Falling in Love Again (34 page)

45

ED

Ed sat in the car, steeling himself to climb up the path. He hadn’t been here for years – over ten to be precise. And even then his father had virtually forced him.

‘It will help you face the past, son. Besides, she left it to you. You owe it to her to keep it going.’

But every inch of the cottage took him back so sharply to those endless, warm summer holidays when his mother would knock on the door quietly before anyone else was up and the two of them would slip off, conspiratorially, wending their way down through the landslip with the dog padding behind in the early morning heat; down towards the shingle beach.

‘First in, wins!’ his mother would cry gaily and they’d be in! His mother (slim, he realised now, although he’d taken her wild beauty for granted) laughing as she flicked salty water at him, encouraging him to take the plunge too. Then Paddy would bound in and they’d play mad games; crazy games – he wondered now whether they'd been too risky. Games where he would nosedive down to the bottom and swim through her legs, holding his breath for what seemed like ages. Games where his mother would swim out to the stony line of rocks so she became a little black dot and then he’d begin to panic and shout out in case she didn’t come back.

‘Don’t be a silly sausage,’ she’d say, hugging him to her. ‘Do you think I’d ever leave you.’

He shivered.

‘Nippy isn’t it?’ Charlie, his driver, turned to him. ‘Even for this time of the year.’

He nodded, not wanting to engage in conversation even with this kindly man who was one of the few people who knew what had really happened. This was one occasion when he wished – really wished – that he could have driven himself. Yet another challenge which his father had set him and where he’d failed to come up with the goods.

‘You can go if you like, Charlie. I can manage the bags.’

He’d already made it clear that once they’d arrived, Charlie was free to do as he pleased provided he kept his mobile on. Even before they’d arrived, Ed wasn’t sure how long he would be able to last here. And now he was actually here, staring up at the cottage with its blue, wrap-around balcony, set like that in the hill between the downs and the landslip, he wondered again if he’d made another of his classic mistakes.

‘No, you haven’t,’ Nancy had said on the phone when they’d finally touched base with each other in the way they always had done, since the old man had died. (He had promised, hadn’t he, to look after her if ‘anything happened’ although it seemed to be the other way round.) ‘It’s a lovely gesture. That group of yours has helped you, hasn’t it? They wanted to go away and you’ve helped them do it.’

Ed glanced at his watch. Another couple of hours before they were due to arrive. They were coming down in two cars on the same ferry from Portsmouth. He had planned that bit too. Before they came, he had something important to do.

The hill up to the cottage was steeper than he’d remembered – or maybe he was just a bit unfit. But the nearer he got, the more beautiful it seemed. At least he had fulfilled one part of his bargain. He might not have visited enough but he had paid the locals to paint it and do the garden. Hopefully, the last lot of tenants, who had left only last month, had kept it in a decent state inside as well.

Instinctively, he stopped by the buddleia bush, remembering how he and his mother had sat there for hours, watching the butterflies. She would paint them, he suddenly recalled. Where were those pictures now? A sudden flash of his father coming up and laying his arm carelessly across his mother’s shoulders, shot into his head. They had loved each other so much! Was that why his father had flitted from wife to wife; girlfriend to girlfriend after she had died, only stopping when he had married Nancy, before dropping down dead?

And was that why he himself kept flitting from wife to wife, always looking for The One? The One he would love as much as he’d loved his mother . . .

Here it was. The lavender bed below the balcony. Her favourite place when she was alive. And dead. ‘She wants to lie there,’ his father had said and as a small boy, he had had this picture of her lying like Snow White in a coffin, open for all to see. No, his father had told him gently. Just her ashes.

Ashes? Were they going to burn a great bonfire then, like they did at home every year for Guy Fawkes?

‘You won’t be able to see them,’ Viv the cleaner had said in a jollier voice. ‘But it will be a place where you can always go, when you choose, to talk to her.’

Now as he sat on the earth – dry and crumbly in the summer heat – he thought about it. You read about it, certainly. People who said that their loved ones still spoke to them in their head, and that they talked back. But it seemed daft somehow. She couldn’t hear, could she? And what could he say back to his mother? That he’d lost the girl with the silly name whom he had connected with – really connected. And that he had then made a fool of himself by proposing to a woman whom he’d had a schoolboy romance with, just because they’d had a child together and because she was in a wheelchair?

‘A child!’

Wow! That almost made him fall over. He didn’t so much hear his mother’s voice as feel it.

‘A grandson?’

How had she known it was a boy? Maybe she WAS still watching over him, even if she was dead. Yet no matter what his father and nanny had said, she wouldn’t be dead at all if he hadn’t . . .

‘Coooeeee!’

He leapt up. Someone down there was waving. Someone large and purple. Dear God. He hadn’t realised Violet was coming too. She’d have to go in one of the outhouses unless he gave up his own bed.

‘Hello! This is amazing!’

Another voice! Sounded like Karen’s. And wasn’t that Lizzie running up the hill. They must have got here early or else he’d been sitting by the lavender for longer than he’d realised.

‘
Remember your manners.
’ This time it was Viv’s voice in his head. Instantly, he leaped to his feet and walked down to meet them.

‘Hello,’ he said in what he hoped was a host-like voice. ‘Welcome to the island.’

Alison wasn’t going to come after all. Something had come up at the last minute, Karen had told them in a slightly subdued tone which made him wonder if she was all right. He liked Alison – had grown to like them all, in fact, apart from that prat Hugh who, for some reason, he couldn’t stand – and felt a prickle of concern about the ‘something that had come up’. Maybe he’d text Clive, his old lodger, just to check.

Funny that he should feel so concerned. Until the group, he hadn’t paid much attention to other people’s feelings. At least,  that’s what Tatiana had told him. ‘You know your trouble?’ she had yelled at him during those last days. ‘You’re too wrapped up in the past to think about the people that are around you now. That’s why none of your marriages work.’

Was that true? And yet he couldn’t help feeling that out of all the women he’d come across in life – including Claire – September had been the one who made him feel alive. Vibrant. Of the moment. And now it was too late.

‘How long have you had this amazing place?’ asked Lizzie as they gathered in the kitchen, helping him to prepare lunch. (They’d agreed to take it in turns.)

‘Forever.’ He glanced through the kitchen French windows which led to the long wooden balcony, affording amazing views out to the sea. ‘It belonged to my mother and before her, her mother.’ He smiled. ‘It was known as the women’s bolthole. Nothing could ever persuade any of them to sell it even when the family fortunes got a bit rocky.’

Lizzie looked as though she was going to say something but then stopped. Good. For a moment there, he felt he was going to tell her everything and he didn’t want that. You never think of others, Tatiana had said.

‘What about you? How are things?’

Lizzie turned away but not before he caught the glimpse of tears. ‘She . . . I can’t say her name . . . had her baby.’

She turned to look at him and this time there was no mistaking the shiny eyes. ‘It – he – is the spitting image of my husband.’

Shit. And she’d been so certain ‘The Slut’ had been sleeping with someone else.

‘So . . .’ He was trying to tread gently. ‘Is that it, then, do you think?’

She nodded. ‘How do you want these carrots. Sliced or diced. Tom always liked them this way.’

And then she was off.  Until now, Ed had always considered himself the master of the ‘WHAT TO DO WHEN WOMEN CRY’ problem. You just ignored them or walked out of the room or handed them a large G and T. But now he found himself putting his arms around this pretty, frail woman and telling her it would be all right and that not all men were bastards and that she’d find someone else before long.

‘But I don’t want anyone else?’ Her sobs were getting louder. ‘I want Tom.’

Shit. She was really crying now. What should he do? Thank God. Here was Karen.

‘It’s all right love.’ She nodded at Ed to indicate she’d take over now. ‘Come with me. Let’s have a bit of fresh air. I always reckon that helps.’

How did she do it? ‘There’s a nice walk down the left hand side of the garden – the path takes you to the beach.’

No answer. Ed returned to the carrots with a sense of failure.

‘
Nonsense
,’ said the voice inside his head.
‘
You haven’t failed at all. You’ve brought them down here. My cottage will heal them.
’

He paused, knife in mid-air. He hadn’t heard his mother’s voice inside his head so clearly since learning that she’d died. The day when she’d told him not to worry and that she’d always be there for him. But when he’d told his father about the voice, Dad’s face had grown stern and he’d told him in no uncertain terms that hearing voices in your head was one of the signs that you could go mad and that under no circumstance should he listen to it any more. So he hadn’t. Yet here it was again!

‘Tell them. Tell them about me. Tell them everything.’

Everything? ‘No.’ He brought the knife down on the carrot so hard that the end flew off. That was too much to ask.

They returned sooner than he’d expected.

‘Wow!’ said Karen. ‘That looks amazing.’

Lizzie nodded. She was still pale but not crying any more, thank God.

‘It’s only a vegetarian casserole, I’m afraid.’ Ed glanced towards the oven.

‘Bit ambitious to cook beans for all these people under one roof, isn’t it?’ commented Violet who was walking past. ‘Just think of that gas. And remember I’m on a diet.’

Karen giggled, mentally thanking Violet for breaking the ice. Funny how a change of scene had made them feel awkward in front of each other, rather like the first meeting. Now it was beginning to be all right again. ‘She might have a point.’

Ed felt worried. ‘I’ve got some baked potatoes too, which might or might not be properly cooked inside.’

He cut his open. Shit. This one needed stabbing.

Karen reached out and put her hand on his arm. ‘Ever cooked a baked potato before, love?’

He shook his head.

‘They need a lot longer unless you’ve got a microwave.’

Some hope.

‘Why don’t we go out for lunch to that nice pub we passed in the village?’

He nodded. ‘Good idea. My treat. No. Honestly. It’s the least I can do to make up for the crap lunch.’

He hadn’t been here for years. Had never been inside in fact; just hung around in the garden while his parents had had a drink inside, with his father coming out every now and then with a bag of crisps that had a little parcel of blue with salt inside.

But the pub, with its roaring fire, was doing them all good. Even Lizzie – who looked much prettier now she’d put on a bit of weight – had begun to talk and made them laugh with her tales about her parents and their newly-discovered (and lost) boyfriend and girlfriend from Grandparents Reunited.

Then he’d told them about The Kid going out in the evening just as Ed was going to bed. And how he was always asking for money so Ed had to hide his wallet and then couldn’t find it again.

‘That’s nice of you to have him,’ Lizzie had said.

So he’d tried to point out that they may have got a lot of stuff wrong in his family but they always looked after each other and that his stepmother Nancy was more like an older sister. And then, over sticky toffee pudding which he’d always loved, he found himself telling them about Claire and the proposal.

‘But you hardly know her!’

True.

‘You’re a hopeless romantic, love.’

That was Karen. Also true.

‘And you mustn’t be offended that she turned you down.’

‘But she’s got someone else apparently. Even though she’s in . . . even though she’s . . .’

He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

‘Even though she’s in a wheelchair.’ Lizzie finished the sentence off for him.

He flushed. ‘I know it’s awful but I thought I’d be doing her a favour.’