by Heidi Swain
‘Are you happy to stay in there, Hayley?’ Catherine asked.
‘If that’s where you’d like me to stay,’ I smiled diplomatically.
The last thing I wanted to do was come across as ungrateful, and turning down the prettiest room in the hall would have been a sure-fire way of doing so.
‘That isn’t quite what I was asking,’ Catherine said gently.
‘Well,’ I said, shifting a little in my seat, ‘as it’s the most popular bedroom here, I was thinking perhaps it would be better if it was kept for guests and family. It’s so lovely and I know it’s Cass’s favourite.’
‘You do know that we think of you as family, don’t you?’ Angus frowned.
‘Of course,’ I said quickly, ‘but I’d be perfectly happy in another room.’
‘What about where I suggested?’ Dorothy said to Catherine.
She had finally taken her seat at the table, but was poised to spring back up should anyone look even remotely in need of further sustenance.
Catherine nodded.
‘How would you fancy moving across to be next to me at the far end of the hall?’ Dorothy asked. ‘You could have the bedroom at the other side of the sitting room I use and we could keep each other company in the evenings.’
Dorothy’s room was at the opposite end of the hall to the family rooms and had a cosy nook to relax in adjoining it. There was another bedroom on the opposite side of her little snug and it had always struck me as a comfortable spot.
‘Are you sure you could put up with me in such close proximity?’ I asked, only half joking. ‘We’re talking twenty-four-seven here, Dorothy.’
‘I know that,’ she tutted.
‘The question should be,’ grinned Mick, ‘can you put up with Dorothy? She has pretty appalling taste when it comes to music and movie nights, you know.’
‘Hey, hey.’ Dorothy retaliated. ‘I’ll have you know there’s nothing better than a little Tom Cruise to brighten up a bleak winter evening. I happen to do a word-perfect rendition of “Danger Zone” from Top Gun.’
I wasn’t sure what I was letting myself in for, but it couldn’t be worse than being at home listening to my father’s snores rattling the roof night after night, could it?
‘That’s settled then,’ said Catherine decisively. ‘Leave your boxes where they are tonight, have one last sleep in the Rose Room and tomorrow you can air out and dress your new space with whatever takes your fancy from the attic.’
With such an exciting prospect on the horizon, I already knew I was in for another sleepless night.
Later that evening, as I lay tossing and turning, I wondered what Gavin would have made of my new abode. However, that wasn’t the only thing on my mind. I could still feel Gabe’s caress long after he had removed the palm of his hand from the back of mine.
Chapter 11
The next morning, after an unusually early breakfast, Dorothy and I walked practically the entire length of the hall from the kitchen to get to my new living quarters. I had to decide how I wanted to dress them, given that Catherine had allowed me to choose from the treasure trove in the attic rooms.
‘All of this can be rearranged,’ Dorothy insisted as she opened the door to the sitting room that we would be sharing. ‘I’m sure we can switch things around so they suit us both.’
‘It’s perfect just the way it is,’ I told her. ‘There’s plenty of space for my few bits and pieces, but, my goodness, I’d forgotten how big your TV is!’
I shouldn’t have forgotten, given the way the delivery guys had puffed after they had finished lugging the gigantic box up innumerable flights of stairs. Still, Dorothy had rewarded them with a hearty lunch to make amends for their aching backs and had sent them on their way with slices of cake wrapped in parchment to see them through the rest of the day.
‘As you know, I’m not one for turning out in the evenings, now,’ Dorothy reminded me, ‘but a screen this size is as good as going to the cinema, and no one minds if you pause the action to make another cup of tea.’
I shook my head and smiled. There couldn’t be many pensioners with the same passion for films as my new roommate. I hoped she wasn’t going to keep me awake all night with her super-duper surround-sound system. That would be as bad as Dad snoring.
‘And this will be you,’ she said, opening the door to the bedroom that was on the opposite side of the sitting room to hers. ‘I’ve already opened the window, so it’s nicely aired. In fact, I think we’ll shut that now.’
The room was freezing, but fresh, and I took my time looking around the almost empty space. There was an old-fashioned metal bedframe, which Dorothy told me was Victorian, but the mattress was practically new and barely slept on.
‘There’s a really nice view from here,’ she said with a nod to the window, which overlooked the gardens at the rear of the hall and had a sill deep enough to sit on, ‘and the seat lifts up so you can store any bits and pieces that you don’t want on display.’
I peered inside wondering if it was large enough to stash away the art folder, which was currently hidden under the bed in the Rose Room. The sooner that was properly away from prying eyes, the better. I looked out across the gardens and, in spite of my insistence that I was turning off my heart from hereon in, it began to thump away in my chest. The fact that Gabe had just come into view had nothing to do with it. The fluttering was all about the realisation that this could be the perfect spot to sketch from, should I decide to carry on.
I quickly stepped away from the window and set about exploring the two deep cupboards on either side of the fireplace, one of which had a hanging rail. There was no other furniture in the room and the wooden floorboards made it sound hollow, but thick curtains and a rug would soon solve that problem.
‘So,’ asked Dorothy, biting her lip. ‘What do you think? I know it’s not a patch on the Rose Room, but—’
‘It’s perfect,’ I told her.
‘Well, it will be when you’ve decided how to decorate it.’ She smiled. ‘And the heating is pretty efficient up here so you’ll be nice and cosy.’
I nodded. I still couldn’t believe that this was where I was going to be living. All these years Catherine and Angus had been asking me to move in, but I had stuck it out at home, and for what? Had I made the break sooner, Mum might have found the courage to move on a lifetime ago, but I knew there was little point in thinking like that.
It was finally going to happen for her now and I was lucky to have another family waiting in the wings to welcome me into their home. And at least I could say I had been a dutiful daughter. I might have made a complete mess of my schooling and what happened after it, but I had done my best to make amends and pay my way in the years that followed.
‘You deserve this,’ said Dorothy, as she crossed the room and rubbed my arm. ‘It’s about time you started living your own life, my darling. It’s time you got out from under your father’s thumb.’
I opened my mouth to explain just how grateful I was to have the opportunity to do so, but she carried on.
‘It’s high time you stopped blaming yourself for everything that happened in the past, Hayley. You need to leave it all behind.’
I knew she was right, but there was still one thing from the past that was holding me back. I would have to face it soon, but not quite yet. I didn’t want anything to spoil today, not even thoughts of my shattered heart.
‘You made the right decision choosing not to put up with that Gavin,’ she told me. ‘He wasn’t good enough for you, my girl.’
I couldn’t help but smile. Dorothy had demoted the once scorching scaffolder to ‘that Gavin’ the second she’d discovered what he had been up to.
‘I know you’re not going to get over him in a hurry, but please don’t let his abhorrent behaviour be the excuse for shutting down your heart.’
‘I’m not shutting down my heart,’ I told her. ‘I’m just hanging the “out to lunch” sign up for a while. Give me a few months and it’ll be
back in business.’
‘But for what, exactly?’ She frowned.
‘Fun and frolics,’ I shrugged, my eyes straying back to the window where I could still see Gabe walking in the garden. ‘I won’t be looking for anything heavy again. I’m not cut out for it.’
‘What you’re suggesting doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with your heart to me.’
‘Well, perhaps it doesn’t,’ I shrugged again.
‘Please don’t let everything that’s happened stop you falling in love again,’ Dorothy sniffed, as I heard footsteps in the corridor outside.
‘Dorothy,’ I told her with a small smile. ‘I know you mean well, but I have no intention of falling in love again. It hurts too much when it goes wrong. Why would I set myself up for this sort of suffering all over again?’
‘Don’t say that,’ she said. ‘You can’t assume things will go wrong.’
‘Look,’ I told her, wishing she didn’t look so sad. ‘I’m fine. I promise, I’m perfectly happy as I am, so please don’t go crying over me and please,’ I added, giving her a hug, ‘please let’s not have deep and meaningful conversations every five minutes because, if we do, we’ll never have any fun up here.’
She nodded and kissed my hair, then moved to the window to dry her eyes as Anna and Molly bounded into the room. They looked more like two excited teenagers who’d been downing WKD behind the village hall than sensible, grown-up women.
‘What’s got into the pair of you?’ I asked.
I couldn’t pinpoint why exactly, but I felt suspicious seeing them with such a spring in their step so early in the day.
Molly opened her mouth to say something, but Anna elbowed her in the ribs and got in first.
‘Nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘We’re just excited to help you get sorted in here, that’s all.’
I could always tell when she was lying.
Dorothy had swiftly recovered from her unusually emotional moment and showed me the bathroom across the corridor, which we would also be sharing. ‘If you find what you want up in the attic rooms, Hayley,’ she said, ‘I’ll draft the menfolk in to help shift it after lunch.’
‘I’m sure we’ll be able to manage,’ I told her. ‘But thank you.’
‘Don’t be so stubborn,’ said Anna. ‘It will be quicker if everyone helps.’
She was right, of course, but the Hayley I was attempting to reprise – the smart-talking sassy one – had never been very good at accepting help. I needed to remember that it was only my heart that I was ringfencing. Accepting an offer of help didn’t necessarily mean that I was going soft again.
‘And you think about what I said,’ Dorothy told me pointedly before she went back to the kitchen.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Molly as soon as Dorothy was out of earshot.
‘And I thought you could read minds,’ I tutted, striding by and heading up to the attics.
We squeezed our way past Dolores, the stuffed brown bear, which Catherine refused to have on display down in the hall, and into the rooms that were packed with all the things I wanted to put in my new quarters.
‘Do you have a theme in mind?’ asked Anna, as we looked along the corridor where Catherine had attempted, in spite of Angus’s efforts to throw the system into chaos, to keep things packed away in alphabetical order. ‘Or a colour?’
‘And are you keeping the bedframe?’ joined in Molly. ‘Or is it too girlie?’
‘Yes, yes, yes and no,’ I told them with a smile.
‘Oh well,’ laughed Anna, ‘that should save some time, then.’
My two friends had been rather taken aback as I began making a pile of things to carry down to my room next to Dolores.
‘This isn’t what I was expecting at all,’ said Anna, shaking her head as I added another cushion to the three I’d already found.
‘Me neither,’ agreed Molly, as she tucked her untameable hair behind her ears for the hundredth time that morning and inspected the three framed rose prints I had just set out.
‘Why not?’ I asked, standing back up and smoothing out the kinks in my spine.
‘Well . . .’ Anna began.
‘It’s all a bit pink,’ Molly cut in.
She was right. It was all a bit pink. From the Laura Ashley vintage curtains to the silky-soft hand-sewn eiderdown, it was all a bit pink and a bit flowery.
‘I’ve never had you down as someone who likes this kind of pretty, pastel stuff,’ said Anna. ‘I thought this was all more my taste than yours.’
‘Good,’ I laughed out loud, making them both jump. ‘Because do you know what? I can’t think of anything worse than being predictable. I’m rather chuffed I’ve surprised you both and you’re just jealous, Anna, because you have to share a room with Jamie, who litters the floors with his dirty laundry and wouldn’t let this sort of stuff anywhere near your room.’
‘So, have you picked this lot out to annoy me or because it’s what you really want?’ She grinned.
I didn’t have a chance to answer.
‘How are you getting on?’
It was Catherine.
‘I see the moths still haven’t got to Dolores, then,’ she went on, skirting her way around the bear she had feared since childhood but couldn’t bring herself to part with. ‘Aha,’ she smiled when she spotted what I had picked out, completely ruining my unpredictable reputation. ‘I had a feeling you might go for this lot.’
‘Is that all right?’
‘Of course it is,’ she told me. ‘It should never have been packed away, but there’s no point dwelling on that now.’
‘Thank you, Catherine.’
‘Now, come on. Dorothy is about to ring the gong for lunch and after that we’ll see to getting this lot shifted.’
Anna and Molly were looking more puzzled than ever, but I didn’t explain that Catherine had once used these pretty furnishings to dress another room to tempt me to take up residence in the hall. I had longed to move in back then, but family loyalty had stopped me. The beautiful room I had spent literally years dreaming about was finally going to be mine.
‘Just your stuff in the Rose Room to shift now, then,’ said Mick, brushing down his trousers as he straightened up after helping me position the rug between the bed and the fireplace.
‘Yep,’ I said, looking about me in excitement, ‘then we can call it a day.’
‘And is this how you hoped it would look?’
I cast my eyes over the pretty, pastel haven we had created. This was one longed-for wish that I had found the courage to make come true without the assistance of the tree in the woods.
‘Yes,’ I said, sighing with pleasure, ‘it is.’
‘That’s good then.’
‘Although,’ I added, ‘I was hoping Anna and Molly would be here to see it all come together. Do you know where they’ve disappeared to?’
‘The Rose Room,’ he said. ‘They said they’d go and get the rest of your stuff while we were putting the rug down.’
I rushed from the room, my excitement forgotten as I hoped neither of them had thought to look under the bed.
‘Is everything all right?’ Mick called after me.
As it turned out, no, everything was not all right.
I could hear the pair chattering excitedly even before I had entered the room. I burst in to find them huddled together on the bed with my now-empty folder, its contents spread across the bed being scrutinised.
‘What have you got there?’ I asked, thinking that if I played dumb then perhaps they wouldn’t associate the work with me at all.
‘When we came up here to find you earlier, Suki dived under the bed,’ began Molly, ‘and tugged this out.’
I wasn’t sure I believed her. The plucky little dog might have had a heart and attitude to match a bull mastiff, but her physical strength was chihuahua all the way, and the packed folder would have been far too heavy for her to heave out.
‘Crikey,’ was all I could manage.
‘Why di
dn’t you tell us?’ asked Anna, her head still bent over one of the sketchbooks.
‘Tell you what?’
‘About this, of course,’ said Molly, her eyes shining with excitement as she pointed at the piles of sketches and paintings. ‘We waited all morning for you to mention it but you didn’t say a word.’
‘But I didn’t know anything about it,’ I replied. ‘Someone must have hidden it there.’
‘And you didn’t spot it when you were vacuuming?’ Anna tutted. ‘Shame on you, Hayley Hurren. I had you down as a housekeeper who hoovered under the beds, not swept things under the carpet.’
I chewed my lip but didn’t bite back. One thing I could never tolerate was having my work ethic criticised. Anna knew that and was purposely trying to get a rise out of me.
‘Do you think it’s been there long?’ asked Molly, kicking off what was clearly a well-rehearsed little speech.
‘Not all that long,’ said Anna. ‘I’d say no more than a few days.’
‘Really?’
Even though I knew they meant no harm, my hands were beginning to sweat and my heart was beating so loudly I was sure one of them was going to hear it.
‘Well, never mind about all that,’ I said, in a vain attempt to try to throw them off. ‘Come and see how the room looks. Mick and I have hung the curtains and laid the rug and you wouldn’t recognise it. It’s gorgeous.’
Neither of them was listening to me, as Molly’s next question confirmed.
‘So, what makes you say that, Anna?’
She was grinning now.
‘Because I know for a fact,’ Anna replied, finally tearing her eyes from the bed to look into mine, ‘that Hayley put this folder here.’
‘What?’ Molly gasped in fake shock.
‘What are you talking about?’ I snapped.
‘HH,’ Anna announced, holding up one of the drawings and pointing to my initials, which I had added in the bottom right-hand corner. ‘Hayley Hurren.’
‘Well I never,’ said Molly, shaking her head.
‘These are Hayley’s drawings and sketches,’ Anna carried on.
‘Oh my,’ whispered Molly in faux surprise. ‘Did you do these, Hayley? Did you really do all of this?’