The River Home : A Novel (2020)

by Richell, Hannah

  Whether it was the champagne she had drunk, or the sensation of Eve’s hood pulled up around her face, or the strange numbness that seemed to have taken hold of her body, Margot wasn’t sure, but all felt muffled. Her footsteps landing on the road, the sound of cars passing, the laughter of little kids playing on a swing set, it was as though she existed in a separate state. Not part of the world but oddly other.

  She didn’t know where she was going. She walked with her head down, her feet treading their monotonous beat, her hand curled around the handle of the penknife in her pocket, now warm in her grip.

  It was only as she reached the entrance to the cul-desac that she realised she had known all along where she was headed. The black front door stood as she remembered, the red car parked on the driveway. A few short weeks ago, she had been standing there with the rest of the cast, waiting to watch the film with their beloved Mr Hudson. She could feel the blood pumping through her veins. She felt the breath catching in her throat. Squeezing the handle of Lucy’s penknife a little tighter, she stepped forward and pressed the doorbell.

  At the sound of the chime, a piercing wail rose from within the house, the cry of a baby. It was followed by other sounds, the murmurings of a woman’s voice, the silencing of a television. ‘Just a minute,’ someone called from behind the door.

  It was his wife’s voice that pulled her from her muffled state – or perhaps the sharp cries of the baby. Either way, seeing the light shifting behind the glass panel of the door, knowing that at any moment it would be thrown open, Margot spun quickly on her heel.

  She walked fast, back down the front step and onto the driveway. It was only as she reached the car that she lifted the knife from her pocket, stretching out her hand to allow the blade to meet the vehicle, dragging it in one long, screaming streak along the painted metal.

  ‘Hey!’ she heard the woman’s cry behind her but Margot didn’t turn around. She didn’t run. She dropped the knife to the pavement with a clatter and kept walking – fast – her shoulders hunched over and her face buried in the hood of the sweatshirt as she turned the corner and carried on, no longer numb and muffled but alive and pumping with blood and a fierce, hot anger.

  She hid for the rest of the summer, turning down party invitations and afternoons swimming in the river. She avoided trips into town, afraid she would bump into friends from the play – or worse – Mr Hudson himself. It was easier to stay at home than face anyone.

  By the time she returned to school at the start of the autumn term, Margot had constructed a careful wall around herself and the experience with Mr Hudson she had locked somewhere deep inside. She was braced for her return, steeled to see Mr Hudson walking the corridors, smiling at her in class. It was done. She would never let him close again.

  What she hadn’t expected was the head teacher to stand up in their first morning assembly and announce Mr Hudson’s sudden departure from the faculty. The head relayed the information to them in the briefest statement, with no explanation as to why he should have abandoned his post. ‘I know you will all join me in welcoming Mrs Ashcroft as our Head of Drama and I ask you please to make her feel at home.’ Margot sat, numb and silent, as the rest of the assembly politely applauded the new teacher.

  It didn’t take long. By lunchtime, the whispers were all around her, a flurry of hushed rumours passing from student to student like the flashing messages on their contraband mobile phones.

  ‘Dirty perv.’

  ‘It’s so gross.’

  ‘I always knew he was dodgy.’

  Margot slowed as she walked by a group of fifth years, craning to hear.

  ‘Apparently he kept her back after class one day and put his hand up her shirt.’

  ‘Ugh. You could tell something wasn’t right. He was such a try-hard, acting like he was everyone’s friend.’

  ‘Do the police know?’

  ‘Sasha’s parents said they’d forget the whole thing if the school got rid of him.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard they wanted to avoid the police, didn’t want her name getting in the newspapers, not when she’s applying to universities.’

  ‘It’s his wife I feel sorry for. Apparently, she’s just had a baby.’

  Margot listened to the rumour mill with a growing sense of panic. Mr Hudson had tried it on with Sasha Hart and Sasha, unlike Margot, had been smart enough to know what Margot had not, she had seen the teacher for what he was, had been able to do what she had not and fight him off. Mr Hudson was a dirty pervert, a fact it seemed everyone else had grasped except her. She felt sick to her stomach listening to the other students churning through the details of his spectacular fall from grace.

  The gossip only confirmed what Margot had known all along: it was her fault this had happened to her, and now that she had held the shameful secret so long, now that everyone knew what he was, it was even more crucial that she keep it from the rest of the world. A whole summer had passed. If she spoke out now, wouldn’t they wonder why she hadn’t told anyone? Unlike Sasha, it wasn’t just his hand up her shirt … he had … he had … and then they would know that she had asked for it.

  See what you do to me?

  Everyone would know. Her family. Her friends. The school. The police. The newspapers. Dread grew like a huge black mass inside of her as she remembered the whispers of the other students. They would all know. She couldn’t bear the thought of it. She could never, ever utter a word about what happened that night, down by the river.

  SATURDAY

  26

  Margot wakes from a nightmare with a dry mouth and her head pounding almost as hard as her heart. She kicks off the duvet and casts about, trying to ground herself in the present. As her vision adjusts to the grey dawn light, she sees the curled shape of a man lying on a mattress on the floor across the room. Jonas.

  Slowly, through the fog of her hangover, fragments of the night before come back to her. The meal at the pub. The drinks. The tension around the table. Andrew’s white face illuminated in the car park security lights. Lucy’s announcement. Jonas’s surprise arrival.

  As she cycles through her memory, an icy horror trickles down the back of her throat. Lucy’s announcement. Margot stiffens.

  Lucy isn’t pregnant. She is sick.

  The word that has been lurking in her subconscious rises: cancer.

  Margot rolls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling, replaying what she can remember. She sees Lucy, standing there beside Tom, with that tight, brave smile on her face.

  Lucy has cancer. It hits her like a punch to the stomach. Words float in her mind: ovaries … stage 4 … metastasised. Unable to stop herself, Margot slides quietly from the bed and retrieves the laptop from her luggage. She sits on the edge of the bed and boots up the machine, typing quickly into the search engine. What she reads doesn’t help. Lucy has clearly tried her best to shield them from the worst, but there is nothing re assuring to be gained from Dr Google. She scans a brief summary of symptoms and treatment options on a cancer charity website and clicks through to a chat room where a whole stream of people have joined threads discussing symptoms, treatments and prognosis. She shuts the laptop and closes her eyes. Oh Lucy.

  Why had she kept this from them? These past days she’d been hiding this most awful secret, protecting them from it. She thinks back to the plaintive text message she had received at the beginning of the week: I need you. What had at first seemed so selfish – drawing them all back for a last-minute wedding – now seems nothing short of heroic.

  Margot releases a long breath. She knows what it is like to hold a painful secret. But this? Margot feels something crack inside of her.

  She lies back on the bed and a wave of emotion rises up. She tries to fight it but it’s like a huge, crushing weight pressing down on her and it’s all she can do to let the tears fall as she tries to draw her next breath.

  After a while, she becomes aware of the sensation of someone moving onto the mattress beside her, a warm hand coming to rest on her
arm. ‘Margot?’

  She can’t speak. She can’t look at him. The pain is too much. She holds herself apart from him, using every ounce of her energy to keep the pieces of herself together. If she lets go now, she will surely fly apart into a thousand brittle shards.

  ‘Margot,’ Jonas says softly. ‘I’m here.’

  At those two words, she turns and buries herself into him. She lets him hold her as she sobs into his shoulder, releasing her burden of pent-up pain and sadness.

  ‘I should be annoyed with you,’ she says, a little later, lying beside him on the bed, both of them staring at the ceiling overhead. ‘Barrelling in here like that.’

  Jonas nods. ‘I know.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘It’s not hard to track down the name of the village where the famous K. T. Weaver lives. Your mum’s Wikipedia page is full of useful information. I came into the pub to sweet talk the locals into giving me directions to your place and there you were, sitting at that table as I walked through the door. A sweet serendipity.’

  ‘Why did you come?’

  He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I felt … I felt as if you might need a friend and when I realised that the worst that could happen would be that you would tell me to fuck off, I knew that I should try.’

  ‘And would you have? Fucked off?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll fuck off any time you ask me to.’

  She can’t help her smile. ‘I think that might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.’

  ‘So you’re not annoyed?’ he asks, still gazing at the ceiling.

  Margot thinks for a moment. ‘No. Do you want to know what I felt when I saw you walk through that door last night?’

  Jonas tilts his head to give her a sideways look. ‘I’m not sure. Do I?’

  ‘I felt relieved. Life is so messed up,’ she says, after a long moment. ‘Lucy has cancer.’

  ‘I know. You told me last night.’

  ‘I did?’ Margot puts a hand to her temple, and realises that she has no memory of leaving the pub, or of being put to bed. She sighs. ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ agrees Jonas. ‘Life isn’t fair.’

  Margot remembers the photograph of the beautiful, blonde woman seated beside the alpine lake pinned to Jonas’s fridge. She squeezes his hand. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘And I’m sorry for you. For Lucy. For your family.’

  Margot sighs and turns away, rolling into a small ball. What she doesn’t say – what she can’t bear to admit to Jonas, to anyone – is how horribly wrong this is. How guilty she feels. How the most unfair thing about it all is that Lucy – who has always lived with such joy and optimism – should have to deal with this. Surely fate has dealt this hand to the wrong sister, because if anyone in their family deserved this kind of sentence, then why not her? She has lived for so long with such shame, such emptiness. It should have been her.

  ‘Talk to me,’ says Jonas, sensing her turmoil.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re here. I don’t know how to live a good life. I’ve got nothing to give you. I’m hollow.’

  Jonas is quiet for a long while. ‘You say you’re hollow, Margot, but that’s bullshit. I see the emotion in you. It’s there. You hold it all so tightly inside. A nut that won’t crack. You may not love me – and I may find that hard to take – but don’t ever think you don’t have the capacity to love. You love. I see it in you. The way you came straight back here for Lucy, even though it’s the place that gives you nightmares. You’re not empty. You’re afraid. Let yourself feel. Let yourself feel it all. What’s the worst that could happen?’

  ‘I’m afraid I will crack.’

  ‘If you crack, perhaps you might start to heal?’

  ‘What if I don’t? What if I break?’

  ‘Then I will be here to hold the pieces.’

  27

  Kit stands outside Sibella’s cottage for a long while before she knocks at the door. She doesn’t know why she has come. All she knows is that she woke with a desperate need to escape Windfalls. She couldn’t bear the thought of all that lay ahead of them: the forced joviality, the laughter, the toasting of a future now so bleak and uncertain. The marquee, standing empty in the orchard, perhaps the ultimate symbol of the pointlessness of it all – the flimsiest, most impermanent space – here today, gone tomorrow. She couldn’t bear to look at it, knowing, in part, why it was there and the reason behind Lucy’s rush down the aisle.

  She had walked for a while along the river, beneath the bowed trees, watching their reflections shifting on the slow-moving water. A single grey heron had stood on a rock in the reeds on the opposite bank, contemplating the shallows. It had lifted its head as she passed by, but remained in place, still amongst the rushes. On a normal day, they’d be cheering the fact that the weather was mild and dry. They would be ironing wedding outfits and popping champagne. But this was anything but a normal day. She wasn’t even sure there would be such a thing as a normal day now.

  Her daughter had cancer. Terminal cancer. With those two words, the future she had taken for granted had been ripped from her grasp.

  She hadn’t known where she was headed, but at some point she had found her feet treading the steps of the stone bridge leading across the river and following the path rising up the far side of the valley, towards Sibella’s house.

  Sibella opens the door with a small nod of greeting. ‘Come in,’ she says, taking a step back to allow Kit into the kitchen.

  She enters and glances about in bewilderment at the cluttered, homely space. This cottage where Ted now resides is a mere mile across the river from Windfalls, yet she’s never stepped foot here before.

  ‘Ted’s popped out. He’s gone to collect the trestle tables from the village hall.’

  Kit nods. She doesn’t know why she’s here. She doesn’t think it was to see Ted, but she’s not sure she was intending to see Sibella, either. She should be back at the house, helping everyone prepare for the party. She is all at sea.

  ‘I was going to make some coffee,’ says Sibella. ‘Would you like a cup?’

  Kit nods. She can feel Sibella’s careful gaze. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Take a seat.’

  Kit nods again and sits on a creaking wicker chair and then, without warning, something inside of her gives and, before she can stop herself, the tears begin to flow, a torrent of them pouring down her cheeks. She buries her face in her hands. Sibella, abandoning the kettle, joins her for a moment. She passes her a tissue and then presses her warm hand around Kit’s cool one, sitting quietly beside her until the tears dry. Eventually, Sibella stands and rummages on a shelf for a cafetière and a tin of coffee. She brings the steaming pot to the table and sits again with Kit. ‘You’re in shock,’ she says.

  Kit sighs. ‘I know what Lucy wants us to do today, but I don’t think I can do it. I can’t pretend everything is wonderful.’ She pulls at the cuff on her sleeve, drawing it down over her hand. ‘Why Lucy? Why now? She’s so young. She has so much ahead of her.’

  Sibella nods.

  ‘I’m so angry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do I stay strong for Lucy? How am I meant to bear this?’

  ‘It’s going to be hard.’

  Kit sniffs. ‘Time doesn’t fucking heal. I’ve been waiting to feel “healed” ever since Ted left, and I still don’t. I still feel the loss of him and our relationship. It’s an ache that can’t be eased.’

  Sibella closes her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Kit.’

  Kit shrugs. ‘It was Ted’s choice. He chose you, and perhaps he was right. I hadn’t been paying attention to him. We lost our way, a long time ago. But it doesn’t make it any easier. I loved him. Still love him, in my own way. But tell me, how do I lose a child and survive that? I don’t think I can bear it.’ Kit looks up, a twist of anger in her eyes. ‘But you wouldn’t know how that feels, would you?’

  Sibella closes her eyes. ‘I lost a husband … and a child – a ba
by, through miscarriage – a long time ago. I know about loss, Kit. I know about holding pain.’

  Kit leans back in her chair. The wicker creaks loudly beneath her. She studies Sibella for a long moment then closes her eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Sibella nods. ‘I’ve never been a mother like you, Kit. You’re right. I wouldn’t understand how that feels.’

  Kit grasps for words. ‘I’m – I’m sorry. That day in the market, what I said … I didn’t know … about your baby.’

  Sibella shrugs. ‘I understood. I understand. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with Ted, and he wouldn’t have fallen in love with me. In an ideal world I would have found the strength to walk away. I’m not perfect, Kit.’

  Kit lets out a hollow laugh. ‘Are any of us? I’m sure as hell not. I messed up a relationship with Ted and seem to have failed my girls.’ She looks up at Sibella, suddenly distraught. ‘You have Ted. Please don’t take the girls from me too.’

  ‘I couldn’t, Kit. Even if I wanted to. You’re their mother. They love you.’

  Kit’s eyes well. She sighs. ‘What Lucy is facing, she’ll need all the support she can get. It suppose it’s up to her, who she turns to, who she leans on. I shouldn’t dictate that.’

  ‘She’s going to need you, Kit.’

  She sighs. ‘These lives we live, they are so fragile.’

  Sibella nods. ‘They are.’

  Kit glances around, taking in a little more of her surroundings. There are dried seed heads and thistles bursting out of a jug. A small white skull – animal bones – placed reverently on a shelf. A pine cone sits on the hearth. Sibella’s delicate pieces of porcelain stand in the window, catching the light. In another corner, nestled in a frame, she sees the face of a handsome, dark-haired man gazing back at her. Kit stares at the photo. ‘Your late husband?’ she asks.

  Sibella nods. ‘Yes. That’s Patrick.’

  Kit glances around and feels, momentarily, as if a veil has been lifted from her eyes. They are everywhere: endings. Sibella’s entire house seems to be littered with objects of loss, radiating the passing of time, reflecting back the impermanence of life. She turns her head and meets Sibella’s gaze directly for the first time since she has arrived at her door.