Harriet Evans - Love Always

‘Wel —’ Guy is immersed in a stain on the wal , and has his back to me. ‘It’s – it’s complicated.’

I stare at the innocuous red exercise book, the white pages yel ow with age. On the front is written, in the scrawling handwriting I know so wel : Continuing the Secret Diary of Cecily Kapoor . ‘Did you take it?’

‘No, I did not,’ he says firmly. ‘Your mother sent it to me. She took it.’

‘What?’

I am stil holding a soggy bal of kitchen paper; my head snaps up.

‘She posted it to me a few days ago. Said I should read it.’

‘But—’ My anger is rising. ‘Why you? She can’t stand you.’ I catch the tip of my tongue between my lips. ‘Sorry. She – she’s just not your biggest fan, maybe.’

‘Yes,’ Guy says. ‘Right. I’d gathered that. I don’t know why, to be honest. But I don’t know why she sent me the diary either, I’m afraid. Wel – I do know why. You ought to read it and find out.’

I’m blushing, with embarrassment and anger. ‘Stil . Where the hel did she get it in the first place?’

‘It was in your grandmother’s studio. She’d found it after Cecily died and kept it in there, al these years.’ He stops. ‘I did wonder, a few months after Cecily died – what happened to the diary? But I assumed they’d just put it away with al her things. I didn’t think about it, real y.’ His head sags.

‘I was too – I was thinking about other things.’

‘So Mum just took it.’ My head is spinning. ‘After the funeral? So she’s had it ever since? Why did she take it? Why hasn’t she said anything?’

‘I haven’t spoken to her. I think she just saw it and snapped,’ Guy says careful y. ‘She was in the studio with Arvind, and she spotted it. The pages you have must have become separated, somehow, just fal en out.’

‘Have you got the note?’

He pauses. ‘I didn’t keep it. I’m sorry. I don’t think she planned it out. I’m rather concerned about her, you know, Natasha. It’s a lot to cope with, what she’s been through. And she’s completely disappeared now. I rang her after I’d – I’d read it, to talk to her. I’ve rung her several times, but she never answers.’

‘Typical,’ I say. My head is spinning. ‘She – I accused her of al these things, last week, and she just stood there. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t mention she had the diary, didn’t say anything. And then she just sends it off to you – of al people, when she’s told me you’re the worst of the lot of them. She’s—’ I don’t know what to say. ‘She is mad.’

‘You haven’t read what’s in here,’ Guy says. The lines on his face deepen, and a spasm of pain flashes in his eyes. ‘If she’s mad – I can see why.’

I don’t say anything. ‘Natasha, you don’t know what it’s like to lose a sibling,’ he says.

‘I’m an only child,’ I snap at him. ‘Of course I don’t.’ Guy jangles some change in his pocket. ‘Yes . . . yes, I know. Wel , you have to understand.

It’s always been with her, this. It changed us al . I don’t think—’ He clears his throat, staring into the distance. ‘I don’t think I ever real y got over her death.’

‘Cecily’s death? Real y?’

‘Yes,’ he says, and he looks at me now, his kind grey eyes ful of pain. ‘There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of her. It’s strange. It was so long ago.’

‘Why? Cecily? But you didn’t know her that wel , did you?’ I say. ‘You hadn’t met her before that summer, had you?’

‘No.’ Guy stands up, and he crosses over to the other side of the room, his back to me. He takes a deep breath, and then he turns around and stands up straight. He says, ‘You’l see. But – I saw her dead by the rocks . . . broken and battered.’ He passes his hands over his face, rubbing his eyes. ‘I brought her up from the sea myself, you know, that evening. I carried her in my arms.’ He’s shaking his head. ‘We put her in the sitting room.

Awful.’ He blinks and looks at me. ‘You know, until the funeral, I hadn’t been back to Summercove since the summer she was kil ed. Died.’ He corrects himself. ‘Died.’

My mouth is dry. ‘You think someone kil ed her. You think – Mum kil ed her?’

The silence is long, broken only by the sound of Thomasina’s purring, her claws piercing the worn fabric she lies on. ‘No,’ he says flatly. ‘That’s not what this is about, Natasha. It’s not a whodunnit. It was an accident. Your mother was there, I saw it. But believe me, it was an accident.’

‘So why does everyone seem to think she did it?’ I said. ‘There were people at the funeral, pointing at my mother, whispering about her.

Octavia does, Louisa does, the rest of them.’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t know what to think any more.’

‘Perhaps it’s been a useful diversion from what real y happened.’ Guy’s hand squeezes the coins in his pocket together so that they make a screeching, scratchy sound, and I wince. ‘Sorry,’ he says. His face is unbearably sad, old and sad. ‘You know, we were young. The world was changing. We had our lives ahead of us. And then she died, and it altered everything. For a long, long time, I thought there’d never be anything nice or good in the world again.’

He holds out the diary, his hands shaking. ‘Read it,’ he says, his voice cracking. ‘Find out what kind of person she real y was.’

‘Who? Cecily?’

He shakes his head. ‘Read it.’

We walk through the silent, echoing shop. It is almost dark now. I have my hand on the door; the old bel jangles loudly. ‘I’l read it tonight,’ I say.

‘And cal me afterwards?’ His face is hopeful. ‘Don’t talk to anyone else, wil you promise me that?’

‘Promise. Goodbye, Guy.’

‘Natasha –?’ he says. ‘It’s lovely to see you again. You look wonderful, if I may say. I heard from your mother that you and Oli have separated,’

he says. ‘I’m sorry. But it obviously suits you.’

I think of the rumpled bed Oli and I had sex in this morning, the rain on the cobbles last night . . . Ben’s face as I walk away from him. ‘That’s unlikely. But thank you.’

I smile my thanks and suddenly his expression changes, as if he wants me gone, instantly. ‘Wel , I’d better get on—’ He looks around the shop and I take my cue and go for the door again.

‘Oh, let me get that.’ He comes forward and holds it open for me, and then suddenly he leans towards me and kisses me on the cheek as the bel jangles.

‘It’s great to see you, Natasha,’ he says. He smiles at me and I smile back. ‘And—’ He stops.

‘What?’ I ask. I’m standing on the threshold of the shop. ‘You do look so like her. Cecily.’

‘That’s what my grandmother used to say,’ I tel him. ‘Wel , it’s a compliment,’ he says. ‘She was beautiful.’ He stares at me curiously. ‘We’l speak. Please, I want to speak to you once you’ve read it.’

He shuts the door, suddenly. I am increasingly unsettled as I start off back home. I walk and walk, through the quiet Georgian terraces of Islington, down towards the canal, past the Charles Lamb pub, out towards Shoreditch. It is that curious time of day you get in spring when it is stil light but feels as if it wil get dark at any moment, that the day is over. It is dark by the time I reach the curious Victorian enclave of Arnold Circus and walk down Brick Lane.

I let myself into the flat. I make a cup of tea and sit down, thinking about my conversation with Guy. I look down at my lap, at the exercise book, so innocuous-looking in my hands, the schoolgirl handwriting and floral decoration around the border the same as a thousand others, before and since. It strikes me that I’ve always thought of Cecily as being a child. They always talked about her, when they talked about her, as a young child.