Second Chance (25 page)

It was sunny but the wind from the sea was cold; I was pleased that I'd persuaded Annabel to take my jacket.

There was no one in the lounge bar when I arrived, but George Williams arrived a few minutes later. ‘I'm so pleased you could come,' I said. ‘What are you drinking?'

I got him the half he asked for and half a lager for me. ‘How do you feel about Arthur?' I asked him as I got back to the table. ‘Are you happy about looking after him or will I have to take him with me to London? Are you fond of cats?'

‘She was very fond of Arthur.' His eyes were so heavy with misery, he couldn't seem to lift them.

‘But what about you?'

‘I like Arthur well enough. But I don't know that he likes me. He used to go out when I came to call.'

‘He didn't like me at first, but he's come round. They make the best of things; cats.'

George took a long drink of beer, looking at me as he did so. ‘It's not what she would want,' he said. ‘I know it's legal. Mr Richards told me all that. But it's not what she would want.'

I couldn't help smiling. ‘Of course it is. She made the will. She was going to marry you, George.'

‘Aye. But it didn't happen. Oh aye, it may be legal, but it's not right. Nobody thinks it's right.'

‘
I
think it's right. I had a bit of a shock at first, I admit that, but as soon as I'd had time to think about it, I knew it was right. I'm happy to think you'll be there looking after the house, instead of it being left empty most of the time.'

‘No, no,' he mumbled sorrowfully to himself, ‘it's not right, not right at all.'

‘George, let's talk about Arthur. That's the only decision we've got to make. The decision about the house has already been made and I'm sure you'll be able to accept it, given time.'

‘I'll walk up there every day to feed the cat, keep the house aired, tidy up the garden, trim the hedge, but I can't promise anything else.'

‘All right, we'll leave it at that. The furniture will be there for you anyway, and the bedclothes, the dishes, the pots and pans, and in a little while you may feel like lighting a fire and making yourself at home. Because it
is
your home, George. Will you have the other half?'

‘No, thank you.'

What a dear man he was. I nearly bent to kiss him as I rose to go, but stopped myself in time, realising that it would utterly confound him. I left him staring into his empty glass. I had the feeling that he'd never get over my mother's death.

It was two o'clock when I got home. There was still no sign of Annabel.

My agent phoned in the afternoon with the offer of a job.

‘And I do think you should take it,' she said. ‘I'm not trying to tell you it's a marvellous part, it isn't, but you appear in all eight episodes so of course the money's good. It's a Catherine Cookson-type serial, very meaty, and it's scheduled for the Sunday night ITV slot, starting in February. You don't even have to audition, you've got the part if you want it. The director knows your work, he was the assistant on the Dickens serial you did in '95. Terence McGrath. Do you remember him? He's very keen you do it. The part? Well, I suppose it could be described as the rather downtrodden mother of the heroine.'

‘That sounds exciting,' I said in a morose voice, ‘and very like the part I'm playing in real life. When does it start rehearsing? The pre-filming in the middle of October? Oh, I suppose I'd better take it. It will probably be only a few miserable lines in every episode and possibly some quiet snivelling, but I could do with the money. And I presume no one's offering me Cleopatra.'

‘Not at the moment,' she said carefully. Agents have to be very diplomatic. All their clients have huge, easily bruised egos.

‘So I'll let you have the contract,' she continued, relief oozing from her voice because I was being sensible for once. ‘Can you spell out your address for me?'

‘Send it to Camberwell,' I said. ‘I'll be back at the end of the week.'

As I put the phone down, I felt that at least something had been decided. I was going back to London, back to work.

For a time I felt quietly elated, everything seeming safe again. My mother's death had dislocated me and Selena's suicide had thrown me even further off balance, but now I had glimpsed order and sanity once more. In my Camberwell setting I was a different person, fairly rational most of the time, far less emotional. There was something about this house which made me less sure of myself, more connected to the person I used to be, connected to my mother and my little wild grandmother who was considered psychic and used to have ‘turns'. When I stood in the garden here or walked down the lane to the village, I was a different person breathing a different air. This was ‘home', yes, but I suddenly realised that ‘home' isn't necessarily, or even usually, where one lives, but where one dreams of. And dreams can trip a person up. I felt safer in London which might be vast and terrifying, but which usually kept itself to itself.

I sat puzzling about my life; all that had happened to me since I'd left here for university almost a quarter of a century ago.

As a student I was greedy for life, determined, I suppose, to make up for the deprivations of my childhood. At that time, sexual freedom was new and potent; I craved the heady excitement of sex, but in my early twenties, my affairs rarely lasted longer than a few months and none of them was particularly important. After this, two longer-lasting relationships with some real pain at the ending of each. Later still, life with Paul, a relationship based on companionship and trust, and because sex was relatively unimportant, one I considered altogether more mature.

And then Rhydian. A blaze of passion, a huge, throbbing excitement I'd never known before as well as far more depth of feeling. How could it be otherwise, since he was part of the dark love which comes from the accident of ‘home', part of my earliest memories, bound up with all my hopes and fears, as near and known as my own flesh. For all that he was a first-cousin-once-removed, the relationship seemed closer than incest. ‘I
am
Heathcliff.' I remember breathing out those words in a student production of
Wuthering Heights
, revelling in the sound of them but without much idea of what they meant. They made perfect sense to me now. Before Rhydian, nothing counted. ‘If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.' Someone has always said it before.

Student days. If only Rhydian and I had met at that time, when we were both free. If only he'd happened to be in Cardiff for a rugby match and had bumped into me in one of the crowded bars at the Angel. For a moment I indulged my fantasy, even recalling the midnight-blue fake-fur coat I wore in those days, a dress barely covering the crotch, spiky hair – strawberry blonde with screaming pink highlights. We'd be already thigh to thigh because of the crush in the bar and I'd looked up and recognised him. What might it have led to?

Except that I scorned rugby types in those days, and on that Saturday afternoon would probably have been queuing up for a student ticket for some pre-West End production at the New.

I left home before he and I had a chance of meeting.

Of course I could have stayed in Wales; there were plenty of opportunities in radio and television, particularly for Welsh-speaking actors. But I chose to turn my back on my home. I chose London: more opportunities, more freedom, more excitement. That's the person I was – superficial, vain, ambitious. I made that choice; it was no use moaning about it now.

You make a choice and then Life gives you the part and you have to play it. A Welsh actor, but a Welsh actor in London. Not that I ever felt an exile. I left that to the ‘professional' Welshmen.

I remember being chided by a scriptwriter called Meic Hywel because I called myself Kate Rivers. ‘I call myself Kate Rivers because it happens to be my name,' I told him. ‘Would I be any more Welsh if I called myself Catrin or Cati?' He seemed to think so. ‘I'm Welsh because I feel Welsh. I don't know whether I'm “pure” Welsh – who does – but I feel Welsh. And I happen to believe that English people who settle in Wales and take an interest in Wales are Welsh too, if they feel Welsh. And feelings are sometimes fleeting and in any case surely too nebulous to be politicised. So any nationalism is screwy from the start it seems to me. It only breeds hatred.'

‘Nonsense,' he said, looking at me with undiluted hatred.

I'd played one of Lloyd George's glittering young mistresses in that play. If they were casting it today, I'd be the poor neglected wife. I always feel for actors who've played a famously successful Juliet and who end up playing the nurse. I auditioned for Juliet once but didn't get it. I auditioned for Rosalind once and got Celia. I was often on the brink of success. That could be my epitaph.

I began to feel worried about Annabel. Surely she realised I would have got rid of Laurie by this time. What had happened to her?

I phoned Lewis Owen, but he hadn't seen or heard of her all day.

‘She went off quite early without anything to eat and I'm getting really worried about her. She's taken my car, otherwise I'd be out looking for her. She was in a bit of a state when she left. She said she was going back to Cwmllys, but it's gone five now. To tell you the truth, I rather hoped she was with you.'

‘No, I teach in Abernon Comprehensive all day Wednesday, and I've only just got back. Look, I'll cycle down to Cwmllys, it'll only take twenty minutes, and I'll phone you from the kiosk there. What's your number? I'll write it down on my hand. Don't worry about her, she's just lost all sense of time. You do down there, don't you? Try not to worry.'

‘Thank you, Lewis,' I said, but he'd already put the phone down.

It was six before he phoned and when he did his voice was cold and jerky. ‘Your car is here,' he said, ‘parked exactly where it was yesterday, but no sign of her, though I've walked all round the headland. She might have walked up Bryncelyn way. She's probably quite safe, but I've taken it upon myself to phone Sergeant Edwards in town.'

‘Isn't it a bit soon to phone the police?' I felt an icy hand squeezing my heart.

‘Edwards didn't think so. Not when he heard about her sister. He's going to drive round Bryncelyn and Morfa making enquiries, and he's already notified the coastguard. We'll soon hear something. Try not to worry.'

Try not to worry? When even the police were worried! I was suddenly frantic. What could I do? I phoned Rhydian, I couldn't help myself.

I felt it would be Grace who'd answer, and it was. ‘I'm so sorry I haven't been in touch,' she said, before I had a chance to say a word. ‘I was devastated to hear about your mother's will. Absolutely
devastated
. And Edwina felt the same. And we'd been hoping to have you living down here for six months or so every year. And then to hear about your little stepdaughter. Oh, what a tragedy. I'd have been over there with you in a minute, except Rhydian was adamant,
adamant
, that your other little step-daughter wasn't in a fit state for company.'

‘That's who I'm ringing you about, Grace.' She was such a kind, warm person. It made my guilt so much worse. ‘Annabel, my other stepdaughter. She's missing. The police are searching for her but she's taken my car, so, you see, I'm helpless.'

A moment's silence. I could almost hear her thinking. ‘Right,' she said, ‘Rhydian's in the shower. I'll give him a sandwich to eat in the car and he'll be over with you in no time. Now, try not to worry. A mother can't help it, I know that, but... Here's Rhydian now. I'll let you go.'

Rhydian. For a moment I wished he was my cousin and not my lover. I cried with a mixture of guilt and desire as I waited for him.

Sergeant Edwards arrived at the door at the same moment as he did. I let them in together. Rhydian put his arm around me. ‘This is my cousin, Rhydian Jones. But you must know each other.' They shook hands.

‘We need to know her exact state of mind,' Edwards said. ‘I was told about her twin sister. Would she be feeling suicidal? Should we be looking for a body?'

‘Have you looked for a heap of clothes on the rocks?' Rhydian asked.

‘The young chap walked all round the headland and saw nothing.'

‘Who was that?' Rhydian asked me.

‘The minister. Lewis Owen. I asked him to go and look for her.' They both looked at me oddly. ‘She had a very bad night last night and got furious because her boyfriend, her
ex
-boyfriend, was insisting on coming down to see her. She rushed out of the house, it was about eleven, taking my car and begging me to get rid of him. Which I did. And I expected her back early afternoon at the latest.'

We heard another car driving up the lane. ‘Oh God, this will be her father,' I said. I felt Rhydian's arm tighten round my shoulder.