Kate’s anger sustained her for so long, but the rain penetrated her thin T-shirt and the combined effects of cold and shock soon made her shiver. Before long, she realised her cheeks were wet, not with rain as she had supposed, but with tears.
Of course it had all been too good to be true: Bluebell Bank, the rediscovered warmth of Emily’s friendship, the rekindling of love with Luke. For a moment or two, back there in the caravan, in Luke’s arms, she had imagined them to be both recreating something lost and building something new.
She hadn’t even known what she was missing all those years without him; she had forgotten the intensity of their love.
Spoiled now.
Theirs was the sort of love all loves ought to be measured against, to always fall pitifully short. Now she felt its loss: a phantom, hollow ache like a missing piece of her.
The rain continued to fall, mixing with her tears and matting her hair. The night was dark and lonely. She heard the sound of tyres on the wet road behind her and quickened her pace. Of course it was Luke, pulling up behind her.
The pavement had given away to a narrow strip of verge and the trees framing the country road were dark, menacing. A pale, yellow moon shone overhead, with drifts of eerie, grey cloud floating across it. Luke leaned out of his truck window. ‘Get in, Kate. At least let me give you a lift home.’
‘Home? I don’t have a home.’ Kate knew she sounded bitter, melodramatic, but it was how she felt: abandoned, betrayed, with no one and nowhere to name her own. Just as she had started out in life – alone, with only herself to rely on – before she was spoiled and softened by the Cottons.
‘You’ve been drinking,’ she told Luke, hardening her tone and her defences. ‘Go home. I’ll walk. Obviously this has been a massive mistake.’
‘I’ve only had a couple of beers,’ Luke said softly. ‘And it felt more like we were fixing a mistake than making one, at least to me it did.’
Kate scowled down the long road ahead of her and crossed her arms. She didn’t want to let him get under her skin and his comment threatened to unravel her resolve. ‘I’m going,’ she said, and she wasn’t entirely sure where she meant: Bluebell Bank, or New York.
‘Kate—’
She stopped at rounded on him. ‘Luke! Seriously, I just want to be alone. Go away. It’s, like, a mile tops. I’ll be fine.’
Luke struggled in indecision, unconvinced. ‘No. I’m driving you back. You don’t have to talk to me, but I can’t just let you wander in the dark on your own in the middle of the night.’ He leaned across to open the passenger door. Kate was torn – part of her wanted to revel in independence, to succumb to anger and hurt, muster a decent flounce, but also she didn’t want him near her, couldn’t bear his excuses.
Common sense prevailed as another bank of rainclouds rolled across the moon. The sky darkened and the rain fell more thickly and Kate surrendered, jumped into the truck without looking at him. He put the car in gear and threw her his jumper: a grey, zip hoodie. Her chattering teeth gave her away. Kate put the sweater on and at once her senses were flooded by him. She closed her eyes and tried not to breathe, to think. She endured the rest of the journey to Bluebell Bank: the agony of Luke’s closeness and the smell of him still on her, and the silent waves of hurt and disappointment rolling off him.
She didn’t feel any better when they finally pulled up outside Bluebell Bank and she remembered Emily was within those walls.
Anger reared up, a thick and bitter taste on her tongue. Emily, who had professed to care, but had tried to take what was hers; then had stuck around to pick up the pieces when Kate’s life shattered into a million fragments. Every hug, every sympathetic glance, every smile and murmur of consolation and reassurance of a brighter future just around the corner: all of it a big, fat lie, adding yet more layers of betrayal.
Luke seemed resigned to her silence. He cast her a last, regretful look as she jumped out of the truck; his eyes were glazed with remorse, all their blue fire dulled and doubtful now. ‘Call me,’ he said. ‘Please.’
She did not reply, just tossed her ponytail and started up the drive to the sound of his truck departing. She made it to her bedroom before the tears came in a torrent once more. Thankfully everyone was in bed and Bluebell Bank lay in slumber.
Kate buried herself in freshly laundered candlewick for a storm of silent weeping. For the first time ever at Bluebell Bank she locked her doors against the Cottons.
Sleep eluded her, of course. And the rest of the long night became a grim and lonely place, a realm of dark shadows and darker thoughts: creeping and insidious and destroying everything in their wake. They swirled around her mind and sucked her under. Haunted and despairing, Kate tossed and turned, and toiled with the memories and imaginings, thoughts of Luke, Emily, Dan, her mother – all so mixed up she barely knew the truth of anything.
Those middle-of-the-night demons had a life and energy all of their own. Kate lay in her bed with an aching head and sank deeper into the pervading pall of misery until she didn’t know what to do with herself and the urge to escape became a physical longing.
*
Emily felt the gnawing of some nameless anxiety as, yawning, she made tea for Lena at first light. Bracken was absent – still in the gentle care of Mike – and this little wrinkle in the fabric of the day was enough to disturb Lena’s routine. She was fretful, and Emily knew there would be no stories this morning, no memory book moments.
Was her anxiety down to the absence of the dog? Her mind fast-forwarded to the time when his departure from Bluebell Bank would be permanent. She didn’t want to think about Lena having to cope without Bracken. She drank her tea at the kitchen table, half her attention on her book, still vaguely unsettled. Lena was going on and on about being late for church – where she had not attended, to Emily’s knowledge, in sixty years, except the occasional wedding or increasingly frequent funeral. Emily tried to tell her it was Monday, Lena’s lifelong atheism having not cut it as a reasonable excuse for non-attendance.
She was casting about for a distraction from this pointless discussion, when the phone rang in the hall. At seven in the morning, this gave Emily a frisson of fear: Bracken? Or Dan calling to say it was time? Abby was two weeks from her due date, so it could be any day.
She crossed the hall and grabbed the receiver. She did not expect the dreadful, sleep-deprived sound of Luke Ross. ‘Emily, I’ve messed up,’ he said without preamble. ‘I thought she already knew. I just wanted to apologise properly … to draw a line under the past, you know?’
‘Luke,’ Emily interrupted sternly, with growing dread. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m sorry it’s early. I waited as long as I could to call. I couldn’t sleep. I was so worried she would do something stupid, like hop on a plane to New York and disappear again. I told her, Emily, about you and me. I thought she knew. I thought you’d told her, made her see it meant nothing—’
Emily closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. ‘I didn’t tell her, Luke. How could I? She needed me. I couldn’t have confessed to her that I was the cause of all her misery.’ It felt so strange to be finally saying the words, and to Luke of all people, after so long of keeping quiet. The dread settled into solid ice in the pit of her stomach.
‘You weren’t the cause,’ Luke said wretchedly. ‘It was me. I told you, things had been weird. Kate was so preoccupied with preparing for uni, and her new friends. She didn’t have time for us – you said so yourself – and then there was Dan. I was so afraid of competing with him for her affections that I gave her up, I practically pushed her into his arms.’ His words came out in an uncharacteristic jumble.
The word us was too intimate for Emily, suggesting a collusion that hadn’t existed; the kiss had been unplanned and much repented; she had tried to convince herself that made it somehow less terrible.
‘Nothing actually happened between Kate and Dan,’ Emily confessed, hating to admit her most egregious sin, which she had worked so hard to keep hidden. ‘I only told you there was something going on to make you jealous … I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking, Luke.’
‘It did happen,’ Luke said dully. ‘She told me so. But only after I split up with her so that was my fault too.’
Emily was silent, thoughts churning. It didn’t negate her own mistakes. But Kate had slept with Dan and kept it secret! Had she come back here and flirted and made Dan wonder even for a second? Anger reared its head; she hadn’t expected that, only guilt for her own folly.
‘If you had kissed anyone else but me,’ she said. Or if it had just been the kiss and not what came after: all those little lies of omission. And if not for the seed I unwittingly planted about Dan. Or, in fact, the reality of Dan.
And if not for Kate, with her legacy of abandonment: fear of rejection at the core of her.
Emily’s heart was beating fast. She was shattered and ashamed. She was also furious, with Kate and her brother. Something slotted into place now: a certain guardedness in Kate’s eyes, the faint longing in Dan’s.
Luke’s words came back to her: I was so worried she’d do something stupid, like hop on a plane to New York …
‘I was going to go after her,’ Luke was saying, but his voice distant now, drowned by the cacophony of her frantic thoughts.
Emily closed her eyes. No, it must be her.
It hit her like a blow. New York. It was so exactly what Kate would do: put the source of her pain as far from her as possible.
‘I bloody well love her,’ Luke said, and that was the last Emily heard before she dropped the phone and sprinted up the stairs, panic finally breaking through the fog in her brain and reaching her muscles.
Kate would find this impossible to forgive.
As she ran, she clung to a thread of hope that she was not too late.
She should have cleared the air before now, when Kate first arrived and before she had the slightest inkling that Luke-bloody-Ross was back in town. Now Luke had decided he loved Kate again, but he would have to tell her that himself. Emily loved her too and the most pressing thing was to find her and let her know how sorry she was …
Emily’s good intentions faded in a torment of fear that she would find Kate already gone. Had Kate ordered a taxi in the middle of the night to spirit her away from Bluebell Bank? She glanced out the window on the landing to confirm that Kate hadn’t made off with Jasper.
She burst into Kate’s room, devoid of its occupant as expected, only to be greeted by a sight both reassuring and terrifying: Kate’s stuff was still there, packed into her suitcase, which stood expectantly by the door, her coat draped on top.
Kate was ready to run.