Love Always: A sweeping summer read full of dark family secrets from the Sunday Times bestselling author

Chapter Seven

The gathering in the sitting room has a desultory, unreal air. There aren’t as many people as there were at the funeral. I suppose most have gone by now. The large room looks odd; people don’t usually stand around in knots, talking softly, politely. I scan the room, checking off the members of my family. When was the last time we were all together, in the same room? I honestly cannot remember. Her seventy-fifth birthday? It’s been years, and even then infrequently. This – this formal, tepid tea party – it’s not Granny. It’s not anything.

This feeling of absence, of something being strangely wrong, is also because Granny’s not here. Normally, you’re waiting for her to come into the room. It wasn’t that she was an especially gregarious person – she wasn’t. More that you felt she and the house were linked, in a fundamental way. Without her, knowing she won’t come in, ever again, is sad and unsettling, too. I look around, touching my hand to my throbbing forehead.

In the old days, back when Summercove was a mecca for the young and bohemian, it wasn’t like this either. I look around, wondering, Are they here, any of those people, today? They’d be old, too, if they were. There are several people I don’t recognise along with my family, all the varying parts of it. Mum’s cousin Jeremy and his wife Mary Beth stand in the furthest corner, as if they’ve backed away from everyone else as far as they can and ended up there. They look tired, weary of this long, strange day. By the French windows, my mother and her brother also stand, talking intently to each other, as ever. They don’t look at each other, they never do when they talk. My mother is staring into space as Archie hisses closely into her ear, and her gaze sharpens, focusing on me. She looks me up and down, nodding as Archie talks, and holds up a hand to me, questioning. What’s going on with you?

Octavia and Julius are talking to an older man in glasses who seems vaguely familiar. Over by the buffet, their mother is collecting up empty bowls and used plates loudly, so that the china clanks together. My mother and uncle turn to her, Mum with an imperious expression on her face, but all that’s visible is Louisa’s sturdy, wide bottom, clad in its crêpey black bias-cut skirt. The Bowler Hat stands by the fireplace clutching a glass of wine, his still-handsome face a mask of polite boredom. Though he’s watching his wife he seems impervious to her, clearing away next to him, tucking her greying blonde bob, which keeps falling in her eyes, behind her ears. Again, I remember and it occurs to me that Louisa was lovely when she was younger in the photos I’ve seen. Now, she’s . . . I don’t know. I suppose your life doesn’t turn out the way you’d expected, that’s all, and I should know.

A couple comes up to say goodbye to Louisa. She raises her head from wiping the table and smiles briefly at them. They are old, around Granny’s age, and they smile back, kindly, at her. As they are leaving, the wife nudges her husband, and whispers something, pointing at my mother and Archie. I see the queer, sharp look she gives my mother, this old woman whom I’ve never seen before. I hear her voice, hissing.

‘That’s the daughter,’ she says. ‘The other daughter, dear. You remember?’

‘Oh . . .’ says the old man curiously. He stares at my mother who I know can hear them but is pretending not to. ‘Yes. The one they—’

‘Shh,’ his wife admonishes. ‘Come on, Alfred. We’re late,’ and she practically pushes him out of the room. I watch them go, and rub my eyes.

‘Natasha, dear,’ another old lady says, handing me a glass of champagne. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you. Now, let me tell you a story about one of your necklaces. I bought it in London. A lovely silver flower on a chain, dear, do you remember that one?’

‘Yes,’ I say, nodding politely, trying not to look over her shoulder at Mum.

‘The clasp didn’t work properly. And I took it back to the shop – because, dear, I did want to support you, and I was so glad to have bought it – and do you know what they said?’

‘Oh, Jeremy,’ I hear Louisa say behind me to her brother. ‘Do you have to go already? Oh, dear.’

‘Well, let me know if they don’t give you a refund,’ I say as the old lady pauses for breath, as if I’ve listened to and understood every word she’s saying. ‘Excuse me, will you?’ I make my way over to the table, and grab some crisps. Jeremy is hugging his sister, Mary Beth is kissing the Bowler Hat.

‘Ah,’ Jeremy says, as he turns and sees me. ‘Natasha. I’m so sorry I haven’t had a chance to talk with you today.’ He squeezes my shoulder and nods, his kind face creasing into a smile. ‘But you look well.’ His eyes rest on the plaster on my forehead and he hesitates a little. ‘And – er, I hear all’s good with you, you and Oli, and the business, that’s really great.’

‘Um – thanks.’ I don’t know what to say. Louisa gawps a little, and the Bowler Hat just smiles urbanely at us all – I want to hit him.

‘Jeremy,’ Mary Beth says, at his side. ‘They just split up.’ She kisses me on the cheek. ‘I’m so sorry, dear. We’re worried about you. Are you feeling OK? How’s the head?’

‘Um –’ I begin again, willing myself not to cry, it would be too awful. Mary Beth is pretty, with fluffy brown bobbed hair with bangs, as they say in the States, and she is dipping her slender hands into her pockets. She stands next to her husband, slightly tense. I can’t read the body language.

‘Oh, my goodness, I’m sorry,’ Jeremy says, looking taken aback. ‘I had no idea – well, gosh, I’m not back very often, I suppose, I hadn’t heard.’

‘It just happened, don’t worry,’ I say to him. His forehead crinkles up, like concertinaed folds of paper. ‘Are you – are you really off? I haven’t seen you at all.’

He nods. ‘I’m awfully sorry. We have a crazy early flight from Heathrow and we’re staying in a motel close by tonight.’ I’d forgotten, because I haven’t seen him for a while, how he has a curious turn of phrase, a combination of British time-warp gent and regular American guy. But he says things people here don’t say any more, like Austin Powers. ‘Need to get there and get some sleep, I guess,’ he says. He looks around the sitting room, his eyes scanning the paintings, the people, the old familiar things. ‘Lovely to be back here again, even if the reason’s a sad one.’ Mary Beth pats his arm.

‘How long’s it been since you were here?’ I say. ‘Erin and Ryder were still at school, weren’t they?’

Jeremy glances round. ‘Oh, about five years,’ he says. ‘Just been busy, you know? And now my mum and dad are both gone, have been for ten years now, there’s been less reason to visit Franty and Arvind. It’s just Mary Beth’s family’s in Indiana. We spend time with them in the summer. It’s so far to come, when we don’t have much vacation.’

‘Of course,’ I say.

He looks relieved that I understand. ‘Well, yes. That’s the way it’s been. Very sadly.’

I can’t help it, I give a ragged sigh. ‘There’s nowhere quite like Summercove, is there? It’s paradise down here, especially in summer. Oh, I’m going to miss it so much. I expect you will too, now it’s going.’

Jeremy looks quickly from left to right. ‘No,’ he says. I’m not sure what he’s saying no to. There’s a silence and then he says, ‘Actually, I don’t really think about the old days, if truth be told. It was all a long time ago.’ And then he takes Mary Beth’s hand, clutches it hurriedly, wincing as if he’s getting a headache. ‘So, we’re going . . .’ He kisses his sister again. ‘Bye, love,’ he says, and he hugs Louisa, hard. ‘Thank you . . . thank you for everything, Lou. You’re wonderful.’

He nods briefly again at me. ‘Lovely to see you, Natasha.’ Mary Beth raises her hand, and they are gone.

Louisa stares after them. ‘Oh, dear,’ she says, and her eyes are full of tears.

I go to her, put my arm round her. ‘You’ll see him soon,’ I say stupidly.

‘I won’t,’ she says, her smile sad. ‘He never comes back any more. Especially now Mummy and Dad are dead, you know.’

I nod. Their mother, Pamela, was Granny’s sister, a rather starchy old lady. She died about seven years ago, her husband before that. They’d come to Summercove, not as much as Louisa, but they were there.

Louisa’s face creases. ‘He only came back this time for me. Darling Jeremy.’ A tear rolls down her cheek. ‘Oh – oh, this is awful,’ she says.

My arm is still around her. It feels weird. Louisa is the mumsy, organised one. Seeing her cry for the first time is wrong. like everything else today.

‘Oh, Louisa, I’m sorry,’ I say. Her head is bowed and she is properly crying now, tears flowing easily down her crumpled face. She looks up at me then, and almost flinches. And then she blinks.

‘No, I’m sorry, Natasha dear,’ she says, moving away, so that my hand falls to my side again. She presses the Bowler Hat’s arm. He kisses her on the head, briefly, tenderly and pulls her against him, and she looks up at him, gratefully happy. I watch them with interest – I see the Bowler Hat so rarely, and any interaction between long-standing couples is fascinating to me at the moment. I turn away, to pick up some more crisps from behind me.

‘She looks so like her, doesn’t she?’ Louisa says, her voice still a bit wobbly. ‘I’d forgotten.’

‘Cecily,’ says the Bowler Hat, slowly, not troubling to keep his voice low. ‘Yes, she does. You’re right.’

No one ever mentions Cecily. It’s like a bullet fired into the conversation.

Perhaps I would have pretended not to hear Louisa, but the Bowler Hat’s voice is loud. ‘I look like Cecily?’ I say, turning back with a bottle in my hand.

Louisa is facing her husband, plucking at a piece of fluff on his jacket. He meets her gaze, briefly, and then looks back into his drink again. I can’t decide if he’s uncomfortable, or simply tired. They ignore me, it’s as if they’re in a world of their own. ‘She gave you your name,’ Louisa says. ‘Don’t you remember?’

He nods, his chin sunk onto his chest, I can’t see his face. ‘Yes. She did, didn’t she?’

I close the gap between us, by reaching forward and filling the Bowler Hat’s glass, and they both look up at me. ‘I didn’t know that,’ I say. I’ve never really thought about it, strange to say. That’s just how he’s always been referred to. ‘Really, that’s how you got the name?’

He nods and switches his wine glass to his other hand. There are smeary finger marks on the glass. He pulls at his collar.

‘Yes,’ he says, and he smiles. ‘You know my brother Guy?’ I nod. ‘He and I came here for the summer, that was the first time I met the rest of the family. 1962?’ He turns to his wife, and for a second he is younger, his craggy strong face unlined, his colourless hair blond again, a still handsome, strapping young man.

‘’63,’ she says quickly. ‘’63.’

‘Of course. Profumo – the trial had just started when we arrived.’ He smiles. ‘Yes! We got the train from London. Read about it on the way down. And after we’d arrived, Cecily took one look at me and said I looked like I should be wearing a bowler hat, not shorts. She could be very funny.’ He shakes his head. ‘Tragic. So sad.’ He is silent, Louisa is looking down at the floor.

I never hear them talk about when they were younger, probably because of Cecily. Never heard anything about the summers down here when they were children. It’s hard, now, to believe they hung out together for weeks on end, had picnics, swam together, lay in the sun. Sure, there’s the odd photo, and the odd reference – ‘That was the year Archie broke his arm, wasn’t it?’ But that’s it. Louisa comes – came – for a week to Summercove every year with the children, that’s how I know them better, but the Bowler Hat never really came, he’d stay up in London, working. Mum and I would sometimes be down here for Christmas, but not often. Mostly it was at home, or with Archie and Sameena in Ealing. We didn’t make jolly family visits to Tunbridge Wells, and I don’t recall Mum ever entertaining Louisa and the Bowler Hat to dinner in our tiny damp Hammersmith abode. They don’t socialise, when I think about it. They’re so different now and there’s no intimacy between them all. And apart from that photo of Cecily that Granny had and I saw only once I know nothing else about her. Cecily simply doesn’t come up. What happened doesn’t come up.

So the three of us stare at each other, unsure how to proceed: we’ve gone down a conversational dead end.

‘Natasha’s right, though,’ the Bowler Hat suddenly says, unbending. ‘It was like paradise, Summercove. So laid-back and free. That day we arrived, Guy and I, and you were lying out on the lawn in those great tight-fitting black trousers, remember?’ He smiles, wolfishly. ‘Yes, we were young then.’