But she’d learned a long time ago that protesting was not only futile, but dangerous. She’d have to hope that the mess remained strewn across the kitchen until it was safe to salvage what she could once he’d passed out in his study that evening.
‘Get out!’
Another roar, and she fled while her legs were still brave enough to carry her.
* * *
When she returned in the early evening, the art equipment was nowhere to be seen. Her father’s sneer that she could earn it back was not enough to pop the bubble of happiness that spending a day with Aidan had brought.
Aidan had spread a blanket on the grass – full of holes, but clean – and they’d lain back, staring at the clouds. ‘God’s doodles’, he’d called them. He’d not said much in the hours they’d spent together, wandering beneath the oak trees, drifting downstream in the old rowing boat, but every syllable was honest, and kind, and the cadence of his words beat in time with her own heart.
When he’d cradled her cheek with his hand, as softly as if she were a baby bird, and called her ‘Hattie’, she’d known right then that she’d fallen in love.
She’d told him about needing to find work. He’d nodded carefully and asked if he could borrow her sketchbook. Anyone else, she’d have said no, but seeing the sincerity in the depths of his hazel eyes, she’d have given him anything.
Three days later, he handed her a letter from their old teacher, Mrs Armitage, who now worked at a busy craft centre beside Sherwood Forest.
‘She wants to use my drawings for cards?’ Harriet gasped. ‘And sell them in the gift shop?’
‘Do you think you can do that?’ Aidan asked. ‘You might need quite a few.’
She thought about the piles of watercolour pictures stashed in folders in the bottom of her wardrobe and under the bed. ‘I don’t know. I think so.’
What Harriet did know was that she’d give her all, trying.
Mrs Armitage gave her ten pounds for thirty wildlife paintings, carefully chopped using the village-hall guillotine and neatly glued onto stiff card. As the summer wore on, Harriet – Hattie, as she now thought of herself – started selling framed prints, for a lot more money than the cards. With Aidan’s encouragement, she cycled to other tourist venues, most of whom immediately snapped up her stock. By the middle of August, she’d made enough money to stop her father sniping at her, and also began stashing savings underneath the loose floorboard.
Even better, Leonard thought she was working in a local tearoom. It was the perfect excuse to spend her long summer drifting in a haze of young love through the forest with Aidan.
And then September arrived. Sixth form. Hattie had stayed on with the hope of studying art at university. Father agreed as long as she kept up her job at weekends and holidays.
Aidan had defied his family and also decided to complete his A levels. He wanted to enter the police force but he wouldn’t mention that to any of the Hunters until he was already on the bus to the academy.
Two years until they could finally be free.
Or so they thought.
On wet days, they’d started to meet after school and at weekends in Riverbend’s chapel, seeing as it was one place Leonard would never go. They’d snuck in an old armchair that Aidan had found at a garage sale, along with a camping stove, a blanket and other small home comforts. Hattie considered it the perfect place to meet. Their love was sacred, and they even went as far as kneeling before the tiny wooden altar and exchanging vows, of sorts, with a promise that one day they would stand there and make them official. Most days after school, they would meet to do homework, play cassette tapes on Aidan’s battered portable stereo and dream about their future.
One morning in November, Hattie confessed that the sudden bout of nausea that sent her stumbling outside had been plaguing her all week. Aidan came from a big family. He had accumulated several nephews and nieces over the years, and he knew exactly what Hattie’s rounder curves and glossy complexion meant.
Harriet Langford was pregnant.
* * *
We were jolted out of the past by a sharp knock on the attic door.
‘Who’s that?’ Hattie asked me, jerking around in shock.
‘Shall I go and see?’ We’d both frozen in place, Hattie perched on the bare mattress, me as usual squatting by the box we were working through.
‘Nobody’s allowed up here. They know that.’
‘Who is it?’ I called, seeing as Hattie appeared too startled to ask.
‘It’s me,’ Lizzie’s familiar voice replied. ‘Is Hattie in there?’
‘I don’t want her coming in,’ Hattie said, eyes scouring the room frantically, so I went and opened the door, slipping out and closing it behind me.
