Chapter Eleven
Harriet spent Friday night bingeing on a DVD box set and drinking wine, trying to stave off loneliness. She couldn’t believe she actually missed the constant squabbling, Mallory’s huffy sighs, William’s constant energy, but she did. She missed Mallory’s persistent eye rolls, and William’s relentless wrestling, and Chloe’s snuggles. She missed it all.
She tried to sleep in on Saturday morning but by eight o’clock she gave up and went downstairs, making herself a coffee and taking it out into the garden. It was a lovely spring morning, all lemony light and fresh, dewy grass—sadly they didn’t have any garden furniture. The enormous wooden set from the Old Rectory had been sold along with everything else, but as she perched on the steps by the French windows, Harriet wished they’d kept a few things. Unfortunately in late January, with everything bleak and frozen, she hadn’t considered that she might one day need garden furniture. That she might want it.
She sipped her coffee and tried to ignore the fact that her bum was getting wet, wondering if she could rouse herself to do some gardening or if she should wait until the children returned so they could do it all together, a proper family activity with Chloe scattering seeds willy-nilly, William trampling over everything, and Mallory complaining the whole while. She smiled at the thought.
Eventually, she went inside and showered, and then spent the next few hours tidying up and doing laundry. By lunchtime she was ready for a change of scene, and she pulled on her welly boots and headed out, away from Willoughby Manor, towards the Lea River.
She hadn’t explored much of the immediate area since moving to Willoughby Close, but when the children had been small she’d taken them for walks along the river; she had a distinct memory of William splashing in the shallows and getting soaked while she stood on the banks, Chloe strapped to her chest in a baby carrier, feeling thoroughly fed up.
Now she picked her way along the muddy footpath, enjoying the stillness, the twitter of birdsong and the gentle quacks of a few ducks paddling happy in the water. It was perfectly peaceful, and Harriet tilted her head to the sunlight, wanting only to enjoy this moment to the full. To live in the present, not the mirey past or the uncertain future.
She ended up at the top of the high street, above the school, having crossed the river on a rickety little footbridge she’d forgotten existed. Wychwood-on-Lea had emptied out over the holidays as people went in search of sunshine elsewhere, and so she meandered down the high street, almost feeling like a tourist in her own town.
On impulse she popped into the teashop; it felt like a lifetime ago when she’s stumbled in there to avoid a couple of gossipy mums. Olivia was standing at the till, and she smiled as Harriet came in.
“Hello! I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I know.” Harriet smiled back as she shed her jacket. “Sorry, I’m tracking mud in, aren’t I? You are open, I hope?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Lovely.” Harriet sat down at one of the spindly little tables and perused the laminated menu that had been stuck between the salt and pepper shakers. “I’ll have…” She was about to order the sensible carrot and coriander soup when she changed her mind. This was her holiday, after all. “I’ll have the full cream tea, please.”
Olivia grinned. “Coming right up.”
Harriet sat back in her chair, feeling strangely satisfied with her decision. Gone were the days of gym workouts and protein shakes and no desserts, the endless chasing after some ideal that she never quite managed to attain. She might have a bit of a poochy tummy, but at least she didn’t have to starve herself in order to replicate the thin, ropy look of the well-worked out mum.
Sitting there enjoying the sunshine she realized she hadn’t been aware of how she’d changed over the last few years, only the sense that she always had to keep up—whether it was workouts, diet, clothes, cars, or childrearing. Everything had turned into a competition—often silent, implicit, but nevertheless threatening and toxic. Was that thanks to friends like Sophie, or to her own ambition to be part of the in-set? To feel important? Was that what Richard hadn’t liked?
If she was different now, would he love her again? Did she want to take that risk?
Olivia brought her the cream tea—two scones piled with cream and jam, a pot of tea and a cup, and plenty of milk and sugar.
“Thank you,” Harriet said, and dug in.
“You seem in a better mood this time,” Olivia offered a little while later, as Harriet polished off her second scone, feeling quite replete.
“Do I?” Harriet let out a laugh and then covered her mouth as a little burp escaped her. “I suppose I am in a better mood. Mostly.” Which was odd, in a way, because so much in her life was still wrong, or at least uncertain. And yet she was starting to feel surer of who she was, or at least who she could become. Again.
Olivia propped her elbows on the counter. “What does that mean?”
“Well, nothing’s really changed,” Harriet admitted on a sigh. “Life is still pretty dismal in a lot of ways. But…” She blew out a breath. “I feel better, at least a little. Readier to face whatever comes. I think.” She let out a laugh. “That doesn’t sound very good at all, does it?”
“Seems pretty decent to me.” Olivia shrugged. “Can’t ask for more, can you, really?”
“No,” Harriet said reflectively. “I suppose not.”
She spent the rest of the day cracking on with the housework, and then that evening she finished both the box set and the wine. Loneliness was starting to creep in, like a morning mist, obscuring everything, cold and damp. She missed her kids. Amazingly, already.
Then Richard rung at half past eight, and Harriet fell on the phone like the lifeline it had become. “You could have called before,” she said, no hello, and then she winced at how accusatory she sounded. She needed to start building bridges, but she was still finding it so hard. “It would have been nice to know how everyone was,” she said in a more moderate tone. “I’ve been worried.”
“They’re fine,” Richard said. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. We were at the beach all day, at Holkham. It’s gorgeous out, sunny and warm.”
“Is it?” She pictured the endless blue sky, the stretch of near-white sand, the placid sea, and felt a shaft of longing. “And the children are behaving themselves?”
“Yes, more or less.” Richard gave a little laugh. “Mallory has some attitude and William has some energy, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. It’s good to be together.”
“Oh. Well. Good.” Was she disappointed that Richard seemed to be coping?
Had she wanted him to complain and moan about how difficult everything was, and how on earth Harriet managed it every day? Well, yes. Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. Maybe she wanted to be needed, in this at least, because he damn well hadn’t needed her in anything else.
“How have you been?” The note of concern in his voice rubbed her raw. Goodness, but she was prickly.
“I’m fine. I had a very productive day, sorting the house out and then I went for a lovely, long walk and had an enormous cream tea in the village.”
“Did you? That’s brilliant.” Richard sounded genuinely pleased. “Where did you go?”
“That little teashop on the high street. I’ve always meant to go in there but never did.” Except for that one time, when she’d been avoiding the other mums.
“I’m glad you finally found the time. And,” Richard continued, “I’m glad you’re having a proper rest. You deserve one, after everything.”
“Oh.” Harriet cleared her throat, unsure how to respond. This was a change from the blame back at the pub. But perhaps she shouldn’t judge Richard from that one heated exchange. “Well,” she said, for lack of anything better to say.
“Do you want to talk to the children?”
“Yes, please.” She spent the next few minutes trying to draw out more than monosyllabic answers from Mallory, and then trying to keep track of Chloe’s breathless monologue about everything they’d done since getting in the car yesterday afternoon, starting with the huge bag of wine gums Richard let them eat in the car, the fact that William was very nearly sick because of said wine gums, and that Chloe really didn’t like the green ones.
“But after the car journey,” Harriet said patiently. “How are things in Norfolk? Did you enjoy the beach at Holkham?”
“Oh, yes,” Chloe said, and then launched into another long description of the beach and all of its wonders.
Harriet tried to ignore the pang of homesickness she felt at hearing all about it, and wishing she was there. It had only been twenty-four hours and she missed her children rather desperately. She missed Richard too, but she wasn’t going to think about that.
By the time she got off the phone with Chloe, the pang had become a physical ache. She had no appetite anymore for either the boxed set or the wine, and she went to bed, curling up on her side, leaving space for Richard even though it had been months since they’d shared a bed and he was nearly two hundred miles away.
The next morning she tackled the garden, raking up dead, damp leaves and pulling weeds in preparation for the fun stuff she planned to do with the children—planting seeds and putting in bedding plants.
It felt good to be outside; the day was warm and balmy, the sun shining down, the birds twittering in the trees. Stupidly she missed the thwack of William’s football against the wall.
“Hey.”
Harriet looked up from the patch of elder weed she’d been trying, without much success, to uproot, and saw Ellie smiling over the wall that separated their gardens.
“Hello,” Harriet said. “I thought you’d gone up to Manchester.”
“We got back this afternoon. A quick trip. I thought you’d all gone, actually. I haven’t heard the children at all.”
“They really are that noisy, aren’t they?”
“I don’t mind. It’s nice to have some noise, after we’d been on our own here. It felt a bit lonely before.”
“Yes, I know what you mean.” Harriet straightened, wincing at the crick in her back. She was forty next September and she was feeling it. “I wonder if anyone will ever move into numbers three and four.”
“Jace says someone has been looking at number three, at least,” Ellie replied. “But he won’t tell me any details.”
“He’s a bit of a dark horse, isn’t he?”
“He knows how to be discreet. He wouldn’t tell me anything about you before you came except that you were a single mum.”
“Ah.” Harriet wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
“Sorry, should I not have said?”
“No, it’s fine.” She was a single mum, more or less. “The kids are with Richard though, actually, for the entire week.”
Ellie cocked her head. “Is that a good thing?”
“Yes, of course.” Harriet spoke a little too quickly. “It’s good for them to see him and I could certainly do with a bit of a break.” And she’d had her bit, and now she was done.
The realization was galling. It seemed she couldn’t be happy either way… with the kids or without them.
“If you’re on your own this week, you ought to come out,” Ellie said. “We could get a group together—Anna is visiting Colin on the weekend. What if we all had dinner?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know Colin and Anna.”
“Oh, you’ll love them,” Ellie assured her. “Colin did the renovations on Willoughby Close, and his girlfriend lives in New York. She stayed here, before anyone moved in, I think. Anyway, I’ll try to arrange it.”
Ellie seemed so pleased about the idea that Harriet felt she had no choice but to agree—and really, why not? It wasn’t as if she had much of a social life anymore. She needed to make some new friends, even if the thought filled her with trepidation.
She spent the rest of the day mucking about the house, trying not to feel lonely. She looked at some nearby spas online, but the treatments she’d once booked without a care in the world now seemed ridiculously expensive.
“Seventy-five pounds for a facial,” she exclaimed aloud. “What do they even put on your face? Gold dust?”
When the phone rang she jumped on it, but it wasn’t Richard as she’d expected. It was her dad.
“Hello, love,” he said, and the familiar, affable sound of his voice had a wave of homesickness crashing over her so hard and fast she felt as if she were drowning, which was strange, because she hadn’t been homesick for Birmingham, for her parents, in years.
“Hey, Dad.” Her voice sounded small and tight.
“We were just thinking about you, as it’s the holidays. We usually come down and see you round Easter, don’t we? And I realized we hadn’t planned anything because… well, because you’ve been so busy, I suppose.”
She hadn’t been that busy. She’d been avoiding her parents because she hadn’t wanted to tell them anything. She hadn’t even told them she’d moved, for heaven’s sake. Just updated the phone number and evaded any questions, not wanting her mother to ferret out any information. Not wanting them to worry or wonder what went wrong, or God help her, to pity her.
“Sorry, Dad,” she said now, curling up in a corner of the sofa.
“Don’t be sorry, love. But what about if your mum and I come down this week, see the kiddos for a bit? Are you busy? Going skiing or anything like that?”
Skiing. Harriet wondered if they’d ever ski again. “No, we’re not going skiing. But… the kids are in Norfolk, with Richard and his parents.”
There was a small, telling pause. “Oh,” her dad said, “oh, well, then…” Bless him, he didn’t want to ask if anything was wrong. That was her dad to a tee—always willing to listen, never pushing. The gentlest man Harriet had ever known, and yet in recent years she’d found both her parents a bit exasperating.
They never changed. They’d lived in the same three bedroom semidetached since they’d been newlyweds, hadn’t changed so much as the wallpaper in all that time, as far as Harriet could tell.
She hadn’t actually been back to the house in Birmingham in years—probably since before Chloe was born. The place was so tiny and William kicked around so much—the last time they’d gone, he’d torn apart one of her father’s little model airplanes, the kind he spent hours putting together and painting. As William had torn the wings off, her father had looked stricken, but he hadn’t said a word.
And as for Harriet… she’d been annoyed, she remembered now with a prickling of shame. Not at William, who had only been three, but at her father—for having the planes, for strewing them about, for simply being him.
She’d been annoyed with her mother as well, for the way she bustled about, always fussing with lace doilies and little bowls of stale crisps and nuts nobody wanted. Everything about her old home had felt suffocating and small, and as they’d driven away, clearing the sprawl of Birmingham suburbs and traffic, she’d let out a huge sigh, feeling as if she could breathe properly for the first time all weekend.
She’d escaped that life, its cramped limitations, her old, sad, nerdy self. She’d escaped it—but to what?
“Well,” her father said now, “what about you coming here, then? I know it’s a long way but we’ve got the space and if you’re kicking about…” He trailed off uncertainly, no doubt because Harriet had not accepted such an invitation in years.
“I’d love to,” Harriet said firmly, surprising both of them. Her father let out a little laugh.
“That’s settled, then. When can we expect you?”
Harriet left early the next morning, with dew still glittering on the grass. As she drove out of Willoughby Close, she threw a worried glance back at the manor, looking dark and gloomy against a brilliantly blue sky. She hadn’t visited Lady Stokeley in a week, and she decided then that she’d visit her as soon as she returned, make sure she was hanging in there.
It was only an hour’s drive to the suburban street in Edgbaston where Harriet had spent the first eighteen years of her life. It was strange, driving there by herself—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d done so.
An hour-long drive gave her time to reconsider whether she really wanted to come home. Her mother would be anxious, her father droopy-eyed and sad-smiling, and the house would feel as claustrophobic as it ever did. Besides, what would she do? She’d lost touch with her few friends from secondary school and the neighborhood was now filled with pensioners like her parents, whose primary interests seemed to be crosswords and gossip.
But no, that was mean. She didn’t even know her parents’ neighbors. She certainly couldn’t say whether they gossiped.
Harriet parked her car on the street in front of her parents’ house, and the front door opened before she’d even got out.
Her parents stood framed by the doorway, looking exactly as she’d imagined—her mother’s forehead furrowed with concern, her hands twisted in the pinny she wore over her pressed jeans—she ironed everything—and her father giving her that sad-eyed smile, like a basset hound in a checked shirt.
“You made it,” he called out, as he always did, and her mother gave her a quick smile before bustling back inside, no doubt to put the kettle on. A cup of tea and a piece of Battenburg cake cured all ills in the Stephenson household.
Harriet gave her father a hug, breathing in the familiar scent of Old Spice and mothballs. Her mother insisted on mothballing every item of clothing in the house. It was practically an extreme sport for her. Harriet had gone through school smelling like she was eighty years old, which had not helped her social status one bit.
But now Harriet breathed in the smell gladly as she pressed her cheek against his shoulder and her father’s arms tightened around her in a way they hadn’t since she was a little girl. Hugs had been little more than a brushing of bodies for decades, air kisses on occasion.
He stroked her hair, causing a lump to rise in her throat. “You all right, my girl?” he asked softly, and the tenderness in his voice made her want to cry.
“I… I think so,” Harriet answered her voice muffled against his shoulder as tears burned under her lids. “I’m trying.”
“You know we’re always here for you, no matter what?”
“Yes.” She did know that, absolutely, and the knowledge humbled her, because she hadn’t been there for her parents much at all.
Why had she seen them as an exasperating inconvenience for so long? All right, she knew why—because they could be exasperating, with her mother whisking dishes away before she’d taken more than a bite, and her father’s obsession with model airplanes, and the worried way they looked at everything. All parents became somewhat exasperating to their children, Harriet suspected, but it still made her feel petty and mean. They loved her. That was all that mattered.
She took a step back, sniffing, and her father stepped aside so she could come in.
By the time she’d gone into the lounge her mother had made tea, and came in with a tray complete with pot, cups, sugar, lemon, milk, and hot water. Harriet sank into the armchair by the gas fire that was still in the atrocious pattern Harriet remembered of large pink cabbage roses.
Her mother pressed a cup of tea in her hands and Harriet took it with murmured thanks. It was milky and sweet, just as she’d liked it as a child.
“Well, then,” her father said once they were all seated with their teas. “How can we help?”
The simple practicality of the question, the openness of his expression and the obvious love in her mother’s worried face, all conspired together to undo Harriet completely.
“I…” she began, and then found she couldn’t say anything more.
With trembling hands she put her teacup and saucer on the table, and with her parents looking on in concern, she burst into tears.