Forgive Me Not

by Samantha Tonge

  ‘Polly’s gran had dementia and she used to look after her. She insists on sitting with Mum most Saturday afternoons, which is a godsend, what with that being the busiest day for the shop. She’s also given me tips on how to keep Mum occupied. The hospital does its best, but…’ Andrea sighed. ‘Mum’s still sleeping at night, which helps. But I caught her drinking undiluted squash last week, and I’ve had to stop her using the cooker and iron.’

  Emma had tried to drink concentrated cordial once when she was little. Just in time, Andrea had spotted her mistake and patiently shown her how to dilute it.

  ‘Polly’s also great at doing an emergency shop if I just haven’t had the time.’

  What about Dean, Andrea’s boyfriend? Didn’t he help? Emma sat in a daze. She couldn’t take it all in.

  ‘You seem nice,’ said Gail, and leant across to pat Emma’s hand. Her eyes crinkled into a smile before she looked vacant again.

  ‘Andrea? I’ll be off now,’ a deep voice boomed from the kitchen. Heavy footsteps sounded from behind Emma, then stopped abruptly.

  Emma lifted her chin, jumped to her feet and turned around.

  Chapter 3

  Emma watched as Bligh ran a hand across his beard and blinked rapidly. White T-shirt. Blue jeans. His handyman uniform hadn’t altered one bit. The air surrounding him still carried a hint of aftershave. With his Popeye arms and determined jawline, true to his namesake he looked like a mariner who could conquer the waves.

  ‘This is a surprise, Emma,’ he muttered.

  He used to call her Emmie.

  ‘What are you after?’ he said in a firmer voice, and folded his arms. ‘More money? Don’t tell me – you’re in some sort of trouble?’

  ‘No, Bligh… I’ve come back to say sorry.’

  ‘You didn’t think about warning us of your arrival? I’d say that smacks of the old dramatic behaviours.’ He glanced meaningfully at Andrea and Gail before once again meeting her gaze. ‘Didn’t you for one moment consider the impact of your visit?’

  ‘I’ve come back to make amends. To help on the farm. I want to spend time with Mum and try to make things easier here. I want to make up for—’

  ‘I want, I want, I want,’ said Andrea. ‘You just assume everyone will forgive and forget. We should ring the police.’

  ‘And I… I wouldn’t blame you,’ said Emma, turning up the palms of her hands. ‘You’ve got to believe how sorry I am. I hated my life back then.’

  ‘Really?’ Andrea snorted. ‘To all appearances you were simply intent on having a good time.’

  Perspiration ran between Emma’s shoulder blades. This wasn’t how her daydreams had panned out. ‘You didn’t really believe I was happy, did you?’

  ‘Well I know I wasn’t,’ said Andrea, in a voice like a starched shirt – a voice Emma had become accustomed to during her last months at the farm. So unlike the gentle tones she remembered from their childhood days. Andrea had been the softest older sister, always letting Emma borrow her clothes or make-up as if the five-year age gap didn’t matter. When Emma was little, Andrea would patiently play board games that must have bored her, and sing nursery rhymes even though her own taste in music had moved on to boy bands.

  ‘This nice woman talks too much. Has she come to make my tea?’ Gail tore her gaze away from the window. ‘Fish on Friday. It is Friday, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ said Emma. Guilt pinched her stomach. She’d been away far too long. ‘It’s actually Wed—’

  ‘Yes, fish today,’ said Andrea in bright tones. ‘If that’s what you fancy, Mum, I’ll put the cod in straight away.’

  Cod? But Mum was a strict vegetarian.

  Andrea stood up, took a firm hold of Emma’s elbow and steered her past Bligh, through the dining room and into the pine kitchen. Dash followed. The poppy-patterned crockery stood as proud as ever in the Welsh dresser, just like the soldiers that flower commemorated. The clock was different – bigger. The cupboards had child locks on them.

  ‘Don’t interfere with how I’m dealing with Mum.’

  ‘But shouldn’t she know it’s not Friday? Isn’t it best—’

  ‘You have no idea what is best. How do you think she would feel if people continually corrected her mistakes?’ said Andrea.

  ‘I’d have thought it would stop the progression of the disease.’

  ‘So, what if she asks you five times a day when she can visit Granny and Gramps? Do you keep breaking the news that her parents are dead? Force her to relive the grief? Or do you just say, don’t worry, Mum, we’ll see them later, and let her eventually forget the question?’

  ‘But… we can’t just let her give in.’ Emma swallowed. ‘She deserves—’

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me what she deserves, as if you have some say in this.’ Andrea paced the chequered floor like a mutinous chess piece. ‘Just go. It’s for the best. I’ve got Mum to see to. The livestock. The shop. I can’t look after you as well.’

  ‘I don’t need looking after any more,’ said Emma quietly.

  ‘What happened to your ambition of becoming a vet? What have you got to show for the last few years?’ Andrea’s ponytail swung angrily. ‘You threw it all away and now you expect us to pick up the pieces?’

  ‘It’s not like that.’ Emma concentrated on her breathing, determined to stay calm. All those hopes she’d had for a family reunion… she’d even given notice on her flat. How could she have been so naive – no, arrogant – imagining some kind of red-carpet welcome?

  ‘Look. Great-Aunt Thelma…’ Andrea rubbed the back of her neck.

  ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘She died a couple of months ago. Pneumonia.’

  Andrea’s voice was matter-of-fact. Emma gasped.

  ‘She left us each an inheritance. Most of mine went on mending the farmhouse roof.’ Andrea rummaged in a kitchen drawer. Finally she found a business card. ‘Here’s the solicitor’s number. No doubt it’s money you’ve come back for, so now you can go.’

  Dear Thelma, with her wicked sense of humour and her affection for the soaps. When Emma had first met Joe, she’d told him how much her great-aunt would have liked him, talking for hours about EastEnders… but she couldn’t think about Joe now. Not today. At Thelma’s ninetieth birthday party they’d all joked that she’d outlive everyone. Emma wished she could have attended the funeral. She winced as Andrea took great care for their fingers not to touch on passing her the card. They’d held hands for years growing up, swinging arms as they walked to the shops. People used to comment on how lovely it was to see two siblings so close.

  Andrea turned away. Bligh and Gail appeared. Gently he manoeuvred her around Dash. Gail went to the cutlery drawer and set the table for two people, putting out spoons instead of knives and forks. Then she sat down and busied herself folding and unfolding a napkin.

  ‘Just go, Emma,’ said Bligh.

  Emma hovered for a moment. Swallowed. He was right. Her return was just making things worse. She wanted to kiss her mother but didn’t want to add to her confusion. Instead, she gently squeezed the hand that had once mucked out the pigsty, picked and scrubbed fruit and sewn clothes. Gail looked up. Nothing registered. Emma glanced at Andrea’s back, wanted to rub those stiff shoulders until they relaxed. Instead she walked back through the dining room into the lounge and picked up her rucksack. She coiled her fingers around the handle of her case and headed outside, accompanied by Dash.

  She gazed across the farmland towards an ellipsis of clouds in the blue sky. In the distance, a weeping willow cried leaves into the small pond. In front of it was a bench, and the pasture for the few sheep and goats. To the left, the vegetable and fruit garden. To the right, the big chicken coop, where a hen clucked whilst taking a dust bath. Next to that was the pigsty, the sheds and the old barn.

  Foxglove Farm produced jams and chutneys as well as fresh eggs and vegetables. They sold home-made fruit cake, and with a little persuasion, Andrea would hang her latest paintings in the shop. Or she use
d to. Emma didn’t know if she did any more. She was self-taught, but she was good, and loved creating imagined exotic scenes from abroad.

  Granny and Gramps had died in a car crash when Emma was little. The money they’d left had been used to give the three of them a fresh start up north. Gail had always fancied living near the Peaks, away from London. They never visited the capital again. She liked the wilder landscape. Undomesticated, she called it – unlike the animals she took in, which soon became pets.

  Emma and Andrea had often giggled and said that Mum had to be the only vegetarian farmer in England. A centre for waifs and strays rather than a farm was probably a better description of the place. Two pigs had come with the smallholding. The previous owner was going to put them down but Mum persuaded him not to. They both died within five years, after a very happy life embellished with many biscuit treats.

  The first sheep came from a big farm in the next town. Gail had heard the owner talking in the Badger Inn one day, saying how for a farm his size, emotions couldn’t come into the shearing process. Targets had to be met and some sheep found the handling traumatic. He had one at the moment who was so jumpy he would sell her early for meat. Gail had interrupted. Said she’d pay him the going rate. Asked him to always send her the sensitive animals. She also rescued battery farm hens, and once a donkey destined for the foreign meat trade.

  Emma’s eyes narrowed. Currently there were two sheep, two goats, three pigs, hens and rabbits. Her mouth went dry as she walked over to look at them. The water bowls looked grubby. Fences and shelters needed repairing. The animals stood bored, with no items to encourage play or foraging. Her gaze moved to the vegetable patch. Wanton carrot tops dirty-danced with the breeze. A disapproving regiment of raspberry canes stood with plump, reliable lettuces at its feet.

  She squinted in the evening sunlight and enjoyed the countryside soundtrack. If only she could record all the noises she used to find so pedestrian.

  She spotted tomatoes growing in the greenhouse. From a trellis across the ceiling, cucumbers dangled like diving Zeppelins. A nose nudged her leg. She crouched and gave Dash a hug, then wandered across to the barn, which now had cracked windows and holes in the roof. Inside, it hadn’t changed much. There were still the haystacks and bits of farm equipment, plus the sink they’d had plumbed in years ago so that they could prepare animal feed out here. Also a pen with dirty hay scattered across the ground, and in the corner, a scratched rocking chair Mum had bought years ago but never got round to renovating.

  Emma looked at her watch. She could catch a train back to Manchester but she didn’t have much money for a hotel. It was too late to get anywhere else. She collapsed onto one of the haystacks. Tomorrow was a new day. She’d work it out. Aunt Thelma’s money would help, although she’d give it all away in a second to have just one lucid moment with Mum.

  ‘She doesn’t know who I am, Dash,’ she said, and put her arms around his neck again. Her mum used to say that animals only judged you on the present. They didn’t care about mistakes from your past and had no expectations about your future. Their behaviour around you – calm or on edge – reflected the person you truly were.

  She closed her eyes and meditated for a few minutes. She opened her suitcase and took out her nightly readings. Then she filled her gratitude journal. Routine. Routine. Routine. Things she was grateful for today? Seeing her family. Acting like a grown-up and accepting the situation. Not shouting, swearing, making her mum cry – all the things she used to do.

  She got a fleece out of her suitcase, wrapped it around her shoulders and lay down, finding comfort in the familiar hard ground. Dash snuggled up. Emma would get up early and leave without causing further upset. No one would know she’d slept here. In fact, she’d get up as soon as the sun rose and see what she could do to help improve the animals’ situation before she left. She could at least clean out the water bowls and drag an old bench she’d noticed into the goats’ enclosure. They’d love having something to jump onto.

  She stroked Dash and with heavy eyes recalled once again the very last day she’d been able to call Healdbury home. How she’d woken up in that upmarket hotel. Seen the blood. Hurriedly driven to the farm and faced Bligh’s fury when he discovered what she’d done. And then run.

  17 months before going back

  Emma stared at the dingy ceiling inhabited by her familiar eight-legged housemates. As a child, she’d imagined spiders to be the weavers of sparkly princess dresses that would entrap princes instead of snacks. She moved her focus to the walls and their nicotine stains the colour of overripe banana. Here, one day passed much the same as another.

  A grunt sounded from her left. She rolled over, nose pinching in the winter morning air, and scanned the sparsely clothed male torso in the grubby blue sleeping bag on the stone floor. She shivered and studied the familiar dirty-blonde hair.

  ‘Surprised we didn’t freeze solid overnight,’ she said, and shuffled over to him. She tucked her head under his chin and felt comforted by his warm breath. He hugged her back loosely and Emma clung on tight, tilting her face hopefully, but he pulled away. These days, Joe was always the first to break contact.

  Unlike the weeks when they’d first met. The friendship had soon become affectionate. Joe would slip his arm around her waist and tuck his fingers in her back pocket. Emma would rest her head on his shoulder as they sat next to each other on the pavement at various locations in Manchester city centre. Being with Joe made this derelict building feel more like a home than just a place to sleep in.

  Yet somehow they’d lost that natural ease and Emma was determined to get it back. She had plans. Their relationship was the way out of this mess. Since meeting Joe, an unfamiliar sensation had stirred deep within her chest. Was it hope? The desire to change? All she knew was that for the first time in months, a different kind of future seemed possible.

  She turned back to the ceiling and reached out her right arm. Sight was not required to curl her fingers around the bottle she knew was there.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ she whispered.

  She sat upright and as a treat allowed herself to think back to happier times at Foxglove Farm. Mum making strawberry jam. Andrea in the vegetable garden, as busy as a worker ant. Blue skies. Fragrant honeysuckle. Carefree pigs snuffling for imaginary truffles. And capable Bligh.

  Sounded like the narrative of a children’s story, didn’t it? Of a book that no longer belonged to her.

  ‘Joe,’ she whispered, ‘let’s go out. Head down to the canal. There’s some bread in my rucksack. I bet the ducks are as hungry as us.’

  ‘Not possible,’ he muttered. ‘We’ve hardly eaten in two days.’

  ‘I did say to go to the soup kitchen,’ she said, half-heartedly. It wasn’t her favourite place – cliquey at the best of times.

  ‘What, with all that forced festive jollity?’ He leant up on one elbow. ‘No thanks. I’d rather keep it real.’

  ‘You enjoyed those Christmas crackers. They’ve got to be the least useful thing anyone’s ever given us.’

  ‘The old dear meant well, and that plastic puzzle kept you quiet for, ooh…’ his lips turned upwards, ‘a good ten minutes.’

  Her mouth broadened. ‘Come on. I need a decent meal. So do you.’ She reached out and took his hand. Joe pulled it away.

  ‘Stop mithering me, Ems,’ he snapped. ‘You never know when to stop. We’re not joined at the hip. You go if you want.’

  He lay back down and wriggled into the sleeping bag. Stammering an apology, she tugged on her boots, grabbed her coat and headed out.

  Half an hour later, she was standing in the queue for food, the merry jingling tunes depressing her mood. Stig stood behind her, having tied up his Staffie dog outside. As usual, he held a battered novel in his hand. They hugged briefly.

  ‘Haven’t bumped into you for a while,’ he said, and pulled off his khaki bobble hat. As they neared the serving hatch, he stuffed the hat and the book into his rucksack. ‘Thought I might se
e you at the Red Lion on Christmas Day for that free turkey lunch. They threw in a bag of chocolates and toiletries too.’

  ‘Me and Joe just stayed in Market Street.’

  The volunteers smiled as they dished out food. Emma and Stig carried their trays over to one of the long white tables. She inhaled the aroma of beef and gravy… creamy mash. A sense of nostalgia embraced her like an over-zealous aunt. The smell shouted school dinners. Christmas cooking. Sunday roasts in the Badger Inn. Oaktree Shelter’s soup kitchen was a desperate measure, but at least her friend Beth was here today.

  ‘It’s made from scratch an’ all,’ said Beth with a slight slur, and gave a thumbs-up.

  ‘Yeah, none of that tinned mince,’ said Stig.

  ‘Or that instant powdered potato crap,’ said Tony, a tiny broccoli floret in his beard that looked like a tree growing out of uncultivable woodland.

  ‘And as for this jam roly-poly with home-made custard…’ said Emma. ‘So much better than the shop-bought version.’

  The four of them stopped shovelling food in for one second and smiled at each other.

  ‘Listen to us,’ said Emma, and wiped her mouth on her duffel coat sleeve. ‘Quite the food critics, aren’t we?’

  ‘Me and the missus used to eat out once a week. Before she got ill.’ Tony stared into the distance and started feeding himself on automatic.

  ‘Seen Mad Hatter Holly lately, Beth?’ Emma asked. She didn’t like to call Holly that, but at least everyone knew who she meant.

  Beth burped. ‘Haven’t you heard, chickie?’

  ‘She got sectioned,’ interjected Stig.

  ‘About time. She needed to get back on her meds.’ Emma stared at her plate and admired the cheerful yellow and red of the pudding.

  ‘So where’s that toy boy of yours?’ said Beth, and smiled to reveal decaying teeth. ‘I haven’t seen him around so much.’

  Emma couldn’t remember the last time she herself had used toothpaste. When she was little, Andrea used to make her scrub her teeth religiously for two minutes every morning and night.