Even though Rebecca seemed to have lost interest in the door, Marin was now determined to open it. She suggested a trip to Whitehaven the next day, and they spent an afternoon scouring charity shops, and managed to find a few decent pieces for Bower House, including a large, square table of scarred oak, just the sort of thing the kitchen needed. Marin also stopped by a hardware shop and bought a basic set of tools, including a screwdriver. Rebecca made no comment.
Back at Bower House Rebecca retreated upstairs and Marin went to work on the door. She scraped as much rust off the latch as she could, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t make the thing move at all.
Sighing in defeat, she headed back inside. Rebecca was in her room, listening to music and flipping through a teen magazine she’d bought in town. Marin hesitated in the doorway, wanting to say something, yet having no idea what – or what Rebecca needed to hear. “I tried the door,” she finally ventured, and Rebecca lifted her gaze from the magazine, her dark-blue eyes, the same colour as her mother’s, giving nothing away.
“Any luck?” she asked, and Marin shook her head.
“I’m sorry about before,” she said, as awkward as ever, and Rebecca sighed.
“Forget it, Marin. It was a stupid idea, anyway.” She offered her a semi-apologetic smile. “I just want to chill out, OK? It’s nothing to do with you.”
Marin nodded, and after another uneasy moment she retreated to her room. She hadn’t had any heartfelt conversations with Rebecca in the three months since she’d taken over her care. She’d tried at first, painfully, asking her if she wanted to talk about the accident or her parents or anything, really. Rebecca hadn’t, and Marin had been secretly, shamefully relieved.
But now Marin was conscious of all the things they hadn’t said, all the ways they hadn’t actually got to know each other. Their relationship was, in a way, as empty as this house, needing to be filled up. Made real and loving, just as this house needed to be made into a home.
Shaking her head at her own fanciful thoughts, Marin went into her bedroom.
She walked to the window, and a draught of cold air blew over her as the panes rattled in the wind. She glanced down at the garden below, the shape of the flower beds just barely visible underneath the tangle of bare brambles. She gazed at the door set into the wall, so blank and unyielding, and felt that tug of fascination that she’d felt earlier, that Rebecca had felt. It was just a door leading to brambles, as she’d insisted to Rebecca, and yet…
A door. A door in a wall. It was, she decided, a thing of possibility or even hope. She still wanted to open it, for her sake, perhaps, as much as Rebecca’s.
She watched the wind chase dead leaves across the garden; they tangled in the long grass and swirled around the twisted trunk of a cherry tree. She hadn’t noticed it before, but an old wooden swing hung from a drooping branch, and the seat creaked and swung back and forth just a little bit in the wind. Marin shivered. Everything about the garden seemed so abandoned, so lonely: the flower beds, the swing, the door.
As she stood there gazing down at it all she felt a sudden, powerful wave of homesickness sweep over her, although what she was missing, she couldn’t even say. Certainly not anything about her life in Boston, which she’d left all too easily. She’d miss her father, but he’d been absent from her life for so long, his death hadn’t actually changed anything.
No, this sudden, sweeping homesickness was for something she’d never had, somewhere she’d never been, and for a few blinding seconds its desolation seemed to sweep right through her, leaving emptiness in its wake.
She placed one hand on the cold glass, almost as though she needed to steady herself. The rays of the afternoon sun hit the top of the garden wall, and she saw, with resounding clarity, there were actually two walls, one behind and slightly higher than the other. She leaned closer, almost hitting her nose against the windowpane. From this vantage point she could quite clearly make out that the door did in fact lead to a garden, a little walled garden. From here she could see the swathes of bramble, the bare, scraggly branches of a few trees, and not much more. The walled garden, just as she’d thought, was overgrown and forgotten.
Marin leaned forward so her nose really was pressing the glass. She thought she could see something underneath all the thorns. Something dark and mossy.
Stones, she realized after a moment. The brambles were growing over the crumbling foundations of a building set in the centre of the garden.
Excitement pulsed through her and she called over her shoulder. “Rebecca! Come here. I can see the garden from my window.”
After a moment, with a laborious sigh, Rebecca came into the bedroom. “Of course you can,” she said.
“I mean the walled garden.” Marin pointed, and Rebecca joined her at the window, a flicker of interest lighting her eyes before winking out.
“It’s just as you said. Brambles.”
“No, look.” Marin tapped the glass. “Underneath. Don’t you see it? I think there was some kind of building back there.”
Rebecca frowned and then squinted before she gave a dismissive shrug. “It was probably just a shed or a greenhouse.”
Marin’s excitement died down a little at that bit of prosaic practicality. “You’re probably right,” she said, and after a moment Rebecca turned and went back to her room.
By dinnertime Rebecca had bounced back from her gloomy spell, which made Marin feel both relieved and a little guilty. She felt she should handle Rebecca’s downturns better, but the truth was she just didn’t know how. She decided to make a proper meal instead, and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how the Rayburn worked, aided by an ancient, dog-eared copy of The Complete Book of Rayburn Cookery, which had been left in a cupboard by the range.
The recipes in the book were woefully outdated; Marin didn’t intend to start her cooking experiment with jugged hare or whitebait in pastry. She made sausages and mash instead, which seemed easy enough, although she still managed to burn the sausages, and the potatoes were a bit lumpy.
Still, Rebecca smiled when she saw the meal on the table, and despite the chilly emptiness of the house the kitchen felt cosy enough with the two of them seated there, eating the meal Marin had made. It felt like a start to their new life here, to the healing process Marin wanted them both to begin. After supper they spent a companionable hour watching TV in the sitting room; with some effort Marin had even managed to make a little coal fire in the fireplace, which provided more atmosphere than warmth. Still, it was something, that they were even both sitting in the same room of an evening. Back in Hampshire Rebecca had spent the time from supper to bed in her room.
“School starts in a couple of days,” Marin announced unnecessarily when Rebecca had turned the TV off. “How do you feel about that?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Who likes school, really?”
“You must tell me if you don’t like it here,” Marin said. “I mean it, Rebecca. We can always go back.”
Rebecca stared at her for a moment, her eyes dark. “Are you saying that for my sake,” she asked, “or your own?”
And the truth was, Marin didn’t know.
The next morning was blustery and bright, and Marin decided to go for a walk through the village. Rebecca elected to stay at home, reading, and Marin didn’t push her.
“The ceilidh’s tonight, remember,” she said. “We’ll have to dig out our dancing shoes.”
Rebecca arched an eyebrow at that, but then just shrugged. Suppressing a sigh at her own ineptitude, Marin headed outside. The wind seemed to cut right through her, and made tears start in her eyes. Why hadn’t she noticed this relentless wind when they’d come here in December? Or had they visited on West Cumbria’s one windless day?
She dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her fleece-lined waterproof and hunched her shoulders against the wind, her head bowed so she could barely see more than the worn slates underneath her boots. She’d meant to walk up through the village and then back down the beach, a loop Mrs Hewitt, the owner of the bed and breakfast they’d stayed at the first night, had told them about, but without even realizing what she was doing, she turned into the church lane instead.
She walked past the church rather than turning towards the churchyard, coming to an uncertain stop before the vicarage. It was a lovely house, with tall, sashed windows and flowerpots filled with early daffodils, their yellow heads battered by the wind, on either side of the big black door. Marin hesitated, wondering just how odd it would seem if she knocked on the door and introduced herself to the American family that lived there.
Then the door opened, and a young girl, about nine or ten, stood there, her jaw dropping rather comically in surprise as she caught sight of Marin, before she offered her a wide smile.
“Hello! Are you lost? The church doors are open, if you’re wanting to have a wander.” The girl, Marin noticed, had a lilting accent that was part Cumbrian, part American. She’d never heard anything like it.
“Thank you, I should have a look in the church,” Marin answered awkwardly. “But actually I was just coming to introduce myself…”
The girl frowned at this, cocking her head, and to Marin’s relief she heard a woman’s voice from inside the house.
“Merrie? Who’s at the door—” A woman appeared behind Merrie; she was dark-haired and harried-looking, in her early forties, probably, just a few years older than Marin. She rested one hand on the girl’s shoulder and glanced quizzically at Marin, offering an uncertain smile.
“Hello—”
“Hi, sorry to disturb you,” Marin said quickly. “My sister and I have just moved into Bower House, on the other side of the church—”
“Oh.” The woman’s expression cleared and her smile widened. “Of course! You’re our new neighbours. Why don’t you come in?”
“I don’t want to be a bother—”
“Nonsense.” The woman stepped aside, holding out a hand. “I’m Jane. Jane Hatton. We’ve been here about a year and a half. What’s your name?”
“Marin Ellis.” She shook her hand and then Jane beckoned her inside.
“Well, come on in, Marin. Merrie, pick up the milk. I’ll put the kettle on.”
Merrie scampered out to pick up the two old-fashioned glass bottles of milk that had been left on the doorstep and Marin smiled, cheered by Jane’s open friendliness. She followed her down the hallway, done in the same kind of patterned tile as Bower House, and around to the kitchen in the back, a room that was large and bright and friendly.
Glancing around at the huge brass kettle on the range, the children’s artwork taped to the walls, the jar of daffodils on the sill by the sink, Marin was caught by a sudden, fierce tug of longing. This was what she wanted for her kitchen. Her home. Her life. She wanted the friendliness and love that exuded from Jane Hatton’s cosy kitchen, with a calendar scribbled full of dates and messages, the washing hanging above the Aga on an airing rack, the warm and welcoming and full feel of it. She wanted it for her and Rebecca.
“So when did you get here?” Jane asked as she filled the kettle and plonked it on the stove. She took a packet of biscuits from the pantry – there were two, Marin saw – and slid a few onto a plate. “Sorry, I’m not really much of a baker,” she said with a smiling shrug of apology towards the shop-bought biscuits.
“Neither am I. We arrived a couple of days ago, from Hampshire.”
“It’s very different, isn’t it?” Jane said in such a tone of sympathy that Marin blinked in surprise.
“It is… but you obviously like it here.”
Jane let out a laugh. “Obviously? Well, that’s cheering, because everyone would have said the opposite a while ago.”
“Really? Why?”
Jane sat down at the scrubbed pine table and indicated for Marin to take a chair. She propped her chin in her hand as she took a bite of her biscuit. “I didn’t want to move here, to be perfectly frank. We were living in New York City, which is completely different to Goswell, as you can imagine. I loved the buzz of the city and my job…” For a moment Jane’s gaze grew distant and she swallowed the last of her biscuit. “Anyway, I didn’t see any reason to move, but my husband Andrew is English – he’s from Keswick – and he wanted to move back here. So we did.” She gave a little shrug, smiling, and the kettle started to whistle.
“But you’ve settled in,” Marin said as Jane made the tea. “You seem happy here.”
“I am,” Jane said firmly. “But it took a while. Growing pains, I suppose. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of what you had. Milk?” Marin nodded and Jane bustled over to the fridge. She took out one of the glass bottles Merrie had picked up and peeled the silver-foil lid off the top. “The children love it here, and I’ve got a job in Workington, part-time for a charity. It’s different from what I had in New York, but I’ve come to realize that’s a good thing. We all needed a change, even if I wasn’t aware of it at the time.” She poured the milk in and then handed Marin her tea. “What about you? What brought you to Goswell?”
“The house, I suppose,” Marin said. She was unused to talking so easily and frankly with someone, and unsure how much to say about how she and Rebecca had ended up here.
“Do you know,” Jane said as she took a sip of her own tea, “I didn’t even know about that house? I’d seen it, of course, but I hadn’t realized it was part of the church property. The vicar built it for his mother-in-law, isn’t that right? Simon told me.”
“Simon?” Marin repeated and Jane explained:
“Simon Truesdell, the current vicar. Friendly man. You’ll meet him soon, I’m sure.”
“So this was his house, before it was sold?” Marin asked, and with a laugh Jane shook her head.
“No, but I thought that exact thing when we moved here. I thought we’d turfed the poor vicar out of his home. He lives in a bungalow up on Vale Road. The diocese decided to sell this place before he came.”
“It’s a lovely house,” Marin said. The rooms were far bigger than those of Bower House, with soaring ceilings and huge windows. It was a house made for a family, a large one, and judging from the various sounds she’d heard since coming in – someone running up and down the stairs, laughter, a shout – Jane’s family filled it admirably.
Again Marin felt that sudden shaft of longing, or even of homesickness, yet for a life she’d never once known. She pushed it away, taking another sip of tea.
“I hated this house when we first arrived,” Jane said. “Well, to be honest, I hated everything. The house, the isolation, the cold, the rain, the wind—”
“I have noticed the wind,” Marin admitted. “The windowpanes rattle with it.”
“They do! It used to drive me crazy.” Jane let out a little laugh and shook her head again. “But you haven’t told me how you ended up in Goswell. The house, you said – but you’re from down south. What brought you all the way up to West Cumbria?”
“Well…” Marin hesitated and Jane must have noticed, for she said quickly: “Sorry, I’m being nosy, aren’t I? You don’t have to tell me.”
“We needed a change,” Marin said. “My sister, well, half-sister, especially wanted one.”
“You live together?”
“Yes, I’m her guardian. She’s only fifteen.”
“Fifteen? That’s the same age as my oldest, Natalie. Will she be starting at Copeland Academy?”
“On Monday.”
“You must bring her over,” Jane said. “For dinner, maybe tomorrow? It makes such a difference to have a friend before you start school.”
“All right.” Marin smiled with a shy awkwardness, both grateful for and surprised by this unexpected invitation. She hoped Rebecca would want to come.
“And do you know about the ceilidh tonight? That’s a good way to meet some people in the village.”
“Yes, I think we’ll go.”
“Good.” Jane sat back, smiling, but then her forehead furrowed and she leaned forward and touched Marin’s hand. “I know it’s not easy. Even if you chose to come here, it’s hard to change. To adjust. But give it time. The people here are lovely, and despite the awful weather it’s really one of the most beautiful places in the world. You couldn’t do better than Goswell, really, for a place to live.”
“That’s quite the recommendation.” Smiling a bit awkwardly, Marin rose from the table. “Thanks for the tea. I ought to get back to Rebecca now. But hopefully we’ll see you tonight at the ceilidh.”
“Yes, definitely.” Jane rose too. “And do come for supper tomorrow night, the two of you. Half past five?”
“All right, thank you.” With a few more thanks and farewells, Marin moved to the front door. Merrie came running down the stairs, skidding to a halt in front of her.
“You will come back, won’t you?” she asked and Marin smiled, touched by the girl’s easy friendliness.
“Yes, tomorrow, for supper. I’ll see you then.”
With one last wave, Marin headed down the lane, her shoulders hunched once more against the wind.