But she hadn’t been content just to sit at home as the children grew more independent; she’d become a volunteer fund-raiser for the children’s hospital which had been such a focal point of their lives during Robbie’s illness and she was now Chairwoman of the committee. So, as she raised her eyes to the illumination of the domed ceiling far above her, she sent up a silent message of thanks for all that she had. And, once again, she deliberately refused to think of that other path which her life might have taken instead.
‘Hello, Mum, Dad.’ Rhona slipped into her seat alongside Angus, kissing him on the cheek. ‘Phew, just in time. It was a bit tricky getting away from the office.’
As the organ struck up ‘Gaudeamus Igitur’ and the new graduands processed in, Ella eagerly sought out Robbie. Angus nudged her, pointing him out amidst the black-gowned ranks, and Ella had to grope in her handbag for a handkerchief as her eyes overflowed suddenly, the enormity of this achievement overwhelming her – not her son’s graduation but the simple fact that the four of them were there, together still.
It was early September and, as always seemed to happen, they were enjoying a spell of good weather just when the schools had started back and everyone was incarcerated in their classrooms and offices once again.
Ella was working in the garden, dead-heading roses and cutting back the exhausted end-of-summer growth in the borders. After raking the fallen leaves from the front lawn, she’d propped open the side gate, making it easier to manoeuvre the wheelbarrow as she carted the damp, loam-scented piles to the compost heap in the far corner of the back garden. So, it should have been a peaceful scene that Angus came home to, his wife finishing off her work amidst the serenity of the newly ordered flowerbeds.
And yet, he sensed her aura of anguish even before he greeted her.
He set his briefcase down on the path and watched her tip out the last barrow-load of leaves with an angry energy which seemed to charge the atmosphere with invisible crackles of electricity.
As she turned towards him, her face was contorted, tears streaming from her eyes which were red and swollen. She wiped her nose and mouth with the sleeve of her shirt, leaving a smear which gleamed on her cuff like the silver snail trails which criss-crossed the stone slabs at his feet. Wretchedness hung heavy on the autumn air, mingling with the smoke from a bonfire in a neighbouring garden.
Wordlessly, he crossed to her and wrapped his arms around her. He waited as she pressed her wet face against his suit jacket.
Finally, when she was calm enough to speak, she pulled away from his encircling arms and turned her back on him, on the pretext of picking up the rake that she’d discarded on the ground.
‘He’s dying.’ She threw the tools into the wheelbarrow with a clatter, knowing that she had to keep moving because otherwise her grief would catch up with her and overwhelm her completely.
Angus stood there, unable to reach her, excluded from her distress. Because how could he comfort her about this?
She wiped her nose with her sleeve again, then pulled a folded letter from her cardigan pocket. ‘Caroline wrote. Christophe has just a few weeks to live, the doctors say.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Angus’s misery made his voice low, his throat constricting with helplessness. He had always been a man who got things done, who resolved problems logically and methodically, so she knew that he loathed this emotional tangle.
She didn’t reply.
‘What are you going to do?’ he repeated, the words coming out more forcefully than before and with a raw edge of bitterness and fear.
Neither of them noticed Rhona, who’d seen the open gate and heard voices in the back garden. She stood, frozen, taking in the scene before her: the angry, stooped posture of her mother; the defeated, despairing attitude of her father as he spoke those words.
‘I’m going to him. Don’t try to stop me. All these years I’ve stayed away. But I have to go to him now. One last time.’
Ella heard Rhona then. Her gasp. Then her shriek, like an animal in pain.
Angus moved towards her, but she held her hands up as if to fend him off and turned away from both her parents, running to the house, leaving them both standing there in the dusk with the smell of smoke hanging in the air, as if it was the aftermath of the explosion of truth that had just been detonated.
Ella turned too and walked slowly to the back door. Very deliberately, numb with a grief for so much that she now saw was lost, she climbed the stairs to her bedroom and began to pack.
Suddenly, Rhona stood in the doorway, her face a white mask of fury. ‘I understand it all now.’ She spat the words at her mother, her voice shaking with anger. ‘You were never here for us really, were you? All through my childhood I felt I could never get your attention. I put it down to Robbie’s illness, made a thousand excuses, blamed myself for being unlovable . . . I thought it was my fault. But now I see what was really going on. That summer in France, you were having an affair with him, weren’t you? That man?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say his name. ‘It all makes sense now. How could you have betrayed us in that way? How could you have betrayed Dad?’
Ella stood, the blouse she’d been folding hanging limply in her hands, and looked at Rhona wearily. She knew there was no point telling her that Angus, too, had had an affair. All that would accomplish would be the girl’s complete and utter devastation, her disillusionment with both of her parents. To take the father she so adored from her would be cruelty itself. The explanations, the blame and counter-blame, all seemed hopeless now; they could only cause more destruction.
All these years, she’d protected her children; all she could do now was carry on trying to do so. So she held her tongue and looked her daughter in the eye.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s all you can say?’ Rhona’s eyes opened wide in incredulity. ‘Well, I’m sorry too. Sorry you weren’t able to be a better mother to me. You always paid attention to Robbie, never to me.’ Pain and resentment poured out of her now that the dam of her emotions had been breached.
Ella tried to explain. ‘But that’s because you were the strong one. You’re like me, Rhona – you had the strength and the resilience to carry on. Robbie needed my strength more than you did.’
‘You’re wrong! I longed for you to love me and look after me the way you did him. I was just a child. You expected too much of me, but always made allowances for him. Perhaps you taught me to expect too much of you. But that’s all gone now. Don’t expect me to be here when you come crawling back – if you ever do. I never want to see you again!’
Ella caught a taxi from the boat, asking the driver to take her to the gallery in Saint Martin. She knew that was where Caroline would be. Christophe too, perhaps? She had no idea whether he still had the strength to work.
Caroline rose from behind the desk as Ella stood in the doorway.
‘You came! I didn’t know whether you would.’
The two women hugged, each supporting the other for a long moment.
‘Tell me,’ Ella said.
Caroline shook her head. ‘It’s not good, Ella. I must warn you. He’s going fast now. Sandrine’s daughter takes care of him when I’m not there. It happened so quickly. One day he was alright – just a little tired – then the next he was bent double with the pain. The doctor says the cancer seems to have spread very fast. It’s in his bones. He suffers a great deal. There is nothing more to be done, so they have let him come home from the hospital. He’ll be pleased to see you. Let me just finish up here and then we’ll go to him.’
Ella sank down on to a chair to wait. Her eye was caught by a blue bowl, sitting on its own in a niche set into the wall. The delicate ceramic looked as if it had been broken into several pieces and then fixed back together with a vein of purest gold, which shot through the piece like a lightning strike against a sky of midnight blue. She reached out a finger and touched the rim. The join was perfect: her fingertip sensed only the very slightest catch where the gold met the clay, invisible to the eye.
Caroline appeared beside her, pulling on her jacket. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s a technique called kintsukuroi. Japanese in style, although this piece was made by a local potter. I love the philosophy behind it: that something which is so unique and irreplaceable is worth mending with pure gold, so that the cracks and flaws themselves become part of the beauty of the piece.’
Ella nodded, moved.
‘And have you seen this?’ Caroline took her gently by the elbow and turned her so that she was facing the wall on the other side of the gallery.
Ella froze.
In the centre of the wall hung a single painting, larger than any of Christophe’s other works. A woman lay sleeping amongst the sand-dunes, one arm curving above her head in utter abandon, her gold-streaked hair mingling with the beach grass that bowed in the ocean breeze. A faint smile played over her lips. Her other hand, the fingers curving softly open, held a hinged white clamshell.
‘It’s entitled Neptune’s Locket,’ Caroline said. ‘Everyone who sees it asks “What is she dreaming of?” Her smile has the same mesmeric, elusive quality of the Mona Lisa’s smile; and yet she looks more like one of Botticelli’s subjects. Many, many people have asked the price, but it is never for sale. It’s become famous. People come to the Île de Ré just to see it. “Why don’t you put it in a gallery in Paris?” they ask. But Christophe refuses. It is to stay here, where he can see it; and where I can look after it.