She raised her hand in the air. ‘Willing volunteer to help you work through it all. Mr Pino and Mr Grigio are offering their assistance too.’
I couldn’t help laughing. Georgia always had known how to lift me.
‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘Can I start on the veg for you? Anything except the tiny trees.’
She directed me to a bag of potatoes and I started peeling while she finished arranging the flowers.
‘I did a thing yesterday,’ I said after I’d peeled a few spuds. ‘I decided to visit The Bothy but I bottled it when I got close.’
Georgia looked puzzled. ‘You do realise Flynn doesn’t live there anymore?’
‘I wasn’t looking for Flynn. I’d already looked it up online. I’d never have gone if I thought he was still there. Do you know why he didn’t sell up straightaway? Actually, no, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.’
‘I couldn’t tell you even if you wanted me to. He might have spoken to Mark about it but, like I told you, I haven’t spent any time with him. But I do know where he lives now. Do you want to know that?’
I shook my head vigorously. ‘Definitely not.’
‘So if you weren’t going to The Bothy to see Flynn, what was the reason?’
‘I thought it might help if I went back there.’
‘Help what?’ She narrowed her eyes at me and, as I saw the realisation hit, she put her peeler down and gathered me into her arms. ‘You’re not okay, are you?’
I gratefully sank into her embrace. ‘Not really.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ she asked when I released her.
I ran my hands into my hair and sighed heavily. ‘Remember what you said to me outside The White Willow at Mum’s eightieth? That I’d run away to Newcastle and buried my head in the sand. I later admitted that I had run away but was adamant that you were wrong about the other part. You weren’t.’
I let my hands drop with another heavy sigh. ‘I haven’t come to terms with any of it. Haven’t moved on at all. If anything, I think I might have regressed.’
‘Oh, Mel.’
‘I thought that visiting The Bothy might?—’
‘Panic over!’ Mark called from the hall, stopping me mid-flow. ‘I have gravy granules.’
‘We’ll talk later,’ Georgia whispered, giving my arm a gentle squeeze.
‘My hero,’ she called to Mark. ‘Mel’s here.’
‘Yeah, spotted her car.’ He joined us in the kitchen, said hello to me, and handed a paper shopping bag over to Georgia before asking what his next task would be.
The mood had been heavy with my confession but Mark’s return, with the addition of some music, lifted the atmosphere considerably. As the three of us finished preparing the meal together, I had flashbacks to so many happy times preparing food in this kitchen, in the kitchen in The Bothy and at Derwent Rise. Our family had always worked as a team to prepare meals, typically accompanied by laughter, music and even dance, and I’d pushed that away for years. What had I been thinking? The point was that I hadn’t been. I’d needed to get out.
And now I wanted to be back in.
Everyone arrived within two minutes of each other, punctuality being another family thing. It was loud and chaotic with so many people appearing at once, calling out greetings, dishing out hugs and, before long, we were sitting down to eat.
Mum, Dad, Keira and Johnnie kept us entertained across the meal as they told us all about their holiday. It seemed that Mum had agreed to hire a mobility scooter for the duration of their break.
‘You were adamant you’d never go on a scooter,’ Georgia declared. ‘Said they were for old people who can’t walk.’
‘Yes, well, I accepted that perhaps I do fall into that category now and I could either embrace it or miss out on all the lovely trips Keira had planned.’
‘It did take her a while to get used to it,’ Dad said, smiling, which prompted several stories of crashing into lampposts, bins and close encounters with pedestrians once she felt confident enough to travel at speed. I could imagine how hard it must have been for someone like Mum to admit that she needed a scooter as it meant accepting that the ability to walk without pain – something that, like most of us, she’d previously taken for granted – had gone. It undoubtedly hurt more as she’d always been so fit. Together, my parents had bagged all the Wainwrights – the 214 peaks in the Lake District National Park which the fell walker, author and illustrator Alfred Wainwright included in his pictorial guides – with their favourite fells summitted several times. They’d also completed the seventy-three miles of the Cumbria Way as well as the Coast to Coast walk which was nearly three times the distance at 197 miles. To go from that to barely being able to walk at all couldn’t be easy so it was no wonder she’d rebelled against a mobility scooter although, of course, I’d missed all of that because I hadn’t been here.
‘We’ve got gifts for everyone,’ Mum announced after we’d passed round coffees.
