Ezra put the tea down on my bedside table and gave me the biggest hug.
‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. The kitchen’s full of roses and I don’t know where to put them,’ I sobbed into his shirt. ‘I made all these designs, got samples and everything and now I don’t know what… how…’
‘It’s okay. I’m going to take you home now. You don’t need to worry about any of it.’
‘But the flowers!’
Because, of course, having a meltdown about flowers was so much more bearable –fixable– than all the rest of it, which was too hideous to think about.
Ezra held me for a long time until my breathing settled and I felt able to carry on with the next few feeble steps of packing up some things and crawling into the passenger seat of his car.
And that was how it went on. With every panic attack, administrative task or agonising decision I had to make, he was there to steady me, explaining things at a pace gentle enough to penetrate the trauma clogging my brain, holding my hand through sleepless nights staring at mindless rubbish on Mum and Dad’s television.
After the funeral, his pregnant wife, Naomi, helped me move again. I couldn’t bear to stay in the house I’d grown up in, suffocating in shadows and silence. Returning to my old life in Leeds was beyond me. The only person I wanted to arrange flowers for was gone. The thought of doing that for anyone else felt abhorrent, like the worst kind of betrayal. So, with a compassion that I was too numb to comprehend back then, Ezra and Naomi welcomed a broken husk of a human being to their farmhouse on the edge of the Peak District. They helped me sell my childhood home after sorting through its contents, made sure I ate, showered and wasn’t completely consumed by the grief. When their second child, JoJo, was born, I cuddled her in the rocking chair when she woke at night, and read stories to their toddler, Ishmael, while Naomi fed the baby or snatched a few minutes’ peace. Somehow, slowly, these precious little lives gave me the courage to try to live again. Then one day, while I was still half-heartedly trying to figure out what living might look like, I got a message from a friend I’d worked with in Leeds. Her mum had died and she didn’t have a clue how to handle it. I ended up visiting her for the day, then going back for two weeks. For the first time in over a year, my life had a purpose beyond the boundary of my own pain.
So, while Ezra, Naomi and their three children would never replace the parents and sister I had lost, they were my home, and my heart, and I was so utterly grateful that they’d chosen to be my family.
* * *
‘We won’t stay up here too long today,’ Hattie informed me as we climbed the attic steps the following day, with no trace of her annoyance the night before. ‘I’ve got to prepare for another class with the Changelings at six, and then the rest of the Gals are heading over for your next session.’
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. While I’d managed not to dig too deep while completing our trial art therapy, and I was determined to keep it that way, I knew that Hattie had other ideas. But there was that phrase –the rest of. I was one of them now. Part of something. It filled me with awe and dread in equal measure.
‘The final trunk.’ Hattie pointed it out, from where she now perched on the end of the bed. ‘Once we’ve done this, only a few thousand boxes to go!’ Her mouth curled up in a smile, but it was the only muscle in her face that moved.
‘Are you ready?’
‘I am.’ She blew out a watery laugh. ‘I just wish someone would tell that to my quivering guts.’
I slowly opened the trunk. This time, the contents were clearly female. There were layers of formalwear, the skirts widening then narrowing again as they reversed from the early sixties through the fifties. There were books, personal items like silver-plated hairbrushes and a jewellery box containing a sparkling array of necklaces, brooches and earrings. Near the bottom, I found a wooden case that contained paintbrushes and a dried-up palette of watercolours.
‘I’ll take that,’ Hattie said, tears glistening on her eyelashes. ‘It’ll be perfect for arting out all this exposed grief later.’
As she reached forwards to take the case, she stopped, ignoring it in favour of what lay beside it, a corner of which was showing where the tissue-paper wrapping had come open.
‘What’s that?’
I carefully unfolded the rest of the paper, lifting out a stunning, forest-green ball gown, packaged up with satin gloves and, in a velvet pouch, a matching tiara.
‘Oh, I remember these,’ Hattie said, reverently placing the tiara on her head. ‘Every now and again, my mother would open up her wardrobe and show them to me. Once, when I was, ooh, maybe thirteen, she let me try them on. This dress was verging on scandalous at the time, but she said it was worth it, because my father couldn’t resist a scandal.’ She sighed. ‘Although, if she’d known how that turned out, maybe she’d have stuck to something more respectable.’
12
RIVERBEND
When the war finally came to an end, Louisa Hood couldn’t bear to stay in a house that felt as though it was waiting for the men who would never come home. She packed up the shards of her shattered heart, kissed her daughter, Verity, goodbye and moved in with her widowed sister-in-law in Bristol.
The last thing Louisa did before saying goodbye to Riverbend forever, having accepted that, no matter how vigorously she begged or bullied, Verity would be staying put, was ensure that her daughter would not dwindle into eccentric spinsterhood, drifting about in that big house alone.
‘I’ve lost a husband and two sons; my only hope now is grandchildren,’ Louisa lamented one breakfast. ‘We’ve no time to waste.’
‘Mother, I’m nineteen.’ Verity tapped the top of her boiled egg with a teaspoon. ‘I’ve got plenty of time for all that. As convenient as you might find it to have me married off before you go, I’m in no hurry to grab myself a husband.’
‘Well, you should be! If you hadn’t noticed, eligible bachelors are in even shorter supply than stockings. If we’re going to stand any chance of finding a man capable of running Riverbend, we need to act quickly, and we need to be clever.’
‘Please, Mother. If the past few years have shown anything, it’s that I’m quite capable of running Riverbend myself.’ She deftly dipped her toast in the perfectly cooked egg, as if to prove it.
It had been a steep learning curve, with plenty of mishaps along the way, but once she’d realised that being responsible for their land also included the freedom to run it how she wanted, she’d relished the challenge. This, alongside her tenacity and an impressive cabbage crop, had earned her a reputation amongst the local landowners as a competent farmer. In the aftermath of the war, she prized that far more highly than being considered pretty. The only time her short stature bothered her nowadays was when she needed a step to reach the top shelf in the barn, or struggled climbing up into her new tractor.
