Coming Home to Jasmine Cottage

by Zara Stoneley

  The damp, downtrodden grass leaked into their shoes as they walked across it, and something clutched at Lucy’s chest. She wanted to feel positive, optimistic, but something told her life was going to get trickier before it got better.

  Chapter 15

  Lucy looked up in surprise as Maisie folded her arms and stared down at her desk, bottom lip trembling, her voice a barely discernible whisper. ‘I don’t want to be a dancing lady.’

  She’d thought this would be the easy part of the Christmas festivities – assigning parts for the twelve days of Christmas, it was the actual execution of it that was supposed to be tricky. It had all seemed to be going okay, until the children had gone back to their desks to draw a picture and write a story about the part they were going to play.

  ‘Why not Maisie?’ She crouched down at the side of the little girl. ‘You’re a very good dancer and our class are all going to be ladies dancing, or lords a-leaping.’

  ‘Mummy used to take me to dancing, and now she doesn’t, she doesn’t take me anywhere. I hate dancing.’ She didn’t look in Lucy’s direction, just pressed her crayon harder against the paper, leaving a harsh red gash. Lucy knew how it felt, losing the things you used to do, little things that nobody else would have noticed.

  ‘Maybe we can tell Daddy, and he can take you dancing again?’ But she knew it wouldn’t be the same for Maisie. Dancing had been something her mother had done with her. Something she felt had been lost forever.

  ‘Dancing’s for cissies.’ Ted was busy drawing a tractor, which didn’t quite fit into any of the festive scenarios Lucy had in her head.

  ‘Dancing is for everybody Ted. Is that a Christmas tractor?’

  He looked up at Lucy. ‘Santa should have a tractor, not a sleigh cos we don’t get enough snow. Ask anybody.’ He took the red crayon from Maisie’s hand and proceeded to colour the new mode of transport in. ‘He’d get stuck in the mud here, most years. That’s what my dad says.’

  ‘My mam says,’ Sophie who was sat on the opposite side of the table stared at Ted indignantly, ‘it’s too early to talk about Christmas.’

  ‘Well that’s cos you don’t keep turkeys, do you?’

  ‘I think that we’ll stick all the pictures that get finished today on the wall, what do you think Miss Jacobs?’

  Lucy nodded at Jill’s intervention. ‘Definitely, they can be the first part of our Christmas display, and,’ she paused, ‘whoever finishes first can help Jill take the fireworks down.’

  There was a sudden rush of activity, apart from Maisie.

  ‘I hate my room too, and I want to go home.’

  ‘I know you want to go home, Maisie. But your new room is very pretty, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s wrong.’

  Things were only right when there was enough of the same in them. When you had your mum and dad, your friends, all the things that made up normal life.

  ‘I want Mummy, but Mummy doesn’t want me.’

  ‘Oh she does, Mummy and Daddy both want you. But where Mummy is isn’t a good place for children is it?’

  ‘The school takes an hour to walk to.’ Maisie looked up, her tearful eyes wide. ‘A whole hour of walking.’ She blinked. ‘That’s ages isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a long way. So that wouldn’t be nice would it? And in Langtry Meadows there’s lots to do, and all your new friends to play with until Mummy comes back. And you’ve got Treacle.’

  ‘Treacle is nice, Treacle loves me. He makes snuffle noises and squeaks.’ She nodded. ‘I don’t think they have guinea pigs where Mummy is, and the cows are thin.’

  She sniffed, and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, and Lucy was relieved to see there were no fresh tears.

  ‘What are you drawing now?’ Lucy watched as Maisie drew a perfect arc of blue, then picked up a yellow crayon.

  ‘A rainbow.’ She carried on drawing, her tongue between her lips. ‘Mummy is at the end and I’m never going to see her cos it’s so far away.’

  ‘You will see her, Maisie.’

  ‘She’s so far away she might be dead. Heaven is a long way, isn’t it?’

  ‘My hamster’s deaded. He’s in heaven, or in the back garden, but I think that’s the same.’ Harry who had been quietly watching them frowned. ‘His soles went to heaven anyway.’

  ‘She’s not dead, Maisie. Look,’ Lucy slid a new fresh sheet of paper over. ‘Why don’t we draw her a lovely picture of what Christmas will be like here, and then you can ask her to draw you a picture of what it will be like where she is? You can bring it into school and we can talk about it.’

  ‘Maybe. But she is dead.’ She added a stick figure at the end of the rainbow. ‘She told Daddy she might as well be, so if she is then she doesn’t care about us anymore. She can’t come back if she’s going to be dead, can she?’

  ‘She cares, and she isn’t dead Maisie. I’ll talk to Daddy, we’ll find out when she’s coming to see you shall we?’

  ‘Shall I draw a dancing lady now?’ She pushed the rainbow away. ‘I’ll draw Sally.’

  When the end of day school bell rang, Lucy was glad to see Charlie had come to pick Maisie up. She gave a beckoning wave and he lingered until the rest of her class had joined their parents and were making their way out of the school grounds.

  ‘She thinks Josie isn’t coming back.’ Lucy watched as Maisie hopscotched across the playground, her curls bouncing. Roo ran alongside her, barking with excitement.

  ‘But why would she think that? I’ve never suggested …’ Charlie ruffled a hand through his hair, and gave her a look of total confusion.

  ‘She thinks Josie wants to be dead, she overheard something, her telling you she might as well be? Charlie, kids hear everything.’

  ‘Oh God.’ He sighed. ‘I thought she was in bed.’

  ‘The conversations you overhear when you’re in bed are the ones you listen hardest to, even when you’re only six.’

  ‘I know.’ He frowned. ‘She’d had a talk to Josie, shown her the guinea pig and gone up. She seemed tired, so as soon as I got her into bed I went down. I skyped Josie back on impulse. How could I have been so stupid?’

  ‘It’s not stupid, Charlie.’

  ‘I just thought it was a good opportunity to try and thrash stuff out. Again. She can just avoid me whenever she likes, blame a lousy Wi-Fi connection. It’s doing my head in, Lucy.’

  ‘I know.’ She put her hand briefly on his arm. She did understand, but right now she couldn’t hug him, she had to be professional.

  ‘I was trying to make her see some sense about what’s going to happen, at the moment she’s all over the place. She’s gone back on her word. When she first brought Maisie here she said we could work this out, it was all supposed to be amicable, everything in Maisie’s best interests, not her dictating what happened and dragging me through the courts if I wouldn’t walk away quietly.’ He looked totally dejected, and Lucy knew that the sense of foreboding that had been growing in her since they’d chatted on Bonfire Night wasn’t just her imagination.

  ‘One minute she’s saying she’s moving abroad and taking Maisie with her, the next she’s coming back here. One day she accepts I’m Maisie’s dad, the next she’s telling me I have no rights at all, that it’s confusing for her. She went off on a rant, saying she was sure I’d rather she was dead, then that would solve all my problems.’

  ‘Ah.’ Lucy flinched. ‘That would explain what Maisie picked up on.’

  ‘Look, Luce, I know this hasn’t been easy.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I think Malcolm’s right. This is going to get really nasty.’ His gaze dropped to his feet, then back up to meet hers. ‘I had a chat to him earlier and he says so far she doesn’t seem willing to negotiate at all. She’s told her solicitor that now she’s had some time to think, she reckons it would be fairer for Maisie to settle with her and just maybe see me occasionally.’ He gave a pained smile. ‘A Christmas and birthday dad.’ She made a move to interrupt, but he waved the words away. ‘I to
ld her I’d fight it, and she came back saying I was unsuitable. Your name was mentioned.’

  ‘As part of the rant?’

  ‘As part of the rant. You can see her react every time Maisie mentions your name. It winds her up.’

  ‘But we haven’t …’

  ‘I’ve told her it’s not about you, about me or even her, it’s about Maisie. But Maisie mentioned your new house to her, and was chatting on about Piper, and your mum. She was just spoiling for a fight by the end of it.’

  ‘Charlie, if we want a hope in hell of keeping this civil, then we’re going to have to …’ It was hard enough as it was, they hardly saw each other and most of their snatched moments together had been at weekends, doing things together. Like a family. There was a lump blocking her throat, and she had a head full of tears that might explode if she said the words that were on the tip of her tongue. And she couldn’t break down out here, not at school, but she could stop this right now. Stop them. If they did it now, stopped seeing each other then there would be one less thing, one very major issue gone as far as Josie was concerned. She swallowed hard, blinked. She could do this. It didn’t have to be forever. They just had to not see each other now. Keep it simple for Maisie. She had to do this. But he didn’t give her a chance.

  ‘Lucy I’m afraid,’ he seemed to be fighting to hold it together, ‘I think she’s coming home over Christmas.’

  Lucy couldn’t help it, she felt sick at the thought of Josie being here. Watching the festivities, joining in with Charlie and Maisie. He seemed to realise, let his hand rest briefly over hers. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll meet at my parents’. But I’m afraid she’ll take Maisie away again, take her back with her. And I’ll never see her again. If she gets her on a plane I won’t stand a chance in hell.’

  The guilt hit her, she was worried about having to see the family reunited; Charlie was worried about seeing it torn apart. ‘She can’t … I mean, the courts …’ Losing Maisie again would kill him.

  ‘She probably could, and if she does,’ his smile was rueful, ‘she’s got the upper hand, hasn’t she? It makes it harder.’

  Lucy folded her arms, tried to stay in professional mode and put her personal feelings to one side. It was easier here, at school. This was for Maisie, about Maisie. ‘Do you want me to chat to Josie? Explain as a professional about how Maisie’s taking this and what she can do to help? It might focus her on the idea that I’m just the teacher. I mean, last summer when she came into school she did seem to care.’

  ‘I’m sure she does, which is why she went off the rails at me. It’s almost like she’s got this urge to run away and be completely irresponsible, but knows it’s wrong and so she can’t stay away.’

  ‘She probably feels guilty, she seemed very close to Maisie.’

  ‘She was. That’s why all of this is crazy. What kind of mother does this? I just, well I just would have never thought she could.’ He shrugged. ‘But what do I know?’

  ‘Let’s do this one step at a time.’ It was up to her to be calm, logical, face the immediate problem that was how upset Maisie was. Worry about the threat of Charlie losing her separately. ‘You need to get Josie to give Maisie some kind of explanation, some reassurance that she’s coming back. Think about it Charlie, if you want me, or even Timothy to have a chat to her then we can. Maybe if it was somebody neutral, like Timothy then it would be better, or I can get somebody from social services involved.’

  ‘Not social services.’ He shook his head. ‘She’d think I was trying to undermine her. But maybe you or Tim.’ He sighed. ‘Or maybe not. I better let you go, looks like you’re in demand.’ He inclined his head towards Jane Smith, who was approaching with a look of determination on her face, holding Sophie with one hand, and brandishing a piece of paper in the other.

  Lucy put a hand on his arm. ‘Charlie, I know this is impossible, but you really need to try and wipe this from your mind when you’re with Maisie. Kids her age are so sensitive, she’ll read the tension, how anxious you are even if she doesn’t understand it, and it’ll put her on edge.’

  ‘I am careful not to let her hear the rows normally, I didn’t realise …’

  ‘It’s not just the rows Charlie.’ She wanted to squeeze him tight. ‘It’s the atmosphere, it will put her on edge and then she’ll be awkward because she’s scared.’

  ‘And refuse to do what I ask her.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Now then Miss Jacobs, Charlie.’ Jane elbowed her way between them, her stout figure killing all hope of further discussion dead. She shot a brief glance in Charlie’s direction, before turning her full attention back to Lucy. ‘What’s all this about?’ She waved the letter in Lucy’s face. ‘This isn’t how we normally do things round—’

  Lucy inwardly braced. ‘Not how we normally do things’ were words she’d heard several times in the first term she’d been at Langtry Meadows Primary School (well if she was honest, every time she tried to introduce anything that was the slightest bit new), but they’d been directed at her less recently, and she really thought that they trusted her now.

  Jane stabbed the words with her stubby finger.

  ‘I’m sorry Mrs Smith, but the PTA decided that our little stock of costumes were getting a bit tatty.’ She glanced over at Charlie, but he’d already turned away. She wanted to help so much, to be there for him, but maybe being there was the worst thing she could do.

  ‘Well they did fine last year.’

  She reluctantly turned her attention back to Jane Smith, and nativity costumes. ‘The goat did eat a couple though from what I’m told?’

  ‘Well it did, but …’

  ‘And even the best stain remover in the world hasn’t got our whites white again after the accident with the cow pat.’ She paused, wondering if she was overdoing this. ‘We just thought it would be really fabulous to put on a good show for the councillor this year.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘We really don’t want the school closing down do we?’

  ‘Well no, but …’

  ‘We need to show George Cambourne that we still all pull together, like we did in his day.’

  Jane frowned, her lips pursed. ‘Well I’m all for pulling together, but this is a bit of a tall order. I’m quite happy to tie a tea towel round her head and a sheet round her waist, and call her a shepherd, love, but I don’t mind telling you that an angel is a step too far.’ She shook her head. ‘In the days I had them wire coat hangers I could knock up a mean pair of wings, but you can’t get them these days can you? Health and safety, love, health and safety. Them plastic hangers aren’t going to cut the mustard are they?’ She gave a resigned sigh. ‘But I expect I’ll do my best out of a bad job.’ And tapping the side of her nose she strode off out of the playground. ‘And as for ’alos, you can forget them.’ Her parting words were shot over her shoulder as her little angel, Sophie stopped dead.

  ‘But I got to have an ’alo, Mam.’ She folded her arms. ‘Angels have to, don’t they, Miss?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘I’m sure we can sort a halo out, Sophie.’

  Jill looked up as Lucy walked back into the classroom. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘I think we might be hearing “my mam says” a lot tomorrow.’

  Jill grinned. ‘They’ll all have a bit of a mutter, then the race will be on to outdo each other.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Jill’s smile dropped. ‘I didn’t mean that though, I meant Charlie.’

  ‘Oh I could wring that woman’s neck, but who knows what’s going through her mind? And it’s none of my business.’

  ‘Well it is, isn’t it? On two fronts. First you care as her teacher, and I think on those grounds alone we can talk to her, has she never heard of safeguarding issues?’ She raised an eyebrow, then went back to tidying up the paint pots. ‘And, then there’s Charlie and you.’

  ‘I think we should be trying not to be a Charlie and me at the moment. We tried not to over the summer, then he decided that we
couldn’t pretend but should just not rush, then his solicitor warned me off.’

  ‘Actually warned you off?’

  ‘Not in so many words. He gave me a look.’ She pulled a rueful face. ‘But he did say that Charlie had to be careful to be seen in the best light.’

  ‘But surely he’s allowed to have a girlfriend?’

  ‘I suppose so, but it’s all about what’s best for Maisie, and at the moment she needs security, she needs to be number one doesn’t she?’

  ‘That doesn’t stop you being number two, Lucy.’

  ‘It does in Josie’s eyes. Charlie’s scared stiff of losing her again, Jill, and I’ll do whatever I can, anything, to make sure that doesn’t happen.’

  Even if it meant walking away and never seeing them again.

  ***

  Lucy pushed the untouched cup of coffee to one side. She had to do it, she had to go and talk to Charlie. Loving him was easy, loving him enough to push him away was so much harder. But they couldn’t carry on as they had been, it was confusing for Maisie, and ammunition for Josie.

  Clipping Piper’s lead on, she slipped her feet into wellingtons and pulled her thickest jacket on.

  The square was dark and deserted as they made their way across it, but she felt safe here in this village. It was actually quite nice to go out in the early morning, or late evening when only the farmers and animals seemed to be awake.

  Now it was only early evening, but the cloak of winter was already draped around Langtry Meadows, the cloudy sky signalling that there was more likely to be rain than frost in the morning. It was cold though, even with the heavy sky, and Lucy walked briskly barely glancing at the cottages they passed as she went through what she was going to say in her head. If she had it all prepared it would be easier.

  ‘Hi, stranger.’ Charlie had damp hands and a tea towel over his shoulder as he dropped a light kiss on her lips and ushered her in. He always made her heart jump, but seeing this relaxed, at home side of him made this all the harder. ‘Just finished tea, you didn’t want anything?’

  She shook her head, and unhooked Piper so that she could say hello to Roo properly.