The Grayson Trilogy Page 2

  “No, that’s true. I was orphaned when I was five and had no relatives to take me in so I was brought up by foster parents. I’m divorced and there’s no one who I would consider to be a close friend.” I was more than embarrassed now at having to admit to having no friends. Cavendish scribbled my response on his notes and as he did so, he asked if there was anything else I wanted to know. Out of curiosity I jumped right in.

  “I was wondering why you had such an interest in my martial arts abilities.”

  He looked up at me, grinning. “Let’s just say that I like my staff to have additional skills other than the ones that I employ them for.” Mystified, I was not sure what to make of that and although I knew my face betrayed my feelings as I met his open gaze, no further elaboration to this response was forthcoming.

  “So unless there’s anything else, when can you start?” Cavendish carried on enthusiastically.

  We agreed on the first week of May and I was to let Ms Sharpe, his personal assistant, know the exact date so everything could be put in place for my arrival. As Cavendish showed me out he explained there would be plenty of time for everything else to be sorted out once I’d moved onto the estate.

  I travelled back through the parkland considerably more appreciative now of the breezy but dry day. Weak sunshine kept finding its way through the endless stream of light clouds that passed swiftly across it, every now and then highlighting the soft rolling countryside only for it to be blotted out again moments later. But it was only when I was driving through the gates, through which I’d entered with such trepidation only a short time before, that I realised it might have been sensible for me to have asked if I could go and see my new home and possibly the stables. I hadn’t even thought of that at the time. What I had thought was that this job, being somewhat isolated on a large estate, might just suit my desire to live as solitary a life as possible, perfectly.

  Chapter 2

  As I drove home I thought through the interview, drawn to the moment when I’d felt Cavendish had come uncomfortably close to following up on why I had no recent experience with horses. He must have known of course, because of the background check, but he’d stopped short of asking anything further, no doubt heeding the warning expressed in my defensive body language. Although I didn’t see it as defensive, to me it was protective; the physical act of wrapping my arms around my body was an attempt to hold myself together when the hole that had been punched through my chest threatened to consume me.

  Four years had passed, and yet some days it felt as if it were only yesterday; four years since I’d lost Eva, my beautiful daughter, who on her arrival had filled a part of me that had unknowingly been empty, and made me complete.

  Alex and I had met at school and, having fallen hard for each other, made the ridiculous decision to get married at eighteen. This had sparked a great deal of gossip at the time, not that we could have cared less, but the gossips were proven to be wrong when Eva did not arrive in our lives until two years later, a much longed-for and loved baby.

  When she was six, Eva became ill. She’d had the normal childhood illnesses as she’d grown up but was otherwise a robustly healthy child. So, when she was running a bit of a temperature I didn’t think too much of it. I kept her at home, dosed her up on medicine, which is usually so effective, and expected she would bounce back to her effervescent self within a few hours. However, the next day she was worse and had been sick a couple of times so I took her to the doctor. I was assured by him that it was a virus, told that there was a lot of it going around and fobbed off with the fact I should keep on doing what I was doing and try to get some liquids into her. I kept telling myself that children get these things and shrug them off again quickly, but I was not reassured and my unease niggled at me.

  By the following day Eva was listless and unable to keep anything down so I drove her straight to the hospital. I’d called Alex at work beforehand to tell him what I was doing, and got the distinct impression he thought I was overreacting. The doctors examined her, but while I tried to tell them of my concerns they barely listened, putting her condition down to the fact she’d not eaten or taken on sufficient liquids for the past forty-eight hours. I felt ignored, then as I pleaded her case harder, pressing for tests to be done, I felt I was an inconvenience. Eventually I realised with humiliation that they were treating me as though I were an unduly overanxious mother, my views clearly not worthy of consideration, and as though my knowledge of my own child bore no weight at all in the decisions being made. They admitted her to a ward, set her up on a drip to rehydrate her and all I could do was cuddle and comfort her, watching and waiting for an improvement. My concern grew, gnawing at me as time passed.

  Alex arrived at the hospital after work, having stopped off at home for some things I’d asked him for. I changed Eva into a clean pair of pyjamas and as I did so, I noticed a couple of small dark-red spots on her legs. As I looked at them I saw another appear. For a moment my heart stood still and then everything happened at once. I was yelling for help, doctors and nurses came running and Eva was moved rapidly into a side room where there was more space.

  After being practically ignored, suddenly Eva was the centre of everyone’s attention; intravenous antibiotics were started immediately, numerous tests carried out. But I already knew what the results would show – meningitis. The spots were multiplying alarmingly, merging to become a rash, spreading up her legs, breaking out on her arms and across her body. Nothing appeared capable of stopping the septicaemia. Alex and I kept out of everyone’s way, frozen with fear at the scene developing in front of us and silently pleading with her to fight. Rooted to the end of the bed while the doctors worked on her we were then at her bedside when they could do no more, when it was just waiting.

  By now our beautiful daughter was being kept alive through the tubes inserted into her and was hooked up to several monitoring machines. We watched over her, holding her hands, talking to her, but there was no response; praying, but there was no response.

  The doctor eventually took us to one side, gently telling us she would not survive; she was in a coma, her body shutting down, and all we could do for her now was to be with her when she died. In that moment, as the window I faced opened onto an unchanged outside world, I felt ours shattering around us, and I clasped Alex’s hands in desperation as we held on to each other in our disbelief. I remember turning from the doctor, cutting off anything further, a roaring silence filling my head, deafening me. My body, my arms, my legs were suddenly leaden as if the doctor’s words had exerted a physical as well as mental toll, dragging me down as, shaking with emotion, I climbed into bed with my beautiful girl, curling her up into my arms, Alex sitting by our side. I held her close for a long time, all the while knowing it was never going to be long enough. Shutting out everything else I stroked her long dark hair, soothing her, hoping for a miracle, hoping she would prove the doctors wrong. As we lay together I gazed into the face I knew better than my own, one that I could never get enough of, absorbing every detail, her full lips relaxed and making her look merely asleep. Her soft peachy cheeks, paler now, providing the resting place for the thick eyelashes which swept across them and which I willed to open, to give me one more chance to gaze into the beautiful eyes beneath that I’d been lost in since the first time they’d opened on me at her birth, when I’d silently promised her in that precious moment that I would protect her until the end of my days…And yet, here we were and I’d failed her.

  Her eyes didn’t open and as I felt life leave her Alex gripped my hand tightly, as tightly as he had on her birth, trying to absorb some of the pain from the anguished cries that started to tear me apart. As we held each other, our baby cradled between us, I could feel Alex’s body shaking with the release of his tears and we clung in anguish to each other in the initial despair of our loss. We were given time to say goodbye, time to prepare ourselves, but when they came to take her away I couldn’t let her go. No amount of time could ever prepare me for that. My ar
ms closed around her instinctively as I hugged her body to mine, and all I could hear were Alex’s sobs, his pleas, his pain, as he tried to reason with me, as he tried to gently peel my arms away to release her; and as he did, I felt part of my heart break away as acutely as if someone had reached into my chest and ripped it apart.

  Alex tried to fill my now-empty arms, holding me tightly, holding me back from her, my hands clawing at him as he sank to the floor with me, rocking as he tried to soothe me, the room filling with distressing noises that could only have come from a wounded animal, that I didn’t recognise as coming from me, struggling as I tried to cut myself off from the brutal reality, the crushing pain closing in, as mentally I started unravelling.

  Over the next few days I heard the murmur of voices: of Alex talking on the phone, of people coming and going. As immobilised as I was in my grief, I lay in bed in the hope death would claim me too. The doctor had sedated me into a state where I was beyond feeling anything, but which had allowed me to go home. Our doctor came with more pills and I took whatever was offered, unquestioning, keeping myself numb and holding off what I knew was waiting for me.

  Amy, my friend, came round every day, trying to make me eat and sitting with me in silence. I didn’t cry, being too paralysed from the drugs to have that much emotion. Alex kept asking me questions about funeral arrangements; I think I replied but I had no idea what the questions were or what answers I gave. I assumed he eventually sorted it all out with Amy.

  The day I dreaded arrived and I dragged myself from my bed to get ready. Alex had informed everyone attending they should wear the clothes Eva would most recognise them in rather than black, but as that would have been jeans and a tee shirt in my case I chose a navy and cream dress Eva had given the seal of approval. I stood, unmoving, staring out of the sitting room window onto the road. Waiting.

  The hearse pulled up and the man in the passenger seat climbed out, making his way to our front door. Alex had already wrapped his arm around my waist in support and, taking my hand, encouraged me to move as we answered the door together. As soon as it opened I could see her – her coffin, so small; I felt myself gasp then struggle to recover my breath. Alex’s arm tightened as we walked down the path towards our daughter. Beautiful flowers filled the space around her in every shade of blue, mauve or violet, set against white. She would have liked the variations of blue, always being a tomboy; pink had been banned from every aspect of her life.

  We started away slowly. Walking, we followed the hearse and while I never took my eyes off Eva I became aware of others joining us. Amy reached out to take my hand in support as we walked together, the villagers, our friends, our neighbours coming out of their houses, joining our sad procession as we wound our way to the church. When we arrived the crowd made its way into the church and the vicar came to greet us. He was kind, I was aware of that, and of him taking my cold hand between his two warm ones as he talked through what was going to happen, trying to engage with me. But I felt distanced, as if I were underwater when you know someone is speaking to you but it’s too muffled to understand what’s being said. Distracted, I couldn’t stop watching as they took Eva’s little coffin out of the hearse. Once ready we followed her into the church.

  Classical music played, beautiful, sweet and heartbreaking as we walked in. I knew Alex would have arranged it – music was one of his passions. I heard the sobs start around me on her arrival and I gripped tightly to Alex and Amy in my battle to control myself. The service started: wonderful words were spoken of Eva, words of kindness were offered to us and the church swelled with the sound of the hymns sung, but throughout I kept my eyes fixed on her coffin as Alex and I held each other’s hand tightly. All I could hear around us were the cries of distress, the muffled sobs of those unable to comprehend the loss of one so young; the pain of those other parents, the parents of Eva’s peers, on having to come face-to-face with the worst fear of any parent. I was glad the pills had deadened me to this – it was the only way I could have coped with the almost palpable grief that surrounded us, coating us so thickly it was as if a blanket had been wrapped around us, weighing us down.

  We took Eva back into the sunshine and for one fleeting moment I closed my eyes and could see her as I had so many times, running ahead of me through the churchyard, laughing and giggling with a friend as I walked them to school, this brief glimpse momentarily giving me respite from facing the grim reality of the burial before us. That was for family only. Alex’s parents, his sister and her husband were there – I was not close to any of them – together with Amy, the nearest thing I had by way of family. More words were spoken that I didn’t hear, then the coffin was lowered and it was at this point that my breathing faltered, my breath sticking in my chest as I struggled, convulsing as I tried to control the panic rising in me. Alex held me to him, trying to calm me as the vicar spoke his final words.

  Alex and I were left at the graveside, holding each other in our grief.

  “How do you think anyone survives this?” I whispered.

  “I have no idea,” Alex sobbed, and having provided precious little support to him so far I held him now as his body wracked with tears.

  Within days I’d decided I needed to stop taking the pills. I thought I’d got through the worst and would be able to face what was to come, but as they wore off I was overwhelmed with a physically excruciating pain that felt like my heart was breaking – the tears that had been held back for so long came, unbidden, my eyes constantly overflowing from an unstoppable supply. I woke screaming, sobbing from the unbearable nightmare that haunted me, Alex holding me, soothing me back to sleep. Each morning I woke exhausted, my pillow soaked, and it was as though the torment would never end.

  Eventually though, the tears did stop, the time between the broken nights gradually becoming longer, but the pain and guilt remained, and I knew that somehow I would have to live with that.

  Alex and Amy did everything to support me during those first few weeks. I knew Alex must have been in the same pain as me but he was stronger. His grief quickly turned to anger, and his anger turned itself on the hospital. He felt he had to do something to make sense of her death; he wanted answers, he wanted retribution, and he wanted someone to blame but he didn’t see that that person was right in front of him. He wouldn’t listen to me, wouldn’t believe me when I told him, and we were torn in our opposing views. He wanted me to support him in the legal action he started against the hospital but I couldn’t do that, knowing him to be in the wrong, and I distanced myself from having anything to do with it.

  Amy was incredibly supportive to us and I valued her friendship – we both did. She cooked us meals, did housework and helped Alex sort out all the other household tasks that used to occupy me. She was the only person I could bear to have around me, the main reason for this being the fact that she was childless. I didn’t make friends, close friends, easily but we’d got on well ever since finding ourselves sat next to each other at school.

  I’d always found school an inconvenience, but one that had to be endured, never being there a moment longer than required. As I grew up I learnt to keep my head down, to do the minimum necessary to make myself invisible, thereby keeping people off my back. At the various schools I attended this was how I coped with what I deemed to be the pettiness of the institutionally enforced discipline.

  When I was fifteen I was simultaneously struggling against the rules set by my new foster parents as well as those at what would turn out to be my last school. Mine and Amy’s relationship grew through our mutual disdain for the boundaries set that we felt were an imposition, bonding as we both strained against the limitations put upon us, then finding relief at finally gaining a little more freedom once we made sixth form. This freedom was the only reason I managed to stay on at all. We’d remained firm friends since leaving school which meant a lot to me, particularly now, when I’d cut myself off from everyone else. They’d all come round initially, supportively, all the people I chatted to at the
school gates, at school functions, who had children that Eva used to play with. They were kind, and I could feel them wanting to help, but the common ground we’d shared was gone and we had nothing outside of that. It was far too painful to be constantly reminded of their children and of the happier times we’d had together, as well as it being desperately uncomfortable for them to have to spend any time with me.

  Life, I was told, had to move on and Alex went back to work and his usual activities as soon as he felt confident I wouldn’t slit my wrists the moment his back was turned. While I was hurt by the apparent ease with which he got over our loss so quickly I found it a blessed relief not to have him hovering around me, watching me anxiously all the time. However, apart from eventually having to go back to work, I couldn’t move on, couldn’t resume anything from my previous life; even my passion for horses died as I found my life grinding to a halt.

  I realised mine and Alex’s relationship was struggling terribly, and at the point when we’d needed it most we’d lost our ability to communicate. That which had once come so naturally to us felt awkward and stilted. Alex tried to resume some semblance of normality in our life together but I didn’t see how he could. I’d lost all interest in him and as I pushed him away he became more and more wary of me. I had difficulty in even looking at him. When I did he reminded me of Eva – I could see her in the movements he made, in his mannerisms, his expressions, and those subtle similarities between them that had once enchanted me now hit me each time with another lance of pain, irritating my raw wounds as acutely as if I’d worked salt into them.

  As I now drove back into Crowbridge and approached my house I realised how much had changed in the intervening four years. The painful reminders Alex had provided had gone, along with the debilitating phase of my grief, which eventually passed, as all things do given enough time, but I’d been left feeling as if all that remained of me was a shell: a hollow, fragile version of my former self, although enough of that person remained that made me not want to show this frailty to the world.