Standing in front of the big old house, she felt unable to move, rooted to the spot and not sure where to turn, what to say or do next. There was a new feeling now: acute embarrassment and shame that she had dared to think she might have met her soulmate and would now have to admit it was a sham.
‘What’s up, darlin’? Thought you were at work?’ Freda folded the paper into her lap.
These words were enough to pull the ripcord on her distress, which she had managed to keep tightly packed in until that moment.
‘Oh Nan!’ Running forward she flopped down on the grass in front of her and placed her head on her lap. Her tears came thick and fast and with her eyes tightly closed, she wished she could wake up from the whole horrible nightmare.
‘What on earth’s the matter, Tawrie Gunn? This isn’t like you! What’s happened, love?’
‘He’s engaged. The boy you met by the bins, he’s engaged to a girl with thin legs and she’s ordering him salad!’ Her sobs upset the rhythm of her breathing and she welcomed the feel of her nan’s palm on her scalp.
‘There there, little maid, don’t cry. Don’t you cry. He’s not worth it. They never are.’
‘I thought he-he was different.’ She hiccupped. ‘He made me feel different! But it wasn’t real. None of it! He’s a liar.’
‘I tell you what we’re going to do.’ Her nan sat forward and threw the newspaper on the floor. Tawrie sat up to face her, her eyes stinging with tears. ‘We’re going to have a cup of tea and you’re going to wash your face and then we’re going to go down to Corner Cottage and we shall tell him what an arsehole he is!’
‘I’m not going to do that.’ She laughed at the thought. ‘I’m never going to speak to him again. I can’t.’
‘Well, I’ll go then!’
‘You don’t need to do that, Nan; I don’t want him to know how upset I am. And I don’t want to upset his fiancée, it’s not her fault.’ She felt the start of a headache.
‘Well, I mean this’ – Freda pointed her slightly bent finger with its nobbled, arthritic knuckle – ‘if he or anyone else gives you any grief then you tell me and I’ll bloody sort them out! Or I’ll send your Uncle Sten to sort them out! He got all his judo belts when he was little. They both did.’
And just this reminder of her dad as a boy was enough for Nana Freda to reach for the tissue that lurked up her sleeve.
‘Thanks, Nan, but I’ll be okay.’
Tawrie hoped this was the truth as she trod the stairs, ignoring her mother’s closed door and what had occurred behind it earlier – a literal shit-show that now paled into comparison with her own woes. She stopped on the half landing to stare at the middle window of the upper hallway at Corner Cottage.
It helped to say it out loud, to help the facts percolate.
‘You have a girlfriend, Ed. A fiancée! Someone that isn’t me! Another woman who, I guess, will never know we had sex last night. And you were telling the truth about one thing: it is a bloody mess.’
She felt the twin blades of regret and shame slice through the image of the two of them on the floor of the laundry room and then, later, entwined on the wide bed beneath the eaves of the attic room. Where she had felt so safe.
She pushed the door open to the cluttered bedroom in which she’d always slept and lay on the bed, tortured by images of her and Ed eating crisps from the packet, drinking ‘the other, pink stuff’ and playing Uno, as wave upon wave of tears filled her nose and throat. Her interior monologue was mournful.Of course this is how it ends for me, for us. What did you expect, Tawrie? This, right here in this room, is the life you have always had and it’s not going to change, not now. Not ever!
Lying on her front, she buried her face in her pillow and wished she could curl up and shut out the whole wide world, just for a while.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HARRIETSTRATTON
AUGUST2002
Harriet folded the towels, still warm from the dryer, and placed them on the kitchen table. She returned the carton of milk that had been left by the kettle to the fridge, then set to with a sponge and spray cleaner to make the surfaces sparkle. Anything, in short, to keep her hands and mind busy. Her breathing came in shallow pants and her pulse raced. She felt flustered, light-headed, overwhelmed. Bracing her arms on the butler sink, she exhaled slowly and closed her eyes, trying to calm down.
‘It’s okay. It’s okay, Harriet.’
She whispered the self-soothing mantra, wishing more than anything that she could see her mum. In that moment, all she wanted was to fall into the embrace of the woman who had raised her, to know again the unique solace and protection that her encircling arms could provide. There never had been and never would be anywhere like it. This, however, was no time for tears and shesniffed them back down her throat, afraid that if she gave in to the distress that beckoned, she might just drown in her sorrow.
She sat at the kitchen table. It was too much, all of it. Her showdown with Hugo and the death of Daniel Gunn were more than she had the capacity to cope with right now. Not that she knew Daniel, no more than someone to nod to, but it was as if the collective sorrow of the town seeped through the very bricks of Corner Cottage and mingled with her own private sadness, magnifying both. She was uncharacteristically nervous about the children surfacing, not sure what questions they might ask or how they might be feeling. Dealing with the fallout of that while doing her best to reassure them was also a lot; more, in fact, than she felt she had the emotional capacity to deal with.
Hugo walked into the kitchen, his hair still wet from his shower.
He sat upright in the chair opposite hers. It felt like an interview, giving the occasion a formality that only added to the weighted atmosphere. She declined to offer him a drink in the way that would once have been automatic, as if she were already mentally clocking off. These small things highlighted the state of before and after in which they now lived.
