Page 52 of New Beginnings At Pencarrow Bay

Peggy didn’t hear her son leave. She had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep eventually, having lain awake next to Ted for a long while, feeling as if the conversation they must have was wriggling restlessly between them in the bed, like a sick child.

But in the end her tired brain just shut down and she slept.

When she woke at seven thirty, Ted was not beside her. It took her a while to come to, taking in the sad realization that Liam was probably long gone. She stumbled out of bed and pulled on some shorts and a T-shirt, anxious, suddenly, that Ted might also have left the house.

She found him outside. Peggy watched him for a moment. He was very still, as if deep in thought. The coffee cup in front of him was empty. Taking a deep breath, she walked slowly out to join him.

Ted leaped up. He looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink: dark circles rimmed his beautiful eyes. ‘Hey.’ His greeting was awkward.

Her heart was doing the trapped-bird thing in her chest. She so wanted this to be a reasonable discussion, not a competition in blame and self-justification. But she didn’t trust herself. Looking at him now, she knew she was still upset.

They sat down. The day was overcast and it was chilly. She would have killed for a cup of coffee, but she wanted to get this over with.

Ted was the first to speak. ‘I… There’s something…’ He dropped his head into his hands for a moment. Then he raised it. Blinking fast, his mouth set, he stared at her, seeming about to explode. ‘She kissed me,’ he finally blurted out.

Peggy flinched, stared at him.

‘Lindy kissed me. You know, a proper kiss. On the lips. A definitely sexual kiss.’

Words spilled off Ted’s tongue in a breathless stream.

‘It happened that day you and I argued… She was so sweet to me at first. So understanding. I was a mess, my head still reeling from too much whisky and the row.’ He cast an anguished glance at Peggy.

‘I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want you to be right about Lindy.

And I felt so ashamed of the kiss. It’s been driving me insane ever since. ’

Peggy tried to unravel what he was saying, what she was feeling, without success. ‘Ashamed? Why? What did you do when she kissed you?’

Ted threw his hands up into the air. ‘I was horrified. I pushed her away, of course.’ Then his gaze dropped. ‘It wasn’t invited, Pegs, I swear. But I felt ashamed that she thought she could kiss me like that. As if I’d somehow led her on, by being nice to her, believing in her.’

Peggy’s mind whirred. ‘Wait a moment. Lindy had already kissed you when I told you she might be behind those emails? So why were you still defending her?’ She took a sharp breath.

Ted seemed bewildered. ‘I honestly wasn’t trying to defend her, Pegs. I was just shocked, finding it hard to believe, that’s all.’

Peggy felt some sympathy. She couldn’t really believe it, either. ‘She cast a spell on you, didn’t she? I began to worry you were in love with her.’

Ted shook his head emphatically. He had tears in his eyes when he finally spoke.

‘Absolutely not, never in a million years.’ He swallowed.

‘God, I’ve been so gullible. I completely misread everything, right from the start.

’ He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

‘But Lindy seemed so vulnerable. I wanted to help her. She persuaded me that nobody was on her side except me.’

‘Everyone would have been on her side,’ Peggy said quietly, ‘that’s the ridiculous thing, if Felix had genuinely been gaslighting her.’

For what seemed like a long while, they sat in silence on the terrace.

Peggy shivered as a breeze blew up. She stared at the man beside her.

His head had sunk, his hands lay loosely in his lap.

He seemed to have given up. After a moment, she took a brave breath and reached out to him, laying her hand on his bare arm. He felt stone cold. ‘Ted?’

He didn’t react to her voice or her touch immediately.

When he did raise his gaze to meet hers, she saw only pain in his grey-green eyes.

‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Buying into Lindy’s drama in the way I did, I totally lost perspective.

’ He went quiet. ‘I should have listened to you. That might have saved all this hurt.’

After a long moment– which she didn’t interrupt– Ted went on, his voice choked with feeling, ‘I was never, ever interested in Lindy in that way. Never . Not for a single, solitary second. You have to believe me, Peggy… I can’t bear it that you thought I might be.’

She heard the passion behind his words. Gazing at him, she found herself trying to eke out every tiny feeling hidden in his soul.

She did believe him. Giving him a smile of acknowledgement, his image misted as her vision blurred with tears.

All the strength went out of her. She felt she could have slept for a week and wearily closed her eyes.

He moved closer to her, shifting his chair with a screech across the paving. She thought he was about to embrace her, but he stopped short, as if she had a force field around her he was not prepared to penetrate. Her body seemed to buzz with disappointment.

Trying to breathe some life into her exhausted brain cells, Peggy said, ‘I know it must have been hard, being on the front line of Lindy’s distress. But you seemed so fixated on helping her, it was almost obsessive.’

Ted took a long time to respond. When he did, his tone was hesitant. ‘I don’t know…’ He shifted awkwardly in his chair, his trainers squeaking on the wooden rung, his eyes ranging across the garden towards the sea.

Peggy waited, thought he was about to go on.

But it was a long moment before he said, ‘I think, perhaps… this sounds daft… but that day Lindy ran off with me to the café…’ Ted gave a shrug.

‘She said something… in a certain way. And, well, the truth is, she reminded me of my mother.’ The words seemed to have exhausted him and he slumped back in his chair.

Peggy frowned. His mother? She was about to interject, when Ted went on, ‘I know I’ve told you in the past that Mum liked a glass or two of red wine…’

She nodded.

‘But I never explained the real truth, Pegs. Never wanted it to be true.’ A long pause followed.

‘Mum was a desperate drunk, you see. And she was always, always in need of rescuing.’ He rolled his eyes, seemingly lost in the world of his boyhood.

‘Minor things, like locking herself out. Or reaching the checkout without any cash. Begging me to hide the empty bottles from Dad by sneaking them into other people’s bins after dark…

All that was normal, par for the course.

’ He gave a nonchalant shrug, as if these things were reasonable responsibilities for a child.

‘Then there was the more major stuff.’ He swallowed hard.

‘Like setting the kitchen on fire one time– and her hair. Passing out drunk on the front step, blood pouring from her head… I thought she was dead. Like throwing a glass at my father and nearly taking his eye out… He needed fifteen stitches.’

Peggy was utterly shocked by what he was telling her.

He’d never even hinted, before, at the appalling degree of his mother’s drinking or how it had affected him.

Lois had been enshrined in a warm glow of beauty and artistic talent, dying tragically young in her fifties from undiagnosed heart disease, according to Ted.

That was pretty much all Peggy knew about the woman because, as with his marriage to Maria, Ted resolutely brushed off any enquiries about his childhood.

Alfie, his brother in Canada, was the only family member he seemed at ease talking about.

Their relationship was safely distant, both emotionally and literally.

Ted was speaking again. ‘Such a bright, beautiful light, Mum. But also teetering on the edge of sanity. Lindy was nothing like her in many ways, but there was something in her eyes when she looked at me…’ He fell silent for a second.

‘It shocked me, Pegs. Took me right back, like I was a ten-year-old again. The way she begged me for help– I felt utterly powerless in her hands.’

Peggy felt a terrible pang of sadness and pity for the small, worried boy. ‘Bright’ and ‘beautiful’ didn’t seem the right words to describe a woman who’d burdened her young son like Lois must have.

Ted gave a heavy sigh. ‘I spent my childhood worrying about Mum… feeling ultimately responsible. Because Dad was always working and Alfie never seemed to notice– maybe they’d given up on her, I don’t know, it was never talked about.

And she didn’t have friends who lasted for more than a brief flare of drunken enthusiasm.

Seemed to me like I was all she had to protect her. ’

‘Oh, my God, Ted. I’m so, so sorry. That sounds absolutely awful. And so sad.’

But Ted still seemed determined to downplay the trauma of his past. ‘Sorry, I’m rambling.

And, please, believe me, I’m not telling you this now to excuse how stupidly short-sighted I’ve been about Lindy.

’ He paused. ‘You know, I think I was sort of flattered by her choosing me to save her. She’s such a presence, the queen of the village– if you’re not talking to Bunny, of course.

And I wanted so much to be respected, to be part of Pencarrow. ’

The two didn’t speak as Peggy digested what Ted had revealed. She knew how hard it must have been– as a man who would far rather be doing than thinking– confronting his feelings. Not least about a past that was clearly still so tender to the touch.

‘I wish you’d told me about your mother.

Dealing with an addict is a nightmare, just awful, at the best of times.

But when it’s your mum…’ She realized how short her time with Ted had been.

History would have been less entrenched, perhaps, in a younger person, not covered with layers of unconscious rewriting over the decades, until it was moulded into a manageable, believable form: his bright, beautiful, talented mother.

‘No point, really. Long time ago now.’ He thought for a minute. ‘It was just so weird, really upsetting, the way it all came rushing back like that. Made me even more determined to help Lindy, though, because I couldn’t help Mum, of course,’ he ended sadly.

Peggy pulled him into her arms. For a long time they held each other.

She could feel his tension gradually melt away in her embrace.

She hugged him tighter, wanting to wash away every ounce of his pain, knowing she couldn’t but pleased that he’d at least, finally, been able to be more honest about his traumatic childhood– although he’d barely scratched the surface, she imagined.

It was a while before either spoke or let each other go. Then Peggy said, ‘I was worried something had broken between us.’

Ted’s eyes sparked with alarm but he didn’t immediately reply. ‘Broken?’ he repeated blankly, perhaps still reeling from his earlier confession.

She tried to explain. ‘You and me… before all this, our love affair had felt so perfect. I think I insisted, in my head, that it was perfect. I needed it to be… Which is ridiculous, of course.’

When Ted spoke, she heard the edge of panic in his voice. ‘We’re solid, aren’t we, Pegs? I know it’s been really difficult recently, but…’ he cleared his throat ‘…you still love me, don’t you?’

Peggy felt the man beside her was holding his breath, the grip on her hand intensifying almost to the level of discomfort.

Looking him straight in the eye so he would have no doubt that she spoke the truth, she said firmly, ‘I love you now, Ted, and I will love you always… from the bottom of my heart.’

The whoosh of breath Ted expelled sounded like a year’s worth of relief.

‘Oh, my God, sweetheart. I love you too, so much .’ He leaned closer, smothering her against his chest. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.

’ His next words seemed forced from his throat, as if he didn’t want to make even the suggestion real by speaking it.

‘You don’t want to leave the bay, do you? ’

Peggy considered his question. Even a couple of days ago– when Liam had broached the possibility in Falmouth– she might have said yes.

She’d faced a village potentially alienated by the bullying allegations, and Ted had seemed to fall under the spell of another woman.

But now… ‘If Lindy did send those emails– and who else could it have been?– it will clear my name.’

‘Ironic, really. The gossip machine can become a force for good. You need only tell one person for everyone to know within the hour.’

Peggy sighed. ‘Do you think she’ll ever admit it?’

‘Maybe in time. If she has the right help.’

They fell silent.

Then Peggy said, ‘I’ve begun to make friends here.

With Sienna employing me, I have work. I’ve even signed up for a yoga class with Gen.

And Paul wants me to get my clarinet out of the attic and join his jazz band.

’ She watched Ted’s face as she said this last sentence for signs of jealousy. But he seemed delighted.

‘I’ve been saying you should do that for years.’

Which was true. Although she had never played for him.

‘Just don’t fall in love with the fellow,’ he added, with an apologetic grin.

‘Bit young for me… although…’ she teased. Then she laid her head in the crook of Ted’s neck and closed her eyes.