Snowdrops on Rosemary Lane

by Ellen Berry

  Fortunately, one of her earliest guests had been a reviewer for a travel website, and through his glowing report a flurry of bookings had kept her going throughout the winter and well into spring. A characterful thatched cottage in a quaint and thriving West Yorkshire village, he had written. It’s one of those places where you find yourself pretending you live there. You want this to be your local high street with its quirky shops including, amazingly, a shop selling nothing but cookbooks. No wonder people come from far and wide – Rosemary Cottage is a perfect home-from-home.

  He had even sent someone along to take photos of Lucy, beaming brightly in the garden at the cottage’s front door. If she hadn’t known the truth, she might have looked at the picture on the website and thought, ‘Well, she has it all with her picture-perfect life.’

  Affecting a cheery smile, she had formulated a way of minimising the risk of any awkward questions from guests about her personal situation. Lucy was aware that no one wanted to arrive at their B&B to learn that the host’s husband had died in a road accident a little more than a year before. No – it had to be all perky chit-chat, attentive service and reams of recommendations for local delights. Part of Lucy’s job was to convey the impression that, at Rosemary Cottage, all was right with the world.

  ‘Such a beautiful day,’ she remarked one bright and sun-filled April morning as she brought out a pot of fresh coffee to her guests in the dining room. Graeme and Amanda were a couple in their early thirties who had seemed notably affectionate with each other – touchy-feely and cuddly – when they had arrived last night.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Graeme agreed. ‘We’re so lucky.’

  ‘It’s our first time away without our little boy,’ his wife Amanda added. ‘So it’s kind of a big deal to us.’

  ‘Oh, that’s pretty special,’ Lucy said. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘He’s just had his first birthday.’ Amanda’s eyes met hers, and Lucy detected the flicker of curiosity that she had started to recognise recently. The couple had already met Marnie and Sam first thing that morning as Rikke had breezed in to take them to school. It was always the women who picked up on what was perhaps a slightly odd situation; Lucy apparently running things alone, with no mention of a partner.

  ‘It’s lovely to get some time together, just the two of you,’ Lucy added.

  ‘It is.’ Graeme nodded and grinned. ‘We so appreciate it.’

  ‘How old are your two?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘Sam’s seven, Marnie’s nine,’ Lucy replied, and there it hung – that pause again, holding a silent question: so, are you running things here by yourself? When they’d first moved here Ivan had been working away during the week, and there’d been no such flicker of curiosity then. But then, Lucy would have dropped him casually into conversation: ‘My husband works in Manchester’; ‘Ivan’s back this evening. Hopefully you’ll meet him later.’

  And these days – at least where her guests were concerned – her husband had become unmentionable.

  When Amanda and Graeme had headed out for the day, Lucy spruced up the downstairs rooms, threw in a load of laundry, peeked in at Marnie’s devastated bedroom, felt instantly depressed, and decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather by getting stuck into weeding the garden instead. Although she still missed Ivan on so many levels, sometimes it was the practical issues that hit her hardest; someone to do stuff, to reach up to high places and lift heavy things, even to twist off a jam jar lid. But it was the parenting side mostly – having someone to share all the worries, the joys and basic hard graft; to whisk the kids off for a few hours at the weekend to give her the peace to tackle a few jobs or, occasionally, sink into a bath with a magazine. Although she was hugely thankful to friends like Carys, who certainly helped out – and she hoped she reciprocated sufficiently – it wasn’t quite the same.

  After a couple of hours’ gardening she stood up, brushing the soil from her gardening gloves as she cast her gaze along the blaze of colour that stretched all the way from the house down to the shed at the bottom of the garden. There were swathes of pale pink sweetpeas and deep red peonies. A climbing rose that clung to the gnarly garden wall – the one Lucy, James and the Linton kids had scrambled over as children – was such a glorious deep yellow that she couldn’t help feeling uplifted whenever she glimpsed it in bloom. She cut some flowers and took them inside, placing the vase of blooms on the windowsill next to the framed photo of Sam and Marnie as a baby and toddler. Until recently, there had been a wedding photo there too. But one morning, a lone, robust hillwalker type – who wore her bobble hat to breakfast, and smelt of Deep Heat – had spied it and asked, ‘So, is your husband involved much with the B&B, Lucy? Or is it really your thing?’

  ‘Oh, um, we lost him, unfortunately,’ Lucy said quickly, unprepared for such a direct question (it was fair enough though, particularly as she still wore her wedding ring; there hadn’t seemed any reason for her to take it off). ‘There was a road accident,’ she added.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ the woman said, looking alarmed. ‘I didn’t realise. I mean, I shouldn’t have—’

  ‘No, really, it’s okay.’ Lucy’s cheeks blazed, mostly from embarrassment at making her feel uncomfortable. Her guest also blushed, as if it were catching, and there had been an excruciating few moments during which Lucy had babbled. ‘We’re managing all right, you know. We’re just getting on with things. You have to, don’t you? So, um, would you like some more toast? Or maybe another pot of tea?’

  ‘Oh, no, I think I’m all done, thank you,’ she said, clearly wanting to scuttle out of the house and run for the hills. As soon as she’d left, Lucy had snatched the photograph and taken it upstairs to her room. When the children asked where it had gone, she had explained, ‘It’s on my bedside table now. I like seeing it before I go to sleep.’ Feeling oddly disloyal, she had gone on to remove all traces of Ivan’s existence from the ‘public’ parts of the house.

  If the children noticed, they didn’t say anything and life went on, hectic and full, leaving Lucy little chance to brood. She barely had time to dwell on the attic that still needed clearing out – or even Ivan’s wardrobe, for that matter. Everything was still as he’d left it. One day she’d deal with it all.

  Lucy was aware that, on the outside at least, she probably seemed like any other normal mother. Perhaps she appeared to be even more capable and gung-ho than most with her open-door policy when it came to welcoming the village children into her home. For the most part, she was buoyant and brimming with energy: ‘Hero Mum,’ as Carys had called her recently, when she had hosted a sleepover for seven children during the Easter holidays. However, she would still wake up some mornings to experience a fresh wave of devastation on realising that Ivan wasn’t beside her.

  It infuriated her that this still happened. When would she be able to trust herself to just wake up and know? But she refused to allow herself to be pulled down by her grief. Ensuring that life was as full as she could possibly make it had become her way of scrambling through the days.

  These days, Lucy rarely mentioned Ivan to anyone, apart from when the children wanted to talk about their dad. She had no desire to go over the details with anyone – which was why, when she spotted James Halsall in the village one bright and sunny afternoon, she was tempted to dart into the greengrocer’s to avoid him.

  Too late. He’d already seen her, and waved, and she waved back as if she’d only just spotted him. As he strode towards her, she arranged her expression into what she hoped looked like a genuine smile.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As soon as he spoke, she felt foolish for even considering hiding from him. Because James already knew about Ivan; of course he did. Burley Bridge was the kind of place where everyone knew pretty much everything – and anyway, they had Rikke in common. ‘Sorry I never got in touch,’ she said as they strolled through the village together. ‘Last year, when I ran into you at the hospital … well, I wasn’t in a good state, you know. I wasn’t really
thinking straight. It had only been a few months.’

  ‘Of course, I understand,’ he said quickly. ‘So … how are things now?’

  She hesitated, wondering how best to explain it. ‘We’re getting there, I suppose. Me and the kids, I mean. Starting up the B&B again has helped, in a weird way. Some people – well, my mother, mainly – thought it was completely mad, but it’s been good for me. There are people around and always tons to do. And time helps, of course.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that.’ James glanced at her. He had barely changed since childhood, Lucy decided. Yes, life was etched on his face; there were fine lines around his brown eyes and his short dark hair was flecked with grey around the temples. But those eyes were still bright, his build still rangy and slim. ‘I’m so sorry, Lucy,’ he added. ‘I can’t imagine how you got through it, with the children being so young too.’

  ‘You just have to,’ she murmured, gripping her basket, which was filled with loaves and the children’s favourite chocolate and almond pastries from the artisan bakery. They fell into silence for a few moments. ‘You texted me, remember?’ she added. ‘And I didn’t reply.’

  ‘Oh, I just assumed you had a lot on your plate,’ he said quickly. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  She glanced at him. ‘How are things with your dad these days?’

  ‘Not too bad at the moment – thanks to Rikke, mainly. Things are ticking along.’

  ‘She’s amazing,’ Lucy remarked, and James nodded. ‘She started helping out when Ivan was still here and took a job back in Manchester, so it was just me running the B&B during the week. I don’t know how I’d have managed without her.’

  ‘It must’ve been a lot to take on with a young family,’ James said.

  ‘Yes, but in some ways it was easier than the grind of working nine-to-five. I used to work for a fashion retailer in Manchester – an underwear brand. That used to be my joke: “I work in lingerie”.’

  James laughed. ‘And you gave up that line to move here? You must have fallen hard for that house.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ Lucy paused and smiled. How easy he was to chat to, she decided, wondering again what had possessed her to consider avoiding him. ‘Are you busy right now? Would you like a coffee? I’d love you to see the cottage.’

  ‘That’d be lovely,’ James said, ‘if you’re not too busy …’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘I have an hour or so before I have to pick up the kids from school. C’mon – you can see what we did to the place.’

  Sometimes, it took an enthusiastic visitor to remind Lucy how much they – and, latterly, she – had done to Rosemary Cottage. The garden was enchanting now, the herbaceous borders abundant with colour, the oak tree’s boughs spread wide over the expanse of lush green lawn. ‘This takes me back,’ James said with a smile as they made their way to the front door. ‘It really is picture-perfect.’

  ‘As long as you don’t look too closely,’ she joked.

  ‘No, it really is lovely.’ She led him in and made coffee, indicating for him to take a seat at the worn old kitchen table.

  Although she hadn’t planned to talk about the night Ivan died, it all came out as they sat together. He listened as she talked, commenting occasionally but never interrupting. Lucy wasn’t sure how much he’d known already, and it didn’t seem important to ask. She felt the sun on her face through the kitchen window as she sipped her coffee and described how life had been since that night.

  It was so easy to tell him, and she didn’t cry. She just talked and talked, encouraged by his gentle, considered responses. She wondered if this was what therapy was like; in fact, several friends, including Carys and Andrew, had suggested she might consider ‘talking to someone’.

  I don’t need that, Lucy had said firmly, meaning: Obviously, I’m going to take the far more sensible approach of bottling it all up and pretending to be fine. But now, she wasn’t pretending anything at all. She described the searing grief in the aftermath of the accident, and how she had wondered, sometimes, if she was going quite mad. Although she didn’t mention Ivan’s mysterious route home, or the flowers in the car, she somehow knew she would probably tell him about that too, one day. It felt as if, now she had started to talk properly about Ivan, she couldn’t stop.

  ‘That’s a hell of a thing to have gone through,’ James said finally, when she paused for breath.

  Lucy nodded and pushed her dark hair from her face. ‘Before it happened, Ivan had been working away during the week. He was only here at weekends.’

  ‘But it’s entirely different, not having someone at all,’ he said gently, ‘and I guess you really looked forward to the weekends.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ She inhaled slowly at the recollection. ‘There were all the rituals, you know – planning a special supper, making sure there was wine in the fridge. It was a kind of date night thing.’ She hesitated. ‘That sounds terribly corny, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It sounds great,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the kind of thing they always tell you to do in the magazines.’

  ‘Maybe my ex and I should’ve tried that,’ James said with a wry smile.

  ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t even asked about your life,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m really going on about Ivan today. I don’t normally—’

  ‘Please don’t apologise,’ he said.

  ‘It’s just …’ She broke off, remembering now how she would put fresh sheets on the bed for those Friday nights, and have her lingerie ready to slip into – usually one of her favourite fripperies, in black or cream silk, from Claudine. Ivan loved that stuff – well, he was a heterosexual man, wasn’t he? – and so did Lucy. It made her feel womanly, alluring and, well, gorgeous, actually, cut as it was to flatter and enhance. She’d pile up her hair messily and apply a little of her favourite body oil, the stuff that made her skin so glowy and soft, and she’d light a scented candle on the bedside table and – oh God, now she was remembering being in Ivan’s arms, and it was so vivid and real she could actually feel the warmth of his skin against hers …

  Startlingly, her eyes had flooded with tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, rubbing at them with the sleeve of her cotton shirt.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ James said, looking alarmed. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned that thing, about the weekends.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she blurted out as, mortifyingly, hot tears began to fall and, worse still, her nose began to run. ‘Most of the time I’m fine,’ she said quickly, furious at herself now as she rubbed at her face, ‘but occasionally it takes me by surprise. It just hits me. I miss him so much and I can’t help it.’

  She looked at James across the table: this kind, patient man who had been such a good friend to her all those years ago. She hadn’t seen him since she was thirteen years old and now she was a mess of tears and snot, using her sleeve as a hankie. She hadn’t even asked about his son, his work or anything, and no doubt he thought she was completely self-obsessed. Lucy could sense him staring at her – perhaps in horror – as she leapt up from her chair and grabbed a tea towel patterned with the top ten British garden birds, and blotted her wet face with it. A choking sob came out.

  James leapt up too. ‘Lucy,’ he started, touching her arm as he hovered beside her now, ‘is there anything I can do, anything at all? I’m so sorry if I said something …’

  ‘No, it wasn’t you.’ She shook her head and turned her back to him, willing the tears to stop and for James to get the message that he should go now and just leave her alone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  But he didn’t go. He waited, seemingly not appalled by the sight of a woman weeping and snotting all over the blue tits and chaffinches on the tea towel. And when Lucy finally stopped – thank God the children hadn’t witnessed her display – he beckoned her to sit back down at the table as he took the seat beside her.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked gently.

  Lucy exhaled and nodded. ‘Yeah. God, I’m mortified, James. I didn’t expec
t that to happen.’

  He looked at her, and she decided there was something incredibly kind about his dark brown eyes. She rubbed at her own, aware that they were puffy and probably bright pink. ‘I’m not sure you can plan these things,’ he added.

  ‘Yeah.’ He got up and filled a glass of water and handed it to her, and she sipped it gratefully. ‘It just seems so unfair sometimes,’ she murmured. ‘For Marnie and Sam especially …’ She broke off. ‘You know what that’s like, don’t you?’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t …’ He sat back down next to her, looking puzzled now.

  ‘Losing your mum, I mean,’ she said. ‘I remember you telling me.’

  James cleared his throat and reddened slightly, and she regretted mentioning it. ‘Erm, yeah …’

  She drank some more water and mustered a smile. ‘Anyway, enough about all this sad stuff. It’s a beautiful day. Would you like to see the garden properly? The one you trespassed in all those times?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said brightly. ‘I’d love to.’ So they headed outside, and as they walked she quizzed him about Spike, his work as a boat fitter and life in Liverpool.

  ‘Spike’s with me half of the week,’ he explained. ‘It’s worked out okay since his mum and I split – not too many dramas.’

  She looked at him, intrigued now about what had gone on in his life in the interim years. ‘How old’s Spike?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s ten. A great kid – bit quiet, bookish, does his own thing. Likes coming on jobs with me when he’s not at school.’ James smiled fondly. ‘He’s pretty handy, actually. Knows one end of a hammer from the other.’

  Lucy grinned. ‘Sounds like you’re really close.’

  ‘Yeah, we are, although of course I drive him mad sometimes, and he’s just reached the stage where I embarrass the hell out of him.’

  Lucy chuckled. ‘Hormones kicking in?’