Chapter Four
From: [email protected]
Subject: Just to say thanks
Hello
Thanks so much for looking after Scarlet yesterday, and it was very kind of you to let her help you do your photos. You mustn’t let her be a nuisance — although, having written that, I’m damned if I know how you prevent an eight-year-old from being a nuisance sometimes, it’s kind of inbuilt, isn’t it, like the whole ‘pink’ thing and a love of One Direction? She’s adorable in a kind of ‘force of nature’ way, not loving Scarl would be like not acknowledging gravity, but then, I’m her uncle so I would say that! Anyway. Upshot and point of this whole mail was just to say ‘thank you’ for keeping her company — she’d hate me for saying this but she can be a bit lonely sometimes. Life in a small town like Great Leys can be hard enough, when everybody remembers your family back three generations and every single transgression any one of them ever made, it’s even worse when there’s some kind of tragedy in the background for them to carefully ‘not mention’ in every conversation! So, any time you feel like dropping by the Old Mill for a slow chat please do.
Thanks again
Alex
I re-read the email. Was it just me reading between carefully typed lines, or was Alex hinting that it wasn’t only Scarlet who was lonely in the small town? Or was he nicely shacked up with the local beauty, bringing up his niece as his own amid a brood of Greek godlings and mini goddesses? He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d trawl through incomers for a potential hit-and-run affair though, he’d seemed normal . Right up at the good-looking end of the spectrum, obviously, but still, normal.
Which was a nice change, really.
And, as though the word ‘normal’ had ricocheted through the aether and set off some kind of chain reaction, my in-box pinged again.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Hey . . .
Seriously though. I mean, seriously. Progress check would be nice, you’re on a deadline, y’know.
D
Very carefully, and with great deliberation, I deleted the email from Dan. Even so, my hand shook slightly, as though even an electronic message could carry some element of him through to Great Leys. It’s no business of yours where I am, Daniel. I’ll write the book because I have to, because I said I would, and whatever else you may say about me, whatever nasty little lies you may tell to anyone who will listen, I keep my promises. Yeah, great, you think you were right, ’course you do. You ALWAYS think you’re right, Dan. I tried to tell you, tried to explain about the whole ‘twin’ thing but you just couldn’t get it, couldn’t understand that what Daisy and I have between us is . . . I can be certain of her. Whatever I do, whatever I am, she will be there for me. You may try, Dan, you may have given me promises, assurances, but they would never be the absolutes that I have with my sister. You could leave, after all, isn’t that what you did? Didn’t you just prove my case?
Go to hell.
I wished I could have written all that. Put it in an email and sent it back, imagined the look on his face when he opened it, his dark eyes widening, maybe a hand rumpling distractedly through hair already frantic in its own right. But I couldn’t. To communicate with Dan would be like forgiving him, and that was never going to happen.
I uploaded the pictures I’d taken for safekeeping. I’d once had a camera die on me and eat the memory card as a last meal, so now I was rigid about backing everything up, keeping a copy, not letting things vanish. Then I sat back, the hard wood of the chair digging into my spine. I know the room’s a bit small but an armchair would fit in. If you cut the arms off. And probably the back. So, a stool, a comfy stool, is that too much to ask for?
But the cottage was cheap. At this back end of the year, in this tiny town with its lack of attractions and so small that it couldn’t even be called a romantic hideaway, unless you were actually hiding from the object of the romance, and even then there wasn’t a lot of room for concealment unless you got under the bed. And even then you’d need to be under five feet tall and really skinny.
Outside the window the bustle of the High Street was dulled a little by a thick mist which had come down from the moors. They overhung the town and loomed like a visit from an opinionated relative to the south, while the north was a river plain which stretched to Newcastle. Great Leys was the last picturesque place before the countryside degenerated into factories and refineries and was therefore a really great location to be studying grave fashions, as the eighteenth century’s version of the nouveau riche had moved out of the unhealthy cities and into the countryside, bringing their modern fashions with their dead bodies. It also made a great centre for travelling to the counterpoint graveyards up on those moors, where farming families had lived for generations and engraved their headstones in the same traditional ways as they always had. Fashion didn’t apply when you were trying to scratch a living from a six-week summer and sheep and believed caps to be essential wear.
I went back to the churchyard, walking through the mist which decorated my sleeves and my hair like a hit-and-run beading fanatic. The shops were opening for Monday business and a knot of children in brand-new uniforms waiting for the school bus turned to watch me, but then it can’t be every day that you see someone go into a churchyard with a laptop. Maybe they thought I was going to conduct a very high-tech seance.
In fact, I was going to write. The text to go with the photographs would hopefully come a lot more easily when written in situ, when I could see the decorative calligraphy in daylight. Beatrice Churchill had clearly had a loving family who had seen fit to not only carve her name and dates in a gothic style which took over most of the stone, but also a nice little homily in English style text, and then to beswag any available clear surfaces with the kind of decorative edging more usually seen as piping around cushions. It was a bit of a dog’s dinner as far as tombstone lettering went, but it gave me a lot to say.
I sat cross-legged on the damp grass, closed my eyes, and tried to feel my way around the emotions of those who’d had the stone erected — it was this ‘speculative’ angle that had given my previous book the edge that had made it the best-seller it had been, rather than the dry, scholarly tone of many books on such subjects. I’d tried to put myself in the mindset of these long-gone people, tried to put their voices across, collated from such disparate sources as the position in the graveyard, the condition of the graves, lettering style and any general family research that I could dig up. And, with the current fashion for genealogy, readers lapped it up.
Beatrice Churchill had had a notable father. One with no taste whatsoever, apparently, but someone about whom I could write. I opened my notes as a separate document and began to type, slowly, slowly putting myself back into the head of the man who’d lost his only daughter at the age of twenty-nine.
Ping.
I had an email. How could I have an email? Who turns a churchyard into a wireless hotspot? And, more to the point, why ? I wriggled my shoulders to loosen them and only now felt the damp that had seeped through my jeans while I’d been working. Two hours? How had that happened? And not many words to show for it, either.
Ping.
From: [email protected]
Subject: You probably won’t even read this but . . .
Okay. Okay. I get it. You don’t want anything to do with me and I guess it’s pointless for me to plead my case. But, Winter, you must have seen how it was for me, how I couldn’t think straight after . . . shit. I just said it was pointless and yet, here I am, trying to make you see my side of the story. And that’s all I want, y’know? To tell you how it looks from my perspective. I mean, I know what I did was wrong. I know I hurt you. The whole Daisy thing, I shouldn’t have got involved . . . yeah, doing it again, guess that’s my mindset for you, pleading that whole pointless case. But you and me, we were good, Win, we were strong, we were that thing that everyone wants, a unit. We were tight. Remember that day in Rouen? With the drunk guy coming on to you, and I offered to punch him out for you and then he floored me and you had to call the police? Guess this email is my equivalent of that, my attempt to punch out the drunk.
Please don’t call the police.
Dan
I had to put the laptop down on the grass because my hands were shaking so hard I was worried I’d drop it. Dan. For a moment I thought that the mist was back, blurring the lines of the stones in front of me, but then I felt the damp touch of tears against my cheek and realised I was crying. Crying? Over Dan? No. No more tears shed over him, he doesn’t deserve them. He shouldn’t be able to affect me like this, not now. Six months is too long to keep that ragged cutting edge of sorrow sharp enough to slice through memories. Enough.
Enough.
I sniffed, wiped my eyes on the back of my hand and bent to pick up the laptop.
‘Winter? Oh, I’m sorry, are you working? I was just, well, it’s a shortcut through here and I was going to pop in and see Alex, such a shame he can’t use a mobile but well, he’s a little impaired with the spoken word so it’s difficult. Did you find the bin liners? If you miss the bin men they only do domestic every other week and it builds up, you know.’
Margaret Hill, wearing something startlingly pink, approached me down the churchyard path. She stopped short of stepping on the still-damp grass and sort of hovered around the edge of the path, almost vibrating with something. Curiosity, possibly, given my damp crotch and sniffing, although it was possible that she’d reached such a stage of fuchsia that the earth was rejecting her physical presence.
I was so shaken by the email from Dan that I seized upon her as though she was my long-lost best friend. ‘Oh, hello. Yes, I was working, but my battery is pretty nearly flat now so I was just going to go.’ As I spoke I walked to the path, uncomfortably aware of my moistness. ‘Where can I get a really good cup of coffee in Great Leys?’
‘Well, there’s the Costa, but they’re a bit corporate for my liking. There’s a little independent coffee shop down near the river but they don’t open on Mondays. Are you writing a book about inscriptions then? Because, if you’re interested, you could talk to Alex, he does some stone carving, he’s done the entranceway to the Old Mill with the poem on it. He’s been working on that place for years now. Do you know he used to be a stonemason? Did very well but now he just does the odd commission.’
Wow, a conversation with Margaret was like playing Twister with a pipe cleaner. ‘Maybe,’ I began, cautiously, in case she was about to launch into rhyming couplets on the subject of Spam or something, ‘I could come and talk to Alex? I could have a coffee at the same time.’
She was suddenly still. Her grey eyes, so like her son and her granddaughter, were shrewd. ‘Alex has a stammer,’ she said. ‘Ever since Ellen,’ and her voice tripped over the name, ‘since his sister died, he’s had problems communicating. It’s called psychogenic stammering, they think it might have been brought on by the trauma.’ Now her speech had lost the twists and turns, it was straightforward and her voice was sad. I wondered if the butterfly attention span she’d so far displayed was a protective thing, to keep her from thinking too deeply.
‘Yes. We’ve met and chatted.’
She smiled a tight smile. ‘He feels guilty, that’s what it is, I’m afraid. Ellen died when a delivery of stone fell, and Alex blames himself for not warning her, for not making her stay away; she was only popping by to drop in some milk; she was bringing Scarlet over to me after school one day and she got out of the car and . . .’ a flick of fingers. ‘I’m sorry. I have no idea why I’m telling you this.’ And now her words were slow, anchored by tears.
I know why you’re telling me. You’re warning me not to mess with your son. You might not even realise it, but that’s what you’re doing. I’m not sure whether you’re telling me to stay right away or to be careful and not hurt him, but you are being a concerned mother of a damaged son, and I suddenly like you a lot more than I did before.
‘It’s fine. It’s nice to meet a man who thinks before he speaks,’ I said, and she let out a sudden giggle.
‘You’re right! Let’s go and see him and he can make you a cup of coffee, and then you can have a chat about stony things.’
I averted my eyes from her pink outfit, which was beginning to make my vision strobe at the edges, and we walked out through the churchyard and across the main road. I’d passed the Old Mill site several times but, apart from a stone archway with the words ‘ The stones move like hearts beat, And love is ground ’ carved into them, there wasn’t much to see from the road. Once we walked under the arch though, I could see the old flour mill, its wheel still dredging into the stream. From the newness of much of the stone it had been almost completely rebuilt, and now looked like a posh barn conversion, with huge doors of glass opening onto a paved yard. Pulley arms jutted high on the walls and an old door at second storey level looked like the place where grain sacks had once been hauled, to be poured down into the mill mechanism.
‘Alex is going to let the units out as craft workshops,’ Margaret said. ‘The bank manager said he should make his money back in ten years.’
Yes, all right, you’re trying to persuade me that your son is a dateable guy, not sell me a second-hand car. But I smiled and noted the eco-friendly solar panels on the roof, the sweeping wooden arch of the timbers that curved from the ridge to provide a sheltered seating area outside the doors and the two huge millstones in the centre of the yard. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Th-th—’ Obviously a difficult one because Alex stopped there, walking towards us from the half-built wall towards the back of the mill. He smelled of hard work, of dust and an earlier shower that had left his hair damp; his shirt was checked and the sleeves were rolled to reveal dusty forearms. His knuckles were red and slightly cracked and his jeans were tight over the muscles that a physical job gives you. He looked like a man who’s spent his whole life in the gym and has then fallen into a sandpit. I’d never been much of a one for muscular men before, my type had always been more cerebral. Tall, verging on the lanky, but with a mind that could win a Scrabble game with a ‘Q’ and no ‘U’s’, speak four languages — all of them with a Lincolnshire accent — and a charisma that would charm everyone from old ladies to small dogs. I shook my head. Muscles were where it was at, now. Yes. No more of the dark, no more of the chaos. No more of the Dan.
‘Hello, dear.’ Margaret kissed the stubbled cheek in an offhand way. ‘Winter would like a coffee, if you’re not busy, and I think she wants to talk about stonemasonry, but I’m not very sure. Can you pick Scarlet up from school this afternoon? I have to take Mr Park to the hospital for his prostate again, they’re really going to have to do something about it, he’s just wee wee wee all day, maybe they can put a tube in it.’
‘I’ve got a d-delivery c-coming.’ Alex led us in through the double doors into the building which smelled of new wood, a clean, citrusy scent. ‘Can’t Mr P-Park’s p-prostate wait?’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you had to sit next to him in meetings. Quite frankly, he’s starting to smell, besides he’s got an appointment and it took me weeks to get him to make one this time and I don’t want him having an excuse not to go, even though all he seems to do is go, if you see what I mean. Can’t the delivery wait?’
‘I’ll fetch her,’ I found myself saying. ‘If that’s all right,’ I added as both pairs of eyes turned to me, and I wasn’t sure if they were looking at me as a lifesaver or a potential child-abductor. ‘And if someone tells me where the school is.’
‘Well, that’s—’ Margaret began, but Alex cut her off.
‘If y-you wouldn’t m-mind, Winter. It w-would be such a help.’ He laid a hand on my sleeve and smiled, his face moving up an attractiveness-category as he did so, a half fan of sun-puckered lines spreading from each eye and his dimples deepening as that wide mouth curved into a proper grin. ‘Y-you’ll have to p-put up with Light B-bulb though, and he’s often a b-bit fr-fractious after a d-day at school. He k-kicks, you know.’
Margaret sighed. ‘You shouldn’t encourage her to keep playing with that thing,’ she said. ‘It’s silly.’
‘It’s all she’s g-got, Mum,’ he said, quietly. ‘I’m g-going to p-put the k-kettle on n-now.’
‘Right, well, I’d better get back to town, I’ve got a library committee meeting this lunchtime before the hospital run and I must remember while I’m there that I wanted to borrow that book. You know, the one with that purple cover that Sally recommended when I was in the fruit shop, something to do with wine tasting or something and then there’ll be Mr Park and his wee to contend with so I’ll see you tomorrow, probably, Alex, and I do hope they’ve taken your bins, Winter. It’s such a worry, what with rats and things.’
She moved off back out of the building, pausing to stroke a hand over some timber supports as though checking for dust. The outfit became more bearable and less pink the further away she went, like an illustration of redshift. ‘She’s b-b—’ began Alex.
Broke? Bradford? Buggering the librarian? I cursed my brain for its impatient tendency to fill in the worst possible permutations of words.
‘—bonkers,’ he finally managed, ‘but she’s been th-through a lot, what with El-Ellen, and th-the stammer, and h-having to look after S-Scarlet. She w-wanted to t-t-take her but . . .’ A shrug. ‘My d-dad had n-not long d-died. She d-didn’t c-cope w-well.’
I thought about the woman as she’d been in the churchyard. Quietly sad. ‘It must be hard for her. It must be hard for all of you, especially Scarlet.’
A shrug. ‘W-we do our b-best.’ Then a headshake which sent drying hair flicking flakes of stone outwards. ‘Now. C-coffee.’
He led me through the building, which was in various stages of completion with electricians working in one section while another had no roof and only three walls, to an office space in what had obviously been the mill itself. Old beams creaked overhead as someone walked on an upper floor, and there was still a smell of flour, wet sacks and, faintly, mice. There was also a cutting-edge computer system, photocopier and printer and, where I had expected a kettle and a couple of chipped mugs, a vast coffee machine. It grumbled and burbled and shot occasional jets of steam from a chrome nozzle, but the smell made my mouth water.
‘That’s a bit heavy duty, isn’t it? For a building site?’
Alex hesitated, then grinned. ‘I have a h-heavy duty habit to s-sustain,’ he said. ‘It’s temperamental b-but makes b-bloody good c-coffee.’ At that moment the machine let out a noise like Everest achieving orgasm and Alex was just in time, shoving a pot underneath the nozzle to catch a stream of coffee which frothed out. ‘As I s-said. Temperamental.’
‘Dangerous, I’d have called it.’
With one leg he hitched a chair over from beside the desk on which all the equipment rested and poked it my way, then swung himself up to sit on the desk itself. ‘M-milk? Sugar? I’ve got a huge d-d—’
For God’s sake, Winter, stop it . . .
‘—delivery coming in a bit, so I c-can’t chat for l-long but . . .’ He poured two mugs of the fragrant coffee, raised an eyebrow at the milk bottle and, when I nodded, added a slurp. ‘. . . if you’ve got any q-questions, I’m always h-here.’ Then he gave a peculiar half-laugh. ‘Yeah. Al-always here,’ he repeated, and now those grey eyes weren’t looking at anything in the real world, they were seeing something old, something that seemed to be ghosting through his brain.
‘Thanks for the email.’ I wanted him to stop thinking whatever thoughts were making his cheeks pull in like that, stop his eyelids drooping down as though to cut the world out. ‘Like I said, I really don’t mind having Scarlet, if it helps you out. Not when I’m working or anything, obviously, but you know, if you find yourself stuck. Ever. Or your mother has to go to the wee clinic.’
Now the grin was back again. It was obviously a more normal expression for him, judging by the way his face had tanned around the laughter lines, and when he stopped they showed up as pale indents along his cheekbones. ‘You might n-not be so k-keen when sh-she’s going on about h-horses,’ he said. ‘She c-can be a b-bit s-single-minded, Scarlet.’ And the grin died again, it was like watching the sun rise and set, days passing across his face. ‘Ellen used to l-love horses.’
‘When did she die?’ I sipped. The bitter, burned taste of fresh coffee swung me back to meetings at Shy Owl, me pitching ideas, Dan picking them up and running with them; laughing and jotting notes, throwing speculative titles at one another, coffee falling into drinks, a meal, a kiss in a parked car and then—
‘Are y-you all right?’ Alex was frowning at me. ‘Y-you went all b-blurry.’
‘Sorry. Flashbacks.’ I swallowed. The coffee seemed to have solidified in my mouth. His expression was now a mixture of carefully reined in curiosity tinged with a sadness that made me say more than I should have done. ‘Ex-boyfriend. My editor. Oh, that makes it sound as though they are two separate people in a fist fight, but they’re not. Daniel, he . . . there was . . .’ Careful, Winter . ‘He never understood. I have a twin, you see, Daisy. Dan . . . he thought I relied on her too much. She moved to Australia, so I spend a lot of time talking to her, to make up for not being able to . . .’ That was as far as I could go. As much as I could vocalise about what had happened. ‘I’ve never really told her what happened, she just knows we split up, I mean, none of it was her fault but I can never forgive him. Never ,’ and I surprised myself with how vicious I sounded. If I’d been Alex I’d have been hiding all the sharp objects, or at least covering the steam spout from the coffee maker.
‘Y-yes, I kn-know the feeling. I was d-dating s-someone when El — when it all h-happened. We b-broke up b-because I c-couldn’t h-handle . . .’ He stopped speaking and wrinkled his nose into his mug. ‘Only d-difference is th-that I c-can’t forgive m-m-myself. Well, th-this is turning into a b-bit of a th-therapy session for b-both of us, isn’t it?’ He leaned forwards and gave my knee a quick rub.
I felt the weight of his hand, the heat of it and, although I knew the intent had been an expression of sympathy I couldn’t stop the blush from rising to my face and dropped my mouth back into the mug to try to conceal it.
‘And El-Ellen died three years ago. S-Scarlet was five. Long enough, you’d th-think. A l-lifetime for a l-little girl.’ And then a direct, cool stare. ‘I do my b-best.’
And you’re worried it isn’t enough. You’re trying to do all this, renovate the mill and get a business up and running and still give enough time to that child, and it isn’t really working, hence today when the childcare arrangements fell apart and you’d have had to what? Find someone at short notice, or rearrange the delivery? You’ve had guilt fitted as standard.
‘I actually do want to talk about stone carving though.’ I finally remembered, dazed as I was by all the turmoil and the dimples and everything, why I’d come in the first place.
‘You m-mean it w-wasn’t a p-ploy? Now I’m d-disappointed.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself, sunshine.’
I hardly know this man. Okay, he’s cute, has the requisite amount of deep feelings and an incredibly nice chest, but that means nothing. Even Dan had deep feelings and a good body. Didn’t make him a nice guy though, did it? And yet, I’ve told Alex more about what happened with Dan and Daisy than I’ve said to almost anyone else, except my mother. All anyone else knows is that we’re no longer a couple. He’s still my editor, for now, but that’s only a matter of time.
‘Like I s-said, I have this d-delivery d-due, that’s g-going to hold me up for th-the rest of the d-day so I c-can’t really chat much n-now. I’ve g-got some b-books though. I’ll sh-show you when you b-bring Scarlet b-back.’
‘And Light Bulb.’
‘Ob-viously.’
I drank the rest of the coffee slowly. Alex got called to some on-site problem and left me with a grin and a flipped hand in the company of the evil coffee dispenser, which growled threateningly at me and refused me a refill. Between that and the hobby horse, I was beginning to think that Great Leys was run entirely by inanimate objects.