The Garden of Stars Read online

  Fortunately the masked man didn’t follow.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I dashed into Cherrystone Cottage and flung the door shut behind me, pushing my body against it to try to block out the gravity of what had just happened.

  It was as if my whole world had rocked then stood still.

  Miss Metford slowly raised her eyes from her book, carefully took out her bookmark and placed it inside. ‘What on earth is the matter, dear girl, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘He was there,’ I mumbled, ‘there at the ball. What am I to do? Rosie, Rosie, is she OK?’

  ‘Rosie, yes, haven’t heard a murmur since the moment you left.’

  I raced up to her room, crashing through the door, expecting the bed to be empty, my golden girl to be gone.

  Of course, she was lay there, sound asleep, gently sighing in her tranquil slumber. I sat with her for a moment, softly stroking her hair. I had to protect her, she had no idea what we were about to be up against. Frantically, I began to grab a few of her clothes, her favourite toy and book, stuffing them into a bag. It was time for us to move on again, the game was over, we’d been caught; we had to leave. I was devastated. I loved it here; I loved it with every sinew of my body. This was my town now; I deserved the right to live here peacefully with my clever, brave daughter. But it seemed fate had determined that was not to be the case. I suppose I was naïve, simply changing my name, we were bound to be found sooner or later.

  Why is life so very cruel? In saving Ivory Meadows, I’d endangered everything I’d created for myself and my child. If I’d have just stayed quiet, maybe we could have carried on as we were, although then perhaps there would have been no town to carry on in.

  Mary was behind me in a flash. It always took me by surprise how sprightly she was for her age. ‘What on earth are you doing, Vivian?’

  ‘I’m packing, Mary.’

  ‘I can see that, even though I’m still wearing these silly reading glasses. My question is why? Who did you say was back? Was it old Johnson? He’s a nasty piece of work but don’t worry yourself, Vivian.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t Mr Johnson,’ I said, moving up into my room, where I grabbed my jewellery and a few photographs of Rosie and threw them into the bag. ‘It was someone entirely more dangerous.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mary, her face dropping, ‘you mean your husband?’

  ‘My ex-husband,’ I rebuked her, ‘and yes, he’ll be here within minutes so I suggest you get yourself home and safe before Rosie and I take off.’

  ‘You can’t just slip away into the night like a pair of shadows.’

  ‘Why ever not? We’ve done it before, we’ll do it again. My job as a mother is to keep Rosemary safe and I’ve failed miserably. Sounding off my big mouth to save this town has put my precious little girl at risk. I’ve been a fool, but it won’t happen again. You’ve been a good friend and a great help, Mary, but I need you to go now, move out of my way.’

  She shrugged her shoulders like a petulant child before opening her mouth to speak.

  ‘Now!’ I shouted, waking up Rosemary, who came running to my room, asking what was wrong.

  I whisked her into my arms, taking comfort and courage from the smell of her long golden hair, and carrying her downstairs, bundling on her coat and pushing her into shoes.

  She sleepily whispered, ‘Not again, Mummy, I thought this was our home, our real, forever home.’

  It broke my heart but I had to stay resolute. ‘No, Rosie, it’s time to go, I’ve got your things, get moving.’

  ‘But I like it here, I’ve made friends here, everyone is lovely, and what about my cat?’

  ‘Take Whisper with you, my darling,’ sighed Miss Metford, returning from the lounge, carrying the cat and placing him gently in Rosie’s arms.

  And with that, with no further argument, Mary was gone.

  Pulling my coat over my now-ridiculous ball gown, I loaded the bags onto my back and opened the door. The cold air hit me like a tidal wave, forcing me to face the reality of our situation. Where were we going to go? That didn’t matter now – we just had to get out before it was too late. Suddenly I remembered I’d left my mother’s locket in the bedroom drawer. Telling Rosie not to move, I dashed upstairs to grab it.

  Returning moments later, everything had changed.

  There he was, stood in my kitchen, holding my little girl in his arms as she nuzzled into his neck. He was no longer a wolf but just – Jack. But he may as well have kept his wolf costume on.

  ‘Put her down,’ I screamed at him, clawing at my child, ‘let her go, we’re leaving, we want nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Cathy, calm down, let’s talk this through, it’s taken me so long to find you. I’ve searched every day since the moment you left. We need to sort things out, make them right, for both of us, and for Lily.’

  ‘There’s nothing to sort out,’ I bellowed, ‘it’s over, you knew that the day you killed our daughter.’

  And, with that, the memories and the enormity of my grief filled every part of my body, every part of the room, so that I could hardly breathe. It all came flooding back like a tidal wave, knocking me off my feet like a heap of old, worn-out fabric in the middle of the floor.

  Oh yes, I remembered, I remembered those long seven weeks watching her every move. It was the waiting that was the hardest part. While pregnant, I couldn’t wait for her to be born. And my impatience had brought on an early labour. As my waters broke, I screamed, ‘It’s not time, she’s not ready.’ My distress, my sheer knowledge that it wasn’t our time nearly killed us both.

  For days, Jack watched and waited for either of us to come round, with the dreadful fear he could lose us both. Eventually after three days, he said I awoke with a start, jumped up and said, ‘Where’s Rosemary?’

  We hadn’t decided on a name, and Jack was amazed I knew it was a girl.

  I hobbled over to see my poor, deformed baby, my child who I’d forced into the world before she’d had chance to finish building herself.

  And yet she wasn’t deformed, she was perfect. Ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes. I longed to pick her up, hold her in my arms. I truly believed I could heal her, just with a mother’s touch. I was the one at fault, the one who’d got her into trouble, surely I was the one who could and should fix her? Each time I ventured near the ventilator I was ushered away by nurses. It was my baby, why were they keeping her from me?

  Was I that bad a mother?

  Jack did his best to reassure me but, as the weeks passed, it seemed less and less likely she was going to get off that horrid wired-up machine. In time, I carefully put my hand into the incubator and held her fragile fingers, willing her to live. I needed her to make it. Even though I’d never held her, I already knew I couldn’t manage without her. I spent every moment of every day and night sat at her side, cradling the glass, begging her to hold on.

  Jack said it was time to let Rosie lead her own life in another place. That it was time to turn off the machine.

  I ranted and raved. There was no way that could happen, not while I truly believed in my heart of hearts that she was still alive, albeit kept so by machines.

  Jack said what I was doing was wrong, that it was unfair both to Rosie and to him, and to me.

  The doctors sided with Jack. It seemed everyone was against me, everyone except my beautiful little girl who was clearly willing me not to let her go. The doctors suggested we hold a baptism for our baby girl. Our family came but I sat, motionless, in the corner. I felt like this was their way of saying goodbye and I wanted no part in saying goodbye to a baby who was not ready to leave.

  One night we argued until dawn. By morning Jack was lying on the floor, blood on his face. To this day I don’t know what happened. But as he picked himself up and wiped himself down, I knew there and then it was over.

  I never went to the hospital again. Jack had murdered my baby girl.

  We continued to argue constantly. He told me I was a paranoid, neurot
ic mother and that I should think of what this was doing to Lily, our six-year-old.

  I thought long and hard about it and decided exactly what I needed to do: leave. That night I picked Lily up from her bed, took the cash from Jack’s wallet, and fled into the night. I didn’t even take a change of clothes. We jumped on an underground train, taking us to an entirely different district of London. For a while we wandered the streets, searching for an answer. Then we stumbled upon a women’s refuge and thankfully they took us in. Speaking to the other women I realised I myself, like so many of them, had been a battered wife, mentally tortured by my cruel, heartless husband.

  After a couple of days one of the women accidentally told me the counsellor at the refuge felt I needed ‘clinical help’. Fearing the worst, I picked up Lily, our clean clothes we’d kindly been given and walked out of the door. That night she slept, fitfully, in my arms in the doorway of a church. I didn’t close my eyes for a second, for fear of what would become of us.

  The next morning I took her to a coffee shop so she could have a glass of juice and I could have a cup of tea and think about our future. As I sat there gazing into my cup, it seemed bottomless. There seemed nowhere for us to go apart from back to Jack.

  Resigned to that being our only option, I opened the newspaper and flicked aimlessly through the pages. I came across an advert that had been circled in red pen. It was for a pretty little white cottage for rent in a tiny town called Ivory Meadows. It was called Cherrystone Cottage. I instantly knew it had to be mine. I called from a telephone box outside the café and two hours later Lily and I were on the train on our way to our new home.

  When I spoke to the woman at the other end of the phone, I told her my name was Vivian Myrtle and that I had a daughter called Rosemary.

  I have no idea where such a strange name came from but it stuck and it seems much more my own now than Catherine Mills ever did. Why I gave my poor elder daughter the name of my tiny deceased baby, I’ll never know. But she never complained, she never questioned what I was doing, just went along cheerfully for an adventure with Mummy where we each took on the name of fairy princesses. She very rarely mentioned her little sister, only when we found the tiny skull in the garden and again when she was delirious with fever. I never brought her up in conversation, although I realise now I probably should have done. It was a subject I found far too difficult to talk about, especially on a level that a seven-year-old could understand. Lily did, however, often wonder about her father, thoughts I’d try to lightly bat away as if we were on some jolly holiday.

  ‘Cathy, talk to me,’ said Jack, shaking me out of my reverie. ‘You can’t just keep running away. I need you, I miss you.

  ‘I’ve looked everywhere for you. I even thought I’d traced you to Ivory Meadows a couple of months ago but the vicar convinced me there was no one here that matched your description. You don’t know, you don’t know what it has been like, not knowing where you were, whether you were alive, even?’

  ‘I’ve been so worried about you.’ He sighed, his voice breaking softly. ‘How are you, Cathy? How’s Rosie?’

  I cast him a look.

  ‘Don’t worry. Your friend Miss Metford has kindly told me all about how you two have been getting along. I understand a lot more than I used to now.’

  ‘But …’

  I tried to speak yet the words wouldn’t come. Aftershave. It was the same as earlier, I knew I’d recognised it on Bill. How strange they should both choose the same scent. It smelt good, reminding me of happier times when I’d loved and been loved in return.

  ‘But …’

  I felt if I didn’t say it my whole body would explode.

  Jack looked caringly into my eyes, willing me to speak. I could see he wasn’t an abuser, a torturer, a liar or a murderer. How had he become such a villain in my mind? How had those seeds of doubt placed by the women in the hostel, the real victims, grown so far out of proportion? He had only ever wanted the best for me. All those years I’d loved and cared for him came flooding back. How he’d wooed me with flowers, wine, and trips to Paris. Not that I’d needed much persuasion. As soon as he’d held the door open for me that very first day, our eyes had met and his hand brushed my shoulder and that was it. I was hooked. He was hooked.

  Even when our poor baby girl lay helpless in her incubator in hospital, Jack was only trying to get me to leave her bedside occasionally, just to eat and to sleep. I’d seen it as a slap round the face when he’d accused me of suffering from post-natal depression. I’d become angry, animated, roaring at him like a wild animal about the fact he had no idea how I felt. Actually, now I could see, he had been right all along. It hadn’t been an accusation at all, merely a suggestion, borne out of kindness, not hostility. And it must have taken courage to say those words, words that had been for my benefit, our benefit. Everything had been for us, as a family. Why had I not seen that before?

  ‘But …’ I tried again, ‘but Rosie had to go. It wasn’t her time. In switching off her life-support machine, you weren’t evil or cruel, you were just doing what was right for you, me and Lily. And for Rosie, too.’

  With that my whole body deflated. It felt as if I was left swimming in an enormous flood of tears that seemed to run across the kitchen tiles and through the door, creating a pool in the garden.

  It was pure and utter relief. I had been hiding for too long, pretending there was a sort of magic in our cottage that was protecting us, building up a defensive barrier against the cruel truth of our past. I could see now I’d developed a whimsical way of seeing things to shelter Lily, and indeed myself, from our harsh reality. The guilt and grief I had felt was so huge, it left me void of anything but despair. I should have been the adult, the parent, sharing my role with Jack equally in the decision to switch off Rosie’s life support machine. Instead I’d shied away from the reality of our situation, throwing out my own accusations like daggers across the room and ranting like a child deprived of its toy. I was filled with a kind of madness, I can see it now, when I look back.

  In the days preceeding Rosemary’s death, my mind had gone blank, my feelings numbed as I stumbled blindly through each waking hour and fretful night. Every time I tried to think straight, to lift myself up out of the dense fog in my head, I became more confused, more empty and defunct.

  And yet, as soon as we were on our way to Ivory Meadows, I had felt a new lease of life. The moment I uttered my false name, I realised that, by playing this fairy-tale character, I didn’t have to play myself. I could be someone entirely different: a kind, caring woman who stood up for what she believed in and protected it, no matter what. My mother had always been full of fanciful ideas, with her bizarre notions and potions. I’d found I’d been thinking of her, and her strange ways, more in the last few months than I had since she’d died three years ago. I guess that questioning your role as a mother makes you think back to your own upbringing. Perhaps it was the madness of the previous months, or what I now recognise was probably depression, but the imaginary story I’d fabricated seemed to make perfect sense to me. Now I saw it was a kind of craziness, the vicar had seen it, as had Barbara and Mary, although they each dealt with it in their own ways.

  At last, this make-believe world I’d created was crumbling around me, and I couldn’t have cared less. I no longer needed it. I had changed, everything had changed.

  It had taken such a long time to even begin to come to terms with the loss of my baby girl, far longer than I’d been able to carry her in my belly. It was a loss I should have shared with my husband, a loss that should have brought us closer together in our struggle against it all. Instead, in my desperate guilt, I had tried to shift my blame onto someone else. And naturally, that culpability was passed to the one I loved the most.

  Jack picked me up and held me tight in his arms. He felt so strong, so capable, as if nothing in the world would go wrong when he was there. Why hadn’t I felt like this before?

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered, my words m
uffled as I burrowed my head into his neck the way I used to. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’

  ‘You did what you had to do to cope. I just wish I could have done more to help you.’

  ‘You did so much,’ I sobbed, ‘if it hadn’t been for you, I’d still be by Rosie’s incubator, two empty corpses side by side.

  ‘I realise now I was running away from myself, not you. I felt so compelled to try to save this little town, having failed so miserably to save my own little baby. And strangely, in doing so, I’ve built a life for myself and Lily here. Lily and I have actually managed to find happiness again.

  ‘But there’s not a day gone by when I haven’t thought about you, and missed you. Even though, in my head, you were the villain and I hated what you’d done, I still couldn’t stop loving you. And that made me hate myself and you even more. Can you understand any of that?’

  ‘Yes, Cathy, I can. I’ve gone over and over that night I got you to sign the consent form to turn off the life support machine. I have been racked with guilt, wondering if I put too much pressure on you to do the right thing. But you have to remember I have been grieving since the moment our baby girl came into our lives too soon, too. The sun will never shine quite so brightly for me without Rosie.

  ‘But for me the grief has been threefold. Because in doing what the doctors advised, in doing what I felt was best, what I always believed you knew in your heart of hearts was best, I lost two daughters and a wife.’

  ‘Oh, Jack,’ I wept, ‘how can you ever forgive me?’

  ‘In the way I hope you’ll forgive me?’

  ‘Mummy, Daddy,’ yelled Lily, ‘does this mean we’re a family again?’

  ‘It certainly does,’ said both Jack and I, at almost the same time.

  We smiled at each other, realising that old flame was still there after all these years.

  ‘And do I still get to keep the cat?’

  We laughed.

  The next morning I awoke early and the house seemed still and quiet. Normally Rosie, sorry Lily, would be pestering me for breakfast. Had it all been just a dream?