Hidden Cottage (36 page)
Low voices.
Not happy voices, but worried voices. And it was Mia and Mum talking.
Only
Mia and Mum.
She strained to hear more but there was definitely no sound of Daisy’s voice. Or JC’s.
Then she heard the sound of a car.
JC!
She sped back to her bedroom and stood at the window. Through the gap in the curtains she looked down onto the street where it was pouring with rain and saw a police car. It had stopped directly outside the house. A policeman got out from the driver’s side and then a policewoman from the other side. They looked up at the house and Madison realized two things at the same time: that the policeman had seen her and that her heart was beating so fast her chest felt like it might explode.
This was bad. The police didn’t arrive late at night with good news. Only bad news. Something had happened. Something very bad.
Owen watched Mia carefully managing her grief. Dressed entirely in black, her face set in an implacable pale mask of grim determination to get through the day, she looked utterly exhausted, as if she had experienced every level of harrowing tiredness and was now functioning as nothing more than an automaton.
He hadn’t planned to come here to Medlar House, had only meant to attend the funeral service as a mark of respect and then discreetly slip away. But walking out of the packed church with Georgina, he’d found himself being swept along with everyone else heading this way. When he’d hesitated on the pavement, Georgina had touched his arm and said, ‘Please come. It’s better that people do.’ In a lighter tone, she’d added, ‘I’m worried that we might have over-catered and I don’t want poor Mia left to eat Muriel’s sandwiches for the rest of the week.’
So here he was, a glass of wine in his hand, feeling it was a mistake. He couldn’t bear to see Mia like this, weighed down with such deep sorrow, her every move and gesture wrought with exhaustion and suffering, and he unable to comfort her. Yes, he could offer his condolences, as he had already, along with everyone else, but that wasn’t what Mia needed. Words alone would not get her through this unthinkable ordeal.
He looked about the terrace of the garden where most people had congregated and where Georgina and Muriel were circulating with large trays of sandwiches and bite-sized food. Seeing the way people were tucking in, Owen doubted there would be a problem with anything left over.
It was three weeks since Mia had phoned him that awful, tragic night when he’d been at Bea and Steve’s. Choking back sobs, she had told him there’d been an accident and she couldn’t get hold of her husband or Eliza. For a moment this seemed to be what mattered most to her. ‘They need to know. They need to be here. But I can’t get hold of them.’ She said it over and over, until he said, ‘Mia, I’ll drive back now. I’ll be there in no time.’
‘
No!
’ she’d cried, her voice frantic and shrill. ‘Please, I don’t want you to have an accident as well. I just wanted to . . . I just needed to speak to someone.’
He’d ignored her pleas and had set off immediately, leaving a hastily written note for Bea on the kitchen table, not wanting to wake her or disturb the sleeping household.
He’d driven straight to the hospital in Northampton and found Mia there with Tattie and Madison, all three of them sitting in dazed shock. If Tattie had been surprised to see him, she had kept it to herself, but then she’d had so much more on her mind. ‘What’s the latest news?’ he’d asked, dreading the answer.
‘We’re still waiting,’ Mia had said.
Now as he stood alone on the terrace, wondering if he could leave without anyone noticing, Owen felt the presence of someone behind him. He turned to see the young man who had sat next to Eliza in church, the one who’d had his arm around her shoulder when she’d followed her parents out at the end of the service, her head lowered as she’d wept. A good friend, Owen had decided. Maybe the one Mia had told him about called Simon, the work colleague. Not the boyfriend who’d turned out to be married.
The young man nodded at Owen in the time-honoured way of breaking the ice and Owen responded by introducing himself, describing his association with the family as merely that of neighbour. ‘And you?’ he asked.
‘I work with Eliza,’ he said, ‘I’m Simon. I was with her the night it happened.’ He pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, shook his head. ‘I still feel awful for what I did.’
Intrigued by his comment and sensing he wanted to talk about it, Owen said, ‘What did you do?’
‘I was trying to give Eliza a special weekend, two days of relaxation – you know the kind of thing: time to get away from it all. I thought it would be the perfect break for her.’
‘Doesn’t sound like you did anything too awful,’ Owen said.
He shook his head. ‘I took her mobile away. I told her she had to manage without it. No calls. No emails. No work. But then her mother was desperately trying to get hold of her and there was no way of anyone tracking her down. It wasn’t until we were back in London on Sunday evening, when I allowed her to switch her mobile back on, that she knew anything was wrong.’
‘You can’t blame yourself for that.’
‘I do though,’ he said grimly. ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I should have left well alone.’
The regret in his voice and the intensity of his expression told Owen that this young man was no more just a work colleague to Eliza than Owen was just a neighbour to Mia. Glancing round the terrace, he wondered at the lives people led and the amount of pretence that went on.
His suit jacket thrown on the floor, Jeff was lying face down on the bed. He couldn’t take any more of the pretence. To hell with the social niceties that demanded the bereaved pulled themselves together for a show of dignified mourning over a fucking sausage roll and a glass of wine. How could anyone expect him to do that when Daisy was dead?
Dead
.
Dry-eyed, he let out a moan of gut-wrenching pain and buried his face into the pillow. Three weeks on and he hadn’t shed a single tear. He didn’t know why. The need to cry was there, but it was as if something deep inside him had shut down.
Three weeks of feeling like this. Three weeks of being unable to accept that she was gone. His little Daisy. His baby. His precious,
precious
baby. He pushed his face harder still into the pillow, wanting it to choke him, to smother the breath out of him. How could he go on living in a world that didn’t contain Daisy? What was the point?
And as for that nauseating service he’d been forced to sit through, listening to the vicar dishing out platitude after platitude about the loss of a child never being an easy thing to accept. What the hell would she know about it? How many children had she lost? What gave her the right to tell him how to think and behave?
He drew his knees up, tried to curl himself into a ball, and thought of the superhuman effort it had taken not to throw himself on Daisy’s coffin in church and tear the lid off. On the rare times he actually slept, he had the same recurring dream. He dreamt that Daisy wasn’t dead, that she’d been put in the coffin by mistake and was calling for him. ‘
Help me, Daddy
,’ she would cry. ‘
Help me!
’
He hadn’t thought he’d be able to go through with the actual burial, but somehow he’d done it. Or he thought he had. He had no recall of it, so God only knew what state he’d been in. He remembered walking back to the house afterwards, though. He vaguely remembered Scott speaking to him and Mia, and introducing his parents, who’d flown over especially from Australia. Apparently they were here to support their son in his grief.
Grief
.
What grief would Scott know? He’d known Daisy for hardly any time at all. How could his superficial loss compare to that of a father? And for what he’d done to Daisy – not only turned her against her own father, but caused the accident by ringing Daisy on her mobile – he hoped Scott never knew another moment’s happiness. He deserved a life of unending misery.
Down in the garden he could hear the level of noise increasing as guests chattered, filling themselves up with wine and food. If he had the strength, he’d go down there and tell them the show was over and to bugger off to their own lives and leave him in peace.
It was unbelievable what people said at funerals, all mindless small talk, none of it serving any real purpose. And then there were the offensive comments, the ones made by people who seemed to think he should be grateful that he hadn’t lost both Daisy and Jensen in the crash. Some were calling it a miracle that Jensen had survived. How could it be a miracle if Daisy was dead and all Jensen had suffered was a broken arm, some cracked ribs and a few cuts and bruises?
No, don’t talk to him about miracles and being thankful. He had absolutely nothing now in his life to be thankful for. If he could turn back the clock, he’d have no qualms in swapping Daisy’s life for Jensen’s. He’d do it in a heartbeat. In fact he’d do anything to turn back time and have his daughter alive once more. He’d even let her marry that idiot downstairs and give her his blessing to live in Australia. Just to have her alive again. To be able to say he was sorry for the way he’d spoken to her the last time he’d seen her, to tell her just how much he loved her.
He took a deep, shuddering breath and shivering with sudden cold, he wrapped his arms around himself.
He had one other regret. That he had spent that night the way he had. The thought of himself in bed with those two prostitutes, when his precious baby girl had been dying, would haunt him for ever. Was this his punishment for that night?
He heard a knock at the door and then the sound of it opening. He made no attempt to turn over and see who it was.
‘Jeff, can I get you anything?’
It was Mia.
‘Go away,’ he said.
Keeping his eyes shut, he heard her come in and move round the bed. He smelt her perfume, then felt a hand on his shoulder, but he flinched at her touch. ‘Leave me alone,’ he said. ‘I want to be on my own.’
He heard the rustle of her clothing as she moved away. Then with relief he heard the door quietly shut.
Still shivering, he kicked off his shoes and got under the duvet and tried to sleep, hoping that when he woke everyone would have gone. Or better still, he hoped he never woke up ever again.
The other side of the door, Mia stood very still. She breathed deeply. Very deeply. Very steadily. Her fists clenched at her sides, she willed every last scrap of her physical strength and emotional energy to hold firm, to fight off the urge to slide to the floor and howl out the raw agony of her grief.
Jeff had looked at her this morning when she’d been dressing for the funeral and said, with real disgust in his voice, ‘How can you do this? How can you put on your clothes as if this is just another ordinary day?’
‘What’s the alternative?’ she’d replied tiredly. ‘We have to get through this day. And tomorrow. And the day after. There’s no other way. All we, or at least, all
I
can do, is put one foot in front of the other and hope I can get through it.’
Ever since he’d flown back from Monte Carlo, Jeff had slept in Daisy’s old room. That’s where he was now. He’d given no explanation and Mia hadn’t asked him for one. She knew why he had to be in there: to be close to Daisy, to feel her presence in the few things that she’d left behind after she’d moved in with Scott. He had said that he didn’t want anyone else to go in there and again she hadn’t questioned this. Just as she had to find a way to get through each day, he had to find his own way to survive this nightmare.
What she did question was his belief that only his grief counted. That anything she or Eliza or Jensen, and in particular Scott, felt was inferior to his loss.
She went downstairs and found Jensen and Madison in the kitchen. Since the accident rarely did Madison leave Jensen’s side – she had practically glued herself to him, terrified that something might happen to him again. There were times when Mia wished she could do the same. With Eliza too. She wished she could keep them close, never out of her sight, just as when they’d been babies and toddlers.
When the police had come to the house that night and told her outright that Daisy was dead and the condition of Jensen was unknown, she had been utterly convinced that she had lost them both. Later, at the hospital, when she had learnt that he had survived and that he was going to be all right, she had fallen against Owen and wept anew, but this time with relief. Then she had hugged Tattie and Madison and they had all cried together. It hadn’t taken her long to worry how she would ever find the right words to break the news to Jeff when she finally got hold of him.
‘You OK, Mum?’ Jensen asked her now.
She nodded and gently patted his good shoulder, resisting the fierce need in her to hold him tight, to reassure herself that he was really still alive, that she hadn’t lost him. It was an emotion she experienced every time she looked at him. Three weeks on from the accident and the cuts and bruises and the burns to his face and hands, which had been caused by the airbag, were healing well. His right arm, broken because he’d raised his arms to brace himself against the impact, was in a sling, and his fractured ribs still caused him pain, as did his neck. But the debilitating headaches had stopped and he’d been assured that the brief coma he’d suffered had left him with no long-term ill-effects.
When he’d been discharged from hospital he and Tattie and Madison had moved into The Gingerbread House. Tattie had been wonderful, throwing herself into looking after Jensen and stepping in to run Mia’s Hats when it had been beyond Mia’s capabilities. She had been a godsend – not just a huge support to Mia and Jensen, but also to Eliza. Jeff had wanted none of her help, though. But then he wanted nothing from anyone. Only retribution, perhaps.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Jeff had initially blamed Daisy’s death on the lorry driver who had been involved in the accident. But the poor man had not been at fault. According to the statement he’d given the police he had done everything he could to avoid a head-on collision, but for whatever reason Daisy simply hadn’t seen him and had driven straight into him. Injured himself, the lorry driver had been the one to alert the emergency services, and again in his statement, he’d described the scene, saying that Daisy had been thrown through the windscreen and that he had believed her to be dead, convinced that no one could have survived such an impact. Jensen’s seatbelt had undoubtedly saved him.
