Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
‘Everything okay?’ Lance asked, strolling in a while later, cool box in hand.
‘Fine, except Christabel came for Tasha and she didn’t want to go.’
‘But she was meant to be staying for supper and then I was going to run her back later.’
‘Change of plan apparently. Erin’s pretty fed up, too.’
He shook his head in obvious frustration.
‘My clients work in Bembridge and picked up some crab for me. It’s one of Tasha’s favourites.’
‘That’s kind.’
‘She’s fragile. Needs some TLC. Rita does her bit, but to be honest, Alastair isn’t always there for her as much as he should be.
I don’t suppose you’d like to join us, would you?
I know you might have other plans, and you might not even like crab, but I can rustle something else up to go with the salad if you’d rather. ’
‘I do like crab actually, but…’
She had a sudden feeling of panic.
‘Your mother’s waiting for you.’
‘No. She’s having supper with Jo. I’m just not very good company.’
‘I totally understand,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t mean to pressure you.
When Sarah died people were so kind and they kept inviting us around for meals, but sometimes it just felt too much.
I remember that feeling of wanting to sit at home without having to make polite conversation or make the effort to look as if I hadn’t splintered into a thousand pieces.
Take the crab home with you and eat it in peace. ’
Erin slunk in through the doorway and went to stand next to her father.
‘Sorry, honey,’ he said, ‘Jules told me what happened.’
‘She’s a witch, Dad,’ Erin said as he put his arm around her. ‘Tasha was so upset, and her mum wouldn’t even wait to take the crab for her to eat.’
‘I’ve offered it to Jules. She’s going to take it home with her, so it won’t be wasted.’
Jules looked at Erin’s crestfallen face.
‘No, I’ll stay.’ She glanced at Lance. ‘If the offer still stands and you don’t mind my grumpiness.’
‘Dad can be grumpy with the best of them,’ Erin chipped in.
She glanced at Lance.
‘The offer might not still stand then.’
‘It does,’ he said with an unmistakably thankful smile.
‘We could play cards after we’ve eaten,’ Erin said to Jules. ‘Do you play cards? Dad, Fitz and I play Go Fish sometimes.’
‘I used to play rummy with my dad,’ Jules said. ‘Tell you what, we’ll play both.’
‘Loser has to do the washing up,’ Lance said, laughing, and Jules could hear the relief in the timbre.
‘Thank you so much,’ Lance said, pouring two glasses of rosé. ‘She gets so upset about Tasha, but what can you do?’
Jules looked through the window to where Erin was picking cut-and-come-again salad leaves from a raised bed.
‘It seems to me that you do all you can to provide her with a bit of a sanctuary. She said to me how much she loves coming here.’
He clinked his glass against hers.
‘And we love having her. Here’s to sanctuaries wherever they may be. We all need them, don’t we?’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Jules said.
She couldn’t believe how quickly the evening passed. After supper of crab, salad and new potatoes garnished with fresh dill and parsley butter, Lance disappeared into the café and came back with three little tubs of ice cream.
‘Honeycomb, chocolate and orange, or lemon and raspberry,’ he said.
‘Isle of Wight ice cream,’ Jules said.
‘Made with local milk and cream,’ Lance said. ‘There used to be over three hundred dairy farms on the island. Now there are only ten. You won’t see that many cows around in the fields these days and this company is trying to keep cattle on the island and provide a livelihood for the farmers.’
‘This is a very supportive place,’ Jules said.
‘It has to be,’ Lance said. ‘Any small community has to be supportive, or it won’t just not thrive, it will die.’
‘Mum used to say it was a magical island,’ Erin said. ‘Do you know what wight means?’
‘No, I never really thought about it,’ Jules said, ‘but I presume it’s an alternative spelling for white because The Needles are white. At least, they look white in photographs.’
‘They’re made of chalk,’ Lance said, ‘so they are white, but that’s not the answer.’
‘It means ghost or spirit,’ Erin said.
Jules felt her heart beat a little faster and developed a clamminess at the nape of her neck.
‘But it’s had many different names over time,’ Lance said.
‘The Anglo Saxons called it Wiht which comes from their word for ‘place of the spirits’, but before that the Romans called it Vectis which people think might have derived from the Latin for conquered. The Vikings called it Wightland, and then it was Henry VIII who named it the Isle of Wight. Another theory is that wight used to mean a divide and of course we’re divided from the mainland. ’
‘It is meant to be the most haunted place on earth. Mum used to call it the island of spirits,’ Erin said. ‘I like to think that. I like to think that Mum’s spirit is still here somewhere. Tasha says there are spirits at Hideaway Cottage. Have you seen them?’
‘No. I’m not sure I really believe in that sort of thing.’
‘Don’t you think it’s got a special atmosphere though?’
‘Yes, but that’s not necessarily to do with spirits. It could just be the way the cottage sits in the landscape or perhaps how Guy has done it up with such care.’
Erin threw her a slightly pitying glance.
‘Or it could be that the spirits of the people who lived there before are looking after it like Mum is still here looking after us.’
‘Erin, you’re going to end up scaring Jules. Why don’t we choose an ice cream before they melt?’
He caught Jules’s eye and held her gaze for a moment as if he was looking straight into her soul.
‘Let me guess. You look like a lemon and raspberry person to me.’
She laughed, glad of the change of conversation.
‘You’re absolutely right.’
‘What do you think Dad is?’ Erin asked, pushing the remaining two tubs into the middle of the table.
Jules felt flustered. It’s just an ice cream flavour, she said to herself. It really doesn’t matter one way or the other if you get it right.
‘This is my inscrutable face,’ Lance said, leaning back in his chair.
‘And it is impressively inscrutable,’ she said. ‘You don’t look like you at all.’
And she blushed because it made it sound as if she’d been studying his every feature and really, she barely knew him. so how did she know what he looked like when he was in his own private space, when he was able to be his real self?
‘I think you like both of them,’ she said.
‘That’s opting out,’ Erin said. ‘You’re not allowed to do that.’
‘And you are right,’ Lance said, teasingly. ‘I do like both of them, but I like one slightly more than the other.’
‘Come on, Dad, more than slightly. You’re addicted to one of them.’
Jules thought back and tried to remember which cake he had eaten at teatime that day when she and Carrie had come on the course. It was only a few days ago, but it seemed much longer.
‘You’re overthinking this,’ he said softly.
‘I know.’
She felt like bursting into tears.
‘Trust your instinct.’
But I don’t trust my instinct anymore, she thought, and she looked up at him, her eyes pooling, aware of tears beading on her lashes.
‘Erin, sweetheart, can you go and get some spoons?’ he said, and she scraped her chair back and headed for the dresser. ‘And while you’re there, can you put a bit more food down for Morwenna?’
‘Sorry,’ he whispered to Jules, placing his hand over hers. ‘It really doesn’t matter. It’s just a silly game we play with visitors.’
She felt the warmth of his skin against hers, looked at his nails and a small scab on one of his knuckles where he’d cut himself. She closed her eyes and suddenly felt safe.
‘Chocolate and orange,’ she said, flicking her eyelids open to find him still looking at her intently.
‘Right first time,’ he said.
‘You’d have said that anyway,’ she said, ‘even if honeycomb was really your favourite.’
He shook his head.
‘I wouldn’t,’ he said, ‘because that would be deceitful and I would never want to deceive you, Jules.’
He was a good man, she thought. Christabel was right about one thing, after all. Sarah had been a very lucky woman.
‘You can’t walk now,’ Lance said, ‘it’s getting dark. I’ve only had one small glass of wine so I’ll run you back.’
Erin hugged her as she left.
‘Thank you for staying.’
Jules dropped her head so that her lips brushed Erin’s hair.
‘Thank you for playing cards with me. It was nice.’
‘Even though I beat you?’
‘Maybe we’ll have to have a rematch,’ she said, meeting Lance’s gaze over the top of Erin’s head. ‘Perhaps at Hideaway Cottage and see if Tasha is allowed to come, too?’
‘That would be good, wouldn’t it, Dad?’
‘Let’s see how much time Jules has left on the island before we start booking her up for card games.’
And irrationally she felt rebuffed.
They drove down the lane in silence as the shadows lengthened.
‘When are you going home?’ he asked, pulling up outside the cottage.
Such a difficult question to answer, she thought, because over the last few days this little house had felt like home, but of course it wasn’t.
‘I don’t know.’
She had butterflies in her stomach at the thought of returning to Manchester, to the memories of Gavin, to the responsibility of her job. How long could she stay here tucked away from normal life? How long should she stay?
‘Not that I’m trying to get rid of you,’ he said with a half laugh. ‘I’m sorry if I was a bit curt back there, but I don’t want either of the girls to get too attached to you if you’re not going to be here for long.’
‘I’ve got to go back sooner or later. I can’t hide behind trauma for ever.’
‘Oh, Jules,’ he said, ‘you’re not hiding behind trauma. You’re learning to live with what’s happened. You can’t hurry that. If you go back too soon, to work, to normal life, you might have a relapse.’
His words felt like an enormous hug. She looked up at him, his eyes dark pools, his cheekbones highlighted by the moonlight.
‘Did that happen to you?’ she asked tentatively.