In Her Shadow (33 page)

She slept almost greedily, as if she could not have enough of it, and I realized that she probably hadn’t slept much over the past few days. I lay beside her and put my arm around her. I didn’t mean to, but I too drifted off. The room was warm, and the sound of birdsong coming in from outside and the rhythm of Ellen’s breathing had a pleasant, soporific effect.

A little later a woman came in with a heated metal trolley
and gave us each a plate of chicken stew, peas and mashed potato. Ellen’s face was still sleep-crumpled.

‘Are you feeling better now?’ I asked and Ellen rubbed her eyes and yawned and nodded. ‘What about Jago?’ I asked. ‘When are you going to tell him?’

‘I don’t know.’

She wriggled up on to her elbows and looked at me. ‘Please, Hannah, please don’t say anything to him. Promise me you won’t. I have to explain this myself.’

‘You are going to tell him the truth?’

She nodded. ‘I will, I promise, as soon as the time is right.’

In the afternoon, we lay on the bed watching television until the doctor returned to examine Ellen. I went back to Reception, and was relieved to see Mrs Todd, waiting.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s all over. She’s fine.’

Mrs Todd closed her eyes and mouthed a little prayer. I heard her say, ‘God forgive me.’ And then I looked towards the glass door and there was Ellen, pale as a ghost, walking towards us. The sleeves of her cardigan were pulled down over her fingers. She reached out her hand and pushed the door open.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

AFTER WE LEFT
Mrs Todd in her nursing home, John and I went for coffee and cake at a little café on the outskirts of the shopping area. I told John everything she had told me.

‘Did you know about Ellen’s parents?’ John asked, stirring sugar into his cappuccino. ‘How they got together?’

‘Some of it. Do you know, for years I thought her father was the perfect man. He seemed so devoted to his wife.’ I laughed to myself. ‘I had a crush on him. I used to want him for myself.’

‘He obviously had that effect on younger women.’

‘No, it wasn’t that.’ I remembered Mr Brecht’s hand on my waist. I remembered how it had made me feel. I remembered trying to kiss him in St Ives, how I had distorted the memory until I was no longer sure of the truth. I felt a pang of frustration for my ridiculous, besotted teenage self. ‘He wasn’t – you know … he didn’t go after young girls. He wasn’t interested in anyone but Anne. He was completely obsessed with her. Ellen used to say he was mad, but I didn’t believe her. I didn’t see it.’

‘What do you think now?’

‘I think she was right. It was there all the time but I wouldn’t acknowledge what was going on. I didn’t want to
think of Mr Brecht in a bad light, but … he was jealous, insecure, possessive, paranoid. He could be so manipulative … And Anne consumed him to the brink of insanity. He must have been a nightmare to live with. He probably liked it that Anne was so ill, because when she was incapacitated she was easier to control.’

I felt sad and also guilty, ashamed that I had been too naive, and too short-sighted, to understand. It wasn’t only that I was seeing the situation now with an adult perspective. I had deliberately misunderstood when I was younger. I was culpable.

‘At least, he
thought
Anne was malleable,’ I said. ‘She and Ellen were experts in outmanoeuvring him. Anne was running rings round him right up to the day she died.’

‘I have never understood,’ said John, ‘why some people feel they must control the ones they profess to love.’

I looked at him. He was frowning and staring down at his cream cake. He had cut it, with the side of his fork, into small pieces.

‘I suppose it comes down to trust,’ I said carefully. I watched his face. He flinched very slightly at the word.

‘Isn’t it true though, Hannah, that those who hold on too hard are the ones who drive the people they love away? If a person wants to stay with you, they will stay.’

I nodded.

‘So long as everyone is honest.’ John speared a piece of cake with the prongs of his little fork and held it in front of him, examining it. I thought that if I was going to say anything to John about Charlotte, now would be the time. I took a deep breath.

‘John, the other day, in Bristol, I saw Charlotte and—’

‘Tell me more about the Brechts.’

He put the cake in his mouth. During this whole exchange he had not once looked at me.

I exhaled slowly and said, as if I were reciting something at school: ‘Mr Brecht loved his wife. He loved her to death. She was everything in the world to him and he wanted her to feel the same. But she didn’t. He put so much pressure on her, all the time. I can see that now. The only way she could get away from him was to die.’

‘And he was the same with Ellen?’

‘It was more complicated with her. More distorted.’ I took a sip of my coffee. ‘What pushed him over the brink,’ I said, ‘was that he believed Anne was in love with the gardener, Adam Tremlett.’

‘Was she?’

‘Probably. They’d known one another all their lives; they were friends before Pieter Brecht came to Cornwall. I think Adam understood her. He knew what was going on. Even on the day she died, they found a way to be together.’

I put down the cup and remembered the flowers that Mr Brecht had thrown down the stairs at Thornfield House; I remembered looking out of the window and seeing Adam, standing by the gates, looking up at the room, and I recalled how Pieter Brecht would not let Ellen change the music. Sadness and comprehension rushed through my veins with the very next heartbeat.

I scooped the last froth from my coffee cup with a little spoon and put it in my mouth.

‘After Anne died,’ I said, ‘Mr Brecht cut the heads off all the flowers in the garden. That’s what he was like. He couldn’t contain his jealousy. It was bigger than him. It was toxic.’

There was silence for a few moments. The sun had come out and was illuminating the busy square beyond. People rushed this way and that, crossing the square, stopping to look in shop windows or to chat, or to buy flowers and sweets from the stalls. Somewhere, not far away, somebody began playing the violin.

‘Ellen was in love with my brother,’ I said. ‘Did I tell you that?’

John shook his head.

‘She was. Despite how her parents were, she still managed to love Jago.’

‘You love your brother too, don’t you?’

‘I thought so,’ I said. ‘I thought I loved him very much, but I was jealous of him and Ellen. Oh John, I was so selfish.’

‘You were very young.’

‘That’s not always an excuse,’ I said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

I WENT INTO
Jago’s room while he was at work and looked through his drawers. I found a brown paper bag. Inside was a packet of three tiny bodysuits, and a pair of scratch mittens. I held the little clothes to my heart and gazed out of the window. I had to tell him that the baby was no more, but how could I, when I wasn’t supposed to know it had ever existed?

I was angrier with Ellen than I’d ever been before. I hated her for putting me in a situation where I had to lie to Jago – not lie, exactly, but not tell the truth. I dragged the burden of my knowledge and his ignorance around with me every day. I was angry with him too, angry that he had been so stupid as to make Ellen pregnant, angry that he had kept it from me so that I could not talk to him about what she had done, and angry that because he had not been honest with me, I had to lie to him.

I felt unfairly trapped inside the huge lie, a lie that was not of my making, a terrible thing; one of the three of us believing he had created a life, one knowing she had ended it, and the third all-knowing and entirely powerless.

And also, I was angry that the lie was spoiling what should have been a perfect time for me. Once again, a drama of
Ellen’s had spilled over into my life. I should have been carefree, happy, planning my escape from Trethene and having fun with Ricky. It wasn’t right that I was burdened with the guilt of knowing about the abortion. Even Jago’s innocence annoyed me because it made me feel bad. I could hardly wait to get away from both of them. I was glad I was going to Chile, somewhere so distant that Ellen wouldn’t be able to reach me.

I sometimes thought about how much she would miss me when I was gone. Who would she involve in her dramas when I wasn’t there, I wondered.

In the meantime, my relationship with Jago soured. I avoided being at home when he was there so that I did not have to look at his face, did not have to pretend I did not know.

When he was not at work, Jago spent his time in the shed in the back garden, making things from the offcuts of wood he had begged from the yard in St Keverne. Curls of lathed wood littered the lawn, shining in the sunlight like barbered hair. I picked them up and crunched them between my fingers. One morning, I went into the shed. Hidden beneath the tarpaulin was a crib, sanded and polished to a fine shine. I ran my finger along the wood. No baby laid in there would ever have a splinter. I rocked the cradle to and fro. It didn’t squeak or creak. It was beautifully made, with love, for Jago’s son or daughter. I thought then that I had to tell him the truth. He couldn’t go on believing in something that didn’t exist. It was not right.

Later, I sat with my back to the wall of the shed and looked out across my father’s small, neat garden. Trixie, old now and stiff, hobbled over and lay beside me with a sigh. The sun made her fur hot beneath my fingers. And behind me, in the shed, I could hear Jago planing, chipping, sharpening, polishing. I practised the words I intended to say
in my head, and when I was well-rehearsed, I fetched a glass of squash for Jago from the house and took it into the shed. Jago removed his goggles and wiped sweat from his eyes. He took the glass from me and drank the squash in one go, his Adam’s apple moving as he glugged. He chinked the ice at the bottom of the glass, and then took a piece out and rubbed it over his face.

‘Jago,’ I said.

‘Yep?’

‘Ellen told me …’

‘Told you what?’ He blinked. A gingery stubble was growing around his jawline and he still had a few acne spots on his neck. The ice water dripped onto his shirt. I was filled with tenderness.

‘Oh, nothing,’ I said.

I went up to Thornfield House, hoping to persuade Ellen to tell the truth to Jago, but we weren’t alone for five minutes. Mr Brecht wanted to talk about the preparations for Ellen’s eighteenth birthday party. She did not want a party, but the idea of it had become her father’s latest obsession. He was manic, asking Ellen what she wanted the theme of the party to be, how she would like the house to look, what food she would prefer. Ellen didn’t care. She made a half-hearted effort to appear interested, but she didn’t fool me so I couldn’t see how her father could be fooled either. He tried to make me join in with him, but I didn’t want to play that game any more. I didn’t want to be on his side. I looked at him as he stood frowning at Ellen, and I couldn’t remember what it was that I used to find so glorious in him. Compared to Ricky, Mr Brecht was old. His hair was receding a little, the beard was stupid, the long hair ridiculous on a man his age. The first two fingers of his right hand had been yellowed by nicotine at the tips, and he was too thin, too persistent, too odd.

Despite all his talk, none of the party arrangements were concrete. No parcels had arrived, no invitations, as far as Ellen knew, had been posted. There was none of the excitement and activity she remembered there being when her parents threw parties together back in the old days. Ellen felt foreboding, but no pleasure. She was aware of a tension in her father that, she believed, would only be released when the birthday was over and done with.

Also, she was anxious about her inheritance. It was a long time since her mother had told her about it; more than two years had passed and Ellen was fretting about the details. Her mother had assured her that no action was necessary on her part; the arrangements had been put in place, the documents she needed would be sent, or delivered directly to her, but Ellen had no point of reference – no name, no telephone number, nobody to ask for advice or reassurance. She had never met a lawyer about an inheritance. She did not know what to expect.

Whenever I saw her, all Ellen wanted to talk about was the inheritance, but I closed off. I was determined not to be interested. It was one of the things about Ellen that made me cross and jealous. What had
she
ever done to deserve coming into a fortune? Why did such things only ever happen to people like Ellen, not to people like me? I read stories in magazines and books but I had never heard of anyone in real life coming into money on that scale before.

The baby was on Jago’s mind that summer, and the inheritance was on Ellen’s, but I did my very best not to dwell on either subject. I had a life of my own at last, a life that was separate from theirs, less complicated. At last I had plans and relationships that didn’t involve either Jago or Ellen. Now I knew that the time to leave was imminent, I could hardly wait for it to arrive. Away from Trethene, I thought I would open up like a flower, and people would see
the person I had always meant to be: not Ellen’s sidekick or Jago’s adoring younger sister, but Hannah Brown, trainee explorer and lover of Ricky Wendon.

I no longer wanted to be at home, with Jago rubbing me up the wrong way and my parents shuffling round worrying about the crime in Chile and the drugs and the heat and the water. Neither did I wish to be at Thornfield House, tiptoeing on eggshells through the myriad things Ellen and I couldn’t talk about, or having to deal with Mr Brecht’s birthday-party weirdness. I was happiest with Ricky, planning the next year of our lives, having fun, not needing to worry about things.

Because I was no longer available to act as a convenient go-between, communication became a problem for Jago and Ellen. One evening in early August, as the sun sank behind the neatly trimmed Leylandii hedge that separated our back garden from the farmland beyond, I heard Jago’s footsteps on the stairs and he pushed open the door to my bedroom. I was sitting on the bed, with Trixie, reading. Jago came in, sat heavily on the end of the bed, bouncing me up, put his head in his hands and said, ‘I’m going round to Thornfield House.’