In Her Shadow (27 page)

As the sun set, I lay on the bench with my knees hooked over the armrest, watching the sky change colour, the
undersides of the clouds illuminated and changing from white to yellow to apricot, orange, gold, pink and scarlet before the sky eventually faded to nothing. I sat up then and watched the night roll in over the sea, and I saw the cows grazing, swishing their tails, their shadows growing longer and longer until they merged with the hedge shadows and all the shadows were one, and a tractor, in the distance, made lines in a crop-field as the day died away. I felt a great emotional affinity with all of life, and at the same time was as lonely as the moon. I emptied all four cans of cider, weed behind a bush, which was difficult because my balance wasn’t very good, had a bout of hiccups, which I managed to stop by knocking back several mouthfuls of neat gin, and then fell asleep on the bench, with my head cushioned by my bag.

I was woken, some time later, by Jago. He had been driving round the lanes in the Escort, which had finally been restored thanks to Mr Brecht’s money, looking for me. He helped me up off the bench, held my hair out of my face as I threw up into the hedgerow, and put his arm around me to stop me staggering and falling as we walked back through the churchyard to the lane where the car was parked.

‘I really, really love you,’ I told him, holding onto his waist, as we stumbled together between the graves. The night was Cornwall-black, pitch-black, dark as a wrecker’s soul.

‘Thanks, Spanner,’ Jago said.

‘But I really
really
don’t want you to keep sneaking around Thornfield House when Ellen comes back because it’s far too dangerous.’

This struck me as a deep and meaningful statement and one that demonstrated what a caring and thoughtful person I was. I began to cry the loud, self-pitying sobs of the young and inebriated.

‘Shut up,’ said Jago. ‘And there won’t be any more
sneaking around. I’m going to take Ellen away. We’re going to America.’

‘America!’ I repeated. My head was too thick with drink to take this in.

Back at number 8, Mum took one look at me and said, ‘We’d better sort you out before your father gets back or you really will be in trouble. Go and run her a bath, Jago.’

She sat me down at the kitchen table, put a blanket around my shoulders, and made me drink some cold water. I was sick again. There was a pain inside my skull as if someone was hammering in my brain.

‘What on earth brought this on?’ Mum asked.

‘She messed up her exams,’ said Jago. ‘She’s worried she won’t get into university.’

‘Is that all? That’s not worth getting all het up about, Hannah.’

I nodded miserably.

‘I never went to university, nor did your father, and we’ve done all right for ourselves.’

I sniffed. I felt the walls of the cottage close in around me until I could hardly breathe. I was like Alice in Wonderland after she’d drunk the growing potion.

‘But I want to be an explorer,’ I said. ‘And you have to go to university to be an explorer, it’s the only way.’

‘There’s always another way,’ said Mum. ‘You could open a shop or write a book. Or you could volunteer to go and work on a fossil dig.’

I looked at her. ‘How do you know about fossil digs?’

‘Someone mentioned it at church. Their grandson’s spending a gap year somewhere – South America, I think – helping get the dinosaur bones out of a tar pit or something.’

I sat up a little straighter.

Mum smoothed my hair. ‘Although I don’t want you doing that, Hannah. I didn’t carry you for nine months and
raise you all these years for you to go off to the other side of the world.’

I snuggled into her.

‘There must be places closer to home,’ Mum said. ‘Do they have fossils in England?’

‘Mmm.’ I nodded. ‘Charmouth.’

‘Charmouth,’ Mum repeated. ‘Charmouth wouldn’t be so bad.’

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

THE BERLIN CURATORIAL
conference partner hotel was in Schönhauser Strasse, a pretty, five-storey building that looked, to me, exactly as a German hotel should look – all shutters and windowboxes, tall windows and steep gable-ends. The taxi John and I had caught at Tegel airport dropped us on the pavement outside, and we went through a revolving door into a small, carpeted foyer. The porter took our bags while John checked us in, and then we followed the porter up a narrow staircase to the second floor. Our rooms both faced the street, but were at opposite ends of the corridor.

‘You wanted rooms together?’ asked the porter.

‘No, we didn’t,’ I said quickly.

I had found the experience of travelling with John a little awkward. He had been polite and attentive, letting me take the window seat on the plane, lifting my bag from the carousel and so on. He was the perfect companion, but every time he mentioned Charlotte or his daughters or even his plans for the future, the weight of the truth I was hiding from him grew a little heavier on my shoulders. I had been quiet during our journey and resolved to spend as little time alone with John as possible. I was looking forward to being at the conference,
where the conversation would be more general, less specific.

There was to be a black-tie gala Willkommen dinner for attendees that evening, at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt venue in the city centre. John and I agreed to meet in the hotel bar at 6.30 p.m., and we parted to go into our separate rooms. Mine was exactly as I had expected it to be – small, clean, impersonal, but pleasant and comfortable. I enjoyed a small frisson of pleasure from being in a different city, doing something different, being somewhere else. I opened the window wide and looked out. The street below was busy with traffic and pedestrians. I liked looking at the different signage, the German words with their Gothic fonts, and inhaling the spicy, mouth-watering smells of Bratwurst, onions and sweet fried pastries rising up from the pavement vendors. Even the texture of the air felt different.

My phone beeped to alert me to a text. It was from Rina.
Lily-cat is fine. Don’t work too hard
.

I bathed, unpacked my small case, and sat on the bed while I read through the conference itinerary. A couple of the lectures sounded interesting and I wrote down their times and venues. On the little desk beneath the window was a faux-leather folder full of leaflets and tourist information about things to do and see in Berlin. I picked it up and read about the city bus tours, a brief history of the Brandenburg Gate, Schloss Charlottenburg and Potsdamer Platz. I opened out a small, folded map and laid it on the desk, scanning the names of the bigger cities nearby: Szczecin, Hamburg, Hannover, Leipzig, writing down places I’d particularly like to visit. Then I saw it:
Magdeburg
.

Just one word, and yet it brought so many memories back to me. Magdeburg, the seat of the Brecht family home. Magdeburg was where Ellen had been born, where she had lived for the first ten years of her life, where Mrs Todd had taken her to recuperate after her father had tried to kill
Adam Tremlett. Magdeburg was where the family had rallied round Ellen. It was where nobody noticed quite how badly she had been damaged by what she had witnessed.

With my fingernail, I traced the line of the A2 road that linked the two cities of Berlin and Magdeburg. It wasn’t that far away. I picked up the map, folded it, and tucked it into my handbag. Then I opened the notebook that I’d bought specifically for the purpose of making notes about this trip, so I wouldn’t forget anything that might be useful in the future. I stared at the blank page. I wrote the word
Magdeburg
and underlined it. Then, although it was whimsical and silly, I wrote
Ellen Brecht
in large, ornate letters, and I drew a curly, ornamental border around the letters, a border full of hearts and flowers.

Ellen always liked to be the centre of attention.

After that I changed into the only cocktail dress I owned. I’d bought it for the museum’s 150th anniversary the previous year. It was dusty pink, and seemed a little loose on me now. I shifted it over my shoulders until it fell straight. It was a demure dress by the standards of somebody like Charlotte, but I felt awkward in it. I was not used to having bare shoulders. I preferred to be more hidden. It was strange how I, who had been such a podgy child, had grown into such a bony, angular adult. Even though I was alone in the room, I slipped a cardigan over my shoulders and immediately felt more covered and comfortable. I stood in front of the mirror to put on lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, fastened my hair with a clip, slipped into my only pair of heels and, hoping I looked presentable but not flashy, went down the stairs.

John was already in the bar, but I didn’t recognize him at first.

I scanned the room: it was long and narrow, tastefully decorated in classic shades of maroon and gold. There were
a few couples, a group of businessmen, a beautiful girl sitting on her own, and an attractive, long-legged man in evening dress sitting at the bar drinking beer and reading a newspaper. The man turned and smiled at me. I looked away, and then looked back.

‘John?’

He slipped off the stool, took my hand, leaned over to kiss my cheek.

‘I didn’t recognize you without your glasses,’ I said. ‘You look so …’

‘Handsome?’

‘Tidy. I was going to say tidy. It’s not just the glasses …’

John shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, I thought I’d better have a shave.’

‘The clothes. You look … Well, it suits you.’

‘Thank you,’ said John.

I allowed him to help me up onto the neighbouring stool. I was unsettled and hot. I wished I’d made a little more effort with my appearance. I wanted to keep looking at him, to work out why he seemed so very different this evening, but I didn’t want him to notice me looking. I imagined, for a moment, how he must have been as a student, young and tall and rangy. He would have had something of the film star about him. No wonder Charlotte had been attracted to him. No wonder she had chosen him. I only wished I had known him then. I wished he’d met me before he met Charlotte. It was all such a mess, so wrong, and so unfair. He should have been with me.

I pulled myself together.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a shirt that’s been ironed before,’ I said. ‘No offence.’

He laughed. ‘None taken. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a dress before, either. You look very nice, Hannah. I ordered you a kir royale – presumptuous, I know. I hope that’s OK.’

‘It is.’ I liked kir royale very much, but would never have thought of ordering one myself.

‘So have you decided what you’d like to do in the morning?’ John asked.

I took a sip of my drink. ‘I’d like to go to Magdeburg.’

John raised his eyebrows.

‘A friend of mine – Ellen, the one who died – she lived there for a while. I didn’t realize how close it was to Berlin.’

‘It’s not far. Magdeburg is still a big place, though.’

‘I know. But they – Ellen’s family – lived in a grand house overlooking the river. It was called Schloss Marien. I’m sure it can’t be that hard to find. I’d just like to see it. We’re so close …’

‘It would be a shame not to,’ John agreed. ‘How are you going to get there?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t worked that out yet.’

John ate a pretzel from a little glass bowl on top of the bar and checked his watch.

‘My laptop’s in my room. We could look the Schloss up when we get back, see if there’s a bus or something.’

‘That’d be brilliant.’

John’s phone beeped then. He took it out of his pocket, looked at the screen, and smiled. He turned the phone towards me. Charlotte had sent a photograph of their two little daughters in their pyjamas, waving into the screen. The message was:
Night night Daddy
.

‘Sweet,’ I said.

‘Sorry.’ John put the phone back in his pocket. ‘Before I had kids of my own I couldn’t stand people who were always going on about theirs. Charlotte knew I’d be thinking about them.’

‘They’re pretty girls,’ I said, but there was a feeling like lead in my stomach.

We finished our drinks and went outside to find a taxi to
take us to the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. The street was still busy. There were two lanes of traffic travelling in each direction, buses, cars and taxis mostly, their engines making a thunderous noise, and horns sounding every now and then. The air retained the day’s warmth but I held the cardigan tight over my shoulders and felt self-conscious in my make-up and heels. The heads of people in the passing cars were turning to stare at John and me in our formal clothes. John kept stepping out into the road, trying to hail a taxi. They were all busy and rushed by in a wind of exhaust fumes.

I looked down at my feet, which seemed oddly naked in the strappy little shoes. I remembered how I used to sit on Ellen’s bed, leaning back on my hands, while Ellen held my foot on her lap and glossed the nails for me, how Ellen’s dark hair fell down over her face, how she tucked it behind her ears. I remembered Ellen’s gentleness, her crossed legs, her concentration as she slowly painted a line down each nail, the chill of the brush on each of my toes in turn and the sweet, chemical smell of the polish. I felt a shiver of sorrow.

I looked up, across the busy street, and I saw her.

For the third time in as many weeks, I saw Ellen.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

DAD CAME INTO
the kitchen and said, ‘The Brechts are back. Just saw Ellen getting out of a cab.’

I put down the pasty I was eating and looked up at him.

‘Ellen’s back?’

‘Yep.’

‘Is her father there?’

‘He stayed in the taxi.’

I ignored Trixie’s hopeful face, put on my trainers, grabbed my bike and cycled up the lane to Thornfield House. The flowers that had bloomed in the garden while the Brechts were away were still attached to their stems. Ellen’s bedroom window was open, and Nirvana was blasting out. It was the first time I had ever heard any music that was not classical or piano coming from the house. I dropped the bike on the drive, scooped up a handful of gravel and threw it at the window. Ellen’s head appeared. She waved, disappeared, and emerged seconds later through the front door, throwing herself at me. We swung round together, hugging and kissing. We were both laughing. I was genuinely happy to see her, from the bottom of my heart. I felt as if I had come home, as much as she.