by Lucy Dillon
‘Well, I love it,’ said Caitlin. ‘I absolutely, totally love it. You’re a genius. When can we get going?’
Lorna reached for her notepad. ‘I’ve drawn up a proposal – look, these are the sites that I think we could use. The trees down the high street, they’ll be bare in winter so the flowers will stand out in the branches, and we can make flower beds from the railings around the town.’ She pointed to the map she’d downloaded and marked up. ‘We can hang some tall sunflowers around the library and some kind of climbing rose bush around the town hall façade. We can do it on a big net.’
‘It’s all very well for you expert knitters, but have you got patterns?’ asked Tiffany. She pointed at the poppy, with its curling red petals. ‘I’m looking at that, and I’m thinking that’s intermediate level. Minimum. I’d need to have that explained .’
‘We can make patterns, can’t we?’ Lorna turned to Caitlin. ‘Is there an online community that might be able to make some for us?’
‘I think so. I think there are … apps? We’d need drawings.’
‘I will draw the flowers,’ said Joyce. She reached out and straightened the poppy, curling the leaf over. ‘That will be my contribution to this project.’
Lorna caught her eye, and saw the smile at the edge of her lips. This was Joyce’s beautiful thing. The burst of creativity that was boiling away inside her, urged on by that little apple tree surprising her with its blossom confetti. She wanted to share it with Lorna – what an honour.
‘I’ll take the inspiration from my own garden,’ Joyce went on. ‘They won’t be detailed drawings, obviously, as my eyesight isn’t up to detailed work any more, but perhaps that’s for the best.’
‘Exactly,’ said Lorna. ‘The simpler the better.’
‘Very, very simple,’ said Tiffany. ‘Please.’
Lorna would have driven Joyce back to Rooks Hall, but Keir had arranged to have Shirley the volunteer driver do the honours, via an appointment at the hospital which Joyce did not wish to discuss but which was, Keir muttered while Joyce was browsing some new arrivals in the watercolour section, just a routine check-up following her fall.
‘They wanted to run some tests,’ he whispered, keeping one eye on Joyce’s back. ‘Just to make sure she’s eating properly. Or maybe to find out what she is eating to keep her so … determined. Then we can put the rest of the old dears on the Joyce Rothery diet.’
Lorna felt sorry for the nurses up at the hospital. The Zimmer frame stood in the back yard, still in its plastic wrapping, furiously exiled. ‘Listen, Keir, I need to discuss something with you, something about Joyce,’ she said, under her breath. ‘It’s about her tenancy – apparently she’s been kicked out!’
‘Shirley’s here!’ Tiffany announced as a car hooted outside. ‘And she’s on a double yellow again!’
Keir gave Lorna a harassed glance. ‘I’ll try and call later,’ he said. ‘I’m in and out of meetings all day – it’s like people have saved up their crises for the nice weather.’
‘Goodbye, goodbye!’ Joyce waved to everyone as she swept out, and suddenly the gallery seemed like a much quieter place.
‘Wow,’ said Caitlin, clutching the dog coat Joyce had finished while they were talking. It had a unicorn horn and wings. Joyce’s imagination was running wild. ‘Mrs Rothery is … wow.’
‘She certainly is,’ said Lorna.
The rest of the afternoon passed without much to distract Lorna from her internet research. She sold three birthday cards and a shell necklace, but mainly she found ways to turn pictures into knitting patterns. At four, the bell jangled and Lorna looked up to see a tall figure coming in, and as always her heart skipped ahead of her, before her brain even had time to react.
It was Sam.
She closed her laptop and tried to arrange her thoughts. She hadn’t seen Sam since the art event and pride had stopped her getting in touch. The kiss – the perfect, spoiled kiss – had played on her mind for days after, but she’d made a decision to lock it away. And clearly he had too, because he hadn’t tried to get in touch either.
Maybe this was the moment, she thought. He’d come in to have yet another mortifying conversation with her.
She slipped off the tall stool, pulling herself up to her full height. ‘Hello,’ she said, and her voice sounded awkward.
Sam gestured to the wall of paintings behind them. ‘I’m in the market for some of your finest artwork. About twenty-five of them. Various sizes and colours, please.’
Oh. Lorna hadn’t been expecting that .
‘Yes, but what subject matter? What style? What artist?’ She indicated some pastels she’d just hung, a young artist from the college who specialised in oily abstracts. ‘What medium?’
‘Medium is fine,’ said Sam gravely. ‘But I’d also like a couple of larges, some smalls, and one extra large.’
‘Ho ho.’ Lorna needed something to occupy her hands. ‘Tea? I was just about to make some.’
‘That’d be nice, thanks. Is this all your stock?’
‘I’ve got more in the back.’ Lorna moved towards the office to flip the kettle on. She was biting her tongue to stop herself asking how the headhunter conversation had gone. When he would be leaving. ‘Does it have to be countryside animals? I’m nearly out of cows, but I might have some sheep coming in.’
Sam followed her through the gallery. ‘No animals. Maybe … peaceful local scenes?’ He was more serious now. ‘Everything’s white, basically. Mum picked up some of those fancy paint cards which are fifty shades of cream. I know how a polar bear feels now – snow as far as the eye can see. I don’t suppose you do house calls, do you?’
Lorna swilled out the teapot and dropped two teabags in. Mary had zero rules for her gallery but strict rules about brewing tea: no bags in cups, always warm the pot. ‘So is this for you? You’re doing up the farmhouse?’
As soon as she said it, she knew he wasn’t. She wanted him to say it – or maybe she wanted him to tell her Gabe had it wrong.
‘No, the holiday lets.’
She fiddled with the tea caddy. I’ll have to say something. I’ll have to say something. Lorna hated scenes; she hated unpleasantness. But her friendship with Sam had been so pure, the one solid trust in her life, like Ryan and Jess. She couldn’t believe he could abandon his kindness so easily. It made her question everything she’d thought of him, every standard she’d held other men to since.
The words burst out. ‘I hear you’ve got another cottage to make over soon.’
The kettle boiled and clicked off, and silence filled the small room. The only noise was Rudy, breathing heavily in the basket under the desk. He didn’t get up and bark at Sam, but then he never had.
Sam sighed. ‘I hear you bumped into Gabriel.’
‘I did,’ Lorna said. Her voice sounded clipped, not her own, and she didn’t like it. ‘He didn’t seem particularly bothered about making an old lady homeless. But still, it’s going to be a lovely cottage for someone. Lovely garden, if he doesn’t Tarmac it over for cars.’
She swept towards the fridge to get the milk, her stomach churning. In her head she saw the big pan of fudge Mum used to make on birthdays and on holidays, the molten sugar bubbling like lava, sweet but so dangerously hot a premature taste could blister your tongue for days. Lorna’s indignation boiled and plopped, great bubbles of it rising and bursting. Waiting to burn her.
‘Wait, what? Making an old lady homeless?’ He caught her arm as she swept past.
Lorna turned. She didn’t want to shake off the hand; she didn’t want a row. But she had gone too far to stop. ‘Joyce has to leave her house. She’s in reasonable health, apart from her eyesight, so there can only be one reason – her lease has been ended by landlords who’ve made no secret of the fact that they want her home back to put on the market. I think that’s a lame way to treat a tenant of her age. I told Gabe that. And he laughed .’
‘I’d agree with you, if it were true,’ he said.
‘
What’s not true? That Joyce is leaving? I can assure you she is.’
‘No, that we made her leave.’
‘Is that just semantics? “We didn’t make her leave, we just made it really clear that we’d prefer to let her house out for more money”?’
‘No, Lorna.’ Sam seemed impatient now. ‘Joyce ended her tenancy. She wrote to us, informing us that she wanted to break her rental agreement. She gave us a month’s notice.’
She had started to pour the tea, to give herself something to do, but her hands were shaking and she put the pot down. ‘Joyce ended the tenancy?’
‘Yes. Last week. She didn’t tell you?’
Lorna faltered. ‘She didn’t go into detail. She’s a private lady.’
‘Right.’ Sam regarded her critically. ‘So you let rip at Gabriel because you assumed we were bastards and Joyce was some helpless old dear who needs protecting from everyone else? I’m not saying he isn’t an arse, but did you really think we’d do that?’
By we , he meant I . His eyes said it very clearly.
‘It’s not unreasonable. You more or less told me you were trying to get her out! Round at your house!’
‘Mum said that. I didn’t. Why did you think I’d bother fitting that bloody safety equipment if I was planning to kick her out? Wouldn’t I just have given her notice then? When I could have got the social worker – what’s his name? – to say the place wasn’t safe?’
They were glaring at each other. Lorna felt the surging, sweeping sensation in the pit of her stomach, the danger of the wrong words coming, and ruining everything, and she felt herself scrabbling to keep it at bay. She had no tactics for rows. They’d never heard a cross word at home; Cathy and Peter had never so much as raised their voices with each other.
Sam broke first. ‘You seem to think that I’m …’ He ran a hand through his hair, struggling with his patience. ‘Lorna, I wish you didn’t do this.’
‘Do what?’
‘Assume stuff. I’m doing my best here. I’ve got to support five people and ten workers on a farm that basically can’t make money the way it used to, I’ve got a family who think I’m a townie snob because I don’t have any tattoos and won’t go lamping, and I’ve got no one to ask for help because my best mate moved miles away and has turned out to be a complete—’
He stopped, his expression so forlorn that her anger faded.
‘Did you speak to Ryan?’ Lorna asked. ‘When he was here at the art event?’
Sam shrugged. ‘Sort of. Wasn’t really the right time, was it? How’s Jess?’
One brief FaceTime conversation about Hattie’s exams and Milo’s trumpet lessons, with words that said one thing and eyes that said something very different. It hurt Lorna that Jess wasn’t sharing. ‘She keeps saying she’s fine. She’s not fine.’
I’m not fine , she wanted to add. Everything has changed, including you .
Sam picked up his mug and stared into it, as if there might be some leaves in there with a clue. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I think we should give up on this idea that you can ever know someone. Truly know them, I mean. Because when you think about it, don’t we all have things about ourselves that we wouldn’t want anyone to know? Even our best friends?’
‘Maybe.’ It was such a sad thing to say. Even though Lorna thought it was true, she couldn’t bear to hear Sam say it. It suggested he thought he didn’t know her, and that she didn’t know him, not properly. ‘Real friends probably understand us better than we understand ourselves, I reckon.’
Sam knew her, and her secrets. He sensed the empty space behind her that she was too scared to turn back and look at, forcing her forward because there was no past to prop her up any more, no family to tell her who she was. Sam knew about Jess, and the shattering repercussions of that time, and Lorna had thought she knew him, and his secret that made him different from the other Osborne farmers.
But now? Did she? It caught her under the ribs. She didn’t. That was what Sam was trying to tell her. That she didn’t know him , just like they didn’t know Ryan. He was reminding her they’d lived different lives since those adolescent moments on the hay bales, that they’d grown into different people.
Sam looked at her squarely. ‘I think people just see the person they always have done. The person they want you to be. And then they’re disappointed.’
Lorna met his gaze, crushed. In her head, she saw Joyce’s bright yellow mountains from the art event, spiking into the whiteness, separating and linking, separating and linking.
‘Are you talking about me?’ The voice was brave, not hers. She didn’t know where it had come from. Her hands hung like dead weights by her side. Please take them, she thought, but he didn’t.
For a second, Sam seemed on the verge of opening his heart. His eyes were miles away. Then he managed a broken smile. ‘No, Lorna,’ he said. ‘It’s not always about you. Now can we talk about paintings? I’ve got eight rooms to fill with the best local art you can supply.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘This is all you’re taking? Are you sure?’
Lorna looked uncertainly at the collection of bags and boxes in front of Joyce. One carpet bag like Mary Poppins’s, plump under its zip but not bursting. One plastic crate of books and photograph albums. Her knitting bag, with balls of wool neatly lined up along the top like rainbow peas in a pod. Another crate, of paintings wrapped in throws. And Bernard.
Bernard wagged his tail. He made up approximately one-fifth of Joyce’s worldly goods.
Was that enough? It seemed so little, she thought, for a life as long and creative as Joyce’s.
‘I should think so. You’re only giving me one room, aren’t you? Not the whole flat.’ Joyce peered over her glasses. ‘Unless you’re angling for some furniture?’
‘No!’ Lorna burst out, then realised Joyce was trying to make light of this strange day. ‘No,’ she said again, with the best smile she could muster up under Joyce’s scrutiny. ‘I just want you to be comfortable.’
A couple of volunteers from the day centre had packed up Joyce’s house, and Lorna had come from the gallery to help. Most of the hard work was already done, but even so the half-filleted house had stirred strange feelings inside her, lifting up memories like the dust floating around from unhooked paintings and emptied shelves. It had reminded her – or not reminded her, since she hadn’t been there – of the grim task Jess had tackled on her own after their father died. Jess had packed up Peter’s possessions from the house that had been his final home. By the time Lorna had arrived, her parents’ life had been tidied away, stacked in brown boxes at the back of the storage unit the Protheros kept for Ryan’s barbecue equipment and the junk they couldn’t fit in the garage.
They were supposed to have gone through the boxes by now, but neither Lorna nor Jess could face it. At this rate, it would be a job for Hattie, Milo and Tyra.
Lorna stared at Joyce’s half-empty bookshelf by the fireplace, the irregular gaps like missing teeth, and felt a similar hollow. Gaps, where a memory should be. At the time, she’d been relieved Jess had spared her the experience of handling their parents’ personal belongings, but soon after Jess had revealed that there wasn’t much to do; Peter had taken it upon himself to shred and burn most of their private papers himself, to ‘save them the bother’. Their parents’ love letters and secrets had been reduced to ashes. It had felt like a third bereavement, one neither of them had expected.
‘Are you all right?’ Joyce enquired. ‘If you’re being glum on my account, don’t be. I’ve always enjoyed a good sort-out. This is therapeutic.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘It’s only things , when all’s said and done. When Bernie died, I gave away so much stuff to the charity shop they practically had to open a second branch. And it was exactly what he’d have done for me.’
‘My parents were the same,’ said Lorna. ‘I wish they’d left something for us to keep.’
‘It wouldn’t be what you’d want,’ said Joyce.
The sight of the empty armchair opposite Joyce’s was too much for Lorna. She put her hand on the back of it, where the leather was worn from decades of Bernard’s head rubbing the back as he nodded off in front of the fire.
‘But what about your chairs?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you want to bring these? We can make room.’
Keir had just walked back into the sitting room, fresh from jamming a large oil painting into the back of Lorna’s car. ‘We can take Joyce’s chairs, can’t we?’
‘What? Into your flat? No way. I can’t carry them up two flights of stairs.’ He eyed the smooth arms and high backs, and rubbed his neck. His face was sheeny with sweat above his dark T-shirt. ‘I’ve got a sports injury.’
Joyce regarded him incredulously. ‘What sport do you do?’
He affected not to hear her. ‘And they won’t go in your car.’
‘I’m sure you can think of something. I’ll make a cup of tea,’ said Joyce, ‘while the kettle’s still here.’
‘Wow.’ Keir boggled as she headed to the kitchen. ‘She’s never offered to make tea before.’
Lorna watched Joyce’s progress down her dark hall, proud but noticeably shufflier than the first time she’d visited.
‘I just wish she wasn’t leaving so much.’ She gestured at the low sideboard, with the old phone and the vase of paintbrushes. Each piece was dotted with yellow Post-it notes: storage , charity shop . ‘I think we should make sure she has her chairs at least.’
‘Both of them?’
Lorna fixed him with a look. ‘Yes. Both of them.’
Keir raised his eyebrows.
‘She’s already leaving her house,’ she hissed back. ‘Don’t make her leave her memories too.’
‘But isn’t that her plan? She wants to leave. Perhaps her memories aren’t tied up in furniture.’ He glanced over his shoulder to check Joyce was still in the kitchen. ‘We see this a lot when older people move into care. Joyce has made a decision, Lorna. We have to respect that. Just because you’d take everything doesn’t mean she wants to.
‘Residents get a fair bit of space in Butterfields,’ he went on, in a low voice. ‘It’s not like some of these homes. The rooms are quite large. Space for …’ He looked around the sitting room, scanning what was left. ‘Well, a sofa, definitely.’