Once the Clouds Have Gone

by KE Payne

  That, and plenty of chocolate-chip cookies too.

  *

  The church was finely dusted with the first of the day’s snow by the time Tag arrived. She was on time, but as she gazed around at the number of people milling around in the churchyard, she felt as though she must have been one of the last to arrive. The churchyard was packed. Her father, Tag remembered soberly, had been a popular figure in the town.

  She looked about her, searching amongst faces she didn’t recognize. Searching for Blair. Faces came and went, voices caught and then left her ears again. Finally, Blair appeared in her line of vision, standing in the church doorway, talking with a tall, robust-looking boy with a mop of thick, curly hair and a suit that looked too big for him. Tag studied Blair, ducking her head to examine the ground each time he looked around in case he spotted her. She wasn’t ready to see him again. Not yet.

  Blair.

  The last time she’d seen him he’d been twenty-three, recently married to Ellen and with a five-year-old child who had only just started school. Now he was stockier, thicker of neck. She watched as he tugged on his shirt collar, knowing he’d be just as uncomfortable in his suit as she was in hers. He looked a lot older than she’d remembered him, the few flecks of grey in his curly black hair catching her eye. He stepped back as the undertakers removed her father’s coffin from the back of the hearse and went to stand next to a woman. Ellen. Tag hung back, keen not to be spotted. Her eyes, though, were constantly fixed on them.

  Tag was nervous. No, terrified. Her scalp pricked and her palms were curiously cold yet sweaty as she watched Blair say something to one of the pallbearers, nod, then step back further as the procession made its way slowly and silently into the church. Tag waited until the last of the other mourners had started to file in. She fell in behind them, painfully aware of the prying eyes cast her way and the few nudges and nods of heads directed towards her by people who evidently had just recognized her. Balfour folk, she reasoned, had never been known for their discretion.

  St. Mary’s was a small medieval church, able to accommodate no more than sixty or so worshippers, which was apt as most Sundays it barely manage to top a dozen. But today, for her father’s funeral, the church was packed. Each local, it seemed, wanted to pay their respects to a man who was, as Connie Booth had told Tag earlier, highly regarded in Balfour. As the last mourner entered through the heavy oak doors of the church, Tag slipped quietly in and sat herself down in a pew at the very back. She craned her neck so she could see exactly where Blair had seated himself. Where was he?

  He was sitting, head bowed, at the front of the church. Ellen was to one side of him, while the boy Blair had been speaking to outside was on his other side. Past and present collided. Tag realized with a jolt that he must be Magnus, the wide-eyed, giggly child she’d last seen the night before she’d left Balfour. For years after she’d left, seeing kids had broken Tag’s heart because she knew that in some quiet corner of the Highlands, Magnus would be growing up without her there to see it. She’d learned to toughen up, though. Blot it out. Or at least, she’d tried to. Over the years she became adept at shaking the sadness from her—but the hurt had always remained.

  Tag leaned her head to one side and studied the back of Magnus’s head. His hair was thick and curly, just like Blair’s. Tag liked that. While Tag had inherited her mother’s auburn hair, it seemed both Blair and Magnus had been blessed with the Grainger dark curls. It made Magnus look exactly how Blair had at that age, Tag realized with a jolt. She wondered if Magnus’s hair was unruly now and refused to be tidy for him, like it always used to be when she would brush it for him when he was a child.

  “Did you know him well?” A voice beside Tag made her flinch.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Adam?” the voice said. An older man was smiling at her. “Did you know him well?”

  “Yes.” Of course she knew him well. “A long time ago now, though.”

  “We only knew him for around four years,” the man said, “when we first moved here.”

  “Right.” What else could she say? Tag looked to the front pew again. When were they going to start?

  “Thought we’d pay our respects, you know?”

  Why was this man still talking?

  “That’s kind of you.” Tag checked herself and looked ahead again. It wasn’t her place to be thanking people for coming to pay their respects. Not any more.

  The arrival of the vicar at the front of the church saved Tag’s blushes. She picked up the order-of-service sheet that was on her pew and opened it. A photograph of her father immediately looked back at her, and Tag swallowed as she stared down at it, astounded by just how much he’d aged. She frowned. So stupid. Of course he’d aged. Did she really think he’d look like the same man she’d known all those years ago?

  “Adam Grainger was a father, a grandfather, a friend.” The vicar, another face Tag no longer recognized, spoke. While his voice droned on, Tag sat transfixed by the photo of her father. She studied his face: his eyes and his hair, so much greyer than it had ever been, the wrinkles she didn’t remember. Surely he’d had wrinkles nine years ago? She stared at it again. The picture was taken up at the mill—that much Tag did recognize—and although the sun was shining down on him and he was smiling, his eyes were sad.

  “People remember the first day they ever met Adam.” The vicar again. “Once you met him, you knew you had a friend for life…”

  His words became white noise to Tag. Instead, she gazed down the aisle towards Blair. His arm was around Ellen, who had her head resting on his shoulder. How ironic, Tag thought, that Ellen was probably mourning her father more than she was. Despite the picture of Adam in front of her and the sight of his coffin at the front of the church, and with the sound of weeping around her, Tag still couldn’t cry.

  She stiffened as Blair unlooped his arm from Ellen’s shoulder and stood. He tugged at the hem of his jacket and smoothed his hands down each arm. Had the vicar finished talking? Tag had had no idea. As if in slow motion, Tag watched as Ellen reached up and placed a hand on Blair’s arm. He stepped from his pew and walked up to the front of the church. He pulled a pair of glasses from his top pocket and put them on.

  Blair wore glasses?

  Tag shook her head slightly. Something else that was new around here.

  Blair paused. He retrieved a sheet of paper from his trouser pocket, unfolded it with slightly shaking hands, and placed it on the lectern in front of him.

  “My father once told me a story of when he was a little boy,” he began, reading from his crumpled sheet of paper, “and how he used to like to go to the mountains to watch the eagles…”

  Tag sat mesmerized by the sight of her brother.

  “…and then many years later he’d take me with him up to the mountains,” Blair continued, “so that we could watch them together.”

  And me, Tag thought.

  “We’d take a picnic with us and just sit,” Blair said, “looking down onto Balfour. My father would point out landmarks that he’d known all his life. We’d be able to see the mill from there. The land that surrounded it. My father would show me all the wheat fields he owned. The tractors harvesting his wheat that he would then use in his mill to make his bread to sell in his bakery.” Blair punched out every word. “I loved it. I loved his enthusiasm. I loved the sense of heritage my father had, and most of all, I loved his passion.”

  Heritage. That was the perfect word to attribute to their father, Tag thought. Adam was immensely proud of all he’d achieved since he’d inherited the mill from his own father in the late 1970s. The renovations, the growth, the sheer hard graft to keep everything moving. Then, once Tag’s mother had died, the hard work he’d endured to sustain everything they’d built together—a testament to his wife. Tag had had to grow up fast without her mother, even faster once Adam retreated, wounded by the loss of his wife, into himself—just when Tag had really needed him.

  Self-pity anchored itself to Tag.
She remembered the long days without her father, the feeling of abandonment and isolation as a child, to be replaced, at sixteen, by the startling realization of expectation from him. He had her future mapped out for her, and there was nothing she could do about it. With Blair already established as an integral part of the mill, Adam had then turned his focus onto Tag, rapidly railroading her into a life she didn’t want. Tag blinked and dredged with a stark clarity from her memory the moment she’d decided she’d seek a more exciting life for herself, far away from Balfour.

  “…and then, once Magnus came along,” Blair now said, looking down towards his son, “he’d take both of us up there.” He pulled his glasses off and looked around him. Tag wanted him to spot her; she needed him to know she was there. His eyes briefly roamed around the church, apparently seeing a sea of faces, but there was no moment of recognition to suggest that he’d seen Tag. But she desperately wanted him to see her. “That was the sort of thing he loved to do,” Blair continued. “He loved to share his knowledge of Scotland, of Balfour, of the environment, of nature, of the land around us,” he said. “And knowing that one day Magnus and I would inherit it made Dad very happy indeed. Knowing that Balfour Watermill would be safe in our hands one day was all he ever wanted.”

  This time, Blair’s eyes flickered to hers and held them. He looked away again. If he’d seen her—and Tag was fairly sure he had—he didn’t let it show in his face. Instead he calmly placed his glasses back on and finished his eulogy without missing a beat. It was only when he was walking back down the aisle to his pew that he finally fixed his stare on Tag.

  That’s when she knew for sure.

  He had seen her. The barely disguised look of disdain on his face as he held her gaze told her everything she needed to know.

  Chapter Five

  “Tag.” Blair’s voice rumbled, low and quiet, behind her. Tag felt a hand on her arm and stiffened. “I would hate to think you’d just up and leave, you know.”

  Tag stepped back from the queue streaming from the church, allowing two or three people to pass her, then spoke. “I wasn’t just going to leave,” she said feebly. She looked up at Blair, instantly transported back to her teenage years.

  “I’m surprised you came.” Blair lowered his voice. “I didn’t think you’d bother.”

  “To my own father’s funeral? What do you think I am?”

  “You need me to answer that?” Blair asked. He turned to acknowledge a hand on his arm from an elderly woman passing down through the line of people, then looked back at Tag. “No word from you in years?” That stung. “Hardly a letter or phone call? Nothing?” He lowered his voice again. Now was neither the time nor place to cause a scene. “How do you think I felt, not even knowing where you were to tell you that Dad had died? How do you think that made me feel?”

  “Good job John Flynn used some investigation to find me, then.” Tag shrugged. “Or his common sense.” But faint guilt tumbled over Tag. Blair was right. The last time she’d contacted him, she’d been in Newcastle. Or was it Manchester? She couldn’t quite recall.

  “Hello, stranger.” Ellen arrived at Blair’s side. She looked at Tag, an easy smile on her face. At least one of them was pleased to see her. “Long time, no see.”

  “Understatement of the century.” Blair strode away to speak to a couple who were waiting for him in the church entrance.

  Tag’s heart sank as she watched him go. That went well then. She swung round to face Ellen, the friendly look she hoped she wore on her face contradicting the ache inside at Blair’s rebuff. To Tag’s surprise, Ellen reached over and pulled her into a hug. “I’m so sorry about your dad,” she said quietly, holding onto her for a few more seconds before releasing her. “It was a shock to us all.”

  “John said it was a heart attack. Up at the mill.”

  Ellen nodded.

  “Ironic that it happened at the mill,” Tag said. “I always thought that place would be the death of him, the hours he used to put in.” The words jarred.

  “We’d booked him a surprise for his birthday this week too.” Ellen gazed away. “Blair thought he was looking tired. We thought a weekend away would do him the world of good.”

  “But instead of celebrating his fifty-sixth, we’re saying goodbye to him.” Tag could no longer maintain her cheerful facade.

  “You’ve lost your accent a little since I last saw you.” As if sensing Tag’s anguish, Ellen changed tack. She ducked her head to catch Tag’s eye. “You don’t sound so Scottish now. Well, not as Scottish as I sound, anyway.”

  “Ah, but you know what they say,” Tag said, looking around her, “you can take the girl out of Scotland, but you can’t take Scotland out of the girl.” She spoke with an exaggerated accent, making Ellen laugh. Tag turned her attention to Blair, still talking to the couple. “He really hates me, doesn’t he?”

  Ellen followed Tag’s gaze. “Hate’s a strong word, Tag.” Diplomatic. “He’s…disappointed in you more than anything.” Not what Tag wanted to hear. “He adored you, you know that?” Ellen said. “You taking off without a word hit him hard. He couldn’t understand why you’d done it. He thought it was something he’d done.”

  “Is that what he thinks?” Tag asked. “I never had a problem with Blair. Okay, I regret walking out on him too, but I just had to go.” She tossed a look over to him. To his back. Apparently he couldn’t even bear to face her. “Surely he realizes that?”

  “I don’t think he does.” Ellen started to move away. “So maybe today might be a very good time to tell him.”

  *

  Balfour Watermill was set in the shadow of Carr’s Rock, a small peak that sat next to its much bigger brother, Ben Crathie. The River Dynne ran alongside the mill, powering the huge watermill that dominated the building and everything surrounding it. It was, in short, a magnificent feat of Victorian architecture and industry. A truly imposing sight. And to Tag, it was so embedded in her memory, she’d thought for years she’d never be able to escape the image of it.

  And she never had.

  As Tag pulled up again in the car park to the cafe immediately after the funeral, it struck her as ironic that the place where her father had died, and the place that caused his death, would now be the very place where they would all celebrate his life.

  Tag killed the engine of her car and sat, staring at the front of the mill. Only the sound of the beating of her own heart filled her ears. It was time to be brave. Returning to the cafe earlier had been hard enough; this time it would be a hundred times worse, because this time she’d have to try and ignore the looks she knew she was about to face inside from her fellow mourners. She got out and strode in through the cafe doors with far more confidence than her shaking legs were feeling. A wave of gratitude hit her when, just like in the church before, Ellen came to her rescue by intercepting her on her way in. Pathetic gratitude. But it was all she had right now.

  “I thought if I got you this now it would save you having to run the gauntlet of stares at the counter.” Ellen handed Tag a glass of orange juice. “You look tired.”

  Tag took her drink. “My night sucked,” she said. Voices ebbed and flowed around her, whispered comments. Were they talking about her? Pointing her out to those who hadn’t yet heard the stories? Tag cradled her drink, standing close to Ellen as if by doing so she’d remain unseen to the rest of the room. “I can thank the worry about today for that.”

  “Understandable that you’d be apprehensive about coming back here,” Ellen said. She took a sip of her drink. “So, dare I ask where you’ve been hiding yourself all these years?” she asked. “Last time we heard from you, you were in England.” She studied Tag carefully. “But that was over four years ago now.”

  “I ended up in Liverpool,” Tag replied, “via Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester. Oh, and London. Briefly.”

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “Took a while to settle.”

  “And now?”

  “I rent an apartment overloo
king the Mersey.” Tag stepped aside to allow someone to pass her. She met his eye as he brushed past and waited for a sign of recognition from him that never came. Tag hastily took another drink; she was being stupid. Not everyone automatically knew who she was—did they?

  “I mean, are you settled?”

  “Oh. I guess.”

  Ellen raised an eyebrow. “You live alone? With someone?”

  “Alone,” Tag said. “Although I’m sure the local gossips would prefer it if I was shacked up in a lesbian commune. Much more titillating.”

  “Are you working?” Ellen asked. “Don’t tell me you’re some high-flying hotshot there.”

  “Nothing so exciting,” Tag replied. “I do freelance work for my ex.” Her eyes sought out Blair. “I suppose my brother is going to come and speak to me at some point, is he?” she asked, her eyes still on him.

  “You know there’s not a day gone by when he and your dad—all of us—haven’t thought about you,” Ellen said. She beckoned Blair over to her. “Your dad particularly.”

  “Don’t set me off.” Tag swallowed back the lump in her throat.

  “Where are you staying while you’re here?” Ellen asked. “Pub? B & B?”

  “Four Winds.” Tag sipped at her orange juice. Damn lump was still there. “I’ve booked a room there. I figured I’d have a lot of things to get sorted while I’m here.”

  “Connie Booth’s place?” Ellen mock-shuddered. “She talks so much, she’ll make your ears bleed.”

  “Maybe I’ll take a trip down to Martins’ Pharmacy and buy myself some earplugs.”

  “You’ll have a job.” Ellen looked away. “It’s a pet store now.”