Chapter 12 Dinner at Kyle’s
That evening, when I let myself into the back garden of Farthington House, I felt in a peculiar way that I belonged.
A warm glow from Aunt Julia’s window upstairs made the house seem friendly.
Soft lamps set in the wall of the stables lit the path to Kyle’s door.
I knocked gently and he opened the door straight away.
‘Hello, you,’ he smiled and stepped back to let me in.
The apartment was even more beautiful at night, with its low lighting and the stars in the ceiling twinkling, and it smelled deliciously of something savoury cooking.
I curled up on the sofa with a glass of wine while Kyle went to give a pot on the hob a stir.
The pages of Diana’s memoir lay in a heap on the coffee table.
I read the first few paragraphs again and was struck by the sadness in them.
‘Did Julia let you read this?’ I said when he sat down next to me.
‘I coaxed her into it and read it this afternoon.’ He frowned. ‘So much makes sense now, but isn’t it awful, how John Rutherfurd basically spoiled his family’s lives.’
‘I feel so sorry for them.’
‘Andrew took over the brewery in the end. I wonder what happened to his dreams of teaching in a university?’
‘I imagine it was the Second World War breaking out. Do you remember that picture of him in the Home Guard?’ With his men from the brewery going off to fight, John Rutherfurd needed all the help he could get. Andrew, who’d looked too sickly to enrol, did his duty.
‘What I want to know, is what happened to Bird in the end?’
‘I know a bit more about that,’ I said softly and reached in my handbag for the letter to her baby daughter.
I watched his expression change as he read it. When he came to the end, he looked up at me in astonishment and I could almost see his mind working.
‘The picture,’ he whispered. ‘You’re Bird’s…’
‘Great-granddaughter,’ I finished the sentence for him. ‘Bird managed to give Gran’s new mother the bluebird pendant and the letter, and there must have been a time when these were passed to Gran!’
‘So your gran knew she was adopted then.’
‘She must have done, but Dad doesn’t think she ever told Mum. This letter was right at the bottom of a suitcase of Gran’s stuff so it would have been easy for Mum not to have seen it.’
‘I wonder if your gran ever tried to find Bird.’
I was silent for a moment as I considered this and was about to shrug my shoulders and say no, when I remembered what Gran had said when I was a little girl and had hurried me past Farthington House.
She’d said that its owners were ‘high and mighty’.
She’d sounded very bitter. I told Kyle this, with some embarrassment.
‘I’m not surprised!’ he said, unoffended. ‘Though that makes me think that she knew them.’
We stared at each other, then both of us noticed a slight smell of burning and Kyle leapt up to attend to the dinner.
Soon we were sitting at the dining table eating a delicious coq au vin, with dishes of chocolate mousse to follow.
It was while we were lingering over the cheeseboard and chatting about our families, trying to work out who was related to whom, that we heard a knock at the door and Kyle went to open it.
To our surprise, Jess bounded in and started sniffing about. Aunt Julia hovered anxiously on the doorstep. ‘Come in,’ Kyle insisted and she stepped inside. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ she said, ‘but…’
‘You’re very welcome,’ Kyle broke in. ‘I mentioned to her that you were coming,’ he told me. ‘And suggested that she pop across.’
‘Of course,’ I said politely, wondering if there was a hidden reason.
‘You’ve bought a new television!’ Julia remarked, staring round. ‘I must say, it’s ridiculously large.’
I smiled to myself, thinking how out of place the elderly lady seemed in this modern setting, but Kyle quickly put her at her ease. She was soon sitting up very straight next to me on the sofa, sipping a cup of tea and discussing her mother’s memoir.
When I showed her Bird’s letter to the baby she gave away, she did not seem surprised.
‘I suspected who you were,’ she mumbled, returning it to me. ‘That’s really why I gave you Mummy’s papers.’
‘You didn’t say so before,’ I said surprised.
‘I had no evidence, but I thought you’d work it out, too.
What Bird did, the shame it brought, broke my mother, ruined her hopes.
She should never have married my father; they made each other miserable.
You can’t imagine what it was like for me, growing up.
After my father left, I was all she had and I never had the courage to leave her. ’
I listened with dismay, feeling sorry for her, but I needed to know more. ‘What happened to Bird?’ I asked gently. ‘I know when she died, but did you ever meet her?’
‘No. My mother said that after Bird recovered from having the baby, she was sent to live with one of my grandmother’s old schoolfriends.
But she ran away. Went to London and studied art.
Who paid for that, I’d like to know. Anyway, it made my mother even more bitter.
Bird had got what she wanted, you see. And lived a very rackety life by all accounts. ’
‘As free as a bird, like her name,’ I murmured, rather pleased by this idea. ‘But do you really think it was her fault? Her oppressive father, an older man who seduced her… Things were loaded against her. And her baby was taken away.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ Julia sighed. ‘I only ever had my mother’s side of the story.’
‘It’s awful that Diana was so unhappy,’ I said carefully, ‘but what happened to Bird is no longer considered shocking. You don’t need to be so secretive anymore. People will understand.’
‘My mother never accepted that,’ Julia said briskly.
‘Did Bird every marry?’ I thought to ask.
‘She did and had another child, I believe.’
Another child! More family to explore. ‘I wondered if Gran ever learned any of this,’ I sighed. ‘And what she’d have thought.’
I glanced at Julia and was alarmed to see the old lady’s face crumple. Kyle and I exchanged looks of dismay and Jess pushed his doggy head into her lap. What on earth had I said to cause this?
‘She came to the house once, your grandmother, Bird’s daughter.’ Julia whispered, clutching at Jess. ‘Many years ago now. Asked for Bird. My mother had to tell her she was dead.’
I gasped. ‘Gran was too late? How awful.’
‘That’s not the worst of it. Mummy wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Sent her away. Told her never to come back.’
For a moment we all sat in silence. I was stunned. So that was why Gran had called the Rutherfurds ‘high and mighty’. They’d rejected her. Poor Gran. And I finally understood quite how bitter Diana must have been.
Julia took a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. ‘That’s it,’ she croaked. ‘You know everything now. It’s a weight off my mind to tell you, I must say. But I’ve decided how to make amends.’
‘To make amends?’ Kyle echoed.
‘Yes. You’re right – the time for secrets is over. Amy, if you want to write about it all, I won’t stand in your way.’ She sat up straight, a red spot of emotion on each cheek and I thought she was being rather brave.
I looked at Kyle and saw he was looking at me. Agreement passed between us.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked her. ‘It’s quite a story, but I’d do it very sympathetically.
After all, I’m family now. And our readers are very soft-hearted.
’ Although the Rutherfurds had done badly by Gran, now was the time to cast sunlight on dark corners, to explain and perhaps to forgive. And Amaya, my boss, would be delighted!
‘Kyle keeps telling me the world has changed,’ Julia sighed, ‘but he assures me Farthington House will always be my home and that’s enough.
My only hope is that there will continue to be Rutherfurds living here.
’ There was no mistaking the meaning of the look she gave first Kyle and then me and again I felt myself blush. Really, the woman was very tactless.
She rose awkwardly, and called the dog to her, leaving no chance for us to reply. Instead, Kyle saw her out and I joined him at the door to watch her small, upright figure cross the softly lit garden, Jess at her heels.
‘Well,’ Kyle said, quietly shutting the door. ‘She’s certainly given us our orders!’
‘I’m so sorry. The cheek of…’ I started to say, then saw his eyes crinkling with fun and we both burst out laughing.
‘Dear Aunt Julia,’ Kyle said, when we stopped to draw breath.
‘Indeed,’ I said. I noticed Diana’s memoir, still on the table next to Bird’s letter. ‘She’s left that for us, so I suppose she means what she says. You have a story for your guidebook.’
‘And you have an angle for your magazine article.’
I stood silently for a moment, hugging myself, thinking.
The story of the Rutherfurds had become personal.
‘It’s all about families, isn’t it? How we learn to understand and forgive one another.
I’m not sure how to tell it yet,’ I explained in a wobbly voice.
Suddenly, tears welled up. ‘Sorry,’ I said, brushing them away.
In a swift moment, Kyle was before me, his gaze tender, concerned.
‘There’s too much for me to take in,’ I croaked. ‘I keep thinking about poor Gran, finding out she’s adopted, too late to find her birth mother, then being turned away by Diana. She must have felt… so alone.’
Gently, Kyle put his arms round me and I rested my cheek on his shoulder. He felt so strong and comforting and we stood like that for a while, gently swaying, until I recovered.
‘It is a lot to take in,’ he murmured in my ear, ‘but there’s plenty of time.
You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,’ and I understood that in that moment something had changed between us.
We truly cared about one another. I straightened in his arms and staring up at him, I saw that he’d sensed the change, too.
Slowly, wonderingly, I cupped his face in my hands and our lips met in a long kiss.
There was so much to think about, to get used to. He and I must each reassess the past, embrace our new extended family and learn to trust the future, but there was something about which I felt certain. In Kyle Rutherfurd’s arms, I’d come home.