The History Room (32 page)

‘At least she didn’t do anything worse to the dog,’ Dad had said.

I shivered, thinking of what she might have done. ‘How did she get a reference?’ I asked. We were particular about who we took as gappies.

‘A year or eighteen months ago Emily was working at a prestigious school in New Zealand as a secretary or PA. I emailed them and we worked out what she’d done.’ He gave me an
amused glance at the mention of his use of email. ‘She applied as a past pupil of that school. When I sent a request for a reference to the head, she simply removed it from his post tray and
used school headed paper to respond on her own behalf. The head and the other staff knew nothing about it.’

She’d have known which envelope to take; it would have had the Letchford school stamp on the front. She must have known she looked young for her age anyway. That marble skin. She could
pass for eighteen or nineteen.

Dad fell quiet. I knew what he was thinking.

‘No, Dad,’ I said quickly as he started to say it. ‘You have no responsibility to Emily. None at all. If she’s so good at forging references she’ll probably be
sorting out another job for herself. That’s what worries me. I still think we should put more pressure on the police to take this seriously.’

‘They said there was little evidence against her. Unless Olivia would testify about Emily pushing her downstairs.’

I thought of that doll swinging on the rope and shuddered. ‘What about the pupils, Dad? How must they have felt when they saw that bloody doll?’

He didn’t even frown at the swear word. ‘The pupils are fine. They are resilient young people. We educate them to bounce back.’

We’d turned now, so that the blanched slopes of the Downs were before us, very clear and pure against the pale sky.

‘I liked him,’ he said simply. I knew he was talking about Emily’s father and that he would always feel deep sorrow for him and for the baby who’d died. ‘I wish I
hadn’t been so preoccupied with the wretched building work and had listened to what he was saying about his son.’

Dad and I had passed a quiet Christmas with Clara and family, toasting not only the season but also news of Marcus’s new job. ‘The pressure’s off,’ my sister had told me
as we wrapped bacon round sausages to go with the turkey. ‘I was getting desperately worried. I know we’re over-geared.’ She’d glanced around at the designer kitchen.
‘It did cross my mind that if he sold, Dad might hand on some capital from the sale of the school to you and me. It would be helpful.’ She put the tray of wrapped chipolatas into the
oven. ‘But I felt terrible afterwards even mentioning it. Greedy. Selfish.’ She’d given me a look similar to the one she’d given me all those years ago when I’d taken
all the blame for defacing the mural. I’d topped up her champagne glass again.

Hugh had vanished on a pre-skiing fitness camp and I hadn’t seen him since the night of the play, although I’d received a card from him. He’d be off to the Alps tomorrow. Dad
and Clara had kept their questions about the state of our marriage to themselves. I’d run through the last part of our conversation on the night of the play. We’d been talking to Sofia
about her work in clubs as a hostess. She’d hinted at another job, as an escort.

I remembered what the nurse had told me about the men in rehabilitation going out together to bars and pubs. Had they extended their bonding and relaxation to visiting lap-dancing clubs? Or
worse? Now I’d had time to reflect I felt I couldn’t get too worked up about it. I didn’t believe Hugh had been involved in anything too sleazy. But it was no great surprise to me
that he might have been to these places. He was a young man in shock, relying on the comradeship of his fellow patients. And I’d accepted my banishment from his life without question,
preferring the role of spurned wife.

I thought of ringing him, trying to get over to him that I wasn’t dwelling on what he might or might not have done. But how would I start a conversation like that? He had to come to
me.

We made a slow circle round the pitches. ‘That dog shouldn’t really be here,’ Dad said. ‘We shouldn’t make exceptions for the family, Merry. It always leads to
trouble.’

I couldn’t hide an ironic smile. ‘I know.’ We both knew, in fact, that an exception would continue to be made for Samson during school holidays.

‘There are always the Abingdon and Oxford schools,’ Dad went on. ‘I know some of them quite well. And we’re near enough for the weekend.’

I knew what he was thinking. He might be able to put in a word for Olivia at St Helen’s, Headington or Oxford High. Perhaps there were bursaries she might apply for there. ‘You
aren’t responsible for Olivia,’ I reminded him, reminding myself that the same was true of me. He stopped. Turned so that his blue eyes, bright in the glasses he’d started
remembering to polish, stared at me.

‘I am responsible.’

‘But she’s not—’

‘My granddaughter. I know. But there’s something you don’t know, Merry. Something nobody, apart from Hana, possibly, knew.’

‘What?’

‘Hana didn’t leave me in that forest.’

‘What?’ I said again, sounding as slow-witted as I felt.

‘It was the other way round, Merry.’ He nodded at me. ‘I kept on looking for her. But there was nothing. No rustle in the undergrowth, no branches swaying.’ For a moment
I was there with him in the forest, looking for a girl in a bright tunic against the dark trees. ‘Nothing,’ he said again.

‘Then I heard a car coming. It slowed. The driver wound down the window. “Heading for the border? You’d better hurry. I’ve heard they’re about to close it. Orders
from Moscow,” he said.’

I pictured the driver letting out the clutch, driving on. Leaving Dad standing there alone. Unsure.

‘I could return to my mother’s village, ask for help with the search for Hana. There were still hours of daylight left. She must be in the trees somewhere. Once her sickness had
passed and she’d rested a bit she’d feel stronger, more like the old Hana.’ He put a gloved hand to his throat, as though what he was saying was catching there. ‘But then I
remembered my mother’s face as she’d waved us off this morning . . .’

He wouldn’t have been able to bear going through it all again: the goodbyes, the promises to write.

‘It was easy to rationalize with myself. Perhaps Hana was hiding, waiting for me to go before reclaiming her bicycle and returning to the railway station. This was her way of ending
things.’ He shrugged. ‘It was easy to persuade myself that she was all right. I thought about leaving a note on her bike. But what would I say? Better to leave it. I called out one last
time. Waited for a minute or two for a response. Then I cycled off.’

He reached the border post half an hour later, he told me. The guards were sympathetic but jumpy. They read his papers carefully before they lifted the barrier. ‘It won’t be as easy
to come back,’ one of them warned him. And as they lowered the barrier he wanted to shout that he’d made a terrible mistake, he’d left someone behind, he needed to go and look for
her, she was just a girl, alone, ill.

But he bit his tongue and made himself push the bicycle pedals. And cycle on into the West.

‘And Hana didn’t tell anyone what had happened,’ I said. ‘Not Maria, not her own children, nobody.’ She’d kept the secret all those decades.

‘She must have felt awful about being left there. She was a proud girl. She’d have felt embarrassed. Perhaps she’d tripped over and banged her head. Passed out for a while.
That was why she didn’t hear me shouting for her. She mightn’t even have remembered what had happened. But I do.’

‘You don’t, Dad, not really. She might well have been hiding from you, just as you said. Perhaps she lost her nerve at the last moment and wasn’t able to tell you she
didn’t want to head for the West. If she was suffering from pregnancy sickness she might have felt so dreadful that she wasn’t thinking straight.’ I remembered how ill Clara had
been with both her boys. Not just in the mornings, but all day, for weeks and months. ‘Perhaps she was already on her way back to the railway station.’

‘She left her bicycle behind, Merry. The station was miles away.’

‘She might have watched you cycle off. Then come out and retrieved it.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. He turned his face away from the sun’s milky rays and a shadow fell over it.

‘It’s hard to know,’ I said, ‘when people really do want you to leave them. And when they’re just pushing you away for a moment. Regretting it later.’ My
voice trembled slightly.

‘Hugh?’ he said.

‘I took him at his word.’

‘And that of the medical staff.’

‘I walked out on him. I could have made an appointment with a counsellor at the rehabilitation unit. I could have pressed them. Made sure I was doing the right thing by taking him at his
word.’ The sun was feeble but it was hurting my eyes so I turned as well. ‘But I slunk back here and spent months feeling sorry for myself.’

‘The Stastnys were always ones for retreating in dignified silence,’ he said. ‘Sulking, my mother called it.’

I couldn’t help laughing. He regarded me indulgently. ‘But not you, Merry. That’s not who you really are. We named you well.’

Samson had found an old hockey ball. He trotted towards me with it in his mouth and dropped it at my feet. I threw it towards the bushes.

‘How’s the painting going?’ I asked. For Christmas Clara and I had bought Dad new paints and brushes and pads of beautiful white paper.

He gave a guilty smile. ‘I am finding it hard to devote time to school administration. All I want to do is play around with paint. I don’t know what Samantha will say when she comes
back.’

A car I didn’t recognize was driving slowly up the snowy drive. ‘I wonder who that is.’ Dad sounded weary. ‘I was hoping the snow would mean a few more days of peace and
quiet before I start preparing for next term.’ I didn’t think we were far away from the time when he’d tell us he was ready to think about retirement.

The small jeep stopped near the steps. A man got out: young, fit. He was taking something out of the back of the car, a parcel wrapped in Christmas paper. I stopped in my tracks. Dad
wasn’t paying attention to the car, obviously preferring to remain out in the grounds, off duty. Samantha was in the house if the visitor had come on school business.

‘You know what,’ I said. ‘I might go in now. I want to sort out some stuff.’

‘What
stuff
?’ He sounded amused at what he’d call my bad use of the language, but his attention was really on the turf beneath the frost. He was prodding it with a toe.
‘I wonder how this new grass seed will stand up to the winter.’

‘Ski stuff.’ In the loft of my apartment there was still a case with my boots and jacket in it.

‘Planning a trip?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘With Hugh?’

‘Maybe. See you later, Dad.’

I whistled to the dog and ran over the white lawn, heart leaping. My breath formed question marks in the clear air as I went to meet my husband. Hugh turned to look at me and the look on his
face dissolved the question marks.

The dog reached him in a jumble of legs and madly wagging tail. I held my breath, fearing Hugh’s balance wouldn’t hold on the slippery drive. Four hours a day of intense gym work and
physio wasn’t enough to prepare any man for the canine welcome he was getting. I had to throw my arms around my husband to stop him from overbalancing. That was going to be my story if he
pushed me away or recoiled from me.

As it happened, he did neither.

‘Pewter curtain rails, I think.’ Emily stepped down from the stool and folded the tape measure. ‘I saw some in John Lewis. You could pick them up when you go
back for the fabric.’

She wrote some measurements in her notepad. ‘We were going for pinch pleats, weren’t we? And the repeat on the material you liked was thirteen centimetres. So here’s how much
you need to buy.’ She wrote the figure. The baby crawled over towards her sewing basket. ‘No, sweetie, too many sharp things in there for you.’ She picked him up and shot an
apologetic look at his mother. ‘Oh, sorry, do you mind? I can’t resist babies.’

‘Not at all, he’s everywhere at the moment.’ Jennifer Andrews was already juggling a toddler on one hip. The twins were busy pulling feathers out of one of the new cushion
pads. ‘He’s only just started crawling. No sense of danger.’

‘No worries.’ Emily smiled at the baby. He really did have a cute little face. ‘Hey, it’s going to be hard for you to go back to the shop with all the crew, isn’t
it? It’s just that I could actually start on the curtains tonight if I’ve got the material and the other bits.’

‘I’ve got the double buggy.’ But Jennifer sounded doubtful.

‘I’ll come back with you. At least that’ll be two pairs of adult hands.’ Emily kept her eyes on the baby.

‘I couldn’t possibly ask you to do that.’

‘No trouble at all. I always need stuff from John Lewis.’

‘Well, it would be easier . . .’ Jennifer seemed to be balancing her fear of taking advantage of an amiable New Zealand stranger with the sheer horror of escorting four under-fours
into Reading again.

‘Let’s go, then.’

Emily helped bundle infants into coats and located the baby’s changing bag behind the sofa. ‘I just never seem to get straight.’ Jennifer fished her car keys out of a
child’s slipper. ‘Tim comes home at night and he doesn’t say anything but I know he thinks the house is such a mess.’

It was.

‘Men don’t realize how much effort it takes to run a house at the same time as you’ve got all the kids to look after,’ Emily offered.

Jennifer didn’t say anything. Emily kicked herself.
Steady, steady, don’t say anything that sounds like criticism of her husband. You’re just the curtain maker. She only
knows you from an ad in the corner shop
.

‘We lost our au pair,’ Jennifer said at last. ‘She didn’t give us any notice. It was a bit of a blow.’

Emily already knew this. She’d met the au pair in the nightclub a week back and heard all about the Russian boyfriend who was going to whisk her away from all this. ‘Too bad,’
she said. ‘It’ll be easy enough to get another one, though, won’t it?’ She followed with the baby as they walked to the car on the drive. New, expensive and a touch clunky.
But it would need to be large with all these kids. The house was large, too.