‘I can’t see,’ Meriel said, ‘I need you to tell me. You’ll choose the right thing and set it in the perfect spot … you’re so good at it.’
Karin stood beside her. In the two years since she had redesigned and planted Meriel’s garden, everything had begun to mature, so that it looked less raw and new. Shrubs were filling out, bulbs had spread so that the small beds at the side of the steps leading up to the terrace were thick with iris reticulata and miniature narcissi. By June the wide borders at the far end would be coming into their own, the climbing roses fuller.
Meriel had asked Karin to lunch. It was the day after Martha’s sad little funeral at the crematorium in the cold and grey. Now, the sun was shining. Meriel wanted to plant a tree in Martha’s memory but she seemed not to know what kind or where it should go. She simply stared vaguely out at the garden.
She looks drawn, Karin had thought, suddenly old. Frail even. There was something about her eyes, too, an anxious look which Karin had never noticed before.
‘You do think it’s the right thing to do?’ She turned now, needing confirmation and reassurance.
‘Of course I do, it’s perfect. I was wondering about a winter flowering cherry; they have those delicate pink blossoms on bare branches when there’s almost nothing else and you often get a flowering twice, in November and again in late January. They’re easy, they look wonderful in snow, they give a pretty dappled shade during the summer.’
‘I knew you’d think of the right thing and you have. But where?’
‘You want to see it … to have it stand out from everything else …’
‘There?’ Meriel pointed vaguely. ‘Oh, but you choose, you decide.’
‘It’s your garden,’ Karin said gently, ‘she was your daughter. I don’t want to take over on this one.’
‘I’ll only get it wrong.’
‘Of course you won’t.’ Karin stepped down off the terrace on to the grass and stood looking all around her. There was no warmth in the sun. She needed the scarf she had tied twice round her neck. Meriel stood above her watching, tall and straight-backed, her legs long in black jeans. How many women of her age could wear black jeans to such effect? Karin wondered.
‘What about there … in the middle of the side lawn against the dark background? You’d see it from the kitchen, from the drawing room and from your bedroom. It wouldn’t grow too big for that space.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’ She seemed anxious to get the decision out of the way, to have the tree chosen, bought, planted and then to move on.
Karin was puzzled. She had no idea what Meriel’s feelings had been about Martha’s life or now her death. Yesterday at the crematorium she had been dry-eyed, moved a little stiffly, once touched Simon’s arm before moving quickly away to the waiting cars. She had been grave. Nothing more.
It had been Richard Serrailler who had wept, discreetly but for some time, he who had read a poem over his daughter’s coffin and barely been able to finish. Afterwards he had not joined the others or looked at the flowers laid on the grass but walked quickly away into the memorial garden at the side of the chapel. Chris Deerbon had made to go after him but Simon had shaken his head.
There had been so few there – three people from Ivy Lodge, Karin, Chris on his own as Cat was only just home with the baby. Karin had looked at Meriel again and again. Something had happened to her. She had been a woman still in middle age and now she had moved forward into the first stage of being old.
‘Do come inside, the wind is too cold to stand about here. I want to talk to you about the hospice exhibition.’
Karin followed her. From the study at the end of the corridor she heard the faint patter of a keyboard. Richard Serrailler still wrote medical papers and co-edited an online journal in ophthalmology.
Meriel put a fresh filter paper in the coffee percolator and a bag of peppermint tea into a mug for Karin, who was still strictly following the anti-cancer diet. Karin sat at the kitchen table looking at the plans for the hospice extension.
‘Do you feel it,’ Meriel asked abruptly, setting down the cups, ‘not having children?’
Karin was taken aback. Since Mike had left her, she had been on an emotional seesaw; half of her was grateful that, after years of struggling to conceive, they had not managed to have children after all – children who would now be torn apart by his actions. But some of the time she believed that children might have meant Mike would never have met the woman in New York, not have left home …
‘Yes and no … probably more no than yes, just now. But when I go to see Cat and little Felix I daresay it will be a very strong yes.’
‘It is the hardest. Losing your child, having your child die before you die. It’s the wrong way round and you feel guilty. You’ve failed, you see. You should protect them from death and you have failed. I had no idea that I would feel like this about Martha … Perhaps I feel it more than I would have done with one of the others … she was so vulnerable. She was innocent and helpless and vulnerable.’
She sipped her coffee. Karin noticed the pale smudges under her eyes, as if someone had scored thumbprints there.
‘Medical advances mean we are so much less accepting of death. And we have to accept it. All of us.’
‘I don’t think I accept it, or I wouldn’t have spent the last year fighting so hard against the prospect of it.’
‘No. But you would have been dying before your time. Did Martha? When was her time to die? At birth probably. Before birth. People bewail miscarriages but they are almost always right. Almost always.’ She stared across the kitchen, not out of the window but simply into space.
Karin reached out to pull the plans towards her. ‘What time would you like me to come to the hall on Saturday?’ She wanted to break the atmosphere, to have the usual Meriel back, full of energy, organising, arranging and in charge, not this sad and rather defeated woman. Karin felt like a child whose seemingly invincible parent has suddenly demonstrated a weakness.
‘Yes,’ Meriel looked vaguely at the papers in front of her. ‘Well, we open at ten. There’s the model to set up and the display boards … we can’t have the hall the night before unfortunately, it’s in use.’
‘Half past eight?’
‘Could you bear it?’
‘Oh yes, I get up pretty early. Are there people lined up to do refreshments or do you want me to help with those too?’
A door opened and closed and they heard footsteps along the passage.
‘Oh no, goodness, there are plenty of cake bakers and coffee servers … no, I need you with me. We must talk to everyone who comes in, persuade them how badly this day-care unit is needed. I aim to have promises and interest enough by the end of Saturday to feel confident that we can go ahead. God knows there’s plenty of money in Lafferton, we just have to dig for it. Have you seen the model? I never think plans and drawings give a proper impression of any building, but the model makes it come alive.’ She leaned over the table. ‘Karin, it is so important … we have got to make this happen!’
This was the old Meriel Serrailler back, enthusiastic and determined, her face alight. Karin relaxed. The right order of things was restored after all.
The door opened and Richard Serrailler stalked across the kitchen.
‘Coffee hot?’
‘I made it five minutes ago.’
‘Good.’ He opened the cupboard and took out a cup and saucer. Then, as he was about to pour his coffee, turned to Karin. ‘It was good of you to come yesterday. Please know how much it was appreciated.’
Karin stammered a reply. Richard Serrailler had barely spoken to her before, and never without appearing curt. How strange death was that it should not only shatter people and change things for ever, but bring different people out of the ones you thought you knew. Even this death of a child-woman whom no one had ever really known had changed things, hurt Meriel enough to age her and reveal her vulnerability and softened her husband to the point where he acknowledged Karin’s presence at the funeral with real gratitude, for all the formal way he had expressed it.
‘I was glad I could be there,’ she said. He nodded, and went out without further comment.
‘The model has to be placed so that it’s the first thing people see and then they’ll be drawn straight to it,’ Meriel said.
Her husband might never have been in the room.