After the Last Dance (31 page)

It took a long time to get out of London. Leo hadn't had to negotiate the snarly rush hour in years and Jane couldn't fathom out the SatNav so kept stabbing at random buttons until Leo snapped at her to stop. Then she snapped at Leo for snapping at her.

When they finally made it onto the motorway, they were immediately stuck in traffic. Jane sighed then twisted round to look out of the back window as if she expected to see Lydia in a car behind frantically signalling them to turn round.

Leo wished that he still smoked. And he wished for the hundredth time that he'd stayed down and out in Las Vegas. He might have hated himself when he got the call to say that Rose had gone, but at least he wouldn't have had to listen when she…

‘Leo, Rose didn't mean what she said.' Jane's hand covered his where it rested on the gear stick. ‘She's in a lot of pain and she's all muddled up with the drugs.'

He took a steadying breath. ‘I shouldn't have come back.'

Jane tightened her grip on his hand, even as he indicated, then changed lanes. ‘Yes, you should have. There's no question about it.'

‘I don't see that I've been much use.' He hated when he got like this, elbow-deep inside himself. Usually the only way out was to get lost. ‘I don't get absolved of my sins just because I've spent a few weeks plastering and painting old houses.'

‘You've done a lot more than that,' Jane said. ‘You've listened to her stories and you've made her laugh. She's been able to rely on you, lean on you.' She tightened her fingers again. ‘Leo, you must realise that Rose adores you. She doesn't do a very good job of hiding it.'

Leo looked over at Jane. Her hair was loose and hanging in sodden rats' tails. She must have been out in the rain for hours. She looked anxious, especially when they talked about Rose, but she seemed softer too. She was still beautiful, but he'd got used to that. ‘While we're on the subject, Rose likes you too.'

‘Well… maybe.' Jane plucked at her seatbelt. ‘Mostly I've stayed for Lydia's cooking. I'm surprised I can still do this up.'

‘Stop fishing. You know you're hot, even with a few extra kilos,' Leo told her, because she was and his mood lightened as she hissed and took her hand off his so she could punch him lightly on the arm.

‘Not
kilos.
Maybe a couple of pounds. Is a pound more than a kilo? I can never remember.' She was able to pull a face now. ‘Two pounds to a kilo, right?'

‘Yeah, give or take.' The atmosphere had shifted along with the traffic, which was now moving slowly but steadily. Leo missed the feel of Jane's hand resting on his.

‘Have you thought about what you're going to do when this is all over?' she asked. ‘Will you go back to the States?'

‘I don't know,' he said, because it was something that he tried not to think about. When this was all over it meant that Rose would be gone. Besides, in a strange sort of way, he was enjoying this limbo. He'd left his bad habits behind and, so far, he'd managed not acquire any new ones. ‘I've never been big on forward planning. What about you? Do you think that there's even an outside chance that you might get back with Mr Ex?'

Jane shook her head just the once. ‘Oh God, no. That ship has well and truly sailed.' Leo thought that he might have veered into dangerous territory, but then she smiled. ‘You know, I wish I had gone back to him sometimes. It would have been simpler. Less confusing.'

‘You didn't love him? Not really, did you?'

Jane glanced over at him, her expression ancient and unfathomable. ‘No, of course I didn't.' She suddenly grinned, all teeth and gums. ‘God, being stuck in this car is like being trapped in a Confessional.'

Leo wanted to ask Jane if she'd ever been in love, but deep down he already knew the answer. So many things he wanted to ask her, to tell her, but it was best to stay silent. They'd cleared the motorway now, driving along unlit country lanes and though Leo had thought they'd be hopelessly lost, he realised that he knew the way. He'd always know the way to Lullington Bay.

He saw the narrow turning just in time and swung right. All he had to do was say ‘Lullington Bay' in his head and in the time it took there was another turning, the trees parted and he could see the shadowy outline of the house.

‘So, talking of love lost and all that, who did Rose end up with after the war?' Jane said. ‘Was it Danny, who I have to say sounds like a wrong 'un, or…'

‘I'll tell you later,' Leo promised. The rumble of the tyres on the gravel drive sounded like coming home. He remembered falling off his bike after attempting a wheelie and landing facedown on the same gravel and Rose and his mother picking tiny pieces of it from his skin with tweezers, promising him an ice cream if he managed not to cry. ‘This is Lullington Bay.'

He wished that they were here on a summer's day when the sun shone down on the sandstone and glinted off the gabled roof. The house stood high on the cliffs, which undulated gently down to sand dunes they'd raced across to get to the beach. It had always felt as if the sea was taunting them as they made the trek from the house laden with towels, picnic baskets, buckets and spades, his mother yelling at Leo to slow down before he broke his neck.

They got out of the car and crunched towards the front door. ‘I thought it was a cottage.' Jane sounded a little put out. ‘I didn't think it would be this big.'

‘It was the old manor house but it burned down in the nineteen-hundreds so they rebuilt it in the Arts and Crafts style,' Leo told her. ‘Caused a hell of a row at the time. Come on, we'll go round the back.'

There were light sensors that snapped on every few metres and the familiar shapes of the garden came into view. The rose bushes, a new one planted each year; the vegetable patch; the herb garden by the back door, covered in netting to protect it from the neighbourhood cats; and the patio with the wrought iron table and chairs where they used to eat their meals when they weren't on the beach.

‘We spent every summer here.' It didn't even matter whether Jane was listening, he just wanted to say the words out loud, make the hazy memories a little brighter, a little more defined. ‘It's such a sad cliché, isn't it? To say that the summers were longer when we were kids but it felt that way. Our aunts, uncles and all our cousins would come down too so there was always a huge gang of us. Sometimes we'd walk along the shoreline until we came to a little kiosk that sold ice cream with real honeycomb studded through it and we'd round up the kids from the village to come back to our beach so we could play hide and seek in the dunes. I used to live for the summer holidays.'

‘My summer holidays weren't really like that,' Jane offered, though she didn't say what her summer holidays had been like. ‘Sounds nice, though.'

‘Yeah, like something out of Enid Blyton,' Leo said with a sneer to counteract the dreamy tone that had crept into his voice.

‘Never really had much time for Enid Blyton either,' Jane said and Leo found it impossible to imagine what she'd been like as a child. ‘So, did you ever learn how to jimmy a window during your endless summers here or have you got a key?'

There was no full-time staff at the house, but lodgers; Victoria and Katy, who taught English at the University of Sussex. The house was in darkness so they were obviously out playing bridge or attending a reading of Virginia Woolf's
Selected Works
in nearby Alfriston or whatever it was that English professors of a certain age did at gone eight on a Friday night.

There was always a key hidden in the little wooden house on top of the bird table and the alarm code was his grandparents' old telephone number but it still felt like they were intruding as Leo turned on lights and led Jane through the kitchen and down the hall. The parquet floor and the panelled walls gleamed dully and Leo could still smell beeswax and the faintest lingering trace of the perfume Rose wore, though Lydia said that Rose had hardly come down at all this past summer.

‘It has that lived-in feeling, not at all like the place in Kensington,' Jane said, running her hand along the carved banister as they walked up the stairs. ‘This, this… feels like home.'

‘Rose used to spend most of her time down here. Ages ago. Before I was born.'

‘Oh? Why did she move back to London?' Jane asked and the answer wasn't a happy one but before he could tell her, he felt his phone vibrate.

It was Lydia. As stoic and as calm as she'd been when he was going to pieces in front of her, over the phone now her voice was stilted like she was holding back tears. Dr Howard had been over and was adamant that Rose should be on a morphine pump and Rose hadn't even argued. ‘I'm expecting him back any moment now. He was quite shocked at how much she'd deteriorated from when he saw her this morning. Anyway, how are you getting on? Have you found everything? What do you mean, you've only just got there? Let me speak to Jane.'

While Jane spoke to Lydia, he guided her up the stairs towards Rose's room where you could look out of the windows at the big blue outside where sky met sea. When he was little, he'd lie here with Rose in the early evening when it was still too light outside to sleep and she'd read to him. And when he still refused to go to sleep, they'd stare out at the horizon with her big binoculars to see if they could spot any pirate ships.

She wasn't even dead yet but he could already feel her ghost in this house.

‘I'll just see if it's in there.' He was standing idle in the middle of the room as Jane, still on the phone, walked over to the big walnut wardrobe and unlocked the door. Another intrusion. She clamped the phone between shoulder and ear as she began to move the hangers to one side, stopping to unzip garment bags. Then she stiffened and Leo felt the answering shiver trip down his spine. ‘I've found it. I'll get the trunk and we'll head back.'

Leo could see Jane's shoulders shake; she raised a hand to touch her face. Then she took down the garment bag and when she turned round her face was bright, blank.

‘There's a trunk under the bed. Cream with black leather straps, Rose's initials stamped on it,' she told him and Leo obediently dropped to his knees, peered under the bed and hauled it out.

‘What's in the bag?' he asked.

‘A dress.' Jane stared at her feet. Her shoulders shook again. ‘A limp, pale blue taffeta dress.'

Her voice cracked a little and she stood with head bowed for a few moments until she could raise her head and give Leo another one of those glittering, empty smiles that promised everything and delivered absolutely nothing.

‘Are you all right?'

‘I'm fine. Are
you
all right?'

‘No, not really.'

Jane nodded. ‘Lydia says everything else is in the trunk. We don't need to open it. Let's just go.'

It was a small trunk but it needed both of them to push and tug it carefully down the stairs. It
had
seemed small but it was too big to get in the boot of Lydia's little car and in the end they managed to get it on the back seat, but only by pushing the front seats so far forward that they had to drive back to London with their knees almost touching their chins.

 

When they got back to Kensington, Rose was still asleep. Agnieska was sitting by her bed and knitting. ‘I'm staying the night. Miss Beaumont is fine. Didn't even wake when I took her blood pressure.' She nodded approvingly. ‘The sleep will do her good.'

‘It's not like a good night's sleep is going to suddenly cure her cancer,' Leo grumbled as they reached their rooms. ‘Maybe I should sit up with her.'

‘Maybe you shouldn't,' Jane said because he looked ashen with exhaustion. ‘Not tonight. Who knows what tomorrow might bring?'

Leo traced a pattern on the floor with his toe. ‘We should try and get some sleep, then.'

He just stood there, not moving, until Jane pulled him into the room and shut the door. All of Leo's newfound assurance had vanished and he looked… untethered. It really had been such a horrible day. ‘I'm not even a little bit tired.' she said. ‘Would you mind if we stayed up and chatted for a little bit… if you want to, that is?'

‘You mean, what the young people call hanging out?' Leo sat down on the bed and toed off his sneakers. ‘Sometimes I think you learned to speak in the early nineteen-hundreds.'

He was scowling again, which was hardly surprising.

‘Shall I tell you a secret? It's guaranteed to cheer you up.' Jane didn't mean
that
kind of secret but Leo obviously thought she did because he nodded, his sudden smile a millimetre away from a leer.

‘Yeah, go on then. Give it your best shot.'

Jane struck a pose; hand on hip, leg bent. ‘In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen.'

Leo looked at her as if she was talking in tongues. ‘What?'

‘The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain,' she elaborated and when Leo shook his head and gave her a tiny, amused, almost pitying smile like he thought she'd completely lost the plot, she threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘Audrey Hepburn, darling!
My Fair Lady
, which I must have seen at least fifty times,' Jane went into the bathroom. ‘That's how I learned to speak proper.'

‘Really? How did you speak before then?'

‘Improperly. Mostly through a series of grunts and hand gestures.'

Leo laughed, even though not a word of it was a lie. ‘I bet your first words were a beautifully constructed sentence in perfect RP.'

Jane was already taking off her make-up but she made sure to meet his gaze as he leaned against the doorjamb so she could arch an eyebrow at him. She hadn't been able to do
that
in a long, long time. She was too scared to subject the delicate skin around her mouth and eyes to anyone but the man she saw in New York who did her fillers and injectables. Maybe, as the feeling returned to her face, it would make her feel other things that she'd hidden away for so long that she thought they were truly dead and buried. ‘Hardly, darling.' She managed to sound as artless and artful as ever.