Chapter 7
‘Here we go, Blanche, another cup of tea for you.’
Henry put down the tray he was carrying on the table beside her chair and removed his own mug from it. Another cup of tea… he was already sick of the stuff.
‘Are you warm enough?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
Henry nodded. Right… All there was left to do was turn on the television and hope to find something which he and Blanche might have some common ground over. Either that or sit in awkward silence. He took a seat opposite her and picked up the remote control.
‘You didn’t fancy it then?’ said Blanche, leaning forward in her chair. ‘The golf club do? Can’t say I blame you. It wouldn’t be my cup of tea either, even if I had been invited.’
‘No… nor mine. I might be wrong but I get the feeling they wouldn’t be my kind of people.’
‘Hmm…’ Blanche looked at him over the rim of her mug. ‘So, looks like you drew the short straw again and got stuck babysitting me instead.’
‘Babysitting?’ queried Henry, with a wry expression on his face. ‘How old are you, again? You can’t be that much older than me; our kids are almost the same age.’
‘I’m seventy-five,’ announced Blanche. ‘Sofia was a rather late addition to the family. I didn’t have her until I was forty-two.’
‘Well, that’s… positively ancient.’ Henry was pleased to see a corresponding twinkle in Blanche’s eye.
‘Although Sofia often makes me feel twice that age. She doesn’t actually say as much, but like so many things she doesn’t say, the implication is there just the same – that I’m a doddery old fool who can’t be trusted on her own.’
Henry wasn’t sure how to reply. Despite Blanche’s admission, he didn’t want to be overly critical of her daughter. But he had also had enough of biting his tongue, of trying to do and say the right thing in order to be the perfect guest. So he decided to tell the truth.
‘Sofia isn’t the only one who’s good at making assumptions,’ he replied. ‘Adam is adept at it too. I don’t know where he gets his ideas about me from, but it wouldn’t do him any harm to listen every once in a while.’
Blanche nodded, and Henry saw the truth of who she was.
She might be thirteen years older than him, but she certainly wasn’t the frail or befuddled old lady that Sofia would have him believe.
She had more than her fair share of wits about her.
And a wicked sense of humour, which for some reason he was only just beginning to discover.
‘Of course, the big question,’ continued Blanche, ‘is why we both put up with it. And why we both come back for more every year. You don’t have to answer that, of course, I’m just voicing out loud what you’ve no doubt thought in your head on countless occasions.’
Henry raised his eyebrows. ‘Because we both love our children and worry we’d never get to see them otherwise?’ Blanche put down her mug and regarded him steadily. She was right – there was no need for him to have answered her question, but it did feel good to say it out loud.
‘I do love my daughter,’ said Blanche. ‘But I don’t always like the way she behaves.
She never used to be obsessed with things.
Or impressed by shallow people who have more money than sense.
But now those kinds of people seem to account for most of their friends.
The ones I’ve seen anyway. Perhaps that’s harsh.
Perhaps they only see those people over Christmas, when I’m here, but I suspect not.
They used to have such a lovely group of friends where they lived before, but I’ve no idea what happened to them.
They certainly don’t seem to be around now.
I blame Sofia’s career. It’s given her fancy ideas. ’
‘You might be right…’ said Henry. ‘I mean, look at this house, for one. It looks lovely, but I’m scared to walk around in case I make anything dirty, or touch anything in case I move it out of place.
’ He frowned. ‘I think my son is as much to blame, though. He never used to be so materialistic either, but since his mother and I divorced, he seems hell-bent on ensuring he turns out nothing like me. I can’t say anything, because suggesting he should make up his own mind about the way I live my life, instead of believing what she’s told him, sounds like sour grapes.
Maybe it is.’ He shrugged. ‘I hate feeling so defensive, too – it’s like we’re all still in the school playground.
Somehow, I thought getting divorced when your child was an adult would be easier, but I’m not sure it is. ’
‘I think it’s called being a parent,’ replied Blanche.
‘Doesn’t matter how old they are, we still worry about them.
And it doesn’t matter how old we are, we’re still more than capable of having a difficult relationship with them.
My daughter and I used to be very close, once upon a time. Can you believe that?’
‘I can. It was the same for me and Adam.’ He smiled. ‘So tell me about yourself, Blanche. Because I’m ashamed to say I don’t know much beyond the fact that you live on your own.’
‘Which might as well be on the moon for all the times Sofia comes to visit. I live in a retirement complex, without which I’m convinced I would have gone doolally a long time ago.
I have friends, we go places, we drink wine with our meals and occasionally get drunk on Friday nights playing cards.
All things which my daughter has never bothered to find out and would undoubtedly be shocked by.
She thinks I sit in my chair all day, watching reruns of soaps while my brain atrophies to the size of a pickled walnut. ’
‘Yet you don’t put her straight?’
‘I don’t, for precisely the same reason you don’t tell your son to stop believing you’ve failed in some way. And if he could get over his determination to never be guilty of that, he’d see that you’re actually pretty happy too, just as I am.’
Henry smiled, picking up his mug. ‘Can I tell you a secret, Blanche? It’s not really a secret, but it is something I’ve been keeping to myself because I don’t want the thought of it spoiled by the comments I know my son would make if I told him.’
‘Oooh, gossip, how naughty. Yes, do please tell me.’
‘I met a woman on the drive down here. I hardly know her. But she has long black hair which she wears in plaits, the kindest smile, and makes the most wonderful cheese and beetroot sandwiches. I bumped into her at a petrol station and then again some seventy miles later when we were both caught in the same traffic jam. She saw me and came over to share her lunch with me. We sat and talked, and now I can’t get her out of my head.
Turns out she only lives fifteen minutes away, which really isn’t helping. ’
‘And presumably, with it being Christmas, she’ll be surrounded by family, so even if you did want to see her, you can’t just barge in and say hello.’
‘Actually, she’s on her own. She’s a widow. And her children are both away, skiing… She described how she was planning to spend the next few days and it sounded heavenly. Not a golf club do in sight, or an endless stream of people and small talk. No rounds of jolly festivities either…’
Blanche tipped her head to one side. ‘You know, now we’ve established that I’m a sherry-drinking card shark and not a doddery old fool who can’t be trusted, I’d be perfectly happy on my own for a few hours.
Sofia and Adam won’t be back for ages yet.
I’ll stick on some trashy TV programme and raid Sofia’s stash of Baileys while you’re gone.
And if I wash up my glass, no one will be any the wiser. ’
Henry stared at her. He couldn’t do that… could he?
‘I’d probably need to take her a present…’
‘I said stash of Baileys. There are three bottles in the pantry, and quite a lot more besides. Take your pick.’
Henry almost turned around several times on the way over, convinced that he was being foolhardy in the extreme.
Just because he thought Peg’s final words to him might have been ‘come over’, it didn’t mean that they were.
She could have said anything. It could also have been something said in the rush of the moment as they were saying goodbye – a polite remark which they both knew was exactly that and no more.
He glanced at the bottle of Baileys nestled on the passenger seat and rolled his eyes.
Lower Steeping was a pretty village which didn’t seem to have changed at all since Henry was last there.
Still the same tree-lined lanes, dotted with warm honeyed stone cottages and neat front gardens.
Gardens which, come summer, would be abundant in flower and teeming with bees.
The green was at the far end of the main street, a bend in the road meaning that the houses formed a sweeping circle around it, but as Henry drove closer he realised that, although Peg had told him her house was at the far end of it, he couldn’t know which one that was.
Not unless he knew in which direction she was travelling.
Or she knew in which direction he would be travelling.
And her reference to the church gave him no clue either; it was down a different lane altogether.
He pulled into the side of the road and slowed to a stop. This was madness.
He looked first one way and then the other.
There were indeed two houses which arguably could be said to be at the end of the green – one, a ramshackle thatched cottage, and the other, set slightly further back from the road, that was painted pink with a bright green front door.
Was that the more likely home of a woman who wore her hair in plaits and favoured colourful clothes?
He decided that it was and set off towards it, the bottle of liqueur in his hand.
With his heart still pounding in his chest, Henry was almost relieved when there was no answer to his knock on the door. That was until he realised someone was calling to him. Turning around, he spied a woman’s face peering at him from over a thick hedge which bordered the property to one side.