Sam gave her a funny look. ‘Yeah, I get that. But when you’ve called an ambulance for your brother falling down the stairs because he’s too proud to use a stair lift, you start thinking differently about safety.’
His bluntness gave Lorna a cold feeling. ‘Isn’t that up to her, though?’
‘Maybe. Maybe she can train this dog here to call the ambulance … Anyway, now you’re here, give us a hand, will you?’ He nodded at the bath. ‘Sit in here and tell me where you’d want a grab rail to go, if you were a bloody-minded old lady.’
Lorna climbed into the bath feeling as if she hadn’t ended that conversation very satisfactorily. Sam held the plastic rail in place, and when he leaned over her, she could smell his aftershave and the warmth of his skin.
‘That social worker said Mrs Rothery was staying with a friend for a few days. Didn’t realise the friend was you,’ he said, marking a spot on the wall with a pencil.
‘I’ve been walking Bernard. I suppose we’ve got to know each other through that.’ She couldn’t quite place Sam’s tone: was he interested? Annoyed she hadn’t said? ‘And the art, of course.’
‘Oh, right. She knew your mum?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
Lorna was going to tell him more but she stopped. She didn’t feel like explaining about the deal they’d struck, or Joyce’s fear of the care home. For the first time ever she wasn’t sure she trusted Sam with her secrets – and that was something she’d never thought. Ever.
And she couldn’t explore that unsettling thought properly, because it had suddenly occurred to her how sad it was that her mum hadn’t known Joyce. Two artists in the same small community. They could have been friends, they could have challenged each other, supported one another in that mysterious, dark forest of imagination. If Mum hadn’t kept herself in her bubble with Dad …
Sam leaned over to pencil in another mark. His face was within touching distance above her, the hairs of his forearm darkening the skin where his checked shirt sleeve rolled back, but instead of the excitement Lorna always imagined she’d feel, being so close to Sam and free to let something happen, she sensed her soul rolling up protectively around her.
Sam stopped scribbling on the wall and glanced down at her, lying in the bath. ‘You OK?’
‘Fine,’ she said, because words weren’t fitting the hollowness in her heart. Was it the house making her feel so lonely?
In another room upstairs, the dogs were playing: barking and running and skittering. Rudy had never played before, being an old lady’s dog, but now he was puppyish in Bernard’s company. Lorna wished she could wind the clock back ten minutes, so she and Sam could have started this conversation with a laugh, watching the two dogs scamper ineptly. It might have ended better.
‘How’s Hattie?’ He went back to the task in hand. ‘Did you ever find out what all that was about, her turning up like that?’
‘Ask her yourself. She’s coming to stay this weekend,’ Lorna heard herself say. ‘Do you want to come out for a meal? Or are you busy? I guess you are busy, with the farm and stuff, and probably finishing this …’
Sam stuck the pencil behind his ear and regarded her thoughtfully. ‘That’d be nice,’ he said. ‘When?’
And despite everything, Lorna’s heart swooped in her chest, like one of the dark birds in the trees outside, then settled somewhere different in the pit of her stomach.
Chapter Thirteen
Saturday was always a good day for business, and even with a faint mizzle greying the high street outside, this was no exception.
Hattie had arrived in a better mood than last time, and was eager to help out. She was kept busy on the till, selling cards and a number of grown-up colouring books, while Lorna booked in several items to be framed by Archibald the framer in Hartley.
Another of her money-spinning initiatives was ‘creative framing’; Betty’s medal had been set in a beautiful red mount, and now hung in the kitchen to inspire Lorna to be brave and pile on the lipstick. She’d also had five of her old cocktail rings mounted and framed, the fruitgum-sized stones encircled with an old beaded necklace of her mum’s that Lorna loved but never wore; it came back looking amazing, so she’d got Archibald to make some more for a display suggesting how a boring pile of keepsakes could be turned into a Mother’s Day gift to last for ever. Five people had already brought in a shoebox full of cards and photos, and Archibald was making bigger frames.
Mary left before lunch to play golf with Keith; she seemed unusually edgy with Joyce sitting in the back room, knitting like a machine on the small chair by the window.
‘Don’t you two get on?’ Lorna noticed Mary had avoided the back room all day, even though the biscuits were in the office beyond.
‘Oh no! No, nothing like that! Goodness, no!’ Mary seemed flustered, although it could have been the dangerously low level of Hobnobs in her system. ‘It’s just that … Well, Joyce makes me nervous. Doesn’t she make you nervous?’
‘Not nervous. Conscious of talking nonsense, maybe.’ Lorna wouldn’t say she’d got to know Joyce – her polite reserve was just how she was – but since her arrival in Lorna’s flat, the mood had shifted from cordiality to something cautiously approaching personal. In her hospital bed, in her worn leather slippers by the bedroom door, in her spartan bathroom, Lorna had glimpsed what lay beneath Joyce’s shell, but she knew Joyce had also intuited private details about her – how could she have failed to? The family snaps in her bedroom, the art on the walls. It wasn’t their conversations so much as the quiet moments that seemed to be building their connection, the vapour trail left between each exchange about portfolios or the arrangement of canvases.
At three, there was a lull and Lorna made tea for Joyce and Hattie. Joyce took her cup, and showed Lorna her finished dog coat. It was a new one, a flawless Aran, knitted entirely without a pattern.
‘I can see it in my head,’ Joyce said, offhandedly when Lorna expressed her astonishment. ‘Don’t ask me to write it down.’
‘Aren’t you bored of knitting coats?’ Lorna offered Joyce a biscuit from the tin. ‘Are there other things you could knit?’
Joyce shrugged. ‘I have a few ideas … We’ll see.’
Lorna watched the old lady’s expression; her eyes were somewhere else, like Hattie’s. Mulling over ideas, stretching and testing them.
What colours and shapes is she seeing? she wondered enviously. How is her artist’s mind working? But Lorna’s thoughts were broken by Hattie, slouching past, eyes glued to her phone.
‘Don’t forget, we’re having dinner with Sam tonight,’ she said. Hattie nodded vaguely, but didn’t look up from the screen.
Lorna let out a low breath, and when she looked back she saw Joyce was watching them both with a hawkish expression, and she wished she knew what she was thinking.
Sam had chosen the venue for dinner: La Dragon, Longhampton’s new fusion restaurant. It was the third most popular eatery in town, according to TripAdvisor, behind the new burger joint and the evergreen Italian time warp that was Ferrari’s Trattoria and Pizzeria. La Dragon was located opposite the Memorial Hall where Lorna and Jessica had had exactly four tap-dancing classes before Lorna twisted her ankle and Jess refused to go on her own.
‘This is nice,’ said Lorna, looking around the red-checked tablecloths and trendy silver lampshades. Sam was paying. He made a point of telling them when the menus arrived, as if it might affect their choices – which seemed a bit London Sam to Lorna.
‘Isn’t it? I have to tell you, Hattie, it wasn’t always this nice.’ Sam winked at Hattie, who was warily nibbling a piece of lava bread. ‘It used to be a greasy spoon snack bar called Snax. With an “x”. Wall-to-wall plastic tables, and the waitresses were two sisters called Mavis and Doris. They only sold food that could be deep-fried or microwaved.’
‘This was when microwaving was an exciting new concept in Longhampton,’ Lorna explained. ‘Before then, everything was just deep fried.’
‘Wow.’ Hattie looked over her shoulder. A couple were having an awkward date in the corner table, where a jukebox had once been stuck on Wham’s Make It Big for a whole year.
To Lorna’s relief, Hattie’s mouth curved into a smile. That was when she looked like Ryan – when she smiled, all wholesomeness and square teeth. ‘When was this?’
Sam glanced over at Lorna and pretended to think. ‘When did microwaves arrive in Longhampton, Lorna? Oooh, what … five, six years ago?’
She laughed. ‘No! More like … ten.’
‘Auntie Lorna and I moved to the big city around the time of microwaves,’ he told Hattie solemnly. ‘When we came back, everything had changed. There was an internet café.’
‘It’s true,’ said Lorna, as Hattie looked between them both, enjoying the back and forth. ‘We used to go to discos in barns and sit on hay bales.’ She shook her head. ‘Because no one could afford chairs. So sad.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Sam. ‘And we didn’t have Spotify either, so everyone just had to hum tunes from the hit parade. You know beatboxing? We had to do that just so people could dance.’
To give him his due, Sam was making this much easier. He had an easy way with Hattie, even though by his own admission he hadn’t seen her since Milo’s christening, and apart from making a big deal about it being his treat, he’d been much more like his old self-deprecating self.
‘Doris and Mavis,’ she said nostalgically. ‘They were twins, weren’t they?’
‘Yes, identical twins.’ Sam poured the wine. ‘You could only tell them apart by their warts. And Doris called everyone duck, while Mavis had a thing about Roger Moore. We used to call her … um, Miss Moneypenny.’
‘No, you didn’t.’ Lorna frowned, amused. ‘That’s not what you called her.’
Sam winked. ‘I’m editing.’
‘Ew!’ Hattie giggled, and when the teenage waitress slouched over in her daffodil apron, Lorna was pleased to see Hattie smile up at her and order a sizeable meal.
The food was better than Lorna had expected, and so was the conversation. They chatted about modern art, and Hattie’s plans for sixth-form college, but any attempts to get Sam to talk about the farm or what was happening in London were headed off, and instead the conversation returned again and again to Sam and Lorna’s teenage years, particularly as the wine bottle emptied, and was replaced, and was half-emptied again.
It was nice to reminisce with Sam, Lorna thought, and to catch him looking nostalgically, almost shyly, at her as they wandered down familiar anecdotal paths, avoiding the hard parts. The easiest memories were their shared ones of Jess and Ryan, two people they both loved very much. Lorna told Hattie how Ryan had felt like a big brother to her, how he’d taken real care of her and Jess, and although she vaguely registered Hattie’s hunching shoulders, she put it down to teenage mortification that her parents had once been spotty, lustful adolescents too, snogging in Renault Clios and failing their driving tests.
‘Funny to think your mum and dad fell in love next to eighty cows, isn’t it?’ She tried to catch Hattie’s downcast eye. Hattie had been stirring the remains of her ice cream round the bowl for five minutes now while they talked about DJ Holstein, the Hip-hop Young Farmer from Builth Wells. ‘I don’t know who had the biggest cow eyes – the cows, or your dad looking at your mum!’
‘Yeah, we always knew they’d end up together,’ said Sam. ‘Even if you weren’t exactly planned, the way they dealt with it … Just goes to show, when two people really love one another, it doesn’t matter what life throws at them.’ He stared into his glass, then looked up, right at Lorna. ‘Gives the rest of us hope, eh, Lorna?’
Lorna didn’t know how to read Sam’s ambiguous expression. Did he mean … he hadn’t found anyone? Or that she was that person?
‘And they’re still mad about each other.’ She focused on Hattie instead. ‘Jess always says, as soon as she found Ryan, she knew he was the man for her. For all her life.’
Whatever Sam was starting to say was lost in the sound of metal scraping on tiles, as Hattie shoved back her chair and dashed out of the restaurant with a sob. Other diners watched her go, knives and forks suspended in mid-air. The door opened and slammed, and she was gone.
Lorna and Sam stared at each other, shocked.
He lifted his hands helplessly. ‘Was it too much?’ he said. ‘Telling her she was a bit of a surprise? Didn’t she know?’
‘God, yes. Jess told her she wasn’t planned,’ said Lorna. ‘She’s the only unplanned thing Jess has ever done.’ Then it dawned on her. Oh no. Did Hattie have an unplanned accident of her own? She threw her napkin on the table and got up. ‘There’s something going on. She’s been acting funny for a while. It’s not you, I promise.’
‘OK. Well, I’ll be here.’ He looked awkward.
‘I don’t know how long it’ll take.’ Lorna was conscious of the entire restaurant pretending not to listen in on their table. ‘If you want to go home …’ She mangled a smile. ‘We don’t seem to be able to get through a whole evening, do we?’
‘I’ll wait,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything I can do? I remember what it was like to be that age. Confused.’
Their eyes locked, and Lorna wished she could read minds. That, or ever know what to say to Sam Osborne.
‘I’ll see if she’ll talk to me about whatever it is.’ She pushed back her chair. ‘Wish me luck.’
Hattie was across the road, sitting on the brick wall outside the Memorial Hall, rocking gently and crying.
Lorna sat down and wrapped an arm round her narrow shoulders, and Hattie turned into her. Her body shook with each gulped breath, and Lorna’s heart ached with a need to soothe away her distress. ‘What’s the matter, Harrietta?’ She stroked her soft hair. She hadn’t called her Harrietta since she was a toddler. ‘Come on, you can tell me.’
‘I can’t.’ Her voice was muffled up against Lorna’s jacket.
‘Now, you can , come on.’ She put her hands on either side of Hattie’s head, lifting her tear-smudged face. She was so soft, so pretty. ‘You nearly told me last time you were here. Whatever it is, it’s not going to get better if you ignore it. It’s not going to go away.’
She tried to keep her voice calm but her mind was racing over the possibilities, and circling back to one. Was Hattie pregnant? It would explain the paleness, the fear of telling Jess and Ryan. They were so ambitious for her, Lorna knew, Jess especially. They had such dreams.
‘I understand if you’re scared to tell your mum and dad,’ she went on. ‘But they love you so much, and I’ll help you. Whatever it is that’s happened, we’ll find a way to talk to them about it. I promise.’
She held her niece’s face for a long minute, then Hattie chewed her lip, and said, ‘You have to swear not to ring Mum straight away.’
‘We’ll talk it through first.’
There was an unbearable pause, then Hattie said, ‘It’s Dad.’ Her eyes were huge in her face, almost superhuman with pain. The words spilled out in a messy rush. ‘I saw him in Costa Coffee in Hereford with another woman. They were holding hands. I know something’s going on and I don’t know how to tell Mum.’
‘What?’ Lorna was stunned. What? Of all the things she’d been expecting, predictable, loyal, reassuringly dull Ryan cheating wasn’t even on her radar. ‘Tell me slowly – start from the beginning. Why were you in Hereford?’
Hattie hugged her knees. ‘With work. I wasn’t meant to be there. My manager sent me and Tia over to the Hereford branch because they needed extra staff for taste-testing. And after our shift we went to get a latte and Dad was in Costa – with this woman. He didn’t see me. I pretended I didn’t want a coffee and ran out.’
Her anxious red-rimmed eyes said: Should I have stayed? Did I do the right thing?
‘It was definitely him?’ Lorna was struggling with her own shock. Ryan was the most trustworthy of trustworthy husbands – it was almost a running joke how devoted to
Jess he was. ‘He wasn’t just with … a work colleague?’
‘It was a Saturday. He’d told Mum he had an away bowls match.’ Hattie looked scornful, then upset. ‘This girl was really pretty. Dad was staring at her like …’ She mimed slack-jawed lust. ‘And he didn’t look like himself. He was wearing a new jacket and his hair was spiky.’
Lorna pushed aside the grim image of a dolled-up Ryan. ‘And what was this woman like?’
‘Young. In her twenties, I think.’ Hattie’s lip curled. ‘She had long blonde hair and a Michael Kors handbag.’
Lorna hesitated, then asked a question she already knew the answer to. ‘So you haven’t told your mum?’
‘No!’ Hattie seemed to be swinging between disgust and absolute misery. ‘What am I supposed to tell her? “Dad’s cheating on you?” What if he denies it? What if she hates me? What if I’ve got it wrong?’ Her voice rose into a squeak.
‘OK, OK, that’s fair enough.’ Lorna rubbed Hattie’s back, calming her like a baby. ‘Have you got any other reason to think he’s seeing someone? Has he been acting odd? Has he …’ She racked her brains. What did people who had affairs do? Apart from get alibis from the nanny?
Hattie shook her head. ‘I told him I needed to borrow his phone one night and there was someone on his messages called P. He’d deleted most of them but there was one left, and it said, So good to see you at the weekend xxx . Kiss, kiss, kiss. You don’t say that to a work colleague, do you?’
‘No.’ Lorna groaned inwardly. ‘You don’t. And have you spoken to him?’
‘Why? I don’t want to be in his company. I couldn’t even go to his stupid birthday party! What a hypocrite, making us play happy families while he’s sending kisses to some homewrecker. It’s gross.’ Hattie looked up at Lorna from under her fringe. ‘I thought you might … You might …’
‘I could tell your mum? Right.’ What was she supposed to do? Lorna took a deep breath. Sam was coming out of La Dragon’s door.
‘Everything all right, ladies?’ He had their jackets over his arm, Lorna’s bag over his shoulder. ‘I’ve settled up, so if you want to go somewhere a bit quieter, maybe the Red Lion? Or …’ He looked between the two of them. ‘Maybe you just want to go home?’