Later that day – Audrey could never remember when exactly – she had gone downstairs to the kitchen with the policeman and policewoman and they had asked her questions she had discovered only later constituted her statement. She had given them only the bare facts – the usual timings of departures and arrivals, place of work, age and health – but she had not dared tell them everything. It was too tortuous a tale and the repercussions had been too momentous, not just for her but for the girls too. But as soon as she had informed the police of what had happened in June – the parts she could divulge without any further incrimination – she had sensed them concluding that they had found their motive, had watched them close their notebooks on the case.
When the police had finally finished asking questions, she remembered unfurling her fingers to find deep indentations in her palms where her nails had dug into the flesh. As anonymous figures had bustled in and out of her house, Audrey had been aware of a gnawing dread that this was an experience from which her girls would never recover. She had not known it then but in the following years, as she had watched her family implode, she had suspected there had to be a link between Jess’s trauma at having discovered her father’s body and her decision to cut Lily out of her life. But Audrey had never been able to uncover what that link was or why Lily had borne the brunt of Jess’s rage.
Audrey looked out of the window onto the street below. She could feel Mia watching her, but however way she rewrote the story of Edward’s death, there seemed to be no way to craft it into a meaningful synopsis. ‘It was a very hard time. That summer had already been so difficult and then losing Edward … I think it probably hit your mum worst of all.’
Audrey thought about how Jess had changed that summer: from an affectionate, carefree ten-year-old at the beginning to a watchful, angry eleven-year-old by the end.
‘But before that, before Grandad … before he died, were you happy?’
Happy. Audrey repeated the word in her head, wondering if there were as many definitions of it as there were people on the planet.
She and Edward had argued so much in the months leading up to his suicide, arguments of such quiet ferocity that they had shifted the foundations on which their marriage had been built. So many times since, Audrey had imagined a parallel life, one in which she had chosen never to tell the truth. Because through whichever prism she viewed it, she could not escape the possibility that had she never told anyone what had happened, Edward might still be alive now.
‘Yes, we had been happy. For a long time we were very happy. But sometimes life has a habit of throwing things at you that are too big even for the strongest relationship to withstand. What makes you ask?’
‘I’ve just always wondered whether you were angry with Grandad about not going to university. I’ve never understood why you didn’t go later, after you’d got married and had children. You got straight As in your A-levels and you’re easily one of the cleverest people I know. From what you’ve always said it sounded like you really wanted to go, so I wondered what stopped you, whether it was Grandad.’
Audrey thought about how to answer honestly without betraying the life she had lived and the choices she had made. ‘No, it wasn’t Grandad. If anything, it was my own cowardice. I couldn’t imagine how people might have reacted if I’d said I wanted to go to university in my mid-twenties.’ Audrey’s mouth felt dry and she sipped the cup of tea cooling between the palms of her hands. ‘Sometimes, in those months between finding out I was pregnant and marrying Edward, I’d imagine myself sitting down and typing a letter to the university, asking if I could defer for a year. I had it all worked out: I’d get someone to look after the baby while I was at lectures and I’d study in the evenings and at weekends when Edward wasn’t at work. The plan was so clear and simple in my head, yet whenever I thought about actually writing the letter, I felt completely paralysed. When I look back now, all I can think is, What on earth stopped me? Why didn’t I at least try? And however many times I ask myself that question, there’s only ever one answer I can offer in response. Because I was scared. It’s as simple as that.’
Audrey’s voice began to splinter and she drank the last of her tea, noticing the small brown spots decorating the bottom of the mug where it hadn’t been washed properly.
‘What were you scared of?’
‘That I couldn’t do it, I suppose. I was worried that I’d cause all that fuss, make all those arrangements, only to discover I couldn’t cope. It was a failure of courage, nothing more complicated than that. It’s the greatest trick people play on themselves, allowing their fears to destroy their ambitions.’ Audrey looked out of the window, where the sun was fighting its way through the clouds.
‘I’m sorry, Granny. I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
Audrey shook her head. ‘Don’t be sorry. I’m pleased you’re interested. Honestly.’ She reached for a tissue from her handbag, coughed into it, knew without checking what she’d find if she dared look. She crumpled it into a tight ball and tucked it into her pocket.
‘Do you regret it now? Not going to university, I mean. Getting married, having children. Do you wish you’d done things differently?’
Mia’s questions circled inside Audrey’s head.
Regret. It was such a powerful word, a word that implied the desire for an undoing. And that wasn’t how Audrey felt about her marriage, her children, the family to whom she’d devoted the best part of her life. So many times she’d imagined parallel versions of herself: an Audrey who’d written that letter, got a deferred place, started university a year later and completed her degree in spite of the odds stacked against her. An Audrey who might have fulfilled that teenage ambition to sit behind a mahogany desk in a university English department, preparing the next lecture for her enthusiastic students.
But each of those scenarios demanded an impossible unravelling of her life. Because there would be no Jess at home, no Mia sitting opposite her. None of the past forty-four years as she’d known them would exist. And that was unthinkable: the untangling of a life back to a moment of critical decision. Audrey could never know where that other track might have led her, could never know what kind of a journey it might have taken her on. All she could know was the family she’d have needed to give up in order to find out.
‘I don’t regret it, no. It’s not regret so much as melancholy, maybe. A mourning for alternative lives you can never know. Do you remember those choose-your-own-adventure books you used to read when you were little? Life is a bit like one of those, except in real life you can’t go back to the beginning and start again.’
Mia let out a heavy sigh, her eyes still blotchy.
‘What is it, Mia? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Just what you said. It’s got me thinking, that’s all.’
Audrey squeezed Mia’s hand, studied her granddaughter’s smooth, elastic flesh in contrast to the delta of veins rising up beneath her own skin. ‘Mia, if you can get to the end of your life without having accumulated too many regrets – your regrets, no one else’s – I think you’ll be happy with the life you’ve led. It’s easier said than done, I know. Just try not to get to my age burdened by too many if onlys.’
Mia smiled but it was as if something was trapped behind her eyes that Audrey couldn’t reach. ‘Look, Granny, everyone else is heading back to class. We ought to go too.’
‘Are you still free afterwards, for our trip to the Tate? We can have lunch there before my choir rehearsal this afternoon.’
Mia nodded. As Audrey slid back her chair and pushed herself to her feet, there it was again: the sharp stabbing sensation in her shoulder. She ground her back teeth against the pain, breathing slowly and counting the seconds until she hoped it would subside.
As they headed out of the canteen and back up to the art room, the pain in her shoulder still needling inside the joint, Audrey thought about what she’d planned for their trip to the Tate and couldn’t be sure whether the violent knocking against her ribs was a feeling of fear or hope.
Chapter 21
Audrey
Walking into the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, Audrey scanned the length of the vast, cavernous space.
‘Right, Granny, where shall we start? How about the Rothko room? We always love it in there. Or do you want an early lunch first?’
Audrey’s eyes continued to sweep the hall.