Beneath the Surface (35 page)

‘Get up,’ Eleanor had snapped, pulling back the curtains. She threw a box onto the bed.

‘What’s that for?’ Kathryn asked.

‘We’re filling it up today.’

She watched her mother sweep around the house, room by room, taking down photographs of Robert, the paintings he had done at college, certificates, a card still standing on the mantelpiece. All traces of him were removed. At first Kathryn did nothing but stare at her mother, speechless.

‘Don’t throw them away,’ she pleaded when the box was full and Eleanor seemed satisfied.

‘So what do you suggest we do?’

‘I don’t know, just don’t throw them away.’

Later she had found the box resting against the dustbin, to be collected the following morning, and Kathryn knew her mother would have banked on her not leaving the house and finding them. That night she dug a hole in the back garden and buried the box so Eleanor wouldn’t find it.

Maybe it was a good idea
, she had told herself as she walked back into the house. It was the right thing to do.

Maybe it wasn’t
, she realised now.

‘So, your mother told you to move on after your husband’s death and you did as she told you. Even though you didn’t feel it was the right thing to do.’ Linda paused. ‘Do you think you ever grieved for him?’

Kathryn shook her head. No, she hadn’t been allowed. And in turn that meant she hadn’t let Abigail either.

In the build-up to Kathryn leaving for the Bay she was struggling again: her relationship with Abigail all but disintegrated, her marriage to Peter practically over. Not only did she have two toddlers to look after, Kathryn had the added worry that Abigail was going to tell the world one of them was hers.

At first Kathryn hadn’t seen the problem. It wouldn’t have been ideal, but would it have really mattered? Her mother was convinced otherwise, however. Eleanor seemed to believe that if it came out their lives would be ruined.

In a funny way it was a relief to hear Peter tell her what was going on beneath the surface of the life she had blindly accepted. The fact that Eleanor was so petrified of it coming out that she made her granddaughter hand over her baby. ‘Everyone would know her and Edgar had manipulated the whole thing,’ Peter told her. ‘That they had doctored the papers and as far as Abigail’s records showed, she was never even pregnant. And your records were tampered with, too,’ he said. ‘Remember they had been doing it for years. Edgar would have lost his job over it.’

‘And my mother?’

‘Public disgrace, I don’t know, they could have gone to jail. As payback to my uncle, Charles had used his position to get Edgar private funding for research. Your father was on the Committee for Privileges and Conducts, Kathryn. They would have been finished if they had been found out.’

So Eleanor knew she had to stop Abigail at whatever cost. But the more Eleanor tried to manipulate Abigail, the more it seemed to encourage her daughter to make her threats.

‘Mother told me I needed to get away for a bit,’ Kathryn told Linda. ‘She said it wasn’t wise to be around Abigail whilst she was such a danger. I told her Abigail wasn’t dangerous, but she insisted I would lose my other daughters if I didn’t do something about it.’

Kathryn gazed out of the window. ‘Peter and Mother had bought the cottage in Mull Bay from Edgar. Apparently he had been renting it out for years to an old woman who had recently died. Mother thought it was a perfect spot to hide away the family she was so ashamed of.’ She turned back to Linda but couldn’t see any emotion in the therapist’s blank face. ‘Peter told me the other day he didn’t think Eleanor had really thought through her plan for the cottage but she had this idea they could ship Abigail to the Bay for a while, until she was convinced Abi wouldn’t say anything.’

‘But Abigail didn’t come to the cottage?’ Linda asked.

Kathryn shook her head. ‘It didn’t get to that. I was frightened. My mother had been drilling into me how much of a threat Abigail was and I was scared, so scared they would find out what we had done and take Hannah away. I thought I might never see either of them again. Of course, I even believed I had adopted her back then, which I now realise wasn’t the case, but I still thought that wouldn’t matter. One night I overheard Mother talking to Peter about the cottage. She called it a safe house and I thought she intended it to be for me. I fell in love with the sound of it, the idea of living near the sea in a tiny village far away from London. All I wanted was for us all to be safe, and suddenly I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I was in such a bad way by then I decided to take matters into my own hands and one day whilst Abigail was at school I packed up all the girls’ belongings, a few things of my own and ran away.’

Kathryn wiped the tears from her face. ‘I was a dreadful mother, I know that. But I hoped my mother would deal with Abigail and then somehow we could all be together again. Only it didn’t work out like that.’

‘So what happened?’ Linda asked.

‘A few days after I had gone I wrote to Abigail and told her where I was, said that I hoped she would come to her senses and then she could move up to be with us. But she didn’t respond and so I told Mother I wanted to see her. I said I would go back to London to collect her. That’s when my mother turned up with a cut down the side of her face.’ Kathryn ran a finger down her own cheek. ‘She said to me,
Look what that girl is capable of. If she can do this to me then think what she might do to the girls
. So I didn’t go. Instead I wrote her more letters but still I never heard back and eventually –’ Kathryn paused – ‘Eventually I gave up on her.’

She might never know for sure, but she didn’t think Abigail would have taken a knife to Eleanor’s face, though it was frightening to think how warped her mother must have been to have done that to herself.

‘I guess, in time, Mother grew to like the thought of holing me up in the Bay and once Abigail had gone off her radar she had got away with everything. What a pity I found out too late,’ Kathryn said. ‘Now she’s dead she doesn’t have to answer to anything.’

Linda passed her a tissue and Kathryn rubbed her eyes and blew her nose noisily. She didn’t want to cry any more tears over her mother, but these were tears for all of them now. And she didn’t know if she would ever be able to stop crying for what she had done to Abigail.

‘I believed my mother and never gave Abigail a chance. It’s too late now, isn’t it?’

‘That’s something you can ask her yourself,’ said Linda. ‘When you see her tomorrow.'

‘I see Morrie is waiting for you outside again.’ Linda motioned towards the door at the end of their session. Kathryn turned and saw him sitting on the sofa in the waiting area, rubbing his beard and browsing through a newspaper. When she turned back, Linda was still watching her.

‘He’s just a friend,’ Kathryn said, feeling the need to justify his presence. ‘He’s been very good to me. He’s even been to the home today to collect some of my mother’s things for me. And of course he’s letting me use his house to meet Abigail.’

Linda nodded. ‘I look forward to hearing how it goes.’ They shook hands and Kathryn turned back towards Morrie. He was just a friend but sometimes, maybe more than ever, she had a little hope there could be more. She had always had three obstacles, she thought, automatically stretching three fingers out inside her pocket, but none of them were relevant any longer. Not her lies, not Peter, and certainly not her mother.

*****

‘I’ll bring the box in, but then I have to rush off, I’m afraid,’ Morrie said when they pulled up outside Kathryn’s cottage. ‘It’s quite heavy.’

‘I’ve no idea what’s in it, but I can’t imagine it’s anything too important,’ she said, leading him to the house and letting him inside. ‘Just leave it in there, and thank you, Morrie. I feel like I’ve relied on you too much lately. You’ve been so good to me over the years. I dread to think what I would have done over the last couple of months if you hadn’t been around.’

Morrie smiled.

‘Why do you do it?’ she persisted. ‘Is it because of the girls?’

But Morrie didn’t answer; he simply leant forward and squeezed her hand.

As soon as he’d left, Kathryn pulled the box towards her. After removing the lid, she started rummaging through its contents. A few books, some of which she recognised from the shelves of their library: a very used dictionary, old copies of Dickens and Brontë. None of it meant much to her but she would see if the girls could make use of them.

Underneath the books was a photograph album. Its pages had lost their stick and had turned brown over time, holding photos that had slipped out of place, loosely held by transparent sheets. The photos were mainly of Eleanor and Charles, taken before Kathryn was born. Her mother had been a beautiful woman to look at.

Kathryn closed the album and thumbed through the rest of the belongings: a half-completed tapestry still attached to its loom, newspaper cuttings about Charles, a couple of Order of Services from weddings and one from a funeral. It was a sad collection of pieces to sum up her mother’s life.

She was about to close the box when she saw a bundle of letters tucked at the bottom, held together with string that was loosely wrapped around them. Pulling one free, she turned it over to read the front of the envelope. Her heart plummeted as she saw her own familiar handwriting on the front. The letter addressed to Abigail was still sealed. Kathryn pulled out another, and then another, until all ten lay in front of her, unopened and unsent.

Kathryn clasped a hand to her mouth, trying to take in what this meant.

‘You really
did
lie to me, Mother,’ she said into the empty air, ‘you told me you’d given them all to her.’

Dear Adam,

I saw my mother again today. For the first time in over fourteen years I saw Kathryn.

I have often played out this day in my head. Sometimes I would wind up crying, clawing at her to give me the answers I suspected I might not actually want to hear. After all, what exactly could she say? She left me fourteen years ago; nothing could make up for that time. At other times I was fuelled by anger, pumped up with determination that she would pay for what she did to me, and I would find myself coiled up tightly, fists clenched so hard, my knuckles had turned white. Whatever I had played out, it was always determined by my mood that day, and I soon realised I had no idea how I would actually feel when the time came.

This morning I woke feeling numb. Anything I had planned to say to her had blanked out of my head. I couldn’t predict what would happen, how she would look, or how I would feel, but still, walking into Morrie’s living room and seeing her again was a shock.

‘Your mother has made an effort today,’ he whispered in my ear as he stood aside to let me walk through. My first sight of her took my breath. She looked so much younger than I’d imagined, so much like the mother I remember from my childhood. Her hair was neatly trimmed and blow-dried, her nails were short and painted cream and she was wearing a soft blue sweater and black trousers.

In an instant I was pulled back to a time before my daddy died, when we were in our small living room in London, waiting for him to come home from work.

‘Mummy,’ I could hear a tiny voice inside me saying, ‘can you help me with my buttons?’

Kathryn stood up and took a step towards me and I almost found myself waiting for her to kneel down and button up my cardigan again. The air filled with her perfume, its scent so overpowering and familiar, and I felt a pull, like I wanted to move closer to her. I wanted her to tell me it was all OK and she was back.

‘Abigail,’ she said. I hadn’t heard her voice in fourteen years – was that how it had always sounded?

I took a step back, my legs shook as I found the armchair behind me and slumped into it.

Kathryn sat back down on the sofa, balancing on the edge. She held out her hands to me, then dropped them back in her lap and started playing with the seam on her trousers. Neither of us knew what to say. I was sure the look of panic on her face mirrored my own.

You must want to know what was going through my head but I’m not sure I can articulate it. You see I was such a ball of mixed emotions I don’t actually remember thinking anything. I remember staring at her – the new lines on her face, the way the skin on her neck ruffled now, the silver ball earrings she had in her ears that I’d never seen before. She always used to wear gold. I wanted to feel something; anger, bitterness, sadness, anything, but I didn’t in that moment.

‘I like the way you have your hair,’ Kathryn said to me eventually.

My hand automatically reached out to touch the ends before I pulled it away again. We weren’t there to talk about my hair, and even though I don’t know what I expected her to say, it wasn’t that.

‘And your sandals are pretty,’ she smiled, peering over the top of her knees to get a better look at my feet.

‘Don’t do this, Kathryn,’ I said, pulling my feet back.

‘Do what?’ She looked surprised. Was she expecting to spend the time making small talk?

I sighed and looked out of Morrie’s small window onto his back garden, studying the tubs of perfectly manicured bushes as I took deep breaths.

‘I read your letters,’ I said, looking back at her. The night before, when Morrie had picked up Hannah, he’d handed me a package, asking if I could read its contents before meeting Kathryn, telling me they were important. There were ten letters that Kathryn had relied upon Eleanor to pass on, but of course she had never done so.

Kathryn nodded. ‘I hope they went some way towards explaining that I hadn’t wanted to leave you.’

‘Yet you did,’ I said simply.

‘Yes, but—’ she stopped. ‘She made me believe things that weren’t true.’

‘You never stopped to ask me. You just ran off and left me in the worst way possible,’ I cried.

Her hands trembled and I could see her trying to hold one still with the other.