Second Chance (19 page)

‘Oh God. Listen to me, Annabel. If I've learnt one thing in life, it's to ignore the media; particularly local radio. No one is aware of anything that's been said after about five minutes.' I blew into the air. ‘
Phooh
! Gone! No one remembers it.'

‘I'll remember it for the rest of my life. It's a terrible, terrible lie. Selena never got drugs for anyone in her life, and she'd never even met Miranda Lottaby.' Suddenly she jumped up from her chair.

‘Where are you going?'

‘To the police station. I'm going to tell them it was me.'

I reached the door before her and wouldn't let her out. ‘I'm sorry, but I'm not going to let you.'

‘You can't stop me.' She was shouting again.

‘Yes I can. I'm bigger than you and much stronger. If you go to the police station, it'll be when you've calmed down, and when Paul is here to go with you. And anyway, why should you tell them it was you? It wasn't. You told me that and I believed you.'

‘But it wasn't Selena, either. Don't you understand that? It wasn't Selena. Just because she's dead, it doesn't mean that she can be blamed for something she didn't do. We can't just dump it all on Selena and forget about it. Truth is important.'

‘Of course it is. But so is compassion. Paul and Francesca won't be able to bear it if you get involved again. Paul is really broken-hearted and he says Francesca's no better. They've lost a daughter, Annabel. I accept that it's even worse for you, but you must admit that it's pretty agonising for them too. And Paul is fifty-four, a dangerously common age for heart attacks in men. How will he bear up if the police start questioning you again – all that hassle?'

Annabel was sitting on the floor looking at her hands, turning them this way and that. I couldn't help thinking what a superb Ophelia she'd make; she looked about fifteen and more than half mad.

‘Don't make them go through all that,' I said quietly. ‘
We
know that Selena was innocent, all your friends, all the people who matter, know she's innocent. Is what they write in the police files so important? Think about it, love.'

Silence settled into every corner of the room. I didn't have anything more to say. What was Annabel thinking? Had she been listening to me? I wanted to suggest another cup of tea, but didn't dare break the silence.

‘You never used to bully me,' she said.

‘I intend to from now on. Someone has to.'

She seemed pleased with that answer, looked up at me with what was almost a smile. ‘I'll make a bargain with you, Kate. I won't go to the police if you let me have my way about the funeral, and secondly, let me leave this place.'

‘I think you should leave this place, if you only came for Selena's sake. And you're old enough to make your own decision about it. About the funeral, I'm not the one to decide that. If your parents agree to it, I'll certainly try to arrange it, but I can't say more, can I?'

‘Oh yes you could, if you had the guts. If you made a definite arrangement, they'd go along with it. Why won't you? Why? Why can't you phone someone now? Why? Why can't you?'

‘Because I'm forty-three years old and I've learnt to behave in a fairly civilised way most of the time. As Paul said last night, having to make the arrangements for the funeral may be of enormous help to Francesca. And though I care more about you, I also care about her. Let's at least discuss it with her. Is she back in London now?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Why don't we go out and get some breakfast somewhere? Croissants and some decent coffee? When we come back we'll try to contact Francesca. All right?'

It wasn't. She started to sob again and rock herself from side to side. All the same, I felt less nervous about her by this time, now that some sort of truce had been agreed between us.

When Paul – and Francesca – arrived at the flat at about eleven o'clock, Annabel and I were still sitting on the floor by the door, sizing each other up.

‘Are you meditating?' Francesca asked.

‘I've brought some freshly ground coffee and some hot walnut bread,' Paul said.

I hadn't seen Francesca for some years. She was beautiful as ever, but had grown smaller and older – she was a year or two older than Paul – and didn't seem quite as brittle and cold.

‘Where's Matthew?' Annabel asked. Matthew was her mother's current boyfriend, a partner in the art gallery.

‘He has the children every Sunday. You should know that.'

I left the sitting room to make coffee in the kitchen and Paul followed me. ‘Has Annabel been difficult?' he asked me. ‘Did she keep waking you?'

‘Yes. Did you have a good night's sleep? You look better. You'd better go back in there, Paul. Annabel's about to tackle Francesca about the funeral.'

‘I've already done that. And she's agreed. She says it'll be restful and uplifting, just the four of us.'

‘Thank you for arranging the funeral for us,' Francesca said, in a grand but gracious voice, as soon as I returned with the coffee. ‘Whatever you and Annabel want will be fine with me. What's the name of your church, by the way, and what religion is it? I need to know so that I can get the cards printed. I'm sure no one will turn up, the place sounds so remote, but I'll simply have to have announcements printed. People will expect that much.'

‘Horeb, Congregational Chapel, Glanrhyd,' I said.

‘No announcements,' Annabel said at exactly the same moment.

Francesca turned to me, ignoring her daughter. ‘Horeb? Is that the name of a Celtic saint?'

‘I don't quite know how these things are arranged,' Paul said. ‘I mean, what if it's members only? Something like that?'

‘Then we pay,' Francesca said briskly, ‘and if that doesn't work, we pay more. And afterwards I'll commission Agnes Miller-Thorpe to design a stained-glass memorial window there. Nothing too modern, of course.' She turned to Annabel. ‘Lilies and doves, darling, and perhaps a very young Saint Catherine.'

Annabel's eyes narrowed as though she was about to say something fairly rancorous, but I cut in. ‘No, Francesca, Horeb isn't the name of a saint, it's a Hebrew place name. Many of our chapels are named after Hebrew places, there's Seion – Zion, Saron – Sharon, Salem – Salem, and Ebenezer, the stone of God, then there's Bethlehem, Bethany, Bethel, Calfaria – Calvary, and of course Moriah and many more which...'

They were looking at me as though they weren't sure whether I'd had a slight brainstorm or was acting mad. I wasn't sure myself. Perhaps people all become actors under extreme stress. Perhaps Francesca was just playing a Francesca part, ‘Lilies and doves, darling, and a very young St Catherine,' and Paul the decent husband and father part, ‘I've brought some coffee and some hot walnut bread,' and I was playing grumpy stepmother.

Anyway, I felt I had every excuse. I hadn't had a decent night's sleep since hearing of my mother's death. When was that? Only a week ago? Too much had happened in one week; three deaths, one of them extremely sad, one hugely tragic, and one small miracle that lit up a corner of my mind but couldn't be thought of at the moment in case my face broke into an unseemly smile.

‘But we do have Celtic saints,' I said. ‘Dewi, our patron saint, Beuno, Padarn, Garmon and Rhydian.' There, I'd pronounced his name and felt better for it. ‘And in fact I have a cousin called Rhydian. He was at my mother's funeral. Rhydian. Rhydian Jones.'

‘Jesus, Kate,' Annabel said. ‘What's got into you? We're not interested in your bloody Celtic saints. Just shut up about them.'

Meanwhile, Francesca had withdrawn herself from the funeral talk. ‘You were born first,' she told Annabel, sounding like an old woman, ‘and Selena wasn't born for another hour and forty minutes. She was so small, not quite two pounds, and I was hoping she'd die. She looked so frightening – bloody, like something the dogs used to bring in when they'd been hunting and torn the skin away. Even when the nurse had washed her, I couldn't look at her or hold her. I just hoped she'd die.'

‘They were both tiny,' Paul said, ‘but I thought they were beautiful.'

‘Why didn't she die, then? When I wanted her to?'

Paul went to Francesca's side and held her against him. Even Annabel was moved to pity for her mother. Her eyes shone with tears and her mouth trembled. ‘We'll never forget her,' she said quietly.

We sat in silence. I wanted to be somewhere else, almost anywhere else.

I thought about the little bay a few miles from my home. Not many people know it because there isn't a road leading down to the sea at that point, only a track through very tall, ancient-looking trees, with the river, the same river that we see from the back of the cottage, a stone's throw away. And there are no noisy holidaymakers with surf boards and ghetto-blasters, only a few local families with rugs and baskets of food and beach balls. When I was a child, I only went there on rare occasions; a Sunday School outing or a geography field day, but when I got to the Sixth and had acquired a second-hand bicycle, I went fairly often. Being in the sea never meant much to me, I could swim, but not well; I always liked it better at a distance. I wasn't overfond of sunbathing, either. What I liked was walking on the sands, collecting stones and pieces of driftwood, and along the cliffs with the heavy smell of gorse drugging the senses and making a fire on the beach afterwards, not to cook anything, but because it lit up the sea and the sky and smelled of tar and salt. Sexual experiences were lovely, too, on the beach, with the tumult of the sea like a swelling film score in the background. In the Sixth, a boy called Brynmor Richards and I were too nervous to go ‘all the way', but the way we did go was sea-sweet and dangerously exciting.

I think of the sea at Cwmllys whenever I'm nervous at First Nights or at difficult social events or medical examinations; cervical smears, for instance.

‘When will you phone the vicar?' Annabel asked, dragging me back to the place I didn't want to be in, to the situation I wanted to escape from.

‘He isn't a vicar, he's a minister. He doesn't wear a cassock, for instance, no sort of robe. In fact, he's not at all a romantic figure. I hope I haven't given you the wrong impression of him or the chapel. I mean, it was obviously the right setting for my mother's funeral, but the minister, for instance, he's very young and he's got bright red hair. And I'm not sure that he's all that religious either. And the organ wheezes like an old man.'

They were still looking at me strangely.

‘None of us can be expected to be normal or sane at the moment,' Paul said briskly. ‘We simply must go out to have a proper breakfast.'

Paul drove us back to the Garden House and Francesca had a word, or several words, with the manager – words I've never managed to acquire – so that we were brought exactly what we asked for even though they had long finished serving breakfast.

We talked about Annabel's future. Francesca said she would give her a job in the Gallery and Paul said she could go to Japan with him, if he got a particular assignment, which he felt he would. ‘What about you?' Annabel asked me. ‘Don't you have anything to offer me?' I felt she was suddenly trying to pull me into the family circle; just at the time I wanted to be out of it.

‘My profession is nothing but sweat, toil and tears,' I said, making an effort to be flippant.

‘Does your work seem to be drying up?' Francesca asked, looking fairly cheerful for the first time.

‘It does rather, I'm too old, now, for the parts I used to get.'

‘Nonsense,' Paul said. ‘The phone doesn't stop ringing.'

‘I was sorry to hear about your mother,' Francesca said. ‘I never met her, but Paul used to say she was quite a character.'

Life, real life, seemed to be resuming. ‘I must go back home tomorrow,' I said. ‘I have so much to do.'

Annabel gave me a look which I tried but failed to interpret.

After a long and satisfying breakfast we went for a walk along the river. The day was completely still, no sun, no wind, the sky a uniform grey, the Cam dark, like antique moss-green silk.

The Cam. I started to think of all the places where I'd never taken my mother. She'd have liked to go to Grantchester, she'd learnt a great chunk of that poem at school, and also to Ireland, ‘where the mountains of Mourne go down to the sea'. She always favoured places associated with school and her childhood. In London, she wanted, above all, to see the Tower where the little princes had been imprisoned and Lady Jane Grey beheaded, and when I once took her to Paris for a weekend, all she'd wanted to see was Napoleon's tomb. ‘I liked him better than Nelson,' she'd confided, as though they were two old school friends. I'd always intended to take her to Ypres where her mother's uncle had been killed, she'd expressed a great desire to see those rows and rows of graves and crosses. She'd had a romantic attachment to death.