Face the Wind and Fly (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

It was a time of struggles. If the first struggle was the important matter of parenting, the second was the altogether trivial mini-war between herself and paint, which nonetheless took on monumental proportions. Kate had thought that painting the kitchen would be an easy, perhaps even a calming, activity, but she could not have been more wrong.

First of all, the paint she chose was described as ‘butter’. It looked nice and creamy in the illustration. The kitchen shown in the paint chart gleamed softly. It was fresh and inviting, like a cold glass of milk on a hot summer’s day. When she got it home, however, she discovered a sickly yellow in the can.

‘What’s that?’ Andrew asked, horrified.

‘Butter, it’s called. Look.’ She shoved the paint brochure in front of him. He glanced at the picture.

‘That’s not the same colour.’

‘It’s supposed to be.’

He put on his glasses and inspected the illustration. ‘The paint here is called Buttermilk,’ he announced, ‘with the wall behind the shelving picked out in Butter.’

Kate groaned. ‘Oh, God. I must have read it wrong.’

‘Take it back.’

She put the lid on the can and pressed it down by dint of leaping onto the tin and stamping around the edge. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said dispiritedly. Her enthusiasm for painting the kitchen was rapidly receding, but in the light of Andrew’s scepticism at her abilities, she felt she had no choice but to plug on.

The way things were going with Andrew was, of course, her third struggle. She’d been right in her suspicion that he was still seeing Sophie MacAteer.

‘She’s very persistent,’ he said, by way of excuse.

‘I’m very persistent,’ she countered, ‘and I have prior claim.’

Andrew seemed flattered to be battled over and, given the general comfortableness of life at Willow Corner and the fact that he loved the house almost as much as she did, Kate suspected he might have tried to conceal the Sophie affair until – possibly – it fizzled out. His problem was that now she was at home, rather than out all day, concealing telephone conversations with the Maneater and slipping out to see her had become so difficult as to be nigh on impossible. He knew Kate wouldn’t tolerate it and Sophie didn’t seem about to let go either.

Kate despised snooping. They had always respected each other’s space, or at least she had thought that was one of the founding principles of their relationship until she realised that she’d never had anything to hide. Now, when Andrew slipped out to the village for the papers, or down to the pub for a drink with Mike Proctor or other friends, she was onto his computer like a shot, to check his emails and to read the latest episode of
Martyne Noreis and the Witch of Lothian.

‘Ellyn had discovered the truth about Martyne’s absences. He knew it first from the change in the fare put before him at night. “Plain gruel? No meat?” he asked, puzzled.

‘ “Only honest men eat meat,” Ellyn answered cryptically, her blonde plaits swinging ferociously as she added a quarter of cabbage to his bowl. The statement was so patently untrue that he was forced to consider its underlying meaning.

‘Later, when he tried to bed her, she rolled away from him and turned her head to the wall. It was unlike Ellyn, who had always shown ardour. At first he cared little, for Ethelinda was providing him with all his needs, but she was in the next village, and with child, and Ellyn was his wife, and should obey him.’

With child? Kate scanned the paragraph on Andrew’s computer again. Ethelinda was pregnant? She checked her watch quickly, and shut down the computer with hands grown suddenly cold. Fifteen years ago, that was what had happened to her, and a marriage had been turned upside down. Was history about to repeat itself?

This furtive searching for information was a peculiar kind of torture. It dripped toxic suggestions into her mind, where they lodged and suppurated and could not be lanced – and besides, her prying lowered her estimation of herself.

She started painting the kitchen. She was covered with Buttermilk from her attempt at rollering the ceiling when Andrew put his head round the door and said, ‘I’m off to town.’

She was too proud to beg him not to go. ‘Going to see the Bishop?’ she asked sarcastically from the top of the ladder, aware that though she might be splattered in paint, this did not make her an oil painting. If she was to compete with Sophie MacAteer, she had to address the matter of the lines at the corner of her eyes and the growing number of gray hairs on her temple.

‘I won’t be long.’

Long enough for a quick shag
, she thought sourly, and remembered all the stolen hours they had spent wound round each other in her tiny student flat before Val had found out about their affair.

Later, when she was showering off the Buttermilk in a sulky rage, she discovered two condoms in Andrew’s wash bag and in an uncharacteristic fit of viciousness, cut them in half with her nail scissors and replaced them. There. That would dampen his ardour the next time he saw her. She glowed with satisfaction for an hour before the crudeness of her action hit home and she repented. The pieces went in the kitchen bin.

She was marching round the house aimlessly and trying to resist the idea of opening a bottle of wine to drink alone when Helena Banks called. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Kate, but Ninian is here. Elliott has asked if he can stay for supper.’

‘No problem,’ Kate said, but perhaps something of her mood came over in her voice because Helena said, ‘You wouldn’t like to join us, would you? You and Andrew? It’s nothing special, just lasagne, but there’s plenty.’

She visualised a happy family table and her own home felt cold and empty. Andrew hadn’t reappeared or called and she baulked at the humiliation of phoning him. She looked around at the dustsheets with their splashes of Buttermilk – her technique wasn’t tidy – and wondered if, instead of offering the room a fresh start she was merely obliterating all the moments of happiness and togetherness the space had witnessed.

‘That’s a really kind invitation,’ she said to Helena. ‘Actually, Andrew is out this evening, but I’d love to come, if that’s all right?’

The girl who answered the door was so absolutely similar in appearance to Elliott Banks that Kate gave an involuntary gasp. ‘You must be twins!’

Her hair was exactly the same shade as Elliott’s, a deep, dark auburn, though it was long and fell smoothly round her shoulders. Her build was slighter than Elliott’s and her features subtly feminine but in all other respects the resemblance was so strong as to be quite unnerving.

She laughed, just as Elliott laughed, easily and openly, so that it was impossible not to be drawn to her. ‘I’m Alice,’ she said, holding her hand out, ‘You must be Kate. Hi.’

‘Ninian,’ Kate said, ‘is a typical boy, I’m afraid. He’s not given to elaboration. Ask him how school was and he’ll say “Fine”. Ask him how his holiday in Devon was and he’ll say “Fine”. Ask him about his friends and you’ll get a grunt. You don’t get information, even such basic information as “Elliott has a twin sister”. I apologise for not knowing of your existence.’

Alice laughed. ‘Come in. And don’t apologise. I know what you mean about boys. They just play on the X Box or install themselves, feet up on the sofa, to watch football, don’t they?’

‘And for hours all you hear is the odd shout of elation or frustration,’ Kate agreed. She liked Alice.

‘Hello Kate, nice to see you, Alice don’t leave Kate standing in the hall, come on in.’

Kate only knew Helena Banks slightly, but seeing her with Alice it was easy to know where the girl got her warmth from. ‘This is so kind of you. I’m painting my kitchen, so the invitation is doubly welcome.’

‘Oh God, poor you, it’s so disruptive, isn’t it? But how brave to do it yourself.’

She led her into a sitting room, where a fire burned cheerfully in the grate and Kate had an instant impression of mellowness and warmth. Where Willow Corner was all creams and pastels and neutrals, this room had burnished gold floorboards and a thick oriental rug. Bookshelves lined the walls, heavy curtains were drawn round a large bay window, and not one, but three, large, chenille-covered sofas were ranged round the fire, their plump cushions soft and inviting.

‘Oh, this is lovely!’ she cried impulsively.

‘Haven’t you been here before? No, I suppose it was usually Andrew who came to pick Ninian up,’ Helena said, tucking a stray wisp of dark auburn hair behind her ear and smiling at Kate’s pleasure. ‘Wine? Or would you prefer something else?’

‘A small glass of wine would be lovely. I’m driving though.’

‘Red or white?’

‘Whatever’s open.’

‘Pick your sofa and I’ll bring it through.’

‘I’ll get it,’ Alice said.

‘This wind farm,’ Helena said as her daughter disappeared.

Kate’s heart sank. For a few minutes she’d been able to forget Summerfield, and AeGen, and the unhappy and aggressive residents of Forgie, and now it was all about to start again.

‘I just thought you should know that we’re all very supportive.’

Kate burst into tears.

Helena Banks was that rarest of creatures, a natural empathiser. She leapt up to intercept Alice, who was coming through with the wine  – ‘That’s lovely, darling, perhaps you could find the boys and warn them that supper will be ready in twenty minutes? Thanks, sweetie,’ – found tissues, and sat patiently while Kate blew her nose and wiped her eyes and stopped sniffing.

‘This is not about the Banks family support of your project, I take it?’ she said, smiling so genuinely that Kate had to smile too.

She gave a last sniff and shook her head. ‘Actually, I’m not working on the project. I’m not working at all at the moment. AeGen have suspended me.’

And she found herself telling her the whole story, of the pressures she’d been put under by having to run a controversial local project, of Jack Bailey and the way he’d constantly undermined her authority, of how she had cracked when she’d found Ninian at the protest camp, of how she felt attacked and abandoned by people – like Frank Griffiths – who she had known for years and had thought were friends. Another glass or two of wine, and some more time, and she would probably have spilled out everything that was happening with Andrew, and Sophie, and how it was affecting Ninian – though she doubted whether she would have mentioned Ibsen even then. That, in itself, told a story.

‘You poor thing. Have you been able to talk to anyone about all this?’

It wasn’t until she asked the question that Kate realised that she hadn’t spoken to anyone. She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘So you’re at home? Painting the kitchen.’

She laughed and dabbed her eyes. ‘That’s it in one.’

‘What’s going to happen?’

‘If I knew that I might sleep more easily at night.’

‘Will you fight for your job?’

‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ It had never occurred to her to do anything else.

Helena placed her wine on a small side table, then got down on her knees and poked the fire, sending a flare of sparks up the chimney. She threw on a log, twisted round, eyed Kate with a speculative look and said, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t.’

A shout came from the hall. ‘I’m home!’

‘That’s Peter.’ She hauled herself up from the floor with the aid of the arm of the sofa. ‘I’ll bring him in.’

Visions of herself as she knew others saw her flashed across Kate’s mind.
That’s Kate Courtenay. Ambitious. Clever. Driven.
She glanced down at her jeans and sweater and saw the other Kate, in her smart business suit and high heels, a silk scarf the only sop to femininity. 
She’s hard
, they would say,
but fair. And she’s a brilliant engineer.
These judgement defined her. They were, after all, what she had struggled to create over the years. She’d worked hard at submerging the soft, vulnerable, uncertain parts of her character so that she could function at this other level, in this other world.
Maybe you shouldn’t.
Helena’s words reverberated round her mind. No. Unthinkable to step back now.

‘Kate, this is Peter. Peter, meet Kate Courtenay, Ninian’s Mum. She’s staying for supper.’

Peter Banks worked, Kate knew, as a senior manager in one of the large insurance companies based in Edinburgh. She had expected someone older, more careworn, more corporate, but what she saw was a fresh-faced, smiling, youthful man who had already ripped off his tie and who was busy struggling with the top button of his shirt as if he couldn’t get out of his city skin quickly enough. ‘Hi Kate. Great to meet you. Can you give me five minutes, Helena, to change?’

‘Three.’

‘Fine.’ He flashed Kate an easy smile and slipped off.

‘He’s lovely,’ she said spontaneously, before wondering whether it was too personal a remark.

‘I’m a lucky woman. Why don’t you come through?’ She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and called up, ‘Alice! Elliott! Ninian! Supper’s ready.’

They ate in their huge kitchen. Again, it was about as unlike the kitchen at Willow Corner as it was possible to be. Willow Corner was cool and stylish, and Kate had always loved it. But although she regarded her kitchen as the hub of their home, it could not compare with the life-giving joyousness of this room. The floor was stone, all the wood scrubbed pine and two of the walls were rich crimson, the others thick cream. The tiles round the Aga and sink were a wild, multi-coloured jumble. She could not have lived with the effect and it would not have suited her but she fell in love, nevertheless, with its heartwarming exuberance.

Ninian sat opposite her on a stool, Alice on a wobbly old wooden chair next to her. Elliott, his mouth full of garlic bread, said, ‘Ninian’s in love with Alice.’

‘I’m not!’ Ninian flared back, but his cheeks flamed.

Alice said serenely, ‘Don’t be so crass, Ell.’

‘He is though. He fancies you something rotten.’

‘Even if he does, Elliott, it’s unkind of you to tease him in that way,’ Helena said, handing Kate a large wooden bowl full of mixed salad leaves. ‘There’s dressing right in front of you, Kate.’

Ninian’s head was down and he was playing with his lasagne. Ninian and a girl? It had to happen some time, and if there was to be a girl, Kate felt that she could not wish for a nicer one. She said, to take the heat off him, ‘I’m thinking of taking Ninian to France at half term.’