Hothouse Flower (6 page)

Alicia went back into the drawing room and sat down, content to watch her father bond with her two sons over a jigsaw. Rose had snuck off upstairs to her bedroom and she could hear Kate in the kitchen helping Max. She stared into the fire, thinking about the newly discovered orchid paintings, and Julia.

When their mother had died, tragically young, of ovarian cancer, Alicia – being the eldest of the two and, even at fourteen, already a nurturer – had done her best to ‘mother’ her younger sibling. George was often away lecturing or specimen-collecting; it seemed to Alicia he spent as little time at home as he could. She understood it was her father’s way of dealing with the loss of his wife, and never complained about his absence.

After Jasmine’s death, Julia had withdrawn into herself. Alicia had seen the pain of loss written on her face. Yet, try as she might to help and comfort, from the start, Julia seemed to resent Alicia’s well-meaning protectiveness. And as she grew through the difficult, teenage years, she had been unwilling to open up to Alicia about school, friends or boyfriends, building a wall around her private thoughts and spending all her free time perfecting her technique on the piano.

Alicia had actually come to view the ‘set of teeth’, as she called the upright piano in the study, as her rival for Julia’s affections. And her sense of responsibility to take care of Julia – it was the last thing her mother had asked of her – overrode her own wants and needs. At eighteen, Alicia had won a place at Durham University to study psychology, but Julia was still at school. Even though there was a housekeeper to take care of their domestic needs and stay overnight when George was away, she didn’t feel she could leave Julia alone. She’d gone to university in Norwich instead and, subsequently, in the year Julia had won a place at the Royal College of Music and moved to London, she’d met Max.

Her unnatural, often lonely childhood had made Alicia dream of a husband, a large family and a comfortable home to put them in. Unlike her sister, who suffered from the same wanderlust as her father, Alicia craved security and love. Max proposed and they were married within six months. She was pregnant within the year with Rose and, since then, had concentrated on giving her children all the things she had never known during her own formative years.

If her horizons had been narrowed because of her past, Alicia accepted them. What she found harder to accept was her younger sister’s continued antipathy. As Julia’s career had taken off, and she’d become a celebrity in the classical music world, Alicia had rarely heard from her. Seven months ago, Julia had needed her again, and Alicia had been there for her immediately, to bring her home to Norfolk, to try and comfort her. Yet she still felt the same distance and undercurrent of tension between them.

Just as twenty years ago, Alicia simply did not know how to reach her sister.

‘Mummy, I’m baking fairy cakes for tea. Where’s the tray to put them on?’

Alicia looked up and saw Kate at the sitting-room door. She roused herself from her thoughts and stood up.

‘On my way, darling, on my way.’

4

When Julia awoke the following morning, she lay there, waiting for the dark thoughts to assail her mind as they always did – the feeling of hopelessness that insidiously consumed the first few positive seconds when she was too sleep-ridden to remember.

They didn’t arrive.

And so, rather than rolling over and clapping her hands to her ears, as if to uselessly block out the thoughts, she decided to get up instead.

She walked over to the bedroom window and pulled open the curtains.

The cottage – which was a basic, two-up, two-down – had been particularly popular with holidaymakers because of the magnificent view. Perched high on a grassy knoll, just a few seconds’ walk from Blakeney High Street, it had the convenience of being in the village, yet the peace and open aspect of its elevated position.

Today, the sun was shining its crisp January light on the frost-covered hillock. Below was Blakeney harbour, and beyond that the sea. She opened the latch on the small window, flung it wide and breathed deeply. Today, Julia thought, it was actually possible to believe that spring might come again.

She closed the window, shivering suddenly in her thin T-shirt, pulled on her cardigan and went downstairs to make some tea.

By lunchtime, Julia was aware that something
had
shifted. Try as she might to remember what she had been doing here in this cottage every day for the past few months, she could not. Time was dragging; she felt restless, bored even. She searched her mind fruitlessly for the path back to the comforting torpor, but it steadfastly refused to take her there.

Feeling claustrophobic, Julia realised she needed to get out of the house. She threw on a jacket, scarf and wellies, opened her front door and marched across the grass and down towards the sea.

The harbour was deserted. The small boats brought in safely to land during the winter sounded restless too, their rigging making a tinkling sound, as if to remind their owners of their usefulness to come. Julia left the harbour behind and continued walking along the long spit of land, at the far end of which seals basked on the sand, to the delight of the tourists who took boat rides out to see them.

The chill wind nipped at her face and she pulled the collar of her jacket up higher to protect herself. She kept going, relishing the fact that she was so completely alone, now with water on both sides of the diminishing strip of land – as if she was walking away from the world.

She stopped, then turned and made her way down one side of the spit towards the water lapping below her, just inches from her feet. It was deep here, deep and cold enough to drown in, especially with the strong outgoing current that would sweep her swiftly away from the shore. She looked from side to side, reassuring herself she was truly alone.

If she threw herself in, there would be no one to stop her …

… and the pain would be over.

At worst, she would go to sleep forever. At best, she would see them again.

Julia dangled one tentative boot out past the land’s edge.

She could do it now …

Now
…

What was to stop her?

She looked down at the grey water, willing herself to take the final plunge into release, but …

She couldn’t.

She gazed up hopelessly at the wintery, white sun, then threw her head back and let out an enormous scream.

‘WWWWWHHHHHYYYYYY!!!?
’

She sank to her knees on the melting frost. And she howled and beat her fists into the ground in fury and pain and anger.

‘
Why them?! Why them?!
’ she repeated over and over until, through exhaustion, she had to stop, so she sobbed instead.

She lay flat, spread-eagled, her tears mingling with the wetness of the grass, crying with the full force of seven months of not doing so.

Finally, she ran out of tears and lay there; still, silent and empty. After a while she sat up, rose to her knees as if she was praying, and spoke to them.

‘I have to …
live
! I have to live without you, somehow …’ she whimpered. Her hands went out to the side, palms stretched upward to the sky. ‘Help me, please help me, help me …’ She sank back down, put her head in her hands, resting it on her knees.

All Julia could hear was the rhythmic lapping of the water surrounding her. She concentrated on it and found it calmed her. She felt the weak warmth of the sun on her back and was suffused with a sudden and unexpected sense of peace.

She had no idea how long it was before she stood up. Wet through from the thawed grass, her legs like jelly and both hands numb from the cold, she staggered back along the spit towards home.

She arrived at the cottage, shaking from the exertion of the long walk and the release of emotion. She was just turning the handle to open the front door when she heard someone calling her name.

‘Julia!’

She looked down the hill and saw Kit Crawford striding up the narrow path towards her from the High Street.

‘Hi there,’ he said as he reached her. ‘I came to see you, but you weren’t in. I put a note through your letter box.’

‘Oh,’ she said, feeling disorientated, and hardly ready to cope with speaking to the living.

Kit was staring at her. ‘You’re soaked. What on earth have you been doing?’ He looked up at the sky for an answer. ‘It hasn’t been raining, has it?’

‘No.’ Julia pushed open the front door, her boots treading on the folded piece of paper that Kit had pushed through the letter box. She leant down to pick it up.

‘I left my mobile number.’ He indicated the note. ‘But as I’ve caught you, do you think we can have a quick chat?’

Julia knew she was looking less than enthusiastic and her teeth were starting to chatter. ‘I think I need to get straight into a hot bath,’ she said, hoping this was enough to make him leave.

Not to be dissuaded, Kit followed her inside the cottage. ‘Yes. Those precious fingers of yours are virtually blue. We can’t afford to have Britain’s most famous young concert pianist getting frostbite, now can we?’ He shut the door behind him, then shivered involuntarily. ‘Blimey, it’s freezing in here too. Listen, why don’t you go upstairs and have a hot bath, whilst I make a nice fire and some coffee?’

Julia turned round and eyed him. ‘I might be some time. I need a good soak.’

‘I’m in no rush,’ Kit answered amiably. ‘Off you go.’

Julia lay in the bath, taking time to thaw out both her feet and her brain, wondering at the timing of Kit’s appearance. She wasn’t used to having visitors turning up unexpectedly on her doorstep, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

Yet … out there alone, she had known she couldn’t stay in the place she’d been any longer, that she
had
to do what everyone told her she must, and try to move on.

She could have chosen to die.

She had chosen to
live
.

Pulling on her jeans and her old woollen cardigan, she walked back down the stairs. Kit was sitting on the sofa, a small package resting on his knee. The fire was burning merrily in a way she could never quite achieve, however hard she tried.

‘So, how did you find me?’ she asked Kit as she hovered by the fire.

‘My sister, Bella, of course,’ Kit explained. ‘She knows everyone. Or should I say, she makes it her business to know everyone, and if she doesn’t, then she’ll know someone who does. In this case, it was your sister, Alicia. I did try to call, but your mobile seems to be permanently switched off.’

Julia thought guiltily of the seventeen messages she hadn’t listened to last time she switched it on. ‘There’s very little signal here.’

‘No problem. Firstly, I wanted to apologise for the other day.’

‘Why?’

Kit studied his hands. ‘I didn’t know about what had happened to you. As I said, I’ve been abroad for years. I only came back to England a few months ago.’

‘Who told you?’

‘Bella, of course. Apparently it was in all the newspapers here. So she’s gleaned her information from them. I’m sure most of it was inaccurate, as these things usually are.’

‘I … don’t know,’ Julia sighed. ‘As you can imagine, I didn’t read them.’

‘No, obviously you didn’t.’ Kit looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, Julia. It must have been … must
be
, terrible for you.’

‘Yes.’ For both their sakes, Julia swiftly changed the subject. ‘So, what was it you wanted to see me about?’

Kit’s face brightened. ‘I’ve found something that you and your family might be interested in.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. You remember I mentioned that I was renovating the cottages in the Quad?’

Julia nodded.

‘Well, it turns out my new home
is
your grandparents’ old house. The plumbers were taking out the floorboards and they found this.’ Kit indicated the package on his knee.

‘What is it?’

Julia watched Kit unwrap the package carefully to reveal a small, leather-bound book. He waved it at her. ‘It’s a diary, beginning in 1941. I flicked through it briefly and it’s an account of life as a prisoner of war in Changi jail.’

Julia’s brow furrowed. ‘That’s in Singapore, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Kit replied. ‘A lot of British soldiers who were fighting in Malaya at the time ended up in there for a while as guests of the Japs. Do you know if your grandfather was a prisoner of war?’

‘Grandfather Bill talked a lot about the “East”, but mostly of the beautiful flowers that grew there,’ Julia smiled. ‘He never mentioned Changi.’

‘I don’t suppose he would talk of it to a young child, but it certainly seems a possibility this diary is his, given what you’ve just said,’ said Kit. ‘And I can’t imagine it being anyone else’s, seeing as your grandfather lived in the cottage for the whole of his life.’

‘May I?’ Julia reached out her hand and Kit gave her the diary. She opened the first page and saw that the leather had protected the thin paper from too much ageing, and the writing on it was quite legible. And it was a beautiful hand that had written these words, the writing elegant, scripted in black ink.