by Unknown
‘I know,’ Celeste whispered. ‘I know these things now but it doesn’t make the pain go away.’
Julian shook his head. ‘That will take time and there will be days like this when it all comes tumbling back into your head – just when you think you’ve got a handle on things. But I know you can get through this and I want to help you. I want you to know I’m here for you.’
She looked up at him. ‘Even though I pushed you away?’
‘Celeste – you could push me into the moat and I’d still come back to you.’
She gave a little laugh and a big sniff. ‘I’m so sorry, Julian.’
‘It’s okay. Just promise to talk to me next time. I want to know what’s going on in here,’ he said, tapping her forehead gently. ‘You’ve got to open up about these things. You’ve got to let them out.’
Suddenly, a strange light came into his eyes and he turned to look at the desk and the chair on the other side of it.
‘What do you want to say to her?’ he asked.
Celeste frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘If she was here now – what would you say to her?’
‘I wouldn’t say anything,’ Celeste said, looking puzzled.
Julian moved round to the other side of the great Victorian desk and pulled Penelope’s chair out from behind it.
‘What are you doing?’ Celeste asked, instantly on her guard.
‘Talk to her,’ he said. ‘She’s sitting here right now, ready to listen to you.’
‘No, Julian – don’t!’ Celeste said. ‘I can’t!’
‘Yes you can! Talk to her! Tell her how you feel!’
Celeste’s heart was racing as she looked into Julian’s face. He was completely and utterly serious about this.
‘Go on, Celly! Tell her how you feel!’
Celeste’s breathing was wild and ragged and her mouth had gone quite dry but something was stirring deep inside her.
‘I want to know,’ she began slowly, ‘I really want to know why you had us when you didn’t want to get to know us – when you didn’t love us? Why, Mum? Why? And how could you say all those things to us? Couldn’t you see the damage you were doing? Couldn’t you see how much pain you were causing? Or did that not matter to you? Didn’t you care about anyone other than yourself? Was that it?’ she cried. ‘God! I wish I could understand this and I’m trying – I’m really trying – but I just feel so helpless. I’m mad too. I’m so mad with you for still making me feel like this even when you’re dead!’
Suddenly, the energy that had been driving her seemed to ebb away and she broke down, the tears flowing from her eyes in uncontrolled torrents.
‘It’s okay,’ Julian said, moving towards her so he could hold her in his arms and stroke her dark hair. ‘It’s okay. You’ve been locking all this pain away for so many years.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said between sobs. ‘I didn’t mean to –’
‘To what?’ he said. ‘Don’t apologise, for heaven’s sake! You needed to release all that, and I know how awful you must be feeling right now but it’ll have done you the world of good. I’m sure of it.’
‘But I should have been able to cope better with all this,’ she said, drying her eyes on the sleeve of her blouse.
‘But that’s what you have been doing. Don’t you see? You’ve been trying to cope on your own for so long and that’s not good for anybody. You’ve got to share all this stuff otherwise you’ll go out of your mind.’
‘I know,’ she said, her head resting on his shoulder, ‘and I will. I promise.’
‘Good,’ he said, his hand firm yet gentle as it continued to stroke her hair.
They stood like that in the middle of the study for some time before Celeste spoke again.
‘Everything’s changing so fast,’ she said. You know Evie’s going to have a baby?’
‘Is she?’
‘And Lukas – that’s the father – is moving in to be with her. We’ve got Esther living here now and then there’ll be your antiques business too.’
‘You mean you’re still up for that?’ Julian asked, leaning back so that he could look at her face.
She nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said, and Julian grinned. ‘But it’s going to be chaos here with all these people coming and going and a baby too and –’
‘But that’s good, isn’t it?’ Julian interrupted. ‘That’s just what this old house needs – a bit of chaos and noise. It’s life!’
‘It makes me anxious,’ Celeste said.
‘But it shouldn’t,’ Julian told her. ‘It just means there’ll be more people around to help you with everything.’ He grinned. ‘I’m so glad you’re not going to sell this place. I know it holds a lot of bad memories for you but I also know that it holds a lot of good ones too. I’ve seen the look on your face when you remember them. You love this place.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’ve helped me to realise that.’
‘And you can make it work too. I know you can.’
Celeste gave a wry smile. ‘Why can’t I see things like you do? You always see the positive and I always focus on the problems!’
‘I’ll teach you,’ he said, ‘and I think we should start with this room.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, just look at it! It’s so dark and gloomy in here,’ he said, leaving her side as he paced around the study. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘I – er –’
‘It needs some changes,’ he said, running his fingers along the dusty old bookshelves. ‘Some drastic changes. Starting with these curtains, right?’
‘Well, I –’
Before she could finish her sentence properly, Julian had ripped the ancient curtains down, pulling on the great weight of them until they landed in a heavy, dusty heap on the floor of the study, with the curtain pole and a good deal of plaster clattering down in its wake.
Celeste looked at him in bewildered astonishment.
‘Ooops,’ he said, a shy smile brightening his face.
‘Julian!’ Celeste cried, her hands flying to her mouth.
He crossed the room towards her. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘You’re not doing yourself any favours locking yourself away in this room. It’s oppressing you. You’re not allowing yourself to be you in here. You’ll always be a daughter in this room and that’s not good enough. You’ve got to be your own person, Celeste. You’re worth that. You’ve got to let yourself live.’
She stood staring at him, her eyes wide and frightened. ‘But I –’
‘Get rid of the curtains. Get rid of all these dusty old books –’
‘But the books are important for business.’
‘But you don’t need them in here, do you?’ Julian said. ‘I’m not suggesting that you get rid of them – just put them somewhere else where they’re not reminding you of the past all the time. Don’t you want to do that? Don’t you want to make this room yours?’
She stared at him for what seemed like an eternity and then she nodded as a huge bubble of excitement built up inside her.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I got you a little something. Wait right there!’ He left the room and she heard him running down the corridor into the hallway. ‘Yes,’ she heard him say. ‘She’s okay. No – not yet. Give me a moment with her, okay?’ She imagined Gertie and Evie waiting in the hallway to make sure that she was all right and, as much as she wanted to see them and to apologise to them, hug them and tell them that she loved them and that everything was going to be all right because they weren’t going to sell the manor, she stood fixed to the spot because Julian had told her to stay right where she was.
When he returned, he was holding something large wrapped in brown paper.
‘I wanted to get you this,’ he said. ‘Now, don’t go getting excited because it’s not the original – as much as I’d have loved buying that for you. But I think it’s a pretty good copy,’ he said as he handed it to her.
Celeste unwrapped the brown paper, w
hich had been tied with a great big bow the colour of a summer sky.
‘Julian!’ she said a moment later as she gazed at the painting. ‘The Fantin-Latour.’
‘It’s just a reproduction,’ he said, ‘but it’s by a great artist friend and –’
‘It’s wonderful!’ Celeste said. ‘I love it!’
‘You do?’
‘What a lovely gift,’ she said, tears of joy sparkling in her eyes. They gazed at one another and Celeste swore that she could see tears swimming in Julian’s eyes too, making them even brighter than usual, and she could wait no longer.
It was hard to tell who was the more surprised by the kiss – Celeste for giving it or Julian for receiving it – but it was a moment that changed everything, sealed everything, made everything perfect, and Celeste had never felt happier in her life.
When they stepped apart, the painting still held between them, they laughed.
‘I really wasn’t expecting that,’ Julian said.
‘You should have been,’ Celeste said, ‘and I should have done it a long time ago.’
The smile that graced his face – the one that she had thought she’d never see again – made her heart soar with joy and love.
‘Come on,’ Julian said. ‘Let’s share all this with those sisters of yours.’
They left the study hand in hand and walked into the hallway, where Celeste’s eyes caught sight of the barometer. As always, it was reading ‘Change’ and she couldn’t help smiling because, for once, it was right.
ONE YEAR LATER
Celeste opened a window in the study. The room had been stripped of its old furnishings and was now a bright and beautiful workspace. The Victorian partners’ desk had been moved into another room because Celeste hadn’t been able to part with it, no matter how it made her feel. In its place stood a modest table which Celeste had made her own by placing photographs and vases of flowers around it.
Julian had been right to push her to make the changes in the room. It had been a painful process but a necessary one.
There had been so many changes at Little Eleigh Manor, Celeste thought. Lukas had moved in and he and Evie were now officially engaged.
‘I don’t need to get married,’ Evie kept protesting.
‘We know!’ her sisters kept telling her.
‘But I think it’s nice for Alba, don’t you?’ Evie said.
Celeste smiled now as she thought about her beautiful niece, Alba Rose. Lukas had been with Evie during the entire length of the nine-hour labour and she had a feeling that he was very much a part of their family now.
It was wonderful having a baby at the manor. Celeste had been absolutely terrified of the thought of her youngest sister being pregnant but Evie, who was now a redhead, was a brilliant mother.
Things seemed to be moving forward for Gertie too. After James and his wife had left for France, Gertie had given all of her poetry books to a charity shop and had taken up kickboxing instead, enrolling in an evening class where she had met a man called Aled who was very cute and who, crucially, wasn’t married. Since then, the two had gone travelling around Italy, Switzerland and Spain, carefully avoiding France, which no longer held an appeal for Gertie.
Meanwhile, Mr Ludkin had finished his work in the north wing and Julian had been converting it into his antiques centre, much to the fascination of Esther Martin, who had actually offered to help out once it was up and running.
‘Do you know how many years I’ve spent sitting in a chair by myself ? Let me be useful, for pity’s sake!’ she told Julian and Celeste when they asked if it would be too much for her.
The reproduction Fantin-Latour – or the Phantom-Latour as it was affectionately known, because it was but a ghost of the real thing, had been hanging with pride in Celeste’s study. And it really was her study too these days, with its freshly painted walls the colour of a New Dawn rose, its light, bright furniture and the beautifully delicate curtains which swayed in the gentlest of breezes, making the room a heavenly place to work in.
Celeste smiled. And what about her, she thought? Well, she’d been spending more time with Julian – a lot more time. They’d walked and talked and laughed and kissed, and she felt happier than she’d ever felt in her life.
Leaning out of the window now, her bare arms on the sun-warmed stone windowsill, Celeste looked out across the moat to the garden and sighed with deep satisfaction as the scent of roses drifted towards her. Julian was out walking Frinton down by the river and Gertie, Esther, Evie and Lukas were in the walled garden with baby Alba. Celeste had promised to join them as soon as her desk was clear.
‘Which it is,’ she said to herself as she turned back into the room. There had been a time when she would have spent an extra hour in the study, tidying, planning and organising, but not anymore: she was finally learning how to let go, enjoy herself and relax, and there was no better way of doing that than by joining her sisters and the rest of her family in the rose garden.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To Emilie, Sophie and Jennifer at Amazon Publishing for believing in this story and for helping me make it the very best it could be. To fellow rosarians Richard Stubbs, Jo Skehan and Nattaporn Vichitrananda. To Adele Geras for her wonderful novel, Watching the Roses. To Alison for her story Teddy Bananas, which inspired my ‘ceiling on the floor’ scene. To Judy for listening to my ideas for this book over the last two years. And to Roy, who taxied me around a fair few rose gardens and who has dug endless holes in our own garden in which to plant my own ever-expanding rose collection!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2011 Roy Connelly
Victoria Connelly studied English literature at Worcester University, got married in a medieval castle in North Yorkshire and now lives in rural Suffolk with her artist husband and family of rescued animals.
She has had ten romantic comedies published around the world as well as books across many genres including novels, novellas, short story collections, children’s adventures and autobiographies. Her first published novel, Flights of Angels, was made into a movie in 2008 by Ziegler Films in Germany. The Runaway Actress was shortlisted for the RNA’s Romantic Comedy award.
Ms Connelly loves books, films, gardening, walking, historic buildings, and animals – especially ex-battery hens. She is also passionate about roses, and her home is surrounded by more than thirty different varieties of rose bush.
Her website is www.victoriaconnelly.com, and readers can follow her on Twitter @VictoriaDarcy.
