From a Distance (34 page)
Authors: Raffaella Barker
Luisa looked at her watch. Ellie would appear any minute. Would she be taller? Thinner? She might look the same as she did before, but be a different person inside? Luisa had never been away on her own for longer than a school exchange trip. She had found it almost impossible to believe Ellie, her baby, was in India. Even though Tom’s clock always told her the time there, and she’d seen her on Skype, she’d never got over her conviction that Ellie was really at school, or asleep in her room, or away on a Duke of Edinburgh camping trip. That she was on another continent, with a babble of languages Luisa had never heard in her ears, breathing scents of pungent spices she was unfamiliar with, was implausible.
It seemed to Luisa like yesterday that Ellie, aged fourteen, went with a schoolfriend on her first day trip to London. Now she had crossed continents on train journeys lasting days, to arrive at a coastline or a mountain range far away, in time to see the new moon rise the wrong way up. Luisa had missed so much of Ellie’s life she could never catch up on. No amount of saying, ‘So you arrived at the airport, and then what happened?’ would give her even the smallest idea of the full story. Ellie was her own person, her own woman. She had a life her family could not share, and that was only going to happen more and more. Luisa knew that before the whole incident with Kit, this would have upset her, now she accepted it. And so she should, after all she had a lot that had happened at home that she wouldn’t be telling Ellie either. Or anyone for that matter.
The white arrivals doors swung open as a new trickle of passengers came through. A slight Indonesian woman steered her trolley with one hand, her other arm supporting a sleeping toddler on her shoulder, while another child bounced on the heap of cases and bundles tied with thin green rope. A man with a moustache ducked under the barrier and engulfed them. The baby woke and sputtered crossly. Happiness poured out of the man like sunshine, and he caught the baby up, surprising it into silence. ‘Well, well, well! Well, well, well! Here I am. Here you are. We’re together now.’ The woman reached up for the startled child, the man kissed her and a quick smile flew between them.
‘Mum.
Mum
– I’m here!’ Luisa turned in confusion. A hit of patchouli oil and incense, like Mae’s joss sticks in her bedroom wafted towards her. Was it Ellie? Where? How had she missed her for God’s sake? A tall girl staggering beneath a huge rucksack rushed up and past, staring into the distance. Someone else’s daughter. The parents had pushed through the crowd to her and she lurched between them, trying to hug them both. The family walked away, her father attempting without success to swing the rucksack onto his back. Luisa wondered if they had any surprises cooking in their family. Like Kit? Since he’d left for Cornwall again, life had hardly paused. Ellie had suddenly decided to return early, and that had thrown everything into a whirl of excitement that had not yet slowed down. Luisa had never even had a moment with Kit to say – what? Really there was nothing to say. Or not to him. Plenty to tell Ellie.
A new uncle. She would tell her on the way home, it was Luisa’s only opportunity to take part in the story of Kit. Her part in it was just a jokey story about the sheep at the Lighthouse. The rest was buried. Only Luisa knew how it had altered her. The frisson of attraction, the possibility of passion, had changed something inside her. She walked taller, and there was some subtle shift in the way she interacted with others. Luisa didn’t any longer feel the need to run after everyone in her life. Sometimes she could simply stand still and let them come to her. Magnetism. She’d found a core of magnetism within her.
Ellie could hear about everything else. The story of Kit and Tom. It was wonderful that Tom was so genuinely pleased. Dora was the same. None of them seemed to mind being shifted down the family into new positions, though a lot of that was surely down to Kit and his charm. Luisa tried to imagine such a thing happening in her family. No chance of it working out there. It would be pumped up testosterone all the way to the pub and a fight of some sort. Anyway, there hadn’t been time for any of that, there hadn’t been time for anything at all, and now Kit had gone back to his life in Cornwall. Their secret
momento di passione
, their frisson, their whatever it had been, was gone. Delicious, bittersweet, melt in the mouth and transient as her finest ice cream. It had no staying power. And she had no place in her life for anything like that, no time.
‘I’m coming back, Mum, I’ll be home on Thursday. I’ve booked the flight, come and get me please Mumma’ had been Ellie’s message, ripping her right out of her fantasy life and back to earth in the thump of a heartbeat. She hardly had time to plan and create the welcome feast, she certainly didn’t have time to think about a crazy infatuation. Rose ice cream. Lovely delicate, sophisticated, quintessentially English yet also Indian – many roses being from the subcontinent originally. Utterly romantic. Perfect to welcome Ellie, a recipe for the future. Luisa pulled out all the stops to make it irresistible. She infused the petals of her favourite rose varieties, pounding them in the pestle. She searched the Internet for the right rose
absolute
essence. She hid the receipt for that, because drop for drop it probably cost more than Tom’s favourite single malt whisky, but it was worth it, the flavour was sublime. Then finally, late last night, she’d stirred in her precious rosehip syrup made last autumn. At last her ingredients submitted, and rolled together to become something both delicate and voluptuous with the scent of a magic spell. It was ready. She was ready. Ellie was coming home.
‘Hey, Mum! It’s me!’
Unbelievable, but she hadn’t even seen Ellie appear. After all that. She threw her arms round her daughter, and almost cried, it was so familiar to embrace her. ‘Ellie! I didn’t see you. Oh, look, you’ve grown.’
‘Hey, Mum.’ Contentment, inner peace, beauty, shiny hair, henna tattoos on her wrist, whatever India offered, Ellie seemed to have it in spadeloads now. Luisa hesitated for a microsecond. Her daughter had grown up. It wasn’t her automatic right to grab her and hug her any more. Their eyes met, laughter burst from them both and they rocked together. Luisa registered subtle changes: a different weight of the ribcage she held against her own, a new strength in the way Ellie held herself, a softer edge to her voice, an indefinable sense of being relaxed, easy in her own skin. Ellie had grown. She was taller than Luisa, her face thinner too. Tiny plaits framed clear eyes, shining, happy with no hint of redness or exhaustion from the flight. About her hung a sultry, evocative, provocative scent, more subtle than patchouli, but delicious, like amber. Until she saw her daughter return, Luisa hadn’t understood what going away like this meant. Much had been lost in translation. The Skype sessions had not prepared her for the raw, radiant, physical reality of Ellie all grown up. Luisa didn’t know how to behave except as a mother, and Ellie looked as though she was past the mothering stage.
‘God, it’s very strange to be somewhere so muted,’ said Ellie, pulling her bag up on to her shoulder. ‘Every scrap of India seems to be a different colour, they don’t do minimal in any way at all.’ She coiled a huge crimson shawl around her neck and pulled her hair over it, bracelets tinkling. She was glamorous, Luisa noticed heads turning as they walked out of the airport building. Pride tangled with excitement, a pang of regret for the end of her childhood, and Luisa’s tears spilled over.
She wiped them away quickly, but Ellie caught her hand. ‘Mum! I knew you’d cry, Mae and I discussed it. Come on, we’ve got to get home. I need to see everyone. Did you come in the ice-cream van? Is it done? I thought I could work through the rest of the summer in it and earn some money for uni.’
Luisa laughed. ‘The van? I can’t believe you even remember I have a van. It’s still not mended, of course, but Dad says—’
Ellie was jumping with excitement now. ‘I know, Dad will fix it. He always says that, Oh I can’t wait to see them all. Why didn’t Mae come with you? My phone’s out of battery, can we call her and Luca in the car? Mum, I want to know everything about home. It’s so long to be away, what’s happened?’
Luisa laughed. ‘Let’s get in the car and I’ll tell you everything.’
Ellie sat with her feet up on the dashboard, gulping the water from the bottle Luisa passed to her, a flow of chatter passing between them as if she had never been away. Luisa drove with a smile sealed on her lips. Ellie couldn’t know the thousand tiny ways she had changed, or the countless gestures and intonations that showed she was still the same Ellie she’d always been. They turned onto the motorway, and Ellie took her mother’s iPod and put on an Otis Redding song, ‘These Arms of Mine’.
Luisa was surprised. ‘Is this not a bit old-fashioned for you? I always thought my favourites were too slow for you lot,’ she teased.
Ellie shook her head and put her hand out for her mother’s. ‘No. I heard this in a bar that night just before I called you, and it made me so homesick I decided then and there to come back,’ she said.
They listened to the bittersweet song in silence. It was so easy to be happy, Luisa thought, this was it. Simple stuff, but who could ever ask for more?
Ellie turned to her. ‘Mum what’s the special ice cream for tonight? You did make one, didn’t you? Like we always have for birthdays and everything?’
Luisa smiled. ‘It’s a surprise,’ she said.
I owe the most enormous debt of gratitude to my editor, Alexandra Pringle, for giving me time to find my way around this story, and I don’t know how to thank her. All I know is that
From a Distance
would not be the book it has become without Alexandra’s wisdom and faith, or her team’s many talents and limitless enthusiasm.
I also thank Gillian Stern for becoming my characters’ best friend and champion, as well as mine, and for getting right under their skins to edit this book, and Justine Taylor for a comet-like copy edit, blazing a trail through what was by then a somewhat battered final draft.
Thanks too, to the venerable fabric designer Pat Albeck for sharing her expert knowledge of the process of silk screen printing and to my fellow novelist Louisa Young for reading an early draft and asking the questions that set my sights on a very particular horizon.
To Roman for helping me research, to James for putting up with me, and to all the rest of my beloved family and dear friends for consistent understanding and support as I headed back for yet another edit, yet another draft, yet another dive away from them and into the world I was creating. Thank you.
My final thanks are to Louise and Graham Banks for allowing me to dedicate this book to the memory of Sam, their son, whose wild and wonderful musical taste I have borrowed.
Raffaella Barker, daughter of the poet George Barker, was born and brought up in the Norfolk countryside. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels:
Come and Tell Me Some Lies; The Hook; Hens Dancing; Summertime; Green Grass; Poppyland
; and
A Perfect Life
. She has also written a novel for young adults,
Phosphorescence
. She is a regular contributor to
Country Life
and the
Sunday Telegraph
, and teaches on the Literature and Creative Writing BA at the University of East Anglia and the
Guardian
UEA Novel Writing Masterclass. Raffaella Barker lives by the sea in north Norfolk.
@raffaellabarker
www.bloomsbury.com/raffaellabarker
Come and Tell Me Some Lies
