Decision made, she dressed quickly and was out the door ten minutes later. Quick check of her cellphone. Fifty percent battery. It should be more than enough to survive there and back again.
There were no seats on the train. She stood crammed in the corridor, looking out through the window at the city passing by in a blur. An hour to get to Haworth and then a short walk up the hill to the church. Plenty of time to try and summon up some emotions other than empty sickness.
It shouldn’t be so hard. Julia brought her up. She must be able to find some sorrow somewhere inside her. She tried starting with Haworth.
She only had to close her eyes to picture the walk between the train station and the cobbled Main Street. She’d done it so often during her childhood, sent off to the shops in nearby Keighley because Julia needed something urgently, though not urgently enough to go in her car and get it herself. It was the only time she was allowed out of her room except to go to school.
“Good exercise for you,” Julia would say, poking Rachel in the stomach. “Get rid of some of that puppy fat. No man wilman’lll want you if you don’t lose some of that weight.”
And there in a nutshell was the reason for the eating disorder she was still recovering from. What would Alan think when he saw her? She looked better than she had in years but she still considered herself too thin.
Could she ever be happy by herself? An entire childhood being told she was too fat until she believed it, and then once she’d moved away, losing so much weight she was almost hospitalized. And then years of worrying she was too thin and finally, very slowly, putting the weight back on.
That was part of why she was permanently cold. No insulating layer of fat. Just skin and bone. The other reason she was always cold was because spring had decided to have a lie in and was showing no signs of getting up any time soon.
It had been raining for a solid week and when it finally stopped that morning it was only to let the wind tag in for a while. The flowers outside the train window were wilting, Rachel knew how they felt. She would have killed for a little bit of sunshine.
Chapter Two
Rachel arrived in Haworth ten minutes late. When the train finally rolled into the station, she stepped off onto the platform and shivered. The wind tried to blow her back onboard. She almost let it.
Haworth. The place she swore she’d never return to. She could feel herself regressing with every step out of the station. One step for each year. Soon she’d be no more than a child again, waiting to get home and find out just what she’d done wrong this time.
The old fear was returning. Wondering what mood Julia would be in when she got there. Whether it would be silence, ear splitting yelling, or worse, cloying over-familiarity.
They were the hardest days. Julia sneaking into her room to whisper slurred beer smelling words to her, another man heading out the front door downstairs.
“You’ll understand when you’re my age.” Her voice low and conspiratorial. “Men are wicked, Rachel, did you know that? They do disgusting things if you let them. You try to be good but they don’t listen. They’re awful and they stink too. Keep away from men, Rachel. Don’t you worry, I’ll protect you from them all.”
She climbed the hill toward the church, trying but failing to shake the past from her mind. You could never wipe the slate clean.
Three years of university and now the Masters and still she felt like an imposter, like someone was about to grab her and tell her she was actually eight years old, what did she think she was doing pretending to be an adult?
It was time to go home and do her chores like a good girl. Stop thinking about the Middle Ages.
She realized she was hunching her shoulders as she walked. Even her posture was returning to how it used to be. She stood up deliberately tall, looking in at the park as she passed it.
The bandstand was still there. She remembered sitting there with her few things in a carrier bag, weeping as she waited for the train, knowing she was never ever going back.
Until today.
As she crossed over the road to Main Street, she found herself, out of nowhere, thinking about her birth mother. Was she still alive somewhere? Was her father?
It seemed unlikely. She had done her best to track them down over the years but the records didn’t seem to exist. As far as the authorities were concerned, Rachel and Alan had simply appeared in a cabbage patch, dropped by a stork without any input from anyone human at all.
The one thing she wanted more than anything else was to find out who her parents were. The woman they were about to bid farewell to was not her mother. Not even close. She was as far from a mother as someone could be.
So why was she was going to her funeral? Was it really for Alan? She stopped dead in the middle of the street as she suddenly realized what it was. It was to make sure she was really gone. That she couldn’t hurt her anymore.
“Wow,” she said out loud as she continued on her way up the steep hill to the church. “I really am damaged.”
The mourners were few and as gray as Rachel’s coat. She didn’t recognize anyone except her brother. Even he’d changed since she’d last seen him. He’d put on a lot of weight.
“Nice beard,” she said when she reached him at the top of the church steps. “Got a great homeless vibe to it. I almost gave you my spare change before I realized it was you.”
“As witty as ever.” He looked surprised to see her. “You made it then.”
“I thought you might want me here. Make up the numbers.”
