37. Out in the Open
Chapter 37
Out in the Open
M att let go of Amy and she frantically tidied her wet hair.
‘Oh! Diane!’ she said, her voice high with anxiety.
‘I’m so sorry. We thought you wouldn’t be back for a while yet. I didn’t see you coming up the track.’ Matt tried to straighten his scarf.
Amy picked up her hat from the floor beside her where it had fallen from her head. ‘It isn’t what it looks like …’ she said, sheepishly. This couldn’t be further from the gentle and kind conversation with Diane that she’d envisaged.
Diane took a deep breath and closed the door. ‘I beg to disagree. I think it’s time we all admitted that was exactly what it looked like and get the truth out in the open.’
‘You mean you know?’ Amy sat down heavily on the sofa in front of the windows.
‘It was obvious the first moment I saw the two of you together at that school fair. Something was going on. I didn’t know what.’ Diane took off her boots carefully and placed them neatly beside the front door, putting on the pair of slippers she’d left there as she went out this morning. ‘At first I thought it was all on your side, Amy, a foolish infatuation.’
‘It’s more than that, Diane,’ Matt said.
‘I know.’
‘I think we should explain.’ Amy glanced at Matt, and he nodded.
‘No.’ Diane held up a hand ‘I think I should explain.’
Go on,’ Matt said cautiously.
Diane took a deep breath. ‘I only came here because I wanted to put a stop to this relationship. I made it as difficult as I could for you to say no to me coming with you. I didn’t give you a chance to talk to me about any of this when I could see how much you wanted to. I’m not proud of myself and I’m very sorry. There.’ She lingered by the door, arranging her gloves and hat on the windowsill as if to avoid approaching them.
‘You can’t mean -’ Amy began, but Diane carried on as if she hadn’t heard.
‘However, since I’ve been here the true situation has become clear,’ she continued. ‘I could no more stop this than I could stop the snow melting right now. And more than that … I find it very hard to dislike you, Amy, much as I wanted to.’
‘How did you find out?’ Matt made no pretence now and sat down beside Amy.
‘The boys were not exactly discreet, and Pat – Mrs Thompson – even referred to Amy as your young woman .’ She walked across the room with quick, neat steps and sat down in her usual seat beside the fire, as if oblivious to the fact that it was now only embers in the grate. ‘And I saw the way you looked at each other. There was no hiding that.’ She stood with her back to the window, hands folded in front of her .
‘Why didn’t you say anything, Diane?’ Matt said, incredulously.
‘Why didn’t I say anything?’ She raised a single eyebrow. ‘It wasn’t my place. You were the ones pretending. You wanted to keep this relationship secret. You didn’t want me to know, so I didn’t give a sign. I thought that might mean that you weren’t sure, that there was still a hope that … Oh, never mind that now. What is more to the point is, why didn’t you tell me? ’
Matt and Amy looked at each other.
‘Because we thought it might be very hard for you to hear,’ said Amy, leaning forward in her seat towards Diane, who leaned subtly back, away from her. ‘At Christmas in particular.’
‘Nothing about the last couple of years has been easy. Stella’s illness, her death. Nothing. I’ve lost so much and now I was scared that I would lose you, Matt, and if I lost you, then what about Oliver? He’s all I’ve got!’
‘So the whole reason you came here was to try and prevent me from getting together with Matt?’ Amy asked.
Diane looked at the fire, as if afraid to meet Amy’s eyes and nodded slowly. ‘As I said, I’m not proud of myself. Can I ask you one thing?’ Now she looked straight at Amy and met her gaze directly. ‘Are you certain about what you feel for Matt? You’ve been wrong before, haven’t you? Are you sure this time?’
‘I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life,’ Amy said slowly. She looked at Diane but she was speaking to Matt. ‘Never. With James, our relationship was like a crazy game. It was intoxicating and exciting at first, but that didn’t last, and soon it became clear the differences that had made us attractive to each other eventually drove us apart. With Matt, it’s more like finding a missing piece, something I’ ve longed for all my life.’ She reached out and took his hand. ‘He’s perfect for me. We complete each other. Like Mrs Thompson said, this isn’t a blaze of passion. This is a steady burn.’
Matt squeezed her hand in response. He didn’t have to tell her, she knew he agreed.
‘And is this how you feel too, Matt?’
He nodded. ‘I loved Stella once, but it was different. She was dazzling. Like a car headlight on the other side of the road. But Amy’s more like … I don’t know … a candle in the window, showing me the way home.’
‘I see. I see. I see,’ Diane said slowly and shook her head. ‘Now I see.’
‘What do you see?’ Matt asked.
‘You just said it. I loved Stella once. I knew there was something. Something Stella didn’t tell me. When they found the cancer, I assumed that was what it had been all along, but it wasn’t that, was it?’
Matt tightened his grip on Amy’s hand. ‘I … um … I don’t … I don’t know …’ he said.
‘Stella was unhappy. Before the cancer. I knew she was unhappy, but I didn’t know why, and now, perhaps, I do. Why didn’t she talk to me?’ Diane had been watching the embers, but now looked straight at Matt, who seemed transfixed by her gaze. ‘And why didn’t you? You and she were in trouble, weren’t you? Why didn’t anyone tell me anything?’
‘She didn’t want to.’ Amy said, when Matt couldn’t speak. ‘I didn’t know Stella very well, but from everything Matt and Oliver have told me about her, she wouldn’t have wanted you to be unhappy.’
‘But I could have helped her. I could’ve been there for her, if things went wrong. Why didn’t she tell me, Matt? And why have you never said a word about any of this? ’
‘She didn’t want you to know.’
‘Whyever not? My own daughter!’
‘Because she how important it was to you to have a good marriage – I mean, look at you and Dennis. Twenty-five years happily married. She didn’t want to let you down when things started to go wrong between us.’
Which was when, suddenly and unaccountably, Diane started to laugh. There wasn’t much humour in her laughter, it was dark and bitter.
‘I don’t understand. What’s so funny?’ Matt let go of Amy’s hand.
‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ Diane insisted. ‘Tell me, have I got this right? You and Stella had marital difficulties and she chose not to tell me because of the strength of my relationship with her father?’
‘It was a lot for her to live up to. She knew how much store you both set by a strong marriage, and how much you disapproved of divorce. She knew you were so upset when Veronica divorced, I mean, you don’t even speak to each other now. She didn’t want you to be disappointed in her too.’
A gust of wind whistled under the front door. It ruffled the ashes in the fireplace and blew a scatter of water droplets against the front windows. Outside, behind the hills, the clouds gathered once more and the morning sun had disappeared behind a sheet of grey. The room grew darker without the sunshine to illuminate it.
‘I did want you to have a strong marriage – of course I did – but more than, I wanted you to have a happy marriage. Not like mine.’
'Your marriage wasn’t happy?’ Amy asked.
Diane shook her head, almost imperceptibly. ‘It was a sham. I lived a lie for twenty-five years so my daughters could be happy.’
‘You …’ Matt began, but his words trickled away into silence, and Amy watched Diane struggle to compose herself. She took a couple of deep breaths and straightened her back but her fingers twitched around the heavy gold ring on her fourth finger, which seemed suddenly too big for her hands. Amy was used to a grey, upright Diane with a barely suppressed disdain in her eyes, not this version who fumbled for composure as neither Amy nor Matt knew where to look. Diane seemed smaller, less substantial, less intimidating. Defeated.
‘I don’t understand,’ Matt said gently after a while. ‘What do you mean, a sham? You and Dennis –’
Diane gave a half-suppressed sigh. ‘There’s no reason to pretend any more. Dennis was a cold, unsympathetic man who was happier in his pulpit lecturing his congregation than he was when he was me. I suppose that made me, in my turn, a rather judgemental wife.’
‘But Stella thought … You weren’t happy?’ Matt said.
‘At first we were. For a year or two, but it was like you said just now, Amy – the differences that first attracted us to each other were too great, and where couples should grow together, we grew apart. By the end, we had very little in common. We weren’t like the Thompsons.’
‘Why did you stay?’ Amy asked. It was almost as if Diane’s calm words and the fingers which compulsively twisted that wedding ring on her left hand belonged to two different people. Diane didn’t look at her hands, but away out of the windows, where the sky was a heavy lead-grey.
‘I stayed for the girls,’ she said. ‘I was brought up to think that’s what women like me did. Like my mother before me, and her mother before her. Keeping up appearances, because he was a vicar. Divorce was wrong so I stayed with him for Stella and Veronica, even when I didn’t love him. I convinced myself the girls would never need to know the truth and they kept their charmed lives – their pony club, and their ballet lessons and their trips to the pantomime every Christmas. I paid the price for all of that with twenty-five years of a loveless marriage.’
‘Diane, I’m so –’ Amy said but Diane carried on as if she couldn’t hear her; as if now the words had started to spill out there was no way to stop them.
‘I thought divorce would have been admitting defeat. I was glad when he died.’
There was a long silence. Even the fire had stopped crackling in the hearth; nothing moved and no one breathed.
Eventually, Diane gave a visible shudder and the spell was broken. ‘There. I’ve said it. That was my secret. I was glad when it was over. Stella had nothing to live up to.’
‘Then –’ Matt said, but Diane wouldn’t let him complete his sentence.
‘I didn’t have the courage to admit our marriage had failed. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth. I pretended I was happy with my life, with Dennis. It was all a lie. Every single minute.’ She took her gaze away from the window and looked directly at Amy. Amy had never noticed how closely her silver-blue eyes resembled Oliver’s before now. ‘Believe it or not, I admire you, Amy,’ she admitted with a twist of her mouth. ‘You had the courage to do what I couldn’t. You walked away from a bad marriage and I’m sure that you, and James, and even Harry are happier for it. I wish I had courage like that.’
Amy stepped past the low coffee table and sat on the sofa next to Diane, close, but not too close, still with an arm’s length between them.
‘You’re braver than you think you are,’ she assured the older woman.
‘No, I’m not. I was a coward then, and I’m a coward now. I could live another thirty years with nothing to look forward to except growing older, alone.’
‘Because you put your children first. That’s not a crime, Diane, and it’s not too late to start again – it’s never too late. I bet there are plenty of attractive widowers at your church.’
‘Widowers – yes. Attractive? Not so much,’ Diane said with a tiny hint of a smile. ‘I think I’m better off on my own.’
The wind blew another heavy smattering of sleet against the window, like a small handful of gravel thrown against the old glass, though these windows had withstood worse weather than this.
‘You’re not alone. Surely you can build bridges with Veronica? Tell her the truth, like you’ve told us, then she’ll know you don’t disapprove of her divorce.’
‘You don’t understand. I told Veronica too much and it destroyed everything. I didn’t dare tell Stella in case I lost her too.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Matt.
‘Dennis … it would be wrong to say he was a violent man. He didn’t lose his temper, or throw things or punch me, but he had his little ways. A twist on the wrist to bring me back in line. An inability to hear the word no . It became easier to keep my mouth shut and not to even try to say no. For the sake of the Stella and Veronica.’
‘Diane, that’s awful!’
‘Veronica’s first husband hit her. Just once, but that was enough for her to pack up and walk out. I tried to tell her she was doing the right thing. I wanted to support her, for heaven’s sake, but when I explained that I knew what it was like she wouldn’t believe it. She called me a liar. Not her daddy, he couldn’t have been like that. She refused to listen to me, and she threw me out. So, I didn’t say anything to Stella, in case I lost her too. She was all I had left.’
The wind moaned around the corners of the cottage and down the chimney, like a wild thing trying to get in. The sleet was falling heavily now and washed away the last of the snow from the tops of the walls and the lane. Where this morning the track had been white, now it ran with water.
‘So, there you are. I know your secrets and you know mine.’ Diane stood up. ‘We should all have been more honest, I think. But I didn’t want to hear it, because if you two were made for each other where did that leave Stella? An irrelevance, that’s all.’
‘Stella wasn’t an irrelevance. She was Oliver’s mother, and we loved each other once. If she’d lived, Stella would’ve found someone else, someone who would’ve loved her properly for who she really was, like I love Amy, and Amy loves me.’ Matt smiled at Amy.
Diane shrugged. ‘I let things go too far. It wasn’t just how I treated you, Amy. I shouldn’t have been so hard on Harry. That’s when I realised I was no better than Dennis had been, using him as a pawn just like Dennis did with my girls. I promise, one day I’ll make it up to him – and to you, Amy. For now, I shall have to rely on the fact that your good nature is probably stronger than my bad one, and trust you will forgive me.’
‘Of course. I … I’m sorry, this is a lot to take on board,’ Am y said. Diane’s eyes were cast down to the rug in front of the fire, and Amy couldn’t imagine how she must feel. It had been stressful to keep the truth of her relationship with Matt hidden for a few days, when Diane had been keeping such an enormous secret for years and years and years. Diane wasn’t the only one, though. This was no different from the way her own mother had kept her relationship with Peter secret from Amy. Neither woman had been happy; that much was clear. Her mother had never allowed herself to live with the truth of her love for Peter, just as Diane had never allowed herself to live with the truth of her unhappiness with Dennis. They had both acted out of love, to protect their daughters, and it had made both their lives colder and emptier. Her mam had never found true happiness again, once she had given up her relationship with Peter. Diane’s secret had destroyed her relationship with Veronica, threatened her relationship with Stella, and poisoned her own life.
Diane looked up from the floor. ‘It’s never been easy,’ she said. ‘Nothing has ever been easy. But it was important to do the right thing.’
All week, the sight of Diane in her own mother’s seat by the fire or at the stove in the kitchen where her mam had cooked had stung Amy. Now she didn’t see the differences between the two women but only the similarities. It had been too late for Amy to help her mother. She hadn’t found out about the life her mam could’ve had with Peter until after she died, but it wasn’t too late to help Diane find her way.
‘I don’t think there’s anything to forgive.’ Amy reached out and touched the back of Diane’s shaking hand. Diane blinked, removed her hand from Amy’s, stood up and brushed down her skirt. The old Diane was back, full of purpose and precision.
‘Well. I think it’s time I went, now the snow’s melting. I’ve stayed here long enough, and I don’t want to intrude any more.’ She clasped her hands tightly in front of her, fingers white and thin with the cold. ‘I’ll be on my way.’