Money wasn’t the issue, they both knew that. It was the duplicity. Audrey didn’t allow herself to imagine Jess’s fury if she ever found out they’d gone behind her back. But as far as Audrey was concerned, attending weekly art classes was hardly the pinnacle of teenage rebellion or the stuff of parental nightmares.
It had been Audrey’s idea to accompany Mia. It wasn’t that she had a burning desire to test her own artistic abilities. It was simply the fact of having Mia to herself for one whole morning a week when her granddaughter wasn’t squirrelled away in her bedroom studying. Although now she was here, Audrey was finding the class calming in ways she hadn’t expected. There was something meditative in the gentle scratch of pencil against paper, in shapes emerging where once there had been nothing, in the collective sound made by eight students each at their own easel.
Leaning to one side to pick up a different pencil, Audrey felt a grinding pain slice through her right shoulder, causing her to inhale sharply.
‘What’s wrong, Granny? Do you need me to get you something?’
Audrey shook her head, moulding her grimace into a smile. ‘No thanks, darling. It’s just a little twinge, that’s all. It’s better now, honestly.’
The pain continued to jab at her shoulder, like a clamorous child demanding attention. She knew it was referred pain from the tumour in her liver, had been tolerating it for weeks, but still its intensity took her by surprise.
‘OK, everyone. Shall we have a fifteen-minute break? Back here at quarter past?’
Pencils clattered against trays. Mia looped her arm through Audrey’s and together they walked down the single flight of stairs to the canteen. In three weeks it had already become a habit: Audrey taking a seat at a corner table by the window, Mia joining her a couple of minutes later balancing a cup of tea, a hot chocolate, and a heavily iced cupcake on a tray.
As Mia sat down opposite, Audrey noticed the dark rings beneath her granddaughter’s eyes.
‘Are you getting enough sleep, Mia? You look exhausted. Are you sure this class isn’t too much for you?’
Mia shook her head. ‘Definitely not. It’s the highlight of my week. I’m not even exaggerating.’ She tried to offer Audrey a reassuring smile but it got lost somewhere between her lips and her eyes.
‘I just don’t want it to add to your stress when I know how much pressure you’re under. Only a week until your first AS exam. Just think, in a month it will all be over.’ Audrey picked up her tea but before she’d managed the first sip, tears had begun to well up in Mia’s eyes. ‘What is it, Mia? What’s wrong?’
‘I’m going to mess them up, I know I am. And then Mum’ll be furious and I can’t cope with her disappointment.’
Audrey took Mia’s hand, rubbing the back of it gently. ‘You’re going to be fine. You work so hard and you’re so bright. I know you’re under a huge amount of pressure, but it’ll be over soon.’
Mia sniffed, the skin marbling around her eyes. ‘It won’t. These are only my AS exams. There’s a whole year before my A-levels. And I’m not going to be fine, Granny. There’s no way I’m going to get an A-star in history.’
‘That doesn’t matter, Mia. Nobody can get top marks in everything.’
‘It does matter. It matters to Mum. You know it does.’
Audrey wiped her granddaughter’s tears with the pad of her thumb. ‘Mum will be proud of you whatever you get.’
‘No she won’t. You know that’s not true. If I don’t get four A-stars next year she’s going to think I’ve failed. She’s only ever happy when I get top marks. You’ve seen her, you know what she’s like.’
Audrey wanted to say that Mia was exaggerating but she’d witnessed too many fraught exchanges between her daughter and granddaughter to contradict her. ‘Mum only wants the best for you. She’s going to love you whatever grades you get. Would you like me to talk to her, tell her how you’re feeling?’
Mia rooted around in the pocket of her jeans, found a tissue, blew her nose and shook her head. ‘Definitely not. It would just annoy her, knowing I’d been moaning to you about it. I just have to get on with it.’
Neither of them said anything for a moment as Mia wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Granny, can I ask you something?’
‘Of course you can. Anything.’
‘What happened when Grandad died? And why won’t Mum talk about it? I mean, I know she really loved him and I know it must have been horrible for her but … I don’t know … She seems really angry about it too. I’ve stopped asking her because she never answers me.’
Mia’s questions hummed in Audrey’s head, peeling back the layers of memory until she was back there, running past the police car and into her house to discover the cause of Helen Sheppard’s hysterical phone call.
When the young policeman had told her what had happened, Audrey had thought there must have been some mistake. It could not have been Edward who had done this. Edward was strong and sensible, the one upon whom they all depended to be the voice of reason.
But as the policeman had stated the facts again, slower this time, Audrey had known deep in the pit of her stomach that it was true. She had not needed the policewoman to tell her that he had left no note because she had already known why Edward had chosen to take his own life. She had been the only person who knew, and the knowledge had felt like a shroud of loneliness wrapping itself around her.
She remembered holding on to Jess, remembered how quiet the house had been, how still. How there had been no sound bar a duet of sorrow and heartbreak, and how it had taken a little while for her to realise that one of the voices chanting the lament was her own.
She had stood in the sitting room, police officers bustling around her, and thought about the last time she had seen Edward as she had walked out of their bedroom that morning, him still cocooned under the duvet. She had asked whether he should start getting ready for work, the pretence at normality straining her voice. He had kept his back to her, told her he was taking the day off, his voice the distant monotone that in recent weeks had become his only alternative to rage. That cold, distant behaviour was so unlike the man she had married, so unlike the man he had been just three months before. She had promised to keep the girls quiet, told him that a day off would probably do him good, trying to find in her voice something to dissolve the animosity that had wedged itself between them.
Holding on to Jess, not yet able to comprehend that she would never see Edward again, Audrey had wondered why she hadn’t been more vigilant. Why she hadn’t thought it odd that Edward – whose sick days in seventeen years she could count on one hand – should suddenly grant himself a day off. Her cheeks had burned with self-reproach that, after everything they had been through, she had not been more alert to changes in his routine, however slight. As the clock in the hall had chimed, Audrey had known that she was to blame. Edward might have tied the noose around his neck, but she had handed him the rope.
Audrey had not known it at the time, but her guilt was to be a storm that would rage for years to come, that would rise and fall with her moods, with the seasons, with the notable dates in the calendar that whipped it back into a frenzy.