loneliness and this unexpected warmth from a woman she barely knew blurred inside her. Boiling tears swept down her face. In an instant Chloe’s arms came round her and Helen’s face was buried in soft suede and the thick mass of dark red hair.
‘What? Helen, what is it?’
There was a second’s quiet before she answered. ‘My father. My father killed himself.’
At once Chloe’s arm tightened around the younger girl’s thin shoulders, but she said nothing.
‘Yes,’ said Helen after a moment, speaking as softly as if to herself. ‘It was in the summer. The middle of August, when the world was hottest and brightest outside. Daddy must have found that very hard, looking inwards at the darkness gathering for him in our house. I suppose it had been dark for weeks before that, months even. At the end, it was as if everything positive and hopeful had wilted, through lack of light. Even our love for him seemed to have no life in it any more, because he couldn’t lean on it. Right at the end, in the last hopeless days, I was still sure that it would brighten the gloom for him. But it didn’t, because he killed himself.’
‘Why did he do it?’ Chloe whispered, as gently as she could, and felt an answering movement that might have been a shrug.
‘It’s a banal story, I suppose,’ Helen told her with a new bitterness in her voice. ‘He lost his job. Not a particularly high-powered job, or anything, just as a middle manager in a middle-sized manufacturing company. My father was always a quiet man – grey, they call it here – quietly doing what he was supposed to do. He came home in the evenings on the train, mowed the lawn, listened to the radio, did what was involved in being a husband and father, but mostly he just did his unassuming job. He must have enjoyed it … no, perhaps needed it is nearer the truth. Because when they took it away, he collapsed inside. They did it all particularly brutally, just pushed him out with a tiny amount of compensation. But that’s not unusual. In my father’s case, I think he knew from the first moment that there was no chance of finding another job. And he wasn’t the kind of man who could turn round and just create another life for himself. He was too mild, and puzzled, and overwhelmed by the circumstances of the life he already had. He just let himself feel shamed and rejected. There was no money, you see. He had no prospects at all, and there was nothing he could do for us or anyone else. So he retreated further into the dark and silence, leaving us behind. Until the day came when he went into the garage, locked the doors and turned the car engine on. He lay down on a tartan knee rug that we used to keep on the back seat. Do you know, he was still wearing a tie?’
‘What about your mother?’ Chloe asked.
‘She loved him. It was the worst kind of shock for her. She’s not very good at being alone.’ Helen rubbed her face with the flat of her hand and, as if noticing that Chloe’s arms were still around her, stiffened and drew back a little. Chloe let her go, noticing the tired pallor and the shadows under her eyes.
‘And you?’ she asked. Helen shrugged again.
‘There are money problems, of course. My mother does some part-time supply teaching, and there’s a tiny pension. But my brother is still a child, really, and needs everything. And there’s a big mortgage, the three of us to clothe and feed, all the household bills. So much money to find, and nowhere …’ Helen’s voice trailed away hopelessly. When she spoke again the reawakening of anxiety had drained away all the colour that the champagne had put into her cheeks. ‘I shouldn’t be here. I should never have come back. The right thing would have been to get a job, doing anything, anywhere. Whatever brings in the most money. I can help a tiny bit out of my grant, but …’ The shrug, when it came, was defeated, ‘… it isn’t enough.’
‘But they insisted, your mother and brother, that you did come back? Said you’d be letting them down, and your father, if you didn’t?’
Helen smiled wryly. ‘Exactly. How did you know that?’
Chloe laughed at her. ‘Because it’s what any right-thinking people would have said. It matters, doesn’t it? You’re probably very bright.’
Helen was too natural to attempt a modest contradiction.
‘I’m bright enough. I could get a First, if I’m lucky. Before Dad died I’d wanted to stay on and do research. Now, of course, I’ll have to look for something that’s more of a paying proposition. But not to have got a degree at all, that would have been very hard.’
As she watched the anxiety in Helen’s face, Chloe felt the weight of her own privilege. Her own background was not wealthy, but never at any time since her early and rapid success at her job had she had to deny herself anything. Travel, new books, designer clothes, a luxurious flat were as much an unquestioned part of her life as they were remote from Helen’s. Chloe reflected that even her place at Oxford had begun as a move in her sexual game with Leo. Set beside Helen’s difficulties and her family’s sacrifices, that suddenly seemed frivolous and wasteful. She shook herself in irritation and turned to listen to Helen again. The other girl’s face was brighter and more animated now.
‘It’s strange to be back here, after so much. And in this weird house …’
‘Isn’t it?’ Chloe grinned at her.
‘… I’d only been in the house an hour before Oliver Mortimore appeared, kissed me, and asked me to tea on Friday.’
‘Who’s that?’
Helen’s smile transformed her face and the grey eyes shone with amusement in the absence of the shadows. She had no idea why she was talking like this to Chloe, but it felt perfectly natural.
‘Oh, a bright star in the local firmament. Rich, titled, amusing, and the most beautiful young man you ever saw.’
‘Love the sound of it,’ said Chloe, ‘but does such a sum of perfection do anything as ordinary as have tea?’
The sound of their laughter reached Rose as she slid across the dark hallway below, and it brought a flicker of a satisfied smiled to her broad face.
‘Now I’m sitting here drinking champagne and talking to you as if I’ve always known you,’ Helen went on. ‘Odd, isn’t it? It feels a long way from home, too, and that isn’t fair.’ The sadness flooded back into her face.
‘Listen to me, Helen,’ Chloe said firmly. ‘It would be wrong to destroy the value of being back here by immersing yourself in guilt and grief. That would make your family’s sacrifice useless, wouldn’t it? You can’t forget your father’s death – how could you? – and you shouldn’t try. But you can find your own strength to carry on positively, where he couldn’t.’ Chloe broke off and bit her lip. Her face reddened as she met Helen’s serious straight gaze. ‘I don’t know why I’m preaching at you,’ Chloe said uncomfortably, ‘particularly when I’ve got the feeling that there are several things for me to learn myself before too long.’
The silence stretched on for a second or two before Helen broke it. ‘You’re right, though. Thank you, Chloe. Tea on Friday with Oliver,’ she added lightly. ‘I’ll have to be profoundly positive to cope with that. Will you … do you think you could lend me something beautiful to wear?’
There was relief in Chloe’s face as she responded warmly, ‘With pleasure. To seal the deal, let’s go out and eat now – I’m ravenous. You tell me where’s good, and I’ll treat you. Okay?’
‘Sounds wonderful.’
The two girls left Follies House together and climbed the cold, slippery steps up to the bridge. Inside her Renault, Chloe revved the engine decisively and glanced at Helen’s profile beside her. ‘Well then, Oxford, here we come,’ she murmured into the icy air.
On Friday afternoon Helen slipped through the great wooden gates of Christ Church and crossed to the porter’s glassed-in box, incongruously snug under the splendour of Wren’s tower.
‘Oliver Mortimore’s rooms, please?’ she asked, remembering that Oliver had made no mention of where he was to be found. Perhaps