Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts (45 page)

‘What have you found?’ demanded Val. She stood up, and for the first time in her life, Rachel saw her mother was really upset. Her shoulders were shaking under her best silk blouse. ‘What have you read?’

‘A note. A note from Felix. Why?’

‘Vally,’ said Ken. ‘Don’t start this.
I’ve told you a million times, it had nothing to do with you, love.’

‘It isn’t always to do with you, Mum,’ agreed Rachel. ‘People are perfectly capable of screwing things up without your help.’

Valerie stared at her across the table, her mouth pinched at the corners. ‘You’re just like her, Rachel,’ she said. ‘You look just like her, and you sound just like her. I don’t want you to end up like her, lonely and sad.’

‘So why are you being so bloody mean now?’ Rachel couldn’t stop herself.

Val opened her mouth to say something, but a silent sob came out instead. She marched swiftly out of the kitchen, throwing her napkin down on the chair as she left.

‘What did I say?’ The fight seeped out of Rachel and she leaned wearily against the oven. She was getting tired all the time now. ‘Dad, I know it’s not how she imagined it would be but come on.’

‘She’s had a drink,’ said Ken. ‘And it’s upsetting for her, this Dot business. You’ve got to remember, she blamed herself for most of it.’

‘If someone would just tell me what that Dot business is, then maybe I could be more sensitive to it?’

Ken looked at her, then looked at the door. Then he patted the chair next to his and jerked his head towards it. Rachel went over and sat down.

‘There’s something you ought to know,’ said Ken, very quietly. ‘About Felix, and Dot. Your mother doesn’t know, and I’m not sure she needs to.’

Rachel wondered how on earth her dad could know if her mum didn’t, and prayed, hard, that it wasn’t something to do with her.

‘I don’t know how to put this,’ said Ken. ‘And it was a very long time ago, but there was a good reason Dot didn’t marry Felix.’ He coughed, and paused, as if he was trying to get it all in an order he could understand. ‘Felix and Dot
– we didn’t see much of them. Dot liked London, liked her life down there. Your mother never really understood that.’ He looked at her, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Maybe you do, though.’

Rachel nodded.

‘We heard a lot about Felix, mind – how good-looking he was, and what a nice house he had, how his family owned this, that and the other. I think Dot might have been a bit ashamed of us, being just simple Lancashire folk.’ Ken went into his Northern self-parody voice. ‘That was how your mother saw it, anyway. The only time Dot brought him home was Amelia’s christening. They arrived in his lovely white Jag, looking like a pair of film stars. I think your mum was a bit put out by that, it being her day, so to speak, and you’d been playing up, so after the tea, she took you and Amelia home, and we stayed on at the hotel for a drink – me, Dot and Felix and some friends.’ Ken looked nostalgic. ‘I’ll say this for Dot, she was laugh-a-minute in her day, and Felix had put some cash behind the bar, as a christening gift.’

‘Bet Mum didn’t like that either,’ said Rachel. It was building up into quite a list.

He gave her an ‘I won’t disagree’ look. ‘Well, the afternoon wore on, and everyone had a few too many, shall we say. Towards the end, as we were all leaving, there was a bit of friendly hugging . . .’ Ken turned bright red. ‘There’s no nice way of putting this, Rachel, but when I went to spend a penny Felix made it clear enough that he’d be happy to take things a bit further than hugging. With me. Soon as I told him it wasn’t on the cards, so to speak, he sobered up sharpish. Said he hadn’t meant anything by it, but I could tell.’

‘Dad!’ breathed Rachel. She tried to picture her grey-haired dad back in his early thirties – he’d been a good-looking, football-playing pie-and-pint bloke. Not the sort of man who’d known much about that sort of thing;
women
probably rarely made passes at him.

‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’ve got a problem with men like that.’ He shot a quick glance towards the door, in case Val had reappeared. ‘Each to his own, as they say. And he was mortified, poor sod. But I had to tell Dot. I thought she had a right to know, what with them going steady. I didn’t want to see her getting hurt.’

‘What did she say?’ How plain-speaking Ken had engineered that conversation was beyond Rachel’s imagination, but she loved her dad for doing what he thought was right, even though he probably wanted to wipe the whole incident from his brain.

Ken let out a sad breath. ‘She said she’d known, deep down. There’d been something about him that she couldn’t quite get to. She put it down to him being, you know, a bit posh. Buttoned-up. In fact, when she tackled him about it he admitted that he’d had these flings, with men, since he was at school – couldn’t quite give them up. Even with Dot.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Well, you know what happened.’ Ken looked uncomfortable. ‘She told me he turned up with one of those emergency marriage licences and said she had to decide. If she could put up with him having the odd dalliance, he’d give her a lovely home, whatever she wanted. They could have had a very nice life. Felix did love her, you know. And she loved him.’

Rachel nodded. ‘This note I found, it’s so sad. It sounds like his heart is really breaking. But she said no? Did you ask her why?’

‘Dot came up to see me one day, didn’t tell your mother. We went out for lunch – her in big sunglasses like a film star – and she told me she didn’t want a marriage with secrets.’ Rachel could see from Ken’s wistful face that a little of Dot’s London glamour had rubbed off on him that day. ‘She didn’t want to know who he’d been with, or what was going on, but she didn’t want to
know
that she didn’t know. If you get my meaning. She said she envied me and your mother, because we had a very boring marriage with no secrets whatsoever.’ He smiled. ‘I mean, she put it a bit more nicely than that. But that’s what she meant.’

Rachel looked round the kitchen. Gem lay in a basket by the door, in the room where Dot had nursed discarded puppies and brought in starving strays, caring for them until she could put them back with an owner who’d love them. A simple match.

‘Did Felix buy her this house then?’

‘I suppose he did. I know he gave her an allowance until he died – she spent it on the dogs, not herself. But we didn’t see much of Dot after that. I don’t think she liked to be reminded, you know, of what had happened.’ He gave her a long-suffering look. ‘Your mother, of course, blames herself.’

Rachel rolled her eyes. Only Val could transpose the blame for Dot’s decision not to marry a bisexual man onto some imagined fault of her own. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, something she said to Dot at the christening. She’s never told me what it was. Says it’s too embarrassing.’ Ken balked at the contrast. ‘Probably something about Dot’s hat.’

‘So why didn’t you just tell her the truth?’

He raised his hands. ‘Because I promised Dot I wouldn’t. I know.’ He deflected Rachel’s accusing gaze. ‘She made me swear I’d never tell a soul. For Felix, and for herself. She was quite proud, you know. I think she’d rather people thought she’d been selfish than know why she’d broken it off. And it wasn’t up to me to tell.’

Nice one, Dot, thought Rachel, marvelling at the drama queen persona emerging from the placid dog-loving disguise. Plant a secret at the heart of my parents’ nice transparent marriage, why don’t you? But she didn’t say it out loud.

‘You could tell Mum now?’ she suggested. ‘Just so she doesn’t spend the next thirty years wondering if Dot hid something in this house for me to find?’

‘What? Tell her I kept it from her for over thirty years that her sister’s boyfriend tried to grope me, and that I stopped Dot getting married? Do me a favour, love.’ He paused, and
looked at her meaningfully. ‘Actually . . .’

‘Oh, no,’
said Rachel. ‘No. Not you as well.’

Dad wanted her to tell Val. And so did Dot.
That
was the secret she’d left in the house for Rachel to find and share with Val, not with anyone else – the real reason for her lifelong spinsterhood, and the reason she hadn’t spoken to her sister for the rest of her life.

Dot and Val. About as bad as each other, thought Rachel with exasperation.

‘Please,’ he said quietly. ‘You can pretend you found something in a drawer. Some note she left for you, maybe?’

‘But . . .’ Rachel stuck her hands in her hair, ‘Mum and I don’t have those sorts of conversations, Dad. She only ever calls me to tell me to do stuff.’

‘She’s worried she’s losing touch with you, Rachel,’ he said. ‘I know your mother’s a bossy boots, but she means well, and she misses you. This baby – she won’t say but she’s over the moon inside. If she nags, it’s only because she worries about you.’

‘She doesn’t need to worry,’ Rachel protested. ‘I’m a big girl! I’m nearly forty!’

Ken’s eyes looked straight into hers, clear with fatherly adoration, and Rachel felt her chest tighten. ‘You might be nearly forty, but you’ll always be our little girl, Rachel. Our first little girl.’

If only he knew how little I felt now, she thought. How much I wish I could just bury my head in his chest and have all this go away.

Val’s Clarks sandals clomped along the tiles outside the kitchen, and Gem’s head sprang up from his sleeping position. Before Ken and Rachel could exchange glances, Val was back in the kitchen, pink lipstick refreshed, eyes bright with tears and fresh wipes.

‘What are you two gabbing about?’ she asked, in an upbeat voice that was meant to telegraph a total change of subject. ‘And do you think George will be dropping back in for a cup of coffee after he’s dealt with his horse?’

‘I’ll text him,’ said Rachel, hearing her own voice mirror her mother’s. ‘You never know. Ice cream, Dad?’

‘Lovely!’ Ken smacked his knees, his usual sign that the tricky emotional stuff was over. He seemed relieved. ‘Where’s the loo in this place, Rachel? Excuse me, ladies.’

‘Now then, I was looking at the wallpaper on the stairs.’ Val launched into a helpful stream of advice about redecorating as Rachel picked Dot’s china pudding bowls out of the crockery cupboard, but though she smiled, Rachel wasn’t listening.

Instead, she was trying to imagine what it must have felt like, to hear the man you’d let inside your head, whom you thought you knew, tell you that he’d been someone different all the time. She probed her own heart. What if Oliver hadn’t told her about Kath, for all those years? What if she’d discovered
that
?

In fact, Kath
had
known. She’d chosen to live with that bitter knowledge that Oliver loved someone else, in exchange for security, and a family. Wouldn’t that erode your spirit, like battery acid?

It wasn’t quite the same, she decided. What Felix had asked Dot to keep secret meant changing everything – including who
she
was. Someone who hadn’t known her lover well enough to pick up on those secret needs. No wonder the shock of it had washed Dot up here, devastated and directionless. And she’d been younger than Rachel was now.

Maybe you never really knew people. Rachel laid Dot’s silver spoons mechanically on the table. Mum wouldn’t guess that Dad could have pulled a bloke, if he’d wanted to. Dad never knew his little girl had been some man’s mistress for longer than Amelia had been married. Maybe Mum was right: George
could
be a closet bigamist for all she knew.

A shiver ran over her, not about George so much as for herself, and the future that she hadn’t a clue about, with the baby she still couldn’t quite believe would be here by Christmas. Dot had been right about this house being full of secrets. Four Oaks, if Felix had paid for it, was an enormous secret in itself. Maybe it would be better to sell it, and make the fresh start Dot should have made, instead of tying herself in knots trying to keep Dot’s mad displacement passion going?

Val laid a hand over hers and Rachel looked down at it.

Her mother was smiling contritely. They were alike in that respect. Always sorry at once for their outbursts.

‘Lots to think about, darling?’ said Val.

Rachel nodded. She felt too tired to argue. ‘Lots,’ she said. And she managed a watery smile.

25

Rachel wasn’t looking forward to finding ‘a quiet moment’ to talk to Val about Dot’s painful family secret, but luckily, she didn’t have to, thanks to the most frenetic Saturday the kennels had had in months.

The doorbell started ringing just after she’d finished making breakfast, when the first wave of dog walkers arrived, encouraged by the bright morning, and spring air. It didn’t stop, and soon the kitchen was full of volunteers, all chatting and scoffing bacon sandwiches, which Val insisted on making, leading to some pointed jostling at the Aga with Freda, Queen of the Grill Pan.

To dispel the simmering tension, Rachel suggested that Ken and Val take Gem for a walk and when they’d gone, she started dealing with the queue of people waiting in the rescue office. Natalie’s website had brought in a new batch of would-be rehomers wanting to meet the dogs and, while she and Megan chatted and discussed home checks, a heartbroken family turned up with their three terriers, in tears because their new council landlord refused to allow pets. Megan had only just calmed them down, when George arrived with a Yorkshire terrier that someone had abandoned outside the surgery.