The hidden truth, p.10
The Hidden Truth, page 10
‘That must be good to hear … for anyone who’s lost someone.’
He’s talking as if he believes Pete actually spoke, she thought. ‘Margaret … she said he told her I shouldn’t wait, that everything was all right,’ she finished reluctantly.
There was silence.
‘How do you feel about that?’
She swallowed, trying to clear the lump in her throat. Then she found herself crying. ‘Sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she mumbled, trying desperately to get herself under control. ‘I think I’m just tired.’
‘Sara …’ His voice was so tender, it only made her cry the more.
‘It’s just …’ She didn’t know what it was ‘just’: her thoughts were swirling around in such a crazy hotchpotch of past and present that it made her feel almost dizzy.
‘Hey, it’s OK,’ he said. ‘Must have been pretty disturbing, being given a message from your dead husband.’
‘I don’t know if I even believe it. But Margaret certainly did.’
There was a long silence, while Sara found a tissue and blew her nose.
‘You know, if we’re going too quickly,’ Bernard said, ‘I’ll quite understand if you want to take things slower.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘No. Pete is my past. I’ve stayed there way too long.’ She took a shaky breath.
After another silence, Bernard said, ‘What sort of soup?’
She told him, and he asked, ‘Do you put pasta in?’
‘No. Just beans. I know I should, traditionally, but it gets too starchy, with potatoes as well.’
‘Save some for me?’ he said.
‘I’d ask you over,’ she replied, thinking how lovely it would be to see him right now, ‘but I’m so tired, I can hardly speak. You’ve worn me out.’
She heard his warm laugh. ‘Me too. Fun, though, eh?’
After they’d said goodbye, Sara went back to dicing and frying and stirring, her hands on autopilot. This thing with Bernard, she thought. It was as if she’d jumped from a plane without a parachute: both thrilling and utterly terrifying at the same time.
17
This thing with Sara … Bernard thought, as he sprawled on the sofa, phone still in his hand after their call. Images, sensations from the previous night floated back to him, sending a delightful tremor through his body. It’s serious.
But on top of these visions, crowding out the current pleasure, came older memories, triggered by their conversation about the dead. He realized he was envious of Pete’s words – so kind, so sanguine – whether they were real or not. Setting Sara free, if that was what she wanted. If only, he thought.
These memories seemed not to be in the past, though. They were not even distanced, like watching a movie. This was immediate. Real life playing out, right there in his living room, himself one of the main protagonists.
Ilsa’s call had summoned him back from a site visit nearly an hour from home that March day. He was irritated, to say the least. This was the third time in as many weeks that she’d interrupted him to say her breathing was bad and she was frightened. But each time, when he arrived back, he found her pale and exhausted, but not at all breathless.
The asthma attacks did seem to be getting more frequent, he’d noticed, but Ilsa, with her recent unexplained aversion to hospitals and mainstream medicine, refused to be checked out, to get her medication reviewed. She relied instead on Fran, her holistic practitioner, who bombarded her with foul-tasting herbal infusions that made her retch, acupuncture and breathing exercises, none of which seemed to make the slightest difference – not least, perhaps, because Ilsa was flaky, dilettante in her compliance.
This time seemed no different. It was bitterly cold – spring seemingly still a long way off. When he got back, after a panicky drive across the frozen Downs, she was lying quietly on the sofa, her head on one of her tapestry cushions, blinds down. The room was very still. Bernard remembered forcing himself to be calm, to be patient when he saw, yet again, that she was not struggling for breath. He was sympathetic, obviously. Not being able to breathe must be hell.
‘How are you?’ he asked, looking down at his wife.
Ilsa opened her eyes. She had beautiful eyes, the palest Nordic blue, clear like an early spring sky. She reached up for his hand and smiled. A smile that always melted his heart. He sat down on the sofa beside her. ‘Are you feeling better?’
She nodded. ‘Sorry, Bernie,’ she said weakly. ‘I’m such a nuisance, aren’t I? But I was frightened it was serious this time. I hate the cold – it always sets me off.’
He’d fetched her a blanket, made her a cup of green tea, checked that she’d got her inhaler by her side, then shut himself into his office to catch up on some work calls. He remembered being restless, resentful, wondering when he could decently take off again. He hadn’t heard her. At least, he heard her coughing, but then she often did. By the time he emerged, nearly an hour later, she was turning blue and gasping, almost unconscious.
The doctors saved her. It was touch and go for a while, though. She hadn’t been taking her medication, apparently, and her lungs were on fire. By the time they removed the tube – early the following morning – and Ilsa was able to breathe again, weakly, but unaided, Bernard was a complete wreck. He hadn’t slept all night, his whole body crooked and aching from the slippery blue hospital chair. He’d even contemplated summoning the twins: Carrie, au-pairing in Ireland for a rich Dublin family – which she loathed; Adam, in Rabat, volunteering with kids, preparing to start his medical training in September. But the doctors assured him there was no need.
The first words Ilsa said, when she opened her eyes were ‘I haven’t died?’
Bernard smiled as he held her long, cool fingers. ‘No, thank goodness. You’re going to be fine.’ Now the danger had passed he felt so angry with her for not taking her asthma drugs properly that he thought he might scream. But he wasn’t going to have that conversation now.
His wife, impossibly beautiful in her wan, huge-eyed infirmity, had almost imperceptibly shaken her head on the pillow. ‘I’m not, Bernie. I’m not going to make it.’
Bernard was very familiar with Ilsa’s dramatic pronouncements about her health. He squeezed her hand. ‘The attack was a bad one, sweetheart, but you pulled through. Look, you’re breathing normally. You can go home tomorrow, the nurse said.’
Her eyebrows rose a little as she stared at him. Then her eyes filled with tears. ‘Look after my babies for me. Please make sure they’re safe, Bernie. Be a proper father.’ She took her hand from his and wiped away the tears. ‘You haven’t always been there for them, you know.’
Bernard bridled, but held his peace. ‘Stop it, for God’s sake, Ilsa. This is nonsense. You are not going to die.’ He spoke the last words slowly, as if to a frightened child.
Nonsense. The word had snagged in his brain for months afterwards.
‘Just promise me,’ Ilsa begged quietly.
So Bernard did. He realized his wife must be discombobulated after the near-death experience of the previous night and decided to indulge her.
‘I’m going to grab a coffee,’ he told her, dropping a kiss on her forehead.
Ilsa closed her eyes.
By the time he got back – he’d been idling, half asleep, on a bench outside the hospital in the chilly sunshine – she was dead. A heart attack, probably brought on, they said, by the strain on her organs from the asthma attack. This time they couldn’t save her.
If I’d paid attention to her coughing and got her to hospital sooner? If I’d realized she wasn’t taking her drugs? If I’d believed her when she said she would die? If I hadn’t gone for a coffee … These were the questions that plagued Bernard on a continuous loop in the early weeks after Ilsa’s death – not least when he’d had to explain what had happened to his devastated children. There was no satisfactory answer to any of them at the time … or since.
On Monday morning Bernard drove to his office in Eastbourne, arriving just after seven thirty. Joe was in before him, as usual – Bernard often wondered if he slept there.
‘Coffee? Beach?’ Joe asked, as soon as Bernard walked in, leaning his large frame back in his chair and stretching his arms above his head, the sound he made somewhere between a yawn and a groan, his chair creaking loudly in sympathy.
‘You look your usual knackered self, mate,’ he said, once they were sitting nursing coffees in the sunshine on a bench along the promenade near the office. There was a tidy rectangle of colourful municipal blooms behind them, the lazy blue sea in front of them – still, as far as the horizon. Joe wiggled his eyebrows up and down and smirked.
Bernard sighed. ‘Sara spent Saturday night with me … She’s magic, Joe.’
His friend looked amused.
They sat in companionable silence, the early-morning stream of runners and dog-walkers flowing round their bench swelling with each passing minute.
‘Listen, I’m sure she’ll understand when you decide it’s time to tell her,’ Joe said, reading his thoughts. ‘Or,’ he added, as if the idea had just occurred to him, ‘I suppose you could just not bring it up for the time being.’
‘Basically keep on lying?’ Bernard snorted derisively. ‘You know where that’s got me.’
Joe turned on the bench, his expression more serious than usual. ‘Yeah, but the five years are nearly up, mate. You’ll be off the hook. She’s unlikely to find out unless you tell her.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m just saying, perhaps you don’t need to mention it until you’re much further down the line.’
He had thought about that. But his friend never seemed to understand. What had happened was like an all-encompassing miasma from which he was unable to escape. The facts themselves no longer seemed relevant. It was the consequences – the twins, for instance – that haunted him and would continue to do so whether he told Sara or not. But entering this relationship with her seemed to have focused the miasma. Where previously it had swirled uncomfortably above his head, now it was twisting and narrowing, gathering force, like an oncoming tornado across the plain. He could feel it.
‘If she sticks around, she’ll meet the twins. They’ll end up letting something slip, even if I don’t … I can’t lie to her, Joe. She’s not that sort of woman.’
Now it was his friend’s turn to snort. ‘Tell Sara your secret and you’ll have to kill her, you realize.’
Bernard tried to laugh at his friend’s jest. The issue wasn’t whether he trusted Sara or not – he knew he did. But it wasn’t just his secret.
18
Sara and Precious sat with the usual cup of tea before their Monday-afternoon clients arrived. Sara had been regaling her friend with the events of the weekend. ‘The house is sort of strange …’ she added, after they’d discussed the storm, the supper, the significant fact she’d stayed the night.
‘In what way?’
‘It wasn’t what I’d expected, I suppose. It’s very closed up, almost muffled …’ She stopped, not knowing how to articulate the atmosphere in the cliff house.
‘Muffled?’
‘Wrong word. I can’t explain. It’s a perfectly nice house. You probably wouldn’t notice anything odd … Although it’s really tidy, everything in cupboards, nothing on the kitchen surfaces. Even his toothbrush is put away. I assume it must be an architect thing.’
Her friend looked puzzled.
‘And no photos. I’ve just realized. I didn’t see a single photo.’
‘Do you think he put them away before you arrived? Thinking you’d feel awkward or something, seeing pictures of his wife?’
‘I wouldn’t have felt awkward, although I suppose he couldn’t have known that.’ Bernard had even shown her his office, its desk covered with the paraphernalia of design, including a large computer and a separate tilted draughting desk, rolls of what she assumed were plans, a black saddle chair on castors. But there was nothing personal on show, unless you counted the exercise mat propped in the corner. ‘It sounds really stupid, I know, but at one point I had this peculiar sensation … as if there was something behind me. Like I was being watched.’
Precious’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, my God, darling. You think the place is haunted?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ she said briskly, managing a laugh. ‘It was just a peculiar feeling … I’m being ridiculous.’
Precious did not look convinced.
Sara sighed. ‘I so wanted to like the house. I thought it would be open and modern, with huge windows, lots of light and views, but there’s this unusual heaviness …’
‘Hmm … Is the place putting you off, Sas?’
‘Not at all,’ she insisted. But she felt disconcerted nonetheless. In the telling of her night with Bernard, thoughts had coalesced. Thoughts to which she had no intention of giving credence.
Precious blew out her cheeks, checked her watch. ‘Look, everyone’s got stuff, Sas. You’ll work it out. Sounds like he might be worth it.’
‘Oh, he so is, Precious. It’s how I feel about him that counts, isn’t it?’ She drained the remains of her tea. Apart from the house, the only lingering niggle she had was the curious absence of his children in his conversation … in his life.
‘So what news of Adam and Carrie?’ she’d asked over Sunday breakfast, having again banged on about the girls: Peggy had sent her more extraordinary images of her Icelandic adventure, which she’d shared with Bernard.
Bernard had taken a moment to reply. ‘Nothing, really. They’re both a bit of a mystery to me as adults,’ he’d eventually told her. ‘I’ve seen so little of them in the last few years, since they left home.’
His reply was so toneless that Sara wasn’t sure how to react. All she was asking for was a sense of them as people, as Bernard’s children. But he wasn’t giving her much to work with. It’s almost as if he’s embarrassed by them, she’d thought at the time.
‘So enjoy every minute! It’s about bloody time.’ Precious was holding up her palm to Sara’s in a celebratory high-five across the desk.
Sara sat for a moment after her friend had gone. She and Bernard had made a plan to meet the following Friday night, spend the bank-holiday weekend together at his house – the weather was forecast to be very hot and they could swim. The thought made her twitch with nervous excitement. She couldn’t wait.
Sara took Thursday afternoon off to be home when Peggy, grubby and exhausted, arrived back from Iceland.
‘Oh, my God, if I don’t get a hot shower right this minute, I’ll literally expire,’ her daughter exclaimed, as her monstrous backpack thudded to the kitchen floor, the tin cup dangling from the strap clanging on the tiles. ‘Tell you everything in a sec, Mum,’ she added, scooting upstairs two at a time. Sara was delighted to see her, but she also felt apprehensive. It was going to be impossible to hide how strongly she felt about Bernard. Would her daughter be shocked at the speed with which things had taken off? Peggy had left on holiday before Bernard had even contacted her.
It was warm and bright again, but not as hot as it had been, so they had lunch outside. Sara thought her garden looked so pretty today. The blush-white shrub rose she’d planted a few years back was in full bloom, its sweet scent filling the small space; French marigolds sat in a large planter near the table, their orange and yellow flowers reflecting the sunshine; the neighbours’ clematis flopped elegantly over her side of the wall, like a pretty young girl. She’d made a big salad and added some crusty rye bread and soft goat’s cheese. Peggy was scrubbed and glowing – although her blue eyes had the jazzy look of the unslept – as she enthusiastically regaled Sara with her trip.
‘It’s a totally extraordinary country, Mum. You wouldn’t believe,’ she said. ‘Beautiful and so empty, compared to ours. A lot of brown and green and grey in the landscape. But then you have this amazing light, which washes everything in these gorgeous colours and just blows your mind. It never really got properly dark.’
‘I loved all your photos.’
Peggy swallowed a bit of bread. ‘We stayed mostly in the south, did the whole hot-springs thing and the beach, checked out the unpronounceable volcano that caused all that trouble with the ash cloud. But the wildness, the feeling of freedom, really got to me.’ She waved a hand in the air. ‘England suddenly seems so crowded and tame.’
She talked on, Sara listening with real pleasure, enjoying watching her daughter’s animated face.
‘Did you and Natasha get on all right?’
‘Yeah, you know … just a few minor irritations. Tash never wants to eat, and I always do. And she hates getting up early, even when it’s stunning out there. Stuff like that. But we got on great most of the time.’ She grinned. ‘There were a couple of days of grim weather – no joke in a tent. But it was a fantastic trip, Mum.’
Sara made tea and brought out chocolate chip cookies. Still she hadn’t managed to find a gap in the conversation into which she could drop Bernard. And remembering Peggy’s anguish before she’d gone to Iceland about missing her dad, Sara wondered if she should say anything at this stage. But as they sat chatting with their drinks, she noticed Peggy eyeing her.
‘Have you lost weight or something, Mum?’
‘No …’
‘You look great … sort of really healthy?’
Sara laughed, self-conscious under her daughter’s forensic stare. Because she knew exactly why she was looking good, if that were the case.
‘So, what’s been going on? How’s work?’ Peggy gave her a sly grin. ‘Been batting off any more pensioners?’
‘Bloody cheek!’ Sara swallowed, allowing herself a small smile. Given any more leeway, her face would crack open and she would be just one gigantic beam. ‘Now you come to mention it, I have been spending time with someone …’
Her daughter was checking her phone, not really listening.
‘We met in a tearoom before you went away. And, well, we’ve seen each other a bit since.’ That’s enough for starters, she thought, the breath fast in her chest even at this anodyne beginning.
