Starting Over at Acorn Cottage

by Kate Forster

  She noticed Rachel mentioned Joe more often than not lately.

  ‘How is Joe?’ she asked casually, remembering Tassie’s words about not making any sudden movements around Rachel lest she scare her away.

  ‘He’s well. He dropped off some lovely middle bacon last night and stayed for a cup of tea. We had it with a Hobnob, which was perfect.’

  Rachel left for the tearooms, pie plates in hand and a dreamy look on her face.

  Clara watched the tearooms and bakery from the kitchen doorway, as the customers chattered to each other and Rachel and Alice served them pots of tea with Earl Grey cupcakes or coffee and pistachio cake. The pies for the day were an egg and bacon open pie or the leek and sweet potato, with a pretty lattice crust. They really were a work of art, thought Clara as she went into the kitchen and plated up some of the orders for the guests in the tearoom.

  And that’s when she knew what she had to do.

  Rachel walked into the kitchen with some empty plates and put them on the bench.

  ‘Can I see you after work today?’ asked Clara. ‘I have to go and do a few errands. A branch fell on the van and so Pansy and Henry are sleeping in the spare room, and I’m having some beds delivered so I need to be home.’

  ‘Are they all right?’ Rachel’s hand was over her mouth in shock and her eyes wide. ‘That’s terrible.’

  Clara touched her arm to bring her out of her panicked state. ‘They are fine; they weren’t in the van at the time, absolutely fine, just homeless.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  Clara paused. ‘Can I come back around five? I have something I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Rachel, as Joe’s sister Alice popped her head around the corner.

  ‘More customers.’

  ‘Coming,’ said Rachel quickly and she rushed back into the shop.

  Clara slipped out the back door and drove back to the cottage.

  Henry was talking on the phone when she arrived, and Pansy was sitting on the grass by the fence watching him.

  ‘Everything okay?’ she asked Pansy as she walked up to her.

  ‘Daddy said shit, fucking joking and get off it three times,’ Pansy reported.

  Clara stifled a laugh, sat next to her and picked a daisy from the grass.

  ‘Do you know how to make a daisy chain?’

  ‘No?’ said Pansy looking interested.

  ‘My mum used to make them for me. When she was a little girl, her grandmother told her that wearing a daisy chain would protect her from lightning and from the Goblin King who liked to steal fairy children.’

  Pansy’s eyes widened. ‘Can you make me one? I don’t want to be taken by the king.’

  ‘I will make you one and I will teach you how to make one, so you can be safe from all storms and evil kings.’

  She thought about Rachel, who needed more than a daisy chain to protect her from that cow of a stepmother.

  She deftly picked the daisies and made a slit in the stem and threaded another through and on and on until it was long enough to go around Pansy’s head like a crown.

  ‘You make one,’ said Pansy. In the distance, Henry was pacing and still talking on the phone as Clara made herself a daisy crown and put it on her head.

  ‘Now you’re safe from the Goblin King,’ said Pansy.

  Henry walked over to them. ‘You two look very pretty,’ he said and Clara knew she was blushing.

  ‘Who were you yelling at?’ she asked, trying to be nonchalant.

  ‘The insurance company. I have to wait to take the branch off till an assessor comes and sees the damage. But the assessor could be a week or more as there was a lightning storm in Trowbridge, which caused all manner of havoc.’

  ‘They needed one of these,’ said Pansy to Clara, touching her daisy crown.

  ‘They did,’ said Clara as the sound of a truck rumbled down the laneway and stopped.

  ‘What’s this?’ Henry asked. ‘Are you expecting anything?’

  ‘I bought a few things in Salisbury,’ she said. She got up from the grass and brushed her jeans of grass then went to the cottage and opened the door for the deliverymen to carry the beds upstairs.

  Henry helped them, and then came down to Clara who was opening the bedding in the living room while the men put the bed bases together.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that.’

  ‘I did and I have, so that’s that.’ She unfolded a red gingham duvet cover and held it up. ‘I hope you won’t feel like you’re sleeping under a picnic blanket.’

  ‘I don’t mind what I sleep under as long as it’s not on the floor. Pansy completely kicked me out of bed last night.’

  Clara smiled as Pansy came in as she pulled out a kitchen chair.

  ‘Daddy, I want to live in the cottage now. I’m over the van.’

  Henry’s face made Clara burst out laughing. ‘You’re over the van? Who taught you what being over something is?’

  ‘I saw it on TV.’ She sighed.

  ‘I hate to break it to you, Pansy, but the van is our home.’

  Clara picked up the linen and left the room for the living room, but she could still hear Pansy negotiating the change in housing.

  ‘We can live here and I can go to school and we can plant Mummy in the with the vegetables.’

  She heard Henry pulling out another chair and sitting down.

  ‘Pansy, this isn’t our home, and Mummy said she wanted it to be our home when we put her ashes in the ground.’

  ‘But I love Clara.’ Pansy’s voice broke a little and she felt deep love for the child.

  ‘I know, I love Clara too but we can’t stay here forever.’

  Clara held the linen to her face, knowing it was red and her eyes were brimming with tears.

  What did he mean? Did he love her? In what way? Was he trying to make Pansy feel better?

  The sound of the deliverymen’s feet on the stairs pushed her away from where she was eavesdropping.

  ‘We’re all done, Miss,’ said one of the men.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she said as Pansy came out of the kitchen at the sound of the voices.

  ‘Want to come and help me make up the beds?’ she asked Pansy who immediately ran upstairs.

  Henry stood in the doorway looking at her and she looked back at him.

  ‘Did you hear us talking?’ he asked.

  She thought about lying but she couldn’t lie anymore. Her whole life she had lied to protect others but mostly to protect herself. If she was going to live a new life at Acorn Cottage, then she had to be truthful from the start.

  She nodded. ‘I did.’

  Henry shuffled his feet, as though he was kicking the dirt, and he put his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  ‘I don’t know how to be with anyone but Naomi.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘I have avoided everything, dragging Pansy around the place, not sending her to school, looking for Naomi in every place, avoiding the feelings. When I cried on the steps of the van it was the first time I cried since she died. I mean, it’s been three years. I have just avoided feeling everything, but I can’t avoid you. I don’t want to avoid you. I just don’t know how to do it.’

  Clara sighed. ‘Well, I don’t know either, but I’m not pushing you to be with me or away from me. I’m not going anywhere. This isn’t a test or a demand. There are things I have to tell you one day, and you might not want to be with me after that, so we all have risks to take.’

  Henry smiled. ‘Did you murder someone?’

  Clara looked him in the eye and paused.

  ‘Clara,’ came Pansy’s voice from upstairs and saved her from answering.

  ‘Gotta go, my queen is calling me.’

  Henry walked towards her and she felt her stomach fall away as he was so close. He kissed her on the forehead. Lingering and soft, and he smiled down at her.

  ‘Then why are you still wearing your crown?’ he asked and then walked outside. Clara realised that whol
e time she had been wearing her daisy crown and somehow it all just felt so right.

  28

  Clara – aged 13

  Clara could hear Dad taking off his boots by the front door. His words were slurred and she knew what would be coming next.

  He called for her and she froze at her desk. She was working on her maths homework, trying to win the maths prize for the year. It was worth twenty pounds, and she would save it for when she and Mum escaped.

  They had tried to leave again after Dad found them at the bus stop when she was younger. He’d dragged Mum home by her hair, huge handfuls of it coming out as Clara ran screaming abuse at him.

  Nobody came to help them. Nobody called the police. They had nobody to help them, but Clara had found her grandmother’s phone number and called her when Mum wasn’t home.

  Dad had told Mum she wasn’t to call her mum or even see her because she hadn’t wanted Mum to marry him. But Mum had secretly been sending her pictures of Clara for years and when Clara was a baby, she had seen her grandmother, not that she remembered.

  Gran was nice and said she understood and that they could come whenever they wanted to live with her. But Clara wondered if her mother would take up Gran on the offer and let them go and live there.

  But the older Clara got, the more complicated she understood her home life was.

  Nothing had worked to make Dad stop drinking and hurting Mum or Clara, and even through she got excellent marks at school and didn’t do anything to worry her mum, she still felt like she was failing her mum by not protecting her from him.

  They left him again when Clara was fourteen, and went to a refuge for women and children, but they couldn’t sleep and at night some of the men came and yelled abuse at the women through the letter box of the door.

  Dad turned up all shaved and in a fresh shirt and said he was sorry to Mum but Clara didn’t believe him. She tried to get Mum to understand it would start again but Mum said she didn’t have a choice, and she was sure he had changed this time.

  It took three days and a bottle of brandy to show he hadn’t changed and the next day, nursing a broken collarbone, Clara went to school and told her teachers and her principal and asked for help for the first time in her life.

  29

  Rachel had closed the shop and was waiting for Clara upstairs.

  Alice had been paid and promised to come back tomorrow and Joe had called her and told her how much it meant to Alice to have a little job over summer and that he had a lovely new cut of topside she might like and would she like to go to see a film with him in Chippenham.

  Rachel said she was happy to help Alice, and yes she would like the topside and would like to see a movie with Joe on Friday night.

  That had been the best day they’d had in the tearooms, and so many of the villagers told her that her hair looked like something a French girl would wear. Perhaps she would even try some red lipstick like the girls in France wore.

  Rachel wasn’t sure she could be any happier as Clara walked upstairs and into the living room.

  Clara didn’t even say hello. She threw her bag down onto the sofa and sat down.

  ‘I saw your mother today. My God, she’s an absolute bitch. I don’t think I have met a nastier female, and I went to a private girls’ school for two years – trust me, there were some horrible girls there.’

  Rachel gasped. ‘You saw her? In hospital?’

  Clara raised an eyebrow. ‘I took her grapes but I took them back because that woman doesn’t deserve grapes or anything from me or the rest of the world. I am surprised you didn’t push her down the stairs. I would have.’

  Rachel didn’t know if she should cry or laugh but Clara was the bravest person she ever met for confronting her mother and for taking the grapes back.

  ‘What did she say?’ Rachel asked, grasping her hands together, twisting them and sticking her nails into the cushiony bit of her hand near her thumb.

  Clara looked Rachel in the eye. ‘Why do you call her Mother when she doesn’t act like one? And besides, she’s your stepmother.’

  ‘What?’ Rachel didn’t understand. ‘She’s my mother. And she does act like one.’

  ‘No. Mothers care for their children – they love them, they don’t punish them for existing. They support them, and they do the hard work while you learn how to become a grown-up. Their love is a feeling of peace.’

  Rachel sat back into the sofa. ‘Not my mother? What do you mean?’

  ‘She told me,’ said Clara. ‘But I need to confirm that it’s true or if she’s just saying it to stir up drama. Where does she keep all her papers?’

  ‘What papers?’

  ‘You know, birth certificates and things like that?’ Clara said.

  Rachel tried to think. ‘There’s a locked box in the cupboard in her wardrobe.’

  ‘Grab it for me and let’s have a look.’

  Rachel left the room and came back and put the box on the table in front of Clara, who looked at the lock.

  ‘Got a screwdriver?’ she asked.

  Rachel went downstairs and came back with a set of screwdrivers. Clara chose the largest one and started to jimmy the lock.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rachel couldn’t believe Clara’s lack of care of what her mother – or stepmother – would think.

  Clara ignored her and used the screwdriver to push in the lock and then Rachel heard a snap. Clara lifted the lid and looked at Rachel.

  ‘This could be tough, Rachel. Do you want me to look first?’

  Rachel nodded and Clara pulled out an official envelope and opened it and read aloud.

  ‘Rachel Louise Brown. Born to Peter Brown and Sarah Brown.’

  She handed it to Rachel then opened another envelope.

  Rachel ran her finger over her mother’s signature on the birth certificate extract. Sarah Brown? Why didn’t they tell her?

  Clara handed her another certificate.

  This one was the death certificate for her mother. She was only nine months old when her mother died of an embolism. No wonder there were no photos of her as a baby before nine months. Moira had probably thrown them all away.

  Her mother was twenty-six when she died. Only a year older than she was now. She felt tears forming and she started to cry.

  Clara was next to her now, hugging her. ‘All this time, I wondered how my own mother could do this to me, but now I know she wasn’t my mother, and it makes it better somehow but also worse. I thought I couldn’t be loved if my own mother didn’t love me.’

  Clara held Rachel closer. ‘You are loved, you are wonderful, you are special and you never deserved what she did to you, Rachel, never – you understand?’

  Clara pulled away and held Rachel’s face in her hands.

  ‘This was never about you, it was done to you, but it’s about her. She’s a truly awful person.’

  ‘Who will come back and make my life worse,’ cried Rachel.

  But Clara was smiling and shaking her head. ‘No, I don’t think she will. Let me go through these papers but if she is as evil as I think she is, she will have done something that might just undo her.’

  Clara went back to the box and picked up the rest of the papers and envelopes.

  ‘Can I take these?’

  Rachel nodded her consent, still in shock.

  Clara leaned down and hugged her again. ‘It will be okay, Rachel, I promise you that. I know exactly what I am going to do, but I just have to get the evidence to prove it.’

  She left in a whirlwind. Rachel went to the box, and found an envelope from a pharmacy and opened it. Inside were old photos, and with her heart in her mouth she pulled them out.

  There was Sarah Brown. Almost exactly like Rachel to look at, with the same short haircut she had now and with a broad smile, sitting in a park, Rachel on her lap. A photo of the three of them, her dad looking happier than he had ever looked with Mother. She mentally corrected herself. Moira.

  More photos of them at a party, maybe he
r mother’s birthday. Yes, there she was being held by Sarah as a cake with candles was burning in front of her.

  She checked the birth date and the day of her death on the death certificate and touched the photo. Months later she would be dead and Rachel would never know that love again. She lay on the sofa and cried for everything she had never known and most of all for her mother who had never known her daughter.

  What Moira did was unforgiveable. She had taken everything from Rachel, including her confidence and her sense of worth, Clara said, but Rachel had one thing Moira didn’t have. She had talent and she was determined now, more than ever, to make the Merryknowe Bakery and Tearooms a soaring success.

  30

  Henry tucked Pansy under the covers and kissed her on the forehead goodnight and then closed the door and went downstairs, where Clara was sitting in the kitchen surrounded by papers.

  ‘Can I ask a personal question about what happened when Naomi died, in terms of paperwork and so on?’

  ‘Of course.’ He sat down opposite her at the table and turned the teapot he’d brought in from the van for them. Clockwise three times and anticlockwise another three, just like Naomi used to do.

  ‘When Naomi died, did she leave anything to Pansy or does everything just go to you automatically?’

  Henry rubbed his face where his beard was annoying him. He’d been thinking of shaving it off but autumn wasn’t far away and then he would complain about the cold.

  ‘Naomi had a life insurance and a policy from her parents, who died when we were first married. She left me the insurance money to care for Pansy and put half into an account for her schooling and half into a trust for her when she turns twenty-one. It won’t be a huge amount but enough for her to buy a car, put a deposit on a little flat or something.’

  ‘And you can’t touch that?’

  ‘No, it was in Naomi’s will.’

  He picked up a document and started to read and then looked at Clara. ‘So what do you think happened?’

  Clara picked up the papers and flicked through them.

  ‘I wonder if he left a will,’ she said.

  ‘Not everyone has one.’

  Clara clapped her hands. ‘I can find out if her dad had one through the probate directory. I forgot about that. Maybe see if her mum had one also. You never know.’