Dearest Rose (42 page)

‘Granddad is going to die,’ Maddie stated, rubbing the palm of her hand across Rose’s back. ‘How soon?’

‘Soon,’ Rose said. ‘We don’t know exactly. Hopefully he will
have
a few weeks, months even. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘It’s OK,’ Maddie said quite calmly, picking up the potato peeler, and setting about skinning the potatoes. She hadn’t spoken more than two words about it to Rose since, certainly not about how she felt, and Rose worried that she’d done the wrong thing in telling her, but when John arrived back, leaning heavily on Frasier, Maddie had gone directly to him and put her arms around his waist.

‘I’m sorry about you dying, Granddad,’ she said. ‘I love you.’

‘Me too,’ John said, masking his surprise with a gruff cough. ‘Me too.’

‘Still,’ Maddie said, taking his hand and holding it as Frasier helped him over to his armchair, ‘we’ve got weeks and weeks, months even, so let’s not think about it. OK?’

‘OK,’ John said, as he settled painfully into the chair, and took the still wet card that Maddie handed him, a portrait of him, painting in his barn, looking exactly as grim and gruff as he did when he worked.

‘It says get well soon,’ Maddie said apologetically. ‘I didn’t know you were going to die when I made it.’

‘It’s lovely,’ John said, repressing a grim smile as he looked at his granddaughter. ‘Just like you.’

‘Thanks,’ Maddie said. ‘I’ve made you some soup too. Mum helped, slightly.’

Frasier and Tilda stayed, spooning the soup out of bowls, seated around John in his armchair. John ate very little, and at one point almost spilt what was left in his lap, as he nodded off, listening to Frasier talking about the value of exhibiting new work and how it enriched an artist’s life and reputation.

‘Granddad!’ Maddie’s voice roused him, as she saved the bowl from tilting too far on his tray and lifted it off his lap.

‘I think perhaps I’d better go to bed,’ John said, leaning his head against the back of the chair. ‘It’s these pills they’ve given me, I expect. I’ll give it a day or two and then see how I get on without them.’

‘Dad, you can’t just stop taking them,’ Rose said.

‘She’s right,’ Tilda said anxiously. ‘You can’t just ignore the doctors, John.’

‘I can do what I bloody like. It’s my body,’ John snapped. ‘I know I’d rather spend what time I’ve got left awake and not snoring my head off.’

‘Granddad,’ Maddie said, biting her lip, ‘if you go to sleep, you will wake up, won’t you?’

‘I will do my best,’ John promised her as Frasier helped him to his feet.

‘I’ll watch you then,’ Maddie said. ‘Poke you if you stop breathing or anything.’

‘Maddie,’ John said gently, resting his palm on the top of her head, ‘what happened to not thinking about it?’

‘I’m not thinking about it,’ Maddie said. ‘I’m just being vigilant.’

‘Here.’ John reached into his pocket and pulled out a key. ‘You can have the barn as your studio now. I’m giving it to you. You go over there now and start working for both of us. That will be the best way to make sure I wake up again. I’ll be worrying about the mess you’ll be making in my barn too much not to.’

‘OK!’ Maddie said with delight, racing off at top speed without even pausing to close the cottage door behind her.

‘I’m not really sure a seven-year-old should be given free rein over an entire barn,’ Rose said anxiously, caught between her maternal worry and the look of joy on Maddie’s face.

‘Nonsense,’ John said, as he made his way into the bedroom, with Frasier’s assistance. ‘Children are too coddled these days. Besides, running riot in a barn is better than sitting vigil over my deathbed, don’t you agree?’

‘I really thought I was doing the right thing, telling her,’ Rose said, making John comfortable as Frasier and Tilda discreetly left the room.

‘And so do I. Children deserve honesty and respect. Another lesson I’ve learnt too late.’ He leant back on the pillow, gazing out of the window to a view of almost solid rock, broken up only here and there with patches of growth. ‘Strikes me that child’s grown up in a house so full of lies and artifice she’s hungry for truth, even if it is difficult. She’s learnt to shut herself away, disconnect herself from the world, like you have. Like I did. And it’s partly my fault she’s lived through what she has and believed it to be normal. I want you to protect her, Rose, but don’t lie to her. Don’t let her be shut away from the world like we were. There is too much joy in it to be missed. And that is the last thing I wanted for either of you.’

‘Do you think I’ve ruined her?’ Rose asked him. ‘I let her live that way. I believed she was immune to it all, because everything that happened, happened out of sight. It’s only since we got here, since I’ve seen her stop living constantly on the edge of her seat, that I’ve realised she went through it just as much as I did. I should have left so much earlier, the day she was born, long before she was born. Why didn’t I? Why wasn’t I strong enough?’

‘I don’t think you should dwell on that,’ John said, studying her face. ‘Maddie’s damaged, yes, and so are you. But you have a lifetime to repair that damage, and that’s what you need to focus on now. That’s what I need to know that you will be focusing on after I’m gone.’

Rose nodded. ‘I promise,’ she said.

‘I had hoped to die looking at the mountain peak,’ he said drowsily, returning his gaze to the window. ‘Not its grubby roots.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rose said.

‘Don’t be.’ John smiled at her, reaching for her hand. ‘I can’t manage the stairs all of a sudden and there it is. There’s nothing to be done about it. Thank you for making this neglected old room as pleasant as you have.’

Rose said nothing, sitting on the edge of the bed as she looked out of the window at the wall of rock outside.

‘Feeling trapped?’ John asked her. ‘You know you don’t have to stay, don’t you? I don’t expect you to. You are under no obligation.’

‘Yes,’ Rose said, ‘I do feel trapped, but not by you or your mountain. I’m just trying to come to terms with the life that I have, the one that closes doors as soon as it opens them. That’s what I feel trapped by: my fate to only ever have who or what I want for the shortest of times. You, Mum, a happy marriage …’ Frasier, she added silently.

‘Don’t say that,’ John said. ‘You have Maddie, and she is quite the most interesting child I’ve ever met. And although your mother is gone, and I soon will be, you will always have us. I wonder if I’ll see her again, afterwards. I do hope so. I would very much like to apologise to her for being such an arse.’

‘I don’t think you’ll have to,’ Rose said. ‘Mum forgave you long before she died. It was her own frailties that she never let up on.’

‘Then I’ll apologise for that,’ John said drowsily, his eyes fluttering. ‘I never met a finer woman than your mother. If I could have just loved her enough then I would have been a very happy man.’

He breathed out a long rattling breath as he drifted into sleep and Rose waited for his chest to rise and fall again twice before she felt able to get up and go back to the living room.

Tilda was gone. Only Frasier remained, standing by the kitchen sink, looking out of the window, the afternoon sunshine lighting up his face with golden promise, making him look very young, just exactly as he had the first time Rose had met him. She stood for a moment, watching him, wishing she was free to go to him, touch his cheek and kiss him, just as she longed to do. Perhaps her feelings for him had been nothing more than pipe dreams when she arrived, but now, oddly perhaps, since he’d withdrawn romantically she found she still loved him so much it ached and pulsated in every limb, every fibre of her body.

‘Hello,’ she said for want of anything better to say and needing to make her presence known somehow.

‘Hello.’ Frasier turned to her and smiled. ‘Tilda went. She said to call her if you needed anything. I think she finds this all rather hard, keeping her distance, being stalwart. She’s trying awfully hard to do the right thing by you.’

‘I know,’ Rose said. ‘I know I need to do the same for her, and I will.’

‘I told her about the exhibition,’ Frasier went on. ‘She thinks
it
’s a great idea and on that front I have cleared the diary, and got the PR people ready. So now we need to talk to your father, to get him to allow me to remove the work, photograph it, frame it, hang it, get it ready to be discovered.’ He hesitated, smiling ruefully. ‘I was thinking that perhaps that part would come better from you?’

‘Me?’ Rose said, feeling daunted by the prospect. ‘I’m not sure. I promised Dad I wouldn’t look at his work before he was ready to show it to me. And I haven’t broken that promise yet. I think it should come from you.’

‘Or how about both of us,’ Frasier said warmly, ‘presenting a united front. And we can recruit Maddie too. He’s bound to be less angry with her as a buffer.’

Rose grinned. ‘He’d be glad to know that we are still intimidated by him.’

‘I always will be,’ Frasier said fondly. ‘I’ve never met another man like him.’

The two of them stood there in the late afternoon sunshine, smiling at each other for a moment longer, sensing the gulf of years stretching between them, now seemingly impossible to bridge.

‘I should go,’ Frasier said. ‘I’ve got this dinner.’

‘Cecily will be waiting,’ Rose added.

‘No.’ Frasier hesitated. ‘I ended things with Cecily. It wasn’t right to string her along. I didn’t love her, not as much as a man should love a woman. And judging by her reaction I don’t think she loved me more than life itself either. If anything she was almost relieved.’

‘Oh,’ Rose said, uncertain how to react. ‘It’s just I thought after … what happened.’

There was a difficult silence, neither of them knowing quite what to say next.

‘I’ll be down tomorrow,’ Frasier said finally. ‘I will be here every single day that I can be for your father, for as long as it takes.’

After a moment, Frasier came to her and kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, Rose.’

Rose waited for his car to disappear round the track before she let herself cry.

At some point after Frasier left, she must have fallen asleep, if only for a few minutes, sitting in her father’s chair, the sunshine dappling on her cheek. Rose woke up with a start, certain she had forgotten something and, more than that, that something was terribly wrong. Sitting up abruptly, she felt her heart pounding fiercely in her chest, gripped by an instinctive fear that she knew was real.

Her first instinct was to go to John’s room, where, after a moment’s inspection, she reassured herself he was just still sleeping, his chest rising and falling steadily. And then she heard it, just a snatch of voice carried by a breeze through the open window. It was Maddie’s voice, and although Rose heard it for only a second she was certain that Maddie sounded afraid.

Remembering that her daughter had been in the barn alone for over an hour, Rose panicked, racing towards the building, but Maddie was nowhere to be seen. The open door, swinging on its hinges in the increasingly brisk wind, slammed shut in a series of nerve-shattering bangs. Turning wildly on her heel, Rose scanned the empty yard, whipping round frantically to study the hillside for any sign of Maddie in her brightly spotted
sundress
, afraid that
the
little girl had taken her new-found freedom to heart and taken herself for a walk.

‘No!’ Rose gasped. Maddie’s shout came from inside the barn, but not from the first room; that had been empty. She must be in the room where John dried his work. Her heart in her mouth, Rose rushed back, pausing for a fraction to see the padlock that normally kept the door locked had been forced open, but the door was pulled shut.

Sick with fear, Rose flung the door open to see her daughter staring defiantly up at her father, who was standing in front of her, a hand on either one of her shoulders. He was speaking, but so quietly Rose didn’t catch a word of it before he looked up and saw her. He turned towards her smiling, one hand still possessively gripping Maddie.

Rose took a ragged breath, her body urging her to run as fast as she could, her heart keeping her rooted to the spot where, feet away, she was certain her daughter was in danger. Richard had finally found them, and he was very, very angry.

She stood for several seconds staring at him, the set of his shoulders, the incline of his head as he talked to Maddie, trying to decipher his mood as she had a thousand times before. To anyone who didn’t know him the way Rose did, watching him now, he seemed completely relaxed, at ease.

But Rose knew better. She knew that no one could do a better job of hiding away their rage behind a pleasant smile and a polite tone than her husband. Maddie, on the other hand, was harder to read. She looked calm, determined even, but her fists were tightly clenched, and although she was standing perfectly still, Rose could see that every sinew of the little girl was repelled and desperate to be away from her father’s touch.

There was nothing for it, Rose realised, struggling to control the fear that gripped her. She could not run away; there was nowhere to hide. This was the moment when she had to face him. Now was the time when she would find out if she really had what it took to stand on her own two feet, to protect her daughter, to be the woman she needed to be finally to be free of him.

‘Rose,’ Richard greeted her, no doubt seeing the look on Maddie’s face as she approached. ‘I found our daughter alone and unattended in a barn, a building literally chock-full of deathtraps. Not the most responsible of parenting, if you don’t mind me saying. Not that I’m in the least bit surprised. By the look of what you’ve done to your hair you really have lost it this time. You look ridiculous.’

‘Why did you break into this room?’ Rose asked him, keeping her gaze locked on him, afraid that if she stopped looking at him, even for one second, something might happen that she couldn’t prevent.

‘I didn’t,’ said Richard, while Maddie’s flinch as the tips of his fingers whitened on her bare shoulder revealed the real truth. ‘The door was already open.’

Why did he come here and, instead of coming to find and confront her, take Maddie somewhere he thought no one would see and hear them? What dreadful way had he been planning to take his revenge on her?