In Her Shadow (40 page)

Ellen had kept the photograph. She had kept it beside her bed, and Karla had picked it up and brought it back to Germany, together with Ellen’s daughter.

‘Karla remembered you, of course,’ said Kirsten. ‘I Googled your name. There were about seven thousand
Hannah Browns in England, but I kept modifying the search and eventually I found you on the museum’s website. I showed Karla the picture. She said it was you.’

‘Kirsten agonized for ages over whether she should come and find you,’ Karla said.

‘I was going to write first,’ the girl said, ‘but then I thought: What if she tells me she doesn’t want to see me? Then I’ll never know. So I decided to seek you out.’

‘We rehearsed different scenarios,’ Dora said with a laugh, ‘me and Kirsten in her bedroom. I’d be you and she’d be herself, and sometimes you’d be shocked to find out that Ellen had had a daughter, but usually you were very happy and emotional and you kissed her and told her she was beautiful and took her out to dinner.’

‘We never rehearsed what to do if you took one look at me and were so horrified you almost had a heart attack!’ Kirsten joked.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

‘It’s no problem,’ said Kirsten, and she and Dora laughed together, and John laughed and finally I laughed too.

‘And of course, that was you I saw in Berlin yesterday,’ I said, and Kirsten nodded. ‘And you were watching me from the clifftop when I was on the beach in Cornwall!’

Kirsten frowned. ‘No. We flew straight home from Bristol. There didn’t seem much point in staying.’

I made light of it. I said I must have been mistaken, but I wasn’t. I knew who I had seen standing on the cliff at Bleached Scarp.
I knew
.

I watched the girls laughing, and I thought, Thank God. Thank God that Kirsten has Karla, and a friend like Dora who will always stand by her.

I thought, Kirsten is luckier than her mother ever was.

Ellen had deserved better than me.

Kirsten said, ‘So, anyway, we came back here and I
thought that was the end of it – and then you found me.’

I was a little drunk, and very tired. ‘Ellen brought me to you,’ I said. ‘I know she did.’

Karla patted my hand.

After that, I told Kirsten some of my story, but not all of it. I explained about Jago, how he had loved Ellen, how much he had wanted the baby, how he had believed it was gone. I explained that he had never recovered from losing Ellen and the child, how he was living a life in Newfoundland, but that it was not a whole life. I told her about our parents, how thrilled they would be to find out that they were, after all, grandparents – and how much they would love Kirsten.

There were some things I could not put into words, some things that would have to wait until they were told.

After that, the night became hazy. The black sky, the bats, more wine, the stars and the breeze, the smell of the river on the air, and John wandering off to speak to Charlotte on his phone. Dora sang, her voice low and tuneful. She sang songs of love and heartbreak, songs that I did not understand but which made me sad all the same.

The German women went to bed and John and I went for a walk by the river. The moon was full, its light so strong the trees, and even we ourselves, cast shadows across the grassy banks. Owls called from the trees. I felt Ellen was there too, walking beside us, knowing.

‘You’ll be OK now,’ said John, and I said: ‘I know.’

I crouched down to pick up a pebble and I threw it into the river, flicking my wrist as Jago had taught me. It bounced three times.

‘I wish it had turned out differently for Ellen,’ I said.

John replied, ‘Hmm,’ then he added, ‘she left a wonderful legacy in Kirsten.’

‘Yes, she did.’

John tried to skim a pebble. His attempt was feeble. I found a flatter, better one for him.

‘How was Charlotte?’ I asked.

‘She was fine,’ said John, ‘on good form. She’s been on the internet, booking a holiday.’

‘For herself?’

‘No.’ John turned the pebble over in his hands. ‘No, for all of us. She says she thinks we could do with some quality time together.’

‘Oh.’

‘A little resort in Turkey. I’ve always wanted to go to Turkey. They’ve got some great archaeological sites there.’

‘I’m glad,’ I said.

‘Charlotte will probably be bored to tears if I drag her round them,’ said John. ‘She’ll criticize and complain, and I’ll have to sit on the beach bored out of my mind to compensate. We’ll rub one another up the wrong way. But we’ll laugh about it afterwards.’

I knew he was trying to explain his marriage to me. He was letting me know that things weren’t perfect between him and Charlotte, that they were different people, but that they still worked as a couple. I wondered if he knew about her affairs, and realized that it didn’t matter. He loved Charlotte as she was. That was the whole point of love: it did not judge or criticize, it was not jealous or defensive – it accepted.

John didn’t want those of us on the periphery of his relationship with Charlotte to drag their secrets into the open where he would be forced to acknowledge them and to act upon them. He wanted to be married to Charlotte, whether she was faithful or not, because that was what made him happy.

It didn’t seem too much to ask.

I also realized that there was no future for me and him, not in the way I had imagined. John would, I hoped, always
be my friend and colleague, but he would never be more than that. It was doing me no good wishing he was mine, thinking about how happy I would make him, because that was never going to happen. The realization made me a little sad, but also it was a relief. I could let go. I didn’t have to be on the outside of his marriage, looking in and thinking I knew best.

If I was going to love someone, I needed to find someone who was free to love me back.

‘You’re useless,’ I said, as the second pebble belly-flopped into the river. ‘Here.’

I took his wrist in my hand and, in the moonlight, on the bank of the Elbe, I taught him how to skim pebbles.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

THE NEXT MORNING
, I rose early. Karla had given me a lovely, east-facing room and the sun was low in the sky outside. I put on the dressing-gown she had lent me, picked up my phone, and crept from the room. Kirsten’s bedroom was next to mine. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open, and she turned towards me in bed, smiling. She was awake; she’d been waiting for me.

I went downstairs, out through the doors, to sit on the terrace by the fountain. The sun was rising, lighting up the rooftops of the city of Magdeburg, casting a summery yellow light over the grounds of the Schloss. It was a beautiful morning. It was going to be a beautiful day.

I called Mum first. I didn’t tell her anything about Kirsten; I just reassured her, once again, that I was fine and asked for the number I needed. She gave it to me.

‘But it’ll be the early hours there now,’ said Mum. I thought, It doesn’t matter. This can’t wait another moment.

Kirsten came out in her pyjamas wearing flip-flops and carrying two mugs of coffee. She sat down beside me. Steam wisped from the surface of the coffee. Kirsten rubbed her nose.

The sun was sending long morning shadows across the
meadows below us. The whole area was tinted golden, dew glistened on the grass and the light picked out the intricate designs of the spiderwebs strung amongst the leaves of the shrubs. Beside us, the water in the fountain sparkled and twinkled; it was green-clear where it pooled in the stone basin. Kirsten trailed her fingers on its surface. She smiled at me, filling me with affection.

‘Are you ready?’ I asked.

She tucked her hair behind her ears so the dyed-pink flash showed, and she nodded. Her eyes were bright and wide.

‘I’m ready,’ she said.

I dialled the number. It took a while to connect, but eventually, at the other end of the line, a telephone rang. I crossed my fingers, and the call was picked up. I heard a man clear his throat and then a gruff, sleepy voice that was distant, but also dear and familiar to me, said: ‘Hello?’

‘Jago,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Hannah.’ I took a deep breath and I smiled at Kristen. ‘There’s somebody here who’d like to talk to you.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A huge thank you to the talented and wonderful Sophie Wilson, who has made this book far better than it otherwise would have been, and to Cat Cobain for her constant wisdom and warmth. It’s a complete joy working with you both.

To everyone at Transworld, especially Madeline Toy, Vivien Garrett and Elspeth Dougall. Thank you for everything – most of all for making me feel so much part of the team.

A million thanks, as always, to Marianne Gunn O’Connor, Vicki Satlow and Pat Lynch for your unfailing support.

Thank you to the wonderful Cathy Rentzenbrink for stories about Cornwall and more, and I’m sorry the trombone incident was lost in the final rewrite.

I have taken liberties with locations in this novel – some are genuine, some fictional. Bristol does have an excellent museum with an ancient Egypt gallery but many details have been changed.

Finally, thank you to my family and friends; you are the world to me – with a special mention for the lovely Georgia Adams.

About the Author

Louise Douglas
is a copywriter. She has three sons and lives in Bath with her partner.
In Her Shadow
is her fourth novel. Her first novel,
The Love of My Life
, was longlisted for both the Romantic Novel of the Year Award and the Waverton Good Read Award, and her second,
Missing You
, won the People’s Choice Award at the Romantic Novelists’ Association Pure Passion Awards 2010.

Also by Louise Douglas

The Love of My Life

Missing You

The Secrets Between Us

For more information on Louise Douglas and her books, see her website at
www.louisedouglas.co.uk

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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First published in Great Britain
in 2012 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright © Louise Douglas 2012

Louise Douglas has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446463567
ISBN 9780593070215 (cased)
9780593067093 (tpb)

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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