Rebecca Pugh - Return To Bluebell Hill

Esme clasped her hands together in her lap as if preparing herself for the conversation. ‘When I returned from the station on the night you left, Bluebell House was empty, as it so often was. They were both still working at the hospital so I waited until gone midnight for them to return. When they eventually did, I told them that I needed to have a word in the kitchen. I explained that you’d left, and then passed on the letter that you’d written. They read it together and afterwards, they asked if I had a number to reach you on. I told them that I did, but I’d been told by you that you didn’t want to hear from them. That you were starting fresh, somewhere new. They were beside themselves with worry but I managed to reassure them that you’d find your way and you’d be okay. You had a good head on your shoulders and you didn’t want to be cooped up in Bluebell Hill forever. You wanted to see the rest of the world and begin your own adventure. I told them how you felt, but left the letter to explain everything else. They did care, Jessica. I promise you, they did. They cried that night, kept saying that they’d done it all wrong, that they’d have done it all different if they’d have had the chance. But you’d already gone.’

Jessica nodded. ‘I forgot I’d said that, about not wanting them to contact me.’ She felt a sharp stab of pain in her chest as she wondered whether they would have got in touch if she’d allowed them to. But they’d listened to her and obeyed her orders to not contact her. Perhaps they’d seen that and taken it as their chance to finally do something right when it came to their daughter. ‘It was so messy wasn’t it?’ she murmured quietly, remembering the hurt and pain, the emotions that had turned her against her parents towards the end. ‘I was so angry, so frustrated with them.’ Her hands clenched at the memory of it. She was older now, and wiser, she hoped. Still, her childhood would never be looked upon with fond memories and that would always be a bitter pill to swallow. Most people remembered summer holidays and BBQs, but she remembered wishing it was her parents who had collected her when the school day had finished rather than Esme.

‘I tried to phone the number that you left a few days later, Jessica,’ Esme said quietly. ‘I was worrying about you but when I dialled the number it cut off and said that it was no longer in service.’ Esme’s eyes glittered with tears as she turned to her. ‘You changed your number, didn’t you?’

Jessica swallowed as it all began to come back to her. It was as if she’d unconsciously locked all of those memories away into a box and only now were they beginning to resurface. ‘I did,’ she whispered. How could she have forgotten that? She’d snapped her sim card into two and chucked it away. She’d seen it as the first step to cutting herself off completely from her previous life. ‘I’m sorry, Esme. I truly am.’ She lowered her eyes. How could she have done that to Esme? She’d treated the woman awfully. She knew that no matter how much she tried to dress the hurtful truth up with her explanations and excuses, she’d still hurt Esme more than she’d known. She realised that now.

Neither of them spoke or moved until Esme’s hand reached across the small gap between the two armchairs and clasped Jessica’s. She gave it a tight, comforting squeeze. She’d always looked upon her as a daughter rather than a child who she’d been hired to look after. ‘You’re here now, Jessica. Perhaps a few years late but you’re here, and that’s all that matters, my dear. That’s all that has ever mattered to me.’

Chapter Three

On the morning of her parents’ funeral, Jessica dressed slowly. She could hear Esme pottering about in the kitchen below but didn’t feel ready to go downstairs and face the day ahead. She wasn’t quite sure what was expected of her, of how to react or whether she was supposed to cry or remain passive-faced. It was such a weird situation and she felt so emotionally abnormal.

She tugged her hair up into a ponytail and stared at herself in the mirror above the chest of drawers.

The churning, twisting feeling that had appeared after the very first phone call with Esme returned to her as she studied her reflection warily. The strange thing was, her reflection looked calm and untroubled. Her lips didn’t quiver, her eyes weren’t wet with tears and she didn’t have shadows beneath them that would hint at the restless nights. Instead, she looked normal, and completely unaffected by the news of her parents’ death. For the millionth time, she questioned whether she was emotionless. She’d thought about it a lot lately, about how it didn’t seem normal for her to be reacting in this way. Most people would have been racked with guilt, sore-eyed from the crying and frail from grief taking over the need for food. There was definitely a thump of sadness when she thought clearly about them and that they were no longer present but then, she’d never felt like they’d been present when they’d been alive anyway, so what was the difference now? She was sure, too, that the sadness only made itself known because of the fact that now there really would be no second chances, no opportunities to make things right. It was the same sort of feeling a person would get when trying to fall asleep after having a bad argument with someone that they cared about, that niggling feeling that burrowed away because you knew that you wouldn’t get a wink of sleep until things were sorted out and back to normal. But things had never been normal, so really, this situation had no other state to return to.

Her childhood had been spent under the watchful, adoring eye of Esme who had been employed by her parents as Jessica’s nanny. Miriam and Arthur McAdams had worked non-stop, leaving Jessica in the care of Esme day in, day out. They had important, busy jobs, on-call 24/7, called upon to deal with emergencies. She’d rarely set eyes on them, even when, at the age of five, she’d sat at the top of the staircase and waited for them to walk through the door. She’d refused to go to bed when prompted by Esme. In the end, unable to keep her eyes open a second longer, she’d fallen asleep with her forehead against the wooden banister. Esme had had to scoop her up and tuck her into her bed.

‘Jessica? Are you awake, dear?’ A gentle knock sounded at the door. Jessica stepped rapidly away from the mirror as Esme’s voice filtered into her consciousness.

‘Yes, I’m just getting dressed,’ she called back, trying to keep her voice level, blinking around the room, trying to remember what exactly she’d been doing before becoming fixated by her reflection in the mirror. ‘I’ll be down in just a sec.’ She took one last look at herself and stared hard at the face that looked back at her. After her self-evaluation, she turned away sharply. Stuffing her things into her bag, she left the room and headed downstairs.

***

They left Esme’s cottage in silence and made tracks towards Bluebell Hill church. It was only a short walk to their destination but it felt like it lasted a lifetime. They passed the village square and the school which Jessica had attended when she’d been little. The sound of children laughing and squealing filtered through the green fence. They walked by the post-office and a handful of people who Esme acknowledged with a polite smile or a quick ‘Hello’ until eventually, they arrived at the wrought-iron gates of the church.

Headstones of the deceased were visible around the side of the building, and a cluster of suitably-attired people surrounded the open doors chatting quietly amongst themselves. It was enough to make Jessica’s legs wobble.

She paused before stepping onto the cream stone path which led up to the church doors. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to take that step over the threshold. She knew that once she did, the circumstances surrounding her parents would suddenly become real, harsh and unable to hide away from. She’d been ignoring the reality steadfastly since hearing of it but today, that would change. For good. And there wasn’t a single thing that she could do about it. She gulped as she blinked at the church, imagining the two coffins inside, the vicar, the people, the tears and the emotions. Was she strong enough to do this? She went to reach for her phone to call Sarah. She needed some of her best friend’s support now more than ever.