Beneath the Surface (34 page)

‘Hannah?’

‘Oh, my God! I’m so sorry! I—’

Her cheeks were aflame with the embarrassment of being caught red-handed. There was nothing she could say to defend her actions. With trembling hands she held the letters out to Abi, who took hold of them, staring down at the paper and then back at Hannah.

‘Have you read them all?’ she asked.

Hannah looked away. She felt sick and wanted to run from the room in shame.

‘I’m not angry,’ Abi said softly. ‘Just tell me the truth.’

Hannah nodded, as tears filled her eyes. She imagined Abi telling her to get out, that she never wanted to speak to her again.

‘I’m
so
sorry,’ she repeated.

‘Don’t cry,’ Abi whispered, putting an arm around her. ‘I would have told you everything, anyway. I want you to know, Hannah,’ she urged.

Eventually Hannah looked up. ‘Is that Adam in the photo?’

Abi paused. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you’re married?’

‘I was going to, it’s just hard for me to talk about it.’

‘I guess things didn’t work out in the end, then?’ Hannah asked.

Abi sat back down on the bed beside her and shook her head.

‘I can’t believe everything that happened. I feel like I’ve learned nearly everything I wanted to know in one go,’ Hannah continued.

‘
Nearly
everything?’ Abi joked. ‘So, what was missing?’

Hannah shrugged, biting the corner of her fingernail. ‘I dunno. I guess maybe more about my real dad. Did he ever know anything about me?’ Now it made sense that the man she had found on the internet meant nothing to her, she wasn’t related to him: he was Lauren’s father but not hers.

‘No,’ Abi said. ‘Jason never found out I was pregnant.’

‘It’s so weird. I’d just started looking for my dad at the start of the summer, before everything happened. Dom was helping me,’ Hannah said. ‘But I was looking for the wrong man.’

‘Sadly, neither are people you’d want in your life.’

‘No, it doesn’t sound like they are,’ Hannah sighed. Her mum might not have told them the truth about Peter but she was right about one thing, and that was that they really didn’t need to find him.

‘Of course if you do want to find Jason, I won’t stop you. I’ll do what I can to help, but I just have no idea where he is.’

Hannah smiled. ‘Thanks, but I don’t think I will for now.’

The summer had taught her a few things about who she did and didn’t need in her life, and she was no longer fuelled by a desire to have a father in it, no matter what. Hannah had had many romantic visions of reuniting with him but it seemed Lauren was right: some things were better left alone.

‘So, what did you actually do after we all left?’ Hannah asked eventually. ‘You said you stayed in the house for a while, and decided you wouldn’t come looking for us.’

‘I did decide that. I was in a very low place, mixing with the wrong people, drinking too much and all that kind of thing,’ Abi replied. ‘I started to believe Eleanor was right, that I couldn’t be trusted and you were better off without me. It became easier for me to forget. I was only seventeen, remember, not much older than you are now. Obviously I wasn’t capable of making good decisions at the time.’

‘And Eleanor gave you money? She was blackmailing you?’

‘Yes, she was. I guess I knew that at the time too, but the money was a lifeline and I came to rely on it. It gave me a lot of credence amongst my friends too. All the kids whose parents didn’t care where they were started hanging out with me even more. Then one day she handed me a whole pile of cash and I realised that was my cue to get out of the house and out of her life.’

‘So you just took it?’

‘I was very mixed up – I had no one I could turn to who’d lead me in the right direction. So I took it and rented a room with a bunch of others. I didn’t really have a plan other than using the money to get me through each day at a time. Anyway, things got a little messy.’

‘Messy how?’

‘Oh, you know,’ Abi waved a hand in the air. ‘Drinking, drugs … Nothing I’m proud of.’

‘I never liked Grandma. And now I know what she did—’ Hannah paused. ‘I wish I’d never had to waste a single minute visiting the old witch. She used to scare me.’

‘She’s a scary woman. I guess that didn’t help Kathryn; it must have been terrifying as a child to have a mother like that.’

‘It was the way she looked too. Those eyes that bore into you, scrutinising your every move. And the scar that made her look so frightening.’

‘Scar?’ Abi asked. ‘I didn’t notice a scar when I last saw her.’

‘Yes, a deep red line all down here,’ Hannah replied, running a finger down her left cheek. ‘She used to wear so much make-up that half the time you could barely see it, but when she didn’t, it looked like someone had run a red felt tip down her face.’

Abi shifted on the edge of the bed and opened her mouth to speak but didn’t say anything.

‘What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I don’t know, I just remembered something. Look, it doesn’t matter. Let’s not talk about her,’ she said, attempting a smile.

‘Anyway, look at you now,’ Hannah told her. ‘You came through it. You’re so strong!’

‘Well, of course a lot of that was down to Adam,’ Abi smiled.

‘I saw the way you wrote to him and the things you said. You can’t deny you still love him,’ Hannah said, clutching Abi’s hand and squeezing it.

‘I’ll never stop loving him.’

‘Then you need to do something about it,’ she urged.

A knock at the door interrupted them. ‘Housekeeping!’ a voice called out, ‘I’ve brought your towels.’

Abi stood up and opened the door, thanked the woman and then suggested to Hannah they made the most of the afternoon before it got too dark outside.

Hannah agreed. She’d continue her conversation with Abi some other time. She had an idea brewing, and one that was exciting her, because a love like Abi and Adam’s was too precious to throw away, and so she wasn’t about to let them do it. Dom would help her look for Adam – he had been so good about finding Peter. And then Hannah could meet him and tell him everything she knew and he would realise what Abi had really been worried about and how much she still loved him, and that it wasn’t too late for them to try to be parents and … Hannah knew she was getting carried away, and if Lauren knew what she was up to, she would probably try stopping her. So this time she wouldn’t say anything. Not until she found him.

But this time she was convinced it was the right thing to do.

Later that day they hugged goodbye outside the hotel. Morrie had arrived to drive her back to the Bay on her mum’s insistence she didn’t get a taxi.

‘Pick your battles,’ he had advised warmly. Some things would take longer than others.

‘This is for you,’ Abi said, handing over a paper bag tied with ribbon that she’d pulled from her handbag.

‘What is it?’ Hannah asked, starting to untie the bow.

‘Open it later,’ Abi laughed.

Hannah slipped into the passenger seat and closed the door behind her, both of them waving to Abi as Morrie pulled off.

‘So did you have a nice afternoon?’ Morrie asked.

‘Yes, it was lovely.’

‘And how’s she feeling about tomorrow?’

‘Nervous, I think.’ Hannah shrugged, already distracted by the bag and its contents.

‘What have you got there?’ Morrie asked, glancing over.

‘He’s very cute,’ she said, taking the blue teddy out and holding it up. ‘But why on earth would she give me this? Oh, hold on, there’s a label.’ Hannah took a moment before reading aloud: ‘This is someone I’ve always looked after for you, but he’s yours again now.’

She looked over at Morrie and then back at the bear.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I guess you’re mine now. Whoever you are, Ted.’

It had been eighty-nine days since Kathryn’s mother had died. Autumn had taken hold; the days and nights were drawing in. The day before they had put the clocks back. It was a date Kathryn usually hated. She didn’t like winter approaching because normally it made her feel nervous – all black and dreary and lacking in hope. But it didn’t feel so bad that year. Despite everything that had happened, oddly, it didn’t seem so bad at all.

She was meeting Abigail the next day. For the first time in over fourteen years she would be sitting in front of her first-born daughter again. Kathryn didn’t know what to think about it, she didn’t know if she was ready. But since her mother had died, and since she had begun to piece together what had actually happened all those years ago, she was better equipped, she felt. At least she finally had some answers she’d be able to relay to Abi.

If Kathryn was honest, she was a little excited about their meeting. When the nerves moved aside to let the other emotions through, she found a small glimmer of hope lodged deep inside her that maybe, just maybe, she might be able to start again with Abi. Once they had put all the other bits to rest, once she had told her what she now knew, then they could move forward together. That was her plan anyway.

‘Kathryn?’

She looked up. Her therapist, Linda Platt, was waiting in the open doorway, her thin lips spread into a flat smile. She wasn’t a pretty woman, her lank blonde hair hung shapelessly to her shoulders, but Kathryn liked her.

Linda stood to one side and waited for Kathryn to walk past into the small square room. She didn’t make small talk and had no interest in anything that didn’t move them forward.

‘So you’re meeting Abigail tomorrow?’ She asked it as a question, so maybe she expected Kathryn to pull out. Kathryn nodded and waited for Linda to sit down on the faded brown sofa opposite her. She pulled out her familiar pad, full of notes on Kathryn’s childhood, husbands and children that she’d gleaned over six sessions.

‘I want to come back to you and your mother, today,’ Linda said, without pursuing the topic of Abigail any further.

They always came back to her mother, but then Kathryn was beginning to see that everything always did.

‘But first I want you to tell me how your conversation with Peter went. You eventually spoke with him last week?’

Kathryn nodded and gazed out of the small window. She could see the dull blue sky and the top of a tree swaying in the wind but little else. The tree moved backwards and forwards like a metronome. It was mesmerising, and she had found herself watching it many times over the past few weeks.

‘He told me what happened, when I left,’ Kathryn said.

*****

Kathryn had put off speaking to Peter after her mother’s death. She knew there were still things she needed to hear but was relieved when Linda suggested they worked through other things first. Over the weeks she and Linda had trawled through Kathryn’s relationship with her mother. Bit by bit Kathryn was piecing it all together, how much her mother had controlled her life, how even as a child she was manipulated by her.

‘When I was ten she made me do elocution even though I hated it,’ Kathryn had mentioned in one of their sessions. ‘She made me stand up in front of the school on speech day even though I was trembling with nerves and wanted the ground to swallow me up—’

She paused: it was a memory she hadn’t thought about in years, the horrendous day when she had spoken in front of four hundred people, her hands shaking as they held tight to the paper in her hand. Even the teachers had told her she really didn’t need to do it, but Eleanor had insisted. It was only ten minutes but the fear she might wet herself had overpowered her. In the end Kathryn had run off the stage on the last word as fast as her jelly legs would take her to the sound of sporadic clapping and a few laughs from the front row.

‘Why do you think you let her make you do those things?’ Linda had asked.

‘Because—’ Kathryn paused.
Why had she let her?
‘I don’t know, really. It was just the way it always was; I didn’t see an alternative. Mother was always there with the answers for me, especially when I didn’t think I could cope. She would tell me what to do so I wouldn’t need to think for myself and in the end I quite liked that. I didn’t always want to think for myself, so it made sense to me that Mother should do so instead.’

That was how it was when Robert died: Mother took over. Some days, following his death, Kathryn would get really angry that he had been taken from her. Some days she even blamed Abigail for it. They had been so happy before Abigail came along, when it was just the two of them. But then he had shared his love with her too. And Kathryn didn’t want to share his heart. She thought that Abigail was getting more than half her share and somehow convinced herself that was why it broke in the end, because he was giving too much of it away.

Of course she understood now how ridiculous that was, but at the time it was all she could see. Her mother had dragged in Edgar Simmonds, who plied her with more pills, ones she now knew were for her illness but at the time she had eagerly accepted because they made the voices stop.

No one had helped her; no one had made her understand that all those feelings were normal for someone with schizophrenic episodes, because no one other than her parents and Edgar knew. And they weren’t telling anyone.

‘What did your mother do?’ Linda had asked her. ‘When Robert died, what did she do that made you think she helped?’

‘She told me to stop being so bloody stupid,’ Kathryn let out a small laugh. ‘She told me to pull myself together and move on.

‘“It’s not healthy,” she said.’

Well, death isn’t healthy, Mother
, Kathryn had wanted to say back.

‘And you think that helped?’

‘Well, she took Abigail to school for me and would lay out clothes for me to wear.’ All Kathryn had wanted to do was stay in bed in her pyjamas. ‘And she bought food. So yes, I guess she helped.’

Eleanor said baked beans weren’t a staple diet, but Kathryn couldn’t have cared less if they ate them out of the tin every night of the week.

‘Then one day she told me enough was enough.’

Kathryn could remember it clearly. It was mid-morning and she was still in bed. Abigail was at school and her mother had returned, telling her they had something to do.