by Anna Wharton
‘Mine,’ Chloe says quickly. Too quickly.
‘Oh, I see, I’m sorry,’ Miriam says. ‘And was it a long time ago, that she . . .’
‘We don’t really . . . I mean, it’s not something I find easy to talk about.’
‘No, no, of course not, Chloe. How silly of me to ask.’
Chloe feels hot inside her clothes suddenly. She crosses the room and kisses Nan goodbye. She needs to get back to Low Drove.
THIRTY-SIX
Chloe walks through the back door of Elm House and finds Patrick in the kitchen. She stops still, reticent now to shut the door behind her. He’s sitting on a kitchen chair, leaning over some newspaper at his feet, a black leather shoe in one hand, a rag black with polish in the other. He looks up when she walks in, then quickly down again. He starts rubbing at the shoe while Chloe’s insides twist. If she could go back outside, she would. But she’s already in. She closes the door behind her. The rest of the house feels quiet, still somehow.
‘Where’s Maureen?’ she says.
Patrick looks up, wipes his hair from his eyes. ‘Gone to Josie’s,’ he says. ‘The two of them are catching up with some old neighbour.’
‘In Chestnut Avenue?’
Patrick looks up as if he hadn’t expected Chloe to remember the name of the street where they lived.
Chloe continues: ‘I mean, I didn’t know that Josie had been a neighbour of yours.’
He goes back to working polish into the shoe.
‘Yes, neighbours for nearly thirty years.’
‘Is she still there? In Chestnut Avenue, I mean.’
It had never occurred to her that Josie – that anyone – could have been watching that day when Chloe had knocked on the door. What if she told Maureen that she’d seen her before? What if she’s telling her right now?
Patrick shakes his head. ‘Moved a year before we did,’ he says, sighing as he gets up. He fills the kettle with water. ‘You want one of these?’ He holds up a cup.
Chloe looks down the hall, in the hope perhaps that Maureen might appear. It is still light despite the fact that it is nearly six o’clock, a reminder that the sunnier days are just around the corner. She wants to say no, but something – curiosity? – makes her nod her head instead.
‘Yes, that’ll be good, thanks.’
She pulls a chair out at the table while Patrick asks whether she prefers tea or coffee.
‘Tea?’ she says. She hadn’t meant for it to sound like she was answering a question with a question. She puts the chair at an angle, further away from the table than she might ordinarily sit.
Chloe watches him as he moves about the kitchen, more confidently, she notices, without Maureen here. This is her domain, everything has her stamp on it, right down to the way that the tea towels are folded and left on the side of the sink. Chloe realizes she’s never actually seen Patrick do so much as make a cup of tea here. When Maureen is around, he is passive, fussed over by her. It’s strange to see him so out of context in his own home. He’s not working today, and he’s wearing jeans and a knitted burgundy jumper. He looks like he’s had a trim, his curls less unruly, which make him look younger, less wild. She’d seen Maureen cutting his hair in the kitchen once not long after she arrived. He’d sat on a chair on the middle of the lino while Maureen snipped at his neck, pieces of hair falling onto the towel she had put there. She shifts in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs as the kettle reaches boiling point on the worktop. Should she start a conversation? She looks around the kitchen for inspiration, for something to say. Patrick interrupts her thoughts.
‘Sugar?’ he asks.
‘Two, please.’
‘Need sweetening up, eh?’ he says, stirring in the milk. He smiles as he puts it down in front of her and Chloe swallows though she hasn’t yet taken a sip. He pulls out a chair nearer to her than the one he had been using, and sits down. She coughs, shifting her chair back a little as she does.
Patrick takes a long sip of his tea, watching her over his cup. She looks down into her own drink.
‘Too hot for you?’ he asks.
‘Yes, I add a bit of cold in the top usually.’
‘Ah, so you do. Maureen would have known that,’ he says.
Chloe nods.
‘She likes to spoil you, eh?’
Chloe looks up at him, unsure how she is meant to answer, or if it’s even a question.
‘Yes, that’s my Maureen, not happy unless she’s fussing over someone.’ He smiles as he says it. ‘She’s been the same since I’ve known her – thirty-six years this year.’
‘Wow,’ Chloe says.
‘You’d get less for murder,’ he says.
Chloe looks down at her tea.
‘She was the last of her brothers and sisters living at home,’ Patrick says, ‘big Irish family like mine. You can just imagine it, can’t you? She would have rather them come to live with us than leave, but then we had Angie and we got that little house just round the corner. Life goes on, doesn’t it?’
Chloe tries her drink now, and nods.
‘She’s not very good with change, Maureen,’ he says. ‘Wasn’t good leaving her mammy and daddy, and she found it hard at first, what with a new babby . . . Still, she was a good little mam – doted on our Angie she did. That kid wanted for nothing.’
Chloe listens, afraid to put her mug down, to break the spell. This is the most Patrick has ever spoken to her.
‘Maureen was lost when she . . . when Angie . . . well, you know, when she went missing, like. I thought I’d lost her as well as Angie. I thought . . .’ He trails off. ‘Well, anyway, no point going over those times. Ent gonna bring her back, is it?’
He looks up at Chloe. She stares at him over the rim of her mug.
‘I think what I’m trying to say is that she finds change, uncertainty . . . difficult. Moving here was a wrench for her, leaving that house. She had everything just’ – he holds out his hands to demonstrate – ‘just so. She even kept Angie’s room, all her little toys, everything, just the way it was. The only way for her to get through it was to convince herself that Angie was coming home.’
Chloe nods.
‘She was angry, see? Not just upset, but angry. The police, see, they . . . well, they didn’t do everything right. They got things wrong and . . . well, Maureen coped the only way she knew how, I suppose. I’m different, stronger, I don’t know. But Mo, she’s fragile, always has been. God knows, I’ve tried to protect her, but . . .’
Chloe is still in her seat. The mug hasn’t moved from her lips.
Patrick wipes his hand across his face. ‘And then you turn up.’
Chloe swallows her tea quickly then, and it burns.
‘It’s funny how you arrived really,’ he continues, ‘how I found you, down that lane just looking at the house . . . just looking you were.’
Chloe feels her cheeks burn and blames it on the steam from her drink.
‘We’ve had plenty of that over the years, people staring – not here, like, but at the old place. Maureen insisted on us doing these bloody newspaper write-ups every year. She wouldn’t give up, wouldn’t let go of our Angie. And it was the police she was angry at – well, I’ve already said that. Anyway, she wouldn’t give up, not until, well . . . until a few months ago when you . . .’
He pauses and sighs, running his hands through his hair.
‘I guess what I’m saying is that if you’ve noticed anything, out of the ordinary I mean, Maureen saying anything, acting . . . She’s still a woman on the edge, Chloe. Losing your child like that . . . well, it does something to a person. I’ve tried to distract her, tried to get her to move on over the years, we all have because, well, because you can’t live in the past, can you? You just can’t and you can’t make everyone else live . . .’
His voice wavers and he gets up from his seat, beginning to pace the kitchen floor. Still silent, Chloe follows him with her eyes. He stops at the sink and looks out of the window.
�
�All I’ve ever wanted is for Maureen to be OK,’ he says. ‘She’s not like the rest of us, she’s . . . she’s vulnerable, youngest of her family, doted on by her mammy and daddy. Christ knows, I haven’t always got it right, but I’ve loved that woman, I’ve looked after her as best I could . . . I’ve tried, well, I’ve tried to make amends, as best I could.’
He turns round from the sink and looks at Chloe.
‘You know what I’m saying, don’t you?’
And even though she doesn’t, even though her head is spinning trying to take it all in, she nods.
‘She’s had some funny ideas recently is all I’m saying, and I’m sure, I’m sure she’ll see them for what they are because there ent no getting through to her when she’s like this. It’s like . . . it’s like a one-track mind, but for now, I mean, I know this is a big ask, but for now, if you could just . . .’
He leaves that hanging, and Chloe nods, quickly, even though she’s not entirely sure what he is saying. Is he asking her to play along with Maureen? Is that what he’s saying? She can’t think properly here, with him, she just wants to get to her room, to go over this whole conversation from the start.
Chloe goes to stand, picking up her cup from the table.
‘I’m really tired,’ she says, ‘I’ve been at a friend’s baby shower today and—’
‘Oh Jesus, well, don’t let me keep you.’ Patrick moves forward, tidying up his own cup. ‘Anyway, Maureen will be back soon. You’re eating with us tonight, aren’t you?’
‘I’m actually a bit full, all that cake,’ she says, tapping her belly.
‘OK, right you are. Well, if you change your mind.’
Chloe leaves the kitchen, takes the stairs silently, her mind noisy with questions. If anything, she’d been expecting Patrick to ask her to leave, not this. Although, what exactly was he saying? Why did it feel like he was asking her to take part in some kind of collusion? And what did he mean when he said he’d tried to make amends? Amends for what?
She climbs to the top, past the photograph of Angie in the window, but one question follows her all the way up into her room. Of everything that Patrick has said, one thing stays with her. What exactly is he trying to protect Maureen from? But as she asks herself the question, she already feels she has the answer: the truth.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Chloe does end up eating with them that night. When she’d got home from Josie’s, Maureen insisted. She’d tried to protest, but Maureen just put her hand to Chloe’s forehead, whittling over whether she was coming down with something. At tea time she serves her the best bit of fish, chopping it up on the plate and searching for bones. Chloe sees Patrick glance at the plate that Maureen serves her food on – the bunnies, the mashed-up fish – but he says nothing, just looks at Chloe with some kind of conspiratorial look and a bit of a nod. Chloe eats her food slowly, watching him across the table, remembering times when he would snap at Maureen for doing something similar. But he makes no comment on her fussing. In fact, if anything, he shows concern too.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t go into work tomorrow, Chloe,’ he says. ‘It might be better to get a bit of rest instead.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she says.
‘Well, at the very least Patrick will run you into town, won’t you, Pat?’ Maureen says.
‘Honestly, I’m—’ Chloe starts.
But Patrick nods between mouthfuls. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I have some business in town anyway.’
‘What’s that then, Pat?’ Maureen asks.
Patrick shovels another mouthful of mashed potato onto his fork. ‘Just some banking, love,’ he says, ‘nothing interesting.’
Maureen shrugs at Chloe. ‘I leave all that to him.’
Patrick doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave the table. In fact, when he finishes, he puts his plate in the sink and sits back down with them.
‘They say it’s warming up next week,’ Patrick tells them both. ‘Sixteen and sunny Tuesday, Wednesday.’
‘That’ll be nice, could do with a bit of sunshine, couldn’t we?’ Maureen says.
‘We could indeed, I’d like to get out in the garden if I can.’
Maureen sounds disappointed. ‘Oh, I was hoping we might have a ride out to the coast on the first nice day.’
‘Still be a bit nippy there, Mo.’
‘You’re probably right,’ she says. ‘Ooh, Chloe, I was meaning to ask, what was the name of your grandmother?’
Chloe is about to put a forkful of food in her mouth but it stops halfway. She doesn’t answer, just looks at Patrick. He registers the surprise on her face and sits up a little in his seat.
‘It’s just,’ Maureen continues, taking another mouthful of mashed potatoes, ‘I was telling Josie that she lived in Dogsthorpe too and we were wondering if we might know her. Imagine that?’
Patrick shuffles closer to the table, not taking his eyes off her for a second.
Chloe puts the food in her mouth. She chews it, buying herself time before she can answer. Should she tell the truth? Make something up? What would be better? The two of them stare at her across the table. She coughs a little. And winces inwardly before she speaks. Her voice is small, unsure.
‘Grace,’ Chloe says, ‘Grace Hudson.’
‘Sorry? Hudson did you say?’ Maureen asks.
She nods slowly and Maureen looks up to the kitchen ceiling. Patrick’s eyes remain stuck fast on Chloe. Her appetite is gone but she looks down at her plate to shovel more food onto her fork.
‘Hudson,’ Maureen says. ‘No, can’t say I know a Hudson. What about you, Pat?’
He looks up like Maureen had a moment ago, then shakes his head.
‘No, Mo, can’t say I know anyone with that surname.’
His eyes return to Chloe.
Maureen shrugs into the space around the dining table. ‘I’ll tell Josie,’ she says. ‘She might know.’ Then she carries on eating.
Chloe’s appetite has gone. She lines her knife and fork up in the middle of the plate.
‘Want me to take that for you?’ Patrick says, extending his hand out for her plate. Chloe looks up at him but she doesn’t want to meet his eye because she can feel her mask slipping and she’s afraid he’ll see it too. She hands him the plate.
‘I’ve just realized,’ Maureen says, turning to Chloe and breaking their gaze, ‘we haven’t seen you in your new blouse yet!’
Patrick puts Chloe’s plate in the sink and returns to the table. ‘What’s that, love?’
‘You know, the blouse I made for Chloe with that bit of material, the one you like with the yellow flowers.’
‘Christ, you’ve had that for years, woman.’
‘I know, but I thought . . .’ She hesitates for a moment. ‘Well, it suits Chloe’s colouring, don’t you think?’
Patrick looks across at Chloe; he leans back in his chair. ‘Can’t say I remember it all that well.’
‘Oh, you do, Pat. Chloe, nip upstairs and put it on, let Pat have a look at you. Honestly, Patrick, it’ll come straight back to you the minute you see it.’
Maureen looks at Chloe.
‘That dinner was lovely, thank you,’ Chloe says, pointing at the sink, trying desperately to change the subject.
‘You’re welcome, Chloe, love,’ Maureen says. ‘Now are you going to run upstairs and pop that top on so Pat can see you?’
She looks from Maureen to Patrick.
‘Sorry?’ Chloe says.
‘The blouse I made you, Patrick would like to see it on.’
‘Oh, it’s just, well . . . I’m a bit—’
‘Nonsense, my love, you’re perfect. Go on, won’t take you a minute.’
Chloe waits for Patrick to say something – anything – she doesn’t know why, but instead he’s looking at her expectantly.
‘Well, go on then,’ Maureen laughs, ‘we haven’t got all night.’
Chloe stands up slowly from the table, and with calls of encouragement from the kitchen, she heads out into t
he hallway and up the stairs. In her room, as instructed, she slips off her top and pulls the blouse over her shoulders. She stands in front of the mirror, as she had the last time she had worn it. She parts her hair in the middle, just like the photograph and picks up the same two bunches. And it’s there again; the resemblance is uncanny. Chloe shivers. She tells herself that Josie was right: that she is a grown woman, that Angie was a little girl. How could they be comparable? But as she shuffles out onto the landing, picking up the photograph in the frame, even she has to admit, the resemblance is striking, undeniable.
Downstairs, Maureen and Patrick are laughing. So different from the atmosphere of the last few days: the arguing, the shouting, the tears. What has changed?
Chloe puts her foot on the top step and takes a deep breath. She walks slowly down the stairs, clutching the newel post as she turns into the hallway, and the minute she does, she hears Maureen gasp from the kitchen.
‘Patrick, will you look at that.’
Patrick spins around in his chair to face her, and there is a split second where he takes her in. But then all the colour drains from his face. In an instant, he is ashen white.
Maureen gets up from her seat, and leads Chloe into the kitchen. She stands beside her, encouraging her to twirl, while Patrick sits on the chair. Chloe spins slowly on the spot, her eyes never leaving Patrick’s blank face.
‘It’s exactly the same, Pat. Can you believe I still kept the pattern and the material.’
‘Maureen . . . I . . .’ he says.
‘And I told you she had just the right colouring for it, didn’t I?’ She stands behind Chloe, pulling her dark hair back from her face so it hangs down her back, limp. Chloe stands silent, still, like a doll Maureen has dressed up. Patrick’s face is expressionless. Maureen chatters away, seemingly oblivious to anyone else’s discomfort.
‘Of course I didn’t have the same buttons – you can’t get the same now – so I borrowed some from the original—’
‘Maureen, what?’ Patrick says, looking up quickly. ‘What did you say?’
Chloe’s dinner turns over inside her stomach. Her skin under Maureen’s touch is suddenly covered with goosebumps. She looks down at the buttons.