The Secret by the Lake (6 page)

I put the old fuse on the table and picked up the new one. Julia passed me the wire.

‘Back then, Dr Croucher used to run his surgery from the cottage next door,’ she said. ‘Mrs Croucher let me help her with the dispensing. She called me “Nurse Cummings”! And the doctor showed me all his instruments and explained what they did. I was allowed to practise using the stethoscope on him.’

I smiled and wound the wire around the casing.

‘Mother came back eventually, but she was different. She packed me off to ballet school as soon as she could. It was as if she could hardly wait to be rid of me.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘That’s what it felt like. Once I was at school, I rarely came home. Mother always had some reason why I couldn’t be here for the holidays so I stayed at school or with friends. She’d come to visit me every now and then, but it wasn’t the same.’

‘No?’

‘No. I was so glad to leave school. And then, of course, I joined the company and I was dancing, travelling round Europe, which was marvellous and exciting and a long way from here, and then I met Alain and I was living a different life and this all seemed so far away. It didn’t belong to me.’ She looked up at me. ‘You must have wondered, Amy, when you were working for us, why I never took Vivi to visit her English grandmother.’

I didn’t reply. I had privately speculated, of course, on the reasons for the rift between Julia and her mother – her father was long dead by then – but she had never spoken of them and I had not liked to ask.

‘I didn’t visit my mother because she wanted me to stay away,’ Julia said. ‘She didn’t want me to bring Viviane here.’

She was speaking quietly but I could hear the bitterness and hurt in her voice.

‘Why didn’t she?’ I asked.

‘Because she was ashamed. Because of Caroline. She didn’t want Vivi to be tainted.’

I waited for her to explain but she said nothing more on the subject of her sister. Instead she said: ‘The only time I returned was for Mother’s funeral.’

‘Yes. I remember.’

It had been three years earlier, during a particularly unpleasant winter. Julia and Alain had returned to Blackwater for the burial. I’d stayed in Paris with Viviane.

Julia sighed. ‘I never thought, not for a single moment, that I would end up living back in Blackwater.’

‘This is only temporary.’

‘I hope so.’ Julia watched as I cut off the end of the wire. She worked at a scratch in the fibre of the wood of the kitchen table-top with her thumbnail. ‘Have you fixed it?’

‘I think so.’ I stood and slotted the fuse back in the box.

‘Ready?’ I asked. Julia nodded. I lifted the main switch and the kitchen light flickered and then began to glow more brightly.

‘Well done,’ Julia said, but she did not smile. She reached across the table, took hold of my hand, raised it to her lips and kissed it. Then she said: ‘I have such a headache, dear, I think I’ll go upstairs and lie down for a while. Would you be an angel and bring me up a cup of tea and an aspirin?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

I helped her to her feet, and Julia leaned on me as we made our way up the stairs. When we reached the landing, I glanced towards the empty bedroom. The door was open a few inches. There seemed to be an unfathomable loneliness behind it.

THE NEXT DAY,
the temperature dropped suddenly. A cold wind whipped around the cottage, leaves blew along the path and gathered in the corners. The loose gutter above the empty bedroom banged repeatedly, like somebody trying to get in. Down in the valley the surface of the lake was unhappy, roughed up. A mist of spray was forming over the dam where the water was throwing itself against the wall with a violence I had not seen before. It was deeply unsettling.

I went to the shops, and by the time I returned, my hands were red and raw. I filled the scuttle and spent an age kneeling at the front living-room grate, lighting rolled-up sheets of newspaper, burning my fingers on match after match as I tried to make the fire take. Julia sat behind me on the couch. She was playing with her glasses, turning them over between her fingers.

‘While you were out,’ she said, ‘I spoke to Mrs Croucher.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘She says there’s a lovely new school in the next village along. It’s called Hailswood, and by coincidence I used to go to school with the headmaster, Eric Leeson, when he was a boy. Mrs Croucher says she’s certain he’d take Vivi and withhold the fees for a few months, until I can afford to pay. She’s going to ask the doctor to make the arrangements.’

‘That sounds ideal.’

‘It does, doesn’t it? They’re apparently very keen on encouraging the arts, music and sports at Hailswood; they even have their own choir. And it’s a small school, so it won’t be too overwhelming for Vivi.’

I poked at the damp coal. ‘It’ll be good for her to make some real friends,’ I said.

Julia reached across the armchair and put her hand on my shoulder. ‘As opposed to pretend ones, you mean?’

‘Well, yes.’ I glanced at Julia. ‘She’s told you about her new imaginary friend?’

Julia nodded. ‘Caroline.’

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit odd? The name, I mean?’

‘It can’t be coincidence. It must have been the name on the plaque on the bedroom door that inspired Vivi.’

‘That’s what I thought too.’ I was trying to gauge if Julia minded this appropriation of her sister’s name. Julia was looking down at her glasses, rubbing at a scratch on one of the lenses with the pad of her thumb.

‘Vivi does seem to be spending a great deal of time with Caroline at present,’ she said. ‘We thought she’d grown out of the whole imaginary friend phase. We hadn’t heard anything of Emily for months. Alain used to tease her about it and she was embarrassed. She used to say: “I’m too big for such nonsense now.”’

I took hold of Julia’s hands. ‘I have to tell you, Julia, I’ve asked Vivi about it and she told me that imaginary Caroline and your sister Caroline are one and the same. The two have become confused in her mind.’

‘Oh!’ said Julia.

Behind my back, the flames flickered in the grate. I could hear the moisture hissing in the coal, the smoke being sucked up the chimney. And outside, the wind rattled the drainpipes and howled mournfully in the eaves. The loose gutter banged on the wall. I could feel Julia’s tension, the tremble of anxiety in her cold hands.

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t like the sound of that at all. It’s one thing having an active imagination, but talking to somebody who you know is dead is something else altogether.’

I tried to keep my voice relaxed when I spoke. ‘It’s important that we don’t make this into more than it is. We must be gentle with Vivi. She’s hurting. She needs time to recover from the shock of losing her father – and talking to Caroline, no matter who she thinks Caroline is, is obviously her way of dealing with her grief. If it’s helping her, then I can’t see how it can be such a terrible thing.’

‘But Amy, this can’t be normal – it can’t be healthy! Don’t you think it’s an awfully morbid thing for Vivi to be doing? At her age, she should be playing with her skipping rope and reading storybooks, not communing with the dead. She shouldn’t even be thinking about such things. This is awful!’

‘Julia, please … if you overreact or come down too heavily on Vivi, you’ll only frighten her or make her feel that she’s done something wrong. She might start hiding it from us, or telling lies. As long as we keep an eye on it, and make sure it doesn’t evolve into anything more … well, sinister … then it will be fine. I’m sure this phase will pass soon enough, just as all the other phases have passed.’

‘Oh, I hope you’re right.’ Julia let go of my hand and reached for her tumbler. Ice clinked against the glass. She took a drink, swallowed, swirled the gin around the ice cubes then suddenly burst out: ‘No. No, it’s
not
all right. The thing is, Amy, it’s more complicated than you realize. My sister, Caroline, well … she was a troubled girl who led a short, difficult life. She was the kind of person who made other people unhappy.’ Julia drained her glass. ‘I know this is an unkind thing to say about my own sister, but if Caroline were still alive, I wouldn’t want my daughter going anywhere near her.’

I was shocked by this, although I did not show it. Instead I said, with all the conviction I could muster: ‘But Vivi’s not
really
talking to Caroline. She’s merely fitting your sister’s existence on to her imaginary friend, as if she were fitting clothes on to a paper doll. Don’t you see, it’s better that she does this than suppress her grief and hide it away. That merely saves up the pain for the future.’

‘How can you be sure that this is what Vivi’s doing?’

‘I can’t be absolutely sure but I read a great deal about child psychology during my training and this sounds exactly like the kind of thing that might happen in these circumstances.’

Julia was unconvinced. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right,’ she said. ‘I still don’t like it one bit.’

I squeezed her hand. ‘If all goes to plan, Vivi will be starting at her new school soon. There’ll be lots of distractions. Why don’t we wait and see what happens then?’

‘It’s about all we can do. I have no other ideas and not a great many options.’ Julia smiled ruefully. ‘Would you be a darling and go and top up my drink, Amy? My hip’s killing me. You might want to fetch some more kindling too. It doesn’t look as if that fire’s taking.’

She was right. The pyramid I’d made of newspaper and sticks had collapsed and now the coals were merely steaming in the grate.

I poked at the coal. ‘The chimney doesn’t seem to be drawing properly,’ I said.

‘That fire’s always been awkward, ever since Father bricked up the fireplace in Caroline’s room,’ Julia said.

‘Why did he brick it up?’

‘Oh … After Caroline died, my mother was convinced she could still hear her voice in the bedroom. Father said it was the wind in the chimney. Dr Croucher helped him seal the opening. We’ve had problems lighting fires in this room ever since.’

MRS CROUCHER WAS
as good as her word and did exactly what she’d promised Julia she would do. She went to the nursing home, Sunnyvale, and spoke to her husband, who telephoned the headmaster of Hailswood School and the relevant arrangements were soon made. Viviane was to start the following week. There was little time to prepare but I took her into Bristol on the bus to buy her uniform.

It was an adventure and a joy to be away from the cottage and amongst crowds of people, to have the distraction of shops with brightly lit windows full of Christmas decorations, and kiosks on the streets selling roast chestnuts and hot potatoes, and jolly carollers singing on the podium in the middle of the shopping centre. Viviane enjoyed it too. Her eyes were bright and there was colour in her cheeks. We walked the cold pavements, weaving in and out of the shoppers, dodging the crammed buses. Vivi walked close beside me, so close that nobody could come between us. She slipped her hand into mine, and I held her tightly.

We went into the shoe shop first. Viviane’s feet were measured, and we bought some brown lace-up school shoes. Vivi complained they were ugly and she had a point, they were clumpy things, but they were practical and they met Hailswood’s specifications. After that we bought the green tunic, grey cardigan, a pair of white blouses and a tie. The regulation coat was terribly expensive, so instead we bought a woven badge and then found a cheaper grey coat in British Home Stores that the badge could be sewed on to; it would do. We also purchased a games bag, a pair of shorts, an aertex shirt and a school hat.

When we returned to Blackwater and were walking along the lane, we saw a man in the front garden of Mrs Croucher’s cottage. He was chopping wood and stacking the logs to one side of the porch. He had taken off his jumper and tied it around his waist by the sleeves. He must have felt my eyes on him because he turned and I recognized him at once as the son of the ill-tempered man who’d been in the jeep in the field. He stood up, took off his gauntlet, and wiped his forehead with his wrist.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Hello.’

‘Go on inside,’ I told Viviane. ‘Show Mummy what we’ve bought.’

Vivi gave me a look that indicated she’d rather stay outside and see what happened next but I gave her a little push and she complied. I walked across to the wall at the front of Mrs Croucher’s cottage.

‘I’m Amy,’ I said.

‘Daniel.’ He smiled. I smiled back. I tucked my hair behind my ear. He held out his hand and I looked at it stupidly for a moment before I realized what he meant by it; I then took it, and shook it, feeling his fingers around mine. We held hands for a moment longer than was necessary. Then I stepped back, self-conscious and lost for words.

‘We met before, down in the field,’ I said eventually.

‘Yes, I remember. My father wasn’t in the best of moods.’

‘No, he certainly wasn’t.’

‘I’m sorry about that. It was nothing to do with you, not exactly. There’s no love lost between the Aldridges and the Cummings family.’

‘Really? How terribly melodramatic. Why?’

‘Julia hasn’t told you?’

‘No.’

Daniel looked away. He hesitated for a moment and then he said: ‘It’s traditional. There’s not much to do out here in the country. We have to make our own entertainment.’

‘Oh. I see.’

‘Anyway,’ he went on, changing the subject, ‘how do you like Blackwater? It’s not too quiet for you?’

‘I’m growing used to it.’

‘You’re not seeing it at its best. In springtime it’s beautiful.’

‘Yes, I’m sure it is.’

‘You should see the birds on the lake.’

‘I’d love to.’

‘Will you still be here in the springtime?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘If you are, then you’ll see what I mean.’

‘Yes.’

We smiled at one another and then there was one of those silences that happen when two people don’t want to stop talking to one another, but neither can think of anything to say. Then I remembered something.