Amelia Grey's Fireside Dream

by Abby Clements

  She shook her head, then reluctantly put her arms into the sleeves and pulled it around her. ‘I was cold. But the garden,’ she said, with a faint smile, ‘is pretty this time of year, isn’t it? I’ve always taken good care of it.’

  I saw now that her feet were clad only in slippers, and her pale white legs, with veins showing through the paperthin skin, had a blue tinge.

  ‘It’s a lovely garden,’ I said. ‘Beautiful. Shall we go inside?’ I asked, holding out my hand.

  ‘No,’ she replied stubbornly. ‘I came here to be by the stream.’

  I offered my hand again, and this time she seemed to have forgotten her reasons for wanting to stay, and took it, walking slowly with me towards the warmth of the cottage.

  ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea,’ I said. ‘And some cake. And then I’m going to call David and he can come and get you. You’ve had everyone worried, you know. Your family care about you a lot.’

  ‘Too much,’ she muttered. ‘For the liar I am.’

  After the slow walk, we arrived at the kitchen. Her eyes came to rest on the one feature from her time at the cottage – the Aga in the corner, and she seemed comforted by its familiarity.

  I put the kettle on, thankful that the other, newer features in the kitchen didn’t seem to have alarmed her.

  ‘I’m just going to call your son and let him know you’re OK.’

  ‘If you have to,’ she said, sitting down at the table.

  I called Mum and told her that Eleanor was fine, and that she was inside now, getting warmed up. I heard the relieved responses of David and Callum in the background.

  ‘You came back to the cottage,’ I said, putting her tea down in front of her. She eyed it suspiciously.

  ‘I came for her things,’ she said. ‘I need to find them. She took my hand in hers and looked me directly in the eye. ‘You know.’

  ‘The tin?’ I asked tentatively.

  ‘That’s where I put them. Yes.’

  ‘OK.’ I walked over to the back door and locked it. ‘Promise me you’ll stay right here, Eleanor? And have your tea? Then I’ll bring them to you.’

  ‘You will?’ she said, her eyes pleading.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I said. I left the kitchen and went upstairs to my bedroom. I found the tin right away, the tarnished bronze gleaming out from my shelf.

  I took it downstairs and passed it to Eleanor, who hadn’t moved from her spot at the table.

  ‘Sarah,’ she said, taking the tin from me. ‘Sarah’s things.’ Her eyes filled with tears as she opened the box and took out the photograph of a baby girl. She lifted the bonnet out next, pressing the soft fabric against her face for a moment and then holding it close to her chest.

  I sat opposite her, feeling as if I was intruding on a deeply intimate moment.

  ‘Was Sarah …?’ I started.

  ‘I didn’t want to let her go,’ she insisted, looking at me as if I’d accused her of something. ‘I had to.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. It seemed to reassure her. She put the photo down on the table and looked at me again.

  ‘I don’t want them to find out,’ she said. ‘That’s why I came here, why I came back. I don’t want them to know. My boys. All these years I’ve never told them about Sarah. It would be too much. Too much hurt, to have them find out now.’

  Her gaze was focused and she seemed lucid – not the scared shadow of a woman I’d found down by the stream just a few moments ago.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked gently.

  Her eyes filled with tears again but she brushed them away roughly.

  ‘It was during the war. I was too young to know better. I could have coped though, I know I could. I wanted her so much, my little girl.’

  I thought back to my conversation with David. Pieces were starting to fall into place now.

  ‘You gave her away?’ I asked, as softly as I could.

  ‘I didn’t want to. But I had to, you see. My mother said it wouldn’t do. Even if I could cope, she said people would judge me. It wouldn’t be something I could hide. I was just a girl really, when I met Alfie. My first time out at a local dance, and he swept me off my feet – literally. I’d saved for weeks to buy that dress, emerald-green it was, and my sister Marie helped me do my hair. My parents wouldn’t normally have let us go out unchaperoned, but the dance had been organized by the church and they didn’t see the harm in it.

  ‘I danced with Alfie all night. He was from out of town, passing through. He never told me what his job was, and well, I never asked. It didn’t seem to matter. We just clicked, you see, laughing and joking together, and didn’t talk much about anything serious at all. Alfie asked to see me again the next weekend, to go to the pictures, and I’d never had a man ask me that before. It didn’t feel right lying to my parents, but Marie told me I shouldn’t miss my chance. She’d seen Alfie, of course – and she was as caught up by his dark eyes and hair as I was. The grin, and those beautiful dimples he had.

  ‘I’m not a bad girl, you know.’

  ‘I’d never have thought that,’ I said.

  ‘But I suppose I did get swept up. It would never have crossed my mind that he’d be married. He didn’t wear a ring, and of course no one much in my village knew him. He had a house in town. I don’t know if it was his or a friend’s. Two months later, I realized what had happened.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’

  ‘Yes. I thought he’d be happy about it – and you know what? For a moment I think he was. He told me he wanted me to have it – the baby – her, Sarah. We could have found a way.’

  ‘He never told you he was married?’

  ‘No. But when a friend of my father’s saw us together – it was inevitable really, we weren’t as careful as we should have been – my parents started to ask questions about him. They found out what I hadn’t really wanted to know, or believe. That weekend was the worst of my life. My parents told me I couldn’t see Alfie again. I met him one last time; he came to my bedroom window at night so we could talk. He told me he was sorry for lying to me, that he would leave his wife. Perhaps I was naive, but I would have gone with him. Only I knew my parents would never forgive me. That was the last time I saw him. He left his address.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘It was my mother who noticed me beginning to show. She was horrified, of course she was. Didn’t dare tell my dad; he went to his grave never knowing. Probably for the best. She sent me away to stay with an aunt in Plymouth, and I had the baby there.’

  ‘Did you ever tell Alfie what happened?’

  ‘I wrote him a letter. Hoping he’d tell me I couldn’t give the baby away. That I didn’t have to do what they told me. But I never heard back. Broke my heart. Not sure it ever really got fixed.’

  ‘But you had your sons …’

  ‘And I couldn’t have loved them more. But there was always a piece of me missing. There still is. The pain of giving her away … my firstborn. I’ll never forget it.’

  Behind the white hair and creased skin, I saw the flash of a teenaged Eleanor, scared and alone, with no choice but to go through with the course of action her mother had put to her.

  ‘I’m sorry. You never …’

  ‘I never saw her again, and the boys – they don’t know about her. I don’t want them to know this about their mother – to think she was heartless enough to give away a sister of theirs. You’ll help me, won’t you, please?’ Eleanor implored me, pointing to the tin.

  Could I really help hide the truth from David and his brother?

  ‘Please,’ she repeated. This woman, clinging to threads of the world she knew, trying to keep control. I had to do what I could to help her retain that hold, before she lost it completely.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ I said.

  ‘The garden,’ she replied, looking out of the kitchen window towards the stretch of green behind the house. ‘David and Ewan had such a lovely childhood out there. Callum and Alice too. Always playing, enjoying
summers in the fresh air.’

  ‘It’s a perfect garden for children.’

  ‘Sarah never had the chance. They took her away. To Cornwall, I think.’

  ‘Would you like us to put her things somewhere in the garden?’ I asked.

  ‘By the stream,’ she said, resolute. ‘So she can be near the water.’

  ‘Shall we go now?’ I asked. ‘David is on his way, and I know you’ll want to do it before he gets here.’

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor said.

  I persuaded her to put on my navy duffel coat and a hat, and some proper shoes, so she’d be warmer.

  We took the tin and went down to the end of the garden, I stopped at the shed to get a trowel to take with us.

  ‘Here?’ I said, pointing to a spot by the water’s edge.

  Eleanor looked around her carefully, as if there was something in particular she was trying to remember. ‘By the tree,’ she said, pointing to the gnarled oak a few feet from where we were standing. I followed her lead, and when she stopped, I bent down with the trowel and dug a hole in the soft, wet earth. She watched as I removed the mud, until we had a hole the size of the tin and about a foot deep.

  She passed me the tin, and I put it deep inside.

  ‘I love you, Sarah,’ she said quietly. ‘And I always will.’

  I reached up to take her hand and this time she squeezed it.

  I put the earth back on top of the tin until the spot was covered again. There was barely a sign that we’d ever been there.

  From the end of the garden I heard the faint ring of the doorbell far in the distance. ‘That will be David and Callum here for you,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s time to go then, isn’t it?’ she said, as if she was no longer sure what we were doing down there by the stream at all.

  *

  ‘Mum!’ David said, as I opened the door with Eleanor beside me. The tension in his forehead disappeared in an instant. He drew his mother into a warm hug, her tiny frame looking even more fragile cradled in his strong arms.

  ‘You had us all so worried.’

  Callum looked on, relief evident on his smiling face. ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Well, thank you, Amelia. We were going out of our minds.’

  ‘Glad to be able to help,’ I said. ‘I almost didn’t spot her, down at the bottom of the garden.’

  ‘In the garden, Grandma?’ Callum said. ‘In your night-dress? You could have got pneumonia.’ He shook his head at her.

  ‘I’m tougher than you think,’ Eleanor said. ‘And I won’t be bossed around by the likes of you, Callum.’

  As she said her grandson’s name, entirely lucid for a moment, we all stopped. David’s eyes misted over with unshed tears. Callum put a hand gently and discreetly on his father’s shoulder.

  ‘I came back,’ Eleanor said, ‘because I left something here. And this lady helped me find it.’

  Callum looked at me, expecting further explanation. I shrugged as if there was nothing more to tell.

  ‘Can’t remember what it was now,’ Eleanor said, ‘but it was nice to see the stream again.’

  ‘Dad, I’ll let the police know to call off the search,’ Callum said. ‘Do you want to get Gran in the car?’

  ‘I’ll get myself in the car, thank you very much,’ Eleanor said, pulling the cardigan I’d lent her more tightly round her. ‘Tired of being bossed around by you lot.’

  ‘Take care,’ I said. She held my gaze for a moment, then looked away. ‘I like it here,’ she said.

  Even with the wallpaper stripped back and the old carpets torn up, a new kitchen fitted and radiators changed, it was still the cottage she knew. She seemed to feel at home.

  ‘Eleanor, I have something of yours. Wait here a moment.’ I went to the downstairs bathroom and picked up the locket that had been lying on the side. Back in the hallway, I passed it to her. Her fingers closed around it.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ she said. I thought I saw a glint of recognition in her eye.

  She walked ahead with Mum as Callum spoke to the police on his mobile. I caught David by the elbow as he went to leave.

  ‘Just a thought,’ I said, ‘but would you and your family like to come for Christmas? Eleanor seems to feel at home here, and you and Callum are part of our family now.’

  David smiled. ‘Thank you. I think we’d all like that very much.’

  *

  I thought I’d heard the car drive away, but a couple of minutes later the doorbell rang again. Mum, I thought. She must have forgotten something.

  When I saw who it was, it felt like my heart stopped for a fraction of a second. That face, the person who made me feel complete. The man who I knew, right then, meant home for me.

  ‘Hi, Amelia,’ he said.

  ‘Jack. Come in.’

  I suppose I should have known he’d come back at some point, that we’d talk again. But having him back here, so close, after six weeks apart, brought all my emotions to the surface.

  I’d been willing him to come back, and yet now he was here, I didn’t know what to say. How I could undo everything I’d done wrong and make things right between us again?

  I led him through to the living room and we sat down together on our old sofa.

  ‘It looks pretty different in here,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Yes. Everything except this,’ I said, running a hand over the worn fabric of our sofa.

  We hadn’t had the money to upgrade it, but I didn’t care – it was a reminder of Addison Road, and of where we’d come from.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ Jack said.

  ‘I’ve missed you too.’

  His hand brushed my cheek gently, noticing the tears I hadn’t been able to hold back.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know. But I know that I can’t be without you, Amelia. I miss this. I miss being us. I love you.’

  I thought back over the past few months – the upheaval of moving, the disagreements about our future, and the way I had doubted Jack – and myself. Somewhere in all of that, the intimacy of just being us, Amelia and Jack, had been lost. We’d once wanted nothing more than time to be the two of us – and now I wanted that again.

  ‘I love you too,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry. For everything. For not putting you – us – first.’

  ‘It wasn’t just you. I promised I’d help with the cottage, and when it came to it you did so much on your own. I never really thought work would take over like it did.’

  ‘Did you get it?’ I asked. ‘The commission?’

  ‘The funders loved it. We’ll start the project in the new year.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jack said. ‘I haven’t really been able to enjoy it yet, to be honest, with all this going on.’

  ‘How was it, staying in London?’

  ‘The truth?’ Jack said, a wry smile on his face. ‘I think my days of sofa-surfing are probably behind me.’

  ‘But you were never tempted to come home?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Jack laughed. ‘I was always tempted to come back here. But I didn’t want to gloss over what went wrong, Amelia. And I still don’t want to. There was something we both needed to work through.’

  ‘It was pretty lonely here,’ I admitted. ‘I missed your silly jokes, and the way you wake me up in the morning with a kiss.’

  ‘I missed everything about you. Even your obsession with bathroom fittings. I even missed your pyjamas. Can you believe that?’

  ‘I knew you liked them really.’

  He reached out and ran his fingers gently down the line of my jaw, coming to rest on my mouth.

  I placed my hand on his arm. That touch of him. I’d missed it so much.

  ‘Amelia, do you think we could have another chance at being you and me?’

  ‘I’m willing to try if you are.’

  Chapter 20

  Making a House a Home

  Monday, 2 December

  ‘Chestnut?’ Jack asked,
passing me a plate of them, freshly toasted.

  The fire crackled in front of us, and I took one, breaking open the tough exterior to reveal the pale, fleshy contents inside. I bit into it hungrily. Snow was falling outside.

  Sally and her husband Dan had just left the house. We’d had them round for dinner, and wound up the evening drinking wine here in the living room.

  We’d done it. The beamed ceiling, the clean windows, the new rugs that made this the cosiest room in the house, and our favourite one to spend time in. But far more importantly than that, Jack was back home again.

  A Christmas tree stood in the corner, the tip nearly touching the ceiling, a tiny angel balanced on the top.

  ‘It feels like home now, doesn’t it?’ Jack said, turning to me, his face warmly coloured by the glow of the fire.

  ‘It does. Well, almost.’

  He looked at me. ‘You think we need to do more work on the place? I thought you said that we were finally finished? Just a few changes to the dining room, right?’

  I shrugged and smiled at him. Over these past few weeks, something inside me had shifted. Perhaps it was that after all the ups and downs of the year I felt closer to Jack, and more in love with him than ever. Maybe it was finally understanding what my mother had gone through in order to bring me up, and realizing she was a better parent than I’d ever thought. Or perhaps it was seeing Eleanor, getting a glimpse of the pain she still had inside over not being able to be a mother to every child she’d given birth to. My ideas weren’t set any more. I didn’t need me and Jack to remain just the way we were. I wasn’t scared of change any more. Rather than being a project drawing to a tidy conclusion, finishing the cottage felt like the start of something for the two of us.

  ‘It’s just that we’ve got a spare room upstairs,’ I continued, ‘and I’m not sure we need a study after all. And the garden … it seems too good now, not to share.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ he asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

  ‘The room upstairs, with the view of the apple tree,’ I said. In an instant I imagined how the cottage would be. Full of laughter, and chaos, and mud – and it wasn’t such a bad image after all. ‘It would make a lovely nursery, wouldn’t it?’