Carmen was untroubled by storms, knowing she was protected by her home that had withstood many an onslaught by the weather. She was warm and cosy, lying in bed next to Bern, a fire roaring in the grate and the scent of cinnamon and bergamot mingling with the unmistakable aroma of coal and woodsmoke. Whatever the season, her whole house smelt divine – another perk of owning a beautiful gift shop stocked to the rafters with the most heavenly of scented bits and bobs. And then there were the decorations.
Her grandchildren were creatures of habit and set great store on their grandma’s house looking EXACTLY the same every single year. Carmen knew it gave them comfort, the ritual of bringing the boxes down from the attic. Her twin granddaughters Ella and Lola would unpack their favourites, the nativity scene and the angel, while her eldest granddaughter Tilly took charge of the baubles with Darcy, the youngest as her assistant.
Bern, Lou and Max brought in the trees after the whole family went down to the forest to choose them, a task that always took a while. They had a huge pine in the lounge, two smaller versions in the kitchen and hall and then there was the special tree for her room. A little artificial one that stood in an old biscuit tin that was wrapped in Christmas paper.
It wasn’t the same tree she saw in her dreams: that had been left behind like everything else but as soon as she got married and had her own place, Carmen replicated the one from her childhood and she’d kept it ever since.
Turning to her side slowly, she smiled when she saw Bern. Pulling the eiderdown further up to cover his shoulders she spent a moment taking him in. She really did love him so much, her strong and able lover who she’d known since Rosina was a toddler. He had been by her side for the past twenty years, not always in a physical sense but there, watching, guiding, lending support. He had never let Carmen down.
She had the urge to stoke his hair, the soft waves on top that were still chestnut brown, fading to ash and grey at the sides.Bloody men,thought Carmen as she traced the wrinkles of his face with her eyes.How come they grow old gracefully and look better as the years go by?
Bern put his rugged good looks down to working outside and according to him, hard work and fresh air were the keys to longevity. He was never ill, had the constitution of an ox, ate like a horse, was powered by batteries that seemed never to run out, but most of all he had a heart of gold. That was the real source of his power, Carmen was convinced of it.
The girls loved him. Her whole family did and that included her mother. Not that she ever said it out loud but the mere fact she hadn’t said the opposite, spoke volumes. And even though Carmen and Bern had taken their time, a rather long time really, everyone said they were always meant to be.
Looking to the chest of drawers in her room, her gaze washed over the photo frames, a gallery of memories that she looked over every day, her own private ritual, saying thanks for her blessings.
Luckily, her mother rarely entered Carmen’s bedroom but when she did, would steadfastly avoid the photographs because at the centre, surrounded by the granddaughters he’d never met, was her dad. She only had two photos that, in a rare moment of defiance, she’d snatched before her mother dragged her sobbing to a taxi.
The face of her father was etched into Carmen’s memory thanks to the black-and-white images that she’d since had copied and remastered when her fear of then being destroyed or lost became an obsession.
The time of year always made her reflect more than usual, but going through sequences of events either wide awake or in her dreams was another ritual she had to embrace, get out of her system then move on. She and Bern had spent many Christmases apart, however, from now on they would be together every year, no obstacles, no excuses.
Closing her eyes she rested her head against his shoulder. It was definitely time to move on and once she’d told the girls on Sunday, she would focus on the future. And as she listened to Bern snore – and yes, that was definitely a little whistle – she stifled a giggle as she took her annual walk down memory lane.
Appleton Farm, Cheshire. 1983
Carmen had fallen in love with the farm the moment she set eyes on it, the day she and Seb, her husband of just over a year, trundled up the drive to their new home. As the only living heir, Sebastian Appleton had inherited the house and extensive swathe of farmland from his great uncle Jonathon Appleton and even though the building had fallen into a state of disrepair, the land agent assured them it was salvageable.
Using all her powers of persuasion, Carmen tried to convince Sebastian that Appleton Farm would make the perfect family home. Placing her hands on her rounded belly, she painted a picture of their children growing up in the countryside, being part of a village community well away from the smoky city and all its perils. Yes, it was a huge project and the clunky plumbing and fire-hazard electrics would need attention but if they did the rooms up one by one, using the money they saved from their rented flat in Manchester, along with the added bonus of his recent promotion, they could do it.
Sebastian had no interest in the farm or the house and its antique mantel clock that ticked so loudly that Carmen said was a sign. He loved city life so wanted to sell the hideous pile immediately and buy somewhere modern. And then Sylvia arrived to cast her beady eye and as soon as she pronounced judgement, his opinion changed. But Sylvia knew that. Later, she’d told Carmen that once she realised how much her daughter wanted to keep it, she did her very best to make sure that happened.
On this occasion Carmen was grateful but it hadn’t always been so. From the moment she introduced her boyfriend to her mum, she had resigned herself to being chief peace negotiator. Sylvia was of the opinion that her naïve, eighteen-year-old daughter was far too young for a worldly-wise thirty-two-year-old and made her position on the matter most clear. With hindsight, many years later, Carmen realised that the more Sylvia protested, the more Sebastian dug in his heels, determined to prove her wrong because he wasn’t a dirty old man and Carmen certainly wasn’t looking for a father figure.
Hence, the about-turn when Sylvia came to visit Appleton and condemned it as a smelly hellhole where Sebastian would keep his young wife and family prisoner while he swanned off around the country flogging business insurance, living it up in hotels and doing God knows what on expenses.
Sylvia always made sure she spoke loudly, her barbed comments and harsh judgements bouncing off the walls, her acid tongue capable of stripping the peeling plaster and paint back down to brick. No doubt determined to prove the hag wrong, and realising that maybe Carmen was right, Sebastian decided that living in the countryside away from Manchester – and his battleaxe mother-in-law – was in fact a positive. So they stayed.
Carmen adored village life and embraced being part of the Gawsworth community. It was bliss. A simpler life. Back to nature. And after channelling her father, imagining him on his allotment she slowly resurrected the vegetable patch so they could eat off the land. She watched the seasons turn, shivering through the winters, embracing spring and breathing in the glory of summer in the countryside. She made new friends, other mothers from the village and in particular Stacey, the wife of one of the tenanted farmhands. It was at a birthday party for their daughter, Sarah-Beth, that Carmen first met Stacey’s husband Bern.
Sebastian had no interest in meeting new people. He was happy with his colleagues in the office in Manchester and the clients he saw regularly during his nomadic travels, however, he begrudgingly attended the party and feigned interest in the locals. What Carmen failed to accept, closed her eyes to and made excuses for, was his belligerent attitude, that air of superiority he adopted while making out he was the local landowner who lived in the big house. The very same house he’d told her the night before would serve them better if it was burnt to the ground.
There was something else too. For the first time, amidst a crowd of young parents of a similar age, there appeared a yawning gap between him and Carmen’s twenty-three years. As they trudged home, her pushing the pram and him marching ahead, three whiskies worse for wear, she blanked out her mother’s voice, the sage advice she’d ignored. Instead, she blinked back tears and couldn’t wait to be home so she could close her eyes to her big mistake, and sleep in the bed she’d made for herself.
Five years after Rosina arrived, Violetta was born and although the house was taking shape, progress was slow and they were still managing with two bedrooms, an ancient bathroom and the kitchen. The tenanted farmland brought in extra money but that was commandeered by Sebastian so Carmen managed the house alone, doing what she could while despite her best attempts to avert it, her mother’s prophecy was coming true.
Sebastian rose through the ranks but was away more often and when he returned seemed unsettled, disinterested in Carmen’s plans for the renovation of the house and unimpressed by her efforts. It was the drinking that bothered her the most, followed by maudlin periods that cast the house into shadows, gloom sticking to her newly emulsioned walls. But the thing she hid most was his ever-increasing bouts of anger, rages that ended with him storming downstairs to sleep on the sofa, leaving Carmen with sore ribs and eyes red from crying.
Her mother, who was a regular visitor but only while Seb was away, had had enough and wasn’t backwards in her interrogation, using information passed on by Rosina, who at ten was far more astute than her little sister. Carmen, desperate to prove her mother wrong, dug in her heels, said it was a blip, an eleven-year itch that they could fix. Sylvia disagreed but respected her daughter’s decision to stay, promising to keep her counsel but to wait in the wings if she was needed.
They staggered on for five more years. He was ill, overweight and unfit and even though the doctor had told him to stop drinking and smoking because whisky and forty cigarettes a day weren’t helping his heart condition, Sebastian knew best. Deep down she knew they were in trouble, but what rammed it home was hearing that Stacey had left Bern for an old boyfriend she’d not seen since school.
The news that she’d simply gone, taking her daughter while Bern was at work rocked the village. For Carmen it was worse, as though the ground beneath her shook when the truth dawned. Bern and Stacey had looked so happy and content on the outside yet her close friend had kept such a huge secret, been carrying on like nothing was amiss.
In contrast, Carmen was trapped in a rickety, rocky marriage that was as unhappy on the inside as it looked on the out, and that meant only one thing – if Stacey could get up to no good right under their noses, who knew what Sebastian got up to while he was away. They were doomed.
To make matters worse, Carmen had heard the Stacey and Bern news as she left the doctor’s, two minutes after he’d confirmed what she already suspected. She was thirty-five years old, baby number three was on the way.
