Nearest Thing to Crazy (32 page)

‘Does she? Do you think that?’

‘Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?’

‘You know damned well why.’

‘All that was a very long time ago. I don’t see it’s going to be helpful to revisit all that stuff, do you? I think what’s important is what’s going on now. And that’s what we’ve got to deal with. You’ll have to talk to her, Cass. It’s you that needs to do it, not me. She’s coming home tomorrow night. You’ll have to do it then. The sooner the better, so that we can get this whole bloody mess sorted out. Trust your mother . . . crazy old woman.’

He reached out and took hold of my hand. ‘It’ll be okay, Cass. I’m sure it’ll be okay. Laura adores you, and the fact that she didn’t say anything must mean that she didn’t want it brought out in the open. She probably didn’t want to upset
you.
’

‘It just seems like my whole life is spinning out of control. You, Laura, my mother, my friends. And all since that woman has been in our lives. I hate her, Dan, I really, really hate her for what she’s doing to us.’

‘Ssssh. I’m sure there’s a rational explanation.’

‘Rational? Do you know she even wrote about that time when she came here for lunch, when the dog was lost, do you remember? And she wrote that the dog wasn’t lost at all, that she’d used it as a ruse to get you alone. And that when you went for that walk later on, you went to see her.’

He was shaking his head slowly, wearing an expression of total incredulity. He was either a bloody good actor or else he really was telling the truth about Ellie. I had no way of knowing which.

‘Dan, do you promise me that nothing was going on? That she really is making all of this up?’

‘I don’t know what else I can say. To be honest, I think you’ve got to take the whole novel thing with a huge pinch of salt. It hardly sounds like a credible plot to me. If what you say is true, then she’s obviously some kind of fantasist – perhaps that’s why she writes stories. Who knows? But I’ll talk to her tomorrow. So . . .’ he stood up and gestured me to come to him. ‘A big day for all of us, hey? You, me and, most importantly, Laura. Forget all the other crap.’

‘But how can I forget it?
Apparently
she’s Laura’s biological mother. God, I should have known it would end in tears, messing about with nature. Maybe I just wasn’t meant to have children and now I’ll lose Laura to her rightful mother.’

‘I’ve never heard such rubbish. You can’t just shove a lifetime away like that. You’ve got to have confidence in yourself, Cass. Laura loves you. Trust me.’

He held me and I felt my body relax into him. I still adored the smell of him, the security of the solid arms of the man I loved. Still loved. God help me, I still loved him. I reached out and put my arms around his waist and squeezed him towards me, as if I was trying to weld our bodies together. I sighed and felt some of the tension of this disgustingly horrible day melt away. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply and, for once, the fist in my stomach started to unclench. If only we could just stay like this, shut out the world and remain here, like this, just Dan and me. That’s all I wanted. I wanted our lives back. I wanted normality.

‘That’s better,’ he sighed into my hair. ‘I love you, Cass. Please don’t go somewhere else . . . in your mind . . . You know what I mean.’

I nodded. ‘I don’t want to . . . really I don’t . . .’

‘I know, I know.’ He dropped his arms and took a step backwards away from me. ‘I think I’ll go and catch a bit of
Newsnight
,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind. Why don’t you come with me? Take our minds off all this crap.’

I gestured to the washing up. ‘I’ll just clear up a bit. Maybe come in in a minute.’

As I stacked, washed, rinsed and dried I thought about Laura’s antagonism towards me. It had kicked off around the time she went away to university, after her eighteenth, from memory. I’d put it down to the fact that she was trying to be grown up and independent, that this was all part of the growing up process, needing to separate herself from me, in order to become an independent woman. Now it seemed obvious that it was because she’d found out about me and my grand deception; that our lives had been one big lie. But how could she have borne knowing the truth, without saying anything? My heart bled for her; she must have been devastated. Poor darling Laura. That would explain why she wanted to punish me, why she always seemed so angry with me. I think Dan was wrong. I didn’t think Laura loved me. I thought Laura hated me.

About twenty minutes later I poked my head around the door. Dan was holding his mobile, staring at the screen. He looked up at me and I swear he looked guilty.

Later, when he came to bed, I was almost asleep. He snuggled up against me and pulled me close. It felt so good to be near him, and I pretended that I was cocooned in a safe place. When he started to caress me, I responded to him with an urgency fuelled by the fear of what I might lose; and when he made sweet, gentle love to me, I allowed myself to imagine that this was my real world.

CHAPTER

17

I woke up wanting to believe in the loving Dan of the night before. I kept running over what he’d said to me.

‘My darling . . . you’re so special . . .’ he had whispered in my ear before he drifted off to sleep. His arms had remained around me as we slept spooned together, anchoring me to the bed – and to my sanity, it seemed. If he let go, if he cast me off, I’d spin away from him, beyond his reach, beyond the reach of rational thought. Was I losing my grip on reality? I didn’t know any more which part of my life was the truth. This? Here with Dan, or between the poisoned pages of that witch’s book? I wanted peace so badly even if it meant I had to kid myself that everything was fine. When it wasn’t fine. At all.

As soon as Dan left for the office, my devils returned. The tenderness, the lovemaking, was all of that a cynical ploy to distract me from pursuing the truth? Oh God, I had bought a ticket for the rollercoaster and there was no way the seller was going to let me off until I’d completed the ride. I was a prisoner, held fast in the car; I couldn’t escape the highs or the lows, I just had to wait for the next crest or dip of my emotions. And the next dip was coming up fast. I was obsessed with how to get through the next ordeal. I was like a puppet whose strings were held firmly in Ellie’s hands. Like that balloon seller in Birmingham. All she had to do was let go of my string and I’d crash to the ground or float away into nothingness.

Somehow I managed to work my way around the supermarket even though I was in a somnambulant daze. Thinking about what to feed my family seemed just so mundane, so normal, that it didn’t sit comfortably within the current landscape of my life. As if anyone would care about food, and whether I cooked lasagne or cottage pie. Or would they prefer steak? Baked potato or sweet potato? God almighty, it just seemed ludicrous.

At the checkout, the smiling woman – Barbara – at the till, said, ‘Got anything nice planned for the weekend?’ ‘No, not really,’ I’d said. ‘You?’ She did tell me but I wasn’t listening. In fact, when I got back in the van to come home, I could barely remember that I’d been shopping at all.

I was halfway through unpacking all the stuff when Amelia’s BMW appeared in the drive, her fiftieth birthday present from William. As the car drew up beside me she choked off some operatic diva mid-aria. She opened the door and climbed out. The door slammed shut with the sort of expensive click that Dan would appreciate.

‘Ah, that explains why I couldn’t get hold of you,’ she said, by way of hello. ‘You were out. And you hadn’t got your mobile switched on.’

‘No. Sorry,’ I smiled. ‘I didn’t realize you were back.’

‘Only just. I thought I’d come straight over, because I’ve got something for you . . . Here, let me give you a hand,’ She kissed my cheek and swept up two handfuls of shopping bags and together we headed into the house. ‘God, don’t you just hate it all, shopping? So boring. Don’t you ever get yours online? You know Waitrose will deliver from Malvern.’

‘Dan’s forbidden me to go near Waitrose as I’m always tempted to overspend, and I can’t be doing with online. Or it can’t be doing with me. Never can get it to work properly. Have you ever thought,’ I said as I filled the kettle and stuck it on the Aga, ‘just how much time one can waste trying to save time?’

‘Suppose . . . Oh crikey, nearly forgot. It’s in the car. Wait a sec . . .’

‘I’ll make coffee.’

‘Love one.’

She reappeared, seconds later, with a basket filled with enormous white hydrangeas. ‘For you. I thought they’d look lovely on your kitchen table.’

‘They’re beautiful. Thank you.’

She centred them on the table, having pushed away a pile of post and yesterday’s newspaper. ‘Covent Garden market. Have you been there? It’s the most amazing place. Honestly, Cass, I was like a dog with six tails – so many flowers. It’s huge. Terrifying. Anyway Ellie and I got everything sorted out. Phew, lovely, coffee, thanks. I’m
exhausted.
’ She sank down into a chair and propped her elbows on the table while I started, somewhat distractedly, putting away the shopping.

‘Have you lost weight? And, darling, you do look tired. I didn’t think you seemed quite yourself the other day, at the meeting. There’s nothing the matter, is there?’

‘I’m all right, I suppose.’

‘Hmm,’ she continued. ‘Ellie and I were talking about it. She was worried that she might have upset you, over the flower business. But I said you wouldn’t have been remotely upset, probably just pleased to be relieved of it. You weren’t upset, were you?’

I shrugged, stared down into my coffee cup. It was all just too draining. ‘That all seems rather trivial now, to be honest.’ I hadn’t decided how honest I was going to be with Amelia, how far I was prepared to go, how much I could trust her to be my friend. ‘Did you have a good time in London?’

‘Wonderful. You’d have loved it. Only a couple of days, but you know what it’s like . . .’

Actually I didn’t. ‘Hmm,’ I said.

‘We devoted yesterday morning to jobs, like sorting out the flowers. Thank God we took William’s car, otherwise we’d never have fitted everything into mine or Ellie’s. And the day before that we did the exhibition which was
wonderful.
If only there weren’t so many people. You feel you’re on a sort of conveyor belt and you stand back to get a really good feel of some fabulous painting, and then a load of people come and stand in front of you,’ she laughed. ‘One forgets how many people there are in London, and most of them seem to be foreign. And then at night we went to this fabulous fish place that Ellie knew and had a good old gossip. She’s such fun. And her mother joined us.’

‘Her mother?’

‘Yes. She’s incredibly young-looking. Lucky Ellie, having those genes. And isn’t it exciting about Laura, and the work experience?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cass?’

‘Hmm?’

‘What’s wrong? I can tell there’s something . . . You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but if there’s anything I can help with . . . It’s not something between you and Ellie, is it? She’s very fond of you, you know. She kept on telling me how great she thought you were. The house, your garden, what a lovely girl Laura is, how well you’ve brought her up –’

The cup slipped out of my hand and crashed to the floor. I wished that I could crash to the floor with it. I grabbed some kitchen roll and started mopping up the spilled coffee, picking up the cup which had broken neatly in two.

‘Careful. You’ll cut yourself. Here, let me.’ She took the pieces of china from my hand, placed them together to make a perfect fit. ‘My china restorer could make a brilliant job of this, if you wanted. She’s not expensive. Only charge you a fiver –’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Amelia. Just bloody leave it!’ Her mouth dropped open in shock. I watched her soft blue eyes grow wide, clouded with confusion. ‘Cass . . . I’m so sorry . . .’

I snatched the jagged pieces of china out of her hands and tossed them into the bin. ‘It’s broken and that’s all there is to it.’

When I turned back to her, I noticed she was sucking her finger. When she took it out of her mouth a bead of blood formed.

‘Oh God, I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry, Amelia. That was so clumsy of me. See what I’ve gone and done. I’ve cut you. Oh God. How
stupid
of me.’

‘It’s nothing. Nothing. Honestly. Just, if you’ve got a plaster . . . You know what fingers are like. It’ll stop in a minute.’

I gave her a piece of kitchen roll and she squeezed it onto the wound. ‘Hang on, I’ll go and get one.’

I felt dreadful. Truly dreadful. Poor Amelia. It wasn’t her fault at all. She didn’t know anything about what was going on. She was merely being her normal, uncomplicated, lovely self. And I was about to lose her as a friend, because I couldn’t hold any compartment of my life together anymore. Did I really want this? No daughter, no husband, no friends? Then what? The only thing left would be the void, the void which I’d escaped in the past. But I didn’t know this time. I really didn’t know. It just felt like I was already in it, sucked into a giant vacuum of nothingness. No thoughts, no pain, no hurt.

My legs felt leaden as I descended the stairs. Amelia was leaning up against the Aga, still holding the sheet of kitchen roll which was now more red than white. I unwrapped the plaster and she held up her finger. I laid the sticky end around the top and rested the dressing side against the place where I had wounded her. But I could tell from her face that I hadn’t just wounded her physically. I could tell that she didn’t know what to say to me. She was offended, hurt and confused. I looked at the beautiful hydrangeas that she had placed on my table. And then I reached out and took her hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Amelia. It’s just that Ellie told me her mother was dead, that she’d electrocuted herself in the bath. So you see I’m feeling a little confused.’