The Shadow Year (53 page)

William nods.

She smiles a little sadly. ‘I think that’s something I can understand now: that ache to have a family.’ Lila reaches out to touch the moss growing on the fallen tree trunk and a piece comes away in her fingers, soft and spongy. ‘I’m still struggling with
that
day though. The fall. She told me a little more about it. I pushed and pushed her for an explanation as to why she’d stayed with Dad for so long. She said I looked so like Freya that day – furious, pregnant – that it had upset her deeply. She almost told me then, apparently, but when I ran away . . . well, she raced after me, tried to stop me and what happened next was just a terrible, tragic accident.’ She squints out towards the boat and watches as Tom reels in a small, flipping fish. He unhooks it from the line and then throws it back with a splash, its scales flashing silver in the sunlight. ‘The lies . . . they’re not easily forgiven but Kat’s the only mother I’ll ever know. If we’re going to continue to have a relationship then we’re going to have to find a way to live with them.’ She sighs. ‘You know, I always knew something wasn’t quite right. I never felt quite “at home” with them both. And yet coming here, spending time at the cottage . . . I felt at peace. I felt, at times, like I
was
home.’

‘It’s amazing what our subconscious can tell us. How a place can speak to us. This
is
where you were born,’ says William, gesturing out across the valley. ‘It was only a short time in your life, but it’s where you spent your first weeks with your biological mother. It’s where a massive, life-changing event occurred for you. It’s no wonder you feel a connection to the place.’

Lila thinks back to the dreams, the whispers in the trees, the shadows on the lake and her strange sense of déjà vu and she can’t help a small shiver. She looks around at the cottage, at the water, and at the trees fringing the lake. ‘I’ve made a decision,’ she says finally, ‘about the cottage. I’m not going to sell it. I want to keep it on, exactly as it is. We’ll come up as much as we can. I want our children to know this place. I want to bring them here and create a new story – one of togetherness and joy.’

William nods. He doesn’t say anything but she can see that he is pleased.

‘I have to thank you, William. If it hadn’t been for you giving me this,’ she stretches her arms out wide to encompass the valley, ‘I never would have found out the truth about Freya. It was you who gave it to me.’

William smiles and looks down at the gnarly bark on the tree trunk beside him. ‘I would have been proud to call you my daughter.’

Lila swallows and blinks back her tears. She looks about and sees the future stretching before them, filmy yet definable, like the thin cirrus veil building in the sky above them. She imagines Evelyn seated in the shade of the trees bouncing a gurgling baby on her lap. She imagines a grinning toddler raised high on Tom’s shoulders and a skinny-legged kid beside them, a fishing rod in hand and William leaning over to bait the hook, Rosie wheeling at his heels. She sees herself wading through the shallows or picking flowers in the meadow to lie upon Freya’s grave. She closes her eyes and sees all the summers that are yet to come and she knows that whatever happens – with Kat, with William and Evelyn, with Tom and the cottage – she knows there will be family.

She sighs. Somewhere deep inside she feels the first stirrings of life, a gentle but insistent fluttering of a tiny, flailing limb. She feels the baby like a real and present truth – like the shining surface of the lake and the waving fronds of the honesty bushes – and she opens her eyes and smiles.

26

KAT

July

It is late afternoon when Kat makes her way through the high grass of the meadow and over the ridge, before coming to a halt by the blackberry bushes above the cottage. She can see Lila and William far below, seemingly deep in conversation on the fallen tree trunk while an elderly grey-haired lady – is that
really
Evelyn? – dozes in a deckchair. Further out on the water the tin boat bobs in the sunshine with Tom slumped at one end, a fishing rod in his hands. She’s driven all the way from Buckinghamshire at Tom’s invitation, but it’s taken every ounce of her courage to leave the sanctuary of her car and walk these last few hundred metres to the lake, and now that she’s here, she’s not sure she can do it – she’s not sure she can join them all at the water’s edge.

She hesitates on the ridge and wonders whether to turn on her heel and leave. No one knows that she is there. She could be gone even before they realise that she came; but while she doesn’t feel brave enough to join them, she also knows that she isn’t quite ready to leave yet either. Something about the light-dappled water and the wind shivering through the grass and rustling the trees holds her captive so instead of heading down to the lake, she crosses the ridge and heads for the alders, seeking shelter amongst their tall white trunks, losing herself in their shadows.

The memories are everywhere; in the gentle lapping of the water, in the shimmering green honesty seed heads, in the tree trunk lying slumped across the grassy bank, even in the slanted shade cast by the cottage in the late afternoon sun. She accepts each small familiarity like a tiny blade to her heart, like the punishment she knows it to be. Hardest of all, however, is the sight of Mac and Lila, seated together on the tree trunk.

Even though Mac has changed considerably in the past three decades, she can still see a faint outline of the gangly young man he once was, hidden in his more substantial form. And Lila – not identical to Freya, no – but there is something in the high curve of her cheekbone, the fullness of her lips and the long, loose tangle of her fair hair, that reaches out to her like an echo coming from very far away. Watching them together, Kat feels her breath stripped from her once again. If she blinked it could almost be Mac and Freya thirty years ago and she feels a familiar ache for her sister welling up inside her.

She could go to them. She could join them. She could begin the difficult task of forgiveness and healing but something holds her back. Even when Lila glances around once or twice, peering over to where she stands hidden in the shade of the trees, even then she doesn’t move. She won’t go to her. Not yet.

There are new memories of course now, too. They return, fresh from that day only a month ago when she had come back to the lake to tell Lila the truth about her mother. Stepping inside the cottage for the first time in years had been a strange, discombobulating experience – the cottage at the same time both achingly familiar and utterly transformed. She’d moved through the rooms with her heart thudding like a caged bird in her chest, swelling with the complex emotions of grief and love and loss . . . and pride too, for Lila’s hard work and achievements. Afterwards, in an attempt to compose herself, she had walked alone to the far end of the jetty and gazed out over the pristine blue-green surface of the lake. She’d looked around and marvelled at how outside nothing had changed – not the shimmering water or the billowing reeds or the shadows of the trees – and yet at the same time she knew
everything
had.

She’d leaned out over the jetty and stared down into the lake. On the surface she’d seen her own mirror image gazing back at her, no longer the unmarked face of her youth but a middle-aged woman with a fretwork of fine lines around her eyes and the first grey hairs beginning to emerge through the hair dye. But the longer she had peered at her reflection, the more clearly she had seen not just her own reflection, but rather her dark and troubled soul. Simon was gone . . . Lila now a grown woman . . . and the truth – or a shadow of it at least – was out there now, shared and made real. She had told a story as clear and transparent as the shallows closer to shore, and yet at its heart, just like the lake and just like her own soul, lay a dark and murky truth that she knew could never be revealed. She’d rewritten the story as best she could.

Kat stands in the shadows of the copse and shivers. She sees Lila reach out for William’s hand and squeeze it tight and the sight of their physical connection only serves to remind Kat of her own separation. She swallows down her loneliness and sinks onto the woodland floor, kneeling among the damp leaves and mulch as she watches from the woods.

Last month, after she’d left the jetty, she had joined Mac – or rather William – as if by some unspoken agreement at the foot of Freya’s unmarked grave. There they’d stood and for just a moment neither of them had said anything. She’d known they were both remembering, both mourning. ‘Lila’s a great girl,’ he’d said to her eventually, not looking at her. ‘Freya would have been so proud.’

‘Yes,’ Kat had agreed, trying to control the sob threatening to break free.

William had scraped the grass with the toe of his boot and she had allowed herself a small smile then, remembering it as a gesture of his from many years ago. ‘Were you happy with him, Kat?’ he’d asked her. ‘Was it the life you wanted?’

She’d heard the judgement in his voice and shrugged. Was she happy with Simon? What a complicated question. How strange that everyone seemed so preoccupied, suddenly, with the intricacies of her marriage. First Lila, then William. Was it the life she wanted? Well that was the easier question to answer. Of course it was the life she wanted. Simon and Lila – they were a proper family – the thing she had always wanted most of all. For all their ups and downs, for the sacrifices she’d had to make in her own life, her own stalled career, she had been careful never to repeat the mistakes of her parents. Lila was always safe, always loved, always cared for. Of that she could be proud. ‘Yes,’ she’d told William, standing there beside Freya’s grave, ‘it was the life I wanted.’

What she hadn’t told him though, what she hadn’t felt able to speak of, was the terrible price that family had come at. She’d always known that Simon would never truly be hers. She hadn’t been so foolish as to assume one gold wedding band would make the difference. It didn’t make him want her any more than he had during that year at the cottage. But he would never leave her, she knew that, because she had given herself to him at the time he needed her most. She had swept in and accepted his daughter and raised her as her own and for that she knew Simon had always been grateful.

No, Simon had never left her, but there had been other crosses to bear. His parents’ snooty disapproval when they’d returned to Buckinghamshire as a newly-married couple. Simon’s struggle to resolve his ideals with the role offered to him at his father’s firm. The drink . . . the women . . . and perhaps most difficult of all, his gradual hardening towards her as his gratitude slowly morphed into something more akin to simmering resentment. The fact they had never been able to have a child of their own had also cut her deeply. She’d always felt that it would bring her and Simon closer, but it seemed a baby born to them both was just never to be and she had endured her infertility like the sentence she knew it to be.

Sometimes she ached with loneliness – those nights without him, when she’d sat alone in their large, empty home feeling the absence of all that was missing in her life like a cold, hard stone sinking into her soul.

And there had been Lila too: the older she’d grown, the more striking her resemblance to Freya. It had cut her to the quick. Just a glimpse of her daughter drifting through the house in a white nightdress, or meandering through the garden in the sunshine, could make that dark part of her heart throb with pain and her eyes fill with tears. Lila had been both a beautiful blessing and a heartbreaking curse. But she would never stop loving her, never stop caring for her because not only was that the promise she had made to Freya, but it was the only way she could think of to make it up to Lila for her own terrible mistakes. Until the day she died Kat knew she would be trying to make it up to Lila.

The sun is just beginning to slouch behind the furthest hills when Tom drags the tin boat onto the shingle and holds up two silver fish for Lila and William to admire. Kat, still hidden among the trees, shivers in the dwindling light and knows that it’s time to leave. Perhaps she will come back another day, when she is feeling braver. With one last glance, she rises from the damp earth and turns her back on the gathering by the lake, carefully winding her way up through the trees towards the meadow.

As she walks through the tall grass she brushes her hands across the bowed heads of wild meadow flowers and remembers her last farewell with Lila, how it had been stiff and yet charged with emotion. ‘Will you go back to France?’ Lila had asked her, standing beside her car on the overgrown track, barely able to look at her.

Kat had shaken her head. ‘Not yet, no. I’ll stay a while, I think. In case . . . you know . . . in case you have more questions. Or just want to talk?’

Lila had nodded. ‘I’m glad, you know . . . I’m glad it’s all finally out in the open . . . that we’re finally speaking the truth.’ She’d felt Lila’s careful gaze sweep over her then. ‘We are aren’t we,’ she’d asked carefully, ‘talking with real honesty now?’