Hidden Cottage (41 page)

He blinked and, clearing his throat, he said to his mother, ‘Does it bother you much that Dad still sleeps in here? Is that why you want to get rid of everything? To make him stop?’

‘No. Yes.’ She took a breath. ‘I mean, it’s not natural, is it, to want to sleep in your dead daughter’s—’ Her voice cracked and she broke off. Then: ‘He’s taken one of her pillows to use in the apartment in Brussels.’

‘It’s just his way of trying to find some comfort. Don’t read too much into it.’

‘I don’t mind that he hardly talks to me; I can cope with that. In fact I prefer the silence. But what hurts is the accusation that I couldn’t possibly understand how he feels because I never loved Daisy the way he did. But then, he’s right – I didn’t love her like he did.’

‘And thank God you didn’t,’ Jensen said firmly. ‘You loved her the normal way a parent loves a child. You and I both know that Dad’s love for Daisy wasn’t a healthy love; she was smothered by it.’

As if she hadn’t heard him, she chewed on her lower lip and said, ‘Every morning I wake up thinking, if only I had gone to fetch you from the station that night, if only I hadn’t let Daisy drive. I feel so guilty.’

‘Mum,’ he said softly, ‘you have nothing to feel guilty about. Whereas I do. I should have ripped that phone out of her hands and remembered her seatbelt wasn’t done up. If I had done that, she’d still be alive today. She’d be in Sydney with Scott planning their new life together. I think that every day. And I think how Dad must hate me for it. Has he said as much to you?’

She shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’

‘Give it time and he will. What’s more he’ll eventually say it to my face.’

‘But you must ignore him if he does. You mustn’t take it to heart. Will you promise me that?’

‘No, Mum, I can’t promise that. Any more than I can turn back time and make you happy again.’ Seconds passed. ‘Can I ask you something?’ he said.

She nodded.

‘Before the accident, I remember thinking that you were happier than I’d seen you in a long while. Were you?’

‘I . . .’ she faltered. ‘I was happy at the thought of you and Tattie and Madison coming to live here.’

‘Just that? There was nothing else?’

Her gaze slid away from his. ‘Your happiness has always been important to me,’ she said.

‘And yours is important to me also.’ He instinctively went to put his arm around her again, but stopped himself. ‘Mum,’ he said, ‘we’ve always been so close. We’ve never hidden anything from each other, have we? Not the important things. You used to say that there was a special intuitive understanding between us. Remember how Eliza banned us from playing Pictionary together because no one stood a chance against us?’

She nodded, but still didn’t look at him.

‘Which is why I’m going to stick my neck out and ask you why you rang Owen the night of the accident.’

Her face jolted in shock and picking up a pair of Daisy’s jeans, she began folding them with exaggerated care. He watched in discomfort her hands shake and hated himself for pushing her like this. On top of everything else, didn’t she have enough to cope with?

‘I suppose it does look odd now, doesn’t it?’ she said lightly. ‘But the simple answer is I got in a muddle with my mobile and instead of Muriel’s number I pressed Owen’s. O comes after M – it was an easy mistake, especially given the state I was in. And when he said he’d be there, I was so relieved I . . . I just needed a familiar face at the hospital.’ She added the jeans to the pile of clothes.

How many times had she rehearsed that answer? he thought, as once more long empty seconds passed between them.

‘Why did you want to know?’ she asked at last.

He tried not to feel hurt that she wasn’t being honest with him, but he couldn’t bring himself to push her any further. What was there to go on anyway? Only his intuition and what Tattie had told him about that night at the hospital when Owen had arrived, coupled with the politely guarded way Owen always enquired after Mia. As far as Jensen knew, Dad didn’t know about Owen’s involvement that night, and all things considered, he reckoned it would be better it stayed that way.

He shrugged. ‘Just curious.’ Then remembering why he was here, he said, ‘There’s something I want to tell you. About Tattie and me.’

Chapter Forty-Eight

Tattie had gone on ahead and saved them both a seat, on the end of the row towards the back. Slipping in next to Jensen – he had insisted on accompanying her – and aware of glances being cast in her direction, Mia sat down and mentally wrapped herself in what she had started to imagine as her cloak of invisibility.

She was only here for the school harvest festival because she’d promised Madison she would come, and to reassure Jensen that she was all right. She wasn’t, of course. How could she be? She felt empty, as if the stuffing had been ripped out of her. Simple everyday tasks seemed beyond her at times, such as choosing what clothes to put on in the morning, or what to cook for supper. She would often find herself staring into the fridge not having a clue how long she had been standing there.

Talking to people was an ordeal and other than relying on mechanical small talk when dealing with a customer, she avoided doing it as much as she could. Talking meant listening and selfishly she didn’t have the energy to pretend she was remotely interested in anything anyone had to say. ‘It’s because they care that they want to talk to you,’ Muriel and Georgina had both said. What difference did it make if they did care? She just wanted to be left alone. Entirely alone. She didn’t even want Muriel and Georgina bothering her. She didn’t mean it nastily, she just didn’t want to feign yet another emotion, that of gratitude for their support.

Georgina, who’d lost her husband and, in her own words, knew how grief could screw you up, was the most difficult to accept help from. How could Mia accept her support when she was filled with remorse that she’d had an affair with Owen knowing full well that Georgina had harboured hopes of a relationship with him? Although in her typically resilient way, Georgina now joked that she had given up hope of there ever being anything more than friendship between her and Owen.

‘I’m clearly not his type,’ she had said. ‘I can’t think why – a frazzled mother with a ready-made family; what more could he want? Oh, and let’s not forget how drunk I can get!’

Georgina’s sympathetic understanding and humour only made Mia feel worse. And who would think well of her if they knew she felt guiltier deceiving a friend than she did her own husband?

Since Jeff had returned to work in Brussels, his presence and absence from Medlar House were practically indistinguishable. Last weekend when he was home, she had hardly seen him; they each had retreated to different parts of the house – she to the kitchen, or over in the barn, and he to Daisy’s old room. He slept in there, worked in there, watched television in there, but mostly, she imagined, suffered in there.

What little interaction they had took place during meal times. She didn’t mind. To the contrary, it was a comfort knowing that she didn’t have to pretend with him. She could sit at the table in silence and not worry about trying to think of something to talk about. She could almost thank him for not forcing her to behave differently. She felt anchored by the sense of isolation they had each adopted and was grateful not to have to expend an iota of physical or mental energy, of which she had precious little on the best of days. She was relieved too that Jeff clearly wasn’t interested in sex. The thought of him touching her made her feel physically sick. She didn’t understand why, but she couldn’t bear to be touched by anyone else either; even a hug from Eliza or Jensen made her feel uncomfortable.

On a day-to-day basis she felt as if she was fighting an impossible battle against a tide of emotions. Some came and went, but always there was indescribable regret mixed with the raw and aching sadness of losing Daisy, and the endless, endless guilt, that things should have been different.

At the hospital that night, when she was told that Jensen was alive she had experienced what she knew was only natural, what any mother would feel: joyful and tearful relief. But then in its wake, she’d been hit with shameful guilt. How could she feel joy when Daisy was dead?

Aware only vaguely of her surroundings, of parents looking on proudly as their offspring performed and of children fidgeting as they sat cross-legged on the floor at the front, Mia closed her eyes and succumbed to what she had come to think of as an empty moment, when there was nothing to occupy her.

It was during these empty moments – usually at night when she couldn’t sleep – that Owen came to her in her thoughts. Sometimes she fought to block out any reminders of him, but other times she gave in and allowed herself to dwell on the bittersweet memories of their short affair. She hadn’t yet decided whether she did it to punish herself or out of a longing to derive some comfort from remembering the closeness of their all too brief time together.

It was the intimacy of their conversations, not the physical intimacy, that lingered most poignantly for her: his sharing with her the story of his childhood and his time in Little Pelham when he was a boy and why The Hidden Cottage was so special to him. Their first time in bed together, she had noticed an ugly scar about four inches long on his right shoulder blade. When she’d asked him how he’d got it, he’d initially deflected her question, saying it was nothing. When she’d pressed him, he’d told her and she’d been horrified, could not imagine how any parent could do such a thing.

But no matter how poignant the memories were of those shared times together, Mia knew that she had to free herself from any feelings she’d once had for Owen. She had to cut him out from her life altogether. If she couldn’t do that, she was convinced she would become swamped by guilt and self-loathing. And fear. Any loneliness she felt was the price she had to pay. She had to sacrifice her feelings in order to rid herself of her shame, a shame that was all wrapped up in the guilt that she had put herself before her family.

She had told Owen the day of the funeral that she believed she had brought this tragedy on her family and while she knew that he wouldn’t be alone in thinking that she was being irrational, these were the undeniable facts: the first time she had planned to leave her husband she had been devastated to learn that Daisy had been making herself profoundly ill, and then once again when she planned to divorce Jeff, Daisy was killed.

There wasn’t a day that passed when she wasn’t haunted by the belief that she was in some way responsible, that her selfishness was inextricably bound up in the loss of her youngest child. It all came down to the single most important truth: she should have been a better mother; she should have known that something was going to happen.

And for all those who would claim she was wrong, that her wanting to end her marriage had no bearing on the wellbeing of her children, she had this to say: what mother, who loved her children as much as she did, would be prepared to put it to the test and risk the life of another child?

A nudge at her elbow had her flicking her eyes open. She turned to see Jensen looking at her. ‘It’s Madison’s turn to read her poem,’ he whispered.

She directed her gaze to the front of the school hall and concentrated on Madison who, to all intents and purposes, was going to be her granddaughter when Jensen and Tattie married. Not so long ago the thought would have pleased her, but now she viewed the girl as another person whom she might love and lose.

Mia watched Madison staring out at the audience, her eyes searching the sea of faces for her mother. Once located, Madison then adjusted her glasses, tucked her hair behind her ears and began reading her poem in a clear, loud voice. Her confidence impressed Mia, especially as she knew that Madison was not the most confident of children, that she frequently let her anxiety get the better of her.

Now that Madison was sitting down on the floor with her classmates and both Tattie and Jensen had relaxed either side of her, Mia once again closed her eyes and thought how proud she was of her son. It seemed that overnight he had truly grown up, had shrugged off all that had gone before. She thought of all those years when she had worried about him, when he was never truly in step with the world, at odds with so much of it, but perhaps chiefly at odds with himself. But now, as Eliza had said, he was fast becoming the lynchpin of the family, holding them together with his quiet, resourceful strength. None of which Jeff saw. For having effectively removed himself from the family circle, he had placed himself beyond reach and beyond any form of consolation.

Jeff didn’t know it but he had cause to be grateful to Jensen. Had it not been for Jensen, Mia would have gone ahead and got rid of Daisy’s things and invoked heaven only knew what trouble. As it was, Jensen had put everything back in the cupboards and locked the bedroom as though they’d never been there. Several weeks later and Mia couldn’t think why she had wanted to do it in the first place; she was glad Jensen had stepped in. It would have only been deeply antagonistic towards Jeff and he was suffering enough without her making it any worse for him. What did it matter if he turned the room into a shrine? If it helped him cope with his grief, who was she to take that away from him? Was it any worse than the time she spent at Daisy’s grave in the churchyard next door? Or the way she liked to sit with an old photo album on her lap turning the pages, watching Daisy grow before her eyes and remembering how her smile could brighten her beautiful face?

No, she was glad that Jensen had stopped her from making a terrible mistake. She was glad too that Jensen hadn’t questioned her any more about Owen and why it was him she had turned to on the night of the crash. The truth was he had been the only one she had thought would be the source of comfort she needed. With hindsight it had been unwise of her, but she really hadn’t been thinking straight and could not have cared less about the consequences. Following that conversation with Jensen, she had decided that even if he suspected something he would never say anything and, so long as she never referred to it, the affair would remain a closed and forgotten chapter in her life.