There was no response from Joyce.
Please, Lorna begged the invisible forces around her. Please let Joyce open her eyes and see what a wonderful thing she’s done, so she knows she’s leaving the world with a triumph.
‘Do you want to have a look?’ Sam asked. ‘Would you like me to carry you to the window?’
‘Is she safe to carry?’ Lorna whispered to Denise.
She nodded. ‘I’ll help you. Be careful.’
Denise unhooked what tubes she could from around the bed, and supported the drips as Sam lifted Joyce from her sheets. She was so light, so brittle now. He carried her across to the window, and stood with her in his arms next to Lorna as she pulled back the curtain.
There was the tree, framed like a picture by the windowpanes, decked out in red apples and snow diamonds, resplendent in the street light. Their version of the little tree planted by two grieving parents, which had blossomed without warning that last summer in Rooks Hall.
‘Can you see?’ Lorna whispered. She took Joyce’s cold hand in hers, warming the bones. ‘The tree is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And look, there’s the postbox … only it’s an oak! And the sunflowers, can you see …?’
She stroked the papery skin with the back of her finger. It moved with each caress, but Lorna kept her slow rhythm, remembering how her mum had calmed her as a small child, and how she’d calmed a shivering, scared Rudy when he’d first come to live with her. Human contact, soft and loving, soothing away the fear.
‘Do you like it?’ she whispered. ‘Did we do your designs justice? Can you imagine what everyone will be saying when they wake up in a few hours’ time?’
The street was a riot of colour, the unexpected textures making it a playground of red, yellow and green, the colours of happiness.
‘It’s your garden come to life,’ Lorna went on, murmuring more to herself now. Joyce was obviously slipping away. As long as she can hear my voice, she reminded herself. There was no sign from her closed eyelids that she could, though.
‘I think we should …’ Denise nodded towards the bed.
‘OK,’ Lorna whispered, disappointed. Maybe Joyce knew, on some level, what they’d done. If she was floating outside herself, seeing everything on every plane.
Sam caught her eye. His face said, We tried, and she smiled sadly.
And just as she was about to turn away, Lorna felt a gentle pressure on her hand, the faintest response against her skin. Joyce’s hooded eyelids flickered, and slowly her glassy eyes opened, unfocused, and stared out at the street as the snowflakes swirled against the window.
Lorna held her breath.
It was clearly taking a huge effort. She had no idea what Joyce was seeing, if she was seeing anything. But the tendons on her neck strained, and the eyes stayed open, and then suddenly her strength ran out and she relaxed into Sam’s arms.
‘Well done, Joyce,’ said Denise. ‘Now, into bed with you.’
Tears streamed down Lorna’s face but they were tears of joy, not sadness. She’s seen it. She’s seen what she’s done.
Sam carried Joyce as gently as he could towards the bed. Denise had pushed it round so it was angled out to the street, and quickly refreshed the sheets, tugging and pulling with expert swiftness so Joyce had a cool nest to be laid in.
‘There we are, nice clean sheets.’ Denise rearranged the photos so they were at the end of the bed, not on the table. Easier to see. ‘Here’s your son, is it? And your husband. What a handsome pair.’
Joyce was definitely sleeping now. Her eyelids flickered from side to side, and her hands jerked as if she was dreaming.
‘Don’t be surprised if she goes soon,’ Denise whispered. ‘Sometimes they’re just waiting for permission, if you know what I mean.’
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ Tiffany touched her hand. ‘Let me get you something to drink.’
‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘That’d be a good idea.’ The pair of them slipped out and left Lorna alone with Joyce.
Lorna knelt by the side of Joyce’s bed with her hand in hers, watching the rise and fall of her chest. The imperious, defensive old lady she’d met in Rooks Hall had swirled up into the cosmos; what was left here were the last breaths of her body.
She felt something soft against her leg and realised Bernard had come back in. He put his paws briefly up on the bed to check Joyce was still there, then flopped down next to it, and looked up at Lorna.
What harm could it do?
Lorna lifted him up and put him at the very end, by Joyce’s feet. ‘There. One last time.’
Bernard curled up with his back against Joyce’s feet, facing out into the room as if he could guard her from what was approaching.
Outside, the snow swirled in silence. Inside, Lorna felt the air move and fill with something she didn’t understand. She willed Bernard and Ronan to come, and she pictured her own mother coming nearer, the intensely imaginative, soft-skinned mother who’d made toffee and drawn dreams in ink as her little girl coloured in by her feet. Her gentle father, with his broken heart no one could mend. Betty too. A gang of them, ready to take Joyce home.
‘Thank you, Joyce,’ she whispered, through her tears. ‘Thank you for showing me the art in everything. Thank you for giving me your most precious paintings. And your memories.’
There was no response. Lorna rested her forehead on the sheets. She wasn’t sure who she was talking to now, Joyce or her mum. She was so tired, she wasn’t even sure if she was whispering or just thinking.
‘And remember you’ll always be a part of me. As long as I think about you, and remember what we said, and the times we laughed … you’re still with me.’
Bernard started growling at something, but there was nothing in the room. He lifted his head and Lorna saw his hackles were up.
She couldn’t explain what happened next: it felt as if the room was suddenly filled with a spiralling love, a clear, warm sense of absolute contentment. The snow against the window seemed too bright, the colours of the knitted flowers too vivid for the subdued nightlights that were on. She couldn’t see anything but Lorna felt wrapped in something soft and stronger than her, and she wanted to cry as it swept through her body, and then, suddenly, it vanished and she was alone in the room.
Lorna lifted her head, and looked at Joyce’s face. It had slackened and was grey, her nose sharp. She was alone. There was just her and Bernard.
With tears in her eyes, Lorna kissed Joyce’s forehead. ‘Goodbye, Joyce.’
She stayed by the side of the bed for a long minute, not wanting to move but suddenly awake and scared of what came next. Bernard was whimpering softly and instinctively she reached out to comfort him.
There was a cough by the door. Denise was standing there, with Sam and Tiffany behind her.
‘I can take over now if you want?’ she asked kindly, and Lorna nodded.
Sam held out his arms and she rushed into them, burying her head in his chest as he held her, kissing the top of her head and stroking her back. She could feel his tears falling on to her hair as he rocked her back and forth.
‘My Lorna,’ he was saying, over and over. ‘My beautiful brave Lorna. My girl.’
They stayed like that for a while, letting the barriers between them fall away, like the broken shell of a chestnut peeling back to reveal the bright conker inside. And then Lorna heard someone calling her name.
‘Lorna?’ Tiffany was standing with her coat back on. She had her phone in her hand, and a determined look on her face.
‘What?’
‘Let’s do the rest of the town.’ She grinned. ‘Let’s finish this. Let’s give Joyce something really amazing to send her off.’
Epilogue
Christmas came suddenly, racing up in the background of Joyce’s funeral and Calum’s hastily revised plan for the competition entry – Joyce and Lorna’s Magic Garden evolved into a proposal for a touring show. The Maiden Gallery was full every day, riding high on the viral hit of thousands of
retweeted photos of the town bedecked in snow-dusted wool. Queries arrived daily from the most surprising and far-flung places, and the KnitCam was kept going, for volunteers knitting coats for homeless dogs.
Mary had held the fort with Tiffany while Lorna was distracted with the arrangements for Joyce. Not just the funeral, a simple humanist ceremony near the low white cottage by the cliffs, but organising her ashes to be scattered with her human Bernard (canine Bernard to be scattered in the same place in due course). When Lorna returned to the gallery after a long weekend of walking and thinking in Wales, she found quite a few items of grotesque crockery on sale that hadn’t been there when she left, complete with an incomprehensible ‘practice statement’ from the artist which ran to three cards, tacked on the wall next to the display.
‘It’s the season of goodwill,’ Mary had protested.
‘That doesn’t mean making this place look like a goodwill shop,’ Lorna pointed out, but she let most of it go. After all, who was she to decide what someone else found beautiful?
There was one corner of the gallery set up with work that wasn’t for sale: her mother’s original hand-drawn Christmas cards, framed by Archibald in festive gold and green. Each card was covered in tiny detail, with her and Jess and Cathy and Peter at the centre, surrounded by a thousand clues to who they were and what they were celebrating that particular year.
Lorna had photocopied some, initially to colour in herself, and then, at Hattie’s suggestion, she’d turned them into adult colouring books for Christmas. A very limited print run, and only sold to customers who’d appreciate their witty intricacies. She had plans to stage a proper Cathy Larkham retrospective in the new year, once the yarnstorm was over. Hattie was going to help her, to explore her grandmother’s legacy – not just in terms of the art she’d left, but what the family had to be proud of.
‘I need to stand back and understand Mum as an artist,’ Lorna told Jess. ‘I’ve been trying to live up to her all my life, and I think seeing her on equal terms – her as an artist, me as her curator – is good. Then I can start seeing her as a human being, just like us.’
‘I want you to do it so we can clear out the garage,’ said Jess, but Lorna knew she was joking.
Only Sam was missing from the picture. His new boss had asked him to start full-time in London early, and he hadn’t come back. Lorna missed him every day, but she filled every gap with a task before she had time to think too hard. Her life, from now on, was about creating a future, not dwelling on what wasn’t there and would never be.
It was the week before Christmas, the busiest of the year, when Lorna was alone at last in the gallery. They’d stayed open an hour later than normal to deal with the final customers, and Bernard and Rudy were yipping and grumbling for their evening walk. It was hard to remember Rudy had once shrunk in fear from anything he didn’t know. Now, with his grizzled mate by his side, the whole world was Rudy’s to explore.
‘I won’t be a minute.’ Lorna stepped over them as they chased one another round her legs; she had to move carefully round the gallery, turning off lights and checking cabinets. Finally, she was at the door, turning the Closed sign round when she saw a face behind the sign and jumped.
It was Sam. It took her a moment to recognise him: the beard had gone, and he looked ten years younger. He smiled at her through the glass and held up two takeaway hot chocolates in their red Christmas cups. ‘Special delivery.’
‘Come in.’ She undid the bolts and let him in along with a blast of cold air. ‘Thank you so much! What timing. We’ve run out of biscuits. Mary’s nervous eating has gone into overdrive this week. The card machine went down and—’
‘I don’t need biscuits.’ He put the hot chocolates down on the desk and grabbed her hand as she walked past. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘About?’
He gazed into her eyes. ‘About Christmas.’
Lorna freed her hand to pick up her hot chocolate, mainly so Sam wouldn’t feel her trembling with nerves. She didn’t want to say something stupid again . ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, I know you volunteer at homeless shelters to avoid spending it with the in-laws. And there’s only so much of my family I can take, given how things have been this year. So I was wondering if you’d like to do something different?’
‘Like what?’
He gently removed the cup from her hand, put it on the desk, and held her hands in his. ‘Like go somewhere else. Together.’
‘Where?’
‘I was thinking London, maybe? It’s romantic when there’s no one else around. We could go ice skating, we could drink champagne in Trafalgar Square … On the lions, if you want.’
London. Her heart sank. He was just bored in town, he wanted company. ‘Sam, I don’t want to go to all the places you go, and then say goodbye and come back here.’
‘Oh, Lorna.’ He leaned forward until his forehead was resting against hers. ‘Maybe I want to say goodbye to some places … before I come back here with you.’
She pulled back and looked up. ‘What?’
‘I miss you,’ he said, simply. ‘London is no fun when I know you’re here. I keep finding excuses to come back and deal with problems on the farm.’ He pulled a face. ‘Luckily Gabe’s making plenty of those for me but …’
‘You’re coming back to live here?’
‘Apart from a few days a month consulting, yes. I want to come back. I want to start again properly, you and me.’ Sam’s eyes didn’t leave hers, searching for her reaction. ‘I’m sorry I got things so wrong before. I hated seeing you fall for that Emperor’s New Clothes art bollocks. I knew you were smarter than that, but I was too arrogant to know how to tell you without insulting you. I could see you were going to get hurt, and I hated myself for not being able to stop it happening.’
‘You have to make your own mistakes.’ Lorna trod carefully. ‘I wouldn’t have done it differently.’
Because if she had, she’d never have met Joyce, never have known the power of four women and some knitting needles, never have made this world for herself, or known what she could do alone.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she said. ‘I’ve judged things I knew nothing about. This town is your home, not mine, really, and I feel as if I’ve … complicated it for you. Well, my whole family has, one way or another.’
Sam turned her hand over, inspecting the life lines on her palm. Then slowly he raised her fingers to his lips and kissed her knuckles. ‘You’re what makes this place home for me, Lorna,’ he said, looking up at her.
Lorna looked back at him, this man with the beautiful eyes of her childhood crush, but with an adult heart she was just starting to understand. She thought of him stroking the de-horned cows in the field, the patient compromises around the family table, Rudy’s instinctive lack of fear when Sam walked in the room. You surrendered a little fear, you offered a little trust and in return, what did you get? As much as you wanted to give.
‘Welcome back,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay, if you will.’
And then Sam leaned forward, put his hands on her face and pulled her towards him, kissing her as if he’d been waiting all his life to kiss her properly, and Lorna’s mind filled with a shimmering powdery explosion of colour, a million shades of red from crimson to scarlet to palest ballet pink to scorching magenta. As her arms slipped round Sam’s waist, pulling him even closer, the reds softened to one: a perfect warm ruby of apples and London buses and children’s wellies and the most bombshell old-fashioned lipstick.
The colour of falling in love. The colour of a heart beating in its perfect rhythm.
Acknowledgements
This has been a hard story to write at times, and I’m extremely grateful to the wonderful crowd of people I have around me, cheering me on and supplying round-the-clock tea, good ideas, dog-walking, and kind but firm nudges in the right direction.
At the front of the crowd is the wonderful Francesca Best, my patient and perceptive editor, and all the team at Transworld
; thank you for transforming my pile of words into something so beautiful (and chronologically accurate): particularly Sarah Whittaker, who designed the magical cover, Josh Benn, Judith Welsh, Becky Short, Vicky Palmer, Deirdre O’Connell, Janine Giovanni, Lucy Keech and Elspeth Dougall.
I’m extremely lucky to know, and also be represented by, the presidential force of nature that is Lizzy Kremer, and the other David Higham miracle workers: Harriet Moore, Maddalena Cavaciuti, Emma Jamison, Alice Howe, Giulia Bernabè, Margaux Vialleron, Camilla Dubini and Annabel Church. There aren’t enough cupcakes in the whole world to convey how much I appreciate all you do for me. Speaking of which, thank you to the editors who have brought Longhampton to places beyond my wildest dreams – especially you, Teresa Knochenhauer.
It gives me a thrill every time I get an email from a kind reader so if you’re reading this and you’ve tweeted or Facebooked or messaged me to say hello, I promise you, it made my day. Thank you! (And keep in touch …)
Contrary to what you might imagine, writers are a supportive and generous group. Well, the ones I know are. They understand the importance of the right pen and the dangers of unlimited broadband. Thank you to the timeless oracles of the Board, the Kremerinos and the SWANS, who all make me roar daily, one way or another, and particularly to Chris Manby, who is a magnificent woman.
I’ve had a lot of support this year from my family; my brave dad, who read this book, and my sister Alex, queen of the texts; my wonderful husband Scott, who heroically kept me sane and happy and caffeinated, my stepchildren, Katie, Calum and Fiona, who never complained about the pinboard of quite unsettling notes hanging around the house, and Barney, who got some long walks and some shorter ones. I love you all, very much.
Finally, thank you Julie Williams, both for the guidance you gave me about Joyce’s medical treatment (any mistakes are mine), and also for the hard and heartbreaking work you do with families living through their loved one’s final days. The compassionate support of Macmillan, Marie Curie and Sue Ryder nurses, and all those professionals and volunteers giving end-of-life care, is somewhere far beyond remarkable. I wish I could thank every single one of you, because you are amazing.