Throwing off her covers, she slid out of bed and crept down the stairs just in time to see Viola opening the front door.
‘Don’t go,’ she pleaded.
Viola turned around, shock on her face. Her eyes were puffy and swollen. ‘Don’t …’ Her voice cracked and she held up her hand.
‘Please. I’m sorry for telling on you. But you’ll break her heart.’
Viola shrugged. ‘She’s got you.’
‘She loves you.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t stay. I feel caged here.’
Katy moved slowly across the hall so as not to frighten Viola away. ‘I know you hate me …’
‘I don’t hate you. Not really. It’s …’ She swallowed and looked at the floor. ‘It’s complicated. Mother and I have never got on, even before you came. It’s being here.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know. When I’m with Danny I’m a better person. When I’m here I’m full of hate.’
Katy hung her head. This was all her fault. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No,’ said Viola, surprising Katy. ‘I’m sorry. Really. For what I said to Danny. I don’t know why I have to act like a bitch all the time.’ And then she gave Katy a quick, firm hug. ‘Promise not to tell on me this time.’
Katy nodded, blinking tears away. ‘I promise.’
‘And look after Mother. She’s going to need you.’
‘I will.’
Viola drew away and disappeared out of the front door, pulling it gently shut behind her.
Viola left a note for Elspeth saying that she was in love. That there was nothing anyone could do about it. And that she wanted never to see either of them again.
Elspeth took the news hard. She wiped away any sign of Viola, taking down photographs from the walls and stripping her bedroom with a white-hot fury. ‘As far as I’m concerned, Viola is dead,’ she said. In one way Katy was pleased to see the back of Viola and all the arguments that her presence had caused, but she could see how much Elspeth was hurting. She often wondered, in the years that followed, whether Viola had meant her parting words or if she had been pacifying her so that she could run away without Katy telling Elspeth.
Elspeth grew more brittle as time passed, as though she blamed Katy for sending her real daughter away. There were occasions when she refused to speak to her for days at a time, never giving a real reason. But Katy knew that the resentment was there, bubbling beneath the surface, every now and again rearing its head.
But it wasn’t until later, when Katy grew up and became Kathryn, when she had her own children, that she began to doubt her mother’s actions. How could she have wiped her only daughter so easily from her life?
Now here they are, thirty years later, and Viola is dead. Elspeth will never have that chance to say sorry.
Kathryn stares at Elspeth. When Jim called and said Viola was dead, she’d passed the receiver wordlessly to her mother. Now Elspeth’s face is ashen, her mouth trembling.
‘Here, come on, let’s sit down,’ says Kathryn, gently, taking the receiver from Elspeth’s hand and leading her into the sitting room.
‘She’s dead,’ she says again, her voice wobbling.
‘I know,’ she soothes. ‘But … you must have expected it?’
‘Of course I didn’t,’ she snaps. ‘Why would I? She was only forty-seven.’
‘I know … It’s just that you never heard from her and I thought that must have been why.’
‘It was only two years ago she died. All those years she could have been in touch.’ She puts a hand to her heart, her face pallid. ‘I suppose I hoped I’d see her again before I …’ She trails off.
‘Before you what?’
She draws herself up so she resembles the formidable woman Kathryn was in awe of as a child. ‘I’m nearly eighty. I’ve been suffering from bad health.’ She still has her hand on her heart. ‘I know I won’t make more than a year or two.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘I’ve got heart disease, Kathryn.’
Kathryn doesn’t know what to say. She swallows. What does this mean? ‘Are you saying … are you saying you’re dying?’
‘We’re all dying.’ Her eyes glisten. A heart attack had killed Viola, according to Jim.
‘Oh, God.’ Kathryn doesn’t know what else to say. If only things could have turned out differently. If only Viola had been kind when Kathryn was adopted into their family. Kathryn had wanted a sister, a friend, not an enemy. Then none of this would have happened.