Chapter 2 #3
The dawn chorus from the seagulls hadn’t been all bad.
Waking up early had given her a chance to rearrange a few things downstairs and move the furniture around in the lounge so that it had a similar layout to the house at Membory Grange.
Rowan had laid claim to a few select smaller items from the family home, as well as some of the wall art, but the cottage wouldn’t accommodate much and the rest had been left behind with James.
He was due to drive down with a van before the end of the school holidays to see the children and bring the stuff Rowan had said she wanted but couldn’t fit in the car, and she was already dreading seeing him.
She was glad in a way that there wasn’t much room for stuff from the old house.
All of the things they’d accumulated over the years were reminders of a life she thought they’d built together, but her husband had only ever been pretending.
She didn’t want to look at those things every day, but she knew the children needed some reminders of the only home they’d known, at least for a while.
Hopefully, before too long, they’d build up new memories and the reminders of their life at Membory Grange would become far less important.
When that happened, Rowan would know they were finally healing from this.
In the meantime, she was doing the one thing she always tried to do: put the children first.
They had a six-month lease on Sea Mist Cottage and she hoped that would be long enough for the children to start seeing Port Agnes as home too, so that they could put down some permanent roots.
It would give James enough time to get his act together and maybe it would be a good thing if he found a parish nearby.
Not in the same village, that would be the last thing she’d want, but close enough for the children to be able to see him whenever they wanted.
Six months would give them all space and hopefully alleviate the doubts that wouldn’t stop nagging at her brain.
The children would both be starting at the village primary school, where Rowan was the new headteacher.
Bella would be going into Year 6 and she desperately hoped her daughter would make friends, and build the kind of relationships that would ease her transition into secondary school when the time came.
She felt awful that Bella was missing out on her final year in the lower school at Membory Grange.
There were so many things she’d been looking forward to, including the Year 6 trip to Paris, a rite of passage that Bella had witnessed older pupils of the school enjoying every year.
She’d been talking about ‘when I go to Paris’ from the time she was in Year 3.
Of course, Rowan could take her there instead, but it wouldn’t be the same.
None of the things that Bella had looked forward to doing in her final year of primary education would be the same as she’d anticipated.
When she went to secondary school, that would be completely different from the experience she’d have had at Membory Grange too.
Worst of all was that Bella wouldn’t start secondary school with a set of ready-made friends.
Membory Grange hadn’t just been Bella’s school, it had been her home too, for almost her entire life.
And it had been Theo’s since before he was even born.
Part of Rowan had wished that she could have held out for another year, for Bella’s sake.
But even the months she’d clung on for had almost killed her.
She doubted there would ever have been a right time anyway.
Theo would still have had to leave before he finished at the lower school, and she’d still have had to wrench the children away from their home to a new house, 130 miles away from their father.
Her children hadn’t wanted any of those things, but James had left her no choice.
Or at least that’s how it had felt. As Rowan turned at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs and saw the look of sadness on her daughter’s face, the fury she felt towards her estranged husband surged up inside her again.
But she painted on a smile, so there was no chance of her own sadness making Bella feel any worse than she already did.
‘You’re up early, sweetheart. Did you sleep okay?’
‘My room smells funny, like old ladies.’ Bella wrinkled her nose as she delivered the verdict on her new bedroom and Rowan laughed, because it was preferable to crying.
‘And what exactly do old ladies smell like?’
‘Lavender and wee.’ The line was delivered with such conviction that Rowan’s next laugh was genuine for the first time in what felt like forever. She knew she shouldn’t laugh at what her daughter was saying, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself and she had to admit it felt good.
‘What exactly are you basing that conclusion on?’
‘Everyone says it.’
‘I don’t think they do, because it isn’t true.’ She gave her daughter a level look. ‘And what do you mean by old anyway?’
Bella shrugged. ‘Sixty.’
‘Nanny Kat and Marion are both in their sixties and neither of them smell of lavender or wee, do they?’ Another genuine smile crept over Rowan’s face at the thought of what their reactions would have been, if they’d heard Bella describing them that way.
‘S’pose not.’ Her daughter pouted and pulled away from Rowan when she reached out to try and hug her. ‘But my room does. It stinks of wee.’
‘It probably just needs a bit of airing. We’ll go down to the shops as soon as they open and get one of those plugs-ins that smell like jasmine or vanilla, and some nice bits and pieces to help it feel more like home until the rest of our stuff arrives.’
‘It’s never going to feel like home. Not without Dad.
’ Bella fired the words at her like bullets and Rowan’s heart twisted in her chest. She’d known this wasn’t going to be easy, but she was beginning to think she might have underestimated just how hard it was going to be.
All she wanted was for her children to be happy again.
She wanted it for herself too, but that wasn’t her priority, because she was never going to be happy until her children were.
‘I’m starving.’ Theo walked into the room rubbing his eyes. They’d had takeaway pizza the night before, because they’d all been too tired to face doing a food shop once they’d unpacked, and none of the big supermarkets delivered to Port Agnes.
‘Why don’t we walk down to the harbour and we can go into Mehenick’s for breakfast? We can get a few essentials and I’ll go out and do a proper shop later, when Nanny Kat comes over to babysit.’
‘I’m ten years old.’ Bella gave a curl of her lip. ‘I don’t need a bloody babysitter.’
‘Bella! We don’t use language like that, do we?’
‘You called Dad a lying shit.’ Bella held her gaze, daring her to say otherwise and Rowan felt as if someone had punched her.
She had said that, more than once, in the months since discovering that her husband had been lying to her for years, possibly for their entire relationship.
She wished Bella hadn’t overheard what she’d said and there was nothing she could do to defend herself, not without making things even worse and breaking the pact she and James had made about waiting until the children were ready.
But she wasn’t going to lie to Bella either, her children needed to know they could trust her if they were ever going to feel secure again.
‘I did say that, but I was wrong and there’s never any excuse for using bad language.
’ Rowan had to look away so that her daughter couldn’t read her expression, because if anything gave her an excuse to swear, it was finding out that her whole life had been a lie.
‘I’m sorry I said it and that you heard it, but I promise I’ll never use language like that again and I want you to promise me the same thing. ’
‘I can’t, because I don’t like it here and I never bloody will, not without any of my friends and especially not without Dad.’ Bella put her hands on her hips in a show of pure defiance and Rowan blinked furiously against the tears she was determined not to cry.
‘I know you miss him, but you’ll be seeing him in a couple of weeks.
He’d hate to hear you talking like this and it’s not who you are either.
You’re allowed to be angry and upset, of course you are, but there are other ways of letting those feelings out and I’m just asking you not to swear.
’ Rowan was amazed at how calm she sounded.
It wasn’t that using that particular word was terrible, she was sure there were plenty of ten-year-olds who used far more shocking language, but this behaviour wasn’t Bella.
It was the hurt on her daughter’s face she couldn’t bear to see, or Bella’s new found belief that it didn’t matter any more what she did, because her life was already ruined.
Rowan couldn’t allow either of her children to feel that way and she’d do whatever it took to make sure they didn’t.