The Couple at No. 9(92)
‘I still love her. I can’t …’ I gulp, tears springing to my eyes ‘… I can’t just stop loving her. I can’t forget everything we’ve been through together – everything she’s done for me, you know? But then I think she could have killed my actual grandmother …’
‘I understand.’ He comes over to me and wraps his arms around my waist. ‘I can’t believe – whoever she is – that she’s a killer, though. There could be some other explanation if the body does belong to the real Rose.’
‘She killed when she was ten years old. All the things I thought I knew about Gran were wrong.’
Tom falls silent as we digest this. ‘We’ve read all the reports from the time,’ he says, after a while. ‘She had an awful upbringing … she was abused herself. And she was rehabilitated.’
We’ve had this conversation many times since we found out about Daphne, of course. And we always end up in the same place. Because there is no getting away from the fact that Rose, Jean, Daphne, whatever her name really is, was the best grandmother in the world. People can change, reverse their circumstances, adapt to a new way of life. ‘I think all of this has fucked Mum up,’ I say. I shiver, feeling cold to the bone, and Tom holds me tighter. ‘I think she’s repressed memories from that time. She was nearly three. It’s not like she was a baby when it happened. I think it explains why she’s always running away. Like now. Once again things get tough and she scarpers back to Spain. We moved around a lot when I was a kid. I was born in Bristol, then we moved to Kent and then out to Brighton, back to Kent and then she moved all over Europe. I don’t think she even knows what she’s running from.’
‘Saff,’ he says gently. ‘She couldn’t stay here for ever. She has a life in Spain. An apartment. A job. She had to go back some time.’
I sigh. ‘I wish Mum had seen Gran to say goodbye before she left. Gran isn’t well. I’m worried she’ll die and Mum will never have the chance to apologize, to …’
‘Babe,’ says Tom, pulling away, ‘you can’t expect Lorna to forgive your gran just because you do.’
‘I know …’
‘She’s been lied to all her life by the person she trusted most in the world.’
I hang my head. He’s right. I can’t blame my mum for being so angry with Gran. But I also know she’ll regret it if she doesn’t have a chance to put things right before it’s too late. Even if it’s only to hear Gran’s side of things.
‘Mum and Theo have a lot in common, don’t they? Both with parents who lied to them?’
‘But that’s the thing,’ says Tom, pushing back a curl from my forehead. ‘Your gran isn’t Lorna’s mother. Shit, I can’t imagine how that would mess with your head.’
‘I suppose. It is messed up. It’s just … I can’t be angry with a frail old woman, Tom, I just can’t.’
Tom moves away from me to make the tea and I stand and watch him. My emotions are so conflicted. I can understand why Mum is so upset, but every time I think of Gran lying in her care-home bed, her eyes wide and frightened, I think of the woman who looked after me every summer, the woman who didn’t expect me to be someone I wasn’t, who allowed me to be awkward, shy, gauche me. Gran loved me like I was her own grandchild, I have no doubt about that. She was always so kind, so gentle. Nurturing. To me, to her plants and her animals. No … there’s no way she murdered the real Rose. I refuse to believe it. All she’s ever done is protect me and Mum.
‘It saddens me that she couldn’t be honest, though,’ I say, taking the mug of tea from Tom and wrapping my hands around its warmth. ‘From the book of poems we found, she obviously loved Rose. Maybe she never got over her.’
‘It’s actually really sad,’ says Tom, thoughtfully, sipping his drink. ‘She pined for her all these years.’
My heart contracts. ‘To think they stood here, Tom. Right here in this kitchen.’ I walk over to the window and place my hand on the leaded glass as though doing so connects me to them, to the past, as though my hand is touching the invisible prints they left behind. ‘Do you think she killed Neil Lewisham?’
‘I think maybe one of them did. And the other protected her.’
‘God.’ I breathe in deeply, the glass cold beneath my fingers, watching as the raindrops cascade down the window. Outside the deluge has caused the sky to mist, obscuring the woods in the distance, but through the glass I imagine them out there, two ethereal creatures in the garden, Daphne and Rose, burying their secrets.
Later, after we’ve eaten our fish and chips, which we had to drive to the next village to collect, and I’ve spoken to Mum, who assures me she’s arrived in San Sebastián safely, I escape upstairs for a bath. Ripping out the old bathroom was one of the first things we did when we found out the house was ours, then put in a claw-foot bath and walk-in shower. I touch my stomach. The baby kicks regularly now, little bubbles beneath my belly. I’m halfway through my pregnancy. We have another scan booked for next week. Sometimes I can’t believe we’ve got this far. I can hear the murmur of the TV downstairs. Tom is watching some football match. I get out of the bath and wrap myself in my towelling robe. And then I go into Mum’s room. She’s left it neat, stripped the bed and bundled the sheets into the washing-machine before she left this morning. There is nothing to say she was ever here apart from a faint whiff of her musky perfume. I don’t know if it’s my hormones but I ache for her in a way I’ve never done before, not even as a child left with my grandmother during those long summers.