by Daisy Tate
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 ask the right questions of the consultants. Ensure her daughter was always loved and secure and never once had to worry about being anything other than being a little girl. If there was a next time. Maybe the consultant would give her the all clear. Perhaps the oncologist 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. Maybe he or she 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 and never see each other ever again.
‘Don’t you think so, Izzy?’
‘Sorry, what’s that?’
‘The attic. Don’t you think it’s a lot like Lady Venetia’s?’ Charlotte gave her a funny look. One that intimated she thought Izzy had been off in cloud-cuckoo-land again. She was right, of course. Dreaming the impossible dream was one of her specialities.
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.
Bless. As if Freya’s dad would ever leave the farm. Freya said that since her mum had died, the only reason he even ventured to St Andrews – an entire mile away – was to have his monthly lunch with ‘the lads’. The same lunch he’d been having every month for the last fifty-six years. Roast beef, tatties and veg. But never as good as your mother’s. Freya had imitated as she told the story. No. Nothing beats your mother’s touch. Nothing at all.
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.
‘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 de
molished. 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 shed and see how the girls are getting on.’ He flashed them all a smile. ‘Anyone up for freezing their nuts off in the shed with me?’
‘Roc!’
‘What?’ Rocco gave his sister a mischievous grin then winked at Charlotte. ‘I’m going to take the lack of scraping chairs as a sign no one wants to join me?’
Charlotte was on the brink of standing up when Regan walked in with Jack. Jack was asking if there was any chocolate they could have, when Regan spotted Rocco pulling on his overalls.
‘Are you going out to the shed?’
‘That I am, my wee lassie. Time to see if any of them are ready to pop!’
‘Cool! Are you coming, Jack?’
Jack pulled a face.
‘C’mon,’ Regan enthused. ‘It’s cool. I’ll bring my stethoscope.’
Charlotte bristled when Jack muttered something about the Super Vet that fell outside the parameters of politeness, but he did follow her out to the boot room. She thought about pulling him aside for a quick word, but the poor boy had had so much to deal with since his father’s news, so … probably best to leave it for a bit.
‘You all right there, Father?’ Freya shouted at her dad when they’d left.
Charlotte wasn’t entirely sure why Freya kept shouting at the poor man. He seemed a little doddery on the short-term memory front, but he certainly wasn’t deaf.
‘Fine, lassie.’ He pushed away from the table and popped his cloth napkin on top of his empty plate. ‘I’m away to the shed as well. I’d hate to miss Buttercup’s latest arrival. She always presents us with a good calf, our Buttercup. Your mother’s favourite, of course.’
Freya sucked in a sharp breath, then slipped out through the door into the main hall.
‘Should we go after her?’ Izzy asked.
‘What for?’ Emily began collecting dishes.
Izzy made a derrr noise. ‘She’s obviously gone off to have a weep about her mum.’
‘Really? Crap.’ Emily thunked the palm of her hand on her forehead. ‘And there was me yapping on about how annoying my mum was.’ She glowered at Izzy. ‘Why didn’t you stop me?’
‘Have you ever tried to stop you?’
‘I don’t normally need to,’ Emily snipped. ‘I’m usually right.’
‘Except for when it comes to talking about your mother in a room full of women who haven’t got one any more.’
Charlotte began to cut in when a glassy-eyed Freya reappeared in the doorway brandishing a bottle of Baileys. ‘Anyone up for a bit of pudding on ice?’
Izzy wrapped a tea towel round her head and made a sad clown face. ‘Not me, girlie. I’m pooped.’
‘I thought Charlotte did all the driving. Why are you so knackered?’ Emily was still in attack mode.
What was it with those two? Had they had a falling out over something?
‘She did but …’ Izzy made a deflating balloon sound.
‘How long’s that cough been hanging around?’
Izzy pushed up and away from the table. ‘It’s nothing.’
Glare.
‘You look like shit.’
‘Well fuck you very much,’ Izzy snarled.
‘Hey!’ Freya waved a serviette between them when Felix, Luna and Poppy came trooping through the kitchen announcing they were going out to the barns as well. ‘Cool it you two.’
Charlotte looked at Izzy, trying to see what Emily was seeing. Izzy did look tired. It was unusual as she was normally full of beans. But it was the holidays. She’d been working very hard at her new job at a small local cinema/micro-brewery/pizzeria which was always full to bursting with mums and children this time of year. Perhaps she’d picked up something from one of them. The last time Charlotte had popped in to collect Izzy when the van had broken (again), one of the mums had been complaining about some bug or other.
‘Go on,’ Freya waved Izzy away with a loose-limbed gesture that came from having had a bit too much wine. ‘Get on up to yer bed, lassie.’
‘She’ll need a hot-water bottle,’ Emily instructed.
‘All right. Away with you.’ Freya grabbed the kettle and shooed Izzy towards the door. ‘I’ll bring one up in a minute. On you go.’
‘Thanks woman. You’re a star. Night night, Little Miss Bossy Pants.’ Izzy began to stick her tongue out at Emily then unsuccessfully stifled a huge yawn. ‘Night, Charlotte,’ Izzy kissed her fingertips then wriggled them into an over-the-shoulder wave as she left the room.
They all quietly sipped their drinks as they cleared the table and did the dishes. Freya took the tea to Izzy. No one was brave enough to ask Emily why she was was sniping at Izzy. Those two had always had a funny relationship. At each other’s throats one minute, laughing like drains the next. Perhaps living with her parents was more of a strain than Emily was letting on. And, of course, the holidays didn’t always bring out the best in people. Oli being a prime case in point. Not that he’d asked Xanthe to go into early labour or anything, but … Charlotte gave the wooden countertops a second round of rigorous swipes. Definitely a line of thought best avoided.
The children bundled in en masse, demanding hot chocolate and bursting with stories about how Rocco and his dad had helped calve an enormous bull calf they’d all named Bartley. Charlotte and Freya shuttled them off to their various bedrooms with a hot-water bottle each, after which Freya said she was knackered and was going to turn in as well.
Poor Freya. That whole ‘Monty storming off’ thing had really taken the wind out of her sails.
After a final whizz round with kitchen cloths and broom, Emily flicked off the kitchen lights then headed towards the stairs with Charlotte.
‘Everything all right?’
Emily gave her a look. ‘Ye-e-es. Why do you ask?’
‘You were a bit sharp with Izzy earlier.’
Emily inhaled quickly and then breathed out slowly, suggesting she was counting to ten. There was definitely something going on with the pair of them.
‘Everything’s good.’
‘Well, if you ever want to talk,’ Charlotte pointed at her bedroom door, ‘you know where to find me.’
‘Thanks, Lotts.’ Emily waved over her shoulder and carried on to her own room. ‘Sweet dreams.’
Charlotte heard the clunk and thud of Rocco coming back into the house, the rolling cadence of his voice as he spoke to his father, the bootjack scraping across the stone floor as first one, then the second wellie was peeled away from his long legs.
Yes, she thought as she hugged her hot-water bottle to her. It might be rather easy to have sweet dreams tonight.
Chapter 3
‘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?