by Lily Graham
It wasn’t only the staff who were wondering about Father’s new appointment. A few days later, when my grandmother came to stay, I realised that even she had heard the rumours.
‘So I hear you’ve gotten rid of Mr Rivers?’ she asked.
Father looked up from the latest efforts of our cook, Mrs Price, and what we’d been told was bouillon, and raised an eyebrow. ‘I haven’t “gotten rid” of anyone. Mr Rivers has simply been assigned the east farm. He is more than up for the task, and I’m delighted to have someone with his background championing a rather difficult piece of land.’
Mother made a disapproving noise in the back of her throat. ‘Yes, and in turn we now have a former turnip farmer as the new head gardener of Idyllwild. But John does enjoy his little experiments,’ she said, placing her spoon in the bowl, which came to rest, upright and dead centre, like an arrow in a target in the tar-like soup. ‘If only we didn’t have to endure them quite so much.’
‘Helena,’ Father said warningly.
She gave him a tight, cold smile. ‘It’s only the family business, darling,’ she said, arching an eyebrow. ‘Heaven forbid I make any attempt to take the fruits of our labours seriously.’
The real difference about having Fen’s father work at the farm was the difference it wrought on Father. He had always been studious. Words like formidable, intractable and hardworking had always applied to him. But now it seemed like there was a greater purpose in his step, and a lighter cast to his features. The only thing that we could really put it down to was the fact that Fen’s father had started at the farm, and perhaps, at last, he had someone who believed in his vision for Idyllwild.
We’d find Father in his study, surrounded by plans for expansion. Every week there appeared to be new partnerships and ideas for hybrids. Behind closed doors, my father had long been accused of being a businessman, but now it was a title he wore with more than a degree of pride.
‘Honestly, it’s like he’s forgotten that he’s meant to be a gentleman,’ Rose complained one morning over toast, after Father got up to check on some new farm equipment that he said would improve the harvest.
‘Why does he keep on with this, Helena?’ asked Granny. ‘Susan Prester-Harvald says in her letter that you’ve twice declined dinner due to that farm. I mean, people will talk.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘Surely no one expects him to abandon his business for the sake of a dinner?’
Mother pursed her lips. ‘Matilda, you are far too young to understand this now, but the truth of the matter is that people are already starting to talk.’
‘Father is in over his head,’ agreed Rose.
‘Rose!’ said Mother.
Granny shrugged. ‘No, I think she’s right. He’s appointed someone who doesn’t really know what he’s doing, and he himself hasn’t got all that much practical experience.’
‘I should hope not!’ said Rose, horrified.
‘Oh, Rose, you’re insufferable,’ I sighed.
‘Well,’ continued Mother, ‘he’s getting enough practical experience now, as he’s having to carry the load. He won’t say it, of course, but I think his sense of duty to this awful man may just be the ruin of us all.’
I shook my head at her. ‘I think that’s a bit melodramatic.’
Mother sipped her tea. ‘I doubt I am being dramatic enough.’
Chapter Twenty
Present day
When I was at university, my friends and I made a pact. Which was that no one ever lets a friend phone or message their ex after they’ve been drinking. This rule was especially enforced after midnight.
Someone should have told my husband this.
‘I know I’m not meant to do this. I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry, Smudge. But it’s the truth. I’m in hell. I miss you so much.’
I drank two glasses of whisky and tried to get the text out of my head. When I had convinced myself that what I was feeling wasn’t pain but simply mild curiosity, I phoned Mark back. I am, of course, an idiot too.
He answered on the first ring.
I didn’t realise that I was mildly drunk until I began to slur. ‘So whys – I mean, why – did you do’ – I paused, concentrating hard – ‘why did you just do that? Send me that. You’re right, it is mean.’
‘I never said it was mean.’
‘You said stupid.’
‘I said I was an idiot.’
‘Oh.’
‘Are you drunk?’ He sounded a little amused. I pictured his smile. I hated how I missed his smile.
‘Of course I’m drunk. Aren’t you?’
‘No, I said it because I love you. I never stopped loving you and I’m an idiot.’
I found myself sobering fast.
‘So, um, does that mean that you and her—’
‘I miss you, Smudge. I don’t know what I’m doing.’
I tasted the tears before I even realised that I was crying. In my fog of booze and pain, I sat with the phone by my ear. Almost a full minute passed before I realised that he hadn’t said anything real, anything new – not really. ‘So, what you’re saying is that you’re still with Jess, but you miss me, is that it?’
There was silence for some time, and then he said, softly, ‘Yes.’
I took a shuddering breath of air. ‘You know, Mark, I don’t know what I want either. I tell everyone that I have it all figured out, and at the time it feels all figured out.’ I gave a grim laugh. ‘I had a surprisingly insightful chat with Mum about it.’
‘Oh God, sorry.’
I took a breath. ‘Mark, I don’t know why I can be fine until I hear your voice. I don’t know why it is that I still care what you have to say, or why for even a second I thought you were going to say something else, that you would honestly—’
‘So you want me to leave her, is that it?’ he asked baldly.
‘Mark, I know what I want and it’s not this at all – this horrible, messy thing that you’ve created between us. We need to file for a divorce, please, so we can move on.’
I hung up and crawled back onto the couch.
In the morning, I woke up to find Adam shaking my arm. ‘Victoria?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Victoria?’
He had a very nice voice, I realised. Very deep, rather husky. The sort of voice that could advertise athletic men zooming along mountains then storming into a casino in a suit, all the while smelling supposedly of Aqua Velva. I had a little laugh, and then groaned as my head felt like it might split apart.
I looked up to see a pair of very concerned, blue eyes. He was wearing faded denims and a navy jumper that made his eyes ever bluer still.
‘You look nice,’ I said, somewhat sleepily.
‘You alright?’
I frowned. Then I looked down. I was wearing one shoe, and had gone to bed with the whisky bottle, which was wedged beneath my chin like a rather sad teddy bear. It had left behind a large, wet puddle on the sofa, which I had slept upon in my drunken, pain-soaked funk.
I didn’t need a mirror to know that I had mascara tracks running across my cheeks. I sat up. The world spun. I could only imagine the bird’s nest that was my hair.
‘I’m fine,’ I said with a wry grin. ‘Why do you ask?’
His mouth curled up in a half smile. ‘Yeah, sorry. I was knocking. Apparently Jack Abrams came past but you didn’t answer.’
‘What?’
‘The builder. Said he was dropping off the sample tiles for the kitchen. Apparently he tried knocking, shouting…’
I cringed.
Adam laughed. ‘Said he could hear snoring, so he wasn’t worried.’
‘Oh my God,’ I said, burying my face in my hands. ‘No!’
Adam waggled my foot. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Aaagh!’
‘Okay, right. First things first, here’s a coffee.’
I opened my eyes and held out my hand. ‘You are a saint, thank you,’ I said, setting it down on the coffee table. I go
t up, fetched a kitchen towel and attempted to soak up some of the spilled whisky.
‘It smells like a distillery in here,’ I said. ‘Exactly the type of thing you want your landlord to find.’
He winked, and gave me that lazy smile of his.
I felt my stomach flip, an unbidden reaction to his smile.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘Drink your coffee.’
I sat on a bit of the sofa that wasn’t wet and took a sip. It was good.
‘So…’ he said, his blue eyes pinned on me, ‘wanna tell me about it?’
I looked at him above the rim of the styrofoam cup. ‘Ah, that. Well, that was simply the result of a chat with the soon to be ex-husband last night…’
He snorted. ‘Looks like it went rather well.’
I had a short laugh. ‘Yes. Have I told you about him? About what happened?’ I felt I owed him some sort of explanation at least, in payment for the coffee and the sympathy.
He shook his head. ‘Not really. I gathered you were separated…’
When I gave him a curious look, he said, ‘Well, when I researched who you were, I saw you were married. But when you bought the cottage and signed the lease for the boat it was only for you.’
‘Ah, you’re a good detective,’ I said.
‘Years of reading crime novels,’ he agreed.
‘Anyway… Well, divorce is the plan, and after last night, well, it can’t happen soon enough.’
‘Is that why he phoned, to ask for a divorce?’
‘No, actually. I think he wanted us to get back together.’
‘Oh,’ he said, with a frown. ‘Would you?’
I wondered what he must have thought. If my ex had this effect on me, surely there were still feelings involved?
I shook my head. ‘No. I think this was me realising that, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t be in that relationship any longer. I’ve known it for a long time, but last night it was just really driven home to me that we aren’t good for each other.’
I told him a little about what had happened, what my life used to be like before.
‘Since I’ve moved here, I feel like I’m finally living, you know? Like there’s room for me,’ I said, unconsciously echoing Tilly’s words from her letter describing how she had felt when she’d met Fen. The same thing had happened to me since I’d left my marriage.
‘Room?’
‘Yeah, for a long time, it was like I wasn’t able to be me.’
I told him about how I used to sleep in Stan’s spare room for a little longer than was strictly necessary when I was on a research trip, just to avoid going home. That sometimes I booked extra-long trips or convinced myself that I actually did need to see something in person for my work, when a photograph or a transcript would have worked just as well, just so that I could avoid going home and facing whatever he’d had time to fester on in my absence. Even though I was making things worse, doing the very thing he accused me of so that we kept repeating the same toxic pattern we’d created, I couldn’t help it. I was tired of being the target for his disappointments instead of what I wanted, which was to be the soft place he could fall.
‘I don’t think I’ve told anyone else that,’ I admitted. ‘For the first time in years, I’m enjoying my life. I know that a lot of it has to do with finally having time to myself, time to lie in past five in the morning, but it’s more than that. I think the main reason I could never get back with Mark now is that I’m tired of the constant pain, you know?’
‘I do.’
I looked at him. Adam had been silent about why he was really here in Cornwall. I knew he was helping his uncle shut down the business, but I had always sensed that there was more to it than that.
‘Has that got to do with why you’re really here? In England?’
He closed his eyes for a second and nodded. ‘ I was supposed to be getting married – this week, in fact.’
‘What?’ I said, sitting up, my eyes huge.
‘Yeah, if things had gone the way they were meant to I’d be back in Connecticut, getting married this coming Friday.’
‘What happened? Did – did you get cold feet?’
His laugh had a cracked sound to it. ‘Me? No. But she did, about seven months ago, just after we’d bought a house together, fitted it out with furniture that we’d hand-picked. She told me that she was leaving me to go and live with her boss in New York.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, it seems she’d been having an affair with him for years, and now that she had decided to move on with me, he’d finally worked up the courage to leave his wife. A New York sort of fairy tale, just like the movies. Oh wait,’ he said, a sarcastic edge to his voice.
‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Adam.’
He shrugged. ‘Yeah. It wasn’t – hasn’t been – a great time.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘And the house?’
‘Had to sell it. Couldn’t live there, you know.’
I did know. I was tempted to offer him his own whisky bottle. Thankfully Adam had a better idea.
‘Okay,’ he said decisively. ‘Why don’t you get showered – de-panda yourself – and we’ll go out for breakfast? Forget about exes and discuss instead how on earth someone goes about taming a fox?’
‘Or a wild little girl?’
He nodded. ‘That too.’
I grinned. ‘I’d love that.’
In the streets of Tregollan spring was like a whisper everyone was straining to hear. There were colourful pots outside shops brimming with flowers, and a few hopefuls had put tables and chairs on the pavements.
We had breakfast at the Harbour Cafe watching the leisure boats in the distance, and spoke about our lives before we moved to Cornwall.
‘Did you always want to be a lawyer?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
I looked at him in surprise and started to laugh. ‘No one ever says yes to that question!’
His eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘I told you I had four sisters growing up, right?’
I nodded.
‘Well, as you can imagine, there was a lot of fighting, screaming, hair-pulling, people sitting on you – my sister Stacey’s trademark. So one day I watched some movie where a lawyer goes to prison and starts settling all these fights, and that was it, it’s what I wanted to be, if only to avoid being sat on again.’
‘Seriously?’
He laughed. ‘No. But when you grow up with four conniving siblings, justice does become rather important. And you, did you always want to be a writer?’
I took a sip of my cappuccino. ‘Not a writer exactly, though I do love that part. I’ve always loved history; it feels very alive to me. Though if it had been up to my mother I would have done something in the sciences.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I, um, did really well at it, but just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to do it,’ I said, not mentioning the scholarships I’d turned down, the IQ tests that had all my teachers and family wildly excited for years, steering me into a path I didn’t want.
‘I agree with you.’
I looked at him in surprise.
‘Yeah, well, in America it’s a big thing – “What will you become?” Everyone is so focused on it. I think people laugh at the idea of being passionate about what you do – it’s almost a cliché nowadays – but the truth is, when someone wants to do something, that’s when the magic happens. You hear about breakthroughs in science only because the people behind it were devoted to it. That’s what it takes.’
I looked at him. ‘You’re a good lawyer. You know, for years I’ve always felt a little guilty about “wasting my potential”, as my careers advisor put it.’
‘You haven’t wasted your potential, Victoria. We need stories in order to understand ourselves, for good or bad, to be inspired or horrified, it’s how we cope with being human and how we decide what type of person we will become.’
I looked at him in surprise
. ‘I agree completely.’
He grinned. ‘I’m not just a pretty face, right?’
‘Well, it is rather pretty,’ I said, then blushed like an idiot.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cornwall, 1905
Tilly
That winter, despite temperatures that hit well below freezing, I had something I’d never had before, something that kept me warm, even on those cold nights.
I had a friend – I had Fen.
The first friend I’d had who lived in the village. The first friend who wasn’t a girl and wasn’t a relation.
I’d never had a brother. Only my cousin Tim – and he’d been a young man when I was a little girl, with no time for adventures and games.
Rose and I, as the two only siblings, should have been close, but our opposing personalities put us at war more often than not. Perhaps it would have been easier if every step I took wasn’t found wanting in relation to Rose’s, or if I’d had less of a rebellious, questioning nature. ‘Why do you feel the need to question everything?’ Father once remarked. ‘You make your life harder.’
But for once, this wasn’t something I was overthinking. As soon as Celine was done with lessons, I’d tear off, her calls to me to ‘Take another jacket, child’, or ‘Wear your wellies if you’re going out’ fading into the distance as I joined Fen and Arthur by the brook, where he’d show me how to bend a reed, blow a tune through the grass pipe, or climb a tree just the right way to see a squirrel skating past.
Afternoons became our time, because that was when Fen was done with his chores. Many of our expeditions centred around food, as he was always hungry.
Unlike Rose, who cut her food into the smallest bites and chewed each morsel with slow deliberation, Fen ate while we walked, taking hungry bites out of the still-warm jacket potatoes I’d wrap up in newspaper, stolen from the kitchen, or the hefty wedges of apple pie I’d sneak out, wrapped in tissue, bulging the pockets of my dress.
Fen was the only one who didn’t seem to mind Mrs Price’s cooking. ‘Hunger makes everything taste good,’ he assured me, even when I handed him her latest experimental pie, which tasted of cabbage and fish.
