by Fanny Blake
Charlie rested her head back in the chair, holding her phone high up in front of her where she could see it. The silence of concentration was punctuated by the sound of the camera’s shutter.
‘Charlie!’ Isla forced her arm down to her lap. ‘I can’t do it with your arm in the way.’
‘Oh, okay.’ She gave in and closed her eyes.
Isla worked fast, repeating what she thought Charlie might have done, digging out the glitter eye-shadow, drawing in her eyebrows until they could pass for Frida Kahlo’s. Perhaps a bit much but that was the look – no? She was working with a combination of dredged-up knowledge from her far-off modelling days and what she had picked up in the back of Sunday colour supplements.
‘Open your eyes.’ She picked out a mascara wand.
Charlie flinched as the wand just missed her eyeball. ‘You’re gonna blind me!’
‘No I’m not.’ Isla went at her again, less confident than the first time. Eventually her work was done. ‘Right! Sit up.’ She took a step back, ready to admire. ‘Oh!’ The look she’d achieved was a bit more heavy-handed than she’d intended.
Charlie leaped out of the chair and into the bathroom. ‘Gran! That’s terrible. Look at the flicks!’
‘It’s not that bad.’ But Isla began to laugh, watching Charlie leaning forward examining her work closely. ‘I tried.’
‘What have you done to my nose?’
Isla went to stand in the doorway.
‘I can’t go for supper like this.’ Charlie reached for her sponge bag and her cleanser. ‘My eyebrows!’ Now she was laughing. ‘You should go online and see how to do it.’
‘Maybe I will. But it’s difficult doing it for someone else.’ She felt she had to justify her failure.
‘For you I mean. You look great like that. You just need some practice.’
She was right. Isla wasn’t remotely embarrassed to be going down for supper looking as she did. In fact she thought she might smarten up to go with it. While Charlie removed and redid Isla’s attempts at a makeover, Isla changed into her cropped grey linen trousers, a plain white shirt and sandals.
‘You look cool,’ was Charlie’s verdict.
‘As do you.’ She was not going to be embarrassed by the shortness of Charlie’s skirt. If she was relaxed in it, then Isla would be too.
They left the room a shambles, locked the door, and went down to supper.
23
Isla hadn’t slept as badly since her brief affair with Chris, a history academic a little older than her, who had snored like a trumpeting elephant all night. The few times he stopped, he rocked the bed violently as he got in and out on his way to the bathroom and back. She had vowed there and then never again to sleep with a man with incipient prostate problems, however much that might limit her options at her age. Jock had kept up a steady snuffling punctuated with loud whimpers when he got close to the rabbits in his dreams. That, combined with Charlie’s constant thrashing about on the other side of the bed, kept Isla dozing in fits and starts until someone started moving the bins and clearing up under their window. From then on there was no hope of sleep. But, at least she finally got a chance to read her book.
By the time she got to the garage that was tucked up a turning at the end of the main street, they had collected her car from the service station and the overalled mechanic was already working on it. ‘Paul at the pub said you needed it urgently so here we go. It shouldn’t take too long.’
She nodded. She wasn’t going to think what she and Charlie would have done if they’d been stranded here for days, waiting for the delivery of a spare part. There was only so much make-up they could apply. But now they would make it to Preston in time to meet Tony’s train. The thought of him lifted her heart.
While the car was fixed, she took Jock round a couple of fields, through a small wood where the sun dappled through the branches, and over a brook babbling back towards the village. A perfect summer morning. While Charlie still slept – there was no reason to bully her out of bed that morning – Isla took advantage of the opportunity to be alone. The previous night’s breakthrough had lasted for a few hours, through a supper of overcooked spit-roast pork and stale rolls, until something on her phone disturbed Charlie again. She wouldn’t say what but rolled onto her side, with her back to Isla, and didn’t talk again before she went to sleep. They had arrived back at square one without even trying.
What was Charlie going to make of Tony? Isla was determined not to make a big deal of introducing them to each other. She tried to see him as Charlie might. Would he like her? Of course he would – he was a kind man and would put up with her granddaughter’s moods. More than anything she wanted them to get along.
She called to Jock, who stopped nosing round a rabbit burrow and trotted up to her, nudging her pocket for a treat. ‘Food! Is that all you think about?’ She tossed a half biscuit in the air that he caught with a practised snap.
And Lorna? Seeing her would be tricky. But she was glad to be going there. Lorna wouldn’t have agreed to her staying unless she wanted to put things right between them. But what if Lorna had an ulterior motive: something Isla wouldn’t put past her. The big issue was obviously the future of Braemore. Could Lorna be hoping Isla would persuade Aggie to sell her share? They all knew that if Aggie would listen to anyone, it was her. If Aggie agreed to the sale, Morag would have to cave in and go along with it. Isla was puzzled. Why would Lorna imagine that she would want to be part of this ongoing fight after May disinherited her? Even Lorna must be able to understand Isla’s reluctance to be involved.
But Lorna had always loved their family home and until now, out of all of them, had the most romantic view of its past. She couldn’t possibly want to see the paddocks give way to a few modern new-builds that would crowd the old house and destroy its character. The more Isla thought about it, the more puzzling it was.
She picked up a stick and threw it for Jock who ambled off in its direction, going more to please her than himself. When he reached the stick, he sniffed at it, then turned away.
‘Oh, come on, Jock! Haven’t you learned anything?’
She would quiz Lorna about May, and that’s what she was looking forward to most. As the youngest, Lorna had always had the place closest to her mother’s heart. When Morag and Isla came back from doing something together, they’d find Lorna and May bent over something – a cake they were baking or a piece of tapestry or knitting – laughing together. Isla had always envied them the closeness that she had lost.
But Lorna had always been volatile, quick to defend herself against her older sisters for any perceived slight. Any divide between them had been driven by her certainty that they looked down on her. But the other two remembered things differently.
Once Isla had left home, the other two became close again but then Lorna had got off with Jimmy, Morag’s then boyfriend. And the balance shifted. Morag found out thanks to a friend who spotted the two of them in the back row of the Dominion cinema: far enough from home to assume they wouldn’t be seen. Lorna had no defence. Her bond with Morag was severely damaged although Morag was eventually glad to have been shown what an untrustworthy bastard Jimmy was. That was confirmed when a year later, he dumped Lorna cruelly. But the damage had been done.
Families.
Had May really said there was some French in Isla? She rather liked the idea that they might have French ancestry somewhere and that she was the one who had inherited a gene or two? May had almost eradicated her own youth as soon as she met David. That’s at least how it seemed. As far as her children were concerned, marrying their father was where she began. Unlike Muff and Puff, their other grandparents, May’s parents Nana and Grandpa were kept at arm’s length, easy enough to do when her father died and her mother moved to Inverness. But as far as Isla knew, they were Scottish through and through.
If there was a French connection somewhere, no one had ever mentioned it to her. As she took the sun-dappled path through the wood, Isla smiled at the
thought of a couple as ordinary as her parents having some sort of secret exotic family history. It was so unlikely. But Aggie must know.
And the picture? Where did that fit in? Perhaps it had been passed down generations of the Adair family and no one knew. Could Céleste be a relative? Or someone known to one? Perhaps when Isla got home, she would take it to an auction house and see if someone could tell her something about the painter.
‘Jock! Come.’ She called him away from truffling in a rabbit hole. He trotted up to her then went off his own way again, sniffing his way through the woods.
Soon, she and Charlie would be on the road again.
* * *
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ The question was followed by an agonised sigh as Charlie pulled out her earbuds and dropped them on her lap.
‘No.’ Isla’s grip tightened on the wheel. Since Charlie had eventually got up, she had been venomous, jumping down Isla’s throat at the slightest opportunity – if she spoke at all. She opened the glove compartment and helped herself to one of the packs of Polos that Isla kept there.
‘Yes, I would like one, please.’ Isla kept her eyes on the road but she could hear the discontented grunt, the click of the compartment door and the tear of paper. A hand appeared in her peripheral vision with a white sweet in its palm. She took it with her left hand. ‘Thanks.’
She was aware of Charlie shifting in her seat, rearranging her legs around the backpack she would not be parted from. Perhaps she should try again.
‘So what happened last night?’
‘What?’ She clearly resented the question.
‘Last night on your phone. You seemed upset.’
‘Nothing.’ A flash of pink caught Isla’s attention as Charlie picked up the phone again.
Well, two could play at that game. Isla concentrated on pulling out to overtake a lorry, knowing that if she pursued the matter, she would get nowhere.
‘Did you know horses can sleep lying down and standing up?’
What?!
Isla gave her a sidelong glance.
Charlie was staring out of the window.
‘Useful,’ she replied, wrong-footed by the sudden change in mood.
‘Did you know they have around two hundred and five bones in their skeleton? How many do we have?’
As quickly as it had disappeared the previous evening, the sun was coming out after the storm.
‘No idea.’ Isla barely dared speak in case it went in again.
‘Two hundred and six. Yet we’re a completely different shape. Weird, no?’
‘I suppose so. I’ve never thought about it. But now you say it…’
‘Did you know a snail can sleep for three years and a slug has four noses?’
‘Where are you getting all this stuff from? No, I didn’t know that.’
‘I’ve just been reading it online.’ She was putting in her earbuds again.
That was the last of the conversation until they reached Preston station. While Isla drove, Charlie slept or entertained herself, occasionally breaking out into snatches of song, responding to the notification alerts. Isla found a space in the car park at the bottom of the hill beside the station. As she switched off the ignition, Charlie sat straight in her seat and stuffed her phone in her backpack.
Walking back up to the station entrance, Charlie spotted the TK Maxx store in the shopping centre opposite. ‘Can we go there?’ She held out Jock’s lead for Isla to take. ‘Just quickly.’
Isla checked her watch. ‘We haven’t time. We’ll go once we’ve met Tony. I’m sure he won’t mind.’
‘Why don’t I go while you meet him?’
Two young men walking past turned to stare at her. She had been so keen to get away that Isla hadn’t registered what Charlie was wearing that morning but now she looked, she realised that her top was barely decent. And the shorts. And the make-up.
‘No. We might lose each other.’ She could see the shutter coming down. ‘Imagine what Helen would say.’ But her attempt at humour fell flat. Her granddaughter was sulking.
They went through a side entrance, Charlie keeping her distance, her flip-flops slapping the tarmac. Isla looked at the Arrivals screen to check the train was on time. They crossed the covered bridge and down the steps into the station.
‘I suppose I can’t even buy a KitKat on my own?’
‘Don’t be silly. Of course you can.’ Isla was inured to the Charlie eye-roll now. She waited while she went into WHSmith, watching as a mother with a toddler stared at her a moment longer than necessary.
‘Isla!’
She’d recognise that voice anywhere. She turned to see Tony walking towards her, a broad smile on his face. She couldn’t remember being this pleased to see someone in a long time: her knees felt as though they might give way. He looked as if he’d stepped away from the Riviera, a loose white collarless shirt, its sleeves rolled up, tucked into stone-coloured chinos, sunglasses hiding his eyes that she knew were smiling. He was carrying a large black holdall that he dumped on the ground when he reached her.
‘At last.’ She caught a whiff of his familiar aftershave as he wrapped her in a tight hug. How good it felt to be back in his arms. Just as she tilted her head back for a kiss, he pulled away. ‘Ah! You must be Charlie.’
‘Mm hm.’ Her mouth was too full of KitKat for her to be able to speak but at least she shook the hand he offered. Isla could see her weighing him up, wondering who was this man in her grandmother’s life. But that reserve wouldn’t last.
‘I can see the resemblance.’
‘I don’t think so,’ retorted Charlie, having swallowed her mouthful.
‘Oh!’ He was taken aback by her hostility. ‘And Jock.’ He reached down to give the old dog a pat but a low growl made him withdraw his hand from Jock’s head as if he’d been burned.
‘Jock! Stop that!’ Isla flicked him with the end of the lead. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
Charlie took the lead from her and walked back towards the car with the dog trotting meekly beside her.
‘I’m not sure that was the best start.’ He pushed his greying hair back over his ears.
‘Don’t take any notice. She’ll come round.’ She put her arm through his. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’
At the car, he held out his hand for the key. ‘I’ll drive.’
She flicked open the boot for his bag. ‘No, it’s fine. Really.’
He took the key from her. ‘Let me. Country roads. You can ride pillion.’ He laughed. ‘And you.’ He faced Charlie. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to get in the back with the cases.’
‘But I—’
‘Don’t fuss, Charlie. We’ll swap next time.’ Isla didn’t want any difficulties. All she wanted was for them to have an enjoyable few days together. Each of them could at least try.
Looking daggers at them both, Charlie flung her backpack into the back seat and climbed in after it. She put her fingers through the grille behind her to tickle Jock’s ear. He grunted a welcome.
‘Seatbelt,’ said Tony.
Isla glanced at him as he adjusted the mirror, surprised by his tone. He winked at her. She got out the Polos and turned to offer one to Charlie. The look she received in return was withering. She ignored it.
‘Got the directions?’ Tony turned the key in the ignition and drove towards the main road while Isla got Google Maps on her phone. ‘I hope this place is good.’
‘Well, they were very helpful in getting an extra room for Charlie. And it looks beautiful.’ She sat back in her seat, trying to relax. These few days were not going to go wrong – whatever it took.
24
Soon after they left the city outskirts, they found themselves in wild countryside, driving through narrow lanes, drystone walls dividing sheep-strewn fields that swelled to distant fells and pine woods. Tony was relaxed – Isla could tell by his grip on the wheel, finger tapping – and began to talk about what he’d been doing while she had been away.
‘I’ve
been giving the old place a going over.’
‘Old place? That’s my home you’re talking about.’
‘I’m teasing.’ He patted her thigh. ‘Just trying to help.’
But she didn’t want his or anyone’s help. Her home was exactly how she liked it.
‘I feel sick.’ The words from the back seat were muffled by Charlie’s hand over her mouth.
‘Can’t you hang on for a few minutes? We’re nearly there.’ Tony glanced in the rear-view mirror at her.
‘No, I really do.’
Isla turned to see Charlie ashen-faced, bending forward over her knees.
‘Tony! Stop the car!’
‘Where? There’s no—’
‘Just stop!’
As he swerved into the entrance to a field, Isla leaped out before they came to a standstill. She was opening Charlie’s door just as the girl lurched forward and vomited into the cup holders between the two front seats. Tony pulled back his hand from the gearstick, but not quite quickly enough.
‘Christ!’ He held it out as if it was contaminated.
Isla took Charlie’s arm to guide her out of the car. ‘There might be some tissues in the glove compartment.’ Standing on the dried rutted earth, Charlie bent over, retching while Isla held her hair off her face, her other hand on her back.
She could hear the click and slam of the glove compartment being opened and shut.
‘Can’t find them.’ He got out and bent to wipe his hand on the grass verge. ‘Ouch! Oh God! I’ve been stung by a bloody wasp!’ He was shaking his hand up and down. ‘Jesus!’
By this time, Charlie had recovered herself, although she was still ashen-faced. ‘That always happens if I’m in the back. I tried to tell you…’
‘But I didn’t listen. I’m so sorry, love.’ She had been too bound up in welcoming Tony and trying to ensure his enjoyment to remember her priorities. ‘You can ride in the front from now on.’ This was not how she’d envisaged things, squished in the back of the car with a couple of suitcases and Jock’s meaty breath drifting over her shoulder. ‘Let me see your finger.’ Tony was clutching his hand and swearing under his breath. ‘You okay?’ she asked over the hot roof of the car.
