Finding Hope at Hillside Farm

by Rachael Lucas

  Contents

  Title page

  Dedication page

  Chapter One: Ella

  Chapter Two: Jenny

  Chapter Three: Ella

  Chapter Four: Ella

  Chapter Five: Harry

  Chapter Six: Ella

  Chapter Seven: Harry

  Chapter Eight: Harry

  Chapter Nine: Ella

  Chapter Ten: Ella

  Chapter Eleven: Jenny

  Chapter Twelve: Ella

  Chapter Thirteen: Ella

  Chapter Fourteen: Ella

  Chapter Fifteen: Harry

  Chapter Sixteen: Ella

  Chapter Seventeen: Harry

  Chapter Eighteen: Jenny

  Chapter Nineteen: Ella

  Chapter Twenty: Harry

  Chapter Twenty-one: Ella

  Chapter Twenty-two: Harry

  Chapter Twenty-three: Harry

  Chapter Twenty-four: Ella – and Harry

  Chapter Twenty-five: Jenny

  Chapter Twenty-six: Ella

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Harry

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Jenny

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Harry

  Chapter Thirty: Ella

  Chapter Thirty-one: Harry

  Chapter Thirty-two: Ella

  Chapter Thirty-three: Ella

  Chapter Thirty-four: Ella

  Chapter Thirty-five: Jenny

  Chapter Thirty-six: Jenny

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Harry

  Chapter Thirty-eight: Ella

  Chapter Thirty-nine: Harry

  Chapter Forty: Jenny

  Chapter Forty-one: Ella

  Chapter Forty-two: Ella

  Chapter Forty-three: Harry

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Rachael Lucas

  Copyright page

  To Archie, with love

  Chapter One

  Ella

  ‘It was a little girl.’

  ‘I should think it was a stray tourist.’

  Ella was certain it had been a little girl. Haunted dark brown eyes in a pale, dirt-smudged face, framed with long, dark hair. When she’d moved towards the hedge, calling hello, the child had started and ducked out of sight.

  Her aunt Bron lifted a saucepan from the top of the Aga and clattered it down on the slate worktop. She turned around, brushing a thick lock of grey hair from her face with the back of her arm. Ella couldn’t remember it happening – just that one day she’d noticed the thick plaited rope that hung down her aunt’s back had somehow shifted from deep auburn to a uniform steely grey. Bron had aged by stealth – the laughter lines that crinkled in the corners of her eyes growing longer, the furrows between her brow deepening over time. Ella watched as her aunt put her hands in the small of her back and stretched, arching her spine with an audible crack.

  ‘I checked the village page, just in case one of the kids from school had wandered off,’ Ella said. The laptop lay open on the battered pine table in front of her. It floated on a sea of discarded post and days-old newspapers, forage bills and junk mail. Ella and Bron lived in what they liked to refer to as comfortable chaos.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing. It just seemed so strange. I couldn’t get her face out of my head. She looked so sad.’

  Bron looked across at her. ‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation.’ She shooed the cat out of the way with a wave of her hand.

  ‘I rang Lissa to check in case she’d heard anything.’

  ‘And?’ Bron pushed up her sleeves and ran her hands under the hot tap, lathering them with the cracked bar of soap that sat in the seashell dish by the sink.

  Ella shook her head. ‘Nothing.’ Lissa was her best friend, and a teacher at the village primary school. There wasn’t much that went on in the village that she didn’t know about – partly because she was party to all the goings-on at the school gates, but also because her nose for gossip was particularly sharp.

  ‘Well then,’ said Bron, as if that was the end of that. She put the soap down on the dish and rinsed her hands under the hot tap. It seemed to Ella that the never-ending green bar of soap had been sitting there for decades. She could remember turning it round and round in her hands as a little girl when they’d visited the farm, back when a week in the summer holidays helping out with the sheep and the chickens and the goats was the highlight of her year. Back then, she could only have dreamed that the farm would become home.

  Ella headed back out to the yard to finish off the final checks for the evening. A flurry of whinnies started up as soon as the horses heard her footsteps on the gravel – the high-pitched squeal from Blossom, the nine-month-old filly, and the low whicker of anticipation from the pregnant Sweetbriar. As the oldest mare of the herd, she presided over the yard from her box, which was set apart from the others. This was more for practical than hierarchical reasons. Left to her own devices, she’d snake her neck forward and take a warning bite out of any of the others who dared come too close. Right now, though, the other eight horses were still grazing the last flush of grass which had grown in the warmth of the autumn sunshine, and so Sweetbriar’s only charge was her fiery little niece in the stable opposite, who shared the same deep chestnut colouring, white blaze, and flaxen mane and tail.

  ‘Get back, you,’ Ella laughed as Blossom reared up, her tiny hooves waving in the air. Her mother, up on the hill, would have given her a warning nip on the neck, telling her to get back in line. Ella lifted a finger, which was enough to send Blossom skittering to the back of her stable.

  It was the last day of October, and the nights had suddenly turned chilly – the clear, bright, sunny afternoons giving way to evenings that were cold up on the hill. The clocks had changed, giving them a brief few weeks of extra light in the evenings, but that would be over soon. Then night feeds would be done in darkness, freezing fingers wrapped around the handles of icy cold feed buckets, the horses clouding the air with dragon-puffs of warm breath. This was the week when autumn took hold – the last few years, October had been a treat of a month, with afternoons which warmed up after misty cold mornings. Down the valley, Ella noticed smoke curling from the chimneys of the cottages below. Some of them were holiday lets, which often sat empty for the six colder months of the year. The town always quietened down as the temperature dropped. She rubbed her hands together, trying to warm them up, then slid the lock back into place.

  The farmhouse was warm and welcoming, and the two dogs lay snoozing in a tangle of legs and tails in front of the Aga. The temptation to collapse on the sofa with a large glass of red and the remains of the box of chocolates was strong. But the prospect of Lissa’s wrath was more terrifying . . . Ella had promised that she’d be at the Hallowe’en party at the Lion. And she’d promised again when she’d spoken to Lissa on the phone earlier that evening – no, she hadn’t forgotten, and yes, she was definitely going to be there.

  She reached down and rubbed Cleo, the spaniel, behind her long floppy ears, and ran a hand over the snoozing wire-coated Jack Russell, Bob. He opened one eye, checking for treats. Realizing none were forthcoming, he dropped off to sleep again.

  ‘All right for you two,’ Ella laughed, turning away.

  She dragged off her long, brown outdoor boots, kicking them under the table, and turned for the bathroom, picking up a heap of roughly folded towels from on top of the Aga. They were deliciously warm. She wrapped her arms around them, feeling the heat rising under her chin. It was half five already, and she had to transform herself from practical equine therapist into something suitable for a fancy-dress party. Or at least suitable to be transformed by Lissa, because – Ella
shook her head, smiling to herself – she knew that the second she arrived at her friend’s house she’d be attacked with eyeliner pen and about a ton of make-up.

  Grasping the towels tightly, she headed to the stairs.

  ‘Ella, have you got a minute?’ Bron called through from the sitting room just as Ella put her foot on the first step. She hovered, the other leg in mid-air, towels balanced precariously under her chin.

  ‘Just going to have a shower. Lissa’s expecting me.’

  ‘I know.’ There was a pause. Bron cleared her throat and Ella stepped back, feeling a strange, uneasy sensation in her stomach. She pushed the door open. Bron was sitting, her fingers steepled together, her brow furrowing.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened –’ Bron chewed on her lip and leaned forward, straightening the wine glass that sat in front of her on the coffee table.

  Ella inclined her head, inviting her to talk. ‘Come on.’ She put the towels down and balanced herself on the arm of the sofa, her long legs tucked to one side. She noticed a hole in her sock and bent forward, pulling it off.

  ‘The thing is . . .’ Bron sat back, and sighed. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this. I’ve been trying to find a way for – well, for ages.’

  Ella swallowed. Her throat felt tight and as she spoke her voice sounded quiet and somehow distant. ‘Tell me what?’

  She could feel the adrenalin response beginning to take effect. Heart thudding against her chest, blood rushing in her ears. She took a deep breath in, calming herself as she did her clients, holding the inhale and then slowly letting the air out of her lungs. It didn’t work.

  Bron began to speak. ‘The thing is, my love, I’m not getting any younger.’

  ‘You’re always telling me seventy is the new forty,’ Ella said, leaning towards her. She scanned her aunt’s face properly for the first time in she didn’t know how long. She looked thin, and her face was weather-beaten and worn. Why hadn’t she noticed she was ill? She’d been so wrapped up in herself, thinking about work, worrying about bills . . .

  ‘I need you to take on a bit of help with the horses. I’m going to be away for a bit.’

  I knew it, thought Ella. Visions of Bron, pale and out of place in a hospital bed, rushed into her mind. She’d never cope with something like that. She was an outside creature. Hospital would be the end of her.

  ‘I’m sorry –’ Ella began. She could feel the prickling on her cheeks that meant tears were on the way. She rubbed at her face again, shaking her head. ‘I should have noticed. It’s OK. I’ll look after everything. We don’t need to take anyone on.’

  ‘You can’t do that, love.’ Bron shook her head. ‘The thing is, I’m not going to be here –’

  Oh, please no. Please, please, please. Anything but that.

  ‘It’s Isobel. She said she didn’t want to worry me, but –’

  ‘Oh –’ Ella let out a breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before opening them wide, and looking at Bron once again. ‘You’re not ill?’

  ‘Healthy as a horse,’ said Bron, looking slightly indignant.

  ‘But I thought –’

  ‘No need to be thinking about me. I’m fine. It’s Isobel who’s having problems, not that she’ll admit to it, the stubborn old mule. She hasn’t changed since we were children.’

  Ella’s memory of her aunt Isobel, who had emigrated to Australia when she was a young nurse in her early twenties, was of the energetic woman who’d flown over to visit when Ella was a little girl. It had been a summer holiday where the sun shone endlessly, and Ella had spent it in shorts and T-shirt, her limbs tanned and her hair swinging in a long ponytail. They’d lived on barbecued sausages and she’d roamed the hills every day with the dogs, exploring until she knew every track through the tall bracken and each tumbling waterfall that poured down through the woods.

  ‘She’s not doing well at all. Let’s face it, to even let on to me that things aren’t quite right is a sign that things must be pretty bad.’

  Ella chewed on the inside of her cheek, closing her eyes. The family had always been very much of the stiff-upper-lip, just-get-on-with-it persuasion. That brisk attitude had been just what Ella had needed when she’d arrived here years back, and it would take something pretty major to shock either Bron or her aunt Isobel into admitting they weren’t doing well.

  ‘It’s not all bad.’ Bron reached over and gave Ella’s knee a pat. ‘Every year I say that I’m going to take some time out and go travelling. I’ve been saying it since I was thirty. Now thirty years have passed and if I don’t go now, it’s never going to happen.’

  Ella picked at a loose thread that was hanging from the edge of her shirt, worrying it until it was long enough to pull.

  ‘It won’t do you any harm.’ Bron’s expression was serious. ‘You’ll be better off here without me cramping your style.’

  Ella pulled at the thread and watched, mesmerized, as the hem of her shirt unravelled with the tug of just one loose thread. It left a pattern of tiny little holes.

  ‘I don’t have a style.’

  ‘That’s part of the problem.’ Bron chuckled. ‘Living with your seventy-year-old aunt is not exactly doing wonders for your street cred, is it?’

  There was a moment of silence. Ella listened as the ancient farmhouse groaned and creaked with the same end-of-the-day noises she’d heard a thousand times. It was safe, and familiar. She was more than happy with safe and familiar.

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you today, of all days, but in a way maybe it’s a good thing. There’s never a right time.’ Bron squeezed Ella’s knee again. ‘But it’s been ten years. Maybe it’s time for us to move on a bit.’

  Ella looked up at the photograph on the dresser of her father with his arms around Bron and his other sister-in-law, Isobel, taken one long hot summer. The picture was bleached from years of sitting on the dresser in the morning sun. In it, her father’s hand was shading his eyes from the same sun, standing on the wall outside the cottage, beaming with love and happiness, the family all together for once. It had been taken the last time Isobel had visited, the final time. The thrombosis she’d suffered on the plane back had put paid to further flights and she’d been lucky to survive. Bron, tied to the farm and the animals and the hill, had managed a couple of short visits – paid for by Isobel, who had worked for years as a specialist nurse in Sydney. But plane fares were expensive, and money was tighter now. It had been years since they’d seen each other.

  ‘Won’t you miss the horses?’

  ‘Less than I ought to, I suspect.’ She chuckled. ‘I’ve been here for thirty years, remember. I suspect I’ll enjoy the break.’

  Ella had done more and more of the work around the stables as the business had begun to grow. Initially, her equine therapy business had been a small sideline to Bron’s breeding programme. But she’d sold on several of the broodmares, and that side of the business had dwindled away until the focus was on Ella’s therapy work. She’d used the inheritance from her father to build a big covered school where she could work with clients and horses all year round, protected from the Welsh rain – or liquid sunshine, as they liked to call it, rolling their eyes as it fell incessantly all summer. And there was a little arena outdoors too, floodlit and surfaced with springy, weatherproof material, sheltered on each side by high thick hedgerows to break the harsh Welsh winter wind. Two of the stables had been converted into a sitting area and a waiting room, where clients could help themselves to coffee from a machine, sit on the comfortable leather armchairs and watch the tank full of tropical fish flitting back and forth. Business wasn’t booming, but they managed to wing it each month, bringing in enough money to keep afloat. And – Ella looked down at her cheap, scruffy jeans and battered fleece covered in straw – she might not be dressed in designer clothes, but the horses didn’t want for anything. If Bron was brave enough to set off to Australia for an adventure, she’d have to step up and deal with it.


  ‘Now you get yourself off and get ready for your night out,’ Bron said, reaching forward for the remote control. ‘We can talk about this more in the morning.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Ella said. ‘We’ve got plenty of time.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Bron made an odd noise, then cleared her throat. ‘About that.’

  Ella’s dark eyes darted to meet her aunt’s blue ones. Bron looked slightly uncomfortable.

  ‘I’ve been trying to pluck up the courage to tell you for a while.’

  ‘Oh-kay . . .’ Ella frowned. ‘So we don’t have plenty of time after all. What’ve we got? Weeks? A week?’

  Bron shifted in her chair and looked at the coffee table instead of meeting her eyes.

  ‘A week.’ Ella shook her head. ‘Are you joking?’

  Bron gave a small shrug and pulled a face. This was typical of her – she hated confrontation, or uncomfortable conversations.

  ‘I thought it might be easier if we just ripped the plaster off.’

  ‘OK. We can deal with that. I can manage.’

  ‘It’s not quite a week, though,’ Bron said quietly. ‘My flight leaves on Monday afternoon.’

  Ella stood up and shoved the towels under her arm, picking up a brown envelope which was sitting on the coffee table as she did so. She felt a bit wobbly, but didn’t want to show it. She took a deep breath, turned back for a moment, and looked at her aunt steadily. ‘I think –’ she ripped open the envelope and pulled out the contents – ‘you’re doing the right thing.’

  She headed out to the hall and stood for a moment, trying to catch her breath.

  Bron had always been there for her, and perhaps it was time to let her get on with her own life. The sitting-room door swung shut with a gentle click, and Ella shook out the paper from inside the envelope. IMPORTANT was stamped at the top, and the contents were ringed with a box of red. That only ever meant one thing. They’d balanced a financial tightrope for long enough that she recognized the seriousness of a final demand straight away. She sat down on the stairs and looked more closely at the letter.

  Further to our repeated attempts to contact you, it began. Ella felt a familiar churning in her stomach. Neither of them were exactly hot on paperwork. They shoved a box full of receipts once a year at Glynn, the accountant, who shook his head and sighed, before working his magic and sending off the details to the tax office. In between times, with the animals and the business taking up their days from dawn to dusk, things were quite often missed, mislaid or forgotten. It always worked out, somehow.