In Her Shadow (22 page)

‘I don’t know who it was,’ I continued quickly. ‘The sun was behind her so I couldn’t see clearly, but it was a woman and she was standing on the clifftop in a place only Ellen would know.’

‘It could have been anyone, Hannah.’

‘I know.’

I didn’t say it but I was thinking that it could also have been no one.

I sat down on the white chair. ‘And there was something else, something weird. I went to Ellen’s grave. I’d never been there before – I know you told me to go years ago, but I hadn’t. Anyway, I went and I found something there – something from our childhood.’

‘What did you find?’

I was feeling a little dizzy. ‘Some pieces of glass. We used to call it drift-glass. Glass that had been in the sea. I used to collect it. I’d left it hidden somewhere secret, somewhere only Ellen would know. And somebody had moved it and put it on Ellen’s gravestone. Don’t you think that’s strange?’

‘How could you be sure they were the same pieces of glass? You can’t have seen them for years.’

‘Because …’ I stopped. I couldn’t explain about the single blue piece and I didn’t think I should tell Julia about my growing feeling that Ellen was still alive. She would think I really had lost my mind. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I’m certain they were.’

There was a silence at the other end of the line for a moment or two. It made me feel vulnerable.

Then Julia said, ‘I’d like to see you, Hannah, just to catch up for a coffee. It would be good, I think, to have a talk face to face. How would you feel about that?’

I felt relieved. Julia would know if I was all right or if I was falling apart. She was a professional. She’d be able to tell. And perhaps she could prescribe me some drugs or some therapy; something to help me sleep. Perhaps, if we were together, I could be honest with her and she would be able to make things clear in my mind.

‘It would be lovely to see you again, Julia,’ I said. ‘I think it would be really helpful for me.’

‘Good,’ she said.

We arranged to meet in Bristol the following day.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I WAS EIGHTEEN
in November. Mum and Dad took Jago and me into Exeter. We ate pizzas in a lively Italian restaurant complete with a real pizza oven and a waiter with a huge, comedy pepperpot. The waiter kept kissing his fingers to indicate that something was delicious. Dad said you could tell the restaurant was authentic by the little dishes full of grated Parmesan on every table. I enjoyed it and Jago did his best, but he was fidgety. Dad had made him wear a shirt and tie. They didn’t suit him. My parents gave me fifty pounds for my birthday and Jago gave me a charm bracelet. I put it on my wrist and he promised to buy me a new charm every year.

My best gift was from Ellen and Mr Brecht. Ellen presented it to me the next time I went to Thornfield House while Mr Brecht opened a bottle of champagne. Mrs Todd was looking on. The gift had been beautifully wrapped. It was an encyclopaedia of Natural History, a huge tome full of beautiful colour pictures. Inside the front of the book, Ellen had written:
To my best friend always
and her father had simply written:
with love
. I traced over those two words with the tip of my finger so many times that they began to fade.

The pages of the book were heavy and silky. They smelled divine. I never tired of looking at them and imagining what it must be like to be on an ice-floe, or in a jungle, or a desert at sunset with the polar bears and the monkeys and the snakes. The book was what made me decide for certain what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be an explorer. I wanted to visit remote parts of the world and discover new species. There were so many places to go, so much to see. Most of all, I decided I wanted to be away from Trethene.

The gift also confirmed my suspicions that things couldn’t be so bad between Ellen and her father if they could still collaborate when it came to choosing a present for me. After I’d unwrapped the book, they stood together, both delighting in my pleasure, Mr Brecht’s hand on Ellen’s shoulder and she leaning slightly towards him, each raising a glass to me. I went to thank them, and they both kissed me. They were, in many ways, so alike. They had, by mutual consent, called a truce in my honour. If only, I thought, Ellen didn’t always make life so difficult for herself and for everyone else, then maybe everything would be fine.

Except, I couldn’t see Mr Brecht ever forgiving her for what she was doing with Jago. Not now. Not when the deception had gone on for so long in his house, under his nose. Not when they were effectively making a fool of him.

My heart ached for Mr Brecht.

The winter rolled in, cold and grey and sullen. Time moved so slowly back then, as if the world were spinning at a different speed. In any day, there would be hours when I had nothing to do except wander around the countryside, or lie on my bed with my eyes closed thinking about how boring my life was and how I wished it was more exciting. I planned out my future: A-levels would start in the new year, and then I’d work in the Seagull during the summer and go off to university in September. I’d study the sciences and then
go to work for the BBC’s Natural History Department, or for a wildlife charity, and I’d make films or write books. I would be famous. I’d change the world.

Without Ellen, I was lonely at school and often bored. I wasn’t interested in the boys who were my contemporaries. They were like cattle, I thought, slow and heavy and smelly, in comparison to Mr Brecht. They would not know how to charm or seduce or love or suffer. Their interests were mundane, their conversations inane. I couldn’t bear the thought of them near me yet they seemed to be all the other girls thought about.

Home, too, seemed ever more constricting. My parents were settling comfortably into late-middle age; they had their routines, their favourite programmes, their regular menus. And Jago, who could have brought some fun into my life, had no time for me.

I was walking the dog along the river estuary one afternoon, when I found him sitting hunched on the rocks, watching the tide come in, spilling along the mudflats where the wading birds with their long, thin legs and arced bills strutted and fed. I sat beside him, not touching him, not saying anything. I wrapped Trixie in my coat. The three of us sat on the rocks and stared out at the gunmetal-grey water and the sky and the birds.

Jago picked up a pebble and skimmed it across the surface of the water. It bounced twice. Dad always used to say that meant bad luck.

‘Throw another one,’ I said. ‘You need three bounces.’

Jago tried again. The pebble jumped off the water once, as if struck by electricity, but the second time it dropped into the water and disappeared.

‘Again,’ I said, but Jago shook his head.

‘What are you thinking about?’ I asked.

‘I have to take Ellen away from here,’ he said. ‘I need to
get her away from her father, far away, somewhere he can’t find her.’

‘Why?’

He frowned at me. ‘Why do you think? So we can be together without all this sneaking around.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘I don’t know. Abroad. Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.’

Jago put his head in his hands. I let my head fall to the side so that my cheek rested against his shoulder. I hugged the dog close to me.

‘If you just waited a while,’ I said, ‘until Ellen’s a bit older, then her father won’t be able to stop you seeing her. He’d probably be fine if you just—’

‘No,’ Jago said. ‘He’ll never let her be free. He’ll never let us be together. I’ll have to take her away, and you’ll have to help us.’

I sighed. This was Ellen’s lament. She had taught it to Jago, and now he was following the script too.

‘What can I do?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know how we’ll do it, but I’ll think of a way. We’ll have to decide where we’re going, as far away as possible, and I’ll have to find a job. We’ll need money. Especially if we’re living abroad. We’ll need the cash to tide us over.’

A pair of mute swans circled overhead. Their necks were extended impossibly long and their wings rippled through the air, stately but loud as gunshot. Trixie looked up and growled.

‘Ellen’s going to get an inheritance when she’s eighteen,’ I said quietly. ‘At least, she told me she was. A fortune, she said. Hundreds of thousands of pounds. I don’t know if it’s true, but—’

‘It is true.’

I moved away a little to look at Jago’s face.

‘How do you know?’

‘Ellen told me,’ he said. Inside, another little bit of me curled up in pain. I had thought I was Ellen’s confidante. All those secrets she’d told me that I thought were private, just for the two of us – had she told Jago too? ‘She doesn’t know how much the inheritance will be,’ Jago said. ‘And that’s not the point. I don’t want to be scrounging off her. I want to look after her. I want her to be proud of me.’

I said nothing. I was trying to contain my hurt.

‘The money will help, of course,’ said Jago. ‘It’s not like it won’t be useful. It means we’ll be able to go wherever we want, anywhere in the world. Do you think the witch would be pleased to know we were using her money to escape Trethene?’

‘You shouldn’t call Mrs Withiel a witch,’ I said crossly. ‘It’s unkind.’

Jago laughed. ‘When did you get so up yourself?’

‘Shut up!’

He put his arm around me and said, ‘Don’t be such a spanner.’ And because he had used my childhood nickname, I burrowed into his warmth and forgave him.

‘I don’t want you to go away,’ I said. ‘What will I do without you? What will happen to me? What about Mum and Dad?’

‘They’ll be fine and you’ve got your own life to lead. You don’t need me. You’re going to be a famous explorer.’

‘I don’t want to be anything without you.’

‘You won’t be without us. You’ll be our accomplice. You’re the key to everything. In fact,’ Jago said, ‘there’s something you can do now. You can start collecting supplies and putting them in the cave at Bleached Scarp so that Ellen has somewhere to go to if things get too bad with her father.’

‘What supplies?’

‘A tent, matches, blankets. You’ll have to wrap everything up in plastic, to make it waterproof.’

‘Ellen can’t stay on the beach …’

‘No, but if she has to get away in a hurry, there needs to be enough there to keep her warm and dry for a few hours,’ Jago said. ‘If she can’t get to me or I can’t reach her.’

He frowned and looked out at the water. I watched as the swans extended their feet and braced their wings to land in the water. I never tired of watching the birds.

‘And you must promise not to say anything about this to Mum and Dad. Not a word.’

‘Of course I won’t. I never tell them anything.’

The swans touched down, meeting their reflections, flapping to a stop.

‘He’s getting worse,’ Jago said.

‘Who?’

‘Mr Brecht.’

‘You only ever hear Ellen’s side of the story, Jago.’

He looked at me. ‘What do you mean?’

I shrugged. ‘He’s all right when I’m there. I mean, he’s still mourning his wife, obviously, but he doesn’t seem that bad to me. He bought me a nice birthday present. And sometimes … sometimes Ellen makes things up.’

Jago snorted. ‘He’s mental! Ellen didn’t make up him cutting down all the flowers in the garden. She didn’t make up being locked in her room. She didn’t make up him hitting her.’

He picked up another pebble and threw it into the water. One of the swans turned a haughty face towards him. Trixie tensed in my arms.

‘Yes, but Ellen …’

‘Ellen what?’

Jago looked at me. I couldn’t say it to him. I couldn’t say: ‘
Ellen does make it up about him hitting her
’ or ‘
Ellen winds him up so badly he can’t help himself
’ or ‘
If Ellen didn’t tell so many lies then he wouldn’t be so angry
.’

So all I said was, ‘It’s not as if Ellen’s father
doesn’t
love her, Jago. If anything, he loves her too much.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I THOUGHT ABOUT
the earlier telephone conversation with Julia as I walked through Bristol in the rain up to Stokes Croft and Jamaica Streeet, and I used her techniques to keep my mind occupied, describing the city to myself, filling my mind with it so there was no room for Ellen. I was coming close to that state of tiredness when it’s difficult to distinguish between being awake and being asleep, between conscious thought and dreams. I knew it was a dangerous place to be. I had to keep hold of reality. I had to be clear about where life began and nightmares ended, but even during the walk I drifted once or twice.

I was not the first to arrive at the museum. The lights had been switched on in the staff rooms and somebody had already boiled the kettle. I had a quick look round to see who was there. The blue glow of a computer screen permeated the opaque glass in the window of the door to John’s office. It was ajar. I stepped quietly through. John didn’t notice me, he was too involved in what he was doing. The blinds were drawn over the window and he was hunched over his computer, the light from the screen reflected in the lenses of his glasses.

‘John?’ I said quietly. He jumped and turned. He looked
terrible. His hair was sticking up, and he was unshaven. His disarray made me feel a little stronger, less aware of my own fragility. Mentally, I took a step away from the cliff edge on which I had been balancing.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked, moving a coffee mug that said
My career lies in ruins
to make room for me to perch on the corner of the desk.

‘Yes, yes,’ John said. ‘I’m fine. I came in early to finish a paper.’

‘You look like you’ve been here all night.’

John flinched a little at that, and I had an awful feeling that I had inadvertently arrived at the truth. I remembered his wife’s words three days previously, how she was thinking about ending their relationship, and wondered if she had, for once, been honest with him and if he had, as a result, left home. Was that why he had tried to contact me? Had he been looking for a shoulder to cry on, or a place to stay? Had I let him down at the time when he had most needed a friend?