by Emma Davies
The door to Maria’s cottage opened as Grace was still walking up the path and she suddenly realised that it was in fact, Amos’s house. She stopped to look at it, feeling odd to be seeing something that was such a part of Amos without him being present.
Maria laughed, opening her arms wide. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she called. ‘Just like Amos!’
The cottage was red-brick, low and perfectly symmetrical, almost like a child’s drawing. A bright-red front door stood between a window on either side, both upstairs and downstairs and a chimney pot stood on the right-hand end of the roof. The garden was beautiful, filled with waving stems of hollyhocks and roses, and a small bench sat to one side, surrounded by pretty tubs. It was friendly and welcoming, and absolutely perfect.
Maria herself was probably in her late twenties, with rich auburn hair that bloomed in a cloud around a petite face. It was tied back with a vividly coloured headscarf, the ends of which trailed onto the tops of dungarees printed with an equally loud pattern. Grace could see instantly why she and Amos were friends. She held out her arms as Grace approached and the two women hugged as if they had known one another their whole lives.
‘Come in, come in,’ beamed Maria. ‘And no, he’s not here yet,’ she added in response to Grace’s unspoken question. ‘But I’m sure he will be.’ She squinted up at the sky. ‘It’s such a beautiful day.’
It was cool and dim inside by comparison and it took Grace a moment for her eyes to adjust. The front door opened directly into the living room, a space that was filled with plants against a backdrop of soft creams and mellow yellows, and Grace felt instantly at home.
‘It’s so lovely to see you, Grace,’ said Maria, still holding her hand, Grace realised. She clasped the other one, holding her at arm’s length and looking her up and down. ‘And you’re everything I hoped you would be.’
Grace blushed at her frank assessment, but strangely, coming from Maria, it felt like an entirely normal thing to say.
‘You’re just like Amos,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know a thing about you, but I can see why you’re such good friends.’
‘Then you approve,’ said Maria. ‘That makes me very happy.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Now, have you eaten? I’ve a fresh batch of scones straight out of the oven, so have one of those at least, even if you can’t face anything else.’
Maria led her from the lounge through an archway into a dining room, and on into the kitchen which ran along the back of the house. Two things struck Grace straight away: the first was the sudden light in this room, and the second was the smell. There was a glorious scent of baking, but also something much earthier, greener and, looking up, Grace realised that the ceiling was hung with bunches of herbs strung from a line across the room. A sewing machine stood on the kitchen table along with heaps of colourful cotton fabric.
‘Have a seat,’ said Maria, ‘if you can find a space, and then I want to know everything about you.’
And so, surprisingly, although she had only just met Maria, over the most delicious cheese and chive scone and a pot of strong tea, Grace did tell her. Except that she didn’t tell her about the Grace of old, she told her about the person she had become since she had met Amos.
22
Somehow the afternoon slipped into the evening without either of them really noticing. More tea had been drunk, both the house and garden explored, and Maria had told Grace all about herself and the small business she ran from the cottage growing and selling herbs and making fragrant pillows and other herbal remedies. In fact, the two women seemed to have so much in common that Grace couldn’t help but wonder aloud why Amos hadn’t fallen for Maria’s considerable charms. It was the first time the young woman’s face fell during the whole time Grace had been there.
‘He hasn’t told you what happened, has he?’ she asked.
Grace shook her head. ‘No, he left before I had the chance to talk to him about it. But I know it must have been serious.’
‘I thought as much, because if he had told you, you would understand why he and I could never be a possibility.’ Her face brightened a little. ‘Of course there’s a huge age gap and we’d have to fancy one another as well, which we don’t. But even if we did it would never work, we’re too much of a reminder for each other. Amos and I are the best of friends, and I am glad to have him in my life, but that’s as far as it goes. But you, you’re a different matter… You’re just as special as Amos if I’m not much mistaken and I’d hate to see you slip through each other’s fingers.’
Grace blushed slightly at the compliment and chose her words carefully. ‘Was the thing that happened something… bad? I feel awful even asking. I mean, here I am, miles from home, waiting for a man who in all honesty I barely know, and yet I am here… I’m not entirely sure why, and yet I can’t believe that anything will change how I feel about Amos.’
Maria considered her question for a few moments, her lips pressed together. ‘That’s not a question I can answer, I’m afraid. The judgement you make must be yours and yours alone.’
‘Yes, I can understand that,’ replied Grace sombrely. ‘And I appreciate your honesty.’ She smiled, trying to lighten the mood once more. ‘I just wish he’d hurry up and get here, that’s if he’s coming at all. I’m beginning to feel a little like a lovesick teenager.’
Maria nodded in acknowledgement of how Grace was feeling. ‘He’ll get here, I’m sure of it, but you might have noticed that time doesn’t seem to hold the same constraints over Amos that it does over most people. The spare bed is made up anyway though – you will stay, won’t you?’
‘Oh…’ Grace stared at her. ‘I hadn’t even thought about what might happen if Amos doesn’t arrive today. I don’t have anything with me… no nightclothes, clean underwear, not even a toothbrush.’ She pulled a face. ‘I’m afraid I was in a bit of a rush to get going when I left home. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.’
Maria grinned. ‘Then it’s a good job I have some spares. Don’t worry, as long as you don’t need anything fancy, you’ll be fine. Now what say we open a bottle of wine and get some food on the go? The garden is just bursting with delicious stuff to eat at the moment and I rather like the idea of picking our own dinner.’
Grace followed her out into the garden, grateful to her for keeping the mood light. It was bad enough waiting for Amos without dwelling on the reason why he left in the first place. Together they gathered some lettuce leaves, fat juicy tomatoes, a pepper, some green beans and handfuls of fresh basil, the smell clinging to Grace’s fingers. She inhaled deeply, feeling the peace that pervaded the place. She tried to draw it down deep, as if she could store it up for the future.
Scarcely a half hour later they were back outside, eating a simple salad dressed in homemade pesto. With another scone to mop up the juice, it was one of the tastiest meals Grace could remember eating. Or perhaps it was the company. Maria seemed to instinctively know how Grace was feeling and, as she poured another glass of wine, she sat back and squinted into the evening sun.
‘Change is never easy, is it?’ she said.
Grace twiddled the stem of her glass. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘And there seems to have been rather a lot of it lately. But I think that’s one thing that Amos has taught me – that I shouldn’t be so concerned with the destination that I forget to enjoy the journey. I’ve been trying to remember that, but it’s not always easy.’
Maria smiled. ‘That’s just the sort of thing he would say, but you’re right, we all have an intrinsic need to be settled, don’t we? Even when the change happens for a good reason, we strive to get to the point where things stand still again. Yet even though it’s the passage between the two points that gives us problems, it’s where our greatest learning comes from, and also the greatest reward.’
‘It’s a lesson I think I’m finally beginning to learn,’ said Grace, somewhat ruefully. ‘Although I fear it’s come a little too late. I’ve been so fixated with keeping my house that I haven’t seen the possibil
ities that lie outside of it. And, worse, I think it might be one of the reasons why Amos left.’
‘How so?’
‘Because he’s such a free spirit, and I was convinced that I couldn’t exist without my house around me, its comfort, its security, but also all the things that I thought were me. I’d wrapped it so tight around myself like a cocoon, no one else could get in. Amos could never stand to be so constrained and, unwittingly, I think I gave him the message that if he didn’t live by my rules there was no room for him in my life.’ She stared out across the garden, the last rays of the golden light sinking below the horizon. ‘He’s not coming, is he?’
Maria leaned forward to take her hand. ‘Don’t give up hope, Grace. You’re not the only one who’s beginning to realise a few things. Amos has been on a journey of his own these last few years, one he’s trodden unwaveringly, but I’ve a feeling he’s coming to the end of it. That’s a scary feeling for anyone, as well you know, but he’ll get there – he already knows who it is that’s changed his course…’ She gave Grace a very direct look. ‘But he has to forgive himself first before he can even think about taking a step in a different direction, and that might take some time.’
‘Forgiveness,’ said Grace quietly. ‘Perhaps the most powerful quality we humans can bestow – to be able to offer forgiveness, either to another or to ourselves. I’m not sure I’ve ever been that good at it, but I recognise the sacrifice involved, to lower all defences and put aside our prejudices and sometimes expected behaviour too, so that we act out of the simple and honest truth of what is right. It can take extraordinary courage to do that.’
Lost in her own thoughts, it took Grace a moment to realise that Maria hadn’t replied. When she looked across at her, she was horrified to see her eyes had filled with tears.
‘Oh my goodness… Maria, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ But to her even greater surprise, the young woman got to her feet and threw her arms around Grace, hugging her tight. When she finally drew away, her eyes were shiny bright but her face was lit by something that came from very deep within.
Maria wiped under her eyes. ‘No, you mustn’t be sorry, Grace. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to hear you say that. And you haven’t upset me, you’ve offered me the greatest kindness anyone has shown me in five long years. You’ve understood me, Grace, you’ve finally confirmed that what I did was right, when everyone else has spent that entire time telling me how wrong I was. It sounds silly, but you’ve made me feel whole again.’
Grace was shocked to see how affected Maria had been by her words. The young woman had shown Grace such kindness since she had arrived and, naively, she had assumed that everything was perfect in Maria’s life. She lived in this beautiful cottage, surrounded by a beautiful garden, making beautiful things for a living. And yet now that Grace really opened her eyes, she saw the truth of the situation – a young woman, clearly living alone, in a house that belonged to someone else and who had made the best of what she found around her, probably because she’d had no choice. And she was a friend of Amos too, which was particularly telling because Grace knew full well how that happened… usually when someone had need of help. Suddenly she understood.
‘So what was it that you forgave Amos for?’ she asked gently.
Maria looked up, a tender expression on her face. ‘Oh, Grace. I wasn’t sure I should be the person to tell you any of this, but now I think perhaps I should. It might help you to understand what Amos has been running from all these years, but also why he might finally be ready to stop.’
Grace swallowed a slug of wine, feeling as if a thousand butterflies had suddenly taken flight in her stomach. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she whispered.
‘You’re right when you said that I forgave Amos, I did. Although, in truth there wasn’t really anything to forgive. He was as much a victim in what happened as the person who…’ She broke off, pouring herself another glass of wine and taking a long swallow. ‘As the person who died,’ she finished. ‘Her name was Bethany, and she was my sister.’
The breath caught in Grace’s throat, a sudden lump of emotion forming, and she reached out her hand in comfort. Maria took it, giving it a squeeze.
‘Amos was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and I truly think that if it had been anyone else driving that day, they all would have died. It’s just that Beth was in the wrong place at the wrong time as well, and whatever Amos did he knew he couldn’t save her too. He had a split second to make a decision, and I absolutely believe he made the right one, but it’s a question he has asked himself every day of his life since then.’
‘Go on…’
‘It was a day in the middle of January, five years ago, a beautiful, bright, but bitterly cold morning. I’ve often thought over the years that this was why it happened at all; the sunshine belying the freezing temperatures, making it seem warmer than it was, and the driver therefore heedless of the icy road. His name was Maurice Green and he got in his car in the morning to pay a visit to the post office, a journey into the local town which took all of ten minutes. Except that this morning he was rushing to get back home to wait for the engineer who was coming to mend his boiler. He shot around the bend at the top of the hill into town, braked rather sharply and, instead of slowing down, skidded on some black ice. He went straight down the hill, gathering speed, until he ploughed into the back of Amos’s stationary car, sitting in the road as he waited to turn right.
‘At that moment Amos became a lethal weapon and there was only one possible outcome. As Amos’s car shot forward towards the pavement he was faced with an impossible choice – hit the group of young mums with their pushchairs, or try and steer in the other direction, pushing him into the path of the single pedestrian who was just crossing the road. He had a split second to make his choice and there was no guarantee that he would even be able to bring the car under any kind of control, but he had to try. The rear end of his car missed the mothers by inches as he swung around, but Beth was hit head on. There was nothing anyone could have done.’
A single tear rolled down Maria’s face as she stared out across the darkening garden. The birds were still singing and the scent of flowers warmed by the sun still hung in the air, but it seemed to Grace as if the world was frozen in time, holding its breath. Her own cheeks were wet, as she concentrated on getting breath in and out of her body; the ability to do so naturally seemed to have totally deserted her.
And then, suddenly it all made sense – why Amos had felt the need to leave his home, why he always looked for the person who needed saving, why he constantly denied himself comfort as if punishment was all he deserved. The guilt he had carried with him ever since that horrific day had dictated his every move. Amos was a hero and yet someone had died. No, not someone, Maria’s sister had died, and Amos had killed her. How on earth did you ever move on from that? But then Grace realised she knew the answer to that too.
‘And you forgave him?’ she whispered.
‘Yes, when no one else around me could. Least of all Amos himself. My family hated him for what he did, still do. They made his life a misery, and mine for sticking up for him, and yet even though he saved the lives of three women, three toddlers and a baby of just seven weeks old, all they could see was the life of the one he killed.’
Grace was still holding her wine glass and she put it down gently, her hand trembling as she did so.
‘But how did you end up here?’
‘Because I couldn’t stay at home listening to my parents’ raging, and their grief, which was so different from mine. I loved Beth with all my heart and there isn’t a single day that goes by when I don’t think of her, but I grieved for Amos too, whose life had ended just as surely as Beth’s. In the end I couldn’t stand being there for any length of time and I began to visit Amos a couple of times a week. Inexplicably I felt lighter when I was with him, as if, even though it was so different in texture, we were able to share our grief. I think it helped Amos too, to sta
rt with anyway. There was a storm of publicity immediately after the accident, most of it portraying him as a hero and, as you can imagine, while this didn’t sit well with him either, at least it helped him to focus on the good that had been done. But, as with all things, people move on. The kind comments stopped, the women he had saved got on with their lives and the contact they had with him initially dwindled to nothing, until all he was left with was the fact that Beth had died.’
‘I can’t imagine what you both must have been going through. I am so, so sorry, for your loss, Maria, but also so very glad that you were there for Amos. I can’t bear the thought that he could have been on his own.’
‘In the end Amos decided to take a break for a few days and I offered to look after his house while he was away. When he came back he seemed lighter – the local pub in the village where he stayed had just been taken over by a young couple who were in the throes of renovation. A chance conversation with them revealed that they’d just been let down by their builder and so Amos offered to give them a hand in return for a meal and a pint each evening. He was gone three weeks altogether.’ Maria smiled. ‘You can imagine what happened after that…’
Grace nodded. ‘And he’s been travelling ever since.’
‘He sold his business and—’
‘Wait, I didn’t know he’d had his own business. What did he do?’
‘Build houses…’
Grace looked heavenward. When Amos had arrived at the farm he had produced a bunch of references for Fraser and Hannah, mentioning nothing about his past. They didn’t know the half of it. ‘Well that explains a lot of things.’
