Hopeful Hearts at Glendale Hall

by Victoria Walters

  ‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ I said to Harry. ‘I suspect it will get very messy, mind.’ I leaned down to kiss him. ‘I won’t be long okay, love?’

  ‘Bye,’ he said cheerfully, waving. I smiled. Life didn’t touch him much yet, it was a shame that it ever had to.

  ‘Take as long as you need,’ Emily said gently, when I stood up, touching my arm in support. ‘We’ll be just fine.’

  ‘Thanks, Em,’ I told her gratefully. Honestly, without the support I had in Glendale, there was no way I could get through Christmas. ‘Save me a gingerbread man,’ I added as I walked out, waving back to Harry as I left. It was always a pull to leave him but I knew he was in safe hands, and I didn’t want him to see me cry, which I knew I would do. I always did.

  Dad parked the car outside Glendale church and we set off arm-in-arm towards it. The sun was high in the sky now, the day cold and crisp, making the village look beautiful. The temperature was definitely dropping again. I wondered if it would be another white Christmas. I hoped so for Harry. As long as we could get to the Hall to celebrate then I wouldn’t mind so much either. Perhaps the white stuff was finally growing on me. Or at least not worrying me as much as it had in the past.

  ‘Heather, Don,’ a voice said behind us. We turned to see Brodie coming out of the vicarage, giving us a nod in greeting. It was funny sometimes to see him in his dog-collar, performing his job, when I was more used to him at the Hall drinking and eating with us. I’d never met a more relaxed minister in my life but I knew he was an excellent one, everyone in the village spoke highly of him, and I could see how happy he made Emily. ‘She brought the sun out for you,’ he said, shaking my dad’s hand, and giving mine a squeeze afterwards. He knew why we were here, of course.

  ‘She was happiest on a sunny day,’ my dad agreed with a smile.

  ‘Well, I’ll see you both later. I’m off to practise my sermon for Sunday,’ Brodie said. ‘I’ll make sure you’re on our prayer list too,’ he added, and headed off into the church.

  Neither Dad or I were believers really but the church formed a big part of our life anyway with all the family events we attended, and the fact Brodie was so close to us, so we appreciated his gesture.

  We walked on together slowly around the back of the church and into the cemetery. It was a small cemetery and there was no longer burial space but Dad had paid for a bench with a plaque for my mother in there. It overlooked the village, which she had loved living in so it was a perfect memorial for her. She had been cremated, and her ashes scattered in the gardens of Broomwood Castle, a place she had loved to visit.

  ‘Do you think she can see us here?’ I asked when we had sat down on her bench. The cemetery was bare as it was winter, the trees empty of leaves, and the grass mixed with mud, but there was always a peace here that made it beautiful even at this time of the year, and with the sun shining down, there was warmth too. You could imagine that maybe she was here with us.

  ‘I think she’s always with us, I really do. Look at Harry – when he smiles, I can see her smile.’

  ‘Me too,’ I agreed. ‘I miss her, Dad. I know that’s obvious but it’s the everyday, small things, that have hit me hard lately. Like with Harry, knowing what to do sometimes, I wish I could ask her. She always seemed to know the right thing to do.’

  He nodded. ‘I feel the same. I always went to her for advice, from when I first met her, right up to the end. There was no one’s opinion I trusted more. But I don’t think you need to worry. Everything she knew, and everything she was, she passed on to you. You’re a wonderful mother, just as she was.’

  I felt the tears rising up already. ‘I wish I could feel that. I feel like I get it all wrong when I try so hard.’

  ‘No one can possibly get everything right in life. I wish I could take some of your worries away. You’ve always taken so much onto yourself. When you really shouldn’t. Harry has so many people who love him, there’s nothing to worry about. He’s so well looked after.’

  ‘I worry about the future,’ I admitted, looking down at my hands. ‘About being there for him. I don’t want him to ever go through what I did.’

  ‘Well, that’s understandable but none of us know what’s going to happen in life. Surely worrying about things that haven’t happened yet just robs you of the joy of today? We all need to plan ahead, of course, but not so much you don’t enjoy what you have now. And you enjoy what you have now, don’t you?’

  I glanced at him, my eyes full of tears. ‘Sometimes I feel like I can’t let myself enjoy it. What if it all slips away from me?’

  ‘Well, why will it?’

  ‘I was so worried I wasn’t suited to this life, to farming, all of it, and now it’s being threatened by everything that might happen at Hilltop, by Stewart turning up too, and it’s shaken me more than I thought it would. It feels like my fault. Like I need to stop it somehow.’ I explained that Stewart seemed to think I was crazy to want the life I was living, that I should come and work with him, that if I did the farm would be protected, but if I didn’t what would happen to it then? ‘I’m stuck. There’s no right choice to make, is there?’

  Dad twisted to look at me, taking my hand in his. ‘There is always a right choice to make, and it’s the one that will make you and your family happy. Don’t be pushed into something you aren’t sure about because you think it’s up to you to make it okay. You didn’t ask Stewart to come here. It’s not your fault.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps this is a good time to tell you – I was never Stewart’s biggest fan. Your mother told me to keep my opinion to myself in case we lost you, we could see how much you loved him. But I always thought he was rather… manipulative.’

  ‘Really?’ I raised an eyebrow in surprise.

  ‘You changed so much when you met him. I don’t think you realised. But a lot of your confidence seemed to go. You started seeking his opinion about everything. You were never the most decisive person but you always got there in the end, you just liked to take your time, and consider everything, but then you just let him decide for you. You’re not like that with Rory. You seem… freer.’

  ‘That’s because he’s so different from me, he’s so laid-back, he doesn’t worry, he just gets on with things.’ I smiled a little through my tears. Rory could handle anything life threw at him, I was sure of it.

  ‘But you’ve become like that too. You fell in love with him so quickly, and you just embraced it. Then you fell pregnant and you took that in your stride too, and moved into the farm and became this amazing woman building a family and a business. Look at how your posts about the farm have inspired people, you got the farm on national TV for goodness’ sake. Who else could do that, love? Honestly, your mother would have been so proud of who you are now.’

  My heart lifted for a moment. I wanted nothing more than for her to be looking down proud of me. ‘I worry that I can’t hold it all together though, Dad. Like it’s all going to fall apart.’

  ‘That’s because you care so much, if you didn’t love Rory and Harry and the farm then you wouldn’t be worried about keeping it all together, right?’

  I hadn’t thought of it like that. I’d been so scared I was failing at all of it, I hadn’t realised it was because I wanted it to work desperately. Because I did love it. Rory, Harry and the farm. And perhaps it had taken the past few days to really make me see that clearly. ‘What if Stewart ruins it all?’ I whispered, panic seizing me again.

  My dad shook his head. ‘Don’t let him,’ he said fiercely.

  I sat back and wiped my eyes. We fell into silence as I processed his words. I had let Stewart voice my fears. That I’d never be good enough as a mother, and as a partner to Rory, but is anyone ever really good enough? All I could do was my best, right? ‘Rory said something…’ I said slowly. ‘That maybe Stewart had chosen the farm next to ours because I lived there.’

  Dad thought for a moment. ‘It is a big coincidence, isn’t it, that he would want to build a hotel on your doorstep? Did he kn
ow you lived there?’

  ‘I’m not sure but I think I need to find out.’ I turned to him. ‘Stewart kissed me,’ I admitted. ‘I pulled away immediately but I feel so guilty. I’m not sure if Rory can forgive me. And I don’t know what I will do if he doesn’t.’

  ‘Rory loves you, so much. If you love him just as much then you can work it out the two of you, I know that.’ He pulled me into a hug. ‘I’m always here for you, Heather. I hope you know that. I know I’m no substitute for your mum but I want to do the best I can.’

  I pulled back to smile at him. ‘You are the best,’ I told him fiercely. ‘Dad, I’d love you to come and live with us on the farm. Not just for Christmas, I mean. But forever. Rory does too. Will you consider it?’ We didn’t have my mother any longer to ask for advice, but we had each other.

  He smiled. ‘I will. Thank you.’ I rested my head on his shoulder, as we looked out at Glendale, the place we called home. ‘She will always be right here with us, won’t she?’

  ‘Always,’ I agreed, another tear rolling down my cheek.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  After we had lunch in the Glendale Arms, and raised a toast to my mum, I left Dad heading for the vicarage, promising to join him there shortly. There was something I needed to do first. If Rory and my dad were right that Stewart had chosen Glendale because of me, then both his job offer, and his behaviour around me since he arrived had indeed been manipulative.

  My dad said he thought Stewart had always been like that towards me, and it got me thinking back over the course of our relationship. I thought about how he would push me to go clubbing even if I had to be up early for a lecture, how he got annoyed when I said I needed to study before an exam, that he always wanted me to do what he wanted to do. And how he had been so impatient if I felt anxious. And then there was the fact he had mapped out our whole future without even really asking me if it was what I actually wanted.

  * * *

  ‘I’ve applied for an apprenticeship at a firm in Edinburgh, my tutor recommended them because they’ll pay me a decent amount to help me become a fully-fledged architect,’ Stewart said in his room one night.

  I was curled up against his chest and I propped myself up on my elbows. ‘I haven’t even thought about a job next year yet, we have months left of uni.’

  ‘These things are really sought after, I had to get in there early. But my dad knows someone who works there so I think I’ve got a good shot. Grades depending obviously.’ He shrugged – he was so confident he’d pass all his exams, he always had done.

  I bit my lip and hesitated before saying. ‘So, you’d be in Edinburgh next year then?’

  He turned to face me. ‘You mean, we will be in Edinburgh next year.’

  ‘We will?’

  Brushing back a hair from my face, he smiled. ‘Well, I’m not going without you. You said it yourself, you don’t know yet what you want to do but I have the perfect idea. We can set up our own design company. I’ll do this apprenticeship and build a name for myself, and you can get any job you like in the city, and we can work towards setting up our own company. It’ll be so great. You and me in the city having fun, we can rent a flat there, and it’ll be just like it is here.’

  ‘I don’t know. I never really thought of living anywhere but Glendale, I suppose.’

  Stewart snorted. ‘What the hell will you do in that Godforsaken place? And you want to be with me, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘Well, then.’ He kissed me. ‘Let’s celebrate…’ he said, reaching for my pyjama top. I lifted my hands, feeling somewhat bulldozed but he was right that I wanted to be with him, and he was the one who knew what he wanted to do, so I should support that, right?

  * * *

  I shook my head at that memory. He hadn’t asked me what I wanted. I had just gone along with what he wanted. And he was trying to do it all over again.

  I thought about the problems at the farm – the power cut, the dog that had appeared, the cow getting stuck in the mud… things that had made me question even more whether I could handle life there. And Stewart had used them to suggest that I wasn’t suited to being on the farm, that it was all too much for me. Rory even wondered whether he’d had something to do with those things.

  And now I was worried that maybe he had.

  I was furious that he thought he could threaten my family, and home, like he had been doing. I liked to see the best in people however, and I had loved him once, so much – surely if he still cared for me as he said he did then he wouldn’t want to hurt the people that I loved? And for what ends – the chance to get me back? Or just to prove that he could?

  Suddenly, I felt like I couldn’t trust anything he said or did. And maybe I never should have.

  As I walked to our farm shop, I thought about my dad telling me that he thought I had far more confidence now than I had back when I had been with Stewart. It was true that I had been intimidated on occasion by how ambitious and determined he was, how sure he was that he’d be successful, and how I had been nervous that he would leave me for someone better than me – someone prettier, more intelligent, more capable.

  I compared that to Rory. I admired him so much for running the farm and I didn’t want to let him down, but if I was really honest it was me who thought I wasn’t capable, he had never once said or made me feel that way. He always wanted to show me things, to encourage me, to help me feel more confident. He treated me as his partner in everything, he never told me what to do, he always wanted my opinion even if it was on something I didn’t have a clue about.

  Stewart hadn’t asked me if I was happy on the farm, he had assumed that I wasn’t. Because it wasn’t something that fitted the way he looked at the world. It didn’t fit what he knew of me back when we’d been together, and what I had told him then that I wanted for my life.

  It was completely true that my life hadn’t turned out how I had planned it, or how Stewart had planned it for us back at university. Which had led to me worrying that meant I couldn’t possibly be happy or content with what had happened. I worried it meant I’d taken a wrong turning somewhere along the way and got lost. But what if I had actually taken the path that I had always been meant to take? What if I was on the right journey now, and the one I had originally planned was actually the wrong one?

  I really needed some sort of sign.

  ‘I didn’t expect you today, Heather,’ Hattie said, looking at the door in surprise as I walked into our farm shop. ‘How good was the Countryside Watch? People have been coming in all day today saying how much they enjoyed it, and we’ve made double already to what we did yesterday so it’s already having an effect!’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s great,’ I said, surprised and pleased to hear that. ‘I’m actually making a flying visit, I’m afraid. I need some information,’ I said, walking up to the counter. ‘You remember when you first told me about the men who are trying to develop Hilltop? You said they’d been snooping about the village, asking questions… before we knew from Malcolm at the pub what they were here for. I need to know if they were asking anything about me, and the farm. Do you know who they spoke to?’

  ‘Rachel at the Glendale Hall shop was the one who told me about them. She can tell you what they asked.’

  ‘Got it, thanks.’ I strode out before she could ask why I was so interested, and carried on walking along the High Street to the Glendale Hall shop. Rachel was behind the counter, and Beth was also in there, fiddling with the gardening display by the door. ‘Hi. Rachel, Hattie said that the two men looking to buy Hilltop came in here when they first arrived in Glendale – and that you spoke to them? Can you remember what they asked you?’ I said. Beth wandered over curiously.

  ‘Only one of them came in. The good-looking one who’s been staying over at the Arms. He said that he wanted to buy a property in Glendale. He asked a few questions about the village, and then he asked about your farm too.’

  ‘What did he ask?’ I prodded urgentl
y.

  ‘He said do you know a Heather Douglas – she lives out on Fraser Farm?’ I sucked in a breath. ‘He wanted to know if the farm was doing well, if you worked there too, and then he asked about Hilltop Farm – how long it had been empty, that kind of thing. I really didn’t tell him much, I was suspicious why he was asking so much to be honest.’

  ‘But he definitely knew I lived on Fraser Farm?’

  She nodded. ‘Definitely. And he frowned when I said you did work there, and I told him about the farm shop, and all I said about Hilltop was it had been empty for two years and it bordered your farm, which he didn’t seem surprised to hear.’ She looked worried. ‘Did I say anything wrong?’

  ‘Is this Stewart? Why did you want to know what he asked when he first got here?’ Beth said to me, leaning on the counter.

  ‘He told me he had no idea I lived next to the farm he wanted to buy but it sounds like he did know, and in advance of coming here. So maybe that means he did choose Hilltop because it was next door to me. That he came to Glendale because of me. All of it was to try and get me back,’ I said, hating that I let him make me question my life with Rory, and my life on the farm. Him turning up hadn’t been a sign of fate. He had tried to change my fate. Conscious of Rachel watching, I thanked her and asked Beth if I could have a word outside. She followed me readily. ‘I’ve been really stupid, Beth,’ I admitted as we faced each other on the pavement. ‘I let Stewart make me think that I didn’t belong on the farm, that I should help him turn Hilltop into a hotel, that I wasn’t capable of living this life I’ve chosen. That maybe Rory wasn’t the right man for me after all. God, I even let him kiss me.’