by Jenny Colgan
‘What?’ said Flora, worried. The last thing she needed now was him getting forgetful.
‘My… my…’
‘Stick? Sandwiches?’
She made him his tea as the lazy old dogs nudged around him.
‘Ach, no,’ he said, smiling. ‘I thought you might still be out. I thought I might have a wee nap.’
Flora smiled.
‘Of course you can have a nap, for God’s sake; you’ve been up since five!’
‘I might just…’
The Aga was still warm, of course, as it always was, and he pulled up the other chair – his chair – next to it.
‘Don’t let me disturb whatever you’re doing,’ he said gravely.
Oddly, Flora found she had spirited the notebook away into her bag. She didn’t want to upset him, obviously, by letting him see it. She felt, too, somehow, as if this were something private, between her and her mother.
‘Just thinking about dinner,’ she said, glancing around.
‘Well, it seems you’ve done a lot already,’ said her father.
She brought him his tea, and he touched her arm when he thanked her for it, and somehow there was something – an air of detente, a thaw – that struck them both.
Fintan came in next, looking around crossly.
‘Oh right, the cleaning fairy’s been in,’ he said. ‘Showing us the error of our ways, are you, sis?’
‘Why are you being so aggressive?’ said Flora.
‘I don’t know. Maybe because you’re stomping around here with a face like a wet weekend because you hate everything about your background and family and heritage? Yeah, maybe that’s it.’
Flora rolled her eyes.
‘You smell. What have you been doing?’
‘None of your business. Nothing intellectual enough for you, anyway.’
Eck looked up sharply.
‘Have you been down in that dairy again?’
‘I think it’s going to be something special, Dad.’
‘Well, it’s wasting enough of our time, that’s for sure. And our money.’
‘It doesn’t cost anything to do.’
‘Well, it does, because I don’t have you seeding the lower field.’
Flora wondered what the hell they were talking about and was about to ask when Fintan sniffed.
‘I suppose there’s no dinner again?’
‘I’ll get Innes to go to the chippy,’ said Eck.
‘No!’ said Flora, fingering the notebook. ‘I’m going to do it.’
They both looked at her and laughed, and Flora’s fragile good mood dissipated almost immediately.
Chapter Sixteen
If Flora had had a fantasy about coming home, it might have gone a little like this: everyone would be thrilled to see her, and desperate to hear her stories of life in the glamorous big city. Okay, maybe not the Tinder dating stories, but definitely the others. And her handsome boss would turn up and extol her virtues and she would be incredibly busy and important taking meetings with Colton Rogers and effortlessly doing his business all round town, instead of hanging about trying to look inconspicuous and fill time.
Then, over meals the boys all pitched in to make, they would open a local ale and trade anecdotes about their mother, and her near-white hair, and how funny she could be over a sherry at Christmas, and all the stories she used to tell about life on the island – bogles and witches and selkies and pixies – which she thought were comforting and charming and they found bed-wettingly terrifying, and they would laugh and bond and celebrate her life and Flora would basically have put the family back together and they would all thank her sincerely and be very impressed by her amazing work, and then she would go back to London and pick up where she’d left off. Except better and more successfully, and she’d look healthy and well from the open air and good food.
She looked around resentfully. Her father was already snoozing by the fire, first whisky well on the way. Fintan had disappeared again, God knows where. Oh well.
She opened the book at pies and took out the mince, gently heating the pan and chopping the onion. Unlike yesterday, when she’d panicked and gone too fast and turned up the heat and felt watched and judged and had an absolute disaster, she tried to calm down. Remember what her mother had done. Mix the pastry carefully with cool hands, nothing rushed, as if she’d done it hundreds of times before.
While the pie was cooking, she heated up carrots and peas for the side, and mashed the locally grown potatoes with a great wodge of butter from the dairy – she added more and more, it was so good – and plenty of salt, until she had the most gorgeous golden mound of fluffy goodness and every single bad carb and fat and salt sin under the sun in a single earthenware bowl, and it was all she could do not to scoff the lot, and she didn’t even have to call everyone in; they all appeared automatically at 4.55 p.m., summoned by the wonderful smells.
‘I like it, Flora,’ said Hamish, and for once the others didn’t disagree with him, simply traded glances.
‘Did you get this out of a packet?’ said Innes.
‘Shut up,’ said Flora. ‘And say thank you.’
Eck looked up in surprise. ‘This is —’
Everyone knew he was going to say, ‘just like your mother used to make’, but nobody wanted him to get to the end of that sentence. Flora cleared her throat and changed the subject.
‘So, anyway, I know I’m repeating myself, but… how’s the farm doing?’ she said, trying to sound cheery.
Innes blinked.
‘Why? Are you going to sell us out to Colton Rogers?’
‘Of course not! I was just asking.’
Eck sniffed.
Hamish smiled.
‘I like Chloe.’
‘She’s a terrible goat,’ said Innes.
‘I like her.’
Innes sighed.
‘What?’ said Flora.
‘Nothing. Just… transporting livestock… I don’t want to get into it. It’s just. I mean, you must have heard what’s happened to the price of milk.’
Flora nodded. ‘Not up here, though?’
‘Oh yes. There’s no escape for us. And trying to sell the cattle on the mainland… I mean, the cost of transportation…’
‘What about keeping it local?’
‘Where? There aren’t enough shops, there isn’t enough trade, there isn’t enough for us to do here. Haven’t you noticed? Talk to your friend Lorna; ask her how many people are raising their families here these days.’
He sat back bitterly. Hamish had simply taken the bowl of mashed potatoes and was eating straight out of it with a spoon. Flora would have told him off for it if she hadn’t wanted to do exactly the same thing herself. God, she had forgotten how good real food could taste.
‘How bad is it?’ she asked, glancing at their father, who either hadn’t heard or was pretending not to.
‘Really, really bad,’ said Innes. He shot Fintan a foul look. ‘And someone isn’t helping.’
Fintan stared straight ahead, chewing and not taking part either. Innes sighed, just as his phone rang. It was Eilidh, his ex. He stood up and wandered over to the big window at the back, where the white sky was fading to a high late blue, but it didn’t hide the fact that they were clearly bickering.
‘Fine, I’ll take her!’ shouted Innes finally, ending the call.
‘Agot? Don’t you want to see her?’ said Flora before she could stop herself.
‘Of course I do,’ said Innes. ‘But we’re ploughing tomorrow. It’s no place for a kid.’
‘She loves the tractor,’ said Hamish.
‘I know,’ said Innes. ‘Loves it enough to run in front of it.’
Innes paced up and down, then glanced at Flora.
Flora had never looked after her niece before. Agot had been a baby at the funeral. Quickly she banished all thoughts of the funeral from her head. She didn’t really get children per se; they seemed nice enough, if a bit demanding, if her friends who’d sprogged were t
o be believed. Unfortunately, once they had sprogged it was a bit hard to keep up, as they immediately moved out of London, and if you made it out there for a pint, they tended to fall asleep after half an hour or so.
Eck looked up from his scraped-clean plate.
‘Our Flora could look after her, couldn’t you?’ he said, pushing his glasses up. ‘You’re not doing much else.’
‘Oh Dad, you know she has a Terribly Important High-Profile Job as a Lawyer,’ snarked Fintan, and Flora flashed him a cross look. It wasn’t her fault that she had to wait on a billionaire. But it was aggravating that they obviously thought she basically did nothing, just as they’d always expected, particularly when she knew that back in London there was a huge load of paperwork piling up for her.
And actually, slightly encouraged by her success in cleaning up the kitchen, Flora had considered tackling the biggest, most horrible job of all: her mother’s wardrobe. She had hoped against hope that her dad might have taken it on himself to do it, but he hadn’t. She wasn’t going to get rid of anything if he didn’t want her to, but it needed sorting out a little.
‘I’ve got plenty to do,’ she sniffed.
‘Yeah, injuring the dogs,’ said Fintan.
‘SHUT UP, FINTAN!’ she yelled.
He stuck his tongue out at her.
All eyes were on her. They were, Flora reflected, the only two girls left in the family.
‘Is she toilet-trained?’
‘Yes,’ lied Innes.
Flora sighed.
‘All right then.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘Once upon a time there was a ship. And a girl was stolen away.’
‘Where?’
‘Oh, from far up north where the castles are, to be taken a long way away across the sea. And she did not want to go.’
‘Why not? Why not?’
But the rustling skirts had gone and the love and the comfort had vanished and she was cold and alone and…
Flora woke crossly in the little single bed, the sun already high across the counterpane although it was only 6.30, her hair rumpled and her eyes sticky. It took her a while to remember where she was. And there was still no word from London.
Agot turned up at 8.30, deposited by an unsmiling Eilidh, who nodded briefly at Flora and said she’d heard she was ‘popping in’, as if ‘popping in’ was the worst insult she could devise.
Little Agot was three, and surprisingly formidable for such a small person.
‘It’s your Auntie Flora,’ Eilidh said, and if Flora detected some sarcasm in it, well, she was in a sensitive mood.
‘HEYO, AUNTIE FLOWA,’ came an unusually loud and deep voice, even muffled by the thumb stuck firmly in her mouth.
‘You two are going to play and have a wonderful time.’
Nobody in the kitchen looked particularly confident at this analysis. Eilidh handed Flora a huge backpack containing nine Tupperware boxes full of food, various packets of wipes, and, ominously, two spare pairs of knickers.
‘Can you feed her?’ said Eilidh.
‘Of course!’ said Flora, bristling.
‘Sorry, it’s just… I heard you were working.’
‘I can multitask,’ said Flora through gritted teeth.
‘Great, great,’ said Eilidh vaguely, kissing her daughter – without, Flora noticed, telling her she had to be good or anything – and heading out.
It was a bright, brisk, breezy morning – rather lovely, in fact, as long as you were wearing a jumper – and normally Flora would have suggested walking Bramble, but he was still a little wobbly on his paw. Instead, she and Agot regarded each other carefully.
‘THIS GRANMA’S HOUSE,’ said Agot eventually. Her hair was white blonde, just like her grandmother’s had been. According to Eck, they were the spit of one another. It hung long and made her look somewhat other-worldly; like a sprite, swept in on the northern waves from who knew where. Innes kept grumbling that it got in the way and was going to get caught in the farm machinery, and Agot herself complained that raccoons didn’t have long hair, no way, but her mother – whose own hair was a light mouse – was far too proud of her daughter’s crowning glory to have it cut; it never had been in fact, and the ends were tiny white baby ringlets. Flora expected it to be subject to a few covetous looks from other parents; there were a lot of fair babies up here, but most deepened to red eventually. It looked like Agot would be a sprite all her life.
‘What do you want to do this morning?’ she said. Agot looked at her askance, and Flora felt, obscurely, that this was something she ought to know; that she needed some kind of plan.
‘BUT!’ said Agot.
‘Yes?’
‘THIS GRANMA’S HOUSE!’
‘I know,’ said Flora. She led Agot outside, and they sat down on one of the rocky outcrops at the front of the farmhouse. Out of the wind, the sun suddenly felt hot on her face, and she made a note to put suncream on the little girl, whose skin was white as milk.
‘But your grandma, she was my mummy.’
Agot pondered that.
‘SHE DADDY’S MUMMY.’
‘She was. And she was my mummy too. Daddy and I are brother and sister.’
‘YIKE GEORGE AND PEPPA?’
Flora blinked and decided it was best to agree with this statement.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Just like them.’
Agot swung her legs against the warm rock.
‘SHE NOT HERE?’
Flora shook her head.
‘AUN’ FLOWA SAD NO MUMMY?’ She asked it entirely conversationally.
Flora watched the tide beating against the rocks below the lower field.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Very sad.’
Agot’s face started to crumple.
‘WAN’ MUMMY,’ she said in a low voice. You didn’t have to be a child expert to realise that trouble was brewing.
‘It’s okay,’ said Flora quickly. ‘Your mummy is fine. I’m just old.’
‘I’S THREE,’ said Agot.
‘That’s right. But it’s okay. I’m a grown-up. I’m… much older than three. So. You see. It’s okay.’
Agot’s thumb was finding her mouth again. Flora cast around quickly for something to distract her.
‘Um… do you want to go throw stones?’
Agot shook her head dismissively.
‘Look at the cows?’
‘I YIKE PIGS.’
‘We don’t have any pigs.’
Agot’s lip started to tremble once more.
‘Ah. Well…’
‘DADDY SAID GRANMA MAKE CAKES,’ announced Agot, as if the thought had just suddenly struck her. She looked at Flora craftily. ‘I YIKE CAKES.’
‘Have you been hanging out with your Uncle Hamish?’ said Flora.
And then she thought of her mother’s light lemon cakes, her tiny little fairy cakes, and the heavy fruit cake always sitting on the shelf in the larder.
She wondered, suddenly, if there was a recipe in her mother’s book.
‘We could go and have a look,’ she said, and beaming, Agot jumped up and grabbed her hand in a way Flora found unexpectedly gratifying.
There were, of course, several cake recipes at the end of the book. Birthdays and Christmas and many happy things. Thinking of Eilidh’s fairly strict boxes of raisins and dried fruit that she’d provided in the rucksack, Flora decided that filling Agot up with sugar might be mildly taking the piss. But here was something she hadn’t made for a long time. And she already had the ingredients. She smiled to see it. Scones. That was it.
Her mother had circled a note at the top of the page: HOT OVEN COLD BUTTER.
‘WHA’S THAT SAY?’ said Agot, who had pulled over a chair from the kitchen table, dragging it noisily across the flagstones. Bramble huffed as if aggrieved.
‘It says “hot oven cold butter”,’ said Flora. ‘Because that is what you need when you’re making scones.’
Agot’s face brightened. ‘I YIKE SCONES. MAKE SCONES!’
Everything Agot said, Flora noticed, was short, emphatic and announced at high volume. Flora looked at the little girl’s contented face and wondered why she herself wasn’t clearer like that. Clearer in her job, with her family; with what she wanted.
‘Hmm, okay.’
She turned up the oven, cleaned Agot’s sticky hands, then set her to work mixing the flour, milk and chilly butter.
A thought struck her. She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her before. She wondered if the boys had got to it first.
She went into the larder, the cold store off the main kitchen. The boys didn’t seem to use it much. There were endless tins of beans and fruit – when her mother was young, it was difficult and expensive to get fresh fruit on the island. Annie had loved tinned mandarins, and peaches and pears. When fresh fruit finally did turn up on a regular basis, she always professed herself disappointed with it compared to the syrupy contents of the cans she absolutely adored – and here they still were.
And up on the higher shelves – yes! Treasure, glowing in the light coming through the tiny dormer window. Pink, deepest purple, bright red. Damson. Strawberry. Blackberry. Cloudberry. It was like discovering an entire seam of her mother.
Looking at the jars, Flora realised that that was it. The very last of the jam; the very last of her mother in those little misshapen bottles, touched by her hands. Much of it had been given away to friends and neighbours, but some had been kept to get them through the winter. A winter she hadn’t seen.
Flora sat down suddenly and started to weep.
‘WHA’S WRONG?’ Tiny sticky hands were grabbing at her, concernedly lifting her hair from her face. ‘YOU CRYING?’
‘No,’ said Flora.
‘ISS,’ said Agot, in the manner of one who was very experienced at spotting crying. ‘YOU CRYING.’