by Hilary Boyd
But as she gazed at her daughter, a voice in her head spoke a warning: Be careful. Don’t love her too much. Try as she might to ignore it, a shadow fell between her and Eve. From that moment on, Stella found she was holding part of herself back, in an attempt to avoid being vulnerable to any more pain. She loved little Eve, she couldn’t help it, but she did not feel free to love in the wholehearted way she had before she lost her boy.
25
Stella was back in her London flat. Eve had a friend, Marzia, staying the week – a woman with whom she had worked at the children’s charity – and her six-year-old son, Teo.
She’d thought she would be thrilled to get five days off and had driven home through the Kent lanes with a real sense of freedom. However much she loved little Arthur, looking after him was hard work.
But the traffic coming round the M25 was at a standstill, adding almost an hour to the journey. When she finally arrived in her street there was nowhere to park, it was boiling hot and the house next-door-but-one in the Victorian terrace had scaffolding, an overflowing skip and a builder in the front garden, cutting lengths of timber with a circular power saw whose high-pitched scream set her teeth on edge and her nerves jangling. After the quiet of Kent, the general city noise seemed deafening.
Her flat, despite being in the half-basement of a previously grand terrace, was high ceilinged and spacious, with bay windows at the front and French doors leading from the sitting-room/kitchen on to a good-sized rear garden. Stella had bought it when she and Jack split up. It had been a wreck, and stayed a wreck for a good few years of Eve’s childhood – interior design was not really Stella’s forte.
Now, finally, it was solid, functioning and had acquired a quirky style along the way. It was cluttered, cosy – messy most of the time, although Stella had become tidier, she thought, since Eve had left home.
It wasn’t until Iain came on the scene that the garden finally got the upgrade it deserved and became a pleasant place to sit. It was how they had met. He had come round to quote for a redesign and thrown his hands up in horror at the overgrown chaos he encountered.
‘Grief, the last owners left you a pretty mess to sort out,’ he’d said, hands on hips, strong legs straddling the small, broken-down brick wall that gave on to where flowerbeds must once have bloomed.
Stella had laughed, suppressing the instant attraction she felt for this blond, tanned, quietly spoken man with the light-blue eyes, who seemed already at home in her garden.
‘Yes, didn’t they just,’ she said. It wasn’t till later that she admitted, rather shamefaced, that she herself had been the owner of the wilderness for nearly eighteen years. Gradually, over the many cups of tea she made him, and the odd glass of wine they’d shared at the end of the day as Iain painstakingly put the garden to rights, they had cautiously fallen in love.
Now she surveyed the flat and sighed. It felt stuffy and dusty, despite the weekly ministrations of Estonian Rasa, sulking like a rejected lover from her five-week absence.
I must get the place painted, she thought, forcing herself to be bright as she unpacked the small wheelie case she’d brought home. She made herself a cup of coffee, checked the post, which contained mostly catalogues and subscription magazines such as Which? and the BBC’s Ariel, something from Thames Water and the AA, and endless pizza fliers.
The noise from the power saw was relentless and suddenly Stella wanted to scream, wanted to run away from the flat that seemed so tethered in her past, back to the safety of her grandson’s embrace, where things were clean and clear-cut, where she knew she was needed … Where she would not be alone. But as she sat at the kitchen table, gazing out on to the grubby London garden and the backs of the houses opposite, she knew she was also being drawn back by something other than Arthur and Eve.
Her phone rang and she picked it up with relief.
‘You’re home! Finally.’ Annette’s voice boomed down the line. ‘I thought I’d lost you for ever to the wilds of Kent.’
Stella had met her friend Annette nearly twenty years ago at a breast cancer charity event. This involved walking a marathon – or in their case a half-marathon – round the streets of London in the middle of an April Saturday night, wearing bras outside their clothes. Stella had been less than enthusiastic about the event. She hated the idea of having to listen to women telling brave stories of their suffering, or the death of someone they loved, with a joke, a raucous laugh. It would, she was certain, make her cry. And if she cried, she might never stop. But there was a group of women going from the BBC, and it seemed curmudgeonly to refuse.
It rained that night, of course. The walkers became increasingly cold, wet and bedraggled, but they were also defiant. Annette wore a hot-pink balcony bra over a sheer black T-shirt, her huge breasts bursting out in all directions. Her sister had died of breast cancer the year before, but Annette talked about her death in such an open, straightforward manner that Stella envied her. By the time they got back to Clapham, her ribs were sore from laughing and they were the best of friends – had been ever since.
Stella welcomed having a friend who didn’t know her from before. Rosie had tried, bless her, to be supportive in the months after Jonny died. But the tragedy had tainted their friendship. Rosie so badly wanted her to recover and be happy, but Stella couldn’t oblige. Rosie wanted her to respond more to Eve, but she couldn’t do that either. She urged Stella to get help, to talk her grief through with a professional. But that didn’t feel like an option. So meetings became awkward, the unsaid a burden to them both. And gradually they had drifted apart. Although Stella told her the bare bones of Jonny’s death, Annette did not seem to expect anything of her on that count. It was in the past, before they’d met, and Stella found this a blessed relief.
‘I’m only staying till Friday,’ she told Annette now. ‘Eve’s got a friend visiting and I thought I’d take a break.’
‘How’s it going? You haven’t strangled each other yet?’ Stella heard her friend groan. ‘God, me and Abby wouldn’t have lasted a week.’
Annette – also a single parent – had a tempestuous relationship with her clever, charming daughter and frequently sounded off about her to Stella. Abby, in turn, would often beg a glass of wine from Stella to complain about her mother’s behaviour, Stella playing a diplomatic pig-in-the-middle.
‘We’ve had our moments.’ Stella laughed. ‘But on the whole it’s been rather wonderful.’
After a surprised silence, Annette said, ‘You sound a bit strange, Stell. Something been going on?’
Stella didn’t know how to reply. What has been going on? she asked herself.
‘Update, pronto,’ Annette boomed. ‘When?’
‘Tomorrow lunch?’
‘Perfect. I’ll come to you and bring salads and some of that chilled Pinot we like. We can sit in the garden and get drunk and you can tell me your darkest secrets. The forecast’s perfect all week.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Iain said later that night, as they sat side by side on the sofa with mugs of tea. It was gone ten o’clock, but he’d only arrived an hour earlier – he was currently doing a garden in Hendon and wanted to take advantage of the summer light.
Stella waited for him to go on. He would do this, start to say something, then stop as he wandered off into his own thoughts.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he repeated after a moment, ‘that we should move out, go and live in the country somewhere … Kent, maybe.’
Stella sat up straighter, confused and immediately wary. ‘What’s brought this on?’
His arm went round her shoulder. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, but she couldn’t fail to hear the note of determination. ‘I’m a gardener, Stella. I love nature and wide open spaces. I’ve only stayed in town for the past few years because of you.’
There was no obvious reproach in his words, but she felt a pang of guilt, nonetheless.
‘Now Evie has made the leap, and you’ve got Arthur and the baby to think about …
Doesn’t it make sense? You don’t need to be in London for work any more – you can write stuff from Timbuktu these days. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to get a place near them? Have a proper garden, a bit of space?’
There was a nervous silence.
‘Live together?’ Stella said, exploring the concept. Because it had crossed her mind in the hours since she’d arrived back in the city that she really didn’t want to be here, not in this flat or this city any more.
Iain gave a wry chuckle. ‘Well, yes. After seven years of loving each other, eating together, sleeping together, sharing everything except our home, is that such a strange notion?’
The notion wasn’t strange at all, of course. It had swirled slightly threateningly – to Stella, at least – around their relationship from the off. Previously it had always been contentious, yet tonight, surprisingly, it didn’t seem so.
She looked up at him. He seemed relaxed, his face amused, as if he were merely trying it on, waiting for the inevitable rebuff.
‘What do you say?’ he asked when she didn’t reply. ‘We can have separate halves of the house, if you like.’
Ignoring his remark, she asked, ‘What about your business? Your client base is in London.’
Iain shrugged. ‘I’ve got enough requests from people out of town to last me till the next century. That won’t be a problem.’
He waited again, his face now amusedly resigned to rejection. Then he added, ‘I’d like to move out anyway, Stell, whether you come or not. But obviously I’d much rather you did.’
Her head whirring, Stella tried to think about the implications of what Iain was saying.
‘So?’ he said, into the silence.
‘So … I say … I say, let’s think about it.’ In that moment, it seemed like the obvious way forward. Committing to Iain felt safe. She could move on with her life, leave the past behind.
‘You mean it?’ Iain said, his tone disbelieving. Then, ‘Really?’
She laughed, feeling exhilarated at her boldness, her sudden change of heart after years of holding Iain at arm’s length – which she knew she had, although she refused to examine why. ‘As you say, it does seem to make a lot of sense.’
It was about three in the morning when Stella woke with a start, heart pounding, sweat pouring from her body. Light was faint on the horizon through the curtains, and she could just make out Iain’s face, flat out asleep. She felt ready to explode with fright, thoughts pelting around her mind, jumbling past and present together in a terrifyingly uncontrolled free-for-all.
What had she done, agreeing to consider changing a habit of a lifetime and move in with Iain, move to Kent, with all its memories … move near Jack? She felt panicky. Padding into the bathroom, she wiped the sweat from her body, sluiced her burning face and chest and gulped a whole glass of cold water. Bloody Jack. For reasons she still didn’t understand, he had shaken the delicate structure inside which Stella had existed perfectly well for decades. And her whole life threatened to collapse about her like a house of cards.
They sat under the shade of the umbrella, which Stella had slotted into the central hole in the garden table on the stone patio. The table was cracked and grey with age and long winters, the beige umbrella well past its best, rust from the spokes and dead insects staining the canvas. Stella rarely used it. If she were out in the garden, she was usually gardening, not sitting down.
The two friends had caught up. Annette told her about the mega-deal she was hoping to make – selling her hugely successful online maternity-clothing site to a German retail giant – and filled her in on granddaughter Molly’s progress. Stella relayed her news on Arthur, Eve’s pregnancy and her agreement to consider – only consider, she emphasized – moving to the country with Iain. A plan of which Annette thoroughly approved.
‘Heavens, about time, Stella,’ she said. ‘You two have been pussyfooting around each other for a decade.’
‘It’s seven years and we haven’t been “pussyfooting”, as you put it. We’ve been totally together, just not in the same house. I don’t understand why everyone has such a problem with that.’
Annette laughed. ‘No, well, I’ve been trying for decades to teach you how to spell “commitment”, but you still get it wrong.’
‘Yeah, yeah, stuck record, Annie.’ And it was. Annette had spent way more time than Iain over the years teasing Stella about her fear of commitment. More than anything, her friend thought it was a stupid waste of money – something the businesswoman abhorred – living in two houses when you could live in one.
‘So why now?’ Annette stretched her long arms over her head and yawned, then ran her fingers through her short, spiky grey crop. Stella envied her friend’s confidence about not dyeing her hair. She’d always told herself she would stop when she was seventy. But that was a way off, and there would be a lot of vanity money down the drain at the hairdressers before that day came.
‘I don’t know. I suppose Evie and the family being in Kent? Anyway, I haven’t agreed to anything yet.’
Annette nodded, pushing her large square sunglasses up her nose. She seemed to be waiting for Stella to continue, clearly sensing there was more she wasn’t telling her. But Stella hesitated. Annette could be forensic in her hunt for the truth. If she spoke about whatever it was that Jack had opened up in her, Annette would badger her, trying to get clear answers when she had none. As the afternoon went on, though, the wine began to loosen her tongue.
‘Jack? What do you mean, you feel “strange” with him?’ Annette’s eyes were wide, a frown of bewilderment on her face. ‘What sort of strange?’ Her friend was leaning forward, her eyes alight with curiosity.
‘Nothing’s going on, I don’t mean that. It’s just … Maybe it’s because we haven’t seen each other for so long …’ She stopped, uncertain how to proceed.
‘Hmm …’ Annette was frowning. ‘He’s just got married again, hasn’t he?’
Stella nodded and let out a long sigh. ‘OK. I’ll try to explain. There just seems to be this connection between us suddenly. Like we had in the past – the way, way distant past, before our son died.’ She hesitated. ‘When we still loved each other, I suppose.’
Annette said nothing, waiting for her to go on.
‘And I’m sure he feels it too. I sensed … when he hugged me, it’s just—’
‘What’s he doing hugging you?’ Annette interrupted.
Stella, assailed by a strange sense of unreality as she spoke of Jack, explained about the bathroom door, explained that this time of year was difficult for both of them because of the anniversary of Jonny’s death. She told Annette that Jack wanted her to commemorate their son’s thirtieth birthday in some way. She said the hugging was just that, hugging. She could tell her friend was baffled by her garbled summary, because she didn’t reply, and Annette was seldom lost for words.
‘Where is he buried, your son?’ she asked after the brief silence.
‘He’s not.’
Her friend raised her eyebrows.
There was a long pause before Stella said, ‘I still have his ashes in a drawer in the bedroom.’
‘Wow!’ Annette whistled softly under her breath. ‘After nearly thirty years?’
Stella shrugged. What are the rules when you lose a child? The bomb that had exploded their lives when Jonny died surely didn’t lend itself to any sort of normality.
‘And Jack wants to scatter them?’ her friend asked after a moment.
Stella hated that word ‘scatter’. Such a crude, careless word when referring to the remains of a human being: disperse, throw about randomly – how could that be right?
‘I imagine.’ Although Jack hadn’t said as much. Not in so many words. She caught the concern in Annette’s eyes and wished she would stop looking at her like that.
‘Maybe it is time to do something,’ Annette suggested, her voice low. She laid her hand lightly over Stella’s on the wooden table and Stella did not shake her off, as was her first instinct. In all
things, recently, she seemed to have lost her strength to object.
‘I don’t know,’ she said for about the fifth time. She seemed to know nothing about anything this afternoon.
‘When is Jonny’s birthday?’ Annette asked.
‘The twenty-second of July.’
‘So, two weeks away.’ Giving Stella’s hand a pat before removing her own, Annette added, ‘I’ll come with you if you like. If you want support.’
‘Thanks,’ Stella said, but she was immediately annoyed with her friend. It was as if Annette and Jack – who had never actually met – were colluding, forcing Stella down a path not of her choosing, making the decision for her about something so intensely personal and private. ‘There isn’t even a plan yet.’
Could she really take the small, rectangular bamboo box, open it and empty it to the four winds? Could she?
‘You never talk about Jonny,’ Annette was saying. ‘Your heart must have broken.’
‘It’s still broken,’ Stella found herself crying out. ‘I can’t see that he’s dead, Annie, even now. I just can’t grasp it. Time makes no difference at all. I still want him so badly sometimes it makes me almost sick.’ Stella had never said this to anyone before and her words felt hot and dangerous. But as soon as she’d spoken them, they appeared immediately to lose their strength. She found herself wondering why she had waited so long. There seemed nothing so terrible in finally admitting her pain to her dearest friend. The sky did not fall in.
Annette’s eyes were full of sympathy. ‘Maybe you need to let go, Stell. Allow Jonny to rest.’ She bit her lip. ‘Perhaps Jack’s instincts are right.’
Stella nodded her agreement. But the thought and the deed were still miles apart in her mind. Two weeks was not a long time. Would she find the courage by then?
26
Jack did, in fact, have a plan. He’d done his research – second nature after all those years at the journalistic coalface. The Morrisons had apparently sold the Kent house a couple of years after Jonny died – he had contacted Giovanna by tweeting her daughter, Alice, who was now a journalist at The Economist. Giovanna said the tragedy had haunted the whole family, and that they no longer felt comfortable there. Nor did Patrick and Sylvie, the neighbours who owned the barn – and the fateful pool. They had sold up soon after the Morrisons.