After Will has gone, El stands at the door for a moment listening to the sound of the engine fading. In the orchard a blackbird is foraging amongst the long grass, feasting on the remains of the windfalls. She hears voices, a door slams, and then there’s the sound of the quad bike starting up and she knows that Andy is off to work on the farm with his sheepdog, Boy, perched up on the bike beside him. She likes Andy and his wife, Trish. They’re good neighbours, and the baby is sweet. She’s careful not to impose on Andy when he offers to bring in logs, clear the orchard. At this moment she’s tempted to cross to the Hen House, to bang on the door, and shout, ‘Hi, it’s me, Trish. Want to come over for coffee?’
But still she stands, oddly unwilling to go back inside. She’s trying to decide whether looking at Pa’s phone is a dishonourable thing to do, like reading someone’s private correspondence. Yet she wonders, too, if there might be something she ought to see, some message that might be important, someone she ought to contact. Pa had a very comprehensive database of names and addresses, which she and Angus used to contact people after he died, since she hadn’t found his phone.
Now she guessed that Pa was wearing his fleece gilet in the garden as he worked, just before he stabbed his finger, and he’d gone back into the cottage, hung up his gilet and hurried to wash his hands, to try to stop the bleeding. The gilet, with the phone in its pocket, has hung there ever since. Somehow the little scene is horribly vivid in her mind. She can imagine the water running whilst he tries to wash away the mud and the blood and how he would be cursing as he tried to get out bandages and plasters and fix them to the wound with his left hand …
She can hear the postman’s van rattling down the track and she turns quickly and hurries inside, unwilling to be caught in an emotional state. She takes the phone from the drawer and goes upstairs. She knows the battery will be flat and she takes it over to the little table by the bookcase where Pa always kept its charger. She plugs it in, switches it on. There’s a battery symbol, a red line and a cable, and then the screen goes black again. After a few minutes the white apple appears and then the phone comes alive. She knows the password because she set it all up for him, and now there are the little red circles which show that there are unread messages and missed calls.
El stares at the screen. Now she must decide. Another memory slides into her mind. He’d phoned her later that evening from his landline and left a message.
‘Hi there, El. It’s Pa. I managed to stab my finger on a thorn in the garden earlier, clumsy idiot that I am. It’s my right hand and the bandage is a bit bulky so I won’t be texting any time soon. I hope you’re out celebrating. Love you, darling.’
By the time she answered there was no reply. She didn’t know it but he was already in hospital and she didn’t have the chance to speak to him again. Impulsively she taps the messages and here they are. There are the texts she sent when she got no reply from the landline, one from Angus suggesting meeting for a pint, a couple from Pa’s walking group confirming the next hike, and one from someone simply headed J.
Where are you? x
El stares at the message and then scrolls up. Pa’s message reads:
Sounds like a plan. See you there.
Quickly she slides up through the messages in reverse.
Yes please. Nancy Fortescue. 10.45?
Coffee tomorrow?
El tries to remember anyone she knows called Nancy Fortescue but can think of nobody, although the name has an odd familiarity. Looking at the date, thinking back, she can see that the meeting was planned for the day after Pa died. She flicks back to the home screen to look at the missed calls and then notices the red dot on the voicemail. Hesitantly she touches the icon, then presses the key to listen to the message.
‘So where were you?’ asks a warm, flexible female voice. The voice sounds amused. ‘Hope you haven’t had a drama. Let me know.’
Resisting with great difficulty the operator’s invitation to return the call. El stands in complete confusion, her mind in a tumult of conjecture, disbelief and surprise. Even as she stands, trying to puzzle it out, her own phone buzzes. She stares at the text. Simon and Natasha are very pleased with her CV and would love to have a chat. They’ll be in the shop all morning if she’s around, otherwise let them know when she can meet up with them again.
Still in a state of bewilderment, El sends them a message saying that she’s on her way. Leaving Pa’s phone on charge, she hurries downstairs, grabs her bag and goes out to the car.
All the while she is with Natasha and Simon she is still thinking about the messages. It is difficult to concentrate while they talk about what her duties will involve when she’s longing to say to them: ‘Do you know anyone called Nancy Fortescue?’ They knew Pa very well and might recognize the name. With an effort she pulls herself together and as she talks with Natasha about checking books in, scanning them into the computer, dealing with wholesalers, El is glad that she’s had holiday jobs in bookshops. It all sounds reassuringly familiar. She loves Book Stop, with its two floors of books and, up on the third floor, the Music Room. Pa once found a remastered CD of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue up there. El remembers how delighted he was and thinks again about the messages.
There are several customers needing attention now and the phone is ringing, so El agrees that she will start on Friday morning at nine o’clock and goes out into the street. She can’t focus her thoughts: partly excited at the prospect of starting work in Book Stop, partly still struggling with the idea of Pa having a relationship with someone she doesn’t know, or at least with a voice she doesn’t recognize. As she pauses on the corner, trying to pull herself together, she sees a woman at the end of Church Lane waving to her. It’s Kate. El waves back, waits for a van to pass between them and then hurries across the road. Kate gives her a hug.
‘Are you OK?’ she asks. ‘You looked a bit lost, standing there, as if you weren’t sure where you ought to be going.’
El nods rather ruefully. ‘I do feel a bit like that,’ she admits. ‘I’ve got a job in Book Stop and I was just wondering how to celebrate. It seems a bit flat just to go home.’
‘That’s easy,’ Kate says at once. ‘Come back to the cottage with me and have some coffee. The decorating is nearly done and it’s looking so nice that I can hardly bear the thought of letting anybody else live in it.’
El laughs as they walk along Duke Street. ‘Then why don’t you stay? Everyone wants you to.’
As they turn into Chapel Street and she follows Kate into the cottage, El wonders what Kate would say if she were to ask her about Nancy Fortescue. Kate leads her into a living-room, two walls lined with bookshelves, a big table in the centre, and indicates one of the armchairs.
‘Would you like to sit down while I make some coffee? The kitchen is very small so this is where I tend to live when I’m here. Gemma and Guy haven’t been gone long so it still feels homely. I think I’ll let it furnished, but I shall take advice.’
‘So you won’t move back?’ El leans against the kitchen door, watching as Kate fills the kettle, spoons coffee into a cafetiere and sets the mugs on a tray. She doesn’t answer for a moment.
‘When I’m here,’ she says at last, ‘with everyone around, I feel really tempted. But then again, I love being at St Meriadoc, too. I wish I could be more single-minded.’
‘But why?’ asks El. ‘Surely you have the best of both worlds?’
‘Not really,’ answers Kate. ‘I can’t afford to leave the cottage empty and come back to it whenever I feel like it. It’s great staying with Tom and Cass, but I sometimes wonder what it would be like actually to live here. Really make it my home.’
‘At least it’s here for you, though, if you should really need it,’ says El. ‘You’ve got it waiting for you and meanwhile you can enjoy your other life as well.’
Kate smiles at her. ‘You’re like your old pa,’ she says. ‘You’re a comforter. You take the positive line. I like that. We all miss him terribly.’
El is silent for a moment. She is pleased that Kate has spoken so directly and with such affection but tears fill her eyes and she wipes them away quickly.
‘I’m thinking of writing a novel,’ she says, almost randomly, to distract herself from this sudden stab of grief. ‘I’ve always wanted to. I’ve got a few ideas and I’m making lots of notes.’
‘Now that really is amazing,’ Kate says warmly. ‘Martin would certainly be thrilled with the idea.’
El stands aside so that Kate can carry the tray into the living-room. She sets it on the table and El pulls up a chair. Kate sits opposite.
‘So you think he’d approve of what I’m doing?’ El asks.
Kate glances across at her, considering the question. ‘I think he’d be very proud of you for giving it a go; for wanting to make it work. And he’d be delighted about your job at Book Stop. He practically lived there.’
El smiles. ‘It’s only part time, three days a week and flexible, but it’s a really good start for me. I feel fantastically lucky.’
‘It’s such a friendly place,’ agrees Kate, ‘and you’ll probably know lots of the customers by sight, if not by name.’
It’s as if Kate has offered her an opportunity and El seizes it.
‘Talking of names,’ she says, casually, ‘do you know anyone called Nancy Fortescue?’
Kate frowns, sipping her coffee thoughtfully. ‘The name certainly rings a bell but I can’t place it. Why?’
El’s ready for this one. ‘I’ve been clearing up a bit and there are things scribbled down on bits of paper. Phone numbers, names. I’m just making sure I’ve contacted everyone who should know.’
‘That’s horrid for you to have to do on your own,’ says Kate sympathetically. ‘Isn’t there anyone to help? What about Freddie? Angus was saying that his friend has been helping you sort out the clothes.’
El is thankful that none of Pa’s friends here in Tavistock knows about her mother’s new family. He never discussed it with them but El wonders if, now she is living here among them, it will be much more difficult to maintain that silence, especially if Will comes to see her again. She wonders why it is so difficult to describe Will as her stepbrother, how they would react to him, and why it matters. Perhaps, because Pa was so reluctant to talk about it all, she’s simply followed his lead. She wonders whether to tell Kate the truth and then decides that she will talk to Will about it first. She remembers how vague he was at the funeral, happy to be introduced as one of Freddie’s friends.
Kate is talking about Sunday lunch. Cass is inviting everyone, will El be able to come? They discuss it, and then Kate says she must be getting back to the Rectory, that she’s left Floss with Cass while she came in to do some shopping. They finish their coffee, El offers to help clear up, and then she’s out in Chapel Street, heading back to the car park and still wondering about Nancy Fortescue.