The Dream House (33 page)

Simon leaned forwards and covered her hand with his. ‘Poor old you,’ he said, pressing his lips together in a woeful smile. ‘I’m really messing you around, aren’t I? Come on, let’s get a drink in the bar and sleep on the matter.’

He summoned a passing waiter and asked him to put the bill to the room. Then he led Kate through the maze of tables and out across the hall.

They stood in dismay at the entrance to the bar, peering in vain amongst the throngs of middle-aged men for empty seats. Through the open French windows beyond, they could see the rain beating down on the metal tables on the terrace.

‘Let’s check out the mini-bar then,’ Simon said simply, and they headed for their room.

Later, in bed, they lay spooned together, and Simon’s hand slid down across her breasts.

I must, Kate told herself. I’ve got to try and make things normal between us. But she was so tense that his touch failed to rouse her; and in the end he turned away, angry at her rejection, but repeating again and again that it wasn’t her fault.

Kate rolled onto her stomach and watched the red figures flicker past on the bedside digital clock. She couldn’t sleep – the afternoon’s nap had put paid to that, and she had too much to think about.

She couldn’t go back to London, she just couldn’t. She was dug in here now, putting down roots for the first time in her life. So were the children. It would be cruel to move them again, just as they were settled. Yes, as Simon said, children could be amazingly resilient, but she remembered her own experience of being moved about from posting to posting, how hard it was to make new friends in a new place. No, she wouldn’t do that to Sam and Daisy. Even if they were forced to move schools to Halesworth, at least their schoolmates would be with them.

There was everything, too, that Agnes represented. She felt so involved with Agnes, as if the old lady’s family were her own – which of course they were. This was family ground and she wanted it to be her ground, too. But what would happen to herself and Simon if she refused to move? Their relationship seemed so fragile. Would he stay with her? He had already dealt one damaging blow to the ties that bound them, ties that, a year ago, she had taken for granted. It was he who had been the one keen to move to the country, and that had appealed to a deep longing inside her, a longing for a place to belong. She remembered the drawing pinned to Joyce’s fridge – the dream house with the dream family – was that all it represented now? A dream that vanished, forgotten, in the harsh light of day?

When she finally fell asleep, it was to keep waking as the hot-water pipes clunked, voices echoed in the corridor, doors slammed and extractor fans throbbed. The duvet was too hot and she couldn’t get comfortable. Then, with the dawn, breakfast started up in the kitchens below. By the morning, she was exhausted.

One night away wasn’t enough, Kate thought miserably over breakfast. Simon, who hadn’t slept well either, seemed to be preparing to go back to the children already, looking at his watch and talking about checking out. She knew he must have a lot to do, getting ready for the coming week away, but surely they should make time this morning to walk and find a pub for lunch before driving back. Had he always been like this – tense, anxious to move on to the next thing?

‘So you’ll think about what I said last night, will you, Kate?’ he asked now. ‘About moving back, I mean? I’m sorry, I feel I’ve let you down in so many ways, but I’ll make it up to you, honestly, I promise. Will you think about it?’

‘Of course I’ll think about it,’ she snapped, ‘but you know what I feel already, so what’s the point?’

‘Don’t be cross, darling,’ he said, trying to stroke her hand on her lap. She snatched it away. ‘No, I can see why you’re cross. On top of everything else.’ His face sunk into sullen introspection.

‘It’s no good you feeling sorry for yourself,’ she hissed.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. We’d better go and pack, I suppose. Since you think we need to rush back.’

‘OK, we’ll stop for lunch if you like. That pub near Beccles you liked the look of.’

‘But you want to get back.’

‘Not if you don’t.’

‘But I won’t enjoy lunch if I know you’d rather be back home.’ And so the bickering went on.

In the end, Simon agreed it wasn’t fair on his mother to turn up for lunch since she wasn’t expecting them, and they stopped for a ploughman’s en route but ate hurriedly and in silence. ‘Anyone looking at us could tell we were married,’ Kate grumbled as they got back into the car. She remembered the title of a book she’d once read:
Married Alive . . .

As they drove in silence back towards Fernley, Kate had an idea. ‘Can we go through Seddington?’ she asked.

‘Seddington? That’s out of our way.’

‘I just want to show you the house, that’s all.’

Simon glanced at her with a slight frown, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Whatever,’ he said, and turned off the main road past Halesworth. But when they stopped before the gates of Seddington House, it was to find them padlocked. The wall was too high, the line of trees the other side too thick, to think of scrambling over, so Simon stood peering through the bars whilst Kate kicked at the gravel in disappointment.

Eventually, Simon said, ‘A handsome place. I’d like a proper look another time.’ And they climbed back into the car and headed for home.

That night, deep in exhausted sleep, Kate dreamed that Agnes was trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t hear the words.

A few miles away, in the hospital, Agnes lay oblivious to the curtains around her bed, to the whispering voices, to the faint glimmer of the new dawn. Her lips moved. Her eyelids fluttered, then her face fell still as she sank deeper into her dream. She was once more a little girl, a toddler, encased in stiff layers of flouncy white cotton. She teetered at the top of some stone steps – one, two, one, two, she counted them – in a beautiful garden. The air was warm, the light coming through the trees threw dappled patterns upon the grass.

‘Come on, Agnes. Come on, darling!’

She looked up in amazement and gasped with joy, the tears prickling her eyes as she stared into the laughing face of . . .‘Mamma!’ Yes, it was her mother, as beautiful and warm and loving as Agnes had always known she would be!

‘Mamma!’ Her lovely face, her outstretched arms – just waiting for her. Mamma, calling for her.

‘Jump, darling, come on, jump! I’m here, I’ll catch you. You’ll be safe. Come to Mamma. Come on, jump!’

And Agnes jumped joyously into the outstretched arms.

At five o’clock in Paradise Cottage the telephone rang out in an urgent, continuous tone, but when Joyce stumbled out of bed to answer it she only heard white noise. There was no one there.

Kate was dazed and headachey the next morning. Simon dragged her out of bed at six to drive him to the station because he didn’t want to leave the car in the car park there for five nights. They hardly spoke on the way, Simon clearly caught up already in the urgency of his schedule, Kate unable to think of anything to say that wouldn’t be cross and hurtful.

At the station, she got out to wave him off and, as she watched him disappear onto the platform she felt a terrible sense of something slipping away from her. On the way home she could hardly drive straight for weeping.

At the house, it was to find Joyce was upstairs getting dressed and the children quarrelling about who should get the free toy in the new packet of breakfast cereal. ‘No one shall have it then,’ she said furiously, and whisked the piece of plastic out of reach as they squealed in frustration.

After dropping them off at school, she hurried back home, head down so that she wouldn’t have to meet other parents and swap cordialities about the weekend. Joyce had gone out with Hazel for the day, so Kate was glad to find she was by herself.

Later that morning, she was putting away the supermarket shopping in between bundling washing in and out of the machine when the telephone rang.

‘Kate, is that you? It’s Max here. Sorry, I’m on my mobile and you’re all fuzzy. Look, I’ve got some bad news.’

‘Agnes,’ said Kate at once. She suddenly knew what the dream had meant.

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. She had a stroke very late last night – a massive one. I got down as quickly as I could, but she passed away at dawn this morning. I’m sorry . . .’

Her first reaction was shock. The tears welled up and she couldn’t speak. After a moment she began to shake.

‘Max. Sorry . . .’ she whispered. ‘I . . . Poor Agnes.’

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘I’m sorry to tell you like this. I didn’t know if I should ring you before, but they said at the hospital there wasn’t anything anybody could do, she never regained consciousness. And it took me a while to track down your number.’

‘Yes, I’m OK. I suppose it would have been no good being there. I’m glad you were. Thank you.’ She cleared her throat.‘Oh, poor Agnes. Max, I should have gone to see her. I was supposed to go on Thursday or Friday. I was going to ask her something.’ Now didn’t seem the time to tell him about the diaries.

‘I suppose it’s right that her time had come,’ he sighed. ‘I thought about what you said – you know, about her going into a home. I still think it would have been best for her, but she would have hated it, wouldn’t she?’

‘Yes. And now she won’t have to go through all that. It’s just . . . oh, I’ll miss her so much. She was such a friend to me. I know we only knew each other for such a little while . . . I can’t explain.’

‘I can see that you two hit it off. She was rather an extraordinary person, wasn’t she? I wish I had had the chance to get to know her better, but I was always so aware of the family feud, whatever it was. She could be a tiny bit terrifying at times, though that may sound silly, a grown man saying that. Look, Kate, I’m sorry, I’m at the hospital. I have to go now. There’s so much to do.’

‘Yes, of course. Max, is there anything I can help with?’

‘No, no, not at the moment, I don’t think. There’s no post mortem required thankfully, so I can get the death registered straight away. We’ll need to plan the funeral together. I hope the vicar might be able to do it this week. It’ll be a burial, won’t it? Oh dear, I’d better go. Why don’t I ring you this afternoon? Oh, you could do something for me, if you would – let Mrs Summers and Dan Peace know. Would that be all right?’

‘Yes, of course. And, could you give me your number, please?’

Kate scribbled down his home and mobile numbers and Max rang off. She put the handset down but her hand shook so much it fell off its cradle. She picked it up but didn’t replace it. Simon. She must speak to Simon. But his number was engaged so she left an urgent message for him to ring her. After a second she grabbed the phone again, thinking she would call Dan. He had given her his number once, but what had she done with it? Perhaps it would be better anyway to go round and find him rather than telling him on the phone.

The car practically drove itself to Seddington, thoughts of Agnes, of the diaries and Max all swirling incoherently round and round in Kate’s head. She ought to tell her parents, she thought suddenly. And Marion. Hadn’t Joyce given her the number? Who else was there?

She was on the edge of the village now. The cottage with the blue door near the pub, he’d said. There was the Fox, with all its flower baskets an obvious contender for Prettiest Pub in the County, and in the line of small detached flint cottages, unimaginatively labelled The Row, was one with a sky-blue door and a number 2 on it. She couldn’t see any sign of Dan’s van. She parked the car, got out and walked on shaky legs up to the door.

As her hand reached out for the dolphin-head knocker, Kate heard the sound of angry voices inside the house, and she froze, wondering what to do.

‘Well, I’ll get her then, if you can’t be bothered,’ snapped a female voice just the other side of the door and, before Kate had time to move, it flew open and a young woman stood before her.

‘Oh,’ said the woman, slightly crossly. Then she recovered herself. ‘Hello.’ She was taller than Kate, but very slim and fragile-looking in a tailored stripy shirt and pale blue denim Capri pants, her small pretty face framed by short fluffy blonde hair. She was dragging a folded buggy in one hand.

‘Is D-Dan in?’ Kate stammered, taking a step back.

‘He’s in the back.
Dan!
Someone wants you,’ she shouted behind her. ‘Go in, why don’t you?’ And without waiting for an answer, she squeezed past Kate, pulling her burden over to a scruffy Ford Escort parked across the road.

Dan’s large figure shambled into the little hallway, but the gloomy expression vanished when he recognized Kate. ‘Come in,’ he said, casting a glance across the road to the woman now getting into the car. He shut the door behind Kate and gestured her into a little front room topsy-turvy with a mishmash of battered old furniture, toddler’s toys and a great big television squatting in one corner, a pile of children’s video boxes scattered around it.

‘I’m sorry, I think I arrived at a bad moment,’ said Kate.

Dan sighed. ‘You’re right – I’m in trouble again,’ he said. ‘Linda’s always asking me to look after Shelley, but Shelley’s got her own dad – that’s where she is now, Linda’s gone to fetch her. Shelley gets very confused – calls both of us Daddy.’ He stopped, seeing the emotions cross Kate’s face.

‘I’d love,’ she whispered, ‘to hear all about it. But there’s a reason I’ve come, I’m afraid.’ And as she told him about Agnes, she finally broke down in tears.

Dan swept some toys and an empty yogurt pot off the sofa so she could sit down, and grabbed a wadge of tissues from a box with teddy bears on it. After a while, Kate recovered sufficiently to look up and smile weakly at him.

He squeezed her shoulder briefly and she saw that he, too, looked immensely sad.

‘I should have gone to see Agnes, I should have made the effort. And now I’ll never know . . . Oh Dan, I’m sorry, I’m a complete mess this morning.’

‘No, you’re not. I’m not surprised you’re so upset. Don’t worry. It’s best to get it all out.’ He paused and said in a low voice, ‘I’m so sorry she’s gone. She was a part of my life for five years. Going up to help at the house was a lifeline when I got back from London, not knowing what to do with myself. She took such an interest in me.’