Sam hears Cara scream, sees her collapse down on the rooftop. By the time he reaches her she is curled up small, huddled against the wind, screaming a name over and over again. He drops to his knees, gathers her shaking body into his arms and sits holding her, utterly unnerved.
‘Cara, what is it? Are you hurt?’
She shudders, wails quietly, and then her eyes roll up and she becomes limp in his arms.
‘Cara,’ he calls. ‘Cara?’
There is no response. He forces himself to stay calm, to control his panic. The squall is on them now. The sun has set and in the noise of the wind and the rain he can’t even tell for sure that she is breathing. Sam lays her flat, bends to her face and listens for breath. He feels it on his cheek and, sitting back, he places a finger on her neck; she has a pulse. He looks around the roof and sees that the crash had been caused by the hatch blowing shut in the wind. He is berating himself, cursing, even as he says out loud, ‘We can’t stay here.’
He leaps up, crosses to the hatch and, seizing the large metal ring in his hands, heaves it up from the roof, hoping that this time the wind will allow him time to act. Moving back to Cara, determined, he bends so that he can pull her up, gripping her under the arms. He lifts her till she is upright and then ducks down to allow her to fall across his shoulders. As he straightens, he is aware that she is light, very light, and it is not difficult to secure her in a fireman’s lift, with her body secure around his neck and his arm locking her legs. Moving swiftly now, scared that the wind might once again catch the hatch door, he approaches the ladder and swings himself over on to the top rungs. The first few steps will be the most difficult. A moment to adjust his burden and then he is climbing down, hands on the rungs, relying on his balance to hold her in place. He is utterly relieved when his head drops below the entrance, out of the wind, but it is still not easy to make progress. Halfway down the ladder he has to pause, terrified that he might let her slip. But he adjusts her weight across his back and finishes the climb, gasping with the fear. He doesn’t pause to savour his relief but rolls her off his shoulders and gathers her in his arms. Leaving the loft room to the elements, he carries her out on to the landing, shouting for Fliss and Hal at the top of his voice. As he begins the descent of the stairs he can hear the commotion below and shouts again. And here they are, hurrying up the stairs to meet him. They take charge, assisting him down to the ground floor, helping him to lay his burden on the sofa. Fliss is pulling Cara’s shoes off and is removing the sodden fleece from her arms when Sam sees Cara stir, her eyes flickering open.
‘Sam?’ she asks. ‘Where’s Sam?’
‘He’s here,’ says Fliss, ‘he’s fine,’ although the look she gives Sam tells him that he is anything but fine; that he’s in a lot of trouble. Far above them there is a boom that echoes down through the hall, and Sam knows that the wind has once again slammed the hatch closed. He flinches at the sound, unable to meet Hal’s eyes.
Cara twists, dropping her feet to the floor, and pushes herself up into a sitting position, wedged in the corner of the sofa. She is attempting to summon her defences and barriers, trying to regain control. Fliss takes the rug that’s draped along the back of the sofa and, sitting down beside her, wraps it around Cara’s shoulders.
‘How are you feeling, Cara?’ she asks gently, ‘Are you hurt?’
Cara shakes her head. Sam kneels beside her, taking her hand in his. His face is pale, shocked.
‘Cara, I’m so, so sorry,’ he says. ‘I never thought … I didn’t know it would scare you like that. Are you afraid of heights?’
She shakes her head again. ‘It wasn’t that. I wasn’t scared for me.’
There is a moment’s silence and then Sam says: ‘Cara, who is Joe?’
Her eyes fill with tears, she doesn’t want to speak, doesn’t want them to know, but she sees in Sam’s face the guilt, the horror at the pain he has caused her, and she is overwhelmed by the need to exonerate him. Fliss touches Cara’s arm, smoothing her sleeve. This gentleness is Cara’s undoing. She remembers how she and Fliss sat together in the courtyard, sharing; how Fliss opened her heart to her, talking about her brother Jamie, and about Mole, and it gives Cara courage. She knows that she cannot avoid this, that she owes it to Sam, and to Hal and Fliss. She has to tell them.
She begins to talk, randomly at first and then more coherently. She tells how she met Joe in London and fell in love. How, when he went back to Italy, she feared it might be over but then, a few weeks later, he invited her to Rome. He sounded so keen, so passionate, that she believed that he was going to propose to her. Joe met her at Fiumicino Airport and drove her into the city.
She tells the whole story, exactly as she relived it just now up on the roof, leaving out none of the details. How she imagined that she might be going to meet his parents, to stay with them at their town house, but instead he took her to his flat on the top floor of a house in the old part of the city. It was early evening but he didn’t want to go out. Joe wanted to make love. They both did.
Cara pauses. It’s more difficult to explain how, afterwards, it became clear that there was going to be no proposal of marriage; to tell them how Joe explained to her that he was already engaged to be married and he was assuming that she’d be happy to be his mistress. She tells them how, ashamed, humiliated, shocked, she seized her case, which was still standing by the door, grabbed her bag, and ran out. Joe followed her, trying to prevent her, still behaving as though she was being totally irrational. Outside the front door of the flat he was laughing at her, calling to her. And when she shouted at him again, he leaned back against the banister rail and flung both arms up in mock fear, still laughing at her as the banister gave way. She can remember his scream as he fell, the thump as he hit the ground three floors below, and then the silence.
‘I ran away,’ Cara says.
She stares at her hands, now clasped together on her knees.
‘When I got down to the hall I could see that he was dead – his neck was broken – and then I heard a door opening; voices. I panicked. I could only think that I knew no Italian, that I couldn’t explain and that I might be thrown into prison. I ran out into the street and then I walked and walked. Eventually I remembered that Max had given me Philip’s address. Philip was his oldest, closest friend and he was stationed at the British Embassy in Rome. I saw a taxi, showed the driver the piece of paper with the address on it, and he took me there.’
She takes a gasp of breath but she can’t stop. It must all be told now. She doesn’t look at Hal or Fliss, or at Sam, who kneels in silence watching her.
‘Philip was amazing. He was calm, he let me cry, he looked after me. The next morning he took me to the airport and booked us on the next flight home. When we arrived in London he hired a car and then he drove me to Norfolk to stay with his mother. I loved his mother. She was the kindest woman I’d ever met. I don’t know what he told her but she just treated me as if I was suffering from some terrible bereavement. She looked after me while he returned to Rome. He told me to speak to no one and that he would come back to see me in a few days.’
At last she raises her eyes and looks at them. They don’t look disgusted, just horrified, shocked. Fliss reaches out and holds Cara’s clasped hands tightly.
‘What an utterly appalling thing to have happened.’
Cara stares at her, hardly able to believe what she hears: no condemnation or drawing back. She nods, wipes away some tears.
‘I caused him to die, you see,’ she says, just in case Fliss hasn’t understood. ‘He died and I abandoned him. I couldn’t stop thinking about his parents.’
‘But it wasn’t your fault,’ says Fliss. ‘He should never have invited you out. He misled you. You were right to leave. But, Cara, what happened was an appalling accident and it wasn’t your fault.’
There is a short silence.
‘And when did Philip come back to see you?’ asks Hal.
‘Philip came home a few days later, as he’d promised. He was in the Chancery section of the Foreign Office but he had contacts who were able to find out what had happened after I ran away. Apparently Joe often took women to the flat. It was thought that there might have been a lovers’ quarrel but nothing was found or proved. Nobody had seen me, and certainly no one suspected a foreign national. Joe’s family didn’t want a scandal. Nobody thought that he’d been murdered, and since the banister was rotten with woodworm it was assumed to be an accident. It was all kept quiet, hushed up. Philip told me that nobody need ever know, but I told him that I would know and that I would never be able to forgive myself.’
She falls silent, wondering how to go on. This is always the problem with baring the soul: it’s difficult for everyone to move on from it. It’s Sam who breaks the silence.
‘So when did you and Philip get married?’ he asks, as if he is trying to carry her forward to a happier time.
She knows that only the truth will do and she braces herself to continue.
‘A few weeks later I realized that I was pregnant,’ she says. ‘I was devastated but I couldn’t lose the baby, I couldn’t give it up. You see, it seemed like an atonement: it was Joe’s, a part of his life. I phoned Philip and he came home on compassionate leave. He understood. He knew what keeping the child meant to me.’ She pauses a moment before continuing. ‘So he suggested that we should get married, that as far as everyone was concerned the child would be his.’
Fliss is still holding her hands.
‘What was your reaction?’ she asks gently.
‘I’d known Philip since I was a little girl,’ answers Cara. ‘He was Max’s best friend and I loved him, so it wasn’t as bizarre as it sounds. And at that moment I needed him so much.’ She pauses again. ‘But then he said that if I would agree to marry him, he would not lie to me. So I knew his secrets just as he knew mine, and I kept them just as he kept mine.’
Cara falls silent. She takes a great breath and looks at them. They still look calm, totally sympathetic. She feels as if she is betraying Philip, that these are not her secrets to tell, yet she needs to be free at last of all the concealment.
‘Philip was gay,’ she says at last. ‘Forty years ago that still meant a very great deal, and Philip was ambitious. As a married man nobody would suspect; no questions would be asked.’
Oddly, they look more horrified now than they did when she told them that she’d caused Joe’s death.
‘But how did you feel about that?’ asks Fliss. ‘Not about him being gay but his asking you to marry him? Was that fair of him? Surely he was taking advantage of the situation.’
‘No, it wasn’t like that,’ Cara tells her quickly. ‘It wasn’t like a bribe or blackmail or anything. You see, I knew he loved me, very deeply, just not in that way. He was prepared for me to say “no” but he wanted to protect me. I was pregnant with Joe’s child and he knew me well enough to know that I could never give it up. I had to deal with all of this, so why not with Philip?’
She pauses again. ‘And then, not long after we were married, I lost the baby. I was devastated. I felt as if I’d killed Joe all over again. But Philip was there, he shared my grief, bound it up, carried it with me.’ She stops, fresh tears on her cheeks. ‘Philip was a good, kind man. I know he would have liked to have been a father, but I wasn’t able to have another child.’
‘It was the most terrible tragedy,’ says Hal at last, ‘but I wish you hadn’t crucified yourself all these years because of it. Awful things happen – car accidents, all sorts of things. You weren’t to blame.’
She looks up at him. ‘I ran away,’ she says. ‘I left Joe lying there.’
‘But you knew people would come. You knew they would deal with it. Your reaction was natural, Cara. How old were you? Nineteen? Twenty? Alone in a foreign country. For God’s sake!’
He seems almost angry, but oddly his anger gives her courage, hope. They are on her side.
‘And you’ve never told anyone?’ asks Fliss gently. ‘Not even Max?’
Cara shakes her head. ‘Max knew about the pregnancy, but he never knew the child wasn’t Philip’s. It was best that nobody knew anything about Joe. Philip was implicated in a way. I mean, he could have reported Joe’s death, couldn’t he, but he didn’t. It was best that we kept it all to ourselves. And we were happy. I miss him terribly.’
Suddenly she feels weak, exhausted, and embarrassed that they will not know what to say next. She makes a movement, shifting herself to the edge of the sofa as if to get up but Fliss gently presses her back down, not allowing her to leave. Hal stands up, throws some more logs on the fire. Cara sits quite still, Fliss beside her, and Honey comes slowly across to Cara and pushes her head into her lap. Her golden Labrador eyes look up unblinkingly. Cara meets her gaze and reaches out to stroke her soft head with a slight smile. She looks at them again.
‘I’m so sorry. When I was on the roof with Sam …’ She pauses for a moment, shakes her head. ‘I don’t know why; it brought it all back. I was so afraid he was going to fall too, and then it was like I was back there again, in Rome. I’ve never experienced anything like that.’
‘It’s called PTSD,’ says Hal calmly. ‘Your mind stores up the horror, feeds it, plays on it, and then something triggers a relapse and you find yourself reliving the trauma all over again. I’m glad you could tell us. Acknowledging it is almost the first requirement to finding a way through it. I think you’ve been through hell, Cara, but perhaps it’s over now.’
His pragmatic response steadies her far more than any outburst of sympathy could. Somehow it puts her confession into a new perspective: that maybe, somehow, it wasn’t all her fault. That her reactions, her fears were natural, something that might happen to anybody faced with a deeply traumatic event.
‘Thank you for telling us,’ Fliss says. ‘I know that it can’t have been easy after such a long time.’
Sam is watching Cara anxiously and she smiles at him, needing to reassure him.
‘I feel a complete fool,’ she says honestly. ‘But it was time. Thank you.’
Hal steps into the breach. ‘I have an old friend called Claude who says that the sun is always over the yardarm somewhere in the world,’ he says. ‘Let’s have a drink.’
Later, up in her room, Cara sits on the bed and tries to analyse her feelings. She can hardly believe that she has spoken out, told the secrets that she and Philip have kept for so many years.
Why now? she asks herself. Why now, and to three people I hardly know?
She knows the answer: that she had no choice, that she had to explain for Sam, to relieve his guilt. And yet the relief is overwhelming. Closing her eyes, arms clasped around herself, she tests herself: waits for the knot in the gut, the panic attack, the desolation. But all she feels is a slow unclenching, as if muscles she never knew she had are loosening, relaxing. Suddenly, as if to convince herself that this is not a dream, she stands up and goes to the mirror. She stares into her own eyes. It seems as if she is meeting herself again after a very long time. Her reflection is familiar, reassuring; it even smiles at her. She wants to burst into tears but is unexpectedly seized with an extraordinary weariness. Going back to the bed, she rolls on to it, kicking off her shoes. Turning on her side, drawing up her knees, she drops into sleep as if she has tumbled from a cliff.