The Secrets We Left Behind (6 page)

I smiled. ‘Hannah was the opposite. She was trying to dress herself at the age of two and she’d get very cross with me if I tried to help.’ I set the cafetière down on
the table and pulled out a chair. I enjoyed these moments of womanly camaraderie with my mother-in-law. ‘You know, I don’t think I realised I’d still be worrying about her even
now; I think I sort of assumed—’

‘Oh, you don’t get off that lightly.’ She chuckled again. ‘I still worry about all three of them, and here’s Duncan, a grandad himself now.’

‘And John and Alice have a grandchild due in the summer, don’t they?’ I reminded her.

Estelle gave another of her famous shudders. ‘Two sons who are grandfathers – as if I didn’t feel old enough already!’ But then a faraway expression settled on her face and she
absent-mindedly twiddled her rings, which all hung loose on her fingers but were kept in place by the swollen knuckles. On her wedding finger were her engagement ring and a gold band so thin now
that it looked as though it could snap; on her middle finger were three eternity rings – Duncan’s dad had bought her one on the birth of each child. I poured the coffee and pushed it
towards her, together with the sugar bowl. She added a spoonful of sugar and stirred it round several times before tapping the teaspoon twice on the side of the cup and placing it neatly in the
saucer. She looked thoughtful.

Toby shifted in his seat and screwed his face up but didn’t open his eyes. We both looked at him and waited, but then his face relaxed and he made a few sucking motions before drifting
back to sleep.

‘You know, dear, I sometimes think motherhood is the best and worst thing that can happen to a woman.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Life is so very short, even when you reach a great age, such as I have.’ Her hand was shaky as she raised her cup to her carefully painted lips and took a sip of coffee. I waited
for her to continue, but she seemed to drift for a moment, as though some unexpected memory had slid into her mind.

‘Estelle, what did you mean?’

Her eyes focused on me again. ‘I’m sorry, darling?’

‘About motherhood being the worst thing that can happen to a woman.’

‘Oh, yes, well. I just meant that it’s all so temporary, you see; the joy of it. One minute, you’re a brand-new mother with your brand-new baby that you grew inside you –
you’re the centre of one another’s worlds, and you know you will do anything for your child. It’s the most complete and perfect type of love. And then the next minute . .
.’

She had that faraway look again. I’d seen photographs of Estelle as a young mother, and then as an older mum after she had Duncan. She’d always been a good-looking woman, not pretty,
exactly, but handsome. And in all the pictures, whether she was posing in a studio, perfectly groomed and wearing a hat and gloves while holding a freshly washed and combed child on her lap, or
whether she was on a beach in an old skirt and with her hair tied back while the kids built sandcastles, she positively glowed with love and pride as she looked at her children.
A complete and
perfect love.
The thought triggered a memory of the exact moment I’d realised how important Hannah was to me. I’d been giving her a bottle and she had her hand curled around my
little finger; I looked into those cornflower-blue eyes and I suddenly knew that, if I had to, I would kill with my bare hands to protect her.

‘Your children have your love and devotion for ever, you see, until you die. But you only have theirs for a limited time. Now, I don’t mean that they stop caring about you, but
I’ve learned this, and so must you.’ She looked over her glasses at me almost sternly. ‘Once your children have their own children, the balance alters. And it’s only right
and proper that it should.’

‘Yes, of course.’ I knew she was right, but I wasn’t ready to acknowledge it yet, not really. ‘But Hannah still asks for my advice.’

Estelle smiled and shook her head. ‘There, you see? That’s what I mean about it being the best and worst. Heavens, I still worry about my children and two of them are grandparents!
But although they look after me,’ she rested her dry, cool hand on my arm, ‘you all do; you’re all so very good to me – they don’t ask for my opinion or advice any
more; if something goes wrong, instead of asking me what they should do about it, they hide it from me so I shan’t worry.’ She tutted and took another sip of her coffee, and a little of
it ran down her chin but she didn’t notice.

‘But that’s because we love you. Of course we don’t want you to worry.’ But she was right; we kept things from her that maybe we shouldn’t.

‘Of course, dear, I know
why
it happens – it’s the natural order of things. But that’s what I mean about the balance altering. When they’re young, we care
for our children, we protect them and we pass our wisdom on to them; in return, they adore us and look up to us; we are the very centre of their world. But gradually the way it works changes; our
children start caring for us, taking responsibility and protecting us. And then we realise we have no more wisdom to pass on because the world has changed and our wisdom is out of date. And then
they have their own babies, and we realise that our children are now the ones who must pass down wisdom and be looked up to and adored, and we, sadly, are slowly fading from the picture, making way
for the next in line.’ She sighed a little shakily. ‘Goodness, whatever’s the matter with me. I’m becoming all maudlin, and we haven’t even had a sherry
yet.’

*

When I got home, Duncan was standing in the hallway with the phone in his hand and a slightly perturbed look on his face. He smiled when he saw me, and nodded towards the
handset. ‘That was another one. Another funny phone call. You haven’t got yourself a secret lover, have you?’ he said affably. ‘You know, “if a man answers, hang
up”?’

‘Did you do 1471?’ I tried to sound light, but I realised that there was an edge to my voice.

He shrugged, then picked up the handset again and punched in the numbers. ‘Hmm, withheld number.’

I felt my blood cool.

On Sunday afternoon, we were getting ready to head off to the woods for a walk with Monty. I tried to persuade Hannah to join us but Marcus had taken Toby out so she was going
to go back to bed for a while. Her voice sounded dull and flat; she hadn’t been herself at all since Toby arrived. I’d always assumed she’d take motherhood in her stride. So had
she, I think; my poor Hannah. I’d seen a lot of tired new mothers, but I’d begun to wonder if it might be more than that.

I was trying to tie the laces of my walking boots when a violent surge of nausea rose up inside me. I sat back heavily on the stairs; I could see slivers of light shooting downwards at the edge
of my vision.

‘Darling, are you all right?’ Duncan was at my side in an instant. ‘You’ve gone grey.’

It took me a moment to answer because I was concentrating on not throwing up. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute. I think it’s a migraine tuning up. Could you grab my
pills.’

He put his hand on my forehead, like I used to do with Hannah when she was little and I was checking for a fever. ‘I didn’t know you still got migraines.’

‘I haven’t had one for ages. I don’t know why it should start again now.’

Duncan handed me a pink pill and a glass of water. Usually, that was enough to stop it, but if the pink pill didn’t do the trick, I had to take one of the yellow ones.

Monty was walking round and round in circles, his claws click-clicking on the wooden floor. Duncan hadn’t put his boots on yet and was standing there in his socks, looking concerned.

‘I’d better stay here,’ I said. ‘You go ahead. I just need to lie down for a while.’

Duncan looked at me for a moment. ‘You sure you’ll be all right?’ Again he rested his palm on my forehead and it was so soothing, I wished he could keep it there.

‘I’ll be fine. Hopefully it won’t get a grip. A couple of hours lying down in a darkened room’ll sort me out.’

Monty started to make impatient little noises. ‘Okay, fella.’ Duncan picked up the lead and Monty began leaping up to try and catch it in his mouth. Then he started jumping in
ecstatic circles until Duncan told him firmly to ‘sit!’ which he did instantly, tail thumping the floor, mouth open and smiling as he looked excitedly from one to the other of us.
Duncan caught hold of his collar and clipped his lead on, at which point Monty almost pulled him off his feet in the rush to get to the door.

I stayed where I was until the front door closed behind them and silence settled around me. Then I turned and climbed the stairs slowly, on my hands and knees. I couldn’t move too fast
because I could sense rather than feel the actual headache, there on the edge of my brain, poised like a predator ready to strike. I felt as though I was pitched against it, that if I could just
crawl into bed without making any sudden movements I might avoid its wrath, but if I tilted the thing into action, it would attack, knives slashing at my head without mercy.

In the bedroom, I turned back the duvet then lowered my head carefully onto the pillow and shut my eyes. Little pinpricks of light popped and fizzled around the edge of my vision, even though my
eyes were closed, and the nausea rose and fell, rose and fell. I lay there, motionless, grateful for the thickness of the curtains and the stillness of the afternoon, willing the pills to kick in.
So far, I still wasn’t feeling actual pain, but the tentacles were sliding ever nearer and I tried not to think about the possibility of a disabling three-dayer.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been lying there when the phone went, each ring jabbing into my poor fragile brain. I lay still and tense, willing it to stop and trying to remember how
many times it would ring before the voicemail kicked in. When it stopped, the silence sort of twinkled for a moment, and I felt my body relax. The phone rang again almost immediately, causing my
body to tense and the nausea to start swirling inside me. I held my breath and counted the rings, six, seven, eight. Then blissful silence, but only for a few seconds before it started again.
Slowly, I levered myself up using my elbow. The room was darker than before, but it wasn’t completely dark outside yet, which meant Duncan hadn’t been out for long. Maybe something was
wrong. The ringing stopped again, and this time I simply braced myself for it to resume, cursing the fact that I hadn’t brought the handset from downstairs and put it next to the bed. A
sequence of pictures flashed though my head: Hannah had collapsed with an unknown illness; the baby wasn’t breathing; Duncan had had a heart attack or slipped on the ice and broken his leg;
Monty had chased a squirrel into the road and been run over. Sure enough, the ringing started again. Still moving slowly, I swung my legs round and put my feet on the floor, then I stood up and
walked across the room.

‘Hello?’ I was aware that my voice sounded anxious. Duncan was always telling me off about it. He said I always sounded like I was expecting bad news.

‘Jo?’

I froze. No one had called me by that name for over thirty years. My fingers gripped the phone more tightly as another thick wave of nausea swayed inside me. I wanted to hang up but I was
paralysed. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be sick or if I was going to faint, but right at that moment I felt very, very ill, like I might die. I leant back against the wall as my knees
buckled and I allowed myself to sink down onto the carpet.

‘Jo?’ he said again. ‘Look, I know you’re there.’

I recognised his voice, even though it sounded softer, weaker than I remembered. So it
was
him I saw in Marks & Spencer’s that day.

‘Listen, please don’t be scared. I know your husband has gone out—’

I hit the
End call
burton and slammed the handset into its cradle, the sudden movement sending a missile of pain deep into my skull. He must have been watching the house. Oh dear God,
why? What did he want? I sat there on the landing with the warm carpet thick and comforting beneath me and I put my hands out to steady myself as though I was on a boat that might tip me into the
freezing water at any moment. I could feel my heart thudding and panic rising in my throat. The phone rang again. I stared at it until it stopped, eight rings. But then it rang again, and again. I
could have unplugged the main phone downstairs, but something told me he wasn’t going to give up, and if he knew where I lived . . . On the next ring, I picked up.

‘Don’t hang up,’ he said. ‘Please, Jo. We have to talk.’ He sounded desperate.

‘We can’t talk,’ I said. ‘Ever.’ And I was about to hang up again when he said, ‘Jo, for God’s sake listen.’

‘That’s not my name,’ I breathed. ‘You know it isn’t.’

‘You might have to get used to it again,’ he said.

‘Wha—’

‘Look, I need to see you. I have something to say and I need to say it in person. When can we meet?’

‘Scott, we can’t meet. We agreed when you left. I have a husband; I have a completely new life. I thought you did, too. I thought you were in New Zealand.’

‘I did; I was. But I’ve been back in the UK for a few years now. I was in London for a while, but now . . . Jo, I’m dying.’

I half laughed. It was the sort of thing he’d have said when he’d wanted one of us to roll him a joint or make him some tea.

‘I mean it. I’m ill; cancer. There’s a tumour in my stomach and there’s nothing more they can do. I have a few months at most, maybe less.’

I was listening now, of course I was. He wouldn’t lie about such a thing, would he? The pain throbbed behind my eye as I tried to guess what this meant. He’d sworn he would never . . .
but if he was dying . . .

‘Jo? Are you still there?’

‘Scott, I’m sorry, but we agreed, no contact, no matter what—’

‘I know that’s what we agreed, but things change, Jo, and anyway—’

‘Don’t keep calling me that.’

‘And anyway, that’s not what I want to see you about. Listen, he’ll be back soon, your husband.’

I felt the anger rise in my throat. I wanted to scream at him but my head would explode if I shouted so I tried to control my voice. ‘You’ve been following me around the town and now
you’re watching my house? You’re
stalking
me? Look, Scott, I’m sorry if your life hasn’t worked out—’