by Daisy Tate
In keeping with the Scottish style of not acknowledging the blatantly obvious – everyone desperately missing Freya’s mum – they’d all tiptoed over every scrap of minutiae instead.
We’re totally happy! We just thought we’d get pyjamas is all. We normally – doesn’t matter. Last year’s onesie was super big so …
If that look’s to make sure I kept the receipt—
No, sis. The turkey wasn’t dry, I just wanted more gravy is all. Is this a new recipe?
Are these chestnuts in the stuffing? No, no. They’re fine. Different. Good, but different.
After they’d slogged their way through Christmas dinner and retold all the jokes from the Christmas crackers, they’d retired to the sitting room to play a game. Everyone had been over-polite. Then snappy. Then wildly apologetic. Or, in Monty’s case … downright childish.
It turned out teasing him about bunking off paying a household bill so he could get her the rather lovely charm bracelet he’d given her had been exactly the wrong thing to say.
How was she meant to have known it was precisely what he’d done? The bracelet was nice, but it was hardly ‘The Gift of the Magi’. And it wasn’t as if she’d actually meant him to bugger off and give her space to think.
Driving through the night to his parents or, more likely, his brother’s as it was nearer to the pub, had been yet another show of Monty’s emotions outweighing his ever-decreasing common sense. It was taking what little remained of her fortitude to keep the terrifying thought at bay that her marriage may have absorbed its final blow.
She was so tired of it all. The fighting, the worrying, the fear.
She plodded back to the mirror and gave herself a wan smile. As much as she hated him leaving in a roiling cloud of hurt and fury, with Monty gone she had a few days to wrap her head round where they were as a couple and, more pressingly, where they stood as debtors.
Right now, both were looking grim.
They might have their car back, but chances were high it would disappear again. It turned out that Monty had put the debt collector’s fee on one of his secret stash credit cards. At least the regular minimum payments explained where the money had gone for the council tax, the water bills and the mortgage. She swallowed down the increasingly familiar tang of guilt, knowing the shop should’ve really been raking it in during the lead-up to Christmas, but … it was as if all the stress had tamped out any sort of creative fire that still might be flickering somewhere deep within her.
She stared at her phone, willing a message notification to ping up.
Nothing.
She supposed she could always text him. Find out if he was lying in a ditch somewhere.
No. She stuffed it back in her pocket. She wasn’t ready. The chances of a phone call degenerating into something she well and truly regretted were too high.
So here she was, listlessly making faces at herself, when a normal Boxing Day wouldn’t have seen so much as a moment to loiter. With Christmas over and done with, Freya’s mum would’ve roped her into some project or other (baking, sewing, painting name tags for the cows). The children and Monty would’ve been put to work, too. None of them would’ve had a moment to think about how awful it had truly been. Then again, it wouldn’t have been awful because her mum would have been alive, full of practical advice she would no doubt have followed, and everything would have been less … different.
She put a few stray ribbons back into the wrapping paper box and set it at the foot of the stairs along with Monty’s favourite jumper. The one with the worn elbows. He would be less than pleased when he realized he’d forgotten it.
She pulled her phone out again, willing a message to ping up. One full of misery and woe and, of course, fathomless apologies for being such a class-A twat on her first Christmas without her mother.
She sighed heavily and dropped onto the cold, stone stairwell. She hoped he felt as miserable as she did. There’d been no need to take the dog. Dumbledore adored it here. All of that cow poo to roll around in. New things to smell. But no. If Monty was miserable, everyone else had to be, too. Score one to Monty!
Freya’s eyes drifted round the sitting room while she waited for her father to make up his mind about tea. The Christmas tree was glittering away in the corner. The stockings had been hung by the vast inglenook fireplace. Half the children’s presents were still strewn around the place. Books, of course, for Felix. Not the latest and greatest gaming console he’d been hoping for, but … Regan had been delighted with her stethoscope and veterinary dictionary. She’d been even more over the moon when she’d unwrapped her nan’s pedal-operated sewing machine. Freya wished she could’ve given her a few bolts of fabric to play around with. She smiled, remembering the endless trips her mum had made to the charity shops for old wool coats, satin dresses, cotton prints. Then on to the woollen mill, where they’d picked up reams of odd-shaped ends going for next to nothing. Their booty was the inspiration behind Freya’s first-ever pair of homemade throw pillows. She’d given a set to Charlotte for her wedding. Butterflies, if she remembered correctly.
‘Dad, would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked again. Normally she didn’t ask him. She just made one and he would scoop up the mug in one of his big old capable hands and give her a wink of thanks. This – the asking – was part of a series of cognitive tests she was trying to slip into their day-to-day chat as suggested by her own GP.
‘Aye,’ Freya’s father said. Then, ‘No.’
Crumbs. This was exactly the sort of thing Rocco had mentioned. Uncertainty in a man who never dithered. He was a doer. A farmer, first and foremost, but in whatever capacity, he was someone who always knew what to do. Rock solid. Vital. Even at the ripe old age of seventy-three which, suddenly, didn’t seem that old. A shiver shunted down Freya’s spine. This couldn’t be the beginning of the end. Even though it had been almost a year, it felt as if they’d only just lost her mum. She wasn’t up to losing her father, too.
She tried again, with a brighter smile this time. One she might have used for the children when they were toddlers.
‘I’m making one for Rocco and me.’
‘Sit down, love. Freya’ll do it. She’s probably got the kettle on already.’
Bollocks.
Chapter Eighteen
A niggle of guilt had been needling through Izzy since they left for Scotland. She’d yet to register at the GP’s in Sussex. She’d told herself she’d put it off because Charlotte had mentioned, more than once, the possibility of selling the house and moving nearer to the children’s school, but honestly …? The last scan had been fine; she’d wanted to focus on that memory rather than facing a new one and the possible nightmare that would ensue. The whole idea of having to go through everything again and then, perhaps, again had … well, it had given Izzy the excuse she’d wanted to put it off. Who wanted to find out if their cancer had come back? Anybody? Anybody? Yeah. Thought so.
She stuck her face to the spare bedroom window of Freya’s family farm.
Some fairy lights were twinkling away on the rowan tree in front of the house. It had been planted a couple of hundred years ago to keep the demons at bay, according to Freya’s brilliantly Scottish father. She pressed her nose even closer to the window then screamed. ‘Looney! It’s snowing!!!’
Izzy did a little happy dance. This was well worth the hours in the car with Charlotte on the journey up with Jack blithering on about how wretched Scotland was going to be when Austria was, obvs, going to be the absolute best time. Never mind the fact that Jack and Poppy were the ones who had refused to go with their grandparents. They were both obviously hurt, and vetoing the trip was their only means of sticking it to their father, but even so … Poppy had really hurt Luna’s feelings when she’d refused to sit next to her. Izzy had been impressed Charlotte hadn’t lost her temper or left them at the services. Her mother would’ve gone ballistic if she’d behaved so rudely. Theodora Yeats did not take to ingratitude. It was one of her mother’s perennial li
fe lessons: Be grateful for what you do have, child. Not waste precious time aching for what you don’t.
Which was how, a year ago, when she’d had absolutely nothing, she’d forced herself to look beyond all that she had lost and ended up back here in the UK. It was amazing what looking for the good in life revealed.
Packing up their few possessions and moving back to the UK was probably the scariest thing Izzy had ever done. And that was saying something, considering her history. She’d naively thought what she had dubbed the ‘Nr Cardiff’ cottage would provide her with the most comfort. Solid evidence that her mother and father had shared something beyond an impassioned one-night stand. Proof family was the foundation of everything, even if it did come in non-traditional packaging.
It wasn’t the house, in the end, that had provided the comfort. It was her friendships. She’d been terrified that spring day, showing up with a child she hadn’t told anyone but Emily about. Holding so many secrets close to her chest. Apart from a bit of a catch-up, it had been like no time had passed at all. Everyone was exactly as she had remembered them. Emily, still sharp as a whip and scratchily caustic. Freya, able to turn her hand to anything and make it more beautiful. Charlotte was still the cake-maker. The organizer. The fixer.
Which was ultimately why she had accepted Charlotte’s offer to move into her granny flat, even after the ‘deadly mould’ in the Nr Cardiff cottage had turned out to be not so deadly. The black splotches had appeared courtesy of a dodgy bathroom fan and the damp Welsh weather. Emily had helped her sort an electrician and some hardcore cleaners. Freya had sent her countless emoticon messages and hilarious GIFs whenever her spirits had sagged, and Charlotte had organized for Izzy’s flat to become a holiday let, administered by a well-established company that had already booked several couples in for a ‘magical Welsh getaway’.
‘Look Mummy! Towels!’
Luna ran back into their room from heaven-knew-where with a set of well-worn towels. She placed them on the bed then dived straight into tidily unpacking her things into a heavy wooden chest of drawers. Luna was the nester of the two of them.
The niggles came back more powerfully. She really should reach out to Looney’s father. If Charlotte sold the house, there was no guarantee they’d be invited to move to her next place. Izzy’s house style (slob) was the total opposite to Charlotte’s (immaculate). Charlotte had been lovely about helping them out in a crisis, but they were out of sight in the granny flat. If she had to downsize and the Welsh cottage had already been let, then Izzy might well have to find yet another place to live.
Oh, well. There was nothing she could do about it right now, and Charlotte had said she wouldn’t think about selling the house until the spring if at all, so …
Izzy did a slow twirl in the centre of the room, soaking in the antler lighting fixtures, the dozen or so individually framed pressed flowers, the hand-carved lampstands shaped like owls. ‘It’s like staying in a quirky art museum.’ She shivered. ‘A museum without any heat.’
Charlotte, who’d just walked through from her room, tugged her gilet a bit closer round her. It was a lovely shade of maroon that really made her green eyes ping out against her pale skin. Pale skin made paler by the cold? Or worry about Freya, in the wake of Monty having buggered off to his brother’s place. Or was it to his parents’? Somewhere near Bristol anyway.
‘I suppose it must cost quite a lot to heat the whole house with only Freya’s father and brother here on their own.’
‘Good point.’ Izzy nodded at the four-poster bed. ‘I thought Freya was the only arty-farty one, but you said her brother made this bed?’
Charlotte nodded, a slightly wistful expression softening her features. Was it for the bed, or Freya’s hunky brother who had helped them haul in their nine thousand bags?
Izzy ran her hand along the thick silver birch tree branch that made up one of the four posters of the huge, fairy-tale bed, then pounced on the squeaky mattress, beckoning for Luna and Charlotte to join her. ‘Did you see these cushions? I bet Freya made them. They have that Frey-Frey touch, don’t they?’
She made fancy hand gestures round the flannel and wool throw pillows, as if she were a model on the shopping channel. They really were spectacular. Ink and tartan cut-outs stitched onto all sorts of different fabrics, with the odd embroidered embellishment. Red deer. Otters. Highland cattle. All of them anthropomorphized to look as though they were at some sort of Highland Mad Hatter’s tea party. They were wonderful. The embellishments showed off Freya’s amazing skill at capturing the tiniest details. A miniature kingfisher dipping its beak into an exquisite cup of tea. A stag, with its head cocked, as if it were listening to the sounds that the wind beyond the window was carrying.
Luna, who hadn’t taken up the invitation to jump on the bed, was still exploring the room. Opening doors and drawers, oohing and aahing as she went. ‘Mum! Look! It’s a secret passageway!’ She held open a door that Izzy hadn’t spied, took a step in then hesitated. ‘Can you go first?’
‘Of course, Booboo!’ Izzy bounced over to the door. This sort of bravery she could do.
She dramatically tiptoed along the short corridor and tried to open the door at the end of it. ‘Nope. Locked. Maybe it’s one of those olden days passages where the rich people snuck into one another’s rooms without the servants knowing.’
Charlotte laughed, ‘Izzy, your imagination is about a thousand times more fertile than mine. I would’ve thought it was for the servants to carry wood to each of the rooms for the fires in the morning.’
‘Do they still have servants?’ Luna was wide-eyed with wonder.
‘Fraid not, Booboo.’ Izzy fluffed her daughter’s billow of ringleted hair. ‘There aren’t many folk who have a fleet of servants to light their fires these days.’ Or men to sneak round and have secret affairs with, for that matter. Although if this led to Rocco’s room and she switched with Charlotte …
Izzy jumped when someone knocked on the door then opened it. Freya’s father. ‘All right girls? I was just wondering if you fancied me lighting the fires in your rooms? Take the edge off.’
Izzy and Charlotte burst out laughing. Charlotte instantly fell over herself apologizing, saying, yes, absolutely, that would be wonderful, but would it be a waste seeing as they were all going to be down in the kitchen soon enough?
‘Fair enough, then.’ Lachlan Burns, who still had a full thick shock of white hair and bright, engaged blue eyes, started to walk away and then doubled back on himself. ‘I think there are a few of those electric bar jobbies – you know, the heating elements. Any chance you fancy following me up to the attic and seeing if we can’t unearth them?’
‘Absolutely!’
Izzy, Charlotte and Luna trooped behind him as they worked their way round the twisty-turny corridors to yet another door at the far end of the house.
‘Where does that go?’ Luna asked, clearly in awe of Lachlan who had a vague resemblance to Sean Connery.
‘Up to the attic. Untold treasures up there.’ He wiggled his eyebrows to great effect. Luna, it was clear to see, was smitten.
Charlotte whispered something about how Freya had wanted them to pay attention to whether or not he remembered things. Judging by Lachlan’s chitchat as he led them round the attic, he had all his marbles in the right order so far as she could tell. One thing, at least, she could stop worrying about.
Would that Izzy could do the same. Maybe if she just told everyone, they’d take over like they had with the Welsh cottage. Make her appointments, nod wisely and ensure her daughter was always loved and secure and never once had to worry about being anything other than being a little girl … Maybe the consultant would give her the all clear? Maybe he or she would playfully chide her for worrying about the tickly little cough she’d felt developing. Or the achiness that seemed to be creeping into her bones and would smile and say, ‘This is Britain! The symptoms you’re experiencing are caused by the cold! Not cancer.’ Then they’d laugh and hug an
d never see each other ever again.
Izzy forced herself to tune into Charlotte, who was nattering away to Lachlan now, telling him he would just love Lady Venetia. That the two of them should meet up one day. They’d really hit it off.
‘Oh, no,’ Lachlan waved her off. ‘There was only one woman for me and she’s alive and well in here.’ He patted his heart, then busied himself with handing them each an electric heater.
They paused when Freya rang the bell hanging just outside the boot room to signal it was time to do the milking. As they followed Lachlan down the stairs, each of them went quiet, lost in their own thoughts. For the first time ever Izzy wondered if she would ever love someone – apart from Luna, obviously – as much as Lachlan had clearly loved his wife. Would Charlotte? Emily? She guiltily threw Freya into the mix then pulled her back out. From the fleeting explanation regarding Monty’s absence, she seemed to have enough on her plate.
Surely to god one of them deserved a happy ending.
Charlotte jumped. ‘What was that?’
‘Front door,’ explained Rocco.
‘Goodness. That’s … loud.’ Charlotte didn’t know if her heart was beating so quickly because of the sudden noise, or the way Rocco had passed the butter to her. Just one brush of his fingertips against hers and … goose bumps. Who knew that making garlic bread could be such a sensory experience?
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
‘Coming!’ Freya called as they pushed back their chairs and went to the door. It had to be Emily. She’d texted about an hour ago saying the train had just left Edinburgh.
Freya pulled the door open.
‘Wooooot! It’s time to par-taaaaay!’ Emily hoisted two clinky jute bags full of booze up as far as her arms would permit. ‘Guess who made friends with the serving chappie in the first-class carriage? Beverages,’ she explained, ‘come free.’
Her friends were staring at her. Izzy broke the silence. ‘Wow! Emms. Look at you. You’ve …’ Izzy floundered as whatever she was going to say was lost in a cough.