butt out on the charred stone of the grate, I scrabbled to my feet, batting the air with my hand to dissipate the lingering taint. Annie began filling the drawers of the tallboy.
I drifted towards the window intending to lift the sash for some fresh air, but I saw Dr Mayhew below, engaged in parting pleasantries with my mother, so I left the window shut. I had no desire to draw attention to myself.
‘I take it you’re not an admirer of Dr Mayhew either,’ I said with idle curiosity.
‘Not really, miss.’
‘Any particular reason?’ I turned my back on the window, resting my bottom on the sill.
‘He’s always pegged me as a troublemaker.’
‘Oh?’ I was only mildly interested and made no effort to press her when she didn’t respond. She carried on placing the folded clothing within the drawers as if I’d never spoken. The carriage clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour.
‘Mother knows about you finding me the other evening.’ I left the unspoken accusation suspended in the air, a gossamer thread connecting us. I had not requested her confidence, but I had rather taken it for granted she would remain mum.
She made no attempt to face me. ‘Mrs Scrivens caught me going back to my room. She thought I had been engaged in some … assignation. I had no choice but to tell her.’
‘I wasn’t going to do anything silly.’ I recalled curling my toes over the rough edge of the jetty and the inviting oblivion awaiting me below the dark surface. ‘I just …’ I turned to rest my forehead against the cool glass, flimsy under the pressure. I watched Dr Mayhew’s car pull away. What was the point? How could I make anyone understand that somehow on the jetty I still felt close to Gerald? It was the one place where I didn’t feel the terror of him slipping away. Standing there, if I closed my eyes and focused, I could almost feel the warmth of that late August sunshine on my cheeks and sense his solid presence beside me. I could almost hear those magical words ‘marry me’ and feel that explosion of joy again. Who could blame me for searching out a crumb of happiness amongst this feast of misery?
Annie shunted the drawer to. ‘Dr Mayhew … There are things he doesn’t understand.’
‘He seems to understand very little about grief.’ I made no attempt to conceal my bitterness.
‘Which is something we both know all too well, miss.’
I looked at her. I could only speculate as to what damage might lie beneath her carefully crafted façade. She had lost everyone dear to her. Jim Burrows had died to save his master’s daughter, condemning his own child to a life without the love and security of a father. How had that made her feel? Less valued? And then her poor mother, left to bear the burden alone – it was a tribute to her they had remained free of the workhouse. I could only imagine what deprivations they had been forced to endure. Perhaps, then, it was not so surprising Annie was odd and aloof – her world had been ripped apart at such a tender age and for what? Lydia had died anyway. Sometimes I wondered how she could bear to be around us. Perhaps she couldn’t.
She dipped a curtsy and made to leave, but before she could close the door behind her my mother appeared, sweeping in as Annie slipped out. Feeling petulant, I turned away.
‘Have you been smoking in here?’
‘I don’t smoke, Mother.’
‘Don’t treat me like a fool, Stella!’
She bustled over to my nightstand and pulled open the shallow top drawer, its brass handle rattling with the violence of her action. She began rifling through the contents.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Where are they? The pills Dr Mayhew gave you?’
‘Why do you want them?’
She held out her hand. ‘Give them to me, Stella.’
With rising ire, I yanked open a drawer in my dressing table. I snatched out the small brown bottle and slammed it into her palm.
‘There!’
She held it between her forefinger and thumb and raised it to eye level. ‘Untouched,’ she observed.
‘I don’t want his pills, Mother. I don’t need them.’
‘These pills are to help you.’
‘These pills, Mother, are to sedate me. I can’t be any trouble if I’m not capable of functioning.’
‘They are to help you cope.’
‘I won’t take them. I simply won’t. I don’t want to be numb. I want to feel – I need to feel.’
‘Sometimes we feel too much.’
‘That is better than feeling nothing at all! You can’t just wave a magic wand and make me forget everything – make me better. You heard Mayhew. I might never recover.’
‘Oh!’ Mother threw up her hands in disgust. ‘Listening at doors now are we, Stella? Is that what you have been reduced to?’
‘With the two of you conspiring to put me away, I will indeed listen at doors. At least then I know what you’re planning.’
‘Oh, Stella.’ She collapsed on the end of my bed, her shoulders sagging as the fight deserted her. She tapped the bottle, the pills rattling against the glass like a maraca. ‘I don’t want you to be “put away”, Stella, but neither do I want to lose you. I’ve already buried Lydia, I cannot bear to give up another child.’ Her face creased with pain, and she suddenly looked so aged and worn that I was rather shocked. It was like coming across an old doll, fondly remembered as young and beautiful, but finding it had become ragged and chipped from too much play. Pain numbed her eyes as she looked at me. ‘I do understand what you are going through. I know you think I don’t. But I do know loss, Stella, I know the pain it brings.’
Of course, she knew loss, I could never deny that, though I resented her belief that Lydia’s death affected her most of all. She would tearfully declare that she had lost a part of herself, whereas, in her view at least, Madeleine and I had only lost a companion. But Lydia was so much more than that. She was our constant shadow, our extra limb, she was our clown when we were in the doldrums and our willing scapegoat whenever were in trouble, always confident her angelic sweetness would deffuse our parents’ anger. She was our sister and if not a physical part of ourselves, she was a precious, irreplaceable feature of our very existence and even now we carried her in our hearts, always.
I had never quite forgiven my mother for withdrawing from us the way she did, wallowing in her own grief whilst almost ignoring ours. But with the loss of Gerald, I had perhaps come to understand her more, her apparent selfishness, for I was convinced no one else could possibly be suffering as I was. My grief for Gerald was not indulgent, it was all-consuming, and its intensity seemed to validate the love I had always felt for him. He was my future, but when he died, that very future was taken from me. I now had to consider that Lydia’s death might have left my mother feeling the same way.
‘I’m not going to do anything silly again,’ I said at last.
‘Promise me?’
I forced a smile and sat down beside her, our shoulders brushing. I took the bottle from her hand and tossed it into the grate. It clattered onto the tiles of the hearth. ‘I refuse to take the pills, but I promise, I won’t do anything to hurt myself. I couldn’t do that to you.’
She nodded, her innate dignity struggling with overwhelming emotion. She took my hand.
‘Good,’ she said, issuing a gentle squeeze before relinquishing her hold as she stood up. She patted my shoulder and took her leave, but she paused in the doorway.
‘It will ease, Stella – your sadness. You will learn to live with it. We all learn to carry on in the end.’
I sat quietly once she had gone. It was my fault, of course, that she