‘You can tell me,’ Sammie urged, gently nudging my arm.
‘I told him I wished it was him who’d taken the pills but that nobody had found him because, as far as I was concerned, I had no father, he was dead to me and he would never be welcome in my life ever again.’
I felt so ashamed saying it out loud now. It sounded so cold and completely unlike me. I’d never been the sort of person who got angry, raised their voice, argued or said cruel things. And to have held onto that hate for so long, even when Mum had been able to move on… what did that say about me? When Sammie and I got together, I’d told her my dad was dead to me but I hadn’t told her I’d actually said those words to him. It felt a hundred times worse to admit that I’d vocalised rather than internalised my feelings.
Sammie slipped her arm round my waist and rested her head against my shoulder. ‘You only said those things because you were hurt and angry and, after what he did and the repercussions of it, you had every right to be.’
‘I’m not that person,’ I said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
She kissed my shoulder. ‘Of course I do. Your dad knows that too.’
I turned to look up at her. ‘Does he? He took me at my word and didn’t get in touch when he was diagnosed with cancer.’
‘But he’s reached out now and—’
‘He hasn’t, Sammie. He told Beth that I’d made my feelings clear and he was going to respect my request to stay away. He didn’t think it was fair to “play the cancer card” as Beth put it and expect me to forgive and forget.’
‘He didn’t know she was meeting you today?’
‘He thought she was taking Archie on a playdate.’
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
‘What’s your gut reaction about what to do,’ Sammie said eventually.
‘I wasn’t sure but, now I’ve said it all aloud, I think there’s only one thing I can do. I need to go and see him.’
‘I agree. When?’
‘I’ll go after work one night next week. I need some time to think first.’
‘Can I make a suggestion? Before you see your dad again, I think you should speak to your mum.’
‘To tell her about the cancer?’
‘I do think she’d want to know about that but I was thinking more about her telling you something that I don’t think you’re aware of.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m sorry if that sounds a bit cryptic but it’s your mum you need to hear it from, not me, because I can’t answer any questions you might have.’
I raised my eyebrows at her. ‘That does sound very cryptic.’ I lifted my bottle. I hadn’t even had half. ‘Would you mind if I drove across to Mum’s now?’
‘Not at all.’
We stood up and I hugged her. ‘Thanks for listening.’
‘Please never worry that I won’t understand or won’t accept anything you’ve said or done in the past because I will. I know how it feels when a parent lets you down and, believe me, I’ve prepared hundreds of speeches for my mum where I’ve told her exactly what I think of her behaviour.’
‘The difference is you never delivered them.’
‘No. The difference is that my mum wouldn’t have cared if I had. She’d have turned my words back on me and called me stupid for trying to flog a dead horse. She’d have laughed. She’d have made me feel worthless. Your dad on the other hand cared enough about you to respect what you’d asked of him. He knew he’d done wrong and that he didn’t deserve your instant forgiveness. Your dad and my mum are very, very different scenarios.’
I hugged Sammie tightly. ‘If I ever cross paths with your mum, I’ll happily tell her what I think of her for how she’s treated you.’
‘Thanks. But you’ll never cross paths with her. She made her choice and that’s a life without me in it. Just how she always wanted it.’
33
Samantha
After Josh set off to his mum’s, I went into the barn and gazed round the enormous space.
‘There’s nowhere comfortable to sit,’ I muttered to myself. I opened my laptop and started searching for sofa beds and hedgehog-themed bedding for the barn so that whoever was on hoglet-duty could try to get some sleep between feeds. A relatively small financial outlay could make such a big difference and I felt relieved once I’d placed the order.
I was watering the hanging baskets outside the farmhouse a little later when I spotted a vehicle approaching along the farm track. I put my watering can down and made my way over to the farmyard.
The driver – a woman of about my age dressed in a nurse’s uniform – wound down her window as soon as she’d parked. ‘Is this where I bring poorly hedgehogs?’
‘Yes. I’m Samantha.’
‘That’s a relief. I spotted a hedgehog in the middle of the road. I couldn’t leave him there or he’d have got squashed but I’m on my way to work so I’m in a rush.’
She opened the back door and lifted out a bucket with a large hedgehog curled into a ball in the bottom.
‘Do you want to come into the barn with me and I can transfer him into a crate and give you the bucket straight back? It’ll only take a minute.’
‘I can just about spare that. I hope you don’t mind but a brilliant name popped into my head for him. Can he keep it?’
I smiled. ’Hit me with it.’
‘It’s Snoop Hoggy Hog.’
I stared at her for a moment as the name sank in, then I burst out laughing. ‘Oh my gosh. That has to be the best name ever! We thought we’d exhausted all the hedgehog-themed names but that one never entered our heads. Love it! Right, Snoop Hoggy Hog, let’s get you out of that bucket.’
I walked as fast as I could, conscious I didn’t want to jostle my new patient too much. He appeared to be tangled in some green twine. This afternoon, I’d made up a couple of crates ready for new arrivals so I grabbed one, pulled on my thick gloves and lifted the hedgehog out of the bucket. A quick check established that it was a male so I didn’t need to delay the nurse by taking her contact details as there was no risk of abandoned hoglets. Which was just as well because the minute I returned her bucket, she dashed out of the barn calling, ‘Thank you, must run.’
‘Let me get my scissors and tweezers organised than I’ll untangle you,’ I said to our new arrival after the barn door closed. ‘We’ll make it all better.’
Snoop Hoggy Hog wasn’t in a bad state at all. The twine – like the sort a gardener would use – wasn’t tight round his torso but it had become knotted between his front paws. Thankfully there didn’t appear to be any damage so I suspected he might have only just got tangled in it before he crossed the road and the movement had snagged his feet, stopping him from going any further at the point the nurse found him. Thank goodness she had or he’d have either tried to continue across the road and done some serious damage to his limbs or he’d have been hit by a car. I gave a little shudder at the thought.
The hoglets started squeaking as I was finishing up with Snoop Hoggy Hog so I had their feeds to sort. It was amazing how quickly they were growing. Their eyes and ears were now open and loads more pigmented spines had come through.
Being kept so busy didn’t stop me thinking about Josh. What a shock that had to have been. I suspected he was more upset with himself than he was letting on. All I could do was keep reassuring him and supporting him. I just hoped that his dad wouldn’t push him away next week although that voicemail message he’d left for Josh gave me hope. When he left it, it must have taken Paul a lot of willpower not to blurt out that he was ill. Presumably he wanted any sort of father/son reunion to be because Josh wanted to try and repair their broken relationship and not because he felt obligated to do so because Paul was ill.
My phone rang and Dave’s name flashed up on the screen.
‘Hi Dave, how’s it going?’
‘Really good. Guess where Rich and I are?’
I could hear the clink of glasses and the chatter in the background. ‘The Black Swan?’
‘How could you possibly have guessed?’ he said, laughter in his voice. ‘It’s a real quickie as our food could arrive at any moment. My Uncle Alex just rang. He drove past yours about fifteen minutes ago and it looked as though somebody had knocked over the donation bins at the end of the farm track. I thought I’d better give you a call in case you weren’t aware.’
‘No, I wasn’t. I’ll go down and have a look now. Thanks for the heads up.’
‘No worries. That’s our food arriving so I’ll speak to you later.’
I said goodbye and hung up. Could that nurse have driven into them in her rush to get to work? Surely not. The entrance was really wide and they weren’t even on the track.
My heart sank when I stopped my car at the end of the track a few minutes later. ‘No!’ I cried, yanking on the handbrake and jumping out.
Not only had the donation bins been pushed over but somebody had destroyed the contents. A large bag of biscuits had been emptied all over the paving slabs and pouches of food had been emptied over them, the empty pouches strewn all around. The contents of a couple of bottles of washing up liquid appeared to have been poured on top of the mess and squirted all over the donation bins along with…
‘No way! That’s disgusting.’ I’d thought it was dog food at first but it was dog faeces instead, smeared all over the lids and the sides. Or at least I hoped it was from a dog rather than a human.
Sighing, I snapped several photos on my phone to send to the police then drove back up to the farmhouse to collect a shovel, gloves, binbags and disinfectant wipes.
As I held my breath and began scraping off the excrement ten minutes later, I refused to cry. I wasn’t going to let them destroy me but why couldn’t they just leave me alone?
34
Josh
Mum looked surprised as she opened the door to Primrose Cottage. ‘Josh! That’s four days running I’ve seen you.’
I gave her a weak smile before gratefully stepping into her hug. ‘I’ve got some news that I wanted to give you face to face.’
‘Bad news, I take it?’ she said, releasing me. ‘Of course it is with that sad face.’ She nodded slowly. ‘Lemonade in the garden?’
‘Sounds good.’
I followed her to the back of the cottage and into the kitchen where she removed a jug of her special home-made lemonade from the fridge while I grabbed a couple of glasses.
The garden wasn’t very wide but it was long. At the far end, there was a summerhouse with a patio in front of it where we settled onto a pair of metal chairs. She poured the drinks while I grappled with what to say.
‘Beth rang and asked me to meet her this afternoon so I did.’ There was no way to soften the news. I just needed to say it. ‘The reason she’s been trying to get hold of me is to tell me that Dad has Hodgkin lymphoma, the first round of chemo hasn’t worked, and he might need a stem cell transplant.’
Mum’s mouth dropped open and her eyes widened. ‘Wow! I wasn’t expecting you to say that. Poor Paul.’
We sipped on our drinks while I repeated the same information I’d given Sammie earlier.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked her when I’d finished.
She pondered for a moment then shrugged. ‘In all the years we were together, I can count on one hand the number of times your dad was ill which was just as well because he was a terrible patient. I can’t imagine him with cancer and it breaks my heart to think of him suffering like that but he’s a strong man. Mentally and emotionally, he’ll be positive and optimistic about beating it. Physically, he’ll fight it with every ounce of strength he has. I’m actually more concerned for Beth. That’s such a lot for her to deal with at such a young age with a baby and another on the way too.’
I raised my eyebrows at her. ‘She destroyed your marriage and you’re worried about her?’ Disbelief made my voice higher than normal.
‘I can’t help it. Don’t forget I spent lots of time with her when we thought she was only your girlfriend and not your dad’s. I liked her. For all the confidence and bravado, there was a scared and vulnerable girl beneath the surface and I’ll bet she’s terrified right now.’ Mum smiled weakly. ‘What about you? How do you feel?’
‘Slightly stunned at what you’ve just said about Beth but, that aside, I’m all over the place. I’m annoyed with him for not telling me himself when he first found out but then I feel guilty because I’m the one who told him I wanted nothing more to do with him ever so he was only respecting my wishes. I feel like a hypocrite that I’m planning to visit him because, if he hadn’t been ill, I wouldn’t have done that.’
‘You’re not a hypocrite. You’re a caring son who has heard some devastating news about his estranged father and is doing the right thing.’
‘What if it’s for the wrong reasons?’
‘Does it matter what the reasons are?’ She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. ‘Let me ask you a question. When Beth first said your dad had cancer, what was your immediate gut reaction?’
‘To sort things out.’
‘I rest my case. Trust your gut, Josh. The first instinct is usually the right one. Do you know what my gut’s telling me? That I need to see him too.’
I widened my eyes. ‘You really want to see him again?’
‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I think he needs to know that, much as it hurt at the time, what happened changed my life for the better and I’m not angry with him anymore. Obviously I won’t visit with you. I think that would be a bit much having a delegation turning up. But if you feel it’s appropriate, could you mention that I’d like to catch-up and perhaps give him some closure? If he needs it, that is. He might have found his own peace but, knowing your dad as well as I do – or used to do – I don’t think that will be the case.’
We sat in silence for a couple of minutes and I gazed round the garden. There was a bag of compost and a trowel laid on the patio alongside a couple of trays of bedding plants and some freshly potted tubs of flowers. Mum had done an amazing job in turning a long lawn into a beautiful cottage garden. I didn’t remember her ever showing an interest in gardening when I’d been younger. Another life change since things had ended with him.
‘Sammie said I should speak to you because there’s something I’m not aware of that you need to tell me. She wouldn’t say more than that. Does that make any sense?’
‘It does,’ Mum replied. ‘Did you think your dad and I were happy together?’
‘Most of the time.’
‘We weren’t.’ She shook her head. ‘No, that’s not true. We were at first and for a long time. Not being able to have the big family we’d hoped for could have broken us but it didn’t. We were happy and very much in love. When you were ten, your dad turned thirty and your granddad’s birthday gift to him was the partnership in the practice.’
‘I remember that,’ I said, a memory from the past flashing into my mind. I could picture Mum driving us to the practice to pick up Grandma and Granddad ready to go out for a celebratory birthday meal. The practice staff were lined up outside, either side of my grandparents, and they were all holding balloons. We’d bundled out of the car and I noticed that the sign above the entrance was covered in a white cloth. Suddenly everyone yelled, ‘Happy Birthday!’ and my grandparents each pulled on a ribbon. The cloth fell to the ground revealing a brand new sign: Alderson & Son Veterinary Practice. Dad had always known he’d become a partner at some point in the future but hadn’t expected it that day. He was ecstatic.
‘At that point, we had everything we’d ever wanted’, Mum said. ‘We had each other, we had you and he had the partnership with his dad. But that’s when things started to go wrong. As he settled into his new role, spending more time at the practice, I started feeling envious and perhaps a bit resentful that he had this amazing career and all I’d done since leaving school was part-time waitressing roles. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed waitressing, but it wasn’t a career like your dad had. It never bothered
me at first because the plan was always that I’d be a stay-at-home mum and, by the time our four or five children were old enough not to need my full-time care, your dad would have a partnership and we could afford for me to train to be whatever I wanted to be.’
‘But the big family never came…’ I prompted when she fell silent.
‘Exactly. Once you started secondary school, I tried to speak to your dad about career ideas but he kept saying there was no rush to make any decisions and that, financially, we were secure with the partnership so I didn’t need to work. He was missing the point. I wanted to work and I wanted his help in sussing out what that might look like. I didn’t want to be a lady who lunches. I didn’t want to have no income of my own. I’d got good grades at school and I wanted to use my brain again but every time I tried to explain that, we ended up arguing.’
I frowned. ‘I don’t ever remember the two of you arguing.’
‘That’s because we never argued in front of you but, by the time you hit your teens, arguments were a pretty regular thing. And then they weren’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘People argue when they’re passionate about something and, somewhere along the way, all the passion had gone out of our relationship. I got a job in a shop. Still not a career at the time but I enjoyed it, I liked my colleagues and I felt like I was something more than a mum and a wife. I started going out with the girls from work and your dad saw his friends. Your Auntie Lauren went through her first divorce so I spent more time with her too and, before we knew it, your dad and I each had our own interests and our own lives. The thing is, the separate lives thing then gave us more to talk about. The laughter returned, the chatter returned and I thought we’d found our way back to a happy place after a bit of a blip.’ She shook her head. ‘We weren’t happy, Josh. We still loved each other and probably always will but we’re talking a nostalgic love. We both changed so much and became different people. Us being together only worked because we had our separate lives and the laughter and chatter only returned because it was like two old friends having a catch-up. That’s not a marriage.’
New Arrivals at Hedgehog Hollow Page 18