by Kate Hewitt
Chapter Two
“It’s good to see you, Anna.” Dan transferred his warm, engaging smile to her as he stretched out a hand for her to shake. “It’s been a while.”
“Yes.” Anna shook his hand as quickly as possible, since her palm was clammy. Her heart was starting to hammer, and she had the awful feeling of marbles in her mouth that made speaking nearly impossible. She hated how this always happened to her. Hated it, and yet was helpless.
Everyone seemed to be waiting for her to say something, but she had no idea what. She opened her mouth to try, and nothing came out.
Fortunately, or not so fortunately, there was a commotion in the front hall as the members of the choir started to come in, pumped up and boisterous after the service of Nine Lessons and Carols.
“Anna!” Diane Tomlinson, a senior member of the choir who used to babysit the Holley girls when they were small, caught sight of Anna and bustled in, enveloping her in a tight hug before she could take a breath. “It’s so lovely to see you, my angel. It’s been so long.”
Anna nodded, letting out a sigh of relief when Diane released her. But the other choir members were swarming in, exclaiming over her, over Rachel and Dan, over everything. Anna managed to just smile and nod—the noise and commotion prohibited actual conversation, thank goodness.
Esther was giving her a strange, piercing look, and Anna avoided her gaze. How she’d managed to disguise her social anxiety as mere shyness for twenty years was testament to how chaotic her family life was. It was easy to get lost in the noisy mix, and so often no one noticed she wasn’t speaking at all.
Ruth came in from the kitchen having tidied her hair and changed her floury jumper, and was bearing a heavy-laden tray of mince pies.
“There’s mulled wine in the kitchen... help yourselves. Anna, do you want to dole it out?”
Anna nodded, grateful for that semi-reprieve. The kitchen was quiet, Charlie having retreated to his place by the AGA after an introductory sniff of everyone, and Anna managed to dole out cups of mulled wine with little more than a smile and a murmured hello. That she could manage, especially when it wasn’t a crowd of people all surrounding her and listening to her, expecting things.
“So what do you think to Rachel and Dan?” Esther asked when the initial stream of guests needing drinks had trickled off, and they were alone in the kitchen. Esther had folded her arms and was leaning against the kitchen counter, giving Anna one of her knowing, speculative looks. Esther always saw too much, and yet at the same nothing at all.
Anna took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forming each word in her mind before she said it. “They’re dating, I gather?”
“Yes, they have been for about three months.”
“Rachel never told me.”
Esther shrugged. “I think she wanted to tell you in person.”
“Hmm.” It was easier to talk to Esther in the kitchen than out in the crowd, and the marbles-in-the-mouth feeling thankfully had dissipated. But Anna was still left with a leaden feeling about Dan and Rachel. She’d had a crush on Dan since she was about eleven. He’d always been so gentle in school, sporty and successful without being one of those callous jocks. He’d taken the time to hold a door, say hello, listen. And there had been a couple of times when he’d been especially kind to her, when the mean girls of year eight had ganged up on her, and she’d hidden behind the Eton Fives courts, not wanting anyone to see her cry. Dan had.
“Is it serious?” Anna asked, stirring the wine, and Esther shrugged.
“Seems to be.”
Anna glanced at Esther, who seemed a little pricklier and more brusque than usual. “How are you and Will?” Esther had married local sheep farmer Will Fenton five years ago. She worked for The Farmers Trust, a national charity that supported farmers in environmental practices. It meant she was often on the road, driving up hill and down in her mud-splatted Land Rover, visiting taciturn farmers in far-flung places.
Esther raised her eyebrows, seeming surprised by Anna’s question. “Me and Will? We’re fine. Why wouldn’t we be?” If there was a slightly surly note of challenge in her big sister’s voice, Anna decided to ignore it.
Esther had always intimidated Anna a bit; she was so self-assured and certain about everything, and she’d been incredibly driven in school, always at the top, whether it was lessons, sports, music. Esther was the kind of girl who was picked for everything and seemed unsurprised to be so, about as far as Anna was, hiding behind her books and trying not to be noticed. Sometimes Anna thought Esther was a little impatient, or even fed up, with her shyness. All through their childhood, Anna had hung back while Esther had stormed ahead, bolshy and brave.
“I don’t know,” she told Esther, backtracking quickly. “I just asked.”
“Well, we’re fine,” Esther said, and it made Anna wonder if they really were.
“Now someone whispered in my ear that my little Anna was here.”
Her heart lurched as her father came into the room, his weathered face wreathed in smiles, his arms opened wide.
“Hi, Dad.” Anna let herself be enveloped in a big hug, breathing in the familiar, beloved scent of pipe tobacco, his not-so-secret vice, and bay rum aftershave.
Tears stung her eyes, surprising her. She’d seen him just a few months ago but it was different at home. Everything felt different at home, which was part of the reason she’d avoided returning to Thornthwaite for so long.
“You all right, Anna Banana?” he asked, using her childhood nickname. He drew back from their hug, squinting at her. “You look like you need some fattening up. I prescribe a cup of mulled wine and at least three mince pies.”
“Three?” Anna said with a little laugh.
“I intend to have at least four. You know they’re my favourite.”
“Yes, I know.” Just about every baked item her mother made was her father’s favourite.
“How’s the big city, anyway?” he asked as he helped himself to the mulled wine and two minced pies cooling on top of the AGA. He popped the first one into his mouth in one bite.
“Big. Cityish.” It was an in-joke between them, from a shared love of Fawlty Tours, to add “ish” to just about any word to describe something. “How’s Thornthwaite?”
“Oh, you know. Villageish.”
They grinned at each other and Anna felt some of the tightness in her chest ease. Maybe coming home wouldn’t be as hard as she feared after all.
“Now you can’t all hide in the kitchen,” Ruth chided, coming in with an empty platter. “Roger, you need to circulate.”
“I am circulating,” her father said, and popped the second mince pie into his mouth. “With my daughters.”
Ruth rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “You know what I mean.”
“I’ll circulate,” Esther said, and pushed off from the counter. Ruth watched her with a slightly worried frown.
“Is everything all right with Esther?” Anna asked, and her mother turned to her with a sigh.
“I think so. Not that she tells me much about anything. You know Esther.”
Yes, she knew. Esther liked to boss people around and organize everything, but she was notoriously closed-lipped about her own life.
“Come on, Banana,” Roger said, loping an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go make chitchat.” The understanding smile made Anna realize he knew this was hard for her. He just had no idea how hard.
“Yes, go on, you two.” Ruth shooed them out, smiling, and so Anna had no choice but to walk with her dad out of the kitchen and towards the dining room, where everyone had gathered.
The high-ceilinged room was garlanded with fresh evergreen, a cheerful blaze roaring away in the fireplace. Anna knew almost all the choir members by name, but whether she knew them, they knew her. Even after so many years as a vicar’s kid, it was disconcerting to be addressed in an entirely familiar fashion by someone she only vaguely recognized. Even the choir members who had joined since she’d left Thornthwaite for uni te
n years ago seemed to know who she was, as well as all the details of her life, or at least the ones she’d shared with her parents.
After just ten minutes of nodding and smiling and offering the occasional word, Anna was starting to feel dizzy. And then the marbles-in-the-mouth feeling came back and, even worse, Diana Tomlinson asked her in a ringing voice when she was going to bring a boyfriend home, and it just happened to be during one of those silences that naturally fell upon a crowd every so often.
The only sound was the crackling of the logs in the grate and the ticking of the grandfather clock as everyone waited for Anna’s answer.
“Umm... ummm...” Her face started to flame and someone in the crowd gave a kindly laugh.
“Cat got your tongue, Anna? Maybe there is someone.”
Anna stared at them all in helpless misery, knowing she wouldn’t be able to manage a word.
“I’m sure my Anna is beating off the boys with a stick,” her father said in his genial way.
Anna saw the frowning concern in his eyes and felt the awful welter of shame. She was such a disappointment, even if her parents would never say as much.
“Hugh,” her father called, turning to a red-faced man who had scoffed two glasses of wine already. “Where did you say you were going for New Year’s? Edinburgh?”
The conversation duly started up again, like someone flicking a lever, and Anna took a step back from the crowd, feigning a fascination with her cup of mulled wine. People left her alone, which was what always happened after one of her spectacular conversation fails.
Everyone stepped around her for a while, as if she was an unexploded land mine they all had to avoid, or maybe just something messy and unpleasant they’d rather not step in. And then they eventually forgot about it, or pretended to, and tried again. Rinse and repeat. It was a cycle Anna had been desperate to break out of, and things had been a bit better in Manchester, without all the expectation of being known, without the burden of shared memory and grief. Unfortunately, she was still essentially the same.
She edged through the door, wondering if she could escape upstairs without anyone noticing, or at least caring. People would just feel even sorrier for her, but that was okay. She was used to it. Another step, and she was in the doorway. Then she was in the hall, and she was turning for the stairs when she saw Rachel and Dan sharing a kiss under the mistletoe that had been helpfully placed above the front door.
“Anna!” Rachel let out a little laugh and stepped back from Dan, smiling and blushing.
Anna averted her eyes; she didn’t want to see Rachel and Dan in some kind of clinch. Her crush on Dan had been of the schoolgirl variety, hopeless and yearning, but it had been intense. And it wasn’t as if she had a ton of experience with the opposite sex as it was.
“You’re not leaving the party already?” Rachel exclaimed. Her second oldest sister always seemed surprised by Anna’s proclivity to stand on the sidelines, mainly because Rachel was such an out-and-out extrovert herself.
“I’m... tired,” Anna hedged, cringing inside, as she noted Dan’s narrowed look of concern.
“Why don’t you hang out with us instead?” Rachel suggested. “We were going to sneak upstairs and watch Netflix anyway.” One of the vicarage’s bedrooms had been turned into a private sitting room for family, since the downstairs rooms were so often used for meetings and guests.
Anna envisioned the three of them squashed on the sofa, watching a rom com, and tried to school her expression into something that wasn’t a wince of horror. “Actually... I think... I’ll take a walk.” The words came out in awkward, staccato bursts. “Thanks anyway,” she added, grateful that she was starting to sound more normal. Another deep, even breath.
“A walk?” Rachel looked incredulous. “It’s freezing out.”
“It’s been... so long... since I’ve been back. I’ll be fine.” And not trusting herself to say anything more, Anna hurried towards the front hallway, grabbed her coat and scarf and a spare pair of mittens from the drawer that was always full of mismatched ones. She stuffed her feet into mud-splattered wellies and then yanked open the door, shutting it as quietly as she could behind her before heading out into the night.
If anything, it had become colder in the hour since she’d arrived back in Thornthwaite, colder and darker. She set off down the lane, the church now silent and empty, the stained-glass windows sightless and dark. Anna shivered. She had no idea where she was going. Thornthwaite at eight o’clock at night did not exactly offer a host of amusement.
The village had two pubs—The Bell Inn and The Queen’s Sorrow, which had something to do with Henry VIII’s last wife Katherine Parr, whose residence had been in nearby Kendal. The Bell tended to be a bit rougher, if Thornthwaite could be considered to have a rough element, and The Queen’s Sorrow was the go-to pub for ladies’ nights out, pub quizzes, and even the VSA’s termly meetings.
Out of instinct, Anna headed for The Queen’s Sorrow, needing somewhere warm to go because wandering through the village on a freezing winter’s night was not an option. But then right in the middle of the little stone bridge crossing St. John’s Beck, she stopped, because she was sure to know someone at The Queen’s Sorrow and the last thing she wanted right now was to have to make chitchat with a well-meaning parishioner. She craved anonymity, but how did she get that in a village of two thousand where she’d spent the first eighteen years of her life and her dad was the vicar? She went to The Bell.
The Bell was on the corner of Thornthwaite’s two main streets, the unoriginally named High Street and the far more interestingly titled Finkle Street, which Anna knew from the town’s well-versed historian came from the Danish word for corner. And Finkle and High did form a sharp, steep corner on which The Bell beckoned with its bright red door, raucous laughter heard from within.
Taking a deep breath, Anna opened the door and stepped inside. Thankfully, no one took any notice of her at all, which was both a surprise and a blessing. The pub was far too busy, and people seemed far too drunk, to care about a slight young woman swathed in a parka coming through the door.
Anna squeezed her way between a group of twenty-something men in football jerseys singing a laddish song and a couple of fortyish women wearing makeup and tight tops who looked like they were on the prowl. This was a whole side of Thornthwaite she’d never even known existed. Until this moment, she’d never stepped so much as a toenail in The Bell before.
Amazingly, she found a barstool, right down at the end. A man was sitting next to her, elbows braced on the scarred oak of the bar as he sipped thoughtfully from a pint, his gaze distant and distracted. On the other side a couple of women were having an intense discussion, their dyed heads bent close together.
Anna slipped onto the stool and surveyed the rows of bottles behind the bar, amazed that she’d dared to get this far. But then speaking to strangers had never been a real problem; crowds of unfamiliar people didn’t scare her too much. No, it was the people she knew who rendered her petrified and speechless.
After a few minutes of being overlooked by the bartender, a beefy man in a tight white T-shirt, the man next to her lifted his shaggy head and called out in a surprisingly educated sounding voice, “Pardon me, but I believe this young woman would like some service.”
Anna blushed and squirmed as the bartender swung his narrowed gaze towards her. “Yeah? What you want, love?”
“Um...” Her mind went blank. Totally, stupidly blank.
The mulled wine seethed in her stomach, but she could hardly ask for that.
“White wine? Red wine? Cider?” The man next to her suggested helpfully in a murmur. “Or perhaps something soft?”
“Cider,” Anna said definitively. She hadn’t drunk cider since her student days, but so what? She felt a bit reckless all of a sudden.
The bartender looked bored. “What kind of cider?”
Mind blank. Again. “Ummm...”
“Can I recommend the elderflower?” the man next to her
said. He had a funny, lopsided, and strangely endearing smile. “Refreshing and not too sweet.”
“Thank you—”
“And”—he added, his smile deepening to reveal a dimple in one lean cheek—“would it be too forward to ask if I can buy it for you?”
Chapter Three
Anna stared at the stranger in shock, because she couldn’t remember the last time someone had offered to buy her a drink. And he didn’t look like the kind of guy who was buying a drink expecting something; he just seemed nice. Still, she wasn’t sure how to respond.
“I won’t, if you’d rather I didn’t,” he said as his smile became even more lopsided. “Just tell me to mind my own business.”
“I don’t care who pays for it,” the bartender informed them curtly, “but what is it you want, love?”
“I’ll have the elderflower cider,” Anna said. She offered the man an uncertain smile. “And yes, you can pay for it, if you’re of a mind to.”
“I am.”
The bartender disappeared to fetch her drink, and the man held out his hand. “Simon.”
“Anna.”
They shook hands awkwardly and then Anna settled more comfortably on her stool. Tucked in the back of a bar she’d never been in before, with a friendly stranger, she felt more at ease in Thornthwaite than she had in a long time. No one’s assessing eyes were on her, no one was looking expectant or hopeful or, worse yet, disappointed. No one was looking at her at all, except for Simon, who was smiling, having no preconceived notions about her at all. Hopefully.
“So are you visiting here, Anna?” Simon asked, and she shook her head.
“No, I live here. Or I should say lived here. I’m in Manchester now. I’m just back, visiting my family.”
“You’ve got me there, then. I’m—what do they say? An offcomer?”
“Yes.” Anna looked at him appraisingly. Slightly shaggy, sandy-brown hair, a cleft chin and dimples, and hazel eyes that looked both friendly and warm. He was like the human equivalent of a golden retriever, the kind of person one instinctively trusted and liked. And yet he had none of the pathetic eagerness of a dog desperate for affection... no, Simon the Offcomer seemed perfectly happy to sip his pint of bitter and let the silence stretch on.
