Chapter Thirty-Six
Daphne wakes up in the house she has known all her life and wonders how she can face the day. She has wondered this each day since she last saw Adelaide, and her answer each morning has been the same: she doesn’t know, but she will try.
Weeks have passed since she found out that her husband and oldest friend not only had an affair but created a child.
It would be ideal if Hector were still cognisant enough that she could rage at him and perhaps throw him out of the house.
If he were capable of being made to pay for his transgression.
Daphne thinks she would like to experience revenge, just once.
Except there are times when she looks at him, with his lack of comprehension and his inability to do simple things alone, when she thinks that revenge is already here.
It has visited him in the form of his drastic ageing, his helplessness.
If only Daphne weren’t also paying the price, and her daughter along with her.
Poor Janet. She’s always adored her father. Now she has to rearrange her brain around the idea that he wasn’t who she thought he was.
Noel won’t come to the house at all. He’s outraged about the whole thing. So are Daphne and Janet, of course, but they don’t have the luxury of refusing to see Hector. In some ways Daphne thinks that Noel is being unfair to them, yet she can’t blame him.
Hector doesn’t seem to remember anything about his betrayal of them all, apart from his occasional random statements about Adelaide. He has asked about her a couple of times.
Daphne wants to call Adelaide and tell her she can look after Hector now. But at the same time she doesn’t want to call her. She doesn’t want to speak to her ever again.
Then her thoughts will careen in another direction, toward the son who was born and given away.
Who is he now? She is curious. So curious.
Does he look like Hector? Does he speak the same?
Walk the same? It’s unlikely she will meet him, so these questions will not be answered, but she remains curious.
She has continued to sketch. Ideas pour out of her and she documents them, then takes them to the frock shop and lets Christina see them.
To have something separate from this house and what’s happening in it, to have someone who doesn’t know Hector take an interest in her life, has been Daphne’s only respite amidst all this hideousness.
Christina loves the sketches, or so she says. It’s flattering, to have such a worldly young woman take an interest. Not that anything will come of them.
Today is one of Daphne’s days at home. No frock shop for her.
She used to love being at home, in this space she has crafted over decades to be cosy and welcoming.
Now she sees it as the location of the betrayal, and while it’s too comfortable to be called a prison, it does feel like a cell.
She is trapped here as long as Hector is alive, because she won’t divorce him.
She probably couldn’t even if she tried, given that he wouldn’t be able to consent.
Her saving grace is Janet, who maintains a quiet dignity in the face of it all. She helps run the household and still looks after Hector even though she is visibly upset by him.
It’s Janet who answers the phone when it rings downstairs, while Daphne is putting laundry away in the linen cupboard on the first floor.
‘Mum, it’s for you,’ she calls up the stairs. ‘Ian.’
Ian is Daphne’s contact at the charity that operates the frock shop. Every now and again he will call with news or an idea. The ideas tend to be bad and Daphne ignores them, knowing he forgets them quickly.
‘Daphne,’ he says curtly when she picks up the phone. He’s always curt, always busy, always with ‘a million things to do’.
‘How are you, Ian?’ She doesn’t know why she asks him, really, apart from it being the done thing.
‘Enormously busy.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘We have to close the shop.’
The sentence hits her like a slap. So typical of him to not ease into it. And she’s shocked. Enough that she puts a hand against the wall to steady herself.
‘How can this be?’ she says.
‘The landlord wants to double the rent.’ Ian sniffs. ‘Says he can’t give us a – how did he phrase it? – free ride any longer.’
‘The rent isn’t free!’
‘Quite. But it is cheaper than market rent.’
‘And probably a tax deduction for him.’
‘I don’t know how accountants work those things out,’ Ian says snippily.
Daphne is going through the motions of the conversation – stalling, really – as her body catches up with her brain.
She knows, logically, what closing the shop means, but it takes her heart a few minutes more to understand that the closure will, most likely, mean she will never spend time in that shop again.
After so many years. So many people and clothes. So much change.
The frock shop has been her constant from the start, and especially now.
It’s been a place for her to forget what’s happening at home and simply be present for others.
For Christina, for Lucy, for the customers.
Without walking that familiar path from home to the junction, will she even know how to be herself?
It’s not a prospect a woman her age should have to consider.
‘So when …’ Daphne takes a breath. ‘When will we close?’
‘He’s going to find a new tenant first. Which may take a while. I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as he thinks. But we shall see.’
If Ian were a more sympathetic person Daphne would wait for him to ask how she is. But he isn’t. So she doesn’t. Instead she pushes down the sadness that is welling.
‘We should carry on as normal, then?’ she asks.
‘For now, yes.’ He’s quiet for a few seconds. ‘I’m sorry, Daphne. I know how much effort you put into the place.’
It’s an atypical acknowledgement from him and she is glad of it.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I will miss it.’
‘It’s our best-performing shop,’ he says. ‘It will be a shame to lose it. You’ve done a marvellous job. Of course, we have the shop in Crows Nest –’
‘No,’ Daphne says.
He probably expects her to say she’s so devoted to the charity she’ll go anywhere, but it’s not the case – and she doesn’t want to explain to him that it’s the location that means the most to her.
That the location has inspired her to be creative with the shop displays and the curation of the clothes.
‘Oh.’ He sounds taken aback – probably because she hasn’t stood up for herself before.
‘I think it’s time I retire,’ she says, feeling not at all like retiring but knowing it’s an acceptable thing to say.
‘As you wish,’ he murmurs.
‘Well,’ she says, but goes no further. It’s his cue to end the call and she hopes he takes it.
‘I should go.’
‘Keep me posted, please.’
‘I will.’
She says goodbye and hangs up, just as Janet reappears, her eyebrows raised in enquiry.
‘The shop’s closing,’ Daphne says, her hand still on the wall. If she lifts it off she may fall down.
‘What?’ Janet rushes over and gives her a hug. ‘Mum, I’m so sorry.’
Daphne lets go of the wall and hugs her back. They’re not usually given to hugging but she can’t imagine why not. It is such a comfort to be embraced by someone who loves you and whom you love.
Once they draw apart, Janet smiles sympathetically. ‘I hate this for you.’
‘So do I.’
‘It’s so much change.’
Daphne nods. ‘As the saying goes: change is the only constant.’
Janet laughs drily. ‘I hate that saying.’
‘I think I do too.’
Janet hugs her again. ‘We’ll get through it, Mum.’
‘We have to,’ Daphne replies.
They stay like that for a while longer, then break apart so they can tend to Hector and whatever else comes their way today.