38. Tomato Soup
Chapter 38
Tomato Soup
‘ Y ou’re not intruding,’ Amy said to Diane. It wasn’t simply politeness.
‘No, of course you’re not.’ Matt stood. ‘I wouldn’t be happy for you to set off in a wind like this, when there’ll still be ice on some of the roads, and lots of water.’ He glanced towards the window.
‘Nonsense, I’ll be fine. Once I get out of the valley I’m sure the roads will be clear.’ She rose to her feet, picked up her handbag and searched inside for her car key.
‘No, Diane. Please stay. I’d like it if we could start again, but this time without any secrets.’ Amy moved to stand beside Matt and took his hand. He squeezed hers in return.
Diane looked from one of them to the other and twisted her car key round between her fingers. ‘You can’t mean that. Even I am not foolish enough to think you’d welcome any more of my company. I’ve made things difficult for you, I know I have. No, it’s time I let you get on with … well, whatever it is you might wish to get on with.’
‘What I wish to get on with now is to try and make things better, Diane. No more secrets. If Matt and I are to have a good relationship, then family is important – and you’re part of Matt and Oliver’s family too. Can we start again, do you think?’ Amy said.
‘I don’t think –’
‘For Oliver’s sake?’ Matt said.
‘I …’ She looked uncertainly from one of them to the other. Instead of the coldness Amy had seen in her eyes throughout these last few days, there was something else. Hope.
‘These last few days have made me realise how small my world has become. Stella was my whole world, and all I had left of her was the space where she’d been. Does that sound strange? That’s why when you appeared, and you were there, in that space Stella left, I was hurt. I should’ve trusted you, Matt. I’ve known you a long time, and I’ve always found you to be a decent man. Honest, trustworthy, kind, and Oliver couldn’t wish for a better father. Even if you did choose to fill Stella’s space in your life, why should I have thought you’d choose someone who wasn’t worthy of it?’
‘Nobody could fill Stella’s place,’ Amy said. ‘I’ll never try to do that. When people die, what they were to us can’t be taken away.’ As she spoke, she glanced towards the box which contained her mother’s ashes on the mantlepiece. Whatever happened now, however hard the end had been, nobody could take away what her mother had meant to her. Sometimes it was hard to see it, when she was prepossessed with thoughts of her death. It must be the same for Diane, and worse, because it wasn’t the natural order of things to bury a daughter. Amy could never be a daughter to Diane, just as Diane would never be a second mother to her, but perhaps they could fill some of the holes in each other’s lives. They could at least try.
‘Are you sure you want me to stay?’ Diane asked. Amy looked at Matt, who nodded.
‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘I’d like it if you stayed, because I hope we’re going to be family from now on.’
It was going to take some getting used to. As Amy went through into the kitchen to find the tomato soup for their lunch, the Diane who was seated on the sofa was no longer a ruler-straight, cold-steel caricature of a woman. She could see the wounded heart behind the armoured fa?ade.
Matt followed her into the kitchen, where she rummaged in the big food cupboard and sorted through the remaining tins from their initial delivery.
‘That wasn’t how I expected it to go,’ he said quietly as he watched her.
‘I thought she was going to go off it and disown you.’ She passed a can to him, and he put it on the table as she leaned deeper into the cupboard.
‘It appears Granny Diane is human too.’ Matt leant against the edge of the kitchen table ‘Perhaps I should’ve realised before now.’
Amy straightened up with the two more cans of soup in her hands. ‘We’re not going to make that mistake again.’ She nudged the cupboard door shut behind her, it closed with a clatter.
‘No more pretending. No more asking the boys to keep secrets. Just you and me, properly together, no more hiding.’ Matt took the tins from her hands.
‘No more kissing in corners.’
‘Although I quite enjoyed the kissing in corners,’ Matt said .
‘I suppose there’s no reason we can’t still have the odd secret kiss. No-one’s looking now,’ Amy joked, and pulled him into an embrace. However the boys must have heard the cupboard door shut and they tumbled noisily into the kitchen.
‘Is it lunchti – Woah! Stop that right there!’ Harry commanded and held up a hand, stumbling to a halt inside the door as Oliver nearly cannoned into the back of him.
‘Do you want Granny Diane to see you?’ Oliver demanded. ‘All the trouble we’ve gone to and now this? You’re worse than a pair of Year Ones at lunch break not following the rules.’
‘Granny Diane knows,’ said Matt. ‘We told her.’
‘You told her? Why would you do that?’ Harry was horrified.
‘Because we did the wrong thing when we tried to keep secrets.’
‘I could’ve told you that.’ Oliver rolled his eyes just like his grandmother did.
‘You’re not going to kiss and hold hands all the time now, are you?’ Harry said.
‘Maybe not all the time. It wouldn’t be practical,’ Matt said.
‘Not if you were on the toilet. Imagine holding hands while you have a –’
‘I think that’ll do, Harry.’ Amy grinned. ‘We’ll get lunch ready. Go and wait in the living room with Granny Diane. We’ll have it at the kitchen table today, I don’t think tomato soup and white linen tablecloths are a good combination. Won’t be long now.’
‘Unless you start kissing again. Then we might have to wait until night-time.’
‘You know …’ Oliver eyed them sideways as they left the kitchen. ‘… I think I quite liked it when they couldn’t do that. It was easier.’
‘Yeah, grown-ups are weird.’
They were all seated around the kitchen table. Christmas music played in the background, and Diane didn’t say a word about it not being carols from Kings, but something more like Christmas hits from the Saddleton Primary Academy disco. Harry and Oliver did some complicated hand-jive to a high-speed version of the Twelve Days of Christmas which might have been sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks. Amy shook her head at the way they waved their soup spoons above their heads but she didn’t have the heart to stop them. At least the spoons were clean.
‘I did notice, Amy, you haven’t had a chance to scatter your poor mother’s ashes yet,’ Diane said. ‘The box is still on the mantlepiece.’
‘There hasn’t been a right time. I’d like Peter to be able to come with us – he and my mother were very close – but with everything that’s happened, there hasn’t been a chance and I doubt he’ll want to do it now. Perhaps it should wait for another time, I can’t go without him.’
‘Why not go this afternoon? I’m sure Mrs Thompson said Peter would be back by lunchtime, and that lad has helped him with the sheep. I’m sure he can spare an hour to walk up to Loverswater. If he doesn’t want to leave his mother, I could take the boys down there again and we could sit with her. They’d love to spend more time with the puppies, I’m sure.’
‘Yeah! We can make sure the little one’s still eating properly,’ Harry said, eagerly. ‘That could be our job. ’
‘Yes, you’re right. That’s a good idea,’ Amy said, but there was a hesitancy in her voice. ‘Though I’m not sure that Peter will be ready, after what happened to his dad.’
Although she didn’t like to admit it, part of her had hoped she wouldn’t find the opportunity to take the ashes up to the tarn. This would be very final; it would be the very last goodbye to her mother. It had seemed like a good idea when she’d suggested it back in the summer, but now … Although she knew it was right to leave her here amongst the mountains and lakes where she’d been happy, it was so far away from home. It was the right thing for her mother, but was it was the right thing for her? She didn’t want the hole to close up, didn’t want to stop missing her mother because that would be like forgetting her. Like Diane had said, all she had left was the empty space where her mam had been. Maybe another month or two wouldn’t make that much of a difference. She could come back in the spring, or the summer, and do it then, when she’d had more time to get used to the idea. The weather was so awful, with the wind and the rain, and perhaps the ice on the tarn wouldn’t yet have melted. Peter wouldn’t want to go now, either. Sunshine would be better; she should wait for a sunny day.
‘Why don’t you give Peter a ring now? See if he’d like to go with you?’ Matt suggested, gently.
‘I think we should wait a bit longer,’ she said, but Matt shook his head.
‘I’ll be with you. You won’t be on your own.’
She sighed. Even though she didn’t want to do it she knew it was the right thing to do.
She walked through to the landline phone in the living room, and stared at it, almost as if she’d never seen a phone before. She took a deep breath, picked up the phone and dialled Peter’s number.