Spring, Summer, Autumn, Us

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 © 2023 by Fiona Collins 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: 9781662507236 ISBN-10: 1662507232 Cover design by Emma Rogers CONTENTS Prologue SPRING 4 MAY 1986 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve SUMMER 20 JULY 1997 Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four AUTUMN 20 OCTOBER 2008 Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three WINTER 2 DECEMBER 2019 Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR Prologue Rachel was dreaming. Not bedtime dreaming, but wide-awake, sitting-on-the-landing dreaming. She shifted on the carpet and stretched her nightie over raised knees, turning them into pink blancmange domes like her mum used to make on hazy summer afternoons. The radiator on the landing was still on and Rachel leaned against it, liking the almost-burn on her bare right arm. Mum and Dad were down in the hall, shouting. Torpedoing words at each other like the coloured plastic sticks in KerPlunk – a jabbing, spiky mesh of scaffolding they could not reach each other through, even if they wanted to, and they did not want to. They only wanted to shout. ‘What you’ve done can never be undone, Gary!’ shouted Mum. Rachel absently tapped the wrapped chocolate biscuit on the carpet beside her, making sure it was still there. She often stole a snack when dinners were forgotten to be made. ‘You keep driving me back to her, Frances!’ shouted Dad. Rachel half-slid the biscuit under her right foot. She was only semi-hearing her parents’ words, as she was somewhere else in her head – a different house to this, a house that was calm and quiet always, not just in patches of days when everything seemed all right again. When her dad stayed and didn’t go. ‘You just make everything so bloody difficult! You make this house miserable, Frances!’ shouted Dad. ‘Don’t go to her tonight, Gary! I’m begging you!’ shouted back Mum. Rachel heard these words, despite trying to dream them out. She knew her father would disappear tonight. He would take his brown shoes from the understairs cupboard and slip out of the front door. She closed her eyes. In later life she would think of herself on this landing, a just-turned-teenage girl, a dreamer, who could never have imagined that the life she lived in this house, with her mum and dad, and their ups and downs and back and forths, would end in tragedy in just a few short days. Rachel opened her eyes and stretched her nightie further over her knees until the middle of the blancmanges were translucent, then she picked up the chocolate biscuit from the carpet and carefully peeled back the silver paper from one corner. SPRING 4 MAY 1986 Chapter One Rachel stepped off the back porch and into the bluster and cloud-shy sunshine of an English garden in early May, followed by Tatiana, known as Teddy to all who loved her, who shoved her hands in the fraying back pockets of her denim boiler suit and scanned the sky. ‘It won’t come here, Rachel, will it?’ Teddy frowned, as low clouds like draught excluders shunted sideways on the horizon and the cottage garden’s scatter of pansies and lilacs and irises shivered in their beds. ‘What won’t come here?’ Rachel was staring at the washing line, thrashing about with merry jeopardy in the freshening wind. Her work aprons. The darks and lights of Jonny’s socks, flapping like the ungainly wings of crows and doves. ‘That poisonous air,’ said Teddy. ‘From Russia.’ ‘From Chernobyl? No, I don’t think so, Teddy,’ said Rachel. It had been headline news for eight days, the explosion. That terrible accident. ‘It’s such a long way from Oxford,’ she added, smoothing the skirt of her dress. ‘Try not to worry.’ They started walking down the steep slope of the garden to the small wooden gate at the bottom. Teddy is a worrier, Rachel thought. Jonny’s eight-year-old daughter worried about school and nits and dogs and fitting in. ‘What’s it called again?’ Teddy asked. ‘The stuff I’ll throw when you and Daddy get married?’ They were on the lane below. A petal-rain of blossom, from the huge magnolia tree in their closest neighbours’ front garden, fluttered down on them, Rachel catching some in her palm, Teddy plucking at the air and putting a few of the flowers in her back pocket. ‘Confetti,’ Rachel replied. ‘How many days away is it?’ ‘Well, it’s going to be quite a long engagement,’ said Rachel. ‘We need to save up. It’ll be more like months, actually.’ ‘But one day soon you’ll be my stepmum.’ ‘Yes, one day soon I’ll be your stepmum.’ Teddy’s face broke into one of her rare grins and she skipped a little, through the ruffling pink blossom carpet at their feet. They were off to the Wetheringtons’ annual Spring Luncheon at the 1930s villa towards the end of Hedge Hill Lane, one of the big houses sprawled behind hedges and iron gates and overlooked by Rachel and Jonny’s tiny black-and-white cottage on the hill. Rachel could just about make out Rupert and Rosemary, two