The Missing Letters of Mrs Bright (ARC)

by Beth Miller

  ‘I’ve been putting some aside.’

  ‘A few stashed tenners isn’t going to go far.’

  ‘Richard was always pretty generous with my wages, and every month I put away £150 in a savings account. I’ve never touched it.’

  ‘Well, that’s smart. That’s what… nearly two grand a year. How long have you been doing that?’

  ‘Twenty-five years.’

  ‘Hell’s bells! That’s a lot of money.’ Rose shot me a sideways glance. ‘Have you been saving for an escape fund this whole time?’

  ‘Of course not. I don’t know what I was saving for. But anyway, even that wouldn’t be enough for long on my own, I know that. I’m not an idiot. Then Mum’s money came through a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘Ahhh, that answers my next question.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Why now?’

  ‘And also Mum didn’t approve of divorce. I’d have hated to tell her.’

  ‘No, she clung on to those ol’ Catholic tenets for a long time, may she rest in peace. Longer than my mum, that’s for sure. She took me out to dinner to celebrate when my divorce finally came through.’

  ‘Plus, Stella’s moved out.’

  ‘Finally.’

  ‘I know. God, poor thing, there were times I thought she’d never go!’

  ‘How’s she doing in Essex?’

  ‘Great, I think. Nice house-share, good mates, working hard.’

  ‘She’s a good kid. Have you called her yet?’

  I shook my head. ‘Can’t face it.’

  ‘You must. She’s really worrying about you.’

  The path became even steeper, and we fell silent, save for the unattractive huffing of my breathing. All I could think about was sitting down, unhospitable a seating area as it was, but then, thank goodness, we reached a flat bit. I slithered down onto my butt, trying to calm my racing heart.

  Rose rummaged round in her rucksack and pulled out a pack of trail-mix. She tipped some into my hand. It was the nicest thing I had ever eaten. I looked at her with big hungry eyes and she handed me the packet.

  ‘So, Snowdon and Venice, and all that,’ Rose said. ‘Is this a random selection of activities you’ve plucked off midlife-crisis dot com?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or a bucket list?’

  ‘I’m not planning on dying any time soon. Possibly if this mountain gets any steeper. No, it’s just… I was looking through some old stuff from Mum’s house, and found a list I made when I was a kid: “Things to do by the time I’m thirty”. And I’d done almost nothing on it.’

  ‘You need to make a new list, is all.’ Rose nodded. ‘Come on, we’ll get cold sitting still.’

  ‘It’s not a bucket list,’ I said, as we resumed walking, ‘but I suppose there was something about losing Mum. Well. We don’t have an infinite amount of time, do we?’

  Rose laughed. ‘Did you only just realise that?’

  ‘No, but it used to be kind of an abstract notion. Then suddenly it was a real and constant threat. I’d be at Waitrose, for instance—’

  ‘I too always have my most metaphysical revelations at Waitrose. Aldi just doesn’t cut it.’

  ‘Shut up. And I’d be wheeling my trolley round thinking, how many more times will I do this?’

  ‘You could get online delivery, you know.’

  ‘And it wasn’t, how many more times will I do this, as in, what a bore. It was, this is a reasonably pleasurable part of my week, and how many more times will I get to do it?’

  ‘No wonder you wanted to leave home, if the supermarket shop was a highlight.’

  ‘I’ve learned to take enjoyment from the banal moments of my uneventful life. Please can we stop for a minute?’ Despite the coolness of the day, I was pouring sweat.

  We rested briefly, our hands braced on our knees. I glanced behind us, and realised that we still had so much further to go than the amount we had already come. We stepped off the path to allow a family of four to pass us. They all said hello, even the little kid at the back who couldn’t have been more than seven. Compared to us, they were going at jogging speed.

  ‘If you’re feeling tired, take off a layer,’ Rose said.

  ‘Is that Mountain Man lore?’

  ‘Yep. Or maybe you’re having a hot flush.’

  ‘I’m nowhere near hot flushes yet. Still getting my periods on the regular.’

  ‘Poor you.’

  ‘Being in one’s fifties is very different, don’t you think, from when our mothers were that age?’

  ‘Totally. My mum seemed like an old lady,’ Rose said.

  ‘I remember. She wore a shawl.’

  ‘That bloody shawl! All she needed was a rocking chair and a cat. Yet she wasn’t much older than I am now.’

  We started off again, a slow uphill crawl. The family were already specks in the distance.

  ‘When Mum was very ill,’ I said, ‘a couple of weeks before she died, she said she regretted not taking one more walk along Parade Gardens.’

  ‘Ah, I haven’t thought about the Parade for years!’

  ‘You haven’t been back to Hoylake for a long time, have you?’

  Rose shuddered. ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘She’d take me along the Parade when I was a kid, but she rarely went there afterwards. You don’t, do you? You don’t go for walks in the same way as when the kids were little. Well you do, with your new Wordsworth boyfriend who wants to take you up the Khyber Pass.’

  ‘Pretty sharp banter for someone puffing like a rhino.’

  ‘Anyway, Mum said, “I always thought there would be more time.” And I realised I was carrying on like that too. I was aware that I wasn’t exactly happy, but I always assumed there would be time to do something about it. And then I thought, what if there isn’t more time? You never know, do you? You never know if there’s a bus hurtling round the corner with your name on it, or a heart attack, or something.’

  ‘Jeez!’ Rose said. ‘This is heavy.’

  ‘Heavy,’ I said, like Ollie.

  Rose was silent for a while. Then she said, ‘It’s about feeling that you need to spend your time in a different way from now on.’

  ‘Exactly! An excellent summary of all my waffle.’

  ‘So there really wasn’t one particular thing Richard did to tip you over the edge?’

  ‘No, honestly, there’s nothing that I could put in an “unreasonable behaviour” petition. There wasn’t any one thing. It was just a marriage-full of little things.’

  We stopped again. The going was tough and we were, when all was said and done, not in the prime of fitness. Rose unscrewed the top of her water bottle and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Go on.’

  ‘How do you know there’s more?’

  ‘I can see from your face.’

  ‘You are so smart, Rose.’ I tried to gulp down a lump that had found its way to my throat. ‘Well, I guess… I was lonely.’

  We started walking again.

  ‘Loneliness is a bugger,’ Rose said.

  ‘Eventually, it makes you fall out of love with someone.’ I drank some water, but it didn’t dislodge the lump.

  ‘Ah, Kay. I’m sorry. So when are you off to Sydney?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Good heavens, why not? You’re worried about Bear, your new mantra is that there might not be more time, so what are you doing sitting here?’

  ‘I’m not sitting! I’m toiling up Wales’ answer to bloody Everest!’ I was starting to feel out of breath again. ‘And I already have my visa. I applied weeks ago.’

  ‘Ha! You have been secretly planning this for a while.’

  ‘Secret from myself, too, in that case. I only applied because I thought I might go to Australia this year.’

  ‘It’s natural to be scared about going off to the other side of the world,’ Rose said.

  I didn’t reply, because at this point we had to do some single-file scrambling up a verge. Rose went first, and I struggled u
p behind, clutching pointlessly at tufts of grass. At the top, the path widened out again, but I was so breathless I sat on the ground. Rose joined me, and we gazed at the view: misty rocks and peaks as far as the eye could see. The world seemed dauntingly huge, all at once.

  Man up, Kay, I told myself. It was a phrase I’d got from Anthony, whenever he had to do something that scared him. Which was quite often – he was an anxious guy. ‘Man up, Anthony!’ he’d mutter to himself. It didn’t seem to help me this time, though.

  ‘Oh, Rose.’ I felt the tears come into my eyes again. ‘I am scared. I wish you were coming with me.’

  ‘I think you have to do this on your own, chick. I’ve been to see Bear a few times, but you never have. Not since that trip when we were eighteen. But I’ll help you plan it, when we get back.’

  We stood, and looked up at the mountain ahead of us. We were now at a point where we could no longer walk side-by-side. The next section would be more like rock climbing.

  ‘If we get back,’ I said.

  We gave each other a Scouts’ salute, and then Rose stepped forward.

  The rest of the climb was the hardest thing I’d ever done. In some places, I had to stretch my leg so high with each step that I grazed my chin with my bended knee. Muscles twanged that I hadn’t heard from in years. At one point, the mist came down and we climbed blind, with no sense of how high up we were.

  It was often physically impossible to talk to each other, and my inner conversation went into crazy overdrive. I berated myself for leaving Richard, then berated myself for not leaving years ago. I worried about the shop, and about Stella being pulled back home so soon after she’d finally managed to leave. I worried about going to Australia, whether it was a stupid idea, and I worried about whether Bear was OK. Occasionally I wondered if the easiest thing would be to lie down and die quietly at the side of the path.

  It took five hours to reach the top, and though we had been passed by dozens of climbers, including young children who sprang from rock to rock like mountain goats, I was taken aback to find hundreds of people in the mountain-top café. When Rose informed me that the majority had come up by train, I was too knackered to be outraged. We got tea and went outside. The fog had lifted, and we sat near the stone cairn marking the summit, surrounded on all sides by valleys and shimmering lakes, and by the rising jagged peaks of smaller mountains, grassy and sunlit. We were right at the top of the world, the clouds almost close enough to touch.

  ‘This was voted the prettiest view in the whole of the UK,’ Rose said, handing me a sandwich. She swept her arm across the landscape. ‘Is it what you thought it would be like?’

  ‘It’s even better than I imagined,’ I said. All the years I’d been coming to Bryn Glas, I’d been aware of Snowdon, so near, yet somehow the time had never been right to tackle it. Now the challenge was over, and I had a warm cup of tea in my hands, I felt something I hadn’t felt for a long time: a sense of achievement. ‘Thanks for making me do this, Rose. You were right. I needed to come out of my head for a bit.’

  I put my arm round her shoulder. I was physically tired but emotionally I was buzzing. ‘So. Train back?’

  She stroked my hair. ‘Hell, no. Downhill’s miles easier!’

  Three hours later, as we limped back into Llanberis, I’d have punched her on the nose, if I wasn’t too exhausted.

  We fell into the car with screams of relief.

  ‘Fuuuuucccckkk,’ Rose said. ‘I forgot something important!’

  ‘Oh God, what?’

  ‘I forgot we were in our fifties.’

  This struck us as extremely funny, and we giggled tiredly all the way back to Bryn Glas. When we were through the door, Rose simply said, ‘Good night,’ and went straight up to bed. It was not yet nine in the evening. I followed her upstairs on my hands and knees, and crawled into bed without taking off any clothes. And that, dear fifty-something worried husband-leaver, is one way to get yourself a decent night’s sleep.

  Letter written on 21 January 2018

  Dearest Bear,

  * * *

  Well, this is new: no letter from you last month. I hope everything’s OK. It feels so weird to be writing without yours in front of me. I had another look at your last, but everything sounded fine. Charlie was happy, getting on with his studies and all his after-school activities, hats off to you. When Stella was a teenager I couldn’t get her to do anything. She’d lie on her bed for hours on end, listening to music, or on the sofa watching telly. It was a miracle to me that she went off to university. When she came back, I wasn’t surprised.

  This last year, with her filling in hundreds of job applications, she was getting so miserable, losing all her confidence. I was thrilled when her boyfriend Theo set her up with someone he knows, Gabrielle, who’s got a thriving business and needed a partner. I think I told you this in my last letter. So, Stella’s moved out at last. It’s hard for kids now, they’ve all got degrees so how do they stand out? I never got mine, of course. I was going to say that despite that, I did OK, but actually, I didn’t really, did I, Bear? All those years when I might have been doing something interesting, I’ve been stuck behind the counter of the bloody shop. Ah well. You make your bed, you lie in it, as my dear old mum would say. Hell, I miss her so much.

  And look here, Honey Bear, I miss you too! I’m hoping this blip is the Royal Mail’s fault and that next month your letter will drop onto my mat, as always. Do you know how my heart lifts at the sight of it? The blue envelope, your slanting handwriting. I didn’t even think how much I’d miss it till it didn’t arrive. Sorry, I sound like I’m guilt-tripping, Bear, and I don’t mean to. I just miss hearing you.

  Till next time.

  Miss you.

  * * *

  Always, Kay

  Five

  Stella

  I got to Mum and Dad’s at a little after five. Or just Dad’s now, I supposed. I let myself in with my key, but he wasn’t in. Oh God, surely he hadn’t gone to…? I called a cab and raced over to Quiller Queen, Mum’s shop. It was almost closing time, but there was an unusually long queue at the counter. A couple of girls at the back peeled off as I went past, and I heard one tell the other that they could ‘get it in Smiths’. Thankfully they were too far away for Dad to hear. Where the hell was Anthony? Today of all days he should be here. Dad was stabbing wildly at the till, looking grey and tired, his hair un-brushed. As I reached the counter, he said to a customer, ‘I’m going to have to take a card payment, this piece of crap is broken.’

  ‘Hey, Dad,’ I said.

  ‘Stella!’ He threw his arms round me in front of everyone, something he’d never done in the shop before. Unprofessional, he’d have called it. Mindful of the impatient customers, I extricated myself and took over. Dad stood limply at my side, smiling vaguely. Once I’d processed the queue and the shop was empty, I turned to him.

  ‘Dad, let’s close up. It’s not long till six, anyway.’

  ‘Am I being useless?’

  ‘No, no. I think you’re a little tired, maybe. You’re in shock.’

  ‘Your mother thinks I’m useless.’

  ‘She’s never said that, Daddy.’ The babyish name seemed to come out at emotional moments.

  ‘She might as well have done. She must have thought me pretty useless to throw me over for that mincing ninny, Anthony.’

  ‘Pardon?’ I looked at Dad closely. ‘What’s happened with Anthony? Where is he?’

  ‘Rotting in hell, I hope.’ Dad slapped his hand down on the counter.

  ‘Daddy, what have you done?’ Oh my God, had Dad… killed Anthony? My mind ran on feverishly. It was such a weird day, I honestly felt like anything could have happened.

  ‘Only what any sensible man would have done in the same situation.’ Dad locked the till.

  ‘What would any sensible man do?’

  ‘Sack him, of course.’

  Phew. Though, hang on, what?

  ‘I sent him packing. That conniving little b
astard, taking my wages every month and secretly, behind my back, well it doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘Mum’s been having an affair with… Anthony?!’

  Dad nodded gravely.

  I couldn’t compute this new twist. We went outside and locked up, then had a brief tussle at Dad’s car, with him insisting he was fine to drive, then abruptly giving in. I got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  ‘Dad, did Mum tell you about this affair?’

  ‘Of course not! She wouldn’t have the balls.’

  ‘So did Anthony say…?’

  ‘A scoundrel like that certainly doesn’t have the balls to admit it! I always assumed he batted for the other team. Shows how wrong you can be about people. All people.’ He let out a strange half-laugh-half-sob, and closed his eyes.

  ‘What did he say, when you confronted him?’

  ‘Oh, he denied it, of course. Little runt seemed to think he could carry on working for me!’

  ‘But…’ I could see from Dad’s face it was pointless to argue. He looked like a crazy man. I was sure Anthony was gay. Still, on this topsy-turvy day, who knew? Maybe he had somehow fallen for Mum’s older-lady charms. Stranger things had happened, probably, though I couldn’t think what they were right now.

  I put the car into gear, eased into the road, and said, ‘Let’s go home, I’ll make you something lovely for tea, and you can have a nice rest.’ I realised I was soothing Dad, speaking as though he was going senile. Was he? Was that why Mum had bailed out? Thanks a bunch, Mum.

  * * *

  Back at the house, Dad went for a bath, something he’d always done after a day in the shop. The normality of that was encouraging. I began to put a curry together from ingredients Mum had left in the fridge. She had clearly stocked it up before she left this morning, as everything was fresh. This thought caught in my throat. How long had she been planning to leave? What preparations had she put in place? I looked at my phone. Nothing from Mum, but a few texts from Edward. As always, he was infuriatingly laid-back.