Shell House (12 page)

       
“This isn’t your house, Jonathan, its Dad’s.”

       
“Oh, its Dad now, is it.” Jonathan could barely keep his head off the table.

       
“I’m not arguing with you, especially not today.”

       
“She’s left me.”

       
Gabrielle turned from spooning coffee in the pot, unsure if she’d heard him correctly.

       
“Yep, left me. Just like that.”

       
“Who, Anna?”

       
“Who do you think? I’m not married to Joan bloody Collins, am I?” Jonathan propped his elbow on the table in order for his hand to take the weight of his head. “You’re not very bright for a writer, are you?” he chuckled to himself.

       
“I’m sorry to hear that.”

       
“What? That you’re not very bright or that my wife’s left me? Ha ha.”

       
Sitting as he was at the table, apart from being much older and very drunk, he was just as Gabrielle remembered him; full of humorous quips and finishing off sentences with “ha ha” as though he were still a child.

       
Jonathan leaned across the table and grabbed a burnt parsnip from the charred dish of vegetables.

       
“You’re not a very good cook either. These look like vanilla pods! Are you good at anything?”

       
Gabrielle laughed; there was no malice in what he said, it was just typical banter from the brother she knew long ago.

       
“Oh no.” He threw his chair back and began staggering around the kitchen; his face had turned a peculiar shade of grey.

       
Gabrielle quickly realised what was happening and tried to guide him to the toilet but it was too late. He turned in the direction of the back door and to her astonishment managed to open it and vomit the contents of his stomach onto the doorstep outside.

       
“A parsnip too far, ha ha!” Gabrielle called to him.

       
He groaned and snorted as the next lot of liquid left his stomach mainly via his nostrils. She left him to it and went into the sitting room to talk to Harry but he was fast asleep in his chair by the fire. She watched him for a few moments and then crept out quietly.

       
She found Jonathan sat at the kitchen table, his face a mixture of white and green, a hint of pink beginning to flood his cheeks.

       
“Come on, let me get you to bed.”

       
He didn’t argue with her, just looked at her, his vision causing him to see double.

       
After she’d tucked him up and made sure he was safely asleep on his side and was not going to be sick anymore, she made her way downstairs to find Harry in the kitchen trying to salvage some of their Christmas dinner.

       
“I’m sorry about before.”

       
“What of it?”

       
“I’m sorry for laughing. It wasn’t at you Dad, it just reminded me of when I was little, when we were young.”

       
“I know it did, love. I realised that afterwards.”

       
“You’re not cross with me?”

       
“Of course not, dear heart!”

       
“Good. Let me help you with the dinner.”

       
“No, no, no!” He raised his hand and shooed her away. “If you want to help you’ll go in the other room, open the wine that’s on the table and put some more music on and turn it up so I can hear it in here.”

       
“Alright.”

       
“It’s got you and your brother talking, has it?”

       
Gabrielle turned to look at him as she was leaving the room. “I suppose it has, yes. We’ll see how he feels in the morning.”

       
“It’s a start.”

       
“Yes it is. Dad?”

       
“Yes love?”

       
“Anna’s left him.”

       
Harry paused briefly and then continued to baste the roast potatoes with hot goose fat. About bloody time was all he replied.

CHAPTER FOUR

        Although it was first thought that Anna leaving Jonathan was the best thing for him, it turned out to be the worst turn of events for the rest of them. The bitterness and hatred that had welled between them and never been aired landed on them all like a giant mass of icy cold water.

       
There was a calm gentle atmosphere for the first few days. Nancy called round regularly, unable to believe what had happened or the change in her father. He’d spoken more in the last few days than he’d ever uttered in her lifetime. He vented his feelings about everything, not just his marriage but his entire life. Gabrielle and Harry found it, at times, uncomfortable and painful, but generally just quite sad. He’d lost himself in his career and he’d been isolated like Gabrielle, only under very different circumstances. He didn’t stay at his father’s very long after Christmas day, deciding he ought to go home to Nancy and explain what was happening.     Gabrielle hoped that he’d be less open with her; she was sure she didn’t want to hear details about her parent’s marriage.

       
Gabrielle could feel the unrest in the house and as cathartic the experience was for them all she knew something very bad was about to happen. And just before the New Year, it did. It came in the form of a journalist knocking at her father’s door asking, casually if Gabrielle Rochester was in. He was calm and collected as if he was trying to catch them out but Harry was just as passive in his reply. He told him that there was no one of that name there but unfortunately his face didn’t follow his words and the journalist hung around outside the house for quite some time. Luckily Gabrielle had agreed to stay with her father over the Christmas period and help him with Jonathan, so she’d already been back to the cottage to collect some things. There was no way she would be leaving the house now − not with a journalist practically camped outside watching their every move.

       
Eventually more journalists rang the bell and hovered outside, having been told calmly that they had the wrong address. They were like a pack of dogs having been thrown a bone; they knew they were onto something. Old newspaper archives had been raked up following an anonymous tip off and Gabrielle had, once again, become like a rabbit in a hutch. It brought with it many memories from before and lots of events she had chosen not to remember.

       
Harry called the police to try and get the journalists removed, but all they could do was stop them from coming down the driveway to the house. Harry had to apply for an injunction in order to stop them coming along the track which led to his property.

       
The arrival of Gabrielle’s Probation Officer, Rosa, just about pushed her over the edge; the police had alerted the Probation Service of her whereabouts and were concerned she was breaking the conditions of her licence. Her identity had been uncovered and it was a worry to them all. This only fuelled the media further and proved that they had the right location.

       
The Probation Service were fairly unconcerned after so many years of Gabrielle having a clean record, and eventually, along with the police, agreed that she was in the best place at her father’s house until it all blew over. “How the hell was she able to go anywhere else with the media watching her every move” was what Harry barked at them down the telephone when they’d rung to tell him what they’d decided. The police told him she was entitled to be put back under the Witness Protection Act due to the rareness of the circumstances. She’d been put into this program before, even though she wasn’t a witness, but the authorities didn’t know what else to do with her and knew she needed a place to hide where people didn’t know her or her real name. This time, Gabrielle refused. She couldn’t see the point; everyone in the whole country knew what she looked like; pictures of her as an author had been splattered all over the papers. There was no way she was leaving her father again and she couldn’t face the outside world anyway. She just wanted to lose herself in her childhood home until she felt better and got a grip on what she was going to do next.

       
The varied emotions she experienced were all similar in the way they hit her so dramatically. In her more lucid moments she wondered if she was bipolar. Generally, whatever she was feeling made her stop and take deep breaths; the whole experience was so intense. She felt that her freedom of choice had been snatched away from her. She couldn’t even go back to her home, where she’d lived for so many years, or to simply stay in the cottage near her father − not unless she wanted to be mobbed. Her career, her whole life’s work, everything felt as though it was over. She couldn’t help but think it was a bit like dying and starting again. She had learnt to embrace change but this was immensely frightening and she hadn’t properly contemplated the consequences of it all. She wasn’t quite sure what was better; living a lie all this time or discovering you were the most hated person in the country.

       
She spent much of her time sitting with her feelings, facing her emotions and the memories they stirred up in her mind. The one thing she knew she must do was to work through whatever she was feeling, rather than swallowing it and trying to stamp it out. During one of her quiet moments of contemplation she suddenly realised underneath all the fear and anxiety that she was actually grieving. At first she put it down to losing her old life, past grief for her family and many other things she felt she’d lost, but it was like a distant voice or song she couldn’t quite hear or recognise. Then it dawned on her that she was mourning Rebecca; she actually felt like she had died. She likened it to actors losing a character after many years of playing the same person, which made her wonder if they grieved too. Because she had morphed into being someone else, as though she were playing a part in a play, she’d very quickly and simply shaken off Rebecca Banford and slipped into being Gabrielle Rochester. It had all come so easily to her, like picking up where you left off with an old friend you hadn’t seen for years. It was a comfort in one way because it told her she’d always been Gabrielle Rochester; that she’d never lost that person and therefore Rebecca had never really existed.

       
For the most part she still felt frightened, terribly lonely and sick to her stomach with the thought of it all. She ceased to eat and Harry, struggling with his own turmoil, became extremely worried for her.

       
Jonathan surprised everyone by being extremely supportive. He booked time off work, which to be honest was his only option and a relief to the Practice Manager at the surgery who was going to have to tell him to do so anyway, due to the media and public attention the whole situation had caused.

       
He took it all in his stride, held his head high in the street, refusing to comment on anything he was asked and he made sure that Harry and Gabrielle had everything they needed. He saw off countless journalists who tried to get into the secluded garden, ignoring the fact there was an injunction in place. He generally acted as their guard and carer as best he could. No one questioned why he had had such a change of heart − it was just accepted and very much welcomed. It was as though since Anna had left he’d become a different person, but he wasn’t so different to Harry and Gabrielle, who saw him as the mature, developed extension of the same self  he had been when he was a boy.

       
However awful things became for the family, it did have a positive angle in that it pushed them all together for the first time in their lives.

       
Nancy and Gabrielle formed an extremely close bond and Nancy even managed to cheer Gabrielle with games of Scrabble, DVD collections of comedy shows and chatter of events that had occurred when she wasn’t around. It was to her, as though her Aunt had lived on a desert island for many years and needed updating on the ways of the world.

       
This routine continued for two weeks and then Harry called Jonathan into the sitting room for a private chat. He’d spent many days deep in thought, quiet but distracted, and was often to be found in the attic rifling through boxes, desperately searching for something. He stole outside into the garden at night time to watch and talk to the sea, his dear wise friend who he missed terribly, having not been able to take his usual daily stroll. He didn’t fancy being mobbed by reporters or spiteful locals and he was immensely grateful that the sea was quite literally on his doorstep.

        Jonathan’s attempts at stopping journalists and the general public who saw fit to wander up the path to pelt eggs and rotten vegetables at the house became pointless, so they’d had to call the police, who then had to appoint two officers to guard the area.

       
His friendships, some years old, seemed fictitious now, and it pained him that people were so fickle and insincere. The very friends who’d supported him in the first place had now firmly turned their back on him, all because he’d decided to welcome his daughter back into his life. When he really thought about it they weren’t his friends at all as he’d not confided to any of them about it; hadn’t felt he could trust them and their friendship.