‘What’s wrong?’ Emma squeezed his hand.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘This is wonderful, Leo. Magical. Thank you.’
Reaching over to the picnic basket, he pulled out a bottle of champagne. He unwound the wire carefully and then let the cork fly – for once not having to worry about denting someone’s ceiling or taking someone’s eye out. As he did, a shooting star rushed across the sky.
‘Did you see that?’
‘Yes,’ Emma said. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a shooting star. Aren’t they supposed to be a good omen?’
‘Make a wish.’
Emma’s eyes met his. ‘It already came true.’
Leo wondered if he would ever be able to tell Emma about Isobel. About why she’d been here. And how you should be very careful what you wish for. Maybe some time, but not now.
‘Here . . .’ Leo handed her two glasses and the champagne frothed over into them.
He took the wire fixer from the cork and twisted it around. Taking Emma’s hand in his, Leo said, ‘Emma, will you do me the very great honour of marrying me?’
Emma’s eyes filled up with tears. ‘Yes,’ she breathed.
Leo slipped the champagne wire ring onto her finger. His fiancée admired it in the moonlight. ‘It’s beautiful.’
They stood up and wrapped their arms around each other.
‘We need to make a toast,’ Leo said.
Emma and Leo clinked their glasses together. ‘To the moonlight, the madness and the magic. To us.’
They toasted each other, savouring the taste of the champagne. The wind picked up gently and lifted Emma’s hair in the breeze. Lights sparkled in the sky, tiny pinpricks of colour that Leo knew instinctively he’d seen somewhere before. He turned to the fire; the flames flickered, showering sparks into the air. In the flames Leo saw an image of Isobel and she was smiling out at him. A tiny silver butterfly broke free of the flames and, as his eyes followed it, it fluttered away high into the sky until soon it was out of sight, vanished in the darkness. But he knew that Isobel was happy and Leo was happy too. She’d always be with him in spirit, but he had Emma – always his one true love – here on earth. And he was glad that he’d had the chance to know Isobel. He was glad that she had come along to open his heart, to blow it apart and to show him just how much he could love. She had managed to teach Leo a lesson that was well worth learning.
Punching his arm into the air, he cried out at the top of his lungs, ‘Hoo! Hoo!’
Leo swept Emma up into his arms and twirled her around. She shrieked with delight. Then he ran down the beach, loving the crunch of the pebbles beneath his feet and the wind in his hair. They reached the sea and he carried Emma into the waves, letting the icy water rush over them both, gasping as the foam hit them.
‘I love you,’ Emma said, her mouth against his neck.
‘I love you too.’ Leo held her to him. ‘We’ll get it right this time. I promise you.’
‘I’ll hold you to it,’ she warned. Then she jumped down and ducked him into the water, splashing and laughing. And Leo had never felt happier or more alive in all his life.
Chapter Ninety-Three
Everything is pitch black. Only the dying embers of the fire remain. The beach is completely deserted. Everyone sane is tucked up in their beds by now. But I never want this night to end. I’m loved. And I’m in love.
‘I’m bloody soaked through,’ I say, doing my best to sound cross.
‘Sorry. Sorry. It was fun though.’
‘It was not fun,’ the future Mrs Leo Harper insists.
‘Sorry. Sorry.’
‘Just look at me.’
‘I am.’
‘I’m going to have to take all of my clothes off,’ I say.
It may be dark but I can still make out the smile on Leo’s lips – so I know he can see the smile on mine. ‘All of them?’
‘Every last thing.’
‘I could help you,’ my husband-to-be suggests.
‘Don’t you come anywhere near me, Leo Harper. You are nothing but trouble.’
‘Do I have to take all of my clothes off too?’
‘Yes. Unless you want to catch your death of cold.’
‘I’d rather take your clothes off first.’
‘Ahh! Leo. Get off! That tickles. I’m serious.’
We help each other undress, laughing, loving. I’m still not sure what has happened between Leo and me, but it’s finished now and behind us. We’ve learned from it and will move on. Leo covers my body with kisses. Tender, butterfly kisses. I have Leo back. The new, improved Leo. And I will cherish him as he deserves to be cherished.
‘Come here, wifey,’ Leo says. ‘I want to show you what a thoroughly wonderful husband I’m going to be.’
I laugh and, holding each other tightly, we sink onto the brand new picnic blanket Leo has splashed out on. Another shooting star crosses the moon, leaving a trail of what looks like silver glitter in its wake. I blink back a tear. This really has been a magical night.
~ The End ~
If you enjoyed It’s a Kind of Magic, you don’t have to wait for more!
Read on for a preview of Carole Matthew’s:
The Cake Shop in the Garden
Chapter One
I sit on the edge of my mum’s bed and take a deep breath. ‘I’ve booked you in for a week’s respite care,’ I tell her.
She stares at me, aghast. ‘But I don’t want you to have any respite from me.’
‘Things are quite difficult at the moment, Mum. You know how it is. The year’s marching on and I need some time to get the café ready for the season.’
She folds her arms across her chest, unconvinced.
I’ve already brought her a cup of tea and a slice of the new coffee cake that I’m trying out, in the hope of softening her up, but my dear mother has turned up her nose at them.
‘I’m not leaving here.’ Mum’s chin juts defiantly. ‘No way, lady.’
For someone who is supposed to be an invalid, my mother has the strongest constitution and will of anyone I’ve ever met. I knew even as I was making the booking that it was overly optimistic. Even a cake fresh from the oven won’t warm my mother’s heart.
‘There are loads of things I need to do, Mum. I could just do with a couple of days. That’s all.’ A couple of days without her banging on the ceiling every five minutes, wanting this or that or something and nothing. She has a walking stick by the bed especially for the purpose.
My family have been blessed enough to be able to live in a beautiful home alongside the Grand Union Canal since my parents, Miranda and Victor Merryweather, were first married. Both my sister, Edie, and I were born and brought up here. One of us is more pleased about it than the other. The house is in the pretty village of Whittan, at one time on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, but now being nudged in the ribs by the thrusting city as it engulfs everything in its path.
When I became Mum’s full-time carer, I gave up my paid job and, out of necessity, started a small cake shop cum café and tearoom – Fay’s Cakes I’d already started selling cakes from our dilapidated narrowboat, the Maid of Merryweather, which is moored at the bottom of the garden. It was a sort of hobby, I suppose, a bit of an ad hoc affair, but it gave me something to do with all the cakes and jam that I so liked to make. Now I run it full-time and it’s grown to take over the dining room, veranda and garden of our house. The only problem with running a business that’s based in our home is that half of my days disappear with me running up and down the stairs fetching and carrying for Mum while trying to keep things going with the café downstairs. Not that I really mind . . . it’s just that sometimes I do need a break from my caring duties so that I can concentrate on actually bringing in some much-needed money.
‘They’ll sit me in the corner with the dribblers and shakers,’ Mum complains.
‘They won’t. This is a nice place.’ I hold up the cheery Sunnyside Respite Care Ho
me brochure encouragingly, but she averts her gaze, refusing to even look at it. ‘It’s not a hospital,’ I press on. ‘You get your own room. I researched it really carefully on the internet.’
‘Pah.’
‘It’s more like a hotel – exactly like a hotel – but with care. They’ll look after you.’
‘Just say if I’m too much trouble for you, Miss Fay Merryweather.’ There’s a sob in Mum’s voice and she dabs theatrically at her eyes beneath the rims of her reading glasses.
‘You’re not too much trouble.’ Once again, she makes me feel like the worst daughter in the world. ‘Of course you’re not.’
She pushes the plate of cake away from her, apparently too overwhelmed to eat.
‘I love you. You know that. It’s only that I have such a lot to do in the café.’ The list is endless. Even the thought of it is making me feel quite dizzy.
‘Oh.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘The café this, the café that. It’s all you ever think about. It’s all I ever hear about.’
‘It pays the bills, Mum.’ Just about. The ones that don’t go away just because I’m at home and caring for you, I add to myself but dare not say out loud.
My mum took to her bed with a bad bout of flu, four winters ago now. The flu became pneumonia and there’s no doubt that she was very poorly at the time. But, several courses of antibiotics later and when the pneumonia had run its course, she was still in no hurry to get up. Then she slipped in the bathroom and broke her hip. When she came back from hospital, she eschewed the physiotherapy programme that she’d been advised to follow and took to her bed again to convalesce. She made herself very comfortable there and, since then, she’s simply refused to get up.
Mum has decided that she’s still ill and infirm, no matter how many times the doctor tells her that she’s just fine. She’s stayed exactly where she is and no one can persuade her otherwise. I’ve coaxed and encouraged her. Doctors come and cajole her. Mental-health professionals turn up, try to counsel her and are duly rebuffed. Antidepressants were prescribed, dispensed and found, by me, hidden down the back of the headboard. In short, my mother has decided she will be permanently bedridden and, quite frankly, she loves it.
Now, every day Miranda Merryweather sits in her bed, snuggled in a duvet, surrounded by fluffy pillows, holding court like the queen of a very small country. These days, she refuses to let most people enter her domain. Occasionally, our lovely GP, Dr Ahmed, is reluctantly allowed an audience. I think at first she liked the attention. Then, as the months went on, she simply became entrenched until, finally, she was frightened to get up and go out at all. Now it’s simply become a way of life.
The friends she once had have all gradually fallen away until, now, I’m the sole person at her beck and call. I cook, clean and run the café. While Mum can still get herself back and forth across the landing to the bathroom, she needs my help to shower, and I wash her hair for her too when she requires it. Though some days I don’t have time to wash my own hair. There’s an ever-growing cache of tablets that have to be administered at regular intervals – blood-pressure pills, water tablets, sleeping potions, statins. The list goes on. The longer she stays in bed, the more medicines she needs. I change her nightdress every day and her sheets once a week.
‘Your sister would never treat me like this,’ Mum says.
‘She wouldn’t,’ I agree. ‘You’d starve before you got tea and cake from Edie.’
Mum recoils as if I’ve slapped her, then turns her head to stare resolutely out of the window at the garden and beyond at the canal which meanders past. The trees along the bank are coming into full bud and soon the hawthorn will be in glorious blossom. It’s so beautiful out there. Yet she’ll stay in this room and miss it all.
‘Edie could teach you a thing or two about caring, madam.’
She couldn’t. Believe me, she really couldn’t.
Edie, my younger and only sibling, is the shining girl of the family. Edie, the unemployed, heavy-drinking, recreational-drug user who is currently kept by a married man, can do no wrong in Mum’s eyes. As she lives in New York, my mother is unaware that any of this actually goes on. As far as she’s concerned, Edie is busily working away at a wonderful career and has a boyfriend who is a fabulously wealthy lawyer. As such, she is a far better daughter than I am. My sister is very scant on detail when she speaks to our mother, and Mum only sees Edie through rose-tinted spectacles. Whereas I am so very often cast as the Wicked Daughter.
The truth of the matter is that Edie rarely rings unless she wants something and never comes home now. She hasn’t been back at all since Mum took to her bed – even when she was actually quite ill. And, let’s face it, New York is just around the corner these days. You can go there for the weekend. It’s not as if Edie’s in Australia or New Zealand or somewhere on the other side of the world.
Even though Edie can be a complete pain in the backside, I do miss her terribly. I wish she was here, and not just because I could do with some help with Mum. Though being the sole carer for your parent can be an onerous and thankless task, it would be nice to have Edie here just as a friend who’d know what I’m going through, so that we could, perhaps, share the emotional burden.
I press on, even though I’m beginning to realise that my mission is fruitless. ‘I thought I could decorate your room while you’re away.’
‘I’m not going away, Little Miss Cloth Ears. I told you.’
Goodness only knows this room needs a bit of a makeover. I don’t think it’s been decorated since about 1972. Some of the pastel-pink, flower-sprigged wallpaper is curling and there’s a damp patch on the ceiling that says we may well have a leak in the roof. Not the first. I don’t even dare to go into the loft these days. To be honest, the whole of Canal House could do with a bit of tender loving care. It hasn’t had any money spent on it in years, simply because there hasn’t been any to spare.
I am forty-one years young and this is the only home I’ve ever known. I was born here, in this very room, and, at the rate I’m going, I will more than likely die here.
‘I could bring in some wallpaper samples.’
‘Not listening.’ My mum puts her fingers in her ears. ‘La, la, la. Not listening.’
I wouldn’t mind if Mum was actually really ancient, but she’s only seventy years old. That’s all. Surely seventy is the new fifty. She should be out there having the time of her life. Yet the concept of the University of the Third Age has, unfortunately, passed her by. It’s so frustrating that she seems to have given up on life and is content just to lie here. Even more frustrating is the fact that she seems to revel in it: she spends her day languishing, watching soap operas and quizzes. Or home-renovation programmes which are never destined to help this particular home.
Before I can remonstrate with her any further, I hear the back door open, and a voice travels up the stairs from the hall.
‘Is me!’
That’s my assistant, Lija. The café isn’t open for a few hours yet but Lija has come in early today to help me scrub down the tables and chairs that have over-wintered in the garden. The first thing on a long list of glamorous tasks that we need to do before we start heading into the busy summer season. Then we won’t get a minute to do anything.
‘I have to go,’ I say.
‘My tea’s gone cold,’ Mum grumbles.
There are times when I’d swear she spends all day thinking up small ways in which to torture me. If she’s woken up in a particularly belligerent mood, she often waits until I’m at the bottom of the stairs to call me back for some little instruction she might have forgotten, or to plump up her pillows.
I take her cup. ‘I’ll bring you a nice fresh one.’
‘Not as much milk this time. It tastes like rice pudding when you make it.’
I could suggest that she’s perfectly capable of getting up and making her own tea and then she’d have no cause to complain, but I don’t. It would be a total waste of my breath as, sadly, I lost that argument
quite some time ago. Instead, I scoop up the laundry – the sheets I changed yesterday, the nightdress that was swapped for a fresh one this morning – and head back downstairs.
This is my life, like it or lump it. And I simply have to man up and get on with it.
Chapter Two
When I go into the kitchen, Lija has already stripped off her coat and is taking some eggs from the fridge.
‘Morning,’ I say as I go to shove the washing in the machine and set it going. I can iron it tonight when I’m watching the episode of Escape to the Country that I’ve recorded. My guilty pleasure. ‘Shall we go out and clean the furniture now while it’s fine? It’s forecast to rain later and we can come in and bake then.’
This afternoon, if all goes to plan, we’re going to try out some new recipes.
‘Is always bloody raining,’ my assistant grumbles. ‘Rain, rain, rain.’
Lija Vilks is young, lithe and Latvian. She’s not really an ideal assistant for a customer-facing business as she’s quite spiky. Particularly with the customers. On the other hand, she’s a great and loyal worker who can turn her hand to pretty much anything. She bakes the most wonderful cakes, which, if I’m honest, are far better than mine. You’ve never had carrot cake until you’ve tasted Lija’s, and I’d swear that her chocolate brownies could win awards. She is a sweary, Goth version of the goddess Mary Berry.
‘How is Old Bag today?’ Lija throws a disdainful glance at the ceiling, above which my dear mother reposes.
‘Not great,’ I admit. ‘She won’t go to the respite-care place, no matter what I say. I’m going to have to ring and cancel it.’
Lija tuts. She’s not my mother’s biggest fan. But then my mother isn’t hers either.
‘I’ve tried,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what else I can do. We’ll just have to work round her.’
‘Can you get nurse in?’
‘I can’t afford it, Lija. There’s just not enough cash in the pot.’ I let out a heartfelt sigh. ‘I wish Edie would come back and help. Even if it’s for a week or two. Perhaps I’ll have another talk with her later.’