The Beloved Girls

by Harriet Evans

  The doors opened, and she stared up at the bus driver.

  ‘Where to, then?’ he said. Catherine looked round but she couldn’t see her.

  ‘Kitty?’ she said, and she blinked, and saw her again.

  The bus driver was more patient than he would have been in London. ‘Hello, miss? Are you getting on?’

  Catherine put her hand out towards her. She knew if she touched Kitty it would be over, because it would be real.

  She raised her hand, slowly. Kitty raised hers. Their hands met.

  Or so she thought. But then Catherine blinked and when she opened her eyes Kitty had vanished.

  The bus driver shook his head. The doors closed. The fumes of the bus, distorting the early morning air, shimmered in the near distance.

  Catherine stood back, looking around, out at the shingle of the beach. Carefully, unused to her new shoes which caused her to stumble on the hard flat stones, she walked slowly out to shore. The closer she came to the sea, the wind caressed her face. Every few seconds she would stop, and look, but there was no sign of her. None at all.

  And Catherine knew she was gone.

  A trestle table and bench stood on the shore, resting at a slant amidst the stones. Catherine sat down. She added it up, calculating that she hadn’t slept more than eight hours in four days. She was still for a moment, and then she looked over towards the seafront, where someone had slammed a car door and was walking towards her.

  She froze, eyes widening. Then she stood and began to move, walking at first then, when she got to the road, running. In case the car drove away. In case she missed him. In case this seam of unreality that had been ripped should open any further, could not be sewn back together.

  She called, as loudly as she could: ‘Is that you?’

  But her voice was too soft, her throat closed up.

  ‘Is that you?’

  And then, across the wind, she heard him.

  ‘Where have you brought me to now, Catrine?’ he was calling, across the empty car park, and she was laughing – it was not romantic, she was dirty, exhausted, in a car park, but she could not stop crying. Her body arched with the release of it, her face stretched using muscles she had not used for days, weeks, months. She threw the backpack off her shoulders, kicking it out of her way.

  When he reached her, he caught her in his arms. ‘You are a difficult person, Catrine,’ he said. ‘I have always said so.’ His face was creased, the pain of what she had done written all over it. He kissed her, and kept kissing her. ‘You smell of saltwater, my darling. I have missed you. But let me say again: you are very difficult.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ Catherine said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ And she buried her face in his chest. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she kept saying, over and over.

  ‘But I am here now.’

  ‘How did you know? To come here?’

  ‘Well, didn’t you always say it was Larcombe? And that it was tiny? Why would I not come, when I knew you were here?’ Davide said. He pronounced it Lar-cohm-buh. She stroked his face, his hair, the wonder of him. He was real. He was here. ‘Please, do not run off again. We can change – everything. We can move. You can stop working. Or not! Everything.’ She could see the shadows under his eyes. I did this, she told herself. I have done this to him, to my children. I must mend it.

  ‘I didn’t know what else to do. That is the truth of it.’

  ‘Chérie, you need to talk to someone.’ She nodded, mutely. ‘Someone who can help you. I cannot do it, I think. I always hoped that, one day, you would come to me and say it to me. Whatever it is. Whatever terrible thing you did.’

  ‘It wasn’t so terrible, I don’t think. Not any more.’

  ‘What is the secret?’

  She faltered. ‘Well, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you on the drive back.’

  ‘Come to my hotel, madam. I have a shower, and my breakfast is waiting. And afterwards I can drive you back home. If you’d care to go.’

  He was here. It really was him. And she had chosen that life. She had chosen him. She had done the right things. She had done well.

  Something fell past her shoulder onto her feet, and she looked down, smiling, hands locked around the firm, solid muscles of his arm.

  It was a dead honeybee, golden body slightly curled, the light of the morning shining on its tiny folded wings. It lay at Catherine’s feet. She braced herself, clutching Davide’s hand, and looked around. But there was no one else. No one at all.

  Catherine picked up the rucksack. She handed it to Davide. ‘I’ve been carrying this for too long. Can you take it?’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’ He slung it over his shoulder. ‘Now let’s go. I am very hungry.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said, calling behind her as they walked away. ‘Goodbye, my friend.’

  But even as she spoke, she knew there would be no answer.

  Acknowledgements

  For help with research, thanks to Richard Danbury and Tamara Oppenheimer for legal information, to Roland Philipps and Seema Nahome-Burgess for bee chats, and to Andy Lavender for help with Oxbridge admissions. Thanks are also due to Fran Beauman, Sophie Linton, Rob Linton and Jo Langley. Thank you to Kirstie Smith for our weekly conversations about motherhood and life. I miss you and the wigs. I’m very grateful to Carola Hoyos for setting up the Writers’ Zoom mid-lockdown. It saved my sanity and saved this book.

  Thanks to all the team at Headline Publishing, especially Fergus ‘spoiled all other proofs for me’ Edmondson, the one and only Becky Bader, Caitlin Raynor, Emily Patience, Joe Yule, Frances Doyle and everyone who worked on the book. I’m very lucky. Special thanks to Louise Swannell: I feel honoured to have you on my side, Lou; to Rebecca F. Folland, doyenne of the rights community, Yeti Lambregts for her stunning cover, Eleanor Dryden for her gentle soul and brilliant blurb, Imogen Taylor for her immensely helpful edits and the cheering line notes on those edits, and the incredible Rosanna Hildyard, who I wish was in charge of everything. Most of all thanks to Mari Evans, whose grace, subtlety and wisdom infuse everything she does and who holds me to the highest of standards.

  At Curtis Brown, huge thanks to Jonathan Lloyd for the conversation and everything else, plus Lucy Morris, Jodi Fabbri, Sophia MacAskill and especially Hannah Beer, and to Sarah Harvey for pitching my own book better than I ever could.

  Thank you to everyone at Grand Central Publishing, most especially Beth de Guzman and Kirsiah McNamara. I am thrilled to be working with you.

  I would just like to take the opportunity here to thank all NHS workers, everyone working in a care home, all supermarket and other front line workers, every single teacher on the planet (as I am now in awe of you more than ever), and everyone who, in the face of daunting odds, tried their best last year.

  Finally thanks to Sam O’Reilly and Jake O’Reilly, to my mum Linda Evans for setting up the St Mary’s Cottage Homeschooling School for Wayward Girls, and most of all to Chris, Cora and Martha for making the past year full of joy when it could have been much bleaker than it was. As Madonna says, somehow I made it through.

  I found the following books invaluable whilst writing The Beloved Girls:

  Songs & Ballads of The West: A Collection made from the mouths of the People – Rev. S Baring-Gould & Rev. H. Fleetwood-Sheppard (Methuen, 1895)

  The Laura Ashley Book of Home Decorating – Elizabeth Dickson & Margaret Colvin (Octopus, 1982)

  A Year on Exmoor – Adam Burton (Frances Lincoln, 2010)

  The Collins Beekeeper’s Bible: Bees, Honey, Recipes & Other Home Uses – (William Collins, 2010)

  A Beautiful Mind – Sylvia Nasar (Faber & Faber, 1998)

  Naples ’44: An Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth – Norman Lewis (Collins, 1978)

  Stiff Upper Lip: Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class – Alex Renton (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2017)

  The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us – Bee Wilson (John Murray, 2004)

  Reading Group Questions
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br />   1.‘Half for us and half for them, else the Devil take us all’

  The bees are central to the story but what symbolic role do they play within the world of Vanes and the novel itself? What do they represent?

  2.Having read the novel, do you think Catherine can move on from the past and be happy? If so, why?

  3.Consider Kitty, Sylvia and Hester – three generations of women. Discuss their similarities and their differences.

  4.In the first and final parts of the novel Catherine sees things that might or might not be true. Do you think they could be real? If not, why not?

  5.‘If she’d been a man, someone else would have cooked, and taken care of the children. I used to think if she had been a different person, she would have been able to fight more for what she wanted.’

  Charles does not take Sylvia’s art seriously. Do you think she ever manages to reclaim power through her work?

  6.Pamela Hunter, Charles and Rosalind’s younger sister, had enormous potential. Consider what she might have done with her life, had she survived.

  7.‘It was so quiet, apart from the wind, and the birdsong. No planes, or helicopters, or idling engines. No drilling, no beeping pedestrian crossings, no shrieks from children playing. She’d forgotten how much the English countryside unnerved her.’

  How important to the novel is its setting in Vanes, Somerset? Do you think it would be very different if it were set somewhere else?

  8.Novels with unreliable narrators are Harriet’s favourite kind of novel. Discuss other novels with narrators where the narrator’s perspective is unclear or distorted: The Little Stranger, The Talented Mr Ripley, My Cousin Rachel.

  9.The working title for The Beloved Girls was The Outsider. Do you like this title? Who is the outsider?

  If you loved The Beloved Girls, discover the secrets of the Horner family . . .

  ‘A sweeping novel you won’t put down’ Katie Fforde

  Nightingale House, 1919. Liddy Horner discovers her husband, the world-famous artist Sir Edward Horner, burning his best-known painting, ‘The Garden of Lost and Found’, days before his sudden death.

  Nightingale House was the Horner family’s beloved home – a gem of design created to inspire happiness – and it was here Ned painted his children, on a perfect day. One magical moment. Before it all came tumbling down. . .

  When Ned and Liddy’s great-granddaughter Juliet is sent the key to Nightingale House, she opens the door onto a forgotten world. But the house holds its mysteries close . . .

  Something shattered this corner of paradise. But what?

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  Thank you so much for spending time reading The Beloved Girls.