She looked at it.
‘This is from Edward Foley’s mother?’
‘Yes. Catherine Foley, I think she signs it.’
Elizabeth stared down at the letter in her hand. It made no sense, but there was no mistaking what she held. Pale blue Basildon Bond and the neat handwriting in black ink. Both identical to the letters she had found in Convent Hill. A cold hand reached across the decades and gripped her stomach. Her poor mother.
THEN
Something was wrong. What was it? Patricia lay rigid as a corpse. Then, it struck her. The wind had stopped. The stillness made her uneasy. There was a metallic taste in her mouth and her head felt thick and heavy on the pillow. Downstairs she heard a door open and shut. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to banish the horror of the night before. How could she ever leave this room again?
Her memories came in and out of focus like a half-remembered dream. She could picture herself stumbling through the dark, her sobs swallowed by the wind in the trees and the deep pit of the night. She had never felt so pathetic in her whole life. Even when her mother had died she hadn’t been so upset. Of course, she understood that the tears weren’t just for the humiliation back in the pub, they were for her life. A life so devoid of hope that she had allowed herself to imagine that Edward could be her knight in shining armour. She felt like such a fool. How had she become so deluded? Placing her feet carefully, she had marched slowly forward, her hands outstretched to protect her from branches or anything else that might confront her in the blind blackness of the night. All too soon of course the lights of a car had pinned her to the hedge and then Edward was out on the road, coat flapping in the headlights, pleading with her to get in. She knew she had been screaming at him but couldn’t remember exactly what. She ended up collapsed into a shuddering ball in front of the car. Edward had half-lifted, half-helped her into the passenger seat. She remembered the familiar smell of her coat which she kept pulled over her head on the drive back to Castle House.
‘I’m so sorry. I was going to tell you. We weren’t trying to trick you. We just thought it was the best way to do things. We …’ His litany of apologies and explanations washed over her and all she really heard was the word ‘we’ repeated over and over again. It made her feel sick to think of them working as a team, the two of them plotting and planning what to say to her. Even worse was the thought of Edward sitting still while his mother read Patricia’s letters aloud to him. Private! It was all meant to be special and intimate and now she felt so exposed. All she wanted to do was go home and end this nightmare. Why had she come back? If only she had kept to her resolve to finish things she would have been spared all this. She pushed herself lower into her seat. ‘Mammy can explain things. Mammy will tell you how it happened.’
Patricia groaned.
Mrs Foley was standing in wait in front of the house, her shadow stretched across the grass like a thin giant. Had she already heard that something had happened in the pub?
‘What is it? Is everything all right?’ She had taken Patricia’s other arm in a firm grip and helped her indoors with Edward.
‘She knows,’ was all Edward said.
‘Knows what?’
‘The letters, Mammy. She knows about the letters.’
Mrs Foley said nothing more.
The three of them weaved their way like drunks into the house and through the hall to the brightly lit heat of the kitchen. Patricia sank down in a chair and stared at her clenched hands on her lap. She was aware of Edward and his mother standing apart and staring at her. The lid of a simmering pot rattled in anticipation.
Predictably it was Mrs Foley that broke the silence.
‘Will you have some food?’
An indignant Patricia glared at her. How dare this woman think that a plate of dinner was going to help her overlook this betrayal? The expression on Mrs Foley’s face suggested she was taken aback by the red swollen eyes and running nose of the young woman sitting at her table. She took a step forward.
‘Edward meant no harm. It was my fault. I’m not going to be around forever and I just wanted to see him settled. He is very fond of you, Patricia.’
She shook her head. ‘No. He can’t.’ Her voice was a high-pitched rasp. ‘If he cared he wouldn’t have lied to me.’ She threw an accusatory glance towards Edward but he had his gaze firmly fixed on the far corner of the room.
‘No, no, Patricia,’ Mrs Foley said in a soothing voice. ‘Edward meant everything in those letters. Those were his feelings.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I was just trying to help. He’s not a stupid boy. It was just that, well, school wasn’t for him.’ Her hands made a strange calming gesture as if she was patting an imaginary dog.