Reluctantly Home(17)

10


‘Oh, my sweet girl,’ sighed Pip’s mother, immediately coming to join Pip on the sofa. She settled down next to her, sliding her ample frame in so the sides of their bodies were touching. Pip hadn’t been so close to anyone other than Dominic since the accident, and it felt odd to feel the sudden heat of her mother’s body seeping into her own. Surprisingly, though, she didn’t pull away, her long-forgotten instinct to gather warmth from her mum in moments of distress taking over.

She couldn’t seem to work out how she was feeling. It ought to have been a shock, but if she was honest, really truly honest with herself, she’d known it was coming. The clues had all been there: their stilted phone conversations, the diminishing number of visits to the farm and the gap that she had felt opening up between her and his life in London. They all pointed in the same direction.

At the start, she had assumed she could rely on Dominic to see her through this nightmare; that he would stick by her until she got herself back on her feet, even though the situation was difficult.

But maybe he just didn’t have it in him. He couldn’t give her what she needed, or perhaps he just didn’t want to. That was possibly closer to the truth. If she were to believe what he had just told her, then he’d wanted to finish things for some time before the accident, and had merely been biding his time until a decent period had elapsed so it didn’t look as if he had deserted her when she was at her lowest. Pip wasn’t sure she did believe that. They had been strong back then, with no cracks in their relationship at all. He must simply have convinced himself that things were rocky before in order to justify leaving her now.

That was what hurt the most. Whilst she had been clinging on to the plans she’d made for their future together once she was back home, he had been working out how he might get rid of her for good. Who had he talked to? How many of their friends knew he was planning to leave? Perhaps they even felt sorry for him – poor Dominic, standing by Rose because she’s too broken to abandon. She could hear them now, twittering at the dinner parties she had missed, the drinks dos that Dominic had attended without her whilst she’d been stuck in Suffolk.

‘He’s trapped, you know. Apparently, the whole relationship had run its course before she killed that boy, but then she had the breakdown and there was nothing Dom could do but sit it out and wait for her to get better so that he could ditch her.’

‘But it’s been months.’

‘Indeed. As I say, poor Dom.’

Maybe that was it? Had he only stayed until he was sure she was stable enough not to harm herself? Pip couldn’t believe he’d think like that. At no point since the accident had she been suicidal. But did Dominic know that? She wasn’t sure he knew her at all.

‘Pip, sweetie, are you all right?’ her mother said, interrupting her thoughts. She laid a hand gently on top of Pip’s and the touch of her skin brought Pip back to herself. They were still sitting side by side, jammed together with nowhere to move. Suddenly it felt too close. Pip needed to get out, to create a space round herself, to bring down her own personal forcefield to protect herself. She shuffled forward on the sofa until she could stand up and escape.

‘I’m okay,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go upstairs. I just need to . . .’

Without elucidating further, she slipped from the room. She felt as insubstantial as a waft of smoke, as if she were so fragile it would just take one sneeze and Philippa Rose Appleby would be gone.

‘Shout if you need anything,’ she heard her mother call after her.

Pip took the wooden steps to the first floor two at a time, barging into her room and banging the door shut behind her just as she had done many times before; so many stairs flounced up, so many doors banged. Sometimes it felt as if the last ten years of her life, what she had become, what she had achieved, had all just melted away. No one here really understood her life as a barrister. Her father was as much in the dark about what she did as her mother. She had once heard him telling someone that she defended murderers for a living, his chest puffed up as he spoke and his eyes casting round the room, making sure everyone was listening to him. She had lost count of the number of times she had tried to explain that there were different kinds of barristers and that neither she nor any of her colleagues were involved with criminal law. To start with, she had been frustrated that her father took so little notice of her other life, her real life, that he couldn’t explain it properly to others, but when she had seen the look of pride on his face as he recounted the particulars to the enquirer she had had to reconsider. Did it really matter that the details were muddled as long as the main points were correct? Her father was proud of her life in London, even though he didn’t understand it. Wasn’t that enough?

What was there left for him to be proud of now? Who was she any more? No sharp suits, no strutting in and out of the Inns of Court, aware of ordinary people watching her and wondering how important she was, no status-enhancing boyfriend with all the trappings he had brought with him.

A life for a life.

Now all the trappings were gone, she wasn’t sure what was left. She had always defined herself by what she did rather than by who she was, by what she wore on the outside instead of what was happening on the inside. Status had shaped each part of her, moulding her into what she had become. So where did that leave her now it was all gone? Drifting with neither rudder to steer her nor anchor to hold her safe. It was terrifying.