Chapter Eight
Eight
Harriet stood outside the theater wondering if Ms. Winter was already inside. The front doors were still boarded shut, and she couldn’t imagine someone of Evaline’s age and social stature squeezing past the corrugated iron covering the backstage entrance.
Behind her, she heard the whine of an electric window motor and turned to see a white-gloved hand with gray fur trim reach languidly through the limousine window and beckon her over. Harriet bent to look inside. Evaline Winter was sat back in her seat, making no effort to lean forward. There was an empty seat beside the elderly woman, which seemed to be reserved for a cream beaded minaudière bag with a gold chain, and on the seat next to that was another figure, too shrouded in darkness for Harriet to see more than a pair of long, slender legs clad in expensive suit trousers and the same oxblood brogues she had admired yesterday morning in James’s apartment. Her stomach gave a yip of excitement despite her better judgment and Pete’s warnings.
“Miss Smith, I presume?”
The woman’s voice was icy and aristocratic, and it snapped Harriet out of her thoughts.
“Ms.,” Harriet replied automatically.
“Please be so kind as to join me in the car so that we can talk.”
“Oh, okay. I thought we’d be meeting in the theater.”
“Don’t make me keep this window open any longer than I need to. I am not in good health.”
“Right, sorry, yes. Shall I get in this side?” She gestured to the door, but the hand flicked her away.
“Other side!” the woman snapped.
Harriet jumped to attention. As she dashed around the front of the car to reach the other side, her boots slipped on a patch of dusty snow on top of an ice puddle and with a most unladylike exclamation of “Son of a cluck bucket!” she was sent sprawling across the long bonnet of the limo, emitting a guttural “Oof!” sound. She peeled her cheek from the polished paintwork and looked in through the windscreen to see a chauffeur staring back at her with one brow arched quizzically but no other signs that this wasn’t an everyday occurrence for him. He wound his window down.
“Would you like some help, madam?” he asked politely.
“No, thank you. I can take it from here.”
“As you wish.”
Pushing up with her palms, she gingerly maneuvered herself off the bonnet, hoping that her coat buttons wouldn’t scratch the paintwork. When her boots were back on the ground, she bent over, keeping her hands flat on the bonnet, and crab-stepped her way around to the door on the far side. Before she opened it, she straightened up and pulled her shoulders back. Maybe they didn’t see me slip? Grateful that the interior was dark enough to hide her blushing cheeks, she climbed into the car, taking one of the seats opposite Ms. Winter and James, and pulled the door shut behind her.
James’s lips were compressed to invisibility and his eyes squinted with the effort of not laughing. He sat rigid, looking everywhere but at her. Clearly, they had seen her splat over the bonnet.
Ms. Winter, however, was less amused. She wore a gray fur ushanka hat that matched the trim of her gloves, the ends of her short white hair curling around the brim. Intelligent, beady eyes glared out at Harriet from beneath it.
“Is this your first time getting into a car, Ms. Smith?” she inquired coldly. “You appeared to struggle with the concept.”
James stifled a squeak that sounded like someone letting the air slowly out of the neck of a balloon. His compressed giggle was infectious, and she wanted more.
She lifted her chin. “No, Ms. Winter. I was practicing my Bo Duke bonnet slide technique.”
James turned pointedly to the window, his eyes squeezed shut, his shoulders shaking. Harriet had to bite down on her own lip to stop herself from joining him. Evaline Winter’s visage remained glacial.
“Mr. Knight, kindly contain yourself. Ms. Smith, do not be facetious,” Evaline snapped, and just like that all good humor was sucked out of the car. She left a beat—presumably for them to think about what they’d done—before saying, “You broke into my property.”
“Well, I mean, technically—” Harriet began.
“That wasn’t a question.”
“Oh, right.”
“I would be quite within my rights to charge you. But my legal counsel rightly advised that this would only hit your pocket.”
Harriet glared at James, but he was busy rifling through papers in the briefcase open on his lap. His glee had dissipated completely. Ms. Winter continued.
“And I have always found that people acknowledge the consequences of their failings, or in this case misdemeanors, best if they are forced to atone for them. It seems only fitting that you clean up your own mess.”
“I certainly wasn’t the first person to break in—”
Ms. Winter removed her gloves and held up one gnarled hand for silence, gold rings heavy with diamond clusters and precious stones wedged over swollen knuckles, arthritic fingers bent at painful angles.
“By all means furnish me with the names of your co-conspirators, Ms. Smith. I would be delighted to include them in the punishments.” She gave a slow blink that felt like a challenge, and Harriet knew she’d been snookered. Ms. Winter cocked her head ever so slightly to the side. “No?” she asked. “Nobody you’d like to implicate?”
Harriet remained quiet. Seething. Her phone pinged loudly in her bag once, then again, then five more times in quick succession.
“Sorry,” she muttered, pulling it out of her bag. She glanced at the screen and saw several texts from Cornell and a voice note from Ali. Her stomach squeezed. “I’m sorry,” she said, holding the phone to her ear. “I just need to address these to make sure there’s not an emergency.”
Ali’s message was about lunch and a glance at Cornell’s texts informed her they were simply more requests for her to do his work. Reluctantly, she turned her phone to silent and put it in her bag.
“Are we interrupting your social life?” Evaline’s voice was snide.
“No, it’s work. I’ll deal with it later.”
Evaline regarded her coldly. “My solicitor has been kind enough to draw up a contract. You are welcome to have it looked over by your own counsel, but I can assure you that it is completely legal.” She held her hand out to James, and he passed her a set of documents fastened with a paper clip. “In lieu of pressing charges, this contract will be signed by you and me and witnessed by Mr. Knight and my chauffeur.”
“Is all of this really necessary?” Harriet asked.
“What assurances do I have that you will keep your side of the agreement if I don’t have it in writing?”
“You have my word.” Harriet gritted her teeth.
“The word of a woman who trespasses? I don’t think so, Ms. Smith. Mr. Knight, would you be so kind…” She gestured to the side of Harriet’s seat.
James leaned over and slid a small tabletop up from inside the door and flipped it down across Harriet’s lap. She could smell his aftershave, neroli oil and patchouli, and beneath that his shampoo, notes of fresh mint and eucalyptus so clean and crisp she wanted to breathe him in like a blue-sky morning. The scent transported her to his bed, his head between her thighs, her hands gripping fistfuls of his crisp white sheets. She swallowed and tried to steady her racing heart, pushing the thoughts from her mind. As he locked the table flat with a click, James looked briefly up at her with the intensity of a person trying to convey something of importance. She looked away, pointedly. When he sat back in his own seat, the dispassionate glaze of professionalism had returned.
Evaline slid the contract onto Harriet’s table and snapped her fingers. The sound was weak, soft, unlike the resolve of this formidable woman. But James set to as though she’d cracked a starter pistol; he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a pen, which he placed in Ms. Winter’s wrinkled palm, and she placed it on top of the contract.
Harriet’s hand hovered over the pen. If she was going to do it, she had to do it now, before she signed the paperwork.
“I will sign. But before I do, I have a proposal that I’d like to put to you.” She wished her voice sounded less halting, but this formidable woman made her feel deeply nervous, and with James there watching too, it was very much like being stuck in one of those dreams where she turned up to work inexplicably naked.
Evaline’s stare was withering.
“Do you feel as though you are in a position to be making proposals?” she asked.
Before this meeting, Harriet had been pep-talking herself with things like Find a common ground. Appeal to her community spirit. She’s a person, you’re a person, you’re both just people. Now, however, she realized the futility of her reasoning; at this point she wasn’t even sure Evaline Winter was human. Her eyes darted to James, who had suddenly become engrossed in a spreadsheet. He didn’t look up. Okay. She could do this. It was now or never.
She cleared her throat.
“I’m sure you are aware of how little there is for young people to do in the town. The cinema has closed down, the bowling alley is now a charity shop warehouse, and even if they were still open, a lot of the kids in the town couldn’t afford to use them. Your theater is sitting empty. What if it could become a community space, a place where the young people of Little Beck Foss could meet, away from negative influences? Supervised, of course. I’m not talking about a free-for-all. We could utilize the layout for drama, singing, a theater group; we could have book clubs and table tennis, art classes…” She was rambling, her ideas spilling out and falling over one another, but she dared not take a breath and risk being cut off. “Maybe the school would pay you a rent to allow students to perform their creative work…”
“And I would allow all this why, exactly?” asked Ms. Winter, her tone a knife edge.
Was her idea not self-explanatory? James had begun writing furiously in his leather-bound notebook, the scratch of his pen loud in the frosty silence.
“Because it would help people. Young people in your community. And it wouldn’t cost you anything. I’m already going to be cleaning the place up anyway, it may as well be used—”
“Perhaps I don’t want my family’s theater to be used as a den for miscreants, Ms. Smith.”
Harriet bristled. “It wouldn’t be a ‘den,’ and the kids I’m talking about are not ‘miscreants.’ And I’m sure your father would have preferred the theater to be used for the creative arts than left crumbling like a forgotten mausoleum.”
Ms. Winter’s green eyes flashed, like a snake readying itself to strike.
“Sign the contract, Ms. Smith.”
Harriet lost her cool. “But it’s empty! It’s just sitting there like a big unloved blot on the high street!” Evaline remained unmoved, so she tried appealing to her ego. “With a little TLC, your theater could be a vital resource for the whole town. You could help change the fortunes of young lives and secure a legacy as a beloved philanthropist. A double whammy, with very little effort on your part.”
Evaline regarded her steadily, her lips pursed. James passed her the book he’d been writing in, and Harriet watched the old woman’s eyes scud back and forth over his notes. When she’d finished, she handed the book back to James without acknowledging him or his scribblings. She rubbed the pads of her thumbs and forefingers on each hand together as she ruminated. Harriet’s spirits rose. She was getting through to her.
“Perhaps we could help one another, Ms. Smith.”
In her mind Harriet punched the air and shouted In your face, bum weasel! at James.
Evaline continued.
“I have been working toward a private sale of the theater for some time. Most recently there have been two offers on the table, both of which, to coin the phrase of my associate here, have been ‘lowball’ due to the condition of the building. Therefore, I have been left with two choices: one, demolish the theater and sell the land; or two, renovate the building to make it more appealing to potential buyers. Suffice to say, I have decided upon the latter.”
Harriet frowned.
“Wait a minute, if you’re planning to renovate the place anyway, then why I am being made to clean it?”
“One must pay for one’s crimes,” Evaline replied simply. “My legal counsel”—she gestured to James with a limp flap of her hand—“has suggested a counterproposal for you. There are some influential theater companies who have been waiting for me to sell up or die; thus far I have disappointed them on both scores. Now is the time for me to dangle the carrot, so to speak.”
“You’ve lost me, I’m afraid. What does any of this have to do with me?”
“It’s very simple. Any property for sale benefits from some staging—excuse the pun—to help buyers see its potential. Here is where our individual concerns diverge. You may use my property for your little community project, on the proviso that you have a production ready to perform on the stage in time for an open house viewing I have arranged for December the twenty-first. It is a theater, after all—buyers will be trying to envision it in working order, and what better way to facilitate that than by providing them with a live production, the first in more than half a century.” She smiled as she warmed to her theme. “In fact”—she tapped a finger to her shriveled, lipstick-caked lips—“why not raise the stakes by opening the performance up to the general public? That ought to stir up some of that ‘media interest’ you’re always so keen on, Mr. Knight, don’t you think?”
James looked up questioningly at Evaline just as Harriet barked out an incredulous laugh.
“What?”
“Are you hard of hearing, Ms. Smith?”
Before Harriet had the chance to answer, James put in, “If I might interject. Ms. Winter, this is a bold proposal with multifaceted considerations; it would be prudent to take a little time to consider. I only meant to have some window dressing on the stage, as it were—”
“No.” Evaline cut him off. “My mind is made up. Ms. Smith can have her little community project and provide some entertainment for my open house on the twenty-first. Call the media. Tell them that the Winter Theater is reopening for one final night.”
“Evaline, please, be reasonable, the logistics alone—”
“Mr. Knight, I pay you so that I don’t have to consider logistics. Make it happen.”
James looked as though he wanted to argue further, but Evaline flicked open a mother-of-pearl compact mirror and checked her reflection, signifying that the subject was closed.
“But.” Harriet glanced pleadingly from Evaline to James and back again. “But what you’re asking is impossible. Nobody could put a production together that fast. The twenty-first is”—she counted on her fingers—“just over five weeks away. Not even a professional company could pull that off. I have zero experience.”
“Then this will be a sharp learning curve for you,” Evaline replied, snapping her compact shut. She regarded Harriet down her long Roman nose.
Harriet pulled her shoulders back in defiance.
“Let’s say for argument’s sake that I agreed to your pie-in-the-sky demands. What happens to my group if you do manage to sell the building to a theater company?”
Ms. Winter opened her mouth to speak, but James beat her to it.
“I would imagine the new owner would be only too happy to encourage community amateur dramatics groups. Theaters are businesses, of course, but they are fundamentally supporters of the arts. I see no reason why the two concerns couldn’t thrive concurrently.”
His employer looked less than pleased, but she pressed her lips together and turned an approximation of a smile to Harriet.
“I’d need some assurance.” She was remembering Pete’s warnings about slippery fishes. “Something in writing to say that the community can still use the theater after it’s sold, something legally binding that the new owners would have to honor.” Harriet tried to sound as demanding as Evaline. This palaver was by no means what she’d envisioned, but equally maybe this was her chance to put her pipe dreams into practice; perhaps the universe was throwing her a bone.
Again, James answered before Evaline had a chance to speak.
“I’m sure there could be a clause written into the sale that would protect your rights on that score—”
“Your choices are limited, Ms. Smith,” Evaline bit out, slicing through James’s conciliatory gesture. “I can still decide to press charges, drag this out through the courts. It would take less than an hour for my contacts to furnish me with the names of each student who trespassed alongside you. Oh yes, I know you weren’t alone. How secure is your job at Foss Independent School? You work in pastoral care, I believe. A worthwhile vocation, I’m sure. I understand that you answer to one Sebastian Cornell. How would he react, do you think? Is your position strong enough to want to find out?”
This was too much. Screw you, Evaline Winter, and screw you, James Bum-Wipe Knight!
“You can’t blackmail me! I will not be a pawn in your seedy little real estate games.”
Evaline continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “I’ll have my solicitor draw up a fresh contract for you to sign.” She whisked the original contract away from Harriet and tore it in two. “One that covers our new agreement. A Christmas production to be performed in front of a live audience on the twenty-first of December.”
It was like being squeezed by a boa constrictor; every objection she made only caused Evaline to coil tighter. There was no air in the car. She couldn’t think straight. What have I got myself into? She could feel herself getting hotter and hotter, a prickling heat rising up through her body. If she didn’t get out of this car right now, she was going to spontaneously combust.
“Clean your own damn theater!” she exploded. She wrenched the handle of the limo door too hard and kicked it open with her boot. She was boiling with outrage and embarrassment at having been so perfectly snookered, even after Pete’s warnings. Evaline did indeed have a large bite radius, and she’d bitten her right on the bum.
She climbed out into the freezing afternoon—leaving the car door disrespectfully open—and was grateful for the rush of cold air after the stuffy interior. Evaline’s lily of the valley perfume had permeated her hair, and that only made her angrier as she stomped off along the road, slipping every couple of steps on the new snow and muttering obscenities. People gave her a wide berth as she stormed along the pavement. The Salvation Army band pulled in a collective breath as she stamped past them: “Weeeeee wish you a merry—”
“Bah humbug bah humbug bah humbug!” she shouted, so loudly that one of the band members dropped his cymbal, which crashed to the ground, making a baby cry and a dog bark. She stomped onward, slipping again and only saving herself by swinging on a lamppost.
Someone was calling her name, but she didn’t turn. The footsteps behind her became louder.
“Harriet! Ms. Smith. Harriet, wait!”
She kept her head down and plowed on until the expensive shoes of James Slimeball Knight blocked her path. She stopped walking and stamped her foot—not her finest moment—and let out a strangulated growl of frustration that caused a cyclist to swerve as he rode past her.
“What? You are a stinking, flatulent beast! I don’t want to talk to you. Go back to Miss Haughty-Pants and tell her to stick her contract up her shriveled bottom!”
James was looking at her with wide eyes.
“Flatulent?”
“Arrrrrggghhhhh!” she roared. James took a step back. “Is that the ‘long-awaited news’ you were celebrating the other night? That her ladyship was finally going to sell the theater? You big capitalist cow testicle!”
“Look, can we just talk for a moment? Believe it or not, I want to help you,” said James.
Harriet laughed mirthlessly. “Help me?” she shouted. She noticed James looking from side to side as people walked by, gawping and stifling giggles. She wasn’t usually one to make a spectacle of herself, but she was steaming mad, and she didn’t know what to do with it. “You call blackmailing a person helping ?”
“Technically it isn’t blackmail…”
Harriet felt her eyes bulge; James must have seen it because he held his hands up for calm.
“I think your ideas for a community space have merit.”
“You mean leverage.” She smudged her hands along her cheeks to wipe off her tears of frustration.
“I promise you, I didn’t know Evaline was going to spring a whole Christmas production on you. I had in mind a talent show or a skit, a bit of window dressing for the potential buyers as they toured the theater. I had no idea she’d escalate it to a full-on bonanza.”
“So it was your idea? That’s what all the scribbling in your little pocketbook was about?”
“It’s actually an Aspinal of London journal…” He must have seen that she was about to go nuclear because he added quickly, “But that’s neither here nor there. Look, I think that your proposal for a safe space for teenagers to hang out is inspired, and I admire your altruism. In my line of work, I don’t meet many people whose motivations aren’t profit based. I promise you, I was trying to be helpful, though I realize it has rather backfired.”
She squinted her eyes to study him more closely. He looked genuine. But then, he was a lawyer. Weren’t they trained to lie convincingly?
“Will she really press charges if I don’t play along?”
He took a moment to consider. “I could probably talk her out of pressing charges by appealing to her bank balance. But it wouldn’t cost her anything to ask for a meeting with the dean of the school, which—”
“Could cost me my job,” she finished for him.
He nodded.
“How can you work for someone like that?” she asked.
In all honesty she’d had no idea what kind of man he was when she’d slept with him, so she shouldn’t feel disappointed in him, and yet she did.
“She’s my firm’s biggest client. It’s my job, my sworn oath to defend her interests, whether they be personal or business.”
“That’s such a cop-out,” she snorted derisively.
“It’s my job. What do you want me to say? When all is said and done, you were in the wrong. As far as the law is concerned, you are the perpetrator of a crime, and my client is the victim.”
She shook her head in disbelief, stepped around him, and carried on up the street. The snow was getting heavier. The high street was full of people: mothers pushing pushchairs laden with bags and stressed-out toddlers, people out of the office on their lunch breaks, drunks on the benches outside sandwich bars hoping for a little charity.
James caught up with her.
“It may not look like it, but I’m offering you a lifeline: a chance to do something that I can see you’re passionate about. I know it’s not ideal, but the world is built on compromise. If you agree to her terms, I will do my utmost to ensure that a clause is written into any sales negotiations that will secure a space for community ventures going forward. Please.”
He looked so earnest she almost believed him. Almost. The black limousine pulled up beside them to more curious looks from passersby. The tinted window wound slowly down.
“Mr. Knight,” came the cool voice from the interior of the car. “I am not in the habit of having to chase down my employees. I trust the matter has been settled?”
James looked at Harriet. “Has it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“There is always a choice.”
“Ah yes, the proverbial rock and hard place.”
“You have until tomorrow lunchtime to decide.” Evaline’s bored voice drifted out of the perfumed car. “I will have Mr. Knight draw up a second contract. I look forward to seeing the fruits of your labors.” She left a beat and then added with languid frustration, “Mr. Knight, when you’re ready.”
James handed Harriet his card. She glanced down at it and then back up. Did he actually think she was going to call him? After this?
“In case you need to discuss…anything,” he said hesitantly before walking around to the other side of the car. How was he not slipping in those fancy brogues? Maybe they came with built-in snow chains on the soles.
“Until tomorrow, Ms. Smith.” Evaline’s voice held the gravel of someone who had smoked all their life.
The window had whirred shut before Harriet could think of a reply.
The car purred away, and heads snapped round to stare at it as it glided down the shabby high street. Harriet shivered, her fingers slowly freezing around the small card. What in the world had she got herself into?
Harriet was eating dinner that evening when Maisy FaceTimed. In the blurry background, she could make out a huge real Christmas tree with blinking lights. Somewhere close by the sounds of a whisk scratching against a china mixing bowl and squeals of laughter made Harriet’s heart squeeze. Missing her daughter was a visceral sensation, an ache running through the center of her bones, a hollow ringing like her ribs had been struck with a tuning fork. Someone else was Christmas baking with her daughter. She pasted herself back together and forced a ringmaster smile.
“You look ready for Christmas.”
Maisy grinned back. “Yeah,” she said, panning the phone around so that her mum could see the decorated sitting room. “We’re making a gingerbread house and sugar cookies. Polly’s an amazing baker. She’s won the Cooperstown gingerbread house contest four years in a row.”
Harriet tried not to hate Polly, the perfectly lovely woman taking wonderful care of her daughter, with her perfect baking skills and perfect house. Mariah Carey began to sing about what she wanted for Christmas and a girl’s high-pitched voice joined in the chorus badly. Maisy laughed.
“That’s Savannah, she loves Christmas music.”
An unseen voice called out, “Hi, Harriet! I love you!” Savannah was the same age as Maisy; she’d stayed with them in Little Beck Foss last summer as part of the school exchange program.
“Love you too, Savannah!” Harriet called back. All this jovial togetherness was shredding her heart. Their merriment highlighted how quiet her home was. Her carefully curated soft furnishings and tasteful pictures felt like a stage with no actors to bring it to life.
Polly, Savannah’s mum, said, “Let her be, honey, she needs to spend some time with her mama.”
Perfect flocking Polly and her perfectly clucking loveliness! thought Harriet peevishly.
“Pan round and show me the sitting room.” Maisy pressed her face up close to the screen, squinting to try and see around Harriet. “I want to see it all decorated. I’ve told Polly and Savannah how we’re always the first to have our decs up and ours are always the best. Did you get the tree out yet? Did you manage to put it up without me?”
Harriet looked around her naked sitting room, the fancy orange-and-cinnamon candles still boxed; she’d probably use them as gifts. The only nod to the coming season was an early Christmas card from her foster parents, Sue and Gil, down in Surrey.
“I…I haven’t had time to put them up yet,” she lied. “Had a lot on my plate.”
Maisy frowned. “Oh, okay.” The disappointment in her voice made Harriet’s organs deflate. “I guess I’ll show Polly when you’ve done them. Speaking of plates,” her daughter continued, “is that beans on toast? For dinner?” Her voice was thick with incredulity.
Harriet shifted slightly, feeling judged and hoping Polly wasn’t listening. “It’s a healthy meal. Beans count as one of your five-a-day.”
“What were you eating the other night when I called you?”
“I don’t recall,” Harriet lied again.
Maisy gave her a hard stare and said, “It was a Pot Noodle.” She pursed her lips in a way Harriet recognized as one of her own signatures of disapproval.
“So?” Harriet asked.
“So, why are you suddenly eating like a student?”
“Oh, you know what it’s like, I’m tired after work, I don’t always feel like cooking.”
“But you always cook after work. I have never known you not to come home from work and start foraging in the fridge.”
Maisy was right. She loved cooking. She’d get in from work, put on some music and cook while she and Maisy shared the details of their day. Or if Maisy was out, she’d listen to an audiobook while she prepared their evening meal. Somewhere between waving Maisy off at the airport and now, she’d lost the motivation. Suddenly it felt less like winding down after a long day and more like a chore to be got through before she could finally switch on the TV and lose herself in someone else’s drama.
“I’ve been having a big meal for lunch at school, that’s all.” She hadn’t. “Now did you call me to critique my dinner or was there something else?”
“Something else. How did your meeting with the old theater crone go?” Maisy settled herself cross-legged on an expansive armchair strewn with Christmas cushions and waited expectantly.
Harriet finished her beans on toast while she filled Maisy in on the day’s events and then carried her plate and phone into the kitchen to wash up.
“So, when you boil it down, you got the deal that you actually wanted.”
“Yes, but it’s all on her terms.”
“I guess. It sounds cool, though, hanging out in an old theater. I’d have loved to have somewhere like that when I was their age.”
“That was only a year ago.”
“Still counts. Maybe if me and my mates had had somewhere to hang out, we wouldn’t have had to freeze our tits off drinking cheap wine in the park on a Saturday night.”
“Please don’t tell me these things. Oh my god, Maisy!”
Maisy laughed. “Like you didn’t do the exact same thing when you were my age.”
She had her there.
“This could be good for you, you know. With me not coming home for Christmas and everything. It’ll help with the pining.”
“I am not pining for you.”
Obviously, she was pining.
“Dad says you’re pining.”
“Dad’s a dunderhead.”
Maisy snorted. “Will you still go to Dad and Emma’s for Christmas? It’s their turn to host.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t made any firm plans yet.”
“Mu-um!”
“You worry about planning your own fabulous Christmas with Savannah and stop trying to micromanage mine.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. I’m fine. I’m the parent, remember?”
“I can’t stand the idea of you sitting by yourself eating baked beans on toast for Christmas dinner.”
“I promise I won’t eat baked beans for Christmas dinner.”
“I just want you to take as much care of yourself as you take of other people.”
As an independent woman with a solid career, a comfortable home and fifteen years’ successful single parenting in the bank, Harriet had always considered that she took rather good care of herself, but these last few weeks had given her pause.
By the week after Maisy had left, she’d lost the will to plump the cushions on the sofas and even her bed, and she had always prided herself on her cushion plumping. Suddenly all the things she’d done daily for decades seemed pointless and she’d realized that she’d built her home almost entirely around her daughter’s needs: the soft throws in the basket by the fire for when Maisy wanted to snuggle under a blanket and watch telly, the constantly brimming biscuit barrel for when Maisy got peckish, the posh bottles of bubble bath for when Maisy wanted a hot soak in the tub. Without Maisy there to enjoy it, it was simply staging.
Harriet smiled. “You don’t need to worry about me, love. Honestly, I’m fine. But you’re right, this community thing will be good for me, and it’ll be good for the students—they just don’t know it yet.”
The FaceTime ended and in the silence her world became two-dimensional again, her sitting room flattened like a photograph in a magazine.
No! She stood and brutally chopped two of her cushions into plumped perfection. I will not wallow. If anything, it was for the best that Maisy was away, because Harriet was going to be busier than ever this Christmas. I will agree to Ms. Bossy-Knickers’s unreasonable demands, and I will create a safe space for the youth of Little Beck Foss, whether she likes it or not. With a simple twist of her fingers, she deadheaded her orchid on the way to the kitchen and flicked an errant baked bean out of her cleavage and down the plug hole from ten paces. She nodded, satisfied. She was going to boss the schnitzel out of this thing!