by Lily Graham
‘Incredible,’ remarked Maggie. ‘Oh, my goodness, these names!’
‘I know,’ said Emma, giving her a wry grin. The names, frankly, were a little mad. ‘Evie told me once that they say what they mean, not what they are.’
Maggie frowned. ‘I suppose that makes sense.’ She leaned forward to read. ‘The instructions are wild,’ she said with a laugh. She read one aloud: ‘The herbs should be picked during the light of the harvest moon, and added before twilight on the second day.’ She made a noise of surprise. ‘It even comes with a warning – ‘A volatile recipe, to be made only with a calm temperament. Clear your emotions before you begin the layers, so as to avoid any unintended consequences, or be prepared to deal with the aftermath.’
‘Do they really do all this?’ she asked, meaning Evie and her aunts. She didn’t ask, ‘Do you?’ – she knew the answer was no, or at least, not any more.
Emma shrugged. ‘Yeah, they do.’
Maggie shook her head. ‘You know, I was always a bit envious of you growing up… I mean, I never told you this but I used to wish that Evie would adopt me, or maybe it would turn out that actually I had some family connection too. My nan said that one of the first Halloways married a Gilbert, so it seemed possible,’ she said, with a wry smile, shaking her head at herself.
Maggie’s family, the Gilberts, like the Allens, Halloways and Leas, were one of the oldest families in the village. Maggie had told Emma that herself the year she first came to live at Hope Cottage, after Emma’s parents had passed away. It was the same occasion as when she had told Emma rather matter-of-factly at the school gates that they could be friends if Emma liked. Emma, who’d been feeling lost and alone, had been really touched.
Emma sat up now in surprise. ‘I didn’t know that! Or that you felt that way.’
‘I never said anything. Didn’t want to be “that guy”.’
They both laughed.
‘You could never be “that guy”. Still, trust me, you’re better off – that book, the whole “Halloway legacy” it’s made things harder than they had to be.’
Maggie nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ Between them Jack Allen’s presence was thick, though unspoken.
After Maggie left, she couldn’t help thinking of the past, when she’d first come to Hope Cottage, when everything changed for evermore.
Chapter Five
Hope Cottage, 1995
* * *
Evie Halloway’s life changed for ever the day the eight magpies flew over the village, making their strange cries. There were few who didn’t stop to cross themselves and rattle off the old rhyme, wondering what it had brought that day.
One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl,
four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told.
Eight though. What could it mean? Old Ann Brimble, who ran the Whistle-In Store with her husband, said it meant change and that it had something to do with the Halloways. She could tell by the lingering scent in the air of burnt vanilla and new beginnings, the way some people know a storm is brewing from the ache in their knees.
Had Mrs Brimble peered inside Hope Cottage, her suspicions may well have been confirmed. It was the first time in fifty years that the old range had been cold to the touch, and the first time the old door, aged the colour of a duck’s egg, had failed to open at the first, desperate, knock from those anxious enough to seek hope from a Halloway edible prescription.
As all villagers knew, food made in the kitchen at Hope Cottage, using the same tempestuous range that all the Halloway women had used since Grace Halloway’s day, appeared to change lives, though no one really knew why.
It was said that when a Halloway woman kneaded dough, long-held quarrels ironed themselves out, and when she sieved flour, things fell smoothly back into place.
Need is what shaped the relationships of most of the villagers with the women of Hope Cottage. Few lifted that old brass knocker, shaped like a curmudgeon of a cat, when they wanted a simple Christmas cake or to learn how to perfect their Yorkshire puddings; people generally knocked only when they were at their wits’ end, when they were prepared to pay the price, though it wasn’t one that was metered by coin.
Evie Halloway, however, could hardly be blamed for not opening the door that particular day. News of the accident reached most people’s ears via the six o’ clock news on The Whistle Blower, the local radio station, but for Evie it had arrived much earlier, shortly after dawn, with the discovery of the tiny egg the colour of an old bruise nestling among the six brown, speckled shells she’d collected from beneath the hens. A shiver ran down her spine, as if someone had whispered something in her ear. The phone began to ring as she crossed over the threshold, and it was with a leaden heart that she lifted the receiver.
‘Mrs Halloway?’ enquired a prim-sounding voice.
‘Just Evie – no missus,’ corrected Evie, automatically, in her distinct Yorkshire brogue.
‘Oh,’ said the voice, with a polite hesitation. ‘I-I’m afraid I have some rather bad news. I’m dreadfully sorry to have to tell you this over the phone, but it appears your daughter…’ the voice faltered for a second, ‘…and your son-in-law have been in a car accident. I’m afraid… they didn’t make it.’
There was a pause, long enough for Evie to feel her heart crack in two.
The voice continued, as if from a great distance, while Evie slumped against the kitchen wall, forgetting to breathe. One word, however, brought the voice back into sharp relief.
‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Evie.
‘Your granddaughter? Thankfully, she’s fine – a few bruises and scratches. Physically, she’ll be okay, I mean emotionally, well, there are already a few effects as you can imagine – she hasn’t said a word since the accident—’
‘My g-granddaughter?’ stammered Evie, blinking against the hazy fog of tears. Trying and failing to comprehend.
‘Emma is fine,’ reassured the voice. ‘We’ll be sending her on to you as soon as possible, as you are the only next of kin, we believe, for both of the deceased… it falls to you, unfortunately, to make the necessary arrangements.’
Necessary arrangements? The air left her lungs when she realised that the woman was referring to the funeral arrangements.
When the phone clicked in her ear, Evie’s eye fell on The Book, open on the scrubbed wooden table, the same large tome that Halloway women had swollen with recipes over the past two hundred years – the same book that her daughter had attempted to burn before she slammed the door on Hope Cottage forever.
‘Oh Margaret,’ she whispered. ‘How can I find out I’ve got a granddaughter on the same day I lose you?’
* * *
It was the shortest day of the year, and the longest night, when Emma, at the age of six, saw Hope Cottage for the first time.
It was a day when the cold wind skipped along the cobblestones, trailing stiff fingers along the walls of thousand-year-old stone cottages, whispering inside the drainpipes and making that low whistle that some said had given the town its name.
It blew Emma’s long red hair across her face and rattled the old brass knocker against the pale blue door, announcing their arrival before they could.
Emma shivered in her thin London coat, wondering what was waiting for her on the other side, hoping that it was better than the foster home she’d been placed in while they tracked down her ‘grandmother’ using records that had taken more than a week to find; someone she’d never met, or even knew existed until the day before, when she was told that’s where she’d be going to live from now on. In her grief and despair, the idea of a granny had been like a light in a world turned dark. The foster home had peeling paint and dirty floors, and was filled with screaming children and a tired, overworked woman who smelt perpetually of cooking grease, and whose only words of comfort had been a suggestion for her to ‘Make yourself scarce’ and ‘Be quiet, stop that crying, you’re not the only one who has lost
their parents,’ when her howls woke up the household. Perhaps Emma had taken this advice a little too much to heart, as she hadn’t been able to find her voice to make a sound since.
The social worker, Mrs Roberts, who would have been horrified if she knew about the rather callous nature of the temporary family she’d placed Emma with, gave her a nervous smile as the door opened with sudden speed. Then warmth as delicious as the first soak in a tub after a long, cold day spread across Emma, setting to work on easing the chill from her fingers and toes. It was followed closely by the scent of heather, wood fires, cinnamon and something that whispered to her, somehow, of Christmas.
It would always be the scent that brought Hope Cottage to Emma’s mind from then on. That and the image of Evie.
Her first thought upon seeing Evie Halloway for the first time was that she didn’t look like a granny. Grannies were plump. They wore half-moon spectacles and shawls round their shoulders and they always seemed to be cradling balls of yarn between their fingers. At least, they did in the books Emma had been allowed to read. Books that were more educational than anything else, and which had helped to give her a rather advanced reading age.
The woman across from her was tall and wiry. She had the type of hair that broke brushes and caused hairdressers to roll up their sleeves; it perched on her shoulders like a shaggy grey animal wearing its thickest wintry coat, appearing to pulse with life. Her eyes were large, and blue, and her skin was smooth and tanned. She wore faded denim dungarees and brown leather boots that laced up to the knee, and the sort of stare that made Mrs Roberts feel the need to swallow, and pat down her neat bun, as she made their introductions.
Evie, though, only had eyes for Emma. She noted the child’s skin – how it was the type that was prone to freckle without provocation. The eyes, which were large and sad and seemed to say everything her frozen tongue could not. They were scared and hopeful and she noted with some satisfaction that they also appeared a little relieved. She noted the colour, the Halloway blue. The blue of lobelias and Cape starlings and secret springs. Then her gaze came back to the child’s hair. That was not typical at all.
‘So, Margaret did run away with that Scot,’ said Evie with a snort, in her Yorkshire brogue, which Emma recognised as similar to her mother’s. ‘I might have guessed.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Mrs Roberts, smoothing down her skirt, eyes wide behind their glasses’ horned rims.
‘Same hair – see,’ said Evie, lips twitching. ‘Red.’ It wasn’t clear if this amused or annoyed her. Perhaps it was both.
Mrs Roberts shifted uncomfortably in her court shoes, shooting Emma an uncertain look, brown eyes hesitant. ‘I’m sorry – do you mean to tell me this is the first time you’re meeting your granddaughter?’
Evie’s right shoulder lifted in a casual shrug. ‘Stranger things have happened than a grandmother meeting her runaway child’s offspring for the first time, I’m sure.’
Mrs Roberts looked agog. It had never occurred to her that child and grandmother might never have met – Emma hadn’t said – then again, as the child hadn’t said anything at all since the accident, that was hardly surprising really.
It was Evie, though, who reassured Mrs Roberts that everything would be all right, the same way she’d been reassuring most visitors who came to Hope Cottage since she herself was around Emma’s age.
‘We’re going to get to know each other just fine, don’t you worry,’ she told them both, seeing Mrs Roberts out the door. ‘It’s home, and she’ll feel that soon enough – it’s in her blood.’
When they were alone, Evie let Emma introduce herself to the cottage slowly, meeting the whitewashed walls, the polished flagstone floors, the low, weathered beams above their heads and the secret nooks and crannies cut into the textured stone. These were filled with books, comfy seats, drying herbs and sleeping cats. Emma counted three before she was shown upstairs.
‘This is your room,’ said Evie, leading her to a spacious room under the eaves, where a forest green iron bed was dressed with a pale muslin cover, a lilac and bird’s egg blue patchwork quilt at the foot. There was a small wooden wardrobe and, next to the bed, a three-legged stool where a jam jar held a posy of dried bell heather, which perfumed the room and brought to mind thoughts of long walks on the moors they’d driven past on their way into the cobbled village with its rolling hills and butterscotch cottages.
Emma tried to imagine her mother living here and couldn’t. Her mother didn’t allow pets. Their flat in a busy, noisy street in London had double-height ceilings and polished, black marble countertops. The furniture was sharp and metallic and they had black and white art dominating entire walls. The flowers were sharp and pointed, with exotic names like strelitzia. Words like ‘spacious’ and ‘minimalist’ and ‘art deco’ were used to describe their flat. She didn’t know what the opposite word for minimalist was, but she knew that it applied here, to Hope Cottage. She sat on the bed, hugging her small backpack to herself like a misshapen teddy bear, and puzzled at the difference.
* * *
In the kitchen, Evie lit the fire and consulted The Book, flipping through the pages until she found the one she was looking for.
Transitional Tomato Tagine.
‘This might do,’ she told Pennywort, the year-old bulldog, who’d taken a seat at the table, his white and brown spotted head propped up on the table edge, keeping a solemn chestnut-coloured eye on the proceedings. She patted his head, then drummed a finger against her chin as she read the notes written by some long-ago Halloway hand.
Make at dusk, stirring counterclockwise, keeping your intentions firm, and your emotions calm. Slow, but lasting results.
Evie didn’t mind waiting. Unlike the villagers who came with desperation in their eyes, who wanted, needed, instant change, she knew that time could be a mercurial friend when you asked too much of it too soon.
She slipped off the last of her good jewellery – her mother’s silver ring – with a sigh. Pennywort put his head to one side and gave her a bulldog huff as she did, his dark eyes boring into hers.
‘Don’t look at me like that. What do I need trinkets for anyway?’ she said, though she put it aside with some reluctance. That’s how she knew it would work. She’d plant it tonight beneath the frost-covered tomato bed, where it would join Mrs Drummond’s diamond earrings and Sandra Pike’s antique vase, a token for better days ahead.
Emma entered the kitchen, and Evie saw her taking in the navy blue range dominating the room, the wrinkly dog sitting at the large scrubbed wooden table and Evie standing before it, a giant cream mixing bowl in her arms. In the background, Elvis crooned softly from an old wireless on the pale blue Welsh dresser.
‘This is Pennywort, he keeps an eye on things, likes to ensure that we keep the cottage running shipshape,’ she told Emma. Then she looked at the dog, ‘My granddaughter, Emma.’
Pennywort, ordinarily a bit of a grump, gave Emma a very uncharacteristic bulldog grin, which the child returned, going over to touch his soft fur.
Evie nodded, deciding that they may as well start where all Halloways begin – gently though. That was best. ‘So… what I’m going to need from you is a sprig of rosemary, a thumb of lemon verbena and three of the bottom leaves of the dark opal basil. You’ll find them all in the greenhouse outside. The basket’s there by the door.’
Emma hesitated. Evie saw the child’s confused expression and asked, ‘Do you know what they look like?’
Emma shook her head. Evie glanced at The Book as if it would lend her strength. It made sense. When Margaret left, she had vowed that she didn’t want anything to do with the ‘family folly’, as she termed it; it was little wonder she’d never instructed her child. By Emma’s age most Halloways would be able to identify dozens of wild herbs with their eyes closed.
Evie opened a drawer and took out an unlined notebook with a plain black cover and a pencil, and put these in front of the child. ‘All Halloways start with one of these.’
At her look of confusion, Evie scanned the dresser next to the range till she found a plump volume, which she plucked off the shelf and handed to Emma as well. ‘This was your mother’s.’
* * *
Emma frowned as she opened the notebook and took a seat next to the dog. He gave her the sort of attention he usually reserved for food, his head butting her arm so that he could see as well.
The notebook was filled with tight black writing and careful sketches that observed the passing of the seasons and the uses of herbs and wild flowers. Some were pressed inside the pages, offering up a lingering scent of the Yorkshire moors.
There were recipes and remedies and ruminations. Emma’s fingers traced around splatters and dribbles from long-ago bubbling pots, riffled through pages that had buckled from steam and smelt of spices and stews and summers gone by.
She paged through it eagerly, until a dark thought rose up and clenched her throat, flooding her with sudden fear. She stood up quickly, her breath coming in sharp gasps, thrust the notebook at Evie and shook her head. A wild, chilling realisation dawned upon her. This could not be her mother’s.
Emma’s eyes scanned the kitchen, taking in Pennywort, who was regarding her with bemusement, and the rest of the cottage, this cosy, somewhat quirky place that in no way looked like her parents’ home in London. It wasn’t possible; her mother couldn’t have come from here. This was all some horrible mistake. The social worker, Mrs Roberts, must have got it wrong.
Evie must be someone else’s grandmother. Her mother never cooked. She ordered pre-made dinners for the week, which arrived in neat cardboard containers that stacked perfectly in the fridge. They had labels on the front that told you in chunky black letters how much in calories, sodium, protein and carbohydrates they contained. All you had to do was divide the meal onto plates and warm them up in the microwave. They were expensive and healthy, and home-cooked, though not in their kitchen. This saved her mother valuable time so that she could be in front of her computer looking at bars and graphs and putting what she saw into spreadsheets. People paid her a lot of money to do that, so that she didn’t have to cook, or so she said. Her mother never stopped to look at anything outside, like rainbows, or the unusual flower growing out of the pavement, or the drawing of a monster wearing underpants on its head in the shop window. She certainly didn’t document the things she saw in pretty notebooks. How could she have, when she hardly saw anything at all? Whenever Emma stopped to point out such things, her arm was pulled and she was chastised to, ‘Hurry up’, though it wasn’t always clear why they were in such a hurry as they were never, ever late.