Coming Home

‘Wherever you come from you should have listened to the forecast before setting out,’ Tara admonished, sounding confident again now that the conversation had returned to the mundane. ‘Vincent decided not to go in to work today after hearing the bad weather warnings this morning and it was only the second time he hasn’t made it to the office in all the time I’ve worked here. Usually he leaves as soon as I arrive at seven thirty, but they were warning of blizzards even then. You must have been crazy; when he brought you in you weren’t even wearing a coat!’

She was right, of course, and the knowledge sent fresh spurts of panic through me, rekindling the sick feeling in my stomach. I didn’t want to dwell on why I had found myself out in the snowstorm with no warm clothes and no belongings; it was just too much for my tired brain to cope with. I decided to concentrate instead on finding out about the owner of my sanctuary.

‘What does Vincent do?’

‘He works in the City, in banking. I don’t know the details exactly.’

‘Do he and Jadie live alone—apart from you, of course?’

‘I suppose you could say that, though I’m here more than he is. Vincent works long hours and he hands Jadie over to me Monday to Friday. He’s not usually back until after I’ve got Jadie into bed. I cook his dinner and then I go home.’

‘You don’t work weekends then?’

‘Not usually. Jadie’s grandmother comes every Friday evening or Saturday morning and stays until Monday when I arrive. She looks after Jadie when I’m not here.’

I yawned again and Tara stood up. ‘I’ll show you to your room, if you like.’

Her tone was friendlier now, and I responded in kind. ‘Thanks. I’m hoping that a good night’s sleep will clear my head and that my memory will be back by the morning.’ I had been trying to be brave and act normally but it was frightening not knowing who I was or where I belonged. I felt like a child, dependent on others for my most basic needs; hollow inside and horribly vulnerable.

Following Tara back up the staircase, the blankets still draped round me, I ran my hands up the polished wood banisters and felt a reassuring warmth creep through me. What was it about this house that seemed so familiar, so comforting? Whatever it was, it helped in some small way to dispel my feelings of helplessness.

We passed the closed door next to Jadie’s room, which I assumed must have been Amber’s, and Tara waved her hand at the next room along, telling me it was the bathroom. There was another short flight of steps at the end of the corridor, over the boot room, which Tara mentioned led to an attic room where she slept occasionally if she stayed over. The last room on the right was to be mine.

Tara flicked on the light and stood back to let me pass. I went into a well-furnished, old-fashioned room with a queen-size bed dominating the space.

‘Is there anything you need?’ she asked abruptly as she turned to leave.

I stood awkwardly, feeling even lonelier and more displaced than ever as I stared round the room. Despite Tara’s thinly veiled hostility I found I didn’t want her to leave but, not wanting to impose more than I already had, I merely murmured, ‘What happened to my clothes?’

‘I pulled your wet things off you when you were brought in,’ she replied. ‘Your boots are drying in the boot room and I’ve washed your clothes and hung them in the kitchen to dry. Do you want them now?’

I nodded and she went off to fetch them with a cluck of her tongue and an exasperated sigh, leaving me alone. After a moment I ventured forwards, half heartedly pulling out drawers and glancing through the contents. The room looked comfortable enough. I sat on the bed, bouncing slightly to test the springs and tried to think sensibly.

Surely I must have had a handbag with me when I’d set out. What about all the things one would normally take when going out? Surely I owned a mobile phone, purse, credit cards, driving licence…everything that gives a person their identity. I didn’t have so much as a hairbrush or lipstick to call my own.

Tara returned a few minutes later carrying a pair of denim jeans and a thin sage-green sweater with three-quarter-length sleeves.

‘The jeans are still a bit damp round the waistband.’ She handed them over to me. ‘You can hang them over the radiator in here and they’ll be dry by the morning.’

‘Thank you.’ I took them despondently and she left me alone. Where had I bought this sweater, I wondered as I held the unfamiliar clothes, and who had I been with? Where had I been going when I’d put it on this morning? Tears threatened at the corners of my eyes. More than ever I felt cast adrift—as if I’d been beamed here from another planet.

A floorboard creaked in the open doorway and I turned, expecting to see Tara return, but to my surprise I found Vincent leaning against the doorframe, contemplating me thoughtfully.

‘Tara’s just reminded me that you have nothing with you in the way of luggage. My wife left most of her things when she did her disappearing act a while back and I’ve never really got round to sorting through them.’ He paused awkwardly. ‘Would you like to come and see if there’s anything you could use?’

‘That’s very kind of you.’ I gave him a wan smile. ‘I’m so sorry to be such a nuisance.’

‘Not at all,’ he replied politely.

Clutching the blanket to me, I followed Vincent back along the landing to his own bedroom, ancient floorboards creaking under our feet. He turned on the lights and then stood back to let me pass in ahead of him. It was a beautiful room with a four-poster bed at its centre, elaborately draped with embroidered cream and red silk. The curtains at the window were made from the same material, with crimson tassels and tie-backs that matched the blood-red carpet. It looked like the king’s chamber in a medieval castle, or the interior of a sultan’s palace.

‘Here.’ He pulled open a cleverly concealed door fitted within a faded tapestry wall hanging, which ran the length of the room. ‘You’re welcome to borrow anything you want.’

I peered into a long walk-in cupboard containing a whole range of women’s clothes on hangers and in drawers, rows of shoes nestling tidily underneath at one end, and a man’s closet at the other. I glanced questioningly at Vincent, who was hanging back, watching me.

‘These would be useful, if you’re sure your wife wouldn’t mind.’ I pulled a pair of silk pyjamas and a dressing gown randomly from the first drawers. Picking through his absent wife’s belongings while he watched made me feel distinctly uncomfortable.

‘I’m quite sure she wouldn’t mind,’ he said shortly. ‘If she’d been interested in anything here she wouldn’t have been so quick to abandon us. You can keep them, for all I care.’

‘Thank you.’ At the pain in his voice I lowered my gaze, blushing with embarrassment.

‘I’m sorry if I sound harsh.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘It’s not your fault…If you need anything else, please just take it.’ He turned away and walked towards the door. ‘I hope you find your room comfortable. Good night.’

Walking slowly back along the landing with the borrowed nightwear clutched in the folds of the blanket, I pondered this strange dysfunctional family and wondered if perhaps there was such a thing as fate. I paused outside Jadie’s room and listened to her slightly ragged breathing. Whether it was by chance or design I didn’t know, but I felt deep in my bones that there was some sort of inevitability to my being here where I had no identity and yet felt so strangely at home.

If I had known then how strange things were going to become, I might have wished I’d made a bolt for the front door when I’d had the chance.

Chapter Six (#ulink_f247e23e-7cae-58d3-8741-a54f129df655)

I slept badly in the unfamiliar surroundings, tossing and turning and having dreams where I found myself wandering through the house like a lost spirit. Vincent’s bedroom must have left an impression on my subconscious, because I dreamed of that room, with its plush furnishings, and every creak of a floorboard, every groan of an unknown pipe disturbed me yet again.

When I eventually opened my eyes in the cold light of morning I felt a moment of panic. Where was I? My eyes raked the ceiling, darting from side to side. Then the events of the previous evening came back to me and I groaned, realising that I still couldn’t recall who I was or how I had come to be here. I trembled with fear of the unknown and tried to quell the sick feeling that had risen to my stomach. Rubbing my hands over my upper arms and shoulders I was relieved to feel the living warmth of my own skin and I snuggled further under the bedclothes, unwilling to face the day. I also felt anxious about the cat in its box, though Vincent had said he would find out what he could.

After a while I relaxed enough to uncurl and I lay for a few moments, gazing round the room. It was comfortably furnished in pale greens, with chintzy curtains with a matching armchair squeezed into one corner. The floor didn’t seem to be quite flat and the walls were sloping more at one end of the room than the other, making me wonder how old this house was. There was a dressing table standing against one wall and the wash basin along another, which I’d used in preference to the family bathroom the previous night, afraid I’d run into Tara or Vincent. The cupboard was full of clothes, but these were more everyday and in larger sizes than those in Vincent’s room, and I assumed they belonged to Jadie’s grandmother. The only thing I’d found of real interest was a half-empty bottle of gin, neatly hidden in a drawer full of underwear.

Eventually, lured by the strange silvery blue light filtering between the cracks in the curtains, I slid out from beneath the covers, pulled on the borrowed dressing gown and tiptoed across the cold carpet to the window. I peered out through the frosted glass to find a snowy fairyland of white mounds, white-tipped trees and soft stillness stretching away into the distance.

All thoughts of being stranded in a strange house vanished as the beauty of the landscape enveloped me. I felt a childish thrill at seeing the first settled snows of the year and despite the cold creeping round my bare feet and ankles, a warmth rushed through me as I stood, silently entranced by the scene.

A timid knock on the door had me spinning round. It was only Jadie, already dressed and grinning.

‘Have you seen the snow?’ she breathed, her eyes round with awe.

Her excitement matched my own and I nodded, my eyes shining. ‘It’s like a fairy wonderland, isn’t it?’

She nodded enthusiastically, her eyes wide, blonde curls bobbing. ‘Can we go outside and make a snowman?’

‘I don’t see why not. Give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll be right along.’

Jadie left and I threw on the clothes Tara had returned to me the night before, wiped some of the toothpaste I’d found on the washstand round my teeth with my finger and followed her. The house seemed quiet as I walked along the landing and stuck my head into Jadie’s room. She was waiting by the window, looking out onto the landscape where the sun was beginning to glisten on the snow like the glitter on a Christmas card.

Any lingering thought I had about being a stranger in an unknown household slipped away, and together we crept through the sleeping house like a couple of co-conspirators, stopping in the boot room to slip on coats and boots. Jadie found me a quilted gardening jacket and an old woollen scarf, which I tied round my neck as she tugged a woollen hat over her golden hair and rummaged in her coat pocket for a pair of mittens. Then she unlocked the heavy oak door and we stepped out into the glorious silence of her back garden.

Directly outside the back door was a courtyard area and the mirror image of the adjoining cottage next door. I assumed the two homes had originally been one big house. There was a low hedge dividing the two properties, topped with snow. I was about to scoop up a handful of the fluffy frosting when Jadie put her finger to her lips and led me round the side of the ancient Cotswold-stone house to where a smooth white lawn stretched away towards a snow-covered boundary hedge.

We stood side by side on the white path and gazed at the virgin snow; a temptingly blank canvas awaiting the first brushstrokes of our boots. The thought flicked through my mind that that was how my life felt at present: every movement, every word a first, untainted by a past, just the clean slate of my existence stretching enticingly ahead of me.

‘You first,’ I whispered, suddenly unnerved by the enormity of my thoughts. Jadie didn’t need telling twice: she danced across the lawn, making tracks with her boots. She turned, giggling, and I followed her, planting my feet in the squeaky coldness, following her tiny prints with my own size fives.