Page 95 of Return to the Lake House
‘Marcus,’ said Jake, waiting for his full attention.
Marcus lowered his eyes to look at him.
‘I’ll come with you, if you want to see …’
Marcus’s face hardened. ‘Didn’t you hear a word I said to you this morning?’
Jake threw up his hands – he didn’t have time for this. He stood up, casting about for any sign of Marty. The lad was nowhere to be seen. Jake entered the gardens as he tried to goover the conversation with Marcus before they left Lark Lodge, but that morning just seemed to be a jumble of Eleanor and Marty and Arnold, and the two envelopes in his pocket, and questions; so many questions. Jake rubbed his forehead and felt a raised lump and a headache coming on.
He stopped and listened for the scraping sound of rusty shears. All was quiet apart from the twittering of birds and the irritating high-pitched cackle of radio frequencies as Marcus tuned in the car radio. Jake continued to wander the grounds until he found himself standing at the gap in the hedge leading to the hidden garden for the second time that morning. He wandered inside.
There was no sign of Marty.
Jake walked over to a narrow stone bench set back in a recess cut out of the hedging. Anyone unfamiliar with the garden would not immediately see the bench. Jake brushed away some hedge clippings that had fallen on the seat and sat down.
His head was now throbbing. He hoped that if he sat still for a few moments, the headache would subside. He stared at the garden; the flowers seemed even brighter and more vibrant the second time round. The memorial stone seemed smaller. The inscription seemed clearer.
The inscription.
That single word.
‘Oh, god.’ A dawning realisation washed over Jake as he recalled what Marcus had said to him that morning:I can’t visit the garden without your little inscription staring back at me, accusing me.
Now he understood. Jake read the inscription out loud. ‘Chosen.’ He closed his eyes and shook his head. Why hadn’t he seen it before?
He opened his eyes. It explained why Marcus found it difficult to visit the garden. Jake had had his reasons for using that word,and they had been nothing to do with Marcus – but evidently that was not how Marcus saw it. To Marcus, it meant something different entirely. It was an accusation, it was blame, and to Marcus, it was a lie. And it was there for all to see – family, friends – but only for the two of them to understand.
Jake rubbed his temples with his balled hands. His headache was not improving, but he couldn’t sit there all day; Marcus had a flight to catch.
Jake left the garden and headed back to the car, this time hoping he didn’t bump into Marty; he had something else a lot more pressing to sort out first.
He tried to go over what he was going to say to Marcus, how he was going to explain. Would Marcus believe how blind he had been? How unintentional it had been to use that word? He could scarcely believe it himself. He wouldn’t have been that callous.
As Jake walked back to the car, he kept telling himself he didn’t care what Marcus thought. Jake was the one who had severed their friendship, had cut Marcus off at every turn since the accident. So why did Jake feel the need to explain, toatone,to ask for Marcus’s forgiveness? It didn’t add up.
Jake had thought he had it all figured out – his new job and new home back in London; discounting the small matter of Marcus interrupting the flow, and the nightmares he still suffered from. Although he knew things weren’t perfect, at least Jake had felt that he was getting his life back on track. So why was this happening? Why did he feel increasingly like he was losing it?
He had known that the holiday was a bad idea. Nothing had made sense, and he needed things to make sense. Like the inscription. That single word summed up the truth that Marcus could not face; that had driven them apart. And yet Jake was looking to apologise for it; to tell Marcus he had made a mistake, when he so clearly had not.
‘I am so screwed up!’ said Jake, unable to shake the feeling that in some way he had been wrong about Marcus. But how was that possible? That crazy thought had been nagging at him for months – awhat ifscenario; what if Marcus had been telling him the truth all along? What if he had not been lying about what had really happened to Eleanor?
Chapter 38
Jake made his way back across the gardens. He walked up the stone steps and approached the car to find that Marcus was no longer sitting in the passenger seat. The car radio was still on.
The music coming from the car radio stopped and a DJ’s irritatingly manic voice blared out some unintelligible slang. Jake leaned through the open window and pressed the radio knob with his finger; it clicked off. Blessed silence.
Jake extracted himself with some difficulty, lifting his head too soon and knocking the back of his head on the car door. He yelped. He stood beside the car, rubbing the back of his head. His headache got even worse.
‘Where the hell did he go?’ Jake’s eyes settled on the house.
Jake set off in that direction. He was just making his way past the front door when he noticed the small flowerpot to the left of the door had been shifted. A circle of green moss marked the spot where it once stood. Jake tried the front door. It opened. He walked in and turned around to close the door, glancing at the flowerpot; Marcus must have found another spare key.
Jake shut the door and stood for a moment staring at the framed photograph on the wall to the left of the door. It was a school photograph of the three of them. They weresitting sideways on, their faces turned to the camera. Eleanor, the youngest, was in front, leaning into Jake’s chest and smiling sweetly for the camera. Jake was sitting up straight, his expression an almost-smile as though he had been caught unawares by the camera. Marcus was sitting behind him, sporting a wide, toothy grin with two new adult front teeth in otherwise bare gums.
Jake hadn’t seen this picture in a long while. He took a step back for a clearer look and noticed the row of coat hooks on a long wooden rack screwed to the wall directly above the picture. The picture had obviously been hidden for some years beneath a jumble of assorted coats, bags and skiwear. Now void of these things, the picture had reappeared.
Jake plucked the picture off the wall and ran two fingers gently down the portrait over the smiling Eleanor. He sighed and hung it back carefully. ‘Marcus!’ he shouted, staring at Marcus’s toothy grin.
