Harriet Evans - Love Always

‘What happened?’ Frances said, watching her daughter. ‘What did you do, Miranda?’

Her son tightened his grip around her. ‘Mum. Don’t say that. She didn’t do anything.’

Miranda, who had opened her arms to her mother, let them drop to her side. She looked back at her, and sank onto the stone doorstep like a broken dol .

They brought Cecily’s body back up from the beach late that evening, as the sun was setting and the grey moths were fluttering around the candles they had set outside to light the way, just as the storm broke and it began to rain.

The police came, too, of course: they had to know what happened, had to see where she’d fal en, take measurements and photographs. And what happened, it would seem, is that Archie and Miranda were out walking when they bumped into Cecily, at the end of the path on her way down to the beach. Guy was walking in the opposite direction, towards the cliffs, and he heard raised voices, shouting, and then screaming. Apparently Cecily had turned and slipped, a little of the rock breaking away with her.

She had fal en down the steps, her neck broken in the fal . It had rained the day after the James’s arrival, and even in the height of summer, the steps, cut into the rock and without any sunlight, were often dank and slippery. Arvind and Frances had been advised to get them resurfaced. It was one of those things they’d been meaning to do, but the pair of them – when did they ever do what they were supposed to do?

She should have taken greater care, even Cecily who knew the path, the steps and the beach so wel . She should have been more careful. She should not have died. And though no one said it out loud, and though at the inquest a verdict of accidental death was recorded, it wasn’t enough to silence the rumours that al was not what it seemed, that it wasn’t, in fact, an accident.

There was something in the air that summer, like a poisonous cloud, growing in strength. And when it broke, like the storm that raged al that night after her death, nothing was the same again.The day after Cecily’s funeral, when they had scattered her ashes out to sea (Arvind’s idea), and everyone had gone – the mourners, the rest of the family, a stunned Guy, a teary Louisa – Frances locked her studio door behind her, and went into her bedroom. Arvind was in his study, of course.

It was a dul , wet evening, mid-August. The nights were noticeably earlier. There was a chil in the air, a suggestion for the first time that summer was drawing to a close. She held the key in her hand, staring out of the bedroom window. She gazed at the gazebo where her son and remaining daughter sat, huddled together, looking out to sea. Her eyes narrowed as she watched them; hatred, she told herself it was hatred, squeezed her heart.

‘It’s over,’ Frances said to herself.

She clutched the key tightly and shivered. Then she opened her bedside drawer and dropped the key in, next to the ring she’d taken off Cecily’s damp, cold finger a week ago. She shut the drawer and went downstairs, and sat in the big, empty sitting room until the light faded and she was alone in the dark. Miranda and Archie came in separately, and went to bed. Arvind too. None of them knew what to say to each other, so they didn’t say anything at al .

PART THREE

February 2009

Chapter Twenty-One

‘So. Miss Kapoor. Thank you for coming today.’

‘Not at al ,’ I say. ‘I’m as anxious as you are to sort this out?’

Unfortunately, I raise my voice at the end of this sentence so that it sounds as if it’s a question, not an answer.

There is silence from across the grey plastic desk. I wipe my sticky hands on my skirt and I blink wearily; I’ve had not quite four hours’ sleep.

This is good for the sleeper train, where things fal onto the floor as the carriage judders suddenly or drawers fly out as you round a corner, rousing you from your too-light slumbers. But it’s stil not much in the grand scheme of things and I am very tired. I can’t escape the feeling that I’m stil there, lying in a rocking berth. The office in Wimbledon – where my business account manager is located and thus where I have to go if I want to stop the bank cal ing in debt col ectors – is warm and my eyes are heavy. The bump on my head from my Victorian heroine-style fainting fit is stil swol en, and has turned an impressive purple colour during the night. I haven’t been home yet; I’m stil wearing my funeral outfit, ironical y appropriate for today as wel as yesterday.

Yesterday seems like a world away. The pages of Cecily’s diary are stil in my skirt pocket. They make a crumpling sound as I shift in my seat.

Ten pages, that’s al , and then – what? Nothing.

When I climbed wearily off the train this morning, I wondered if I’d dreamed the previous twenty-four hours. It would make more sense, somehow. These scant pages in Cecily’s scrawling, cramped handwriting, al too little an insight. I keep thinking of them al after the funeral, in the living room at Summercove. My family, standing around in knots, not talking to each other. The taxi ride with Octavia, the near-pleasure with which she thought she was tel ing me the truth about my mother. Was she?

I can’t think about it now. I shut my eyes again. Opposite, Clare Lomax, Local Business Manager, stares impassively at me, her hands clasped neatly on the desk. Her suit jacket is slightly too big. It looks like a man’s.

‘So. We’ve been trying to contact you for a while about your overdraft, Miss Kapoor.’

‘Yes.’ I shift my focus back to the present moment. I nod, as though we’re in this together.

‘We’ve become extremely concerned about your ability to sustain a viable business. As you know. That is why we have decided to withdraw your overdraft facility and request immediate repayment of the amount in question.’

‘Yes,’ I say again.

Clare Lomax glances at her sheet. She reads, in a sing-song voice, ‘You are five thousand pounds overdrawn at this time, and you have defaulted twice on repayments for the loan you took out with us last year, also for five thousand pounds. I see you also have considerable debt on your credit card, also held with this bank. And despite several letters requesting repayment we have not been contacted by you with regard to these matters, which is why you’ve left us no other option, I’m afraid, Miss Kapoor.’

‘Yes,’ I say again, stil nodding, so hard now that my neck is starting to hurt. It is such a huge amount, it doesn’t seem real. How has it come to this? What have I been doing? And the answer comes back to me, clear, booming, Octavia’s persistent voice in my ear. Living in a dreamworld.

‘If we look at the company’s bank statements –’ a flick through the sheaf on her desk, before one almond-shaped pearlescent nail smoothly drags the offending sheet of paper into the light – ‘wel , we can see what the problem is. Too many outgoings, not enough incomings. In fact the last payment into the company account was October 2008, for one hundred and thirty-five pounds.’

Bless Cathy. Those were Christmas presents for her mother and her sisters. But I flush with shame that these were the last payments into the account: I am being propped up by friends, by my husband. There have been no website sales since then.

‘Miss Kapoor.’ Clare Lomax shuts the folder with a flourish and puts her fingers under her chin. She stares at me. ‘It’s not good, is it?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘And in the meantime –’ the same nail scratches down a long list – ‘we’ve got payments coming out of the account regularly, driving you further into debt.’ I gaze down. ‘Website hosting . . . three hundred pounds . . . Two hundred pounds to Walsh and Sons, Hatton Garden?’