Chapter Twenty-six
From the Twitter feed of Rainton Farm Shop:
Friday night is barbecue night! Here at Rainton Farm Shop we’ve a two-for-one offer on ALL burgers and sausages in our Summer Sizzle range. (NB due to the extreme heat customers are urged NOT to barbecue outdoors.)
In the event, confronting Tiffany-Jane proved easy.
Not wanting to face the girl, Pat had deliberately lingered on the way back from Thelma’s, calling in first at the leisure centre for a swim, then the farm shop for a totally unnecessary shop.
By the time she pulled up at home, it had gone seven, a time when she could be reasonably sure that both Justin and Rod would be at home.
However, they were not.
Walking into the kitchen she had found Tiffany, squinting through her phone at Pat’s Tuscan platter, which was bearing two poached eggs artistically arranged on a bed of watercress, zig-zagged across with dribbles of brown.
Next to the platter were posed two ornate glass bottles of balsamic vinegar.
‘Hello, love,’ she said, more cheerily than she felt.
‘Hiya. Rod and Justy have gone down the Wheatsheaf to watch the cricket,’ said Tiffany, photographing the eggs.
Pat sighed to herself as she deposited her keys in the Moroccan bowl – the repository for all the household keys.
Of course, in an ideal world Justin would have fessed up to Rod over a few pints and by the time they got home everything would be out in the open and sorted out.
However, this wasn’t an ideal world, this was two Yorkshiremen watching cricket; personal conversation of any description would be way down the agenda.
She’d maybe go upstairs and have another shower, then by the time she came down Tiffany might well have removed herself and her bottles of vinegar.
A sudden clatter caught her attention. Tiffany had dropped her phone on the floor.
She was looking away from the eggs, frowning worriedly at the wall – before bolting off in the direction of the downstairs toilet from where rather graphic and unmistakable noises could be heard.
Larson gave Pat a resigned shrug and padded off to the lounge.
When Tiffany returned, Pat had tactfully moved the eggs out of sight.
‘Pat! I’m so sorry!’ she said chirpily. ‘Like I said – I think I’ve got a spot of gastric trouble.’ She was heading towards the stairs but Pat’s matter-of-fact voice stopped her.
‘With our Justin,’ said Pat, ‘I was sick as a dog twenty-four seven. With Andrew it was heartburn. But our Liam – I wouldn’t have even known I was carrying him.’
Tiffany turned, the perfect face frozen. Frozen – then slipped – then puckered before finally, finally giving itself up to tears. And at last Pat was able to hold the girl. At last, she saw that face, open and honest, blotchy and damp with the degradations wrought by tears.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, patting her back as she used to do with Liam.
‘It’s not all right!’ The strength of Tiffany’s reaction shook them both.
Pat stepped back. ‘Is something …’ How to find the words? ‘Is something not … right?’ she said tentatively, ‘I mean with the baby?’
‘No.’ The word came out as a weary exhalation. ‘No, the baby’s fine – at least it was last check-up …’
‘And Justin?’ Again, that tentative tone in Pat’s voice. The baby was Justin’s surely? ‘He’s all right with it?’
‘Justy’s fine. I mean, surprised and very overprotective – but yeah, he’s really pleased – and so am I …’
‘But?’
‘But we’ve nowhere to live – nowhere near enough money!’ Tiffany’s voice was almost shrill with panic.
‘Stop right there.’ Gently Pat led the girl to sit down at the kitchen table. ‘Now listen,’ she said firmly. ‘You and Justin and the baby can live here – live not stay here – as long as you need to. Justin’s got a job; he’s looking for another—’
‘I can’t work though,’ said Tiffany in anguished tones, looking forlornly at the green plate.
‘At least not influencing. It’s taking all my headspace to do just one or two photos …
and even then …’ Her voice tailed off as she queasily eyed the bottles of balsamic vinegar.
‘But if I do step back, even for a couple of months, there’s a hundred other influencers out there just waiting to step into my shoes—’
‘We’ll manage.’ Pat stemmed the flow with the firmness and certainty that six decades of life and all its trials had afforded her.
‘But it’s not what I planned!’ said Tiffany with a wail.
‘Newsflash, love,’ said Pat with a faint smile, ‘life seldom is.’
Tiffany smiled back, an uncertain, watery smile.
‘Tiffany, listen to me.’ Pat took both her hands. ‘This is wonderful, wonderful news!’
The younger woman’s eyes met hers and for the first time Pat thought she detected a faint light of hope in them.
She’d think of what to say to Rod later.
The heat came as an unwelcome blast after the relative cool dimness of indoors.
Liz shaded her eyes as, with a mighty clatter, Ffion hoisted up the garage door of the Old Barn.
Following her inside, inhaling those garage fumes of chemicals and oil, Liz stopped dead.
There was none of Ffion’s equine detritus here.
Without being told, she knew instantly that this was as much Neville’s domain as his study had been.
The space was nothing less than a love letter to order and organisation.
Shelves were stacked with plastic boxes, a shelf of red, of blue, of yellow – each bearing a printed, laminated label: cross-headed screws, LED bulbs, misc.
hinges. On the wall hung a dizzying array of tools clipped on a templated background.
It was beyond tidy, beyond organised, it was so many things but the one overwhelming thing it was, thought Liz looking at the array of tools and labels – was heartbreaking. Oh, Neville Hilton …
‘Here,’ said Ffion urgently, indicating a jar on the lower shelf. ‘Look.’
Liz frowned at the jar, feeling a familiar prickle growing on the back of her neck. ‘Did Neville not leave this here?’ she asked.
‘No!’ Ffion’s cry was explosive, almost passionate. ‘No! That’s just it! Nev would never ever leave anything like that! He used to play pop with me if I ever did! You might as well chuck that straight in the bin – that’s what he’d say.’
‘Do you have any idea when this appeared?’ said Liz, knees creaking as she bent down for a better look.
Ffion shook her head. ‘I hardly come in here,’ she said. ‘DIY and stuff – that was all Nev’s department.’ She hugged herself, staring at the object on the bottom shelf. ‘It was when I was thinking about setting up that CCTV; I came in here and it was the smell that got my attention.’
Liz nodded; indeed, the smell of white spirit was pretty strong in the stuffy dim space.
‘All along I reckoned it must’ve been Nev doing that weird decorating – what other reason could there be? But then I found this!’ She looked at Liz. ‘He’d never ever have left it like that.’
Liz nodded and looked at that jar half full of a cloudy liquid in which a paintbrush was soaking. The liquid was a cloudy yellow, the colour of butter.
The colour of a certain line on a certain wall.
* * *
When Liz arrived back from Hollinby Quernhow, she felt a bit nervous about facing Jacob.
Was he still angry with her for eating those wretched Vegan Moments?
Derek clearly knew this as he was waiting for her.
‘He’s in the sitting room,’ he said quietly.
‘The storm has abated and I rather think he wants to talk to you; he’s kept on asking when you’d be back.
’ He squeezed her shoulder in a gesture of solidarity and Liz nodded. Talk to me – or shout at me again?
Jacob was sitting on the sofa, staring sightlessly at a SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon, a sure sign of worry and preoccupation. Steeling herself, she sat beside him, fully expecting him to shrug himself away and stalk off.
However, he didn’t. After a moment – to Liz’s warm, blessed relief – he snuggled up against her as he’d done so many, many times before.
‘Grandma,’ he said in a small voice, eyes not leaving the screen. ‘Grandma, you have to keep your beta cells working. They have to keep hoovering the sugar up out of your blood.’
And all at once Liz understood. Heard the fear in his voice – and understood the root cause of his anger.
She felt a sudden, warm, swell of realisation that here was one person who loved her, and out in the kitchen was another who loved her, and that both of them cared for her enough to try and keep her out of direct sunlight and away from sugary snacks.
‘I know,’ she said sensibly, putting her arm round him, so he could snuggle still further.
‘And one of the reasons I know is that you’ve explained it all to me so well.
And what I want you to do now is go online and find me a reasonably priced gizmo for testing blood sugar so we can keep checking how I’m doing.
’ She expected him to nod, leap up in search of his tablet, but instead her merely nodded, eyes fixed to the screen.
‘Is there something else worrying you, lovey?’ she said, knowing full well there was.
Finally, Jacob looked at her, eyes magnified and troubled behind his spectacles. ‘It’s Anna-Marie,’ he said.
‘Anna-Marie from your direct action group?’ said Liz. ‘Why, what’s she done?’
Jacob took a deep breath, marshalling his words in the way he’d done ever since he’d learned how to talk.
‘So, you know our blog, Climate Change Devastation?’ he said.
Liz did, of course she did. Barely a day went by when she wasn’t WhatsApped some photo of parched trees and browning vegetation.
‘She’s lying.’ He brought up a picture on his tablet showing a flower bed, earth cracked, plants brown and very, very dead. ‘That’s her garden,’ he said.
‘Oh dear,’ said Liz, wincing at the sight of such horticultural devastation. She looked at Jacob. ‘Her garden?’
‘Oh yes.’ Jacob nodded. ‘But it’s only like that because she deliberately hasn’t watered it, not even with a watering can. She’s just left it, so people will think it’s like that even with watering.’
‘That does seem rather extreme,’ agreed Liz.
‘I mean I know how bad climate change is, but isn’t it wrong not to be truthful about it?’
Liz thought of the Vegan Moments. ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘Yes, it is. Deception is not right.’
As Jacob got up to fetch his tablet, Liz remained sitting there. A train of thought had started flickering in her mind, just beyond sight but definitely there. A brush left soaking in white spirit … someone going in Ffion’s house, going through drawers – and boots liberally splashed yellow …
Direct action … telling a lie to support a truth or something you believed was true …
When Jacob appeared twenty minutes later with three blood sugar monitors to show her, she was still sitting there, frowning.