I locked the front door behind me, strapped my rucksack to my back and made my way up the long, steep road to the railway station. I paused halfway for a final sentimental glance at the building responsible for helping to rebuild me. A red glow had already illuminated a couple of rooms, and it wouldn’t be long before more followed.
Like I had with my family, I’d created something almost perfect. But perfection fades. Catherine’s had, and the H?tel Près de la C?te would follow suit. Nobody would feel the love for it I’d felt. No one would hear its cry for help like I did, or restore it like it deserved. I would not let others ruin it like they had done before. I would be the one to choose how it got the finale it deserved.
Fifteen minutes later, I perched on the pavement outside a lifeless station and drew the faint sea air into my lungs one last time. I placed my rucksack behind my head, lay on the pavement and drifted off to the sounds of pops, shouts and small explosions.
Northampton, today
12.30 p.m.
‘I don’t understand,’ she began, utterly confused. ‘You put your heart and soul into renovating that building, and then you set fire to it?’
He nodded slowly and tapped his foot on the floor.
‘So is that what you do?’ she continued. ‘You work hard to create something amazing and then destroy it because of something you think I did to you twenty-five years ago?’
This time his head remained still, but she persisted.
‘Is that what the problem was with us? We were the perfect family you’d always wanted, but once you got it, you realised you didn’t need us after all?’
‘No,’ he replied with certainty. They were far from perfect, she had seen to that. But he’d save that part for later.
Her initial anger was giving way to frustration. He appeared quite determined to regale her with select stories from his past, but because there were so many gaps open to interpretation, she naturally wanted to know more. Then he’d clam up as tight as an oyster shell or change the subject. She hated herself for letting him draw her in. Nevertheless, she wasn’t prepared to end her line of questioning just because of his reluctance.
‘But you’d made friends there – while I was working like a slave and selling off everything we owned, you didn’t have a bloody care in the world!’
‘Nothing that satisfying ever lasts, Catherine,’ he replied. He was smiling, but she could see it was underpinned by sadness. ‘Not the hotel, not the people, not my life here or my life there. So it’s far better to leave on your own terms than on someone else’s.’
‘Then you were depressed? I understand depression – you knew what I went through before you went. But you could have talked to me about it, let me be there for you like you were there for me. You didn’t have to run away.’
‘I didn’t say I was depressed, Catherine. You’re making assumptions.’
She was exasperated. ‘Then, once again, I don’t understand! Why did you leave? All these bloody riddles and you still haven’t told me the one thing I want to know. What did I do that was so bad it made you run away?’
Like the slow burning of a cigarette, he kept her waiting. She didn’t know what game he was playing, but he was better practised than a politician when it came to avoiding the answers that mattered.
As much as she hated being controlled by a puppetmaster, she got the feeling she’d have to play along a lot longer before she could cut the strings herself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CATHERINE
Northampton, twenty-four years earlier
4 January
I couldn’t have felt more out of place had I been dressed in a clown suit and wearing deely boppers.
The bell above the door tinkled when I walked through the doors of Fabien’s boutique. It was like stepping into the pages of Vogue magazine – orange, rust and gold wallpaper covered the walls, and mahogany rails of clothing were placed near display tables draped with select pieces. A crystal chandelier hung from the centre of the ceiling. The whole shop was like Joan Collins’s walk-in wardrobe.
I checked the designer labels on hangers but there wasn’t a price tag in sight. A little matter of cost didn’t concern the kind of women lucky enough to afford to shop there. Like my mum’s dresses, the clothes in Fabien’s were always supposed to hang in someone else’s closet, not mine.
‘Stunning, aren’t they?’ a smoky voice crackled behind me. I turned around, startled, and yanked back my hand like I’d been caught shoplifting.
Selena had asked if I could visit her mother after the Christmas holidays. I’d presumed she’d wanted some alterations doing, but when she revealed her mother owned Fabien’s, you could have knocked me down with a feather. It was one of only a handful of independent clothes shops in town selling high-end fashion imported from places like Italy and France. I’d never had the guts to go inside: my experience of Fabien’s was limited to lingering glances as I walked past the window to C&A.
‘I’m Selena’s mother, Margaret. You must be Catherine,’ she began, extending a manicured hand towards mine. Her long, ruby-red fingernails drew my eye to clusters of diamonds in her gold rings.
‘Yes, nice to meet you,’ I replied, ashamed of my own hands which resembled pincushions.
Margaret was every inch the boutique she owned, and precisely the reason I’d never set foot in it. Hovering somewhere around her mid-fifties, she was the epitome of old-school glamour – part Joan Crawford, part Rita Hayworth. Her chestnut-brown hair was tied into a neat bun. Lines running vertically down her cheeks and above her lips gave away her fondness for the sun and a cigarette. I wondered why she had a daughter who could barely make ends meet.
‘Nothing like Selena, am I?’ she asked. ‘I’ve tried to help her, financially I mean, but she’s inherited my stubbornness and refuses to take a penny. I’m proud of her nonetheless. Anyway, please continue looking around.’
I felt even more self-conscious as Margaret’s eyes bored into me to get the measure of who I was by the clothes I was drawn to. Eventually, she spoke again.
‘I’ll get to the point, darling. I want you to work for me.’
‘Um, I don’t know if I’d fit in here,’ I stuttered.
‘No, no,’ she laughed. ‘I don’t need you in the shop; assistants are ten a penny. I want you to make a range of clothes for me.’
I must have looked baffled. It was too early for an April Fool.
Margaret explained how she’d seen the clothes I’d made for Selena and her friends. And while the modern fashions teenage girls desired weren’t to her taste, she’d been impressed by my attention to detail and the quality of my work.