Come Away With Me

Peter loved her and Adam so generously. He had married a Gentile against fierce parental wishes and how had she repaid him? With as little of herself as possible. Ruth thought that for Peter any happiness from this marriage was due to Adam, not her.

She went outside and walked a little way up the hill to ring him. Peter sounded so glad to hear her it gave her a guilty ache between her ribs, where my heart should lie. She described the alterations to the cottage they had arranged earlier in the year. She told him what she and Adam had been doing. She told him how beautiful the creek was at dusk as she stood talking to him, despite the gloomy weather.

‘I miss you, Ruth. I wish I were there with you both. I’m weary of this wretched merger and commuting back and forth.’

‘You must be. It seems to have gone on and on. You’ve got to take a break soon, Peter, or you’ll crack. Surely your family realise you are exhausted with the constant travelling?’

He snorted wryly. ‘My mother worries about me, as only mothers do. My father and brothers are impervious to anything but getting the right terms drawn up. They certainly don’t understand the word compromise in business. Anyway, I’m OK. How’s Adam?’

‘He’s jogging up the hill to talk to you now. Take care of yourself, Peter.’

‘You too.’ She heard him hesitate, longing for her to say more, or anything that would enable him to say I love you, Ruth.

Adam took the phone from her, and she went back into the house and took a bottle of wine from the fridge and poured herself a large glass. The glass misted like her eyes with her wretchedness at her inability to provide the small, normal, loving moments that would wipe Peter’s weariness clean away.

My mother worries about me as only mothers do. Oh, Peter.

She went to the door with her wine. Adam’s voice, as he chatted to Peter, reached her across the night. He seemed a little subdued, not so enthusiastic about his birds or about being here as he usually was. It occurred to Ruth that he might be starting to outgrow the cottage and his childlike delight in being here might be changing.

He was reaching the age when everything was going to become dead boring and the most boring thing of all would be going anywhere with your mother. Or perhaps it was just the closed-in weather and missing having Peter to birdwatch with.

Ruth started to open cupboards and get out the things she needed to make lasagne, Adam’s favourite supper. As she chopped the onions she realised he had come back inside the house and gone upstairs. Usually, when he had been talking to Peter he came and gave her the gist of the conversation.

After a minute the mournful notes of his clarinet wafted downstairs: a James Galway number played tremulously. Anxiety for him welled up inside her. Why couldn’t I, for just once in my life, swallow my pride, say to hell with my principles and accept Peter’s offer to pay for a private school?

She grated cheese over the top of the lasagne and bunged it in the oven. Soon the smell of it filled the cottage. She looked up the television programmes. Thank God there was an aged James Bond. She laid two trays and poured herself some more wine. She was pleasantly bored. She might do some work later on. Tomorrow she would put out bedding plants in the garden, ready for holidaymakers.

Oh God! she thought suddenly, sometimes I feel forty not thirty-one. All at once she wished she had no responsibilities at all, that she could jump on a plane, work abroad and answer to no one. Do something exciting. Be free. She prayed the wretched sun would come out, that Adam was not going to throw a moody and that they would not be shrouded in mist for the entire half-term.

After a while the music stopped and following a few thumps Adam came noisily back down the stairs.

‘What is it, lasagne?’ He sniffed hungrily.

‘Yep.’

He grinned at her. ‘Wicked.’

Ruth grinned back. ‘Could you get some garlic bread from the fridge? There are some green beans in there somewhere too.’

He saw the trays and his face lit up. ‘Are we eating in front of the telly?’

‘Yes. There’s no one to see us slumming and there’s a James Bond to watch for the umpteenth time.’

He grabbed a sip of her wine and she batted his hair. He went off, humming, to turn on the television. Ruth was frozen for a second in the fleeting moment of how easy it was to make someone else happy if you really wanted to.

She went and opened the door of the cottage again and listened to the curlews. What a wavery, uncharted line there was between sorrow and happiness.

EIGHTEEN (#ulink_7a75c04f-2275-5101-89c2-32a85ff95daf)

Danielle rang Flo from Birmingham. ‘Is Jenny home?’

‘No, she isn’t,’ Flo said, her heart sinking.

‘There is no sign of her here. She still is not answering her mobile phone. I have even been out to Ruth’s house. They have all gone away for a break. Her cleaner told me that Jenny was going to stay on one more night in the house after the family left and then she was returning to London. Neither of the buyers at Mason’s or Simpson’s has seen her.’

‘Why on earth hasn’t she rung us? Maybe she’s on her way home now.’

‘Maybe. But Flo, I don’t like it. Jenny always lets us know where she is.’

Flo sat down heavily. ‘Oh dear. I wonder if she could have suddenly decided to go home to Cornwall, to Bea and James.’

‘She would have rung and let us know.’

‘Not if she isn’t thinking straight. Not if it’s all caught up with her. I must ring James and Bea. I don’t want to worry them unnecessarily, but it’s been forty-eight hours now since we heard anything. Danielle, come home, there is nothing more you can do in Birmingham.’

‘Ruth’s cleaner told me that Ruth has no phone in the Cornish cottage and there is no reception on her mobile there so we cannot contact her.’

‘You’ve done all you can, dear. Come back to London now. I’ll see you tonight.’

Flo replaced the receiver. She wanted to believe that Jenny had suddenly made for home on a whim, as a child does, seeking comfort. She got up awkwardly, a pain shooting up her left leg, went to the landing window and picked up the vase of dead snowdrops that depressed her and threw them away. Nothing could account for this silence. Something was wrong. Flo dialled the Browns’ number.

James took the call. He realised as he listened to Flo that he had been half expecting something like this to happen.

‘How odd that Jenny and Ruth should meet up after all this time on a train. If it’s the same cottage, Flo, I know it well. I’ll drive over to St Minyon now. It wouldn’t surprise me if Ruth and Jenny were together. They were extremely close as children. If she isn’t there and Ruth doesn’t know where she is, then I think we might have to do something about it.’

‘I’m worried she might be having some sort of breakdown.’

There was a silence, then James said gently, ‘Yes. It is possible. Try not to get too anxious. I’ll ring you back as soon I can.’

James revved his old car and drove up the hill out of St Ives. It was the most glorious day and the bay below him glittered in sunlight. How often he had sailed with the children out of the harbour and Jenny, the youngest little afterthought, who seemed to have been born happy, would laugh with excitement: I love the sea, Dad, I love the sea. Oh! There’s nowhere in the whole world as lovely as this, is there?

Bea used to say Jenny had been born joyful. James sighed.

The joy had been snatched away so early in her adult life. Uneasily, he remembered their conversation last Christmas after Tom was killed.

Jenny had travelled down with Flo on the train. The house was bursting with her sisters and their children. Both he and Bea had thought it was what Jenny needed: a time in the centre of her family where she could have all their support and love.

It was a mistake. It had cruelly highlighted the fact that her sisters still had husbands and children, the people they loved. It isolated her, made her anxious that they should not feel guilty. Everyone had subconsciously tiptoed round her as if she had an illness.

Jenny had taken herself off for long walks, getting up early to avoid anyone offering to go with her. She skirted the windy winter town or roamed the cliffs towards Zennor. She sat in her old duffel coat in the shelter of the rocks watching the surfers; spent hours in the tiny Barbara Hepworth museum sitting in the cold but peaceful garden.

On Christmas Eve James had accompanied her on the cliff path to Lelant. They had taken binoculars to watch the birds on the estuary. It was a walk they used to do when she was a child. They would often set off to catch the little singletrack train that ploughed between St Ives and the Saltings.

That day, as they walked on the long stretch of beach at Porth Kidney, the wind had buffeted them nearly off their feet. Seagulls screamed and wheeled around them, and the wind was so cold it snatched their breath away. Jenny had marched beside him, loving it, James knew, because the discomfort made her concentrate on that and not on the icy place within her.

He had reached out to take her hand and said, his words torn and snatched by that irritating wind, ‘I feel so helpless. I want to do something to make you feel better and I’m powerless. I can do nothing.’

Jenny had turned to him, trying to smile. ‘You’re here, Dad. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying so hard not to depress everyone, especially the children. It’s not fair on them. I would have been better working over Christmas, but I knew Bea would have a fit if I stayed in London. Really, it would be better if I got back home as soon as possible. Without my work I’ve got nothing. When I’m working I can just think about Tom and the things we used to do together, Tom and me. It’s all I want, Dad. It’s all I want. I’m trying to be jolly, but I can’t.’