The Banker's Niece 42: Six weeks later

Jane manoeuvres Clio round a tight corner and into the carpark. Retrieving her backpack and locking the car, she sets off.

    It’s a brilliant April morning. The air has that clear just-washed look she never noticed before she came to Devon. Perhaps it’s particular to this part of the country, something to do with the amount of rain that falls on it. The sun sparkles on a stream that ripples down a brick channel parallel with the High Street. In neat front gardens, swathes of bold daffodils sway in the breeze, yellow trumpets proclaiming spring.

    Jane walks briskly swinging her arms. Young women pushing buggies glance at her and Jane smiles politely. When she reaches the square, the older people, well wrapped in anoraks and scarves and clustered round the door of the mini-market catching up on gossip, give her more searching looks, but Jane doesn’t linger. Even though she’s visited the village before many years ago, she doesn’t recognise it, and she hopes no one recognises her although she fears they might. She knows now how deep run the Devon memories, and how far-reaching are the connections.

    Take Maisie for instance, with whom she’s had several glorious Exmoor walks since retrieving Clio and whom she hasn’t been able to stop thanking for rescuing her.

    ‘I just can’t believe that someone would be so kind to a complete stranger,’ she said.

    ‘Ah, but you weren’t a complete stranger,’ said Maisie. ‘I was almost certain I knew who you were.’

    She stopped there as if waiting for Jane to say something but Jane didn’t. She knew the obvious reply. What did Maisie know about her? Did she mean she knew about Jane now or about Jane both now and thirty-something years ago? She didn’t want to know the answer to that because she suspected from the way Maisie spoke that it was the latter. It made her queasy to think that people might be privy to events in her life that she herself had banished to the back of the least-used cupboards of her mind.

    Had.

Six roads and a footpath lead off the square, only two of them signposted. With the help of Google and Chris however she’s done her homework and, without drawing attention to herself by hesitating or pulling out a map, is able to turn on to one of the unmarked roads.

    She strides away from the village, splashing through muddy puddles. Already her mind is clearing and the knot in her stomach dissolving. That's the magic of walking she's discovered, not only during her excursions with Maisie, but also during recent solitary explorations around Muddicombe. However bad you feel before you start, and however dire the weather, you always feel better afterwards. Her once-pristine Ordnance Survey map is tearing along its folds, and the ridges on her wellie soles are worn flat. She's wearing the wellies now and hopes they don't start to leak. That would really put her off.

    The hedgerows are liberally sprinkled with wildflowers. She recognises some of them, like bluebell and buttercup, but there are others, pink ones and white ones, that she doesn’t yet know the names of. She really must take photographs and check them against her old wildflower book. The flora of Devon differs from that of Kent and it’s time – ‘high time’ as her father would have said – she got to grips with it. After all, if she stays in Devon she’s likely to be out walking, now that she’s discovered how therapeutic walking is, and if she’s out walking she’s going to want to know what she’s looking at.

    If she stays in Devon, that is, and doesn’t take an extended holiday the other side of the globe. She’s still looking at pictures of Oz on the internet and plotting itineraries. She hasn’t yet ruled it out.

    Busy-ness is all around. Little birds flit across the road in front of her and vanish into bushes. Bigger birds, holding twigs in their beaks, fly self-importantly from tree to tree. A frantic chorus of birdsong comes at her from all directions.

    Spring is something else she’s noticing for the first time. She never realised before she came to Devon how mad spring is and how catching that madness is. She can feel her own blood stirring, and thanks providence that she decided to walk from the village – in spite of its danger - instead of driving all the way. Walking is giving her time to think, time to make sure that it’s not only spring fever that propelled her out of bed and into her car this morning.

    She may be better than she was, but she’s not there yet, and she's still not certain about what she's doing today.

The road winds on and on. With its high hedges that hide the surroundings, it looks like every other Devon lane and she knows she has to pay attention so as not to get lost. Many a time in Clio she’s emerged from a reverie to find she hasn’t the faintest idea where she is or even where she’s going. It’s scary, like waking in a strange bed. She’s pretty certain however from the map Chris drew for her that there are no turnings until the relevant one, and she doesn’t think she’s reached that yet. She hopes not anyway. She's not ready.

    Support over the last six weeks has come from the most unlikely sources – and she’s sure Sharon would have something to say about that. She remembers her talking one day about ‘quests’ and the helpers you meet on the road and how important it is to recognise and respect them.

    On the very day that everything happened – the day she lost her job, and Chris arrived, and Rick had his crash – Mrs Henry rang and asked her over. It was a measure of how desperate she was that she went.

    ‘Call me Rose,’ said Mrs Henry the next morning, greeting Jane with a kiss on both cheeks. ‘We’ll go to my office. It’s the warmest place.’

    Jane trailed after her, too intent on holding herself upright to notice much even though it was her first visit to the Manor. She had a vague impression of wooden floors and Turkish rugs, blue and white porcelain, the scent of woodsmoke, fresh flowers.

    The office was a small sunlit room. A desk covered with papers sat sideways to the window. Opposite was a faded sofa, heated by a free-standing electric fire.
    ‘Do sit down,’ said Mrs Henry – Rose, placing herself on the sofa and patting the cushion next to her.

    Jane huddled into the far end.

    ‘Can I tell you something?’ said Rose. ‘I think it might help.’

    Jane gave a small nod but kept her eyes down. She was afraid she might cry if she looked Rose in the face.

    ‘Four years ago’, said Rose, ‘our youngest son, Archie, was expelled from Eton for selling drugs and disappeared. A year later, thank God, he turned up again but we hardly recognised him. He was covered in dirt and looked like a skeleton, but at least he was alive. Since then we’ve realised that bad things can happen to anyone and that one must do what one can for others. I volunteered for the Samaritans and now I’m training to be a counsellor.’

    She put her hand on Jane’s arm. Jane tried not to pull away.

    ‘Henry’s told me something of what’s been happening and it’s obvious to me that you’re going through a trauma of some kind. So what I wanted to say was, if you ever need the name of someone who could help you, someone good, I can recommend someone.’

    Rose stood up and poured some coffee from a vacuum flask on the desk. She pressed the mug into Jane’s hand.

    ‘Do think about it,’ she said. ‘It's no loss if it doesn't work out, and it might be a comfort to you.’

Then of course there’s Chris, who phoned her every day to start with and visits often.

    One evening she came over with an envelope.

    ‘I found this at Rick’s place,’ she said, handing it to Jane.

    On the front was written ‘For Jane’. Inside was a memory stick with a sticky label on which was written ‘Listen!’ and the date 22 February - the day she drove into a snowdrift, the day before Rick’s crash. She recognised Rick's tiny scrawl on both envelope and label.

    It was nearly a week before she found the courage to plug the stick into her computer.

Click here for the next instalment