No Place to Hide (33 page)

Perhaps that is why I would so very much like the cottage to be kept for them. It will be a small part of their childhoods, returned to them with a great deal of love from their grandma.

It is, of course, your decision, Camilla. I will no longer be here to argue or approve of what you decide, and I am sure Tom will want to have a say. Please know that if things work out the way I am planning there will be nothing in the cottage or on the grounds to associate with my actions. No ghoulish reminders or inappropriate shrines.

One of my greatest sadnesses today is that I am leaving you without having yet visited you in London. I know you understand why it has been difficult for me to come, as I didn’t feel able to leave Phillip on his own once he’d moved up from Pennsylvania. Just as I understand why you stopped the children from coming here. I truly don’t believe he’d ever have hurt them; you must surely remember how sensitive and caring he is. There is just this side to his nature that has ended up ruining all our lives.

I will wish you good night now, my dearest, and at the same time I ask you to try to remember how much you loved your brother as you were growing up. Try from now on to think of him in only that way. The lawyers will take care of our funeral arrangements, so there will be no need for you to come to Culver if you would prefer not to. As I have no idea how much attention or scandal will attach itself to my actions, I have relieved Father Dominic of the problem of how to deal with our burials by requesting cremations. Another way of displeasing the Church, but I believe in my heart that God is all-seeing, all-powerful, and all-forgiving.

I know you claim no longer to be a believer, but I would ask you anyway to pray for me and for Phillip, as I, when I go to communion tomorrow, will make my final prayers inside a church for you, Tom, and my wonderful grandchildren, Justine and Robert.

God bless you all,

Your devoted mother,

May

Justine’s eyes closed as her heart filled with so much anguish and sorrow that tears ran down her cheeks.

Her grandmother had taken her own life and her son’s because of bigotry and AIDS.

Suddenly catching the sweet scent of flowers again, she felt it softening the tension inside her, like a soothing hand, and opened her eyes. She was trying to imagine how her grandmother must have felt in those final days and hours. It must have taken so much courage to do what she had, but at the same time she must have been very afraid. Everything was against her religion: the homosexuality, her husband’s suicide, and then her own. The killing of her own son to save him from a horrible death…

She had to presume that her grandmother had carried out her plans or she wouldn’t be reading this letter now, or finding out about her uncle for the first time. She had no recollection of him; maybe her mother had insisted from the time she and Rob were born that Phillip was not to come anywhere near them. Her mother should have known better, and almost certainly did now, but there had been so much ignorance and prejudice back then, not to mention panic about the spread of this new and deadly disease.

Reaching for her mother’s letter, she slipped it out of the envelope and held it to the light. It was true, she had many questions after reading her grandmother’s last words, and she was more than ready to hear some answers.

Dearest Justine,

If you’re reading this, I’m going to presume you’ve come to the end of the last letter I ever received from my mother. It’s been many years since I read it myself, and doing so recently has disturbed me in just as many ways, as it did back then—more, actually.

We have all done things of which we are ashamed; where I differ from you and your grandmother is that I had a choice. I needn’t have turned my back on my brother, but I did, and I will never forgive myself for that. I should have stood by him and not added so cruelly to his pain after our father died. I should have stood by my mother too, and not encouraged your father to move us to London. Don’t get me wrong, it was an excellent position and he wanted to take it, but for the right reasons, not for those I now admit to with such bitter regret.

Most importantly of all, what I want to say to you is that the shame you feel about Ben and that my mother felt about Phillip has no place in your hearts. She couldn’t help the way Phillip was any more than you can help the way Ben is. You have no reason to feel any guilt either; it wasn’t you who killed those children, and nothing you did drove Ben to it. Whatever he did is in his character, or the chemical makeup of his brain, not his upbringing.

Though I realize Ben’s crime was very different from Phillip’s, that the two can’t even be compared, I think it’s important for you to realize that you are in danger of going the same way as your grandmother. No, I don’t think you’re about to commit a murder-suicide, but I am sometimes afraid that only Lula and a prison sentence are saving you from that.

I understand that, as Ben’s mother, you needed to get away; it wasn’t possible for you to carry on living here in this country without everyone knowing who you were, and though not everyone blamed you, it’s true that some did. It’s all too easy for people to have opinions about those they don’t know, have never met and are not even likely to meet; in my own small way I get it all the time. In your case I could see how difficult it was becoming, and I now deeply regret not helping you more. My only excuse is that I was so shocked, and then afraid when you decided to go to Culver, that I couldn’t make myself think straight. I felt I had somehow to dissuade you from going; your grandmother had been very clear that she didn’t want you or Rob to find out what she’d done, or know anything about Phillip. Yet, perversely, she dearly wanted you to have the house. It was in trying to reconcile these contradictory wishes that I went about everything in completely the wrong way with you when you decided to make Culver your home. I know I upset you, and of course I confused you very much indeed. This was most definitely not what you needed at such a difficult time in your life, and I can hardly begin to tell you how sorry I am.

I know you will have many questions going round in your head now, such as why did I keep the house and never visit? Why didn’t I offer it to you when you decided to go to Culver? You might even want to know how your grandmother committed her final act.

Of course I wasn’t there, but when we speak I can tell you what I was told and I’ve never had any reason to doubt it.

If you go to the cottage you will see that the boathouse has gone. I believe it was burned to the ground, but again I can only report what I was told. Your father and I didn’t fly over for the funerals; this is another of my many regrets. I often think if I hadn’t turned my back on her she might not have done what she did, although I remind myself too that there was no cure for AIDS at the time Phillip was diagnosed, so perhaps there really wasn’t anything I could do.

I know you’ve more or less turned your back on Ben, and of course no one can blame you for that. However, I implore you to let go of the guilt and shame you are feeling and start living again. As I’ve already said, it doesn’t belong in your heart any more than it belonged in your grandmother’s. You need to take your life back for your own sake and for Matt’s. I say Matt and not Lula, because I think he needs you even more than she does right now. The decision you took to separate so you could give Lula a life was understandable, but wrong. I heard someone say recently that the experience of trauma has many far-reaching effects, and we certainly know that is true for us. You should not be allowing Ben to break up your family; he’s caused enough damage already, and you simply can’t make it possible for him to cause more. If you do, you’ll forever be hanging on to your misplaced guilt and shame as a reason for why you can’t have a full and worthwhile existence. You’re punishing yourselves, both of you, for a crime not of your doing or making, and believe me, no good will ever come of that.

So, Justine, please listen to your grandma, because I believe in her way she is talking to you now, through me, through her letter, and through the feelings that drew you to Culver. She doesn’t want you to suffer for something that you never had the power to control, the way that she did.

Call me when you’re ready.

With my love,

Mum

Keeping hold of the letter, Justine lay back against the pillows and turned out the light. Her grandmother and mother had left her with much to consider, and already her mind was trying to sort through it all, to make sense of why things happened the way they did, or in some instances didn’t happen at all.
I heard someone say recently that the experience of trauma has many far-reaching effects, and we certainly know that is true for us.

It would go on and on, Justine was in no doubt about that. How could it not, when Ben’s crime had affected so many? She didn’t have it in her heart to forgive him, in spite of knowing that somewhere deep inside she still loved him. Nor did she feel that her forgiveness would carry any great significance; how could it when it would be a mere drop in the ocean of what was required?

She was tempted to call her mother now, if only to thank her for showing an understanding and love that Justine had never really credited her with before.

It just went to show how hard it was to really know someone, and how easy it was to get it wrong.

Aware of how tired she suddenly felt, she gathered up the letters and put them on the nightstand along with the keys. If she dreamt about anything tonight, she’d like it to be something beautiful and simple, such as Lula and Daisy, the sun on the lake, the whispering fall of leaves from the trees. There would be time tomorrow to think about Ben and Matt, her grandma and uncle, and what else she might yet find inside the lake house.

Culver, Indiana

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Sallie Jo asked warily.

Justine was gazing through the chain-link fence to where the gabled rooftops of her grandmother’s mansion of a cottage were nestling among a canopy of bright coppery trees. There was no movement, no signs of life apart from the darting scurry of a squirrel crossing a power line and the occasional drift of leaves as they meandered to the lawns below. From their neatness and the piles of fall debris stacked on the roadside, it was clear that the gardener had been since their last visit.

She was about to answer when she spotted the remains of a tree house in the outstretched limbs of a giant maple. She wondered if she was really remembering climbing the slats nailed into the trunk, or just wanting to remember it.

Finally responding to Sallie Jo’s question, she said, “Yes, definitely,” and, holding on to Daisy, she pushed open the car door. Though it was sunny and crystal-clear, the temperature had plummeted overnight, and even now, in the middle of the day, it was struggling to make it past thirty-five degrees.

Reaching the padlocked gate, she tried both the keys, but neither of them fitted.

Apparently amused, Sallie Jo said, “Then I guess we’re climbing this here fence.” Waiting for a passing car to disappear in the direction of the woodcraft and Academies, she slotted a foot into the chain-link, swung a leg over the sagging top, and dropped nimbly down to the other side.

Handing Daisy over, Justine followed suit, wondering if anyone could see them from the neighboring houses. Though both were a good twenty or thirty yards away, the change of season was offering brief glimpses through the trees of glinting windowpanes and red-brick chimneys. However, she felt confident that their unconventional entrance had most likely gone undetected.

Following Sallie Jo and Daisy along the cracked and uneven footpath, she caught herself thinking of Cheryl and how exciting she’d have found this peculiar adventure. Abby would have loved it too, and Chantal. Probably her mother would have liked to be here, but from their brief chat on the phone this morning she knew that much as Camilla might wish it otherwise, there was no real chance of her getting away until just before Christmas.

“I’d like to come then, if I may,” Camilla had added, managing to sound uncharacteristically humble, for her. She was worried, Justine realized, about how harshly she was being judged over the treatment of her brother. However, it hadn’t been the time to discuss it, with Camilla on location and cameras likely to roll at any second. So, deciding to put her mother’s mind at rest, at least for the time being, Justine said, “Of course, we’d love that,” and she’d meant it. “Will you fly out with Rob and Maggie?”