Hidden Cottage (42 page)
But try as she might to convince herself that her silence was all that it would take to put Owen behind her, the fear of discovery was still there. What if Owen said something?
Or worse, what if someone else had noticed something and some of the stares she received from people in the village were not of sympathy, but of suspicion?
It was always possible that without someone with whom she could share the secret and her remorse, she had become paranoid. But that, she supposed, was what a guilty conscience did to one. It was probably why so many people confessed and made a clean break of things – to be free of the burden of knowing they had done something very wrong.
Would that ultimately be the only way she too would feel free?
It was a blustery autumn morning and the sky was grey. It looked like it was going to rain. But Madison didn’t care. It was the first day of half-term – Saturday morning – and they were flying to America to stay with Grandma Barb and Grandpa Tom. ‘It’s time for your grandparents to check me out,’ JC had joked when they told her about the trip. ‘They need to be sure I’m good enough for your mum.’
Grandma Barb had told her all about the things they would do together, and that she’d got Grandpa to repaint the little room that Madison would sleep in and that she was getting the house ready for Halloween. Mum said that Grandma had always gone a bit crazy when it came to Halloween and that she liked to decorate the house from top to bottom with anything that was spooky or shaped like a pumpkin.
Staring ahead through the windscreen, Madison saw a man jogging towards them on the grass verge.
‘There’s Owen!’ she cried out abruptly. Embarrassed by the loudness of her voice in the quiet of the car, she said, ‘Can we say goodbye to him, please?’
For a moment she didn’t think Mia was going to stop, but then the car slowed and came to a standstill as Owen also stopped. Madison lowered the window, as did JC in the front.
Breathing hard, Owen said, ‘You’re all set, then?’
JC nodded. ‘Yep, we’re ready for lift-off. Madison just wanted to say goodbye.’
Owen moved to the rear of the car and smiled at her. ‘You be sure to have a good holiday,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you when you’re back, and be warned, we have the talent show and your exam to prepare for.’ He smiled at Mum and then turned to look at Mia in the front. But Mia wasn’t looking his way. She was staring straight ahead through the windscreen. She seemed to be concentrating very hard on nothing in particular. She did a lot of that. Staring into the distance. She never used to, not before Daisy died. Madison also noticed that her hands were gripping the steering wheel, her knuckles showing white and ugly, almost like the bones were poking through. Madison felt sorry for Owen – he seemed to want to say something to Mia, but it was obvious she didn’t want to say anything to him. It was as if they’d had a big row and Mia no longer wanted to be friends with him. Madison couldn’t think why.
‘Well, then,’ Owen said, straightening up, ‘I’d better let you get on. Safe journey!’
‘Bye!’ they said at the same time. All except for Mia.
As they drove away from the verge, Madison raised herself up and leant out of the window to wave at Owen. He waved back and again Madison felt sorry for him. What could they have argued about for Mia to be so rude to him?
Mia had been gone for a while when Jeff decided to get up.
Lying in bed, he had listened to her getting ready – the shower running, drawers opening and shutting, footsteps crossing the landing then going down the stairs, the rumble of the kettle boiling, the sound of keys being scooped up, the back door shutting and then finally the sound of his car starting up.
His
car because they’d only just got around to buying a replacement for Mia’s old Golf and it wasn’t big enough for all the luggage.
Showered and dressed, he went downstairs and found a note left for him by the kettle.
Sorry, no ground coffee, I forgot to buy some yesterday
.
He stood staring out of the window at the leaden sky. Behind him, the clock on the wall ticked inexorably in the silence. It was a loud, ponderous tick. An annoying tick. It was there in the deafening silence of every meal he and Mia now shared. He considered getting a chair and reaching up to the clock and smashing it on the floor, but he couldn’t be bothered.
Instead, he pulled on his coat to go in search of some coffee.
On the green, a gust of chilly wind was shaking the leaves from the oak tree, chasing them across the grass. He buttoned his coat and thought how much he now hated Saturday mornings. Monday to Friday, he could get through the days. Work was his salvation. So long as he had that – a full diary, wall-to-wall meetings, endless reports to prepare or read, planes to catch – he knew where he was. It was the long empty hours of the weekend that he couldn’t cope with. He had no idea how to fill them, other than burying himself in yet more work and finding ways to avoid talking to anyone. There was nothing he could say to people, nothing that meant anything.
He was no nearer accepting the horror of Daisy’s death than he had been back in July when it happened. How could he be? How could he ever get over the loss of his precious daughter? Or his regret that he hadn’t resolved matters with her? He felt sick in his heart whenever he thought of the dreadful last words they had exchanged. He had never believed in heaven – he still didn’t – but he needed to imagine that Daisy was somewhere better than this bloody awful place and that she knew he was sorry, sorrier than he could ever put into words.
Several times he had stood at the foot of her grave in the churchyard and begged her forgiveness, but not once had he ever experienced any kind of response or relief. And he knew he never would because she wasn’t there. He could not bring himself to picture her there beneath the ground, shut in a box, her body decaying, her insides being . . .
He stopped himself short. Enough! Better to picture her in her old room, lying on the bed happily listening to music, magazines and clothes strewn messily all over the carpet. It was why he slept in there, it was the only place he could remember her properly. As she was. His perfect little baby girl.
Yet for all the painful suffering of his grief, he still had not cried. While he could not imagine feeling any worse than he did, he was beginning to fear that he was undergoing some form of delayed shock, that something more devastating than this agony awaited him.
He pushed open the shop door and as the tinkly bell announced his presence to those inside – Bob, Wendy and Muriel – he braced himself for the inevitable sympathetic expressions, the excessively considerate handling of him.
Bob was the first to speak. ‘Morning, Mr Channing,’ he said in the awkwardly moderated voice he now used to speak to him. ‘Looks like autumn’s really with us now, doesn’t it? I was only saying to Muriel a few minutes ago, I don’t know where this year’s gone.’
Jeff nodded silently.
From the window where she was arranging a display of pumpkins, Wendy smiled at him. ‘Goodness,’ she said, her tone almost as sickly as her pink lipstick, ‘it’ll be Christmas before we know it.’
Adding a loaf of bread into her wire basket, Muriel groaned. ‘Oh, please don’t remind me, not when I still have so much to do for the show. I’m convinced this year we won’t be ready in time.’
Christmas
, Jeff thought with a brutal stab of pain. Christmas without Daisy. His first Christmas without her. How would he get through it?
He found the ground coffee he wanted and went to pay for it.
Muriel had got there before him.
‘That’s all right,’ she said, ‘you go ahead. I’m in no hurry.’
More kindness and consideration. He wished they wouldn’t do it. It didn’t help. He didn’t want their pity. He’d prefer it if they ignored him.
He had his wallet out of his pocket when Muriel said, ‘I was wondering, Jeff, whether you might have given the show any more thought.’
He jerked his head up. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, I don’t think I could possibly—’ The words got stuck in his throat and he fiddled with his wallet.
She looked at him, her face unnaturally softened with benevolence. ‘It won’t be the same without you. You—’ She hesitated. ‘You don’t think it might do you good? You know, give you something else to think about. Something fun. Something to cheer you up.’
He stared at her, summoning the right response. ‘Muriel, I know you mean well, but really there isn’t anything in this world that could cheer me up.’
Suddenly unable to take another word or expression of their understanding, and terrified he would break down in front of them, he slammed a handful of coins down on the counter. His heart beating fast and desperate to escape, he threw open the shop door with a crash. The bell tinkled loudly as if in protest.
Out on the pavement, he stepped into the road and felt like a truck had hit him. The air knocked from him, he fell to the ground with a heavy thump, conscious only of a man in shorts and a T-shirt above him. When he’d caught his breath he saw that the man was Owen Fletcher and he was bending down, a hand outstretched to help him to his feet. In an instant, the control he’d been struggling to retain welled up inside him and converted itself to furious anger. He pushed the proffered hand away and got to his feet. ‘Watch where you’re going,’ he snarled.
Owen took a step back. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘Are you OK? Any damage done?’
To add insult to injury, Muriel with Bob and Wendy in tow now appeared on the pavement, making his humiliation complete. ‘I’m fine,’ he snapped, before they could fuss over him.
‘You forgot your coffee,’ Muriel said, holding out the packet to him and looking worried.
Fighting to keep his composure, Jeff took the bag of coffee from her. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered in a strangled voice.
He set off across the green. Bloody Owen Fletcher, he thought miserably. Why was it whenever he was in that smug bastard’s company he felt like punching him hard? There the man was, cruising through life with not a care in the world. It was enough to make him sick.
Owen raised the axe and, swinging it through a perfect arc, cleaved the log in two. He then rearranged the pieces and chopped the two into four.
‘Not bad,’ Rich said, taking the axe from him. ‘Now I’ll show you how it’s really done. Load me up.’
Smiling, Owen placed a log on the tree stump that now made the ideal chopping block and stood back. ‘Ready when you are.’
Rich took his first swing and the blade of the axe dug deep, but the log didn’t split. He lifted the axe and the log came with it. ‘Must be a sticky bit of wood,’ he said, pulling a face.
‘Yeah right, nothing to do with being a total rookie.’
‘Hey, fella, no dissing me when I’ve got a dangerous weapon in my hand.’
Owen laughed. ‘First rule of woodcutting, leave it to an expert. Here, give it to me.’
‘What, and have you gloating for the rest of the day? Not on your life!’
Still laughing, and glad to have his friend here, he said, ‘Trust you to turn a simple task into a championship face-off.’
Two hours later and with the hawthorn trees that Joe had helped Owen to cut down earlier in the week now chopped and piled in the wood store, Owen proposed a beer. The light was fading and the temperature was dropping fast, but still warm from their exertions, the two men sat on the veranda, chinked bottles and sighed deeply and contentedly.
With Catherine away on a girls’ spa weekend, Rich had rung yesterday and invited himself for Sunday lunch, and after they’d put away epic amounts of roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, carrots, and the last of the runner beans from the garden, Owen had declared them in need of some exercise. Eager for another sofa ride, Rich’s hopes had been dashed when Owen gave him the news the sofa had been taken away by the council some weeks ago. His disappointment had been short-lived when he’d taken one look at the logs Owen had made a start on already and had rolled up his sleeves with typical enthusiasm. ‘Soon have the rest chopped,’ he’d declared.
‘You’re becoming quite the man of the soil,’ Rich said now. ‘Growing your own food, chopping your own wood . . . what next, I ask myself – self-sufficiency with a pig and a goat in the garden?’
‘There are halfway measures, you know.’
‘Some hens, then? How about fresh eggs every morning?’
Owen took a long swig of his beer. ‘A nice idea, but who would look after them when I’m not here?’
Rich eyed him thoughtfully. ‘Thinking of getting away, are you? Bored with playing the country bumpkin already?’
‘And there you go again. There really are no half measures with you.’
‘Hey, all I’m doing is an honest bit of fishing. I’ve been here since half past twelve and while I’ve been happy to hear about your flourishing career as a piano teacher, the one-day course down in London and all about the Little Pelham’s Got Talent show, not a word have you said about the married woman in the village here who’d so captivated you. And that’s despite my subtle and not-so-subtle hints.’
‘I told you ages ago that it was over between us.’
‘That was
then
. What about
now
? Has nothing changed?’
Owen ran a hand over his unshaven chin and looked up at the darkening sky. ‘No.’
‘Come on, give me more than that.’
‘There really isn’t more to tell. Since the death of her youngest daughter she’s avoided me. In a nutshell, and this is my reading of the situation, she associates our affair with being happy and that’s an emotion she won’t allow herself to feel again.’
‘She said that?’
‘No. What she actually said was far worse. She’s convinced herself it was a mistake and that it brought about the death of her daughter.’
‘Right. That twisted old cookie of karma payback. God help you, in that case.’
‘Grief makes people behave in a variety of ways; this is her way of coping, I guess. There doesn’t have to be any logic involved.’
In the silence that followed, Owen thought of Mia’s steadfast refusal to so much as look at him yesterday morning when he’d been out jogging and Madison had wanted to say goodbye.