What Have I Done? (5 page)

On better days, she could find humour in the fact that the rumour mill among the pupils had it laid down as fact that she was a sex maniac who insisted on indulging in a wild and frantic love life on a nightly basis. Why else would there be the constant need for the laundering of bed linen? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink… Saucy Mrs Brooker, lucky Mr Brooker. Was that why she always looked so exhausted, so weak, and he so happy, so smug?

She would sometimes stare at her reflection, pondering her skinny frame and nervous expression, her pale demeanour, the dark circles under her eyes, her cellist’s fingers with their square-cut nails and her blunt-bobbed haircut. Pulling her olive-coloured cardigan over her linen skirt, she would think,
That’s me, a regular sex kitten
.

Kathryn wandered back into the kitchen, reluctantly abandoning the warmth of the early-morning sun, and started to clear the breakfast things from the scrubbed pine table that dominated the room.

A marmalade-smeared plate and an empty coffee mug were the only evidence that her son Dominic still lived under
their Georgian roof. Their interactions were minimal, so she welcomed these little reminders that he was still around, living in the same space, even if she hadn’t actually seen him. At the moment he appeared to be playing the role of a reluctant lodger who sought the solace of his own room at every opportunity. The truth, she suspected, was that he was probably sneaking off to the comfort of someone else’s room at every opportunity, someone in the girls’ dorm. She was pretty sure it was Emily Grant who was the latest object of his affections, but there was no point commenting or getting involved – it would be another identikit, glossy-haired lovely in a few weeks’ time. This seemed to be how it worked nowadays.

There were many aspects of her son’s life, not just his courtship rituals, that Kathryn simply did not understand. Far from disapprove, however, she was in fact happy for him, happy for both of her children. Delighted that they were living busy, joyful lives, full of fun and excitement, with a host of possibilities ahead. She needed to know that this was how it was and that there was a whole world out there for them to grab with both hands and run with; otherwise, what was the point?

The Brooker family had lived in the house for seven years, having moved there in the September when Mark had been promoted from head of year to headmaster. It was a wonderful achievement, the youngest head of school ever to be appointed. It meant a happy life for her and her family; this had to be true because everyone had told her so, even her sister, Francesca. Kathryn had detected the vaguest hint of jealousy and for Francesca to be jealous, it most certainly had to be true.

She knew that the outside world saw her as the fortunate Kathryn Brooker, living a fulfilling life in a lovely two-hundred-year-old house with her perfect family and a rosy future. Many envied her charmed existence, her prestige and her material
wealth. Not to mention that she had bagged the rather handsome Mark Brooker – the girl had definitely been punching above her weight on
that
day. This amused Kathryn, knowing that if they walked in her sensible shoes for a day and a night, they would be clamouring to escape, clawing at the flint stones until their fingernails ripped away, scrambling over the walls until knees were raw, and digging with bare, bloodied hands at the very foundations to make a tunnel. They would try anything and stop at nothing to be free of the charmed life she led.

There was something about living in a school house on school grounds in a building that was joined on to the school that meant that she never quite felt like it was hers. Which was quite right – it wasn’t. The majority of the time, Kathryn felt more like a curator or custodian than a home-maker. She took extra care of the blackened range, original window cording and parquet flooring, as if she would be judged on the state in which she kept this venerable property and the state in which she handed it back. This of course is exactly how history would have judged her, had some other more significant and somewhat more shocking event not occurred, rendering the cleanliness of her windows and their dust-free cording quite irrelevant.

The children had been young when they moved in and it had taken a while for them all to get used to the new set-up. Lydia could no longer run around ‘nudey dudey’ after her bath, not with masters and pupils dropping in unannounced. And Dominic had had to say a reluctant goodbye to his beloved pet chickens, Nugget and Kiev; the prospect of having to repeatedly retrieve them as they pecked around the cricket crease could not be countenanced. Once had been enough to cause much annoyance to the visiting Millfield eleven, who to this day were convinced it had been a clever tactic to divert and conquer.

Those youngsters were now teenagers, Lydia fifteen and
Dominic sixteen. Being the headmaster’s children meant that you were either extremely popular or unpopular for all the wrong reasons. Thankfully for the Brooker children, they had already been at the school for a number of years prior to their dad’s appointment as head honcho, so they were established and accepted. It also helped that they were both considered attractive by their peers. They had inherited Kathryn’s rangy physique and the striking face of their father translated very well onto those sharp, young cheekbones. They were funny, cool kids who were well liked, regardless of their parents’ status.

Mark, of course, flourished in such an environment, constantly in character and always ready to perform. He engaged in banter with the children and displayed the jovial camaraderie that made him a hit with the masters. He appeased and buttered up the parents, offering a firm handshake to the wealthy fathers and all the time in the world to discuss minutiae with the coiffed and toned mummies. He was in complete control of all he surveyed, a very happy man.

Kathryn, however, upon taking up residence in the ‘big house’, had felt her refuge diminish until it was non-existent. Earlier in Mark’s career, when they had lived in rented accommodation in Finchbury, she at least could spend the daytimes away from his obsessive gaze. Until he returned from school, there was no one to watch her, no eyes waiting to see how she did things, what she wore, what she said or ate, who she sat with, spoke to, when she arrived and when she left. Life in the head’s house was very different; the list of things that were forbidden, permitted and expected was long and ever changing. It was in this fluid environment of constant scrutiny that she existed. ‘Existed’ was the word Kathryn used when thinking about her situation – ‘lived’ would imply
that she had a life, and she did not. Kathryn had no life at all.

As she scraped the breakfast detritus into the bin and loaded the plates into the dishwasher with the rest of the china, her mind flitted back to the early hours of that Thursday morning in June, nineteen years ago. She had been twenty-one, her sister Francesca nineteen. They were both still living at home with their parents, occupying adjacent bedrooms in the cramped, semi-detached house.

Kathryn had padded into Francesca’s room and gently shaken the blanket-wrapped shoulder of her sleeping sibling. She hadn’t wanted to wake her, but knew if she didn’t share the news that was threatening to burst from her, she would very probably explode.

‘Francesca, are you asleep?’

‘Mmmmnnnn… Go away…’ Francesca mumbled.

‘Wake up! I really need to tell you something.’

Even in her semi-conscious fog, Francesca knew from her sister’s tone that resistance was futile. She reached out an arm and snapped the lamp on the bedside table into life.

‘For God’s sake, Katie, this better be good.’

Rubbing her eyes, she focussed on her sister’s blushing face.

‘Well, go on then!’

Francesca’s irritable prompting rather robbed her of her moment, but she proceeded nonetheless.

‘Guess what?’

‘What?’

‘Francesca, you’re supposed to guess! Come on!’

‘For God’s sake, Katie, you’re really annoying me now! We’re not children any more; it’s three o’clock in the bloody morning. I’ve got to be up for work in three hours. So, you either tell me now why you’ve woken me up or bugger off and leave me alone!’

‘Okay, grumpy, you are not going to believe this, but Mark has asked me to marry him!’

Kathryn clapped her hands together and let the news hang in the air. Francesca reached over and located her glasses, perching them on the tip of her nose. She leant forward as though improved visual focus would help her mentally focus as well.

‘He has asked you to
marry
him?’

‘Yes! Can you believe it?’

Her sister thought for a few seconds. ‘Frankly, no. I thought you were going to say you’d shagged him.’

‘Oh for goodness sake, Fran, you are so gross! Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘Truthfully, honey? I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

‘I mean… Look, Katie, I love you, but you are a bit like a character in a
Famous Five
novel who doesn’t realise that there is a big bad world out there. Even though I’m the youngest, I’ve always felt as if you needed my protection. We all do, in fact.’

‘Do you?’ It wasn’t exactly news to her that Francesca felt that she was a total idiot, but her parents as well?

‘Yeah, kind of. And this Mark… It’s great that you’re so happy, but he’s your first proper boyfriend, you’ve only known him five minutes, and you haven’t even, you know… Sex is very important!’

‘Oh for goodness sake, there has to be more to a relationship than sex!’

‘There does? Okay, don’t look like that, I’m kidding, kind of. I am happy if you are happy, but I don’t think that you should be rushing into anything.’

‘Actually we have been going out for three and a half months and I love him, Fran, and he loves me.’

Kathryn chose not to divulge the frenzied kissing and aggressive smooching that left her more excited and alive than she had ever felt. This she knew boded well for a satisfying love life in the future.

‘Blurgh! Pass the bucket!’

Kathryn punched her sister on the arm.

‘I’m truly chuffed for you, sis, but there’s something about Mark that I’m not quite sure about…’

‘What do you mean?’ Kathryn’s voice was a high-pitched squeal, she looked close to tears.

Francesca decided to backtrack.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t got to know him yet or maybe he isn’t relaxed with us because it’s all new for him as well.’

These words caused Kathryn to brighten again. Yes, that would be it.

‘All I am saying is, Katie, why don’t you have a long engagement, get the sex out of the way, get to know each other a bit and see how it works out. Worst-case scenario, you get to keep the rock; best-case scenario, you end up with the love of your life!’

‘I don’t have to wait or have a long engagement. Mark
is
the love of my life, he is so gorgeous and he feels the same, we just know.’

‘How do you “just know”? Do you remember how much you loved jacket potatoes when you were little and then you discovered pasta and
that
became your favourite? Maybe Mark is your jacket potato?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, he is not my jacket potato! I can’t explain it, but we
do
know. Mark says why wait if we have found what we would only spend our future searching for. It would be like wasting years, only to reach the conclusion that we were right all along!’

‘Well, mate, when you put it like that!’

‘I know you’re taking the mick out of me, but I don’t care, Fran, not tonight.’

‘Katie, I am pleased for you, but can’t you just have a nice little love affair and see if it wears off? Just in case?’

‘Mark says we should jump in while the water’s warm!’

‘“Mark says”, “Mark says…”. Blimey, Katie, you want to be careful there.’

‘What do you mean, “be careful”? Why?’

She couldn’t hide the slight irritation in her voice; she was in the first stages of love and any negativity directed at the object of her desire felt like daggers being plunged into her heart.

‘Because you are a strong, smart girl and I don’t want you to lose any bit of yourself, ever. No man is worth that.’

This was a phrase that Kathryn replayed in her mind many times in the coming years. She should have listened to her baby sister, wise and prophetic beyond her years. She wished she had listened.

She replayed it now as she studied the hand-painted mug in her hand. ‘
I don’t want you to lose any bit of yourself, ever
.’ What would she say to her sister now? She imagined trying to phrase the words. They saw each other so infrequently that when they did meet up, there was always an awkward hour or so when they had to relearn how to act in the other’s company. It was so different from being with a friend or a colleague; being with a sister was unique.

It didn’t matter what either of them achieved or how much time passed, it was hard for Kathryn to play the role of contented grown-up, to deceive. Not when they shared so much history. Francesca knew her sister back to front, inside out. There were so many fond memories that they used to retell over and over until they became hysterical with laughter. Kathryn’s favourite
was about one night during a childhood holiday, the two of them top-to-toeing in a rusty Cornish caravan, aged six and eight. They had eaten so much chocolate that Kathryn threw up out of the window, only to discover that the window was closed. Her parents spent the best part of the next day hosing Caramac from the velour interior of their rented home.

Part of their awkwardness now was down to the fact that Mark never left them alone for a second; it was as if he was monitoring them, making them mindful of their conversation. He was careful to steer them onto topics that he felt were appropriate, and he was always slightly anxious until after her sister left. His nerves were not obvious to anyone else, but Kathryn noted that he spoke a little quicker than usual and laughed a little too loudly. He needn’t have been concerned; she could never have told. She would never have told.

It was all too difficult. What would she like to say to her sister? ‘
You were right, Fran, I should have listened to you because I haven’t just lost a bit of myself, I have lost all of myself. I wish I’d listened to you, but I didn’t, did I?
’