Читать книгу The Bookshop of New Beginnings: Heart-warming, uplifting – a perfect feel good read! - Jen Mouat - Страница 12

Chapter Four

With ghosts popping up at every turn, Kate descended the stairs, feeling like an imposter. For the first time the unwelcome thought rose to torment her: what if the email had been a drunken whim and Emily neither expected nor truly wanted her to come? Then she recalled how Emily had flung her arms around her in the bookshop and was somewhat reassured.

Kate was unused to doubting herself these days – such prevarication was relegated to a time long gone – and the sense of uncertainty unsettled her.

Life with Lily in the dismal tenement flat in Edinburgh had been terribly grim, a battle for survival sometimes. It was thanks to the Cottons that she had prevailed, made a success of herself; thanks to one night in fact, when she had been driven to seek their help. The nights were always the worst; it was then that her mother’s demeanour was at its most precarious. It wasn’t so bad when Lily went out – the parties back at the tenement were far more frightening. Kate would lie rigid and sleepless beneath her thin sheet, listening to raucous voices in the sitting room. A man had invaded her bedroom once, lurched towards her bed slurring sibilantly, shushing her, grinning drunkenly. Kate had lain frozen, heart thundering and body useless, until Lily had come in and laughingly dragged him out by the shirt. After that Kate always made sure the chair was firmly beneath the door handle.

The nights when Lily went off who-knew-where with people she called friends were usually something of a relief. But not this particular night. After years of trying to keep the stark truth of her mother’s drinking locked tightly within, Kate was forced to throw herself upon the Cottons’ mercy. She hadn’t been able to sleep. She had been up for hours waiting for Lily to come home, tormented by some ambiguous terror. They’d had a fight earlier – a raging argument about Lily spending all her money on booze, too little left over to feed them – and Kate was nursing lingering resentment and the dull thud of pain from a developing bruise where Lily had swiped at her on the way past.

Lily didn’t come. The electricity was off again and there was no money to feed the meter. Kate was cold, wrapped in a blanket, watching raindrops slide down the dark, curtain-less windows and street lights bleed in the wet that patterned the glass. Waiting, waiting, for her mum to come home and be safe. She had her shoebox on her knee – the contents might have seemed like junk to anyone else but to Kate they were treasures and she had them still, carrying them through adulthood with her, carefully preserved: shells from Rigg Bay, the plastic bangles from Emily, a birthday card Dan had given her scribbled in his messy boyish handwriting, a piece of turquoise sea glass and other such oddments.

Kate listened to the sounds of car tyres sluicing through puddles until there were fewer and fewer of them and the street below was almost deserted. When she checked the clock by her mother’s bed it was 4 a.m. She did the only thing she could think of.

She hadn’t any money for the bus, but anyway, she felt safer walking than she would on the night bus with the drunks and weirdos. When she arrived on the Cottons’ peaceful, sleeping, suburban street only a mile from her own dark, uncared-for tenement, she was a mess: hair in rattails, stark white face, eyes like holes burned in cloth. No wonder Dan had looked so shocked when he opened the door, his father appearing behind him, rumpled and helpless, with glasses askew. Kate remembered, despite the overriding cold and fear and loneliness of that night, the warmth of Dan’s hand as he pulled her inside, as he put his arm so gently around her and guided her into the kitchen; the concern and anger on his face as he sat across the table from her listening to her story, while Ally made lumpy hot chocolate and Fergus buttered toast, and Emily sat as close to Kate as it was possible to be. Later, Jonathon had driven her to the tenement to check on her mother – passed out and snoring on the sofa – and collect her things. She had stayed with the Cottons for a week, begged them not to call social services upon her return; she didn’t want to be taken away from Emily and the brothers. From then on, she spent most of her time at the Cottons’ house anyway, and it was worth putting up with the occasional night with her mother to preserve her sanctum.

It was the first time Kate had asked for anything. She had shown the Cottons the worst of herself and they hadn’t shunned her. Kate – hitherto so closed and wary, so protectively curled around the shame of her home life – had opened up like an unfolding flower.

It was the first the Cotton siblings had glimpsed of the reality of Kate’s life; the first they knew of any lives lived like hers: without refrigerators filled with an endless availability of food, or nagging parents complaining about picking up laundry, but always remembering to pack lunches or sign forms for school trips; homes like Kate’s that were not warm and safe, where adult responsibilities and fear came much too soon. This enlightenment was sobering and all four Cottons became fiercely protective from there on in.

Kate hadn’t been afraid after that because she had never again felt alone; their acceptance sparked new confidence in her, and helped to determine a different course. Afterwards, she joked that the brothers were as much hers as Emily’s, to which Emily was wont to reply that she was welcome to them. At thirteen, Emily was at the age to despise her family: Dan was supercilious by dint of being eldest; Fergus was a pain in the neck, always playing practical jokes and taking the piss; Ally trailed after Kate and Emily like a lost puppy most of the time; and Noah was too young to be of any use.

Kate wouldn’t have traded them for anything.

Kate hovered in the hall, memories of that miserable night, and others, too close for comfort. This was the home of her heart, these were the Cottons; and she couldn’t remember their beneficence without feeling fragments of that old pain.

It was frightening, this change, turning her back on everything she had cultivated and embarking on a path so uncertain, but it was also exhilarating, necessary. Kate squared her shoulders as she descended the last two steps. She had been the chameleon all her life, forced to adapt, to make her own way. She’d managed to secure a place at university to study art, bolstering her mediocre grades with a heap of hard work and a little help from Emily; left Lily and the tenement and all they represented behind to forge a new life in America – playing the part of someone confident and carefree from the outset and being surprised when everyone seemed taken in by this new incarnation.

Emily was in the kitchen, making noisy dinner preparations. Kate stood in the doorway for a moment and observed the scene of domestic … well, bliss wasn’t precisely the right word … with a smile. ‘Need a hand?’ She wasn’t sure what Emily was making, but it seemed to involve using most of the utensils and pans in the kitchen.

‘Oh, hi. No, I’m good thanks. Sit and talk to me by all means. Do you still like Bolognese?’

‘Yes.’ Kate studied the unique array of ingredients on the bench. ‘But are you quite certain that’s what you’re making?’

‘Well, a version of it. I just chuck everything in.’

‘So I see.’ Kate slid into a seat at the table and looked around the room. Besides the unfolding dinner carnage, the room was clean, but cluttered; she hadn’t taken the time to look around properly earlier, too preoccupied. She studied a pinboard neatly arranged with little slips of paper, thick black pen in Emily’s hand marking out instructions and appointments: a manual for getting through the day. Alongside that was another board of photographs, each carefully labelled. Kate rose and went to study the board. If not for those labels it might have been any ordinary display of family pictures, in an ordinary kitchen, rather than a glaring reminder of Lena’s illness.

These photographs were recent and she eyed them with interest, updating her mental picture of them all. ‘Tell me about the boys,’ she said, tapping a photo showing all five Cotton siblings – at an airport by the looks of things, if backdrop and baggage were anything to go by. Fergus was in the middle, his red hair vibrant and a grin on his face, his arms spread wide to pull all his siblings into the frame of the picture.

‘The boys? There’s not much to tell really. They’re the same.’

Kate laughed. ‘They can’t be; it’s been six years.’ The boys in the picture were men now, every one; only Noah, the youngest, still clung to the vestiges of boyhood.

Emily dumped a can of tomatoes into the strange concoction in a pan on the Aga. She gave it a cursory stir and turned to look at Kate, frowning as she tried to summarise six years in a single sentence apiece. The first came as a blow to Kate, though she hadn’t any right to care. ‘Well, Dan got married a couple of years ago. He and Abby run the farm together and Abby’s pregnant with their first child. Noah lives with them just now; he’s working on the farm this summer – he was having a hard time at home. He got expelled from school. I can’t believe he’s seventeen, can you?’

Kate thought of the boy she had known, a gentle, shy eleven-year old. ‘No. Wait … expelled?’

Emily nodded. ‘It’s a long story and one you should hear from him. He’ll probably tell you, he always liked you more than the rest of us. He won’t talk about it,’ she added with a scowl that suggested it was an ongoing battle.

Kate put this knowledge aside to be considered later. ‘What about Fergus?’

‘Went to Australia eight months ago. He’s having a ball. He and Dan had a falling-out over the running of the business. It was always Dan’s farm – Lena gave it to him to run when her last tenants pulled out – and Fergus’s interference didn’t go down too well. Ferg’s happier setting out on his own anyway. Alistair’s fine. He’s in London. He got his law degree and now he’s working towards making partner in his firm. We barely see him.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘You know what it’s like, everyone’s busy.’ Her tone was brisk as she turned her back and stirred the saucepan’s contents again.

‘You’re scattered, aren’t you? I suppose it was stupid to think you’d all still be here.’ In contradiction to her words, Kate felt discomfited. ‘I suppose people move on,’ she said vaguely.

‘Yeah, like to New York.’ Emily couldn’t help herself.

Kate conceded the point. ‘Fair enough. It’ll be great to see Dan and Noah again. I’m glad they’re here. I missed your brothers almost as much as I missed you.’

Emily turned to look at her. ‘I was right here,’ she said. An awkward silence fell. She had no right to mind, really; Kate might bear the brunt of the blame for being the one to flee the country, but strictly speaking Emily left first; though there wasn’t anything to be gained by that kind of petty point scoring.

Emily did what she did best and changed the subject swiftly. ‘You know when we were kids I always wanted you to marry one of my brothers?’

Kate accepted the conversational olive branch. ‘So you told me. Frequently.’

She didn’t want to talk about her feelings for Dan, or their inevitable conclusion. Exactly how much Emily knew, Kate wasn’t sure; it was one of the few secrets she had kept, but she couldn’t be sure Dan had been as circumspect. She kept her tone light-hearted as she continued. ‘Ally was like a brother to me, Fergus was just too busy being a grumpy teenager to notice me like that. Noah’s a wee bit young, and Dan …’ Here, she trailed off. There was nothing to say about Dan now, or rather there was, but it was all too late. Married! A baby!

She couldn’t help but voice the thought. ‘It’s so strange to think of him being married.’ It seemed such a grown-up thing to do – never mind that he was almost thirty and had been running his own business for the past ten years. But, also, hadn’t she always hung on to the vague, selfish idea that he was hers? Though she had let him go.

Emily gave her a wry smile. ‘My money would have been on Dan, if you were going to hook up with any of them, but I suppose that ship has sailed now. You know, I’m sure he had a crush on you. I just wanted you to be part of the family, but of course you already are.’

Kate’s heart raced as she tried to fathom if Emily knew more than she was letting on about her and Dan. Perhaps it was one of the many things they must lay bare, to clear the air between them. But not yet.

Emily’s use of present tense felt good, reminding Kate that she had earned her place on the wall of family photographs, that her bedroom was waiting for her as if she had only stepped out momentarily. She watched as Emily picked up the framed picture again of the two of them on the beach at Rigg Bay, rummaged in a drawer for a slip of paper and a felt tip, wrote a label and added Kate to Lena’s memory board with a flourish.

She turned to look at Kate, her expression innocently content, as if in that moment all her cares had melted. She smiled. ‘Wait here a moment. I’ve something for you. Oh, and open a bottle of wine. In the cupboard, there.’ She directed Kate towards the larder and then whisked out of the room in a whirl of knotty curls; she had shed the fisherman’s jumper in favour of more seasonal attire and her red T-shirt was vibrant against the dark of her hair.

Kate wandered past the Aga, sniffing cautiously at the contents of the pan, which smelled surprisingly good – better than the sum of the ingredients haphazardly thrown in – and opened the larder door. She selected a bottle at random from the wine rack – Merlot, of course, but taking her back all the same to those student days sharing a bottle or three with Em, when the wine was rank and cost a few quid from the local newsagent.

The cupboards in the Bluebell Bank kitchen were well ordered, despite the clutter covering the surfaces: the folded newspapers open at the crossword page, old yellowed recipes, receipts and lists and piles of glossy junk mail. The place had always had an air of lived-in untidiness, which had contrasted with the sharp cleanliness of Emily’s parents’ home and the fetid mess of Kate’s. It was comfortable and familiar to sink into a chair here, to look around at the lingering debris of Cotton family life and revel in the unchangeable-ness of this house.

Kate had just twisted the cap off the bottle when Emily returned, bouncing into the kitchen with a heavy book in her hand. ‘Glasses are in there,’ she said. ‘Lena doesn’t like wine. She prefers a whisky, but it’s strictly rationed – medication, you know.’ Emily swept aside a sheaf of papers and sat down at the table. She accepted her glass of wine from Kate and, hesitating for just a moment, pushed the book across the table towards her. ‘Here. I made this for you. In case I ever saw you again. I was feeling sentimental one night.’

Kate set down her own glass, and opened the leather cover. It looked like an old hardback book, but inside the pages were crisp and new: a photograph album disguised as an antiquarian book. ‘Is “sentimental” a euphemism for “drunk”?’

Emily shrugged, with the beginnings of a grin. ‘Maybe.’

Kate turned the pages slowly. Emily had documented their life together, gifted the book to her to smooth the turbulence of her return: there were school portraits in rumpled sweatshirts; summers at Bluebell Bank and hot days on the beach – in garish Bermuda shorts and Mickey Mouse sunglasses – and playing in the old orange dinghy with Ally and Fergus; then as young teenagers, posing provocatively, wearing the wrong shades of lipstick and heavy eye make-up. A bonfire party, their first purloined cigarettes held proudly between dark-painted fingernails.

Next came the university days: nights out in cheap student bars around the city; sunbathing in Princes Street Gardens with various hangers-on they had once called friends; a weekend clubbing in London; a week in a backpackers in Rome.

It was all there, every important moment in the timeline of their friendship and, because of the significance of that friendship, their lives: so entwined and tangled you could barely see the join. Where Emily ended and Kate began.

And then, suddenly, it all came to an abrupt end, like a sentence without a full stop. Kate turned the page after the final photograph – a day trip in someone’s car to the sands of St Andrews – and was met with nothing but blank paper. All those empty pages were a glaring reminder of the sudden fracture.

There was something missing too. Someone. Luke.

Made more conspicuous by his absence, Luke’s name hovered on her lips as Kate flipped back to the place where he should have appeared – it couldn’t have been more obvious if Emily had left an empty space for him. Kate looked up, noted how Emily’s eyes slid away from hers as she realised her mistake. Perhaps she was only trying to protect Kate, shield her from the remembered pain of losing him, but erasing him wasn’t the answer; as if Kate could possibly forget.

‘Thanks,’ Kate said softly, pushing the book aside. ‘This is great.’

Emily feigned interest in her ragged fingernails, hands curled around the stem of her wine glass. She took a gulp, realising too late that the gesture of the album had served as a nod to darker times just as surely as rekindling the gentle, happy reminiscences. No Luke, no Joe; but they were there all the same. ‘No problem. I had boxes of pictures lying about and I thought they should be in an album. All the photographs were taken on my camera. I didn’t think you would have any.’

Boxes of pictures? So where was Luke? ‘I don’t. Thank you,’ Kate repeated. She lifted her glass to her lips and slowly took a sip.

Emily stood up, almost knocking over her glass in her haste. ‘Better check on dinner,’ she said. ‘It’s probably ready. Oh, I gave Dan a call. He’s expecting us later. I didn’t tell him about you. I wanted it to be a surprise. He won’t be able to believe his eyes.’

Kate, lost in thoughts stirred up by the album like a gust of autumn leaves, only murmured in assent. She was realising that two worlds could not collide and be expected to mesh. She could not be the New York Kate here at Bluebell Bank, with these people and these memories.

And in New York she had eschewed the memories of this place, this version of herself, in order to be a completely new person: a better one, or so she had thought.

But such a split couldn’t continue; she was either new Kate, aloof and unattached and capable, or old Kate, immersed in this world and these people. One must prevail.

She would have to choose.

Losing the new self she had crafted so carefully seemed like too great a loss, a betrayal, but she wanted to be the girl with the bangles again, the Kate who hoarded simple treasures and clung to the Cottons. Alarmingly, she didn’t feel like Ben’s Kate any more – not here, awash with the memories of love and loss, of Luke and Dan; and not when the person Ben had fallen in love with was a phoney. The Kate the Cottons remembered was the real one.

*

Emily watched Kate leaf through the photograph album and knew her mistake; she had omitted Luke from the annals, which was stupid – also difficult because he was in nearly every bloody photograph! She had been trying to save Kate the pain of seeing him, and also – if she was honest – to save herself too. Luke Ross was dangerous territory; they definitely didn’t need to venture there tonight.

Kate’s expression was soft as she studied the images of her teenaged self, Emily and the brothers never far from her side. The album had achieved the desired effect of reminding her that once they had been her world.

And they could be again. She and Kate could start fresh, put past differences behind them. They would make the bookshop work together. And maybe everything else would be easier with Kate here: bearing Lena’s illness; bridging the ever-widening gulf between Noah and Dan – permanently at each other’s throat; forgetting Joe. For the first time since she had fled home to Bluebell Bank, Emily felt wildly optimistic.