Chapter 12
TWELVE
Jules had gone upstairs in an absolute panic.
What a nightmare. How on earth had she allowed herself to agree to that?
And how was she going to get out of it? Poor Lance.
He had gone pretty quiet, too, probably worried about being lumbered with a nervous wreck of a woman for a whole day.
She longed to lie down, preferably with the curtains drawn and the duvet pulled right up over her face.
From the bedroom window she watched the three of them wandering around the garden, Lance pointing out different flowers and shrubs, Erin doing a cartwheel across the lawn and Tasha saying something which made them all laugh.
She pulled on jeans and a T-shirt with La Dolce Vita emblazoned across the front, washed her face, brushed her hair and applied a touch of lip gloss.
‘You’d never know,’ she whispered, looking at herself in the mirror, ‘that on the inside you are a complete and utter quivering wreck.’
‘Do you think it’s going to rain?’ Jules asked, standing on the back doorstep and looking up at the sky, hoping for a black cloud. Rain might force them to postpone this outing until another day and then she could be otherwise engaged.
‘Twenty percent chance at twelve o’clock apparently,’ Tasha called.
‘Oh!’
‘The weather forecast is almost as important as religion in our house,’ Tasha said with a grin. ‘It’s a bit like a cup of tea and prayers. Granny couldn’t possibly start or end the day without any of them.’
‘Does twenty percent warrant an umbrella?’ Jules asked.
‘You’re asking someone who doesn’t even own an umbrella, just coats with hoods.’
‘That sounds much more practical, but my coat doesn’t have a hood so perhaps I’ll put an umbrella in my basket just in case.’
‘What have you got in there?’ Tasha asked, peering into the wicker basket which Jules put on the garden table.
‘Cardigan in case it turns cold, flip-flops in case it goes really hot, sun cream, water bottle, sun hat, book to read, small sketchpad and pencils, scarf…’
‘Scarf!’ Tasha scoffed. ‘You don’t need a scarf. This is summer on the Isle of Wight, the driest, warmest place in the British Isles.’
Jules pressed her lips together.
‘Maybe you’re right. I’ll take the scarf out.’
‘And I can see a packet of biscuits and some plasters. Oh, my goodness, there are bananas in here, too, and something wrapped in foil.’
She took out the packet and sniffed it.
‘Is that cheese?’
‘It’s a protein snack.’
‘There’s a tearoom there, you know, and don’t forget our picnic.’
‘Going around interesting buildings makes me hungry,’ Jules said. ‘I get these blood sugar dips from taking in all the information…’
‘Okay, the biscuits can stay,’ Tasha agreed. ‘Don’t want you keeling over on us. Are you planning to leave some of this in the car or carry it around with you, because this basket’s pretty heavy? If you take this much just for a day out, I’d hate to go on holiday with you.’
‘I like to be prepared for any eventuality.’
‘Like my dad,’ said Erin, coming to stand next to them and rolling her eyes at Tasha. ‘Flares in case we get lost between here and Carisbrooke, stretcher in case one of us falls off the battlements…’
‘…hot air balloon in case we need to make a getaway from the inner courtyard,’ Tasha added with a giggle. ‘What is it with grown-ups?’
‘I can hear what you’re saying,’ Lance said, strolling across the grass towards them, ‘and you may mock, but remember that time Fitz fell exploring rock pools at that remote beach in Devon and I hadn’t got any plasters to put over his badly cut knee. I learnt my lesson the hard way.’
‘Jules has got emergency supplies, too,’ Tasha piped up.
‘Then we must be ready to go,’ Lance said, throwing her a warm smile.
She locked the back door and took a deep breath. There was no getting out of it.
As they drove along the country roads Tasha and Erin chatted away in the back about schoolfriends and boys and things they’d watched on YouTube while Lance stared studiously at the road.
‘Here we are,’ he said, after about fifteen minutes, and Jules realised she had intermittently been holding her breath the whole way.
He turned the car down a small lane with houses either side before it opened up suddenly into an entrance to the car park, the castle walls towering to the left.
He flung open his car door as if he, too, was in a hurry to get out.
‘We’ll come back and get the picnic and anything else we need later,’ he said to the girls. ‘Why don’t we meet in our usual place at one o’clock?’
Jules felt her panic levels rising. She’d thought they’d all be wandering around together. Tasha swung a neat little bag over her shoulder and made eye contact.
‘We’re going to look at the donkeys, Jules. Do you want to come? They’re really cute.’
‘Oh, thank you, that would be…’
‘Dad always gets a coffee first,’ Erin interrupted. ‘I bet you’d rather do that, wouldn’t you? Adults always need a coffee as soon as they get somewhere.’
She didn’t know what to say.
‘Well, I’m not desperate,’ she said, but the girls had scampered ahead across the car park towards the entrance.
Lance looked at the sky.
‘Don’t think you’ll be needing your umbrella just yet. Anything else you want to bring with you?’
She shook her head and he locked the car.
‘Erin’s right, I do like to get a coffee when we first arrive,’ he said, as they walked beneath the gateway. ‘But you’re not stuck with me.’
For the first time he looked at her directly.
‘Sorry if you feel as if you’ve been press-ganged into this. Erin and Tasha can be a pretty determined double act. You look as if you could do with a drink of something.’
She nodded and made a mental note to never let anyone talk her into anything like this again.
They sat at an outside table in the little courtyard, which was a real sun trap, and Jules began to wish she’d brought her hat, but daren’t suggest going back to the car to get it.
‘This was the first place I came to with my wife when we arrived on the island,’ Lance said, gazing around.
OMG, Jules thought, as if it hadn’t felt bad enough, now it seemed that she was getting in the way of some pilgrimage to his wife’s memory.
She spooned some of the froth from her coffee into her mouth.
‘She found it so easy to settle on the island. There were plenty of times when I wondered if we’d done the right thing, but Sarah was always sure.
I trusted her judgement. She was rarely wrong.
She could turn her hand to anything creative, but really, she was an artist, always sketching, always stopping to examine a seed head or watch how the light changed from one moment to the next.
I’ve got hundreds of her notebooks, all full to bursting with ideas.
She was drawing right to the end. It was a part of her.
Always looking to the future. She was a very positive person. ’
He closed his eyes and turned his face upwards towards the sun while Jules let the statement hang between them.
‘It’s a wonderful quality to have,’ he said softly. ‘I think she was born with it.’
How lucky, Jules thought. He opened his eyes and concentrated on the sparrows pecking away at crumbs beneath their table.
‘Sometimes I think we should stop coming here, but Sarah made us promise to come back at least once a year. I think it helps Erin to feel closer to her mum.’
‘I’m sorry. It must have been really hard.’
‘It would have been even harder without Erin and Fitz. They were the reasons I kept going. Otherwise, I’d probably have packed it all in and headed back to London.
Sarah knew that. Made me commit to staying for at least a year after she’d gone.
My friends and family thought I was mad.
Sarah’s mother was desperate for us to go back to the mainland, and I felt really guilty about that.
She’d lost her daughter and wanted her grandchildren back.
To be honest I couldn’t see how I would make it work on my own, but I was determined not to break my word. ’
He almost sounded out of breath as if he hadn’t spoken so many sentences all together with such emotion for a very long time.
‘And you didn’t.’
‘No, I didn’t and that was largely due to the way people rallied around in a way I couldn’t ever have imagined.
Friends that Sarah had made helped out in so many ways.
She made friends easily. Even when she was really ill, she could still sit at a table in the pottery café and strike up a conversation with a complete stranger and create a bond.
A couple of them came back a few months later and gave me commissions. ’
He paused as if to collect himself.
‘That was incredibly kind. It was a lifeline and gradually I realised that it might be easier to stay than I’d thought. Then there was Rita. She was amazing, checking in, bringing food, taking Erin under her wing and Fitz for walks in his buggy. I’ll never be able to thank her enough.’
Jules smiled.
‘Rita is amazing. I knew that from the first time I met her. In fact, no, from before that. I sensed it from the first time I heard her voice over the phone when we were booking the cottage for Carrie. Although she’d hate me to say it, she’s the epitome of goodness.’
‘She was the one person who didn’t put any pressure on me,’ Lance said.
‘She was just there when I needed her without expectation of anything in return. There was no suggestion of ‘moving on’ which is what some of my old friends started talking about after an indecently short amount of time. They were urging me to get out there, meet someone else, find a ‘mother’ for the children. If I’d gone back, they’d have been setting me up and I didn’t want that.
I also didn’t want to have to summon the energy to fight their well-meaning intentions.
All of that was taken up with getting through each day.
The memories could, can, be difficult though.
A new start might have helped with those. ’