by Della Galton
‘I didn’t kidnap you, Grandad. I’m just trying to stop you doing something you’ll regret. I just want you to think things through.’
‘I know that, love.’ Suddenly his demeanour changed. ‘But I have thought things through. I’ve done nothing but think things through, these past few months. And I’m not a fan of thinking. You know that, Clara. I’m a fan of doing things.’
She did know that. She held his gaze, over their dirty plates. The scent of herby leek sausages and mash hung in the air. Sausage and mash was his favourite meal, which she’d cooked especially, to sweeten the fact that she hadn’t taken him directly to Gran’s.
His shoulders sagged a bit and suddenly all she could see was an old man, who was growing increasingly frail, and for the first time she wondered if she really had done the right thing, bringing him here. Staging an intervention was a modern term, but maybe it wasn’t always constructive. Maybe she hadn’t acted as rationally as she’d thought. Maybe she should just accept that if a divorce was what he wanted, then he should be left alone to get on with it. It was his marriage, not hers.
‘I’ll take you to Gran’s in the morning,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you on the way to work. If that’s truly what you want me to do.’
‘It is, love.’ He put the palms of his hands on the table and gave her a direct look. ‘It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the lovely meal. I do…’ He’d left two of the sausages, she saw. Foxy would be thrilled. ‘But I think I’ll get off for an early night. I’m feeling a bit under the weather, if I’m honest with you.’ He stood up, wheezing heavily, and shot her a glance back over his shoulder. ‘I suppose I should be thankful there’s no stairs in this place, shouldn’t I!’ He headed off down the hall to the spare bedroom that Clara had made up for him.
Clara began to clear the table. She stacked the dishwasher, fed Foxy and cleared up the kitchen and then she let the little dog outside and followed her into the garden. They may be a week into October, but summer hadn’t yet packed her bags and fled. Today, there had been sunshine and the skies were still clear.
Clara strolled down the path that led to the bottom of the garden and stood beside the dark oblong shape of the shed. She rested a hand against the warm wood and breathed in the evening air. The moon was almost full tonight and the stars were bright, little twinkling dots of light that stretched out into infinity. The smell of the night-time sea that swept across the cliff path on the faintest of breezes was one she knew she would never get tired of. Yet she could feel the winds of change on its breath.
Was it only a few months ago that she’d had a rock-solid family and a boyfriend, albeit a slightly misguided one, and a dream job that she could keep for the foreseeable future? These things were disappearing one by one and Clara didn’t have the faintest idea how to stop them.
When she woke up the next day, she was clinging to the faint hope that Grandad might have had a change of heart in the night. But, if anything, he seemed even more determined.
‘It’s for the best, love,’ he said, as he repacked the few bits and pieces he’d brought with him into his overnight bag. ‘Once Thelma and I have had the chat, we can all move on.’
‘How will you get back to Jim’s?’ she said when they were finally on their way. Grandad had given up his rights to the family car when he’d moved out.
‘Let me worry about that. I’m sure your gran will give me a lift. It will all be very amicable, you know it will.’
When she pulled up outside his family home, Grandad seemed subdued but determined. There was a resolution in his eyes that she hadn’t seen there for some time.
‘Do you want me to wait for a minute in case she isn’t in?’
‘She’s in. The car’s there.’
Clara had really meant in case of any other eventuality. What if Gran wouldn’t let him in? But it was too late. He was already getting out, albeit slowly, and with one last nod of thanks, he was gone, walking straight-backed to the front door to face his future.
Clara watched the door open a crack and then shut while Gran got the chain off. A few seconds later, it opened a little wider to admit him. Then it closed again and there was nothing else for her to do except leave.
All the way to work, she tried to imagine what they might be saying and couldn’t. How did you even begin to unravel a marriage of so many years? She imagined all the gaps between conversation where the pain would lie in wait and that hurt so much that she had to stop and tell herself that it was nothing to do with her. She had done everything she possibly could
The next twenty-four hours passed slowly. It was now Friday morning and there had been no word from either of her grandparents or from anyone else in her family. Clara wasn’t sure whether that meant no one else knew what was going on or whether her grandparents had had a change of heart.
Luckily, the hotel was so busy with preparations for the forthcoming Scargill wedding that Clara didn’t have time to worry too much. She was also still dealing with fallout from The Purbeck Gazette’s story.
A couple of suppliers had been on, Mr B had told her, wanting to make sure they weren’t going to be implicated in any possible food poisoning rumours. Clara had also received phone calls and emails from past and future guests, sympathising. To her huge relief, there had been no more cancellations.
She had tried to get the Serious Hill Runners back, but she hadn’t succeeded. The most their secretary would say was that she would raise the matter again at their next meeting.
Kate had phoned every day since Oktoberfest and she’d spoken to Phil and Mr B too. This had unnerved Clara slightly, but she knew she would have done the same in her employer’s shoes. A lot was at stake.
It was now lunchtime and Clara and Zoe were in the downstairs music room, which had been transformed into a fabulous wedding venue for the following day.
From the French door entrance, a wide aisle led between two rows of chairs that were five wide. At the end of each aisle were white candles in crystal holders with white ribbons trailing from them. Tall cut-crystal glass vases waited for the flowers that would fill them the following day. The entire room was draped with lace and fairy lights. The effect was stunning.
The Steinway was in its usual position, slightly off centre at the far end of the room, but the raised stage beyond it had been transformed into a pulpit, which now housed a wooden lectern and a table with two chairs.
‘It looks even better than I thought it would,’ Clara murmured, as Zoe looked around them, starry-eyed.
‘I know. It’s gorgeous. It’s like something out of a fairy tale. Does it make you want to get married?’
‘Marriage isn’t just for one day,’ Clara suddenly felt as though she were a thousand years old.
‘No, I know. It’s for at least a year, otherwise it’s not worth all the hassle of changing your name!’ Zoe winked and walked down the aisle, fingering a ribbon here and touching a seat there. ‘It smells divine in here. What is that?’
‘Essence of rose and amber. It’s an essential oil I found in one of the catalogues. Beautiful isn’t it. I wanted to preview it before tomorrow, so I burnt some in here earlier. The flowers will add their own scents once they arrive, but it’s nice to have an underlay of perfume, don’t you think?’
Zoe nodded and closed her eyes, tilting her face back to breathe it in.
‘This is the venue for the night-time entertainment too,’ Clara went on. ‘They’re having a brass band who will set up on stage as soon as the ceremony is over and we’ll clear some of the chairs while the wedding party are having lunch. This room used to be a ballroom back in the day, did you know that?’
‘Phil mentioned it once. Has it always had this floor?’ Zoe rocked back and forth on her kitten heels.
‘I think Kate had a new sprung floor put in. It’s for dancers. This whole place is so high spec. There are lots of details like that. It must have cost a fortune to refurbish it. Mind you, apparently there was a bidding war with some developers to get
the plot in the first place, so I don’t think money was too much of an issue. Did you know it was her Aunt Carrie’s dream to open this hotel?’
‘Yes.’ Zoe’s face sobered. ‘Her Aunt Carrie envisioned a place where people would come and live their dream and Kate did it all – even though her aunt never lived to see it come to fruition.’ She met Clara’s gaze and her clear blue eyes shadowed a little. ‘Was there any more news on the Curly Wurly thing? Did we ever find out what happened?’
‘We never got to the bottom of it, no.’
‘But I thought we’d found out that the nasty reporter had also delivered the paper to us especially. That’s incriminating.’
‘Mr B swore that it was him, but even if it was, it doesn’t mean he had anything to do with the sabotage if that’s what it was. Just that he’s not our friend. And I think we knew that already.’ Clara looked at the sunlight spilling through the great plate-glass windows and highlighting slanted sections of the beautiful oak floor. ‘It doesn’t mean that he had anything to do with whatever it was that caused Micky to be sick.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘He could have had a bug. It could just have been very unfortunate timing.’ Neither of them believed that, she knew, but it was possible.
She strolled a little closer to the stage, where the drama of a wedding, the beginning of someone’s love story, would take place, this time tomorrow.
‘And it doesn’t mean that he had anything to do with the previous incidents,’ she continued. ‘They’ve all been different. There wasn’t a video on YouTube this time. And he did take one. I watched him.’
Zoe nodded. She was close to the pulpit and she bent to adjust a small wooden plaque on the edge of the stage that would hold the order of service. ‘Maybe there wasn’t any point in putting it on there though, because it wasn’t linked to us.’ She straightened. ‘He could point the finger at us in his paper with words, but he couldn’t do it on that video. Not without being really obvious and risking getting sued.’
‘I think you might have a point.’ Clara joined her beside the pulpit. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot. What I always come back to is why? Why would anyone want to drag the Bluebell’s name into the mud? Why would anyone want to close down a hotel that makes people’s dreams come true?’
‘Mr B says we need to find out before they succeed.’
‘And we will,’ Clara reassured, even though she still didn’t have the faintest idea of how they were going to do it. ‘Kate will be back soon. She may have some ideas. Until then, all we need to focus on is this wedding. We have to make sure nothing goes wrong. It has to be superbulous,’ she added, wondering why she was using one of Adam’s made up words. She still hadn’t managed to banish him entirely from her thoughts then!
But Zoe joined in to the spirit of things. ‘It will be superbulous,’ she agreed as they walked back up the aisle together. ‘Absolutely fantabysuperbulous.’
On Friday evening, just after Clara had got back to the bungalow following Foxy’s evening walk, Rosanna phoned.
‘Something awful’s happened,’ she said, as soon as Clara picked up.
‘Go on,’ Clara said, bracing herself.
‘It’s Grandad. He’s had a funny turn.’
‘What do you mean?’ Clara asked, wondering if this could possibly be a reference to him asking Gran for a divorce.
‘No one’s exactly sure. But he was at Gran’s when it happened and she had to call an ambulance. They took him to Poole Hospital. Clara, do you know why he was at Gran’s. Were they getting back together?’
Clara was saved from having to answer this because the signal disappeared, but her mind was whirring. So he’d stayed overnight. Was that good?
Her sister was obviously on her Bluetooth in a car. She phoned back instantly. ‘Oh my God, Clara. I hope he’s going to be all right. He’s nearly eighty. I’m just on my way to the hospital now. Eddie’s looking after the kids. I’m picking up Mum and Dad en route. Are you at work or at home?’
‘I’ve just got back home. But I’ll come straight away. Is he in a ward?’
‘Not sure. I’ll let… know… reception—’ There was another burst of staccato words and then there was nothing and her phone beeped with the message:
Call failed.
Clara shouted for Foxy, who appeared reluctantly. Maybe even she was tired with the amount of head-clearing walking they’d been doing lately, but she couldn’t leave her alone while she drove to Poole. It was only forty minutes away, but she had a feeling it might be a long night. Her stomach crunched with anxiety.
Hospitals were like airports, she thought as she went in through the main doors. It didn’t matter whether it was day or night. There was still fluorescent lighting and dry air and people milling about with tired and anxious faces.
The main reception was closed, but a sign directed her through to A&E, where she found someone in a uniform, who consulted a computer and told her that Eric Price was in a cardiac ward on floor three.
‘Does that mean he’s had a heart attack?’
‘I can’t give you any details. You’ll need to ask at the nurses’ station.’
When Clara got to the nurses’ station, she was directed to a visitors’ room, where she found the rest of her family.
Dad was hugging Mum – they were standing by the window – and Rosanna had her arm around Gran on a bench seat beside them. All of them, even Dad, looked as though they’d been crying and the recycled air in the oblong room smelled of sadness.
‘How is he?’ Clara asked, standing in the doorway and suddenly fearing the worst.
Mum detached herself from Dad and came over. ‘He’s bad, love. They’re with him now. They won’t tell us much.’ She glanced at Gran. ‘It’s all been such a shock.’
Now Gran got up too and came across to where they stood. ‘The bloody idiot. He’s been having pains in his arm. He didn’t tell me until today. He said he thought it was tennis elbow.’ Her eyes flashed with pain. ‘He doesn’t even play tennis. Did he say anything to you?’
‘He didn’t say anything about pains in his arm,’ Clara answered, feeling a cold dread creeping through her. ‘He said he felt slightly under the weather, that’s all.’
‘Have you seen him then?’ Rosanna looked at them from her position on the bench seat. ‘When?’
‘Wednesday evening. He phoned me from Jim’s.’
‘Your sister was kind enough to drop him over to me yesterday and then it got too late for me to drive him back, so he stayed in the spare room.’ Gran shot Clara a warning look, which Clara assumed meant, ‘don’t say anything else’. Maybe the subject of divorce had been raised then, but it wasn’t common knowledge. It certainly didn’t seem to have been discussed tonight. ‘So, do they think it was a heart attack,’ she went on. ‘Is that what’s happened?’
‘We think so, yes.’ Dad looked at her. ‘More than one. It sounds as though he’s really lucky he’s still here.’ He gestured towards Gran. ‘Your gran will tell you the full story.’
‘He said he was still feeling ill when he got up this morning,’ Gran said. ‘So I sent him back to bed. Then he collapsed in the bathroom just before teatime. I heard him cry out and then I heard this thump and I thought he’d knocked something over and broken it. You know how cack-handed he can be.’ Her voice wobbled a little and Clara reached for her hand. ‘I went in to tell him off. He never locks the door luckily.’ She paused to gather herself and Clara could feel her grandmother’s thin arm trembling as it knocked against hers and she knew that her gran, who never let anyone get to her, who never cried, was close to breaking point.
Gran swallowed hard several times before she was ready to continue. ‘I thought I’d lost him. He was on the floor and he was still breathing, but his lips were blue.’
‘But we haven’t lost him,’ Clara said gently. ‘He’s still here.’
‘Only just, my angel.’ Gran’s eyes met hers and she saw they were misted with pain and grief.
‘Oh my goodness, I’ve been such a bloody fool.’
23
Clara was relieved there was no one else but her family in this dim little room: no one else waiting for news. She couldn’t have stood to be around raw-faced strangers fidgeting and pacing and alternating between silence and trying to pretend everything was normal. It was bad enough being with the people she loved.
As the time passed, there were bursts of conversation between them when they talked about trivia, like the fact that Sophie was nearly ready to take Grade 1 violin, wasn’t that something? Or Tom had a friend who had a cousin who had mumps – wasn’t that supposed to have been eradicated? But the silences were longer.
Clara knew they were all doing the same thing. Trying to divert themselves from their fear over Grandad. Every so often, Clara thought about the bridal party arriving the following morning. The groom’s party were already in situ. The Scargill wedding was the most important event that the Bluebell had ever hosted, and she needed to be on top form to make sure nothing went wrong. She thought about all the measures that she and Phil had put in place to make sure everything went with clockwork precision. How they had double-checked everything: timings; expectations; plans; hopes and dreams.
Isobel Scargill’s father had paid a fortune for his ‘only daughter’s only wedding’. That’s what he’d called it when he’d phoned up to book. Kate had passed on this information to Clara with a wry smile before she had gone off to Adelaide: ‘“It’s my only daughter’s only wedding and everything has to be perfect” – that’s what he actually said. Clearly he’s confident that she’s found her perfect match.’
‘I guess everyone is confident on the day they actually tie the knot,’ Clara had said. ‘Or they wouldn’t do it.’
