The Anniversary, page 1
Hilary Boyd
* * *
THE ANNIVERSARY
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Acknowledgements
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PENGUIN BOOKS
THE ANNIVERSARY
Hilary Boyd was a nurse, marriage counsellor and ran a small cancer charity before becoming an author. She has written eight books, including Thursdays in the Park, her debut novel which sold over half a million copies and was an international bestseller.
For my brother, John.
Gone, but never, ever forgotten.
‘Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.’
Rumi
Prologue
June 1985
It was cold on the beach. A stiff breeze came off the black water, although it was high summer, and the stars were veiled in cloud. The party was over – it was gone one in the morning – but a group of hard-core stragglers stubbornly refused to leave the dunes and the dying bonfire, three couples still swaying to the music drifting softly from the speakers wedged in the sand.
‘They’re playing our song,’ Jack said, his body pressed to the woman in his arms. But it was not just his arms that held her, it was his heart, his whole being that embraced her in the glow of the bonfire, the sand cold and sliding beneath their bare feet.
He heard her laugh softly. ‘We haven’t got a song, Jack.’
‘We have now.’
They danced in silence to Lou Reed’s half-talking drawl, their own day so perfect that the song seemed to have been written especially for them.
Jack drew back, gazing down at Stella. He couldn’t see the colour of her beautiful violet eyes in the darkness, but he thought he could see the love in them as she stared back at him.
‘You’re the most beautiful woman in the world, you know,’ he whispered.
Stella looked embarrassed. ‘My mother told me to be very suspicious of “flummery”, as she called it. Especially from a man.’
Jack grinned. ‘It’s not “flummery”. You are.’
She shook her head self-deprecatingly, but continued to gaze into his eyes.
For a moment, neither spoke.
‘I love you, Stella Beatty. Will you marry me? I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’ He paused. ‘I’d go down on one knee, but I can’t let you loose for a second, in case you run away.’
Jack held his breath. He’d been going out with Stella for less than four months now, and work on both sides had meant they saw each other infrequently. But he would have proposed to her on the very first day they met, side by side on the flight to Dundee; he was that certain Stella was the woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life. They’d been so totally absorbed in each other, he remembered, that neither was properly aware of the plane bucking and lurching like a rodeo bronco as it repeatedly circled the runway, trying to land in the storm, until other passengers, drained white by fear, were talking about it later in the small Scottish arrivals hall.
He understood Stella was feisty, independent and unpredictable. He thought – hoped with all his heart – that she loved him too. But now, as he waited for her to reply, he took nothing for granted.
Jack saw her expression flit through surprise, then wariness – he thought he might explode with anticipation. Then her eyes filled with tears, her face opening up into a dazzling smile.
‘Is that a yes?’ he asked tentatively, as she still didn’t speak.
She nodded. ‘It’s definitely a yes.’ Then she added, ‘I love you too, Jack Holt.’
He whooped with joy, arching back as he hugged her tight, lifting her off the sand. The others on the beach – drunk or stoned, or both – paid no attention whatsoever as he twirled her ecstatically in his arms.
When he put her down, both of them breathless and laughing, he saw Stella was shivering despite the heat still emanating from the bonfire. The T-shirts and shorts they’d worn for what had been a gloriously sunny day were now totally inadequate on the chilly night-time beach.
‘Let’s go home, Jack,’ she said, her voice bubbling with excitement as she grabbed his hand in hers and pulled him towards the path that led through the gap between the colourful beach huts to his car. ‘Let’s go home and make love to each other till the end of time.’
1
Present Day
Stella picked with her fork at the crusty remnants of potato clinging to the side of Iain’s fish pie dish. It was almost June, a warm evening, and they were sitting on the tiny balcony of his third-floor, red-brick Hammersmith flat. It overlooked the Thames if you craned your neck far enough over the balcony railings and squinted right, past the plane tree and the mansion block that actually fronted the riverside.
Iain turned his light-blue eyes on her, his expression concerned. ‘Are you and Eve really going to rub along together for two whole months in the same house? With her pregnant and worried about this problem she has?’ He paused. ‘It could get pretty tense, no?’
Stella was irritated. She was allowed to admit that her relationship with her daughter, Eve, was less than perfect, but even Iain, her live-round-the-corner partner of seven years, was not wise to highlight the problem. Although he was right, of course.
She sighed. ‘I don’t have a choice. Eric is stuck in the frozen wastes of Antarctica … and you know Arthur. I can’t leave her struggling with him.’
The thought of her nearly three-year-old grandson brought a smile to her face. He was so dear to her it sometimes felt as if he’d actually invaded her heart, taken up residence in her emotions with a force that amazed her. It had taken her completely by surprise, that first day of his life, when she’d stood in the hospital room with a little bundle in her arms. He’d looked up into her eyes, he’d seen her, completely understood her – or so it had felt to Stella, a woman with a famously defended heart, not given to fanciful notions of this kind.
Her closest friend, Annette, had become a grandmother the year before Stella, and she’d had to steel herself to get through their regular coffees. Annette was usually the toughest, least sentimental person on the planet – some would say scary with her large frame, loud laugh and total lack of bullshit. But faced with her granddaughter, she melted. Stella was forced to endure endless adoring monologues, phone-photos and five-second videos: Molly smiling (pooing?), Molly in her rabbit babygro, Molly with organic pear puree dripping from her chin, etc., etc. She’d had to find a way to ride out Annette’s tedious obsession without actually stabbing her. Now she understood. Although for Stella, the love she felt for Arthur was a very private thing, which she hugged to herself like a warm secret and which gave her a happiness she’d never thought to experience again.
‘Shouldn’t Eric come back?’ Iain asked, interrupting her train of thought.
‘Well, of course he bloody well should, but Eve’s being ridiculous. She won’t tell him there’s a problem. Says his research is “too important” to him. That’s why she didn’t even mention she was pregnant till he was safely ensconced nine thousand miles away. She knew he wouldn’t go if she told him.’ She shook her head. ‘Stubborn as the day is long, my daughter. Anyway, she says he’ll be more use when the baby’s born.’
Iain looked uneasy. ‘So this placenta praevia thing means what, exactly?’
Stella couldn’t help smiling. Iain, a landscape gardener by trade, was so at home in the natural world. Apart from his extensive knowledge of plants – wild or cultivated – he could fix a bird’s broken wing, was cosy with bats and handled snakes with confidence. He was also at home, he claimed, with spiritual practices. But when it came to the mechanics of the human body, he was surprisingly squeamish: the mention of illness made him wince.
Deciding to spare him, Stella r
He nodded slowly and looked away towards the river. Stella gazed at his profile. He was not quite a handsome man, but he had a presence that people noticed, a confident strength in his broad-shouldered, muscled body and open, tanned features, his shock of thick, white-blond hair – not quite blond any more, at fifty-six, and not yet white, either. People trusted him; she trusted him. Not enough to suggest he move in with her – which Iain had never pressed for, despite his obvious frustration with the back and forth nature of their arrangement – but she trusted him to love her.
Stella lived ten minutes away in a ground-floor flat in a street near Brook Green, west of Shepherd’s Bush Road. It was a two-bedroomed garden flat in a brick Victorian terrace with a white portico where she had lived since she and Jack separated – nearly twenty-four years ago now. It was Eve’s home, growing up. She had never really seen how her life, or Iain’s, would be improved by his moving in. They met up regularly, they socialized and holidayed together, they did all the things cohabiting couples did, but had the bonus – as Stella saw it – of their own space. Men seldom understood her point of view; she could tell her independence made them nervous. Women – older ones, at least – often did.
‘I hope you’ll come at weekends,’ she said now.
‘Stay tonight, then, if you’re going to be away for so long.’ Iain reached across for her hand. ‘It’s such a beautiful evening, we could walk by the river.’
She didn’t answer at once, thinking of all the things she had to organize before she drove down to Kent in the morning – what in God’s name do you take for so long? But she didn’t want to leave Iain tonight. Although she didn’t choose to articulate it to him, she was anxious about this trip to look after her daughter. The peace between her and Eve was new – since Eric, really, and Arthur. She didn’t want that upset, didn’t want a return to the bad old days of her teenage years and beyond, where they’d sniped continuously at each other.
‘I disappoint you,’ Eve had said to Stella on more than one occasion. ‘You want me to be someone who gets A stars, goes to uni and gets the perfect job at the BBC. But that’s not me, Mum, it’ll never be me.’ Stella had always argued that Eve could never disappoint her. But it was true that she hated seeing her intelligent daughter flunking her exams and working for peanuts in a pub.
And later, when Eve began her challenging job as a key worker for a children’s charity, Stella knew she had not been clear enough about just how much she admired her daughter. Because by that time the damage was done – Eve had left home and they were not in touch nearly enough.
‘I don’t have to be up too early tomorrow,’ Iain was saying.
She grinned and raised an eyebrow. ‘Define “early”.’
2
Eve felt the insistent bash of her son’s hand on her face – indiscriminate, untargeted, his open palm landing on her eyes and nose, forehead and mouth with vigour in his attempt to wake her – and struggled to open her eyes. It had been light for hours and she’d witnessed the summer dawn during one of her many pee trips. But then she’d sunk into a dead sleep from which it was hard to surface.
She rolled over to face Arthur and lifted him on to the bed, pulling the duvet over them both. He had dinosaurs on his blue cotton pyjamas, his pale-auburn curls – courtesy of his grandfather, Jack – squashed from sleep, his feet bare and cold against her swollen belly as he grinned at her round the thumb he’d popped in his mouth. She just had time to grab him and lift his pyjama top – pressing her face in the soft, squidgy warmth of his tummy, inhaling the delicious scent of her son and making him giggle – before he wriggled free, pushing her away.
‘Get up, Mumma,’ he said, sliding out of bed again and pulling on her hand. Arthur didn’t say a lot, yet – probably because Eric was always away and she didn’t get out much. She’d been resistant to joining a local playgroup with all those country mums, who would no doubt think her weird with her very visible tattoo and her London past, so much of their day was spent in contented silence. She knew her mother was worried that Arthur wasn’t talking more, though, with his third birthday only three months away.
Mum, she thought, and sighed as she got out of bed, her feet touching the cool, dusty floorboards, reminding her she really needed to get on and order the carpet – choose the carpet, indeed – before the baby arrived. What had she done, asking Stella to come and stay for so long?
Settling her son in the Tripp Trapp wooden high chair in the kitchen that his grandfather had bought for him, Eve put a plastic Peppa Pig bowl containing Rice Krispies and milk in front of him. While the kettle boiled, she pulled back her long, straggling hair – a bright, red-gold that everyone thought she dyed, but which was just an intense version of her father’s lighter auburn – securing it in a raggedy brown ponytail holder she dug out of the wooden bowl of bits and bobs on the kitchen table.
It was not yet seven, and the day – warm, beautiful – stretched ahead in a monotonous haze. She’d have to think of something with which to occupy Arthur. Her mother had said she wouldn’t be arriving till the afternoon and Eve supposed she should try and tidy the bedroom where Stella would sleep. But the effort seemed too much right now. There were still boxes in there from the move from London, six months ago now, and no curtains at the window, no carpet on the floor. Where, she wondered, are the sheets for that bed?
She couldn’t concentrate on anything, though. Whenever she attempted to focus, her thoughts skittered away in the face of an overarching anxiety about the baby she was carrying. Every time she went to pee, she would tense as she checked for spots of blood – although there had been none for over a week now. Every time she felt a twinge, she would stop what she was doing, hold her breath and listen to her body. Intensely aware of every flutter, crick and ache, she felt as if she were existing purely as a vessel for her baby, not as Eve, a thinking, feeling woman.
She smoothed her hands protectively across the twenty-four-week swell of her belly under her T-shirt. Please, she spoke silently, please, please let it be all right. And for the first time in years, she realized she desperately wanted her mother. Stella’s tough, organized, no-nonsense approach to life – albeit bordering on the detached – would take away some of the responsibility for this small mass of child currently floating precariously in her womb.
She felt tears building behind her eyes and bit her lip to stop herself from crying in front of Arthur. The person she really wanted was Eric. Even if it were just to tell him what was happening to her body. Her thoughts drifted back to their last night together, before he had set off on the gruelling three-day journey, ending in a five-and-a-half-hour flight in a Dash-7, high-wing, turboprop plane. If the weather were good, it would take him from Stanley in the Falklands to the Rothera Research Station, sitting west off the Antarctic Peninsula.
God, she had so longed to tell him about the baby – her periods irregular, it was her tender breasts that had prompted her to do a test only days before his departure. She’d almost blurted it out then and there. And it was burning on the tip of her tongue as they made love that night – more attentively, more tenderly, more consciously than usual, under the shadow of parting – then lay awake afterwards, her head on his shoulder, her arm across his warm, thin body.
But Eric had been ecstatic, so full of excitement about his trip. He’d been to the Arctic twice before, but never the Antarctic. Maybe feeling guilty for the five-month separation they were facing that night, he had reminded Eve – not for the first time, as he tried to convey his passion for his work to her – that the area was a hot spot of climate warming, the perfect place to study climate change, an opportunity of a lifetime. And the words had died on her lips. She’d made her decision. She knew if she’d breathed one word about her pregnancy to her partner, he would postpone his trip.
Almost as soon as he got into the taxi that would take him to Ashford Station and then London on that miserable March morning, she had regretted it. Panic had overtaken her, and guilt for a silence she’d seen, till that moment, as strong and self-reliant. Eve was not used to relying on a man. During her childhood, her journalist father had often missed the every-other-weekend he’d been allocated after the split, because of some urgent last-minute assignment. ‘Ten, nine, eight.’ She remembered sitting on her bed, her young self staring out through the barred windows at the steps that led up to the front door. ‘Seven, six …’ she would deliberately slow the count, shutting her eyes tight, willing her father to be there. Then her mum’s head would pop round the door. Eve always knew from her expression what she was about to say. ‘Daddy’s just rung, sweetheart …’ Then the crushing disappointment.
