Book Read Free

The Homecoming

Page 16

by Rosie Howard


  ‘What moment?’

  He didn’t answer but Maddy watched as Helen walked through the double doors to the ward. Even her back looked disapproving but, over her shoulder, Maddy saw Patrick break into a smile as he saw her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘My God, Maddy,’ exclaimed Serena as they got out of the Land Rover. ‘You look bloody awful.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Doesn’t she look awful?’ she implored Ben. ‘I don’t think I even noticed earlier,’ she went on. ‘What with the whole Kevin thing. Vile little man,’ she added. ‘You just look like you haven’t slept for a week,’ she said. ‘Or eaten, come to that.’

  ‘You know I’ve done that,’ said Maddy. ‘You fed me yourself last night.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Serena, ‘I wasn’t going to mention it until after you’d spoken to Giles but now you have – and Ben think’s it’s a great idea too, by the way—’

  ‘Mads!’ The shriek cut across the idea Serena was just about to reveal at last. Maddy turned awkwardly on her crutches to see Flora barrelling towards her from the barn. There was a flurry of fur gilet, plaits and beads. Several of them thwacked Maddy in the face as Flora threw her arms around her.

  ‘Mads,’ she exclaimed, as if she hadn’t seen Maddy for years. ‘Soooo excited about the Bespoke Consortium thingie all being here on one spot. Sooo cool!’ She carried on, working her way around the little group doling out hugs and kisses all round. ‘Hmm,’ she said approvingly, giving Ben’s bicep a little squeeze before she put him down. ‘I would,’ she said to Maddy with a wink. ‘Can’t wait ’til you move in,’ she continued. ‘We can have sleepovers!’

  ‘Erm,’ interjected Serena, ‘I haven’t actually …’

  ‘Oops! Sorree …’ said Flora, clapping her hand to her mouth. ‘Anyhoo, got to go, just helping the boy with his new pelt delivery. Pongs a bit,’ she added, holding her nose. ‘Must dash!’

  ‘Allow me,’ said Serena to Maddy at last.

  Maddy was dying for a coffee but Serena led her not to the kitchen but to a gate leading out of the courtyard and down a steep cobbled slope.

  ‘Watch it here,’ Ben said, taking Maddy’s elbow. ‘The cobbles can be a bit slippery.’

  ‘This is sweet,’ remarked Maddy, as she saw the little square building beyond, with its flint and brick walls and steeply sloping clay tile roof. It was a perfect square and tiny, perhaps just fifteen feet from front to back.

  ‘Glad you think so,’ said Serena, leading her towards a wooden door not more than five-and-a-half feet high. ‘Mind your head,’ she said. ‘Especially you,’ she added to Ben.

  Straightening up inside, and repositioning her crutches firmly into her elbows, Maddy looked around. ‘How gorgeous! I never knew this was here.’

  ‘Old grain store,’ explained Serena. ‘Giles had it all done up as an office, but he never got into the habit of working from home so I chucked him out. I thought it might be good holiday accommodation or something but – in truth – I could never be arsed with holidaymakers coming and going …’

  Inside, the interior was cosy, with a low ceiling over the kitchen area where they were standing, but opening right to the raftered roof beyond it, where a comfortable-looking sofa covered in squashy cushions sat in front of a woodburning stove. There was dark slate on the floor with a thick wool rug defining the sitting area. The interior was saved from gloom by a wide French window in the opposite wall that opened onto a verandah with a bistro table and two chairs. Beyond was the most stunning view of the Sussex countryside. From the little room you could imagine there wasn’t another house for miles, just rolling hills, mainly fields with patches of woodland and a silvery stream running through the valley below.

  ‘It’s absolutely beautiful,’ said Maddy when she had taken it all in.

  At that point, she noticed the ladder leading from the sofa area to the little loft area where she could just see a low bed platform piled high with plump pillows, and one of the Bespoke Consortium’s checked woollen blankets.

  ‘There’s a bed on the mezzanine, of course,’ said Serena, following Maddy’s eyes. ‘There’s not a lot of headroom, but it’s enough, and there’s a shower room behind it. The plumbing and drainage was all there already because Giles had put the kitchen in. We improved it a bit, of course,’ she continued, looking around the little apartment with an appraising eye. ‘So, it’s not much,’ she said, holding her hands out to the sides, ‘but it’ll do you good to get out of that cramped little bedroom at the pub …’

  ‘Me?’ said Maddy disbelievingly. ‘I can really have this?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Serena. ‘That’s the point: it’s for you. Oh, but silly me,’ she exclaimed, misreading Maddy’s look of disbelief, ‘you’re worried about your leg. Of course that’s a nuisance but Ben and I have thought it through. That’s a sofa bed,’ she explained, waving at the little sofa. ‘It’s a reasonably good one. You’ll be comfortable enough until you can manage the ladder. And luckily the loo’s downstairs,’ she added, checking around to spot and eliminate any other issues Maddy might be concerned about. ‘It’ll be no fun washing in the kitchen sink, I appreciate, but you can pop into the house whenever you like and have a really lovely soak in the bath. And the cast is coming off soon enough, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not that, it’s not …’ said Maddy. ‘It’s absolutely amazing but – I mean – I can’t …’ she trailed off and then continued, ‘Giles has made me put a salary in the budget for the first year of the Bespoke Consortium – did he say?’ she asked Serena, not waiting for the answer. ‘It’s wonderful to have an income, of course, but it doesn’t run to renting a lovely place like this.’

  ‘Good grief, are you mad?’ exclaimed Serena. ‘You don’t have to pay rent! Of course you can’t afford to on the tiny bit of money you’ll get for the first year. I jolly well hope you’ll be making more by the end of it … No, I want you to live here as our guest. Actually, not even our guest, let’s just say it’s part of the deal in return for your contribution to the Bespoke Consortium. It suits us all for you to be here. It makes perfect sense.’

  Maddy looked around again. ‘It’s just simply the loveliest place I’ve ever seen,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Anyhow,’ continued Serena, ‘Ben says you have to move here. For your health.’

  Ben shuffled his feet. ‘I didn’t exactly say that. What I actually said is that I suspect your condition might deteriorate unless we can get you away from the pub, which does – for some reason – seem to be triggering.’

  ‘Ah,’ sighed Maddy. ‘Here it comes.’

  ‘It’s not just this morning,’ he went on. ‘You’ve said yourself that your sleep is becoming more disturbed. Then there was the flashback. These are all signs that uncomfortable memories are resurfacing …’

  ‘I thought I was supposed to be remembering stuff.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly say that. I think what’s happening at the moment is that the trauma is resurfacing in an uncontrolled and potentially damaging way. Your mind is telling you that – in the environment you are in – it can no longer suppress the memories it was keeping a lid on while you were in London. Its strategies to keep you in denial are breaking down and it’s distressed. You’re distressed, Maddy,’ he added gently.

  She was conscious of his gaze but couldn’t lift her eyes, which were unaccountably filling with tears. He was right, dammit. She was cracking up. She rubbed her eyes furiously, and – instead of looking at Ben – she turned to Serena with a bright smile.

  ‘I absolutely love it. I’d love to be here. But only when I know Patrick and Helen are okay without me.’

  Serena sighed with relief. ‘Fantastic,’ she said, giving Ben a triumphant look. ‘You can be in by the end of the week.’

  Bumping along the country lanes in Ben’s Land Rover, Maddy started getting nervous at the thought of Patrick and Helen having spent a couple of hours on their own. If one had murdered the other her money was on He
len. Patrick didn’t stand a chance.

  ‘Come and have supper with us tonight?’ she asked. ‘Mum’s made lasagne and I think I might need your peacekeeping skills.’

  ‘Didn’t manage to achieve much in Bosnia, so with Patrick and Helen I’ve got no chance,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I can’t this evening, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Nope. Got a hot date, actually.’

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘Okay …’ She turned to look out of the window, pretending to be fascinated by the advertising hoarding by the railway station. Of course he had a date. She swallowed her disillusionment and turned back to discover him grinning at her.

  ‘A “hot date” with Jonno, my mad, bald, pot-bellied and tattooed army buddy who is calling in his God-given right to a wild night with his old mate painting Brighton town red,’ he said. ‘It may be my most dangerous mission yet.’

  ‘It’s no concern of mine who you see.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, seeing her prim expression, as he drew up outside the Havenbury Arms. ‘I shouldn’t tease. Now wish me luck – I may not make it through the night.’

  Maddy leant in to give him a peck on the cheek but he put his arms around her and gathered her in for a far too brotherly hug instead, the gear stick digging into her hip, and her plastered leg sticking out awkwardly. Uncomfortable as it was, pressed up against him she nearly groaned aloud with the pleasure of his embrace. The only girl she wanted Ben to have a hot date with was her. Failing that, she wanted to just stay here, in his arms, feeling his warmth and breathing in his smell … Disappointingly, after one final squeeze, he released her and drew away. Reluctantly, she grabbed her crutches.

  ‘Take care, Maddy,’ he said. ‘Stay out of trouble, and try to get some sleep.’

  To Maddy’s relief, Patrick and Helen were both sitting companionably at the little kitchen table over mugs of tea and a plate of biscuits, now empty except a few crumbs.

  ‘Were your ears burning?’ asked Helen, waving a mug at Maddy in enquiry.

  ‘Yes please,’ said Maddy to the offer of tea. ‘My ears are fine,’ she added, pretending to check. ‘Why? What have the two of you been plotting?’

  ‘Patrick was just saying that he’s been getting good feedback about your contribution to the food menu. Your Trevor’s doing a great job with the new menu, and the locals are loving the whole simple, local produce thing,’ said Helen, patting Patrick on the shoulder. ‘So I’m telling him there’s no rush to get back to the kitchen.’

  ‘He’s a sweetie,’ agreed Maddy, ‘but I’m frustrated this’ – she rapped her knuckles on her plaster – ‘has meant we needed to bring someone in.’

  ‘Just what I was saying,’ said Patrick. ‘I’m perfectly happy to go with the new menu and suppliers but we just can’t be splashing money around that we haven’t got paying wages now I’m back.’

  Helen raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Get him,’ she said to Maddy. ‘He was three-quarters dead a few weeks ago and now he’s Superman.’

  ‘Near enough,’ said Patrick, ‘and if you’re keen to see me wear my underpants outside my tights you only have to ask.’

  ‘What makes you think I want to see your underpants under any circumstances?’ retorted Helen. ‘Tell him, Maddy.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare,’ grinned Maddy, chickening out. ‘Although it would be a shame to overdo it.’

  Patrick’s shirt was unbuttoned just far enough for her to see the top couple of inches of a livid red scar, which now divided his chest. As always he was smiling but Maddy noticed how he shifted uncomfortably on his chair, holding his ribs as he turned.

  ‘It’s about time you had a rest,’ snapped Helen, noticing too. ‘I’m going to get you to bed,’ she said, standing and holding out her arm.

  ‘Steady on, woman,’ joked Patrick. ‘I thought I wasn’t supposed to be overdoing it.’

  Helen didn’t move.

  ‘Alright, you bossy woman,’ he said. ‘Perhaps just for half an hour.’

  ‘Must you do that today?’ Maddy asked as she clumped noisily into the kitchen for her first cup of tea of the day. Patrick was already up and dressed, sitting at the table, working his way methodically through a large pile of post. With a mug of coffee to the side of him, he was slicing envelopes with the butter knife and dumping the majority of the proceeds into the waste bin beside him. It was already overflowing.

  ‘No time like the present – although it would have been nice if you’d brought them to me in hospital, like I’d asked.’ He peered at her over the top of his glasses but Maddy was unmoved.

  ‘The nurses told me not to,’ she lied. ‘Anyhow, I’d be very surprised if there was anything important.’

  ‘There’s this, for a start,’ he said, picking up an A4 envelope with a ‘Top Taverns’ frank on it.

  ‘I haven’t seen that before,’ she said, reaching for it.

  ‘Actually this one only came this morning,’ he admitted, snatching it back out of her grasp. ‘Make us another cup of coffee, darling,’ he pleaded. ‘I can hear your mum’s up now so she’d probably like one too.’

  With Maddy’s attention elsewhere, Patrick slid the knife across the top of the envelope and slid out a sheaf of papers with a letter paper-clipped to the front. Laying the papers carefully to one side, he held the letter in both hands and read, with concentration.

  When Maddy turned back to the table, with a mug in each hand, just about managing to rock the couple of steps on her cast, she saw that Patrick was sitting completely still, staring unseeing at the letter. His face was grey and beads of sweat were breaking out on his forehead.

  ‘Patrick!’ she exclaimed, plonking down the mugs, oblivious to the coffee slopping onto the table and onto the edge of the sheaf of paper, which Patrick had laid to one side.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, my lovely,’ said Patrick, through stiff lips. ‘I’m completely fine … just need my spray if you could …’ He gestured to the worktop behind him.

  Shaking, Maddy clumped over to the other side of the room putting her full weight on her broken leg but barely registering the stab of pain that resulted. She scrabbled through the bottles of medication Patrick had brought back from the hospital with him. Amongst them was a slim white canister with a spray top.

  ‘This?’

  Patrick nodded, staring with concentration at the table as he held onto the edge with both hands.

  Fumbling with the lid, Maddy stumbled back to him. She watched anxiously as he sprayed it twice under his tongue and then looked up at Maddy with what he clearly hoped was a reassuring smile. It was more of a grimace.

  Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Shall I call an ambulance?’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘Wait.’

  She sat down opposite him and watched intently. Over a couple of minutes, his breathing eased and colour seeped back into his face.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said at last, with a more convincing smile.

  Maddy brushed away tears, and reached for the letter. ‘Is it this?’ she demanded. ‘What do they say? Please let me see …’

  Patrick shook his head with resignation. ‘It’s fine. Not a surprise, just a bit of a blow, that’s all …’

  Maddy skimmed the letter rapidly, exclaiming rudely at intervals. Getting to the end and practically spitting in fury at Dennis’s ridiculously grandiose signature – it nearly took up half the page – she made herself read it through carefully again from the beginning.

  ‘Wanker,’ she said at last, with feeling.

  ‘Language.’

  ‘He is. Can he do this?’

  ‘He’s doing it.’

  ‘So, basically,’ she said, waving at the lease on the table, ‘this is what they want you to sign or they’ll chuck you out after Christmas.’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘And they want how much per week?’ She rifled through the papers until she found it. ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said, throwing it back down on the table in disgust. ‘The pub can’t
possibly pay that.’

  ‘The beer ties have got a bit more onerous too,’ said Patrick, grabbing a pencil and circling a paragraph on the next page. ‘I barely sell enough of the stuff to suit them as it is.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s bloody awful.’

  ‘Language,’ joked Maddy mirthlessly.

  They sat in silence.

  ‘I’m spent,’ said Patrick.

  Maddy shook her head frantically, the corners of her mouth turning down. ‘No.’

  ‘I am,’ insisted Patrick. ‘I’m too old for this game.’ He pushed the lease papers away. ‘It’s not the same as it was and I don’t like the new rules one little bit. Even if I didn’t have the whole heart thing I should probably be calling it a day. Leave the whole local publican thing to a younger man – like that Irish bloke down on the quay. Johnny or something. A jumped-up Irish boozer with ambitions to run a monopoly, I don’t doubt …’

  ‘Where will you live?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll admit it’s damned hard to imagine living anywhere else. I can’t persuade myself Pirate will enjoy the change.’

  They both fell silent again, listening to Helen in the sitting room, chatting to Pirate as she took the blanket off his cage and his squawk of greeting.

  ‘He’ll miss the company,’ Patrick went on. ‘And so will I.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘Compulsory beer ties aren’t legal any more,’ said Ben.

  ‘How the heck do you know that?’ said Maddy, stirring the cream into her hot chocolate to stop it looking quite so much like a Mr Whippy ice cream. ‘I feel like a six-year-old,’ she complained mildly.

  ‘You love it like that,’ said Ben. ‘I even asked for extra marshmallows.’

  ‘Back to beer ties, Mastermind,’ said Maddy. ‘I had no idea they were your specialist subject. What gives?’

  ‘So,’ said Ben, ‘I was talking to my mate Jonno last night, as you know.’

 

‹ Prev