She jabbed one square finger against two slices of wallpaper, perfectly papered onto the wall. ‘There.’
Catherine found herself looking at a densely interwoven design: roundels made up of brambles, bracken and late summer grasses, dotted with handbells, stars and bees. In the middle of each were two short-haired girls in silhouette, holding hands.
‘It’s called The Beloved Girls.’
‘Of course,’ said Catherine, her eye picking out the silhouetted details – the seven stars of the Plough, the hives, the handbells – amongst the brambles. ‘It’s just right, Sylvia. It’s us.’
Sylvia simply nodded.
‘I thought she might still be alive,’ Catherine said, her eyes ranging over the pattern, over and over again. She said it very quietly. ‘I think I see her too.’
‘Well, perhaps you do,’ said Sylvia.
She gestured to the corner of the room. There, in a small, wicker chair, which Catherine recognised from Vanes, sat a worn brown teddy bear. He had the pendant tied round his neck. His head was frayed and battered, one leg was half missing.
Catherine’s eyes felt dry, she didn’t blink. ‘Wellington Bear. That’s Wellington Bear. How did he end up with you? He was with her . . . she took him . . .’
‘I found him here one day. And that’s all I know about it.’
‘Do you think –’ Catherine put her hand on the mantelpiece, to steady herself. ‘My God, Sylvia. Did she bring him back to you? She must be –’
‘I found him here. On the doorstep. And I don’t want to know any more.’
Catherine looked at her. She looked at the bear, who had seen more than Sylvia. She opened her mouth, and then realised Sylvia had said all she was going to.
In the small, warmly lit room there was a brief silence, and then Catherine stood up.
‘I’m going to go.’
‘Do you want to stay the night?’
‘No,’ Catherine said. ‘Thank you. But I’ll – I’ll just walk, if that’s OK.’
Sylvia didn’t even try to persuade her. ‘My darling girl. Come back and see me, won’t you? Joss won’t be here in a few weeks. I’ll be all alone, and happy as anything. I’d love to see you again – perhaps even your children.’ Her face was empty, hollow, suddenly. ‘I would like that.’
Catherine stared at her. The idea that they’d come and visit, when Vanes was sold: stay in the village, or get an Airbnb. Introduce the children to Sylvia, eat fish and chips on the harbour wall as she had done . . . No. Suddenly the old feeling of terror washed over her. This seeming normality, the neat tidying up of what was wrong – there it was again. She did not know if she wanted it. She did not know if she’d ever be able to see Sylvia again, after this. But all she said was: ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
Impulsively, she crossed the room and touched the bear’s soft head, feeling the worn and matted fur against her fingers. ‘Take care of her, will you,’ she told him, under her breath.
When she left, the noise from the engines was louder than ever, and a rusting creak, like an old swing but louder, had started up too. Catherine had no idea of the time now. She thought it must be very late. Above, the stars covered her, growing in number as she looked up, more pinpricks of light that were other suns, worlds, galaxies, the view deepening the longer she craned her neck, scanning the skies above her.
She glanced back at the little bell-shaped house, the light still on. ‘I’m working on a new version of the Girls at the moment. I’ll carry on for a bit. I’m not tired,’ Sylvia had said at the door. ‘I want to make sure it’s perfect, before I send it off next week.’
Pebbles cut into her bare feet, as Catherine turned off the Vanes driveway and into the wood.
She took the footpath that cut across the edge of the Vanes woodland to come out onto the main path, only twenty metres from the chapel, and as she emerged she saw what the noise had been about. They were demolishing the chapel.
There were two trucks, and a digger. It had bright, diamond-sparkling headlamps, four in a row, fixed to the top of the digger, and it was hacking away at what remained of the ancient bricks. As she watched in horror, she saw to the east the faintest wavy line of light on the horizon, mottled from black to aqua-grey then silver, flooding the sky, turning it slowly into day. A man stood in front of the chapel, with a headlamp on. She realised why Joss had been so jumpy when she’d appeared. He’d thought she was a prying local, or more likely Merry had warned him she might turn up: Janey Lestrange, come back to ruin things one last time.
She should have cared – the lawyer in her should have been outraged, filming it on her phone, looking up precedent, making notes. She could hear the cracking of rock, as bit by bit the ancient place was destroyed. With a flash she remembered the crunch underfoot, the eerie stillness of the place, and remembered that the bees had long gone.
She sat on the edge of the pathway, leaning against the boundary wall of the old house, and watched as, bit by bit, the Reverend Diver’s chapel was demolished. At some point, she must have fallen asleep for a while.
High up on the moor, daylight was fanning out across the sky, as Catherine walked down into the village. All around her trees, bushes, and hedgerows rang out with birdsong. Her feet were sore now, cut in places, smarting in others, but she didn’t really notice. Something had vanished inside her. She felt different. Not lighter, just different. Perhaps it was seeing Sylvia. Perhaps it was speaking to Davide again. Perhaps it was that the chapel lay in ruins.
Her street at home was quiet in the mornings, before the drills started, and the cars, and the sound of London waking up. She had always loved this time best of all, a pause after dawn before the day began in earnest. She had often got up and made herself tea, slipping into her little study overlooking the neat grid of gardens. She would work there for a couple of hours before the children woke, getting ahead of herself, making lists, replying to emails, reading cases, calling up documents. Order. All she’d ever wanted was to work hard and do well, to provide for her family, to enjoy the time she had with them, with her husband. She kept thinking of Sylvia, of how she had submitted to the work of being a wife and mother, subsumed herself to survive. But Catherine had not. She had enjoyed it. She found small children interesting. She enjoyed drawing butterflies and playing games and tracing letters and reading books. She had loved feeding them, and cleaning up after them, marvelling at their mess. Most of all, she had revelled in their utter absorption in the present, their inability to see the past, to judge or make assumptions.
She had no desire to leave a legacy, a trail of light behind her like a comet. She wasn’t an interesting person, not like Kitty had been. She had been happiest at home with Davide and the children, and all those years she hadn’t really ever seen it. And she saw it now: the gift her father had given her, the strength of his love, and that she carried it inside her, and had transmitted it to her children.
There, in the middle of the lane, facing east, Catherine spread her arms wide and encircled herself, squeezing herself tightly, then she rubbed her eyes vigorously, waking herself up.
‘She rescued herself, Daddy,’ she said out loud, and then laughed. She shook her head, and carried on, towards the village.
Chapter Thirty-Five
By the time she reached Larcombe, the sun was up. There was the old harbour, where they’d gone to eat fish and chips and throw stones into the sea, and there was the Good Leper pub, scene of Giles’s birthday. It was so small, a low building; in her memory it was vast, sprawling, crammed with tall, thick-haired boys who smelled of cigarettes and fermented beer. Does Giles’s son go there and drink in the holidays? she wondered. Had anything changed?
She caught sight of her reflection in the scratched, cracked plastic of the bus shelter as she hovered at the edge of the village, not sure what to do next. She stopped and stared at herself, fascinated. Her hair was a mess, sticking out in a tangled halo around her head, and she was covered in mud, presumably from walking and falling at
various points. Catherine Christophe was usually immaculate, checking her phone on the walk into chambers each morning to make sure there was no stray nose hair, no spot, twig in the hair, piece of spinach in the teeth. Now she had no shoes, and hadn’t cleaned her teeth for two, possibly three days. She had stopped trying to be in control: she honestly didn’t know what she would do next.
Once again the enormity of what she had now unleashed, the edge of the reality of it, swept over her. She was not well. Something had broken. And she was so tired. She leaned against the thought of going back to that small, quiet study, back to how it was before she’d tried to destroy it, back to concentrating her mind on something before the first joyous sounds of her children dragging themselves out of bed and yelling for her, even if it was to moan about the wrong cereal. She pictured it. It was warm, and safe. It was her home.
And the sound of Davide, as he began the long process of making the coffee. His hair, grizzled at the temples, the light caramel of his skin, the tips of his sensitive, long fingers, his quiet voice. His calmness. He was always calm. He loved her, but would he still when he knew the depth of her deception, the years that had been a lie?
My birthday isn’t in August. It’s in September. I’m eleven months older than you think. Every year I buy myself a present for my real birthday.
I took a place from someone at university.
I heard someone else tell me she caused the deaths of two people. And I was glad for her.
I left someone to die.
No one was around, just the clinking of boat masts and the call of one or two gulls. Strutting oystercatchers pecked around on the brown mud.
A van pulled up at the back of the pub; Catherine watched it, trying to regain her breath, trying to steady herself. A man got out and started unloading laundry.
Janey Lestrange, it’s time to go home, she said to herself.
She watched as the man heaved a large white fabric basket of towels and sheets out onto the floor, opening the side door of the shuttered, dark pub with his own key. He slung the laundry in there, and then, going back to the van, he pulled out another basket. A gull swooped, he stumbled, and one or two plastic packages fell out.
After he’d locked up and driven away, Catherine walked towards the Good Leper, heart still thumping. She picked up one of the fallen plastic-wrapped items off the road. It was a pair of towelling slippers, the ones you get in hotels and B&Bs. ‘The Good Leper’ was embroidered on it in gold thread, which made her smile. She tore open the packaging and put them on, and then went over to the harbour wall, where she sat until the hotel next door, a boutique affair with black-and-white prints on the walls and striped carpets, opened its doors. She went inside, and ate a hearty breakfast: porridge, granola, toast, coffee. She ordered a paper and worked steadily through the news. She was not mentioned. When the waiter glanced down at her feet, she smiled.
‘My trainers washed into the sea yesterday. Rather embarrassing.’
Never over-explain; she knew this, from years of cross-examining or defending liars. The ones you never believed were the ones who tried to oversell their story.
So she was keeping going, keeping momentum, just like Daddy had always said she must. She paid cash, and went out onto the street. It was eight thirty. The post office was just opening up. Catherine went in, bought a pair of canvas beach shoes, explaining the circumstances of her shoelessness again to the lady behind the counter, who was kindly sympathetic. The door swung open.
‘Morning, Kel.’
‘Morning, Sheila.’
‘You all right?’
‘Not too bad. You heard what he’s done, did you? In the night? They’ve demolished the chapel. Not a brick standing. John was one of them hired to do it. Says they were paid in cash, sworn to secrecy.’
‘Oh, that one.’ Sheila leaned on the counter. ‘Thinks he’s bloody Mr Grand Designs or something. Big ideas. It’s nothing to him. What does Sam say about it?’
‘My dad? He said the buyers wanted it gone before they’d exchange contracts. Accidental demolition. That’s what they call it. Threatened to pull out otherwise. It’s all about money with him, like with his dad, that’s what Dad says. As if they’re going to be able to keep something like that secret.’
Catherine went and stood by the bus shelter and waited for the bus. Country buses didn’t change. She had no idea when it would come. But it would come, at some point. And then it would take her to a town, and then to another town, then to a train station, then on a train, then perhaps even a cab from the station, and later today she could, if she wanted, be standing on her own front doorstep.
She closed her eyes, and saw her children, at Davide’s birthday in March, in the pub just up the road from them, illuminated by candlelight, laughing, Tom’s hand on his mother’s arm, Carys, so like Simon Lestrange, so like him, hugging her father, their young faces smooth, their eyes huge in the dark. She pushed the image away, right away, and kept her eyes closed.
Suddenly, she heard a voice, talking to her. So clear it was as if it was behind her.
I will always be by your side; you don’t even need to look for me. I’ll always be there. And remember: ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’
Catherine opened her eyes.
Rising above the village was a winding lane, and as she looked up she saw a figure, coming in off the fields behind the houses and onto the lane. She was walking towards her. And Catherine knew who it was, without having to see her any closer.
She did not have to see the flushed pink cheeks.
She did not have to see the long, golden hair, framing the heart-shaped face.
She did not have to see the calm, swaying stride to know.
It was her. Catherine steadied herself against the bus stop. Salt wind stung her eyes, her cheeks.
The other woman smiled at her, blinking into the sun. Catherine looked down, at her own long shadow, wondering where the shadow of the other woman was. Where was it?
‘Hello, Catherine.’
‘H-hello.’
‘So you went back.’
‘So did you.’
‘I wanted to be here when they pulled it down.’
Catherine opened her mouth, then closed it. A middle-aged woman in a beige raincoat hurried past. She stared at Catherine, curiously. This gave Catherine more conviction.
‘You’re dead,’ she said, firmly. ‘You disappeared up by the Vane Stones. You died. Animals, whoever it was, they took your body. The beast of Exmoor, maybe, or the ghost of the Reverend Diver.’ She laughed wildly. ‘That’s why they never found you.’
‘Ah,’ the woman opposite her said. She cracked her knuckles, slowly. ‘That’s what happened, is it?’
‘You knew you were dying. That’s what I’ve realised. You left me to . . . I – I – I . . .’ Catherine watched. The face, still pale, still solemn. Tendrils of Kitty’s long hair fluttered as she breathed out. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
And suddenly Catherine saw she knew the answer. ‘No. I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. You were there. You told me to take it. You tricked me.’
The other woman laughed. Her voice was soft, shimmering like a breeze, like wind chimes. ‘That’s not true. Tell the truth. You lied. You didn’t kill anyone, but you lied. You left me to die. You abandoned me, and I loved you so much. From the day we first met, when we were girls. I thought you’d be the one to save me.’
Catherine screwed up her face, her eyes. ‘I had no other choice.’
‘You made me vanish.’ Kitty put her head on one side, looking at Catherine with those huge, curious bloodshot eyes. Catherine noticed new things about her, bargaining frantically to convince herself this meant she was real. She had on a bright yellow mac with a big hood, lined in striped white and blue fabric. Her boots were black, and old, and covered in fresh mud. These were real things – weren’t they? Her fingers were pressed against the brown
paper and one nail had a torn cuticle – it was red, and swollen, raw, like her own nails had been that summer.
Her chewed and sore fingernails – Kitty’s shining hair, like a golden mane – Joss’s guitar – Merry’s chirpy gambolling across the fields – the smell of mushrooms frying for breakfast, and ratatouille – Wendy James’s pale, sheer pink lipstick – the portrait of the Reverend Diver, gleaming in the dark panelled hallway – Sylvia, crushing lavender between her fingers, all the time – the Neighbours theme tune – the acid brightness of the day-glo clothes – the salt air, it came back to this fresh, strange air that she hadn’t smelled since – suddenly, she was back there, as surely as if she had torn a hole in the fabric of the present and simply stepped through it, back thirty years. She could feel burned skin on her bony shoulders, the prickly-soft moss on the flagstones, the rush of the sea, the roar of the bees.
She looked up, and said clearly: ‘It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t yours. I love you, you loved me. We wanted to save each other. I wish you well. I miss you. This isn’t you.’ And Catherine took a step forward. ‘Go home, Kitty.’
‘I am home,’ said Kitty, but she seemed to back away.
‘I want to go home now,’ said Catherine, in a small voice. She could feel Kitty’s laugh, and felt the faintest flicker of hot air on her cheek. ‘Please.’
Kitty folded her arms. ‘I’m here because of you. Come with me again, Janey. Come with me again.’
Catherine’s tired fingers fiddled with her rucksack straps, fumbling to do her checks again. The bus was trundling down the main coast road; she could see it now.
She didn’t have to go home. She was good at this, she knew. She could get on the bus or she could carry on walking, up into the woods, through the combe, over onto the moor, trying to escape this, the voices, everything. She could just keep on walking, and never go back. What had Sylvia said? You never belonged here.
The Beloved Girls Page 46