A PIECE OF CAKE

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Why don’t you ask Jonas?’ I’d suggested. ‘He told me all kinds of old legends and stories when I was little, so I’m sure he could come up with some ideas – especially if it brings more visitors to the Lady Spring, too. In fact,’ I’d added, ‘why not call a meeting and get other people from the village on board? This could bring visitors to the whole valley, not just the pub.’

  ‘Great idea,’ she’d enthused. ‘See, I said you had more imagination than me!’

  Now she was going to do just that, holding the first meeting on Tuesday evening – so if Kieran and I had the almighty falling-out tomorrow that I suspected was on the cards, I’d be back in time for it.

  ‘I’m so looking forward to seeing you again,’ she’d said. ‘Do you know, it’s been nearly four years? And Tam hasn’t seen you for even longer. It’s lovely that Tam has moved back here too, but it’s not the same when it isn’t the three of us.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ I’d agreed and then suddenly I’d longed even more to be at Halfhidden again, that Shangri-la of childhood. It was pulling me back and, despite what had happened in the past, it would always be the place where I felt I truly belonged.

  *

  I got off the plane in much the same sticky and dishevelled state I’d got on to it, though at least I’d sent most of my heavy luggage on to Halfhidden and only had one suitcase with me.

  Kieran’s father was meeting me, which was unfortunate considering that once Kieran arrived next day, I was going to tell all of them fully and frankly exactly how I was feeling and what I intended to do about it. I wasn’t sure what would happen after that, except I’d be going straight home, leaving the ball in Kieran’s court.

  There had been no getting out of it, though: Douglas had to be in London for some meeting or seminar the day before and then was having lunch today with friends before heading home, so he’d insisted on collecting me at the airport on the way back to Oxford.

  ‘Rough journey?’ he said, after failing to recognise me until I went right up to him. This lack of tact only hardened my resolve, and since I was thinking ahead to what I was going to say to him and Miranda when we arrived, it was a while before I noticed he was driving very fast … and also, unless he’d taken to using whisky as an aftershave, he’d been drinking.

  And on that very thought, even though we were just approaching a sharp bend, Douglas recklessly swung out to overtake a lorry – straight into the path of a small blue car coming the other way.

  There wasn’t enough room to get past and Douglas jammed on the brakes, jerking me sharply forward … And then the weirdest thing happened, for it was as if, for just a second, the fabric of time ripped open and I fell through, right into the Range Rover on the night Harry Salcombe died.

  Then, equally suddenly, I was catapulted out again, into a gentle, familiar bright light, filled by a soft susurration of wings and a hint of celestial music …

  I found I was now hovering above the car, which had spun right around and was facing back the way we’d come, while the small blue one was in the ditch. I could see myself sitting like a statue in the passenger seat, eyes wide with shock, and hear the thin thread of Douglas’s voice, as if through water.

  ‘Come on Izzy, be quick – change places with me!’ he demanded, pulling at my arm urgently, as if he could drag me across into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Izzy, come on, I’ll lose my licence,’ he snapped. ‘Pull yourself together, you’re not hurt!’

  Then he sharply slapped my face – and, instantly, I was back in my body and gasping with shock, partly at the blow and partly from once again being wrenched back from Heaven.

  Chapter 2: Fault Lines

  ‘By then, other drivers had stopped and the police were there in minutes,’ I said. ‘An ambulance came soon after, and then it all got a bit confusing.’

  ‘I expect it did, after such a shock,’ Daisy Silver said in her calm, warm voice, pouring me a mug of coffee and pushing it across the wide, battered, pine kitchen table.

  Her ample curves were enveloped in a familiar, old rubbed purple velvet kaftan and she had loosened the thick plait of hair that usually circled her head like a silver crown, so that it hung down her back to her waist … or where her waist would have been, had she had one.

  ‘Douglas is an awful man! I mean, he’s a doctor, yet instead of getting out to see if the people in the other car needed any help, he just kept on and on at me to say I was driving! Luckily no one was seriously injured, but the mother and two small children in the other car were really shaken up.’

  ‘He does seem to have entirely disregarded his Hippocratic oath,’ she agreed dryly.

  ‘Yes and even when the police were questioning him, he insisted the driver of the other car was at fault and wanted me to back him up.’

  ‘Which I’m assuming you didn’t?’

  ‘No, of course not. I told them it was entirely his fault for overtaking on a bend and then, of course, he was even more furious with me. When they breathalysed him he was way over the limit, so they charged him with drink-driving as well as dangerous driving and goodness knows what else. … Though come to think of it, I didn’t tell them about him asking me to pretend to have been the driver.’

  ‘It sounds like he’ll be in enough trouble without that, so I wouldn’t worry about it.’

  ‘It would be just my word against his anyway, wouldn’t it?’

  She nodded. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘We had to go to the police station, but eventually they said I could go, so I got into a taxi and came here.’ I clamped my hands around the mug of hot coffee.

  ‘Well, I’m always glad to see you, whatever the reason, you know that.’

  ‘I do,’ I said gratefully. ‘And it seemed natural to head here.’

  ‘Very sensible,’ she approved. ‘In fact, you behaved extremely well, given the shock you’d had.’

  ‘It could easily have been a fatal crash.’ I shivered. ‘All because he drank too much and drove like an idiot.’

  ‘Health professionals have all the human failings, just like anyone else,’ Daisy said. ‘But I’m horrified he should have asked you to change places in the car with him.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Kieran ever told him about the accident I was involved in when I was a teenager – in fact, Douglas probably didn’t even know I couldn’t drive.’

  ‘He should never have thought of asking you, whether he did or not. But at least you had too much common sense and integrity to agree – and it’s wonderful that the family in the other car weren’t hurt.’

  Then she smiled at me and pushed over the open tin of coffee-iced biscuits. ‘Have some soothing sugar.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, taking one and crunching into the crisp coating, and for a few moments we munched in amicable silence.

  Then she said with her usual acuity, which I suppose was a vital component of her success as a child psychiatrist, ‘Did something else happen, Izzy?’

  ‘Yes – or rather, two things happened just as we hit the other car. One of them was that I briefly went back to Heaven, like I did after the first accident … and then I was right out of my body, looking down.’

  ‘So you went through the bright tunnel again?’ she asked, interested.

  ‘There wasn’t any tunnel this time, I was just momentarily enveloped by light and colour and a strange kind of music … it was lovely. But right before that, just as we struck the other car …’

  I tailed off, trying to frame the words for what had happened, and Daisy didn’t push me, any more than she had when I’d arrived by taxi half an hour before in a distressed condition, merely greeting me with her usual, ‘Oh, there you are, Izzy! Come in,’ as if I was the most welcome and expected visitor in the world.

  She’d always made me feel that way, especially when Debo, my aunt and guardian, had packed me off to convalesce with her after that first dreadful accident. And it was during that stay, after she took me to the V&A museum, that I devel
oped the consuming interest in textiles that has enabled me to help so many other women escape from grinding poverty – which I truly believe was the reason I was sent back from Heaven. If you looked, there seemed to be a reason for everything, good or bad … and that brought me back full circle to what I needed to say.

  I looked up at her familiar apple-cheeked, wise face with its clever dark eyes. ‘It was the weirdest thing, Daisy, just as if time was a curtain that ripped open to let me slip through – because suddenly, I was there in the Range Rover on the night of the accident when Harry … when I …’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Daisy said, ‘because you had no recollection of even getting into the car, let alone subsequent events.’

  ‘So you think it was a memory?’

  ‘Possibly, because a sudden shock can bring back things the subconscious has hidden – though it can also create new “memories”,’ she gently suggested.

  ‘You mean, I might have imagined the scene I saw? But it seemed so real! We were going along the lane up towards the Green and the others, Harry, Caro and Simon, were all singing. They’d been celebrating their exam results and Harry wanted me to go back to Sweetwell with them to a party … but I’d already told him I couldn’t, because if I wasn’t home by ten, Judy would go down to the pub to look for me … and that’s the last real memory of that evening I have.’

  Debo had tended to lose track of my movements and the passing of time, but Judy, her best friend, who’d moved in to help with the childcare after my mother had died and never left, was more practical and firmly set the boundaries a teenager needed.

  ‘Judy was surprised you’d disobeyed her, but we knew Harry must have persuaded you. But to return to the flashback you had, if everyone was singing and happy, that was a good memory?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, and though I think she guessed I was still holding something back, she didn’t press me. I changed tack.

  ‘I had another argument with Kieran on the phone last night and I’d decided things weren’t going to work out – or not the way he wanted them to – so I was going to have it out with him tomorrow, when he got back.’

  ‘You did seem unhappy about the way his parents were taking over your plans, last time we spoke,’ she said.

  ‘That was certainly part of it! Do you know, his mother had even started planning a huge wedding in Oxford, when I’d told her I’d always dreamed of a small one in the Halfhidden church.’

  ‘Well, Izzy, you certainly couldn’t have a big one in St Mary’s, because it can’t hold more than about thirty people at once, can it? And it’s your wedding, so you must have it where you want it.’

  ‘Or not at all. And there’s more, too – they’ve found us a house round the corner from theirs, which they think I’m going to put that legacy from my father into. And Kieran can’t see any problem with any of that. In fact, he’s entirely failed to see my viewpoint at all, and last night after we argued, he put the phone down on me!’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear it isn’t working out, but it’s better to find out whether you’re entirely compatible before you get married, rather than afterwards,’ she said. ‘If Kieran’s set on joining the family GP practice in Oxford, you’d definitely have to see a lot of his parents.’

  I shuddered. ‘I don’t even want to live in Oxford.’

  ‘It’s a very lovely place.’

  ‘I can see that, only it’s not my place.’ I tried to explain. ‘I know I wasn’t born in Lancashire, but despite what happened there, Halfhidden still feels like home and the one place where I truly belong. It … pulls me back.’

  ‘You were only about five when Debo went to live with Baz Salcombe, so you probably don’t recall much before that?’

  ‘No, nothing at all. I think I remember living with Judy in the Victorian wing of Sweetwell, where the housekeeper and her family live now, but mostly my memories are of after the affair finished, when we all moved to the Lodge.’

  ‘Debo does have the knack of staying best friends with her former lovers,’ she said of her old friend, with a smile. ‘And it made sense to stay in the country, because by then she and Judy had got about eight or nine rescued dogs between them, way too many for town.’

  ‘Baz liked dogs too,’ I said. ‘He never minded when Debo’s escaped and ran around the estate, or that she extended the kennels beyond the garden into the grounds.’

  I sighed sadly. ‘He was the nearest to a father figure I ever had, and I missed him after he went to live abroad …’

  For Baz had been so broken by the loss of his only child that he’d shut up Sweetwell and gone to live permanently in his beachfront house in the Bahamas, leaving the housekeeper, Tom Tamblyn’s younger sister Myra, as caretaker and Dan Clew to look after the garden and keep an eye on the wooded grounds.

  Baz had rarely visited after that and never at times that coincided with my visits, though he and Debo had always remained friends – and occasionally, I suspected, more than friends.

  ‘Kieran absolutely idolises his father,’ I said, following this train of thought. ‘So he’s going to be a bit upset about the accident, though I don’t know if Douglas will tell him I refused to take the blame for it, or not.’

  ‘If he does, since Kieran knows about your history, he’ll hardly be surprised about that. And if he truly loves you, he’ll be more concerned with how it’s affected you.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure he really does love me, and in any case, when push came to shove, he seemed quite prepared to override what I wanted to please his parents.’

  ‘It certainly sounds to me as if you two at least need some breathing space apart,’ she said. ‘Things will seem clearer then and you may even find that you do have a future together.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said doubtfully. ‘But if so, it definitely wouldn’t be in Oxford. And not only have I already used some of this legacy they seemed to have been counting on, I’ll probably have to bail Debo out with the rest.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it will come to that. Debo does stagger from financial crisis to crisis, but she always manages to raise the money she needs from somewhere,’ she said, surprised. ‘I mean, for a start she can get as much modelling work as she wants and she often pops down to stay with me for various assignments.’

  Debo had been a famous model in the sixties and seventies and even though she was now the wrong side of sixty was still much in demand. Tall, thin and elegant, with huge grey doe-eyes and cropped ash-blonde hair, she doesn’t look that much different, either. Judy always told me I looked like a miniature version of her but with my father’s dark colouring and lack of height, though I think she was just being kind …

  ‘Debo hates leaving the dogs to do the assignments, though, so if she’s been down a lot recently it shows how bad things have got – and this time there’s no Baz to come to the rescue,’ I pointed out. ‘She was devastated when he died so suddenly – not to mention finding out the whole estate had been left to some illegitimate son she’d never heard of!’

  ‘Actually, when she rang to tell me, the main shock seemed to be more that Baz must have had a fling with Fliss Gambol, an old enemy of hers from her early modelling days, even though it was before she took up with him,’ Daisy said. ‘Even worse, she’s always blamed Fliss for your mother’s death.’

  ‘Oh? In what way?’ I asked, puzzled, because Debo had never told me much about my mother, except that she had died young from an accidental drug overdose. ‘Fliss Gambol was some sixties singer, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, until drink and drugs got the better of her. Lisa, your mother, was very young when she came to live with Debo and unfortunately she fell in with Fliss’s crowd and under her influence.’

  ‘That makes it a bit clearer,’ I said. ‘I can see now why Debo would be upset. And the other thing is that she said Baz always promised he’d leave her the Lodge and the land round it where she’s extended the kennels, and instead this son he’d just found out about scooped the lot.’
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  ‘She does have the Lodge for life though and Baz may have thought if he left her any money, she’d spend it on even more dogs,’ she said astutely. ‘Or if he gave her the Lodge outright, she’d mortgage that.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I admitted, because Debo did tend to pour every penny that came her way (except for what Judy could snatch away for housekeeping) into her Debo’s Desperate Dogs Rescue Kennels.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll have to see when I get home. But if she has the lodge for life, then at least she can stay there, even if she can’t keep as many dogs.’

  ‘I can’t see her being happy about that,’ Daisy said. ‘And I don’t think she’ll want to take any of the money your father left you, either, however desperate things are.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said, sitting up straighter. ‘You know, I believe meeting Kieran was a wrong turn. I confused what I wanted with what I was supposed to be doing.’

  Daisy smiled. ‘I think it all comes down to following your heart. But sometimes, you also need to use your head.’

  ‘Both seem to be telling me to go back to Halfhidden and set up my mail-order company there. I want to go home at last, and not go away ever again,’ I finished.

  Daisy regarded me thoughtfully. ‘Hmm … that might still be the shock talking and the cold feet about the wedding. But time will tell.’

  ‘It will – and there’s something else I’m going to do when I get home, that I should have done years ago: I’m going to meet the past head-on,’ I said with new resolution.

  ‘You mean, the accident?’

  ‘Yes, I want to fill in the blank bits and try to understand why I was driving that night. I mean, I remember clearly that I was working in the pub with Lulu and Tam and that I left to walk home early, because my old dog, Patch, was ill. And then in the car park, I passed the red Range Rover and Harry invited me to the party at Sweetwell. I told him I couldn’t go, though that bit’s fuzzy … and then, absolutely nothing until I came out of the induced coma in hospital, weeks later.’