Now fully awake, and anxious to shake off these memories, Jake dragged himself out of bed and into the shower. It always seemed like this when he was at home; Fran was everywhere around him and the pain of her loss was undiminished. The night swim on their familiar patch of coast may have ended happily enough – not so that day in the French countryside a few years later.
They hadn’t known that Leah would be coming, Jake’s mother explained over breakfast. She had just come back from a post-A-level jaunt to Ibiza and was at a loose end. Helen had called as they were leaving London to ask if they could bring her with them. In an echo of his Easter visit to Marianne two years earlier, it now appeared to be Jake’s responsibility to entertain his cousin over the weekend. He did not relish the task. He remembered the breathless sixteen-year-old he had escorted around Cambridge that Easter. He remembered her as full of naïve school-girl enthusiasms mixed with a certain irritating precocity. He remembered her crude attempts to flirt and her tendency to sulk when he did not respond. He did not expect to enjoy her company.
Finishing her breakfast, Marianne took her mug of coffee and hobbled out onto the terrace where her sister Claire sat working through the quick crossword at the back of the paper. It was warm in the July sun, and well sheltered from the breezes which came in from the sea. She looked admiringly at Juliette’s group of pots outside the kitchen. A large, almost spherical pittosporum provided a bright halo of apple green, in front of which the agastache paraded their purple spikes like an imperial guard while at their feet dense groups of blue and white lobelia clustered together in homage.
‘Come for a walk around the garden with me,’ said Juliette. ‘At least you will appreciate all my hard work. My mother doesn’t know a rose from a rhododendron.’
‘Not entirely true, darling.’
‘I’ll happily stagger around with you,’ said Marianne. ‘Help me up then – don’t forget I’m ten years older than your mother and carrying a few war wounds as well.’ She also knew that she was carrying rather more weight than her sister; time, which either eats flesh or lards it on, had left Claire all fine bones and tiny ankles, whereas Marianne had been losing the battle of her girth for forty years.
Juliette took Marianne’s arm and together they walked onto the lawn towards the border which backed onto the old stone milking shed, which formed the western boundary of the garden. Friends of the family often found it surprising that Claire’s daughter Juliette was so unlike her mother. Despite growing up in London, it seemed she couldn’t get away quickly enough, and now lived with her husband Tom in a group of converted agricultural buildings near the Dorset coast.
Looking across to the sea Marianne saw Jake and Leah heading out towards the cliffs – Jake helping Leah over the stile at the corner of the first field. It had been a joy to watch her grand-daughter grow into such a mature and confident eighteen-year-old. Hard to believe she’s my great-grand-daughter, she thought. It almost seemed to her now that Izzy and Callum had been siblings – both her own children – as if by some miracle she had had a second child a dozen years after the accident in Russia.
‘Does she remind you?’ said Juliette.
‘You mean Izzy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sometimes. There’s a look Izzy used to have – I see it with Leah. I mean, it’s a different relationship with a grandchild – Leah is always on her best behaviour with me. Mother-daughter, that’s…’
‘Yes, quite different. Fran wasn’t always easy either.’
‘I remember.’
Juliette stood beside her in silence as they watched the two figures disappearing behind a clump of stubby, wind-bent trees. ‘I never blamed you…’
‘I know. But perhaps I should have been…’
‘No, don’t…’ Juliette put her hand on Marianne’s shoulder. ‘Just now. I was watching you watching them, and you looked so happy. But now you look sad.’
‘Of course – I’m both.’
‘Why sad?’
‘Partly about Fran, of course. For you, especially – but for all of us. And then… well, for myself, maybe the last time here for the birthday weekend – you never know – but, it’s the same emotion now: happiness, sadness – they fuse together at my age. Can’t be happy without being a little sad…’
‘Hey, don’t give up on life – you’re looking so well, and Callum says you’re doing incredible stuff with those old diaries.’
‘Well, I was, but I think it may all be too much for me. Of course, what would have made my life perfect,’ said Marianne, smiling at her niece, ‘would have been for Callum to have married you – did I ever tell you about that fantasy of mine, Julie darling?’
‘You did,’ said Juliette, her large brown eyes lighting up with an amused tolerance. ‘Several times, in fact.’
As Jake walked across the fields with Leah, he found himself revising his opinion of her. She had grown up a lot in the two years since he had last seen her. She seemed calmer, comfortable about herself and at ease with her older relations. He learned that – encouraged by her grandmother Marianne – she had applied to Cambridge, though she rated her chances as slim. It seemed that her mother was keen for her to go to Melbourne, where her sister was now in her last year, whereas she preferred to go to an English university.
‘Getting to Cambridge is the only way I can keep everyone happy,’ she said. ‘Even Mum will bow down before the altar of Oxbridge.’
When they reached the cliff, they sat on the grass and watched a pair of kite-surfers racing across the water; like tiny insects dragged behind giant birds of prey, their red and green wings lurching and diving in the squally wind blowing up the channel.
‘That picture in my room – I suppose that’s Fran?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long ago was it?’
‘Eight years.’
‘Did you think for a moment…? I mean, when you saw me last night – you looked so shocked…’
‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘Of course not, but…’
‘You’re right, though, it was a shock.’
‘Tell me about her.’
Jake said nothing. He looked down at the beach where a couple walked hand in hand at the edge of the sea, occasionally jumping inshore when a larger wave threatened to wet their feet. The tide was out and a small strip of sand had appeared between the shingle and the sea. The girl took off her shoes and began to paddle. He couldn’t talk about Fran – not to anyone. Nowadays he tried his utmost never to think about her, to keep that part of his life locked away. It was the only method which seemed to work. Leah didn’t break the silence – for which he was grateful. At last he said, ‘We used to climb down the cliff here to swim. I’ll show you.’
The consecutive birthdays of Jake and Juliette were being celebrated on the Sunday and everyone was engaged in preparing for lunch. Only Claire and Marianne were permitted to sit and watch while the others worked. Jake’s father, Tom, had taken charge of the barbecue, assisted by Helen who expressed disapproval at what she called ‘all this palaver with charcoal’.
‘Julie thinks the food tastes better on a proper charcoal barbecue,’ said Tom.
‘I guess if you had a barbie as often as we do you’d appreciate the gas ones,’ said Helen.
Inside the kitchen, Juliette was cutting up mozzarella and avocados and chatting to Callum who was frying lardons for the potato salad. Meanwhile, Leah was browning pine nuts and making a green salad under Juliette’s instruction, while Jake had been sent to pick parsley and chives from the herb garden. When Jake came back into the kitchen, Juliette said, ‘Jake, darling, Leah is looking for some work experience now that she’s finished school, do you think there is any chance that the Chronicle would take her?’