In Her Shadow (7 page)

Ellen and I exchanged glances. The wind was blowing in from the sea, whipping our hair across our faces and, 30 feet below, the waves were choppy, the water green-blue. A single seal was bobbing up and down, its head poised above the splashing waves.

‘Let’s go,’ said Ellen. Her eyes were bright. She sat down and took off her shoes. ‘Come on, Hannah!’ And then she too disappeared. After a while, I followed.

We never told anyone else about the little beach. It was our private place, the place we loved.

It was where we always went, and although I missed going to Thornfield House and being teased and complimented by Mr Brecht, I was happy to be with Jago and Ellen. We weren’t three individuals at the beach; we were three parts of one whole. And it wasn’t as if I never saw Ellen’s parents. Mr Brecht was always there with a smile and a wink when I went round to call for his daughter.

I remember one autumn … I was almost fourteen, Ellen nine months younger and Jago sixteen. His body fascinated me. He was growing tall – his feet and hands were huge, but the rest of him hadn’t caught up yet. Soft, gingery hair grew under his arms and acne spread over his chest and back. His shoulders were broad and muscular but he was still a boy, still so young.

We had an Indian summer in Cornwall that year. The leaves on the trees had turned red and gold, and the sun shining through them made exquisite colours. We were halfway through the autumn term and it was still warm enough to swim. In my mind’s eye, I can see Ellen and Jago standing in their swimsuits on the rocks that slabbed out over the water, counting down, jumping in and emerging, shaking their heads, shouting at the cold and laughing. They were like two muscled, sleek sea-creatures. They raced each other up the rocks, agile as monkeys, and jumped from
higher and higher, their arms held out wide as they fell. And when they tired of jumping, they dared one another to swim further out to sea, across the cove from the bottom of one cliff-face to the opposite side. I sat on the rocks on the beach, amongst the spiky little cockle pyramids, and worried about them, hugging my knees and watching the dark shapes of their heads, fearing if I lost sight of either they might drown, and wondering how I would explain that they were gone, and I was still here.

I was never a bold child. I had been spoon-fed caution by my doting parents and I knew people drowned along that coastline every year. I used to beg Jago and Ellen not to take so many risks, but they took no notice. They acted as if they were immortal. They ran, shrieking like banshees, towards the sea. They dived into crashing waves and were pushed and pulled along the pebbles, scraping their knees, their hands, their stomachs. They spent hours together in the sea. When I tired of watching them, I combed the beach for pieces of drift-glass made soft and cloudy by the abrasion of the water and the sand, or collected driftwood to make beach fires on which to cook the small yellow crabs and shellfish that Jago fetched up from the seabed.

I remember it so clearly. Ellen, Jago and me, huddled around the fire, warming ourselves by the little orange flames that blew this way and that, cowering beneath the wind. Jago and Ellen’s teeth chattered; they were wrapped in threadbare towels that they tossed up into the gorse when they had finished with them. The smoke was in our eyes and hair, the inside of our mouths tasted of scalding hot cockle-meat and burning wood.

I used to think that, away from the beach, Jago and Ellen would never do more than tolerate each other, and then only for my sake. Each, I believed, thought the other too distant and different. Jago was the rough, uncouth boy from the
wrong side of the tracks, Ellen the kooky snob with the wealthy parents. When either Jago or Ellen was alone with me, they made unkind comments about the other. Ellen thought Jago was stupid, Jago thought Ellen was stuck-up. I was the buffer between them.

We all played our parts so diligently, so well that I never realized we were acting. For a long while, none of us did.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE EARLY HOURS
of the morning dragged on until at last it was eight o’clock, which seemed a reasonable time to call my psychiatrist. Julia Fortes da Cruz had told me, years before, that I could contact her at any time. As the phone rang out I closed my eyes and hoped that she had meant it. I was so relieved when she answered that it took me a moment to compose myself.

‘Julia …’

‘Hello! Who’s that?’

I could hear a child in the background, a baby, squawking and laughing. Julia had not had a child last time I spoke to her.

‘It’s Hannah,’ I said. ‘Hannah Brown. I was your patient in Chartwell.’

Julia flustered for a moment, but regained her composure quickly.

‘Hannah, how lovely to hear from you! Are you all right?’

Her voice had changed. At the mention of the hospital, I imagined her tucking the phone under her chin, signalling her partner to take care of the baby, slipping from the kitchen. Julia was a small, lively, unconventional woman. I was certain she would have a study with plants on the
windowledge and coloured glass dream-catchers, crystals and inspirational postcards pinned to the picture rail.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not all right – not really. I’m sorry to call so early, Julia, but something happened yesterday and—’

‘It’s OK. It’s not a problem. I’m glad you called. That’s why I’m here.’ There was a rustle at the other end of the line and then the familiar elongated electronic note of a computer booting itself up. Julia was looking for my records, reminding herself of my case. I imagined her sitting down at a desk by a window, looking out on an overgrown garden full of children’s toys and pots hand-thrown by her arty, eclectic friends. ‘What happened, Hannah?’ she asked.

‘I was at work yesterday,’ I said, ‘and I saw Ellen Brecht.’

‘Right,’ said Julia, as if there were nothing unusual in this. I wondered if she remembered the details of my case, or perhaps just the bare bones of memory gave her the shape of my disorder as clearly as I could see the live Tyrannosaurus Rex fleshed out from its skeleton, hanging in the museum. She was probably scanning her computer notes right then, reminding herself. ‘Were you on your own, or with other people?’

‘There were lots of people there. I was in the museum, in an exhibition area. She – Ellen – was standing amongst the other visitors.’

‘And how did this make you feel?’

‘For a moment I was happy but then I realized what was happening and I was scared,’ I said, and the word was not big enough for the terror I had experienced, and which still lingered, like a hangover, in my mind and in my bones. ‘She seemed so real,’ I said. ‘It was raining outside and her hair was damp. Every detail was real.’

‘Or at least it
felt
real, Hannah,’ Julia said gently. ‘The mind can be very good at self-deception, especially under stress. What happened next?’

‘I had a panic attack.’

‘OK.’

‘And after that I came home but I couldn’t stop worrying. I couldn’t sleep. I keep thinking about Ellen. What if she’s come back, Julia? What if the same thing that happened before happens again and I keep seeing her everywhere? How am I going to manage if she’s always there, in my head? What am I going to do? I don’t think I could bear to go through it a second time, really I don’t.’

Julia’s voice was quiet and calm. ‘All right, Hannah. That’s a lot of “what if”s. We’ll jump those fences if we get to them. One shaky moment doesn’t make a breakdown any more than one swallow makes a summer.’

‘No,’ I said, but I was thinking of how real Ellen had seemed to me in the museum, how present she had been.

Julia asked: ‘How have you been generally, up until now?’

‘Good.’

‘Everything’s been going along at an even keel? You’re eating well? Exercising?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sleeping OK?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Stressed? Anxious?’

‘Not really. Not until yesterday.’ I took a deep breath and leaned my head back against the wall. Lily was weaving around my ankles.

‘OK …’ I could hear Julia’s fingertips tapping on her desktop. ‘Listen, Hannah, I don’t think there’s any need to worry. This event, although I appreciate it was unpleasant and frightening, was most likely a one-off, a flashback. They happen to the best of us.’

I closed my eyes. ‘It didn’t feel like a flashback. She was so clear and so real and—’

Julia interrupted. ‘That’s how you described your
hallucinations last time, Hannah. They feel absolutely real to you, of course they do, that’s why they’re so frightening.’

‘Yes.’

‘So for now, let’s hope this doesn’t happen again, but if it does, I want you to stay calm – you remember the breathing exercises?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do those. And stay in touch. I want to speak to you every few days until things have settled down. Call me any time you need to, day or night.’

I picked up the cat and held her in my arms, up close to my face. I could feel her heart beating beneath my fingers. ‘Thank you, Julia,’ I said. ‘I will.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

WHILE JAGO, ELLEN
and I were growing up, the situation next door at number 10 Cross Hands Lane deteriorated. The Cardells’ fights became more frequent and more vicious, until one day Mrs Cardell left the house wearing her slippers and carrying an umbrella and never returned. Mr Cardell responded by bringing home young women he’d picked up at the docks and holding round-the-clock drinking sessions with his mates. Jago missed school more often than he attended. The dog, exhausted by whelping, became stiffer and more cowed until finally my father decided to take matters into his own hands. He put on his best jumper, combed what was left of his hair over the shiny pink dome of his head, went down our garden path and up the Cardells’ and knocked on their front door. Caleb opened it. He was wearing a pair of filthy jeans and nothing on his top. He had a can of beer in one hand and a roll-up in the other and he was swaying on his feet, red-eyed and nasty. It was dark inside the Cardells’ house because their front-room window had been broken and was boarded. Dad could only see the men in the pit of a living room by the flickering grey-blue light of the television screen reflected on their faces.

He took a deep breath and said, ‘I’ll give you fifty pounds cash for the dog, Caleb.’

The money was in his hand, where Mr Cardell could see it. Caleb looked at the money and then back at my father. He took a drag on the cigarette.

‘I make twenty-five a pup each time she whelps,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Dad, ‘but she’s past it now. You and I both know it. Next pregnancy’ll finish her off.’

Caleb Cardell thought about this for a moment.

‘Seventy-five and you’ve got yourself a deal,’ he said.

Dad nodded. He had expected this. He took five more notes out of his back pocket and placed them into Mr Cardell’s hand.

Caleb put the cigarette in his mouth while he counted the money. Then he leaned over the stair banister and shouted up: ‘Jago! Get down here, you lazy bastard, and fetch the friggin’ dog.’

Jago came downstairs warily. He didn’t look at my father, but dodged past his uncle and went into the kitchen. Dad heard the back door open. He took a couple of steps away, into the fresher air, clasped his hands together behind his back, rocked on his heels and stared into the middle distance. Jago reappeared a few moments later with the dog following timorously, her ears flat and her tail between her legs. She was attached to Jago by a piece of green garden twine. As he reached the front door, Mr Cardell kicked Jago’s backside with the flat of his boot. Jago stumbled and fell forward, past Dad, onto his hands and knees on the front path, which was filthy and full of nettles and broken glass.

‘Take the fucking kid as well,’ Caleb Cardell said to my father. ‘You can fucking have him for fucking fuck all,’ and he laughed and slammed the door shut.

Back at our house, Mum, who had been listening from
behind the front-room window, buttered some extra bread for tea. Dad came in with Jago and the dog. Nobody said anything about what had happened. Jago and the dog both looked ashamed, as if it were all their fault. Jago sat at the table with us to eat his dinner, though – and he ate plenty. He cleaned his plate in about two minutes flat. He ate uncouthly, scooping food onto his fork and shovelling it into his mouth. If I’d eaten like that I’d have been told off, but my parents merely exchanged knowing glances, and then Mum heaped up Jago’s plate again. I had never seen anyone eat so much, so fast, in all my life.

‘It’s nice to have someone with a good appetite at the table,’ Mum said. She smiled at Jago. He wiped his mouth with his hand, burped and said, ‘Thanks very much.’

Mum nodded. She was pleased, I could tell.

I kept looking at Jago from under my fringe. I could not think of a single thing to say that would not make me sound like a baby or an idiot.

After a while, we heard raised voices next door. The dog cowered behind one of the living-room chairs and peed on the carpet.

‘I’d best be going,’ Jago said. He stood up. He looked dirty and scruffy and big, and out of place in our little front room that was neat as a pin.

‘Going where?’ Mum asked.

Jago shrugged. ‘I dunno. Anywhere. I’ll find somewhere.’

Dad turned up the telly to mask the sounds from number 10 and said it would be helpful if Jago stayed with us at least until the dog settled down. Mum latched onto what Dad had said as if that had been the plan all along.

‘You can’t go and leave us to cope with her while she’s so unsettled,’ she said. ‘You just can’t.’

Jago looked dubious but did not know how to refuse.

Mum went upstairs to make up the bed in the boxroom.
Dad told Jago to sit down again in the kind of voice that brooked no argument.

I could hardly wait to tell Ellen about all this – she would, I was sure, be mad with curiosity.

For the rest of the evening, Dad and Jago sat together on the settee, awkwardly, with their arms crossed, watching the football, and I sat on the rug and tried to feed cheese to the dog to make her feel more at home. Then Dad said it was getting late and time for bed.