by Lily Graham
She paused before the stone stairs, but Evie shook her head, leading her into the kitchen instead. It was a large room with an enormous navy blue range dominating one wall; next to this was a pale blue Welsh dresser, adorned with herbs and spices in clear jars with blue and white striped lids. Opposite was a large scrubbed wooden table with cream and indigo mismatching chairs. In the centre of the table usually sat the old family recipe book, the size of a concrete slab, which generations of Halloway women had filled over the years. Evie put it back in its place now, then gave Emma a smile as she indicated the small alcove towards the left, near the back door. ‘We’ve made a spot for you here,’ she said, showing her behind a large blue screen painted with wispy pink cherry blossoms. Behind this was a single bed, with a forest green, iron frame that had once sat in her childhood bedroom. Next to this was an old wooden wardrobe, with clawed feet and a three-legged stool, on top of which was a jam jar filled with dried bell heather, picked, no doubt, on one of Evie’s many foraging heathland walks. The effect was charming, old-fashioned and slightly quirky – like Evie herself.
‘I thought it would be easier for you to be down here rather than having to face the stairs,’ she said, putting Emma’s case down on top of a pale lilac quilt.
Emma nodded. It made sense. Stairs wouldn’t be easy with her crutch.
A noise from behind made her turn, and what she saw made her smile in sudden delight. An old bulldog named Pennywort snuffled forward, his bottom waggling, his face split in a wide, doggy grin.
‘Penny!’ she cried, bending down to touch his soft, dappled brown and white fur. She took a seat on the edge of the bed, and Pennywort jumped up to settle his considerable bulk in her lap.
‘He’s missed you,’ said Evie, giving the old dog an eye-roll for his soppiness. ‘I’m no substitute, apparently,’ she added with a grunt. Then she grinned. ‘But Sandro’s a firm favourite now. I dare say you’ve finally got a bit of competition at last.’
Emma patted the dog, and then frowned. Before she could ask who Sandro was, Evie touched her arm and said, ‘I’m sorry about Pete.’
‘Me too.’
Evie didn’t say what Emma knew she was thinking – that he’d never been right for her. None of them had ever really got her decision to date Pete.
‘It’s not just that’s he’s about as exciting as a can of PVC paint,’ her great aunt, Aggie had said a few months before, when they’d all come for a visit not long after she moved into her flat in Catford. They had pulled faces at the tiny space that smelt a bit like the kebab shop below, a factor that she couldn’t help any more than she could mask the sounds of her neighbour’s naughty films creaking through the parchment-thin walls. Right then they could hear a gruff, American voice drawling, ‘You like that, huh? You like that?’
He kept asking, so Emma thought that perhaps she didn’t.
‘It’s, erm, lovely,’ said Dot, glancing around at the place with wide eyes, her handbag clutched beneath her armpit.
Plump, with a kind face and flyaway silver hair, and nail polish that was always chipping, her great-aunt, Dot Halloway, was a terrible liar.
It was the first time Emma had seen them in several months. They’d decided to take matters into their own hands and come down to see her after she’d excused herself too many times from visiting Hope Cottage.
‘No, it’s awful, but that’s not what’s concerning me,’ said her other aunt, Aggie, who always told things as they were. She was tall and stout with short black hair and the family’s piercing blue eyes. She gave Emma her customary hard stare now. ‘I mean, look at you,’ she said, concerned.
‘What?’ she’d said, looking down at her pale chinos and smart white shirt with a puzzled frown.
Dot, Evie and Aggie shared similar looks of worry.
‘It’s like you’re starting to fade away, like you’re trying so hard to be just like him – or what you think you’re meant to be like, really – that you’ve started to rub yourself out.’
‘I… what?’ she’d spluttered, outraged, turning to Dot and Evie for support. ‘I’m not trying to be somebody else – this is who I am!’
Evie shook her head, sadly. ‘No, ‘tisn’t, love. Trust me, when you try to let go of who you are well – that’s the result,’ she said turning Emma around to face the mirror in the hallway.
Dot frowned. ‘When was the last time you even cooked something?’
As if that solved anything.
Still. Staring at herself, Emma had no choice but to see her wan face, her lank, once bright hair now the colour of pale rust, and her listless, dull blue eyes staring back at her. She shook her head. ‘I eat, trust me,’ she said, though she knew that wasn’t what Dot meant; but she wasn’t about to admit how much she missed cooking. They’d simply read too much into it.
‘I’ve just been busy that’s all – it’s the column, my freelance work. I’ve given a few lectures at the university on Victorian baking as well, so that’s meant some late nights lately, I don’t get time for much else, really, none of this has anything to do with Pete. I mean, I know, he’s not exciting, but—’
There was a snort from Aggie, who muttered, ‘You can say that again,’ beneath her breath, though Emma heard her nonetheless.
Emma crossed her arms. ‘But he’s very sweet and kind, which is all that matters to me.’
‘Of course he is,’ said Evie, in placating tones. ‘And you’re right,’ she added.
‘About what?’ asked Emma.
‘That it has nothing to do with Pete.’
Emma turned to her with a look of suspicion on her face, waiting for the ‘but’. Evie shrugged. ‘It has everything to do with you – and what you need to face.’
‘What I need to face?’ she echoed with a frown.
‘Yes. Why you’ve run away.’
Evie, Dot and Aggie all nodded.
She looked at them all and shook her head in exasperation. ‘I haven’t run away. I live in London now, where I have made a life – a good life – for the last four years! I’m – I’m happy.’
Aggie snorted. ‘Yeah. You look it. About as happy as someone facing the noose, love.’
She’d been upset with them for ages after that. They simply didn’t get the pace of life in London – didn’t understand that her Catford flat, despite its less than savoury appeal, was a mark of her independence. Besides, it wasn’t called a rat race for nothing, and she’d been working really hard lately just to keep on top of things. Her part-time lecturer post had helped; it would mean that she could just about manage her rent for the next few months. The extra work had meant juggling a crazy schedule, working sixteen-hour days, but it had helped to bring her head above water, as there had been times when she had seemed to simply live on credit before. And things with Pete had been good – they’d been talking of finally moving in together in the New Year, looking for a nicer flat, somewhere far away from a kebab shop and pervy neighbours – till he ended it. Really, looking back, things had gone downhill since she’d run into Suze while she and Pete were having coffee, a few weeks before. Suze was a colleague from the Mail & Ledger.
Suze had done a double-take when Emma introduced Pete as her boyfriend.
‘My God, Em, you dark horse, the way you always spoke about him – I just thought he was your brother!’ She laughed, flicking back her long blonde hair, eyeing him with an admiring smile.
When Suze left, Emma had dismissed the comment as silly and thought no more of it – but clearly, Pete hadn’t. He’d chewed on it for hours, in his quiet, contemplative way, mulling it over and over. She’d found him sitting in the dark in the early hours of the morning and when she asked him what was wrong, he’d just said, ‘That’s not normal, Em, people thinking that, that I’m your brother.’
She’d scoffed – a mistake, she realised later. ‘You aren’t upset about that still?’
He’d looked at her with hurt eyes.
‘She’s a twit, honestly, I hardly know her. I’ve sp
oken about you, of course, but not that much, I don’t know why she got that impression, but please don’t take it seriously.’
But he did. After that it was like he looked at their whole relationship differently and what he saw seemed to prove Suze right, no matter how strongly she argued against it. The trouble was that theirs had never been a passionate relationship, but it was based on something much better, or so she had thought – friendship. He might not have been exciting, but then, after a lifetime of excitement provided by her crazy family and previous relationship with Jack, that had been a relief.
‘He was very upset when I phoned him,’ said Evie now. Emma did a double-take as she snapped back to the present. ‘You phoned Pete? When?’
‘It was the day I arrived at the hospital, a week ago, just wanted to let him know what happened. He felt terrible when he heard, felt responsible I suppose.’
Emma sighed. ‘The accident wasn’t his fault. Well, not technically.’ If it was the fault of any one thing, as far as Emma was concerned, it was The Book – though she knew, logically, that didn’t really make sense, and she would never say it out loud, not because Evie wouldn’t believe her but because there was every chance that she would.
At Evie’s frown, she explained how she’d decided to get out of the flat after she’d found the break-up Post-it, which was when the postal van knocked her down. ‘It was just bad luck, really.’
Evie, however, had really only heard one thing. She was looking at her incredulously, her blue eyes amused.
‘He broke up with you on a Post-it note?’ Her lips started to twitch.
‘Don’t. It was actually very sad,’ Emma said, though she felt a sudden mad urge to laugh as well.
‘Oh? I’m sure it was very heartfelt. What did it say? Let me guess – something like this: “To do: Pop into Tesco for gluten-free bread – no more gyppy tummy for me. Buy some exciting new slacks, think maybe – gasp – brown, do I chance it? Yes Pete, yes you can! Also. Break up with Emma?”’
Emma laughed. ‘No, but he did add a postscript that said I was out of washing powder.’
Evie pressed her knuckles to her lips, her shoulders shaking as she tried, and failed, to suppress a giggle. ‘Sorry!’ she gasped as her raspy laugh echoed against the stone walls. There were tears leaking out of her eyes.
Emma bit her lip, trying not to giggle too. ‘No, don’t, he’s – well, he’s really nice when he’s not breaking up with someone on Post-it notes.’
‘Yeah, especially on laundry day, that’s for sure.’
‘Stop it,’ Emma giggled, and then frowned. ‘When you told him, didn’t he want to come see me?’ She couldn’t help feeling hurt by that.
‘Course he did, love. But I told him it would probably be for the best not to as I was taking you home – and well, seeing you like this might have meant…’
‘That we’d get back together.’ Emma couldn’t help wishing that he had decided to take that risk. Her shoulders slumped. The worst part was that he didn’t even want to speak to her, even now.
‘He said that I wasn’t in love with him.’ Emma hadn’t meant to tell Evie that, it simply slipped out.
Evie looked at her, didn’t say anything for a while, then, ‘Maybe it’s for the best, love?’
Emma looked away. Best for who? Not her, surely? ‘It isn’t true, you know. I do love him.’
Evie touched her shoulder. ‘Aye love, we all know you care for him.’
At Emma’s sharp look, she added, ‘A lot, but – but it’s not the same as real love, is it?’
Emma closed her eyes. A tear tracked down her cheek. What she knew about ‘real love’ was that it ripped you in two, made you give up everything, including the only home you’d ever known, just to get away from it. This, the version she’d had with Pete, at least as far as she was concerned, had been so much better.
‘You look exhausted,’ said Evie, smoothing back her hair.
‘I feel it,’ she said, with a sigh. Exhaustion had become her constant companion since the accident.
‘Why don’t you have a lie-down?’
Emma nodded. A lie-down sounded like exactly what she needed.
* * *
Three days later, and all Emma had done really since she arrived at Hope Cottage was sleep. She felt like a puzzle that had been put together wrong, the pieces jammed together at odd angles to create an odd, almost cubist version of the person who was once Emma Halloway.
The girl who once got around by cycling all over London and stayed up all night inspired to finish an article now got overwhelmed by the idea of leaving the house, and had to take a nap every few hours just so that she could form coherent sentences.
The girl who’d bought most of her clothes at trendy vintage shops (beige slacks that Pete had bought her notwithstanding) now wore pyjamas like a uniform.
Nothing felt right. Her scrambled senses could muddle the touch of water with the prick of needles, or the sound of Elvis’s crooning with chainsaws. She had to rely on Evie for everything. Her hazy vision meant that even opening up the right pill bottle or making herself a cup of tea was a challenge because she couldn’t rely on her other senses to help guide her.
The smallest thing could feel like a battle, like early the next morning when she tried to put on socks and it felt like she had applied a heat rod to her soles. Evie found her sobbing on the edge of the bed.
‘That’s the worst of it,’ she said, as Evie stroked her back, tried to calm her wails. ‘I feel so overwhelmed all the time. I just want my old life back! I just want things to make sense – literally.’
‘It will, love, just give it time.’
Time was all she had now, great bucketloads of it. Her world had turned small, constricted to the alcove around her bed and the wider surrounds of the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom.
She couldn’t escape into a novel as the letters scrambled across the page like moving ants, and even if she could watch television, Evie had never owned one, though she suspected that the moving images and sounds would have simply worn her out anyway. The same was to be said of social media; it was all just too hazy and there was a real danger of her typing something that didn’t make sense at all.
‘You’re home now love, you’ll see, things will get better soon,’ said Evie, getting up to put the copper kettle on the range for tea.
Home. One of the things that she did look forward to about being back – one of the only things really – was seeing her oldest friends, Maggie and Jenny, who, along with Gretchen (who, sadly, lived in Scotland now) had been a constant in her life since her first year at school. Who needed social media when you could have the real thing, she thought with a grin.
Emma lay back against the cushions and thought: home. When she pictured it, it was this. The large, whitewashed kitchen with its navy blue range, the same behemoth that generations of Halloway women had used since Grace Halloway swept into the village of Whistling some two hundred years before, with dust lining her coffers and only her family recipes to her name. The flagstone floors and pale weathered beams were the same too. Cats asleep in shadowy corners – though always just outside the kitchen, which was, as ever, Pennywort’s domain. Dust-mote rainbows in the lemon-coloured sunshine. Herbs drying on the windowsills. Pennywort himself, seated on a chair, his old head resting on the large scrubbed kitchen table, keeping an eye on what they made. Miraculously still going strong after all these years (the aunts insisted that it was due to one of their recipes for longevity; Emma thought they’d just got lucky). Evie.
But it was also this: the sound of anxious knocking on the door. The reason why, in many ways, she’d been happy to see the back of Hope Cottage.
Shooting Emma an apprehensive glance, Evie opened the door to find Mary Galway standing in wait. Her pale eyes darted nervously around the room, widening in alarm when they took in Emma lying in bed in her fluffy pink pyjamas. Emma cursed herself for having moved the blue silk screen that blocked the alcove from the rest of
the kitchen, en route to the bathroom the night before. She fought the urge to hide beneath the covers.
Mary dithered, with one foot on the threshold like a startled rabbit, ready to flee at the slightest provocation. Her mousy hair hung in lank strings down her face and she had that deflated look of someone who had become recently thin, like a soufflé that had popped in the oven.
‘Cup of tea?’ Evie asked.
Mary nodded, and Evie asked, ‘For you as well, love?’
Emma stifled a groan. What she really wanted was for Evie to put the silk screen back in place, so that she could pretend for just a second that she hadn’t re-entered the twilight zone.
‘No thanks,’ she said instead.
Evie shrugged, beckoning Mary inside where she took a tentative seat next to Pennywort, who eyed her solemnly for a moment then jumped down as if he would offer the two some privacy.
‘What seems to be the problem, Mary?’ asked Evie.
Some things never changed. No one came to Hope Cottage at dawn, not unless they had a problem they couldn’t solve any other way, because what the Halloways offered always came with a price, a sacrifice.
It was the tradition, as old as the cottage itself. If you needed the Halloways you came at sunup. Being a Halloway and having a lie-in were not things that often went together.
Mary swallowed and darted Emma a nervous look, hesitant to say what it was in front of her, no doubt. Emma hid a grin. She half suspected that that was Evie’s plan, why she’d put her bed in the kitchen and not the living room – so that she could be drawn back in to the life of the cottage.
Not today, thought Emma, getting up with some difficulty. She shrugged into her fluffy pink robe, which clashed rather magnificently with her badly-in-need-of-a-brush red hair, and hobbled away with her crutch. ‘I’ll leave you two to talk,’ she said pointedly, Pennywort following at her heels.