Did she die at the house?
Jeannie and Donna have turned away to talk to the others and I am grateful to be ignored. Light-headed, I check the text again, lifting the phone up to my face for a better view, but the wording hasn’t changed. My mum is dead and has been for almost ten hours.
Illuminated against the backdrop of the dimly lit pub, the text glares back at me, challenging me to disbelieve it. And I do. I just don’t get how she can be dead: she is – was – no age at all. Mentally, I calculate exactly how old. If I’m thirty-four now and she had me at twenty-seven, that would make her sixty-one. That’s relatively young still, isn’t it?
Jeannie nudges me. ‘You okay?’ she asks, eyeing my phone. I flip it over in my hand so she can’t see the screen. ‘You’ve gone really pale.’
‘I’m fine.’ I do a passable impression of smiling, then rise to my feet. ‘I need the loo. I’ll be back in a minute.’
I take my phone with me and push through the throng towards the toilets. There is a queue outside the ladies’ and I recognise the woman at its rear as someone from our firm’s marketing team, but she doesn’t acknowledge me as I slot in behind her. I don’t merit her attention because I’m ‘only’ in accounts, but for once I don’t mind being snubbed. I can’t make small talk now, not when my mind is racing at a million miles an hour and my pulse is matching it step for step.
Mum died and I wasn’t there.
I should’ve guessed Karen would be the one to tell me. My father aside, she was the person Mum was closest to. Sisters born only eighteen months apart, they bought houses in the next street from one another and had their children around the same time so they could raise them together. Unless Mum had remarried, I expect Auntie Karen was with her at the end, holding her hand until the last … unless, it hits me, her death really was sudden and no one was. The thought of Mum being alone like that makes my knees buckle and I stumble into the marketing woman, who shoots me a look over her shoulder. I mumble an apology, blaming it on the heeled boots I’m wearing. She probably thinks I’m drunk and I’m happy to let her.
A few minutes later, it’s my turn for an empty cubicle. I shut the door with a bang and rest my forehead against the sign on the back of it advertising the pub’s Christmas menu, even though it’s still only mid-October. I let out a sob, then another, but my eyes remain dry. I’ve shed so many tears for my mum over the past two decades that now, when she’s finally deserving of them, there are none to give.
Our estrangement was her doing. She made the decision, along with my dad, to pretend I didn’t exist. I read somewhere once that on a person’s deathbed his or her overriding regret isn’t failing to land their dream job, own their own house or earn enough money, it’s losing contact with loved ones. Did Mum, in her dying moments, wish we’d reconciled? My heart steels a fraction as I count up the years I’ve been on my own and I wonder if it’s too much to hope she was bereft that we hadn’t.
I peel myself away from the door, lower the toilet lid and gingerly sit down. Cradling my phone in both hands, I wonder how to answer my aunt’s messages. Does she even expect me to? The lack of warmth suggests she might not, nor are there any ‘hope you’re well’ or ‘take care’ platitudes I can boomerang back. Then again, I silently scold myself, she’s hardly going to be concerned about niceties after her sister’s died and I won’t have been the only relative she’d have had to break the news to, which in itself gives me pause. I wonder where I ranked on her list of people to contact. It’s probably too much to hope that I might’ve been first, and the time lapse would suggest not.
I try to formulate a response, my fingers hovering over the keypad, but I keep coming up blank. Calling my aunt is out of the question, I decide – because what do you say to someone you haven’t seen or spoken to in twenty-five years?
The last memory I have of Auntie Karen is standing on the front doorstep of our house with her arm around Mum’s shoulders as she sobbed, convincing her that my departure was for the best. That left Dad to walk beside me as they rolled me away; I can still hear his voice breaking as he asked the doctor whether the restraints pinning me to the stretcher were really necessary. I shall also never forget how his face sagged with despair when they lifted me into the back of the ambulance and his fingers were wrenched from mine. It was the last time we ever held hands.
Suddenly I’m angry. Screw Auntie Karen and what she said that day. If she hadn’t stuck her oar in, filling my parents’ ears with poison, my life would’ve turned out differently. I wouldn’t be hiding in a pub toilet in Colchester, slightly tipsy and devastated to find out my mum is dead – I would be at home in Heldean with my cousins, raising a glass to her memory and choosing which songs to play at her funeral.
There’s a bang on the cubicle door.
‘What are you doing in there?’ a woman shouts, an edge to her voice. ‘People are waiting out here and you’ve been in there ages.’
I look at the time on my phone and I’m startled to see half an hour has passed since I received the first text.
I hear another voice, this one familiar.
‘Cara? Are you in here?’ Jeannie calls out.
‘Is that your friend in there? Tell her to get a bloody move on.’
Knuckles rap softly on the cubicle door. ‘Cara? Are you okay?’
Rising to my feet, I slip my phone into my trouser pocket and open the door. One look at Jeannie’s concerned expression and I fall helplessly into her arms. Still the tears won’t come, but I howl as though my heart is breaking – which I think it might be.
Jeannie’s voice rings in my ear. ‘Christ, what’s happened?’
I can’t find the words.
‘Cara, tell me what’s wrong.’
Eventually, I lift my head from my boss’s shoulder. The women waiting in line have melted back to a respectable distance.
‘It’s my mum,’ I stutter. ‘She died today. I just found out.’
Jeannie’s mouth falls opens in shock and a rumble of sympathy reverberates among the women watching us.
‘Oh, Cara, I’m so sorry.’ Jeannie’s eyes brim easily with the tears that mine can’t produce. ‘Was it sudden?’
I don’t want to admit I haven’t a clue, so I lie and say yes.
‘Let’s get you out of here. With a bit of luck, we can get you on a train to Morecambe tonight.’
That pulls me up short. ‘Morecambe?’
‘To be with your dad.’
Her comment baffles me, because Dad’s been dead for almost two decades. He was killed in a car accident not long before my sixteenth birthday.
Then the penny drops.
‘I don’t mean Anne,’ I say quietly.
Now Jeannie is confused. ‘I thought that was her name?’
She’s heard me mention Anne and has assumed she’s my mum. I’ve never told anyone at work what I tell Jeannie next.
‘Anne’s my foster mum. It’s my real mum who’s died.’
Jeannie stares at me, palpably stunned. One of the women in the queue has reached bursting point and squeezes past us apologetically to use my vacated cubicle. This propels Jeannie into taking my hand and leading me outside into the corridor separating the toilets from the rest of the pub. It’s busy, with people going back and forth, but there’s a quiet spot at the end, by the fire exit. As we stand there, I feel a draught sneaking under the door and it’s a reminder that while the pub is warm enough for us to shed our layers down to our shirtsleeves, outside autumn’s making its mark.
I can see Jeannie is brimming with questions for me, but she’s astute enough to realise I’m in no state to be forthcoming right now, so she sticks to the practicalities a situation like this requires.
‘Where does – did – your mum live?’ she asks.
‘Heldean, on the Herts–Essex border.’
She frowns. ‘That’s about an hour away, if I’m thinking of the right place. Maybe we could get you a taxi there. It’ll cost, but it’ll be quicker than going by
train at this hour.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m not going back there.’
‘Oh, Cara, I know this must be a huge shock, but are you sure? Who let you know that she died?’
‘My aunt, but she won’t want me turning up.’
‘It’s not up to her – she was your mum,’ she says fiercely. ‘If you want to go back to pay your respects, she can’t stop you.’
I feel a surge of affection for Jeannie for saying that. She doesn’t have children of her own – never could, she’ll cheerfully tell anyone impertinent enough to ask – and instead she helms our office like the mother hen she never had the chance to be. She cheers on our triumphs, counsels our failures, disciplines us when we step out of line and never for a second do we doubt she cares. I’ve often thought she’d make a great foster carer, but I fear the boards which approve them might not be enlightened enough to look past the sheath-like blouses, skyscraper stilettos and eighties-era make-up to see what a remarkable person she is.
‘I honestly don’t think I could face it,’ I say, which is an understatement and a half.
Jeannie looks pained on my behalf. ‘When was the last time you saw your mum?’
I hesitate. If I’m honest with her, it means risking her finding out my real identity.
It was decided early on, while I was still in the Peachick, that I should keep my first name because the distress of adopting a new one might impede my recovery. It’s perhaps the only thing I am grateful to the Peachick for. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Two years locked up in that hospital taught me the art of being still – when everything around you is chaotic and frightening and loud, when the adults around you are strangers you can’t trust, learning how to quiet yourself so you go unnoticed is quite the skill and one I still use to great effect.
But while I stayed as Cara, I changed my surname from Belling to Marshall, which I plucked from a book. The day I left foster care, I vowed never to reveal to another living soul who I used to be – why should I go through life being judged for what people thought was the truth about me, and if they looked me up online, they would only assume the worst. Cara Belling and the events of July 1994 have their own Wikipedia entry.
Yet this news about my mum has broken me in a way I could never have predicted. I feel alone and lost again in the same way I did coming round my first morning in the Peachick and wondering why my parents had put me there. A dedicated psychiatric unit for children and adolescents, it is a place I remember mostly for its outward cheeriness – every wall was covered in artwork and murals, as though that might be enough to distract us from where we were. It didn’t work.
‘Cara?’
Jeannie startles me from my reverie. She’s only a few years younger than Mum was and is gazing at me with such tenderness that suddenly I decide I should tell her at least some of the truth. I need to tell someone.
‘The last time I saw my mum I was nine years old. Once I was in foster care, I never saw or spoke to her again.’
Chapter Three
MEMORANDUM
To: Dr Patrick Malloy, head of clinical services
From: Dr Stacey Ardern, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist
Subject: Cara Belling
Date: Friday 22 July 1994
As requested, this is the abridged version of my first assessment – full report to follow by end of day.
Cara has presented with signs of acute emotional distress since her admittance three days ago. She appears to have no grasp of the nature of her surroundings and repeatedly asks to go home. She so far refuses to engage in conversation about what happened to her brother and any mention, however abstract, of the entity known as Limey Stan that she identified to police officers at the scene of the fatality induces hysteria. Trust-building may be a challenging and drawn-out process and pushing too hard on the subject at this early stage may be deleterious for her. Therefore, a cautious approach by all professionals coming into contact with the child must be heeded.
Chapter Four
Karen
The kettle is almost at boiling point, the sound of gurgling water reaching its crescendo. Karen stares at it groggily. She can’t remember coming into the kitchen to switch it on or why she has – the time for soothing cups of tea has long passed and everyone in the living room is on either red wine or neat spirits now. None of them has requested another hot drink and neither does she want one. She reaches over and switches the kettle off and as it is silenced, she hears her husband, Gary, let out a peal of laughter in the next room, which sets them all off.
The sound of their merriment rakes at her insides like a fork scraping a plate and she wishes they would leave. She’d been happy to see them when she arrived back from the hospice and was grateful for the fierce embraces and salving words and the tears of solidarity for her loss, but already she can sense their veils of sadness beginning to lift. Only by a fraction, and abetted by the alcohol, but enough to make her feel as though she is the only one who still cares that her sister died today.
The door between the kitchen and hallway swings open and Ryan enters, empty bottle of Cabernet in his grasp. Without prompting, he goes straight to the recycling bin to deposit it.
‘Dad’s asked me to open another one,’ he says.
Karen nods and he pulls another bottle of red from the rack by the fridge.
‘Don’t you want a glass?’ her son asks.
She shakes her head. ‘No, absolutely not.’
Right now she can’t imagine drinking wine of any colour ever again.
Twice a day, volunteers brought a trolley round the hospice, offering free alcoholic drinks to patients and their relatives. An unorthodox form of palliative care, but one that made the waiting that bit more bearable. Anita had been conscious for occasional moments during her final twenty-four hours and it was during one of those moments she suggested the two of them enjoy a last glass of white wine together ‘to toast me on my way’. She’d only managed a sip of hers before weakly shoving it away, so Karen had downed both glasses in quick succession and now she has to live with the memory that while her sister took her last, shuddering breath, she’d sat there feeling horribly woozy.
‘Why don’t you come and sit with us, Mum? Everyone’s talking about their favourite memories of Auntie Neet.’
Karen swallows hard. She has so many, she wouldn’t know where to begin. She and Anita were two halves of the same coin their entire lives, companionably intertwined in a way that belied many sibling relationships. Blind panic rises up in her at the thought of never seeing her sister again and she covers her mouth with her hand to stop herself crying out.
‘Mum?’
She shakes her head, too upset to manage a reply. Ryan reaches over and squeezes her shoulder.
‘I wish we could’ve been with you at the end. It must’ve been so hard going through it alone.’
Karen nods, tears coming quickly. It was Anita’s emphatic wish that only she be at her bedside when she died and so Karen spent three days at the hospice on her own watching her sister ebb away, the hardest thing she has ever had to do. She would have given anything to have Gary be there to support her, even for an hour or so, but Anita would not be swayed. Gary was not welcome and nor was anyone else.
Ryan eyes his mum’s phone, which is lying on the countertop next to the kettle. ‘Has Cara texted you back?’
Karen lowers her hand from her mouth. ‘No, not yet.’
‘The woman you spoke to definitely gave you the right number for her?’
‘Yes, she did. She was very nice about it. She even offered to tell Cara herself, but I said no.’
‘You should’ve let her,’ says Ryan, his voice hardening. ‘The less any of us have to do with her, the better.’
‘It’s not that simple,’ Karen replies stiffly.
‘Isn’t it? Auntie Neet never wanted to see her, so why should we bother with her now?’
‘Your aunt wanted me to tell her.’
‘But why? C
ara meant nothing to her.’
‘Please, Ryan, let’s not go through this now. Not tonight.’
Karen is too exhausted to deal with her son’s anger right now, but she accepts it isn’t misplaced, because she feels exactly the same. Having to make contact with Cara bothers her immensely – as far as she is concerned, her niece lost the right to be involved in any family matters a long time ago.
‘Sorry, Mum, I don’t mean for you to get upset again. It’s just when I think about what Cara did …’ He grimaces and his hand tightens around the neck of the wine bottle. ‘It’s wrong that we have to take her feelings into consideration now.’
‘I know. The best outcome all round would be that she doesn’t care her mum’s died and she leaves us alone.’
But she won’t, Karen thinks bitterly. Cara’s return to Heldean is guaranteed, because before Anita died she made sure of it.
Chapter Five
Cara
I wake the next morning to a voicemail message from Anne saying my aunt Karen has been in touch with her, that she and John are very sorry for my loss and could I call them back please? It was almost eleven the previous evening when she rang me, but I was already in bed by then – after I told her about my mum, Jeannie sent me home in a taxi she paid for upfront and as soon as I reached my flat, I put my phone on silent and crawled into bed with a half-full bottle of vodka for company.
Wrenching my head off the pillow takes some effort: my brain feels like it’s been nailed to the inside of my skull. The now-empty vodka bottle is on the floor beside the bed where I must’ve dropped it and I nudge it out of the way with my foot as I stagger to the bathroom. Mustard is waiting outside the door for me when I’ve finished, his baleful stare compounding the shame I feel. He rallies when I feed him though, and I wish, not for the first time, that people were as easily placated as dogs.
I adopted him from a dog-rescue charity six years ago and he was there for eighteen months before that. A veritable canine soup – my vet reckons he is part Alsatian, collie and boxer – poor Mustard kept being overlooked for prettier dogs, but I loved him at first sight because I could see he was desperate for some permanency in his life and I knew all about that myself.
Shadow of a Doubt Page 2