In Her Shadow (19 page)

‘I’d stay with you,’ said Jago. ‘We could live here together, just you and me.’

And me!
I wanted to shout.
What about me?

Ellen smiled, dropped her head right down and pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands.

‘Would you live with me, Jago?’ she asked. ‘Really?’ Her words were muffled by her knees.

‘You know I would.’

‘We have to go,’ I said. ‘Jago, honestly. We have to go right now.’

Neither of them took any notice. They were looking at one another.

‘Oh please!’ I cried. ‘Please let’s go before there’s any trouble!’

They took for ever packing up. They kept smiling although they were both quiet. I felt excluded again. I kept telling them to hurry up but they wouldn’t listen.

What happened next was their fault, not mine.

We cycled back along the tiny lanes that wound through the fields, lanes that only the cows and tractors used, taking the back route to Trethene, the sunburn stretching the skin on our legs. When we turned the corner into Cross Hands Lane we saw the car parked outside the cottage.

‘Oh fuck!’ said Jago. ‘Whose is that?’

‘It’s Papa’s,’ Ellen said.

I felt as if I had always known the car would be there. I looked towards Ellen: her eyes were wide although her skin had paled. I wondered if a public confrontation with her father was what she had wanted all along. I wondered if she had planned this to make everyone feel sorry for her.

‘Perhaps you should just go home, Ellen,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll make up some story …’

‘I don’t want to face him on my own,’ she said.

‘You’re not on your own,’ said Jago. ‘I’m here.’

Ellen made one of her overdramatic faces. ‘Jago, he can’t know I’ve been with
you
! That’ll make things a thousand times worse.’

‘Why? We haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘That’s not the point. If Papa finds out I was with you, he’ll think we’ve been …’ she tailed off. ‘You know.’

Jago let out a sigh of frustration.

I tried to breathe slowly. I’d told them this was going to happen, they should have listened to me.

I took Ellen’s hand. ‘Come with me,’ I said. ‘Jago, don’t say anything.’

We walked round to the back door. Jago followed a few paces behind.

My parents and Mr Brecht were together in the front room, which seemed too small and cluttered and pedestrian for the drama playing out inside. Mr Brecht was standing by the window, looking out. He must have been watching us. His hands were clasped behind his back.

‘Oh Hannah!’ Mum exclaimed, and I could tell from her voice that she was relieved and angry in equal measures. ‘There was a tree on the railway line and Mr Brecht’s train was cancelled so he came straight back home. He’s been so worried. Where have you been all day? It’s half past seven!’

‘We went to the beach. It was such a nice day and—’

‘You told me you were working, Ellen,’ Mr Brecht said, without turning round.

‘When I got there, they said they didn’t need me.’

‘I went to the kiosk, and they told me they hadn’t seen you all day. Where were you?’

‘We were honestly at the beach,’ I said.

‘Which beach?’

‘Polrack.’

‘You were not at Polrack.’

‘Well, never mind the details. All’s well that ends well, eh?’
said Dad. He stood up and rubbed his hands together. ‘How about a beer, Mr Brecht?’

Mr Brecht seemed not to hear him.

‘You lied, Ellen,’ he said. ‘I try to trust you, I try to believe you, but you lie and lie and lie. You’re just like your mother.’

‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘Then why do you lie?’ Mr Brecht took hold of Ellen and led her out of the house. She stumbled after him passively, doll-like. Jago made to follow her, but Dad grabbed his arm.

‘Leave it, son,’ he said.

Jago shook off Dad’s arm. For a moment I feared he would do or say something terrible. Instead he went into the kitchen and, moments later, we heard the back door slam.

For the rest of the evening, our family was subdued. Mum put the supper on, Jago stayed out and Dad turned up the volume on the television as if that would make everything better.

I curled up on the settee and bit my fingernails.

‘Do you think I should go up to Thornfield House and make sure everything’s OK?’ I asked.

Dad shook his head. ‘Leave it be, Hannah. Everything will be fine. You’ll see Ellen at work in the morning.’

But I didn’t. Ellen wasn’t on the Polrack bus the next day or the next or the next.

She never served another ice cream from the kiosk by the harbour. She never so much as set foot in there again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CORNWALL HAD BEEN
beautiful but I was a stranger there now. I was glad to get back to the city. Bristol’s Montpelier district was about as different to Trethene as it’s possible to be. My road was busy with its usual eclectic mix of characters; street music and cooking smells, veiled women pushing buggies, older men with bellies straining the buttons on their shirts, swaggering young men and girls with their trousers low on their hips. People were spilling out of the pubs, drinking their drinks at the kerbside, and boys cycled round on bicycles, weaving in and out of the cars.

I bought a few supplies, then hurried up into the flat. Lily, who had been fed by the lady who lived upstairs, was nonetheless peeved at being abandoned all weekend, and demanded attention. I fussed her, drew the curtains and turned on the lamps. I switched on the television for company.

The light on the telephone answering machine was flashing. I switched it on, but no message had been recorded. I pressed 1471 to find out who the last caller had been, and found that John Lansdown had called about half an hour before I’d arrived home. I called straight back, but he did not
pick up the phone. Anxiety about him loaded itself on top of my worries about Ellen. I had known secrets about Ellen and now I knew secrets about John and his marriage. In Ellen’s case, no good had come of the truth, but that didn’t necessarily mean it would be wrong in the current situation. I wished I knew what to do for the best. I wished there was somebody I could talk to, somebody impartial who would be able to tell me what to do.

Dad always used to tell Jago and me, ‘If in doubt, do nowt.’

Sometimes doing nothing was the hardest thing in the world.

I ran a bath, and as I undressed, the piece of blue glass fell out of my pocket and rolled along the carpet. I picked it up and put it on the dressing-table. I wondered what exactly it was that had happened over the past forty-eight hours.

I reminded myself that I did not believe in ghosts. I was a scientist and a pragmatist. I worked in a museum, surrounded by the detritus of death. I understood corporeal processes. I also knew something about the mind, and the physiology of the brain, how chemical imbalances can be exacerbated by stress, how easy it is for people to convince themselves of the reality of something that may have been nothing more than a couple of neurological malfunctions

I knew many things, but I could not, for the life of me, work out how my drift-glass had made its way from the beach to the gravestone.

It made no sense to me.

The thought that had been niggling away at the back of my mind was still trying to attract my attention. I did my best to ignore it, but it would not go away.

The glass on the gravestone made no sense – unless Ellen had put it there.

CHAPTER THIRTY

AFTER THE DAY
on the beach, Ellen was grounded, so I travelled to my hotel job on the bus by myself for the last two weeks of the summer. In the Seagull, I cleaned the bathrooms and stripped the beds, restocked the linen cupboards, emptied the dishwasher, set the tables for breakfast and prepared clotted-cream teas for the residents. I looked out of the top bedroom windows and saw Jago repairing the lobster pots on the harbour wall, or standing with his feet apart, balancing on the deck of the
Eliza May
. He didn’t joke and laugh with his crew-mates any more, not like he used to. I watched him walk up and down the hill, looking for Ellen, hoping she’d come, although he knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Sometimes he sat on the wall, staring into the water. At home, he was withdrawn and introverted. He was no fun any more. I didn’t know what to do, or say to him.

Ellen was stuck in Thornfield House until she promised to abide by her father’s rules and stop lying to him. There were no celebrations for her seventeenth birthday. I called for her once or twice but was secretly relieved when I was not allowed to see her. I knew if I did, I would have to listen to her raging against her father’s tyranny and the unfairness of
her life. I looked up from the gateway and Ellen was at her bedroom window, gazing out, standing in the same place her grandmother used to stand. I wondered if all the unhappiness that took place there was something to do with the house itself; if it was cursed. When I suggested this at home, Mum told me not to be ridiculous. She said what was happening in Thornfield House was just a consequence of circumstance.

‘Teenage daughters and widowed fathers don’t mix,’ she said. ‘They’re like oil and water. Ellen’s at the age where she’s bound to rebel, and he’s bound to be a bit on the protective side. Don’t worry, Hannah, Mr Brecht can’t keep her locked up for ever. She’ll be back at school next week.’

The following Saturday, we met Mrs Todd in the post office.

‘How is Ellen?’ Mum asked.

‘She’s not helping herself,’ Mrs Todd said. ‘There’s a terrible atmosphere in the house. Neither of them will give an inch. They’re both as stubborn as each other.’

Mum sucked in the corners of her mouth and shook her head.

‘Perhaps you could come round, Hannah, and try to talk some sense into Ellen,’ said Mrs Todd. ‘Come over after lunch tomorrow. I’m going to visit my friend in Exeter. I’ll let Ellen know you’re coming and perhaps she’ll try to be civil.’

At home, we ate a big lunch after church the next day and, when the dishes had been washed and dried and put away, Jago and my father went to the sports-ground to practise in the cricket nets. Mum sat at the kitchen table with her sewing basket, listening to the radio.

I leaned down to kiss her cheek.

‘I’m off to Thornfield House,’ I said. ‘Wish me luck.’

‘Good luck,’ said Mum. She squeezed my hand.

I put Trixie on the lead. I thought perhaps if I turned up
with the dog, Mr Brecht would let Ellen come out for a walk. What harm could possibly come of that? Two girls and a dog. Probably the most innocent combination possible, and I would smile at him and be charming to make up for all Ellen’s surliness.

Trixie and I squeezed past the Escort in the front garden. Its restoration was a task that, my mother often opined, like the painting of the Forth Road Bridge, would never be completed. No matter how many scrapyards Jago and Dad visited, they never seemed to have exactly the component they needed, when they needed it. Several rusting pieces of engine were lined up neatly by the front wall of our house.

Trixie and I meandered slowly up the lane, enjoying the dappling shade, the birdsong, the peaceful sound of the burbling water of the hidden brook. At the gate to Thornfield House, I paused. The house looked different. The wisteria that used to climb up the front of the house had been pulled down – a great heap of twisty stems was piled on the lawn. I didn’t notice, not immediately, what else had changed. I walked up the drive to the front door, Trixie panting behind. The door looked as if it was closed, but was very slightly ajar. I tied Trixie’s lead to the ornamental boot-scraper in the porch, told her to sit and wait, kissed her snout, then gently, I pushed the door open and went inside, into the hall.

Nobody was in the front room, or the dining room, but I could see the French windows were open at the back. I crept through and looked out into the garden.

Adam Tremlett had not been back and nobody had taken care of the garden in the months since Mrs Brecht had died. Mrs Todd had done her best but even the vegetable plot was too big for her to cope with on her own. I was used to the encroaching disorder but there was something odd about the garden that afternoon. I couldn’t work out what it was,
but something was wrong. I stood for a moment, my eyes wandering amongst the shrubs and the flowerbeds, and a single, small red poppy bobbing like a flag made me realize. All the flowers were gone.

I stepped through the French windows into the warmer, outside air. The fountain was not working. The pond was clogged with vegetation. Some of the fish had already died; they were floating on their sides, dull-eyed. Others were at the surface, gasping for oxygen, their little round mouths helpless and desperate. I pulled handfuls of sodden flower-heads out of the pond. Petals floated forlornly on the black water as I heaped dripping armfuls of stocks, geraniums, delphiniums and countless other flowers on to the terrace. When I felt there was enough clear water for the surviving fish, I shook the water off my arms and tried to work out what had happened.

Mr Brecht was lying beneath the shade of the copper beech tree with its almost-black leaves. He was curled on one side on one of two padded sun-loungers. A small, ornate metal table stood beside the lounger and on it was a vodka bottle, a glass and a pair of long-handled secateurs. The bottle was almost empty. I crept forward, hoping Trixie would not bark.

Mr Brecht stank of vodka. His sunglasses had slipped awkwardly up his face, they were skew-whiff on his forehead. His eyes were closed, his mouth open. He was snoring. There was a dark, damp patch on the cushion beneath his head where he had dribbled in his sleep. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and his hands and forearms were covered in scratches and small, black scabs. He had been working hard. He had cut down every flower in the garden.

Ellen’s denim jacket lay on the lawn, as if it had been dropped and abandoned. I pictured the two of them having
a terrible fight. I couldn’t imagine what it had been about, or what they had said to one another. I couldn’t imagine the despair that had driven him to this. I reached down and picked up the jacket. My shadow fell over Mr Brecht’s face, and I held my breath for a moment, but he did not stir. I crept out of the garden, going back through the house the same way I had come in. I ran upstairs to check, but Ellen’s room was empty. The house was silent. She was not there.