Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller (best large ereader txt) 📕

pulls out the envelope from under the lining, and waves it at him. “So tell me, what is it you want this time? You wouldn’t take the money Mum borrowed, so why would I believe your bloody offer now?”

Rawson runs his hand over his eyes. “Your mother never owed me money,” he says. “She never owed me anything. You’re right—I never asked for any rent, not since your father died.”

Jeanie puffs out air. She doesn’t want to hear it; she just wants him to leave.

“And I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the eviction. That was down to Caroline. She insisted we go away, to try and patch things up, she said, but she arranged the eviction while I wasn’t here. I should have come to see you as soon as I got back, to explain, but—well, there has been a lot to try and sort out between us. Caroline was so angry. More angry than I’d ever seen her. I promised her . . . I promised her so many times.”

Jeanie doesn’t want to hear what he promised his wife. Won’t hear. But he doesn’t stop.

“Caroline found out, you see. About me and Dot.” His voice breaks when he says her name and for a moment Jeanie sees the unhappy man under the person she has always hated. “It started a year or so after your father died—”

“Was killed by you,” Jeanie says.

“Well,” he says. “We can get into all that if you like, but it’s not as straightforward as you were led to believe. One of your mother’s conditions.”

“What does that mean?” she asks aggressively.

Rawson looks away, doesn’t answer, and Jeanie screws the envelope into a ball. The sound outside is the engine of a dirt bike.

“You’ve brought your friends with you?”

Rawson listens. “That’s nothing to do with me.”

Jeanie goes to the door and bolts it. She’d rather be inside with Rawson than take her chances with whoever is out there.

“We knew it was wrong,” he says. “I was married. We ended it so many times, and I promised Caroline. I promised her it wouldn’t start up again. Dot felt bad about it too. But we couldn’t stop. I loved her,” he says, and his voice softens and slows.“Whenever your mother could get away, we’d meet. If Caroline was off somewhere, Dot would come to the house. Often, we’d just talk, play the piano. Sometimes we only managed once a month.”

Jeanie wants to clamp her hands over her ears like a child. Her mother and this man. It can’t be true, even while she knows it is, has always known in some way. She turns her head, can’t look at him, but lets him go on.

“I loved her,” he says again. “And she loved me too. I know it. Perhaps it was only escaping the daily grind of making a living, looking after you two without a husband to help her, running a home, but I like to think it was more than that. We talked about the farm, the garden, the state of the world, the cottage. I wanted to do it up, put in decent plumbing, rethatch the place, but she thought you and your brother would be suspicious.

“She had strong opinions, your mother. Interesting ideas. And she liked to tell me about you and Julius. She loved you both very much.”

Jeanie can’t bear the tremble in Rawson’s voice, the tenderness, the grief.

“We often talked about whether we could be together properly, but there are . . . well, there are things that happened a long time ago to Caroline and me, and in the end, I couldn’t do that to her—leave her. And your mother said her job was to look after you, and Julius of course. It was a promise she’d made to herself; she wouldn’t ever tell me why. But she loved you being at home with her.”

“None of this is possible,” Jeanie says angrily. “I don’t believe you.” An image flashes into her head of her mother’s wedding ring on the scullery windowsill, and even as she speaks she understands that she and Julius were the last to know.

“As I think Caroline said when she unfortunately came to see you, there’s a receipt book at home. It was a joke between me and Dot—signing her initials by each date. When she got ill it became harder for us to meet. I was so worried about her, but she wouldn’t let me help. I suppose she felt guilty that she wasn’t giving anything in return for the cottage, and so she offered money. I didn’t want her money. I only wanted her.”

There’s a prickle in Jeanie’s nose and the thump of blood in her ears.

“I always told her the cottage was hers, and yours of course, for as long as you and Julius needed it. I said I would sign it over to her, but she wouldn’t have it. She was a bloody stubborn woman when she wanted to be, wouldn’t take anything from anyone unless she was giving something in return. But I didn’t tell Caroline that Dot wasn’t paying any rent; I let her see the receipt book and she believed what she wanted to believe. And then, after Dot died, it all came out, that no rent was ever paid and that we were still in love.” He finishes on a kind of sob.

Jeanie puts her fingers against her heart, but she can no longer keep her voice regulated. “And so just like that, out of guilt or whatever bloody thing it is you think you’re suffering from, you’ve come to offer me the cottage back. Is that it?”

“I want to make amends. Sort things out between us. You and Julius can move back into the cottage, and I—well, I would like to invite both of you round to the house sometimes if you wanted to come. Caroline isn’t there—we’re having a trial separation, just to see what happens. Dot talked about you and your brother so often.”