by Daisy Tate
‘I have cut my hair. Thoughts?’ Emily quipped in her inimitable, ‘this is entirely rhetorical, feel free not to answer’ style. Or perhaps she genuinely did care and was masking it. She handed Izzy one of the clinky bags and shook her head to realign the choppy pixie cut. She looked like an anime character. With an eye-twitch.
Oh, bless. She did care. She also didn’t bother waiting for a response. ‘My mother abhors it. And you know what? It shouldn’t really matter what she thinks, but what do you know? It does.’
Charlotte gave her arm a squeeze. Emily appeared to have taken advantage of a few complimentary beverages prior to arrival. Talking about feelings straight off the bat was unusual for her, to say the least.
‘When does it stop?’ she wailed, dropping the rest of her bags to the ground. ‘I mean, how many forty-year-old orthopaedic surgeons worry what their mother is going to say after they have their hair trimmed?’
‘Emms,’ Izzy gave her a wary grin. ‘Are we actually talking about hair here?’
Charlotte looked between the pair of them. How had Izzy made that leap? The haircut was a significant change. Charlotte’s mum probably wouldn’t have noticed if she’d shaved her head, but from everything she knew about Emily’s mother, she would care. And comment. Apart from which, Emily was a bit off-base calling it a trim. It was, Charlotte believed, what they called a ‘statement cut’.
‘Of course we’re talking about hair,’ Emily self-consciously tweaked her fringe. ‘What else would we be talking about?’
No one answered. Emily was very much an enigma to Charlotte, who was still processing the revelation that Emily occasionally paid to have ‘Nordic cuddling’ therapy.
‘I think it’s fun,’ Charlotte finally said tactfully. ‘It suits you.’
The style was actually not anything at all like the Emily she thought she knew. But life was making it abundantly clear that things she thought she knew weren’t always as they seemed. Her (almost) ex-husband, for example, had just named his brand-new daughter Olive. A name she knew he loathed, because he had regularly mocked a little girl in Poppy’s nursery who bore the same name. Wasn’t life – or Instagram – just full of surprises?
‘You’re quiet tonight,’ Emily observed, as Freya inched round her to try and shut the door.
Izzy hip-bumped Emily further into the hallway. ‘Move woman. It’s bloody freezing. Freya’s trying not to heat up the whole of Scotland. Any other big life changes you want to tell us about?’
‘No,’ Emily intoned, ‘unless you’re talking about the bliss that is being a forty-year-old woman living in her parents’ basement flat.’
Izzy grinned. ‘How is the bliss?’
‘They’re in Islington right?’ Freya asked, as she took Emily’s knee-length puffer jacket from her.
‘You might want to keep that,’ Izzy said. ‘It’s freezing. Soz, Frey.’ She rubbed her hands together and coughed again.
‘Healthy as ever, I see,’ Emily observed, frowning, then continued in a falsely bright tone. ‘Perhaps we need to go and see the doctor?’
‘Perhaps it’s nothing to worry about,’ Izzy mimicked Emily’s tone and won herself a glare.
‘I’ll make her an appointment with my GP when we get back.’ Charlotte took Emily’s overnight bag off her shoulder and put it by the stairs. ‘I’ve been meaning to register her for ages—’
Emily cut her off with another pointed question for Izzy. ‘You should be the one registering. What’s wrong with you? You should’ve done it months ago. It’s a simple phone call.’
Before Izzy could answer, the children ran in with Bonzer. There was a fresh chorus of hellos, awkward hugs, and you remember Emily don’t yous for Poppy and Jack who hadn’t seen her since May.
As Emily gently extracted herself from a particularly loving Luna embrace, she looked round and asked, ‘Where’s Monty?’
Freya’s shoulders zapped to her ears.
Charlotte caught Izzy mouthing tell you later when the kitchen door phwapped open.
‘Right you lot!’ Rocco was wielding a spatula. ‘Lasagne’s up!’
Charlotte was struck anew by just how vital he was. The man didn’t do anything by halves. When he laughed? It was a belly laugh. Smiled? It was ear to ear. He was entirely present in whatever he did. Settling his father into his chair in the kitchen. Milking dozens of cows. Handing her the butter …
An hour later, the moreish lasagne had been demolished. When Charlotte asked after the recipe, Freya said it was her maternal grandmother’s. An Italian. Lachlan had them all in stitches as he described the ‘wiry, weasel-eyed woman who’d run the best gelateria St Andrews had ever seen.’
‘Do you ever make ice cream with the milk from the dairy?’
Rocco shook his head. ‘It all goes to the milk board. Mum had always wanted to. We even registered with the council a couple of years back as vendors, but … Right!’ He clapped his hands together and pushed back from the huge old pine table. ‘I’d best get out to the barn and see how the girls are getting on.’ He flashed them all a smile. ‘Anyone up for freezing their nuts off with me?’
Chapter Nineteen
‘Well, hello there.’
Charlotte nearly leapt out of her skin. It wasn’t often six foot three, twinkly-eyed men appeared in the kitchen pre-dawn. Particularly ones who had been, ahem, the main character in a shockingly naughty dream. So vivid. And now here Rocco was in real life, sending a rather vibrant surge of butterflies winging round her body.
‘Are you all right, lassie?’
Definitely not.
Rocco stomped his feet on the stone flooring of the boot room and swirled his thick winter coat off onto a nearby antler hook in a well-practised move.
‘Goodness,’ Charlotte finally managed. ‘You start bright and early.’
‘Aye. The first milking’s at four, so.’ Rocco’s green eyes travelled from her bunny rabbit slippers, up along her skinny jeans, swooping up and over the pinafore covering her sage green jumper, and stopped when he met her eyes. Had she noticed just how green his eyes were before? Again she thought of the heather.
He pulled off his knitted cap and scrubbed the back of his head, his smile not quite as bright as it normally was.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Aye. No.’ He laughed at his own dithering. ‘The milk truck’s late. They got stuck on someone else’s farm track a-ways down the road and are refusing to do any more collections until the snow thaws, which has a knock-on effect.’ He saw she had no idea what that meant. ‘We only have so much milk storage here on the farm. No collection? Nowhere to put the extra.’
‘Oh, that sounds …’ Totally outside anything she might be able to help with.
‘Ach, it’s happened before. And they’ll probably be here later, but it’s a spanner in the works I could do without.’ He winked at her. ‘Who knows? I might have to get my finger out and do what Freya and Mum have been suggesting for years.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Specializing. Setting up a wee shop here on the farm.’
‘Oh, that sounds interesting.’ Charlotte was on firmer ground here. Ish.
‘Mum dreamt it up back when …’ He waved his big old hand towards the past. ‘We’re registered with the council, but it’s a lot of work and would take a lot of time I don’t have.’ He didn’t say it as though he was angry about it. It was just the way things were. Busy. Which would go hand in hand with Freya’s thoughts on why he’d yet to marry. Too little time. So much to do.
Rocco’s eyes abruptly dropped from her eyes to her – oh my – her chest. Had he been having confusing and startlingly explicit dreams as well?
‘What’s that you got on there?’
Her thoughts were muddled as she stared down at the pinny. It wasn’t strictly Agent Provocateur, but …
‘Oh this? I found it in the pantry.’ She smoothed her fingers over the hand-stitched goldfinches and thick cotton fabric that had obviously been through the
washing machine more than a few times then threw him an apologetic smile. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘No, no.’ He narrowed his gaze. ‘I think it’s one Freya made Mum quite a few years back.’ He looked up and met her eyes. ‘It’s lovely.’
Something flickered deep inside Charlotte that she hadn’t felt in years.
Oh, sugar plum fairies.
Raw, unabashed lust was tripping the light fantastic through her nether regions. How embarrassing. Was this what happened when you were an almost divorcée? According to the latest letter from her solicitor, All she and Oli had to do was sit back and wait for the decree absolute and then they could all get on with their lives. Oli had obviously jumped the gun in that department. If the past few months had taught her anything, it was that their lives – Oli’s and the children’s – had been her life. Developing a sideline with the cakes and revamping the shop with Lady V had been a huge help. As had driving out to see the children in their West Country schools when they’d forgotten something at home, or going to see Poppy’s school play, but really? They were time fillers, not soul satisfiers. Would she ever have the courage to make one of her own dreams come true?
Her stomach flipped as Rocco closed the gap between them, her heart pounding so hard she could feel its beat at the base of her throat. Every single cell in her body was on high alert. Was this what happened when you met the person you were meant to have been with all along?
Rocco put his hand on her arm and gave it a squeeze. ‘You all right, darlin’? You’re looking a wee bit pale.’
Rocco’s voice was like warm butter. Better. Syrup. It trickled through her body in all the right places. Could crushes really last twenty years?
‘I understand things at home have been, ah, tricky for you.’
Oh. He was just being polite. Well, in that case she may as well be honest.
‘Yes, mostly for the children. I was shocked at first, of course, and upset. But now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I sometimes wonder whether we’d known one another at all. Our interests are – were – so wildly different. Anyway. I’m presuming it’s all happened this way for a reason.’ Her voice was getting higher pitched as she spoke, ‘All that’s left for me to do is work out the silver lining.’
Rocco nodded, sat with what she’d said for a minute then said in a rush, ‘I’d always meant to come down to London to see you – and Freya of course – back in the day, but …’
Her eyes caught with his again. He had felt it, too? The connection.
‘That summer you spent up here was memorable.’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper. ‘Yes it was. I would’ve loved to come back, but …’
He gave the back of his neck a rub, eyes still glued to hers. ‘Funny how life gets in the way of living sometimes, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded and they shared a smile so full of meaning that she suddenly felt less alone in the world than she ever had. Rocco seemed so confident, but perhaps he too had an insecurity that he had yet to overcome. Perhaps he lacked confidence on the romance front. It couldn’t be easy getting away from the farm. Maybe he thought women might want something different to what he had to offer. She remembered how he used to joke that she and Freya were taking a step up on the social ladder thanks to their degrees. Did he think she wouldn’t have considered him an option because he couldn’t break down the finer plot points of Ulysses? How ironic. Charlotte Bunce of Sheffield’s least plummy tower block, too high-falutin’ for the most honest, kind, man she’d ever had the privilege to meet. Her mind reeled as she absorbed all the things their lives could have been if just one of them had said something.
As if by internal conditioning, she stepped back, unable to be quite so close to him any more, her nervous laughter filling the space she’d just been standing in. Rocco probably wasn’t even flirting. He was simply being kind. Asking after the poor divorcée in the wake of her husband’s latest reminder that neither she nor the children had ever been his priority. How was it she could no longer read a simple kindness?
Fifteen years of marriage to someone who never entirely approved, perhaps?
‘What’s that you’re doing there?’ Rocco’s dark curls piled onto his forehead as he leant in to inspect the huge mixing bowl Charlotte had unearthed from the pantry.
Rocco was about to plunge his finger into the batter so she reached out to stop him – almost short-circuiting at the electricity that shot from his hand to hers.
She said the only thing she could think of, ‘Just knocking up some pancake batter.’
‘Pancakes?’ Rocco looked delighted, eventually extracting his hand from hers and running it through his hair.
‘The American kind,’ she clarified, just for something to say.
Rocco tapped the side of his nose. ‘You know those “American” ones were originally called Scotch pancakes?’
She liked how he said American. It was about nineteen syllables and sounded utterly erotic.
Charlotte! she chided herself. The poor man is not flirting with you!
‘Scotch pancakes,’ Rocco sighed. ‘I haven’t had those since Mum died.’ His expression softened. ‘Thank you Charlotte. That’s really thoughtful.’ He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, his hand lingering ever so slightly before he took a brisk step back and rubbed his hands together.
Oh. Maybe he was flirting with her.
‘Right. I’ve got a few more things to see to out in the cowshed, but you can count me in if you’re making enough for everyone.’
‘It shall be done.’ She waved her mixing spoon at him as if it were a magic wand. A ridiculous thing to do really, but he smiled and gave her the thumbs-up.
She would’ve made ten more batches there and then if he’d asked. And every day after if he’d asked again.
When the door shut behind him, she had to press her hands together to stop them from shaking. Ridiculous! Getting all giddy at the first male to show her common courtesy after all of the fuss with Oliver.
Fuss that involved lawyers, dates for selling the family home, spreadsheets of joint assets, only to see in black and white that all she had contributed to the marriage had been herself. And, of course, the children.
It was all so crude. Putting a price tag on the emotional devastation Oli had wrought on her and the children.
She poured a bit more flour into the batter and slowly stirred the pancake batter, watching the little clumps of flour dissolve into the milk and egg mixture. It was like bearing witness to the slow and subtle elimination of her own hopes and dreams. The ones of having a big, happy, bustling family, then, one day, starting up a little business of her own. One of those kitchen-table businesses she’d read about in Waitrose Weekend, where a bad situation had brought about something good. Gourmet crisps from a beleaguered potato farm. Insanely expensive scented candles from an abundance of lavender.
She saw Rocco passing from the cowshed out to another, smaller barn. He looked over to the kitchen window, stopped and waved, then headed off again, that lovely smile of his playing upon his lips.
Would he whisk her away from all of this ‘real life’ business and show her what it felt like to experience genuine pleasure?
She laughed into the empty kitchen.
This wasn’t Madame Bovary. It was real life, and she needed to start seeing it as such. Rocco was a very kind man. That was all.
A couple of hours later, the huge kitchen table teeming with three generations’ worth of pancake fans, and Charlotte was back in her element. This was what she’d needed. To be part of a busy household again. She had been born to organize. To pick up Granddad’s dropped serviette; to pull out the extra tray of bacon no one had remembered was in the Rayburn. Wash it all up. Put it all away. Then start all over again.
That said, she didn’t mind that each time her eyes just happened to meet Rocco’s, he dropped her a little wink.
Yes. That was nice. That was very nice indeed.
&n
bsp; The kitchen was the warmest room in the house and, as a result, where everyone was congregating.
Izzy had made herself quite at home on the lumpy old sofa by the fireplace. Freya was strangely comforted to see she and Luna had tucked themselves underneath one of her mum’s old patchwork quilts, reading trashy magazines they’d picked up at the services.
Emily was not so subtly playing cognitive games with Freya’s father. She’d unearthed an old Trivial Pursuit game and had challenged him to a quick-fire game with Felix and Regan. Jack and Poppy had yet to look up from their iPads. Didn’t even ooh and aah when Charlotte pulled two trays of the most beautiful-looking scones she’d ever seen out of the oven.
Charlotte was on some sort of baking mission. She’d found Freya’s mum’s old pinny this morning. The one to which Freya had added goldfinches swirling round a mixing bowl when her mother had wondered aloud if her new purchase – a light blue checked affair – was a bit plain.
‘Course it is, Mum! You never go flash enough for yourself,’ Freya had teased. She pressed her fingers against her closed eyes to stop the tears coming. It was nice, she told herself, to see the pinafore being put to use.
What would their marriage be like, she wondered, if she’d spent more time complimenting Monty for the things he did, rather than snapping at him about the things he didn’t? She was so hard on herself, she supposed she thought he was getting it easy, but really? Being on the wrong end of her half Italian, half Scottish temper was very likely less than pleasant.
Freya checked her phone for the nineteenth time that morning. Though they’d agreed to a ‘news blackout’ when he’d finally rung, she was still hurt there weren’t any messages. Apologies more like. When Monty had stormed out on Christmas night, her gut instinct had been to jump into her brother’s scrappy old Land Rover, chase him down and scream it out on the side of the M6. Tell him to take his ring and shove it where the sun didn’t shine. This was her first Christmas without her mother and he had made it all about him. The niggling possibility that she’d contributed to the drama was something she wasn’t quite ready to confront.