Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage

by Milly Johnson

  It would give her an excuse to drive off and sit in her car for her lunch hour instead of spending it with Ian. She sneaked out five minutes early and told the other receptionist that she had to go out to the shops if anyone asked where she was. It was with some relief that she made it out of the car park unseen.

  She left a message on Linda’s voicemail because she always had her phone switched off when she was in the hospital; Caro picked up though.

  ‘You’ll never guess,’ said Stel. ‘De Niro rang Gaynor this morning and told her that she and Mick had been on the brink of splitting up. He wanted to go back to Gaynor, apparently.’

  ‘Well, that was always going to happen,’ said Caro. She would have been rubbish at acting surprised so plumped for the ‘not surprised’ reaction.

  ‘Do you really think so? I mean, he changed his will.’

  ‘And signed it with his impulsive prick,’ replied Caro. ‘What’s happening with the funeral, did she say?’

  ‘Gaynor’s now in charge. She’s moved everything from the Co-op to Eastman’s.’

  Caro let out a long whistley breath. ‘That’ll be a relief for her. I wish she’d let me give her a hot stones treatment. It would work wonders for her.’

  Stel, greatly in need of some stress relief said, ‘I might book in for a massage.’

  ‘Do. Have one at lunchtime tomorrow. I’m free,’ said Caro, scanning her appointment book.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Stel, aware that she was making an excuse to fill another lunchtime. She couldn’t keep doing that every day though, could she? And how the heck was she going to tell Viv that Ian had moved in after a fortnight? She doubted that Caro would get the stress knots out of her back with a few warm pebbles. She’d better get a sledgehammer ready to dip in her aromatherapy oils.

  Stel rang Viv just before driving back to the hospice. She wanted to hear her daughter’s voice so much. How could she have raised such a wonderful, sensible girl when she was an emotional train-wreck of a woman? She hoped she’d been a good mother. Viv had always had the best of everything she could afford to give her, and her time. Stel’s mum had always said that the most valuable thing you could give a child was that. She’d only ever moved one man into the family home and that was Darren. To be fair, he hadn’t been a bad man, just a bloody useless one. Then Stel had discovered a lump and all the cards had been flung up in the air. Suddenly Viv had become the parent, propping up her useless wimp of a mother and she’d been doing it ever since.

  ‘Helloo, Mum.’ Viv’s lovely voice flooded into her ear and Stel could have wept at the sound. ‘How’s things?’

  Stel told her about Mick Pollock dying and Al moving. Viv had never met Mick so though she thought it was sad for her mother’s friend, it was the news about Al that really gave her a punch. It was smashing that he could afford a nice new house but he’d been their neighbour for ever, or so it felt like. She was very fond of Al.

  ‘It’s all change for you, isn’t it, Mum?’ she said. ‘Me moving out, Al moving out and your new man.’

  Moving in, Stel added secretly to herself. There had been too many changes, thought Stel, swallowing down her emotion. She wished Viv would come home and sort her out yet again but this time she knew she had to do it for herself – and she would, and then she would never be so stupid again. She could not keep expecting her daughter to manage her problems, it wasn’t fair. Plus Viv needed time and space to sort herself out. Part of Stel dreaded what Viv might discover in Ironmist, both about herself and . . . other things, but she had to be brave, step back and let her daughter get on with it, even if it meant things might not be the same between them afterwards. And it wasn’t fair of her to distract Viv from what she had to do. Stel had got too used to being pathetic. Well, no more. She had a plan.

  ‘Talking of change, Viv, I’ve decided to have the house redecorated so I’m just letting you know that you might be as well not coming back for a couple of weeks until it’s all done.’

  ‘Wow. When did you decide all this then?’

  ‘Last night. You know how impulsive I am.’ At least her biggest fault would work in her favour here.

  ‘Er, slightly,’ Viv chuckled. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to help you move stuff . . .’

  ‘Nope, it’ll keep me busy and the decorators will lift the heavy things, I’m sure.’

  Stel knew that Viv believed her. That was good. It would buy her time.

  ‘Well, I can’t wait to see it,’ said Viv. ‘How are you and Ian?’

  ‘Oh we’re fine,’ replied Stel, her composure starting to slide now. ‘I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing.’

  ‘Hand-feeding a three-legged donkey carrots.’

  There was a smile in Viv’s voice, she was happy, thought Stel.

  ‘I love you, Viv.’

  ‘Love you too, Mum. See you soon.’

  Stel hoped that she would, too. As soon as she’d extricated herself from the glue pot she’d landed herself in and proved to her daughter that she could be a grown-up.

  Chapter 65

  Ian had booked a table at the Tarnview pub in the Town End. It was nice enough, waitress service, plenty of choice on the menu, although the chef only needed to be able to throw frozen food into a microwave. He ordered a bottle of house Champagne so they could properly toast their cohabitation. That gave Stel the opportunity to bring up something which had been niggling her.

  ‘Didn’t you say you were in the middle of having a lot of work done to your place?’ she asked, trying to make it sound conversational, and not as if she were leading him into admitting a lie.

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘But Pete’s desperate and the house he’s just left was a total shit-hole so mine is a palace by comparison.’

  That sounds feasible, so why do you assume he lied? Her own head was giving her a talking to. You gave him the wrong signals so all this is your fault. Just tell him that the living together thing is too much and he’ll be fine about it. Then you can carry on at a slower pace. He’ll just have to tell his mate that there’s been a change of plan.

  ‘Anyway, look, cheers,’ he held up his glass and when she followed suit, he chinked it against hers. ‘I want us to be happy.’ And he looked at her with such tenderness that she was overcome with guilt that she thought any ill of him.

  ‘Me too,’ said Stel. She didn’t want it to end. They were good together. They liked so much of the same stuff and he couldn’t keep his hands off her which meant he fancied her like mad. These were all things she had wanted in her ideal relationship so what was wrong with her?

  Ian picked up the menu and studied it. His eyes remained fixed on it whilst he asked her about earlier. ‘By the way, I was a bit surprised that you didn’t tell me you were going out for lunch today,’ he said.

  ‘I had some phone calls to make for my friend. The one whose husband died.’

  ‘Did you have to drive off to make them?’

  ‘No, but I wanted some privacy.’

  ‘Okay.’ He tapped the menu with the back of his hand. ‘So, what do you fancy, apart from me of course?’ He laughed. And Stel laughed but she wasn’t sure she did fancy him and she didn’t want to admit that to herself. She’d tried to force herself to find him attractive, but she still didn’t like his eyes and she wished she did. She really did. Talk about screwed up!

  She chose scampi and chips and he had soup and a steak and kidney pie. The portions were enormous and they struggled to finish them.

  ‘My old mum would have loved this,’ said Ian, wiping his mouth on the paper serviette.

  ‘Mine too,’ said Stel. ‘She’d have had the pie and then moaned that it wasn’t as good as one she could make, but she’d still have eaten the lot. She did it every time we went out.’

  ‘Mum gets fed through her stomach now,’ said Ian, with a sad smile. ‘She can’t eat solids any more.’

  His mum’s dead, Stel. I remember him telling us at his interview. She died in a hospice last year, Maria had said.


  Stel felt as if someone had tied a knot in her throat. She tried to cough it away but it stayed put.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I must have got it wrong. I thought your mum had . . . you know . . . passed over.’

  Ian raised his head and though his smile was still in place, it looked as if it had been glued on.

  ‘I told you I went to see her on her birthday the week before last, not that she knows who I am. Or anyone for that matter. It’s my step-mum who’s dead. She was the one who brought me up.’

  ‘Oh, oh.’ Stel shook her head as if she was stupid and the action might jiggle some sense into it.

  ‘Bit confusing,’ said Ian. ‘I wasn’t close to my real mum until about two years ago. She left my dad when I was a baby.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Stel. She couldn’t get her head around a woman walking away from a baby. But she knew they did.

  Ian stopped chewing as if a sudden thought had just locked his jaw. He swallowed and said, ‘So, if you thought my mum was dead, what did you think when I told you that I’d been to see her?’

  ‘I just thought that you’d been to her grave with flowers.’

  ‘Christ, I wouldn’t have given that old cow flowers when she was alive, never mind dead,’ he laughed coldly and it shocked her.

  ‘You weren’t close to your step-mum then?’

  ‘She was a fucking bitch,’ he said, too loud, his lips contorted with hate. He dropped his voice and offered an apology. ‘Sorry, Stelly. Let’s not talk about mothers, eh?’ He reached over the table and grabbed her hand. ‘It upsets me. I’ve not had the best experience with them.’

  So which one had breast cancer then? The one he was there ‘every step of the way’ for? Something wasn’t adding up, or maybe she was remembering that wrong.

  ‘Maybe you should tell me something else about yourself. I don’t really know that much about you, Ian,’ said Stel, thinking again how ridiculous it was that the man opposite to her had a key to her house and she didn’t even know if he had any brothers or sisters. She knew lots of unimportant stuff about him, such as he liked peanut butter, Lacoste polo shirts and his favourite film was The Shawshank Redemption, but what did she know about his history, other than his name was Ian Robson, he came from Nottingham, he was a forty-eight-year-old gardener who had once been a soldier and he’d just rented out his house in Crompton Street to his mate Pete? It wouldn’t fill a postcard.

  ‘Stelly, just look forwards, eh, love? Why rake over old bones? We have our whole lives ahead of us. Why should we waste time looking back?’

  Stel thought of all the things she’d rather he didn’t know about her: the Matchmaker.com years, the older married man she’d once had a fumble with when she was young and drunk, so many daft things she’d done and she realised he was right; it wasn’t necessary they knew everything about each other, was it?

  The waitress came over and cleared the plates and asked if they’d like to see the dessert menu. Ian said no at the same time as Stel said yes.

  ‘We’ll just have the bill,’ Ian said, giving the waitress the definitive answer, then he addressed Stel. ‘I think we’ve eaten enough tonight so we’ll just go home.’

  It’s not your home, it’s mine, Stel mumbled in her head. But she rather thought she was a bit late to the party with that information.

  Stel was cross on the way back but she didn’t want to say anything, especially as Ian was well over the alcohol limit but insisted he was fine to drive. How dare he decide when I’ve had enough to eat, she thought. She’d been saving a space for an Eton Mess, that’s why she hadn’t had a starter like he had.

  She’d feigned being very tired when they got in the house.

  ‘I’ve got something that will wake you up,’ Ian had said, kissing her neck.

  ‘I’ve eaten too much,’ protested Stel, using his own argument against him. She pulled away from him but he wouldn’t let her go.

  ‘I’ll help you burn it off,’ he insisted.

  ‘Ian, I’m really tired. I got up at five thirty this morning.’ Stel’s polite smile was laboured now.

  ‘Well, that’s not my fault you couldn’t sleep, is it? Come on Stelly, just a quickie. We’ve had a nice evening, make it extra special for me. Don’t spoil it. I’ve bought you a nice meal and Champagne.’

  And because Stel didn’t want to spoil the evening, because she didn’t want to seem like an ungrateful cow, she let him do it. But she hated herself for it.

  *

  Gaynor went to bed that night as happy as someone who had newly acquired the status of widow could go. She had been to see the new funeral director that day and asked him to change the casual clothes that Danira had chosen for Mick’s interment. He would want to leave this world with dignity and that wouldn’t be achieved with 501s and a sweatshirt. She supplied one of the suits he had left behind, the only one that she hadn’t cut out the crotch from. It was the suit she had bought him for their Silver Wedding Anniversary and she couldn’t quite bring herself to deface it.

  She had chosen a poem and the hymn ‘Love Divine’ which had been played at their wedding, although she hoped it wouldn’t be the same organist who had massacred it with bum notes. Her dad had brought the house down by remarking in his father-of-the-bride speech that he was sorry Les Dawson couldn’t join them at the reception, but he had another wedding to play for. And she had written a glowing obituary for the Chronicle, leaving out the part about Mick pissing off with a woman younger than his daughter and buying her a house. She had ordered the flowers: a simple cross of white and red roses, because he was born in Lancashire and she was a Yorkie and so that’s what she had had in her wedding bouquet. Danira hadn’t booked any catering for after the crematorium service – wanting to save her money for drugs no doubt, thought Gaynor – but she secured the function suite at the Farmer’s Arms between Dodley and Maltstone where she and Mick had often gone for Sunday lunch. She paid for the luxury buffet with sparkling wine on arrival.

  Then Gaynor spent a couple of hours sitting by Mick’s side in the funeral parlour and she talked to him and relived old precious memories. She touched his face and said that she forgave him and loved him, had always loved him and would always love him. And she hoped that heaven would give them a chance to do it all again, properly, with a sofa that you could slump into next time. She promised him he could have first pick if there was a DFS in the clouds.

  Chapter 66

  Once again, Stel took an early lunch break, sneaking out before Ian noticed she had gone. She knew she hadn’t said a definite no to sex the previous evening, but she still felt violated. It was all going terribly wrong. She needed the massage that she had booked with Caro; but not as much as she wanted to talk to someone and ask them for help.

  When she was laid face down on the massage table, Caro whistled as she started kneading her muscles.

  ‘There are some serious knots in this back, lady, what’s the matter with you?’

  Stel looked down through the head hole and saw a tear bounce on the floor tile below.

  Just tell her. This is your friend, screamed a voice inside her.

  ‘I’m not sleeping too well,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll work some magic,’ promised Caro, spreading more warm oil onto her skin. ‘I was going to use stones, but I think you need my hands. Jesus, it’s like someone’s put cornflakes under your skin. Can you feel that crunching? You should get your man working on these for you every single night until they’re gone.’

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘Stop moaning. This will get worse before it gets better. I’m going to get my elbows in on the act in a minute.’

  Caro worked on Stel’s shoulders. It was like trying to soften concrete.

  ‘How’s Viv doing?’ she asked. ‘Have you seen anything of her this week?’

  ‘She’s really busy,’ said Stel. ‘The woman she works with has had a fall so she’s taken on a lot more duties. She’s doing very long hours.’

  ‘Yo
u could always drive over to her, I suppose.’

  ‘I will, when she’s got more spare time.’

  ‘You must miss her.’

  Like you wouldn’t believe, thought Stel. She wouldn’t have gotten into this mess if Viv were here. But she would get out of it and Viv need never know.

  Caro rotated the tip of her elbow into Stel’s shoulder blade.

  ‘If this doesn’t loosen you up, I’m going to use a hammer-drill,’ chuckled Caro.

  Stel groaned. ‘It feels good in a sort of agonising way. I might need hospital treatment after this though.’

  Caro kept the pressure on. ‘Only seems ten minutes, not ten years, since we were sitting in that waiting room in the hospital, doesn’t it, Stel? How the years fly by.’

  They had been two strangers, both waiting for news of their children. Marnie had meningitis, Viv was having her most serious back operation. Both women were terrified. Both were drinking coffee on a continuous loop and ended up sitting in the hospital restaurant together. They had bonded instantly through their pain. They cried, they shared their lives, they held each other’s hands through black hours. Then, when the news became good, they both rejoiced with and for each other, clinging to each other with relief.

  ‘We’ve both had some shit, haven’t we, Caro?’

  ‘Haven’t we just. So come on, tell me then, how’s the love-life.’ Caro felt Stel’s muscles contract instantly.

  ‘All good,’ replied Stel. She wanted to pour everything out, share it, let someone tell her what to do.

  ‘Is he treating you well?’ asked Caro. ‘You’ve gone all tight again.’

  ‘Sorry. He took me out for a meal last night. Tarnview. It was very nice.’