Chapter Five
The next couple of weeks passed in a gray fog of determined activity. While the children were at school, Harriet drove her gleaming black Discovery to a lot near Moreton-in-Marsh and traded it in for an older, battered model with a hundred thousand miles on it. She told herself she’d never liked that car anyway, and this one looked… friendlier. It also looked like it would only last a couple of months.
She arranged for an auction house to haul away all the furniture in storage, and accepted a flat and thankfully substantial figure for the lot. She tried not to flinch as moving men in blue coveralls and with bland expressions hauled everything out—the bespoke kitchen table, the antique wardrobe with beveled glass, the huge, squashy sofas that had cost far more than anyone should spend on a sofa. All of it bundled into the back of a truck in a matter of minutes, and money deposited into her and Richard’s joint account.
It was probably time to get her own bank account.
When they moved into Wychwood House, she’d buy new stuff. Better stuff, and do it all herself rather than hiring an expensive interior decorator to hold her hand and reassure her that she was making the right choices. That she belonged in this world.
She went to the stables and sold Mallory’s pony, Cobbler, stroking the animal’s velvety nose with a pang of sorrow. She remembered a chubby six-year-old Mallory astride the pony’s bowed back, looking thrilled and more than a little terrified, and she wished for those days back… in all sorts of ways.
At the time, she’d most likely been impatient and cross, balancing Chloe on her hip, a toddler-aged William running amok through mud puddles in the stable yard. Everything had felt difficult back then, so much mess and noise and lack of sleep, and yet Harriet thought she’d been happy. Happier than she was now, certainly, but that wasn’t saying all that much.
“Do you want to see Cobbler?” Harriet had asked Mallory the night before. “To say goodbye?”
“No, why bother?” Mallory had said, shrugging, her expression as closed as ever, just as it had been when Harriet had, painfully, told her she wouldn’t be going to Ellerton. Mallory’s expression had turned stony then and she hadn’t said a word, which had broken another big chip off of Harriet’s heart.
“I’m sorry…” she’d begun, wretched, and Mallory had just looked away.
Her children had accepted every incremental loss stoically, but Harriet wasn’t convinced by their attitude. Underneath the silent acceptance seethed both resentment and confusion. How could it be otherwise? They were children, and their world had been ripped apart.
Admittedly not on remotely the same league as a thousand major tragedies unfolding across the globe that very minute, but they were her children, and their losses, their hurts, held the power to flay her, as well as to keep her having minor anxiety attacks at inconvenient moments.
Mallory still simmered with rage, a constant blaze in her eyes, in her stiff shoulders, and jerky movements. William had, according to his teacher, been sent to the head teacher’s office several times a week for bad behavior. He’d always been a boisterous child, so much boy, but he hadn’t actually acted out in a mean way. Now, according to Mrs. Wills, he’d hit a boy and called him a douche. Harriet had been appalled to realize that William even knew that word.
She’d asked him about it after school, and William had shrugged. “I’m not a baby,” he said.
“I know you aren’t. But even big kids don’t need to rude words.” Harriet hesitated, unsure how to navigate these moments. “Are you… are you angry, William?”
His response was to attempt to put her in a head lock.
And then there was Chloe, who was still sucking her thumb and looking anxious. Recently she’d also started wetting the bed. She’d shaken Harriet awake, shivering and miserable, and Harriet had spent a wretched hour in the middle of the night, washing her off, changing sheets, and disinfecting the mattress. A six-year-old, she discovered, had a lot more wee than a little baby’s leaky nappy.
“I’m sorry, Mummy,” Chloe had said, her voice trembling, and Harriet’s heart, already battered beyond belief, had broken a little more.
She’d put her arms around Chloe’s skinny shoulders and drawn her close, wee and all. “It’s all right, my darling. These things happen. It’s not your fault, not at all.”
But it didn’t feel all right. At school drop off and pickup Harriet felt adrift, anchorless, like a knobby-kneed twelve-year-old walking into the lunch room, staring at the sea of tables, no one making eye contact. Sophie had waggled her fingers at her but hadn’t talked to her once, and Harriet didn’t know whether she was paranoid in thinking that some of the other mums were avoiding her.
She’d had a few sympathetic smiles sent her way, a bit of desultory chitchat about the weather or the awful Mrs. Bryson, but not much more and, in truth, she wasn’t seeking anyone out. She wasn’t ready yet to make all that effort, summon up a jolly-hockey-sticks sort of smile, the bracing tone. Oh, it’s been tricky, but we’re managing. And really it’s a bit of a relief. Makes you realize what’s important…
No, she couldn’t pull that off yet. Not even close.
Richard stopped by several times a week, tense, awkward meetings that still left Harriet aching with regret and trembling at the knees. The children didn’t quite seem to know what to do with him, sometimes acting hyper and overloud, sometimes sullen and uncommunicative. Richard didn’t seem to know what to do either, adopting the over-jolly tone of someone who doesn’t know how to act with children, which made everyone cringe, or else wandering around looking lost while the children entertained themselves, usually electronically.
He tried to talk to Harriet, but she kept the conversations brisk and businesslike, exchanging important information about school trips, parent/teacher meetings, and, of course, money. Everything seemed to be about money.
“I had an interview with that headhunter,” Richard said once, sounding important. “It went really well.”
“Did it?” Harriet couldn’t summon the energy for either interest or hope.
Every time he visited he had some meeting or other—headhunter, contact, old friend, new lead. Nothing had happened with any of it yet, and she couldn’t bring herself to ride the rollercoaster of hope and disappointment, whereas Richard was on a perpetual loop-the-loop. Everything felt like a disaster, and the only thing she felt she could do was keep blundering through.
Most of the money they’d got from selling everything had gone to paying their debts, and the rest should see them through a few months at least of careful economizing. After that… Richard’s unemployment benefit wasn’t going to cover their living costs, and with no other income coming in Harriet supposed she’d have to get a job. Richard said as much on one of his visits, not looking her in the eye.
“It would help,” he half-muttered, “in the short term. Once I’m working again you can go back to staying at home. If that’s what you want.”
Harriet had no idea what she wanted. Nothing appealed. As for a job… she hadn’t worked in eleven years, not since she’d had Mallory, and she didn’t think there were many jobs in the marketing side of publishing in the Cotswolds. She couldn’t stomach a commute to London, not with the children to think of, which left her pondering the other available choices. There were a few jobs in Oxford with some textbook publishers, but she didn’t have any relevant experience in academic publishing and even that was a considerable commute.
She was clicking on various job offers online, the kids all piled on the sofa, one Saturday in mid-March, when a knock sounded on the door. The kids looked up in surprise; in the three weeks since they’d moved to Willoughby Close they’d seen their neighbor Ellie and her daughter only in passing once or twice. Jace, the caretaker, had delivered wood, shrugging off Harriet’s stammering offer to pay him for it, even though she didn’t think she could afford it.
“I’ll get it,” Harriet said, and went to open the door.
Ellie’s daughter stood there, looking nervous and a little defiant.
“Abby,” Harriet said after a brief pause, as she struggled to remember the girl’s name. “How are you? Is everything okay?”
“No, actually, it isn’t.” Abby gave her a quick, worried smile. “Dorothy’s ill and I was wondering if you could drive us to the doctor’s.”
“Dorothy?”
“Lady Stokeley,” Abby clarified. “She needs to see a doctor. She’s got a fever and she’s shivering and I really don’t think she’s well.”
“Oh, dear.” Harriet knew Lady Stokeley by sight, although she’d never met her or been inside Willoughby Manor. “I’m sorry to hear that, but… where’s your mum?”
“She’s in Cheltenham visiting Oliver’s parents for the weekend. Her boyfriend,” Abby explained, while Harriet struggled to keep up.
She remembered Ellie saying something about being a single mum when they’d both helped out at the bake sale, but she hadn’t known about the boyfriend. Why would she have? They hadn’t had a long chat, and Ellie hadn’t joined them for coffee afterwards, a blur of gossipy conversation that Harriet could barely remember.
“She’s gone for the weekend?” Harriet said. “And she’s left you all alone?” She couldn’t keep a note of scandalized judgment from her voice.
“No, I’m staying with Dorothy and, like I said, she’s sick. You have a car.” Abby glanced at the ancient Rover parked next to her mother’s equally battered estate. “So could you please drive us?”
Harriet still felt like she needed to catch up with the conversation, but she saw that Abby was impatient and worried, and so she nodded. “Okay, sure. Let me get my keys.”
“What’s going on?” Mallory asked without much interest as Harriet grabbed her keys.
“I need to drive Abby and Lady Stokeley to the doctor’s.” Harriet hesitated, reluctant to disturb her children who would no doubt moan and complain about being kicked off the telly, but she could be hours at the doctor’s. “You’d better come with me.”
The children, thankfully, seemed too surprised by the turn of events, as well as curious about the unknown Lady Stokeley, to complain, and so they all piled into the car, Mallory giving Abby a sniffy look, before Harriet headed up to Willoughby Manor to pick up Lady Stokeley.
She parked the car in front of the massive front doors, eyeing the place uncertainly. It was a huge house, and she couldn’t imagine living in it alone. She knew Lady Stokeley’s nephew, Henry Trent, was due to inherit—Richard had met him a couple of times in London, both of them working in the city. Worked in the city, at least in Richard’s case.
She reached for the enormous lion’s head knocker but Abby moved past her with another one of her quick smiles. “It’s okay, I can just go in.”
“I didn’t realize you knew Lady Stokeley,” Harriet remarked as she followed Abby into an enormous marble-tiled foyer. “Goodness, it’s freezing in here.” Harriet thought it was even colder inside the house than out.
“I know, Dorothy pretty much lives in one sitting room and her bedroom,” Abby explained. “Where it’s warm.” She started towards the ornate wooden staircase, covered in a moth-eaten crimson runner with tarnished brass rods. “You’d better stay here. I don’t think she’d like strangers in her bedroom, seeing her in her nightgown and things.”
“Okay. Let me know if I can help.” Harriet wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in the still, icy air, as she walked around the foyer and examined the many paintings on the walls. There was barely an inch of faded, peeling wallpaper to be seen beneath all the oil paintings with their overly ornate frames.
“This place is creepy,” Mallory whispered, but she sounded semi-fascinated.
“It’s kind of interesting, don’t you think?” Harriet pointed to an oil painting of a scowling man in an Elizabethan ruff. “Do you think that’s an ancestor?”
“He doesn’t look very nice,” Chloe said in her high, piping voice. William, Harriet saw with alarm, was attempting to slide down the ancient banister.
“William, don’t. You might break something and—” She stopped before she finished that unwelcome sentence. I can’t afford to pay for anything here. “Behave yourself, please,” she entreated, and William slouched down the stairs, running his hand along the banister, and causing a cloud of dust to fly up.
Mallory and Harriet both backed away, coughing and waving their hands in front of their faces.
“This place smells funny,” Chloe announced, and that was when Lady Stokeley came down the stairs, managing to look regal in a tweedy twin set and Ugg boots.
“You’re right, young lady,” she replied in ringing, cut glass tones. “It does smell. Like old age and decay. Like me.”
What a pleasant introduction. Harriet stepped forward, trying not to sneeze. Dust motes still floated in the air. “Hello, Lady Stokeley. I’m Harriet Lang.”
Lady Stokeley gave a dignified nod, drawing her petite frame to all of its barely five feet. “I’m sorry not to greet you in more pleasant circumstances,” she said, and then erupted into a hacking cough that sounded like she was bringing up a kidney. Mallory backed away, a look of disgust on her face.
“Ew,” Chloe whispered, sidling towards Harriet. With a quick smile for her daughter, Harriet started forward, taking Lady Stokeley’s arm.
“Let’s get you to the doctor.”
Worry niggled at her as she drove down the high street to the doctor’s surgery by the school. Lady Stokeley didn’t look good at all, even for a woman of eighty plus. Her face had a greyish cast and coughs continued to wrack her thin frame, making Mallory and even Abby inch away from her uneasily.
“Is she going to die?” Chloe whispered as Harriet helped Lady Stokeley out of the car.
“Not quite yet, I hope,” Lady Stokeley snapped, but Harriet thought she detected a glint of humor in her faded blue eyes, and she smiled.
They had to wait an hour in the surgery’s crowded waiting room, while Chloe dubiously inspected the few battered and dirty toys stuck in a cardboard box in the corner of the room. Mallory flipped through a year-old copy of Woman’s Weekly, sighing loudly and often, and William kicked his feet against the seat repeatedly while Harriet continually asked him to stop. By the time the doctor called Lady Stokeley, Harriet was ready to scream—or have a stiff drink. Or maybe even two.
The doctor, who had treated Harriet for a bladder infection last year, listened to Lady Stokeley’s chest and took her temperature and then shook his head.
“This sounds like pneumonia, I’m afraid, and at your age, I’m not comfortable with a simple course of antibiotics. I think you should go into hospital.”
“In Oxford?” Harriet said, and he nodded. What other hospital was there? Harriet’s heart sank, because it would take the better part of an hour to get to Oxford, and then it twisted at the look of naked fear on the elderly lady’s face before Lady Stokeley stiffened, lifting her chin even as her thin frame shuddered.
“Very well.”
“I’ll take you,” Harriet said. “Of course.”
“You mean we can’t go home?” Mallory hissed, and Harriet silenced her with a look, or tried to.
“No, we can’t,” she hissed back when Lady Stokeley was putting on her coat. “She’s elderly and ill and alone, Mallory. Have some heart.”
Abby watched this exchange with a shrewd, knowing look in her eyes. “She has some seriously cool clothes,” she told Mallory rather suddenly. “Amazing vintage. Chanel and stuff. You should come and see it sometime.”
Mallory narrowed her eyes, looking nonplussed by this information. Harriet suspected she was intrigued by the idea of clothes but wanted to blow Abby off. Her daughter chose silence, simply shrugging and looking away.
A few minutes later they were all piled into the car, heading towards the hospital in Oxford. Nobody had eaten, and the children were getting decidedly tetchy. Harriet was getting decidedly tetchy, as well as increasingly worried. Lady Stokeley was sitting semi-slumped against Abby who had put a protective arm around her shoulders. Mallory, on the other hand, had edged as far as away from Lady Stokeley as she could and was staring moodily out of the window. She wished her daughter could be a little more sympathetic, but Lady Stokeley was a stranger and old people could be scary. Still, it would have been nice to see her daughter show some compassion.
It was nearing seven o’clock before they finally got to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and Lady Stokeley was seen by a doctor and then installed in a private room. She looked frail and small and vulnerable in the huge hospital bed, her face as pale and wrinkled as a scrunched-up piece of paper.
“I do apologize for causing so much trouble,” she said with dignity, and Harriet’s tetchiness vanished in an instant.
“It’s no trouble at all. I’m the one who should be thanking you, for converting the stables into cottages. It was the only place large enough we could find to rent in the whole village.”
Lady Stokeley cocked her head, her gaze considering, and Harriet wondered how much the old lady had heard about her situation. The gossip must really be rampant if it had reached the ears of an elderly shut-in. Maybe Abby had said something.
“Do you want us to stay…” Harriet asked hesitantly, because she didn’t like leaving Lady Stokeley alone, but she was realistic enough to realize she couldn’t contain William much longer. He was over by a bank of important-looking medical machines, starting to push buttons.
“No, my dear, I think not. I’m tired and I very much doubt I could sleep with all of you in here.” Her gaze slid to William, and Harriet found herself smiling.
“No, it’s probably best for us to give you a bit of peace and quiet. We’ll check on you in the morning.”
“There’s no need…”
“I don’t mind,” Harriet said, surprised to realize she meant it. It felt good, or at least better, to worry about someone other than herself, and she didn’t like the thought of Lady Stokeley in here all alone. “Is there someone I should call, to let them know…?”
“No,” Lady Stokeley answered, her tone firm. “Definitely not.”
Okay, then. Perhaps things with her nephew were a bit strained.
“Bye, Dorothy,” Abby said, giving her a gentle hug, and Lady Stokeley rested one knobbly hand against Abby’s cheek.
“You’ll be all right?” she asked, with a glance at Mallory.
Harriet wondered what the subtext she was missing was.
“Yeah, I think so. Don’t worry about me.”
Mallory blew out a loud breath and Harriet decided it was time to go. She shepherded everyone out of the room, smiling her thanks at the nurse who was hanging a chart on the end of Lady Stokeley’s bed.
“I’m starving,” Mallory announced with a theatrical groan as they headed towards the lift.
“Me too, Mummy.” Chloe pulled on her sleeve. “I’m really, really hungry. We didn’t have any tea and it’s late.”
“I know.” Harriet took a deep breath. She felt incredibly weary, and it would be another hour at least before they were home. “We’ll stop on the way,” she conceded, even though she knew she couldn’t really afford takeaway for six.
As they navigated the endless car park in the cold and dark, Abby came up next to her. “Um, Mrs. Lang?”
“Yes?” Harriet looked at her in surprise. Abby had radiated quiet confidence all afternoon and evening, but now she looked nervous.
“The thing is, my mum is away this evening, and I really don’t want her to have to come back. It’s kind of an important weekend.”
“Oh?” Curiosity piqued, and then the penny dropped. “Would you like to stay over at ours?”
Relief washed across Abby’s face. “Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” Harriet said, suppressing a guilty pang.
Why hadn’t she thought of the girl’s predicament earlier? Sometimes she really felt like a terrible, selfish person, so wrapped up in her own problems she couldn’t see beyond her nose. Even now she was wondering where Abby would sleep, and if Mallory would behave herself. All she wanted was a hot, deep bubble bath, and she had a feeling she wasn’t going to get it.
“I don’t mind at all,” she assured Abby, patting her arm, and she hoped Mallory wouldn’t either.
The drive back to Wychwood-on-Lea, at least, was somewhat peaceful, after they’d stopped for milkshakes and burgers. Harriet couldn’t believe how expensive everything was. A couple of months ago she wouldn’t have even looked at the prices. She would have swiped her card with thoughtless ease, and now she was totaling the amounts in her head, insisting the children could share fries and asking the server to split the milkshakes—which were huge—into two cups.
“Seriously, Mum?” Mallory muttered under her breath. “How poor are we?”
“I’m being frugal,” Harriet returned tartly. “And you never finish a whole milkshake anyway.”
She didn’t order anything for herself, finishing Chloe’s burger instead. As they ate in the fluorescent-lit fast food restaurant with a handful of other people all slumped over their burgers, Harriet marveled that it had come to this. She wouldn’t have even stopped at a place like this a few months ago. She would have gone somewhere more upmarket, the kind of place that offered organic food and proper coffee. She would have turned her nose up at everything about this situation, and the realization made her cringe inside, just a little.
Now, at least, she didn’t feel the fury and despair she’d been battling since finding that phone bill. No, she felt a little removed from everything, or at least from her old self. She marveled at who she’d been, and she wondered if she’d ever go back to being that woman again. If she’d ever get the chance. And would Richard even want her? Did she want him? The pang in her heart told her at least part of her still did, and she had no idea how to feel about that. Self-righteous anger was so much easier, but already it was ebbing away.
Back at the house, the children slouched towards the sofa while Abby stood uncertainly by the door.
“Mallory, why don’t you and Abby go over to her house to get her stuff?” Harriet said in the brisk, officious tone she reserved for moments like this.
Cue the death stare. She hoped, she really hoped, that her daughter had enough simple human kindness not to blow off Abby to her face, in front of everyone else. She hoped her daughter hadn’t turned into a mean girl, the kind of girl who had made Harriet’s life a misery, once upon a time.
“Fine,” Mallory said, and started towards the door without waiting for Abby to follow.
“I’ll make up a bed,” Harriet said, although she still didn’t know where that was going to be. Chloe and Mallory’s room wouldn’t fit another mattress, not that they had one.
By the time Mallory and Abby came back half an hour later, she’d managed to put clean sheets on Chloe’s bed for Abby, and inform a delighted Chloe that she’d be sharing Mummy’s bed. William and Chloe were in their pajamas, amazingly, with their teeth brushed, reading books on the sofa. Well, William was flipping through a book, looking at the pictures, but still. Harriet felt as if she’d just scaled Mount Everest. Without oxygen.
To Harriet’s surprise, Mallory and Abby more or less seemed to be getting along, in a monosyllabic sort of way, and they disappeared into Mallory’s room while Harriet tucked Chloe into her bed.
“I like sleeping with you, Mummy,” Chloe said, and Harriet kissed her cheek.
“I like it too, sweetheart,” she said, even though she knew she’d be kneed in the kidneys for most of the night. Having a warm body next to hers would make for a nice change after sleeping alone for the last two months.
By ten o’clock at night everyone was in bed if not asleep, and Harriet was in the kitchen pouring herself a large glass of wine. She sipped it slowly, staring out at the darkness, battling a weird mixture of something almost like contentment, or at least satisfaction—she’d accomplished something today, she’d helped someone—and a deep, unending loneliness, an ache that went on and on.
If Richard were here, he would have poured the wine and they would have sat on the sofa, Harriet curled up on one end, her feet in Richard’s lap. They would have gone over the day, laughing about the crazy moments, reflecting on Lady Stokeley and her situation. If Richard were here…
But he wasn’t. And he hadn’t been there, really been there, for a long time. His so-called friendship with Meghan hadn’t popped up out of the blue, even if it felt like that to her. They’d been growing apart for a while, him in London making piles of money and her in Wychwood-on-Lea, spending it to make the perfect life they weren’t even sharing. She took another sip of wine and then, her mood soured, poured the rest down the drain.