The Shadow Year (33 page)

‘Pow!’ he says, jolting her out of her reverie, mimicking the ricochet of a bullet, rocking her back into the curve of his body. ‘See,’ he says, ‘you and me together. There’s no way we can lose.’

15

LILA

February

Lila is growing experienced in the art of distraction: which cotton to use for tacking hems onto a pair of curtains; the careful dip of a brush into a paint pot; the rhythmic rasp of sandpaper scraping across a blistered window frame; the
tap-tap-tap
of a nail sinking into wood. They are all small jobs and yet each one serves its purpose: while her hands are busy, her mind doesn’t seem to churn so much and the anxiety remains at bay. Besides, every day that she stays put, she can see the cottage improve in some small way and she takes a glimmer of satisfaction from that too. Even though Tom is angry with her for leaving again, there is no doubt in Lila’s mind that she had been right to return.

The cottage still echoes emptily all around her, but she must be getting used to it because she doesn’t have that eerie sensation of being watched quite so often and she’s learning other strategies to cope with the loneliness too. She walks every day now, rain or shine. At a certain point each day she downs tools, pulls on her coat and boots and stomps out across the moors or down through the forest ringing the lake, breathing in lungfuls of frosty air, enjoying the sensation of the blood moving around her body.

The days are short and bitterly cold but the faintest promise of spring hangs like a whisper over the countryside. Lila notices catkins growing high up in the thin canopy of the alder trees and thick clumps of snowdrops springing up almost overnight across the woodland floor. Out on the lake she sees a flock of wild geese take flight and once she even stumbles upon an old, grey heron, standing as still as a garden ornament among the reeds. As she walks through the landscape, the pale sun at her back, she notices the subtle changes occurring all around her. Winter is still very much in residence but she can’t help hoping she has weathered its worst.

She is dragging a huge shard of wood out of the trees, puffing and panting with exertion but determined to claim it as her own, when she hears the excited barks of a dog. Surprised, she spins to see William clumping his way down the ridge with Rosie bounding at his heels. ‘You’re back,’ he says, raising a gloved hand at her in greeting.

‘Yes,’ she says, dropping the piece of wood, pushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘Hello. Happy New Year.’ She bends to pat Rosie, tweaking the dog’s ears. ‘I was going to come by . . .’

He nods. ‘That’s OK. We thought we’d come and check on the place for you, just in case.’

‘Thank you . . . and thank you for the track . . . and the firewood. I assume that was you, putting the sleepers in and topping up my woodpile?’

William nods sheepishly. ‘I know you said not to, but I couldn’t see how you would get your car back up here, if you returned.’

She’d had the exact same thought halfway up the motorway just a few weeks ago. Taking off on the spur of the moment, she’d only remembered the muddy track and how her car would struggle when it had been too late to turn back; but she needn’t have worried. Jolting and bouncing her way up the steep trail in her car, it had been clear that William had been busy in her absence. Old railway sleepers were buried at intervals up the route and when she’d arrived at the back door of the cottage she’d seen her dwindling supply of firewood had been generously replenished. As she’d let herself in through the door she’d offered up a silent prayer of thanks for his kindness. ‘I wish I could say you shouldn’t have, but it really has made a big difference. I hope it wasn’t too much work?’

William shrugs. ‘No trouble.’

They stare at each other. Lila can see he hasn’t shaved in a few days. The stubble on his chin gleams the same silver colour as his eyes. ‘How’s this place coming along?’ he asks.

‘I’ve been busy,’ she says. ‘Want to take a look around?’

‘Sure.’ William whistles for Rosie and the dog comes racing.

‘Come on then,’ she says, ‘you can help me with my treasure.’ She points to the large piece of wood lying at her feet.

‘What’s this for?’

‘A coffee table.’

William shakes his head and smiles, lifts the wood easily at one end and drags it back to the cottage with Lila and Rosie following close behind.

They step out of their muddy boots and slide into the kitchen. ‘Goodness,’ says William, looking around, ‘you weren’t kidding. It’s transformed.’

She smiles. ‘So you like it?’ It has taken her nearly two weeks of solid work, but she has washed down the walls and painted them a soft white, sanded all the wooden cupboards and painted them a duck-egg blue. The old cast iron range has been polished until it shines and she’s replaced the rusting pots and pans with a new set of gleaming copper ones that hang on the hooks upon the chimney breast. She’s scrubbed the kitchen table, mended the wobbly benches and added cheery curtains to the windows. The thing she is most pleased with, however, is the seat she has built into the bay of the window, where her two ikat cushions, purchased in London, now sit amongst a scattering of other colourful vintage cushions requisitioned from junk shops. On the table is a tin jug bursting with snowdrops, while several of the less chipped blue patterned plates from the cupboard, the ones that were salvageable, now hang along the wall facing the range. It’s a simple but highly effective transformation.

‘It looks great – very cheerful,’ he adds.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Seeing it through his eyes, she can appreciate at last how much she’s achieved. She bends to stoke the smouldering range and adds another log to the flames. ‘Would you and Rosie like to stay for dinner? I was going to make pancakes. It is Shrove Tuesday, after all.’

‘Is it?’ William scratches his head. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Stay,’ she urges. ‘I’d like the company.’

He hesitates.

‘Please.’

He gives her a nod. ‘OK.’

She mixes the batter and heats butter in the frying pan, all the while stealing sideways glances at William where he sits in the new window seat looking out across the tangled garden. He isn’t exactly handsome, at least not in an obvious way, but there is something undeniably attractive about him. His face is solid and kind-looking, weathered by a life lived on the land, and his frame strong and muscular from physical labour. When she first met him he’d seemed shifty and awkward but today he exudes a different air – a sort of quiet, calm confidence, like a man who knows that he is exactly where he is supposed to be. Rosie lies at his feet, blissed-out, craning her neck as he scratches beneath her chin, and as Lila cooks they talk about her work at the cottage and William’s hopes for the upcoming lambing season. ‘Here we go,’ she says, laying a plate stacked with pancakes onto the table between them. ‘I made extra for Rosie.’

‘She shouldn’t,’ he says, ‘she’s getting fat,’ but as they tuck into the pancakes, drizzled with lemon juice and sugar, William feeds Rosie pieces from his fingers under the table. ‘I thought you’d stay down south a little longer,’ he says after a while, ‘you know, wait for it to warm up a bit before you braved this place again.’

‘No.’ She hesitates. ‘I wanted to come back.’

‘Getting under your skin, is it?’

She tilts her head at him.

‘This place, the lake, the land. It’s got to you, hasn’t it?’

She nods. ‘It’s peaceful . . . and it feels like a refuge.’ He throws her a curious glance and she sighs. ‘Things haven’t been easy between Tom and me recently.’

William looks down at his plate and doesn’t ask for further explanation, but for some reason Lila finds herself offering it. ‘We . . . we lost a baby . . . last summer.’

He swallows. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thanks.’ She hesitates then surprises herself by continuing. ‘It was my fault. I was supposed to be going shopping for baby things with Mum. I was rushing to get ready and I took a really bad fall down the stairs. I don’t remember how it happened . . . but I fell all the way. I was twenty-seven weeks pregnant.’

William winces.

‘Mum arrived at the house to pick me up and when I didn’t answer the doorbell she peered through the letter box . . . saw me lying there at the bottom of the stairs, unconscious . . . blood everywhere, apparently.’

‘God,’ murmurs William, ‘that must have been awful . . . for all of you.’

Lila nods. ‘Mum called the ambulance and I was rushed to hospital.’

William nods carefully but doesn’t interrupt, as if sensing Lila’s need to keep talking.

‘When I came round they told me the trauma of the fall had meant the placenta had separated. There was no time to wait. There was no other choice. I had to give birth to her there and then.’ She swallows. ‘It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, knowing she was coming – too early – knowing it was my fault.’ Lila falls silent, staring at the empty plate before her. ‘She was born on the twenty-third of June and she lived for five days. She fought hard, our little girl. She clung on.’ A tear rolls down Lila’s cheek and drips onto the scrubbed surface of the table. She smooths it away with the tip of her finger. ‘I held her hand through the hole in the incubator. I willed her to be strong, to make it, but it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t save her.’

‘What was her name?’ William asks, not quite meeting her eye.

‘We called her Milly. It means “brave” – because that’s what she was.’

He smiles. ‘Milly. That’s lovely.’

Lila’s not sure if it’s a trick of the light but it seems as though William is fighting tears too. She swallows and takes a breath, but still the words come. ‘It’s been so hard. Ever since, I’ve been so sad . . . and angry too. All I wanted to do was wake up from the nightmare, to return to the life we had been living just a few days before, when everything stretched before us, a future of possibility. I just wanted to rewind, to go back to the hospital and scoop my baby up and take her home and be a mother to her. I wanted to keep her safe, but I couldn’t do it.’

William nods.

‘Now every day I wake up and the first thing I think is that she isn’t with us.’ She sighs. ‘I wish I could go could back to that one day. I wish I could live it again. I wouldn’t rush; I wouldn’t worry over the stupid things . . . which top to wear, which shoes look right. I’d take things slow, appreciate the pregnancy, the life growing inside me.’ She wipes at her eyes. ‘I ask myself over and over, how could I fall? I should have been more careful, should have fought harder. I should have found a way to save her, to keep her with me.’

She sees the shake of William’s head from the corner of her eye. He clears his throat. ‘Some things – precious things – escape you, no matter how much you might want to keep them close.’

She glances across at him, hearing the emotion in his words and realises that he too has lost something or someone important. She wonders about his lonely existence up at the farm. A woman, she thinks – the one that got away.

‘Sometimes the real fight is what comes after the event, when you face what you are left with,’ he continues. ‘How you live with that. That’s the real battle.’

She nods in understanding before cautiously reaching across the table. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze then draws her own back again, laying it in her lap.

‘But that’s the fight that makes you stronger,’ he adds. ‘Makes you a better person. At least,’ he says, running a hand across his chin, ‘that’s what I think.’ He seems embarrassed to have spoken so openly. He clears his throat again. ‘It doesn’t sound to me as though anything that happened that day is your fault though. It was an accident.’

She shakes her head. ‘It’s the not remembering . . . I can’t let it go until I know
exactly
what happened . . . and I just can’t shake this feeling that there’s something missing . . . something I’ve forgotten. Until I remember it all I don’t think I can move forwards.’

William eyes her sadly. ‘What if you never remember?’

She shrugs. ‘I think that’s why I like being up here. There’s something about it – an escape, something to focus on that stops me from going completely mad. Patching this place up, well,’ she says, letting out a harsh laugh, ‘I don’t suppose it takes a genius to work out what I’m
really
trying to fix.’

William nods. ‘And what about Tom?’

Lila looks at him, confused.

‘He must be struggling too. Why isn’t he here with you? Why aren’t you doing this together?’

Lila shakes her head. ‘Like I said, things haven’t been so good between us since the accident. It’s as if we’re on completely different wavelengths with our grief. I’ve been poleaxed but Tom’s way of coping is to bury it all inside and focus on his work. He won’t really talk about the fall and he doesn’t seem to want to face what we’ve lost.’

William shakes his head. ‘You two shouldn’t let this fester, you know.’

‘I know, but every time we try to draw close again it’s as though there’s an insurmountable wall between us. Sorry,’ she says, shaking her head, ‘I didn’t mean to get all heavy on you.’ She pushes her plate away, suddenly embarrassed.