The House of Memories (28 page)

His voice softened. “You’re like a daughter to me, Ella. You know that. I didn’t want children of my own, but then I got you and I got all the best parts. Your curiosity, your friendship, your faxes and letters. I got to see you grow from childhood to adulthood, to share in your life, to be proud of you. You met your husband through me. I was at your wedding. I was godfather to your first baby. You gave me so much. But you wouldn’t let me grieve for Felix either. Only you were allowed to.”

I was crying now. “Lucas, I didn’t—”

He opened his arms. I moved into them. I pressed my face against his jumper and I cried until I had no more tears. He waited. When he spoke his voice was gentle.

“Ella, you’ve been like this all your life—do you know that? Expecting everyone around you to be perfect. Getting so upset when they weren’t. I blame my brother. If he hadn’t divorced Meredith, if you’d grown up in a happy home, perhaps you would have been different too.”

I stepped back then, roughly wiped my eyes. “I had a very happy childhood.”

“Did you? I always thought otherwise. I used to worry about you a lot. But obviously I was wrong. You had a very happy childhood. Good.”

We started walking again. I told the truth. “I found it hard at times. Especially when Mum got married again. When she had Jess.”

“You never did get over that, did you?”

I stopped. “Over what?”

“Being jealous of Jess. I must have had hundreds of faxes from you about her.”

“I can’t talk about Jess, Lucas.”

“You could. You should. You should talk about her until there is nothing left for you to say.”

I kept walking. Behind me, Lucas spoke, his voice clear in the misty air.

“Ella, I can’t stop you running away again. You’re free to go anytime you like. You probably will, now that I’ve foolishly told you there were no thefts.”

I stopped and turned. “I don’t want to go yet.”

“Good. Because I don’t want you to go yet.”

I came back to where he was standing.

He smiled. “You weren’t a very good detective, by the way, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“And your tutors could sue you for libel, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“The tutors knew nothing about it. They believed you were actually interviewing them for a magazine. They’ve asked me about it since, by the way. You might need to write that article.”

“You even convinced Henrietta, didn’t you? Lied to her too.”

“She didn’t care about the thefts. She’ll care even less that there weren’t any.”

He held out his arm. I looped my hand through it. We began walking back toward his house.

“So what are you going to do about Jess being here?” he asked.

“Nothing.” My tone was too sharp again. But I meant it. “I know you think it’s simple, Lucas, but it’s not. I know you think that all I need to do is talk to her and Aidan, cry together, and life will go on. It won’t. Can’t you see that? How can I forget that Felix died because of them?”

“He didn’t.”

“He did, Lucas.”

“Felix died because he hit his head on a rock, Ella. Because he fell off a fence in an accident that tragically happened while Jess was babysitting him. And she was babysitting because Aidan had been called into work. That’s what happened. That’s exactly what happened. And hating Jess and hating Aidan for the rest of your life is never going to change that.”

“I don’t hate them. I don’t.”
Didn’t I?

“No? So what has been fueling you these past twenty months, Ella? What’s kept you running and running? If it wasn’t hatred, what was it?”

Fear.
The word appeared in my head in block letters.
I’ve been so scared.

We reached his house. We climbed the steps. I waited for him to unlock the door. Instead, he turned and stood in front of it.

“You can’t come in yet, Ella.”

“But I have to cook dinner for everyone. I need to make a list, go shopping.”

“Forget dinner. We’ve done enough talking too. You are going back across to the park and you are going to open Aidan’s letter. And you’re not allowed back in here until you’ve read it.”

He meant it. I could see that.

“Fine,” I said.

I
took a seat at what I had now started to think of as my bench, in the Italian Gardens. I reached into my bag for the notebook and took out Aidan’s letter.

I looked at the envelope, putting off the moment of opening it for as long as I could. I knew his handwriting so well. He’d left me dozens of notes in our years together, from the earliest days in London.

We’d kept our separate rooms in Lucas’s house at first. One afternoon I came back upstairs to find a note pushed under my door.
Dear Ella, You are beautiful. Signed, A Secret Admirer.

“Thank you for the note,” I said later that night.

He’d smiled. “Note? What note?”

It continued in Australia. He worked very long hours in his trade job. I’d wake up to find he’d already left for work. I’d see a note on the pillow beside me, or beside the toaster.

Fresh juice in the fridge. You are gorgeous.

If I was out late at a work dinner myself, I’d return home to notes on the kitchen table.

Charlie rang to say hello. Sends his love. I love you more.

Welcome home. Have decided to write in code from now on. I L Y. Can you decipher?

In the first weeks after Felix was born, when our son seemed to want to be up all night and sleep all day, I snatched my own sleep whenever I could, often as soon as Aidan came in the door. There was one week when we barely spoke to each other. We said everything via notes.

E, have sterilized the bottles. Also had a word with Felix about his nocturnal behavior. He said to say thanks for being up all night with him. Says you’re great company. W L Y.

E, spoke to your mother tonight. Sorry, correction, listened to your mother tonight. She is very excited. Arriving six p.m. flight on Friday. Insists she’ll get a taxi. I L Y, by the way. So does Felix. (Evidence points to the fact your mother does too.)

After Felix was born, Mum used to come up to Canberra to see him often, every second or third weekend at least. Why hadn’t I remembered that? My memories over the past twenty months had only been of her visit that final weekend. But there had been so many other visits too.

She’d also insisted early on, even before he was born, that she wanted our baby to call her Granny. I was amazed. “Don’t you want to be called Meredith?” It was what Charlie and Lucy’s four children called her, I knew. Charlie had always called her Meredith too, never Mum. They had a good, if not close, relationship, but he was always her stepson and she always seemed conscious that Charlie’s children were her step-grandchildren, not full grandchildren. The complications of a blended family, yet again. Walter was Papa, a nod to their German background.

It was different with Felix. Mum was emphatic about it. “I’m his granny so I want him to call me Granny.” Felix did. It was one of his first clear words.

She and I spoke often during my pregnancy. “Don’t worry,” she told me when I rang her after our first alarming appointment at the birth clinic. We’d been shown a graphic video of childbirth. Aidan had gone pale while he watched it. So had I. “You’re doing what your body was born to do. Just let it happen,” she said.

She told me to ignore all the medical advice I was getting. Her own source of information was Dr. Rob, her network’s resident expert. She sent me e-mail messages with links to all his segments. Aidan and I watched them together. Her technological skills sometimes let her down.

“She’s so thoughtful,” Aidan said after we watched one clip. “If you don’t mind me saying, you have had something of a wart outbreak since you got pregnant.”

The next day, there was another e-mail from her.
Whoops, sorry about the warts! Here’s the one I meant to send.
It was Dr. Rob on nappy rash.

“I preferred the warts,” Aidan said.

She decided to fill our freezer with home-cooked meals, so we wouldn’t have to worry about cooking for the first month or two after the baby arrived. She came up one weekend to do it, three weeks before Felix was born. She wouldn’t let me help. After a full day and a lot of mess in the kitchen there was one shaky-looking quiche on the counter. It didn’t look like it would survive a day, let alone a few months in the freezer. We had it for dinner that night.

Two days later, after Mum had returned home, there was a knock at the door. It was a delivery van from one of Canberra’s best-known restaurants. She’d ordered dozens of gourmet meals for us, each of them labeled and freezer-ready.
No quiches, I hope!
Mum’s accompanying note said. We lived off those meals for the first two months.

She, Walter and Jess flew up to Canberra the day after Felix was born. They came into my hospital room laden with presents. Mum carried flowers, Walter carried champagne, Jess carried her laptop. She set it up as we took turns holding Felix, all of us marveling at his shock of black hair, all trying to decide who he looked like the most, me or Aidan. No, he definitely had Aidan’s ears. Yes, but he had my nose. All the while, Jess was there with her computer, plugging in cables and pressing buttons. Suddenly, there on her laptop screen via the wonder of Skype was Charlie and his family in Boston, crowded around their computer, waving at us. Jess had arranged it all. She did the same thing with Lucas, as soon as the time was right for her to call London. He’d used one of his student’s laptops, up in his attic. I’d been able to see the fox paintings on the wall behind him as we spoke, as we held Felix up for him to see.

I had forgotten all of this.

Lucas’s words came to mind.
We all loved him too.

I thought of the photos of Felix I carried with me. Felix and I. Aidan and Felix. The three of us together. The beautiful photo of Lucas, Charlie, Aidan and Felix. But there had been other photos too, photos that I hadn’t taken with me when I left Canberra. Dozens of photos of Mum with Felix, cheek to cheek, reading to him, walking with him. Laughing with him. Holding him. A photo of Felix sitting on the cushion Mum had made for him, a bright green square with his name embroidered on it in yellow wool. Mum hated sewing but she’d found the time to embroider his name and date of birth. Felix had loved that cushion.

There had been photos of Walter and Felix too. Not many. Usually, Walter was the one who took photos of the rest of us. But there was one special photo, a funny one, of Walter holding Felix, bouncing him on his knee, a little awkwardly, and laughing as Felix reached up and tugged at his beard. Where was that photo? Had I left that behind for Aidan? Or just left it behind?

Another memory flashed into my mind. Walter crying at the funeral. Holding Mum, holding her as she sobbed and sobbed. Tears on his face too. I remembered him standing behind Mum the times they visited me in the restaurant, holding her. Supporting her. Literally supporting her.

I couldn’t stop the memories coming now.

I remembered Jess with Felix. Ess and Elix. Their pet names for each other. She had come up to Canberra as often as she could too. Whenever Aidan and I drove down to Melbourne, every couple of months or so, she’d be the first to run out to the car, the first to get Felix out of his baby seat in the back, the first to offer to babysit. “Come to Auntie Ess, Elix,” she’d say. And he’d hold out his arms, impatient to get out of his seat after the eight-hour drive, calling, “Ess! Ess!” And we would all laugh. And Walter would say, “She’s a natural with babies, isn’t she?” “Everyone loves Jess,” Mum would say.

And I would get a flash of jealousy. Even though we were the center of attention, even though we were all in a circle looking at my baby, even though the whole gathering was to welcome us back to Melbourne, to coo over Felix, I would still feel jealous of Jess. I wouldn’t like it when she took him into the back garden to play. I’d leave her with him for five minutes and then I would go out there and bring him back in. He was my baby, not hers.

But as the months went by, Felix became something of a bridge between us. He gave Jess and me something to share, to talk and laugh about that wasn’t complicated by tricky childhood memories. She loved him. Really loved him. She was so good with him, too—endlessly patient, happy to sit on the floor with him and play peekaboo or build castles out of blocks for hours. For longer than I could. He loved her singing and dancing. He would laugh, really laugh, while she clowned around in front of him. She would do that for hours too. It was the perfect setup. He loved watching her. She loved having an audience. Elix and Ess.

She was at the funeral. I didn’t see her. I didn’t want to see her. I don’t remember seeing anyone. It was the hardest day of my life, to stand there in that church, in the row of seats beside that small white coffin, to think that inside it, that inside was—

Two weeks after the funeral, I went to the doctor. Aidan begged me to go, telling me he was so worried, would I please just go and talk to someone. The doctor wanted to give me antidepressants and sleeping tablets. I refused them. I didn’t know what they’d do to me. I was scared they’d affect the part of my brain that held my memories of Felix. The doctor said I needed something, that medication would help get me through these early days. I walked out. I couldn’t risk blocking out even one thought of Felix. They were all I had of him now.

As I came into our apartment after my appointment, I heard a noise in Felix’s bedroom. Aidan was in there, sitting on the floor, a box beside him. He was putting Felix’s toys into it. He’d been trying to, at least. The box was empty. He was on the floor surrounded by Felix’s toys and books, crying so hard he didn’t hear me come in. He didn’t know I was there until I started shouting.

I see now what he’d been trying to do. I didn’t see it then. I shouted at him to leave Felix’s things alone. I wouldn’t listen when he said he thought it would help me, that he was just trying to—

“
Help
me? How can you help me? It’s all your fault—don’t you realize that? This is your fault.”

It was the first time I’d said it out loud. I’d thought it but I hadn’t said it. It was said now. Jess was the one who’d been in the park, but if Aidan hadn’t agreed to go into work and asked her to babysit, it wouldn’t have happened.

That was when it changed between us. At that moment, with that sentence. We stayed together for another month, but what had been said couldn’t be unsaid. I blamed Aidan every time I looked at him. He blamed himself. If I looked at him, I could see only guilt. We slept in the same bed but we didn’t touch. He moved to hug me once, and he took me by surprise and I jumped back. I flinched. That was the last time we’d touched.

Now, here I was in London, many months later, holding something that he had touched recently. An envelope he had sealed. In it, a piece of paper on which he had written—

Ella, I want a divorce.

I could see the words so clearly it was as if I had opened the letter. I shut my eyes as tightly as possible. There was one word in my head.

No.

No.

I didn’t want to divorce Aidan? Was that what I was thinking? I didn’t want him to divorce me?

You abandoned him, Ella.
Lucas’s words.

Suddenly all I could think of was Aidan in Felix’s bedroom that day. On the floor, crying. I had stopped him cleaning out the room. I had ordered him out. I’d shut the door. I’d left the apartment without going in there again. So who had finally tidied it? Who had packed away Felix’s toys, his books, his clothes? Who had taken down all the pictures? Aidan? On his own?

Another memory, long pushed away, came to me. A message from Mum on my voice mail. A short message, softly spoken, telling me she was on her way to Canberra to help Aidan pack up. They were the words she used. Two days later, another message. She was back home. She’d brought everything back to Melbourne. “I’ll keep it all here, Ella. It’s safe, I promise.”

I hadn’t called her back. I hadn’t called her back even after she’d rung me to tell me what she and my husband had done with my son’s toys and clothes.

“Is this seat taken?”

It was an elderly woman, an umbrella in one hand, a small dog at her feet.

I stood up. “Please, have it. I was about to leave.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to hurry you.”

“I’m sure,” I said.

I went straight to Lucas’s house. I was going to read Aidan’s letter now, but not on my own. I wanted Lucas to do it with me. Be beside me as I read it. Help me cope with whatever it said.

His door opened before I had a chance to use my key. He must have been watching for me.

“Lucas, I haven’t read it yet. I need you—” I stopped. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Your mother’s just rung. Charlie’s on his way to London. Jess has gone missing.”