Chapter 44
‘Just the girl I wanted to see,’ said Frank, collaring Roo as she came out of the loo. ‘We’ve been trying to find you.’ By ‘we’ he meant he and Grace, as she was hovering behind him. ‘Come into the lounge with us for a minute, will you?’
He led the way and Roo said, ‘Am I in trouble? You look all serious.’
‘Massive trouble,’ Frank threw the words over his shoulder.
‘Ignore him,’ said Grace. ‘Although it is pretty serious, I have to admit.’
Roo hadn’t a clue what they might want her for. Frank put another log on the fire to stop it dying out and stood square in front of her when she’d sat down. He clapped his hands and then came straight out with it.
‘How do you fancy coming to live with us?’
‘Oh, Frank, that sounds creepy as fuck,’ said Grace, in the way the old Grace would have reprimanded him, the one who bantered with him, who chided him gently, playfully.
‘Let me. Roo… dear Roo, Frank told you that he wanted to start holding open mike nights in the inn. We need someone who’ll be passionate about…
humour and help organise it and bring people in, young talent…
fresh voices. Frank has had the idea but he won’t have a clue how to do it.
Besides, he’ll probably be too busy looking for a gym and getting involved in setting that up.
Because I know how much he misses his boxing… his boys and his girls.’
When she turned she saw the look that Frank gave her which was like a gift of gold.
She’d just surprised him with something far better than anything she could have wrapped up for Christmas.
She hadn’t planned to say it, but her impulse had been guided by something that knew it was right.
She could see it in his face, the joy, the gratitude.
She’d knocked him speechless and had to continue her pitch to Roo solo.
‘We have a room which is bigger than the others, with its own sitting area, so you’d have some privacy – don’t get too excited.
But it will put you on until you can find something more permanent, if you want to stay in the area.
And it’s beautiful where we live. By the sea.
We’d love to have you, Roo. We’d love to give you the chance to springboard to the Palladium. ’
Fat chance, Roo was going to say, but she stopped herself. Because everyone who had appeared there must have thought fat chance once upon a time, but they’d done it. ‘You serious? Really?’
‘We are very serious. It’s a chance for you to be involved in it right from the beginning.
A learning curve for us all, an adventure.
We could do with some help behind the bar so it would be half that sort of work, we’ll play it by ear.
We’re quite good bosses. We don’t take advantage and the locals are friendly – even to you northerners.
’ Grace smiled. ‘We’d look after you. And if you hate it, Roo, we won’t hold you to anything. ’
‘I love it already,’ said Roo, almost breathlessly.
‘Well, that’s settled then, innit,’ said Frank, still reeling from what Grace had said about the gym, about the life he loved. He had plenty of energy for it all and he couldn’t wait to get started.
On her way back to the cabin, Roo took her coin out of her pocket and tossed it into the air. She caught it on the back of her hand.
‘Should I go and live in Norfolk?’ she asked it silently.
The answer was YES.
Elizabeth was lying on the bed having a catnap, she said, although it was really a battle with a stress headache caused by the journey to Topston becoming ever nearer.
‘Roo, it will be a perfect opportunity for you, you must go,’ Elizabeth said when Roo told her about the conversation she’d just had.
‘They might even let me put on a Northern Soul night. I know all the dance moves. I could hold classes.’ Ideas were falling over themselves in her head to be heard.
‘I’ll have to work some notice at my job but I’ll be able to do that all right, knowing that there’s light on my horizon.
’ Roo was giddy as a kipper and Elizabeth put on a good show of being thrilled for her, even though her head was pounding.
She hadn’t wanted to let go of Vincent’s hand when they were walking across the snow.
They didn’t look at each other, just held on as if their hands were a separate entity from the rest of them, and only when they reached the train door, did their contact end.
She had read too much into it all: the contour of his arm muscle underneath her palm, the electric moment when his fingers curled around hers.
She doubted very much he was reliving the walk from Figgy Hollow back to the Yorkshire Belle, imagining both of them in a sunny pub garden together sharing salty chips, remembering how her hand felt in his.
But he was.
‘The A7501 is now fully opened. Train lines are thawed out as well, ice does something to the points apparently – I don’t understand all that jargon though, but suffice to say that most of the trains will be running again properly tomorrow.
But please take care in the Whitby harbour area because there is flooding.
We just exchange one hazard for another, don’t we, in this country – hee hee. ’
‘He loves doing his transmissions, doesn’t he, old Brian,’ said Vincent with a fond smile. He was going to miss him. He was going to miss everyone.
They were all sitting around the fire in the lounge having a mulled cider – made by Frank, but from Jane’s recipe which included a hearty splosh of calvados.
She and Clifford first tasted it made that way when they went skiing in France.
Ridiculous pursuit at their ages, the holiday insurance had been astronomical.
But what fun they’d had, and they emerged from the experience completely unscathed. Much to Michael’s disappointment.
Roo had thrown the last five cherries in hers. Frank said he’d get a jar in for her when she came down, and plenty of sprouts as they’d still be in season.
First job when they got back was getting a room ready for Jane.
There was a lovely airy one on the ground floor so there were no stairs for her to contend with, though she could probably do them better than he could.
He hoped he was as sprightly at her age.
He’d look after her as if she were his own mum.
They both would. Until they loaded her cases onto the bus so she could sail off and start living her best life.
The thought of the Jane they had come to know being cooped up in a small flat, having rings run round her by her seriously devious devil of a greedy bastard stepson made his blood boil.
Roo would bring her dynamism with her and he knew she’d make The Salty Cockle buzz.
His own soul was already buzzing like a bee drunk on Jane’s mulled cider recipe, because he knew where there was a unit that would be ideal for him to set up a boxing gym.
He’d already had a crafty look, but turned it down because he knew it would be the end of him and Grace if he signed on the dotted line.
It had still been on the market before they set off on their trip because he’d not been able to resist checking.
If it was meant to be, it would be. And if it wasn’t, he’d find somewhere else.
He’d make it happen, one way or another.
He looked over at Grace, refereeing between Roo and Vincent as they had one of their playful verbal spats.
It was so good to see that smile back on her face, the light back in her eyes.
He couldn’t wait for her to meet young Billie.
Grace would fall in love with her, nothing surer, and that love would help her grow new tissue over her deep scars.
‘Where you going when you get off then, Frank?’ Vincent called over to him.
‘Oh, I think we’ll head back home.’ He looked at Grace for confirmation.
‘Home is good.’ She dropped a nod of agreement.
‘Back to the Rectory for me,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll finish off what I have to and ring Michael to deliver the good news: that I’m spending the money his father left me – on me. I shall wait for him to try and have me committed.’
‘Jesus, he won’t, will he?’ said Vincent. Mind you, this Michael geezer sounded a right sort and he really hoped Jane was joking.
‘No, his modus operandi is more wheedling, more “poor me” than outwardly aggressive, he’s too gutless for that.
’ The Wutheridge men must be rotating in their graves, she thought.
The ones she met were all strong, fair, honest, fiercely loyal: Clifford’s uncles Sutherland, Peregrine and Dennison, his cousin Cornelius, dearest August, her father-in-law and her beloved Clifford.
Clearly Michael Wutheridge’s genetic make-up was dominated by his mother’s input.
‘Don’t worry, I shan’t be drawn in. I’m too excited about going back to Venice.’
‘Get yourself to that Taj Mahal,’ said Vincent.
‘I don’t think I could go there, Vincent. Not alone. But there are plenty of other things to see in the world.’
‘Good for you, Jane.’
‘Myself and Mrs Cosgrove are booking our holiday this week,’ said Brian from the radio, as if he was joining in with the conversation. ‘We are splashing out this year and going to Scokland.’
‘Oh, bless him, he can’t get his gums around the country,’ said Roo.
‘Whereas you could get yours around the whole of the British Isles.’
‘Hark at you, you cheek—’
‘Shh, Vincent, Roo, I want to hear Brian,’ said Grace.
‘We are taking our trusty Morris Minor and setting off in early spring well before midge season. I’m going to book us into the little hotel on the island of Iona where Mrs Cosgrove and I honeymooned.
Although she doesn’t know that and she’s not listening in because she’s presently having a soak with her new bath cubes while reading the Mills and Boon love story book that Santa brought. ’
‘You old romantic, Brian,’ said Vincent. ‘Lovely Scotland. I’d like to do that myself, all the islands.’
Elizabeth opened her mouth to say, ‘So would I,’ and shut it before the words came out. Sometimes she felt as if Vincent could see into her head and everything in it married up with everything in his. She wished it didn’t.
‘He must be into his classic cars,’ said Frank. ‘I can imagine him tootling along in an old Morris Minor past a castle and a hill with a stag on it. I bet he’s got it immaculately maintained.’
‘Mrs Brian – Cath – in the passenger seat with a flask and some sandwiches for the journey.’ Grace added to the portrait being painted of their expedition.
‘Soft sandwiches though, milk roll probably, nothing he’d need teeth for,’ said Vincent. ‘She’s a marg girl usually, but they’d have a scraping of best butter specially for the occasion, and he’d be in seventh heaven sitting by a loch with his best girl at his side.’
Frank knew how he’d feel. His best girl was at his side.
‘Anybody want anything to eat?’ he asked.
‘I wasn’t hungry,’ said Tim, ‘then you started talking about buttered milk roll sandwiches.’ He rose from the sofa. ‘No one dare get up, I’ll knock us up some snap. Roo, you can be my sous chef.’
She jumped up, keen as ever, and both Frank and Grace thought that they wouldn’t have any problems with her work ethic, that was for sure.
In the kitchen while Roo was buttering bread, which wasn’t quite as thin as the milk roll Tim was coveting, he said, ‘I asked you to help me because I wanted to say thank you, Roo, privately, for trusting me with the story about your dad. I don’t think anyone else could have given me a perspective like that.
And you opening up to me has… really helped me get my head into gear. ’
‘I wouldn’t thank me yet, she might tell you to get stuffed when you talk to her,’ said Roo.
Tim took that in and then barked with laughter, such a deep rumble he made the real Santa sound like a eunuch.
‘She won’t, I’m joking, of course,’ said Roo.
‘If my dad turned up now I’d throw my arms around him.
I’d call him a tosser but I’d still love him, even though he was a rubbish dad.
But you weren’t rubbish, you were good to your girl.
You have to stop beating yourself up and not judge yourself with the whip of hindsight because at the time, you were in a great position to get the very best for your family because you loved them and so that’s what you went ahead and did.
And so what if you enjoyed your work, there’s no sin in that.
You’d have been a better father being fulfilled and proud of what you could do for them.
Maybe your work-life balance was a bit on the wonk, you’re not the only one.
But… I’d have killed for a dad like you, Tim.
’ She hoped she’d said that right. But from the look on his face, she thought she might have.
‘I’m not very good with saying how I feel. I’ve never told my daughter that I love her. I find the words difficult. Never too late to learn a new skill, eh?’
‘Well, I dunno about that. Not sure I’d try asymmetric bars at your age, Tim.’
‘Don’t ever change, Roo,’ said Tim, taking the plate of buttered bread slices from her so he could apply the filling.
He wished at that moment he could have been her dad.
But he didn’t think a pony and a big bedroom with an ensuite and a swimming pool could have made Roo Cooper turn out any better than she already had.