by Diane Janes
She was careful not to say anything to Marcus about this sense of anticipation, instead allowing him to believe that she was working assiduously on the Lake Artists Tour and endeavouring to appear keen to discuss all other aspects of the business at every opportunity, an activity for which Marcus had never needed any encouragement. His conversation was peppered with: ‘Melissa says this,’ or ‘Melissa says that,’ or ‘Melissa’s had a great idea.’ She just adopted a fixed smile and said nothing. As if she couldn’t see that he was besotted with bloody Melissa. When he was not there, she actively tried not to think about the business, which in turn meant that she did not have to think about Melissa. Mostly she thought about Lauren. She had begun to think of her in a more positive, less painful way; to visualize her as the girl she would be now, a girl who would be coming home … soon.
Being at home enabled her to catch up on a variety of jobs, and during the May half-term, she decided it was the turn of the kitchen cupboards to get a thorough overhaul and clean. She started one morning with the wall cupboard nearest the kitchen door, unloading its contents on to the work surface so that she could wipe out the interior. The house was very quiet. She had not bothered to switch on the radio, and there was no sound from upstairs, where she assumed Sean was still in bed, although it was approaching noon.
As she rinsed her cleaning cloth at the sink, she pondered yet again how the shells had arrived on the doorstep and the window sill. Had someone crept along the lane with them, keeping low behind the walls, scurrying from one bit of cover to another? Probably nothing so obviously furtive than that. Around here it was not unusual to encounter walkers at any hour, sometimes even late at night. Several footpaths converged on Easter Bridge, since foot traffic down the ages had always needed to avail itself of the crossing. Dressing as a hiker would be the perfect cover for moving about on the public roads because no one looked twice so long as you had the regulation boots and rucksack. If anyone had happened to pass in a vehicle, or even look out of their window, the sight of someone striding along the road in hiking gear was just about as unremarkable as you could get – and it would take less than a minute to sneak down the drive to the house and back. You would have to be extremely unlucky to get spotted. It was not a comfortable thought, the idea of a shadowy figure creeping into the garden, then sliding away again, melting back into the Lakeland scenery. In an instant they would be an ordinary, anonymous person again, someone she might pass by without a second glance – they knowing perfectly well who she was, but she not recognizing them.
This image of a backpacker trekking up from the bridge changed into that of a young girl strolling along in the sunshine. A girl of roughly twelve years old, with long blonde hair – Lauren – Lauren as she would look now, walking up from the bridge … coming home. Jo’s eyes followed the vision up the lane. It disappeared now and again. behind the trees and shrubs, which were still pale with the spring colours which came late to the Lake District. Once or twice Jo thought she had lost it, but the figure kept on coming nearer, its progress steady and unhurried, just as it would be in real life.
Without realizing it, Jo began to grip the edge of the sink for support. It was really her. Lauren was walking up the lane, heading for The Hideaway just as surely as if she knew exactly where she had to come. Although her knees were all but giving way, she managed to run outside on to the drive. She tried to shout, but nothing came. Seemingly unaware of her, the girl continued to approach in the same unhurried way, like a ghost which inhabits its own parallel arc of time and place, seen by but unseeing of the living.
‘Lauren!’ Jo reached the gateway just as the girl drew level. ‘Lauren,’ she repeated, holding out her hands.
The girl shied like a startled foal, removing tiny headphones from her ears as she edged away. Jo was momentarily aware of a crackle of music, cut off as the girl’s fingers found the switch of something hidden under her jacket. She spoke warily, all the time keeping her eyes firmly fixed on Jo. ‘Sorry – did you want something? Are you OK?’ The voice was polite but nervous, slightly plummy.
Jo stared at the apparition. The sense of fairy-tale unreality which had carried her thus far was ebbing away.
‘Is there a problem?’ Gilda Iceton’s words swept down the lane like an audible storm warning. Jo automatically turned at the sound, to find that Gilda had appeared in the gateway of The Old Forge. Jo noticed for the first time that Gilda’s voice was quite plummy too.
‘I think this lady might be ill.’ The girl sidestepped neatly, putting herself further from Jo and closer to Gilda, who was now advancing in swift strides.
‘You go into the house, Becky. I’ll take care of Mrs Handley.’ It was a tone which, while not unkind, brooked no argument. As the girl headed up the lane, Gilda stepped nearer to Jo and spoke in a voice too low for the girl to hear. ‘You leave my daughter alone. I don’t want you anywhere near her. How dare you think you can try to terrorize her, the way you and your friends terrorized me.’
‘I wasn’t – I didn’t …’
Gilda had already taken Jo’s arm and begun to lead her towards The Hideaway. To any onlooker she might have appeared to be helping an unsteady neighbour back home, but it was an iron grip, the strength of which was not only surprising but painful, too.
‘Leave us alone,’ Gilda hissed in her ear. ‘Do you understand me? Just leave us alone.’ She steered Jo right back up the drive, only loosing her hold when they reached the kitchen door. Jo automatically reached up and rubbed her arm, which continued to throb as if Gilda’s fingers were still clamped into it. ‘Hurt you, have I?’ Gilda seemed to tower over her. Jo had forgotten how lanky Gilda had been at school; there she had been a thin, daddy-long-legs kind of figure, gangly-limbed, with a running style all of her own. She was carrying a good deal more weight now. ‘If you ever do anything to upset Becky, I swear I’ll hurt you so badly you may never recover.’
Jo opened her mouth to protest, but Gilda stalked away before she could say a word. When Jo called after her the other woman took no notice.
Gilda’s daughter. The girl was Gilda’s daughter. Wave after wave of disappointment swept over her. She stood outside the door for several minutes, rubbing her arm where Gilda had held her and gulping for air. If only Gilda had let her explain. Dear God, it was not as if she would have done the girl any harm. Surely even Gilda could see the difference between the kind of things one might get drawn into as a teenager and the kind of things one was capable of as an adult.
When she eventually re-entered the house, she had to sit at the kitchen table for a long time, trying to recover from the shaky feeling Gilda had engendered in her. Although she told herself that she had merely been confronted by the natural wrath of a mother protecting her young, there was something else she could not quantify. Perhaps it was no more than a primitive instinct telling her that people who appear different may be dangerous, an old, irrational prejudice against someone whose outward appearance is not quite right.
While she was still sitting at the table, Sean ambled downstairs and made straight for the fridge. If we live here long enough, Jo thought, he will erode a track: bedroom to fridge, then back to bedroom.
‘Good morning,’ she said, summoning an effort. ‘I’m just making tea.’ She would have preferred coffee, but she knew he didn’t drink it. ‘Would you like a cup?’
‘Yeah – thanks.’ His tone was cautious.
‘It’s a much better day, quite warm outside. Have you got any plans?’
‘I might go down to Harry’s later on.’
She allowed a pause to develop before saying casually, ‘I see the new girl who lives at The Old Forge is home for the holidays.’
‘Yeah. Her name’s Becky. She’s been playing with Charlie.’
At any other time Jo would probably have derived pleasure from such a breakthrough. Sean volunteering information in a conversational way without having it forced out of him was a red-letter event; but this morning she felt only frustration. It was
evident that Sean had been aware of the girl who lived across the lane for a couple of days. If he had only said something about it earlier, she would have been alerted to the girl’s presence and much less likely to have made such a catastrophic error.
‘If you go to Harry’s,’ she said, ‘be sure to lock up after yourself and take a key. I might be going out later on.’
‘OK.’ Sean paused to examine the items she had removed from the cupboard, picking through them one by one. ‘Why is all this stuff out?’
‘I’m cleaning the cupboard.’
She was beset by the awful suspicion that he was reporting back to Marcus: ‘Nothing abnormal observed today, except that she’d taken everything out of a kitchen cupboard. She said she was cleaning, but I didn’t see any signs of it.’
After pouring the tea, she made haste to resume her spring-cleaning activities – dreadful, this idea of being under surveillance. However, once Sean had taken his bowl of Weetabix and mug of tea, she quickly wiped and dried the shelves and replaced the contents any old how, deciding that the time had come to cut and run. When she had changed into her outdoor clothes, she called out from the landing to tell Sean she was going and heard a muffled ‘OK’ in return. As she laced her boots, she noticed that her fingers were still trembling. She badly needed fresh air and some sun on her face, but in order to gain the fells, she would have to walk right through Easter Bridge, passing all the other houses, including The Old Forge, en route.
She set out briskly enough to make her heart rate quicken, looking neither to right nor left, trying to ignore the sensation which came from the certain knowledge that she was being observed – maybe by the ghosts in The Old Forge, or maybe by Gilda Iceton herself. Or perhaps by Sean, keeping a covert watch from an upstairs window, preparing his report on her movements for his father. Most certainly by Maisie Perry, if she was at home; possibly by the family who had rented the old farmhouse for the week, exhibiting their holidaymakers’ curiosity about the people who lived in the village, or perhaps even by Shelley and Brian, from the windows of the gallery. As she approached The Hollies, she saw Harry’s mother in the act of placing a knotted carrier bag into the wheelie bin. Harry’s mother had always been friendly, generally going out of her way to say ‘hello’, but Jo felt that she could not face a chat with anyone just at the moment, so she focused her eyes straight ahead to avoid seeing the other woman.
In the end, she did not go up on to the fells. She had been on the point of taking her favourite path up through the woods when she saw some of Mr Tyson’s highland cattle grazing in a field not far along the road, and she decided to sketch them instead. She stood at the stout wooden field gate, resting her drawing book on the top bar. One of the beasts obliged her by approaching to see what she was doing, giving her the benefit of its full-faced curiosity, coming so near that she could see the texture of its rough ginger fringe and tough pale horns. The big eyes stared at her unblinking while she struggled to capture the creature’s appeal, without falling into the traps marked cute or cartoonesque. When the beast eventually decided that she was not of any interest and moved off to resume feeding, she began to sketch the other animals, all of them presenting at slightly different angles and attitudes. Finally she roughed in the line of the hedgerow on the far side of the field, thinking that when she sat down with it at home, she might try to incorporate all these various elements into a composite drawing.
She had come without her watch, but she guessed it must be well beyond lunchtime when she turned for home. She had just reached the Old Chapel Gallery when she caught sight of Shelley, who was just emerging from Ingledene.
‘Hi.’ Shelley waved a hand. ‘Long time no see. Are you coming in for a coffee?’
In truth, Jo was still shaken from the events of the morning and would much rather have gone straight home, but Shelley’s invitation was the perfect way to get over an awkward hurdle, and a refusal was open to misinterpretation, so she agreed at once, waiting at the door of the gallery while Shelley unlocked it and preceded her inside.
‘Brian’s down in Barrow for the day,’ Shelley said. ‘So I’m holding the fort alone. The trouble is that I forgot Bri was going out and started some tea breads for the freezer, so I’ve just had to pop back and turn the oven off. How’s your Lake Artists project coming on?’
Jo was grateful to accept the prompt, noting that Shelley seemed keen to gloss over her recent absence and pick up where they had left off. She accepted a mug of Shelley’s bitter brew and began to outline some of her queries and ideas. When she mentioned the Pre-Raphaelites, Shelley said: ‘I’ve got just the thing for you. It’s a leaflet about all the places in Cumbria with Pre-Raphaelite stained glass – there’s a woman in South Lakes who’s an expert on it, and she’s produced this handout. I know I can put my hand straight on it; I only saw it the other day when I was hunting for something else. I’ll go and fetch it now. If anyone comes in, make sure they buy something nice and pricey – I could use the pennies for the meter.’
While Shelley was gone, Jo sipped her coffee and looked at the nearest paintings. There was an exquisite representation of a red squirrel in oils, hung alongside another by the same artist of a snowy owl, both precise and detailed as photographs, but with the depth and beauty which a mere camera could never achieve. These were in complete contrast to the huge canvas on the facing panel, which appeared to have been slashed about with browns and greens. Jo had little or no knowledge of abstract art, but she did know that Brian would not have hung anything he did not consider very good, and from where she sat, she could see that the price tag read £2,850. She supposed that an occasional collector making a purchase of that magnitude once in a while would help keep ‘the meter’ going for some time.
When Shelley came back, she was carrying not only the promised leaflet, but also three large books. ‘These might come in useful. This one is the book about Ruskin that I couldn’t find when I looked last time, and these others will give you a bit more background on the Pre-Raphaelites, since you seem to be branching further in that direction. It would give you a chance to put in a nice bit of scandal too, with Ruskin, Millais and darling Effie.’
‘It certainly spices up the human interest,’ Jo laughed.
‘I should have brought you some sort of bag. They’re a bit awkward to carry, and this one’s got a cover which keeps slipping about.’
‘There’s plenty of room in my rucksack. I’ve only got my sketch pad and some waterproofs.’ Jo unfastened the rucksack as she was speaking and unpacked her sketch book on to the edge of the table, while she opened the drawstring wide enough to accommodate the largest of the volumes.
‘How’s the drawing coming along?’
‘I think I’m improving.’ For a moment Jo considered asking Shelley’s opinion of her sheep and cattle, but it seemed presumptuous when Shelley was a proper artist who sold her pictures.
‘You should join the Art Society. I keep on telling you that’s the way to bring yourself on.’
‘I’m really not good enough.’
‘Rubbish – that’s what everyone thinks. The Art Society accepts anyone who’s keen – and you are keen – yes, you are. You’re always heading off out to draw something. You’d gain so much from it, and what have you got to lose?’
‘I’ll think about it.’ Jo was lifting the last of the three books into her rucksack. She imagined Brian, towering over her, making some cutting remarks about her efforts with a paintbrush. She had always been wary of Brian, and now it was even worse.
Shelley might almost have read her mind. ‘Brian’s a marvellous teacher, you know. He would bring you on no end if you enrolled for one of his painting days.’
‘No thanks.’ The words were out before she could stop them – way too emphatic. The awkwardness was palpable, but she couldn’t find the words to put things right. ‘I mean … it would be difficult. And – and I’m just not ready.’
‘Your choice, of course,’ said Shelley. She shrugged and half
turned away, as if her attention had been caught by something which needed rearrangement on the table.
‘Thanks for the books.’
‘No probs. Hang on to them for as long as you need them.’ Shelley didn’t look up.
She knows, Jo thought, she knows what I thought about Brian. ‘See you,’ she said, as brightly as she could.
‘Yeah, see you later,’ said Shelley.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘I’ve been doing some thinking’, said Jo, ‘while you’ve been away, and I was wondering whether we should consider moving away from here, making a fresh start.’
Dinner was over. Sean had returned to his room, but Marcus and Jo had lingered at the kitchen table, finishing off a bottle of wine. She had spoken tentatively, her eyes cast down on the place where her dinner plate had recently been, but now that she looked up to see how Marcus would react, she suddenly noticed how tired he seemed.
‘This was our fresh start. A new place, a new enterprise. This is it, Jo. You can’t just run away and start again every few years.’
‘I just think that maybe we’d all be happier somewhere else.’
‘Moving is a huge expense. We can’t afford to extend our mortgage, then there’s the business and Sean’s school.’
‘It would be better for Sean if we didn’t live right out in the country like this. If he was nearer his school, living in a bigger community, where there were more young people … He’s had Harry this week, but Harry’s family went home yesterday and there isn’t anyone else of his own age for miles.’
‘But he’s just got started at his new school, and anyway, he always knows he can ask us for a lift to anywhere he wants to go. That’s how kids in the country manage – they travel by car between each other’s houses.’