His polished shoes continued their familiar tapping along the floor until they reached the carpeted sections, then started again when the surface changed. Coordinating time off wasn’t an easy thing to do and she was still working up the confidence to tell him their planned staycation in his beautiful classic Windsor townhouse wasn’t going to happen, the leisurely strolls and brunches wherever they chose would have to be put on hold.
Cabin-crew life looked glamorous to outsiders with all the jetting off to exotic locations but in reality it was hard work. So was the job of the pilot, but Jay was always happy to drive them back to his place in Windsor and let her kick back in the passenger seat of his BMW.
Out in the car park they climbed into the plush seats and, as they set off, Melissa’s eyes shut from exhaustion and the shock of Barney’s fall, of Harvey’s abrupt contact that he surely must have known would worry her. She waited until Jay had negotiated the car park exit, the roads surrounding the airport, and they were firmly on their way home. And when he groaned as they slowed to millipede pace along the M4, she found her moment. ‘I need to go back to Heritage Cove.’ She daren’t look at him, instead focusing on the bank of cars ahead of them, the rear windscreen of the one in front filthy except for where its wiper blade had shifted grey dirt in an arc and left a clean section in the centre.
When the man in the truck next to them lit up a cigarette and its smoke somehow curled through the vehicle pollution over to their car, Melissa did up her window and faced Jay. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘I did.’ He waited until the ten miles per hour reduced once again to a standstill. ‘But I didn’t think you were serious.’
‘Unfortunately I am.’ The only thing she’d ever told Jay about Heritage Cove was that she was born there, she’d spent her childhood in a village she’d outgrown since her parents died, and she’d wanted to get away. She hadn’t told him anything more, he hadn’t asked, and she’d floated along in an existence of denial ever since. It had been the easiest way. Just as she ignored any malaise when she was up in the air with full make-up and a smile on her face, any time the village or her years growing up were mentioned she kept up the pretence that those times were normal, no dramas needed to be discussed or reflected on. It helped too that her brother had left the village years ago, before even she did, and moved to Scotland, where he had a wife and family. It meant that her links to Heritage Cove had reduced and she could talk with Billy on the phone without having to hear about the village and its residents. And if he mentioned them, she quickly found a way to turn the conversation around.
Looking out at the drizzle now, the sort of rain that tricked you into thinking you couldn’t possibly get wet, coming down from the greyness blanketed above, she longed for the blue skies of Dubai, the scorching temperatures she’d just left, the feeling of another world that wasn’t quite reality.
‘It’s taken ages to arrange time off with each other,’ Jay complained when he realised she was completely serious. ‘Why do you need to go now? Why all of a sudden?’
‘It’s Barney.’
‘Who’s Barney?’
‘The man I still send cards to, I’ve told you about him before.’
He shook his head but as he negotiated moving to the outside lane in the vague hope of progressing a little further, something seemed to click. ‘You’re right, sorry, I must’ve forgotten. I didn’t think you were that close.’
‘He’s in hospital, he had a fall.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ Barney had once been everything to her. She’d never forgive herself for abandoning him, for leaving him the way she had, but staying had become too painful. And just because she hadn’t seen him and didn’t get in touch often, it didn’t mean they weren’t still close. Harvey’s email had proven that. As soon as she’d read his message, her feelings had come right back to her and she knew she had to see Barney.
She wasn’t going to mention that it wasn’t Barney himself who had contacted her and, thankfully, Jay didn’t ask. He was too busy moving back into the middle lane now that the traffic was progressing.
After Melissa left for London all those years ago she stayed in touch with her best friend, Tracy, for a while but, over time, their phone calls had stopped. Melissa’s life had moved on, she’d got a job she loved, she was off travelling the world. For a time she’d called Barney to let him know she was safe and well; they’d chatted often, and he’d always told her never to feel guilty for living her life the way she needed to. But because Melissa’s job took her out of the country so much, the phone calls gradually stopped happening. Barney wasn’t a homebody either so coordinating their times was difficult – or, if Melissa was entirely honest, shutting herself off had been the easiest option. So instead, she’d sent Christmas and birthday cards as well as the odd letter and Barney had done the same in return. She’d sent postcards from exotic locations as a way of telling him that she was living her best life, that leaving hadn’t been the wrong decision, that she was seeing the big wide world as she’d always wanted. Neither of them ever mentioned Harvey in any correspondence, but Melissa hoped he’d gone on to find happiness in the same way that she had.
And part of her happiness was Jay. In the car now, she reached a hand up to his face and ran her fingers across his cheek and along his strong jaw. ‘I’m sorry, I know how much you were looking forward to our week off.’
With a sigh he shook his head. ‘You’ll keep, I guess.’ And he beamed a smile her way to tell her that it wasn’t great, but he understood. ‘Hey, I could always come with you.’
‘No need, honestly. I’ll be at the hospital half the time anyway, at least until Barney gets out, and then I’ll be at his place helping as much as I can.’ She said it with as much conviction as she could muster, because part of her panicked that Barney wouldn’t get home, that this was it. She would’ve left it too late to say how sorry she was for her absence. How had she left it so long? And how had she not seen how selfish she was being?
Melissa would email her boss the moment she got home and clear an extra week of unpaid leave so she didn’t have to rush back to work, because if Barney was really bad, there was no way she’d leave him to fend for himself. He was loved in the community of Heritage Cove, but he had no wife, no children, no siblings, and it was Melissa and Harvey who, despite not being blood-related, were the closest thing he had to family.
Jay put a hand over hers, mistaking her frown of concern for guilt at cancelling their pre-arranged time off together. ‘We’ll have a staycation together another time, no big deal.’ His gaze came her way, his sharp blue eyes that missed nothing at thousands of feet up in the sky. ‘If you don’t need me with you, at least let me drive you up there.’
‘No need. I’ll want my car to get to and from the hospital. But thank you.’ She put her hand on his knee and gave it a squeeze, maintaining physical contact between them while he handled the gear stick, the wheel, focusing his attention on the road.
‘Well don’t stay away too long,’ he said. ‘For selfish reasons, the bed’s much better when you’re in it.’
‘You should be used to it, we’re rarely on the same schedule.’
‘True, but this is different. I’ll know you’re not all that far away.’
‘I won’t be far away, and I’ll be back in a few weeks.’ Then she’d get back to normal, back to Jay, back to her job and jetting off somewhere far, far away from everything else.
He covered her hand with his, looking at her whenever he could. His attentiveness had been one of the things that attracted Melissa to Jay right from the start. She’d spent some time on her own, determined to prove that she could do it, because if she didn’t let anyone get close, she was protecting herself. It was a barrier she put up so she’d never feel so devastated and heartbroken again. But then, one night on a stopover in Singapore, she’d found herself alone in a bar after all the other cabin crew had gone to bed and Jay had asked her to have a drin
k with him. For the first time in a long while she’d felt like the centre of someone’s universe, she felt needed. They’d dated whenever they could, spending any spare minutes they had together. And Melissa had felt that she was finally getting the true fresh start she’d yearned for.
Now, in the lay-by approaching Heritage Cove, the soothing clippety-clop of the horses’ hooves faded as they trooped one after the other across the road to presumably head towards the riding school. The cottage Melissa’s parents had once owned and that Melissa had lived in until she left the village was down that way, past the paddocks, and had been rented out for the last five years. Jay wanted her to sell it and instead put the money into a bolthole in France, Spain or Portugal but, so far, Melissa hadn’t bothered to get in touch with an estate agent. Maybe now she was here it was time to do so, to get rid of the cottage once and for all, another tie she could discard and move away from.
She looked again at the sign saying Heritage Cove, there ahead of her. It was now or never. She put the cap back on her bottle of water and prepared to drive on, check in at the Heritage Inn and then take herself off to the hospital.
But instead of driving on, she made the most of the quiet country road and the lay-by that made it possible to turn around and she headed back the way she’d come. She’d go to the hospital first, see Barney, anything to put off check-in – or, more to the point, anything to avoid Heritage Cove for a little bit longer.
Who knew? Maybe she’d be at the hospital so long that it would at least be dark by the time she came back to the village and she could face it in full sunlight after a good night’s sleep.
Maybe by then she wouldn’t have such a feeling of dread pooling inside of her.
Chapter Two
‘Would you stop fussing?’ Barney demanded for the third time in as many minutes. Harvey was at his bedside in the hospital; he’d been here since the early hours, waiting to be allowed inside. If he’d had his way he would’ve slept in the chair all night to keep an eye on the man who’d always been there for him when his own father had not.
‘Don’t you have a job to do, lofts to convert and work on?’ Barney moaned. He’d just had breakfast but it seemed that hadn’t gone any way to improving his mood. ‘You’ve been here every day for the last week.’
‘My job doesn’t come first, some things are more important.’ Harvey stopped smiling when Barney shrugged his hand away from his arm. ‘Stop being so grumpy, it doesn’t suit you.’
‘Of course it does, and if it’s the only way I’ll be left alone to get some peace and quiet, then I’ll be as miserable as I like.’ Fair-skinned Barney usually had a bit of colour in his cheeks but not since he’d had the fall. He looked gaunt and his frustration left a scowl that deepened the wrinkles on his forehead.
When the nurse came in to do her checks, Harvey was grateful to take his mind away from Barney’s mood and the fact he was somehow viewing this fall, this temporary setback, as the start of his demise. It wasn’t like Barney, who only days before had been happily showing off his short back and sides at the local bakery after going to the barber and having his silver, almost white, hair cropped back into the tidy way it should be. Over the last day or so Barney had continually – when he was talking rather than griping – claimed an inability to look after himself properly anymore. He’d talked about the lonely house awaiting his return and although he didn’t say he was scared to be alone, Harvey could tell that was what he meant. It was as though the fall and fracture of his hip had snatched the seventy-three-year-old’s confidence and therefore independence away from him.
‘He’s been here since first thing, you know, hanging around well before he was allowed in,’ the nurse told Barney, referring to Harvey as she pulled the stethoscope from her ears and loosened the cuff she’d put on Barney’s arm to check his blood pressure. ‘Same as every day you’ve been in here, he’s been by your side. You’re lucky to have him.’
‘Stupid boy, he should know I’ll tell him if I need anything. I’m hardly likely to get myself into trouble lying in this bed, am I?’
‘Family tend to see it a different way and they want to be here for you anyway,’ the nurse, Sharon, chirruped on in her overly happy way. She probably saw miserable old buggers like Barney every day of the week. But the chances of him cheering up while he was in here were very slim. Harvey wondered whether she saw beneath the façade like he did, whether she guessed that, deep down, Barney was scared and that usually, instead of being this rude, he’d have nothing but kind words and smiles for people unless they crossed him.
‘He’s not family,’ Barney murmured, looking out the window across grey rooftops, which, mingled with an equally slate-grey sky, didn’t help much either.
Sharon held her clipboard against an ample chest. ‘Then you must be a very close friend,’ she told Harvey before putting a hand on Barney’s shoulder. ‘Sometimes our friends become our family.’
While the nurse carried on with her checks Harvey went to grab a coffee, not that it tasted much good out of the vending machine, but at least it would give Barney a bit of space.
The nurse was spot on when she said that friends often became family. Barney had been in his life since Harvey was eight years old. Harvey had been hanging around the village one summer, bored as anything, and he’d gone to the old barn via the road that cut behind Barney’s house so he wouldn’t be seen. As he’d done many a time without being caught, he’d climbed up into one of the trees to pluck a ripe apple but while he was pulling the firm fruit from where it hung, a voice had yelled out to him and scared him half to death; he lost his footing and tumbled out of the tree to the ground. The man who had shouted at him came tearing over but Harvey was lying in a pile of leaves that had cushioned his fall and was already laughing away when another apple, disturbed by the pandemonium, dropped down and clonked him on the head. The man had laughed too, most likely in relief, helped him up, and it had been the start of a very happy friendship that, decades on, was still going strong. The day Harvey tried to steal an apple, Barney had made him help collect more of the fruit and they’d taken it into the barn, where Barney had shown him how to make fresh juice. From that day on he’d been allowed to come over whenever he liked, drink as much of the juice as he wanted, and it became his escape every day after, that first day ending up with him racing home as fast as his skinny little legs would let him so as not to break curfew. Out of the barn he’d gone, across the courtyard, through the gap between the trees, down the path to the pavement and then up and around the bend and into the village itself before heading to his own house. It was a route he’d be wholly familiar with very quickly and still was.
Harvey pressed the button on the vending machine and the coffee groaned its way out as though it couldn’t really be bothered to add flavour for anyone, least of all him. Over the years, Harvey had told Barney very little about his home life but he hadn’t really needed to. Everyone in the village knew about the Luddington family – the dad who was a bully, the mum who tried to do her best by her two sons, Harvey, whose home was still in Heritage Cove, and his younger brother Daniel, who was no longer interested in being a proper part of their family. Daniel had eventually left the Cove at eighteen after endless run-ins with their dad, Donnie. The pair probably would’ve killed one another if Daniel hadn’t left when he did, their tempers were a match. Harvey was left behind to pick up the pieces for his mum, who was devastated Daniel had left them behind, but at least they had their own lives now, in a beautiful village, minus the aggravation.
He took his coffee back to the ward and the first thing Barney said when Harvey appeared at his bedside was, ‘I’m sorry for being an ungrateful grouch.’
‘No worries at all.’ Harvey tentatively pulled up a chair and sat down.
‘What’s the coffee like?’
‘Iffy, but it might keep me awake a while longer.’
‘Bad as the food then,’ he harrumphed.
‘Unfortunately.’
; ‘Nurse is happy with my progress.’
‘That’s great.’ Harvey took another brave sip of coffee. ‘We’ll soon have you home. They mentioned it would probably happen today.’ When Barney nodded he asked, ‘What happened when you fell? You still haven’t really explained.’
Barney muttered. ‘It’s no great mystery, I fell off a ladder.’
‘But did you lose your balance? Were you dizzy?’
‘I’ve already been through this with the doctors and nurses. Honestly, you’d think you lot were trying to confuse me with all your questions.’
‘This is purely for my peace of mind.’
‘There’s no mysterious tale to tell. I was trying to repair a beam in the barn, that’s all. I’m getting too old, I know.’
‘That wasn’t what I was getting at.’
‘Well it’s true, it’s a fact.’ Barney looked up at the ceiling. ‘This place needs a fresh lick of paint, the whole hospital does. Do you think it’s their mission to make these places as depressing as possible?’
Pleased at least to see the old man’s sense of humour trying to escape, Harvey agreed. ‘It may well be. I mean, they don’t want to encourage patients to hang around too long, do they?’
Barney relaxed into the familiar friendly banter, a father-son-like way of talking to each other that neither of them had ever had before they came into each other’s life.
‘I can fix the barn up,’ Harvey assured him. ‘It needs quite a few things doing, but no more climbing up ladders for you, leave it to me.’ He pulled a face after a sip of coffee and set the cup on the window sill.
‘That bad?’
‘Worse…thought I could manage it but I’ll pour it away.’
Coming Home to Heritage Cove Page 2