In Her Shadow (6 page)

I propped my bike against the wall and walked through the open gates onto the flagstone path. The lower half of one
of the front-room sash windows was open. Ivory-coloured voile curtains shimmied in the draught. I walked slowly to the window, taking care not to make a noise, and I looked through.

Ellen was sitting at the piano, with her back to me. She was wearing what appeared to be a sleeveless nightdress, and her feet were bare. Her black hair slid down her back, between her shoulder blades, and her arms were moving in time to the music, backwards and forwards, stretching to get the reach of the keys. Ellen’s head occasionally dipped a little. Her feet were tucked under the piano stool. She wasn’t using the pedals.

I hadn’t known Ellen could play the piano, let alone that she could play so well and so beautifully, as if it were something she had been born to do. Why had she kept this part of her life from me? Why wasn’t I allowed to share it? I wanted to knock on the window and interrupt her, so that she would be forced to let me into her world, but then I realized I was enjoying watching her secretly. It gave me a kind of power over her.

It was only when she had finished, when the piece trickled delicately to its end, that I noticed Ellen’s parents were also in the room. Her mother was lying on the chaise longue. She was covered by a cashmere throw; just one deformed ankle, one narrow foot with lumpy joints, the white growths stretching the skin, was visible on the pale velvet. Her hair was loose and messy and she too had her back to the window. Beside her, on the floor, was an almost-empty wine bottle and a long-stemmed glass lying on its side.

As Ellen slowly turned on the piano stool, as if she were in a dream, her father raised himself from the chair where he had been sitting, went over to Ellen, and leaned down to kiss her. He held his daughter so tenderly, his hands on her
shoulders and his hair falling over his face, and the two of them seemed to be caught in a moment of exquisite intimacy. It was perfect, Mr Brecht looking down at Ellen, she looking back up at him, and smoke from the cigarette pincered between the first two fingers of his left hand curling elegantly around them, wreathing them in a delicate mist.

I felt a pang of loneliness in my heart.

I wanted Mr Brecht to hold me like that.

I wanted to be part of that perfect family so closely bound by their private music. I had thought they included me in everything, but I had not known about this, and if I did not know about this, what else was there? What other secrets?

‘Play that piece again, Ellen,’ Mr Brecht said, ‘for your mother.’

Ellen gave a little smile and a nod. She turned back to the piano, and Mr Brecht stood beside her as the music started up again, just a few notes to begin with, trickling over one another brightly like water running over stone.

A few days later, during our school break-time, I asked Ellen outright if she could play any instruments. I expected her to lie, but she shrugged and said, ‘Yeah. Piano.’

‘How long have you been learning?’ I asked.

Ellen frowned. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘I just don’t, OK?’ She narrowed her eyes and looked at me with an intensity that was a warning to me not to pursue the subject.

‘I don’t see why it has to be such a big secret,’ I said. ‘It’s only a stupid piano.’

‘Shut up!’ Ellen hissed. She pushed me, hard, in the chest, so that I stumbled backwards and nearly fell over. ‘Shut up, Hannah, you’re so stupid. You don’t know anything!’

We didn’t speak to one another for the rest of the day. Ellen was furious with me and I couldn’t work out what I had done wrong.

CHAPTER NINE

BY THE TIME
John dropped me back at the flat after our meal, the soporific effect of the alcohol was kicking in and I was tired. I made some lemon and ginger tea and took the mug, and Lily, into the living room. The red light on the answering machine was winking at me and the display informed me I had three messages. I pressed the button. Rina had called to see how I was, and there was a confused message from my mother, who obstinately refused to grasp the concept of talking to a machine. I felt a pang of guilt at having missed her, deleted the message and moved on to the third one. A woman’s voice said, ‘
Hannah, it’s me …
’

Was it Ellen? I stepped away from the telephone with my hands over my mouth and my heart pumping. The cat, alarmed, fled the room. Time seemed to stand still. Panicky thoughts careered through my brain, colliding with one another and shattering into myriad smaller anxieties. I was so terrified, I could not bring myself to reach over and switch the machine off. It crackled and whirred, there was the sound of a cigarette-lighter clicking, an inhalation, and the voice returned. ‘
It’s me, Hannah, Charlotte Lansdown
.’

I sank down into a chair and put my head in my hands. It sounded as if Charlotte were pouring herself a drink. I
heard the gurgle of liquid, the chink of ice, and then: ‘
I just got back from singing and John’s not here and the idiot has forgotten his phone
.’ She took another drag on the cigarette. ‘
Would you get him to call me and …
’ More rustlings, more crackles. ‘
Oh, it’s all right – he’s back! Ignore this message, babes. Hope you had a good evening
.’ And she hung up.

I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and steadied myself against the wall, pressing my forehead against its cool surface.

I needed help. I couldn’t cope with this on my own. This was how it had started before; the beginning of my breakdown had been just like this, only the fear was worse this time. It was a cold fear, like the dead fingers of winter inside me, and it was encroaching faster. Less than twelve hours had passed since I saw Ellen in the museum, and already I felt as if she were standing behind me, breathing her chill, dead breath down my neck, watching, listening, waiting.

I rummaged in a drawer, found my address book and looked up the number of my psychiatrist, Julia. I wrote the number on a piece of paper, and tucked the paper beneath the telephone.

‘Eight hours,’ I told myself. ‘Eight hours from now you can reasonably call her.’

One night, that was all.

I went to bed but I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t make myself comfortable – my body seemed to be all bones and awkward angles and trapped nerves. A cat howled outside, in one of the gardens down the street. It sounded like a child in distress, and each time it made its banshee wail, the dogs in the neighbourhood barked in protest. I could hear the drone of traffic on the M32 as a distant background irritation, like a wasp in the room, and emergency sirens repeatedly pierced the night somewhere in the city. Worst-case scenarios chased
one another through my mind: I imagined bombs going off, buildings collapsing, madmen with guns, fires, people dying. I was too hot, and then too cold. I was parched, dehydrated, so I drank a glass of water and then felt too full. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw Ellen’s face. Every time I drifted close to sleep, a memory would jump into my mind, a flashback to the earlier nightmare or some part of real life that I had forgotten.

At 5 a.m., in the cool, grey pre-dawn light when the birds began their chorus and the cat finally stopped its yowling, I gave up and climbed out of bed.

I had an idea that if I found a picture of Ellen, if I looked at her face, then the memory of her would lose some of its power. She had only been a girl, after all, a girl who died young. What was so frightening about that? Why had she turned into something so monstrous in my mind? I made some tea and pulled out the shoe-box beneath my bed where I kept the few items from my past that had survived my psychotic purges. I curled up on the white easy chair in the living room, listening to Holst with the cat on my lap, and I opened the box.

I used to have hundreds of pictures of Ellen, but after I came back from Chile, I destroyed most of them. I did not want memories, or to be reminded. I riffled through the items in the box until I found the first of the only two images that remained. I picked it up and looked at it by the light of the reading lamp. I had only kept this particular photograph because Jago had taken it. Because he was out of reach, lost to me now, and because I had so little left of him, I had kept the picture.

It had been taken on my thirteenth birthday outside the comprehensive school while we were waiting for the bus home. The camera had been a present from my parents. I’d taken it to school with me, in my bag.

That November afternoon, Jago had been standing at the bus stop, as usual, with the Williams twins. I was a little afraid of them. They were older boys, and they spent their free time roaring around the lanes on motorbikes that spewed fumes, and shooting foxes. Mum had seen them drinking cider in the field behind the church with some holiday girls. The tone of her voice implied that this was shocking behaviour. Sometimes when Jago was with them, he ignored me, but that day he smiled. I said, ‘Hello.’ I was wearing a badge on my jumper that said:
Birthday Girl
.

‘Is it your birthday, then?’ Jago asked.

‘He’s quick!’ Ellen said. We all laughed and he pushed his hair back out of his face from embarrassment and shifted from one foot to another.

‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get you a present.’

I shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

Jago jiggled about on his feet.

‘I’ll give you something better than a present,’ he said.

Right there, in front of all the kids queuing for buses, he put his boy-arms around me and leaned down and pressed his lips against mine. Jago gave me a birthday kiss. Cheers rippled round the bus stop. I burned with delight and embarrassment.

And then, flushed and happy, I took the camera out of my bag and asked Jago to take a picture of Ellen and me. We stood together, side by side, in our black tights and winter coats, while Jago bounced about in front of us, trying to find the best angle for the shot. Ellen’s head was leaning against mine, my blonde hair tangling with her darker, longer hair. At thirteen, I still had puppy fat, my tummy bulged against the coat waistband. While I looked awkward, Ellen looked coltish. Our postures were different. I was standing face-on to the camera, my feet at 45 degrees to each other, my arms by my sides, smiling shyly from under my fringe, my cheeks
dimpled and the metal brace on my teeth just visible. The scarf my mother had knitted was tied in a knot around my neck and the red woolly cuffs of my gloves were sticking out of my coat pockets. Ellen was side-on, next to me, one arm around my shoulder, the other bent at the elbow with the hand on her hip. Her chin was pointed upwards and her lips were pursed in a pretty pout. I’d never noticed before that she was posing, but in the cold light of that morning, as an adult, I understood. Jago had kissed me and now Ellen was flirting with Jago because she could not bear to be left out.

I put the photograph, face down, on the floor. The postcards Ellen had sent me from Magdeburg were still in the box. I flicked through them. Her handwriting was uneven and messy, there were crossings-out and scribbles. I didn’t read the cards, but dropped them on top of the photograph. I tipped out some school reports, Jago’s old school tie, a picture of Snoopy he had drawn for me, a metal dog tag in the shape of a bone with
Trixie
inscribed on the front, a discarded watch without a strap, seashells and some dried flowers the origins of which I no longer remembered.

At the bottom of the box was the second photograph of Ellen. It was a small square snap that I had taken with the same camera. I picked the photograph up, turned it over. The colours had faded a little, washed with time, but the image took me back there, to the garden of Thornfield House, on Ellen’s eighteenth birthday. She was wearing the silver-grey dress her father had given her the year before and was standing beneath an arch made of wrought iron that Adam Tremlett had erected as part of the garden restoration; it was wound through with climbing roses. Anybody who looked at that picture and didn’t know might have thought it was an innocent, commemorative snap, but if they looked closer, they would have seen that something was wrong with the image. It wasn’t the tiredness and stress that showed clearly
in Ellen’s face, the tight smile on her lips. It wasn’t that the garden was decorated as if for a party, but she was the only one there. No, the problem was the climbing roses trained to weave through the metalwork arch. The plants had grown well, but they had been neglected, left to run wild. Untamed stems of feral dog-rose wove amongst the cultivars. It wasn’t the weedy offshoots that unsettled me. What made my blood run cold was remembering that the photograph had been taken in August. The arch should have been full of flowers, filling the warm evening air with their scent.

Ellen should have been surrounded by roses, flowers about her head and petals at her feet, but there were none.

Not one single bud.

CHAPTER TEN

THE BEST MEMORIES
of my life were of the times I spent with Jago and Ellen at Bleached Scarp, when we were young teenagers, before everything became complicated and started to go wrong.

Bleached Scarp was a beach that Jago had found and that nobody knew about apart from the three of us. It was our own private heaven, tucked in a horseshoe cove between the cliffs beneath Goonhilly Down. Jago had found a secret way down to the beach via steps hewn through a cleft in the rock. To reach it, we had to climb over the fence that separated the cliff edge from the coastal footpath, and tramp through some marshy ground where the gley-soil was spongey with sedge and black bog-rush. After a few yards, we reached a little scree path winding between rocks leading to the cleft. The first time Jago took us there, he scampered down the dark hole but Ellen and I hesitated, afraid to follow him. The rock walls were wet and black as night, and the sound of the sea echoed up from below, slapping against the cave walls. I didn’t like the smell of wet sand and seaweed that blew up through the tunnel.

‘Come on! What are you waiting for?’ Jago called from the bottom. There was an echo to his voice.