Come Away With Me. Sara MacDonald

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       FIVE

      It was February and the neglected garden was full snowdrops and purple and yellow crocuses. Winter jasmine blossomed in a wave against the fence. Before I left to catch the train I went downstairs and gathered little bunches of snowdrops and dotted them about the rooms as if to leave a shadow of myself in the house. They looked like delicate ballet dancers bunched in white clumps against the stained-glass window on the landing, but they would all be faded and brown by the time I got back.

      I was putting off the moment of leaving the house. I did not want to shut the front door behind me and find myself on the outside in the crisp cold air. I felt an irrational dread that something might happen to those left in the house or the high-ceilinged rooms would vaporise behind me.

      I sat in Tom’s leather armchair and let the sound of the girls’ voices and laughter on the cutting-room floor above me filter down. I listened to Flo’s deep, soft voice on the telephone. I thought guiltily of how much Danielle had taken on these past few weeks and how it should be a small thing for me to make good the appointments she had set-up for me in Birmingham.

      I heard the taxi outside and I got out of the chair and went downstairs. I gathered my bags from the hall and called up to Flo that I was leaving. She came down the attic stairs and stood on the first-floor landing looking down at me. I swallowed the urge to drop my bags and rush back up the stairs and admit that I had changed my mind and Birmingham was the last place on earth I wanted to go on my own.

      Something must have shown in my face because Flo started to come down the last flight of stairs to me. ‘It’s not too late, lovey. Why don’t you give Birmingham a miss? Wait until Danielle gets back. A week is not going to make a great deal of difference. I can reschedule your appointments. Danielle will understand.’

      I shook my head and lied, ‘I’m OK, honestly. I must go today, Flo. Danielle has set up these meetings and I don’t want to let her down, it wouldn’t be fair.’

      Flo sighed and kissed my cheek. ‘All right, Jen. I’ll ring you tonight.’

      I walked down the steps and into the waiting taxi. I waved and Flo watched me out of sight.

      The traffic was horrendous and I had left myself short of time. As I hurried along the platform for the Birmingham train a figure ahead of me reminded me of someone. It was the small movement of her head as she walked, the straight back. I had a bewildering lurch of déjà vu; a sliver of memory just beyond reach.

      I climbed into an almost empty first class carriage and found a seat. The silence was wonderful. I could do some paperwork.

      All of a sudden it came to me who the woman walking ahead of me had reminded me of from behind: Ruth Freidman, my best friend at school. We had been inseparable as children. She had practically lived at our house in St Ives. She was one of those girls who was good at everything. She needed to be because she had older parents who were cold and critical of everything she did, and very strict. She was never allowed to take friends home and there had been a myriad rules she must not break. It had made her different, made her stand out from the rest of us.

      Bea had instinctively scooped her up into our large noisy family, and away from home, when she was with us, Ruth seemed to blossom. She had been fun and clever. I had loved her very much, but I knew, even as a child, that once she left home she would never return. She was loyal. She never really spoke about her awful parents; she just seemed to accept how they were.

      The train gathered speed into the suburbs. I had not thought of Ruth for years and it was strange that a glimpse of a woman’s head could trigger memories that flooded back, sweet and painful. I remembered her saying, ‘I’m never going to get married, Jen. Do you know that my parents have lived in Cornwall all their lives and they’ve never been anywhere? They have no curiosity about anything or anyone. It’s incredible. I’m going to fly, free as a bird…’

      I wondered if she did fly free. Inexplicably, a few months later, as we were both about to sit our A levels, her father, a bank manager, accepted a posting to Toronto and the family packed up in extraordinary haste and in weeks they were gone. Vanished. Leaving us all with open mouths.

      It had made no sense to pull Ruth out of school just before important exams. It was weird, especially as her parents were always so pushy and expectant about Ruth’s academic progress. Bea, anxious that something was wrong, had gone round to see Ruth’s parents. She offered to have Ruth to live with us until after her A levels, but her parents had been coldly determined that Ruth was to go with them and take her exams later at the International School in Toronto.

      The strangest thing of all was Ruth’s odd, robot-like compliance. She put up no fight to stay at all. When I begged and pleaded with her to remain with us, she eventually became angry. It was the only time she turned on me and told me to mind my own bloody business.

      What stung me cruelly was that she left her life and me firmly behind her without as much as a backward glance. She never wrote to me once. We had been inseparable and yet I could be instantly discarded for her new life. Ruth had made a mistake with the box number and all my letters were returned. It took years for the hurt and sense of loss to leave me.

      I looked out of the window at the battered little gardens of terraced houses. What did Ruth do with her life? What had happened to her? She had always been a little mysterious and prone to mood swings. It was not surprising with the parents she had, but I wondered, when she left without a backward glance, if I had really known her at all.

      I stared at my shadowy reflection in the window. Odd how memory could be jogged by such a frail thing as a woman’s back.

      Someone hovered near my seat, and then threw their coat on to the rack above me. I hastily fanned out my newspaper. There were plenty of seats elsewhere. I looked up, annoyed, into the smiling face of an elegant blonde woman.

      ‘Jenny Brown! I thought it must be you. No one else could wear outrageous clothes as you do and look absolutely stunning, and your hair is exactly the same. It had to be you!’

      I stared up at her, startled. Ruth Freidman stood before me. I don’t think I would have recognised her immediately, but her voice and laugh had not changed.

      ‘Ruth! Oh my God. I followed the back of your head walking to the train. I just thought it was someone who reminded me of you from the back.’

      I was prattling and our eyes met and we both laughed as she СКАЧАТЬ