Letters to the Lost (43 page)

No words came. None that would put back together what Charles Thorne had destroyed with his brutal logic. The odds had been stacked against them from the start, he thought dully. It should come as no surprise that the law was too.

He shook his head, to clear the fog from in front of his eyes. Stella’s face swam into focus, as pale as the moon, her eyes huge with horror. He opened his mouth to cast out his last lifeline, his one remaining hope.
We could have another one. Our own child . . .
But then she lifted Daisy to hold her against her shoulder and, disturbed by the movement, the baby gave a sudden cat-like mewling cry. It split the air between them like forked lightning, and struck him dumb. In silent agony he watched as Stella rested her cheek against the tiny head, folding Daisy more tightly into her body as the distance between them seemed to widen.

‘I can’t leave her, Dan. I can’t . . .’ Her voice was barely audible.

‘I would never ask you to.’

He was all out of ammunition and the battle was lost. He knew that at some point during its course he had sustained wounds that he couldn’t yet feel, but that soon, once the numbness had worn off the pain was going to be bad.

He closed the gap between them, sliding his hand into the warmth of her neck, beneath her hair, bringing his mouth to her ear.

‘This isn’t goodbye, Stella, I promise you that. I won’t let it be.’ His lips were stiff, his voice hoarse. ‘It’s not over – not for me. I’ll wait for you, however long it takes – forever, if I have to. And I’ll write. And I’ll never stop loving you, or hoping. As long as we’re both alive I’m not going to give up hope.’

He let her go. Without trusting himself to glance at the man who had destroyed his chance of happiness he went down the stairs and out of the front door, into the drenching summer downpour and the wreckage of the rest of his life.

33

2011

In accordance with the proverb, March came in like a lion, if that meant it was fiercely cold. A couple of sudden and heavy snowfalls at the end of the first week turned London’s parks into enchanted playgrounds and its pavements into death runs. With only three weeks to go until the wedding, Will’s mother was in despair about the garden being anything like ready. She’d been banking on the magnolia being in bloom for the photographs, as well as the hundreds of bulbs she’d had put in last autumn especially for the event.

Will was in despair too, only he was less vocal about it. Thanks to Warren, the Spitfire was no trouble to start on icy mornings, but going to work early on the first snowy day he had lost control on an ungritted road and skidded, slowly and gracefully, into a new, top of the range Mercedes. His car had skimmed along the side, denting the rear wheel arch of the Mercedes before scraping the gleaming paintwork over both doors. As a twenty-five-year-old male, the cost of insuring an ungaraged classic sports car in London was already astronomical and he couldn’t afford the premium hike if he made a claim. He could barely afford the Mercedes owner’s six-hundred-pound repair bill either, especially not on top of Simon and Marina’s wedding present. He’d been shocked to discover that the cheapest thing on the list they held with an exclusive Chelsea design store was a corkscrew at seventy-nine pounds.

Any faint and foolish hope he might have cherished of striking gold with Nancy Price’s estate had also officially been dashed. He’d gone, as promised, to Albert Greaves’s early on the Saturday morning after he’d got back from Crewe, only to find that, when he went to open the front door of number four, the key wouldn’t fit. It was only then that he’d noticed the brightness of the metal keyhole and the scratched paintwork around it, and realized that the locks had been changed.

‘Who the ’eck’s done that?’ Albert asked, indignantly.

‘The council,’ Will guessed. ‘They must have been notified about the house by the police and the paramedics. They’ll have got a court order to deal with the contents and, if no heirs come to light, process a sale.’

‘If I’d have seen the cheeky blighters doing it they’d have had a piece of my mind,’ Albert spluttered. ‘They’ve got no right.’

There was no point explaining that they had, and, with no paperwork relating to the property’s ownership, were following correct procedure. Will knew that Albert was as disappointed as he was. To both of them number four Greenfields Lane was more than a decaying old house filled with the flotsam and jetsam of a lifetime. It had held dreams; for Albert, of the past, for Will the future. Their abrupt removal was a bitter blow.

Will could remember quite clearly how he had felt five years ago when it had all gone wrong. The details of what happened and what he’d done – the uncontrolled drinking, the long walks through silent streets in the small hours, the scrambled essays and missed mealtimes – were a blur, remembered largely because of his housemates’ reports afterwards. But the feelings . . . the
thoughts
were still there, like a shadow on his brain. As events eluded his control he was aware of that shadow spreading and darkening.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Jess; wondering where she was and whether she was all right, torn between the certainty that she had simply moved on with her life and the nagging belief that maybe, wherever she was, she might just be thinking of him too and not know how to reach him. That was the thing that tormented him most. Not knowing.

Small things. Small things mattered. One of his therapists had described a set of scales inside his mind on which everything came to rest, and explained that even the tiniest events made a difference to the balance. The image had stayed with him, and as March slipped by and spring didn’t come; as the wedding got closer, Ansell’s jibes got crueller and he relinquished all hope of seeing Jess Moran again, he knew that if he couldn’t take control, he had to take care. To do small, positive things to counterbalance the negative.

And so, in the absence of anything else to focus on, he applied himself to the task of finding out what had happened to Stella Thorne.

*

The pills lay in the palm of her hand like tiny bombs.

Two of them. She squeezed her eyes shut for a second and then looked again. Definitely two – that was right, and she hadn’t taken them already this morning. Had she? Tuesday. She said the day out loud to fix it in her head, then put the pills into her mouth and gulped down water. It would be an hour until they began to work their magic fully, but she felt calmer already, just knowing that soon the sharp edges of the day would begin to blur again and questions that chased themselves round and round in her head would lose their urgency.

She didn’t know what she would do without the pills. After the day of the fete (the ill-feted day, as she sometimes thought of it, when the pills gave her thoughts that warm fluidity) things had been very bad, but Dr Walsh had turned out to be an unexpected ally. ‘Difficult times, my dear, difficult times. These will help,’ he’d said smoothly, the nib of his fountain pen scratching on the paper. After the coldness meted out to her by Ada and Marjorie and the rest of the parish ladies, she was astonished and relieved and grateful.

If it wasn’t for Daisy she would have simply given up. Often, during the hot sleepless nights she would find herself wondering which would be the quickest, the least painful, the cleanest way to end it. Those were some of the questions that circulated ceaselessly around the passageways in her brain, like a clockwork train. But then she would remember that she had given up her future with Dan to stay with Daisy and a new series of questions would begin: how was she to get through each day of the rest of her life without him?

Before, she had had the comfort of fantasy to keep her going. Even while fearing he was dead, she had been able to sustain herself with hope and wishes and what-ifs.
If only he would come back safely, everything would be all right.
But he had come back; fate or God or his own courage and determination had brought him home, and it had been she who had sounded the death-knell on their future together. Each time she remembered that, panic pulsed through her, making her blood fizz. Was it too late to change her mind?

She knocked on the door of Charles’s study. He didn’t look round when she went in, but even the back of his head seemed to radiate cold disapproval.

‘I’m taking Daisy to the shops.’ Her voice sounded odd – muffled and echoey, as if she were underwater. ‘Is there anything you need?’

‘No thank you.’ He turned round and regarded her coolly over his spectacles. ‘Do you have to take Daisy? Isn’t it time for her nap? Dr Walsh has said numerous times how important it is for her to have a routine. She’ll never settle properly if you constantly fuss with her like some . . . doll.’

‘She’ll fall asleep in the pram. She’s almost dropping off already. Dr Walsh also said it was important for her to get fresh air, and it’s such a lovely day . . .’

She trailed off, exhausted by the effort of putting the sentence together. Charles made a little grunt of impatience, or possibly disgust. ‘Very well then. It’s very hot; make sure she’s shaded by the pram hood.’

It was obvious he wanted her out of his room. She went, closing the door carefully behind her. Since the fete Charles had lost enthusiasm for playing the part of loving husband. He had stopped asking her to help with the little things he couldn’t manage and relied instead on Ada and Dr Walsh. A new curate had arrived; an earnest young man called Owen or Ewan, and he had quickly become, almost literally, Charles’s right-hand man.

The August sun was hard and white, and its heat pressed down on Stella’s head as she walked along the baked pavement. Beneath the fringed hood of the pram Daisy wailed fitfully. Stella watched her little mouth stretch in her screwed-up face, but the pills had started to work and the sound that came from it was disconnected. Reaching the row of shops at the bottom of the hill she parked the pram outside Fairacre’s and joined the queue inside. Ada was there, talking to Ethel Collins. She glanced at Stella as she came in and pointedly turned her back.

Since she’d been revealed as an adulteress it had been the same story, of conversations ended abruptly, pursed lips and hostile stares. Stella leaned against the doorframe. It was just as well, she thought vaguely; she’d rather be spared the effort of dredging up words from the soup in her head and arranging them into a conversation. Flies circled drunkenly in the thick air and one of them blundered into her face. The hot, meaty smell of blood coming from the counter very suddenly reminded her of Blossom and an inexplicable rush of tears stung her eyes.

She stumbled out of the shop, dizzy and stricken. The fly seemed to follow her. Its buzzing filled her head, so that she thought it was caught in her hair and shook it wildly to get rid of it. The noise got louder, deeper, until the sky boomed with it. She put her hands over her ears and started to walk quickly, keeping her eyes pinned to the pavement and the flicker of her own feet. Running now. Running. Running, running, running—

The explosion made her stop. The ground jerked and the hot air seemed to suck itself in before expanding again in a hot rush. Everything shimmered and became liquid and insubstantial for a moment, as if the world itself was dissolving.

But it didn’t. The boom died away and the vacuum of silence in its wake was filled again, by the distant sounds of ringing bells and shouted voices. Smoke billowed like a black parachute unfurling above the rooftops, but the houses around her resumed their solid outlines. Stella looked around, blinking as she tried to get her bearings. She didn’t recognize the street in which she stood, but the smoke rose like a shadowy skyscraper in the direction from which she’d just come. From the shops.

Where she’d left Daisy.

34

2011

Morning Dan. Just checking in quickly to fill you in on how it went yesterday in King’s Oak. Not exactly brilliant, I’m sorry to say. Got the bus over there and found the church, no problem. It’s exactly how you described it – a great big ugly dark red building, so nothing’s changed there. It was all locked up and so I went to the Vicarage across the road. It felt pretty weird – good weird – to walk up the path of Stella’s old home, but when I knocked the woman who answered looked at me like I was a plague carrier or something and said that it wasn’t anything to do with the church any more and she pointed to a sign by the front door that said THE OLD VICARAGE. The new one is a bit further down, next to the community hall. It looks like a shoebox with windows.

The vicar wasn’t much help, to be honest. I don’t think he liked me and he didn’t make much effort to hide it, which I thought was pretty bad since he’s supposed to be a Christian. Anyway, he did go away and dig out this massive book of parish records and showed me the bit about Charles Thorne. It just said that he was there from June 1937, and the next guy took over in September 1945. If old grumpy trousers had any idea where Charles went after that, or how I could find out, he wasn’t going to tell me, that was for certain.

One thing was interesting, though. The list of all the vicars was pretty formal, with middle names and everything. Our guy was listed as Maurice Charles Thorne. I can see why he preferred to be called Charles, but I guess if Maurice was his proper first name that might be why you haven’t been able to find him in documents and stuff?

Have you made any progress on the house? And how are you feeling? I hope the new drug they gave you is working well, and with no nasty side effects.

I’m off to the lunch club today. I’m massively nervous because last time one of the ladies – Vera, who I told you about, the one who knew Nancy Price pretty well and called her a ‘fast piece’ or whatever it was – managed to get out of me that I wanted to be a singer. Or used to, before I realized what a hopeless ambition it was. Well, she made a big fuss about it and announced it to everyone, and it seems like they’ve got a piano in the room where they have their tea and coffee after lunch, and one of the old girls plays it, so you can guess what’s coming, can’t you? I’ll try to get out of it, but those ladies are a pretty determined bunch, I can tell you.