Her One Mistake(88)

“If this is what’s eating you up, you should tell them how you feel,” Aud says. “You can’t expect them to understand if you don’t.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Charlotte sighs. What would be the point anyway? She couldn’t tell them everything. She couldn’t tell anyone that.

“Is that what this is really about?” Audrey asks. “There’s nothing else on your mind?”

Charlotte leans her head against the back of the sofa. She’s often come close to telling Audrey the whole truth, but she’s always stopped herself. She wonders how Aud would react if she knew Harriet had set her up and that Charlotte had perjured herself to save her.

Maybe talking to Audrey would help lift the black cloud, because recently it’s been drawing so close she expects to one day wake up and find it’s smothered her completely. It’s not easy pretending life has returned to normal.

Yet there are no gray shades with Aud. She’d undoubtedly tell her to go to the police and tell them the truth. Harriet would be arrested and tried, Alice would be taken from her, and what would those same people say then? What kind of friend would that make Charlotte?

No. She made her decision a year ago and needs to learn to live with it.

“I’m thinking of going to see Harriet,” Charlotte says.

“Good. I never understood why you lost touch, especially when she was so eager to see you.”

“Well, she moved away—”

“Oh, don’t give me that again,” Aud says. “You pulled away from her before she moved back to Kent. You haven’t even seen the new baby. Is that why you’re going now?”

“That’s part of it,” Charlotte says. She doesn’t add that the bigger part is to get things off her chest. To ask Harriet about something that’s been bothering her since that night on the beach. “If I go next week, could you watch the children?” she asks.

? ? ?

A WARM PUFF of air explodes into Harriet’s kitchen as she opens the oven door. She leans in and jabs a knife into the cake. It looks done but she hesitates, her head practically inside the oven as she decides whether to take it out or give it another five minutes. In the end she closes the door and glances at the clock, stretching her back and rubbing her stomach. It feels knotted. A feeling that comes and goes, but it’s tighter today, which isn’t surprising since Charlotte is due in one hour.

Harriet picks up the baby monitor and holds it to her ear. She can hear a faint babble, a heartwarming sound. As she places the monitor back on the windowsill, her gaze drifts to the yard where Alice is wandering alongside the small flowerbed with a watering can. The leasing agent told her the yard was a good size for ground-floor flats in the area, especially so close to the school. The moment she saw the place she said she’d take it. After the other fifteen, Harriet knew she’d struck gold and wished the agent had shown her this one first.

Moving back to Kent had been an easy decision. They couldn’t stay where they were, in a house filled with memories where Brian still lingered in every corner. Each morning when Harriet woke, the first thing she imagined was her husband lying in bed beside her. And then the last memory she had of him, in the sea, would flood her thoughts and that equally wasn’t a good way to start the day.

There was nothing left for Harriet in Dorset. Nowhere she could take Alice without crushing reminders of what she’d lost. Once she’d stood in the café of a National Trust house and felt herself sinking to the ground, the world evaporating around her as the memory of her talking to her father in that very same room blinded her. When Alice pulled at her sleeve, Harriet looked around and realized she was crying. A couple was staring at her from their corner table.

In that moment she understood they needed a fresh start, a chance to make new memories rather than reliving raw and painful ones every day. The flat in the tall Victorian semi around the corner from Alice’s new school became the perfect base.

Harriet takes a deep breath as a waft of smoke fills the air. “Oh no,” she mutters, pulling the oven door open. The cakes are burnt around the edges, a dark brown crust that she knows without touching will be crispy and hard. She throws the cake pans to the side and fights back tears.

“Mummy, what’s that smell?” Alice comes into the kitchen, her nose screwed up as she drops the empty watering can on the floor.

“I burnt the cake.”

Alice totters over and peers at the treats. “They’ll still taste nice, Mummy.”

Harriet smiles and ruffles her daughter’s hair. “What are you doing in the garden?”

“Watering Grandpa’s rose,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Good girl.” She pauses. “Have you watered your daddy’s, too?”

Alice nods and Harriet changes the subject, asking if she’d like a drink. She has no idea if she’s doing the right thing when it comes to talking to Alice about Brian. Counselors advise her not to ignore him, to make sure Alice knows she can talk about her father, ask questions whenever she wants. But she often wonders if it does either of them any good.

Harriet hadn’t wanted to get Brian a rosebush. In the garden center, she’d originally only picked out one with the intention of planting it for her dad. It wasn’t until they were at the cash register that the thought hit her that Alice should have one for her own father. “Let’s go and choose one for Daddy, too, shall we?” she’d said, and Alice had followed her back through the store at least three paces behind. Harriet had pointed out pretty bushes until eventually Alice had agreed to one.