Second Chance (21 page)

Another long silence, the miles speeding, or at least trundling by.

‘What do you get out of living with Paul? I've often wondered. I mean, he's quite a boring person, isn't he? I like him because he's very dependable, but I'd have thought you'd want more than that.'

I wasn't prepared to answer her question, so countered with one of my own. ‘You like your father. Do you like your mother, too?'

‘No, but she's more interesting and more challenging. When we were children we always liked him, but admired her. Wanted to be like her. We were very spoilt, I know that. And desperate for more and more attention. We were rich and spoilt.'

‘I wouldn't argue with that.'

‘And we despised anything we considered ordinary. We liked ignoring people, but we couldn't ignore Francesca.'

‘You admired Francesca and tried to out-do her.'

‘Something like that, I suppose. And Selena has, in a way. She not only despised ordinary middle-class life, as Francesca did, but despised life as a whole. Life with a capital L. To the extent of finishing it.'

‘Oh, I think that's going too far. You're trying to elevate her suicide into something grand and meaningful. I think it was much more likely to be a momentary mood of despair – too much work, too little attention, no one to love, you being in trouble with the police – at a time when Francesca's sleeping tablets happened to be on hand.'

Even as I spoke I realised that Annabel might find my words hurtful or even offensive. ‘Of course, I may be totally wrong,' I added hurriedly. ‘After all, you knew her much better than I did.'

‘I hope it wasn't as haphazard as that,' she said, in a small, child-like voice, which I hardly recognised. ‘But life is pretty haphazard isn't it, so perhaps death is, too.'

By this time the moon had risen and I drew into a lay-by again, turned off the engine and got out of the car. At first, the silence seemed total and overwhelming. Soon, though, I could hear the river in the distance and the bleating of an occasional sheep. ‘Have we arrived?' Annabel asked.

‘Look at the mountains,' I said, pointing at some vague charcoal-coloured shapes in the distance. ‘That's Cader Idris on the right, and Pumlymon on this side. What do you think? Are you glad you came?' I felt light-headed and expected a scathing reply. It would mean nothing to her. To me it was beautiful because I knew it so well, knew the colours; the blues, violets and greys, in sun and rain. Especially in rain.

When I turned towards her, I realised that she was crying again. ‘You can moan and howl here as much as you like,' I said. ‘No one will hear you but the sheep and the foxes.'

She went on crying, but still silently. After a few moments I put an arm round her and she leaned on my shoulder. ‘Say some poetry,' she said. ‘Shout out some sad poetry.'

‘Fear no more the heat o' the sun,

Nor the furious winter's rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone and ta'en thy wages:

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.'

I was crying too, by this time; for my mother as well as for Selena. My voice cracked and shivered in the amphitheatre of the mountains. I tackled a few lines of
Lear
, some of Wordsworth's ‘Prelude', Keats' ‘Bright Star' and finished with a Welsh englyn on the death of a young girl.

It was a cathartic experience for me and, I think, for Annabel, too. Before we turned back to the car she took a deep breath and shouted out, ‘Selena! Selena!' It was very moving. It was like the ‘Last Post'.

When we arrived home, we were too tired to do anything but go straight to bed.

I put Annabel in the tiny spare bedroom – with the curtain across the corner for a wardrobe – leaving her a tin of biscuits and a glass of milk in case she got hungry in the night. But before I'd got myself undressed, she was calling for me: Arthur had got in through the window and was drinking the milk. I'd forgotten him, but he hadn't forgotten me. He circled round my ankles, purring and sneezing with excitement until I went downstairs again to feed him.

The phone rang as I got to the living room. I guessed it would be Rhydian and it was. ‘How did you know I was back?' I asked him.

‘I ring every night at eleven-thirty. When can I see you?'

‘It won't be easy, love. I've got my stepdaughter with me, the twin sister of the girl who died. The funeral's going to be in Horeb – I don't know when. I've got to see the minister tomorrow.'

‘I can call by, though, can't I? I am your cousin.'

‘And my lover.' Oh God, I shouldn't have said that. I intended to be aloof, but hearing his voice confused me.

‘Can I come over now?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Oh, please don't sound so tortured. I'm not trying to make things worse for you. I know our position isn't easy, but we mustn't give up. You don't want to give me up, do you?'

‘No, but I may have to. But I'll never forget you, Rhydian.'

‘I don't want any of that bloody stuff. That's just bullshit. I'm not into the marriage of true minds, all that rubbish.'

‘Just sex?' I asked. Lovingly.

‘That first and foremost, yes, and mixed up with everything else. Like our background, our inheritance, our beliefs.'

‘I haven't got any beliefs.'

‘Yes, you have, and they're the same as mine.'

He sounded so sure of himself, so determined. ‘What are we going to do, Rhydian?'

‘As much as we can, for as long as we can.'

‘That doesn't sound very safe. But it does sound exciting.'

‘And there's one other thing too. I love you, Katie. I love you.'

I slept well that night, with no visitations from Annabel. I got up early, but decided to let her sleep on. I phoned Paul but he wasn't in; he had either gone out or had stayed the night with Francesca. If he had stayed with her, I should be feeling pleased because it simplified my course of action. But of course feelings aren't logical; if I was going to be thrown over for Francesca, I wanted to be consulted about it, wanted to be apologised to, grovelled to, made much of. At times it was convenient to forget that I'd already done what I thought Paul might be doing, and without as much excuse as he had.

There was an unopened business letter lying on the dresser. I must have picked it up last night and been too tired to bother with it. I had a moment's unease as I slit open the envelope.

It was from Mr Gomer Richards, a solicitor in town, sending me his condolences on my mother's death and a copy of her Last Will and Testament, which he had drawn up for her a little over a week before her recent untimely death.

My unease grew, formed a small tight lump in my chest. Had she had some bad news about her health? I couldn't imagine why else she'd felt the need to make a will. I could hardly bring myself to open it.

Being of sound mind, etc, etc, she, Miriam Rivers, bequeathed to her only daughter, Katherine Jane Rivers, her gold wedding ring, her opal and pearl brooch, her silver pendant and whatever she should desire of the contents of her house, Maendy, Glanrhyd, Ceredigion. The said house and the remainder of the furniture and contents she bequeathed to George Rhys Williams of Two Brook Cottages, Glanrhyd, Ceredigion, to use and enjoy during his lifetime, after which it would revert to her aforementioned daughter, Katherine Jane Rivers.

I had to read it three times before the truth sunk in. This house wasn't mine. This house where I'd been born, which I'd always considered home, now belonged to someone else. I probably had no right to be sitting at this table, looking out at this tree and this sky. This view, this silence, this damp smell which we'd never succeeded in eradicating, the garden, the smooth white stones from Cwmllys outside the back door, the stunted bushes, the grass, the rabbits, the air even, these things were no longer mine. And I'd planned to live here for at least a part of every year. Arthur jumped up onto my knee and I cried into the soft fur at the back of his neck, cried for things I'd only recently realised I needed, things I'd always taken for granted, as much mine as my own flesh.

‘What's wrong with you?'

I looked up at a stern-faced Annabel. ‘What the hell's wrong with you?' she repeated. Anxious for sympathy and discussion, I was suddenly pleased she was with me.

However she didn't wait for my explanation, but rushed to the bathroom where I could hear her being sick. I dislodged Arthur and got up to make her a cup of tea. In George Williams' kitchen. When would he be expecting to move in? I reminded myself that he was a kind, respectable man who'd been faithfully in love with my mother for almost half a century. And he lived, I'd been told, with his sister and her husband and their fifty-year-old unmarried son in the small council house they'd taken over from their parents. Wasn't it fitting and proper that she should bequeath this cottage to him rather than to me, part-owner of a semi-detached Edwardian villa, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, in a fairly desirable and increasingly trendy part of Camberwell?

Lorna came to the door. ‘I don't want any more letters,' I told her.

‘What's the matter now?'

‘How long can you stay?'

I settled down with the teapot and the tin of digestive biscuits and gave her the full details of my mother's will. She flung her chest out, about, I think, to make an indignant protest, when Annabel joined us. ‘I'll just have water and lemon,' she said.

‘This is my stepdaughter, Annabel. We're here to arrange her twin sister's funeral.'

‘Her twin sister's funeral?' Lorna put down the tea I'd poured her and blew her nose. ‘You poor little thing,' she said then, looking at Annabel. ‘God love her,' she said, looking at me. And then she blew her nose again, wiped her eyes very thoroughly and said nothing more.

And of course, I said nothing more. Under the circumstances, how could I possibly carry on bemoaning the loss of a house?

‘Do you feel well enough to come with me to see the minister?' I asked Annabel when Lorna had left.

‘Give me half an hour, my stomach's still churning. Hey, what's this on the table? What's all this about?'

‘You can read it if you like,' I said, since she was already studying it and looking very perplexed.

‘Who is this George Rhys Williams?'

‘The man my mother was going to marry. I didn't know of his existence until last week.'

‘And she's left him this house? That's a bloody shame. I was planning on staying here...What's so amusing?'

‘What would you find to do here, Annabel? You'd have no sort of a life here.'

‘What sort of a life would I have anywhere? Would I be better off with Francesca? With you and Paul? Or with Laurie who doesn't want me? I'm twenty-one, I've been a child all my life so far and now I've got to grow up and be a mother all at once. What should I do? And please don't try to advise me because I've got to try and work it out for myself.'

We sat in silence for a few minutes, Annabel sipping her cup of hot water while I re-read the solicitor's letter and my mother's will.

‘Do you fancy a day at the sea?' I asked. ‘A walk on the cliffs and a picnic? We could call on the minister on the way back.'

‘Selena and I were brought up by the sea,' Annabel said as we walked along the sand and pebbles at Cwmllys. ‘The waves crashing on the rocks was probably one of the first sounds we heard.'

‘Was that in Crete?'

‘Crete,' she said in a child's voice. ‘In Crete our entire life was a poem.'

I looked up at her, hoping she was being at least slightly ironic, but she was deeply serious; tears in her eyes, her lips quivering. My impulse was to hug her, but I knew it wasn't the response she wanted. For a moment or two I simply stared out to sea, saying nothing. Then an old excitement took over. ‘Look, look, there's a dolphin! Over there. Can you see it? Or it may just be a seal. No it's a dolphin! definitely.'

She ignored me, wasn't even prepared to locate the creature, let alone enthuse about it. ‘Francesca and Paul had this cabin right at the edge of the sea. Did you ever go there? Did Paul ever take you there?'

‘No, he didn't.'

‘He probably didn't think of it. Or perhaps it would have made him think of past times. Why did you two never get married?'

‘Perhaps he was still in love with Francesca.'

‘Do you think it was that? Do you really? Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up.'

‘It's all right. It's all water under the bridge now.'

‘What does that mean? All water under the bridge?'

‘It's all in the past.'