Free The Vows of Silence by Susan Hill Page A

photographs of them all as children next to new ones of Cat’s sons and daughter, stuck up everywhere. But the plants had died and never been replaced, the music had gone to Cat; some of the photographs had fallen down or curled at the edges. The notice board was bare. Simon hated going into the kitchen. It was the one room where he missed his mother beyond bearing.
    Now he noticed some scarlet geraniums on the ledge, neat in their pots with saucers beneath. There was an unopened bottle of wine on the table. Glasses.
    Who was this?
    “I take it you’ve seen your sister,” Richard said.
    “Of course. They’re back and fully functioning. It’s brilliant.”
    “I’ll telephone Catherine tomorrow.”
    “Don’t you think you should drive out there, Richard, not just telephone? They’ll be longing to see you.”
    Simon looked from the woman to his father and back again. Richard said, “Oh, I doubt that.” But he was smiling.
    “Will you stay for supper, Simon? I’ve made a chicken pie that will feed half a dozen. I always cook too much.”
    Who was this? What was she doing, cooking in his mother’s kitchen, inviting him to supper, telling his father where he should go, who he should see? Who was this?
    She handed him the bottle of wine. “Would you open this?” Smiling. She had a warm smile.
    She was—what—late forties? Tall. Light brown hair with some careful, fairer streaks. Straight. Very well cut. Pink shirt. Necklace of large almond-shaped stones. Large mouth. Slightly crooked nose. Who was this?
    His father said, “Should we eat in here or shall I lay the table in the dining room?”
    “It’s so comfortable in here. Simon, do stay. We don’t have any holiday snaps to bore you with.”
    Holiday?
    His father was avoiding his eye.
    Simon picked up the bottle and went to the drawer for the corkscrew but she had it in her hand. Held it out to him.
    Her look said, Don’t ask now. Later. He will tell you later. I will see to it.
    He took the corkscrew. She smiled.
    Tall. But not like his mother. Not his mother.
    In his mother’s place. In her house. Her kitchen. Cooking in her kitchen. Not his mother.
    He wrenched the cork hard out of the bottle.

Sixteen
    The evening air smelled of bonfires. Cat Deerbon walked towards the east door of the cathedral in the gathering dusk and the woodsmoke drifting on the air was nostalgic of childhood, school satchels, her first year as a junior doctor, running across to the hospital from her room to answer a bleep when the groundsmen were burning the leaves. And her mother in the garden at Hallam House, tall and elegant in jeans in her mid-seventies, pushing the debris of the summer borders into the glowing heart of a small, neat and well-controlled bonfire.
    Cat stood for a second catching her breath at the vividness of the memory, wishing she could go there now, make a mug of tea, chat, catch up.
    The cathedral was still and almost empty at the end of the day. Two vergers were changing the candles in the great holders on the high altar. Someone wasbrushing the floor at the far end of the chancel with a rhythmic scritch-scratch of bristle on stone.
    There was no service. Cat had had to drop in a letter to the New Song School and she always took the chance to sit in the cathedral for a few moments when she could, centring herself, reflecting, bringing some of her patients and their problems with her to leave in the peace and holiness of the building. She had only just returned to the practice. There were new patients, old ones returning with new problems, nothing dramatic yet. Her energies were going into opposing some changes, learning to work with others, battling the system. Chris, still not fully recovered from a lengthy jet lag, was refusing to argue, refusing to compromise, unusually irritable. But she was determined to win on one front, determined to do some nights on call, seeing her own patients when they needed her most. It would all settle down.
    She closed her