by Fanny Blake
‘No.’ He groaned. ‘She wants me to have her. But how can I?’
May was shocked. How could she have left Eloise, such a good and beautiful baby? May couldn’t understand how any woman could have so little heart. How could she have abandoned such a gentle, loving man for another life? And what about Eloise? A man couldn’t bring up a baby on his own.
‘I could help out,’ she said before she had even thought what she was going to say next.
He looked at her. Gratitude and astonishment chased across his face.
‘Perhaps Madame would let me while Emile’s in school. I could skip my French classes.’ Her French was more than passable now, so what did that matter anyway?
‘You’d do that?’ He looked at her as if she was an angel sent to save him. ‘It needn’t be for long, just till I get back on my feet and sort things out.’
She wanted to help him. The idea of doing something for someone in need made her feel better about herself immediately. This was unquestionably the right thing for her to do. She was sure Madame would understand.
‘I would,’ she said, never more certain of anything.
And so it was arranged.
28
Galloway, 2019
‘Grandmothers! Who’d ever have thought it?’ Isla’s old schoolfriend Janet raised her glass towards the horizon. ‘Cheers! She seems a nice girl though. You should meet mine – such a prima donna. And the make-up!’
‘Don’t I know?’ said Isla, raising hers in tandem, looking across the wide beach to where Charlie was throwing a ball for Jock who ambled after it but then left it where it was. They had spent the afternoon exploring, Isla trying to enthuse a monosyllabic Charlie into collecting the tiny cornet-shaped shells found on the little shell-covered beach she remembered from her childhood. She had decided to ignore any mood swings Charlie threw at her and just press on regardless, her rulebook thrown out the window. If Charlie didn’t like it – too bad.
Janet had driven over in the late afternoon. She had put on weight since they had last met but was as agile clambering over the rocks as ever. Her eyes shone from a lined face that showed how much time she spent outside. Her hair had not seen a hairdresser for ages and was scraped back and held in place by kirby grips. Seeing her again, the time fell away as it does with good friends.
‘God, but this takes me back.’ Janet’s gesture included the vast bay where the tide had pulled the sea right back towards the horizon, leaving a vast expanse of rippled sand. Runnels of sea water sparkled in the evening sun, among them thousands of coiled lugworm casts, with the Murray Isles silhouetted in the distance – all was just as it had all been for years. Sailing boats covered in tarpaulins were pulled to the back of the beach where they rested on their trailers. Over to their right, the river Fleet was a silver ribbon gleaming as it flowed out to sea past Mossyard and Cardoness on the opposite side of the estuary. Everything was as Isla remembered, and yet not the same at all. The campsite had expanded and changed. The green caravans of her memory had been replaced by much larger static homes and luxury wooden cabins that lined up along the sea front. There were tarmacked roads and careful landscaping. The pleasant modesty of her youth had gone upmarket – sign of the times.
‘Even the diving platform’s gone.’
Her father had taught them to dive from the rickety wooden diving platform that must have succumbed to the elements years earlier. Shivering up there, watching the sea swirl around them had always been thrilling as they’d egged each other on to jump in. May would encourage them to go swimming even in the rain. How many summers must they have spent racing up and down the beach, learning to sail, shrimping in rockpools, building sandcastles and dams? Life was so simple then, when they had all got on and played together.
‘And how different is this?’ Isla turned back to the neat grey clapboard house with plate glass windows that gave a wonderful view of the shore, just the other side of the low brick wall. When she had last been here, there were no palm trees, no terrace, no manicured lawn, just scrubby grass. ‘I wonder when they knocked down the old house. I can’t remember it clearly at all.’
‘It was just a holiday home, basic and battered round the edges. In fact your parents always seemed a bit too smart for it.’
This was the second evening they’d spent together. Janet had got rid of her husband a decade earlier when she realised that life was better and easier lived alone. She bought a pretty aqua-coloured cottage in Kirkcudbright’s High Street, made friends there and spent much of her time painting and going on long walks with Ferdie, her golden retriever. ‘He’s the only company I need in my life.’
Isla couldn’t imagine such a pared-down existence for herself, while envying it too. They had been best friends since Janet whispered her two prompts in the school play and saved Isla from making a complete fool of herself. After that their friendship had never faltered. Their parents had become friends too, and Janet’s would take the next-door cottage on the beach for shared summer holidays. Her dad, a choleric-faced lawyer, would take them out in his Wayfarer, teaching them all to sail – and capsize, the best fun. In the evening they often ate together. When the kids went down to the beach in the dark, the parents would sit on one verandah or the other, often wrapped in blankets, watching out for them and chatting.
‘You said you wanted to talk about May.’
‘Yes, I do. I desperately want to know what motivated her, made her who she became. You’re my oldest friend. Maybe you remember something I don’t.’
‘We were scared of your mum, you know. She could be awfully stern.’
‘Were you?’ Her image of her parents on holiday was benign. Her father was in his swimming shorts, smoking his pipe, showing them how to cook and eat the shrimps they’d caught. Her mother had a cigarette in hand, a sleeveless white shirt tucked into a skirt gathered at the waist, her hair rolled into a French pleat, sometimes a little headscarf fluttering round it. Perhaps she was a bit more carefully dressed than the other mums, but they weren’t married to the MD of Adairs.
At Sandgreen she remembered a more carefree, more loving side to them – towards each other and their three girls. Each year May would insist they all dress up and go to the Cally Pally, the grand hotel in the woods behind the campsite for afternoon tea. They’d be given a table by the window of the huge dining room and she would order scones and cakes till they were stuffed. Other times they’d go to Kirkcudbright where their father would buy them fish ’n’ chips – something they were never allowed at home. May’s favourite thing was the apple pie from the baker in Gatehouse that she’d eat cold with lumps of Scottish cheddar. In the evenings, the mood became more competitive when David would get out the Monopoly or cards. Isla always tried to avoid getting paired with May who got so cross if she played a bad move.
‘She must have learned that intimidating air in Paris.’
Isla put down her glass. ‘How do you know she went to Paris? Did I tell you?’
‘Didn’t they meet there? I’m sure that’s what Mum told us. We thought that was so glamorous and romantic. But you should know. Another?’ She gathered up their two glasses.
‘I always thought they met in Edinburgh. Morag thinks so too. But Lorna told me Dad was in France the year before Mum was there.’
Janet shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ She got up and poured them another couple of drinks. ‘She was elegant though, wasn’t she?’
‘I suppose so. And of course I’ve got Aggie to ask.’ But would their aunt even remember? Or be prepared to? However unlikely it seemed, Paris had cropped up too many times not to be significant. But if that was the case, why hadn’t either of her parents ever mentioned it?
‘Look, I found this.’ Janet pulled a tartan-covered photo album out of her bag and opened it.
Isla spun it round so they could look at it together. ‘Morag got out the old family snaps too. Oh my God. I’d forgotten you had these.’ Janet and Bill had come to London for her and Ian’s wedding.
‘I know, but he was impossible… I still see him, you know.’ She looked again. It was true. He was once impossibly handsome too.
‘Isn’t that hard, after all this time?’
‘Not at all. He’s Helen’s dad after all, and we’ve both moved on.’
‘Have you?’ Janet gave her a look.
‘Of course.’ She was aware that when she thought of Ian, it was with a special sort of affection very different from her feelings for Tony. ‘You know what they say – you never forget your first love.’
‘Why are you blushing?’ Janet teased.
Isla batted her away like an annoying fly. ‘That was years ago. We’re friends, that’s it. We’ve had to be for Helen’s sake. And I’ve got Tony now.’
By the time Janet left, it was too late to call Morag to tell her what she had said about their parents’ meeting. Instead, Isla made herself and Charlie a hot chocolate and they lay on her double bed and watched a film on her laptop. Charlie had come in just before supper and presented her with a small collection of cornet shells. ‘For your collection.’ Isla was touched. Now, giddy from too much gin, tingling from the sun on her skin, happy at being back where she once belonged, Isla plumped up the pillows, added some cushions and away they went, only pausing it briefly in the middle to get some biscuits. She went along with Charlie’s choice. She’d never heard of Pitch Perfect but was soon sucked into the story. She laughed, she cried (almost) and she was amazed to hear Charlie sing every single number in the film, quietly at first then with increasing power until she was belting out the final song.
‘You really can sing,’ said Isla when the film was over.
Charlie emerged from the bubble that she’d entered once the music had started and looked embarrassed. ‘Was I too loud? Did I spoil it? Mum’s always telling me to shush when we do this.’ She reached for another Hob Nob.
‘Not a bit. Is this what you do with Helen?’ She liked the idea of the two of them having girly evenings together.
‘We used to. But she’s like too busy at the mo with Dad being away so much and stuff.’
‘She and I did too but we’d be on the sofa, toasting marshmallows in the fire.’ Those were happy times, just the two of them, no dramas. ‘But your singing… Are you in a band or a choir or something? You should be.’
‘I was in the school choir once, but I didn’t like all that religious shit they sang. So now I sing in my bedroom or with my best friend, Alice.’ She took another biscuit. ‘Shall we watch today’s episode of Love Island on catch-up?’
‘It’s nearly midnight,’ Isla pointed out, then saw Charlie’s face cloud over. ‘But we’re on holiday, so what the hell? We’re not meeting Janet till lunchtime. Switch it on.’
Charlie laughed. ‘God, Gran. You’re so old-school.’
Within minutes, they had been transported from the Scottish borders to an exotic sun-kissed villa peopled by impossibly beautiful young men and women with perfect bodies and perfect smiles. Charlie gave a running commentary as it went along about who was who and who they had or hadn’t been coupled with. Isla found it hard to follow or be really interested but she did her best.
A jab in her arm woke her up.
‘When did you go to sleep?’ Charlie accused her. ‘Did you miss the bit when—’
‘I wasn’t asleep. I was just resting my eyes. I heard everything that was going on.’
‘Yeah, right!’
‘Truly.’
Charlie grinned as she got off the bed. ‘See you in the morning, then!’ Isla was left to sweep the biscuit crumbs off her bed, but feeling once again that a small corner had been turned.
* * *
The next morning, she was on the phone to Morag before she was out of bed. ‘Janet says her parents told her Mum and Dad met in Paris.’ Outside, it was a beautiful day with blue sky, fluffs of cloud, seagulls shrieking over an incoming tide.
‘I never knew that.’
‘Could they, do you think? I talked to Lorna and she—’
‘Why?’
‘To tell her Charlie was coming with me. That’s all. No, we didn’t talk about Braemore – I thought that was better left till we’re face-to-face. But she and Aggie found Dad’s old passports. He was in France the year before Mum was. Isn’t that odd?’
‘How long for?’
‘She didn’t say – were you stamped back in when you came home? I don’t know – but apparently that’s what Janet’s mother told her. They thought having been in Paris was what made Mum so different – as if the Parisian style had rubbed off on her. I can’t believe we didn’t know.’
‘I don’t buy that. That was being Mrs Adair, wasn’t it? She had to look smart. ’
Isla was frustrated by her memories being so patchy. Perhaps that was because she’d left home as soon as she could and never gave her parents a thought until she went home on a duty visit. They had been unhappy when she had applied to drama college in London. But she wasn’t one of the stay-at-home tribe, and had been encouraged by Honor, one of her best friends, who had her heart set on independence too. They had set off on their big adventure together and never looked back. May accepted her decision reluctantly, pacified by the knowledge that Honor’s grandparents lived in London. Not that they ever saw them. When she did go home, Isla bent over backwards to be the sort of daughter May wanted but however much she tried, it was never quite enough. The barrier between them calcified and became the status quo.
She remembered how protective of Helen she had been when she reached the same age. Protective but ineffective. Helen had inherited the same strong will and if Isla said no, her daughter just did whatever it was anyway without telling. And it looked like Charlie had inherited it too.
When they met Janet in Gatehouse, she and her dog, Ferdie, were standing by her car in the small car park at the end of the High Street. Beside her were two freezer bags and a picnic basket.
‘What are we doing?’ asked Isla. ‘I would have brought something.’
‘You’ll see,’ said Janet, piling into Betty, not minding the back seat and Jock at all. Ferdie leaped in beside her. ‘It’s a Magical Mystery Tour. You’ve brought your swimming things?’
A nod from Isla and a grunt from Charlie.
‘Then just follow instructions.’
Even Charlie, who had had to be dragged out of bed to get there on time, brightened up. However, by the time they’d driven out of the town and were heading east she was fast asleep again.
‘Meet my exciting travelling companion,’ joked Isla, with a nod in Charlie’s direction. She caught Janet’s eye in the rear-view mirror.
Charlie opened one eye. ‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ she said. And shut it again.
‘Where are we going?’ Isla asked. They had driven back through the town, turning off the main road onto a narrow lane, belted Galloway cows and black-faced sheep grazing in the fields behind the drystone walls.
‘Wait and see. Somewhere perfect for a day like this.’ Indeed it was another day of clear skies and sunshine. They passed a couple of working farms and several modest whitewashed houses, holiday homes perhaps, brilliant under the sun. In the far distance the land rose towards the hazy blue hills beyond. As Janet pulled into a passing place to wait until an oncoming tractor had gone by, Charlie woke up.
‘Where are we going?’ She looked out of the window. No shops. No cafés. She clutched onto her lifeline, her phone, and grabbed her earbuds.
‘You’ll see.’ Janet winked.
Eventually they came to a wood where there was a lay-by with room for a couple of cars. They got out, letting the dogs run ahead into the wood as they gathered up the picnic things. Charlie clutched her backpack close to her. A short walk took them through the close-knit pine trees, illuminated by shafts of sunshine, with the sound of running water not far away and the crunch of cones and needles beneath t
heir feet, the smell of pine resin. Isla and Janet carried the picnic, forging ahead together towards the sound. Charlie stomped behind them, staring at the ground, having been given the task of carrying the picnic rug that trailed on the ground behind her. Her feelings about the expedition were perfectly clear.
‘If only she’d make more of an effort,’ hissed Isla.
‘Ach, nonsense. She’ll come round.’ Janet raised an arm to show the way. ‘Just over here.’
And there before them was a clearing in the trees where a burn flowed over a waterfall into a pool of clear peaty-coloured water. Janet laid out their picnic on a couple of flat rocks by the waterfall, putting their drinks into a plastic bag that she hung into the pool to keep cool. She took the rug from Charlie and spread it in the shade on a bed of pine needles. ‘There.’
Charlie and Jock dropped onto it as if it had been put there just for them while Ferdie went off exploring.
‘But first…’ Janet lifted her T-shirt over her head and unzipped her trousers to reveal a red and blue swimsuit. ‘Anyone else coming in? It’s fabulous, I promise you.’
‘Really?’ Isla hesitated, but it looked so inviting. ‘You’d better be right. Charlie? Coming in?’
‘No way.’ Her forehead glistened with sweat as she peeled a strand of hair off it.
‘Remember our rules? Try it.’ Isla changed behind a nearby bush. How good it was to be out of her sticky clothes, feeling the air on her skin. She put her toes in the water. ‘Christ!’ She withdrew her foot smartish. ‘It’s icy.’
‘Once you’re in, it’s great.’ Janet raised her arm and splashed her.
Isla could hear Charlie laughing behind her. ‘Go on, Gran.’
‘You can laugh. I don’t see you trying to get in. I’ll probably have a coronary.’ She scooped up a handful of the clear brown water and walked back to her granddaughter, dripping all the way.
‘No! Don’t.’ Charlie shrieked. ‘No! My phone!’ She was about to stand up and run but Isla was too quick. She opened her almost empty hands and the remaining water splashed onto Charlie’s face.