The Beloved Girls

by Harriet Evans

‘I’ll be back tomorrow. There’s something I have to do tonight. Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course – it’s late,’ said Davide. She could hear him, shushing the children.

  ‘I love you. I love you all. I’ll come back. I promise. I promise.’

  She must have stayed there a while, because the sun had almost disappeared behind the cliffs as she emerged. Still in her bare feet, she stood on the springy, soft mossy turf, feeling the warmth of it soaking into her skin. She was here again. She had spoken to her family. There was a link between these two formerly separate worlds. She had stood on this ground and heard their voices.

  Catherine walked the few steps towards the stone gate that led into the garden of Vanes, through which she had run so many times that summer. She saw, with a plucking feeling at her heart, the gateway to the old stone pool; the gate was open, she could see the green water, glinting in the setting sun.

  It was an hour or so since she’d eaten the honey; she’d had nothing else since breakfast other than a banana and some water. She felt light-headed, bursting with energy, and she wondered if the rumours about the honey and its strange properties were true. The colours around her were incredibly bright. The world seemed calm, and at the same time pulsating with life. Every leaf, every blade.

  She stood still for a minute, there under the archway, looking for one last time at the house, the terrace. The back door opened again, suddenly, and a man came out. He pointed at her.

  ‘Hey, you!’ he called, his voice carrying across in the wind.

  She stood still, as if it wasn’t obvious he was talking to her.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing, poking around? I saw you going into the chapel. It’s condemned property, OK? It’s dangerous. Clear off!’

  Catherine took a step back. She slid her thumbs under her rucksack and stared back at him. She could see now for certain that it was Joss; of course it was.

  He was wearing a moleskin waistcoat with gold buttons that gleamed; a checked shirt, dark-green trousers. He was red-faced, and those lovely hazel-grey eyes that she had once gazed into glared furiously at her as he gathered pace. The Byronic lock of hair that used to fall into those eyes had gone; most of his hair was gone, in fact. His stomach was a little round half-sphere; the rest of his once-wiry, languorous frame had expanded, like a balloon filled with too much air.

  Joss, it’s me. I took Kitty’s life. She gave it to me. I lived it, and it was good. So good. Ah, Joss –

  But she couldn’t bring herself to say hello. She couldn’t bear to think that was Kitty’s twin, nor did she want to trample on the last traces of nostalgia she might have had about that summer, to see the man the boy had become.

  ‘I say! Hey!’

  He was walking across the lawn, following the path they’d always taken. He was coming towards her. Catherine dropped the bee that she was still holding in her hand, forgetting about her trainers, and backed away.

  ‘Here! You!’ he was shouting. He was getting closer, and she could see him, squinting at her in the last of the light from the sun. ‘Who is that? Tell me who you are!’

  ‘Goodbye,’ Catherine called. ‘Goodbye!’

  And she started to run, bare feet surprisingly agile on the springy turf, till his shouts faded and there was no answer, only the sound of sea and air.

  Catherine went back along the footpath and turned off towards the main road. She didn’t know where she would sleep tonight, only that she should get out. This was her last night. Tomorrow she would go home.

  The first night she’d slept in a hotel, the second two nights out in Hyde Park, and she could barely remember them now . . . that was the worst period, where she knew she couldn’t go back but couldn’t seem to go forward at all. And she had been afraid she might try to end it. She had been so afraid. Now she was out of it she realised how terrified she had been.

  At the end of the short path through the woods was the gatehouse. But it was not empty. There was a light inside and she could hear loud music, guitar, something with drums. And then she remembered what Merry had said. ‘She lives in the gatehouse now.’

  Catherine had no idea what time it was. She stood rather woozily on tiptoe, and peered above the overgrown hedge, spiky with spring growth. Staring into the sitting room window she could see a figure, hunched over an empty grate. At her feet, a discarded box from a ready meal, a plate and some cutlery, and jewel-like coloured foils, twists of chocolate wrappers, scattered across the floor.

  It was Sylvia; she knew, without seeing her face. The black hair, tied in a loose bun, heavy fringe shot through with grey. The sharp angles of her shoulders, the way her knuckles whitened as she clenched her hands together in her lap, beating in time to the music; all this, Catherine knew, without having to see it. How like Merry she was, and like Kitty had been, in her swift, intelligent movements, and how little she resembled her son.

  Sylvia looked up, suddenly, as if she sensed something out of the window. Catherine stopped still, keeping completely quiet. ‘It’s late,’ she heard Sylvia say, very calmly. ‘Who is it? Who’s there? Is it you again, Kitty? Come to blow my house down?’

  The wall was covered in strange markings, set out in evenly spaced-out hexagons: as Catherine peered closer she could see a block of brightly coloured diamond patterns, next to perfectly controlled swirls of colour, clambering, spiked thickets of rose studded with little decorations, woodland animals on endless repeat. The whole of the small room, she realised, was a hive in different patterns.

  Catherine’s head still ached. She stared again, as the hive played depth tricks on her eyes. The room seemed to be layered, the walls alive, three-dimensional.

  The wind behind her gusted and a tree scraped on the roof, the window rattled and suddenly the door flew open, banging loudly, and Sylvia appeared in the doorway, staring out at Catherine, as the music swelled and a woman’s voice howled.

  ‘Oh. There you are,’ she said. ‘I wondered when you’d come.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Catherine was ushered inside the tiny gatehouse and Sylvia shut the door carefully, peering out, head swivelling back and forth down the road.

  ‘Unwanted visitors,’ she said, obscurely. She slammed the door smartly, then leaned against it, arms folded behind her back, her lovely dark eyes flashing. ‘So you’re here. At last.’ She looked down at Catherine’s bare, muddied feet but said nothing. ‘May I take your coat, my darling?’

  Inside, the music was so loud things rattled. A guitar, a drum beat, a wailing, distanced voice grew, swelling towards a chorus. A glass, a precariously balanced photo frame, a cup and saucer on the cluttered dresser shook – with a jolt that made her feel sick, Catherine recognised the cup and saucer, a pink willow pattern, from Vanes. ‘I like the music,’ she yelled. ‘What is it?’

  Sylvia gave her a strange look. ‘The Stones, darling. “Gimme Shelter”. How the devil are you? And sorry to be awkward, darling, but what should I call you?’

  ‘Oh. Catherine. Th-thank you.’ She shivered.

  ‘I know,’ said Sylvia, rubbing her hands together. ‘It’s chilly, isn’t it? I like this bit. She was called Merry, you know.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The backing singer. Listen.’ She grabbed Catherine’s hand. ‘Rape . . . Murder . . .’ she wailed. ‘Did you hear that? When she duets with Mick. Her voice cracks. She was pregnant. She lost the baby later that night.’ She shook herself. ‘What a song, man. It really is far out. The Devil’s in it. Clayton. Merry Clayton, she was called. I always liked that name, you see.’

  Catherine blinked. She didn’t know what to say. ‘You don’t seem surprised to see me.’

  ‘I’m not. “Catherine”, did you say you call yourself?’

  ‘Yes. Did you speak to Merry? I went to see her yesterday. Did she tell you I was here?’

  ‘Merry? Goodness no. Haven’t heard from her in over a year. She’s in league with Joss, of course. They’re always messaging, usually at the same time as he’s te
lling me off for something or other.’ She mimed a texting action with her fingers: ‘Nnn nnn nnn. Merry’s very grand now. Too busy to come here, which is fine with me.’ The beady eyes were watching Catherine.

  ‘I thought she might have rung you, that’s all.’

  ‘No. I knew you’d come back.’ She gestured Catherine towards the cosy little sitting room. ‘I’ll turn the music down. Great thing, a record player. Doesn’t break, you don’t need to download anything. I listen to “Gimme Shelter” all the time.’ Her weather-beaten face cracked into a smile. ‘It’s a good thing I don’t have any neighbours. Come in.’

  She disappeared into a side room and Catherine heard the sound of a needle being removed. Catherine followed her, pushing aside some curtains in Sylvia’s fabric, then stopped and stared. The walls were covered, not just with hive drawings, but other drawings, children playing, rain storms, a green parrot pecking its way round some curtains, scribbled onto the wall, in biro, or felt tip, or whatever appeared to be to hand. There were photographs, pinned onto cork boards that were stuck up on the walls. Peeling old snapshots with white borders, and newer ones. A little girl with a huge smile and a large tabby cat, sitting in a garden. Children on a lawn. Merry and Joss, arms round each other. Joss and a dark, slim woman obviously taken on their wedding day, and – and – Catherine peered more closely, and stepped back, as Sylvia reappeared from a closet at the end of the room.

  ‘That’s me,’ she said, in some surprise. It was from March. She was leaving the Old Bailey with Grant Doyle. Ashok Sengupta, Grant’s solicitor, was standing behind her, wearing an irritable expression. It was very strange, looking at the picture, to see herself during that period, when she had felt all the time as though she couldn’t breathe. When even looking at her children gave her a pain in her chest. When she did not sleep, and ghosts seemed to follow her everywhere.

  Suddenly she ached for Davide, for her husband’s arms around her, for the taste of his kiss, for the feel of the bumps on his skull when she held his head in her hands, for the feeling of walking down the street with him, close enough to touch, of the sound of his voice, light, amused, cynical, kind. He knew her, knew the bones of her, what kind of person she was, and what did the rest of it matter? It didn’t, oh it didn’t.

  Her breathing quickened again. She stared at Grant Doyle, at his dead eyes. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘It was in The Times. I still get a paper,’ said Sylvia, with some pride. ‘And I buy The Times, to test myself. Because you know a lot of rubbish gets talked in the media. One must be alert, to the truth. If one simply swallows the Guardian whole every day, one doesn’t question anything. Although they were wrong about Brexit, weren’t they? Dead wrong. The Times has been rather keen on your disappearance, darling, but there was nothing about it today. Just that boy. I don’t like his face much, do you? A very unhappy child. Now. Would you like some rhubarb schnapps?’

  ‘Oh – I’m not sure.’ Catherine looked around her.

  ‘Come now. Just a little glass. It’s homemade. Where have you got to go to?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Catherine, with a laugh.

  ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

  ‘I – don’t know.’ She paused, and took a deep breath, and found that the air seemed to fill her lungs, that she was still, for a moment.

  ‘Well,’ said Sylvia, watching her. ‘Even more reason to have a drink then. Come with me, my dear. Yes. Come.’ She led her back through the tiny hexagonal hall, into a kitchen. In Aunty Ros’s day it had been unchanged from the eighteenth century – plain shining painted walls. A large butler’s sink, old material below it, and a couple of shelves.

  Now, the layout was the same but the room was transformed. The walls were drawn on all over with sketches and patterns, as in the little sitting room. The tankards were gone, in their place plastic cups and china jugs and mugs emblazoned with messages. ‘I’m From Minehead, what’s your excuse?’ ‘A Gift from Exmoor’. ‘Ohhh Jeremy Corbyn’. Where Ros’s Letham’s Ladies’ College photograph had been was a mark around the wall and a snap of Corbyn himself in the space, stuck up with Sellotape. There were Extinction Rebellion stickers on everything and several joss sticks, one partially burned with a trembling ribbon of ash, stuck into a plastic cup. Across a photograph of the Hunter family from the 1900s – ruffles, lace, hats, pointed collars, lined up outside the chapel, carrying the smokers, the handbells and the spoons, not one smiling – someone had cut and pasted in different letters taken from newspaper print the legend:

  Why Does Karl Marx Hate Earl Grey?

  Because all proper tea is theft.

  Catherine thought of Merry’s flat. She started laughing, so tired now she was quite dizzy. ‘I love it.’

  ‘Love what?’

  ‘Well . . . What you’ve done with this house. It’s not very . . . Aunty Ros, is it?’

  ‘Not really, no. But not many things were poor Ros, my dear. She was against far more things than she was for them. Ghastly, ghastly woman. Do you know, she’d be ninety-eight if she were still alive.’

  ‘Good grief.’ Catherine took the tiny cut-glass crystal tumbler of schnapps offered her and clinked it against Sylvia’s. ‘Cheers.’ Their eyes met. She swallowed it down. ‘Oh. This is delicious.’

  ‘Thank you. I have a little vegetable garden around the back. I grow most of my own food and store the rest. Half for me, you know.’ She gestured out. ‘Look.’

  Catherine peered into the dark. In the long thin strip between the house and the road she could just make out an assortment of sticks and, as a car drove past, its headlights threw into relief the outline of a large, neatly managed vegetable garden. ‘That’s very impressive.’

  ‘It has to be. I don’t want to rely on anyone. And it keeps me busy, when I need a break from drawing. Although I always want to draw.’

  ‘You’re working again, I know –’ Catherine began.

  Sylvia looked down at the glass. ‘I had to. There’s so much I still want to do. So much I couldn’t do when I was married. I – I used to tell myself: One day there’ll be a chance. One day.’ She glanced up quickly, her head jerking with a small, swift twitch. ‘The rest of the time I cooked, I had the children, I drove around doing errands, I entertained . . . and I gave Charles what he wanted.’ She drained her glass. ‘I thought of it like ticking a box. If I’d ticked the box it was like marking another day off in the calendar, and then I could sleep.’

  ‘Marking a day off till –’

  Sylvia looked past her. Her heart-shaped face was set, her gaze fixed on a distant point. ‘Till I’d be on my own, able to work again. Free. And now I am free. To work all day if I want, so I do. I’ve just finished a new design actually, I’ll show it to you, later. I sell direct when I’m dealing with somewhere like Liberty. They take what I’ve got, and I use a variety of names.’

  ‘Don’t you want to have them all under one name?’

  ‘Absolutely not. I don’t want to be recognised, not any more. I don’t want attention. I just want to do the work, make sure people use it. Furnishing fabric, oilcloth, napkins. I did some lovely placemats and tableware last year for IKEA. I like the idea millions of people will use it. It’s fun.’

  ‘I didn’t know that’s what you were doing. Merry told me you were working again.’

  ‘Why on earth would you? I don’t want anyone to know. It pays well and it keeps me independent. And it means Merry and Joss leave me alone. In fact, I have that son of mine over a barrel.’ Catherine blinked. ‘I must have poured a couple of hundred thousand into that great hole of a house for years, paying his wife’s consultancy fees, setting up his podcast studio and all this other rubbish. But I’ve said no more now. Why do you think he’s selling? He wanted to rootle me out of here, my own home, but I soon put paid to that. Do you know, I’ve learned to be quite tough when I want to be. This is my place, and I’m staying. Here, come.’ Sylvia stood up, and Catherine followed her back into the sitting room. �
�There. That’s one of my designs.’ She pointed at the chair, a grey-blue fabric with a house like Vanes, with pointed gables, and spare, Scandinavian detailing around the house.

  Catherine smiled, the hair on her neck starting to prickle, the feeling of it moving up to her scalp. ‘Sylvia. I have that in my bedroom. At home. The curtains. I picked it myself. I – it always reminded me . . . I –’ She stopped, unable to say more, and shook her head. ‘You designed it.’

  Sylvia was nodding. ‘I did.’

  Catherine managed to say: ‘I love it. I look at it every day. When I was in bed, feeding my babies. It always made me feel – calm. Which is strange, I picked it because it reminded me of Vanes.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because, in some way, it reminded you of happy times. Or an idea of them. So you have two children. How wonderful. I am sure you’re a terrific mother. After all, you’re Simon’s child, how could you not be? Look at the example he gave you.’

  With one small sentence Catherine felt something settle inside her, a warmth, a heaviness. Her shoulders sank, she felt as though she was breathing again, that she had come up for air.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. It’s odd to hear someone else say it. To hear you say it . . .’

  They were silent, looking at each other, as the wind rustled outside in the trees. A lorry rumbled slowly past the house.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Catherine said, eventually. ‘I’m sorry we ran off.’ Sylvia nodded. She didn’t say anything, just sank into the worn armchair. Catherine sat down, opposite her. ‘I wanted to see you again. To say that I should have tried to get her to stay. To avoid what happened.’

  ‘What? The bees? Charles’s death? Kitty vanishing?’ Sylvia jabbed the air. ‘It couldn’t be avoided, none of it. It was coming for years. I lost a daughter, my husband, his sister, that night. And there’s nothing that could have been done about it.’

  ‘That’s not true. It could have been different.’

  ‘No,’ Sylvia said, pursing up her mouth, tightly. The dark eyes that had once been so vague, so clouded were alive, gleaming with purpose. ‘I couldn’t stop her going. That’s my great failure. I tried, but I couldn’t keep her safe. But I’ve stopped blaming myself. I was barely there by then, hadn’t been there for years. You know what I mean.’ She gave her a searching look. ‘As for the others – I saw then that the only way she might one day come back was – to a safer house. So I locked the door.’