The Summer of Secrets (29 page)

She sits down in the wing-sided armchair facing the fire and leans forward as if she wants to poke the flames. But it’s gas, not wood, and she sits back, her hands folded in her lap, her body angled towards me.

‘I need to know what happened.’ The words hang in the air, and I am confused about my meaning.

My mother clears her throat and speaks for the first time. ‘When, exactly?’ Her voice sounds hoarse. I wonder if I am imagining that her grip has tightened.

‘Well, the fire, for a start.’

‘You knew about the fire. You were there.’

I find muscles clenching in familiar patterns of frustration.

‘I only remember the bonfire.’ I swallow, trying not to let the images in my mind take over my consciousness. ‘But afterwards. I went to the cottage and it was burned. I didn’t see that happen. And you told me they were all OK, that they’d gone away.’ My voice is shaking, and I have to find something to wipe my eyes on. I can’t find a tissue anywhere, and use my sleeve.

Her hand plucks at the arm of the chair.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about the fire, that the cottage was burned?’ Despite myself, I hear my voice rise into something very close to a whine.

Her fingers are tracing the raised pattern of the upholstery now, her eyes fixed on the picture above the fire. The stag stands in his glen, looking right back at her. I hope so much that she will tell me I am over-reacting, that I am imagining the whole thing. But I am not going to be that lucky.

‘It seemed the best thing at the time.’ She glances at my face, then back at the stag. He must be easier to face. ‘I …’ She pauses. ‘We thought you had enough to deal with.’

My throat is tight, not wanting to let the words out. It’s like a safety mechanism, because if the words came out, so would all the anger, and I’m scared of the depths I might yet discover. ‘I thought I’d done something wrong, and that was why they didn’t find me.’ Despite my best efforts, tears are forcing their way out again, and the wet cloth of my sleeve is rough as it sweeps them away. ‘Pippa …’ My throat locks shut this time, finally getting to the question that’s been pushing itself up at me ever since last night. I try again. ‘Did something happen to Pippa?’

Her hand reaches across towards me, even though I am too far away for contact. I realize that I have drawn my legs further back at the same moment as her hand drops.

‘Your father never forgave himself,’ she says.

I wait for her to elaborate, but her face is lost somewhere distant. I am about to ask her what she means when the quiet is broken by the sound of the front door opening. There are voices in the hallway, and a child comes running through and launches herself on to my mother’s lap.

‘Nanny Babs, I’ve got a new doll!’

My mother’s face breaks into a smile. She leans towards the child, reaching a hand out to smooth her hair.

‘You’ll have to show me.’ Her voice has lifted in pitch, and I am taken aback by the tenderness in her eyes. ‘Why don’t you go and find a biscuit?’

A young woman is standing in the doorway. She is much younger than me, probably not thirty yet, and she watches her daughter charge into the kitchen before running her eyes over me and turning to my mother.

‘Everything OK, Babs?’

She’s beautiful, with glowing black skin, a bundle of curls tied up in a red scarf, a gap between her front teeth. As she stands there, she slips off her jacket and throws it down on to the end of the sofa.

‘Yes, yes.’ My mother stands up now, and waits for the woman to come and give her a hug. Then, keeping her hold on the woman’s arm, she turns to me, but talks to her. ‘This is Helen.’

The woman’s head goes up, a tiny gesture that shows she knows exactly who I am. Her expression suggests that her thoughts are not positive. I feel myself shrink, and I put up a hand to push hair behind my ear, and only remember it’s not there when my fingers touch the rough wool of my beret.

‘I’m Olivia.’ She holds out a hand and I give it a tentative shake. ‘I come and help your mum out.’

The silence is broken by the girl, who runs back in holding a biscuit in each hand. She stops, the atmosphere bringing her to a halt as effectively as a brick wall. Her gaze is uncertain as she turns to her mother, peeking at me from the corner of her eye.

‘And this –’ My mother holds out an arm, and puts on a cheery voice – ‘is Lola.’

Lola smiles again, and carries on towards the chair, leaning on the arm as she takes a bite out of first the right-hand biscuit, then the left.

‘Lola comes every week to tell me about everything she’s been up to, don’t you, poppet?’

My fingernails have found their way under my sleeves, and I dig in hard. I sense Olivia’s glance, but cannot risk making eye contact with anyone. My gaze is fixed on the carpet. Any minute now, someone is going to tell me to mind my manners. Instead, Olivia steps forward and holds a hand out to her daughter.

‘Lola, baby, we forgot to get the milk!’ The words rise in mock horror, and Lola reacts to what is clearly a familiar game. Her hands go up and she opens her eyes wide.

‘Oh no! Nanny Babs won’t be able to have any tea!’

‘That’s right.’ Olivia squats, and holds the palm of her hand for a brief instant against Lola’s round cheek. ‘Let’s go to the corner shop and see if they have any.’ She checks my mother again, and receives an imperceptible nod. These two know each other well.

When they have gone, silence falls again. I have cracked open my anger, and found nothing but an empty husk. They have left so my mother and I can say what we need to say, but I don’t know what that is any more. When I tell her I am going, my mother doesn’t argue. She pushes herself upright and disappears into her bedroom. I stand with one hand on the front door, wondering if she has gone in there for good, whether she is making a significant gesture; shutting out the past, leaving me standing there in uncertainty. The wallpaper in front of me has a raised pattern of circular bumps, in the same inoffensive cream as in all my mother’s homes. I scrape my fingernails down the wall, catching them on those smug bumps. One of them lifts away from the wall. I feel the urge to sink my nails right in, to grip the plaster and tear it out in chunks. I want to rip at the paper, pulling it off in long, ragged strips. I imagine it coming away from the wall, widening outwards to become a mighty triangular flag. Instead, I push the tiny bump of texture back into place. Nobody would know it had ever been torn.

The door from the bedroom opens, and my mother comes out carrying a brown cardboard box. She comes towards me and, although it’s hard to tell in the dim hall light, it seems her eyes are red.

‘I’ve had this saved for you.’ Her voice is normal. ‘I never knew whether to send it or not.’ She passes the box across and I stand there holding it, wondering what to do next.

‘Does Olivia come every day?’ It’s a stupid question, and it is not enough to take the place of all of the questions I thought I wanted to ask, but it’s all I can come up with.

‘No.’ In spite of myself, I have an empty feeling as I see the happiness that briefly lights my mother’s face. ‘Once or twice a week.’ She holds my gaze. ‘All I ever wanted was a daughter, you know.’ The words are so quiet, I’m not even sure that I’ve heard them.

In the end, she makes the first move.

‘Shall I get the door for you?’ she asks.

I step out on to the landing.

‘Helen.’

I stop and turn back, barely able to see around the edge of the box. It’s the first time she has used my name. She is talking to me as a person, not a daughter.

‘Yes?’

‘I wanted to protect you.’

She hesitates, then carries on.

‘I didn’t hate your father. But he didn’t leave an explanation. He left you with nothing.’ She is holding the side of the door as if she needs its support. ‘I found that hard to forgive.’

There’s a tall stand of leylandii along the front now, their feathery green branches obscuring the view. I pay off the taxi, and step closer to the gate, so that I can see through to the house. New windows and smooth, cream paint; a white plastic porch with a lockable door and fake stained glass; heavy drapes at the windows with matching pelmets. It reminds me of the Weavers’ house further up the lane, as it used to be. I draw closer, and more of the garden comes into view. It’s smaller than I remember. The grass seems greener, and there are tidy flowerbeds in front of the house. Then I see an empty space. Our garage is gone, our ugly garage with the breeze-block walls, the corrugated roof and double doors. There’s a new garage further across, built closer to the house with a brick walkway connecting the two. It’s much bigger, and there are windows in the roof: a workroom? Office? There are no cars in the drive, no sign of life beyond the half-drawn curtains of the house, so I push at the gate to get closer.

My memory is unreliable. I’m not sure if the drive is in the same place, and the new garage blocks off the side of the house, making it hard to calculate angles and distances. I think I can see a line under the grass where a wall might have been. Standing back, with my eyes half closed, I try to overlay the sense of what I remember with what is in front of me. As the details slip into place, a voice comes from behind.

‘Excuse me, but can I help you?’

Standing by the gate, wearing Wellington boots and holding the lead of a wet and muddy Labrador, is a white-haired lady with an expression ready to tip into suspicion. What I should do is shift the box on to my left hip and walk towards her with my right hand outstretched and apologize for my intrusion. I should explain why I’m here before apologizing again, complimenting her on her display of michaelmas daisies, and taking my leave. But the image of the boat, resting in the dim light of the garage, Dad sitting in his chair staring at who knows what visions and working his way through his crate of beer, is filling my mind, and I stumble on the words.

‘I …’ My throat is bunched tight. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Not for being here. For being here like this. For not asking more questions and for ignoring the gaps in other people’s stories. For the house and the garage and the boat. And for Dad. The lady stands there with her gardener’s hands and her well-behaved dog and regards me with a frown. Perhaps she is wondering what I have in the box, and what I am intending to do with it.

I try again. ‘I used to live here, you see.’ My emotions are settling to a manageable level, and I even squeeze out a deprecating smile. ‘I was passing, and I wanted to … revisit.’

Her face relaxes.

‘That must have been quite some time ago,’ she says, her voice less icy now she is able to place me in a category. The dog slumps on to the ground, resting his muzzle on his paws. ‘The folk before us had no children, I believe.’

‘Oh, goodness, yes.’ I hear myself laugh and wonder where this is coming from. Who on earth am I pretending to be? ‘It’s all very different.’

‘I should imagine so.’ She bends her head, as if accepting praise.

‘In fact, I was trying to decide where my dad’s garage used to be.’

‘Ah, yes.’ She smiles, giving a small shake of the head at the same time, and I follow her as she walks over to where the garage used to be, where the boat spent so many years. The Labrador heaves himself up. When we come to a halt, he ambles across to sniff at my feet.

We both stand and regard the grass.

‘Absolute death trap,’ she says.

‘Sorry?’

‘The garage. No foundations, and the wrong cement had been used, so none of the blocks were stable.’ She turns to give me a stern look. ‘And the roof was made of asbestos. Terrible!’

I make some noise of shocked agreement. From where we are standing, I can see into the back garden. The pond has been filled in.

There is nothing more to be said.

Her eyes follow me as I walk down to the gate and out on to the lane.

I expected the house to be different, but I’m totally unprepared for the sight of the canal. There’s a whole line of boats, for a start, shiny doll’s houses with names like
At Last!
and
Dream On
, moored in a neat line against the opposite bank. The canal I remember was thick with weeds. The few boats that came by were dilapidated, and their roofs were stacked with bags of coal and ramshackle trolleys, cats curled onboard in the sun.

I slip back to the summer that was ours. I don’t remember anyone else being there for all of those long, hot week. Only us and the water. The boat.

One of the fields on the far side is now a marina, with thirty or so boats packed in rows along wooden pontoons. There is a footbridge, a sign for a coffee shop. The landscaping around the basin still looks raw, with grass growing in thin patches and bare saplings strapped to supporting posts at regular intervals. To the left are apartments, some sporting flat Juliet balconies. The water is the same, though, a thick grey-green, flowing at a sluggish pace in the breeze.

I turn away from the edge and push through an unfamiliar black-and-white kissing gate. And here are the cottages. The hedge has gone and rose bushes, heavy with big, pink blossoms, edge the gardens instead. The basic proportions of the buildings are the same, but they hold no sense of the place I remember. The first cottage has a white cruiser tied to the canal bank, and a trampoline on a patch of grass. A dog barks in the front window of the second. I see the old lady’s face peering out at us, complaining the racket we were making, always grumbling about how young people behaved. How everyone behaved. Except Pippa. More than once we’d found her sitting on a high stool in Mrs … Mrs … Tyler’s kitchen, eating bread and jam and chattering away. A pain twists in my stomach.

The last time I saw Mrs Tyler was the day I found the empty shell of the cottage, the burned and ashy remains. Very clearly, I recall what she said.
Poor little maid.
I’d thought she was saying it about me, but I realize there’s something wrong with the memory. If I had been the one to feel sorry for, she’d have done something, surely. Asked if I was all right, taken me inside for sweet tea. She was crusty and abrupt, but not unkind. If it wasn’t me, though, who did she mean? The third cottage is paved right up to the door, a large motorbike propped in the middle, like a decorative feature. I stop and study the final cottage, and feel nothing. I have no emotion left. The walls are straight and the windows are clean. The roof is weathered. There is nothing to suggest it has ever been any different. I rest my cardboard box on the wall. A spot of rain lands, leaving a polka dot on the brown surface. And another.