What Have I Done? (32 page)

‘I don’t want to talk to you! I don’t want to talk to you ever again!’

‘Ah, sweet Kathryn, but you are talking to me!’

‘I’m Kate now.’

She was aware that her words were slightly slurred. He chuckled.

‘Is that right, darling? And how long have you been Kate?’

She considered this.

‘I have always been Kate, but I wasn’t allowed to be for a while, not until you were gone.’

His voice was steady, unwavering.

‘No, darling. You will never be Kate. Never, not properly. But you know that deep down, don’t you, Kathryn?’

‘I
am
Kate, not Kathryn, and you are gone, Mark. You can’t hurt me any more!’

She thrashed her head from side to side, trying to make him disappear. Mark laughed quietly. He leant forward, his voice barely more than a whisper.

‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’

‘Yes! It’s true. You can’t hurt me now. I am free of you, Mark.’

‘Oh, Kathryn. What was it you said to me?
I will become all of the things that I thought I might
… Have you achieved that, darling? Have you become all the things you thought you might? Did you think you might become lonely, old and childless? Is that what you thought? And as for not hurting you, we both know that I still hurt you every single day, despite all your brave words. It would take more than throwing on a pair of jeans and not making a bed to get rid of me! I am lurking over your shoulder when you look in the mirror, I am breathing down your neck before you fall asleep and I am the reason that the kids hate you. You’ve lost them, Kathryn. But you know that too, don’t you?’

Her sobs were loud and unrestrained.

‘They do NOT hate me! That is a lie. They are my children, they do not!’

‘Then where are they, Kathryn? Where are they right now? Why have there been no responses to all the pathetic letters you write? How hard is it for them to pick up the phone? Why didn’t they ever visit you? Why don’t they now?’

She shook her head.

‘I don’t know why and I don’t know where they are.’

‘And Lydi surprises me still. I would have thought that in her you had found an ally, especially with your life experiences being not that dissimilar.’

‘Our lives were never similar!’

‘Were they not?’

Mark raised his eyebrow, his smile widened.

‘Think about it, Kathryn, think about it logically.’

‘Mark, if you touched her, I swear to God…’

‘What, darling? What will you do? Kill me?’

He laughed loudly.

‘I only stayed with you to keep them safe, and if they weren’t safe…’

‘That’s right, darling – it would all have been for nothing. Ironic, isn’t it? Oh, Kathryn, what a price you have paid. Was it worth it,
amor vitae meae
?’

Kate slid down onto the floor. Her tears snaked into her mouth.

‘NO!’ she screamed into the ether. ‘It was not worth it! I want my kids back! I want my children and I would go back to that life in a heartbeat if it meant I got to see my babies every day! It was NOT worth it, Mark! You have won! Are you happy? You have won!’

Her throat was raw from shouting. She lay in the small gap between the sofa and the coffee table and she slept where she fell.

Kate busied herself with tidying the mess from the night before, vacuuming and plumping the cushions in the sitting room. She couldn’t control the tremor that dogged her right hand as she wrote out cheques in the study. That was all the bills up to date. A few more lines were penned and sealed in envelopes and she was all set. Dishwasher on. Loos cleaned. Plants watered. Laundry folded. Bed made.

Kate pulled the front door behind her and relished the feel
of the morning sun on her cheeks. This had always been her favourite time of day. As the path flattened out and the stones gave way to sand, Kate’s faltering steps turned into strides. She ran the last few metres with a smile on her face as the salt-tinged breeze lifted her fringe and buffeted her chest.

Kate removed her T-shirt, folded it neatly with arm holes and hems together, and laid it on the sand. Next she slipped out of her jeans, which she placed with precision on top of her T-shirt. She unhooked her bra and let the straps fall along her muscular arms and finally she stepped out of her pants. Her clothes sat in a neat little pile, like laundry waiting to be collected and put away on wash day. She was done.

Kate felt the bite of small stones and shells on the soft soles of her feet. She did nothing to ease the discomfort, figuring that it mattered little compared to the journey that she was about to undertake. A second or two of foot pain meant nothing in the grander scheme of things. She ran her palms over the backs of her thighs; she’d had worse. ‘
Good morning, Mrs Bedmaker… Good afternoon, Mrs Bedmaker… Mrs Bedmaker… Mrs Bedmaker
…’ She always noticed, always.

She walked forward to the dark shadow on the sand where the water lapped, staining it the colour of dark tea and pitting it with fizzing holes in which small worms and crabs bathed.

Kate trod gingerly, feeling the shock of the icy current on her exposed flesh. It was colder than she remembered for the time of the year. Her mind flitted briefly to the warm Caribbean Sea that had caressed her under a hot sun all those years ago. She remembered throwing herself into the balmy current and feeling the heat smooth the knots from her muscles; she remembered dancing in the rain at Carnival and wearing green feathers. She recalled being held in strong arms with nothing but a towel between her nakedness and a beautiful man; she remembered
a kiss that had been full of love and promise. That had been a perfect day.

The man reversed on the winding lane and struggled with the unpredictable gearstick of the hire car as it crunched and whined in protest. He pulled into a lay-by to allow the caravan and hefty 4x4 to pass by. His female passenger winced and squealed, closing her eyes against the impossible manoeuvre. The man exhaled loudly through puffed out cheeks; these roads were going to take a bit of getting used to. Relief and laughter filled the car.

Kate strode further into the water and allowed the tiny waves to lap her with their salty tongues. She turned and faced the shore, stepping backwards until the sea covered her shoulders. Her teeth chattered in her gums and her limbs jerked involuntarily, trying to counter the effects of the cold.

The man pulled the car into the driveway. This was it. Bulky luggage and a partly defrosted shepherd’s pie were quickly retrieved from the tiny boot and lugged to the front door.

The girl shielded her eyes from the sun and looked out over the ocean.

‘I am so going to paint this!’

The man put his arm across her shoulders.

‘Nervous?’

She nodded and bit her bottom lip.

‘Me too,’ he said.

Kate gazed up to the top of the cliff for one last look at Prospect House. This was the one place that she had been happy, the one place she had been comfortable and felt needed. Kate knew when she was beaten. Mark was right, he had won. She would never be free of the memory of what he had done; her
scars ran too deep and the pain hovered too near the surface. There would never be peace for someone like her; she was too broken. The prospect of a life without her children was one that she could not contemplate. Deep down she had always known this. She would rather bow out than face that reality.

Prospect House looked beautiful. She thought of how easily her last vista could have been something else – Mark’s grinning face, the underside of a pillow at Mountbriers, a reflection of her own face, begging. This was better, much better. She liked the fact that it was by her own hand and not his. She was in control.

Kate’s body had gone numb with extreme cold and her skin was peppered with a million goosebumps. Her fine hair floated like brown seaweed around her head. Still with her eyes on the shoreline, Kate took two more steps backwards, until the soft sand beneath her feet gave way to nothing and she was treading water, preparing to go down, under the sea.

As the cold water began to engulf her, she was overcome with a beautiful calmness. Kate smiled at the prospect of the peace and escape that lay ahead. She would just take a moment… prepare.

Her eyes scanned the sand; she saw an image of the kids. They were toddlers with fat little tummies and chubby, splayed feet. They trudged up and down the beach carrying little red buckets filled with water that sloshed and slopped so that when they eventually reached the sandcastle moat there was nothing to tip. She laughed into the water and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the kids were nine and ten. Lydia, resplendent in oversized yellow sunglasses and her first bikini, lay on a beach towel, trying to be so grown up. Dominic, sneaking up behind his sister, held a clump of wet seaweed that in a matter of minutes would be deposited on her stomach.

Her precious memories would go with her. It had been an unfortunate life in one sense, but Kate could safely say that she would go through it all again, just for the sweet joy of being a mother to two such exceptional human beings. They would always be her greatest achievement, her legacy and no one, not even Mark could take that away from her.

Kate took a deep breath and prepared to submerge. She squinted at the shoreline, slowly exhaling, blinking through saltwater lashes to try and better focus. Another memory, only this felt different… The kids looked older and try as she might to search the crevices of her mind, she couldn’t remember it. It was more like a premonition. Here they were, adult at last. Dominic standing tall in a white open-necked shirt with his arm across Lydia’s shoulders. They were shouting, waving. Had they come to say goodbye? She strained to catch their words, but only Simon’s lilting tone filled her head. ‘
Try and remember that hope comes in many forms; sometimes it’s a place and sometimes it’s a person.
’

Lydia and Dominic stood on the shoreline. This was no memory, they were real and they had finally arrived. Standing arm in arm now, the siblings waited tentatively at the water’s edge. What on earth was she doing? They held her bundled clothes and beckoned her inland with open arms.

‘Hurry up! Some of us are desperate for a cup of tea!’ Dom bellowed in her direction.

Kate smiled and wept into the current.

Or people,
she thought.
Sometimes it comes in the form of people
.

Kate began to swim, towards the shore, towards the hope that had been there all along, towards a future, a future with her children. She knew that she was free. Finally she would be able to tell her children the story of Mrs Bedmaker without fear.

‘I
am
Kate!’ she shouted. ‘I
am
Kate!’

She had won after all.

I would like to thank the incredible team at Head of Zeus whose passion for the written word means that they take a good story and make it great, especially Laura who is not afraid to suggest the bold changes that make all the difference.

My lovely Caroline Michel and the team at PFD whose support and encouragement was just what a wobbly newbie needed.

My lovely boys Josh and Ben who have taken being abandoned in their stride and have pizza delivery on speed dial for those evenings when mum has her head in a lap top.

Thank you to all those women who have shared their stories with me, women from all walks of life who dread the sound of a key in the door. You are not alone.

Finally to my Simeon who is the polar opposite of Mark Brooker, he has my heart in his hands and handles it with great care, I am blessed.