Simply Heaven (58 page)

And then the latch clicks and the door begins to swing open. Nessa calls back over her shoulder: ‘You were right. There’s a room back here. Strewth! We’d never have found it …’

I see dim light filtering through the doorway. My mouth doesn’t work. I don’t have enough saliva to swallow, let alone speak.

The light reduces dramatically. Roly must have come back. ‘Is she in there? Pwooagh.’ This latter sound is an expression of disgust.

‘Well, there’s
something
in there,’ says Nessa.

Torchlight plays over the walls. I try to croak out some word, some indication that I’m still alive, but all I hear is the thin whistle of air in my throat. I try to turn on to my back. It takes me three goes. I’m frightened by the deterioration in my strength in the time I’ve been drifting.

‘Something moved,’ says Nessa, urgently, ‘I’m sure it did. Come on. She’s in here. She’s got to be.’

And then there is a scrabbling, wriggling presence between them, and a body barrels across the floor. And I am lying there, dry-weeping as I feel Perkins’s filthy breath, his warm wet tongue slobbering deliciously over my face, my cracked lips. I extract an arm from my rank swaddlings, throw it around his neck and choke-sob into his warm silken ears.

Perkins puts his forepaws up on the bed, pants and covers me in mucus. Nothing, nothing has ever felt so good.

‘I think he’s found her,’ says Nessa.

‘Is she alive?’

‘I don’t know. Come on. Mel? Are you there? Are you OK? Can you answer me?’

The torchlight moves once again, hits the carpet, the far wall, the ceiling. She’s climbing through. I turn my head to see her.

‘She’s moving!’ She calls back over her shoulder. ‘I don’t think she can talk but she’s – Jesus.’

‘What?’ asks Roly.

The beam has landed on Lucy’s face. Stays there, wobbling, as Nessa drinks in what she sees. Then it flicks forward and she sees me, sees the whites of my eyes and says ‘Jesus’ again.

Roly clambers through the doorway. ‘What is it?’

She’s halfway to me. ‘She’s here. Look.’

And she’s down on her knees, pushing Perkins out of the way and covering my face with her tears. Sensible Nessa, bawling against my cheek. ‘It’s OK. We found you. You’re OK. Oh God—’

I put a finger against her miraculous face and run it along its length. It’s so warm, so soft.

‘Have you got the water?’

‘Yuh,’ he says. ‘She’s alive?’

‘Yes, of course she’s fu— yes. Yes, she is. She’s pretty crook, but she’s still with us.’

Roly appears over Nessa’s shoulder. Hands her a plastic bottle. ‘Hello, Mel,’ he says, as though he were at a pheasant shoot. ‘How are you?’

And I see his eyes widen as he sees past me in the dark. ‘Bloody
hell
!’ he barks.

Perkins bounces and wags, and Nessa twists the top off the bottle, slowly, slowly, like she’s running on frame-by-frame. Holds it to my lips. I grab at it as the water touches my tongue, try to snatch it from her, but she holds firm, prises my fingers away. ‘Slowly,’ she says. ‘You’ll throw it up. Just a little. It’s OK. You can have more. Oh God, Mel, I heard those bitches and I had a hard time making myself believe it, but … oh God, I’m so sorry. I should’ve looked earlier.’

‘Who the hell is
that
?’ asks Roly.

Nessa doesn’t reply, watches me and controls the trickle of life into my body. I look up into her eyes like a small child, feel the miracle. I want to gulp, to slather it over my parched skin, to tip the bottle back and let it pour, pour, pour, but she holds it steady, pulls it back to wait to see if I’ve coped.

‘Bloody
hell
,’ Roly repeats after a few seconds’ contemplation. I hear Perkins’s tail slide rough against the carpet. God, that dog: I will never, ever again sneer at the Englishman’s love of the canine.

‘I told you,’ says Roly, ‘he was a good dog, didn’t I?’

I try to say something, but my mouth is still dry as stones.

‘Don’t try and talk,’ says Nessa. Tips another couple of tablespoons’ worth between my lips. I close my eyes, feel it. Breathe out and let my sandpaper eyelids drop closed.

‘I think it’s Tilly’s mother,’ Nessa finally replies to Roly’s question.

‘Tilly’s mother? The one who – oh.’

She nods.

‘I didn’t – but that would mean that …’

‘I guess so,’ she says.

‘Poor woman. My God. What a way to die …’

Poor old Roly. Thinking always takes him a while, the great, wonderful life-saving galoot.

‘Poor Tilly,’ he says. ‘This’ll knock the stuffing out of her.’

You would have thought it would, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t. If anything, after the initial explosion of tears, it has the opposite effect. Because Tilly gets so angry that I secretly wonder if I shouldn’t take Lucy away in case she jiggles her to death.

One of life’s great injustices: that redheads are the people least advised to cry when they have, by and large, more reason than most to do so. Tilly looks like she has been left out in the rain. She looks like she has both been bleached and gone rusty. Her eyes have that gooseberry-jam look about them and her nose, prone to colour at the best of times, would guide Santa and his reindeer through the whole of Christmas Eve and still have wattage left over to light Times Square for New Year.

But what she’s not is someone whose stuffing has been knocked out. Tilly is grim with rage as she clutches the necklace with fingers so rigid that I think its pattern will be imprinted on her palms for life. Her mouth forms a single straight line from the lobe of one ear to the other, and the tendons stand out in her neck like hawsers. Looking at her, I almost pity Mary and Beatrice. Not much, though.

Tilly has been apologising pretty much her whole life for the inconvenience of her existence, for the fact that her very appearance is a constant reminder to her father of his own heartbreak. Having her need to mourn squashed by people who told her over and over how grateful she should be. Now she’s found out about the source of her pain, I don’t suppose either gratitude or forgiveness are high on her agenda.

She is so angry that she has stopped speaking. She sits silently on the sofa, Lucy bobbling about on her knee, and glares towards infinity, lips occasionally forming tight little words that never come out.

I’m lying on the other sofa with a drip in my arm. There are advantages to getting rescued by an SRN. I’ve been gone three days. I still don’t know if it feels like more, or less. Both, I guess. Roly sits, legs akimbo, on an armchair, his heavenly, heavenly hunting dog grinning between his knees. Nessa is on the rug in front of the fire.

Tilly may have lost her voice, but I’ve found mine. ‘I don’t get how you worked it out,’ I say.

Nessa fiddles with an unlit cigarette. Even she respects the lungs of the newborn.

‘You’re bloody lucky I did,’ she replies.

‘You don’t say.’

‘It was that damn cellphone. You know what? You can be grateful you got done over by a bunch of luddites. They probably thought they’d switched it off, but as you’d got the lock on, all it did was show no display. I heard it ringing. Knew it had to be yours. No-one else I can think of would have a Tom Jones tune on their mobile. Not around here, anyway. And you only put it on there in order to annoy your mother-in-law. And a lucky thing too. Everyone thinks you’re gone. Your car’s gone, and all your stuff. Rufus thinks you cleared, and I don’t blame him. It’s not like it would be the first time, would it?’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise to me,’ she says. ‘I’m not the one who needs an apology. Mel, I have to say, you’ve not handled things well.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No, really. He thinks you’ve gone. Didn’t even question it. He’s furious. And those bloody harpies—’

‘She’s right, you know,’ adds Roly. ‘Tried talking to him m’self, but you know – chaps talking to chaps – not so good at it, I’m afraid. Always knew you weren’t a quitter myself. ’Fraid he doesn’t seem to think the same.’

‘What did he say?’ I ask, my heart sinking.

Roly pauses, considers. Tries to work out how to put it gently, gives up. ‘Said he thought he’d made a mistake. Terrible mistake, actually. Those were his exact words. Said he should never have married you.’

‘Oh, God.’ I feel awful. A sick headache slams into the back of my neck, makes me close my eyes.

‘Sorry,’ adds Roly.

‘No, no,’ I manage. ‘Not your fault. Mine.’

‘What exactly did you say to him?’ asks Nessa.

‘Terrible things,’ I say. ‘I’m too ashamed to say. I don’t blame him.’

‘Don’t give up just yet,’ says Nessa. ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it.’

‘Oh, I think he did,’ says Roly. Colours and adds another ‘sorry’.

‘I
knew
you hadn’t gone,’ says Tilly suddenly. ‘Those – are you telling me Granny was in on this? I can’t, I don’t … oh God. My own grandmother.’

Nessa looks up at her, and her expression is a strange mix of trepidation and sympathy. ‘Yeah. I’m sorry, Tilly. I think – I can’t see any way she won’t have been. And she’s been … well, happy over the last few days. Sort of triumphant. I thought it was because she thought she’d seen Mel off, but then I heard the phone and I knew Mel wouldn’t have gone without it. She’s bloody welded to that thing.’

‘She always hated my mother,’ says Tilly. ‘She wouldn’t let me talk about her. I always thought it was because … and all that time, she knew. She
knew
. Oh God, Mummy. I can’t bear it. It’s
unbearable
.’

‘It is,’ says Nessa. ‘I don’t know. We have to think.’

‘So the phone …?’

‘Lucky coincidence. I was going along the Egyptian corridor when I heard it ringing. I wouldn’t normally be there. Can’t remember the last time I used it, but the Georgian staircase has come loose from the wall and I didn’t trust it.’

‘The whole house is falling apart,’ says Tilly. ‘It’s coming down around their ears.’

‘It was such a weird sound, I almost convinced myself I was hallucinating it. I mean: “Delilah” coming out from behind a door in an empty room. It actually took me five minutes to realise what I’d been hearing. And then I couldn’t remember which room it was. I had to go and get my phone from Beatrice’s room and walk up and down calling your number till I tracked it down. It was on its last legs. Another couple of hours and the battery would have run out altogether. And it was so quiet I wouldn’t have heard it at all if there had been any background noise. It was in one of the wardrobes. Buried among a great heap of your other stuff. Everything: clothes, makeup, jewellery, books, pots of glop. They must have shoved it in there in a hurry. Maybe they were planning to get rid of it later. I don’t know. Maybe they thought they could just leave it there to rot. It’s not like anybody’s used that room since I’ve been here. And when I found that lot, I went and found Roly.’

Rufus. I’m lying there thinking about Rufus. I can’t help it. My eyes are full of tears. That in a few short months he can have changed from loving me so much, from being my champion, the one who believed in me, to this.

‘Why didn’t you go and find Rufus?’

‘Mary and Hilary took him up to London two days ago,’ says Tilly. ‘They said, if you came back, it would serve you right if he was gone. I suppose they wanted him out of the house in case he went looking for you while you could still make a noise. Oh God, they did the same thing with Daddy when … That fucking
bitch
.’

I’ve never heard Tilly swear. I look over at her and she’s bent over Lucy, clutching her so tightly I’m afraid she’ll suffocate her.

‘Oh babe,’ says Nessa. Crawls across the floor and gently insinuates herself between mother and baby. Enfolds Tilly in a hug and rocks her, gesticulating with a single finger at Roly to come and get the child. And Tilly’s really bawling, now, mouth open and howling at the memory of her lost mother, fingers digging into Nessa’s back so viciously that it must only be granite will that stops Nessa from howling too.

‘I thought she hated me.’ The words spill out in a torrent. ‘I thought, all this time, she’d left me, it was something I’d done. I thought, I must have been so bad, such a
bad
child, that she would leave me like that. Never look back. Never care what happened to me. And Daddy’s been broken since it happened, no sort of man, no sort of father, just … And all the time … all the time she was there, lying there, and I never knew. All these years I’ve hated her, and it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t … Oh God, what she must have been thinking! To die like that, my
mother
!’

Roly’s chin has vanished into his neck as he goggles at Tilly over her daughter’s head. Someone who never had a lot of luck with family himself, I can’t think what he’s thinking right now.

‘Tilly,’ he says, ‘I don’t know what to say to you. I understand that nothing – nothing – will make this better. We must do something. We can’t let this … I think we should call the police. Do
something
.’

Tilly sits back, looks at him over Nessa’s shoulder, and just like that, snap, the anger is back. Anger and something else – resolution. Her eyes are narrow and glittering, jaw hard with vengeance.

‘No,’ she says. ‘No, not yet. I don’t want her to think she can be forgiven. I don’t want that. She took everything from me and she can’t get away with it.’

I don’t know, now, if she’s talking about Mary or Beatrice. Both, it turns out: two matriarchs in one.

‘Mary will get jail,’ she says. ‘Sure. She’ll get jail and I’ll laugh as I see her go there, but what are they going to do to a hundred-year-old woman? What’s going to happen to
her
? She has no conscience, she has no heart, and they’ll say, but look, she’s too old, what can we do?’

We wait, in silence, all of us.

‘They took everything,’ she says. ‘They took everything that mattered, and all for a house. All so they could mother the heir of Bourton Allhallows. And for what? For
what
?’

‘I don’t want them to get away that easily,’ she says. ‘They took everything from me, and she took everything from my father.’

‘They took everything,’ she says, ‘and I want to take everything back. I want to take their sons.’