It was their father who broke the silence. “We wanted to ask how you would feel if we were to move down here…to Clifftops?”
Dora’s mouth fell open. “Us, live here?”
“Yes,” said Richard.
“Forever?” asked Dora.
Cassie rolled her eyes. “Not forever, dummy. Aren’t you planning on leaving home one day?”
“I know what you meant, Panda,” Richard smoothed. “Yes, it would be a permanent move. We’d give up the London house and transfer our lives down here. It could be fun, don’t you think? All of us together in my old family home.”
There was a resounding silence.
“And it’s what your grandparents wanted,” he added. “They’ve said as much in their wills.” He looked at each of them in turn. “It was their dearest wish that Clifftops stay in the family. It was so important to them…restoring this house, together…and that makes it…well, it makes it important to me.” They all heard the crack in Richard’s voice.
“What about school?” Dora asked, still trying to wrap her head around her father’s suggestion.
“You’d both go to the local school here,” Helen answered, giving Richard a moment to compose himself.
Dora looked thoughtful. “Can we get a dog?”
“Hmmm…we’ll have to see,” stalled Helen.
“Cassie, you’re very quiet,” Richard said finally. “What do you think?”
Cassie shrugged. She didn’t know why her parents were bothering with this charade. “You’ve already made up your minds, haven’t you?”
“Well…what you think is important to us.”
“So if I said I didn’t want to move here we could stay in London…in our own home?” Cassie asked, eyeing him evenly.
“Well…not exactly,” stumbled Richard, “but there are things we could do to help you with the transition.”
“What about you, Mum?” Cassie asked, turning to Helen. “Do you want to move?” She couldn’t stop herself; she could feel that tickle deep in her gut that made her want to stir things up.
“Your father…he…er…” It was their mother’s turn to stumble. Richard shot her a look, and Helen quickly corrected herself. “What I mean is we think it’s the best thing for the family. An exciting fresh start: a new school…and new friends. Your father can manage some of his projects from here, and some from London. He’ll travel back and forth a bit, for a while.”
“What about your job?”
Helen gave a little defeated sigh. “Well, I suppose I can find a new job when we get down here.” No one could miss the edge in her voice.
Cassie thought for a moment. It would be a big change. She’d miss her friends, the shops, the freedom of the city, just being able to jump on a tube or bus and find a new corner to explore. But there would be other freedoms living at Clifftops: the beach, the sprawling countryside, the rambling walks, and, most excitingly, the cavernous old house. There would be no more queuing to use the bathroom in the morning, no more tripping over Dora and her parents in the kitchen at breakfast time, or having to jam a chair against her bedroom door whenever she wanted a little privacy. They would rattle around in the huge old house like the lonely pennies in her piggy bank. It could be amazing.
“So is it decided then?” asked Dora.
Cassie watched her parents gaze at each other for a moment. The silence closed in around them.
Finally, Richard swallowed. “Yes, Dora,” he said gently, “it’s decided. It will be a new start for all of us.” He reached across and gently took Helen’s hand in his, and Cassie watched as her mother flushed slightly and turned her face toward the window. She wondered if she was the only one who could see the pulse throbbing at her mother’s temple, a fast drumbeat visible just below the surface of her skin.
It was late February when the Tide family eventually packed up their poky London house and moved down to the space and grandeur of Clifftops. The days preceding had been a tedious round of sorting and packing, clearing out books, clothes, and old toys for the charity shops, watching as their life’s possessions were bubble-wrapped, boxed, sealed, and stored, ready for the big move. There were endless arrangements, phone calls, and good-byes, most of which were punctuated by fierce and frequent arguments between her parents, until at last they stood outside on the doorstep, locked the front door one final time, and left London for good. Cassie found it a relief to be going, finally.
The afternoon light was fading fast as they arrived at Clifftops and tiptoed, intruder-like, through the back door.
“Well,” said Richard, “here we are.” He shivered and stomped his feet on the kitchen flagstones. “Let’s get the heating on. It’s freezing.” He fiddled with a thermostat on the wall before leaning over the Aga.
“I’ll make tea,” volunteered Helen. She opened a cupboard and was confronted by a towering stack of roasting trays and cake tins. She tried another, and then another. “Where are the mugs?”
“Try that one over there,” offered Richard, pointing to a corner cupboard near the fridge.
Helen sighed and stomped across the room, and Cassie, sensing another argument building between her parents, snuck silently out of the kitchen door.
It was strange wandering through the old house. She skulked down hallways and wandered through rooms, flicking on lights and testing how it felt now that it was to officially be their home. Everything stood as her grandparents had left it: each chair still perfectly in place, each cushion plumped, the table in the conservatory cluttered with gardening gloves and seed trays, the airing cupboard piled high with linen tablecloths and crisp white bedding, even the antique clocks in the sitting room still tick-ticking, marking the time as if nothing of any consequence had changed. Cassie came upon a half-finished crossword in her grandfather’s study, and an embroidery frame of her grandmother’s. And there was that smell, that particular scent that Cassie would always associate with the house, a strange, dusty cedar aroma that filled her nostrils and reminded her, by its very presence, how far they were from London and their old lives.
Cassie went from room to room, jumpy and uncomfortable, half expecting Daphne or Alfred to appear at any moment. It was eerie. The old house still seemed to echo with their presence, and for once Cassie felt grateful for the silent shadow of her sister, following her wherever she went.
Eventually they descended the back staircase and arrived back at the kitchen door. It was only then that Dora spoke.
“It feels strange, doesn’t it?” Dora said in a hushed voice.
“Yes,” Cassie admitted, “it does.”
She pushed on the swing door and came upon her parents embracing in the middle of the room. Cassie watched in silence as her father pulled back and studied her mother’s face.
“We’ve done the right thing, haven’t we?” he asked, and Helen gave a small, serious smile and smoothed the furrowed lines of his brow with her fingers.
“Stop worrying,” she said. “We’ll make it work. We have to.”
They drank tea out of Daphne’s cups and saucers and watched as the removal vans disappeared down the drive and it was only then, as the radiators clicked and groaned and the cardboard boxes towered over them, that the reality of the move began to sink in.
It surprised Cassie how quickly she adjusted to her new life. Once she’d gotten used to the scratchy new school uniform, the pitch-black night skies, and the sound of the sea lulling her to sleep at night, she found that there was a lot to like about her new home. There was a simplicity and freedom that came with living in the countryside. In London her parents had always wanted to know exactly where she was and what she was doing, but somehow, by the coast, they didn’t seem as tense or cautious. Cassie reveled in her newfound freedom and as winter gradually receded, she took to pounding the clifftop tracks, often stopping to perch on a creaking stile or a fallen tree while she watched the waves and daydreamed.
Dora was still a pain, bounding around, snooping through her stuff, and always
wanting to follow her or know what she was doing, but whether it was the space of their new home, or the vast openness of the landscape around her, Cassie found she didn’t mind her sister’s stealthy pursuit quite so much anymore. It was actually fun to wander down to the village shop together on a Saturday morning, spend their pocket money on penny candies, and then sit on the seawall, watching the crashing waves and the seagulls flap and spin above them on the breeze.
Their father seemed to love it too. He did his best to balance his weekly commute to London, and while there were plenty of nights when he couldn’t make it home, he always walked through the door on a Friday night with bear hugs for each of them and a beaming smile spread across his face.
It appeared that all of them had adapted easily to the change. All of them found the transition to their new home relatively straightforward. All of them except Helen.
Helen, it seemed, was riddled with regret. Almost as soon as the boxes had been unpacked, her mood changed. She stomped around the house like a stroppy teenager, grimacing as she opened yet another closet or wooden chest to be faced with piles of dusty china, crystal wineglasses, or bags of old clothes no one had the heart to throw out. She reminded Cassie of a caged tiger, frustration and bristling anger rolling off her in waves.
“What on earth are we going to do with all this stuff?” she would moan, throwing open yet another cupboard crammed full of relics.
“Whatever we like, my darling,” said Richard, attempting to pacify her with a comforting arm around her shoulders. “This is our home now.”
“So why do I feel like I’m living in some kind of museum?” Helen shrugged him off. “I feel as though your mother is watching me.”
“It’s bound to take us all time to settle in. The kids seem to love it, though,” he offered, glancing hopefully at Cassie and Dora, who nodded back obediently. “I know it’s daunting, I feel it too, but I owe it to my parents to look after this place. It’s their legacy, after all.” Helen didn’t reply, so he persevered. “And I know it’s a little cluttered and that not everything is to your taste, but you should consider it yours now. Treat it like a project, if you will, now you’re not working. It could be exciting, don’t you think? Do whatever you need to, to make it feel like your home.”
Helen looked at him skeptically. “A project?”
“Yes, my darling. Whatever it takes for you to be happy here.”
And Cassie watched as her mother folded her arms across her chest and turned her gaze back toward the room, noting the dangerous glint in Helen’s eyes.
While the Tides adjusted in their individual ways to the move, some things stayed the same. Bill Dryden remained a familiar face around the estate, his hunched figure often visible from the house, stooped over a flower bed or digging in the vegetable patch, just as he had when her grandparents were alive.
Cassie liked Bill—he was what her grandfather would have called a good egg—and sometimes, when she was bored of roaming round the big house, she would wander out and follow the lazy drift of his tobacco smoke until she found him. She liked to sit and watch him work, sometimes in companionable silence, sometimes engaging in easy conversation. He didn’t treat her like a little girl. He spoke to her like an adult and always seemed interested in her opinions.
She was heading out to find him early one Saturday morning when Dora caught her by the back door.
“Where are you going?”
“Just out.”
“Where out?”
“Nowhere special.”
“Can I come?”
Cassie sighed. “I suppose so. You’ll need your boots, though; it’s muddy.”
Dora was already rummaging in the pile by the back door for her red Wellies. “Got them!” she called. “Let’s go.”
Cassie held the door open for Dora and they began to clomp their way down the lawn toward the stream, their boots squelching in unison through the wet grass. It had finally stopped raining. There was a freshness to the air that made their cheeks sting, but every so often the sun appeared from behind a fast-moving bank of gray clouds and showered them in a pale, golden warmth. Cassie could see clusters of bright yellow daffodils dancing in the flower beds.
“Where are we going?” asked Dora after a little while.
“I told you, I don’t know. Just around.”
She took a running jump over the narrow stream and then continued along to the old rusty gate that led into the fruit orchard at the bottom of the garden. The first buds were just emerging on the tips of the branches, a faint green hue against the brown bark. For a while the two sisters wandered among the trees aimlessly, companionable in their silence, until the sound of metal against wood carried toward them on the breeze.
“Listen!” Cassie said. “It’s Bill…come on!” She set off at a run down the hillside, leaving Dora to chase after her, and arrived in the clearing at the bottom of the orchard just in time to see him hefting a large ax at a gnarly branch of wood. “Bill!” she called out. “Bill, it’s us!”
He turned and squinted before breaking into a broad smile. “Well, if it isn’t my two favorite girls. Hello there, how are you both?”
Dora rushed past Cassie at full pelt and launched herself into the man’s arms.
“Whoa there, Nellie!” he cried, taking the full, buffeting embrace of the little girl. “You nearly knocked me for six!”
Dora giggled. “I’m not Nellie. I’m Dora!” It was their little joke.
Cassie caught Bill’s eye and smiled.
“And Cassie too,” he said in his West Country lilt. “Aren’t I the lucky one. My Betty is still on at me to have you round to the house. She wants to make one of her chocolate cakes especially…”
“We’ll come,” said Cassie readily. Betty Dryden was practically famous in Summertown for her chocolate cake.
“Good-oh.” Bill smiled.
“What are you doing?” asked Dora, poking at a pile of logs with the toe of her Wellie.
“Just clearing up after winter, chopping firewood for next.”
“Maybe we could help you?” said Dora hopefully.
“Well, you’d be welcome to. I’ve got plenty of branches to clear still. It’s hard work, mind.”
Dora did a little jig of excitement. “I’ll start over here.”
She raced off at full pelt, and Cassie watched with amusement as her little sister began to fight with an oversize branch lying in the long grass.
Bill chuckled. “She’s nowt but determined, your sister. Reminds me of a young pup. More energy than she knows what to do with.” He reached for a handkerchief and mopped his brow.
Cassie grinned. She knew just want he meant. Dora did look like a puppy wrestling with a giant bone. She sat on a tree stump and watched her for a moment, swinging her dangling booted feet back and forth.
“So how are things going up at the big house, Cassie? Are you girls enjoying life by the sea?”
“Yeah, it’s great.”
“School okay?”
“Uh-huh.” Cassie watched with fascination as Bill took a pipe from his pocket, filled it with tobacco, and then placed it in the corner of his mouth.
“Making friends?” he asked, lighting the pipe with a match.
“Yep.” It was true. Cassie hadn’t had any trouble making friends with the kids in her class. Everyone had been very welcoming, if not a little in awe of the fact that she had grown up in London.
“And how are your folks?”
Cassie paused. She wondered how much to tell him. She decided to be honest. “Dad’s good; he loves being back here. But I think Mum wishes we’d stayed in London.”
“Is that right?” He took several long puffs from the pipe and then exhaled in a long, slow stream.
“Yes. Dad’s away with work a lot, but now whenever he is here they just seem to fight all the time.” Cassie shot a glance toward her sister, checking she was out of earshot. “Dora hates it. It makes her really upset.”
“Does it now?”
“Yes, I think she’s scared they’re going to get a divorce and then we’ll have to move back to London and we’ll never be allowed to get a dog.”
“And what about you, are you worried?”
Cassie shrugged. “Not really. I don’t want a dog.”
Bill let out a small cough.
“I think Mum needs a job.”
Bill nodded sagely. “You’re probably right.”
“You know, sometimes I wonder if they even really love each other.” She’d blurted it out before she’d realized and blushed at her daring.
“Love’s a funny thing, Cassie.”
She looked up.
“It’s like this here orchard. Look around you. Not much to see right now, is there? It looks a little sleepy, forlorn even. But it’s all a cycle. Winter, spring, summer, autumn. Real love, I mean deep, true love, is like that. It takes root, grows, and changes shape. Sometimes it seems to fade; other times it’s in full bloom. Nothing stays the same forever. Things change, life moves forward. But if it’s true love, like the love that entwines a family, then it’s always there simmering beneath the surface, just waiting to burst forth again.”
Cassie looked up at the branches of the apple tree she sat beneath. They were brown and bare, but here and there she could see green shoots of life sprouting, buds that would soon bear beautiful blossoms and before long heavy apples that would bend the boughs.
“So do you…do you love Mrs. Dryden like that then?” Cassie held her breath, unsure if she was allowed to ask such a personal question.
But Bill nodded solemnly. “Yes,” he said, “we’ve been married fifty years this summer and I wouldn’t have missed a single day, not even the ones when we fought like cats and dogs. I’m sure your parents are like that too, Cassie. Deep down they love each other.”
Cassie nodded, feeling a little better.
“What are you two talking about?” asked Dora. She was dragging her giant branch triumphantly behind her.
“Just putting the world to rights,” said Bill smoothly.
The House of Tides Page 6
