‘What-ee what-say?’ Dennis asked.
‘French word,’ Chalkie said. ‘Means “bleedin’ delighted”。’
‘I adore her,’ Bronte said. ‘I adore all three of my children.’
‘So how do you reconcile being a loving mother with using heroin?’
‘But they weren’t there.’ She sounded surprised. ‘They were away at school. I never took drugs around them.’
Really? Well, maybe. It fitted with Freya’s version of events. ‘When you got married you – for the most part – stopped using heroin? But you began again about six years ago? Yes? Why?’
‘I’m not really sure …’
‘Your youngest child is thirteen? What age was he when he went to boarding school?’
‘Seven.’
‘Which was how many years ago?’
‘… Six.’
I let that sit with her for a while.
‘Eden sent you to rehab five years ago? And you got clean and stayed clean, until eight months ago? Yes? Before you broke your ankle, how were you doing with your life? Was anything different? Any changes? Big or small?’
She widened her eyes. ‘Not that I can remember.’
‘Let’s track back. It was June when you had your accident. What else was going on last June?’
‘Mmm. Most of the dams had foaled –’
‘Anything going on with your children? Freya? She’d done her A Levels, left school and come home? For how long?’
‘Two weeks.’
‘You had expected her to stay for longer?’
‘I thought she was home for good. To study Equine Science at uni in Dublin.’
‘So what happened?’
Bronte’s face became pinched. ‘Eden got her an internship in a bank. In San Francisco. It came as a huge shock to Freya. And to me. When her year in the bank ends, instead of going to uni in Ireland, he says she’s reading economics in Durham.’
‘How did you feel about that?’
‘It was devastating.’ Her voice was faint. ‘We – Freya and I – had such wonderful plans, to work together with our horses. We were both so excited. It had been agony being away from her, from all three of them. But I’d stayed strong because I knew better times were coming. Then I discovered that the end of her schooling meant she’d be more gone from me than ever.’
‘So you fell off your horse.’
Startled, she said, ‘Are you suggesting I did it on purpose?’
‘Did you? Put it another way. You’d waited a long time to have a proper relationship with your daughter, only to discover that that special mother–daughter time you’d been yearning for was never going to happen. You felt …？’
‘Desolate.’
‘Then you fell from your horse. I don’t doubt that you were in a lot of physical pain. But the drugs they offered you were old friends. You knew they would numb your anguish about Freya. There were many ways of relieving the agony of the broken bone. But only one way to muffle your loss about Freya.’ I shrugged. ‘Heroin.’
Dennis actually gasped. In fairness, though, they were all awestruck, thinking I was some sort of a witch.
‘So it’s Eden’s fault?’ Bronte asked.
‘You’re the one who takes heroin.’
‘But Eden’s so –’ She stopped abruptly.
‘High and mighty?’ Dennis offered. ‘Bossy?’
‘Autocratic?’ Chalkie said. ‘Overbearing? Dictatorial? A pain in the hole?’
‘I thought he was lovely,’ Ella murmured, giving Bronte a poisonous look.
‘Enough,’ I said. ‘This isn’t about him.’
‘Ah, Rachel, I was enjoying that,’ Chalkie said.
Eden Tollemarche did seem like quite the tyrant, but the Cloisters wasn’t a reinvention heaven where under-the-thumb women came to get their groove back. Bronte could sort out her marriage further down the line – or maybe not, who knew? – but, much as I would have loved to wade in there and give her all sorts of life advice, my only job was to help her to get – and crucially, stay – clean.
60
When I switched my phone on, it beeped: a missed call from Luke, then a terse two-word text: Call me.
My stomach fell down a well.
He answered after half a ring. ‘I need to see you. We need to talk.’
‘… About what?’
‘Something we have to get straight.’ His voice was calm, measured, furious. ‘On Sunday, at the beach, you said I left you, but that’s not how it was –’