Once Upon A Winter (35 page)

A thin smile curved Freya’s lips. ‘Josh and I are going to fix this,’ she said, allowing herself to believe that with a little help it was possible. ‘We’re going to make Mum happy again. We’re going to get Dad home.’

Silas
was tired.

The world, he felt, could turn perfectly well without him.

He lay on the single bed in the small, low-ceilinged room and listened to the seagulls outside. Now and again, through the tiny window, he caught a glimpse of one, wheeling in the sky in search of food.

Silas had dreamed of the sea
, a boat of his own and the heat of the sun for so long, but now he no longer had the passion to pursue it. There was no Aegean heat outside, only the frozen wasteland of winter and the grey, churning depths of the English Channel.

He was tired. So tired.

But Nell had been right. The world needed to turn in a certain way. She had shown insight and wisdom by sending him away. Now that she knew the truth about Joshua, she would be more than capable of explaining it to the child. Preparing the boy for his role in life. The old pattern would be repeated - the same design, scarcely altered, for as far back as it had always gone. Silas wasn’t sure when it had first started. Did anyone actually know? But nothing much would change for them or their kind. And he was so tired, anyway.

He remembered his father like this, lying down, slipping away. The fight gone. Energy and will snuffed out. And Silas wasn’t truly needed any more, either. It was his time, he thought, with neither relief nor despair. He had a son. That particular duty was fulfilled. It wasn’t intended that he grow grey and lined and stooped. Maybe that was a blessing. A reward for a life lived at such intensity.

It wouldn’t be long, just a few years, and Joshua would be filling his place. And there were others like them out there, too, Silas was aware, although their paths would seldom cross.

No, the world could turn without him. Had turned well enough this last couple of weeks . . . or was it longer? Silas had lost track of time. But even if he could hear the desperate
souls calling out to him, he knew he had nothing to offer them now. The fire had gone out. He would be useless to them.

‘Silas?’ There was a soft, hesitant knock, and the door was pushed open with a protesting creak.

Silas continued to stare up at his patch of sludge-blue sky, without even a glance at the old man. ‘What do you want, Abe?’

‘What do I want?’ There was a sigh. ‘I want you to eat, Silas. You haven’t touched your food again.’

‘I’m not hungry. You can take the tray away, Abe.’

‘Silas . . .
please
. . .’

‘There’s nothing to say. I’m not hungry. Just tired. You need to let me go.’

Now there was anger in the old man’s voice. ‘Then why did you come to me? What did you expect me to do?’

‘Just to be here.’ Silas slowly moved his head to look at his old friend. ‘I’ve lived much longer than you, Abe, in spite of how we appear to the world. I’m tired of life. Tired of the endlessness of it. I need to escape it somehow.’

‘Why are you so selfish now, Silas? You’ve never been that before.’

‘Selfish?’ Silas reeled slightly.

‘To expect me to just watch you fade away like this . . .’

‘I only wanted to feel less lonely. It’s my time, Abe. You can’t deny me some peace. When your wife was sick -’

‘Rebecca had cancer,’ snapped Abe waspishly. ‘What do you have, Silas? You won’t say. But it’s in your head, as far as I can make out. You’re not resisting it.’

‘There’s nothing to resist.’

‘You have children to live for. A family -’

‘They don’t need me.’ Silas turned towards the window again. ‘Be fair, Abe. You know what it’s like to crave rest. You finally sold your business. You’ve retired he
re, as you always wanted. The town I first brought you to when you came to England with your mother. You’re here, in the old fisherman’s cottage you first stayed in. You told me once you would own it, when you made your fortune, remember? A small boy full of hopes and dreams, and I always had faith in you. You achieved so much.’

‘My main success in this life was that I had a wife I loved, and who loved me
. . . But we were never blessed with the family we longed for. You have all that, Silas. Such beautiful children. A loyal wife -’

‘And you promised, Abe. You swore on your life and mine, and Rebecca’s memory, that you wouldn’t tell them where I was. It’s dangerous for them to have me around. Nell’s safer without me. I can’t give her anything more than I already have, except a shadow over her life, the possibility that I’ll bring some tragedy upon her.’

‘Pah!’ Abe spat, and waved his hand contemptuously. ‘You’re an idiot! You’re bringing tragedy on her already. On the children. Allowing yourself to waste away like this. What will that achieve for them? You’ve condemned
yourself
.’

Silas turned weakly towards Abe. ‘Better me, than her,’ he said. ‘You need to trust me one last time. Joshua will be fine; but don’t risk Nell’s life. Or Freya’s. Just let me go. Pretend I’m just some figment of your imagination. Just a name in a story . . . It’s all my kind once was  . . . If it’s easier, think of me that way. Think of me as simply going back to where I belong.’

‘I can’t,’ said Abe hoarsely. ‘How can I . . . ? You’re as much flesh and blood as I am. As much a man as any other.’

‘No.’ Silas shook his head, and his mind spun with the effort. ‘I’m not. And nothing on this earth can convince me otherwise.’

‘
Mum, you have to come. You can’t chicken out now.’ Joshua stood in the doorway of his mother’s room.

She was sitting on the bed, half ready, wearing that red dress that she’d worn to the New Year’s Eve party, although it still needed zipping up at the top.
Her hair wasn’t combed, and she didn’t have any make-up on.

‘Joshua,’ she said with a frown
, ‘I think I’m coming down with that bug you had last week . . .’

‘Oh, no!
It was horrible. I hope you don’t get as sick as I was.’

‘You’re fine, Mum.’ Freya brushed past him and strode into the room. ‘You just don’t want to go, so you’re making up some excuse.’

‘I’m not,’ muttered their mother, but sheepishly.

‘Turn around a bit,’ said Freya, ‘and I’ll do up your dress at the back.’

Grudgingly, Mum shifted on the bed. Freya struggled with the zip.

‘This is all too much bother.
’ Mum sighed with a judder. ‘I don’t feel like going to a party . . .’

‘Well, you’ve got to. Daniel’s driving us there in his new car. He wanted to show it off. He’d be upset if you didn’t go.’

‘I could drive the Land Rover instead . . . Daniel ought to be able to have a drink. It’s his party, and I don’t much fancy drinking tonight, after all.’

‘Then tell him that,’ said Freya,
handing Mum a hairbrush. ‘And hurry up and finish looking pretty. Josh and I are ready. We don’t want to be kept waiting.’

*

Daniel took up Nell’s offer, without much persuading. Originally, Nell had been certain she wouldn’t get through the evening without some Dutch Courage. Now, though, after nursing Joshua through a stomach bug last week, she seemed to have come down with it herself, and the thought of even a white wine spritzer made her stomach churn.

For once, Freya seemed to have got off lightly, and hadn’t shown any signs of coming down with her brother’s sickness. In fact, while Nell had run herself ragged looking after a still-poorly Nana Gwen and a son who couldn’t seem to keep anything
down, or hold anything in, Freya had competently assumed control of the household. In a minor sense, at least.

She had looked after Nana Gwen on the occasions w
hen Nell was dealing with Joshua; had sometimes made dinner, even if it was always cheese on toast; laid out clean school uniform for herself and put together her own packed lunches. Nell hadn’t let her near the washing machine or the iron, however, because she hadn’t particularly wanted pink undies when they ought to be white, or shrunken jeans, or a daughter with second-degree burns from a steam iron. 

Freya had impr
essed her by seeming much older than her nearly-ten years, though, and far less concerned about her own needs than usual.

Daniel led
Nell to the passenger door of the Land Rover. ‘I’ll drive us down there, and you can drive back. I know you don’t like using the 4x4 much.’

Regardless of how Nell felt about driving
it, she appreciated that it was safer than her little Skoda in this weather.

‘I left Nana Gwen asleep,’ she said
, as the children clicked on their seatbelts in the back. ‘She’s dropping off earlier and earlier these days. I’ll come back up here in an hour or so, to check she’s OK.’

‘Nell, let Emma come up. You know she will. No one expects you to shoulder it all yourself.’

Nell frowned through the window. She would miss Daniel when he left Harreloe; enough to make her dread what life would be like without him next door in the Annexe.

This party was in his honour, to celebrate his new job, among other things, because it also happened to be his birthday. He wasn’t leaving Harreloe or the
old school quite yet, but it had been Emma’s suggestion to throw a party for him, and Calista had offered the use of her café as a private function room.

Nell had only heard about it once it was all organised. A done deal. Freya had told her about it, sounding remarkably like a little adult, and saying that Nell would have to make an effort for Daniel, because it wasn’t fair if she didn’t.

One appraising glance in the mirror had confirmed Nell’s fears that she had let her beauty regime slide over the last few weeks. Or a lot, truthfully. So she had dragged herself to the hairdressers, and had made the effort to pile on the skin products last thing at night and first thing in the morning, in an attempt not to resemble some freakish ghoul.

Not merely for Daniel’s sake, she acknowledged, but for the children’s, because it wasn’t enough to make assertions that she was slogging on for them and doing her best. She had to demonstrate
to everyone that she was a good mother, and more than capable of functioning as she had before Silas had come and gone.

Concerned phone calls from
her father hadn’t helped, but Nell had stayed calm and tried not to sound as if she was anywhere close to tears. The last thing she wanted was to have him cutting his trip short on the very last leg.

Nana Gwen’s delirious rants hadn’
t been much fun, either. The old lady had been running a fever, and was already on her second course of antibiotics.

‘Tell S
ilas I’m dying,’ she had declared, on and off. ‘He might come back to Harreloe.’

‘I can’t.’ Nell had struggled to keep her patience. ‘I deleted his number, Nana.’ She hadn’t wanted to see it there in her phone. The temptation would have been too great. ‘And you’re not dying. You’re just a bit sick. If you were terribly bad, you’d be in hospital.’

‘Oh, stupid,
stupid
girl. Stupid man,’ her grandmother had babbled, flinging her head crossly from side to side on her pillows. ‘Both of you . . . throwing it all away . . .’

Nell felt guilty leaving her grandmother tonight. But Nana Gwen’s temperature had been down today, and the antibiotics had probably done their job this time round.

With a deep breath now, as Daniel parked the Land Rover, Nell blinked up at the heart-shaped fairy lights Calista had hung in the café window for Valentine’s Day, and had yet to take down. That had been the worst day, so far. Aside from the implications of being a wife without a husband, Nell had felt a heaviness seeping over her, an ominous sort of feeling, as if something bad were happening somewhere. Yet she had been unable to pinpoint what exactly. It had just settled over her and refused to budge.

She had learned to put up with it, though, as she was putting up with everything else. The only respite she had was the fact that she was sleeping soundly again, crawling into bed early every night and just conking out, like a flaky car engine. She wished she could do that today, rather than pretend she was having fun for everyone else’s benefit rather than her own.

The bell over the door tinkled as they entered. Calista came flitting out of the kitchen in an aquamarine dress with long, wide, floaty sleeves. She swooped down on Nell as if she had butterfly wings.

‘Cariad!’ She hugged Nell
and kissed her cheek. Then held her by the shoulders and leaned back, surveying her from head to foot. ‘You look washed out,’ she murmured quietly, with a frown. ‘As if all the colour has left you.’

‘I might have looked better the last time I
wore this dress.’

‘You were radiant back then
. Now you seem . . .’ Calista’s eyes became slits. ‘Come and help me a moment,’ she said, and led Nell away, behind the counter and through the beaded curtain. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come up to Bryn Heulog to see you.’ She turned to face Nell. ‘I thought about it, but I wasn’t sure how welcome I would be. You stopped coming into the café, so I assumed you were avoiding me again. I don’t like to foist myself on people, and I’d heard your grandmother wasn’t well. I thought you might need time to adjust to things.’

‘I thought you’d
blame me for Silas leaving. I couldn’t face you.’

‘Blame you? Why would I do that? He was the one who left without saying goodbye.’

Nell looked down at her red shoes. ‘But only because I asked him to.’

‘Oh?’ Nell could feel Calista’s penetrating gaze on her. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘Because,’ said Nell, and shrugged. ‘He was going to eventually.’

‘Was he? I suppose he might have been.’ Calista sounded remarkably buoyant. ‘He had it in his head that his father had damned his mother, simply by loving her. That always seemed so unsound to me, when love ought to be the least damning thing in the world.’

‘Anna’s family would never have approved . . . A bit like mine.’

‘Nell, your family only want you to be happy. Anna Lambert’s didn’t. They didn’t care one jot about her happiness.’

‘It’s all beside the point now, anyway . . . Silas is gone.’

‘And Daniel will be leaving, too,’ Calista pointed out.

‘He’s been a good friend.’

‘Are you sure that’s all he’s been? Not your lover?’

Nell frowned, but Calista’s bluntness shouldn’t have surprised her, and there was no point trying to evade it. ‘In all honesty, no. It never went that far.’

‘Everything’s going to be rather strange for you, isn’t it? I suppose, though, once your father and Yvette get home, you’ll be under less strain with your grandmother.’

‘I suppose . . . I’m not sure what’s going to happen.’ Nell hadn’t had much of a chance to mull it over lately.

Calista smiled. ‘It’s just as well you’ll have help, really. Considering.’

‘Considering what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Do you?’

‘Do I know
what
exactly?’ Nell’s brain seemed to hurt with the exertion of keeping up with the older woman.

‘Apparently you don’t,’ said Calista, with a bizarre smile. ‘Now, will you help me by
carrying this tray out? It’s just a few nibbles to keep us all going until dinner’s ready and everyone’s arrived. Meryl will be down in a minute, too, to finish up in here.’

Nell frowned as she went back out carrying the tray. Calista was making no sense. And smiling far too much.

*

Freya
and Joshua poked their heads through the beaded curtain.

‘Did we do OK?’ asked Freya. ‘We got her here, like you wanted.’

Calista ushered them into the kitchen. She was grinning warmly. ‘Yes, children. You both did brilliantly. She needed to get out like this, or she might have turned into a hermit, like I used to be. And I’m glad it’s given me the chance to see how she is.’

‘You still haven’t heard anything from Dad?’ said Joshua.

Calista’s face clouded over momentarily. ‘No, lad, not yet. But be patient. As long as you’re both being helpful and kind to your mother, you’re doing your part.’

‘I hate waiting around.’ Freya pouted
sulkily.

Calista patted her cheek. ‘Sometimes waiting is all we can do. Sometimes it’s the best course of action. It throws things up at us unexpectedly. It makes life clearer.’

Freya stared at the woman, sensing something different about her. ‘Have you worked it out?’ She confronted Calista plainly. ‘You have, haven’t you . . . ? You know what’s changed! You know how the curse has been broken!’

Joshua’s eyes were like saucers. ‘We’ve been trying to wo
rk it out for days.’

‘Weeks,’ said Freya, slightly disgruntled that Calista had figured it out before they had. It had been part of the reason for bringing Mum to her tonight, so that Calista could
talk to her, but still . . .

Freya liked the sensation of knowing things before anyone else. It set her a
part from her brother, she felt. She was far less tolerant than he was. Freya supposed that Joshua had got the best of Dad, and that maybe she had been left with the remainder.

‘A few more weeks,’ said Calista, ‘and everyone will know.’

‘You’re not going to tell us - are you?’ Freya frowned in frustration.

‘Not before your mother knows. No. I don’t think it would be fair, child.’

‘So when will she know?’ asked Joshua.

‘Oh, she’ll work it out - soon enough.’

‘This is doing my head in,’ said Freya, and flounced out through the beaded curtain, her sequined top shimmering like stardust.

‘Will it mean that Dad comes home?’ Joshua asked, blinking up at Calista. ‘If we can find out where he is?’

The woman sighed. ‘If your father needed a sign . . . any sign . . . I couldn’t honestly think of a more faultless one.’