Chapter 9
NINE
The following morning, Jules was sitting on the sofa reading a magazine when she saw Tasha walking up the path. She waved through the window and went to the front door.
‘Hello. What can I do for you?’
‘Carrie rang. Said you were short of eggs, so I’ve brought some.’ She held out a brown cardboard box. ‘Laid this morning.’
‘Thank you. Did you find Scattihen?’
Tasha lifted the lid and pointed to a creamy pink egg.
‘That’s hers. She reappeared last night. We’ve no idea where she’s been, but she still had all of her feathers.’
‘That’s a relief.’
Jules took the box and Tasha hovered on the doorstep.
‘Do you want to come in?’ she asked. ‘I was just about to make a coffee.’
Tasha bit her lip.
‘Mum says not to bother you.’
‘You’re not bothering me. I wouldn’t have asked otherwise. I don’t want to get you into trouble though.’
‘I’m always in trouble. Coffee sounds nice, although Mum says it’s bad for my skin.’
‘But good for you in other ways. I won’t tell her if you don’t.’
Tasha smiled and Jules stepped back to let her pass. She wandered around the kitchen, trailing her fingers across the worktops as Jules scooped mahogany grains into the cafetiere.
‘When Mum goes away, I hope that she won’t come back. That’s wrong, isn’t it? Abnormal?’
Jules looked back over her shoulder.
‘Not necessarily.’
Tasha screwed up her nose a little.
‘Two days is the average time she’s gone. I wish she’d stay away longer.’
‘We all need to get away sometimes and this is quite a small island.’
‘Dad doesn’t,’ Tasha said. ‘He says that there’s nowhere better than here.’
‘That must be nice. To feel so settled.’
‘Mum thinks it’s boring here. She thinks Dad’s boring.’
Jules placed the cafetiere and mugs on the table.
‘And what about you? What do you think?’
Tasha carefully poured the tiniest bit of milk into her coffee.
‘I want to see the world.’
She looked at the ginger biscuits as if she really wanted one, but was trying to resist, then turned sideways on the chair and stretched herself upwards.
‘Do you think I’m fat?’
Jules looked at the chiselled cheekbones, the slim hips, the delicate wrists. A blast of wind from the Solent and Tasha looked as if she could be carried on the air currents to the mainland.
‘No, of course not…’
‘Mum does. She’s always telling me to hold my stomach in, not to slouch, that sugar’s bad for me. She never allows me syrup in my coffee when we go out. She only lets me have coffee if I insist.’
‘Your mother is very elegant.’
‘She used to do a bit of modelling, but she wasn’t good enough to make the big time.’
‘Is that where she goes,’ Jules asked, ‘when she goes to the mainland, to do some modelling?’
Tasha laughed out loud. It was short and sharp.
‘Oh no! She goes to see an old boyfriend. They’re just friends now – or so she says.’
‘Well, perhaps they are. It is possible to be friends with old boyfriends.’
Tasha raised an eyebrow and immediately Jules thought of Gavin. She could never be friends with him.
‘Mum prefers male friends to female ones.’
Tasha said ‘friends’ in a specific way.
‘Some women do.’
‘She wanted to be friends with Guy, but until Carrie came, he wasn’t interested in anyone, least of all Mum. She’s not his type. So she turned her attention to Lance. Even did a course at the pottery.’
Jules took a biscuit. They were very moreish.
‘But she was too impatient.’
‘It can take time to get the hang of it,’ Jules said.
Tasha threw her a withering look.
‘Not with the pots, with Lance.’
‘Oh!’
‘You know his wife died?’
‘Yes.’
‘He puts Erin and Fitz first, above everything. Did your dad do that, put you first?’
Jules thought for a moment.
‘He tried to, but my mother was, is quite needy.’
Tasha nodded.
‘I get that. Dad’s always trying to keep the peace. He thinks I wind Mum up on purpose.’
‘Do you?’
Tasha stared at her and clasped her cup so tightly her knuckles turned white.
‘Mum only has to look at me to get wound up. She says I have a surly face.’ Tasha lifted her chin and tilted her head to one side. ‘Do you think I have a surly face?’
‘No, I don’t.’
She smiled and reached for a biscuit, taking a mouse bite from the edge.
‘I have a theory that she resents me because I ruined her figure. I know that I wasn’t an easy baby because she’s always telling me.
Apparently, the birth was horrendous. She thinks she should have had a caesarean, but in the end, she gave birth naturally.
She lost a lot of blood and had to have a transfusion.
We’ve never bonded. That happens, doesn’t it? ’
‘Sometimes, but you mustn’t blame yourself.’
‘Do you think that deep down we can remember our birth and being inside the womb and whether we were wanted? Do you think that affects us and our relationships with people, with ourselves?’
‘Wow, um… those are big questions. I don’t know. They do say that we never forget anything and there’s so much we still don’t know about memory and how the body and brain work. It must have been hard for your mum to go through that experience though.’
‘She bonded with Will straight away. He was an easy baby apparently. Erin was really wanted, too. Her mum had had a couple of miscarriages. She and Lance didn’t think they could have children so when she came along it was like a miracle. She was adored from the get-go. You can tell, can’t you?’
Jules thought back to the girl she’d briefly seen at the pottery; her lovely heart-shaped face, smiling eyes and upturned lips. In spite of the sadness she’d suffered, she looked balanced and secure.
‘Yes, I think you can.’
‘And Fitz, too. They really wanted him. So much that Erin’s mum delayed having chemo rather than risk losing the baby. Erin says that probably cost her life.’
‘That’s very sad.’
‘Lance talks about her a lot and there are photos everywhere in the house. Erin says that her dad does his best to make up for them not having a mum. He always says the three of them are a team. He doesn’t do anything without asking them.
I think Mum’s jealous of how close they are.
She doesn’t like me going to the pottery much, but Erin’s my best friend and Granny stands up for me. I love it there. It’s so chilled.’
‘What are you making?’
‘Another jug. I’m getting quite good at them now.’
Suddenly she sat up straighter.
‘When I’m sitting at that wheel, I forget about everything else, about Mum and Dad and problems at school, and being fat and what I’m going to do with my life that will make everyone happy.’
Jules stared at her for a moment, at her beautiful translucent skin with its smattering of freckles, at her long, wavy hair, at her blonde-tipped eyelashes.
‘I felt the same when I was there,’ Jules said. ‘Totally absorbed. I’ve had a bad time. Someone, a man who I thought I loved, has let me down very badly. Taken money from me.’
‘Taken your trust,’ Tasha said, softly.
‘Yes.’
‘In everything?’
‘I thought so, until I came here. Of course, I had Carrie. She is one of the best friends anyone could have.’
‘Like Erin.’
Jules nodded.
‘We all need a friend like that. I nearly lost Carrie. Don’t you let that happen with Erin. Don’t let some silly argument jeopardise your friendship.’
‘But when you sat at the wheel,’ Tasha said, ‘you felt better?’
Jules gazed out of the window towards the side garden where birds were pecking seed from the feeder which Guy had filled yesterday while they were out.
‘It was like – like the aftermath of delivering my first baby. A feeling of contentment, of knowing that this was something I could do, was meant to do, does that sound weird?’
Tasha shook her head.
‘Do you believe in reincarnation?’
‘Oh, my goodness, that’s another big question, especially for a midwife. I’m not sure. I’ve noticed how uncanny it is that after one person passes on from a family, a new baby arrives as if to fill the space.’
Tasha started to blush.
‘You’ll think I’m stupid if I tell you this. I haven’t even told Erin.’
‘I won’t think you’re stupid at all, but if it’s something that you’ll regret telling me afterwards, then don’t. Some things are best kept to yourself.’
She thought of Gavin. She couldn’t imagine ever telling anyone how he had treated her, how she had allowed herself to be duped.
Tasha paused.
‘It’s just that I feel as if I’ve thrown pots before, in a previous life maybe.’
‘And maybe you have.’
‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Carrie’s the person you should be talking to about all of this. I’m more of a black and white person, or I was.’
She thought how mixed up she must sound. Was this the sort of person she had thought she’d become when she was fourteen?
Tasha glanced around the kitchen.
‘This house has a nice atmosphere, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, very.’
‘Whoever lived here before must have been happy and kind. Houses absorb the atmosphere of their occupants, I think.’
‘That’s a nice thought.’
‘Mum wanted this house, you know.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Guy’s gran, Irene, is related to my gran, Rita, and their great-aunt lived here – Agnes, she was called.
She never married, but because Gran had inherited the farm, and Irene had had a difficult time with her husband leaving, Agnes left the cottage to Irene who then made it over to Guy. Mum was spitting.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not. Mum would have ruined it. She’d have put a whacking great extension on the side and taken the heart out of it.
When Guy was doing it up, I used to come and sit in the garden.
Sometimes I’d hide under the willow’ – she paused – ‘but I’d always check before I went into the space in case someone else was there, not physical people, but spirits. It’s one of their favourite places.’
‘Oh?’
‘Not that I’ve seen them. Just a wispy shape here and there. Gran’s seen them, too, when she’s been in the cottage cleaning and she’s heard them whispering. Have I scared you?’
Jules shook her head.
‘No, not at all.’