by Dillon, Lucy
‘Ah, finally! Skiving off in the office again, eh?’ The stocky man at the table put his beer down as they came in; his tone was bantering, his eyes weren’t. Lorna recognised Gabriel, Sam’s older brother.
‘Says the man who hasn’t shifted from here since lunch,’ Sam retorted evenly. His tone was bantering too but Lorna caught a flash of irritation as he leaned into the fridge – she saw his hand touch a beer bottle, but then he took a Coke. ‘Can I get you a drink, Lorna?’
‘Yes, please. Coke’s fine,’ she said as Gabriel replied, ‘I’m working from my phone, en’ I? That’s technology.’
Gabriel had always been broad-shouldered and strong for his age, playing rugby for the town when he was still in his teens, but now his checked shirt strained over the top of his jeans and his nose had a beery flush. Lorna sensed a narrowness to his eyes that hadn’t been there before, as if he was sizing everything up and not finding what he wanted. He and Sam had seemed very different back then; fifteen years on, only the dark eyes gave any clue they were related.
Sam handed her a can of Coke and a pint glass with a faint air of apology. ‘Bills still need paying, Gabe.’
Gabriel raised his hands in mock-surrender. The fingers were chubby and something about them gave Lorna the creeps. ‘You’re the brains, little bro. Who’s this then?’
Sam addressed her, not him. ‘Lorna, you remember Gabe, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘I did tell him you were coming for dinner. He’s got a lot on, must have slipped his mind.’
Lorna leaned forward to shake his creepy hand – what else could she do? – just as he said, ‘Well, hello, Lorna! I wouldn’t have known you.’
‘Is that a compliment?’ It didn’t come out as lightly as she’d have liked.
‘It’s been a while.’ Gabriel smiled at her, his eyes almost vanishing into his red face. ‘How old were you when that clever sister of yours got herself up the …?’ Sam coughed, Gabriel corrected himself with a smirk. ‘When we last saw you? About twelve?’
‘I left when I was thirteen,’ she said before Sam could interrupt again. ‘Jess was seventeen. And engaged to Ryan. They’ve been married for nearly seventeen years now.’
‘All’s well that ends well, eh?’ said Gabriel with a wink, and Lorna noticed a flicker in Sam’s jaw. There was real tension between the two of them, beyond the standard issue brotherly squabbling she remembered from years back.
How had it felt for Gabe? she wondered. First, you’ve got a straight A little brother who makes it clear he’s too good for the farm. But that doesn’t matter because you’ve got the job for life. Then you fall under a baler and that same little brother comes back in his fancy suit and starts telling you how to do the job you’ve been training for since you could drive a quad bike.
The worst of both worlds. For everyone involved.
‘Sam! Out of that fridge!’ Mrs Osborne appeared from the pantry, wiping her hands on her apron. She was neat and never stopped moving, with the last Princess Diana haircut in existence, unchanged since Lorna had last seen her. ‘Oh, Lorna! You’ve caught me on the hop! I’m sorry. How are you, love?’
‘Very well, thank you, Mrs Osborne.’ Lorna offered her the bottle of wine. ‘I wasn’t sure what we were eating.’
‘Wine! Posh!’ said Gabriel. ‘We’re simple folk here, beer would’ve done.’
‘Don’t be silly, Gabriel. Sam often gets us wine. Very kind of you.’ Mrs Osborne put it on the sideboard carefully. ‘Sit down. I’ll call Dad now you’re here.’
Sam and Gabriel exchanged loaded glances as Mr Osborne was summoned from wherever he was (the cow shed) and they settled around the table. Sam’s mother lifted a steaming pie out of the Aga, and while they were still marvelling at its size, she surrounded it with dishes of roast potatoes, peas, broccoli, mashed potatoes and gravy.
‘No boiled spuds, Mum?’ asked Gabriel, lifting a lid.
‘And you wonder what I meant about my suit.’ Sam raised an eyebrow at Lorna, offering her the first plate.
‘This smells delicious,’ she said. Her voice sounded different in the kitchen – shyer, more like her old teenage self.
Mrs Osborne beamed as the men piled into the food. ‘How’s your sister, Lorna? We still get a card from her and Ryan every Christmas. And the kids? Three now, isn’t it?’
Lorna tried not to look at Gabriel. ‘All fine, thank you. Hattie’s been helping me out in the gallery. Sam mentioned you’d called in for cards?’
‘I have indeed. Isn’t it lovely that you and Hattie are keeping it in the family with your art, just like us and the farm!’ Mrs Osborne’s cheery expression faltered. ‘It was so sad about your dad, Lorna. Very sad, especially so soon after your mum. You’ve been through the wars.’
‘We have. Lots of happy memories though.’ It was her stock response. No one knew what to say; to lose one parent was bad enough, but to lose two … It was touching when an elderly couple couldn’t live without each other, but Cathy and Peter hadn’t even been sixty. There was an uncomfortable drama about it, an extravagant emotion.
‘You’ll notice lots of changes with the farm,’ Mr Osborne announced.
‘Yes!’ It wasn’t a real question, of course, just a chance to open up a favourite topic, but Lorna didn’t mind going with it.
‘Got to move with the times, Dad,’ said Sam, as if he knew where this was heading.
‘Know how long we’ve been here this year?’ Mr Osborne pointed at her with his knife; Mrs Osborne nudged him and he dropped it. ‘One hundred and fifty years. All in the same family.’
‘Wow.’
‘Not many farms round here can say that.’
‘And that’s why we’re adapting,’ said Sam. ‘Diversification, everyone’s doing it.’
‘Diversification.’ Mr Osborne poked at his pie. ‘Don’t feel like farming to me. Feels more like playing about.’
Sam helped himself to peas without making eye contact. ‘Times change, Dad. We need to diversify if we want to go on for another hundred and fifty.’
It had never struck Lorna before how weird it was, being part of a farming family – taking on that obligation to keep the farm going, no matter whether you wanted to or not, because that’s what your family did. And Sam’s dad being forced to stay here and watch his sons change everything he’d worked for, being reminded of his own time slipping away with each harvest brought in.
She suddenly felt claustrophobic. The copper pans on the side, the rows of blue and white plates lining the Welsh dresser, the ancient cookbooks. Everything in this kitchen had been here for years . Even the dogs were replaced with identical black Labradors.
‘For instance,’ Sam explained, turning to Lorna, ‘we’re renting out some pasture to a farmer over the way for his beef herd, and we’ve turned over a few fields to bird seed.’
‘Bird seed? What, for bird feeders?’ She sensed this was a conversation only she would be contributing to. Gabriel remained silent, brooding, not part of either side; Pat kept smiling and eating her supper in small regular forkfuls. Mr Osborne looked positively wounded.
‘Yes! It’s an expanding market. And some for racing pigeons, special high-energy mixes. I looked into growing sunflowers for the seeds but we’re a bit far north for that.’
‘Shame,’ said Mrs Osborne. ‘I’d have loved a field full of sunflowers, wouldn’t you, Len? Makes a change from cows, left, right and centre!’
‘Not for me. Had to get rid of my dairy herd, no money in ’em, apparently.’ He sounded morose. ‘Broke my heart, that did. Day they come and took the girls away.’
‘All about volume production now,’ said Sam. ‘None of us want that, Dad. Even if we could have afforded the machinery, you’d have hated seeing it.’
He would have hated it, Lorna thought. Sam was dutiful but he drew the line somewhere.
‘What about the cows outside?’ she asked, wanting to get the old man talking about something he liked. ‘The lovely stripy ones? Are they yours?’
&n
bsp; ‘Yes.’ Mr Osborne’s eyes lit up. ‘They’re Belted Galloways. Beautiful, ent they? Lovely creatures, Belties.’
‘Very succulent,’ said Gabriel, a loaded fork halfway to his open pink mouth.
Lorna blanched. ‘You eat them?’
‘Course. What else they for, cows? You a vegetarian?’ Gabriel went on, back in the conversation. ‘Dad! We’ve got another veggie! Call the steak police!’
‘Gabriel! Enough! Now, what I’m enjoying is the holiday accommodation.’ Mrs Osborne cast dark looks around the table, and continued brightly, ‘We did a bit of B & B when the boys were young, but Sam’s come up with a plan for making money from the cottages we used to rent out. No one round here wanted them, being so far out of town, so we’ve done up a few and it’s really taking off, isn’t it?’ She looked proudly between her boys. ‘Gabriel manages them, and Sam does the fancy marketing. You quite enjoy it, don’t you, Sam? Not quite what you were doing up in London, but a bit like it, eh?’
Gabriel muttered something under his breath and Sam glared at him.
‘How many cottages are you renting out?’ Lorna asked Mrs Osborne, just to be polite.
‘We’ve got three on the website, and there are three more to do. Well, four. Mrs Rothery’s still in Rooks Hall, bless her. Although I shouldn’t think she’ll be there for much longer.’ The corners of Mrs Osborne’s mouth tilted downwards sympathetically. ‘She had a fall recently, poor dear. I popped in to talk to her about Butterfields – my mother-in-law’s there. Lovely place.’
‘Gave you an earful, didn’t she?’ said Gabriel. ‘Reckon you should go back and have another little chat. Old cottage like that’s no place for someone her age.’
Lorna bristled. Joyce wasn’t old; she was barely eighty and acted a decade younger. ‘I don’t think she feels ready to give up her independence just yet. She’s very active for her age.’
‘Sam says you know Mrs Rothery, Lorna?’ Mrs Osborne turned to her with interest. ‘Is that right? How did you meet her?’
‘She’s an artist – she sold her work through my gallery.’ How did they not know that?
‘And Lorna walks her Border terrier sometimes,’ said Sam. ‘Mum, did Gran ever get someone in to walk Wispa? Because Lorna’s friend Tiffany volunteers for a charity that helps old people exercise their dogs. Any chance we could get someone to walk a very old collie, Lorna?’
It was a brave attempt to divert the conversation, but Mrs Osborne had heard what she wanted to hear. She fixed Lorna with a direct, farmer’s-wife smile. ‘Well, now. Maybe you could have a chat with Mrs Rothery, then? Tell her it’s so much better to move into one of these retirement homes while you’re still up to making friends and settling in. No point hanging on in that cottage – it’d be the best thing for everyone if she made a move while she’s got some oomph left.’
‘Mrs Rothery has more oomph than I do,’ said Lorna, struggling not to glare at Sam.
Inside, she was seething. Was this the point of her invitation tonight? Had Sam set this up, so his mother could ask her what he couldn’t? So the Osbornes could eject Joyce from her home, to get on with making more money from it?
Sam wasn’t looking at her, on purpose probably. She felt angry with him, but also with herself. What a cheap shot. He’d always been about the bottom line, Sam. He hadn’t even tried to understand about the art when she’d explained her pop-up gallery; he’d just torn holes in her sums, made it all about the money. And that was the difference between them. She had art and creativity in her veins, and he had money.
‘It’s the best cottage, Rooks Hall,’ said Gabriel. ‘Put more parking in at the front, and you could easily let it to sleep eight.’
‘More parking?’ Lorna knew what was coming; she just had to hear him say it so she could hate him completely.
‘Tarmac over the garden.’ Gabe smiled; there was a fat shred of broccoli stuck in his gappy teeth.
By keeping her patient and courteous dad at the forefront of her mind as a kind of talisman, Lorna managed to make small talk for the rest of the main course, and an apple pie with double cream, but when Mrs Osborne offered her some tea ‘to wash it down’, she pushed her chair from the table.
‘So sorry, I’ve got to get back,’ she said. ‘I’ve left my dog on his own.’
Sam met her gaze and she knew he knew Tiff was in the flat with Rudy but she didn’t care. She was too disappointed with him, and she hoped it showed in her eyes.
‘Thanks so much for a delicious supper,’ she went on as the Osbornes slowly got to their feet. ‘Don’t get up! Sam’ll see me out, won’t you, Sam?’
‘Hey, hey, hey,’ crowed Gabriel, ‘Sammy boy!’
‘Give it a rest, Gabe.’ He followed Lorna out, and when they were out of earshot in the shadowy yard, she turned to him, struggling to compress her bitterness into one sharp, unemotional sentence.
She couldn’t. It was all she could do not to throw her head back and let the contempt spill out. She hated Gabriel, and she loathed herself.
Sam sighed. ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ he said. ‘And no, is the answer.’
‘How would you know what I’m thinking? That’s the only reason you invited me, isn’t it?’ Lorna jerked a thumb back at the cosy kitchen window. ‘To help you get Joyce out of her home so you can start turning it into an overpriced holiday cottage.’
‘Of course not!’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Why would I have spent all last weekend drilling holes in my own fingers to make the place safe for her if I thought that?’
‘Because you’re legally obliged to!’ Lorna couldn’t believe Sam would do something like this, but then … maybe he would. He couldn’t have done so well in business if he hadn’t got that ruthless streak. ‘I can’t believe I have to say this, but please don’t kick her out. That cottage is Joyce’s life . Her husband designed the garden for her, it’s where she created her art, it’s … everything to her. Are you surprised she doesn’t want to move to some care home where she can’t even take her dog?’
‘Butterfields does let—’
‘There’s no room at Butterfields at the moment. There’s only Monnow Court, where she can’t take Bernard!’ Lorna held up her hands to stop him. This evening had started with so much happy nostalgia; now she was feeling as small and hopeless as the old Lorna, not as creative as her mother, not as clever as her sister. Nothing had changed. Nothing. ‘And thanks for sticking up for the mother of your godchild when your brother was making out she was a sleazy under-age mum, by the way,’ she added. ‘Oh no, wait. You didn’t.’
‘Lorna, please don’t …’ Sam sighed, and turned away so she couldn’t see his face. ‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘Not as much as I am.’ She stared at him. Who was he?
The light from the kitchen window dimmed as someone – his mother? – drew the curtains shut, and another cat streaked across the yard, disappearing into the barns that once held shuffling, cud-breathed cattle. Lorna wanted to go dramatically, but she knew that once she stormed off, that would be it. There would be no recovering this moment and she desperately wanted Sam to show her how wrong she was.
His voice, when he spoke, was carefully controlled. What he said made her heart sink. ‘You have no idea how hard this has been for me. You think I was happy to come back here … to this?’ He lifted his palms. ‘It’s the last place in the world I want to be. But you do what you have to do. We all do. You know that.’
Lorna wanted to back down and sympathise, but she couldn’t. She was too angry still. ‘What? Evict old ladies from their houses?’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic. The alternative was evicting that old lady from her house.’ He jerked a thumb towards the farm. ‘We’d have had to sell. Seriously. Where would Mum and Dad have gone, at their age?’
‘It’s not the same thing.’ Even as she said it the rational side of Lorna’s brain was arguing his point, reminding her of the spectres chaining him to this place, to his family, to a life h
e hadn’t chosen and didn’t want. But the heartbroken side was in control now, riding roughshod over reason.
‘You know, the one thing I always believed about you was that you were kind,’ she said passionately. ‘I can’t see how you could be so kind to animals, and so cruel to an old lady with nothing left but her memories.’
And before she could see the hurt on Sam’s face, she got into her car and drove away, without looking back. All the way home, Lorna replayed the conversation in her head, but she couldn’t make herself feel bad about saying what she’d said.
She’d meant it.
Chapter Eighteen
Lorna’s Art Week briefing with Calum Hardy was as sparky and borderline flirtatious as she’d expected, mainly because she’d provided him with a centrepiece to the whole Art Week, one that the design team were ‘excited to run with’.
‘We are all over Paint the Music,’ he assured her over Ferrari’s special lunch offer (pasta plus one glass of questionable wine or beer). ‘It’s on all the posters, journalists are loving it, and we’re in talks to get the local television news team down to join in! I know! It’s like real-life Anchorman . Make sure you get your hair done.’
And he actually winked.
Calum was so enthusiastic that Lorna felt guilty about taking credit for what had been, really, Joyce’s idea.
‘Would you like to come along and join in?’ she suggested when she called round later in the week to walk Bernard, update Joyce with the latest developments and get more advice on her knitting. ‘Maybe, if you felt like it, you could start us off? Put in the inaugural brushstroke?’
She held her breath as Joyce carried on knitting. She had discarded the book of patterns and had begun a dog coat of her own design, with silver butterfly wings and a sort of scaly pattern, and now she focused on her needles as if the answer could only come once she’d finished that row.
The clock ticked on the mantelpiece, a metronome to Joyce’s stitches. The old lady said nothing, but Lorna had come to realise that meant she was thinking. Joyce didn’t waste words; they were as carefully chosen as the colours in her paintings. She wondered if she’d made a faux pas – was a community splodgy project a bit beneath Joyce, as a proper artist? Maybe it was too personal, to celebrate Ronan’s idea in public.
