Finding Hope at Hillside Farm

by Rachael Lucas

  ‘Yes please.’ Her mouth stretched the words out as she yawned, despite herself. ‘I’m not tired,’ she added, out of habit. Hope was never tired, she maintained. She definitely needed less sleep than most children, springing out of bed at five every morning. At least now she would sit with her drink and a snack and look at her iPad – most of the time. Harry heard the familiar clattering and mumbled chat of Jenny and Lou downstairs, and the comfortable sound of a bottle of wine being opened.

  ‘Same one as always?’ He lifted the book she loved from the bedside table, and she snuggled down, pulling the covers up to her nose.

  ‘Same one as always.’ The reply, despite her protestations to the contrary, was fuzzy with sleep.

  A quarter of an hour later, he crept downstairs. Perhaps Jenny was right and the country air was good for her. Or perhaps her escape to the horse farm up the road was the key to her exhaustion. She’d told him how she’d sneaked out to look at the horses in the field next door and watched a woman bring them buckets of food. He paused for a second on the landing, looking out of the window.

  The stars were crystal bright, and up on the hill he could see the lights of a farmhouse, and another house a distance away. But that was it. They were completely in the middle of nowhere, with virtually no mobile phone reception. One of those lights must be the horse place Hope loved so much.

  Maybe tomorrow he’d take her up to say hello to the horses in the fields and let her show him her favourites. She’d told him, very solemnly, that she’d chosen names for them all.

  ‘Glass of red?’ Lou made to get up from his armchair. ‘Let’s get you settled in. You must be knackered.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘You stay where you are. I’ll get it.’

  ‘Bloody hell, you’re not going to be fussing over me as well, are you?’ Lou tutted, and sat back down in the chair.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Harry, unscrewing the lid of a bottle of red, which still had the price tag on it. £4.99 from Spar, it said. He took a mouthful and disguised his wince at the taste as a cough.

  ‘Everything all right with you boys?’ Jenny appeared from the kitchen, a tea towel in hand.

  ‘I’m telling Harry I’ve got enough on my plate with you fussing over me, without him starting as well,’ said Lou, gruffly.

  Jenny perched on the arm of his chair and flicked her husband playfully with the tea towel. ‘I’m not fussing. I just want you in one piece. That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘I don’t know why we had to move to the bloody depths of Wales for me to stay in one piece,’ Lou grumbled, but he chuckled as he spoke. He shifted in his chair and gave a heavy sigh.

  ‘Because you weren’t going to recover from a major heart scare by spending every waking moment on the phone to the office finding out what was happening.’

  Lou shook his head, but put a hand on his wife’s knee. Until his retirement, he had been a DCI in the police force in Norwich when he’d been felled by a severe heart attack. After he was rushed to hospital, it transpired that only 25 per cent of his heart was still working, and only the IED they’d placed in his heart was keeping him alive. Rest and recuperation were the orders, and after a second scare saw him blue-lighted to hospital, Jenny had put her foot down.

  She’d always talked about wanting to move out of the city – but neither Lou nor Harry had expected her to come up with the idea of renting out their house and moving to Wales for six months, in winter. But Hope had been struggling at school, and her grandma had decided to take things into her own hands. Yes, they would move to the hills of mid Wales, where she’d spent her childhood holidays. Hope – who had missed so much school due to tummy aches, headaches, and just not feeling right that the teachers agreed that perhaps the change would be as good as a rest – had been transferred to the tiny little village school, and would start after half term. And Harry – well, he would carry on doing what he’d been doing since Sarah died.

  Harry looked at the picture on the mantelpiece. The hall was still full of cardboard boxes, but he knew that Jenny would have lovingly unpacked the picture of her daughter from the tissue-paper wrapping first and placed her there to look over them all.

  What Harry hadn’t known, back then when he met his future wife, was that there was a reason she’d bumped into him coming out of the oncology wing. He always wondered, afterwards, at how grief had blinkered him so he hadn’t realized. Sarah had discovered her cancer two years earlier, when she was twenty-eight. She might have looked like a teenage mum when he’d met her, but she’d just turned thirty, and tiny Hope was only three months old. Hope’s father wasn’t on the scene, and it seemed as if Harry had fallen into the arms of Sarah’s family just when he needed them most. And yet, just when he thought he had a chance at the happiness that had eluded him so far, Sarah’s cancer had returned. This time it took no prisoners. It hit her so fast and hard that the whole family was left reeling by the side of her grave, seemingly moments after they’d tried to understand the kindly consultant who’d told them that there was nothing she could do.

  ‘I’ve made a chilli.’ Jenny broke through his thoughts. ‘I’ve just got to finish off the bits to go with it and we can sit down.’

  ‘Or we could have it in here,’ said Lou, picking up the remote control and looking at it, pressing a few buttons before the television switched on. ‘The news is on at nine, and I’d like to see what’s going on in the world.’

  Harry knew what was coming next. Lou was an insatiable consumer of news – without the politics of the workplace to keep him busy, he’d moved on to become obsessed by the world’s political happenings. Lou leaned forward as the headlines flashed up on the screen.

  Jenny shook her head. ‘You’re supposed to be switching off, not on.’

  ‘If you don’t let me keep my brain active, it’ll shrivel away. And they don’t have an IED for that.’

  ‘Fine.’ Jenny pulled a face, recognizing that she’d been outfoxed. ‘Harry, don’t you get up. I’ll do this. Rest after that long drive.’

  She pulled the door shut behind her.

  ‘There was accident on the road, then?’ Lou said, muting the weather. ‘Rain, and more bloody rain. We don’t need a forecast to know that. She’s moved us to the wettest part of Wales, if that’s possible.’

  Harry closed his eyes for a second, pressing the heels of his hands against them in an attempt to wipe away the memories that lurked, ever-present. ‘Not an accident – well, a lorry overturned. Nobody hurt.’

  ‘Good.’ Lou gave a nod and turned the sound back on.

  ‘So how did she escape?’

  ‘You make her sound like an animal from the zoo,’ Jenny chided, as he stacked the dishes beside the sink. The meal finished, Harry had insisted he help with the tidying up. Lou had returned to the sofa. Jenny rummaged in a cardboard box. ‘I knew I put dishwasher tablets in here. Here you go.’

  She pulled the door open and popped in the tablet before starting to stack the plates.

  ‘Let me do it.’

  ‘You’ve had a long drive.’

  ‘So have you, yesterday,’ said Harry, putting a hand down, barring her way. ‘You sit there and talk to me, if you won’t go and settle. I’ll wash this saucepan.’

  Jenny sank into the chair, and he could see how grateful she was. Bringing up an eight-year-old wasn’t easy at the best of times, never mind when you were supposed to be enjoying retirement. It wasn’t surprising that Hope had managed to give them the slip.

  ‘I didn’t hear a thing, you know.’ Jenny picked up the mats on the kitchen table and stacked them as she spoke. ‘She must have just slipped out.’

  ‘I suppose we should be glad she headed up the hill towards the horses and not down into the village.’ Harry had a vision of Hope meandering across the high street of Llanidaeron – the village seemed small enough, but even when he’d got there earlier that night, there had still been a reasonable stream of cars trundling through, not to mention the screech of a couple of boy
racers in a souped-up Corsa. And then there was the train . . .

  ‘We just need to keep an eye on her. Lock the gate.’ Jenny frowned in thought.

  ‘I suppose –’ Harry rinsed soapy water down the drain. The chilli was welded to the bottom of the pan. ‘I’ll leave this to soak.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have taken my eye off her.’ Jenny pushed her chair back and made for the sitting room.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Harry said to her retreating back.

  He rubbed his hands up and down his face. He was exhausted, but it was nothing to how Jenny and Lou must be feeling. Things were going to have to change somehow. This had been brewing for a while and the truth was – he caught a glimpse of himself in the dark of the kitchen window, noticing the dark shadows and darker stubble – he needed to sort himself out. Sort all of this out. One way or another.

  He lay in the bed, staring at the whitewashed ceiling. It was bisected by a heavy wooden beam, knotted and dark-stained. How many other people had lain here, tossing and turning, unable to sleep, over the years?

  The situation was unusual, he knew. His friend Holly, who knew him better than almost anyone, had been on at him for ages to sort it out. He picked up his phone and slid a finger across the screen, unlocking it, looking at her messages.

  Speak to J and L when you’re there at the weekend, she’d said. You’ve got six months to work out what to do from there.

  It’s not that easy, he typed. How do I broach the subject? How do I tell them I think they need to step back and let me make my own mistakes bringing up Hope, when they don’t think I’m capable?

  But there was no mobile signal – no way of asking the question. He hit the delete button and watched the cursor travel backwards, letter by letter, until there was nothing there.

  Sarah would have known what to do. She’d have dealt with it perfectly. The trouble was, if she’d been there, none of this would have been a problem in the first place.

  She’d been so bright and open and direct. Her taciturn dad Lou had been silent on the subject of her death, pretty much from the moment they returned from the graveyard that day five years ago. He’d let himself have one morning where the tears had poured unchecked down his face, and then returned to work and to normality. He softened whenever he dealt with his darling granddaughter, and Harry knew that he could see Sarah in her – they all could.

  Meanwhile, Jenny had thrown herself into caring for Hope, which was just as well. Harry had been pretty useless then – the death of his partner had brought back long-buried feelings from previous losses. By the time he recovered from grief and started to move on, Jenny – a natural organizer – had taken over. And now his dad was gone, too. The complicated sort of love he had felt for his parents was something he couldn’t articulate. He looked at the screen-saver photo of himself and Hope wearing mouse ears at Disney – Hope wrapped in his arms, beaming with happiness – and smiled to himself. When his dad’s house was sold, he’d have enough money to spend all summer there if they wanted to. But how would Jenny feel about that, even if it was an option?

  He put the phone down on the little wooden stool that served as a bedside table, and lay in the darkness, thinking.

  Chapter Nine

  Ella

  Ella woke with a start. She turned, pulling the clock to face her. The glowing face informed her that it was – as she would have known, if she’d been awake enough to think – 3.45 a.m. She pushed it back across the battered oak chest of drawers that stood by the side of the bed, knocking aside a heap of unread books, narrowly missing a half-drunk cup of coffee.

  It was always the same time when she woke. The dreams, when they came, were always the same. She lay flat on her back, pulling the covers up against the chill of the evening, watching the slip of the moon between the curtains. The hills were dark shapes against a bright sky.

  She took a deep breath in, holding it for a moment, releasing slowly. She knew that the adrenalin would disperse, that her heart – currently thudding wildly in her chest – would settle, and in moments she’d be fast asleep again. She had trained herself well, using the same techniques that helped her to tame the fears and anxieties of her clients. The therapies worked – in conjunction with the calming nature of the horses, who could intuitively sense the feelings that lay behind the words, the anxieties and anger.

  The next morning when she got up – groggy from the middle-of-the-night disturbance – she found Bron already in the kitchen, making lists.

  ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘I’m just working out the things I do that I might forget to tell you.’

  ‘I am a functioning adult, you know.’ She gave Bron a nudge and then, smothering a yawn, pulled out the box of cat food and tipped biscuits into a bowl.

  Over the last few months she’d had several emails from an over-enthusiastic new journalist from the local paper, desperate to fill space with a feature on equine therapy. Her name was Miranda. Ella had been putting her off with vague, polite responses about lack of time and the horses being unwell. If she got some extra publicity, though, she might be able to cover the rates bill . . .

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘I’m thinking that I’ll get Miranda Whatsit from the paper to do the article she wants.’

  ‘But you said . . .’ Bron looked dubious.

  ‘Absolutely no way was I having a journalist sniffing around the place. Yes, I know. But things have to change. I can’t keep ticking over, bringing in just enough money to cover the bills and no more. By the time you get back from Australia, you won’t recognize this place.’ Scrolling through her emails, Ella scribbled down Miranda’s number on the edge of a discarded envelope. She felt surprisingly determined and businesslike. ‘And I’m going to need someone up here to give me a hand – we can kill two birds with one stone and save ourselves a job finding someone. I’ll see if she’ll mention it in the interview.’

  Bron nodded thoughtfully. ‘Good thinking.’

  ‘I’ll ring her this morning.’ Ella caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror that hung on the wall by the stable door which led out to the yard. She looked exhausted – purple shadows beneath her eyes, her hair an untidy rats’ nest of tangles from tossing and turning on the pillow. And of course she’d refused to let herself think about what had happened with Nick.

  ‘Have you fed Sweetbriar and the baby?’

  ‘I let them out first thing. The dogs were nagging for a run up the hill, so I took them up before it was even properly light.’

  Realizing that someone like Miranda was probably attached to her email 24/7, she typed a quick reply to Miranda’s most recent, breezily enthusiastic message. ‘Sorry for not getting back to you sooner,’ she lied, ‘but I’ve got a bit of time today if you’re free?’

  The laptop beeped with Miranda’s response as Ella was pulling a dry towel out of the airing cupboard in the hall.

  Wonderful! Delighted to hear. Don’t suppose you’re free at 1 pm?

  ‘Perfect,’ typed Ella, and looked at the clock. Maybe she’d better get the horses down from the field and looking halfway respectable first, then have a shower. She pulled on an old lambswool fleece and a bobble hat and slid her feet into wellies. Breakfast could wait.

  Unfortunately for Ella, what she hadn’t factored in was that the herd, determined to binge-eat the final flush of autumn grass growing on the hill, were not in the mood for being caught. One after another they slipped just out of reach, their eyes bright with mischief. Ella almost managed to get a hand on the head collar of Muffin, the naughtiest little Welsh pony, before he dodged away with a snort and a whinny of triumph. His little hooves thudded hollowly on the mossy ground.

  You swine, Ella thought to herself, feeling her feet slipping on a patch of mud. Before she could stop herself she lost her footing completely and thudded to the ground with a squelch. Bloody brilliant. Now she was freezing cold and soaked through. She pushed herself up, putting one hand down in something unspeakable l
eft by the sheep that roamed the hillside. The horses stood just out of reach, ears pricked forward in polite interest, expressions innocent.

  ‘You little sods.’

  Ella turned her back on them and headed for the gate. Sometimes if she played it cool they’d follow her down and if she could get one caught, the others would traipse along behind, always worried they’d miss out on treats or something interesting. Horses were intrinsically nosey – it was that part of their nature that made them so perfect for the therapy work. If she and a client laid out a trail of wooden blocks, whichever horse they’d chosen to work with would trundle along behind, sniffing each one with interest, following the humans instinctively.

  Sure enough, as she meandered down the hillside Ella could sense – the huffing of breath and the jostling for position being the giveaway – that she was being followed. She put a hand in her pocket, pulling out a handful of grain almost as if surprised. She looked at it in her open palm and laughed as Tor’s chestnut nose appeared over her shoulder. She looped the rope of the head collar around his neck and led him through the gate, guiding him to step back with one pointed finger, watching as the others all processed through, in pack order.

  First came little Muffin. A grey Welsh Mountain pony, he was a native of the hills and therefore seemed to claim natural dominance over the others, wheeling round the young Arabs and nipping at their hocks, keeping them in order when the colts threatened to get above themselves and start messing about.

  Echo was next. He was old and stiff, his back leg damaged after an injury in the field a few years back. His coat was thick and white all year round, a side-effect of the Cushing’s disease they’d discovered a few years back. But he was kind and patient, and one of the characters the quieter clients were often drawn to – there was something in his eyes, a sense that he knew how it felt to be at the bottom of the heap, which Ella suspected drew them in. She ran a hand over his back as he passed, feeling his muscles move beneath the thick waterproof rug that kept off the worst of the Welsh mountain weather. He felt thinner than she’d like – she made a note to up his feed that evening.