Garden of Stars (37 page)

A long silence followed. Then Sarah moved towards him, put her arms around him, and felt his anger melt away as they held each other. “I can't tell you how sorry I am.”

“Don't be. There's no need, any more.”

“One more thing.” Sarah lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun that was directly behind Scott's head.

“Those months after I left – despite Celina's pregnancy, the wedding – if I had got back in touch, if I had told you where I was – would you have come?”

The sun beat down into the silence that followed. Scott looked into her eyes with a steady, calm gaze.

“Yes, I would have come.”

They said goodbye at the security gate.

“Do you think you'll be able to get away again between now and the end of the year?” asked Scott.

“I should think so. I hope so.” Sarah watched travellers discard water bottles and fumble with plastic bags full of cosmetics and toiletries. “Perhaps just before the end of term. Inês might… I could see if…”

What could she do? This was crazy, impossible. Inês was far too frail to travel anywhere, let alone to the edge of Europe on an aeroplane to visit a never-known grave.

Scott was waiting for her to finish.

“I'll work something out. For sure. We'll do it together.”

“You could leave, Sarah. Come to live in Canada with me, you and the girls.”

And then the last call for his flight came through, calling his name, urgent and definite.

“Think about it,” he shouted back to her as he passed through the barriers. “Please think about it.”

Sarah made her way to the station to travel into the city. When the train came she got on it, and sat there, biting her lip and bending her ticket backwards and forwards until the fold was white, wrinkled and ready to fall apart.

The enormity of the situation was too great to comprehend.

The city centre was hot and fumy, cars three deep trying to circumnavigate the Praça dos Restauradores, a confusing mess of horns and scorched rubber, whirling and swirling around her. She went to the room, the modern box in the chain hotel, with its lingering smell of stale cigarette smoke and carpet cleaner. Lying flat on her back on the bed, she felt the ceiling close in on her. She had taken Inês's experiences, her confession that she regretted not pursuing Edmund, her advocation that we all only have the one life and that the future is ours to shape, as…what? What had she taken it as? Permission. Endorsement. Encouragement. But it was none of those things. It was Inês sharing her experience, for better or for worse.

Sarah thought she might cry and then decided that there was no point. Crying wouldn't change anything. Hours passed as she lay there. She kept looking at her phone, thinking, he'll send a text as soon as he gets to Madrid. Or when he comes out of the meeting. Or before dinner. Or after dinner. Surely he will.

It was an hour ahead in Spain. At 11pm she texted him.

I need to speak to you. I can't bear this. x

In the morning, the phone rang. She hadn't slept at all.

“What's wrong?”

She thought she was going to lose it, to throw the phone at the wall and watch as it broke apart, the case detaching, the battery falling out, the internal components shattering irreparably as it crashed to the floor.

What do you think is wrong?

“I just wanted to know that you were OK, that's all. After the last few days, everything we've had together… I didn't think you would just go off without a word.”

“Sarah, that's bullshit. I didn't go off without a word, and I've been with my colleagues the whole time since I got here, I couldn't get away. I didn't want to phone you at 5am; I thought you'd be asleep.”

Silence followed. She was weeping.

“Sarah, don't do this to me. Don't fall apart on me now.”

“I can't bear it. To think that this is it, we might never see each other again.”

“I'm not even going there. I'm not even considering that. I'm going to see you again soon, for sure.”

“You're the only person I ever wanted to love me. I wanted so desperately much to be with you, but it didn't work out. I've lived all these years knowing it was my fault. And what now?”

Scott's phone bleeped and Sarah heard nothing for a moment; she wondered if she had been talking to herself.

Then she heard him saying, “Sarah, my love. I love you too. There's no point in blaming yourself for what happened such a long time ago.”

The line crackled and fizzed and Sarah was sure he was gone for good this time, until his voice came again. “Don't give up on me now, Sarah. Think about what I said at the airport. Consider it, at least.”

And then the continuous tone sounded that signified that the call had ended. She sat looking at the phone for a long time. She had thought that he was omniscient and omnipotent, that he would be able to make everything right. But he had only the same suggestion to make as anyone might – that she should leave her husband, break up her marriage and live in Canada. And as soon as he had said it, she had known with a searing knife-blade of horror in her heart, that she would never do it. Though the world was so much smaller now than in Inês's day, transport so much easier, distances, continents and borders could not just be magicked away. The obstacles that Carrie had listed were obvious and real – visas, permissions, finances. But even more than that was the knowledge that she could not rip her family apart in heartbreak and pain for a fantasy.

She went down to breakfast, not to eat, just to get coffee. She met her own eyes in the mirror in the lift and was appalled by how old and washed out she looked.

There's nobody to blame but me. I've brought this all on myself. I should have stayed well away. I should have known better.

The search for Inês's lost little baby girl was over, and Sarah did not feel inclined to return to the cemetery. She had the whole day to fill. She went instead to Alcântara, wandered the narrow streets trying to find the little pink and blue house but the hunt was in vain. She didn't recognise any of the neighbourhoods she passed through and could find no trace of her one-time home.

She took the train to Estoril, and walked through the streets, past the imposing white façade of the Palácio Hotel where Inês had stayed on her short honeymoon, past the Casino, and on along the beach. Everywhere was quiet now and almost deserted long after the summer holiday season was over. There was not even a seagull within sight, just the sporadic glinting of the sun on the cars speeding along the main road in the distance. She was completely alone.

The ocean was calm, but grey, not blue. It suddenly occurred to her that it stretched all the way to Canada. Not to Vancouver, of course, but the same landmass, at least. And that he was on a plane somewhere above it right now. The repetitive, endless ebb and flow of the tides, the continual crashing of the waves upon the shore seemed to mirror the push and pull of her feelings for Scott, and for Hugo.

It wasn't as if either of their marriages was awful. They were just unions that were dull and worn out, like so many, that had somewhere and somehow lost their reason for being, that lacked passion and mutual fulfilment. Where each partner did not pay the other enough attention, did not show appreciation in the way we all crave.

That night she drank wine until she felt sick and numb. Fumbling in her handbag for paracetamol, her hand encountered a hard-edged object. She pulled it out, wondering what it could be, then saw that it was a small set of face paints, something one of the girls had acquired somewhere, and given to her for safe-keeping. She had completely forgotten they were in there.

She put them on the table in front of the mirror and considered them, her eyes struggling to focus. She could turn herself into a pierrot, a princess or a pirate. A butterfly or a tiger, as Honor and Ruby had done, so little time before. But she'd still be Sarah, underneath.

She gazed at herself in the mirror as the tears descended, and she could no longer see through the thick, glassy globules of liquid that formed and reformed, over and over again.

Eventually, a long time later, she lay down on her bed and slept.

The next morning, she woke to the bleeping of an incoming text message. She sat up abruptly and reached for the phone, the sudden movement setting her head pounding from last night's alcohol.

How's it going? Any luck with the search? I'm missing you so much. x

It was from Hugo.

He was so anxious that she should find what she was looking for.

30

London, 2010

Perfect cotton wool clouds drifted lazily over the uneven squares and rectangles of the green, brown and beige fields far below as the plane approached Luton airport. But when Sarah stepped out of the doors and onto the metal stairs, an icy wind hit her full in the face and she shivered violently, her nostrils filling with the reek of aviation fuel and the shrivelling scent of autumn.

Finding Isabel was a great achievement; she had fulfilled an old lady's dying wish. It was far more important than anything that was going on in her own life. She was working hard to convince herself of that.

Scott had sent a text:

I'm back, everything is good. There are emails waiting for you. I had a fantastic time. XXXXX

She got back to the house, let herself in the front door. Her mother had already gone home, with Hugo on standby to pick up from school if Sarah's plane was delayed. The house was cold and empty, and unusually orderly.

She opened some mail; there was nothing interesting, just bills and bank statements. No envelope of the best quality paper that might indicate an answer from Inês to the card she had sent her from Amarante.

Sarah made some coffee, went out into the garden to drink it, sitting on the bench against the wall over which the climbing plants scrambled and tumbled. The dreams that had sustained her for so long were gone and right now she had nothing to replace them. She could not see, she did not know, how she could go on. But she must. She must, even though she could hardly bear the pain that she felt. It clenched and tightened around her heart the way the tendrils of the passion vine gripped the trellis it clung to. She had read in a newspaper article, once, that it was indeed possible to die of a broken heart. She wondered if that was what was happening to her.

She went up to her office even though she knew it was hopeless to try and get any work done. Instead she picked up, one by one, the photos of the children that adorned her desk. The girls on the swings in the playground. A two-year old Ruby blowing a kiss. Hugo holding Honor at two days old, her tiny body exactly fitting the length of his forearm, his hand held flat with fingers outstretched to cradle her delicate head.

Every moment with her own children was a joy but also a terror, every newspaper full of the banal tragedies that could end happiness forever; the child choking to death on a school dinner or killed by the falling of a badly built wall or fatally wounded by tripping on the open dishwasher door and being stabbed in the heart by an upright knife in the cutlery basket. At night, what horror could come; five daughters burnt to death in a fire caused by a faulty washing machine, the boy who went to bed with flu and woke up dead from meningitis… Every day was a gift and should be treated as such.

On the computer screen, the bold type of a new email from Scott stood out against the white background.

Sarah leant forward and rested her forehead on the cool glass of the tabletop.

I have been mourning a lover, a youth I no longer have, a life I could have lived.

But Inês – Inês has spent a lifetime mourning a baby, a life never lived.

There was no comparison. Simply none at all.

She went to Inês's house. Her shoes clattered cacophonously on the wooden stairs. Pausing on the half-landing, she glanced out of the window to the garden, which looked tired now that summer was over. She saw Billy clearing fallen leaves from the lawn, hat pulled down so far over his eyes that she wondered how he could possibly see what he was doing.

When she entered the drawing room, for a moment she thought that Inês was not there. But then she saw that instead of occupying her usual high-backed chair, she was sitting by the window in a wheelchair. She looked tiny, fragile and impossibly old. Sarah rushed over to her and kissed her on the top of her head.

“Inês! How are you? What's with the chair?”

“Sarah!” answered Inês, weakly. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again.

“She's very tired. It's best not to disturb her.” The carer came out of the kitchen, frowning. “We had to get her the wheelchair – she could hardly get about and I can't carry her around the place.”

Sarah felt irritation rise up in her. Don't patronise her
,
she wanted to say, but held back. It wouldn't do Inês any good to set the carer against her. She looked at her great-aunt, whose head was slightly bowed. With a sudden certainty, she knew that this was it. Inês had been right. There wasn't much time left.

“I have something very important to tell my aunt. I would appreciate it if I could talk to her alone for a moment.”

“I hope it's nothing that's likely to upset her.”

“No. It's fine. I think I know what will upset her and what will not.”

Better than you do
,
she felt like adding.

She knelt down on the floor by Inês's chair, and took her hands. “Inês, listen carefully. I've got good news. I found her grave, your little girl's grave. She's fine, the place is beautiful. She's in the English cemetery in Lisbon. I put some flowers there – I don't know what they're called, but they were orange, like the sun. I told her you love her, that you always have and always will.”

Inês's eyes flickered towards Sarah and then back again, to the window and the faint stream of sunlight that had fought its way through the oppressive clouds.