Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

But too late for what? To make amends, perhaps; to repair some long-ago transgression? Had it been guilt that took her back to the castle and then drove her away again before we passed through the gates? It was possible. And if it were true would certainly explain her distress. It might also account for why she’d kept the whole thing secret in the first place. For it was the secrecy as much as the mystery that struck me then. I don’t believe in an obligation of full disclosure, yet in this case I couldn’t shake off the sense that I’d been lied to. More than that: that I was somehow affected directly. Something sat in my mother’s past, something she’d made every attempt to hide, and it refused to stay there. An action, a decision, a mere moment, perhaps, when she was just a girl; something that had cast its shadow, long and dark, into Mum’s present, and therefore right across mine too. And, not just because I was nosy, not just because I was coming to empathize so strongly with Juniper Blythe, but because in some way that was difficult to explain, this secret had come to represent a lifetime’s distance between my mother and me – I needed to know what had happened.

‘I should say that you do,’ Herbert had agreed, when I said as much to him. We’d spent the afternoon squeezing my boxes of books and other assorted household items into storage in his cluttered attic, and had just headed out for a stroll through Kensington Gardens. The walks are a daily habit of ours, begun at the vet’s behest; they’re supposed to help with Jess’s digestion, the regular activity giving her metabolism a little boost, but she approaches the event with spectacularly bad grace. ‘Come along, Jessie,’ said Herbert, tapping his shoe against a stubborn bottom, which had affixed itself rather firmly to the concrete. ‘We’re nearly at the ducks, old lovely.’

‘But how am I going to find out?’ There was Auntie Rita, of course, but Mum’s fraught relationship with her elder sister made that idea seem particularly sneaky. I pushed my hands deep into my pockets, as if the answer might be found amongst the lint. ‘What should I do? Where should I start?’

‘Well now, Edie.’ He handed over Jess’s lead while he fussed a cigarette from his pocket and cupped his hand to light it. ‘It seems to me there’s only one place to start.’

‘Oh?’

He exhaled a theatrical stream of smoke. ‘You know as well as I, my love; you need to ask your mother.’

You would be forgiven for thinking that Herbert’s suggestion was obvious, and I must take some of the blame for that. I suspect I’ve given you entirely the wrong impression about my family, beginning as I did with that long-lost letter. It’s where this story starts, but it’s not where my story starts; or rather, it’s not where the story of Meredith and Edie starts. Coming into our family that Sunday afternoon, you’d be forgiven for thinking we were a rather expansive pair, that we chatted and shared easily. However nice that might sound, it was not the case. There are any number of childhood experiences I could submit in evidence to demonstrate that ours was not a relationship marked by conversation and understanding: the unexplained appearance in my drawer of a military-style bra when I turned thirteen; my reliance on Sarah for all but the most basic information regarding birds and bees and everything in between; the ghostly brother my parents and I pretended not to see.

But Herbert was right: this was my mother’s secret, and if I wanted to know the truth, to learn more about that little girl who’d shadowed me around Milderhurst Castle, it was the only proper place to begin. As good luck would have it, we’d arranged to meet for coffee the following week in a patisserie around the corner from Billing & Brown. I left the office at eleven o’clock, found a table in the back corner and placed our order, as per habit. The waitress had just brought me a steaming pot of Darjeeling when there came a blurt of road noise and I looked up to see the patisserie door was open and Mum was standing tentatively, just inside, bag and hat in hand. A spirit of defensive caution had taken hold of her features as she surveyed the unfamiliar, decidedly modern cafe, and I glanced away, at my hands, the table, fiddled with the zip on my bag, anything to avoid bearing witness. I’ve noticed that look of uncertainty more often lately, and I’m not sure whether it’s because she’s getting older, or because I am, or because the world really is speeding up. My reaction to it dismays me, for surely a glimpse of my mother’s weakness should engender pity, make her more lovable to me, but the opposite is true. It frightens me, like a tear in the fabric of normality that threatens to render everything unlovely, unrecognizable, not as it should be. All my life my mother has been an oracle, a brick wall of propriety, so to see her unsure, particularly in a situation that I meet without a wrinkle, tilts my world and makes the solid ground swirl like clouds beneath me. So I waited, and only when enough time had passed did I look up again, catch her eye, sure again now, confident, and wave with candour, as if only in that moment had I realized she was there.

She negotiated the crowded cafe cautiously, guarding her bag from bumping people’s heads in an ostentatious way that managed somehow to convey disapproval at the seating arrangements. I, meanwhile, busied myself making sure no one had left spilled sugar granules or cappuccino froth or pastry flakes on her side of the table. These semi-regular coffee dates of ours were a new thing, instituted a few months after Dad’s retirement started. They were a little awkward for both of us, even when I wasn’t hoping to undertake a delicate excavation of Mum’s life. I stood halfway out of my seat when she reached the table, my lips met the air near her proffered cheek, then we both sat down, smiling with excessive relief because the public greeting was over.

‘Warm out, isn’t it?’

I said, ‘Very,’ and we were back in motion down a comfortable road: Dad’s current home-improvement obsession (tidying the boxes in the attic), my work (supernatural encounters on Romney Marsh), and Mum’s bridge club gossip. Then a pause while we smiled at each other, both waiting for Mum to falter beneath the weight of her routine enquiry: ‘And how’s Jamie?’

‘He’s well.’

‘I saw the recent write up in The Times. The new play’s been well received.’

‘Yes.’ I’d seen the review, too. I didn’t go hunting, I really didn’t; it just jumped out at me when I was looking for the letting pages. A very good review, as it happens. Damn paper: no suitable flats to rent either.

Mum paused while the cappuccino I’d ordered for her arrived at the table. ‘And tell me,’ she said, laying a paper napkin between her cup and saucer to soak up the slopped milk, ‘what’s next on his agenda?’

‘He’s working on his own script. Sarah has a friend, a film director, who’s promised to read it when he’s done.’

Her mouth formed a silent, cynical ‘Oh’ before she managed to utter some positive noises. The last of these was drowned when she took a sip of coffee, flinched at the bitter taste, and, blessedly, changed the subject. ‘And how’s the flat? Your father wants to know whether that tap in the kitchen’s still giving you trouble. He’s had another idea he thinks will fix it once and for all.’

I pictured the cold and empty flat I’d left for the final time that morning, phantom memories sealed within the collection of brown cardboard boxes my life had become, then crammed into Herbert’s attic. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘The flat’s fine, the tap’s fine. Tell him he really doesn’t need to worry any more.’