Ursula's Secret (32 page)

But it
was
Ross. And he was alive.

*

“Not wearing her out again, I hope, Lexy.”

Robert. Back to check on her.

“Shh.” Lexy raised her finger to her lips, smug to be the one issuing the admonition for a change. “She’s sleeping and you’ll—”

“Robbie?”

“Now, look! You’ve woken her.” Lexy tried to sound exasperated but was secretly pleased. Would there be time before Evie went into theatre to talk some more?

“Hello, Gran. Bearing up? They’ll be coming to prep you for theatre shortly.”

“Not yet, Robbie, I need to … to tell Lexy, is she still here … I …”

Even to Lexy the voice was thin, too weak. “I’m here, Evie.”

“Lexy. I have to tell you the rest, to …”

Lexy stepped forward, took the old woman’s hand. “Evie, it’s all right, I’m here.” She looked across the bed to Robert. He was frowning, feeling for Evie’s pulse.

Had Lexy done this to her? Worn her out just before the operation? She felt a pang of worry. She’d been angry, of course she had, but she didn’t want anything to happen to Evie. It was just there had been no one else to be angry with, or at least there hadn’t been, until that phone call had changed everything.

“You should go, Lexy,” Robert was saying. “She’s too weak to talk, I’ll stay—”

“No, I need to tell … to …” Evie’s eyes were darting from side to side, her fingers twitching in Lexy’s hand.

“No, Gran, you don’t. You have to rest. Whatever it is can wait. Lexy, you have to go now, you’re upsetting her.”

“But she’s the one who wants to talk. I’m not forcing her.”

“Robbie, I need to talk … Just five more minutes.”

Lexy knew she had one last chance before Evie went into theatre. One last chance to find out what she really needed to know. “Evie, just tell me, why did she send Izzie away to Ursula? Why did she abandon my mother?”

“She had no choice. It broke her heart.”

“So why do it? Surely it made more sense to keep them together, Ross and Izzie?”

“No. He knew, you see.” Evie’s voice cracked and her shoulders heaved as coughing racked her body. “He’d have taken—” The coughing took hold once again and small beads of perspiration appeared on her creased forehead.

“For God’s sake, Lexy, just leave it.” Robert reached over to put his arm around his grandmother’s shoulders, lift her into a more upright position. “Easy now, Gran. Let me get you some water.”

“Taken what? Izzie? But how—”

“Enough, Lexy!” Robert’s voice was harsh, his fury evident. “Get out. Just go. Have some compassion, can’t you?”

“Well, of course, but I … just … One last question before I go.”

“
No
,” he shouted, then visibly restrained his temper and added more calmly, “She needs to rest.”

“No, it’s a question for you. Why, after you told me you no longer spoke to David Buchanan, did you get into his car and drive off with him yesterday afternoon?”

“Look, Lexy. I’ll explain.” He looked at Evie. “But not right now. Later. I’ll come to the hotel, after … when Gran’s out, okay?”

That’s right,
Lexy thought,
Give yourself time to dream up a story.

“Fine,” Lexy said, though it wasn’t at all. “Evie, I hope—”

“Go, Lexy, now. Leave her alone.”

Lexy looked at them both for a moment, then walked out, pulling the door closed behind her. No slam. That was good. Although it hardly mattered now. Lexy didn’t plan to see either of them again, or at least not until she’d found the answers elsewhere. She had other options now. She had family. Real, blood family. That open ticket she’d bought would be pressed into service as soon as possible. Tonight, if she could make the London flight, and from there, a credit card would get her to Scotland and to her uncle, Ross Buchanan-Munro.

Helen stood, arms crossed across her chest, staring out at the thin grey ribbon of road winding down the hillside past the peat banks towards the shore, watching, waiting. She’d stood here for hours, days, it seemed, watching, waiting. Each time she saw a splash of colour, a flash of movement, her heart stalled, kicked again when the car turned off to the right at the T-junction, leaving her behind, still hidden, still safe, still dead to those she had run from. Nothing had come her way since she’d begun her vigil, the height of the bracken and shallow ruts on the track a testament to the croft house’s isolation. Her sanctuary. Her prison.

In the early days, they’d tried, these scattered inhabitants of the slopes and shoreline beneath Ben Mor Coigach. There’d been the odd curious neighbour dropping by with words of welcome on their lips to mask the inquisitiveness, the intrusiveness, of their uninvited calling. Helen had been cold and distant, relentlessly unfriendly. She’d shrugged off her interest in society, her need for company and conviviality, with the fur stoles and cashmere wraps she’d left behind her in the hills above the lake. No need now to concern herself with pleasantries, with doing the done thing, with the conventions of hospitality. She had no need, no desire, to like or be liked. Anonymity, isolation, secrecy: these were what had come to define her. The croft house had lain empty since she and Ursula had left it, Helen armed with a certainty that deserted her now. No one had stepped over the threshold, seen inside the croft house until she’d returned, almost half a century ago. No one, she’d believed, ever would.

She knew they spied on her. She sometimes caught the flash of sunlight on a metal buckle, or the glint from trained binoculars. But the word had spread and no one came near these days, the lifelines and rhythms of this peninsula community ebbing and flowing round her like snowmelt round a rock.

She could see a face looking back at her, distorted by the buckled glass of the windowpane, like Munch’s
Scream
. Gaunt and hollow as a skull, black holes where once there’d been bright eyes, rictus where there’d once been a smile. Who was she?
What
was she, this creature, haunting her like a silent reprimand, a story whose ending would never be told? Helen Buchanan, heiress, socialite, adored mother, happy wife. Gone. Abandoned. Forgotten. She couldn’t be, didn’t know
how
to be, that woman again, even if she were free, or inclined, to try. Instead she’d turned liar, deceiver, destroyer of lives, become wraith, remnant, more dead than alive. What would her daughter make of her? Would she come, would she try?

Izzie.

Who was she now? Had those blue eyes stayed baby blue, the blonde waves straightened or furled into curls and ringlets? Did she grow tall and strong, like her father, or delicate and slight like her mother, loud as David, shy as Ross? Helen would know soon enough.

Izzie.
She breathed the word again, saw it snake like a hiss of steam in the air between Helen and her reflected self, felt the prickle of impatience on taut skin, a fluttering in her stomach. Years of not knowing, not daring to ask, not trusting herself to remember, wiped out in that instant when she’d finally relented, replied to Ursula’s letter with a single word scrawled on the back of a postcard of Inverness Castle.
YES.
Her reward: this purgatory of waiting.

Helen turned from the window and looked up at the clock. Nearly midnight. Long days made longer by summer light. No one would come now. She could go to bed, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep. She’d stare at the light filtering through curtains, fading but never fully darkening before brightening again into yet another morning. And each time the same thought, the same question: today, this day, would this be the one?

The corners of the room were dim, too dim for reading, so she picked up the single page she’d left on the table by dirty plates she’d yet to clear and took it back to the window. Perching one hip on the wide ledge, she dropped her glasses from the top of her head onto her nose and began to read, as she’d read umpteen times before, searching for clues the words wouldn’t yield, answers they didn’t hold.

Edinburgh, May 24th 2014

My dear Helen,

She’s coming. She’s agreed, as I so very much hoped she would, and she will be here in a few days. I am praying that she will forgive us, although I am afraid, truly afraid, that she won’t. I have this single chance – we have this chance – to make her understand how much she is, and always has been, loved by us both. Oh Helen. My youthful stupidity has led us both to do so much wrong. But no point in repeating all that here. You know how sorry I am and I know you have forgiven me even though I can’t forgive myself. Your generosity and love overwhelm me.

So, to the matter in hand. I have prepared a folder, a portfolio, for her. I will tell her what I can, and provide her with evidence from my diary and our letters for her to read through and keep. It will be too much, I’m sure, for her to absorb, to follow, in a single conversation, and I fear that’s all she will allow me when she hears what I have to say. I also fear that Jenny will not leave me alone long. And as you know, I have my concerns about her. In some ways she reminds me of Izzie – quick-witted, funny, gregarious – but she has a level of cunning to her intellect which is unpleasant, and there is something that just doesn’t ring true about her. As if she’s acting. And that worries me. She is too much the serendipitous helper at times. I am sure she is reading my mail, looking for something, although I don’t know exactly what. I pray it is simply a way to establish my worth, to decide if I’m worth robbing or bumping off or whatever. God forbid it is anything to do with all of this. But how could it be? Jenny is a child of poverty, that much is clear, hardly likely to have been brought up on tales of Africa and fortunes. I’ve promised her a legacy and spoken to my lawyers in the hope that that will be enough to keep her from prying further, but time will tell.

In the folder I show Izzie our deception. My shameful behaviour, Evie’s solution. Our trip to Scotland. But from the point where you returned to Africa and I remained here, I will be silent. I died a kind of death when you left. I have no words to express what I felt, if indeed I felt anything at all, until our darling girl brought me back to life with her laughter and love and joy. So the years of hiding are yours to tell, dear Helen. Your story, not mine. Your horror. You tell it as you see fit. And feel no need to hold back on my account. Not a day goes by when I don’t blame myself for what I did to you. For what I let Cameron do.

There are some details I will not include in the folder for fear of – I’m not sure what. Superstition perhaps, force of habit, or maybe even Jenny again. I cannot trust her. But I will not write down your location, nor will I commit details of the financial arrangements to paper. There will be nothing in writing that will lead to you or any of the others. If Izzie wants to find you, I will give her details of the croft face to face. If she doesn’t come I have arranged for a “clue” to be left with my lawyer. A copy of an old unsigned lease for the croft house in the middle of my current file. Our Izzie won’t be able to resist the questions that will pose and she will find you. Jenny’s legacy will serve a similar function. Should I be right in my fears about her, our inquisitive Izzie will track her down, I’m sure, when she comes across a name she doesn’t recognise. I leave it to you to provide details of anything, anyone else, if you see fit to do so, when you meet with her. Revelation will, after all, break our side of the pact we made with our very own devil and his henchmen and could mean no further support for you and R. So again, that must be your decision. I am simply a conduit in the matter of the funds.

Dear Helen. Nothing is guaranteed, but I feel certain that she will come to you. She was so disappointed before when you wouldn’t let me talk to her. It’s why she walked out and refused to speak to me for all those years. All those lost, long years. She wanted to know the truth then and now she can. Whatever has happened to her in the intervening years, I know that desire will not have changed. She spoke of feeling incomplete, and needing this to complete her. Of needing to tell her daughter.

So it is nearly time, and I wait, as you do. This is something I must do if I am ever to rest easy in my grave. And I fear that rest is closer than I would like. For me, Izzie’s visit will bring closure, but for you, I pray it will be a beginning.

Your repentant and grateful friend,

Ursula

Helen let the letter drop to the ledge beside her, stared into the half-light and remembered. Another letter, waiting for another child. Another lifetime. The same knot of anticipation. Would it be different this time or would she be punished again? She was afraid to hope for too much, in case she was disappointed, as she had been on that day some fifty years ago. In her mind it was as vivid, as fresh as yesterday had been. No. Fresher …

* * *

It had been early afternoon that day he’d come, the air still and calm. She heard the car climbing the slight hill before she could see it tip over its brow. She’d been sitting sewing a button back on one of Izzie’s blouses, expected the car to be the battered white Peugeot, to see the florid face of Sister Agnes set in concentration behind the wheel as she brought Izzie back to her from the Mission clinic. Izzie would be tearful and tired, no doubt, after the journey and the shock of the inoculation. Sister Agnes would have done her best to soothe the disgruntled child, but Helen knew Izzie in that mood would take comfort from no one but her own mother. She smiled to herself as she dropped the cotton blouse back into the sewing basket and flipped the lid closed with her foot. She stretched and stood, swallowing a yawn. Her hand shielded her eyes from the sun as she sought out the car.

And there it was. Black. Black and growing bigger as it neared the house. Not white, not whining the way the small Mission car did, not lurching over the bumps and dips, but slithering, gliding, invading.

Helen’s hand flew to her mouth as she turned and made for the door. Hide. She had to hide. Whoever this was, it wasn’t good. But too late for that: she would have been seen, would be seen disappearing through the screen door. And the house was full of Izzie’s things; she mustn’t let them see, whoever it was, they mustn’t know there was a child. Whatever they’d come for, they could do what they liked to Helen, but not to Izzie. Not her. Her heart was thudding, drowning the sound of the car as it came.