‘Hmm,’ Ros said, but she remembered those final days in the hospice with her mother. She’d slept a lot too and Ros had hoped against all hope that maybe when she woke, things might get better. ‘What’s this?’ She picked up the letter box from the table.
‘It’s from… Here, take a look, I’m trying to get my head around it, but really… what are the chances at this point?’ Heather handed her the envelope. Ros read the letter slowly, giving each word the solemnity it deserved. At the end, she just looked at Heather and they both began to cry.
48
Constance
‘Will you sit with me for a while, I need to talk to you,’ she asked Heather when she arrived into the room with a fresh glass of water and news that Jake had delivered a copy of her will earlier; it was propped up on the table next to her bed. Constance had smiled at the news and sighed: it was another thing done.
‘There’s something I need to tell you. It’s something that we’ve kept a secret for nearly seventy years.’
‘We?’ Heather looked at her now, smiling, perhaps unsure what to expect next.
‘Your mother and I… you know, we had a very special bond?’
‘I know, when I was little I was rather jealous. She seemed to love you so much more than me but then when we came here, I could see why and sometimes…’ she traced her finger along the back of Constance’s hand, ‘sometimes, I wished you were my mother instead. Isn’t that a terrible thing to say?’ It had been a harmless childhood thought; there was no malice in it.
‘Dotty found it hard to show her feelings for anyone, Heather, that’s the truth of it and there was a good reason for it.’
‘Oh?’ Heather said. She was humouring Constance, because Heather had always believed her mother was an alcoholic, pure and simple, and maybe she’d never wondered what it was that all the drinking was trying to cover over.
‘It’s a long story and I hope I have the energy to get to the end of it…’ Constance took a deep breath. She was so tired, so very tired.
‘Please, don’t wear yourself out, not for me, keep your energy, just rest for now…’
‘I need to tell you this.’ Constance tried her best to smile, but it was hardly a flicker on her lips. ‘Heather, your grandfather was a bad man. A very bad man, do you know what I mean?’
‘I… I suppose so, my mother never mentioned him, so I never really knew about him.’
‘He did things to her or at least he tried to do things, terrible things. Things that we never knew grown-ups would want to do with children. I don’t know how long it went on for, but I know it went on for a while, until one day he came after her, blind with rage, and I was there…’
‘Oh my God, my mother, that’s why she was always… I never knew, I never even thought it could be something like… Oh, you poor things.’
‘No, no, I was okay, I mean, I wasn’t… At the time, I was beside myself, I didn’t know what to do, but… you see, I thought he would do something terrible to her.’ Constance closed her eyes; she could see it as clearly as if it had happened just hours ago.
‘Don’t upset yourself, not with something that happened so long ago, you really don’t have to.’
‘But I do, I want you to see…’ She hadn’t the energy to add that she wanted Heather to see that Dotty might have loved her, if she’d ever had the chance to love herself properly first.
‘Well, at least have some water.’ Heather held the glass to her lips, but Constance could hardly taste it.
‘He came after us. He came after me, in the garden. He was going to…’ She shuddered, even now to think of it made her feel sick. ‘I don’t know what he’d have done, but Dotty knew and she tried to save me. We tried to save each other.’ She closed hereyes to gather all her strength. ‘There was one terrible moment. That was all it took and that changed everything.’ She shivered, remembering Mr Wren in her mind’s eye, his expression – complete and utter disbelief. ‘He fell into the well, at the end of a garden that no-one ever really went near.’
‘Accidents happen, Constance. Don’t upset yourself now, it’s a long time ago.’ But in spite of her words, Heather’s expression had changed. She knew this was serious.
‘He didn’t fall exactly, there was a skirmish, he would have… I don’t know, it felt as if it was either him or us and…’
‘Ah Constance, stop it, you were only kids. You can’t blame yourself if you were trying to…’
‘Listen to me, Heather.’ She tried to catch her breath, but it was wispy now, as if it floated just ahead of her and the effect made her light-headed. ‘We didn’t run for help. Afterwards.’ With her words, it felt as if a silence so heavy fell on the room that it blocked out the whole world from them. ‘We covered over where he went in.’ She closed her eyes, remembering it all so clearly now. ‘We threw his bag in after him, I mean, we really set out to make him disappear, Heather, we didn’twantto save him.’
‘Constance, listen to me, you werechildren, children in a terrible situation, no-one can judge you for that.’
‘You don’t just forget something like this. Heather, your mother saved me that day, but it changed her. Inside, I mean, you couldn’t see any difference, not on the outside, but it does something to you. It did something to your mother. She spent her whole life wanting to run away…’
‘Away? But she did run away, didn’t she?’
‘She wanted to run away from life, to escape the memory of it, Heather. She wanted to run away from the truth of what we did; maybe more than that she wanted to run away from the truth of what he had done to her before that.’
