Starting Over at Acorn Cottage

by Kate Forster

  He was still dressed as was she, but it felt intimate under the heavy cover and her foot found his again and they touched.

  She saw the desire in his eyes and she leaned forward and kissed him. It wasn’t a chaste kiss now. It was searching and filled with questions that he answered by pulling her to him.

  His hands were on her hip and he pressed against her. She heard him moan as she pressed her hips back against him.

  His tongue flickered in her mouth and she caught it, sucking on it, thinking she would die with desire. His hand went under her top and the touch of his skin made her gasp with pleasure. His hands were rough and demanding and she felt his thumb brush against the side of her breast. She moved so he knew she wanted more and soon his hands were everywhere.

  She pulled him on top of her in the bed, feeling his hardness between her legs, and she moved against him.

  God, I haven’t made out like this since I was a teenager, she thought as her legs went around him.

  It was exquisite pleasure and she didn’t want it to end but she wanted more.

  Henry pushed up on his hands and looked down at her.

  ‘Tell me what you want me to do to you?’ he asked and she saw he was very serious.

  She paused, trying to think. She wanted everything at once. Him inside her, above her, behind her, over her, under her.

  ‘Everything,’ she simply said and he sat up and pulled off his top.

  His body was lovely. Strong with chest hair, which she tugged at, biting her lip as she smiled up at him.

  ‘God, you’re gorgeous,’ he said.

  ‘So are you.’

  She pulled him down to her and bit him gently on the nipple. Then she rolled on top of him and pulled off her top and smiled as she undid the button on her pyjama top.

  ‘You are seriously sexy.’

  ‘Yes, pyjamas are very sexy – the boys love them.’ She laughed as she shrugged the top from her shoulders.

  ‘You could be wearing a cloak made of feathers and I wouldn’t notice. I just want you naked.’

  The desire he had for her was unlike anything Clara had known before. He was raw and primal and she felt intimidated and yet so special as he pulled her down and sucked on her nipple then rolled her over onto her back.

  Within minutes, her pants were off, and he was between her legs. She grasped his head and pulled the pillow over her head to stop her cries waking Pansy.

  He didn’t stop, until she had come three times and then she pulled his head up and rolled on top of him. ‘Now, inside me,’ she moaned, wondering who this girl was in bed with this man.

  Sex had been pleasant but perfunctory with Giles when it happened, which was rare. Before that there had been a short-term university boyfriend, who ended up being gay, which explained why he wasn’t into sex with her, and a few boys from high school and university who she had sex with because she could, sometimes even when she felt she should but nothing prepared her for Henry.

  He was naked, between her legs. She looked down at him and felt as though she might die with desire.

  ‘What do you want, Clara?’ he asked.

  ‘You.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Gone was the shy man and in his place was this bearded man who looked like he was going to claim her in every position and more and she couldn’t wait.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. Fuck me,’ she said, surprised at her words. Had she ever said that before? Perhaps she had said it because she was supposed to but this time she meant it with everything she had.

  Henry paused, his cock running along her wetness.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ she moaned.

  ‘Oh, darling, I haven’t even started yet,’ and with that he pushed up into her, opening her, and she arched her back with a pleasure she had never known before.

  36

  The end of summer rainstorm was keeping the people away from the bakery and tearooms so Rachel took it upon herself to make a cup of tea and sit behind the counter on the stool she had brought in from the shed outside.

  Mother had said sitting in the shop was lazy and Rachel had agreed but she was tired now it was so busy and besides, there was a lull between customers.

  Joe had told her she needed a website, but since she didn’t have a computer, he brought her his small one that his sister Alice used for school but she had recently upgraded.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t understand computers or emails but her mother had a tablet and controlled it like everything in Rachel’s life, not letting her use it for anything unless it served Mother.

  Now, as she surfed through the pages and pages of recipes and photos and gorgeous inspiration of tearooms and more, Rachel felt a flicker of something unfamiliar. She started to download photos she liked, then picked up the notebook used for ordering and wrote ideas for baking as she read the pages.

  The sound of the bell on the door made her look up and she saw Tassie from across the road.

  ‘You’re brave to go out in this rain. I think the creek will flood,’ said Rachel as she closed the computer and stood up.

  Tassie waved her hand at Rachel. ‘No need to get up, my dear, I will find a seat.’

  ‘Tea? Cake? Something warm?’ offered Rachel.

  ‘Bring your tea to me and show me what you are looking at on the computer. You seem to be lost in creative exploration. I could see the little sparks coming off you from across the street.’

  ‘Could you?’ She wouldn’t be surprised. Tassie always knew what was happening in the village and more specifically in the bakery.

  Mother had said she was an old busybody who didn’t have a life so used other people’s lives as a way of feeling important but Rachel had never felt that Tassie had overstepped any boundaries, not the way her own mother had.

  Thinking of her mother’s rules now made her shiver.

  Not being allowed to lock the bathroom door, so Mother could rattle the handle when she walked by to ensure Rachel wasn’t up to not good. She wasn’t sure what she meant but as Rachel’s body began to change Mother wouldn’t let her look at herself in the mirror; she said Rachel’s breasts were disgusting, and that she should avoid looking or touching her private parts at all costs.

  And it wasn’t as though Rachel wasn’t aware of sex or didn’t have sexual feelings but she would never have been allowed to have a boyfriend with Mother in her life because it would take Rachel away from being her servant and providing money for Mother.

  Rachel took tea and a butterfly cake to Tassie and then carried her own mug of tea and the computer to Tassie and sat down.

  ‘Show me how these things work,’ said Tassie, as she peered at the screen. She took her glasses out of her bag and peered even more closely.

  ‘I have been looking at tea shop ideas and interiors. I would like to spruce this place up a bit but I don’t know if Mother will let me or if we can afford it.’

  Tassie looked at the screen and pointed to a photograph of a tearoom with bookshelves.

  ‘That’s lovely.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rachel. ‘Can I show you want I want to do if I had the money and the freedom?’

  Tassie sighed. ‘Money and freedom. The wish of so many women of my generation, and still the wish remains unfilled.’

  Rachel took Tassie through her ideas of the bookshelves and the open fire for winter and the tables with pretty tablecloths and flowers in vases.

  ‘I think it could be a place to stop by for ten minutes or hours if you wanted. You could have book readings happen or get authors to come and do signings or artists to show their art. My dad wanted to be an artist but he became an insurance salesman instead. I wanted to create a place where everyone can come and be inspired.’

  Tassie smiled and sat back then picked up her cake and took a bite, spreading icing sugar on her purple coat and leaving cream on her top lip.

  ‘I think that’s perfectly doable, more than doable. I think it’s super-duper doable.’

  Rachel sighed and closed t
he computer. ‘I don’t know. Mother will have to come back. Clara said she had some ideas to help me but I haven’t seen her lately.’

  ‘I saw her a week ago when she took me and the little one to Salisbury. It was very nice indeed. But Clara will be back – she has some things she needs attending to right now.’

  Tassie raised her eyebrows a few times and Rachel laughed. ‘What does that mean?’

  Tassie drained her tea and put down the cup and looked inside it.

  ‘An important announcement is coming,’ she said. ‘My death notice might be in the paper, so I should check.’

  The sound of the bell rang and Clara stood in the doorway.

  ‘Hello, Ladies of Merryknowe,’ she cried, waving an envelope in her hand. ‘I have news.’

  ‘There’s the announcement,’ said Tassie to Rachel.

  Clara came to the table and sat down.

  ‘You seem well,’ said Tassie with a look that Rachel didn’t understand.

  ‘More on that later,’ said Clara very firmly to Tassie, and Rachel noticed a blush climbing up her neck.

  ‘So, last week I went to Salisbury and I looked into your dad’s will, which wasn’t with the other papers.’

  Rachel nodded. ‘Mother might have misplaced it.’

  ‘She isn’t your mother, Rachel,’ said Clara.

  ‘Old habits die hard, darling,’ Tassie said to Clara in a gentle tone and Clara put her hand on Rachel’s knee.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just dislike her so much.’

  Rachel nodded. ‘I don’t like her either but I don’t have any power here. She is truly the wicked stepmother and I am the baking version of Cinderella.’

  Clara laughed and threw her head forward so her dark hair fell over her face. When she looked up at them her eyes were sparkling and her smile wide.

  ‘That’s the thing. Your father worked in insurance, didn’t he?’

  Rachel nodded.

  Clara slammed her hand on the table. ‘Your dad knew what he was doing. He set everything up so your stepmother had an allowance but most of the money would be left to you. Instead she forged signatures and God knows what else and she took the money to buy the bakery because she saw you were cheap labour. What she didn’t know was you were good at it, and she hated that. I think she kept you back from being creative in the kitchen because she didn’t want you to draw attention to the shop. She got enough to keep it going but, Rachel, you own this. You own the shop and the tearooms. The whole thing.’

  Rachel was silent as she looked around the shop and then she started to cry.

  It felt like the sobs were coming from the earth and up through her feet and out her mouth as she wailed into the echo of the shop.

  Clara was holding her hands now, and Tassie was rubbing her back as she cried until she thought she was going to be sick and then it slowed until she could breathe again and when she looked up, the sun was out, shining on Clara’s black hair, making her look like exactly like Rachel had always thought of her – as her own guardian angel.

  ‘You mean I can do the renovations?’ Rachel asked. ‘I can have a fireplace and a bookshelf and games and cards?’

  ‘You can have it all, Rachel Brown, everything you’ve ever wanted for your life,’ Clara said. Rachel looked Tassie and then to Clara and wiped her eyes with a napkin.

  ‘You two are the best friends anyone could ask for. My whole life I was lonely and I used to ask my dad to bring me friends. Ones who could make me feel good about my life, who would help me get away from Moth… Moira, and here you are. I don’t think I could be any luckier than I am right now and I want you both to know, I love you very much.’

  Rachel saw Tassie wipe her eye and Clara was nodding and had tears in her eyes.

  ‘We are a lucky three, aren’t we?’ Clara said and they held hands around the table, just as a huge crack of lightning went off overhead, making Clara and Rachel laugh and Tassie look smug.

  37

  Clara – aged 15

  The chickens were chatting among themselves when Clara arrived home from school. She dropped her bag in the back garden and went straight to them, opening the gate to the chicken coop and greeting the girls before she asked their permission to check for eggs.

  She always felt guilty she was taking their hard-earned work for her breakfast but they seemed quite proud of their work and so Clara always praised them and thanked them.

  Mum thought she was silly for talking to chickens but Gran understood the mutual respect.

  Perhaps Mum had lost her understanding of respect after Dad abused her so many times?

  Clara didn’t have any answers but she also didn’t have as many questions now they lived at Gran’s house.

  Once she’d told the teachers what was happening at home, they had contacted the police, the social workers and some lawyers who helped Mum leave Dad and they went to court and Dad wasn’t allowed to come near them anymore.

  Mum had said that Dad didn’t even know where they lived anymore, so Clara stopped listening for him before dinner. Slowly she began to relax at home and at school. She made friends and joined the football club and she liked a boy named Jamie.

  But Gran was the best part of it all. She was like the grandmothers in books with warm cocoa and teaching her how to make cakes and painting faces on boiled eggs for her breakfast.

  And Mum had a job at a nursing home working with old people. She would tell Clara and Gran stories over dinner while the heater was on and sometimes, when it was raining and they were cosy inside the kitchen, Clara thought this was almost as good as the cottage dream she had when she was little.

  But the dream of the cottage hadn’t died in Clara and Mum’s minds, and when a new show started on BBC called Escape to the Country, they would watch and make notes of some of the villages they wanted to move to and the houses they liked.

  Clara liked the thatched cottages but Mum liked the barn conversions or even a house with a water mill, which Clara told her would make her want to go to the bathroom all night.

  Clara kept a new notebook this time, with all the notes of the villages and the houses they liked. She cut out maps of the areas and circled where she thought the houses might be and found old house magazines in charity shops and pasted in the pictures of rooms she thought looked like they belonged in a cottage.

  Curtains with flowery sprigs and soft lamp light and open fires. Overstuffed sofas and dogs lying on them, with bunches of roses in teacups and violet-lined paths.

  It was a perfect dream and Clara knew that she would make it come true one day, because she had managed to do the hardest thing in the world, and Mum laughing at Clara talking to the chickens was living proof.

  38

  After they worked out a plan with Rachel at the tearooms, and the rain had stopped, Clara walked Tassie across the road back to her home, ensuring she didn’t slip on the road.

  ‘Have you asked Henry about Pansy coming to read with me?’ Tassie asked as she opened the door.

  ‘Not yet, we’ve been busy,’ Clara said and Tassie laughed.

  ‘I can tell. Don’t forget school starts soon and Pansy needs to know her letter sounds at the very least.’

  Clara paused. ‘Do you want to come and see the cottage and ask Henry yourself? It might be better coming from you, otherwise I’ll look like the evil stepmother trying to get rid of the child.’

  ‘Are you going to be the stepmother?’

  For a woman closer to ninety years of age than she was to eighty-nine, she didn’t miss a trick, Clara thought as she felt Tassie’s eyes try and bore holes into her mind.

  ‘I don’t know yet. I just like being with him and Pansy.’ She smiled and corrected herself: ‘Actually, I love being with him and Pansy.’

  Tassie nodded in understanding. ‘Then I should come to the cottage and see that all is as it should be.’

  Clara laughed as Tassie closed the door and locked it. They went to Clara’s car and drove to the cottage.

  Henry w
as on the roof when they arrived and Pansy was lying on the lawn on a blanket, surrounded by her dolls and animals.

  ‘Tassie,’ Pansy cried, when Clara opened the car door and she ran towards them.

  Henry waved from above.

  ‘Henry, this is Tassie McIver, my friend who lives in the village,’ Clara called up.

  Henry waved. ‘I’ll come down,’ he said.

  ‘Come inside,’ said Clara. She wanted Tassie’s approval of not just Henry but also the cottage.

  She opened the front door and Tassie walked inside and looked around. Then she walked to the living space, which was still a mess, and then to the kitchen and out through the back door.

  ‘Don’t you want to see upstairs?’ asked Clara, as Henry joined her side.

  ‘Stairs at my age are not my friends, dear’ said Tassie as she walked out towards the huge oak tree in the back garden.

  ‘What a beauty she is,’ said Tassie to the tree more than to Clara.

  Clara and Henry stood back as Pansy went to Tassie and held her hand and looked up at tree also.

  ‘Sometimes I hear the tree whisper to me,’ said Pansy to Tassie as though this was an entirely normal thing.

  ‘Of course you do, pet,’ said Tassie. ‘What does she say?’

  ‘She says that I am loved.’

  ‘That you are.’

  ‘And that Mummy is here with me.’

  Clara felt herself tense at the mention of Naomi. Should be jealous of a dead woman? There was nothing to be jealous of except the energy she left behind that still wrapped Henry and Pansy in its starry cloak.

  ‘Of course Mummy is here, and Daddy and Clara and everyone,’ said Tassie in a very no-nonsense voice.

  Pansy was quiet for a moment. ‘The tree also says that I should have more ice cream than once a week. And cake is good for breakfast and eating your crusts doesn’t make your hair curly.’ She turned and looked pointedly at Henry.

  Henry burst out laughing and Pansy turned to glare at him.

  ‘You don’t know what it said to me,’ she said to her father and turned back to the tree.