The Homecoming

by Rosie Howard

  ‘No chance. And also I don’t know how he would. Where would he live, for one thing?’

  Serena nodded, pondering. ‘One thing at a time, eh? We’d better round up these boys and head off to Brighton. The traffic can be abysmal and we don’t want to be late, plus we have to swing by and pick up Flora on the way.’

  ‘Wow, you really did break it! Again!’ exclaimed Flora as she flumped herself into the back of the car, beaded plaits flying, making the two boys squeeze up. ‘Sad face,’ she added, making a sad, clown face and blowing Maddy a kiss. ‘So, serious business meeting,’ she said, composing herself. ‘Bring it on.’

  The ‘web boys’, as Serena insisted on calling them, occupied a cramped office on the first floor above a stationery shop. The little office, with four desks crammed in at one end and a small meeting area at the other, was an eclectic mix of professionalism and hardcore juvenility.

  The two men, both in their twenties, kissed Serena and politely shook hands with Maddy and Flora, who they eyed up shyly but appreciatively, before offering tea and coffee and exclaiming over the broken leg.

  ‘Jules totally smashed up his leg snowboarding last year,’ said Henry, fiddling nervously with the numerous friendship bracelets he was wearing, some of them practically decaying with age.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Jules, ‘it was really gross, but the French nurses were – like – uber fit, and I totally scored with them so, you know, it was cool.’

  Serena looked at them both fondly. ‘Your mum wasn’t too thrilled, as I recall,’ she observed, and Jules went slightly pink.

  ‘Yeah well, you know her, she was – like – panicking a bit.’

  Contrary to initial appearances, the young men were hugely impressive when they got into the meeting itself. They were happy with the designs and made some useful comments about the site layout and structure.

  ‘So, you’re basically looking to create a directory site?’ suggested Jules. ‘Nothing to stop you having online retailing ability too – there’s these modules you can just plug in – although you could do worse than encourage your members to retail via sites like eBay and Etsy too.’

  ‘I could manage that side of things,’ said Flora. ‘I’m doing it all the time, anyhow.’

  ‘It’s another avenue,’ said Serena, holding up her hands in agreement. ‘As long as you’re happy to give it the time, Flora.’

  ‘You’ll want us to make sure there’s connectivity with all the social media platforms too, of course,’ said Henry.

  Serena grimaced. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘A closed book to me, I’m afraid. You?’ she asked Maddy.

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Maddy. ‘They can be real time-suckers, that’s the trouble. It’s a key marketing thing, obviously, but not my favourite task.’ Plus – she was thinking – there was no way she would have enough time to spend on social media with everything else that was going on.

  ‘I’ll totes do that too,’ said Flora, happily. ‘I’m an Instagram junkie, you have no idea …’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Once Serena settled the two boys with some extraordinary-looking knickerbocker glories the three women contemplated their options over coffee.

  ‘With those two lads on board, and Flora being such a whizz on the social media,’ said Serena, ‘I really think we can nail it.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Maddy. ‘So, other than some decent photography, media relations, a launch event – and we definitely still need to be at one of the big home and lifestyle exhibitions – oh, and not forgetting a major chunk of start-up funding, we’re pretty much there,’ she joked mirthlessly.

  ‘What I think,’ said Flora, slowly, with a wide grin spreading over her sweet, amiable face, ‘is that we,’ she made a sweeping gesture to include Maddy and Serena, ‘are the dog’s bollocks.’

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ said Maddy, infected with her enthusiasm. Holding up her coffee mug triumphantly, she declared, ‘To us!’

  ‘To us,’ agreed the other two, slopping latte enthusiastically in a three-way toast.

  ‘Anybody hungry?’ came the voice, floating up the stairs. It startled Maddy out of a light doze and, before she had had time to sit up and wipe the sleep out of her eyes, Ben was there.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to wake you.’

  ‘I wasn’t sleeping,’ she lied. ‘Just resting my eyes for a moment.’

  ‘I hope Serena hasn’t tired you out. I asked her and the boys to come and help you, not drag you halfway around the country, as I now hear they did.’

  ‘It was only Brighton. And a really worthwhile meeting, actually. I may have broken my leg, but there’s nothing wrong with my brain.’

  They both considered what she had just said in light of the conversation they had had the day before; the one where they both concluded there was most definitely something wrong with her brain.

  ‘Fish and chips?’ said Ben, holding up two loosely wrapped parcels.

  ‘Yum! Tartare sauce?’

  ‘Aren’t you posh? There’s ketchup but I’ll see if Patrick’s got any in the kitchen.’

  There was half a jar in the fridge – quite possibly of venerable age – but he had a taste and proclaimed it edible.

  Sitting side by side on the sofa, with her broken leg resting on a chair, they tucked in appreciatively.

  ‘So, you spurn tomato ketchup but you’re perfectly happy to eat out of the paper with your fingers.’

  ‘God yes,’ said Maddy, ‘no one decants takeaway fish and chips onto plates. That’s really common,’ she joked.

  ‘Good meeting, you say?’

  ‘Really good. I don’t know how we’re going to pay for it, but Serena has an idea about that.’

  ‘You know, you could really get this Bespoke Consortium idea going. It could be your job.’

  ‘Hard to see how it could earn me any sort of living … At the moment, with the artisans having no budget to speak of, it’s difficult to see how we can even get it off the ground, let alone put a roof over my head,’ she said. ‘Serena and Flora are putting loads of time into it, too. It’s very much their baby as well as mine.’

  ‘Serena doesn’t need money.’

  ‘Flora does, though. I agree, Serena doesn’t, really, but she’s clever and I think she very much wants an opportunity to do something that isn’t chasing after Giles’s pesky runaway pigs and looking after her boys – who are away a lot, anyway.’

  ‘She was pretty senior, from what I gather of her job before she married him,’ said Ben.

  ‘Funny how she gave it all up. I’m surprised.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Ben. ‘The thing about Serena is that she does everything to the max. She hooked up with Giles reasonably late. He was sort of a second chance. Getting on for a last chance, when it came to being sure they could have children. The boys didn’t come along straight away. When she had them she was so totally devoted – as you can see – the whole Home Farm thing with the Aga and the Labrador and space to run around was for their sake. No sacrifice too great, especially for Giles. Havenbury Magna is Serena’s childhood home, not his.’

  ‘Have you known her long?’

  ‘For ever. She was like an older sister to me when I was in my teens. Not a great influence particularly … She’s pretty wild, so generally she was encouraging me to do all the daft teenage things that I hadn’t thought of myself …’

  ‘And what about Giles? What’s he like?’

  ‘You’ve met him, haven’t you?’

  Maddy nodded. ‘Briefly.’

  ‘The main thing to know about Giles is that he absolutely, unconditionally adores Serena. Got her on a pedestal. Can’t believe she said “yes”, basically.’

  ‘And does she love him?’

  ‘Yeees,’ said Ben, his head on one side, considering. ‘No, she does, she does … of course she does.’

  ‘But … ?’

  ‘No “buts”, it’s just …’

  Maddy waited.

  ‘He wa
sn’t her first love.’

  ‘No, clearly. Serena must have been in her mid thirties, at least. Unless she was a nun …’

  ‘Okay, then, let’s just say that Giles isn’t quite the love of her life,’ he said. And then Maddy saw the shutters come down. He gave her a smile, but the message was clear: the subject was off limits.

  ‘So,’ he said briskly. ‘Going back to the business, what about working for the Bespoke Consortium pro bono but subsidising it with the sort of work you are doing in London, only for local clients,’ suggested Ben.

  ‘Are you trying to persuade me to move down here permanently?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ben simply. ‘Imagine it. The landscape, the people, the cost of living must be an awful lot lower than London. You could work smart, not hard … ’course we’ll have to get you a proper pair of walking boots when you get that cast taken off …’

  ‘But it wouldn’t work.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Loads of reasons,’ said Maddy, with finality. If she brought up specifics he would just suggest solutions in that annoyingly literal way that men had. There were plenty of problems to solve: the pub, the Consortium, her mother’s relationship with Patrick, yikes and what about her relationship with the neglected Simon? … She had an idea that Ben would have an answer for them all but the insurmountable one was the constant anxiety and night-time terror, which were now inextricably linked with her presence in Havenbury. She couldn’t imagine ever finding a way to live with that.

  Maddy’s mother’s long-anticipated arrival caught her on the hop. She texted to apologise for only just realising she couldn’t meet the train.

  Don’t worry, darling, Helen texted back. Can hardly expect u to turn up with broken leg but wouldn’t say no to bag-carrying services from hunky army boy instead … xxx

  Maddy duly texted the request to ‘hunky army boy’, who regretfully declined on the basis he would be delivering a lecture at the college when she arrived and also wasn’t thirty-two a bit old to be called a boy? Can’t wait to meet your mother, he added. Tell her I’ll buy you both supper tonight, to make up for missing her arrival.

  Thanks to careful and efficient packing, Helen arrived with just a small holdall and a rucksack, which were perfectly manageable on her own. Her walk up the steep hill from the station, in her sensible shoes, had made her quite pink in the face. Although she was racing towards fifty at speed – something she was not keen to discuss – she and Maddy were still sometimes mistaken for sisters, to Helen’s amusement and Maddy’s pretend horror. Her curly brown hair, now streaked with grey, was cut in a shaggy bob, a little shorter than Maddy’s but the wide-spaced blue-green eyes were the same and her neat little figure was only a little thicker around the waist than her daughter’s thanks to twice-weekly Pilates and yoga classes. Next to each other, the most obvious difference was that Maddy was some six inches taller, causing her to announce that her mum was the ‘bonsai’ version.

  It was a warm morning, almost like summer, and the familiar route, not taken for so many years, had a dreamlike quality to it as memories of that long, hot summer floated around her. She could almost feel the grit of the dust trapped between her toes in the open sandals she wore then. Her hair had been long, nearly down to her waist, and she vividly recalled how she would wind it into a heavy knot at the base of her neck to keep her cool as she worked. Those long, exhausting shifts pulling pints were buoyed by a love – an infatuation perhaps – which carried with it an optimism and excitement she had never felt since.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, throwing her arms around Maddy so enthusiastically she nearly swept her off her crutches. ‘Look at you. What on earth … ?’ she said, waving at her leg. ‘That lovely Ben told me not to worry but what are they saying?’

  ‘They’re saying I need to get out of the habit of breaking it or they’ll chop it off,’ she joked. ‘It’s fine, Mum, no worse than last time.’

  ‘That’s no great comfort.’

  ‘Really, Mum, it’ll be fine; just a few weeks in plaster and a bit of physio, that’s all.’

  Helen gave Maddy a sideways look. ‘And Patrick?’

  ‘Ben’s promised to take us in to see him in a bit. And then he’s going to take us out for supper.’

  ‘I see!’ said Helen, looking smug.

  ‘Please don’t be embarrassing tonight, Mum.’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Mrs Cross,’ said Ben, kissing Helen on both cheeks. ‘It’s lovely to meet you. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you arrived.’

  ‘No need to apologise. Maddy’s told me so much about you.’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ protested Maddy.

  ‘She’s told me lots about you, too,’ he said.

  ‘No I haven’t,’ she protested again.

  ‘We’d better get a move on,’ said Ben, checking his watch. ‘Visiting hours end at six. We don’t want to get chucked out as soon as we arrive.’

  ‘I doubt you would be,’ said Maddy crossly, ‘what with all your sucking up to Harriet, the ward sister, or whatever her name is.’

  ‘Hetty. And it’s Patrick who’s got her in the palm of his hand, not me.’

  ‘Sounds like him,’ said Helen, with an edge to her voice.

  ‘How long has it been?’ asked Ben, as he unlocked the car, helping Maddy into the back so she could stretch her leg out and threading her crutches in after her.

  ‘Goodness, I haven’t seen Patrick for years,’ said Helen lightly. ‘Heaven knows why I’m here to see him now, other than it being Maddy’s suggestion that I come.’

  ‘Really?’ said Ben. ‘I got the impression you and Patrick were old, old friends.’

  ‘More “old friends” as in “friends a long time ago”, than “friends for a long time”,’ corrected Helen. ‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen the old bugger since before Maddy was born …’ she tried to sound offhand, but Ben noticed the tendons in her neck looked tense as she stared pointedly out of the passenger window so as not to meet his eye.

  ‘Patrick and I were close for a time,’ she went on, ‘but it was only when Maddy applied for college locally I suggested she might want to get in touch. They hit it off,’ she observed, smiling fondly at the thought, but then her expression tightened again. ‘I was happy he was keeping an eye on her while she was away from home. Although not as close an eye as I would have liked, as it happens …’ At this last comment, Helen clamped her mouth shut, staring straight ahead through the windscreen. To Maddy’s relief, Ben took the hint and asked her nothing more.

  ‘You are so kind to do this,’ said Helen, having recovered her mood by the time they found a space in the hospital car park.

  ‘No problem,’ said Ben. ‘I know how much Patrick is looking forward to seeing you. Tell you what, why don’t you go on ahead,’ he said, giving Helen brief, clear directions to Patrick’s ward. ‘Maddy and I’ll pop to the canteen for a cup of tea and join you both in a bit.’

  ‘That was a good call,’ observed Maddy as he helped her onto her crutches. ‘Best if they meet one to one to start with.’

  ‘So I gather,’ said Ben. ‘There’s history between those two,’ he went on, patiently walking alongside Maddy as she sweated. Crutches were hard work and, if she was honest, walking was painful and exhausting still.

  ‘Are you Maddy, by any chance?’ said a nurse with a clipboard, who popped out of a side office like a Jack-in-a-Box, making Maddy jump and jar her leg painfully. ‘I’m glad I caught you; just a bit of paperwork,’ she went on, waving the board.

  ‘Don’t wait,’ Maddy said to Ben. ‘I’ll just …’

  ‘I’ll go ahead and get our order in,’ said Ben, taking the hint. ‘I fancy hot chocolate.’

  ‘Oo, good idea. Me too.’

  ‘Good grief,’ she said, when she finally made it over to the table he had requisitioned.

  ‘I assumed you wanted everything.’

  ‘You weren’t wrong,’ smiled Maddy, although she wasn’t
sure how she was going to manage supper once she had worked her way through the huge, steaming mug of chocolate, liberally topped with whipped cream, marshmallows and a swirl of chocolate syrup.

  Ben was drinking a cup of coffee.

  ‘You said you wanted one of these,’ she accused, gesturing at her ridiculous mug.

  ‘I lied, because I knew you did.’

  Maddy stuck her tongue out at him. ‘Your loss,’ she said, scooping up a spoonful of cream and marshmallow. ‘Do you think we ought to have left them on their own?’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Ben breezily. ‘So what gives between Patrick and your mum, anyhow?’

  ‘Sounds mad, but I don’t really know …’ She stared into space for a while and then continued. ‘They’ve known each other since before I was born, I know that. But he definitely wasn’t around when I was growing up. It was always just me and Mum, really. It was good. No complaints.’

  ‘She’s young,’ observed Ben.

  ‘I suppose she is,’ said Maddy. ‘She was only twenty-three when I was born. Younger than I am now. I think about that a lot. I’m certainly not ready to be a mother …’

  ‘It must have been hard for her,’ said Ben, ‘being on her own. So, if your mum knew Patrick before you were born, and he wasn’t around when you were younger, what changed?’

  ‘It was purely that I decided to study here. Mum mentioned she had a friend who lived nearby and encouraged me to find him and introduce myself. She said for me to start searching at the Havenbury Arms because he was running it when she knew him. I turned up expecting to be told he had moved on, but there he was.’

  Maddy hadn’t been too keen at first, she remembered. Full of the excitement of being away from home for the first time, the last thing she wanted was to have someone old and boring keeping an eye on her.

  ‘I call him my godfather,’ she explained, ‘but he isn’t really. Just an old friend of my mum’s. An old ex-friend I suspect,’ she added.