten scent of her sister. Feeling a little comforted, she pulled the hoodie on. She liked the way it felt – too big, swamping her frame, hiding her from view.

  In Lucy’s room, the void seemed even greater, the constant energy and momentum of her sister all the more obvious for its absence. The room stood like a messy time capsule, littered with a tangle of teenage memorabilia. She studied old posters of boy bands and photos tacked to the wall, of Lucy lifting school hockey trophies and posing with triumphant netball teams. There was another photo of the three of them from a long time ago – the sisters seated on the jetty down by the river, all of them gazing into the water. She couldn’t remember the photo being taken, but presumed it had been their father who had shot it. She couldn’t have been more than about six or seven. She looked at the girls they once were, then turned away.

  Lucy had left so many of her belongings. On the desk Margot saw a messy spread of pens and books, old bottles of nail varnish and a stack of well-thumbed paperbacks piled haphazardly. There were old cinema tickets and lipsticks, a beaded necklace lying tangled with a pair of headphones. Beside a dusty lamp, she saw her sister’s penknife lying discarded next to a half-empty bottle of patchouli oil. She reached out and tested its weight in her palm before releasing the blade and turning it to catch the light. She remembered a moment by the stream in the garden, Lucy using it to carve into a tree. The knife felt cool and solid in her grip. She slipped it into the front pocket of the hoodie and left the room.

  Outside, the day was cool and grey. There was no sign of Kit. She knew her mother would be down in the studio, working on her precious words. Pulling the hood up over her head, she turned and walked down the drive, away from the house, away from the river.