Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
In the dead of night, a furious knocking rattled the farmhouse door, jolting Rita awake.
Heart hammering and feeling decidedly groggy after drinking at least a bottle of wine earlier, she reached instinctively for the shotgun that Archie had insisted should always rest beside their bed.
For a moment, she froze, breath held, terrified of what she was going to be confronted with.
She could hear Kelly oblivious to it all, snoring like a warthog in Thom’s old room across the corridor.
Then came a voice, muffled but unmistakable. ‘Mum! It’s me, it’s Sennen!’
Rita threw back the covers and charged down the stairs, gasping as her feet hit the cold kitchen flagstones. She unlocked and whipped open the door. There stood her beautiful daughter, tear-streaked and shaking.
‘Alex has dumped me,’ she choked, eyes red and swollen. ‘And I don’t know what to do.’
The next morning Kelly sat hunched at the kitchen table, nursing a mug of sweet black coffee, while Rita leaned against the Aga, eyes half shut, her smudged eyeliner giving her the look of a panda.
Sennen moved quietly around them, setting the table, her usual spark dimmed, her movements slow and mechanical.
Yet, even with her long auburn hair scraped into a messy bun, her flared jeans and a baby pink WEDDINGS BY SENNEN T-shirt showing off her petite frame, she still looked like she’d stepped straight out of a magazine shoot.
‘Jesus. I come home hoping for a bit of nurturing and end up playing mum to two fully grown adults,’ she sighed.
‘And you’re getting just bacon sandwiches; I don’t have it in me to coordinate a full fry-up.
’ She grabbed the ketchup from the fridge and plonked it down on the table, followed by the two plates of delicious-smelling food.
Kelly tucked in hungrily, while Rita, aware she was a delicate shade of green, didn’t move to touch hers. Sennen busied herself by washing up at the sink.
Between mouthfuls, Kelly looked up. ‘Great to see you, Sen, although of course I wish it were under better circumstances.’ She took a sip of coffee. ‘You know he’s a dick, right? Alex. Always has been. It’s just now you see it.’
Rita jumped in defensively. ‘Kel! Not now.’ She put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘Tell me again, love, what happened. I was sleepy last night. I’m sorry.’
‘You were still drunk, Mum,’ Sennen tutted.
‘He told me on Thursday night he couldn’t cope with me moping about Dad.
So, I stormed off. Luckily, I was at a wedding I’d planned yesterday and had budgeted for a hotel.
But I got to the room and couldn’t bear to be on my own, so I drove straight to you. ’
‘Oh, baby girl.’ Rita felt her pain as her daughter went on.
‘He also said that maybe I’d moved in with him too soon. I mean, we’re twenty-three, not eighteen!’
‘That’s still quite young,’ Kelly offered.
Rita glared at her friend, who, under her breath, said, ‘Oops. Not now, OK.’ Kelly pretended to zip her mouth shut.
‘I mean, let’s give grief an expiry date, shall we?’ Sennen bashed her hand down on the draining board, then burst into ugly snotty tears. ‘It’s not fair. I miss Dad so much.’
‘Oh, darling. It’s so awful, I know, but I’m here and you can stay as long as you want to. Come on, wipe your hands and let’s sit down. I’ll sort that later.’
Sennen did as she was told. ‘Alex wasn’t always this horrible. He just… didn’t know how to deal with my emotions. With all this.’ She gestured down at herself, as if her grief were something she carried like a second skin.
‘Well, maybe he should’ve tried a little harder,’ Rita said, voice croaky from too much wine and too little sleep. ‘That’s what you do when you love someone. You don’t walk away just because it gets a bit dark and difficult.’
Kelly felt she could speak up now. ‘Didn’t Marilyn Monroe say something like, “If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best”?’
‘Still not helping,’ Rita murmured.
Sennen blew her nose loudly with the kitchen roll handed to her by her mother. ‘I have been a nightmare. I know it was like the old Sennen disappeared, but he didn’t want to make the effort to look for me.’ She started to cry again.
Rita reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘You’re still in there, darling, and we see and hear you loud and clear.’ She then stood slowly. ‘Right. We need air. I’ve got a spare pair of wellies. Let’s walk off these hangovers and heartbreak, shall we? Kel, you coming?’
‘The only place I’m walking is back up those stairs to bed, and I’m staying there until lunchtime.’ Kelly took a bite from Rita’s sandwich.
‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ came Nigel’s raucous tones from the orchard.
‘And put a gag on that sodding bird while you’re at it,’ Kel groaned. ‘He woke me at six o’-bleeding-clock this morning.’
Rita and Sennen exchanged a knowing smile as they pulled on their wellies.
As Rita and Sennen reached the High Meadow, the sun came out. They approached the edge of the cliff and, at the sight of the expansive ocean below, Sennen started to run, arms outstretched towards the majestic old sycamore tree.
‘Come on, Mum, let’s sit under the Singing Tree like we used to when me and Thom were little.’
Rita threw down her mac, and two generations of Jory women sat side by side at its base, where the roots bulged and twisted like legs poking through the ground.
The soil beneath the tree was soft and cool.
Above them, the sycamore’s fresh spring leaves shimmered in the light, each one the size of Rita’s palm.
‘Your dad used to leave me little love notes in this tree, you know. When we first got together and even when you two were babies. Following that on every wedding anniversary.’ Sennen was wide eyed.
‘It felt such a treat for me to come up here and see what he’d hidden.
’ Rita made a funny whining noise. ‘He knew it was my “healing space”.’
‘Oh my God, Mum, that’s adorable.’
‘I would quite often come up here when the weather was good to feed you both, to escape the monotony of the farmhouse. It was hard, having two of you to look after. I don’t think I’ve ever known tiredness like it. And this view gave me some head space.’
They both took a minute in silence to look out over the wild, endless, and achingly breathtaking view.
To take in the soothing cries of gulls and distant screeches of kids playing on the beach as they enjoyed the freedom of the Easter holidays.
The horizon stretched wide and calm, with the pale sky gently kissing the now-shimmering sea.
Rita sighed. ‘Your dad would be so busy, but he would always have time to show that he was here for me.’ She let out a little groan. ‘So many memories. You first crawled by this tree, then ran, then played…’
‘Who crawled first?’ Sennen asked quietly.
‘Thom.’ Rita shrugged.
‘Of course he bloody did!’ Sennen laughed.
‘But only a week before you.’ Rita’s voice lowered. ‘And then in what felt like the blink of an eye, it was time for you to run away from Seahaven Bay.’
‘I never ran far.’ Sennen grabbed her mum’s hand. ‘I love you, Mum.’
Rita welled up. ‘I love you too, darling.’
Sennen jumped up. ‘Show me where Dad hid the notes. I wanna see.’
Rita smiled. ‘Down here.’ She leaned back against the trunk, fingertips grazing the bark.
Just above root level was a small hollow, a natural little letterbox, hidden beneath a strip of peeling bark.
He’d once covered her eyes with his hands and led her to it, one golden summer evening, the same summer they’d shared their first kiss.
Inside had been a tiny note, folded small and sealed with a heart sticker.
She still had it, tucked safely away in her memory box, along with all the others.
In his crooked scrawl, it simply read: To the woman whose kiss ruined all the others.
Short. Honest. Utterly him.
Sennen jumped down and crouched beside the base of the tree.
‘Just imagine if we actually found a note in here,’ she said, grinning as she reached casually into the deep hollow.
Nothing. Undeterred, she reached in deeper, more carefully this time, and let out a loud shriek as her fingers touched something. ‘Oh my God!’
She pulled out a filthy, thin strip of paper, folded tight. Both women stared, mouths open like startled goldfish. Rita grabbed it from her, her hands shaking.
‘What does it say?’ Sennen whispered.
Rita unfolded the paper slowly, her voice catching in her throat as she read aloud the words printed there: ‘Ask Stan. He knows everything.’
Sennen stared at her, eyes wide. Then she smiled. ‘Grandad Brown always said the stories of our lives have already been written, didn’t he?’
Rita couldn’t reply. She just nodded, holding the note like it might dissolve if she breathed too hard. ‘Not literally, though.’ Rita’s hands were shaking. ‘And your dad never used a printer.’
‘Well, whoever put it there, Mum, I mean, they knew it was somewhere you may look and find it.’
Rita looked around, half expecting someone to appear from behind the gnarled trunk.
Who would leave a message here, in this quiet, hidden spot?
Was it a random kindness, or something more?
A secret admirer? A warning? Her mind spun with questions, none with answers yet.
Who even knew that Archie used to leave her notes?
‘Grandad was always right, though, wasn’t he?’ Sennen was oblivious to Rita’s inner turmoil.
Rita’s thoughts drifted to her dear old dad, who had passed away just five years earlier from cancer.
Her parents had had her late in life, after years of trying; her mum, a twin herself, had fallen pregnant at forty-four and along came Rita Joan Brown.
She never remembered a single cross word between them, not with each other, and certainly not with her.