‘We only saw them twice after Georgina’s death,’ says Gerard. ‘Once when they told us the terrible news and the second time when Lewis said we would never see them again and that we mustn’t try to contact them.’
‘But why would Flora want that?’ I blurt out. ‘You say she’d changed – anyone would change after a tragedy like that, but to push away your own parents …’
‘Please.’ Gerard raises a hand. He’s telling me, as politely as he can, to shut up. ‘All the questions you’re likely to ask are ones we asked ourselves, again and again. We didn’t understand. Of course we didn’t. After such a tragedy, to be bereaved again so unnecessarily – and if you think it’s too dramatic to call being cut off by your daughter and remaining grandchildren a bereavement, I can assure you, that’s exactly how it felt and how it still feels.’
‘I can imagine,’ I say shakily.
But it can’t have been Flora’s fault. None of it can. She’d never have cut you off if she’d had a choice.
How the hell am I going to manage the long drive home after this?
Gerard says, ‘Since I’m no longer in touch with Flora, I obviously can’t ask her why she made the decision that she made. I have my suspicions, if you’d like to hear them?’
‘Only if you don’t mind telling us,’ says Zannah.
Thank you, Zan. Thanks for speaking when I can’t. If Zannah or Ben ever cut off contact with me, I’d throw myself off a bridge there and then. I wouldn’t try to be brave for anyone else’s sake. I couldn’t live in a world where my daughter didn’t want to know me.
Gerard says, ‘I think … well, I know, from my own experience, that most people will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid unbearable pain. It’s what we’ve done since losing Flora and the children. It’s the reason your visit, and your mention of Flora’s name, caused us such, uh, consternation, shall we say? Flora and Lewis knew that every time they saw us, every interaction they had with us in the future, they would have to confront our loss, the grief that we felt at losing Georgina. I don’t think they could face that prospect. I must say, it doesn’t surprise me to hear that they’ve moved to America. It fits with my suspicion: they want to surround themselves with people who have no memories of Georgina. It will make life easier for them. Perhaps it’s the only way they can face living at all.’
People who have no memories of Georgina … Not me, then. I remember Georgina very clearly, from her one visit to my house. Even if I’d never met her in person, there was no chance I would ever forget her.
Thoughts and memories crash-land in my mind, one after another: Flora on the phone, ending the call as soon as she could, promising to ring back and then not ringing back. Flora running away from me in a Huntingdon car park, Lewis on the phone from Delray Beach, Florida – happy to chat at length, confident he could sustain his lies for as long as I could keep him talking.
Flora wasn’t confident or happy to talk, though she did her best to pretend to be. She could only stretch out her lies for a finite amount of time. And then she couldn’t risk ringing back. When she saw me in the car park in Huntingdon, she didn’t brazen it out, as Lewis would no doubt have done. She turned and ran.
She was scared. Of me. Shit, how can this not have struck me before? She was on her way back to her car, presumably strolling along in a reasonably normal frame of mind, and then she saw me and she freaked out. Ran away. I was the thing that caused that rush of fear – because she knew I’d ask after Georgina and she didn’t want to have to talk about her death? But …
No. That can’t be it. You might try and avoid an old friend in those circumstances, but the fear I saw in Flora’s eyes, the way she turned and ran … that wasn’t just reluctance to talk about a past tragedy. It was more and bigger than that. And then, to send that other woman back to the car park wearing her clothes …
‘I’m worried Flora’s in danger,’ I say before I can stop myself. ‘I’m not sure I can explain it very well, but … Flora and Lewis both lied to me. The people living in their old house lied. There are no pictures of Flora on Lewis’s Instagram page – only of him, Thomas and Emily. I know none of this proves she’s in danger, but I think something is really wrong.’
‘Beth, please try to understand,’ says Gerard. ‘We can’t help you. We don’t know the answers to any questions you might ask. You know more than we do, and I’m afraid that conversations like this one won’t do me or my wife any good at all. It’s going to take us weeks, possibly months, to recover from your visit. Nothing you’ve said suggests danger to me so much as … well, hard though this might be for you to hear, I think it sounds as if Flora and Lewis don’t want you in their life any more – much the same way they felt about us.’
‘But they told you quite directly, didn’t they? That’s not what they’re doing with me.’
‘Mum, we should go,’ Zannah says quietly.
‘I’m sorry. Sorry to be so … relentless. Can I ask you one more question before I leave?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ says Gerard, at the same time that Rosemary says, ‘Yes.’
‘Did you like Lewis? Were you happy to have him as a son-in-law? Did you ever worry that he might …’ I can’t bring myself to say it.
‘Harm Flora?’ says Rosemary. ‘No. Never. He adored Flora and the children. Treated them as if they were made of gold. I didn’t like him, though.’
Gerard makes a spluttering noise. He puts down his cup of tea and wipes his mouth. ‘Rosemary, of course you liked Lewis. We both did.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You did,’ he insists, looking perplexed.
‘I pretended to. I’ve always pretended to, even after they told us they didn’t want us in their lives any more. It was probably silly of me, Ged. You and I should have discussed it before now. I shouldn’t have told you in front of people we hardly know.’
‘Never mind,’ he says. He looks as if he does, though.
‘Why didn’t you like him?’ I ask Rosemary.
‘It’s hard to describe, especially at a distance of so many years. But whenever he came here, I felt as if I was a guest in his house and not the other way round. Not even a guest, actually. More of a servant. He always had an air of being in charge, even in places where he shouldn’t have been. Even in my kitchen.’
‘He was always perfectly genial, as far as I recall,’ Gerard defends the man who told him he’d never see his daughter or grandchildren again. ‘Life and soul of every gathering.’
‘But we couldn’t be ourselves around him, Ged. Not at all.’
‘I could.’
‘Well, I couldn’t,’ says Rosemary in a shaky voice. ‘I always felt I needed to please and impress him, and that, if I didn’t, my relationship with Flora would suffer. I worked out, very early on, what kind of mother-in-law he would most want, and then I pretended to be that person.’
‘When I spoke to Lewis on the phone, I asked after Georgina,’ I tell her. ‘I said, “How old is she now?” Obviously, I had no idea she’d passed away. I said it in a “Wow, she must be nearly a teenager” kind of way.’