Second Chance (28 page)

I held my breath, waiting for the storm of angry tears. But she only blinked and took a deep breath. ‘Lewis is taking me there at four o'clock this afternoon when he comes back from his hospital visit. He said we'd go round and read the words on all the gravestones. Some of them are incredibly moving, he says. There's one of five small children who all died in eighteen-something within a month of one another. Probably of malnutrition. He says he'll have to think about that when he has to say something about Selena. We thought “Brightness falls from the air” would be lovely words for her gravestone.'

Paul and I nodded our heads in agreement but neither of us could speak. After a few moments' silence, Paul went to the kitchen and we could hear him blowing his nose. ‘I'm enormously proud of you,' he told Annabel when he got back. ‘I don't know where you get your strength from but it's certainly not from me or your mother.' He stopped abruptly, on the point of breaking down, but after a moment was able to continue. ‘I'm going back to London now so that I'll be able to drive Francesca down tomorrow. With the... the hearse following behind. We'll see you at the chapel at two.'

He kissed us both and left. That day I felt very tender towards him. It might not be the sort of love I felt for Rhydian, but it was love all the same.

Annabel got the job. She didn't pretend to have had any experience, but said she'd spent all her holidays in Crete and knew quite a lot about foreign food – though not that she actually knew how to cook it. No, she hadn't had any experience, not hands-on experience, though she'd eaten at many famous restaurants. She'd then said how much she loved the hotel and the village, and that she knew she could be happy there. Perhaps they'd had problems keeping young staff in the past, because that seemed to clinch it. They offered her the job, starting in a month's time, at two hundred pounds a week, all found.

‘So now I've got to learn how to cook,' she said mournfully. ‘I think it's going to be mostly breakfasts and puddings. Fried eggs are damnably difficult, Lewis says.'

She didn't mention her visit to the cemetery and neither did I.

The morning of the funeral was grey and stormy, the Indian summer well and truly over. It was only a week since my mother's funeral and I hadn't yet managed to come to terms with that, and now I had another ordeal to face. I felt immensely sorry for myself; it was only the need to support Annabel that kept me going.

‘Nasty old day,' Lorna said when she called, ‘but it will be bright this evening, you shall see. My mother-in-law and I were thinking of turning in to the chapel this afternoon unless you'd rather we didn't. We both took to your little stepdaughter and so did Cliff. She hasn't got up yet? Well, that's all for the best, isn't it. Let her sleep. Only there's a letter here for her. Miss Annabel Farringdon. Lovely name... George Williams thought he might come as well. Out of respect for your mother, I suppose. I hope Lewis Owen will have one of his better days. You'd be surprised how deep he can be sometimes. Now, you won't go and forget us, will you, when you're back in London? Oh no, you'll come down to see Annabel, won't you? They say it's very nice in Maes Garw under the new management. Even though breakfast is extra. Tell you what, you pay for your room, they charge plenty mind, and come and have breakfast with me and Cliff. We do ourselves proud at the weekend.'

Though still absorbing the rhythm of her sentences, I'd stopped listening to what she was actually saying. I excused myself. ‘I'm trying to decide whether to keep Annabel's letter until after the funeral,' I told her. ‘I've got the feeling it might be from an ex-boyfriend who could be trying to upset her.'

‘She's twenty-one,' Lorna said, getting to her feet, ‘and already as upset as can be. For goodness' sake, don't try to play God.'

‘Lorna, will you mind if I ring you up from time to time to ask your advice about various things?'

She laughed. ‘You do that,' she said.

I gave Annabel the letter as soon as she got downstairs. ‘From Laurie,' she said savagely. ‘Offering to marry me, would you believe. Prepared to put his career prospects on hold for a year or two. How very noble. Excuse me while I go to the bathroom to throw up.'

‘How long does this bloody morning sickness go on?' she asked me when she got back to the living room.

‘It's not so severe after the first couple of months,' I said cheerily. I'd read that somewhere.

For a time she sat at the table sipping some hot water, seeming almost too quiet and composed. She had a harrowing day in front of her.

I could hardly believe that she intended staying in Glanrhyd. I'd miss her so much. I'd imagined her living with me in Camberwell where I could look after her. What was wrong with my hormones? I was her ex-stepmother, not her mother.

‘Can I get you a cup of tea?' I asked her.

‘No, thanks. Not at the moment.'

God, I had to get out of the habit of offering everyone cups of tea. I was beginning to sound middle-aged. Come off it, I
was
middle-aged, at least half my life behind me. And I was going back to London to live alone in a four-bedroomed family house.

Arthur jumped onto my lap and dug his claws into me. It seemed like affection, rough love. Oh, I'd take him with me! Why not? Why shouldn't I settle down and become the stereotype spinster with a cat for company? Perhaps I could write a scintillating television script, set in the twenties, for a grumpy middle-aged detective who lived alone with her cat and had spiffing adventures. I'd have a trilby hat to set me apart from all the other female sleuths and possibly a wooden leg. It was a pity I didn't know any criminals. I knew
of
several, but had never taken the trouble to cultivate any of them. Another bad career move.

‘Would you like baked beans on toast?' Annabel asked me after a long silence.

I knew we should have a large nourishing meal before the ordeal of the funeral service, but these days Annabel couldn't eat much until evening and I didn't feel at all like cooking or eating. ‘Just one piece,' I said feebly. All I wanted was for the day to be over.

Annabel brought in the beans and two bottles of Coke. Her mood had darkened again. ‘I think Selena may have killed herself because she knew I was going to have an abortion,' she said, her voice thin and trembling. ‘Perhaps she wanted to make me think again.'

The idea of such self-sacrifice frightened me. ‘Annabel, don't torment yourself. She'd been working too hard, she was deeply troubled and confused about various aspects of her life, perhaps about yours too, I won't deny that, and Francesca's sleeping pills just happened to be there. It was a hideous tragedy, but trying to invent some logical explanation for something which was in all probability completely illogical is just self-indulgence.'

She became calm. ‘Lewis said something very like that,' she said.

The reading was from the Book of Isaiah, incomprehensible, but like Beckett's monologues, shot through with what was perhaps a thread of hope. There was a long organ voluntary instead of a hymn, Mr Cynrig Ellis the organist possibly trying to persuade us of the pressing need for a new organ.

The sermon was short: how tragedy called forth love, not original perhaps, but deeply felt. How there was always a huge crowd of eager volunteers at the pit head when there'd been a horrific accident underground, how lifeboat men were always at hand to launch their little boat into a hideously perilous sea. Love was not necessarily life-threatening but always dangerous. Christ's message was that we must live dangerously, love courageously. Lewis was so pale that I realised he was finding it almost impossible to continue.

He stopped abruptly, announcing that Annabel wanted to say a few words about her sister.

‘Selena and I were always together. We were identical twins so people thought we had identical minds but we didn't. She was gentle and thoughtful and I was brash and thoughtless. Now I have to live without her. And that has to be my act of courage. Please cherish her memory.'

Then Lewis looked towards the organ, Mr Ellis struggled with some Bach and then we went out into the rain.

Either by accident or design, the committal at the grave was in Welsh. I glanced over at Francesca to see what she thought of it, but her face was so distorted by fierce grief that I felt guilty to be spying on her. Paul had her and Annabel, one on each side, in a tight grip. I was pleased about that. More or less.

Maggie Davies and Lorna were both dabbing at their eyes as we walked from the cemetery. George Williams said nothing but when we reached the gate, shook my hand for a long time, perhaps not trusting himself to speak. I invited them to join us at the Maes Garw Hotel for afternoon tea, but they declined, though I could see that Maggie was sorely tempted.

We drove there in two cars, Annabel with her parents in one and Lewis and I in the other. ‘You did well,' I said. ‘I don't want to talk about it,' he said. ‘And please don't patronise me.' He seemed nervous and surly, but I was prepared to forgive him. ‘You did well,' I said again.

Both cars arrived at the hotel together. Why exactly was I there? I wished I'd gone home.

‘You mustn't hate me,' Francesca said, taking my arm and squeezing it as we walked up the steps to the front door. I couldn't think how to reply, so I didn't.

We were ushered in to a large, opulently furnished but rather chilly sitting room. As a student, I used to clean the seven guest bedrooms, but wasn't considered either experienced or mature enough to have any dealings with the lounge and the dining room with their antique furniture and their brass and crystal ornaments. Paul ordered a pot of tea and toasted teacakes, but Francesca called the waiter back, demanding brandy and insisting on having the fire lit. ‘I don't hate you,' I told her and we smiled at each other in brief reconciliation.

The log fire in the wide inglenook fireplace was soon blazing away, the tea and teacakes were good, the brandy was soul-warming; we sipped it as though it was life itself.

‘Shall I tell them or will you?' Lewis asked.

Annabel raised her eyes from him, looked towards us and cleared her throat. ‘I'm eleven weeks pregnant,' she said. ‘An accident, of course. Yes, Laurie was the father, but it could have been anyone. What I mean is, I was never in love with him or anything like that. Absolutely not. But I've fallen in love with Lewis, isn't it extraordinary. I didn't think it would ever happen to me but it has.' Her clear grey eyes were suddenly luminous with tears and love. ‘And he understands me better than anyone else because, you see, he was a twin himself and he's felt lonely and incomplete ever since his twin brother died at two years old.'

We looked at them with wonder. It was like something out of Shakespeare. Shakespeare was obsessed by twins; he had fathered twins himself, so knew about their magical affinity.

‘And I've asked her to marry me,' Lewis said, ‘and she's agreed to it. And it must be as soon as possible, if that's all right with you all. You see, in my position, I don't want to wait until everyone is gossiping about us. We think it's best to give as little offence as we can.'

I broke the stunned silence. ‘The courage of love,' I said. ‘Let's drink to that.'

Paul rallied and repeated, ‘The courage of love.'

Annabel came over from the sofa where she'd been sitting with Lewis and kissed her parents and me. Francesca seemed to wake from a trance. ‘And I suppose the wedding will be here, too,' she said, sounding pathetic but resigned.

‘Do you really hate it here?' I asked her.

‘Oh no, the chapel is beautiful.'

‘It is, isn't it? And I was a member for years without ever noticing it.'

‘All the same, what I'd like is a wedding at St Botolph's,' Annabel said. And probably only I knew how much that peace-offering to her mother was costing her.

Francesca came to life again. ‘Oh, darling! But what about the people here? Oh, but we can lay on a coach – or two coaches – to bring them up, can't we, Paul?' She looked at Lewis as though seeing him for the first time and managing to convey, yes, you'll do very nicely, in her glance. ‘Of course, Lewis must decide everything. It's very important that his congregation doesn't turn against them.'

‘With Maggie Davies on their side, who will dare turn against them?' I said.

Now it's just over three weeks later. I was hoping, by this time, to have found some sort of calm, but here I am in the middle of a huge, raging excitement.

I left Wales the day after Selena's funeral, Paul, Francesca and Annabel having already gone the previous evening. At about seven o'clock, a sad hour on a sad day, Lewis called on me to apologise for his surly behaviour in the funeral car. ‘I had so much on my mind,' he said. ‘But now I'm really happy.'

One part of me wanted to warn him that he wasn't going to have an easy life with Annabel, but I concluded that he already knew that. ‘I came up thinking you might be lonely,' he said. ‘Annabel told me about Paul and her mother getting back together. And that must be very difficult for you.'