by Susan Lewis
‘I did,’ Vivi confirmed, leaning towards her little goddaughter to receive a bruising hug and kiss. ‘You were brilliant.’
‘My teacher says I might be in the show we do for Christmas. Will you come and watch me?’
‘Of course,’ Vivienne promised, fleetingly seeing the empty chair where she should be sitting.
‘Do I get one of those?’ Michelle prompted, tapping a finger to her cheek.
Millie gave a little leap as she laughed. ‘Sorry, Mummy, I forgot you,’ and running to Michelle she delivered a dutiful adoring hug and nose-bumping kiss.
‘Where’s Daddy?’ Michelle asked. ‘Didn’t he bring you home?’
‘Yes, he went into his office. Can I have a drink, please? And one of the cakes I made with Auntie Vivi?’
‘That was over a week ago,’ Michelle reminded her, ‘and you’ve eaten them all.’
‘But there are some Kinder eggs as a special treat,’ Vivi told her. ‘Two for you and one for Ash.’
‘Because he’s too little for two,’ Millie said with wise understanding, apparently not guessing that her brother had already eaten one. Then grabbing the baby by the cheeks she blew a raspberry on his lips and giggled as he let out a shriek of delight.
Minutes later Millie was back with a beaker of cold milk and a chocolate egg, which she placed carefully on the table. ‘Shall I show you some more of my ballet?’ she suggested.
‘Yes, please,’ Vivi encouraged, enjoying the feel of Ash’s head on her shoulder as she stroked his curly blond hair.
‘Clear away some of the toys,’ Michelle cautioned, ‘or you’ll have an accident.’
Millie turned to Vivi. ‘I don’t want to have an accident,’ she told her gravely.
‘No, you certainly don’t.’
Millie’s cute little face lit up with a smile. ‘I’m on holiday for all of the summer,’ she declared, ‘and Mummy said you’re going to be here too.’
‘That’s right. So we’ll be able to bake lots of cakes and do drawings and go to the beach …’
‘Shall I get my doctor’s set and listen to your heart?’ Millie offered, suddenly remembering why Vivi was often there.
‘That would be lovely, thank you, but let me see some more of your ballet first.’
Needing no further bidding, Millie hurriedly kicked Ash’s toys out of the way and struck an opening pose. ‘This is called first position,’ she explained, her heels tightly together and toes turned slightly out. ‘See my arms are like this, because it’s got to be like I’m holding a big beach ball.’ She shuffled her feet so that her right heel was against the arch of her left foot and arced one arm over her head while reaching out to the side with the other. ‘This is second position,’ she announced proudly, then screwed up her face in confusion. ‘Um, I think it might be third. Yes, it’s definitely third, so we don’t need to worry about second.’
Vivi was trying hard not to laugh, while Michelle lost the struggle.
‘Don’t be rude, Mummy,’ Millie chided. ‘Daddy, Mummy’s laughing at me,’ she told him as he came out onto the deck.
‘She’s a terrible mummy,’ he declared sympathetically. ‘What shall we do with her? Hello, son,’ he laughed as Ash started bouncing around in glee, and sweeping him up in his arms he planted a giant smackeroo on his forehead.
Millie was bursting with a good idea. ‘I think we should send her to bed without any supper,’ she told him. ‘And we’ll send the wicked witch to get her if she tries to escape.’
‘Let’s do it!’ he agreed.
Millie squealed with laughter and threw her arms around his legs. ‘I’m only joking, Mummy,’ she assured Michelle, ‘but you shouldn’t laugh at me.’
Setting Ash down, Sam embraced Vivi, saying, ‘I forgot you were going to be here. You’re looking good. Better than good.’
Smiling, Vivi said, ‘Mark FaceTimed us earlier from Pompeii. He said to tell you there’s quite a lot of rebuilding work needs doing if you’re interested.’
Laughing, he said, ‘I take it he’s having a fantastic time.’
‘Oh, I think we can be sure of that, although I’m getting the impression he’s a lot more interested in Italian girls than he is in exploring historical sites.’
‘And so he should be at his age.’ He checked his watch. ‘Sorry, I have to pop over to Deerwood for an hour, but you’re staying for dinner?’
‘That’s the plan,’ Michelle told him. ‘I thought we’d barbecue.’
‘OK, I’ll do the honours. We’ll probably be one extra, by the way, making us six including the kids, unless your parents are coming, in which case we’ll be eight.’
After he’d gone Vivi said, ‘Deerwood?’
‘He does a lot of work out there,’ Michelle explained, scooping up Ash. ‘The owner’s son is an old friend of his going back to schooldays. I expect that’s who our extra guest will be.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
SHELLEY
Spring 2004
‘So when did you first come up with the idea of using Deerwood Farm this way?’ the young reporter was asking Shelley, pencil poised over his notebook with a small tape recorder spinning away on the kitchen table between them for backup.
His name was Martin Coolidge and he was, Shelley gauged, around Hanna’s age, twenty-two or twenty-three, and he had the engaging, though comical look of Clark Kent about him. All slicked-down hair, dark-rimmed glasses and intelligent blue eyes. She could tell he was trying to make himself seem older and more experienced than he probably was; however, he must be good if he’d managed to get a job with a national newspaper. He’d be really bloody good if he went to the loo and came back with his pants over his trousers and suddenly took off over the fields on a rescue mission.
Since she was getting used to doing these interviews now, mostly with local media, though not exclusively, she could answer his question straight away. ‘It was my daughter’s idea originally,’ she explained, admiring the pastel-coloured tulips he’d so thoughtfully brought with him and she’d already placed in a vase. If he’d done his research before coming here he’d already know about Hanna, but he wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t get the full story from as many sources as possible.
‘You have two daughters, is that correct?’ he asked.
Shelley nodded towards the family portrait that sat proudly over the sideboard, where much chaos and clutter still reigned and the female bronze dancer continued to wait in her niche for her partner to come home. Though Shelley had long ago accepted that wasn’t going to happen, there was still a part of her that hoped they’d be reunited one day – this was the part, she realized, that wanted to believe that she’d be with Jack again when her time came. Hanna and Zoe had commissioned the large portrait a couple of Christmases ago, giving the artist a family photograph to work from. It showed them as young girls of nine and seven, with Josh aged four, all clustered around their parents, Jack at the heart of the group looking so lifelike and there that Shelley often felt his eyes following her about the kitchen; sometimes she even sensed him speaking to her in a voice no one else could hear. ‘The children are much older now, of course,’ she said, wondering where the years had gone, with the girls now in their twenties and Josh not far off joining them. It was Hanna who conceived this project of ours – I’m sorry she’s not here for you to interview right now, but she should be back any minute.’
‘That would be great,’ he confirmed. ‘The photographer’s due about midday. Do you think she’ll be around by then?’
‘I’m sure she will. In the meantime, I’m here to do my best for you.’
He smiled in a way that made her feel quite maternal – and willing to be rescued, should he turn out to be an actual superhero. ‘Hanna’s put a lot of work into getting us to where we are now,’ she told him, ‘and we’ve done our best to support her all the way.’
‘So what actually gave her the idea?’ he prompted.
Shelley sipped her coffee and savoured the moment, f
or she always enjoyed this part of the story. ‘I’m sure she’ll tell it better than I can,’ she said, ‘but here’s my version. She was still only fifteen when she decided to give us the fright of our lives by running away from home. She certainly succeeded in that. It was a terrifying time for us all, not knowing where she was, if any harm had come to her, if we’d ever see her again … Luckily she came back. The police found her living in a caravan – a squat really – over at Perryman’s Cove with a bunch of homeless kids. They were mostly a year or two older than her, but they’d been subjected to some very different life experiences to any that she’d had. By comparison she’d had quite a sheltered upbringing, although it hadn’t all been easy. Her father’s death when she was eight hit us all very hard. It’s not easy to get over a sudden loss like that, and my husband was a wonderful father.’ As her voice trailed off for a moment she was thinking of the gossip Zoe had brought home from school all those years ago about him being unfaithful, but she’d never heard anything like it since. She’d probably have made herself forget all about it if the image of the girl at the crematorium didn’t still haunt her from time to time. Who was she? Had she even been there because of Jack? It shouldn’t have mattered after so long, but sometimes it did.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, bringing herself back to the present, ‘before she took off Hanna had already started staying out for long periods of time and never telling anyone where she was or who she was with … It turned out she’d been connecting with kids on the street who were so obviously worse off than she was that she started to feel guilty about her own existence, and resentful in a way she couldn’t understand. She was too young, and still too traumatized by her father’s death to know how to process things properly. She felt as though she needed to live with these kids, to lose her own pain in theirs and get a proper understanding of what things were really like for them. So she moved into this caravan, watched them drink themselves senseless, take drugs, sell themselves on the street, fail to connect with any sense of self-preservation or dignity … Most had lost all contact with their families if they even had one, and many didn’t. They’d spent a good deal of their lives in care of one sort or another, residential, fostering, difficult adoptions, and by the time Hanna got to know them they were on their own. Of course social services are supposed to provide some sort of transition process when a child leaves care, a support network, counsellors, help with jobs and finding homes, but what is supposed to happen and what actually does are two different things.’
He wasn’t writing now, only listening, intently, as his tape recorder absorbed her words along with the distant sound of clacking and tinny bells that had just started up.
‘Hanna was deeply affected by what she witnessed while she was in that caravan,’ Shelley continued. ‘She told me afterwards that she felt really close to her dad while she was there, as if he was guiding her, keeping her safe and showing her what to do. It was very moving to hear her say that, and to realize how deeply she believed it, because she was right, Jack would have wanted her to help those less fortunate than herself. He’d be so proud of her if he were here now.’
She paused, half expecting Martin to glance at the portrait, or to fire more questions at her, but it seemed he wanted to hear the story in her words, however they came.
‘It’s quite amazing really,’ she said, ‘or I think it is, that such a young girl with so little real knowledge of the world could feel such empathy and compassion for those who’d never known what it was to be loved and cared for. She was in no doubt about what she wanted to do when she came back. It took her no time at all to tell me. I put her in the bath and it all just came tumbling out. “We have to do something to help these kids, Mum,” she informed me, as if I’d already objected and she was getting ready to fight. “We can’t just let them drift into the gutter or prison as if they mean nothing to anyone. They’re human beings, for God’s sake, and no one’s looking out for them.”
‘Of course I agreed with her that it was appalling, and yes we did have a duty as a society, and as individuals, to do what we could to help. “I think we have to use Deerwood,” she told me. “I think we should turn it into a place for them to come when they leave care at sixteen to prepare them for the wider world.’” Shelley smiled at the memory of Hanna’s skinny body in the bath, pale, thin and seeming so small to be bottling up so much worthy ambition. Yet the fervour in her big blue eyes, the steel and determination that had emanated from her, had made her seem so like Jack that Shelley had taken her seriously from the start.
‘It was true,’ she told Martin, ‘that in my heart of hearts I thought the scheme was crazy, a kind of impulsive, romantic reaction to the tragedies she’d seen. On the other hand I never did anything to try and dampen or criticize her aims. At best she might actually make it work, at worst she would learn some extremely valuable life lessons in trying. What I hadn’t expected was how quickly the rest of us would get on board. We were fascinated by her efforts, energized by her, and we all wanted it to work as much as she did. So we helped her to take on the system, invested in various building works here at the farm, raised funds in any way we could and guilt-tripped the authorities into matching it. It was amazing the way the project seemed to take on a life of its own, and it was happening so fast. By the time Hanna finished sixth-form college and announced she was done with education, we weren’t far off being ready to take in our first residents.’
She looked up as the door opened and Jemmie Bleasdale came in, laughing and shaking her head in mock despair. She was at Deerwood so often now that she almost felt like family; even Sir Humphrey had managed to morph into a milder, slightly more human form of his irascible self during the years since the tragedy of Jack’s accident. Shelley only wished she could say the same for their sons. Though she saw almost nothing of them now that all three lived in London, she was aware of the problems they often brought to their parents’ door, even if she didn’t always know the details.
‘Those lads out there are too hilarious,’ Jemmie informed Shelley, picking up the string bag full of fresh produce she’d left on the table. ‘You should see them, camping it up like … Oh, sorry, I’m interrupting. I just came back to collect this.’
‘No problem,’ Shelley assured her. ‘This is Martin Coolidge, who’s come to write about us. Martin, this is Lady Bleasdale, also known as Jemmie.’
With an engaging smile Jemmie shook Martin’s hand. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ she told him, ‘and now I’ll disappear. Will I see you later, Shelley?’
Remembering her promise to go and help with a seating plan for Matthew Bleasdale’s upcoming wedding, Shelley assured her she’d be there and would have returned her attention to Martin as Jemmie left, were it not for the merry shimmy of jingles and a ludicrous kick-up of youthful limbs that came through the door.
‘We are totally amazing,’ Josh informed her, still making his morris-dancer costume ring like a shop doorbell in a state of excitement. ‘We are going to put everyone to shame at that show, you wait and see. You should come,’ he told Martin. Then apparently realizing he had no idea who the young man was, he held out a hand to shake. ‘Josh Raynor, good to meet you.’
Half rising as he took the hand, the reporter said, ‘Martin Coolidge. Good to meet you too. You’re Hanna’s brother?’
‘One of my claims to fame,’ Josh replied drily. He was already six feet tall, and though not as filled out yet as his father had been, he was so like Jack in looks and temperament – even the sound of him – that Shelley often damned the fate that hadn’t allowed Jack to see his son grow up.
‘If you’re wondering about this weird get-up,’ Josh was saying to Martin, ‘then I should explain that I, along with my mate Sam and cousin, Perry, lost a bet. Well, looking at me, that’s probably a given. So we’re having to take part in the morris dancing competition at the county fair. We’ve just had our first lesson, and I’ve got to tell you, we’re demons.’
Laughing, Shelley sa
id, ‘Martin’s here to write about Deerwood for one of the national papers. Is it the Guardian?’ she asked him.
‘The Saturday magazine section,’ he clarified.
‘Awesome,’ Josh responded, checking his mobile as a text came through.
‘I should probably tell you,’ Shelley said to Martin, ‘in case it’s of interest for your article, that Sam, the friend Josh just mentioned, is the son of the builder who’s done most of the work on the place. The boys act as labourers to earn some money when they’re back from uni for the summer and it was Henry, Sam’s dad, who won the bet that’s ended them up as morris dancers.’
‘So what was the bet?’ Martin asked, turning back to Josh.
Grinning, Josh said, ‘We reckoned we could construct a four-by-eight-metre drystone wall in a day, which we did, but then it fell down. Anyway, good luck with the article. Let me know if you want to see any of my projects. It’s not all about Hanna, you know.’
As the door closed behind him, Shelley was smiling and rolling her eyes in exasperation. ‘I’m dreading what’s going to happen when he finishes uni,’ she confided to Martin, ‘it feels empty enough around here already when he’s away.’ What she didn’t add was how afraid she was that it might feel like losing Jack all over again – or that Josh would go out into the world and decide not to come back. Of course he wouldn’t come back, he was a young man with his whole life ahead of him, and she wanted him to live it, just please God don’t let it turn out to be the other side of the world. ‘So where were we?’ she asked, checking the time and deciding she could spare Martin several more minutes yet.
‘We’d got to the point,’ he replied, ‘where you were more or less ready to take your first residents.’
Shelley nodded and inhaled deeply. ‘I’ll spare you what we had to go through with the authorities to get that far. Suffice it to say you’d have thought they’d be pleased to have someone willing to help transition these youngsters into a wider society and hopefully better life, but they definitely weren’t going out of their way to make it happen. However, in the end it wasn’t them who closed us down before we even got started, it was the wretched foot-and-mouth disease.’