Country Wives (23 page)

Kate put the box on one side to take downstairs and hide in her wardrobe. That box most certainly mustn’t go with the rest.

Then, most painful of all, she found hidden under a shelf behind a vast pile of old model railway magazines another thick envelope of letters he’d written but never sent. All with “Tessa” written on the envelopes and stored in date order. They were dated regularly throughout the first year of Kate’s life and then they trailed off and, around her first birthday, they stopped altogether. That was when Mia had replaced her. One by one Kate opened them and read all about her dad’s tender love for her mum in every line: a pining and a longing which revealed so poignantly a depth of feeling she never knew he was capable of. Poor Dad! Loving her like that. How did he survive her going?

“Kate! Are you all right up there? That serial we’re watching—it’s just about to start. Are you coming?”

Guiltily she shoved the letters into the shoebox along with the photos and squeezed the lid on. “I’m on my way.” In haste, so as to prevent Mia from coming up, she got together all the boxes which could be taken with the train layout and, taking
the one into which she’d crammed all her dad’s own memorabilia under her arm, she switched off the attic light, went down to her bedroom, pushed aside a pile of shoes she should have thrown away months ago, put the box in the bottom of her wardrobe and heaped the shoes back inside to hide it, so Mia wouldn’t find it.

Somehow she found it difficult to meet Mia’s eyes when she got downstairs and sat staring at the TV, scarcely able to follow the plot because her mind was so full of what she’d just read. Her dad had suddenly, in one evening, become quite a different person from the one she thought she knew. For her father’s sake Kate realized she’d have to give her mother time if nothing else. Simply because he had loved her so.

Mia patted her hand. “Finished it all?”

Kate nodded.

“Nothing to keep?”

“No. It’s all in piles. Waiting.”

“He’ll be here to take it away on Saturday. The check’s gone through the bank now, so the money’s secure. There wasn’t anything for me to see, then?”

“No.”

“I see.”

Kate leaped up. “I’ll make us a drink.” Before Mia could agree with her, she’d disappeared into the kitchen. Now it was Mia’s turn to be unable to follow the TV. Because she knew Kate so well, she guessed she was hiding something. What, she didn’t know, but there was something Kate didn’t want her to know. If there was something up there about how much Gerry had loved that Tessa, there was no need to hide it; she’d always known. A stranger pair there couldn’t have been. Tessa had been a fool, because she, Mia, had reaped all the benefits of loving Gerry and having Kate. Nothing,
nothing
Tessa could do could take the last eighteen years from her, so she’d hug that to
her heart no matter what happened. Saturday would be here before she knew it, and what had been Gerry’s passion would go out of the house for good with that model railway man; and perhaps, worse, she’d lose Kate that day too.

K
ATE
, eager to see her mother, was at the house promptly at three o’clock. She parked at one side of the U-shaped drive because the road was too busy for her to park at the curb, but there was no one there. She stood back from the front door and looked up at the house. It was very new, beautifully painted, with lavish bay windows and expensive net curtains at each of them—being so close to the road, they were necessary. Two smartly clipped bay trees grew in square cast-iron tubs at either side of the door, and the beginnings of a wisteria, a favorite of Mia’s, grew on the far side of the right-hand window.

She tried the doorbell again and smiled at the tune it played. Mia would have laughed at it had she been with her. So … the big meeting of mother with daughter had finished before it started. Kate went to sit in her car to wait. Just in case. She might turn up. Just might.
I’ll wait until half past three; she could have been held up in traffic
. Kate wondered what car she drove and played a game of guessing while she waited. Every part of the house and front garden was as neat as a pin and shouted money. Well, stuff it. Tears welled in her eyes. Her mother seemed to be making a career out of dumping her. Then, as she prepared to pull out to drive away, she saw in her rear mirror a BMW turn into the drive and park. So instead she reversed, parked and got out.

Her mother leaped out. “Kate! I’m so sorry! I went shopping and didn’t realize the time. Can you forgive me?” From the backseat she hauled several expensive-looking carrier bags. “This is all for you.”

Kate’s heart sank and resistance to enticement grew inside her, but when she saw what her mother had bought for her she caved in and accepted. “How did you know my size?”

“I didn’t. I guessed.”

“I don’t know how to thank you; it’s all so lovely. This top and these trousers! I’ve been longing for a pair like these for weeks.” But she didn’t give her a kiss of thanks as she would have given Mia.

“Tea! I’m parched. Have a look around while I get it ready. The bedroom at the back will be yours if you like it.” She wagged a teasing finger at her and disappeared into the back.

Kate wandered about the house, admiring her taste in furniture and the good eye she had for interior decoration. She loved the collection of silver snuff boxes she had, and the modern art on the walls, and the huge, inviting, cuddly goatskin rug before the ornate electric fire. When Kate saw the bedroom her mother had said would be hers if she so chose, she gasped with delight. Such an elegant quilted throw on the big single bed, the huge matching curtains looped back by tasseled cords, a long-pile carpet invited her to try the texture of it with appreciative fingers. It was a bedroom she could only dream about, and with its own bathroom too. Surely it wasn’t real marble on the floor? It was. My God! A pink marble bathroom. What a joy!

When she got back to the drawing room, the tea was laid out on a trolley, all lace doilies and delicate china, with a Georgian silver teapot—the whole works.

“Tell me, Kate, what do you think?”

“You have a lovely home.”

“I’ve got an eye for choosing furnishings, haven’t I?”

The question popped out of her mouth before Kate could stop it. “You’ve never married, then?”

“No, never. Not to say I haven’t had the opportunity but … sugar?”

“No, thanks. Why?”

“Didn’t see any reason why I should. I have a good job and simply didn’t have any interest in any encumbrances. Do you think I should have?”

Kate shook her head. “Nothing to do with me; I just wondered.” She munched on a tiny sandwich, so unlike one made by Mia, which would have had the filling pouring out over the edges and be lavishly buttered and chunky. Mia always joked that it was her generous nature which made her sandwiches turn out like they did. “You’ve never had any more children? I mean, I haven’t got a brother or a sister somewhere?”

Her mother shook her head emphatically. “No, you have not. Once was enough.” She looked as though, given the chance, she would have snatched back that last sentence. “Childbirth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Being a mother isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either, apparently. Well, not as far as you’re concerned.”

Her mother looked hurt. “Kate! How unkind.”

Kate waited for the lace handkerchief to come out, but it didn’t. “You did leave me. At two weeks old. That takes some effort to understand. In fact, I can’t understand and probably never will.” Kate couldn’t work out why she was coming out with such unkind things; some devil seemed to be goading her. “Didn’t you give me a thought? Didn’t you care about who would look after me when you were gone?”

“Of course I did. You had Gerry. I’m not entirely heartless.”

“No?”

“No. I lost my identity when you were born. I wasn’t me. I was Katrina’s mother and not Tessa Fenton, solicitor. And you woke in the night to be fed. Night and day demanding food. It was exhausting. I wasn’t cut out for it. Believe me, I was tormented by what I did.”

Kate helped herself to another sandwich and said with a
sarcastic edge to her voice, “Well, you needn’t have worried; Mia’s done an excellent job.”

“She may have, but she can’t give you what I can give you.” She waved her hand in the air, encompassing the elegance of her drawing room. “A house like this to live in, a room like yours upstairs, clothes like these, and if you get to college, which I’ve no doubt you will, being your mother’s daughter, you’ll have no worries about money. I’ll see to that.”

Kate gasped for the second time that afternoon. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t. You come to live with me, and you’ll want for nothing. Trips abroad, clothes, money to spend. I’ll buy a flat for you near college. I’m not having you in student accommodation.”

“Oh!”

Her mother leaned across and put a gentle hand on her knee. “You see, you’ve turned out just as I would have wished. You need to lose a bit of weight, say, perhaps a stone, well, half a stone maybe, and then …” She bunched her fingers and kissed them. “With the kind of clothes I can afford for you, you’ll be stunning. More tea, Katrina?”

“Yes, please.” She held out her cup. Noticed the expensive bracelet and ring her mother wore, the long, beautifully lacquered nails, the impeccable cuff of her white shirt and thought about Mia’s neatly filed short nails, and the sweetness of
her
hands and the healing they seemed to bring when they touched her. “When I’ve drunk this I must be going.”

“But we haven’t talked.”

“What is there to say?”

“You could tell me what Gerry was like as a father. What Mia’s like. How you enjoyed Christmas.”

Kate, shocked by her use of the word “enjoyed” in connection with her first Christmas after her dad’s death, snarled,
“Enjoyed
Christmas? How could we
enjoy
it? We’d just lost Dad. It was vile. Absolutely vile. Both of us hated it, but it was better than staying at home, just the two of us without him. Don’t you understand anything at all?” She sprang to her feet, angry with her mother and with herself, and bitterly disappointed. “I’m sorry for shouting, but this, all this that you’re offering me. I can’t help but ask why? After all these years. Why? Why bother?”

Her mother got to her feet to emphasize her point. “Because I thought I should when you’d lost your father. It made you an orphan and it didn’t seem right. Not when I knew about you, saw in the paper you were still living in the same house. I had to do something. I didn’t know how you would be placed, and when I did, I knew something had to be done about it. You can’t live in that dreadful house. You needed rescuing.”

“Rescuing? From what? A stepmother who loves me? A home that’s mine? Where I’m comfortable and happy? Is that what I need rescuing from? Believe me, I don’t.” Kate gathered her bag and coat, looked at the carrier bags holding the clothes she was expected to take with her and decided not to take them. “I’ll be in touch.”

“No, Katrina, no. Don’t go like this. It’s not fair.”

“Not fair?”

“To me. I’ve done my best.” This time the lace handkerchief did come out.

“And another thing: I’m called Kate, not Katrina; I hate it. Thank you for the tea. Do you want me to have the clothes after the way I’ve behaved? I expect you’ll be able to take them back to the shop if you don’t.”

Her mother sat down on the sofa, and looked small and beaten. In a defeated kind of voice she said, “Take them; you may as well as they were bought for you.”

Kate hesitated and decided it would be just too churlish to
refuse, and they were all that she longed for but couldn’t afford. At least her mother got that right. “Thank you, then. Thank you very much. I will. Sorry for losing my temper, but I couldn’t help it.”

Her mother looked up, eyes glowing, not a tear in sight, but a smile of satisfaction on her face. “Thank you, Katrin—Kate. Thank you. I don’t mean to be thoughtless. It’s just that I never have anyone else’s feelings to consider, so it’s hard for me. But I’m a quick learner. Forgiven?”

“Forgiven.”

She went with Kate to the car and helped her put the bags on the backseat. “I’m sorry to have upset you, Kate. I didn’t mean to. Will you come again?”

“Of course. Perhaps we could go out for a meal, my treat?”

“That would be lovely. Next weekend?”

“I’m working next weekend, so we’ll make it a fortnight.”

“I’ll pop my diet sheet in the post in the meantime. All right?” Her mother moved as though to kiss her goodbye, but Kate aborted that idea by getting into the car.

“I’ll ring and we’ll make arrangements. Thank you for tea and the clothes, and I’m sorry if I’ve been rude.”

Before her mother could reply Kate pulled away and drove home, churning with conflicting emotions which crisscrossed her mind so rapidly that each was only half formed before another took its place.

K
ATE
threw herself into her work to avoid having to sort out her feelings about her mother. The new clothes she’d flung on hangers and left in the wardrobe, not able to bear to wear them

It was Dan who saved her sanity one night when he got a call to a difficult lambing at Tad Porter’s just as he was about to
leave for home. “How about coming with me, Kate? Fancy it? Seen a lambing before?”

“No, I haven’t. Are you sure? I’d love to.”

“Of course.”

He courteously opened the passenger door for her, stored her boots along with his in his giant plastic washing-up bowl and drove off at his usual hell-for-leather pace. They’d driven right out of the town before he spoke. “Take your mind off things.”

Kate continued looking glumly out of the window.

“Is she that bad, this mother of yours? Or isn’t that the problem?”

“Between you and me?”

Dan nodded. They’d turned off the Magnum Percy road onto the lane which ended at Tad Porter’s. He pulled in to allow a car to pass him on the steep narrow road and then replied, “You don’t like her, do you?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like her; we’re just not the same kind of people, and she is trying to buy me. It’s as if I’m being auctioned. Except she’s the only one bidding. I’ll do the gate.”