Читать книгу The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson - Страница 8

It turned out that the residents of Angels Cove were expecting not one, but two Katherines to arrive in Penzance on the evening of 17 December. My namesake Storm Katherine – a desperate attention seeker who was determined to make a dramatic entrance – would arrive late with the loud and gregarious roar of an axe-wielding Viking. Trees would crash onto roads, chicken hutches would be turned upside down, and the blight of every twenty first century garden – the netted trampoline – would disappear over hedgerows never to be seen again (it wasn’t all bad, then). I hoped Uncle Gerald wouldn’t see my concurrent arrival with Katherine as some kind of omen, but really, how could he not?

Stepping onto the train in Exeter, despite the forecast weather, I was excited. By Plymouth I was beginning to wonder if it had all been a dreadful mistake – the locals would want to chat, and the woman in the shop (there was always a chatty woman in a shop) would glance at my wedding ring and pry into my life with a stream of double negatives: ‘Will your husband not be joining you in the cottage for Christmas, then? No? Well, it’s nice to have some time away from them all, eh? And what about your children? Will they not be coming down? No children? Oh, dear. Well, never mind …’

That kind of thing.

By Truro, I’d decided to turn back, but Katherine’s advance party had already begun to rock the carriages, and by the time St Michael’s Mount appeared through the late afternoon darkness – a watered down image of her usual self, barely visible through the driving rain and sea fret – my excitement had vaporised completely. Gazing through the splattered carriage window, I was startled by the sight of my mother’s face staring back at me. Only it wasn’t my mother, it was my own aged reflection. When had that happened? Anxious fingers rushed to smooth the lines on my mother’s face, which could only be described as tired (dreadful word) and I realised that, just like St Michael’s Mount in the winter rain, I too was a watered-down image of my usual self, barely visible through a veil of grief I had worn ever since the morning James had gone.

I hadn’t needed an alarm call that morning. I’d been laying on my side for hours, tucked into the foetal position, the left side of my face resting on a tear-stained pillow, my eyes focused just above the bedside table, fixed on the clock.

I watched every movement of Mickey Mouse’s right hand as it made a full circle, resting, with a final little wave, on the twelve.

Mickey’s voice rang out—

‘It’s time, time, time, to wake up! It’s time, time, time to wake up!’

I’d never known if Mickey had been supposed to say the word ‘time’ three times, or if at some point over the past umpteen years he had developed a stutter, but I silenced him with a harsh thump on the head and lay staring at the damp patch on the ceiling we’d never gotten to the bottom of, just to the right of the light fitting.

I wanted to lay there and consider that phrase for a moment – ‘it’s time’. Two little words with such a big meaning.

It’s time, Katherine.

How many times had I heard those words?

My father had said them, standing in the kitchen doorway on my wedding day. He’d taken my hand with a wonderful smile and walked me to the car, a happy man. We were followed closely behind by my Aunt Helena, who was frothing my veil and laughing at Mum – who did not approve of the match – and who fussed along behind us, arguing about … I think it was art, but it might have been cheese. And now, twenty years later, the exact same words were used by Gerald, to direct me out of the house. To force me, my insides kicking and screaming for release, to slide into the long black car that waited in the yard – the car that would take us to James’ funeral, the sort of funeral that has the caption ‘But, dear God, why?’ hovering in the air the whole day.

I turned my back on Mickey and ran my arm across the base sheet on the other side of the bed. If only there was still some warmth there. An arm to curl into, a woolly chest to rest my head on. But the sheet was cold, and like everything else in my house in Exeter, retained the deep ingrained memory of centuries of damp.

But if I just lay there and let the day move on without me …

It’s time, time, time, to wake up!

Mickey again.

I stretched. Ridiculous thought. Mickey was right. The day wouldn’t move on, not if I didn’t wind the cogs and drop-kick the sun through the goal posts. I threw my legs out of bed, sat up, patted Mickey, apologised for hitting him on the head and I kissed him on the face. Poor thing. It wasn’t his fault James had been killed, even if he did insist in shouting at me every morning in his overly polite, American way.

It’s time, Katherine.

But that was the thing with travelling alone on a train, there was simply too much time to think. Trains were just one long rolling mass of melancholy, the carriages filled with random, interconnected thoughts. Travel alone on a train with no book to read and an over-thinker can spend an entire journey in the equivalent of that confused state between sleeping and waking.

And then the guard broke my reverie.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will shortly be arriving in Penzance. Penzance is the last station stop. Service terminates at Penzance. All alight at Penzance.

It was pretty obvious I needed to get off.

The train slowed to a final halt at the station and the last of the passengers began to stir. I grabbed my laptop case, put on my winter coat, hat and gloves and trundled to the end of the carriage in the hope that my suitcase would still be there. It was time to step out onto the platform, find Uncle Gerald, and head out into the storm.