Chapter 12 #2
“I suppose loads of farmers have to do the same, just to keep the farm going,” Juliet said. She tried to picture toy tractors and a petting zoo at Bega Farm and failed. As if Peter sensed her thoughts, he offered a crooked smile.
“Not going to happen here, though.”
“No.”
He finished his whiskey in one long swallow. “So what is it that’s hard?” he asked, and Juliet realized he was talking about Lucy.
“Everything,” she said bleakly. “Absolutely everything.”
“Were you not close, as barneys?” he asked, and she smiled a bit at the Cumbrian word for children.
Peter’s genealogy stretched back to the Vikings, she suspected, who had come to the Cumbrian coast a thousand years ago.
There were some who said the old Cumbrian dialect was closer to Icelandic than to English.
“No, we weren’t. I’m eleven years older than Lucy, and we have different fathers.”
He nodded slowly, and for a moment Juliet didn’t think he’d say anything more. And maybe that was better. Did she really want to talk about how much she resented Lucy? It would only make her seem petty and childish.
“But you invited her here, all the same,” he finally stated.
“Yes, but I didn’t expect it to make me feel so . . .” She stopped then, not wanting to put it into words.
“That’s what family does, though, don’t they? Make a hocker-up of everything.”
“A hocker-up . . .”
“A bloody mess,” Peter said with an unexpected grin. “You’ve been here near dick years, Juliet, and you don’t know the Cumbrian yet?”
She laughed, surprised and strangely gratified to be teased. “Dick years. Sounds a bit dirty. Would that be ten years?”
He nodded. “Surely you’ve learned the counting.”
“Only yan, tan, tethera.” She knew many sheep farmers, and even some schoolchildren in the playground, used the ancient number system for counting sheep.
“Methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick,” Peter finished.
“Definitely sounds a bit dirty,” Juliet said, and wondered if she was actually bantering with Peter Lanford. She felt unbalanced by the conversation, or maybe just the whiskey. “Anyway, I’m still an offcomer, aren’t I?”
“Only in your mind, maybe.”
And just like that, the teasing tone dropped and she felt exposed, revealed by his words and his perception, and she had nowhere to look, nowhere to hide. She stared at him helplessly, unable to come up with a response. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—Peter Lanford didn’t seem to need one.
“Well, it’s bound to get easier with time, if you let it.” He took her glass. “And I’ll see to that wall on the morrow. Can’t have my ewes moidering you and eating all your rosebushes.”
“They’re not moidering me,” Juliet protested, the Cumbrian word for “bothering” sounding as awkward coming from her as it did easy coming from Peter. “And I didn’t say they were eating my rosebushes.”
Peter gazed at her, a smile lurking in his eyes.
“You didn’t have to.” Juliet stared back, discomfited, sensing a depth behind Peter’s silent stillness that she’d had no idea was there.
It felt akin to jumping in the sea and finding out it was far deeper than you’d imagined, and instead of resting your feet on solid, sandy ground, you kicked uselessly through the water, in over your head.
“Thank you for the whiskey,” she finally said.
“Anytime, Juliet,” Peter answered. “Anytime.”
She left Peter’s house and strode down the dirt track, stumbling a bit in the darkness.
Back at the house she tidied up the kitchen before going up to bed; she’d told the Scottish lads to lock up after they came back after the pub’s last call.
She paused for a second on the landing, but all was quiet from Lucy’s room.
She’d just changed into her sensible fleece pajamas and was getting into bed to read the gritty crime thriller that was a blessed escape from her own life when she heard a soft, hesitant knock on the door.
She slid out of bed and went to open the door, surprised to see Lucy even though it couldn’t have been anyone else.
“Do you . . . do you have a moment?” Lucy asked, and Juliet nodded. Lucy came into her bedroom, looking young and vulnerable with hair frizzing all about her face; she was wearing a pair of pajamas covered in dancing Snoopys. Juliet waited, arms folded. “How well do you know Alex Kincaid?”
Juliet blinked. “Not very well.”
“Do you know him well enough to know how he might take a . . . a bit of advice?”
“It depends what the advice is regarding.”
She must have had some kind of skeptical look on her face, because Lucy let out a little laugh and said, “I know you’re probably thinking there’s nothing I could advise him on.”
“I don’t have an opinion on the subject.” She sounded so prickly. So prissy. And yet she didn’t know how to keep herself from it.
“Well, it’s what I would be thinking,” Lucy said. “Except in this case . . .” She hesitated, and Juliet raised her eyebrows.
“In this case?” she prompted, a touch of impatience to her voice. Clearly Lucy wanted her to ask.
“I think his daughter Bella would appreciate this advice,” Lucy said. “Eventually.”
“Bella?” Juliet stared at her. She’d seen Alex’s daughters in the village, two solemn-faced girls, the older one slouchy and sullen and the younger dreamy and lost. She’d said hello to them a few times, both before and after Anna had died, but that was all. “How do you even know Bella?”
“She came into school yesterday. She’s been suspended.”
“For what?”
“Skipping PE.”
“They suspend children for bunking off PE now?” Juliet asked, and Lucy shrugged.
“I think there’s more to the story.”
“So what advice do you want to give Alex?” Juliet was curious now, in spite of her intention to remain removed.
“Well . . . Bella kind of needs a bra,” Lucy said, and then added, “Actually, there’s no kind of about it.”
Juliet stared at her. “A bra,” she said, without inflection, because that was just about the last thing she’d been expecting.
“I don’t think her father realizes it. Which isn’t all that surprising, really.”
Lucy gave a wry smile while Juliet just stared, and then all of a sudden, because it was so absurd, or maybe because her emotions were so close to the surface, she burst out laughing.
Lucy stared at her in shock as Juliet sank onto the bed, her arms wrapped around her middle, and then Lucy started laughing too, her hands pressed to her mouth, both of them in the throes of the kind of silent-shaking, eyes-streaming, helpless laughter that took them over completely.
It felt good to release all the excess emotion. Finally she pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and took a steadying breath.
“A bra,” she said. “Poor Alex.”
“Poor me, because I’m the one who’s got to tell him.”
“And he’s got to buy it.” Juliet’s laughter subsided completely then, because while the situation was funny, it was also desperately sad.
Lucy must have sensed the shift in her mood because she asked quietly, “Were you friends with his wife?”
“Anna?” Juliet considered. “I wouldn’t say friends, exactly.” She didn’t know whom she’d call her friend, except maybe Rachel.
Then she thought of Peter’s steady gaze on her as they drank whiskey in his kitchen, and pushed the memory away. “We were friendly,” she told Lucy. “She kept her horse in the stables behind the house and I’d chat with her when she got ready to go riding. She didn’t seem very happy here, though.”
“She didn’t?”
Juliet shrugged. “She spent a lot of time riding, and I got the sense she was more of a city girl.”
“Why did Alex move here, then?”
“Why does anyone move here? Anyway,” Juliet said, rising from the bed, “if Bella really does need a bra, then you have to tell Alex. I don’t think anyone else will.”
“Surely someone . . .”
“He’s a bit of a loner. Works all the time. I’m sure some single mums in the village have set their sights on him, but not enough to do him that kind of favor.”
Lucy grimaced. “Except for me.”
“Except for you,” Juliet agreed. The laughter they’d shared had loosened something between them, and now she felt it inexorably tightening again. “It’s late. I should go to bed.” Which was unsubtle code for Get out of my room.
Lucy nodded; message received. “Thanks,” she said, turning to Juliet, taking a step forward as if she might actually hug her before she stopped. “Thanks for listening.”
Juliet swallowed. Lucy’s gratitude made her feel guilty for how little she’d offered.
She nodded, and Lucy headed back to her room.
Quietly Juliet closed the door. Her stomach muscles actually ached from laughing.
She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d laughed like that; she knew only that it had been a very long time.