Reluctantly Home Read online

  ALSO BY IMOGEN CLARK

  Postcards from a Stranger

  The Thing About Clare

  Where the Story Starts

  The Last Piece

  Postcards at Christmas (a novella)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Blue Lizard Books Ltd

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542021203

  ISBN-10: 1542021200

  Cover design by Lisa Horton

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  2019

  She was going to be late for court.

  She had been cutting it fine anyway, leaving chambers when she did, but Dominic had said it would only take half an hour to get there once she was through the worst of the central London traffic. Now, however, she was sitting in a stationary queue of cars watching the clock on her dashboard click over from minute to minute.

  She couldn’t be late. The judge would crucify her in front of her client. He might even refuse to give her audience and then she’d end up slinking back to the office with her tail between her legs.

  She could feel her heart beginning to race and her chest grew tight as her panic rose. She didn’t even know where this court was, or where she could park. And she still had some papers to read before the hearing. The whole thing was a disaster before she’d even begun. What had she been thinking, leaving so late?

  Then, mercifully, the traffic began to clear, and the stream of cars sped up. She let out a slow breath. The situation might be salvageable. If she didn’t hit any more slow patches between here and there, she’d arrive with time to spare. She could feel the tension slip from her neck and shoulders as she relaxed. She began to run through her opening address, speaking it out loud as she drove; her voice sounded clear and confident. Years of court experience brought with them a certain self-assurance. She was good at what she did, she knew she was. She would win the hearing this morning and then . . .

  She didn’t see the boy until he was already on her bonnet, his face distorted first by shock and then the impact with her windscreen. And then he was gone, rolling away from her and out of sight.

  Where was he? She was going to run over him as well as knocking him down. Her instincts took over and she slammed on the brakes, the car shuddering to a stop. The driver behind was surely going to smash into her now. She braced herself for the impact, but it didn’t come, the car managing to brake in time. She could see the driver, a woman with silver hair, in her rear-view mirror. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open in horror.

  But where was the boy? She should get out and see if he was all right, but she couldn’t make her legs move. All communications between her brain and her muscles seemed to have been cut. Her breath was coming in short snatches, as if something had sucked all the oxygen out of the car and she couldn’t get enough to fill her lungs. Her heart was banging so hard in her chest that she could barely hear anything else. But there was something, a little sound in the distance that she couldn’t quite focus on. It was a voice, she worked out. Someone was shouting at her. She tried to concentrate, listen to what they were saying, but it sounded very quiet and far away.

  ‘Are you hurt? I’m calling an ambulance. Stay where you are.’

  It was the woman from the car behind, now out on the road next to her window, mobile phone in hand.

  ‘Ambulance, please. And police. There’s been an accident. A boy. He just ran out into the road. He didn’t look. He ran out and a car hit him . . . No . . . I don’t know . . . No, it wasn’t my car. It was the car in front of me, but it wasn’t her fault. There was nothing she could have done. He just ran out . . . Yes, I think so. Hang on.’

  And then the woman was talking to her again through the window, her voice muffled.

  ‘Are you all right? Are you injured in any way?’

  Suddenly she had to get out into the fresh air. The space was too small. She couldn’t breathe. She scrabbled for the seat belt, clicked it loose and flung the door open, pushing her way out. There were cars everywhere, all stopped and pointing towards her as if she was the main attraction. It felt surreal to be standing in the middle of the road surrounded by cars but without the sounds of engines around her.

  But where was the boy? She dropped her eyes, searching for him, and there he was, lying across the opposite carriageway, the wheels of another car stopped just inches from his supine body. The first thing she noticed was that his leg was all wrong. It shouldn’t be at an angle like that. She wanted to bend down and straighten it for him. And then she saw his face. His eyes were wide open and sightless. That was when she knew, without a shadow of doubt, that he was dead. That she had killed him.

  And then she woke up.

  2

  ‘It’s okay. It’s over. It’s just a dream,’ Pip whispered to herself, repeating the mantra she had been desperately clinging to for the six months since the accident. Slowly, inch by inch, she pulled herself round to consciousness as her breathing levelled out and her heartbeat began to return to normal. She could feel her pyjama top sticking to her shoulders. The damp sheets beneath her were already growing too cold and clammy to sleep on.

  Was this her life now, Pip wondered, being woken every night as her mind replayed the accident on a never-ending loop? It had been six months, and yet the dream was still as vivid as if she had hit the boy yesterday. And each time, she woke at exactly the same moment. It wasn’t the shock of the impact that ricocheted her from sleep into consciousness, although she could still feel the thud of the boy’s body as he hit her bonnet. No, the last thing she saw before she snapped awake was always his eyes, wide and staring at nothing. Those eyes haunted her, day and night.

  Gradually Pip started to focus on the familiar space of her childhood bedroom. How had she ended up back here, after all those years trying to get away? She had been gone for over a decade, but the room still looked as it had done when she was eighteen. The baby-pink walls were speckled with dark Blu Tack marks where photos and pictures cut from magazines had promised her a life beyond the farm, and her bookshelves still bowed
under the weight of teenage paperbacks and folders stuffed full of A level notes. When she was here, it felt almost as if she had imagined the life she had created in London, or that it had happened to someone else. It felt as if it was floating further away from her with every passing week.

  She heard a door creak open and then the soft pad of footsteps on the landing.

  ‘Pip? Are you okay?’ her mother asked in hushed tones through her closed door. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  Pip cursed under her breath. Why couldn’t her nightmares be silent so she could keep them to herself? She imagined her mother lying awake in the dark next door, just waiting for her terrors to make their nightly visit, her father snoring gently next to her, oblivious.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum,’ she said, trying to sound reassuring and not irritated. ‘Go back to bed.’

  She heard her mother creep away, the bedroom door opening and then not quite closing behind her. Was this what her future looked like now, with her unable to make it through a night without reliving every moment of the accident, and her mother watching over her like a hawk? How was that a future?

  But what did she expect? Pip had taken a life, and for that it was only right she should forfeit her own. The inquest had found her to have no legal responsibility for the boy’s death; it had simply been a tragic accident, but that made no difference. She knew what had happened was her fault, and she couldn’t imagine ever being able to forgive herself. Guilt was her constant companion, never once leaving her side, so she couldn’t forget, even for a second, what she had done. And her life, destroyed by panic and guilt, seemed a fair price to pay. A life for a life.

  She settled herself back into the cold, damp sheets, ready to lie awake until morning.

  Pip must have dropped off to sleep at some point, because she woke to the smell of burning. The acrid air stole into her nostrils and her eyes snapped open. What was on fire? Should she run? Then she remembered where she was. Her parents’ house. The smell currently filling her room would be the toast her mother was making for breakfast. Some things never changed. The ancient Aga that sat in the farmhouse kitchen had been there since Pip was a baby and making toast on it was simply a question of timing, but somehow it always burned.

  She got up, threw a dressing gown around her shoulders and headed downstairs, the smell getting stronger the closer she got to the kitchen. Once there, the air was thick with smoke and her mother was standing over the bin trying to scrape the worst of the charring off with a knife. Her father and his farmhand, Jez, were tucking into their breakfasts at the scrubbed pine table and barely seemed to have noticed.

  ‘Morning,’ said Pip.

  Her mother looked up and then back down at the blackened piece of bread in her hand.

  ‘I burned the blessed toast,’ she said. ‘The cat brought a mouse in and . . .’ She shrugged sadly by way of further explanation. ‘It was the last of the bread, too, until I get to the shops.’

  ‘Nothing changes, eh, Pip?’ her father said, cheerfully biting into his sausage. ‘There’s plenty of bacon left. Sit down and have a bite with us before we head out.’

  Jez was wiping the remains of his egg yolk up with a piece of bread, but he looked up and then shuffled his chair across a little to make room for her to sit down. He gave her a smile, wide and friendly, but Pip ignored him, or rather, pretended she hadn’t noticed. The two of them had been close when they were kids, and he kept trying to talk to her, but she didn’t have the strength for conversation and, if she was honest, she wasn’t that interested in rekindling their friendship. Jez was part of her past, and she didn’t need him in her present. What would be the point? She wasn’t planning on being around for long enough to get to know him again, and anyway, they’d have nothing to talk about. They might have been close as teenagers, but she doubted they had much in common now. He was still here, for a start, content to work on a farm a few miles from where he’d grown up, whereas she had built a fabulous life for herself in London, and although she liked him well enough, investing time in their erstwhile friendship would take more than she had to give.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said to her mother. ‘I’m not that hungry. I’ll just have a cup of tea.’

  What she really wanted was coffee, decent coffee made with hand-ground beans and filtered to a rich smoothness, but all her mother could offer was an old jar of instant that had lost any tempting aroma it might once have held through sitting on the window sill for months, possibly years. No one drank coffee here and so this jar was reserved for visitors. After two or three cups of the filthy stuff, Pip had resorted to drinking tea instead.

  ‘Oh, Pip,’ her mother replied, and in those two words Pip could hear the worry that was so clearly etched into her face. Pip was tired of being the cause of so much heartache, but she couldn’t summon the energy to change that, either.

  ‘You can’t go to the shop on an empty stomach,’ her mother continued to object. ‘Let me make you some porridge. Or a boiled egg at the very least. . .’ She looked at the charred slice of bread in her hand and then opened her fingers and let it fall into the bin. ‘But there’s no toast for soldiers,’ she added, her mouth twisted into a wry smile.

  ‘Honestly, Mum,’ Pip said, filling the kettle and setting it to boil on the hot plate. ‘There’s no need. Tea is fine.’

  Her mother made a noise somewhere between a tut and a harrumph, but she didn’t push the point.

  ‘I thought we weren’t calling you Pip any more,’ her father chipped in, and Pip cringed.

  ‘Have you heard this one, Jez?’ he continued. ‘Our Pip’s only gone and changed her name to Rose. We didn’t know a thing about it until her chap Dominic came to stay. When he called her Rose, I was looking round to see who he was talking to.’

  ‘It’s just my work name, Dad,’ said Pip, anxious not to get caught up in the discussion around what she called herself yet again. She had tried to get her parents to call her Rose when she first came back to Suffolk. Her mother had made an effort initially, but had given up. Her father, however, seemed tickled by the suggestion and still wouldn’t let it drop.

  ‘Pip was christened with two names,’ said her mother patiently. ‘It’s up to her which one she chooses to use.’

  Pip gave her a grateful smile, but she had already turned away and Pip glimpsed the tail of her hurt look as it crossed her face.

  ‘Well, I still can’t see what’s wrong with Pip,’ her father muttered under his breath.

  Pip thought she could sense Jez staring at her, but she ignored him. She didn’t need him judging her on top of everything else.

  The men finished their breakfast, the chairs scraping across the tiled floor as they pushed them away from the table. After one last, noisy slurp of his tea, Jez took his plate and mug and placed them neatly by the sink, ready to be washed. Her father kissed her mother on the cheek and then they were gone to put their boots back on and head out to the fields.

  Pip pulled a tea towel from where it was hanging on the Aga and began to dry the dishes her mother had already washed. She stacked them neatly in the cupboards, moving around the kitchen instinctively, although it hadn’t been her home for a third of her life. It was disheartening how easily she’d slipped back into life on the farm. She’d spent ten years trying to escape the place, had grabbed hold of her dreams and turned them into reality, and yet now she was right back where she’d started, helping out in a charity shop and having her breakfast burned by her mother.

  Her mother was busy decanting eggs from a bucket into cardboard egg boxes. The family had always sold what they couldn’t eat by way of an honesty box at the end of the farm track, and as a child, taking the little key down to the road, opening the coin box and emptying its contents into her waiting hands had been a highlight of Pip’s week. Sometimes she had been allowed to keep a coin or two to buy sweets or a comic from the corner shop. More than once her friends had encouraged her to syphon off a little of the egg money for themselves, assuring her that her
parents would ‘never know’, but Pip had always refused. Partly, she liked to think, this was to do with the inherent integrity that had steered her towards a career in the law. Truthfully, however, she could never be sure that her mother wouldn’t know exactly how much should be in the box and catch her stealing. A fear of being caught and causing disappointment was the greatest deterrent of all.

  ‘Will Dominic be coming this weekend?’ her mother asked, without looking up from her task.

  The question was lightly posed, but Pip could hear a thread of tension in her voice.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, even though she wasn’t expecting him to come. ‘He’s very busy, Mum. You don’t get to be a QC by sitting around on your backside, you know.’

  ‘No,’ her mother said quickly. ‘No. I’m sure you don’t.’

  Pip was pretty sure her mother didn’t know that QC stood for Queen’s Counsel, nor what a prestigious position that was to hold, but she had given up trying to explain how the bar worked a long time ago.

  ‘And his diary is full with non-work stuff, too, things that I would have been doing if I wasn’t stuck up here. You do realise, Mum, that we’re big news, Dominic and me? We get invited to all kinds of events, parties, shows, gallery openings. You name it. He can’t just drop all that because I’m not there to go with him.’ Pip sounded petulant, childish, but she didn’t care.

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ said her mother. ‘But you have been quite ill, Pip. I’d have thought he’d try to make a little bit more of an effort to come and see you. I hear him ring sometimes . . .’

  Pip bristled. Did she have no privacy, even with her mobile? It was like being a teenager and having to sit on the stairs to use the landline whilst her mother earwigged.

  ‘. . . but a phone call isn’t the same as actually coming to visit.’

  But she knew her mother was right. Dominic’s trips to the farm had tailed off, and she missed him, missed the glimpse that he gave her of her old life. And when they did speak, she could feel him floating further away with every conversation. He seemed to struggle to find a connection with her when she wasn’t in London, as if a link in the chain that held them together had broken. He told her his news, but when she had almost nothing to say in return, the conversation fell flat. Pip knew she should trust that everything would work itself out when she got back home to London, but that was getting harder to do with each passing week.