The Mother’s Lies
Joanne Sefton

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This ebook edition published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

First published as 'If They Knew' in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Joanne Sefton 2018

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Cover illustration © Shutterstock

Joanne Sefton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008294441

Version: 2020-01-23

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

June 1963

July 2017

December 2014

July 2017

June 1963

July 2017

June 2012

August 2017

June 1963

August 2017

May 1990

August 2017

June 1963

August 2017

October 1975

August 2017

June 1963

August 2017

June 1973

August 2017

June 1970

August 2017

March 1968

August 2017

February 1968

August 2017

August 1964

August 2017

October 1962

August 2017

June 1962

August 2017

June 1962

August 2017

June 1962

August 2017

May 1958

August 2017

August 2017

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

June 1963

Katy

She wondered if there would still be honeysuckle.

From the car window she caught sight of it from time to time – flashes of mottled flowers on the motorway embankment and in the hedgerows – pink and cream against the bright beech and shadowy hawthorn. There had been honeysuckle in flower a year ago; scrambling around the edges of the building site, its tendrils grasping over the broken earth and scattered debris and scenting the afternoon air. It would all be different now. But still, she would like Mary to have honeysuckle.

That was why they were coming today, Mr Robertson had said. It might seem more familiar at this time of year; Katy might be able to remember something new. It was also the last chance before the building was due to open to the public.

Katy didn’t want to remember at all.

Last time they had brought her back, it had been in winter. The windows of Mr Robertson’s stately old Austin had frozen up while he waited for her. Katy remembered that, and she remembered Etta, wrapped in a fur coat with black felt hat and gloves, standing stiff with malice whilst Katy and the police shivered from the cold.

It had all been different to that first June day with Mary. In winter, there had been no broken earth and no wire fences, no ramshackle no man’s land where the site met the farms. By January it was all flat tarmac surfaces, white paint and clean lines. Builders’ vans were parked neatly by the entrance, and a pair of window fitters had stopped work to gawp at them, until one of the coppers went over to have a word.

‘This is us, then,’ Mr Robertson called from the front seat, bringing Katy back to June; back to honeysuckle and the present. Miss Silver, sitting next to her, gave her hand a quick squeeze, as if she were embarrassed but felt she had to do it anyway. There was a copper waiting at the bottom of the slip road. Mr Robertson pulled in, past the signs advertising next week’s grand opening of the service station. Moreton Chase it was going to be called – someone had told Katy that last time. The Austin slowed as if to stop, but the young constable waved them on, scurrying to replace the painted wooden traffic cones that were being used to block the slip lane.

As the car swung round a wide bend into the car park, Katy felt her heart beat faster. She didn’t want to remember what happened a year ago. She didn’t want to feel Mary’s weight in her arms. She didn’t want to see Mary’s face. Instead, she forced her mind’s eye downwards, remembering only her own feet in their scuffed school shoes, tramping through the grass and clover on a sunny June morning.

July 2017

Helen

Her phone rang just as the children were finishing their food. Helen answered, then tried to balance the slim handset between her ear and shoulder so she could bend to wipe Alys’s mouth, but the child was too quick for her, wriggling off her stool and smearing jammy stickiness down Helen’s clean tights. She let her go, too bone-tired to do anything more.

‘Sorry, I didn’t catch …’ she started to say.

‘It’s Dad, Helen.’

‘Oh, hi, just a sec …’ She paused to push down the door handle for Alys, allowing her to make her escape. Even through the confusion, Helen caught a weight to her father’s tone, and registered that it was odd for him to call when he must have known it was the children’s teatime.

‘The kids on good form then?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, they’re both fine.’

‘They’re not too …’

She heard Neil try to shape the question on his tongue and pictured his fingers worrying at the grey hair that was still thick behind his ears. Eventually he gave up, failure escaping his lips as a gentle sigh down the line.

‘They’re doing fine,’ she repeated, making an effort to say it more gently. ‘But what about you – is everything okay?’

Another breath down the line – this one heavy, steadying.

‘Your mum was up at the hospital today, love.’

Helen racked her memory, uncertain whether this was an appointment that she was meant to have known about. Had Barbara’s eye problem flared up again? Was there anything else that she’d mentioned recently?

‘Right …’ she stalled.

‘It’s not good, Helen.’

His voice cracked on the ‘H’ of her name and she felt her heart jump, then race.

Her father continued, ‘She had a mammogram … They’ve found a lump.’

*

It was twenty minutes after the call ended when Alys and Barney came tumbling down the stairs. Helen was still sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by their leftovers. The phone was by her side and she was dabbing her eyes with her knuckles. Barney wobbled on his tiptoes to get the box of tissues from the windowsill before placing it on the table by her elbow. She went to take one but the box was empty – he must not have realised – so she kissed his gorgeous chestnut hair and tried to keep her voice steady to ask him to fetch some toilet paper instead. She hated that they were seeing her like this.

‘Mummy? Are you sad because of Daddy?’ Barney asked, frowning as he handed over a streamer of toilet roll.

‘No, my love, don’t worry.’ Helen shook her head. ‘That was Granddad. He was phoning to tell us that your Nana Barbara is ill. She might be very ill, and that’s why I’m sad.’

‘I’m sad too,’ said Barney, looking relieved.

‘We’ll have to go and visit them,’ Helen said, attempting a smile. ‘You’ll both like that, won’t you? A trip up north? You can see Granddad Adam and Nana Chris while we’re there.’

Alys spoke at last. ‘Daddy come too?’

‘I don’t think so, lovely.’ Helen bent to kiss her, which allowed her to hide the fresh tears from Barney. She could smell the jam around her daughter’s mouth. ‘But we’ll tell him we’re going. And you’ll be able to talk to him on the phone.’

‘But we’re staying with Daddy on Friday,’ said Barney, in his matter-of-fact way. His small brow wrinkled and Helen caught her own father’s frown in his expression. ‘We’re all going to Gambado.’

‘You are, are you now?’

Darren had only moved out six weeks ago and already it seemed he was resorting to indoor-adventure-play bribery. That’d be hurting him in the wallet. And did Barney’s ‘we’re all’ include Lauren? She felt a tension flicker start up by her left eye.

‘Gam-ba-do, Gam-ba-do!’ Alys was echoing her brother, her voice full of wonder. Gambado might enchant them now, but it surely wouldn’t be long before the stakes were upped to Euro Disney, then Florida. Anger at bloody Darren flared inside her.

‘Well, now that Nana’s ill, I’m afraid Gambado might have to wait for another day. Barney, will you take Alys upstairs please. I have to phone your father.’ She realised she’d never called him ‘your father’ before he left; how quickly they were turning into one of those ex-couples.

Neil

He held the phone in his hand for a good minute or so after Helen had hung up. Even after all these years, he still ached for his daughter like a missing limb. He just needed a moment.

Once he’d gathered himself, he’d go back through to the living room, where Barbara would be doing the crossword or sudoku; denial tap-tapping from her pen as she drummed it on the newspaper, fingertips dancing under the shadow of her neat, treacherous breasts.

He put the handset back into its cradle and opened the living room door.

‘Shall I put a brew on, love?’

She nodded towards the cup at her elbow, her hands not even slowing.

‘No, thanks. I didn’t finish the other one, and it’s barely cold.’

‘Right.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘Do you mind if I sit with you?’

‘Why would I mind, you daft bugger?’

He took a few steps, crossing the floor towards her, then reached out a hand to take the paper from her.

‘What are you doing? I’m about to get one.’

‘Put it down, love, eh? Just for a minute.’

She sighed, but did as he asked, laying the paper and pen to one side and folding her arms. He sat down beside her and placed a hand on her knee, half expecting her to brush it away.

‘I told our Helen.’

‘But we agreed we weren’t going to worry her.’

Neil shook his head. ‘We were wrong, love. I know what we said, but—’

‘Well, if you’ve done it then you’ve done it.’ She cut him off briskly and went to pick up her pen again. Neil pushed her hand gently down.

‘Barbara …’ his voice was shuddering, ‘… oh God, Barbara. You know I love you so, so much.’

To his surprise, she turned in to him and opened her arms to hold him.

‘And I love you, Neil. Always.’

After their embrace, he slipped an arm around her shoulders and she leant in against him, although she’d picked up the paper again, making a show of concentrating on her little scribbled sums. Her shoulders felt narrow, almost bony, and he pictured the cancer already leaching her strength, growing with parasitical single-mindedness.

‘I love you,’ he said again, almost apologetically.

‘So you said. And you’ll have plenty of time to say it again, whatever happens.’

‘I know.’

He counted to ten in his head.

‘Barbara?’

‘What?’

‘I love you!’

He peered over the newspaper, wondering if she’d laugh or just glare at him, but the look in her eyes was one of pity. His own laugh caught in his throat.

Surely Barbara was the one more in need of sympathy? But then his wife had never been one to conform to expectations.

Helen

The drive from London to Lancashire was a total nightmare. They sat in solid traffic for much of the way up the M6, even though it was only Thursday. Alys mostly slept, but Barney barely closed his eyes at all and whined about everything, from the dropped toy he couldn’t reach, to the fact that Helen wouldn’t turn up the sound on his DVD, to the abandoned trip to Gambado that she thought he’d forgotten about. When they finally arrived at her parents’ house, Helen had a pounding headache and a voice hoarse from singing ‘Wheels on the Bus’.

‘You do look very pale, Helen,’ said Barbara, on the doorstep, as though Helen was the one who was ill.

Helen scrutinised her mother carefully. She looked the same. Quite a tall woman, she still stood poker-straight, with her hair neatly coiled into the tight bun that Helen couldn’t remember seeing her without, and her brown eyes that always seemed to be somewhere else. While superficially nothing had changed, Helen could see that she’d lost weight, and Barbara had never had that much to spare. Her collarbones looked coat-hangerish and her hands, which were on the large side, looked even more out of proportion. There was a trace of a shadow around her eyes, but when Helen bent slightly to hug her, Barbara responded with her usual tight but perfunctory squeeze. She smelt of ink and mint imperials.

In the fuss of coats and comforters and Alys leaving a shoe in the car, Helen only noticed the envelope on the doormat because she actually stood on it. It was pale green and unsealed, clearly hand-delivered because it simply said ‘Barbara’ on the front, in what looked like black felt tip.

‘There’s a card for you here, Mum,’ she called.

Both children settled easily enough at bedtime. As usual when they visited, their beds were made up in Helen’s old room that they now thought of as theirs. As Helen bent to kiss Barney’s head, she remembered vividly lying in that bed, curled up to face the window as he was now.

Ten minutes later, she was downstairs in the living room, clutching a mug of gritty instant coffee. She breathed in deeply and could almost feel the steam easing out her frown lines.

‘So …’ she turned to Barbara ‘… how is everything?’

‘I’m fine, Helen, really, I am. I’m sure it’ll all be a fuss over nothing.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Helen echoed, ‘but I’d rather be here all the same.’

‘We don’t know much more than when I spoke to you,’ put in Neil, who was nursing his cup of tea and standing anxiously by Barbara’s shoulder rather than taking a seat of his own. ‘We’re visiting the hospital tomorrow. She’ll see the consultant and get the results of the biopsy they did.’

‘I see.’ She knew all this already, but it seemed right to hear it again, in person.

‘You’ll come?’ he asked.

Helen looked at her mother. ‘Do you want me there?’

Barbara hesitated. ‘Well, it might be difficult … with the children and so on.’

‘I want you there,’ said Neil. Barbara opened her mouth, but he waved a hand and, uncharacte‌ristically, she shut it again. ‘No, Barbara. You know we struggled to remember everything they said to us last time. It’ll be good to have Helen with us. She’ll know what to ask.’

Helen nodded. ‘Of course I’ll come.’

The appointment was early the next morning, so Helen put down her coffee to make arrangements for the children. Christine, her mother-in-law, was kind as ever – her voice heavy with regret over the reason for their visit – but Helen could hear a reserve in her tone too. They weren’t on quite the same team any more. Dropping the kids off would be the first time she’d seen either Christine or Adam since Darren left.

A little later, with the children’s visit to the Harrisons sorted and the three of them sitting glazed in front of a detective show that nobody was actually watching, Helen’s gaze caught the two greetings cards on the fireplace. They were both floral designs, with no wording on the front. If it did turn out to be cancer, they’d soon start to multiply.

‘What was that note that came in today, Mum? In the green envelope?’ She was making conversation as much as anything else.

‘Oh, that. It was a card from Jackie at work.’ Barbara nodded towards the fireplace.

‘Why didn’t you put it up?’

‘I did.’ Her tone was placid, bemused.

‘You can’t have. Those were both here when we came in. I looked at them when Alys was saying goodnight to you and Dad.’

‘It’s the one there with the irises. You must have made a mistake.’

‘But—’

‘You must have made a mistake, Helen.’

Barbara’s gaze met Helen’s: calm, but commanding nevertheless. She couldn’t push it any further. But then why should it even cross her mind to pick an argument over a missing card? It was odd, thought Helen, what coming home could do to you.

*

‘Did the doctor make Nana Barbara better?’ asked Barney, in the car after Helen had collected them from the Harrisons. She was taken aback that he’d remembered where she had been; her little boy was growing up so quickly.

‘Well,’ she began, ‘the doctor can’t make Nana Barbara better straight away. But he did explain everything they’re going to do to try to make her better. She’ll be having an operation soon. Do you know what that is?’

Barney shook his head solemnly.

‘They give you some medicine so you go to sleep and can’t feel anything and then they open you up and have a look inside and try to take out whatever it is that’s making you ill. When they are done, they stitch you back together again as good as new.’

‘So then will she be better?’

‘Well, then she’ll have to recover from the operation, because it’s very tiring. Then they’ll give her some special medicine. And then she’ll hopefully be better.’

In fact, the prognosis had not been particularly rosy. Mr Eklund, the Swedish surgeon who would be operating on Barbara, had gently informed them that the biopsy had confirmed a malignancy in the left breast, and there were pre-cancerous changes in the right one, too. He couldn’t be sure how far it had spread before operating, but he thought the most likely scenario was a Stage 3 diagnosis, which would give her, very roughly, a 50/50 chance after chemotherapy. It was a lot to take on board.

‘Shall I give Nana one of my drawings?’

‘I think that would be a lovely thing to do, darling. Look, I’m just going to call in here …’ They were passing an out-of-town shopping place. The parking was easy and the kids would tolerate a quick trip in. ‘I want to get Nana a new nightdress for the hospital.’

When they got back, Barbara’s delight seemed out of proportion to the gift.

‘That was so thoughtful of you, Helen. You’ve really cheered me up.’

‘And I’ve called work – the kids and I will stay until after the operation. No arguments. Getting you through this is the most important thing at the moment.’

The glisten on Barbara’s eyes was as close as Helen had ever seen her to tears, and the thought of it almost made her well up herself. This Barbara was so different from the Barbara of last night, so hostile and cold over a stupid thing like that card. But then her mum always had been a conundrum. You never knew what you were going to get with her. That way you didn’t get too close.

She had plenty of practical issues to worry about, what with trying to hand work stuff over remotely and making a list of the things she’d need to buy for the kids, but still, somehow, Helen found the image of the green envelope was bothering her. She tried to blame it on tiredness, or perhaps her brain was looking for some sort of distraction from the hideous news at the hospital. But what could it be and why would Barbara lie about it? She kept drifting back to those questions.

Much later, when everyone else was in bed, Helen decamped to the back room to reply to some work emails and stuck on the TV for a bit of background noise. It was only when she finished and went to switch the TV off that she noticed the slim edge of green pushed to the bottom of a pile of papers on the sideboard.

She slid the top section of the pile aside and, sure enough, the green line turned out to be the edge of the small envelope that she’d seen on the doormat. The front simply said ‘Barbara’, written in a nondescript hand with, as she’d thought, black felt tip. The letter looked as though it had never been sealed, and the paper, cheap and green, matching the envelope, slid out easily.

HELLO BARBARA.

CANCER IS TOO GOOD FOR YOU.

DON’T WORRY – I’LL BE WITH YOU ALL THE WAY.

JUST LIKE YOU DESERVE.

JENNIFER

Helen’s hands started to shake; the harsh New York laughter from the chat show on television seemed to be taunting her. This was a joke, surely? Yet, on the other hand, it was no kind of joke at all.

She reread the thing twice or more, but her mind couldn’t process the words. Who was Jennifer? And what could she mean? Whatever it was, the intention behind it was obviously malevolent. But could it be serious? She started to look at the note itself, mechanically noting the flimsy copier paper, the black felt tip, the careful capitals with a few wobbles – she guessed that the author was using their wrong hand. But none of it took her any further.

After a few moments, the credits music startled her into action. She refolded the note and replaced it in the envelope. Once she’d tucked it away, back under a building society statement, she could almost believe she’d imagined it. She focused in turn on the graduation pictures on the wall and the wedding-present china shepherdess that Barbara hated. This was the normal world. It was more than normal – it was the world of dull, petty suburbia that Helen had escaped. It had nothing to do with threatening notes from anonymous villains. She resolved to confront Barbara again the next day. No matter how frosty or secretive her mother could be, she couldn’t simply brush off something like this.

December 2014

Helen

The thing about Darren was he’d always had a knack for giving people what they didn’t know they wanted. It occurred to Helen later that she probably shouldn’t have been so shocked when he finally managed to turn that talent into hard cash. Perhaps the more surprising thing, she mused, as she tried on her third little black dress and frowned hopelessly at the mirror again, was that it had taken him quite so long. Austerity ground on, and yet here she was, getting ready for a blowout Christmas party that would show the world just how damn successful Darren Harrison was.

The man himself, immaculate in Paul Smith, stuck his head round the bedroom door.

‘Are you getting there, Hels? The car will be here in twenty.’

Apparently they were too grand for minicabs these days.

‘Okay, thanks, I’m just going to swap this for my black one.’

‘I thought you’d got something new during the week?’ His brow creased slightly, with just the hint of a frown.

‘I didn’t find anything.’

The truth was, she’d only managed an hour to dash into a couple of local shops and, ten months after giving birth to Alys, she still found trying clothes on a miserable experience.

The business was called Date Night. Darren had started putting on these ironic telly-themed singles nights, having got the idea after watching one too many cheap nostalgic box sets. It was the seventh or eighth golden business brainwave he’d had, whilst her dull but steadily more lucrative career in financial-services HR supported them both. Finally, this one had stuck.

In a year, she’d gone from being a career girl in Shoreditch to maternity leave in Chiswick. Going back to work after Barney had felt like a return to civilisation. After Alys, though, Darren pointed out that he could pay for everything now – all the holidays they could handle. Wasn’t it better, he asked, for her to be less stressed and for the kids to be raised by their parents rather than strangers? She didn’t speak to him for three days after that and at the end of her first day back in the office she drank Prosecco with her friend Amy Stretton. Amy was in CID with the Met Police and, back then, still single. She could be relied upon to opine at length about all men being bastards.

The dress she had settled on for tonight was from the Shoreditch days. It was black, and forgivingly stretchy – although faded from too many washes. Well, surely it would be dark at the party anyway? She added a pair of silver earrings, looked in the mirror and smiled, feeling, finally, like she was herself.

‘The car’s outside, Hels.’

‘I’m coming!’

She quickly kissed her babies – they’d both been asleep for a while – then she popped into the front room to let her parents know they were off. She’d managed to persuade them down for a rare pre-Christmas visit and then Darren had casually informed her about the party. If she was being honest with herself, she’d be more comfortable booking the usual babysitter.

Darren was jiggling his keys against his hip as she came into the hallway; he looked her up and down but said nothing. His smile was flat.

*

Although it was after one a.m. by the time they got back, Barbara was not yet in bed. Instead they found her tucked in a corner of the sofa under the glow of a single lamp, peering at a laptop she had balanced on the arm of the sofa. Her dark bun had always given her something of the air of a ballerina, and she unfurled gracefully from her pose as they came into the room.

‘I hope you didn’t stay up for our sakes?’ Darren’s words were polite, but there was something querulous in his tone. He spoke more to the decanter and glass in his hand than to his mother-in-law.

‘Of course not, don’t worry.’ Barbara’s own voice was light. ‘I’m doing coursework – the time ran away with me.’ Helen and Darren had both been mildly amused when she’d announced a couple of years earlier that she was taking an OU course in computing, but although she’d initially shrugged it off as just a tactic to stay one step ahead of the endless cuts and redundancies in local newspapers, she seemed to have really taken to it.

‘Were the kids okay?’ Helen asked.

Barbara looked momentarily blank, as though she had possibly forgotten about them, but then nodded. ‘Not a peep out of either of them. All fine.’

‘Well, I’m going up,’ announced Darren, raising his whisky to them. Helen knew she should join him; after all, she had been the one who had insisted on leaving at the end of the party, rather than heading out into the West End, where many of the guests were going to continue their evening. Now she was home, though, she felt suddenly awake. And desperate to take off her heels and have a cup of tea. Barbara declined her offer and Darren slunk off.

‘Good night?’ Barbara asked as she shut down the laptop.

Helen shrugged. Had it been? She found it exhausting, having to keep track of the employees, the investors, the suppliers, the hangers-on and God knows who else. Over the years, she’d shared little of the day-to-day concerns of her life with her mother – taking her lead from Barbara herself no doubt. She wasn’t now about to start dissecting her insecurities about Darren and how she feared the business was changing him.

To be fair, the night had improved when Darren – probably irritated with her defensiveness – had insisted that she knock back a couple of glasses of champagne and led her onto the dance floor, swinging her around to Pharrell Williams. She knew they’d looked good together; they always did. And in the moment, she was ‘Happy’, just like the song said. The dancing made her feel less self-conscious about whether people were questioning what on earth he was doing with her.

Sometimes she wondered if he ever had crossed the line, and mixed play with the work he was so devoted to. She’d asked him about it once and he’d laughed. He said he’d spent thirty-five years with nothing to recommend him but his smile and his wits; he wouldn’t want to be with the sort of woman who might want him now that he had a belly and grey temples and a bit of cash. That was a couple of years ago, though. Back then he wouldn’t have slunk off to bed with a whisky. On the other hand, back then she’d probably have mustered the enthusiasm for a nightcap elsewhere.

‘Well?’ Her mother was still looking at her expectantly.

‘Sorry, I drifted off a bit – a bit woozy I’m afraid. It was lovely. The venue was spectacular.’

‘I’m glad you had fun,’ Barbara said, making Helen feel about seventeen again. Her eyes were on the laptop as it went through its shutting-down processes. It seemed Helen had no need to worry about her mother trying to get her to open up.

‘So how’s the coursework going?’ Helen asked, more to stop her own mind whirring than for any other reason. ‘I thought you were finishing up with that last spring?’

‘Yes, I did, but then I signed up for some of the degree-level modules. It’s fascinating, actually.’

‘It’s a shame you didn’t get into it when you were younger – you could have made a fortune.’

Barbara laughed lightly. ‘Yes, it would have been nice to have had the chance. But never too late, as they say – I’ve got a few little projects I’m dreaming up. Anyway, that’s my work done. I think I’ll get to bed.’

‘Night, Mum.’

But Helen’s mind had drifted back to the dance floor, to the moment when a slow Sam Smith number had come on and she’d insisted that she was exhausted and needed to go back to their table for a drink. Darren had nodded and they made their way back across to the low table where their bottle of champagne still waited, half full.

One of the new regional managers glided over, in painfully high sandals that pushed her chest forward.

‘Darren! You two were amazing on the dance floor. You kept that quiet!’

‘Louise …’ He clasped her shoulder warmly.

‘Lauren.’

‘Lauren, of course, so sorry. This is my wife, Helen.’

‘Don’t worry.’ She brushed his hand, as if to smooth away his mistake, laughing loudly. ‘There’s so many people here!’

She’d cornered them for the next ten minutes – despite Darren’s smooth attempts to move her on – sharing gossip and gushing compliments.

If he were going to get involved with someone at work, someone like Lauren would be last on the list. So why was the sound of her grating laughter continuing to rattle around Helen’s head as she failed to get to sleep?

July 2017

Helen

In the end, she didn’t get any chance to mention the note on Saturday. Neil whisked them all off to a theme park for the day, then dinner at the local Italian. ‘Take our minds off it all,’ he said, repeatedly. Helen grinned for his sake, as much as for Barney and Alys. Barbara’s enjoyment, she was sure, was just as manufactured. The thought gave her an unfamiliar sense of camaraderie with her mother – for as long as she could remember, she’d found herself siding with her dad in the face of Barbara’s quirks and moods.

On Sunday morning, however, she woke up thinking about the note. It had lurked through her dreams, which had danced from Darren, to her children, then her parents; all unformed and fast-fading glimpses. Each encounter had played out on the sickly green landscape of the notepaper – those black capitals always there but never in focus. In those giddy predawn hours, something fearful woke in her belly, and, once woken, it shifted and clawed about inside her like a rat.

She was still turning the words of the note over in her mind as the grey dawn gradually crept round the edges of the heavy velvet curtains. They were cast-offs from Neil’s sister – Aunt Vicky – given away when she moved to Málaga, to replace the yellow ones that had been up since Helen was small. Good enough for the spare room, her parents must have decided, even though the size wasn’t quite right. She’d got used to sleeping here with Darren over the years. Now she was sleeping alone in the big old bed, with no one else to see the patterns the morning light made around the badly fitting curtains.

If only she could show Darren the note. Her Darren, not the new, arm’s-length, polite-chat-about-the-weather Darren who made her skin crawl. It wasn’t that she thought he’d have all the answers, just that she wasn’t used to having no one to share things with. They’d met at school and grown up together as an ‘us’. Suddenly Helen had to work everything out as ‘me’. And everything was bloody tough.

At first, her mind had tricked itself – he was on a business trip, or working late – God knew she was used to not having him around. But now it was more than six weeks, and the reality, the permanence, of his absence was becoming undeniable. All the more so since that awful call with her dad. The old Darren might not have been around when the au pair was sick or when she needed to decide on a holiday booking, but she could be confident that if the world fell apart he’d be there to catch her. Now it had and he was content to see her in free fall.

Gradually, the lumpy shadow-scape revealed itself as her assorted bits of luggage, strewn with clothes and toys and everything else that she’d not had the will to try to tidy up. The green dizzy dreams and the clawing rat seemed to shrivel in the light. It was too bizarre. To be looking at the fresh baked-bean-juice stains on her dressing gown, or the cascade of children’s books erupting from a Gruffalo backpack, and thinking that somebody out there was happy her mother could be dying, that somebody out there wanted Barbara to suffer.

Error, as the laptop would say. Switch it off and on again. If only she could.

She kept coming up with improbable explanations – the note was a prop from a murder-mystery party, or a handwriting test, or Barbara had written it herself as some sort of weird displacement activity. But why the mention of cancer? And why had it been on the doormat when Helen arrived? There was no simple answer to explain that away.

Finally she heard Alys start up her morning whimper, which, in her usual way, would soon become a chatter and then, shortly after, a wail. As Helen quit the stale bed and pulled on the bean-juice-stained dressing gown, the demons scuttled back to their dusty recesses. She pushed the curtains back, then, still fumbling with the belt of her dressing gown, she headed upstairs.

*

Helen found the blue dress later that morning, when she was going through some stuff in her old room. She’d hoped that one of the dusty boxes stashed under the bed would hold something that might keep the kids occupied for a while.

Of course, she’d packed for the journey in a hurry, with no real idea of how long they’d be staying, and the flaws in her organisation – no charger for Barney’s tablet, DVD boxes missing their discs, and Jess the Doll’s tragically deficient wardrobe – were now becoming woefully apparent.

It must have been twenty years since Helen had seen that dress. She knew the story of Neil buying it for Barbara on honeymoon in Glasgow and the shimmer of blue – more eastern Med than western Scotland – was instantly recognisable. She found the straps and held it up, letting the layers of satin and chiffon swing free. There were details she hadn’t noticed before, or didn’t remember: the old-fashioned label, sewn in by hand, the slight discolouration under the arms. Was there a breath of Barbara’s perfume, or was that just Helen’s imagination?

‘Alys!’ she shouted, after a moment or two. ‘Come and try on this princess dress.’

She knew Barbara wouldn’t mind a bit. After all, Helen herself had spent a good year around the age of six tripping around the house in its gauzy layers, the spaghetti straps nicely set off against her utilitarian white M&S vests. She’d called it her cocktail dress. As a child, Helen had liked to imagine Barbara’s youth had been spent swishing around sophisticated parties. She had a vague fantasy that Barbara had come down in the world when she married Neil and renounced a life of leisure and glamour and quite possibly even cigarette holders for love, a red-brick semi and her baby girl. She didn’t actually have any evidence for this exotic former life, but, in the absence of evidence of anything more prosaic, it was an attractive fantasy.

Alys duly trotted upstairs, but when Helen held up the dress she looked sceptical.

‘Which princess?’ she asked.

‘Not a Disney Princess. Another Princess. Princess Alys.’

‘Daddy buy me Belle dress.’

‘Did he?’ Helen was genuinely puzzled. Alys adored Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Helen couldn’t imagine she could have received such a prize and not been full of it for days.

The girl looked sad and a little confused. ‘I get it next time, he say, next time, but …’ She faltered, and her big eyes welled with tears.

At home, Helen had had to tell her over and over that Daddy didn’t live with them any more. Each time, it cut her up inside and the tears that she managed to hold in when she was with her children spilled out with interest after bedtime. Eventually, Alys seemed to have understood, on some level at least, but the visit up here could only have confused her.

‘Blue is for boys, Mummy.’ As ever, the three-year-old’s train of thought chugged on at pace.

Helen racked her mind for some Disney Princess assistance. ‘Cinderella wears blue,’ she said, encouragingly.

‘Not that blue, Mummy – that’s boys’ blue.’

Helen looked down at the dress, as if noticing its colour for the first time. ‘Oh! You mean I should give it to Barney to wear?’

She loved her daughter’s laughter, which bubbled thick and sticky in her throat like liquid fudge. Alys liked the joke of her brother wearing the dress and her chortles brought Neil to the door.

‘Good morning, ladies,’ Neil said, making Alys giggle even more.

‘Alys thinks Barney should dress up in Nana’s honeymoon dress. What do you reckon, Granddad?’

She expected Neil to laugh along. Instead, he reached out, groping like a blind man. His fingers touched the fabric, but then it slipped out of his grasp and the dress slithered to the floor. He sat down heavily on the bed. Helen cursed inwardly. Of course, she should have realised the dress might upset him. But a moment later he was smiling again and had pulled a toffee out of his pocket for Alys.

He turned to Helen. ‘I came to tell you there’s a phone call for you, love.’

‘Darren?’ she mouthed it silently over Alys’s head, and he nodded.

‘Now, young Alys.’ His grasp on the dress was firm this time, and the wet sheen on his eyes had been blinked away. ‘The thing you have to know about this dress is that it belonged to a mermaid once. That’s why you can see all the colours of the deep blue ocean in it – in fact, I’m sure I once saw a tiny golden fish flickering through just about here …’

The phone handset sat like a grenade on a chest of drawers on the landing.

‘Hello?’ She kept her voice low, going into the spare room.

‘Hi, Hels. How’s your mum doing?’ said the voice on the line.

‘She’s okay. We went to the hospital on Friday. They’re going to operate next week. We’ll know more then.’

‘I was gutted to hear it, really I was.’ She could picture him shaking his head, sorrowfully, rubbing the back of his hand against his designer stubble in that way he had. ‘Give her my best, yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ she agreed, knowing she’d say nothing.

‘I’ve been trying your mobile.’

‘I know you have. It’s not the easiest time, Darren.’

‘Yeah, I understand that. But the kids’ll be missing me.’ As he spoke, she tried to push away the image of Alys’s perplexed face, talking about the stupid Disney costume. ‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t have taken them up there, and we both wanted to deal with access informally, but …’

Bastard. Always trying to come across as Mr More-Than-Reasonable. He should be here with his family now, rather than having fucked off with his glossy, giggling area manager. That’s what Helen wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come. She’d had explosive, raging, endless rows with Darren each day since he’d left, but only in the privacy of her own mind. When it came to real life, the words would never come.

She realised he was still talking. He was still going on in his calm let’s be adult about this voice that she’d so quickly come to despise.

‘… So I’ll come up at the weekend and stay with my mum. Just me, not Lauren – I don’t want to make things harder. But I want to see the kids properly, not just an hour over lunch or something. Okay? And I want to speak to them. Are they there just now?’

Helen pressed the handset closer to her ear. Alys’s laughter was louder now, but not so loud that he’d be able to hear it down the phone line.

‘Mum’s taken them both to the park,’ she lied. ‘You only caught Dad and I because we were finishing the dishes. We’re just going to meet them.’

‘Right.’

‘Yes.’

He sighed. ‘Look, call me later – just let me say goodnight to them at least.’ His voice might have cracked, or it might have been static on the line. She was learning, to her surprise, that Darren could be a good actor. It was bizarre, thinking back to how she’d always been able to read him like a book. Perhaps he’d never had the will to deceive her before, or perhaps it was the distance that had opened up between them making it harder for her to really see him the way she always had before. She ached even more for the man she had married.

‘I don’t want them to get upset,’ she said.

‘For God’s sake, don’t make me beg to speak to my own kids, Helen.’

He didn’t sound to her like a man who was begging. She felt the familiar lump swell in the back of her throat. This was why she couldn’t fight with him: whenever she tried to give voice to her anger, the rage choked her before she could let it out.

‘Tomorrow,’ she managed.

‘First thing.’

She nodded uselessly into the phone, tears running down both cheeks now. Finally she said ‘okay’ just about loud enough for him to hear, and then hung up.

God knew she didn’t want either of the kids to catch her looking like this; they’d seen enough tears. Taking care to be silent, she slipped out of the bedroom and walked down the stairs. She wanted to return the handset to its charger quickly. Whilst she held it, it felt as though she was carrying Darren around, and he would know that she’d lied to him and be able to see her falling apart.

Just thinking about Darren was so painful, yet she couldn’t stop herself. She had no reference point for what was happening to her and that left her completely bewildered. As she and Darren had been together since high school, she’d never had any sort of break-up before. And her parents’ relationship had always been rock solid. Barbara had her quirks – always had – she was often distant with her daughter and could be sharp with her tongue. Occasionally her claws came out and Helen could remember the odd ring of a slap or the twist of an arm when her mother was angry.

But, even though he could be on the receiving end of her sharp tongue too, Neil had adored his wife with a constancy that was unshakeable. Even more remarkably, he’d had love enough for both of them, so Helen had never felt the need to compete, and never questioned the security of their family.

Now, it looked like her own children were going to have none of that, and she veered between righteous rage towards Darren and anxious guilt about what more she could have done to keep her family together.

Helen could hear Barbara’s voice in the kitchen as she came down the stairs. Although the green and inky haze of the dreams had faded, it hadn’t left her completely. It occurred to her that if Barbara knew what the envelope contained before she picked it up from the doormat, then perhaps there had been others. She’d not thought to look for any until now, and her decision to confront her mother had lost impetus through the bittersweet family outings yesterday. The thought of interrogating Barbara about the note in the midst of the turmoil of a cancer diagnosis made her squeamish. Given how emotionally vulnerable she felt herself – her hands were still shaking after the phone call – it didn’t take much to persuade herself to put it off. She was decided; before confronting her mother, she would look for more notes.

In the hall, she replaced the phone on its cradle and pulled out a tissue. She dabbed at her face in the mirror and managed to tidy it a bit. At least she’d learned to avoid wearing mascara these days. Now that she was closer to the kitchen she could hear Barney’s voice too. He was explaining the plot of one of the films he watched endlessly. It seemed unlikely she’d be disturbed by either of them any time soon.

She retraced her steps, stealthily, to the staircase. There was a little hotel safe at the back of Barbara’s wardrobe, hidden by a clutter of shoes. It contained passports and building society books and pension stuff. Much duller stuff than Helen had hoped to find when, aged fifteen or so, she’d idly observed her mother opening it and gone on to crack the code: 2973. She could still remember it. Would Barbara have changed the code over the years?

The little door swung open smoothly, and that small disturbance was enough to shift the stack of mismatched papers. Even through the gloom, a knife-edge sliver of green caught Helen’s eye. Clearly, the note from the other night had not been the first. Again, this envelope simply said ‘Barbara’.

From the bedroom, she heard Alys pause to ask, ‘Where’s Mummy?’ Rather than risk them coming out to look for her, Helen stuffed the envelope into the large pocket on her hoodie to read later. After a few seconds, she felt safe enough to carry on. Riffling through the rest of the papers in the safe, she quickly found two more. Then she replaced everything as accurately as she could and stuck the two new envelopes alongside the first in the front of her hoodie. She’d take them back to the downstairs loo to read, where she could lock the door and not worry about being disturbed. If nothing else, this intrigue might give her something to occupy her brain other than the constant, cycling worries about Darren.

As soon as she got to the bottom of the stairs, though, Barney erupted from the kitchen and threw himself at her, without stopping for breath in his chatter. Helen twirled him around and he dragged her back to the kitchen, where she had to enthuse over the half-done jigsaw on the table. Moments later, Neil appeared in the doorway with Alys, who wanted to show off her princess dress.

While Alys performed curtsies, Helen watched Barbara applaud with no sign of sentiment over the reappearance of her dress. Barney talked all the louder for fear of his little sister getting some attention.

Neil moved across to the window, where Barbara stood by the sink with a tea towel in her hand. She let her husband rest his arm across her shoulders for all of three seconds, before she gently lifted it and twisted away.

‘Shall I get us all some tea?’ Barbara asked, brightly.

*

It was half an hour, in the end, before Helen managed some time alone. The three new notes were not identical to the first, but they were all similar: short and mysterious but written with unmistakable venom.

HELLO BARBARA

THIS IS JENNIFER.

I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

HELLO BARBARA

I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

I’VE COME TO PAY YOU BACK.

JENNIFER

HELLO BARBARA.

DOES NEIL KNOW?

OR WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO TELL HIM?

JENNIFER

There were no dates on any of them, but that was the order that seemed to make most sense, leading up to the cancer one. There was no clue as to how long it had been going on for, nor as to whether ‘Jennifer’ had approached Neil or done anything else.

Helen had been well aware whilst growing up that her mum wouldn’t speak about the past; that she would admit to no family, no history – in fact, no life at all before meeting Neil at the age of twenty. Occasionally, he would call her his girl who fell to earth. Helen had badgered him over it at times, mostly when she was in her teens, but as life unfurled, the mystery seemed minor in the scheme of things. It had become part of the scenery.

‘I know who you are,’ the notes said, and the words made Helen’s blood turn icy, because the truth was she didn’t. And she never had.

She tried to imagine asking her dad about it now; her relationship with Neil had always been simpler. He was her dad; he loved her, worried about her and thought she was a superstar. She was his daughter; she loved him, allowed him to bore her with his gardening chat and bought him socks for Christmas. For as long as she could remember, they’d been able to talk easily about just about anything.

But she hesitated, only now realising that the one thing they never really talked easily about was Barbara. Her mind was full of the image of his face, crumpling at the sight of his wife’s blue honeymoon dress. The notes would be devastating – doubly so if Barbara hadn’t told him about them herself, which Helen was convinced was the case. ‘Jennifer’ had threatened to tell Neil something – Helen had no idea what – but if she showed him the notes she might well blunder into the very threat that ‘Jennifer’ was holding like an axe to Barbara’s neck. So she was left with the first option she’d thought of. And the one Helen had always found most difficult – trying to talk to her mother.

She folded the notes into their envelopes, tucking them deep in her pocket to return when she had the chance. Then she washed her face as quietly as she could, using cold water to try to subdue the redness. The tears had been close to the surface since that awful phone call with Darren, and her anger on reading the notes had quickly brought them back. When she finally looked human, she combed her hair through, listening to the hum of the house around her and the laughter and chatter of the children with their grandparents.

On the surface, she thought, this looked like perfection. No fly on the wall, or neighbour peeping through the net curtains, would know the different ways in which every heart in this house was breaking.

June 1963

Katy

She recognised the stern, mustachioed face of the policeman who came towards them, though she wouldn’t be able to name him. As Mr Robertson opened the door for Katy, the officer held out a pair of handcuffs, gaping open, the metal glinting in the sunshine.

‘I don’t think we’ll need those, thank you.’ Mr Robertson’s tone was firm, and the other man frowned.

‘Protocol—’ he began, but Mr Robertson cut him off.

‘I have custody of the prisoner. Miss Silver and I are content that nothing untoward will happen, and if it does, then we’ll be the ones to answer for it.’

‘For the sake of the family, though,’ the officer tried again, waving towards a large white estate car, painted with the letters ‘POLICE’. Katy supposed that Etta was inside.

‘Mrs Gardiner is here to try to find her child, not to see Katy Clery humiliated. You can put the handcuffs away.’

Katy wasn’t so sure that she agreed with Mr Robertson on why Etta Gardiner wanted to be there, but the policeman finally did as he was asked. A few of his colleagues had made their way over during the discussion, and Mr Robertson exchanged pleasantries with the inspector in charge. The plan was that they would initially walk across the site onto the adjacent farmland, to the vicinity where it was believed that Katy must have accessed the site a year earlier, coming from the railway station. Katy turned and walked with them, keeping close to Miss Silver so as to not give the police any excuse to pull out the handcuffs again. None of the adults talked to her, although she was all they were talking about.

A few seconds after they had passed the motorway patrol car, she heard its door open and the rustle of a passenger getting out. Risking a glance back, she saw she had been right. It was Etta, not in fur this time, but instead in a black, shapeless dress and jacket, a dark-dyed straw hat pressed low on her brow. Their eyes met, and for a moment Katy thought she saw sadness rather than anger. Then the woman turned deliberately to one side, away from the constable at her shoulder, and spat coolly onto the tarmac. The hatred, when she lifted her eyes back to Katy, was clear.

Katy fought back the tears prickling behind her own eyes and continued to walk forward. Soon the police started to slow. They were nearing the edge of the site. The tarmac of the car park ended, and there was a thin strip of scrub before a wire fence. Someone had cut a gap. There was a neat roll of fencing wire stacked to one side – ready to fix it quickly so everything was shipshape for the grand opening, she supposed.

There were nettles around the fence, and as they made their way into the field, the ground became soft and uneven. Katy, now used to the confines of Ashdown with its paved yard and endless linoleum corridors, felt herself stumble. The smells of the wet earth, of the green grass, buzzed in her mind.

‘Well,’ said the inspector, suddenly turning to face back towards the service station and the motorway beyond it. ‘Do you recognise it? Are you planning to tell us anything, or just to waste everyone’s time again?’

July 2017

Barbara

She held the soap out under the shower water. The jets carried away the film of dust and the creamy white surface began to glisten. She turned it over in her hands, waiting for the hot steam to release that unmistakable floral scent. Tesco shower gel was sufficient most mornings, but today something more potent seemed called for. The bar of No. 5 had been eased out of its monogrammed box and pressed into service.

I’m still me, she thought, as she worked the soap into the brown marks left on her dry ankles by her sandal straps, and then lathered up her shins in preparation for the razor. Saggier, more wrinkly and more blemished, yes. Bearing scars inflicted both by accident and design. But still, this body was recognisable as the one that had twirled in the blue dress up in Glasgow; still the same body that appeared, bikini-clad, in the Lanzarote beach photos from a few years later. Not to mention the same body seen smothered in sheets in the blotchy hospital shot from the day Helen was born. It hung on the bedroom wall even now, despite years of trying to talk Neil into taking it down.

She’d decided a long time ago that age-related deterioration in eyesight was a small mercy; those stray hairs, liver spots and discoloured veins, which would have horrified her in her youth, were easier to ignore through the forgiving blur of myopia.

I’m still me.

Her limbs were firm and strong; she’d been careful not to run to fat, though it was true her back ached now when she bent like this to shave her legs. At least the hairs grew slower than they used to, even if they compensated with random migration – sprouting witchily in unexpected places. All in all, she looked and felt in good nick for sixty-nine. That had been old-woman territory in her own mother’s day, but not any more.

Barbara remembered the paradox of the ship of Theseus – not that there’d been much in the way of the classics where she’d had her education, but she’d come across a Myths and Legends book in the library during her early days at the newspaper. It turned out that a couple of renewals brought a surprising amount of useful bullshit within her grasp. If every plank on a ship is replaced, one by one, until none of the original planks are left, is it still the same ship? Or the same axe, or broom, or human being?

It was said that our constantly regenerating cells meant no part of our body was ever more than seven years old – or perhaps it was ten? What, then, made these the same feet that had run pell-mell on terraced streets in gaping shoes? What made these the same lips that joined, shaking, with Neil’s on their wedding day? What made these the hands that, trembling with fear, had cradled newborn Helen?

It was the pattern, the mould, that was important. Just as each plank of the ship was measured, cut and sanded to fit in its position, so each cell died and another grew in its place, arranged just as before, cheek by jowl with its comrades, directed by God or DNA or both to maintain the thinness of her bottom lip, the flecks of gold in her brown eyes and the bluntness of her stubby fingers. But not any more.

‘Cancer’ is our word for what happens when the mould breaks.

Barbara lathered her breasts, lifting each one tenderly and committing the weight and tone and pucker of it to memory. Her pattern read 34C, the cells dutifully multiplying and expanding to sprout at thirteen and to swell during pregnancy, just as mandated in their instructions.

Now, though, they’d gone rogue. She had Militant Mammaries. Jihadi Jugs. The pattern had been ripped up, and right now there were thousands (millions?) of manically reproducing cells bulging into colonies of chaos, thrusting aside the law-abiding, structured tissue and making manifest the sins of the flesh.

I’m still me. She let the middle finger of her left hand creep over the Lump. Except for the bits that aren’t. She pictured the glinting edge of a scalpel. Incision. Excision. Fifteen hundred years of medicine and it still came down to this: cut the damn thing out.

When she wasn’t thinking of the cancer, she was thinking of the note. Barbara was sure that Helen’s sharp eyes had picked up on it. She’d find the others in the safe soon enough – if she hadn’t already. That girl gets her sharpness from her mother, Barbara thought proudly, even if her daughter couldn’t really be called a girl any more. There was a distance in Helen’s eyes, an uneasiness in her smile, that told Barbara she had read the note, and would be asking awkward questions soon enough. Helen’s distracted look could just be worry about the illness, especially coming on top of the business with Darren, but Barbara didn’t think so. She had a sense about these things.

Of course, the fact the notes were there didn’t mean anything would come of them. Anonymous vitriol was easy enough – just look at the internet these days. This was the curtain call for a closing act that Barbara had waited all her adult life for, but she still didn’t know if she was ready to take to the stage.

I’m still me. She muttered it aloud this time, letting the bitter soap taste into her mouth.

Still me; but so, so tired.

That was how she knew the cancer was for real, not the blurry shots from the mammogram or Eklund’s careful explanations, but the numbing, bone-aching, deadening tiredness that had her in its embrace, sucking her down like quicksand. She had prepared for this finale well enough. If it was ever going to play out, the curtain was going to have to come up pretty damn quickly.

Helen

They agreed that Neil would take Barbara into hospital by himself when she was to be admitted for the operation. That way, Helen could stay at the house with the kids and not have to worry about bothering Chris and Adam again. Chris had frowned when Helen told her, saying: ‘I thought you’d want to be with your mum,’ but the look in her mother-in-law’s eyes told Helen there was more to it than that. She didn’t want to give Chris the chance to start pleading Darren’s case about seeing the children.

It was afterwards that Barbara would need the support, anyway, once the doctors were ready to say exactly what it was that they had found in there. And later on, when she came home, and would need care that Neil might struggle to provide. Helen had already made a couple of discreet calls to social services, just to check what would be available for them, but Neil had started talking darkly about the indignity of having strangers poking around when you’re at your lowest ebb, and Helen knew she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to walk away.

So, instead of following up with the council, she had called her boss. It came down to an ultimatum – give me a sabbatical or I’ll walk. The managers weren’t happy, but there wasn’t much they could say. Helen told herself that keeping up the mortgage payments was the least she could expect from shit-rat Darren and prayed to God that her bravado wouldn’t come unstuck.

Now, the day had come and she was helping Barbara to pack. The master bedroom had barely changed in twenty years and Helen still felt odd going in there. They had never been one of those families who all piled into the double bed on a Sunday morning – like she and Darren used to do with the kids. Whilst she hadn’t exactly been forbidden from going into her parents’ bedroom, it certainly wasn’t encouraged, and it brought back stiff memories of having her hair done on school-photo day or before a birthday party.

‘Thank you again for the nightie you got, Helen,’ said Barbara, rather formally. ‘It is lovely.’

‘Let me get it out. Did you put it in the drawer here?’

Helen opened the drawer as she spoke, but had got confused. Barbara kept her nightwear in the fourth one down, and she’d opened the third, full of tights.

‘Sorry!’

‘Next one down, Helen, perhaps I should just …’

A couple of minutes later, once Helen had managed to pick up the wrong toilet bag and then folded Barbara’s spare jumper incorrectly, Barbara insisted on swapping places.

‘I’m not an invalid, not yet at any rate.’

‘I know … I just want to help.’

‘Don’t worry, love, it’s nice just to have you here.’

Helen couldn’t help but notice that her mother was avoiding her eyes as she said it.

She tried desperately to think of some way to start a real conversation. The notes on their sickly green paper swam in her mind’s eye. Her thoughts flicked back to a time, aged twelve or so, when she’d sat in this same chair and Barbara had outlined the facts of life in her brisk, hearty journalist’s manner. Neil had practically had to push Helen in through the door to have the conversation, and, looking back, she reckoned he’d probably had to do the same for Barbara. Beyond that she struggled to remember any meaningful conversation the two of them had had alone.

‘Have you got the list the nurse gave you?’ she asked, stalling for time.

Barbara just waved a hand towards a scrap of paper on the bedside table and carried on folding the nightie.

‘What books are you taking?’

‘I picked a couple up at the library.’ She nodded towards a couple of paperbacks on the bed. Helen nearly picked one up to ask about it, but decided she had to do better than that.

‘Mum? Are you scared?’

Barbara didn’t answer, just carried on arranging the same few bits of clothing in her bag. For a moment, Helen wondered if she’d not really said it out loud, but she noticed Barbara’s hands were trembling. Eventually, she sat down heavily on the bed and looked Helen in the eye for the first time since they’d come into the bedroom.

‘What sort of question is that?’

Her gaze was hard, almost contemptuous.

‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘Yes, I’m scared.’ Her voice was flat.

‘I want you to know you can talk to me, Mum, if it helps – that’s all.’

‘Talking doesn’t help, Helen. I’m afraid that’s one thing that your dad and I disagree on.’ Her smile looked thin and forced. ‘If you’re trying to tell me you care, don’t worry – I know that. I know that I’ve not always made it easy for you and I know that you care anyway. You’ve got that much of Neil in you and we can both be grateful for that.’

Helen nodded. For a weird moment, she felt almost jealous of whoever had written the notes. Barbara was so self-possessed, so isolated, it was hard to imagine how she’d ever got close enough to anyone to wreak the harm the author of the note seemed to blame her for.

Helen took a deep breath.

‘I found the note, Mum.’

‘What note?’ Barbara looked up only for an instant. She was winding the cable on a phone charger, ready to add it to her bag.

‘You know what note: the green one, the awful poison pen thing.’

‘So that’s what you’ve got your knickers in a twist over! And I thought the idea of me at death’s door was enough.’ Barbara raised her eyebrows.

‘Well? What’s it all about then?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s sad really, a young girl in town – well, not so young any more, I suppose – her shoplifting conviction was reported in the paper and I was the one who wrote up the report. She lost her job – I think that’s right. I’m not sure of the details. Anyway, she fixated on me, blamed me for making her life fall apart, and started sending notes, threatening to get me sacked or to expose me as a liar.’

‘So how long’s it been going on?’

‘Well, it started about ten years ago. I got the police involved first time around, but once you unmask a stalker they tend to be a lot less scary than you imagined. When I found out it was her, I felt sorry for her more than anything else. She’s tried it on two or three times since, dropping little poisonous notes into work, or here. There were one or two phone calls too. Then years with nothing in between. She’s never gone any further. The best thing is just to ignore it.’

‘Does Dad know?’

Barbara’s lightness of manner lifted, leaving her tense and rigid once again.

‘He doesn’t,’ she confirmed, with a shake of the head. ‘I should have told him first time around – I wish that I had – but I didn’t want to worry him. If I tell him now, with all this … all this other stuff, I don’t know what he’ll do. That’s why I was so cagey about it when you brought it up before.’

She looked up at Helen, assessing. ‘And that’s what’s worrying me. If another one arrives here, when I’m in hospital, and he finds it … it’ll all be so much worse than it needs to be. Would you keep an eye open?’

Helen nodded. ‘I don’t understand why you don’t just put them in the bin, though, Mum?’

‘I probably should have, but I threw them out when it happened before. The police told me off – very nicely of course. They said I should keep anything else. I remember a woman officer wagging her finger at me and saying, “You never know”. I don’t know what she meant by it. I doubt she did, to be honest.’ She sighed, wearily. ‘So there should be one or two from last time – about three years ago. I could probably put my hands on them if I had to, but I think we’ve all got bigger things to worry about, don’t you?’

Suddenly decisive, Barbara pointed to the jewellery box on her dressing table. ‘Put the note in there: the one from downstairs, and any others that come. There’s a compartment underneath. They’ll be safe there.’

And that was it. Barbara tucked the phone charger down the side of her little wheelie case and zipped it closed.

Helen fingered the notes in her pocket. Were the notes she’d found in the safe years old? Or had they come recently? Barbara’s explanation allowed for either possibility, but she couldn’t nail it down without admitting to the raid on the safe. She wasn’t proud of herself for riffling through her parents’ private papers, whether as a teenager or now, and it was her reticence to bring that up that had led her only to ask Barbara about the latest note.

If the notes had been coming sporadically for years, with no sort of escalation, then perhaps her mother was right to ignore it. Helen certainly found that idea more comfortable than the thought that this was something that had kicked off very recently. It was unpleasant, she reasoned, and odd. But not dangerous. As Barbara had said – they both had bigger things to worry about.

June 2012

Helen

All the other NCT mums thought Helen was crackers. Barney was only two weeks old – a red, mewling alien, so tiny his whole being would expand and contract with each precarious breath. Now, rather than sitting back and letting grandparents queue up to fuss over her in the comfort of her own home, Helen was taking Barney to them.

To be fair, she realised they had a point as she packed the car. As soon as the bump became awkward, they had traded up Darren’s beloved MX5 for a family-sized Audi. When the new car was delivered, the pair of them had gaped at its interior and laughed when their few lonely shopping bags rolled around and scattered their contents across the felty wilderness of the boot. It had never occurred to them that they would fill the thing, at least not unless another two kids and a decent-sized dog came along. Yet here they were, a few months later, setting off up the M1 on the Jubilee bank holiday weekend, with the boot groaning with baby paraphernalia that they were too scared to leave behind.

But this had been how Helen had wanted it, she mused, as she held Barney’s hot little hand between her finger and thumb and gazed down at his snuffling, sleepy form in the car seat. Taking him up north meant she could show him off, but saved her from feeling like she had to play the hostess in her sore and exhausted state. She was sitting beside him in the back and it was all she could do to stop herself from unbuckling him and pulling him close. He’d been a part of her for so long, any physical gap between them seemed somehow wrong.

God knew, she’d survived just fine for long enough without a baby. Thirty-eight wasn’t ridiculously old, but given that she and Darren had been together (well, mostly) since high school and married for twelve years, there had certainly been a few raised eyebrows when they’d announced it. Already, though, she couldn’t imagine life without this mysterious snuffling bundle.

It was early June and one of the warmest days of the year so far. The daylight seemed to stretch out forever, as if they were chasing the sunset north. That always made the journey feel longer, and this one blurred into a long, fading evening of traffic jams and stops; bad coffee and bored baristas microwaving endless tubs of formula milk; the sound of Barney’s crying; that ‘Umbrella’ song that was never off the radio; and Helen’s own seldom-heard singing voice hoarse with ‘Twinkle Twinkle’. Finally, the blue signs announced their junction and Darren flicked down the indicator.

‘Don’t come off here,’ she told him. ‘I got a text from Dad; go on to the services.’

All the locals used the access road to Moreton Chase as an unofficial junction, but the motorway police closed it from time to time and it was a long trek back from the next official exit if you got caught out.

Even with the shortcut, it was gone eleven by the time they got to Barbara and Neil’s, and the hosts looked as tired as their visitors did, though their faces lit up to see them all the same.

‘Here’s the wee man!’ said Neil. ‘Bring him in, bring him in. Let’s have a proper look. Oh, he’s a smasher, Helen.’

The NCT mums had talked about their own mothers being all over their babies. But when Helen went home, it was Neil who held Barney first, who kissed his toes and nudged his pinkie into Barney’s hand so the baby’s little fingers would curl around it. Barbara stuck the kettle on so Helen could make up a bottle and they could all have a cup of tea that didn’t taste of cardboard.

When Barbara finally held him, he reached towards her and did the thing with his mouth that Darren kept saying was going to turn into smiling any day now.

‘He likes you, Barbara,’ said Neil.

‘I think he does.’ She smiled down at Barney. ‘I also think it’s about time he went down for the night.’

Neil held him again, whilst Darren and Helen brought the travel cot in from the car and wrestled it up next to their bed in the spare room. His chest still rose and fell dramatically with every breath, but Helen noticed it wasn’t as marked as it had been in those first days. Already her little boy was growing, getting stronger.

‘Are you okay?’ It was Barbara, passing by with an armful of carrier bags. Helen wondered if her mother would notice the tears threatening to seep from her eyes.

‘Deathly tired, that’s all.’ She smiled. ‘It’s been a tough couple of weeks.’

She expected her mother to frown, but Barbara just nodded. ‘There’s nothing harder than coping with a newborn, Helen. You need to be kind to yourself. You and Darren, too.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I mean it. Don’t struggle more than you have to. We can help, and Adam and Christine, of course.’

‘We’re doing fine.’

‘I’m sure you are, Helen.’

Neil opened a red wine he’d been saving and they toasted Barney first, and then, jokingly, the queen. Before long, the glasses were drained. Helen sank into bed, knowing that sleep would take her the moment she shut her eyes and that the next thing she knew would be Barney’s mewling hunger dragging her from it.

Barbara

Barbara listened for the change in her daughter’s breathing as Helen finally succumbed to her exhaustion. For a few moments, she stood by the spare room door, matching her own shuddering breath to Helen’s, trying to be slow, trying to be calm. When she was sure that her daughter was asleep, she crept into the bathroom.

The master bedroom had an en suite – Neil had plumbed it in himself ten years earlier and together they’d sponged the walls blue and lavender. The bathroom cabinet was cluttered with stuff that was never used – toiletry gifts that hadn’t quite hit the mark and little travel bags that Neil had saved from the occasional business-class flights taken before he retired. Right at the back was a cheap polyester make-up bag. Like everything else, it had gathered a fine film of dust. It wasn’t often that she felt the need to get this kit out. She was pleased to note that when she checked over the contents they were immaculate.

Next, she swabbed the toilet lid with a disinfectant wipe, before setting out the cotton wool, the steri-strips, the antiseptic and the pack of blades. Her hands shook as she ripped the cardboard from the packet.

She allowed herself a pause, more breathing and counting to steady herself, but she knew Neil would be back before too long. Of course, he couldn’t be expected to understand how difficult she found it to have a baby under her roof. He didn’t even know the memories that it brought back. This would help her, just as it had helped when Helen herself was tiny. Neil would hate it but manage to accept it nonetheless, because Neil’s best quality was his ability to accept.

The feeling of the blade on her thigh was delicious for an instant, and even after that first golden moment, when the loathing began to pour back in, the sense of satisfaction remained. Now she was steady, now she was in control once more. The blood ran into the shower tray, her anxiety seeping away with it.

She cleaned up quickly, feeling the silvering of old scars under her fingertips as she pressed and wiped the wound.

Later, in bed, Neil’s fingers found the neat row of steri-strips.

‘Oh, love,’ he sighed.

‘I’m okay. I won’t need to do it again.’

He’d always had a vampire’s sense for her blood, and a haemophobe’s aversion to it. He drew his hand away abruptly and nestled it in her hair, stroking and soothing – although she was the one who had to do the reassuring. She’d known she would struggle with the baby in the house. These days, she didn’t cut often, and she was disappointed in herself that it had come to this, but she’d done what she needed to do. Neil thought the world was about gardens and beauty and patience rewarded. Barbara liked that about him, but in her heart she believed it came down to much less than that – just people doing what they needed to do.

A few hours later they made love, when they’d both been asleep and could pretend more or less to be sleeping still. It was the first time in many weeks, and, in the morning, when the memory of their silent and familiar coupling came back to Barbara, it made her smile. She recalled bittersweet moments from their past, and the fact that Neil was perhaps not so much of a haemophobe as he liked to have her believe.

Helen

The next morning, Darren took Barney to meet his other grandparents. They would all be going over for dinner, but Helen’s day had been going since four a.m., not counting the two a.m. feed. His suggestion that she try to grab a nap had been welcome, but sleep didn’t come easily – partly because Barney wasn’t nearby. And it wasn’t helping that dawn had been hours ago. Again, she felt the endless daylight was stalking her.

Eventually, Barbara stuck her head around the door. ‘Shall I bring you up a cuppa?’

‘No. Hopefully I’ll get to sleep. Thanks, anyway.’

Ten minutes later she was still lying there. It was bright outside and the closed curtains cast a jaundiced glow about the room without achieving any semblance of darkness. She heard the kettle go on, and the steps on the staircase shortly after.

Barbara edged round the door with a mug in each hand, peering at Helen to check if her eyes were open before speaking.

‘I thought I’d make two, just in case you were still awake.’

‘Thanks.’ Helen gave up and pushed herself up against the headboard. She was slightly unnerved by her mother’s thoughtfulness. Barbara was efficient, witty and even generous, but in Helen’s experience, her admirable qualities didn’t usually extend to anything resembling tenderness. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any headache pills?’

Barbara quickly fetched a pack from her own bedroom, and a glass of water.

‘Are you coping, Helen? I hope you’d tell me.’

Helen went to shake her head but stopped because it hurt.

‘It’s okay – tiring. Everyone struggles a bit, though – it’s normal.’

‘Of course it’s normal,’ Barbara said, even though Helen had not meant it as a question. ‘God knows I’ve never been one for newborns—’

‘Haven’t you?’ asked Helen. She couldn’t remember seeing her mother fuss over a baby, but then she couldn’t remember there being many babies around. And Barbara wasn’t a fusser over anything.

‘Better when they grow up a bit … By mid-thirties it’s much easier!’

Barbara’s laughter sounded forced, as though she felt this should be an intimate moment and was working desperately to make it happen. Helen laughed along, but a little cautiously.

‘You know, Helen, I’ll admit I found it difficult to feel close to you when you were younger. Your dad found it much easier, and then you two were so natural together … Anyway, I want you to know I’m not judging you.’ Now Barbara gave a sharp laugh. ‘I’m the last person to judge anyone.’

There was a lump in Helen’s throat. It was as much to do with her mother’s rarely spoken of pride in her, with a vague sense of Barbara’s own missed opportunities, as with the fact Helen was knackered, but most of all it was grief for the shared understanding she should have had with this woman, her mother, that they’d somehow missed out on along the way.

Helen wanted to reassure her mother that she did care about her, that she’d always cared about her, even though Barbara had made it as hard as she could. The thoughts and words buzzed in Helen’s head but she couldn’t marshal them; she couldn’t trust herself. She’d always felt somehow that her birth had spoiled things for her mother. That was the conclusion she’d drawn from the never-spoken-about gaps in Barbara’s past. And that was why, she reasoned, Barbara could never feel about Helen the way Helen felt about Barney.

August 2017

Helen

Barbara had still been on her laptop when Neil was ready to leave for the hospital. He’d put her bag in the boot, checked the admissions letter twice and was now shuffling by the front door.

‘I’m just tying up loose ends. You don’t want me taking it with me, do you?’ Barbara called down to them.

‘What’s she doing on it these days, anyway – I thought she’d pretty much retired?’ Helen asked her father.

He shrugged. ‘Open data. Citizen journalism. Crowd science. None of it makes a jot of sense to me, but she’s always got something going on. Keeps her sharp, she says, and I suppose it seems to work.’

They heard the computer power down and then Barbara emerged on the stairs. She and Neil went out to the car. Helen took the children to wave at the window. Neil’s face was strained and she regretted not taking the chance to ask him how he was whilst Barbara was busy. Still, it underlined Barbara’s point about the notes: he wasn’t a man who needed anything extra to worry about.

Pat from next door rushed over to the car with a card in her hand and both Neil and Barbara looked to be trying hard to seem pleased to see her, without managing to succeed.

Normally, Helen only insisted the kids come to the window to wave when the grandparents had been staying with them and were leaving to drive home. Barney was clearly bored by waiting for them to actually get into the car and couldn’t get back to CBeebies quickly enough. Alys, though, was confused.

‘Granddad Neil and Nana Barbara go to our house?’ she asked, as the car finally pulled away.

‘No, Nana is going to hospital for a few days. Granddad will be back later.’

‘And Nana.’

‘No, just Granddad.’

‘Granddad can come to our house.’ She was nodding firmly, as if that decided it.

‘No, we need to stay here a bit longer. We need to wait for Nana to come home.’

‘Daddy come here.’

God, thought Helen, please don’t start this now. ‘No …’ she began patiently, getting ready to explain once again.

‘Not no!’ Alys shouted. ‘Daddy come now!’

She was pointing out of the window. Helen hadn’t even registered the car that had pulled into the cul-de-sac a few moments after Neil’s Nissan had turned out of it. It was a silver Astra, badged up by a hire company.

Fuck. Alys was right. He was three days early.

Darren jumped out of the driver’s seat and bounded onto the drive, before catching sight of them in the window and veering across the lawn, waving at Alys.

Frantically, Helen strained to see if there was anyone else in the car, but he seemed to be alone. Alys’s voice rose to a clamour and by this time Barney had left the television and was hauling himself up to stand on the sofa and see what was going on.

‘Daddydaddy‌daddydaddy‌daddydaddy‌daddydaddy.’

‘Feet down, please, Barney.’

He ignored her and the volume of the children’s joyous duet surged ever upward. Darren didn’t disappoint, miming his excitement through the double glazing whilst studiously failing to meet Helen’s eye.

Of course, she had no choice but to let him come in. After as few terse words as she could manage, Helen left the living room and let the three of them get on with it.

She went to the spare room first, but that immediately felt wrong, so instead she crept upstairs and into the womblike snugness of her childhood bedroom. She sat in the corner of the single bed, leaning against the wall, with Barney’s precious blanket tucked between her knees, straining to listen and to keep the tears from falling.

Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

*

Helen studied the lilac, swirly wallpaper she’d picked out when she was fourteen, trying to match up the ghostly, faded squares with the posters and pages ripped from magazines that had once decorated her walls. Michael J. Fox over there, later replaced by John Squire. George Michael, replaced by John Squire. She pictured the various incarnations, trying to switch off her brain.

Eventually she heard his footsteps on the stairs. He’d lasted about forty-five minutes, which was more time than he’d spent alone with Barney and Alys together in as long as she could remember, not counting soft play. He opened the door without knocking and walked into the room. She stayed hunched up on the bed, looking over his shoulder instead of directly at him, but still catching the look of mild pity as he gazed down at her.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing turning up here?’ she asked.

It wasn’t brilliant, but she was proud that she had managed to spit it out, past the lump in her throat and the decades of conditioned politeness. Darren didn’t answer immediately, probably weighing up his options.

‘They’re my kids. I had to see them, Helen. I didn’t have any choice.’

‘Well now you’ve seen them.’

She was going to add ‘fuck off’, but in the end it seemed too crude, too teenage. The pair of them fell into silence. Then Darren dropped down to a sitting position, closing the door to lean his back against it and laying his long legs out across the only stretch of carpet in the tiny room where they fitted. He should know. Years ago, he used to play guitar sitting like that for hours, while she was revising or reading or just watching him. Hard to believe it was the same person.

‘My mum said Barbara’s going in today, that the op’s tomorrow?’

‘I’d like you to leave.’

He bit his lip and then put a finger to it. For a moment, she sensed he was about to slam his hand against something, but he seemed to hold himself back.

‘I miss you, Helen.’

She said nothing.

‘I know I chose this, I know it’s my fault. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss you. We grew up together, didn’t we? No one knows me like you do, and I know what you’re going through as much as anyone can. I’m sorry about it, Hels, I really am.’

‘Are you asking to come back?’

Now it was Darren’s turn for silence. He wriggled an index finger into the pile of the carpet and stared at the holes he was making.

‘We’ve been through all this,’ he whispered. ‘You know it’s not been right for ages. This is better for both of us.’ But then he rushed on, whip-quick, as if to head off any disagreement from her. ‘But the point is I can help you. And I want to. For the kids. And for us, for everything we were. You’ve got to let me, Hels.’

She shouldn’t have agreed, she thought later.

In truth, she didn’t agree. She didn’t say anything. But her silence was acquiescence enough.

She let him bring her a cup of tea and put the kids in front of a film. She let him sit on the single bed next to her, the weight and the smell of him on the homely sheets just as intoxicating and incongruous as it had been twenty-odd years earlier. She poured out the details of surgery and staging, metastasis and Macmillan nurses. She even told him about the green notes. He seemed perfectly happy with Barbara’s explanation about the teenage shoplifter. ‘There are some fucked-up weirdos in this world, Hels.’ He laughed. ‘That’s one thing you learn running a dating business.’

The words had come out of her like a dam burst, but Darren caught every last drop, and mopped them up and dealt with them like he mopped the tears from her cheeks. She didn’t even need to tell him where to find the tissues. Was it just a performance for her benefit? To persuade her to let him see more of the kids, or to soften her up for whatever he and Lauren were planning next? She felt she ought to be more cynical, but she was too exhausted and wrung out to do anything but accept the sympathy on offer.

Her friends were far away and had their own worries. They’d all drifted apart since they started having families – literally as well as metaphorically, as they had moved out in different directions to various London suburbs. She missed the gossip and the laughter, but Darren had always been her emotional anchor. In her twenties, she’d provided the shoulder to cry on as her friends went through dating disasters and relationship break-ups. Now, finally, she was the one in need and the only confidant she’d ever needed was the one whose betrayal was ripping her to shreds.

Eventually, after a snack with the kids and about four cups of tea, and after he’d taken off his socks because he always preferred bare feet, and after Helen had finished one box of Kleenex and, shamefully, got him to refill the screen wash on her car, he said he should go.

They agreed he’d have the kids on Thursday, assuming Barbara’s operation the day before had gone okay, and take them somewhere for the day. Both Barney and Alys had been very forbearing whilst their parents sat alone upstairs and that pricked at her – between her and Darren they were turning them into diplomats. On the doorstep, Darren paused awkwardly and she let him falter, but he turned away without a kiss, or a handshake, or any touch at all. She thought about the way they’d been in the bedroom and wondered if different rules applied there. Barney and Alys waved the Astra off quite happily, without asking any questions.

‘Was it nice to see Daddy?’ she asked.

They both nodded and ‘yes-yessed’ enthusiastically.

‘Daddy smelt happy,’ said Barney, quietly.

‘Really? What do you mean?’

But he just shrugged and tried to grab a piece of jigsaw from Alys’s hand.

It killed her that even Barney could see Darren was happier now. Happier having abandoned his family. Happier without her. Happier with carefree, bright-eyed, not-yet-thirty Lauren.

*

Neil went back to the hospital at seven the next morning. It was Wednesday already; tomorrow they’d have been away from home for a week and she had no idea when they’d be going back. She tried to occupy herself with washing the kids’ clothes and making a list of extras she should pick up for them from the supermarket, whilst waiting for news from the hospital. Neil sent a text when Barbara was going into theatre and then one when she came out; another when she’d started to come round from the anaesthetic and another when they’d let him in to see her in the recovery room. It had all gone ‘by the book’ he said, though Helen guessed those were Mr Eklund’s words, or someone else at the hospital. They’d get the first proper update on what they had found on the Thursday ward round, by which point it was expected that Barbara would be well enough to take it in.

It was early evening by the time Neil was able to report that Barbara was back on the ward. They’d planned for him to come home then, but when it came to it, he didn’t want to leave her alone. Eventually, Helen persuaded him that he should drive back around the kids’ bedtime and that she would go in and sit with Barbara through the night. When he came back and she saw him in the flesh, she was glad she’d insisted. He looked wearier than she remembered ever seeing him. The day had clearly taken everything he had to give.

As soon as she’d kissed the kids – both sleeping soundly, thank God – he was gently hurrying her out. She insisted on delaying long enough to make sure he ate the pasta bake she’d left for him, and wondered bleakly whether anyone would get so concerned about her by the time she was Barbara’s age.

It was going dark by the time Helen arrived, and the strange, unnatural half-light of the hospital corridors made her feel suddenly weary. Barbara was in a half-private cubicle set back from the main ward. The young nurse on night duty explained that visitors were allowed in tonight because she was just out of surgery. Soon she’d be moved into the ward itself and visiting hours would have to be observed.

The heels of Helen’s ankle boots clipped loudly on the few steps between the ward door and Barbara’s cubicle, and she peered anxiously into the gloom, hoping she’d not woken up any of the other patients. The nurse left as soon as Helen was settled in the chair, closing the ward door carefully behind her and slipping off, rubber-soled, into the shadows. Helen had no chance to ask her anything.

Barbara lay there like a storybook invalid, her head back against the semi-propped pillows, eyelids lowered and hands folded on the blanket. Her skin had an oniony look, translucent, papery, unhealthy. It was as if the operation had somehow removed a layer of her. Helen was shocked by the difference from the previous day, when she’d looked whole and wholesome – give or take the odd liver spot and the dark circles under her eyes.

She sat down in the plastic armchair and laid her hand over her mother’s. She couldn’t decide if Barbara was too cold or if she herself was too hot. Barbara’s eyelids didn’t flicker. By now, Helen had tuned in to the shallow sound of her breathing. She let herself fall into its rhythm.

June 1963

Katy

The honeysuckle made no difference; Katy couldn’t tell them anything.

The builders and their machines had changed the very shape of the earth. It had been moulded and flattened and moulded again, like the sandpits in the infant school.

‘Well, did you come in to the left of the oak, or the right of the oak? The damn tree’s not moved!’ The sergeant with the moustache was making no effort to hide his annoyance.

Katy could remember there being trees; she didn’t know if the one he was waving at had been one of them. She wanted to tell him that she’d been terrified and panicking. That she’d barely slept and it was the furthest she’d ever gone from home on her own. When she thought about that day, it was through a fog of guilt, the horror of what she’d done weighing down on her with each day she got older, each day she spent at Ashdown. Mr Robertson might understand, but she knew this man never would.

‘I only remember there being a road sweeping up ahead of me,’ she said, and the muscles round her mouth twitched oddly as she fought back tears. ‘There was a bank of loose earth and stones. That’s where … that’s where …’

‘It’s okay.’ Miss Silver stepped closer, patting her arm.

‘It’s bloody well not okay,’ interjected the policeman. ‘How far from the site perimeter was this road? How far did you have to walk to get to it?’

Katy shook her head. She couldn’t answer.

‘How was the road orientated? Which direction did it go in?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her lips formed the words, but there was no voice.

The man’s face was in hers now. She could see the smattering of ginger hairs in his brown moustache, and the spittle catching at the corners of his lips.

‘There were signs bloody everywhere; what did the signs say? How high was this banking? How far were you from the building itself?’

Eventually it was over. The little group picked its way across the field and back to the car park, the policeman muttering darkly about not having any more of this sort of little jolly. Katy managed to keep her silence, though a few tears escaped down her cheeks. They didn’t sting like they had in the cold of January. The inspector went ahead to where Etta Gardiner stood, the same constable still by her side. Katy couldn’t hear what he said, but she heard Etta’s loud gasp and saw the inspector’s white handkerchief flutter as he pulled it out to comfort her. Although they kept a good distance away, Katy’s cheeks burned as they walked past, feeling Etta’s gaze track her all the way to the Austin.

That was it. They wouldn’t be back in time for dinner and would have to get something on the road, Mr Robertson noted with a strained cheerfulness. For a moment, Katy imagined running. Never having to go back to Ashdown with its menace and melancholy and stink of boiled cabbage. She could bury her face in the smell of the wet earth and go to sleep cradled in the scent of honeysuckle without ever waking up.

She didn’t run. It would give the creep with the moustache too much satisfaction.

As Mr Robertson made heavy weather of turning the Austin, she caught a final glimpse of Etta through the window. There was a man beside her, his slim, slightly hunched figure unmistakable. Simon Gardiner handed his wife a posy of white narcissus and linked arms with her to walk towards the fence where Katy guessed the flowers were to be laid. Etta leant in to him as they walked the few steps, almost collapsing in his arms as they drew to a pause.

White for innocence, Katy thought. If only you knew, Etta Gardiner.

The Austin wheeled round abruptly and the tableau was gone.

Katy made a silent vow. One day I’ll show her what he is. One day I’ll show everyone.

August 2017

Helen

Giving up on sleep, Helen had gone to get a coffee. It was after two a.m., but there was a twenty-four-hour kiosk in the main foyer. She strolled around the deserted tables to stretch her legs, nodding to a couple of medics on their break. She paused to look at a gaudy poster about the fundraising efforts for a new cancer centre.

Not wanting to be away for too long, she returned to Barbara’s ward, still clutching her paper cup, and slipped through the doorway. A nurse was bent over paperwork at a small desk that had been empty before. She lifted her head to smile and Helen caught the faint scent of toothpaste as she walked past. The late shift at the hospital was giving way to the early one.

In Barbara’s cubicle, the figure in the bed looked exactly the same as when Helen had left her: still lying on her back, the same shallow breathing lifting the cellular blanket only a touch with each inhalation. Helen felt an unexpected surge of relief.

She settled herself, then simply sat and held Barbara’s hand, just as she had done before. She was achingly tired, and her mind felt dull. How many people were awake in this building just now? she wondered. There must be babies being born here – as she had been born here. There must be other grown-up children holding the hands of parents and wondering if their time together was coming to an end. Did any of them feel only numbness instead of the grief and worry that she’d expected to feel? Did this distance and lack of feeling make her a bad daughter? No, ‘bad’ was the wrong word – an unnatural daughter, that was more what she felt. And if she was an unnatural daughter, was it her fault or Barbara’s?

She swept back through her memory, looking for moments of love, special times that she and Barbara had shared, trying to conjure some missing fondness, almost in the way that, as a child, she found thinking of her neighbour’s dead cat helped to stop her getting the giggles when she was in trouble with a teacher.

There were certainly happy images. Her disbelief when she was allowed the biggest chocolate sundae in the world at an ice cream shop in Italy. Jumping the waves on a beach in France the day after a thunderstorm. Her tenth birthday party, which had been a surprise, with all her school friends jumping out from behind the sofa when the family returned from a ‘grown-up’ celebratory pub lunch.

Her childhood, on the whole, had been a happy one. But in every mental picture her dad’s face was clearer – shining with joy, sharing her laughter, showing tender concern about some childhood malady. Neil had worked full-time until his retirement. Barbara worked on the newspaper only two days a week when Helen was in primary school, a little more after she went to the high. Those hours together had made little imprint on her memory, it seemed. The best she could recall was that they were filled with books and TV and homework. That she kept out of her mother’s way, without really knowing why. Or was it Barbara who had been keeping out of hers?

There was a movement from the bed and the limp hand Helen had been holding gripped back. When it was clear that Barbara was waking up, Helen manoeuvred the bed and the pillows to prop her up a bit, and then held the glass that she’d filled to her mother’s lips.

‘So how do you feel, Mum?’

‘Okay,’ she said, then sipped again. ‘Sore.’

The nurse from the desk appeared, gently tugging the curtain back.

‘I heard your voices,’ she said. ‘Doing okay this morning?’

‘Just sore,’ Barbara repeated, and the nurse nodded sympathetically. ‘There’s a painkiller in your drip, but I can get you a tablet too if you can take it. And breakfast will be around in an hour or so. I’ll tell them just to try you on some toast for now.’

Helen wasn’t sure if Barbara had heard. Her eyes closed slowly and the rhythm of her breathing changed.

‘She’ll be dozy after the anaesthetic,’ said the nurse, a little unnecessarily.

Helen nodded. She was so tired that she was still nodding to the nurse’s back as she replaced the clipboard in its holder and walked off down the ward.

*

Neil turned up about half past ten. Darren had picked up the children as arranged and Neil had jumped in the car the minute they’d gone. He was just in time to see Barbara’s third session of dry-heaving. Just the smell of the toast had set her off and she’d not had much peace from it since.

‘Oh, love,’ he said, bending down to hold her shoulders as she shuddered over the paper bowl. ‘That’s it, that’s it, there you go.’

When it was done, she fell back on his arm and let him lower her down to the propped-up pillows. A thread of spit trailed from the corner of her mouth, and she was too exhausted this time to even take a sip of water.

‘It’s the anaesthetic,’ Helen told him. ‘The nurse says it should pass in twenty-four hours.’

Neil grilled her for more information that she didn’t have. The consultants hadn’t done their rounds yet and it was pretty obvious that Barbara wasn’t really in a state to take anything on board anyway. Helen really wanted to ask him about Darren and the kids, but he brushed off her first attempt, telling her they’d both slept like troopers and gone off happily this morning – Darren was taking them to some soft play centre apparently. She didn’t want to seem uncaring, focusing on her own children rather than on Barbara, so she bit her tongue.

It was a shock for Neil to see his wife looking so fragile, Helen could tell. Having been there since Barbara woke up, she’d had more of a chance to get used to it. If anything, Helen felt there was perhaps a little bit of colour coming back to her cheeks – when she wasn’t throwing up, obviously. But Neil looked dismayed, and even as Helen filled him in on what time Barbara had woken up and what the nurse had said, she could see his wide eyes darting back to the bed, taking in every detail.

Eventually, Barbara opened her eyes, smiled at him, and gestured for the water.

‘You never could keep away,’ she whispered.

‘Of course not. Oh, Barbara …’ he bent to kiss her cheek, ‘… you’re looking wonderful, love. You’re going to be out of here in no time.’ He said it fiercely, as if he could wish it hard enough to make it true. Helen couldn’t meet his eye, but she saw that Barbara did. She wanted to be happy for her mother – for them both – but all she could think of was that Darren wouldn’t be there to say that if it was her.

They made some desultory conversation about the weather and then about the two new families in Neil and Barbara’s street and the building work they were planning. Barbara could nod, or make the occasional comment, and Helen and Neil felt like they were entertaining her. After a while, the trolley came round with some pasta and tomato sauce – nominally this was lunchtime – and Barbara managed not to be sick, although she asked them to swap it for toast. A little later, she even ate a few mouthfuls.

‘We could bring you something in,’ offered Neil. ‘Some nice biscuits, or a jam sandwich? Those cheesy crackers? What would tickle your fancy?’

Barbara looked a little green.

‘I think she just needs a day or so to recover her appetite,’ Helen said. ‘We’ll have plenty of time to bring stuff in.

‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to the children?’ Barbara asked, probably just to try to change the subject away from food.

‘Darren’s taking them out for the day. To be honest, though,’ Helen said, taking her opportunity, ‘I could really do with a shower. Do you both mind if I—’

‘No, no, no,’ her parents flustered in unison. ‘You get home, love,’ continued Neil. ‘Get a bit of kip if you can – it’ll do you good.’

*

In the bathroom, she saw Barbara’s cake of Chanel No. 5 soap sitting on the windowsill. It was carefully placed on a folded flannel, drying in the sunshine so that she could rewrap it in its embossed tissue paper and slip it back inside the plastic soapbox and then its cardboard box; but she must never have gotten round to completing the task. The sight of it caught Helen off-guard; she’d forgotten all about that little ritual of her mother’s.

She didn’t have to pick up the soap to smell it; the perfume still hung heavy in the warm, close air. Gulping it down as her breathing turned ragged and the tears came, somehow the scent had thawed the numbness that had consumed her in the hospital.

There was no point in trying to stop it – Helen let her crying keen out unchecked through the empty house. The ugly, screeching noises seemed to scratch at the walls like trapped wild beasts. In some distant, unmoved part of her mind, she registered mild surprise that she could sound like that. Then she carried on anyway.

The shame of it was that the crying wasn’t for Barbara, or even for Neil, though that was part of it. She was crying for herself; for the loss of her mother, for the sort of mother she’d never had in the first place, for the family that was slipping away from her. She’d never bargained for this. She didn’t deserve it. She wailed, like Alys might, simply because it wasn’t fair.

The shower helped, though, and once she was calmer, there was some small comfort to be had in being able to take time to dry her hair properly, to smooth on some body lotion and file her nails, but she was constantly remembering that the time was hers only because Barney and Alys were with Darren. She tormented herself with the thought of what a wonderful time they would be having, of them not wanting to come back, and, worst of all, of the inevitable moment in the future when Darren would insist on them meeting her. Whilst she could just about stomach the thought of the kids being happy in the company of their father, she felt very different when she pictured a perfect, nuclear family unit that she wasn’t part of.

Gradually, the thoughts took on a relentless, tinnitus-like quality, thrumming incessantly through her over-weary mind. She tried to take a nap but was too strung out to sleep; then she picked up her novel, but put it down again after reading the same paragraph three times.

Barbara and Neil still had a VHS player. Eventually, Helen put on a second pair of socks, retrieved a pack of custard creams from the kitchen and looked on the shelf for her old copy of Dirty Dancing. She had to blow the dust off the case before she opened it. It felt surreal, putting on a film (and not a cartoon) in the middle of the day, with the sunlight streaming in the window, but she just prayed that her teenage favourite would give her racing mind a break.

The custard creams were finished before Johnny and Baby even got to the watermelons. It worked as well as Helen could have hoped, suppressing the thrumming of worries in her mind.

Then the call came from Neil.

‘Helen?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s your mum – you’ve got to come quickly.’ The panic was clear in his voice.

‘What is it?’

‘She’s being sick—’

She felt her shoulders relax a fraction and jumped to reassure him.

‘They said it was the anaesthetic, Dad. I think it’s normal, for some people anyway. Have you spoken to a nurse?’

‘It’s not normal, Helen, she’s bringing up blood. They’re talking about intensive care. You need to just get here.’

‘I’m coming.’

It was a fifteen-minute drive to the hospital, but it took an eternity. Her heart pounded all the way, with the thought of Barbara in pain and Neil anxious and afraid. She had no idea whether she really should be panicking. Nobody had suggested things could go badly once Barbara had come out of the recovery room and back to the ward – at least not in the short term. Surely she was in the best place and whatever it was they could hook her up to a machine and get it ‘stabilised’, as they always said on the TV?

Helen had recognised from that first trip with them to Mr Eklund that Neil was finding the hospital difficult, that he felt out of his depth and – there was no other word for it – terrified. She still had hope that her dad had just had a panic, that she’d get there to be told it was a fuss about nothing, and her parents would be sitting in the cubicle happily watching some quiz show or cookery repeat on the mini bedside TV.

She found a parking space near the main door – she’d already bought a weekly permit for her own car and insisted on doing the same for Neil’s – and hurried in.

They weren’t watching TV. As soon as she entered the ward, she could see the hubbub of people around Barbara’s bed. There were eight or nine of them clustered into the little room, some bent over her, two holding IV lines, and Neil standing a couple of footsteps outside the door, looking smaller than she’d ever seen him.

‘Helen!’

She gave him a hurried hug, and then turned to look through the glass at Barbara. If she’d looked bad before, she looked deathly now. Her skin was chalk-like, paler than the white sheets that she was lying on. She was wearing a breathing mask, which seemed to cover most of her face, but her eyes burnt out above it, bloodshot, widened and, above all, scared.

Neil pulled Helen back when she tried to step into the room.

‘They said not to. They need the space.’

She was still taking it in as she stepped back – the extra lines now attaching her mother to various machines, and the ominous red-brown stains on the bed. Then a woman in civvies – an open-neck shirt and some tailored trousers – turned away from the bed and stuck her head out of the room.

‘You must be Mrs Marsden’s daughter? I’m Rebecca Evans. I’m a consultant here. There’s a trolley on its way to transfer your mother to the intensive care unit. She should be fine, but we need to take the precaution. I’ll have to ask you and Mr Marsden to stand back please.’

The woman gestured towards some chairs by the nurses’ station, but Helen had no intention of being herded off into a corner.

‘First, tell me what’s going on? This morning she was doing fine. They said she just needed to get the last of the anaesthetic out of her system. Surely she can’t have had a reaction this late?’

The woman shook her head. ‘It’s not the anaesthetic. I can’t—’

She stopped speaking as the main ward doors opened and two men wheeled a trolley through at speed. She waved her hand towards the chairs again and this time Helen stepped backward. Without even bothering to check if she’d gone, the consultant turned back to the bed, barking out incomprehensible instructions to the nurses and porters. The transfer was made in seconds, despite all the tubes and wires that Barbara suddenly seemed to have coming out of her.

Three or four of the nurses hung back. Barbara was out of their hands now. The others advanced down the ward together, surrounding the trolley like it was some kind of battering ram, with Ms Evans setting a brisk pace in her low heels.

The eldest of the ward nurses came over to where Neil and Helen were standing.

‘They’ll let you know when you can see her,’ she said. ‘Come into the office; that way we’ll be ready when they buzz for you.’

She had a kindly, grandmotherly way about her, and they followed meekly, walking the length of the ward with the eyes of all the patients and visitors moving silently with them. Geranium Ward clearly wasn’t used to seeing much in the way of medical high-drama.

Helen and Neil sat down and the nurse quickly left, saying something about getting someone to make them a cuppa. She seemed to recognise that they needed a bit of privacy. The office smelt of mints and bleach, with just the faintest trace of cigarette smoke. I’d take one, Helen thought, if someone offered. She’d not smoked since her teens.

The wall was decorated with a single, faded Monet print in a Perspex frame that reflected all the movement from the ward. Life didn’t stop because of a visit from the crash team. There were still bedpans to be dealt with, antibacterial protocols to follow and endless charts to be checked off and stuffed back into their clipboards.

‘She was bringing up blood, Helen.’ Neil’s voice was low, and he looked at the floor rather than her. ‘Not just a bit – it was just gushing out of her. Coming from her nose as well, even one of her ears at one point.’

Helen thought back to the stains she’d seen on the bed. How awful.

She just couldn’t understand it. There had been no suggestion of any cancer in Barbara’s digestive system. No one had mentioned any side effects or surgical complications that could look like this. And it had all seemed to be going so smoothly, completely ‘by the book’, as they’d all been saying yesterday. She didn’t know what to say to Neil. She was the one who had read all the leaflets, gone online; she was the one who was meant to know what to expect, and nothing had – nothing could have – prepared her for this.

There was a niggling voice in her head that said maybe there was a reason for that. Could it be that this was something more sinister than a symptom or a side effect? Jennifer, whoever she was, had promised to make Barbara suffer. And Helen doubted she’d suffered anything in her life like the last few hours. What if the notes weren’t just empty threats? What if this time Jennifer meant it for real? Helen felt giddy. Was she putting two and two together and getting eleven? Or should she listen to the instinct screaming at her that this was anything but an accident?

She reached out for Neil’s hand, and he let her take it, though his eyes remained fixed on the tight brown weave of the carpet tiles.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.