It was late afternoon by the time they approached the house, and lazy peach light was streaming through the leaves of the live oaks along the drive.
‘Why don’t you pick up an overnight bag and come back to my parents’?’ he offered.
‘Are they going to be at home?’
‘They’re entertaining tonight. But we could go to the guest cottage.’
‘When they’re entertaining, aren’t you supposed to put in an appearance?’
‘Then how about you come tomorrow instead? Bring that.’ He smiled, motioning at the camcorder. ‘Maybe we can have a little fun with it,’ he added as Jennifer slapped him playfully on the wrist.
Connor parked the car outside the house. As he switched off the engine, Jennifer could hear noises from inside.
She hesitated for a moment and glanced at Connor as she got out of the car.
In the still, sticky summer air, she could hear it quite distinctly. The raised yet controlled voice of her father; her mother’s more malevolent and hysterical screams.
Connor got out of the car and stood with Jennifer in solidarity on the steps of Casa D’Or.
‘Let’s go,’ he said softly.
‘I can’t.’ She couldn’t just drive off and leave her parents to it. She didn’t want to go into the house either, but when she heard something smash, she took a deep breath and opened the door.
It was as if she were witnessing a picture on freeze frame. Her mother stood motionless, clenched white fingers raised to her face. Her father glanced over towards Jennifer. The expression on his face was tired and frustrated.
She heard Sylvia take a sharp inhalation of breath. Tension quivered around the room. Then her mother dropped her arms to her sides, crossed the hall to the walnut cabinet and snatched up a set of car keys, striding towards the front door without another word, not even glancing in her daughter’s direction.
Jennifer watched her go, watched her pause for a moment when she saw Connor standing there, and although she could no longer see her mother’s face, she imagined it flushing with anger and shame to be caught out like this.
‘Let her go,’ said her father, pre-empting Jennifer’s next question. ‘She’s just had another one of her turns. She’ll be back soon.’
Jennifer bit down on her lip, memories of her childhood flooding back to haunt her. Feelings of fear and guilt, and anxiety. Even when she was old enough to understand that her mother had changeable and unpredictable moods, she still wondered what she had done to make her behave like this, wondered what she had done to upset her and how she could have been better. Thoughts that were going around her head at that very moment.
She heard her mother’s car gun off in the distance and then the soft sound of footsteps coming up the steps. Connor put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her reassuringly close.
Her father was already headed upstairs.
‘I’m going to read,’ he said, his voice drained of any life or emotion.
‘Come back to mine,’ said Connor, as David Wyatt turned back and nodded his approval.
Jennifer agreed, knowing that at least her boyfriend had seen all this before, and understood.
Chapter Eleven
David Wyatt had taken a pragmatic approach to his daughter’s unemployment and a deal had been struck. He would support the idea of her making a documentary and would continue to pay her the allowance he had given her whilst she was at college. He had emphasised that it was only a temporary arrangement; in fact he had given her a deadline of the end of the summer, at which point Jennifer had to do something with her creative body of work: use it to find a job in the media, or submit it to film festivals to gauge whether it – and by implication, she – had any artistic merit.
The summer suddenly felt full of promise, and Jim Johnson had offered to help with the filming. It made sense to turn down Jeanne’s offer of a room in her apartment and instead Jennifer started seeing her Lake House neighbour every day. Once Connor had left Savannah for New York, Jennifer had felt a little guilty about seeing so much of her new friend, but two heads were better than one, and Jim had a lot of good ideas. Sometimes they made their creative brainstorms sociable; she’d had her first crack at a shooting script over ice cream and soda after they had been to see a matinee performance of Forrest Gump.
She’d started videoing her friends almost immediately after Connor had bought her the camera, and had been surprised how many people were keen to get involved, confirming Jim’s view that everybody liked the opportunity to talk about themselves.
Today she was at the Lake House with Jim, watching the tapes of everything she had filmed so far. It was a particularly hot and sticky afternoon, the sort of day when she loved to go sailing, but with the clock ticking, it made more sense to stay out of the sun and do some work.
Bryn Johnson came into the main house smoking a cigar. According to Jim, his father usually worked in the boathouse at the end of the pontoon, but he was clearly taking a break. He had grown a stubbly beard since the last time Jennifer had seen him and reminded her of Ernest Hemingway, which was almost certainly the look he was after.
‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked.
‘Gone swimming,’ said Jim from his reclined position on the floor, not even looking up from the television.