The Way Back Home. Freya North

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СКАЧАТЬ thanks.’ She knew her husband would wrap them in tinfoil and have them for breakfast, cold.

      ‘That was Django.’

      ‘I gathered.’

      ‘Oriana dropped in.’ Cat thought about it. ‘She stayed for two hours.’

      ‘That was nice of her?’ Ben was unsure why Cat appeared disconcerted.

      ‘He said she asked to go upstairs and then she wandered around, looking in rooms and standing deep in thought.’

      ‘And?’ Ben didn’t want to comment too much – the umbilical cord appeared to be syphoning off much of his wife’s patience and sense of humour. If that was the case, their baby would be imperturbable and have great comic timing.

      ‘It’s just –’ Cat thought about it. ‘She’s my oldest friend – I know everything about her.’ Absent-mindedly, she pressed at her jutting navel as if trying to keep thoughts in. ‘But when I saw her, it struck me that she was just ever so slightly guarded – as if there was something essential she was concealing.’

      ‘Maybe she didn’t want to say in front of Django?’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous – Django’s world famous for being unshockable.’

      ‘I wouldn’t take it personally.’

      ‘Why wouldn’t I? She’s my oldest friend. God! You just don’t understand!’

      Ben counted to ten in his head. ‘Well – perhaps she was just passing?’

      Cat looked at him as if he was dense. Django lived so off the beaten track that impromptu visits always necessitated an involved detour and a certain level of planning.

      ‘Did Django say where she was on her way to – or back from – to make a trip to his plausible?’

      There was a long pause. ‘She’d been to Windward,’ Cat said. ‘That’s why it’s weird. She went back to Windward. Just like that.’ She rubbed her belly thoughtfully, as if hoping to elicit the genie from the lamp.

      ‘And you wanted to go with her?’ Ben was trying to second-guess. Cat looked at him blankly. ‘Or – you wanted her to let you know she was going? Or had been?’

      ‘You would’ve thought she’d’ve phoned me.’ She felt hot, uncomfortable. ‘Whatever. Doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s watch telly. Can I have a cuppa?’

      Ben took the pizza boxes into the kitchen, Cat muted the sound on the television, randomly channel hopping while managing her thoughts. Why is Oriana back? Why would she go to Windward anyway? Why hadn’t she told her – beforehand or straight after? And she thought, have we grown apart? Can friendships not last such lapses? If all you have in common is a shared past, is that reason enough to believe you’ll always be as close as you were? To Cat just then, the past was neither halcyon nor troubling, it was simply a long, long time ago.

      Ben made tea and thought to himself how often he had heard his patients who were pregnant complain that people treated them differently – as if growing a baby equated to diminished brain cells and the incapacity for any conversation other than about babies. They felt excluded because of some misplaced need of others to protect them from any topic anything other than bland ones. And, for the most part, they didn’t like it. My baby’s stolen my identity! one had declared. He thought about Oriana. He’d only met her a few times, when they were all living in the United States but, through Cat, he felt he knew her well enough. He remembered how, if ever he answered her call, the first words she’d always say were sorry to bother you.

      ‘She’ll call,’ he told his wife. ‘She’s probably just worried about bothering you.’

      * * *

      In Hathersage, no one asked any searching questions. It was enough that ‘Did you have a nice day?’ was met with ‘Yes, thanks, did you?’ In fact, most of the questions came from Oriana who tactfully chose topics she knew Rachel and Bernard could answer at length. The route to Wakefield. The Bennets’ house. What they’d had for their dinner. And their tea. The weather forecast tomorrow. The amount of detail that anodyne subjects warranted was surprising and insubstantial minutiae floated through the evening like musak until it was a respectable time to turn in. As Oriana climbed the stairs, she thought to herself, that’s probably the longest conversation I have ever had with my mother.

      It was only after cleaning her teeth, when she caught sight of herself in the mirror unawares, that the magnitude of the day that was closing swept over her again. But it wasn’t what had happened or where she had been. At that moment it wasn’t even whom she had seen. It was who had seen her, looking like this.

      Frequently, since her return from the US, her mother had remarked how thin Oriana looked. But ‘thin’ implied something gently fragile, like a bird, like a Hans Christian Andersen character, something young and pretty and ethereal, waif-like. Butterfly wings and gentle breeze and dandelion heads and spun sugar. ‘Thin’ brought out the protective in others. But, now she looked, Oriana didn’t see thin. She saw haggard. She saw gaunt grey. She saw someone to baulk at, to shy away from; to think Christ, she’s aged, she looks terrible. What the fuck happened to Oriana? they’d say. Have you seen her these days? Old beyond her years.

      ‘Mum!’ She called out before she’d even opened the bathroom door, let alone unlocked it. ‘Mum!’

      Rachel’s bedroom door opened. Oriana must have been in conversation with her reflection for quite some time if her mother’s bleariness was anything to go by.

      ‘What is it? Honey – you OK?’

      Bernard could be heard from the gloom of the room saying everything OK? everything OK? like a daft old parrot trying to keep up with the action.

      ‘It’s fine,’ Rachel called back at him. ‘We’re good.’

      ‘My hair,’ Oriana wailed. ‘Look at it! I look hideous. Do you have a good hairdresser? Are they open Sundays?’

      ‘You look fine,’ said Rachel, agitated. ‘You’re a bit thin – but you’re tired. Go to sleep and yes, I have a hairdresser,’ and she touched her own hair as if to double-check. ‘And no, they’re not open Sundays.’

      ‘They are in the lead-up to Christmas, love,’ came Bernard’s voice.

      ‘It’s fucking April!’ Rachel seethed over her shoulder, before clapping her hand over her mouth, wondering how long it had been – truly, how many years – since she’d sworn like that. ‘Look what you made me do!’ she hissed at Oriana. ‘Just go to sleep, for God’s sake.’ Reproach and dislike creased her face.

      Rachel had never spoken to Bernard like that, never. She held his hand tightly as she lay awake, frowning into the dark. Her daughter should not have come back and, just then, she really resented her. Oriana was rested, fed, had a roof over her head, their home and car at her disposal and yet she looked worse now than when she arrived. Where was the gratitude in that? Into the conspiratorial darkness, Rachel let her thoughts find support. She liked her daughter less when she was troubled. In fact, she liked her less when she was in direct contact. If their relationship was to survive – or even go back to how it had been – she really did need her out of the house. Emails and occasional СКАЧАТЬ