by Diane Janes
‘But I have to get through.’
‘Sorry love, but the road’s completely blocked. Are you local? Yes? Well if you take the Oak Bank turn, then do a right at Coxley Beck Farm; that’ll bring you down to the main road. Best thing is to reverse a couple of yards and turn round in that gateway. Plenty of room back there, and it’s solid concrete in front of the gate.’
From within her bag, her mobile trilled.
‘Shouldn’t have that switched on when you’re driving,’ he said.
‘I didn’t know it was switched on. I wouldn’t have answered it.’
‘Better pull in on that side if you’re going to see who it is – and mind you turn your engine off first.’
‘Right – yes – thank you.’
She turned the car on to the wrong side of the lane as the policeman had indicated, so that she wouldn’t be blocking any other vehicles which happened to come along and needed to turn round. The phone had stopped ringing by the time she silenced the engine, but she saw that the missed call was Marcus’s mobile. With trembling fingers she returned the call.
He answered right away. ‘Jo, is everything all right? They gave me the message when I got back to the ward, but when I called home I got the answering machine again. Where are you?’
‘I’m out in the car.’ She felt so sick that she could hardly speak. She thought of arriving on Melissa’s doorstep, demanding to be let in, insisting that Marcus was inside … when all the time he had been at the hospital in Manchester.
‘Why are you out? What’s happened?’
‘Nothing’s happened. I rang to see how your mum is. I thought you’d be with her, but they said you weren’t there.’
‘Sandra and I slipped out for a bite to eat. But why aren’t you at home?’
‘We’d run out … of something. I was going to Booths, but there’s a road block. There’s been an accident, so I’m going back home.’
‘Are you sure you’re OK? You sound very shaken. You weren’t involved, were you?’
‘No. I don’t even know what’s happened. A policeman was standing in the road, making people turn back.’
‘Booths won’t be open, will they? Don’t they close at eight on a Saturday?’
‘I’d forgotten,’ she said. ‘Is your mum much worse?’
‘It’s difficult to say. Sandra seemed to think this might be it, but you know the hospital won’t ever commit themselves. I’m staying to please Sandra, really. I don’t believe Mum knows whether we’re here or not.’
As they talked she felt colder and colder. It was as if the car had turned into a deep freeze, and the blood in her veins was slowing, turning to ice. The flickering lights of the police car made everything seem unreal: they might not have belonged to a police car at all, because her own car could have been anywhere, the windows obscured by streams of rain and every other external sound eliminated by pellets of water crashing into the metal a thousand times a minute. The policeman must still be out there keeping a lonely vigil against oncoming motorists, but she could not see him. The thought that there was someone standing unseen in the darkness, someone who could be right up beside the car for all she knew – even if he was a policeman – gave her a shivery feeling. Even the interior of the car had become a place of uncertainty in the undulating blue light, which illuminated now the dashboard, now a section of her thighs, now a pale hand, resting against the sill of the window. It might almost have been someone else’s hand because in the transient fragmentary light she could not see where and how it joined up with the rest of her. To prove whose hand it was, she made the fingers move, but they seemed to mock her, each of them tapping in turn, forwards and backwards like someone playing a scale on an invisible piano
When she made the fingers stop, she fancied that they carried on wriggling a while longer, just to let her know that she was not entirely in control. It was the same hand which had drawn the pictures of Melissa in her sketch book.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marcus’s mother did not die on Saturday night, contriving to expire instead at a moment on Sunday afternoon when neither Marcus nor his sister were at her bedside. Sandra wanted to arrange the funeral for a week on Monday, but Marcus persuaded her to put it back two days so that it would fit better with his work schedule. It seemed to Jo that every detail of the arrangements became the subject of a spat between brother and sister, with Sandra insisting that the service include ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’, while Marcus protested that his mother had never really liked it and complaining that Sandra had vetoed his idea of including a Rossetti poem among the readings.
Jo tried to be supportive, but found it difficult to relate to any of their disagreements. Her own mother’s funeral had been arranged by the authorities. There were people in ‘secure facilities’ whose job it was to register deaths and make the appropriate arrangements. They had contacted her and asked if she wanted to attend, but she had replied that there was no point. Her mother had not wanted to see her in life, so it was hardly likely that she would have wanted her around at the funeral. The details of her father’s funeral had become obscured among those tangled memories of his death: a blur of uncomfortable silences and shuffling feet, people in dark clothes; herself in the front pew flanked by Aunty Joan and Grandma Molesly, with her father’s family keeping separate from her mother’s. Two families previously bound together by a marriage, now abruptly disunited because one of their number had destroyed another, a chasm opening up between the two sides and herself being swallowed by it.
Marcus insisted on driving them down for the funeral himself. It was a predominantly silent journey, with Sean in the back seat, wearing his school trousers, white school shirt and a black tie specially purchased for the occasion. Jo half wondered whether Sean’s mother would put in an appearance, but she did not come. Sandra wept openly during the service, but Marcus looked straight ahead. Jo squeezed his elbow when the coffin slid away, but he gave no sign that he was aware of her. That’s the trouble, she thought. I can never be there for him, because he’s self-contained and doesn’t actually need me.
She offered to drive back, but Marcus preferred to take the wheel himself. As they approached the motorway, Marcus began to outline the relationships of the various mourners to Sean, who listened politely while his father explained that the old lady wearing the hat with black net across the top was Aunty Kate, who had been married to Uncle Tom, who was wounded at Monte Cassino, while Uncle Derek was the son of Tom’s long-deceased brother Kenneth …
Jo let it roll over her. She reflected that this was the second funeral she had attended in a matter of weeks. Grandma Molesly always said deaths came in threes. In the old days, when families were much larger and people didn’t live so long, that prophecy had probably been more easily fulfilled, but now that Marcus’s mother was gone, she could not think of anyone she knew of who was particularly old or ailing.
At least Marcus would not have to be forever paying duty visits to Manchester any more – or staying overnight there. She shuddered at the recollection of how close she had come to doing something very foolish. If only she and Marcus were not apart so often. That was the root of the problem – a lack of quality time together – although when they were together these days, she could rarely think of much to say to him, while his own attempts at communication seemed forced or superficial and their sex life was non-existent. There had been a period in their relationship when sex had been joyful and abandoned. Not at the beginning, when Marcus had assiduously avoided putting any pressure on her, preferring to become first a friend and confidant, wooing her gently with romantic gestures, so that sex, when it happened, was a wonderful confirmation of what they already knew. Marcus had put so much effort into making her happy. Her happiness and well-being had been the most important thing in his life – he had actually said that to her once. The thought crossed her mind that perhaps she had been his project of the moment. Marcus had put his heart and soul into turning her life around, but once he believed
that he had made her happy, his main focus had transferred elsewhere. Maybe he had intended for Sean to become a project too, but the trouble was, Marcus could only devote himself to one big thing at a time: he might want to be the good son, the good father, the good husband, but his number-one priority now was the business.
Two days after the funeral, he set off to guide the inaugural Daphne du Maurier tour. Jo watched his meticulous preparations with renewed interest. Maybe he wasn’t cheating on her with Melissa, so much as disregarding her in favour of Daphne and a host of other dead literary folk, long-departed generals, kings and queens. She waved him away with a pang of envy. She had once been as enthusiastic about it all as he was.
Sean rose late, and after eating a large bowl of Shreddies, ambled down to Harry’s. Soon afterwards she happened to be looking out of an upstairs window and saw Harry’s sister emerging from the gateway of The Old Forge, walking side by side with Gilda’s daughter, the two of them also heading in the direction of The Hollies. Mindful of recent near-catastrophic events, Jo no longer allowed herself to entertain any speculations about this coincidental child. She and Gilda were the same age, and therefore it was quite likely that they would be producing children at around the same time. Whatever happened, she must not allow her imagination to run away with her again. She moved back from the window and resumed stripping the bed.
By coincidence, Suzanne Wheaton also happened to be changing the beds down at The Hollies. When she and John originally bought the place, they had been determined to buck the stereotype of second-home ownership. Not for them the Friday-night arrival, complete with bags of groceries brought from home, all too swiftly followed by the Sunday night departure with nary a word to their country neighbours in between. On the contrary, they told one another that they would make every effort to be part of the community, using the local shops and fraternizing to a degree which guaranteed their acceptance. When conjuring up this idyllic vision of chatting over the gate with a pipe-chewing farmer, or buying a jar or two of homemade marmalade from his apple-cheeked wife, they had reckoned without the nature of a hamlet like Easter Bridge, where the only emporium was an expensive gallery, and even regular residents like the Handleys were, as often as not, working away for days at a stretch.
Part of the picture had undoubtedly been the prospect of their own children rubbing shoulders with the local kids: children who would be interested in the world around them, conversant with the names of birds and the tracks of badgers – uncomplicated kids who would warm to their townie friends and invite them to come and help with lambing. The complete absence of children in the immediate area had undoubtedly put a damper on this in their previous years at The Hollies, but then Sean had arrived like the answer to a prayer, appearing at just the right time, when Harry was becoming increasingly resistant to the idea of family time spent up in the Lakes. At a stroke Harry’s complaints had been cut back to token whining, and within less than a year came the sale of The Old Forge, bringing with it the prospect of a possible friend for Charlotte too.
Alas, the reality of these friendships fell well short of the dream. Harry and his country-dwelling friend, far from disappearing to hunt for badger tracks or climb trees, spent most of their time playing computer games, just as Harry would have done if he had been at home with his friends in Heswall; while Charlotte’s new friend, Rebecca, turned out to be a pupil at a fee-paying school. As a good middle-class liberal, Suzanne Wheaton disapproved of private education, preferring to ‘support’ her excellent local comprehensive – having taken the precaution of moving into its catchment area as soon as Harry was expected. This reservation aside, Suzanne could not help being somewhat intrigued by Rebecca’s mother, a woman who, in spite of inhabiting the scruffiest dwelling for miles around, could evidently afford a private education for her daughter. And although Suzanne told herself that she had hoped her children would form friendships with rough-and-tumbling rural children, products of a threatened village school, and parented by the local salt of the earth, she was not unaware of the advantages of making ‘good’ connections, either. John was an architect, after all, and she could not imagine Rebecca’s mother would leave that house unaltered for very long. Even so, she baulked at the idea of inviting the woman round for a drink. On the handful of occasions when the two women had spoken, Suzanne had derived the impression that there was something a bit odd about Gilda Iceton. ‘Just nervy,’ John had said, but it wasn’t that – in fact, she came across to Suzanne as a fairly confident person. It was something she could not quite put her finger on, which went beyond the way the woman’s voice was a bit too loud, her laugh off-key.
At least Rebecca herself – unlike her mother – always looked nicely turned out. In fact, she seemed to be a thoroughly pleasant girl all round, who had lovely manners and was very well spoken. Suzanne was not so sure about Sean, who had blotted his copybook with the episode of the unsuitable DVD and the dreadful stories he had told Harry about his stepmother. John had been inclined to take a more charitable view than she had. ‘Kids make things up all the time, just to make themselves seem more interesting,’ he said. ‘Harry’s probably told Sean that we’re axe murderers.’
‘I sincerely hope not!’
Sean’s stepmother certainly didn’t look like a murderess. If anything, she looked more like a victim, Suzanne thought. A nervous little woman, who all but scurried past the house with her head down, never seeming to want to meet your eye. She hadn’t always been like that – she had appeared quite friendly when they first came, but now she looked as if she was afraid of her own shadow. Suzanne wondered if she might be ill. She never seemed to be away working with their tour company any more.
Her uneasiness about Sean was tempered by the difficulties of actively discouraging Harry from seeing him. Having originally encouraged the friendship, it was difficult suddenly to take the opposite line, and anyway, active prohibition seemed too extreme. It was not as if there were any other young people in whose direction Harry could be pointed. Moreover, she knew that the combined presence of Sean and Rebecca had probably been the single factor which had prevented her own two from killing each other this holiday. She was starting to feel the effects of cabin fever herself, as the rain kept them penned indoors day after day.
The weather was the subject of conversation in the sitting room of The Hollies at that precise moment. The youth of Easter Bridge normally segregated itself by gender, but the whole quartet had been temporarily forced into one another’s company when Mrs Wheaton ordered everyone out of the bedrooms so that she could change the beds.
‘I can’t believe Dad has gone walking in this weather,’ Charlotte was saying.
‘Dad’ll walk in anything,’ said Harry.
‘There’s no point. You can’t see anything.’
‘What’s the deal with walking, anyway?’ This from Sean. ‘Unless you actually need to get somewhere and you haven’t got a car, it’s just putting one foot in front of the other – a complete waste of time.’
There was a brief silence while the others tried to decide if Sean had just uttered something profound.
‘Does it always rain like this here?’ asked Rebecca.
‘Not always,’ said Charlotte. ‘It was really nice one year. We ate our dinner outside nearly every night.’
‘Since I’ve been home from school it’s rained nearly every day. It’s like winter all the time.’
‘Where did you live before?’
‘Oh, loads of places, mostly in Devon and Essex. My grandad used to own lots of property, so when I was little we lived in one of his houses, and when he died, my mum liquefied some of it and bought houses of her own.’
‘Oh.’ Charlotte was impressed, in spite of being unclear on what liquefying actually involved. ‘We’ve only got two houses, this one and our proper house in Heswall.’
‘This is a proper house, too, dummy,’ said her brother.
‘It’s not our real house, though. It’s not where we live most of
the time.’
‘I’m at school most of the time,’ said Rebecca.
‘Do you mind?’
‘No, I like it. And sometimes I go to stay with friends, and some of the time I go to stay with my Aunty Carole in Yorkshire. I really love it there. There are some stables just down the road from her house, where I can go riding. Are there any stables round here? I asked Mum, but she didn’t know. She said she’d look into it. I’ve never seen anyone out hacking, have you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Harry, who guessed that hacking must be something to do with horses, although the term conjured up a man going at a hedge with a scythe.
‘We’re going to the Algarve for the last two weeks of the holidays, to stay in my uncle’s villa,’ Charlotte announced. ‘You can ride horses there. I’ve seen a picture in the brochure.’
‘I’ve hardly ever been abroad,’ Rebecca said. ‘My mum doesn’t like flying. We’ve been to Euro Disney on the train. Aunty Carole took us. She was going to take me to France again last year, but then I got a virus and couldn’t go.’
‘Is she your dad’s sister?’ asked Sean, who wasn’t really interested in familial details, but was fed up with the subject of holidays, conscious that his father and stepmother had no plans to take him away anywhere, so that the best he could hope for was a few days in Manchester with his mother, pretending to admire the new baby. He supposed his father never thought about organizing a holiday for him, because he was always too busy organizing holidays for other people.