It was evening – Emily’s favourite time of day in the shop. The radio was playing, Noah had gone out to meet a friend and it was just her and Kate putting the finishing touches to the paintwork. One wall was left exposed stone, the other three alternated cream and sage green. The shop looked and smelled fresh, clean.
‘So,’ Emily said, the moment the door had closed behind her brother, ‘you talked to Noah yet?’
‘Yes.’ Kate was cautious.
‘Well?’ Emily had been itching to ask, but Noah was always there and by the time they returned to Bluebell Bank at night they were exhausted; she had made time for Lena’s nightly Scrabble matches, but she had been so tired Lena had beaten her easily.
She was a little nervous to ask about Noah in case it inspired the conversation about where Emily had run off to and what she had been doing. She would tell Kate about the panic attacks, about Joe, but she was happy to postpone her confession for a while longer.
‘Emily, you can’t ask me to wheedle my way into Noah’s confidences then expect me to betray them.’
‘He’s a kid,’ Emily said. ‘I’m his sister. I need to know if he’s OK.’
‘He deserves some privacy. He needs it.’ Kate looked uncomfortable. ‘But, yes, I think he’s OK.’
Emily pushed her hair off her face with the heel of her hand and dropped her paintbrush into the tray. Kate was lying on her belly painting skirting boards painstakingly. ‘Good, because, honestly, we were all pretty worried there for a while. He told you what he did, right?’ Kate nodded. ‘Well? What do you think?’
‘I think he must have been feeling pretty desperate. And I’m sure a day doesn’t go past when he doesn’t regret it.’
Emily threw herself down on the floor beside Kate and watched her careful progress along the wall.
Kate looked up. ‘I don’t want to tittle-tattle about him, Em. You wanted me to be a willing ear for Noah and I am, but I won’t gossip about him.’
‘Of course not,’ Emily grumbled, disgruntled. ‘I’m his sister, Kate, not some stranger. I just meant … well, you know, getting expelled is pretty major, and what he did is kind of scary, don’t you think? Mum and Dad don’t know what to do with him.’ She sat back and looped her arms around her legs.
Kate reached the end of the skirting, set her brush aside and came over to join her, throwing herself on the ground with a sigh, stretching her back. ‘He isn’t going to do anything stupid, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ she said. ‘I think he just wants to be left alone for a bit.’
Emily glanced around the walls. ‘That is an amazing colour, like a herb garden, or the sea in stormy light. You were totally right about it. And you’re probably right about Noah too, don’t listen to me, I’m just grumpy because he’d rather talk to you than his own sister.’
‘You asked me to—’
Emily waved a paint-spattered hand. ‘I know. I know. I didn’t say it necessarily made sense, it’s just how I feel.’
‘Talking of things that don’t make sense,’ Kate said. Emily’s heart sank. ‘Want to tell me what you were doing when you ran off the other day?’
Emily became very intent in scraping the paint that had dried around her nails.
‘You sound as if you have some idea what you think I was doing.’ If they were going to make this work, they had to be honest with one another.
‘Phoning Joe?’
Emily looked at her. ‘Bloody Noah,’ she said, getting up and wiping her hands on her jeans. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘No,’ Kate said sternly. ‘Sit down, Em. No running off to make tea as an avoidance tactic. And it was just a theory of his, but I guess it was true, huh?’ Emily gave a non-committal grunt which was all the confirmation Kate needed. ‘Seems like a strange thing to do is all.’
‘It’s just a thing I do, it calms me down.’ Emily felt her hands shake and leapt up again. ‘I’m not avoiding anything, but I will talk better with a paintbrush in my hands. I’m going to start the second coat of the cream.’
She reached for a roller. She dipped and swiped, taking pleasure in the lush sweep of paint.
‘It’s not my place to judge,’ Kate said. She got a brush too and did the fiddly bits along her neat gloss work so that Emily didn’t make a mess. ‘Just sounds like an odd way to get over him. You get to worry about Noah, and we both get to worry about you.’
Emily paused and glanced at her. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘On all counts, I know. But, I saw your face today in the store when we met Luke. You can’t tell me you don’t recognise the pull of first love, or that you don’t understand how downright impossible it can be to truly get over someone who once mattered so much. It’s just … hard, you know.’
What was she doing? She hadn’t meant to bring up Luke and she’d been delighted when Kate hadn’t either. She had been quite happy to pretend he didn’t exist at all, or at least that he wasn’t here, his very proximity threatening this tentative thing she and Kate were building. Emily jabbed her roller savagely into the paint and sprayed an arc of paint onto the wall.
Kate opened her mouth to deny, perhaps to opine that being vaguely overwhelmed by a chance sighting of her childhood sweetheart was very different indeed from clinging to the threads of a worn-out marriage long after they ought to have been let go.
Kate had been trying to put Luke out of her mind, but it wasn’t easy to banish him from her thoughts – not now that they had stood face to face in the same spot, covering the gaps in their histories with those inadequate, enticing, synopses of the lost years; and yes, she wanted to know more. But Luke hadn’t just broken her heart, he’d crushed it; turned her into the ice queen she’d become all through university, when she let no one get close.
It had been love at first glance, from that very first kiss in the woods at the Martyr’s Stake to Kate’s birthday dinner, when Luke first ran the gauntlet of Lena and the brothers; and all the rest of that long, heavenly hot summer, and beyond.
Falling in love and feeling that nothing else mattered, that time was elongated; some moments lasting a lifetime, while hours passed in a heartbeat. And every kiss, every touch, every hungry, lingering glance seemed so significant, so memorable. Which made it all the more impossible to accept when it ended.
Lena had been tight-lipped that night when she picked them up in town, Emily slumping in the back seat: an inebriated Pre-Raphaelite heroine with hair spilling over her face, barely able to control her drunken glee. Kate had been worried Lena would hold Emily’s drunkenness against Luke, but she had liked Luke when she met him – when she realised he hadn’t been the one to ply her granddaughter with drink. Lena was a good judge of character and her approval mattered to Kate more than anyone’s.
On Kate’s fifteenth birthday, after a family dinner at which Luke was guest of honour and Kate could barely eat for awe of him, they had all piled into the woods to light a campfire. Dan remonstrated with Fergus for purloining a bottle of cider from Lena’s cellar with which to toast the special occasion since he, more than the others, was perceptive enough to make the link between the liquor Fergus was trying to press upon them and the mess of Kate’s childhood.
Dan’s sensitivity might have touched Kate, had not she been so wrapped up in Luke, sitting by the fire with the heat licking their faces and the smoky, orange light of the flames in their eyes. That Dan was jealous did not occur to her until much later, when it was too late; she was already completely embroiled. At the end of the summer Dan started seeing some girl from school anyway.
When Luke rode away on his bicycle that night, lights blinking through the blackness between the trees, Kate had returned to the house to find Dan on the doorstep waiting. ‘Be careful,’ he warned; but she only smiled beatifically and hugged him with none of the coyness she would have previously felt, and then dashed up the stairs to regale Emily with a starry-eyed account of Luke’s kisses.
Kate realised she had lapsed into daydream, her brush frozen midway between tray and wall. Emily was looking at her as if she had just proved her point for her. ‘It’s different,’ Kate said reprovingly, leaning over to replenish the paint. ‘You don’t want to talk about him yet, that’s fine, but trust me, it’s different. And what you’re doing is not cool, Em.’
Emily wore the mulish expression she always did when she felt she was being told off. ‘You don’t—’
‘I don’t understand,’ Kate groaned. ‘I’m sick of you telling me I don’t understand because I wasn’t here. Look, Emily, I plan to help you. With all of it. The shop, Lena, Joe … I know we’ve got a lot to talk about, but I just think it’s important to be straight with each other. You’ve never told me what happened between you—’
The shop door swung open and Noah breezed in, putting an end to the conversation: a welcome interruption for Emily, but not so for Kate. She hadn’t liked Joe in the beginning and she didn’t like him now that he was a phantom hovering around and getting in the way. She didn’t like what he’d done to Emily, turning her into this shadow of herself. She intended to get to the bottom of it and help Emily exorcise Joe for good.
*
The following days passed in a blur of laughter, reminiscences and hard work. In the evenings, Kate immersed herself in fabric samples and design ideas on Pinterest, while Emily entertained Lena by recounting their progress; it wasn’t always clear if Lena was taking any of this in, but Emily never gave up telling.
Lena spent her days in the garden amongst her rows of lettuce, kale and cabbage, her raised flower beds and blue tepees of climbing plants. Perhaps the ingrained knowledge of how to turn the soil and commune with her plants would be one of the last things to go, and here Lena felt anchored and solid in her shifting world.
One evening Lena, with her straw hat pulled down over her eyes and wisps of wild, white hair sticking out, noticed Kate meandering among the fruit trees and stopped what she was doing. She tugged off her gardening gloves and threw them to one side.
She reached out to take the proffered mug from Kate. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and Kate looked at her warily, searching for presence, for a trace of the strong woman she had known.
Lena might easily have forgotten her again, think she was the cleaner they had had for a while – a disaster, according to Emily; Lena kept shouting at her and making her cry. Today, in this precious moment, Lena was lucid; she seemed to know Kate, and herself. She sipped her tea with relish and looked around the garden. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s wonderful, Lena. You’ve got a proper business going on here.’
Lena smiled wryly. ‘I always loved gardening. You know where you are with plants.’
People had sometimes confused Lena, with their obfuscations and petty insecurities. She had taught the girls that it didn’t matter what anyone thought of them, only what they thought of themselves. She had taught them to be straightforward. Always be able to meet your own eyes in the mirror.
When Emily got drunk that first night at the Martyr’s Stake, it was not the drinking itself that irritated Lena. ‘So long as you did it because you wanted to, and not to impress anybody,’ she said severely. ‘And so long as you don’t tell your mother this happened on my watch.’
Fergus had been furious at her lenience, claiming it would have been an entirely different story if it was him, or one of the other boys, and perhaps it would.
Emily, who wasn’t precisely sure of her motivations – other than the enticement of Luke’s cute friend named Cam – only that she never meant to let a drop of alcohol pass her lips again, had certainly no intention of telling her mother.
Lena didn’t disapprove of romance of course, only the dissipation of self that sometimes accompanies love. She liked Luke, Kate suspected, mainly because he adored Kate exactly as she was, required no contortions of her personality to suit him. Too often, Kate had learned – post-Luke – that this wasn’t the case with relationships. Lena would have been horrified, had she known, by the girls’ – well, Emily’s – doubtful dithering and nervous vigils by the phone during their university days.
Questioning herself over a man would have been anathema to Lena. Or maybe not, Kate thought, maybe it hadn’t always been that way. Perhaps Lena had once been a love-struck young girl too, desperate to impress.
What Lena might have thought of Joe was a source of wild curiosity to Kate – perhaps eloping was far the easier option when the alternative was having to face Lena’s shrewd stare and explain herself; explain Joe – dissolute, self-indulgent and irresponsible; explain a tumultuous present and an uncertain future. But he has cheekbones to die for, Granny! And when he sings I want to jump his bones right there on the stage.
Somehow, Kate fancied Lena would have forgiven Emily for sleeping with Joe, but not for caring about him, and not for valuing his opinion of her or making herself miserable in marriage.
Sitting in the garden, Kate leaned her head against Lena’s shoulder, just as she would have done as a girl. Automatically, responding to muscle memory and some deep-rooted instinct, Lena put an arm around her and rested one calloused palm against the soft silk of Kate’s hair. There was a hole in Kate’s heart, the size and shape of Lena’s illness. She hated the wavering uncertainty she felt every time she looked at Lena; the capricious whimsy of an illness which seemed simply to please itself. Day to day; moment to moment: unpredictable, cruel in its voracious appetite for memories and personality.
Kate didn’t know the right thing to say. Would Lena be offended if she mentioned her Alzheimer’s? Or more offended if she didn’t. It was difficult to know what was right. Lena would laugh at herself if she could, would find the humour and face the disease with stoic disdain, but she couldn’t because the disease was attacking the very parts of her that made her Lena.
Lena looked down at her, eyes piercing and clear, at the very same moment Kate glanced up. Kate took a breath and sat up straight. ‘What does it feel like?’ she asked.
Lena stretched her booted feet in front of her. ‘That’s not something people ask,’ she said. ‘They’re all too afraid of offending me. You’ve gone all direct and American on us, haven’t you?’
Kate blushed. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to answer that.’
‘It’s …’ Lena paused and looked down the garden, as if seeing through the layers of history she had created; life and love in this house, the rabble of children, grandchildren and dogs she’d raised.
Kate thought she had gone, lost the sense of the moment and the question. Lena looked back at her with eyebrows raised. ‘If people talk about it at all it’s to give me the benefit of their well-meant advice. Treatments, old wives’ tales.’ She smiled grimly. ‘No one ever asks how it feels. And mostly they talk over my head as if I am … dissipating, like smoke.’ She waved a hand, took a breath and let it out slowly. Lena was never one to talk about feelings, but now Kate could see a chink in her armour, a glimpse of the loneliness and fear beneath. ‘I am always waiting to be asked a question to which I will not know the answer,’ Lena said. She drained her cup. ‘It makes you stupid, this infernal disease.’ Her frustration was ripe, sharp on her tongue. She made an impatient, guttural sound then lapsed into silence.
For a while they just sat, letting Lena’s words settle like sediment. Then Lena, said, so quietly Kate had to strain to hear, ‘I wonder if you’ve made things right with that mother of yours yet?’
Kate stilled and said nothing; the question sounded rhetorical but it had hit the mark. She sat for a long moment, contemplating her answer.
She sensed the moment’s passing, between one heartbeat and the next; Lena’s attention wavering and the conversation sinking into the soup of lost things. Lena began to fidget beside her.
She changed the subject quickly. ‘Emily phoned Ally earlier. He’s coming at the weekend. And Jonathon.’
Lena nodded vaguely, a flower nodding in the breeze, but Kate could detect the frantic searching: who were these people? Her kin? Impossible.
‘Thanks, Lena.’ Kate uncurled her legs and stood, her heart breaking a little. She collected Lena’s mug and headed up the path. When she glanced back, Lena had taken up her hoe again and was lost in her work.
Kate was restless as she wound her way up the garden path towards the house. The sun was low, a soft, pale gold light infusing the air and painting the shadows purple. There was still a warmth to it. Kate wanted to find Emily, to ask her to do something: take a walk, have a glass of wine, talk.
Wine was probably a bad idea; she felt heady enough as it was.
Perhaps a walk, she thought, but not to the farm, she didn’t want to see Dan again, not until she had squared away her troublesome feelings.
One of their meandering talks, then, about nothing much, dissolving into laughter, finding everything funny; Emily, acerbic and sharp of wit, not ceasing until Kate was doubled over, holding her ribs and begging her to stop.
But talking no longer seemed as loose and easy as it once had; not when there were so many topics being skirted, half discussed. She was aware of how deftly Emily had dodged the Joe conversation the other day, hiding her obfuscation by launching Luke into the exchange to distract her.
She desperately wanted to spill her heart to Emily about Luke, as she used to; to tell her how she hadn’t been able to put him out of her mind, how the old heartbreak felt fresh, as raw as if it had happened yesterday. And Ben – she needed Emily’s advice about him. Something was holding her back.
Her mobile buzzed in her pocket and Kate pulled it out. Of course, just what she needed right now – a message from her mother.
Kate scrolled through their recent text conversation – misleading to call it that since it was almost entirely one-sided, with only occasional, curt replies from Kate. Lily never stopped trying. She had joined a church, she was busy with a fundraiser, she had a new job as a florist; all breezy, little clean-living proclamations punctuated with smiley faces and exclamation points. The latest read: Just wanted to let you know that I’ve been promoted to manager!!! A real step up. Very exciting!! Hope you are well, how is the Big Apple?
Her mother had begun straightening herself out when Kate went off to uni, completed the turnaround with Kate out of the country. Now she hovered on the fringes, poised like a butterfly, waiting for Kate to notice her new wings. It wasn’t that Kate hadn’t noticed. She just hadn’t a clue how to go about repairing things, or even if she wanted to. She was so afraid of being hurt, and still so angry.
As she set the message aside for later – a time that never seemed to come – Kate realised she hadn’t even told her mother she was in Scotland.