The Vows of Silence (3 page)

But the arguments over it had become too angry.

She and Chris had agreed to go back to work and accept the status quo, focusing on catching up with changes and reacquainting themselves with patients, staff and all the routine of a busy surgery.

“Seen a lot of Dad?” Cat asked now.

Simon made a face. “Took him out to a pub lunch a couple of times. Dropped by, but he was often out. I hate going to Hallam House now.”

“I know you do, but with us away and no Mum he needed you a lot more.”

“Not so’s you’d notice. I took flowers up to Martha’s grave on her anniversary. I rang Dad—thought we could meet up. He wasn’t in. He never mentioned it. I don’t think he’s thought about Martha since she died. Or about Mother come to that.”

“That’s unfair, Simon.”

“Is it?”

Simon had been close to Martha, their handicapped sister, close to Meriel, their mother. Their deaths had been two blows from which he knew he had not recovered and probably never would.

It was easier for Cat. She had Chris, she had three children and she had escaped to Australia.

Escaped? He looked at his sister now, curled in the sagging kitchen armchair with her legs under her, holding a glass of wine. She looked well. But to call it an escape—for her—was wrong. He knew that if Chris had not pushed, she would never have left Lafferton. Cat was like him, a home bird. She seemed entirely settled and content to be back in the farmhouse.

Simon closed his eyes, stroking Mephisto until the cat’s purr was like the throbbing of an engine. He realised exactly how miserable his months without the sanctuary of this house and this family had been.

He let out a deep sigh of contentment.

Four

She didn’t have time to look around and take anything in—the people sitting at tables or standing near the bar—because as she went inside he was there, saying, “Helen? Yes, of course you’re Helen. Let’s get out of here, it’s packed, this was a thoroughly bad idea.”

And he took her elbow and guided her through the door. Outside it was a warm September evening. Dark. The
Old Ship
was strung with fairy lights.

It had taken ten days. She had sent him her details, received his, sent a voicemail message, got one back. It felt right. She was comfortable.

Phil had suggested they meet at this pub in the centre of Lafferton. She hadn’t known it, but both Elizabeth and Tom had said, “Oh, that place is OK. You’ll be fine there.” So here she was.

“Let’s get right out of Lafferton. Do you know the
Croxley Oak
? The food is good so it won’t be empty but we should be able to hear ourselves think.”

“Shall I follow you then?”

“What? No, no, I’ll drive us back here, you can pick up your car later.”

It wasn’t the plan but she was swept along by him, across the car park, into a dark-coloured Peugeot, clicking the seat belt and then off, out of town, on the road, heading somewhere else. It had happened before she could disagree. The country road was dark. Once, a car overtook them too fast. Dark road again.

“Helen, I’m sorry … rushing you off like that. What must you think? I just can’t bear overcrowded bars, but more to the point, some of my students were there. I wasn’t going to meet you for the first time in full view of them.”

“No, it’s fine. Fine.”

The car seemed new. Smelled new. She clutched her bag. Her mobile was safely inside it. After a few minutes she glanced at him sideways, very quickly. The photo had been pretty good. He was not as tall as she’d imagined, but he was not a small man either. She had a phobia about small men.

“What have you been doing today?” he asked. “Tell me from the beginning.”

To her surprise, she did. They sped through the darkness, away from town, away from Tom and Elizabeth, away from everything familiar, away from the place she had told them she would be for the evening, and so, to quell the anxiety she felt riding at night in a fast car with a stranger, she talked through every detail of her day.

*

The
Croxley Oak
had the tawny atmosphere only some good country pubs acquire, mellow, with the pleasant hum of conversation. Helen drank lime and soda, then a glass of white wine; Phil had a single half of bitter and then went on to ginger beer. And they talked. After almost an hour, they ordered home-baked ham with chips and salad, and the chips came thick and handcut, the ham in chunky slices, sweet and lean.

He was talking about some difficulties with one of his school’s department heads, how everyone had to handle her tactfully, how she upset students. It had arisen because Helen had told him about a colleague who had always been exceptionally conscientious and had recently become slack and careless, worrying everyone because it was so out of character. She told Phil she couldn’t take an interest in cricket, though she had tried hard for Tom’s sake when he had been in the school team; he expressed total ignorance of choral music when he learned she was a member of the St Michael’s Singers.

Now, as he shook his head over a remark the department head had made that day to a pupil, Helen looked across the table at Philip Russell and felt an extraordinary sense of having known him all her life. It was as though he had been there, familiar, trusted, even while she had been married to Terry and bringing up their children, somehow living a parallel life which was interwoven with hers. The feeling startled her and in a second it had gone, to be replaced by the knowledge that she was simply enjoying her evening and his company.

“Would you like a pudding? Coffee?”

“I’d like some tea.”

“Good, so would I. Isn’t it great that you can actually get tea in pubs now and no one thinks it odd?” He made to get up, then said, “Helen, do your family know where you are?”

“They know I’m meeting you.”

She felt embarrassed. How could she say, Yes, and my son is sitting at home waiting for a call to tell him to come and rescue me? “Why do you ask?”

He laughed, looking embarrassed himself, and went off to order their tea.

The pub was emptying before they paused in talk about their families—how her Tom was one of those teenagers struggling to find a meaning and a spiritual dimension in his life, and how she worried that most of his friends seemed to be so odd; how his elder son Hugh was spending a year teaching in Africa and the younger, also Tom, was at drama school—against his father’s better judgement. “But I’ll support him all the same. I have to. You have to make up for a lot, don’t you find? Make up for that huge gap in their lives.” His wife had been killed in an appalling electrical accident in the house. He had stated the fact in a way that forbade further enquiry.

“It’s rather late,” Helen said.

“I know, but we’re grown-ups. Nobody’s going to tell us off.”

“Oh yes they are!”

He held open his car door. I am enjoying myself, she thought again. I haven’t enjoyed myself like this for too long.

At her car, in the now deserted yard of the
Old Ship
, he said, “Thank you, Helen. I’ll phone you if I may?”

Turning out into the street and on her route home, glancing in her rear-view mirror as she drove away, she saw that he waited and watched.

Five

Melanie Drew was so happy. It was very quiet, very peaceful, and the early autumn sun was coming in through the window onto the table at which she sat with a packet of thank-you notes. She had written two and had worked out that she still had forty-two to go.

The previous day, a delivery van had arrived from the company, everythingwedding.com, with which they had had their list and it had taken two men the best part of forty minutes to bring all the parcels and boxes out and up the two flights of stairs to the flat. They had been perfectly cheerful about it, though, and after it was all done Melanie had made tea and given them each a piece of wedding cake and they had toasted her in the new blue mugs with white stars.

Now, she took an envelope and wrote on it—but not the address of the aunt who had sent them a hundred pounds.

She wrote:

Melanie Drew.

Melanie Drew.

Melanie Drew.

Mr and Mrs Craig Drew.

Mrs Craig Drew.

Craig and Melanie Drew.

Craig and …

What a waste of an envelope! But she sat in the sun looking at her writing and she couldn’t stop smiling. She hadn’t been able to stop smiling since the wedding two weeks ago.

Now, though, the honeymoon was over, Craig had gone back to work at the estate agent’s yesterday, she had another couple of days off but then she would be heading for the reception desk at Price and Fairbrother. Tonight, they had more wedding presents to open. The flat suddenly seemed very small. The spare room was where Craig wanted to keep stuff like his Wellington boots and waterproof jackets and mittens. Now, it was so full of boxes they could barely open the door. And then there was a mountain of wrapping paper, tissue paper and cardboard to dispose of. Craig was keen on recycling and determined to find out the greenest way of binning it; Melanie had muttered about a bonfire.

“Do you know what you’re saying there, Mel? Bonfire? You can’t have a bonfire. It adds to the carbon levels in the atmosphere.”

“Oh. Right.”

“You should be more concerned.”

“I’m concerned about getting my spare room back, that’s all.”

It had not been a row though. They never rowed. They agreed to differ.

She smiled now and wrote
Mrs Melanie Anita Drew
three times on the envelope.

The sun was warm as well as bright. The flat faced west so it would be like this when they got in from work and for a lot of the evening, right through the spring and summer. They had been lucky to get it, and for the price, though they had worked like slaves for the previous six months replacing the kitchen, taking up ancient lino and rotten floorboards, pulling down sixties wood-effect panelling, ripping out old gas fires, and redecorating. It had paid off. It looked fresh and bright and new and Melanie was delighted with it all. Married life, she thought now. Married life. She and Craig had known one another for three years but never actually lived together, so everything was new, everything was fun, as well as, occasionally, slightly scary.

She looked around the room. Then back to the envelopes. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Midnight-blue Le Creuset cookware, pale blue Nigella Lawson kitchenware, china with hearts and stars, soft white fluffy bathrobes and towels, desk lamps, cutlery, mirrors, clocks, and a massive chandelier made out of tooled wire and hanging crystal beads that she had put down on the wedding list because it looked fun but which was so expensive she had not really thought anyone would ever buy it. Her godmother, who was an actress and liked what she called
“a bit of OTT’, had. The box it came in could have housed a new fridge. The moment it arrived Melanie had had misgivings. Craig hated it.

But it didn’t matter. It was a laugh. It was daft and she was happy. Happy, happy, happy.

She put aside the thank-you notes and opened her laptop. The wedding pictures had gone up on the photographer’s website and she had looked through them several times since they had got home, revelling in every detail. She was still surprised at how much she had missed on the day itself, and also, of course, how much happened that she had never got to see at all—Craig and his brother and ushers arriving at the church, the bridesmaids getting out of the car and her sister Gaynor almost measuring her length and her posy having to be reassembled. They had made a beautiful collage of the reception which by some clever trick moved and changed as you watched—so that every time Mel opened up the website she saw something she hadn’t previously noticed. This time, it was the expression on Adrian’s face, as he was waiting to make his best man speech: he looked as if he were headed for the gallows.

She also had two disks of pictures taken by friends, and she planned to post the best of these on the wedding-day-and-honey moon website she had set up. That way some of the family on her father’s side, who hadn’t been able to join them, could share the day.

She had taken a lot of persuading to have a September wedding. May or June had been her choice, but she’d been shocked at how booked up everywhere got so far ahead and September was the earliest they could
organise. Which had turned out well because most of May and June had been cold and wet and September, including their wedding day, gloriously sunny.

She sat back and closed her eyes and let the sun warm her face, remembering. It was odd. Time did strange things. The day had passed so quickly, in a flash really, and yet ever since it seemed to have expanded and grown so that she could relive it in slow motion, going over every little detail again and again. She thought that Craig probably didn’t. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed it, because she knew he had. But his attitude was: Right, that’s that, it was great, so what’s next?

If she was honest, it not only puzzled her, she was mildly upset.

“Well, he’s a man, isn’t he?” Gaynor had said. “Get over it.”

If she didn’t have to go back to work, she could imagine spending a great many more afternoons like this, looking at the photographs, unpacking and sorting the wedding presents, writing thank-you cards and then starting to get supper ready with all the new kitchen things. She enjoyed her job. They were a nice firm to work for, she liked everyone there and she knew perfectly well that once the novelty of all this had faded she would have gone off her head with boredom alone in the flat all day. All the same, just another couple of weeks would have been nice.

Meanwhile, there was tonight. She was making a Thai chicken recipe with three fresh vegetables and a citrus and walnut salad. Bread. Cheese from the new
Just Cheese
in the Old Market Square—Lafferton’s latest mall of small shops which were very tempting and very expensive. She got up to check on the recipe to see how much longer the chicken had to marinate and discovered that she had forgotten to buy walnuts. That was the sort of thing you could do when you had the day at home to yourself—shop in a leisurely fashion and pop out again if you found you had forgotten something. The flat was less than ten minutes by car from the supermarket on the Bevham Road. She could get walnuts and a bottle of wine. Wandering round the supermarket at half past three in the afternoon was part of the fun of these last days off. Part of being happy.