That night I awoke in the darkness, and for one long, terrifying moment, I thought I was back in Fletcher Park Lane. Waves of panic flooded my body, and my skin felt clammy. I reached across to place my hand on the other side of the bed…the cold, empty side. Relief immediately replaced my panic. I was home, here at Box Tree Cottage with dear Aunt V and all the memories I was trying to come to terms with.
Memories. They overwhelmed me as I tossed and turned through the endless night. Memories filled with pain. Memories of happy times. Memories of galloping side-by-side with Daniel over the wild freedom of the fell. A longing to go and see the horses gnawed at my stomach, consuming me. I imagined their gentle eyes and velvet muzzles. I remembered how much they had meant to Daniel, and I knew I had to see them soon.
I rolled over, abruptly aware of the cast on my leg. I couldn’t walk to them, though, could I? Beside my bed, the tiny green numbers of the clock shone in the darkness: 5:45 a. m. Was that all it was? Gingerly I eased myself up and fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp. I could not wait any longer, for to wait was to wonder and to wonder was to change your mind. I was so afraid of changing my mind again.
I knew that I could do it. I would have to walk slowly, but it wasn’t so far. Eagerly I struggled into jeans and a lazy-day sweater, allowing my mind to ponder momentarily city suits and high-heeled shoes. Who was that other me? I shuddered at the thought as I crept along the landing, pausing for a moment outside Aunt V’s door. Her breathing was deep and regular and her alarm clocked ticked loudly in the silence. I would leave her a note, I decided, aware how horrified she would be when she realized that I had walked all the way to Homewood with a plaster cast on my leg.
Before going outside, I tied a plastic bag firmly around my foot over a thick woolen sock and secured it with tape. Was I stupid to try? This was just something that I had to do, and I had to do it now.
It was ten past six when I left. The sky was still dark, with just the hint of silver around a hidden moon, and the air was so sharp with an icy frost that I shivered, and quickly clutched my thick down jacket around my shoulders. Perhaps I should have waited. No, I reminded myself yet again. To wait was to wonder, and to wonder was to change your mind. I couldn’t afford to wait or wonder.
My feet crunched on the frozen grass of the verge beside the road, and the silence all around me was so intense that every sound screamed in my ears. The rustle of a creature in the hedge; the irregular, awkward thudding of my feet; even my breath, drawing in and out relentlessly, on and on, until one day it would stop, too, just like Daniel’s.
It took me longer than I’d expected to make the journey down the lane toward the distant lights of Homewood, but at last, with a blaze of satisfaction, I limped slowly through the side gate that led directly into the yard.
The house lights were already blazing, and as I paused to get my bearings, I could hear the distant hum of a radio and the clatter of pots from the kitchen—comforting sounds. I shrank into the shadows, not wanting to face anyone yet, only the horses. Cautiously I made my way toward the barn where they were stabled.
A beam of warm yellow light from the low barn across the way lit up the yard with a comforting glow. The milking machine thumped rhythmically and the cows lowed intolerantly, and nostalgia rushed in. I imagined Mr. Brown, humming to himself as he attached the clusters to the warm udders. Should I go and see him first? I wondered. No, I was here to see Timmy and Promise. The prospect of breathing in their distinctive aroma after all this time flooded me with excitement.
The stable was in still in darkness as I slipped through the door. I peered into the gloom, savoring the warmth after the biting cold outside, feeling the pain in the ends of my fingers as they steadily came back to life.
“Timmy!” I whispered. “Here, boy.”
I could make out two huge shapes in the light that filtered through from the yard—Promise, pale in the darkness, hanging back; Timmy, stamping impatiently, eager to greet me and unafraid of humans in any shape or form.
I held out a carrot, and when he leaned over the rail and took it with gentle lips, crunching ecstatically, I reached out my hand and ran it down his smooth, warm neck. His coat was thick with winter growth and mud clung to the roots of his mane.
“You need some TLC,” I told him, breathing his scent deep down into my lungs.
“And you are just the person to give it,” said Harry Brown from behind me. Promise snorted as I spun around to see Harry’s tall figure outlined by the light.
“How did you know I was here?” I cried.
He tapped the side of his nose, and a knife twisted inside me.
“Instinct,” he said. “Just instinct. Now, why don’t I go and get you some brushes and you can make yourself useful.”
There is no better therapy than to throw yourself into grooming a muddy horse. Shoulders aching with effort; lungs caked with dry dust; the feel of a totally innocent living creature beneath your hand, a trusting creature that doesn’t question, doesn’t judge and doesn’t ask anything other than to be fed and cared for.
I could almost feel my head straightening out as I worked. Oh, why had I left returning so long?
Harry appeared in the doorway again half an hour later. “Why, they both look a picture!” he exclaimed with a glow of pride in his eyes.
“The grooming was long overdue,” I grumbled.
“Well, you’re back now,” he declared, walking across to place an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go and get some breakfast. Your poor aunt will be tearing her hair out when she finds out that you’ve walked all the way here with that pot on your leg.”
Edna was waiting with a bright smile and huge plates of food. When she handed me mine, I thought I saw a tear in the corner of her eye, and I touched her arm tenderly.
“I’m sorry, Edna,” I murmured.
She gave a kind of snort. “Nothing to be sorry for,” she announced. “You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”
We ate at first in silence, each of us locked in our own memory. It was Mr. Brown who broke the moment.
“You’ll be riding after breakfast, I take it,” he announced with a twinkle in his eyes.
I stared at him in horror. “With a pot on my leg?”
“I didn’t think a little thing like that would bother you,” he remarked, looking at Edna.
She bristled, shoulders back and chest heaving. When he winked at me, I held in a giggle.
“I might give it a try,” I proclaimed in a serious tone. “I’ll just use one stirrup and—”
“You will do no such thing!” Edna interrupted, leaping to her feet.
My withheld giggle burst into a ripple of laughter, while Harry banged his palm onto the table with a loud guffaw. Edna’s face turned pink, and then suddenly she was laughing, too.
“Riding with a broken leg!” she snorted.
“I think I could,” I told her.
“Lucy McTavish,” she declared, glowering at me, “you are still just as madcap as you ever were.”
“Am I?” I asked quietly. “Is that how you have always seen me?”
“No more so than that son of mine,” she noted with a wistful smile on her face. And suddenly the whole mood changed. I felt a surge of guilt for being so merry, and the half-eaten meal on my plate made the bile rise in my throat.
“He wouldn’t blame you for living, Lucy,” she told me quietly.
Harry pushed his plate aside and jumped up from his chair, muttering something as he disappeared out the back door about seeing to a cow.
Edna sighed and picked up his half-finished breakfast. “Life goes on, you know,” she said sadly.
“Around and around again, through time immemorial,” I finished.
“Wherever did you hear that?” She smiled.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
Where had I heard it?
“In a dream, I think,” I said, with a vague recollection of glorious vibrant colors and a strange acute sense of perfect peace.
“Well, it’s true enough,” she agreed, scraping the leftover food into Buster’s dish. He bounded across the kitchen and began to gulp it down.
“Some things never change.” I grinned.
She nodded wisely. “Perhaps it’s just as well.”
“Do you think he still misses Daniel?”
We eyed at the big golden dog, so like poor old Fudge, and Edna sighed.
“I think animals adapt a lot quicker than humans,” she said, glancing toward the door. “They don’t dwell on things the way we do.”
“The way Harry does?”
She stared into her cup, swishing the tea around and around.
“Some days, like this morning, he’s his old self and then something triggers a memory and everything floods back.”
“It must be the same for you as well, though—surely,” I declared.
She nodded. “Except perhaps that with me the memories are always there, so there is nothing to flood back, if you see what I mean. I’m always the same. If I’m laughing and joking, it’s not because I’ve forgotten for a while. Daniel’s memory is always with me.”
“And that’s how I want to be,” I announced.
She poured us both another cup of tea then, taking solace in everyday actions, and we sat in silence for a while until I remembered the question that I was determined to ask.
“Do you recall the letters you sent me?”
I began tentatively, uneasy about my other life and unsure of bringing it up. But I needn’t have worried.
“I hope they helped you.”
“They did…oh, they did. It was just….”
She held my eyes and a lump formed in my throat.
“That last letter—what did you mean about something that helped you?”
For a moment her expression brightened, and excitement bubbled up inside me.
“I have wondered whether to tell you or not,” she began. “It’s a strange thing, really.”
The back door banged, an icy draft of air rushed into the comfortable warmth of the kitchen and the words died on her lips.
“Lucy!” cried Aunt V as she burst into the room. “Whatever do you think you are doing?”
“Having breakfast,” I told her with a smile.
“When I got up and saw your note, I…”
She stood in front of me, hands clutched, face bright pink with the icy air outside and her cap of gray hair uncharacteristically disheveled.
“I’m sorry,” I said with a pang of genuine remorse. “I should have woken you up.”
“Too right, you should have,” she exclaimed, frowning at me. Then a smile lit up her features and she shrugged. “Anyway, no matter. Edna put me in the picture. You certainly look a bit brighter. That’s what counts.”
“Oh, I am,” I declared, suddenly aware that it was true. I did feel better.
“Cup of tea?” inquired Edna, reaching for the pot.
Aunt V sank onto a chair beside me and I sighed. It seemed that I would have to wait a bit longer to learn about the letter.
“Oh, and guess who called this morning,” she announced. “The phone went just as I was leaving.”
My pulse began to beat faster and apprehension squeezed the breath from my lungs. “Who?” I whispered. “Who called?”
“Ben,” she told me with a broad smile. “It was Ben.”
My pulse beat faster still when an image of his honey-brown eyes flashed into my mind and I realized that I had missed his easy company.
Edna paused, teapot held aloft. “Ben?” she asked sharply. “Ben who?”
Her eyes narrowed as she waited for one of us to answer, and I felt a prickle of guilt.
“Ben Carlisle,” explained Aunt V. “You know, the young man I told you about. He saved Lucy’s life.”
For a moment I thought that Edna was going to faint. Her face paled and she reached out to support herself on the chair back.
“You never told me his name,” she said softly.
I stepped forward to place a hand on her shoulder, and she covered it with shaking fingers. “Edna, are you all right?” I asked her.
She took a deep breath. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “Must be getting a touch of flu, I think. I just came over all shaky and cold.”
I ushered her into a chair and assumed her tea-making duties, leaving Aunt V to find out what was really wrong. Was it about Ben? I wondered. Was she afraid that I had found someone else?
“Ben’s just a friend,” I told her as I placed a steaming mug in her hand.
She smiled at me vaguely.
“I know. It’s not about that. It’s just…Oh don’t listen to me.”
“Then tell us what’s wrong,” I pleaded.
“Nothing,” she persisted, sitting up tall in her chair. “We have to get on, that’s all. It will be time to open the tearoom soon, and I have another batch of cakes to put in the oven.”
With that she dismissed our attention, but deep in my heart I was sure her odd behavior had something to do with Ben. Why had he called? I didn’t like to ask while Edna was there.
“I’ll go and sort out the shelves,” announced Aunt V, turning toward me, “and you, my girl, can help. If you’re fit enough to walk over a mile, then you are certainly fit enough to lend me a hand for five minutes.”
“Well, I’ll warn you now,” I told her. “I have no experience with cakes and I make a terrible cup of tea.”
“Watch and learn.” She laughed. “There must be something useful you can do.”
Aunt V tidied the shelves and I helped her to restock them with some items from a cardboard box. Frosted fruit jellies, old-fashioned licorices, chocolate cats and dogs and pink pigs made of something sugary—all went into various glass containers.
“You have a strange selection of things here,” I remarked absentmindedly.
Aunt V nodded while rearranging the items I had unpacked. “We aim to have different things,” she told me. “Things that tourists might buy for presents.”
“What did Ben want?”
There, it was out, a casual question delivered with a studied lack of interest.
“To talk to you, of course,” she said. “He got our number from Mrs. Minton. We had a little chat and he said that he would ring back some other time.”
I concentrated very hard on positioning a family of fluffy brown rabbits on a stand at the end of the counter. “When did he say he would ring again?”
She gazed at me inquiringly.
“Not that I want to speak to him, particularly.” My words emerged in a rush. “He isn’t a part of here or who I am now…But I suppose I owe him something.”
“You owe him your life,” she said quietly. “So you must at least speak to the poor man.”
“Oh, I will…I will speak to him. I just don’t want him coming anywhere near here.”
“Well, if he’d like to see you, you could always meet in Appleton for a coffee or something,” she suggested.
I nodded. “If he phones again…”
“If he phones again,” she agreed.
My early-morning efforts caught up with me before lunch. My leg began to ache and I felt weak and a bit dizzy. Aunt V noticed at once, of course, and demanded that I go to see Edna in the kitchen.
“Have a sit-down for a while,” she insisted. “I’ll run you home at lunchtime. I knew you’d done too much.”
Edna’s good humor seemed to have been completely restored. She apologized for her earlier behavior, proclaiming that it was either the start of a cold or probably even just a hot flush.
“I’m at that sort of age, after all,” she told me.
“You’re still young.” I laughed.
She went quiet for a moment. “Not young enough to have another child, I’m afraid,” she murmured.
There was such sadness in her eyes that it tore at my heartstrings. “Well, I’ll always be here for you, Edna,” I promised.
She forced a bright smile back onto her face. “Take no notice of me, Lucy. We all have our little doldrums now and then, but they don’t last. Look at Harry. He was in a terrible mood at breakfast, but he’s fine again now. He’s just been in to see me, and he is so excited about you being back that he’s had an idea. No doubt he’ll talk to you about it himself, but I’ll prepare you.”
I looked at her eagerly and she leaned toward me, lowering her tone.
“He’s decided to put Promise in foal and he wants you to go with him to view some stallions.”
“Oh, that will be fantastic,” I cried.
She nodded happily. “Well, it will give the pair of you an interest.”
She bustled off then to see Aunt V, and when she returned, I thought she appeared different, quieter, as though something was on her mind. When I asked her about it, though, she brushed me off. And then I remembered the letter.
“What was it that you were going to tell me earlier?” I asked. “When Aunt V came in. You know…about the letter.”
“The letter?”
She regarded me with confusion in her eyes, and then they clouded over, shutting me out.
“Nothing,” she said firmly. “I thought I remembered, but it has gone right out of my head. So. Would you like me to go and get Harry to run you home? Your aunt says you need to rest.”
Did I? Did I need to rest? I was certainly bewildered. Images of honey-brown eyes kept flashing into my mind’s eye, mingling uncomfortably with my memories of Daniel’s soft brown gaze, so alike and yet so different. I pushed them firmly aside. It was Daniel I wanted to think about, not some guy I had met only a few times, even if he had saved my life. If he phoned again, I would ask Aunt V to tell him that I wasn’t in, I decided.
“Yes, please,” I told her. “I do need a lie-down.”
Harry was full of his idea to put Promise in foal. He talked of his plans with such enthusiasm that I couldn’t help but feel enthusiastic, too, even though he sometimes sounded so like Daniel that it brought a deep dull pain into my heart.
“After Christmas,” he decided. “We’ll sort out some of the best stallions and go view them. What do you think we should go for—a thoroughbred or something stockier?”
“What would Daniel have liked?” I asked him.
He paused to consider for a moment, with a shadow in his eyes, and when he sighed and turned to me, I silently shared the sorrow that would always lurk behind our smiles.
“Why, lass,” he said, “let’s see if he gives us an inkling over the next weeks.”
“Good idea,” I murmured.
He reached across and patted my hand. “You’ve brought happiness back to Homewood, Lucy,” he told me.
I just looked away. Who was going to bring the happiness back to me? Or was it already slowly uncurling inside me? I shut my heart against its tentative fingers, for to be happy was to set yourself up for pain.