by Emma Rous
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“Yes, darling. It’s just a shock, to see that after all this time. It must have been taken not long before I arrived, and everything happened. It’s—it’s actually quite nice to see a shot of them looking so happy together.”
“So what was Mum like when you got here? What happened?”
She shakes her head slowly. “She was—confused. Unwell.” She gives me an anguished look. “I’m sorry, Seraphine. I didn’t know she was going to jump until it was too late. I should have saved her.”
I nod, pressing my lips together. The corner of the photo is damp under my thumb, and I switch to holding it by the edges. My mother’s face seems more blurry than ever.
“Well, why do you think they took this without both of us being in it?”
She shakes her head slowly, her forehead creased. “I can’t think. Perhaps one of you was asleep and they didn’t want to disturb you?”
“Can you tell which of us it is?” I hold the picture closer to her, but she keeps her hands folded on her lap.
“No. I’m not sure. You were bigger than Danny, of course. But I can’t tell from that—it could be either one of you.”
“Maybe it’s Danny, then. It looks small to me.”
“Maybe.”
“I tried to get in touch with Laura,” I say, and then leap to my feet again as Vera starts to cough. She pushes her chair backward and half stands, bent over the table, catching her breath.
“Are you all right, Gran?”
She waves a hand at me. “Fine.”
“I’ll get you some water.”
As I wait for the kitchen tap to run cold, I slide the photo between two pages of a heavy old recipe book to keep it flat. A dragonfly batters against the window, but when I push the pane open it just skitters higher to buzz metallically at the ceiling. I fill a glass.
Vera stands at the edge of the patio, looking out over the neglected lawn, her back to me.
“How did you find her?” she asks.
“I went to her old address, and they told me where she works.”
“Did you speak to her?”
I hesitate. “No.”
She turns to me, and I think she’s going to accuse me of lying, but she steps closer with an expression I’ve never seen before, as if she’s fighting a swell of panic. She twists her rings around and around in front of her chest.
“Seraphine, listen to me. That girl almost destroyed our family. I wish to God Ruth had never employed her. Don’t talk to her, Seraphine, please. I can’t bear it. I’ll answer any questions you have about your birth, about your mother, about anything. Just please stay away from her.”
“Oh, Gran, I didn’t mean to upset you.” My hand hovers over her arm for a moment. I weigh up her words, and then I step back.
“Actually, there is something else I’d like to ask you,” I say. “It’s nothing to do with Laura.”
She returns to her seat, easing herself down with a huff. “Go ahead then.”
“What are your plans for Summerbourne?” I ask. “In the long run?”
Her eyes widen. “What do you mean?”
“Can’t we just talk about these things, Gran? I don’t mind either way. But who will get it? Danny or me? I just want to know.”
“Seraphine.” She pulls a handkerchief from the bag at her side and dabs it around her mouth. “My goodness. What’s got into you today?”
I press my lips together and look at her, and she’s the first to break eye contact.
“There will always be more than enough money for you to buy your own house,” she says. I sway slightly and grasp the back of a chair.
“Are you saying that Summerbourne will go to Danny?” I ask.
She watches me. She gives the smallest of nods.
“Why?” I whisper.
She opens her mouth, but the sudden flash of pity in her eyes makes me recoil.
I can’t bear to be near her any longer. I have a sudden desperate need to see the sea. She calls my name, but I stride across the lawn without looking back, breaking into a run when I reach the cover of the trees, curling my fists as I pound toward the back gate. Summerbourne is my home. I’m the one who loves it the most.
When we were young, Danny used to run away from home periodically, triggered more than once by one of his favorite nannies leaving. He would pack a bag with provisions, and sometimes make it as far as the village before he was missed. Dad used to say Danny was ready to go off exploring the world before he even started school.
I, on the other hand, resisted bonding with our nannies because I understood from a young age that sooner or later they would all leave us. Just like our mother had left us.
People were unreliable, but the house I was born in was a safe, solid constant. I used to pester Dad and Vera for tales of Summerbourne’s history, frustrated that Dad knew so little and that Vera seemed so irritated by my questions. I drew pictures of “my” house obsessively, and dreamed of being its queen and making all the rules. One of Dad’s favorite tales was of finding me, aged five, crying with a cut finger—“not because it hurt,” he used to tell people, laughing, “but because I’d told her Summerbourne was in her blood, and she’d been peering into her wound and couldn’t see any yellow brickdust.”
I think of Danny now, my laid-back brother, and a loud, harsh laugh escapes me, because I know already what he will say when he hears Vera’s decision about Summerbourne: We can share it, Seph. You can have it, Seph. The same as he’s always said about everything our whole lives.
As ever, the view from the top of the cliffs soothes me. Gulls soar and swoop farther along the coastline near the boatyard, but their cries are drowned by the hiss of the waves here on the beach below. The breeze dries my tears, and I turn my attention to the stone tower by the top of the cliff steps: the Summerbourne folly, built by one of my ancestors, used nowadays to store our deck chairs and windbreaks for the beach. I potter around, tugging up a few weeds from the low wall that encircles the tower, bundling the prettier ones together into a bouquet. I run my fingers over the chiseled Latin words by the tower door, and then I sit in my usual spot on the scratchy grass inside the enclosure and rest my back against the warm stone wall.
I think of my grandmother’s face as she looked at that photo, and as she told me that Summerbourne will go to Danny. Despite her faults, I struggle to believe that Vera would favor a male heir for the sake of it. Has she made this decision because Danny has always been her favorite? Cheerful, biddable Danny, who never argued with her or resented her claustrophobic care the way I did. Or could it be something else—could it be related to there just being one baby in that photo? Could it mean she has doubts about who I really am?
I know that Dad was in London on the morning we were born, that he didn’t get here until after Laura had helped my mother deliver her babies. We weren’t expected until the following month, and there was nobody else in the house apart from four-year-old Edwin.
I push myself up, and take my bunch of wildflowers back to the house, dropping them into an old glass vase on the kitchen table. Vera has gone, presumably in a taxi back to the station. There’s a note on the hall table saying, Please don’t be cross, Seraphine. I’ll see you next weekend. V x. I scrunch it up and toss it into the trash can before dialing the number for Winterbourne.
I need to talk to my brothers. I grit my teeth against the tiny voice that scratches inside my skull: But are they your brothers?
4
Laura
September 1991
RUTH AND DOMINIC Mayes met me at King’s Lynn station on my return to Norfolk just over a week later. Dominic was a tall man, all smiles and enthusiasm. He laughed when he lifted my suitcase.
“What have you got in here—rocks?”
“Books,” I said.
“Darling, she’s
here for a year,” Ruth said. “This is hardly anything.”
I tried to smile. “I don’t need much.”
Dominic opened the back door of his car with a flourish, ushering me inside. “Anything you need while you’re staying with us, just ask, Laura. Edwin can’t wait to see you again. He’s made you about five welcome cards this morning already.” I glanced at the empty car seat next to me, wishing Edwin had come with them.
The villages were busier on a Saturday morning than they had been in the week, with people mowing the grass in their front gardens and walking their dogs in family groups. Driving through the last village, the one that Summerbourne sits on the far outskirts of, Dominic pointed out several landmarks.
“You can walk into the village in fifteen minutes or so,” he said. “Or we can find you a bike, I’m sure. Food in the pub’s okay. Basics in the shop. Bakery and butcher’s down there behind the post office. There’s a little pharmacy at the back of the doctor’s office.”
“That’s the school,” Ruth said, turning her head to keep it in her sight.
“The preschool’s in the hut at the end,” Dominic said. “Edwin will do a couple of mornings a week after Christmas.”
“He might,” Ruth said.
“To make some friends before he starts school,” Dominic said. “Oh look, there’s Helen. Hang on a sec.”
He swung into a parking bay alongside the village green, and a woman in a flowing maternity dress huffed her way over as Ruth wound down her window.
“Hot enough for you, Helen?” Dominic called out, leaning into Ruth’s shoulder.
The woman laughed. “I’ll say. How are you all getting on?”
“Very well, thanks,” Ruth said. “You?”
“Heartburn’s killing me—must be another curly-haired one, I reckon. I was bad enough with Ralph. But it’s all worth it, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t see Ruth’s face, but she made a “mm” sound.
“Your mother gave me a beautiful little outfit for the baby,” Helen continued. “Really kind of her. Do thank her again for me, won’t you?”
Ruth nodded. “Of course. Well. We’ll see you Wednesday.”
“Have a good weekend,” Dominic said.
The woman’s gaze flickered over me curiously, but Ruth waved her fingers, and we pulled back out onto the road.
“Helen Luckhurst,” Ruth told me, turning in her seat for a moment. “Her son, Ralph, does gymnastics with Edwin.”
Dominic slowed the car again, this time to allow a group of people to cross the road in front of us. They waved, calling out greetings.
“Everyone knows everyone around here, I’m afraid,” Dominic said, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. “You’ll get used to it.”
Ruth wound her window back up.
Edwin hurtled out of the front door when we pulled up at Summerbourne, grabbing me by the hand as I climbed out of the car.
“Come and see my den, Laura. Come and see my kittens. They’ve got names.”
“Not your kittens, darling,” Ruth murmured.
Vera appeared in the doorway holding a glass vase brimming with yellow carnations. “Edwin, let Laura come in first. Why don’t you give her your cards, and Daddy will carry her case to the annex?”
The family swept me through the kitchen into the day nursery. The door to the annex was open at the far end, but Vera held Edwin back as I followed Dominic and Ruth in. Ruth placed Vera’s flowers on the coffee table.
We stood and looked around together, the moment stretching out in silence as I tried to take it all in. Someone had added bright orange cushions to the little sofa, and a thick sheepskin rug to the floor in front of the gas fire. In place of the armchair that had been in the corner previously, there now stood a desk and a small bookcase.
“It’s wonderful,” I said at last. Ruth smiled.
“I meant to get you a desk lamp,” Dominic said. “I’ll bring one down next weekend.”
I felt rather as though I was in a spotlight myself, struggling to assume the correct facial expression under the intensity of the family’s gaze. I turned my back on them for a moment to line up Edwin’s handmade cards along the mantelpiece.
“No, Edwin.” Vera held on to the squirming boy in the doorway. “This is Laura’s private space, not for you.”
Dominic handed me two keys on a key ring. “Front door and this door. We’ll leave you to unpack and settle in.”
The beseeching look in Edwin’s eyes broke through my daze, and I smiled. “Perhaps I could go and see this den now?” I said. “And the kittens. I can unpack later.”
Edwin chattered nonstop as he led me back through to the kitchen and out into the garden, leaving the adults behind. I chased him across the lawn, and even once we were hidden in the wooded area I continued to run, weaving through the trees and making him giggle, pumping the blood back into muscles that I’d held rigid all morning. I examined each of the precious objects in his den in turn, and suggested we build our own museum to house them in.
“We can charge money!” Edwin said with glee.
He took me to a shed behind the stable block, next to the swimming pool. A cat from the neighboring farm was keeping a pair of kittens in the gap underneath the shed, and Edwin reached in and stroked the two sleepy creatures with a gentle finger.
“Mummy won’t let me bring them inside,” he said. “This one’s called Stripes and this one’s called Gordon. They’re twins, you know, because they were born on the same day.”
My throat tightened, and I nodded. I’d done the sums: he’d been without his twin brother for almost half his lifetime now, this little boy. Did he still remember him? I watched a series of expressions flit across his face.
The mother cat basked in a patch of sunlight nearby, and Edwin’s gaze drifted toward her, and then he flashed me a sudden grin.
“When I’m a grown-up, me and Stripes and Gordon are gonna live in London. Do you want to come?”
We crouched there together, watching the kitten twins and chatting about train journeys and London Zoo, until a bell rang out from the house and Edwin said, “Lunchtime.”
Saturday lunch at Summerbourne was eaten informally at the kitchen table. Over time I learned that the cooking was left to Dominic when he was there, and the rest of the time Ruth heated things up without enthusiasm, often relying on ready-made meals from the butcher in the village. The dining room was generally used only on Sundays, when Dominic liked to prepare a traditional roast dinner.
I lay awake for hours that night, the conversations of the day swirling insistently through my mind. I swapped pillows around, trying to find one that didn’t feel so desperately unfamiliar. Even the sheets felt strange—both lighter and yet somehow scratchier against my skin than my duvet cover at home. A faint scent of honeysuckle was a constant reminder that I was in a strange place, in a strange bed. I’ll get used to it, I told myself, over and over. It’s better than being at home.
By the time I emerged into the main house the next morning, Dominic was pressing sprigs of rosemary into a joint of lamb, and a mound of unwashed potatoes sat by the sink. He waved away any offer of help.
“You’re not working today,” he said. “Make yourself at home. Don’t let Edwin hassle you.”
Vera was reading the Sunday newspapers on the patio, and Ruth was still upstairs. In the end, I played with Edwin in the garden until the bell rang.
Despite the appetizing aromas, my mouth dried as we entered the dining room. Heavy silver cutlery and crystal wineglasses were laid on a red tablecloth, and the family members glided to their places with the ease of long-held custom—Vera at one end, and Dominic at the other. I took the remaining seat, between Edwin and Vera, opposite Ruth. For a moment I thought someone might say grace, but the family launched into serving themselves from the dishes in the middle, swapping them around and m
urmuring appreciatively as they took their first mouthfuls. The plates were warm. I poured gravy onto Edwin’s vegetables for him.
“Alex finally exchanged contracts on the cottage last week,” Dominic said between mouthfuls. “He’s coming down to collect the keys on Saturday.”
Ruth put her fork down. “Really? When did you speak to him?”
“He was in town in the week. We had drinks with the Mellards on Wednesday night. I told him he should come for lunch on Saturday.”
The potatoes were crispy and golden on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside; I suspected they had been roasted in goose fat. The carrots were glazed with honey. The lamb was so tender it slipped off my fork. I declined the wine that Dominic offered me, and spooned some homegrown mint sauce onto my plate.
“Is that all right?” Dominic was saying.
“Absolutely.” Ruth cut her meat into fine slivers. “I can’t wait to see him.”
“The Collisons’ old cottage?” Vera asked. “I didn’t realize he was seriously looking.”
“That’s the one,” Dominic said. “It’ll be a nice little escape when he needs it.”
Ruth reached out and put her hand over Dominic’s. “We could have a picnic on the beach on Saturday. Would you pick up groceries from the deli if I phone them an order?”
Vera turned to face me then. “How are you liking it here so far, my dear? You know you mustn’t let Edwin dominate your weekends. I hope you’re not feeling homesick?”
I finished my mouthful and shook my head. “Not homesick, no. I’m very happy, thank you.”
“More potatoes?” she asked.
“Thank you.” I took two.
I retreated to the annex after lunch to finish unpacking. My paperbacks fitted neatly along the top shelf of the bookcase, textbooks and multicolored ring binders underneath. I pulled a clip frame from my suitcase and contemplated the familiar photo montage: me and my three best friends—laughing on the bus, posing at parties and at the school dance, doing rabbit ears behind one another’s heads. A twinge of nostalgia threatened to open the lid on other, darker memories, and I gritted my teeth and slid the frame back into the suitcase. That was all behind me now.