Coming Home to Glendale Hall

by Victoria Walters

  ‘How is Gran?’ I asked then, already nervous to see her. Growing up I had always been intimidated by her. And for ten years, I had never been able to forgive her because she was the reason I’d felt I had to run away.

  ‘The doctors are doing all they can to keep her comfortable,’ my mother replied. She looked at Izzy. ‘You have grown again.’

  ‘I’m almost as tall as Mum,’ Izzy replied with pride.

  ‘You both get your height from David,’ Mum said with an envious sigh about what we’d inherited from my dad. ‘You better go up and see your grandmother, Beth. She gets very anxious at the moment. Isabelle can stay with us and we can find out all about what you’ve been doing.’

  Why did anything my mother suggest sound so ominous? I swallowed the rest of my coffee and grabbed a muffin to take up with me.

  ‘Breakfast was delicious,’ I told Sally. ‘You’ll be okay down here?’ I checked with Izzy, wishing she could come with me. I wasn’t at all ready to face my grandmother, but I knew I should see her alone first. I needed to prepare Izzy for how sick she might look. They had met only twice, both times when my grandmother had deigned to join my parents in London to see us, but the last visit had been a long time ago. She hated to leave Scotland was the excuse my mum always gave, but I was certain it was because she had never got over me going against her wishes as I had.

  ‘Of course she will,’ my mum answered for her.

  Izzy piled more food on her plate, making me smile as I left. I knew she would be fine really. My family all loved her.

  It was me who was the black sheep.

  Chapter Three

  Gran’s bedroom was at the front of the house. It was her father who had built Glendale, and it was she who owned it now. Leslie Campbell had made his money making whiskey. As he approached retirement, and with only a daughter and old-fashioned views about passing on family businesses, he had sold it all off to a big brand, and had made even more money in the process. We still owned shares in the company, and those, along with the money from the sale, had kept the family in comfortable wealth ever since. Gran’s husband and my dad had both worked though they didn’t really need to, but my grandmother and mother never had. It was yet another difference between us. And one of the reasons I was so stunned when I received my first wages from the café I worked in when I got to London, and saw how little I had to live on.

  Gran liked the fact that she had a view of the driveway to keep an eye on the comings and goings of the house. I asked her once if she minded living with my mum and dad and Gran said this house needed people to fill it. I wondered if it had felt different after I left but, in my heart, I knew it had.

  I hesitated outside the door. I had fallen pregnant with Izzy when I was sixteen, and Gran was the one who found my pregnancy test. While we hadn’t ever been what you would call a close family, I had hoped that she might support me but she had been furious and disappointed, and our relationship had never recovered. ‘Don’t be a chicken,’ I whispered to myself and, taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door softly.

  Margaret Mackenzie was in bed with her eyes closed. I tiptoed in and walked towards the bed, leaning over to look at her. I was taken aback by how different she looked from the last time I had seen her. She was pale and thin, her usually dyed hair now allowed to be its natural white, cut a lot shorter than she had ever worn it.

  ‘Gran?’ I whispered and her eyes opened to reveal the same brown eyes that Mum and I shared with her. She smiled faintly, and I went to perch on the edge of her bed. ‘How are you feeling?’ Perhaps a stupid question, to be honest. She bore hardly any resemblance to the formidable woman that I had spoken to there in that very room just before I had run away from the house.

  ‘Beth, it’s really you,’ she said, reaching out with a cold, bony hand to touch mine briefly. She had never been particularly affectionate and, even now, the touch barely registered. ‘You’re back.’

  ‘Dad told me you wanted to see me.’

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said with a small cough. She struggled to prop herself up a bit to look at me. ‘All grown up now. And Isabelle…’

  ‘She’s here too. You can see her when you feel up to it.’ I sat down in the chair beside the bed.

  ‘How is she doing at school?’ Gran asked, ignoring my comment.

  ‘Brilliantly, as usual. She reads more than I’ve ever seen anyone read.’ I tried not to let my anxiety about that show to Gran. I loved that Izzy was so enthusiastic about books but sometimes it worried me how she seemed to prefer to live in a fictional world. I wasn’t about to let Gran know any of that though. In front of her, I needed to be as strong as I could be.

  She sighed, then her eyes fixed on me. ‘Ten years is a long time. I never dreamed you’d stay away from here for so long.’

  ‘Well, my life is in London now. And it’s a long way…’ I mumbled, not meeting her eyes. The truth was I had been too nervous to come home. I had tried to forget the Hall, even though that had proved impossible.

  ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about the past stuck here in bed,’ Gran said, her voice throaty and faint as if she hardly used it now.

  ‘I suppose you would do.’

  ‘It’s been hard on your parents, well on all of us, with you and Isabelle living so far away from here.’

  ‘It’s been hard for us too,’ I replied, wishing I could keep out the trace of bitterness in my voice, but that was impossible. Izzy and I had had to survive on our own, and she must have known that it was because of her, surely? I sighed though, seeing her sad expression. I couldn’t help but feel a rise of pity inside for her. ‘We’re here now though,’ I added, soothingly.

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’ She closed her eyes briefly. I looked around her bedroom. It was exactly the same. Mum had obviously been banned from decorating it along with the rest of the house. I thought back to that final conversation between us. Gran had told me so many reasons in that very room why I shouldn’t have my baby. I was so young. I wasn’t married. I had my whole future ahead of me. What about my dream of being a landscape gardener? Of going to college and university? What would people say? And then the argument that had reached my heart. How could I do it to Drew? How could I destroy his future right alongside mine?

  ‘It’s good to have you back,’ Gran said then, opening her eyes again and drawing me back from the past to the present. ‘What does Isabelle think of Glendale Hall?’

  ‘I’m going to show her around later. She can’t believe how big it is.’ I smiled. Thank goodness Izzy was with me. I felt like I could handle anything with her by my side. As I’d had her so young, we were often mistaken for sisters, and she felt like my best friend, as well as daughter. We were as close as I had hoped we would be when I walked away from my family with her growing inside me. Although I wished she didn’t worry about things as much as she did. I had known as soon as I decided I had to keep her that I would be nothing like Mum or Gran, that I would raise my baby with affection and honesty, and I would try my hardest to give her everything she needed from me. It hadn’t been easy at all, but I had done my very best. Gran coughed again and her eyes closed for a moment.

  ‘You look tired. I should let you rest.’

  ‘But it’s been so long.’

  I nodded and stood up. It was hard to reconcile the woman in front of me with the one who pushed me to go. I needed time to adjust. ‘We’re here for Christmas so don’t worry. There’s plenty of time. I’ll come back later.’

  ‘There is so much to say.’ She closed her eyes again. ‘Thank you for coming, Beth.’

  I watched her drift off into sleep. It didn’t look good at all. I wasn’t sure quite how I felt about that as I left softly, closing the door behind me. It felt wrong to be angry with someone who was so sick. But I was, I realised. It was there, bubbling up under the skin as if it had been lying dormant all the time in London. It all felt raw again.

  There wasn’t a moment when I regretted having Izzy but those first few
months were bloody tough. Being a single mother far away from my family and my home had been a test of all my determination and survival instincts.

  ‘There you are,’ Izzy said, rounding the corner and spotting me. She looked relieved.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, instantly on alert.

  She smiled. ‘Nothing. I just came to find you.’

  ‘Come on, I want to show you the garden.’ I slung an arm around her.

  * * *

  Growing up, the grounds had always been my favourite place. We grabbed hats and scarves from our rooms. The sun had finally risen but it was that kind of watery wintery sunshine that failed to produce much warmth. There was no breeze, though, so it didn’t feel too biting when we walked out of the French doors onto the still-dewy grass.

  The house sat in around eight acres of grounds. There was a formal garden to the side of the house that burst with colour in summer, a wide green lawn that led down to a stream and the woodland area, as well as a vegetable patch and long greenhouse. In the midst of the trees was a small, pretty cottage where our full-time gardener, John, lived. As a kid, I had spent a lot of time in the garden.

  ‘I used to love coming out here,’ I said, wrapping an arm through my daughter’s as we strolled away from the house together. ‘I even had my own patch.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Let’s find it.’

  We walked under a large archway, which in spring was draped in wisteria but was now just a skeleton, to the side of the greenhouse where a square patch was marked out. John had let me plant what I wanted there, and I had found the prettiest and most colourful flowers that I could for it. I was surprised to be able to see it from a few feet away.

  ‘There it is, it’s still here,’ I said, pleased, bending my knees to look more closely at it. The flowers weren’t in bloom in December and a thin layer of frost covered the plants there. It was clearly still tended to carefully though as every inch of the grounds always had been. ‘God, I miss having a garden.’ The worst part of moving to London was having to live in a flat. We had a tiny balcony at our place where I could fit two pots of flowers, and that was it. Out there, being with nature again I found myself smiling. The cold morning didn’t dampen the spring in my step as I stood back up. ‘I had dreams of being a gardener, you know.’

  Izzy looked at me. ‘Really?’

  She, of course, had never known me as anything but an admin assistant at her school. When I was pregnant, I had worked in a coffee shop and then managed to scrape by when Izzy was tiny, looking after a family who let her come with me, and then when she started school, I took the office job there so I did the same hours as her. It had worked well, although we never had much money. ‘I loved being outdoors and learning about plants. I loved growing things. All summer, I was in the garden. As an only child, there wasn’t always much to do in the house, but in the garden, I always had something to do. I hadn’t realised how much I had missed it.’

  ‘It’s pretty,’ Izzy said. ‘Did you say there’s a stream?’

  ‘Up here, we call it a burn. Come on, I’ll show you.’ I knew she was just humouring me but I led her towards it. Isabelle was an indoors girl. Happiest with her books, she had always been capable of occupying herself. I had tried to get her interested by taking her to gardens and parks in the city but I had never really succeeded. I was determined not to stop trying though.

  We walked further from the house and I felt lighter than I had since we arrived. I looked down and was pleased to see Izzy had a smile on her face too. I was happy I could finally show her the grounds that I had loved so much. Perhaps coming home wouldn’t be a complete disaster after all.

  Chapter Four

  ‘I heard a rumour you were back,’ a voice called out to us as we approached the water’s edge.

  I turned to see John sloping down the lawn towards us. He was nearing fifty, broad-shouldered and freckled, his skin always tanned from being outdoors and his fair hair now had streaks of grey in it. ‘Unfortunately, the rumour is true.’

  He grinned. ‘Well, at least Christmas won’t be boring now.’ He gave me a quick hug then turned to Izzy. ‘And this must be the famous Isabelle. Your grandparents have got me searching all the grounds for the best Christmas tree I can find just for you.’

  ‘Really?’ She looked at me, her eyes all lit up.

  ‘Can you top the one we had when I was twelve though?’ I asked him. The tree had touched the ceiling in the hallway, taking up half of the massive room.

  ‘I’m going to do my best. It’s good to see you out here again. How’s your garden at home?’

  I frowned. ‘We only have a tiny balcony so right now I just have a pot of pansies, and some heather out there.’

  John shook his head. ‘That’s too bad. I always wanted to see what garden you’d have when you had your own place. Right, I better head off, I need to find that perfect tree, don’t I?’ He winked at us and carried on his way.

  I looked at the house behind us, rising up tall and proud in the wintery sunshine, the cream stone as bright as ever, and I sighed. Turning back to the stream, I followed Izzy towards it, the sun dancing on top of the water. It was hard not having a garden of my own. Being out in the garden was making my fingers itch with wanting to touch the earth again. I had had a place at college in Inverness to study horticulture when I was sixteen, which my parents were happy to let me do as they assumed that like my mother and grandmother, I’d get married before I started a career anyway. But then I did something that none of us had planned for – I fell pregnant. I wouldn’t have changed having Izzy for anything, but I couldn’t deny my heart had been broken when I realised I would never get to go to college.

  ‘I can’t feel my nose,’ Izzy complained as we walked along the stream. It was getting colder, and we were not used to it.

  ‘I think we need one of Sally’s famous hot chocolates. Let’s head back,’ I replied, changing direction. ‘What do you think of Glendale Hall then, Iz?’

  She looked at the house as we started to walk back to it. ‘It’s amazing, Mum. I can’t believe you used to live here.’

  ‘I know, right?’

  ‘I can’t wait to see it decorated for Christmas. Could we help, do you think?’

  I thought back to Christmases when I was younger – my mother would arrange for people to come in and decorate for us; I never had the chance to do anything. In London, Izzy and I always spent a day decorating our flat together playing cheesy Christmas songs as loudly as we could, and eating far too many chocolates. ‘I’ll ask Sally to make sure you can help with something, don’t worry.’ Sally was bound to be doing a lot of festive baking that Izzy could help with if my mum was still against children being part of Christmas.

  As we got closer to the house, I looked up and saw a figure at the windows, watching us. My mum was upstairs, looking at us walking across the garden. I couldn’t fathom the expression on her face. When she saw me looking, she quickly turned away. I wondered how we had drifted so far apart. I couldn’t even pin it on me leaving. We’d always been so different, I supposed, and I’d always resented how she’d tried to mould me into someone who would be just like her and Gran. Which was why I hadn’t turned to her when I fell pregnant, and why we struggled to communicate with each other now. My grandmother had certainly made things even harder between us. Gran had expected a lot from her daughter, and Mum in turn, had expected a lot from me. That was one of the reasons I left to raise Izzy, I wanted to have a different relationship with her. I wanted to raise her to be the person she wanted to be. I just wanted her to be happy.

  ‘Sally, we are in need of emergency hot chocolate!’ I called as we walked in through the back door to the kitchen.

  Sally was kneading dough. She actually baked bread. ‘Good job there’s some ready to go then.’ She went over to the cooker to turn the pot on. We took off our boots on the doorstep and left them outside, knowing my mum would have a fit if we trailed mud into the house. We shed our outside
coats and hung up them on the hooks by the door before heading over to the table where Sally joined us, bringing over a steaming mug of hot chocolate for all three of us.

  ‘How was your walk?’

  ‘It was lovely to see the grounds again.’ I sat holding my hands around the mug to try to get some feeling back in them. Izzy was blowing on her drink, her nose as red as I was certain mine was. It was going to take some getting used to how cold it was. ‘I’ve missed them.’

  ‘Can I go and get my book, Mum?’ Izzy asked, obviously sensing it was adult chat time and wanting to avoid it. I couldn’t say I blamed her.

  ‘Take your drink up with you if you want to read in your room.’

  She beamed and hurried off, clutching the mug to her chest. I shook my head. ‘She hasn’t inherited my love of the outdoors at all. I keep trying to get her nose out of a book but it never works for long.’

  ‘It’s a shame you don’t have a garden in London.’

  ‘There’s no way I could afford to move somewhere with one. I hadn’t realised how much I’ve missed it.’ I looked out of the French doors, already wanting to be back out there again. ‘Hopefully John will let me help out while I’m here.’ I turned back to Sally. ‘How is everything here? Really?’ I hadn’t missed the fact that I hadn’t seen my dad yet and my gran seemed to not be doing well at all. The house seemed so quiet, so downcast, to how I remembered it. I tried not to worry that somehow it was my fault, but it was perhaps inevitable that my absence had left its mark on the house, and on my family.

  Sally sighed. ‘Mrs MacKenzie has been ill for a long time. The cancer is everywhere now. Your mother has found it very hard; we have a daily nurse coming in but she’s taken on most of her care by herself. You know your father, he’s always at work so hasn’t been around to help much. I don’t think your mother is coping that well.’