Chapter Twenty-Three
The sun played hide-and-seek behind the tall trees as Grace and Annie walked side by side along the path through Hawkwood.
Grace told Annie what Frank said about Sherlock Holmes, and about how he suggested he and Rosie had ADHD as well as Jude.
The only part she left out was Tony’s addiction.
She told herself it wasn’t her place to talk about someone who wasn’t a direct relative, but a part of her knew that wasn’t the only reason.
Alcoholism felt different to any other health condition, even though she knew it wasn’t.
She wasn’t proud of herself for feeling that stigma and not confronting it, especially since she’d already done the same with her family’s ADHD.
Would she never learn? She wouldn’t hide it, she decided. She’d just save it for another day.
This path was drier. Copper and brown leaves crackled under their feet as they walked on. When Grace finished speaking, Annie said, ‘And how do you feel about that?’
‘Which part? That my husband thought I was a dismissive cow, or that he thought of me as staff?’
‘Did he say dismissive cow?’
‘Not in so many words, but I’m sure that’s what he meant.
’ Annie glanced at her, then away and Grace’s insides flipped.
What an idiot she was. Annie had been Frank’s friend for a decade, and here Grace was slagging him off after only knowing her for five minutes.
She turned it back on herself. ‘What kind of person can’t work it out when their partner tries to tell them something like that? ’
‘If he was oblique, you can’t blame yourself for that.’
‘I thought we knew everything about each other.’
Annie smiled sadly. ‘But we can’t see inside each other’s heads, no matter how long we’re together.’
Grace could have kicked herself. Annie was going through a terrible time with her husband. ‘Ignore me. I’m probably in one of those stages of grief. There’s an anger one, isn’t there?’
‘You said Frank wrote that you were helpful, dependable and supportive?’ Annie said gently.
‘Yes, but …’ When Annie threw it back to her like that, it didn’t sound bad at all. ‘I know they’re positive traits, but they make me sound like … like a cross between a Labrador and a bloody St Bernard.’
‘Two very good breeds of dog.’
‘Yes’ – Grace could hear the exasperation in her own voice – ‘but if I was comparing him to a dog, it would be something like, I don’t know, a husky with piercing blue eyes, or a playful Dalmatian. Something fun and interesting. Something a bit different.’
‘But everyone loves a Lab.’
Annie was missing the point completely. ‘Yes, well, I’m normal too, apparently,’ said Grace flatly.
Annie cocked an eyebrow. ‘And that’s a bad thing as well?’
‘It is when everyone else in the family is quirky.’
Two white and brown King Charles spaniels trotted past, their owner nodding and smiling as she followed behind.
‘You want to be quirky?’
Did she? She didn’t want to feel othered by her own people, she knew that much.
She wrinkled her nose. It stung as the cut opened.
She took a tissue from her pocket and dabbed the blood away.
‘It’s not that I want to have ADHD myself just so I’m part of the gang, it’s more that I didn’t really consider the others to be …
unusual. I mean, I knew they were funny, and had their peccadilloes, but everyone does.
We were a bit different, I get that, but most creative people I know are.
In fact, most people I know are what people would generally call quirky. ’
‘Then you’re a very lucky woman.’ Annie’s words made Grace stop for a moment.
When she carried on speaking, Grace hurried to catch up.
‘In my experience, quirky and creative people are the most interesting. Interesting people surround themselves with other interesting people, so if you’ve spent your life with those kinds of folk, it suggests to me that you must be a very interesting individual too. ’
Grace considered this, and hope lifted her mood. ‘But I’m the normal one. Normal isn’t interesting.’
Annie laughed. ‘Normal is a relative term.’
‘So, you don’t think I’m normal?’ Why on earth did she feel indignant at that? She really was a contrary old woman.
‘You’re bloody impossible, I’ll give you that. You’re complaining that Frank thought you were normal then you sound offended at the thought you might not be. You can’t win with some people.’ There was amusement in her voice.
‘Sorry … I—’
‘All I’m saying is you give off an air of being an interesting woman, and on top of that, I knew Frank for ten years and he never said anything but lovely things about you.’
‘He didn’t say I was dismissive?’
‘No.’ Annie peered at her. ‘When you look back, do you feel like you were dismissive?’
Grace imagined herself and Frank eating dinner together. She remembered chatter, laughter and open discussion. ‘I don’t think so. I hope not anyway.’
‘Then forgive yourself for doing it once. The Frank I knew would have forgiven you. And on the other point, in my experience,’ Annie continued, ‘the women are the ones who have to be the Labradors and St Bernards because we are the support system for the family. We learn from an early age that mothers look after everyone, and men learn that women look after them. We don’t have the freedom to bounce around like spaniels because someone has to carry the heavy barrel of brandy around their bloody neck to make sure everyone else survives.
We can be as feminist as we like but the patriarchy has worked its way into our brains before we take our first steps.
What I’d take from what Frank wrote is that he appreciated you for the caring role you played in the family.
And I’m not sure a man like Frank would have stuck with someone he didn’t find interesting for decades. ’
She made good points. Grace’s mother had given up her job at the hotel when Grace was born and didn’t go back to work until she was at school full-time.
Her father’s dinner was on the table when he got home from work.
Their roles were clearly delineated and, despite Grace seeing her own marriage as being considerably more equal, they’d fallen into similar roles.
That pattern stopped with Rosie though; she was the main caregiver in her house, but she and Paz made all the decisions together.
And Frank did always make Grace feel like she was interesting.
She never felt like he’d rather be with someone else.
A field of purple and green fern appeared in a clearing to their right.
Annie took the path through it, and Grace walked alongside, trying to recalibrate her feelings.
‘Maybe I had an amplified emotional response because it’s the first time I’ve heard Frank’s voice, well, read his words, since … since he died.’
‘That sounds likely. It can’t have been easy to discover he hadn’t told you everything.’ Annie’s voice was soft. ‘I might react in the same way if Jack kept something significant from me, even if he had good intentions.’
Grace nodded. ‘Annie, sorry for asking but you knew Frank well. Do you think he had ADHD?’
Annie dipped her head under a low canopy of trees at the end of the clearing and carried along a narrow path.
‘They gave us a bit of training on it at work, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he did.
He was a sensitive soul, and even my lively ones at school seem to have bigger hearts than most, but they take everything to heart as well.
That’s why Frank made book club what it is, I think. ’
‘What do you mean?’ Unlike Annie, Grace didn’t have to duck to pass onto the path. The air cooled under the shade of the trees, and she was glad of the chill on her cheeks.
‘You know he started book club with Crush when Books En Parade opened?’
‘Yes.’ Grace remembered how excited Frank was when he first had the idea and told her he’d found the perfect venue in the new bookshop that had opened up in the old antiques place.
‘Well, it went on like a normal book club for the first year, you know, with people discussing a book we’d chosen the previous time, but then sometimes people came along and said they hadn’t had time to read the book and we talked about changing it to monthly instead of fortnightly.
Anyway, Frank said he was having a particularly busy time at work, and didn’t always have time to read, and when he did, he couldn’t always concentrate. ’
Grace thought back ten years. It would have been around the time Frank and his partners were thinking about selling the business and he was a ball of anxiety.
His partners were keen to sell because retirement was on the horizon and the offer was a generous one, but Frank worried the promises the buyers made about keeping on all their staff were just that, promises.
He wanted it written into the contract that all employees’ jobs were secure for a minimum of twenty-four months after the sale.
The deal fell through, and his partners never really forgave him, but that was Frank all over.
Doing the right thing was in his blood, but it had taken a huge toll on his mental health.
‘I remember,’ she said. ‘He was so preoccupied with work; he couldn’t concentrate on anything. ’
‘That’s when he suggested we became a silent book club.
He argued that would take the pressure off people because we all read at different rates, so someone who was time poor could come along and get their hour’s reading in and no one would feel like they were letting the side down.
He said it would be more inclusive too, because we could read what we wanted, but share books we loved, so people still had the opportunity to find something new. ’
‘Did everyone agree?’
‘One or two competitive readers complained.’
‘Competitive readers?’
‘You know the ones.’ Annie curled her lip. ‘The kind of people who love to tell you how they could have written a novel better. They see book group as a chance to show off by explaining why their choice for the winner of the Booker Prize was worthier, that sort of nonsense.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘They came along to the first couple, then drifted off to another book club. There’s plenty about.
I just like to think ours is better. Lee’s still with us, for some reason.
He still takes every opportunity to mansplain, bless him, but he’s always there whatever the weather.
We ignore him when he bangs on. The time he told me how it felt to have a hot flush was a highlight, though.
That man.’ She shook her head, smiling as though remembering a childhood pet.
Grace pictured Lee with his pinched lips and literary fiction. She thought back to the last gathering at Books En Parade, of Harry with Earnest at his feet, and Jasmine with her soft voice and gentle smile. ‘You’re right, it is a brilliant group.’
‘And that was your Frank’s doing. It’s such a shame the numbers have dropped.
I keep planning to raise it with the others, but I haven’t got time to do anything about it, and I don’t suppose they have either.
Frank didn’t let people forget about book club and I suppose we relied on him to keep everything going.
’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, if he did have ADHD, I’m sure he had good intentions when he chose not to tell you.
From what you said, I don’t get the impression he was trying to exclude you from anything.
He wanted to protect you. And that seems very on brand to me. ’
They emerged from under the low branches to see a gate in front of an enormous green field. After the dark of the path, the open space was bright and vast. Grace lifted her face to the sun and her concerns of the last few hours melted away in its warmth.