Coming Home to Glendale Hall

by Victoria Walters

  My gran had told me my parents felt the same way she did about the baby, and I had been heartbroken. I had hoped my mother might support my pregnancy and I had never felt so alone than in the moment I realised she wouldn’t. Gran told me she had booked me in to see the doctor the next day to have an abortion. ‘You’d be going against all of our wishes if you do this. I’ve spoken to your parents. And they are as disappointed as I am. You’re too young for this. Drew is going to America. You can’t destroy his future along with yours. You can’t be a single mother. What will people think? What will they say?’

  Tears streaming down my face, I had asked her if my mum had also agreed that I shouldn’t have the baby. I had still been holding a small flicker of hope that she would step up and stand by me for once, that she’d want her grandchild even if it had seemed like she had never wanted me.

  My gran had looked at me and shaken her head. ‘Your mother thinks as I do. You can’t have this baby, Beth. But, don’t worry, we will sort it out quickly. I’ll take you to the doctor myself in the morning.’

  I tried to tell her that I wasn’t sure, but she swept out of the room. I remember thinking that surely I had a say in the matter. Wasn’t it my body? My choice?

  I sat on my bed in tears, not knowing what to do. I touched my stomach. I started to imagine what it would be like if the baby kept growing inside me. Would it look like me or Drew? I thought of Drew and how much I loved him. I was carrying a part of him too, wasn’t I? How could I not love it too?

  Perhaps if I had thought more rationally, I would have weighed up that love against how hard it would be becoming such a young, single mother, but I couldn’t seem to get my head to ignore my heart. In that moment, all I could think about was the love I already felt for that baby. Love that I thought my family didn’t feel for me.

  My grandmother had never paused to ask me what I thought, to check how I felt, she had just decided what was best for me, like she and my mum always had. And that made me angry. And reminded me once again about how much I longed to be free of my family’s influence. To do what I wanted to do.

  I knew that if I was going to keep the baby, I couldn’t stay. I had already imagined leaving Glendale and making my own way in the world away from them, so I could just do it sooner than I had planned. Now, I had a reason to do it.

  My sixteen-year-old stubbornness kicked in. I felt as if I could take on the world by myself, and so I decided to do just that.

  I looked back at my sleeping grandmother who was nearing her last days on earth. I wondered if she had ever regretted what she said before I ran away. I was sure I’d never know. My family don’t do apologies or forgiveness. There was still a wall between us all. I had wondered if coming home would help to break it down, finally, but maybe it would always stay that way.

  Chapter Six

  We woke up to a blanket of white outside. Snow covered the garden and every surface, layers deep, powdered and thick like I hadn’t seen since I left Glendale.

  Izzy bounded into my room, up before me as usual, eager for us to walk in it. It was lovely to see her so excited to go outside so I suggested we left the tour of the house I had promised her until later, and that we go to the village first. It looked like a Christmas card outside. I couldn’t wait for us to leave our footprints in it.

  We ate breakfast alone. Sally told us that Dad had gone to the office and Mum was upstairs with Gran. I promised to take Izzy up to see her as soon as we got back home. We ate quickly and then pulled on our coats, hats, scarves and boots. It had been a long time since I had walked through the snow. We opened the door and almost cried at the bitter wind that greeted us.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ I asked Izzy, wondering if my mother had been right about staying in today.

  ‘Mum, it’s snow, we have to!’

  I laughed and clutched her gloved hand with mine as we stepped gingerly off the front step. John had cleared a path to the front gate already, but beyond, although the road had been gritted the pavements were still completely covered, so we walked single file along the road.

  Glendale village was a twenty-minute walk from the house, down a small winding lane with countryside surrounding it. There wasn’t another house for miles. I had done the walk so many times in my life before I could have probably done it blindfolded, but it felt unfamiliar because Izzy was beside me. The sky was blue, and the sun was out, shining down on the white ground beneath our feet. There was something about snow that made the world feel peaceful. It was silent, the only sound the crunching of the snow underfoot as we walked carefully away from the Hall. Izzy was beaming, enjoying the feel of walking through deep snow for the first time in her life. I snapped some photos of her on my phone and took a selfie of the two of us with silver birch trees behind us, covered in snow.

  ‘Is that it?’ Izzy asked, squinting as some buildings came into view, forcing their way into the landscape in front of us.

  ‘That’s it.’ We soon passed the sign indicating that we were in Glendale village and found ourselves in the small narrow high street. It was strange to walk down it again. We were the only two people in sight. I thought back to summer days as a teenager, running to the village almost every day to meet up with my boyfriend Drew and our friends. We would buy ice creams and walk to the small green in front of the church to eat them. The church still dominated the scene, its steeple was dusted with snow.

  I looked around in surprise. ‘Where is everyone?’ I wondered aloud to Izzy, who shrugged. I didn’t think the snow would be a deterrent to hardy Glendale residents, as it would have been in London, but there was an eerie emptiness to the village.

  We strolled down the road. There were just two shops open – a convenience store and a florist – as well as the doctor’s surgery and the library. The rest of the shops had been boarded up. ‘There used to be so much more here,’ I told Izzy. It had been thriving when I was younger. I had often dragged my mum into the cafe for a sweet treat when she had brought me with her on errands. We always saw someone we knew and I used to roll my eyes at how long she would talk to people in there, bored as soon as I’d finished my shortbread. I wondered how long it had been since she had walked down the road like we were doing. Would she still stop to talk to people here, or had my leaving changed all that for her? I felt guiltier with each step.

  I tried hard to find some resemblance to the past village I had known. It felt like that had been a different place. ‘At least the pub is still here,’ I muttered, seeing it still standing at the end of the road, its thatched roof covered in white. I smiled as I remembered hanging out there as a teenager, sitting out in the beer garden, even though it was too cold, to hide the alcoholic drinks bought for us by older kids. Snuggled up to Drew, I never wanted to go home after nights like that.

  ‘And they still have a library,’ Izzy said then, breaking through my memories, pointing ahead eagerly. ‘Can we go, please? I definitely need more books,’ she begged, her eyes having lit up at the very idea of books.

  ‘Izzy, we talked about you not disappearing into a book every moment of this trip, didn’t we?’ I said. I loved that she got so excited about books, but I also wanted her to want to spend time with people. In London, she found it hard to connect with kids her age. She had always enjoyed books, and we had read together a lot, but once she started school, she spent more and more time reading. I tried to encourage her to be more sociable by inviting kids in her class round or taking her to birthday parties but she just didn’t seem to enjoy it, and I hated forcing her into it. I knew that as an only child without family around, she had spent more time alone or just with me than many of her peers would have done, but I worried that there was more to it. Izzy always tried to protect me, I knew that, telling me that everything was okay and avoiding asking me for money unless she really had to, trying to help out around the house when she saw that I was tired; it was tough us being alone and there being a smaller age gap between us than most mothers and daughters, but I didn’t wa
nt her to miss out on anything.

  Izzy pouted. ‘Can we just have a look though? Don’t you want to see it again? It’s part of the village tour, isn’t it?’

  I couldn’t say no to the hopeful look in her eyes. ‘Okay, fine, just for a few minutes and then we’re getting hot drinks, I can’t feel my face,’ I said, letting her lead the way to the small building at the end of the high street. It certainly hadn’t been somewhere I had spent much time in growing up. My mother had always bought books brand new for me, and never having been the studious type, I had done the bare minimum in studying outside of school, working as fast as I could until I could get outside again. Izzy, however, had always been very much at home in a library. On my limited income, it had been a godsend with such a bookish daughter. We walked inside and the warmth that greeted us was very welcome.

  Izzy marched us straight to the children’s department and let out a gasp. ‘Oh my god, look!’ She pointed to a display of Harry Potter books draped with the house scarves and dotted with figures from the films, and wands and mugs, and basically every piece of merchandise you could think of. ‘This is amazing.’

  The Harry Potter series had always been her favourite. She loved the magic, obviously, but had especially loved the fact there was not only a red-haired main character but a whole, large family all with red hair in it too.

  ‘Do you like it?’ We turned to see a petite blonde walking over to us.

  ‘I love it!’ Izzy cried. ‘Although you don’t have a Ginny figure and she’s the best.’

  ‘You’re right. I’ll have to get one,’ the woman replied, smiling at Izzy. She turned to me and stared, her mouth slowly falling open into an ‘oh’ shape.

  I touched my face, wondering if I had breakfast left on it or something.

  ‘Oh my god. You look so much like… Beth?’ She said in a thick Scottish accent.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s me – Heather!’

  Then it was my turn to stare. She broke out into a huge grin as I smiled. ‘Oh my god, it is you!’ I recognised her too, then. My childhood best friend.

  Heather grabbed me and gave me a tight hug that took my breath away. ‘Bloody hell! It really is you. I heard rumours you were back in town.’ The couple in the corner turned around to shush us. ‘Oops,’ she said in a lower voice. ‘I should really know better. Then this must be…?’ she asked, looking down at Izzy.

  ‘I’m Izzy,’ she replied, standing a little straighter.

  ‘What a lovely name!’

  ‘I can’t believe we’ve run into you,’ I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

  ‘I know! It’s been, what, ten years? Please say I can tempt you to a cup of tea?’

  I hesitated, glancing at Izzy who promptly sat down, cross-legged on the floor, pulling a book down on to her lap. ‘It would be nice to catch up. You’ll be okay here, Iz?’

  ‘Of course,’ she replied, pointing to the book.

  Following Heather to the desk at the front, I sat in the seat she gestured to and watched as she put the kettle on. ‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ I told her.

  ‘Me? I’m always here! But you, I haven’t seen you in Glendale in forever. You still live in London, don’t you? I tried to find you on Facebook a few years ago actually, but I couldn’t find you,’ Heather replied.

  I remembered her rapid-fire conversation from when we were teenagers. It was nice to see she hadn’t changed.

  ‘I still live there,’ I confirmed. ‘My grandmother isn’t well, so Izzy and I have come back for Christmas. And I’m not on Facebook at all,’ I told her, smiling as she handed me a tea and sat down in the desk chair opposite me. I had avoided social media, too worried that I’d resort to stalking Drew online. It was better to be in the dark about his life, for both Izzy and me. It made his absence from ours somewhat easier.

  ‘You’re probably wondering why the hell I’m still in Glendale, huh? Well, I did get out for a bit. I went to uni and all that, but my parents needed me, so I came back and got a job here.’

  ‘How are your parents?’ I asked, taking a sip of the tea.

  Heather sighed. ‘My mum passed away a few years ago, so it’s just me and Dad now.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ I remembered all the times I spent at Heather’s house in the village when I was growing up. I loved her cosy, warm house and her loving parents: it always felt like a respite from life at Glendale Hall. ‘I wish I had known.’

  ‘It was a shame that you went so far away,’ Heather agreed. ‘But I did understand. Sally came to see me like you asked her to.’

  ‘I couldn’t just leave without telling you.’ I had begged Sally to go and see Heather to tell her why I’d had to run from Glendale.

  ‘I’m glad you did. I wished I could have helped you in some way though.’

  ‘It all happened so fast. I realised I was pregnant, and then Gran found my test. I didn’t have a chance to talk to you, to anyone really. Sally was a huge help. I went to stay with her niece to start with.’ I glanced over at Izzy and smiled.

  Heather looked at her too. ‘She looks just like you expect for the red hair. That’s all Drew,’ she said, whispering his name. ‘Does she know about him?’

  ‘Yes. She knows that he never knew I was pregnant, which is why she’s never met him.’ I didn’t want to confess that I had reached out to Drew and had been rejected.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to do it all on your own. You didn’t ever meet someone then, in London?’

  I shook my head. ‘I suppose it wasn’t easy being a single mother; I always put Izzy first.’

  ‘And you were so in love with Drew,’ Heather replied, looking at me with understanding.

  I felt my cheeks warm up more than I could blame on the tea. ‘I suppose I have compared people to him. It’s hard not to. First love and all that…’ I tried to laugh. ‘But what about you? Anyone special in your life?’

  ‘Unfortunately, you don’t tend to meet Prince Charming working in here. What do you do in London then?’

  ‘I do admin at Izzy’s school.’

  ‘The girl who hated school now works in one!’ Heather hooted with delight. ‘I never told anyone that she was Drew’s,’ she continued in a low voice. ‘Your parents kept quiet the real reason you had gone, but obviously there was a lot of gossip about it. One of the theories was that you’d gone to a young offender’s place.’ She shook her head. ‘In the end, most people assumed you’d run off with another boy. And then your mum told someone that you’d had a baby in London, which seemed to confirm all of that. It was all a bit of a scandal though. Beth Williams leaving Glendale Hall and her family… the village was shocked.’

  I sighed. I could just imagine how much people had talked about it all back then. It explained why my parents appeared to have retreated from village life. They would have been mortified being gossiped about. ‘And what about Drew? Have you seen or heard anything about him? Did he hear all the gossip?’ I asked her, anxiously.

  ‘Rory told me that Drew had been devastated when you didn’t turn up to see him at the airport. He took a lot of convincing to get on the plane to America. Rory didn’t tell him about the rumour you’d gone off with someone else, I don’t think.’

  ‘It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, not going to that airport.’

  ‘I bet. I’ve briefly seen him on and off over the years when he’s been home if him and Rory have come into the pub, just to say hi really, not much more. He seems like he’s doing well. I don’t know if you want to hear that or not though,’ she added.

  I was about to reply but Izzy came over then. I shook my head, that conversation had to be over for now. ‘Now, why do you have four books with you?’

  ‘They look really good.’

  ‘You won’t have time to read them, we will be spending time with the family and you brought a pile from home.’

  ‘Mum, you can never have too many books!’

  Heather chuckled. ‘A girl after my own heart. How di
d you produce such a bookish daughter? I was friends with your mum when she was young, and I never saw her reading.’

  ‘You like Harry Potter though, don’t you, Mum?’

  I grinned. ‘Well, of course, I do.’

  ‘Take them all home with you; it’s lovely to see someone using the library,’ Heather said. ‘I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be here, so you might as well.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘The council keep threatening close it down because they are losing Government funding for it, apparently, as people just aren’t using it enough. The whole of the high street seems to be shutting down. The council put all the rents up and it forced most of the shops to shut. There’s a rumour that they want to sell off the whole street to some developers, but I don’t know if that’s true.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ Izzy said, her face twisting up in outrage at the very idea of closing the library.

  ‘What will they do with the buildings if they do sell them?’ I asked Heather.

  ‘Put up flats, apparently, sell it as a commuter estate for people working in Inverness. I don’t know, maybe it would be better, the high street is like a ghost town.’ She shrugged. ‘But if they do close the library, I’ll have to get a job in Inverness as there will be nothing around here for me.’

  ‘That’s such a shame,’ I said, thinking that explained why it had all felt so different to the village I remembered. I wondered whether my parents knew how bleak Glendale had become; they had always been so active in the community when I was growing up. It used to annoy me that they would constantly tell me we had to keep up our good family name in the community, so it was strange to see them not at all interested in the village now. ‘I hope it can be saved.’

  ‘We’d need a lot of money though. Anyway, we should talk about brighter things. What are your plans for Christmas then?’

  ‘Tomorrow we’re cutting down a tree and I’m going to help decorate it,’ Izzy said, excitedly.