El moves about the cottage, switching on the heating and the fridge, unpacking her things, trying to accustom herself to her father’s absence, wondering what she might want to change. Nothing immediately springs to mind. The cottage has always seemed like a shared space. When he first moved in, she came to stay and they chose furniture, paintings, kitchenware together. Her mother had taken most of the family belongings with her, and Pa had decided that the Pig Pen was to be a fresh start. They had a great deal of fun choosing what might work in this big open area. Occasionally El wondered if they might be enjoying themselves too much: this, after all, was the result of a divorce, of his unfaithfulness. Sometimes she wondered if it were a kind of relief for both of them to be free of her mother’s controlling personality. This made her feel guilty, but didn’t prevent her from enjoying the experience.
Freddie came to visit. El knew that she and Pa felt very slightly like naughty children who have behaved badly but aren’t really sorry.
‘I hope he likes it,’ Pa said just before Freddie’s first arrival, looking around anxiously lest there should be something his son might find tasteless. El knew that he felt badly that there were only two bedrooms and so it was difficult to accommodate Freddie. One of the sofas could be converted into a comfortable bed made up with duvets and pillows, which is where Pa put his friends when they came to stay, but Eleanor knew that Freddie would be relieved. He would feel less compromised, less disloyal, if he could say to his mother that he wasn’t actually staying at the Pig Pen. He booked in at the Bedford Hotel and El guessed that he would be more comfortable knowing he could make his escape; that he need not be drawn into those long intimate after-supper conversations, which might demand too much of him or compromise him. He is non-confrontational; he likes everybody to be happy. He can’t see that his expectation is a triumph of hope over experience. It was a good visit, though. He and Pa did their one-arm, man-type hug when Freddie left, promising to return soon.
‘I think he was OK with it,’ Pa said, as they waved him off up the track.
He stood for a moment, listening to the sound of the car engine fading, and then turned back, stooping to twitch the dead head from a flower in a tub, tweaking out a weed. She hadn’t known what to say. Pa never spoke of the divorce or the reason for it. Sometimes she wondered if he might still be seeing the woman with whom he had the affair but he never mentioned her, nor was there ever any sign of another female presence at the Pig Pen.
El wishes that she had the approval of her family for this big adventure in her life but, although it has been agreed that Freddie should inherit everything their mother took with her in the divorce settlement and that El should have the Pig Pen, there is no sense of encouragement. Nobody could have expected that Pa should die when he was barely sixty, so none of them had thought much about the future, but she would have appreciated a friendly voice from the people closest to her.
She goes out from the sitting-room on to the little terrace and looks at her phone. Freddie messaged her yesterday, sending his love, Angus has offered company or help, or anything she might need to settle in, but there are three new messages. Two are from her uni friends, sending love, asking when they can come to stay. The third one is from Will.
Hope you’re OK. Have you moved in yet?
She stares at the message, surprised, and pleased, too. Will: she hadn’t expected anything from him. Her relationship with Will is an ambivalent one. When her mother and his father became an item, Will was as unenthusiastic about it as El and Freddie were. He and Freddie were nearly twenty-three, Eleanor seventeen.
‘But how are we all supposed to live together?’ she demanded of her mother. ‘I mean, we don’t know these people. We can’t just suddenly become a family.’
She was indignant, Freddie was troubled, Will was cool and unapproachable. It was fortunate that Freddie was already in his fifth year of his medical course and Will had joined an airline as a junior first officer. He often spent holidays abroad with friends. After the wedding, El hated moving into Roger’s house; being allotted a small bedroom, bumping into Will on the landing on those rare occasions when he came home, adjusting to Roger’s presence. It wasn’t that she disliked Roger – he was an inoffensive, kindly man – it was all just so weird. Her mother managed to imply that it was her father’s fault, that if he hadn’t behaved so badly they wouldn’t be in this position now, but El was very relieved when Pa bought the Pig Pen and she could escape for the major part of each holiday and alternate Christmases, despite her mother’s wrath and Freddie’s pleadings. Will kept clear, too. El went to university and their relationship, such that it was, continued at a distance.
Yet she understands Will. She knows that he was resentful that his father should marry this strong-willed woman, who moved in and clearly intended to take over all their lives. Will made no scenes, caused no arguments, he simply disappeared away into his own life. Several times he brought home his flat-mate, a gay man called Christian. El liked him, and liked the way he and Will bantered together, but her mother was convinced that Will was gay after he brought him to the first New Year’s party Roger gave soon after the move back to Dorchester from Devon.
Now, as she stares at his text, El remembers how touched she was when Will asked if he could attend Pa’s funeral; pleased when he hugged her afterwards and told her how well she’d organized it.
She suddenly remembers that very first Christmas after the wedding, with them all together in the new house, at the Boxing Day party that her mother insisted should be given so that their mutual friends should see how happy they all were. El was embarrassed and not at all happy. Towards the end of the party she took rather a large swig from Freddie’s wine glass and, in a silly fit of devil-may-care misery, she seized a piece of mistletoe, held it over Will’s head and kissed him. It was not intended to be a sisterly action – quite the contrary, as if she were trying to show their parents that she refused to accept the relationship. Taken off guard, he responded, pulling her close to him, before suddenly pushing her away. Both of them were shocked, and El, feeling confused by her reaction to his kiss and humiliated by her foolishness, dropped the mistletoe and fled to her room, hoping that in the crush nobody would notice. She stayed in bed until late the next morning and by the time she made a reluctant appearance it was to find that Will had already left to visit friends for the rest of the holidays. By the time she saw him again she was able to pretend that it was all part of the Christmas madness; almost that it had never happened. Certainly Will never mentioned it.
Now, four years on, she looks at his message, remembers his kindness at the funeral, and wonders if some kind of friendship might be salvaged. She types a reply – Not really. Missing Pa. Got to sort his clothes – and sends it before she can change her mind. She looks again at her messages and she goes back into the cottage. It’s time to do the thing she’s been dreading for the last few weeks, which is to clear out Pa’s bedroom. Soon she will have visitors to stay and she has to make his room a guest-room.
Slowly, reluctantly, she goes downstairs and opens his bedroom door. Standing just inside, she looks around. She’s done this several times since he died: looking for echoes of him, reminders of his presence. When Freddie stayed for the funeral she changed the sheets, tidied the bathroom, but she left the essentials of him so that Freddie should remember the father they’d shared.
‘You don’t mind?’ she asked tentatively, the night before the funeral. ‘Me having the Pig Pen, I mean? You’ll get all of Mum’s estate, of course, and Pa’s life insurance will be split between us, but it seems a bit weird somehow, me having this now…’
‘It’s fine,’ he answered quickly. ‘Honestly, El, it’s not a problem. I wouldn’t want it anyway. It’s not my scene.’
‘No, I get that, but it would be more fair to sell it and split it between us.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s all been dealt with. Let’s not talk about it now.’
Once he’d gone she’d stripped the bed, flung a throw across it and closed the door, but now she looks at those built-in cupboards and drawers full of Pa’s clothes and knows that she must sort them out, take them to a charity shop. When she asked Freddie if there was anything he’d like to keep he selected two pairs of cuff links, several books and a small watercolour of a moorland scene, asking first if she minded.
‘Of course not,’ she said, pleased that he wanted these special things. ‘And I shan’t be getting rid of any of the books or paintings or things like that. Only his clothes and shoes. So if you think of anything else, let me know.’
He hesitated and she wondered if he might be going to ask if he should take anything for their mother. Pa’s death had been so sudden, so unexpected, that she decided it would be unfair to Roger to cancel the expensive holiday they had booked and they hadn’t appeared at the funeral. Freddie did his best to explain this tactfully, reasonably, but El knew how humiliated her mother would feel to face all the friends who knew what Pa had done and was glad to have an excuse to stay away.
But all Freddie said now was: ‘Do you need any help with anything?’
‘There’s really only his clothes. Angus is going to check through all his papers, all the official stuff. But thanks for offering. I’ll let you know if I have problems. And I hope everything goes really well with you and Sarah.’
He was telling her at supper after the funeral about his new girlfriend, a radiologist at his hospital, and how they might be getting a flat together. El was pleased for him, told him that she must bring Sarah down for a visit. She found him a bag in which to put his keepsakes, gave him a hug.
Now, as she opens the cupboard doors and stares inside, she realizes that she will need bags into which she must pack the clothes. Resisting the urge to close the doors again, to postpone the moment, she begins to bring out the trousers, shirts and jackets and pile them on to the bed. She glances at Pa’s radio and CD player standing on top of the chest and switches it on. The CD starts turning and begins to play. Earth, Wind & Fire: ‘Star bright, star light…’, one of Pa’s favourites. Eleanor hesitates, her arms full of clothes. Tears rush to her eyes and she bows her head, burying her face in his soft cotton shirts. After a moment she straightens up, piles them on to the bed and begins to fold them. A text pings in and she takes out her phone to look at it. It’s from Will.
Would you like some help with that? I could come down on Wednesday morning for twenty-four hours.
It’s odd how unexpected kindness is the undoing of her. She sits down on the edge of the bed beside the pile of shirts, takes a deep breath. Why not accept his offer, accept help? She’s sometimes wondered how it must have been for Will when his mother died, how he felt about his father remarrying, and how much he must have resented her mother. She texts:
Thanks. That would be great. I’ll send directions.
Once she’s sent it she is washed through with relief. This dreaded moment can be postponed. It will be easier to deal with it once Will, calm, pragmatic, is with her. She switches off the music, goes out and closes the door behind her.
Kate is walking Floss in the woods above Burrator Reservoir. How strange but how familiar it is to be here: a glint of water between bare, black branches, the high outcrop of rock that is Sheepstor, the croak of a raven circling above her. As she wanders slowly, crunching through rusty dead bracken, watching Floss skittering ahead, Kate tries to analyse the sensations of happiness, contentment – and an odd feeling of loss. From the very beginning when she moved here as a young naval wife with her twin baby sons, Dartmoor – bleak, mysterious – has been her spiritual home. The colonial bungalow in Dousland, the cottage near Horrabridge, the Victorian semi in Whitchurch: these places were home and the moor was her refuge. It consoled her when her first marriage failed, when her love affair with Alex broke apart, and then again when her second husband, David, died.
As she picks her way amongst the mossy boulders, checking on Floss, watching a buzzard surfing the thermals, she wonders why it should have been then, when she felt most alone – David gone, both her boys married – that she left Tavistock, selling the house, which was much too big for her, and renting a cottage from one of David’s friends in St Meriadoc on the north Cornish coast. David was an artist, an RA; Bruno Trevannion is a writer. He owns the small estate at St Meriadoc but prefers to live in a stone folly on the cliff rather than in the pretty house, Paradise, set amongst sheltered gardens, or in one of the three terraced cottages set round the long-disused harbour. It was in one of these cottages that Kate lived, though, and taking advice she’d bought a cottage in Chapel Street in Tavistock, which she rented out as a naval hiring. Her son Guy with his wife, Gemma, and their two boys have been living in it since they came home from Canada. Now they’ve moved down to be closer to the little family group that run the sailing school and Kate must find another tenant. Staying with Cass whilst some redecorating is done at the cottage, she’s falling back into old familiar ways: walking on the moor, going to see old friends, coffee with Cass in the Bedford.
‘Why don’t you move back?’ asks Cass. ‘This is home really, you know that. I know you’re very fond of dear old Bruno, and it’s beautiful down there on the coast, but this is where you belong.’
Kate thinks about this as she walks. In a way, Cass is right. She ran away when David died. At that moment it seemed this place she loved so much represented failure: the collapse of her marriage with Mark, the heartbreak of a failed love affair, David’s death. She was looking for a new beginning, something completely different. The move to St Meriadoc gave her a whole new perspective and she is happy in the little cottage, with Bruno out on his rock, writing his novels, and his kindly relatives around her. She remembers another occasion like this when she felt torn between her two loves, and Bruno saying, ‘Home is where the heart is,’ but she is still not sure where that is. She misses Bruno when she is away from him. In some ways he’s like David. They’re both creative artists and so are slightly detached, but they both know how to share, how to love.
She looks around for Floss, calling her name. She can see her now, following a scent amongst the trees on the slopes below, and Kate calls again until Floss comes dashing back to her.
‘Good girl,’ says Kate, fastening Floss’s lead. ‘It’s time for tea.’
They walk back to the car, Floss tugging at the end of the lead and Kate suddenly wishing that they were going to her cottage in Tavistock rather than back to the Old Rectory. Just at the moment there’s a great deal of stress between Cass and Tom. Tom feels very strongly that the time has come to sell the Rectory and move into a smaller house in Tavistock.
‘Things have changed,’ he says. ‘The village shop and post office have closed down. There’s no bus. I’m seventy-five this year and we need to make the move while we still can. We don’t want to leave it too late and be pushed into it.’
Whenever he says this kind of thing, Kate can see Cass shrink a little; her eyes flick around her home as if to reassure herself of all that is dear and familiar to her. Kate feels huge sympathy for both of them. Tom is right: the Rectory is very big and very remote. It’s beginning to look shabby and the garden is becoming a wilderness. Tom has had a knee replacement and can’t do as much as he once could, and they are starting to lose their grip on it all. At the same time, Cass has lived there for forty years and there are too many memories, too much of her life there, to be cast aside easily. Each of them appeals to Kate for support and she’s finding it a very difficult situation. Although she’s never lived for any length of time in Chapel Street, she wonders what it might be like to be going there now: going home. She thinks of El. How she is feeling now that the Pig Pen is truly her home; not simply a place she goes to for holidays or weekends to stay with her father, but the place where she lives?
As she helps Floss to scramble into the back of the car and settles her on her rug, Kate thinks about Martin, and imagines how proud he would be of El. She remembers the woman she saw with him in the Walled Garden at The Garden House, and again one winter’s morning on a beach in Cornwall, arm in arm, heads bent close together against the wind. On both occasions instinct warned Kate to stay clear. As she gets into the car and drives away, she thinks about how she saw the woman again at Martin’s funeral, slipping out from her seat at the back into the shadows and disappearing on to Church Lane, unwilling to be noticed. It was then that Kate recognized her: the pretty, dark-haired woman was Julia Braithwaite. She’d presented a programme recently on local television called Cakes and Ale, celebrating the pubs and tearooms around the coast of the south-west peninsula, but Kate made no attempt to approach her, nor did she mention Julia to any of her friends. Clearly Martin wanted to keep their affair a private thing, a secret, and Kate has no intention of betraying it.