‘Leave fixing the table, Harvey. I’m sure you’ve got your own things to be getting on with.’
‘It won’t take me long. Is there anything else I can get you before I go outside?’
‘A blanket, if you don’t mind.’ Barney harrumphed. ‘I hate making a fuss.’
It was unlike him to ask for anything but hopefully this was a temporary state of mind. Surely somewhere along the line they’d reach a turning point and Barney would go back to his normal self.
‘You’ll find one on the top shelf of the wardrobe. Pop it on the end of my bed,’ Barney went on. ‘I can pull it over me when I need to.’
Usually Barney protested when things weren’t to his liking, he valued independence – he wasn’t the man who asked for a blanket just in case, he was the man who would put himself through pain to get the blanket rather than have to ask for it to be provided. Harvey had envisioned the most difficult patient on earth when they left the hospital ward, the moaning and demanding that he could manage perfectly fine. But those expected traits had somehow been exchanged for this melancholy, this acceptance of defeat, and it had Harvey second-guessing whether Barney was himself at all. The doctors had warned him a fall could knock some patients’ confidence, and at the time Harvey had doubted that would happen to Barney. But now? Now he was worried.
Harvey opened up the wardrobe and tugged out the red woollen blanket from the shelf above a selection of jumpers, trousers, a couple of shirts and a lightweight jacket. He put the blanket on the end of the bed, rolled it back so it would be easy to grab, then went to shut the wardrobe doors, but when he did he noticed something long at the end of a rail. Wrapped in see-through plastic, on closer inspection it was definitely a dress.
‘Something you need to tell me, Barney?’ Harvey pulled out the dress on its hanger. ‘I’m not sure it would suit you,’ he joked peering at what was clearly a wedding gown.
Barney opened one eye and his lethargy almost didn’t alert him to the find but his face turned stony when he saw what Harvey was holding. ‘Put that away.’
‘Whose is it?’ Interest piqued, Harvey wanted to know the story behind the dress. There had to be one, didn’t there?
‘I said put it away.’ Barney shut his eyes again. No other explanation offered, just a tone that matched the one Harvey had heard as a young boy if he did something naughty – like the time he and Melissa had started a small fire near the barn. Harvey had wanted to toast marshmallows on the end of a stick for her but when Barney found the two of them he went mad. They were only teens, he’d said, the whole barn could’ve gone up, and it was the same voice now, telling Harvey to stop probing.
Harvey put the dress back onto the rail. ‘I’ll leave you to rest then…do that table.’
‘Thank you.’ Barney’s eyes were already shut; he was either drifting off or determined not to answer any questions.
Harvey shut the door to the bedroom quietly behind him and out in the barn he turned the table upside down. He’d already cut to size a piece of wood to replace the corner brace that had split and so it was a simple job to fix it in place with a couple of screws. It was also a quiet job, nowhere near noisy enough to disturb Barney, and he had no need to be concerned about neighbours either when he was working around here – it had been one of the real perks for him and Melissa as kids that they could run riot without any hassle.
The table finished, he leaned against the side of the barn in the summer sunshine drinking an ice-cold glass of water. This place had always been his escape, somewhere he ran to when his dad was at his worst, where he came when Melissa upped and left leaving him heartbroken. His head could be muddled but coming here helped him to get it straight. The rolling fields beyond gave him a sense of freedom, the row of hardy juniper trees at the other side of the courtyard with an archway in the middle that led through to a small box garden and Barney’s front door had always given him a feeling of security and protection as they lined the connection from the barn to the house that was bordered on one side by plump hedges.
Harvey went back into the barn and positioned the fixed table against the wall. There were three other tables and he checked them all, because they’d all be used for apples, vessels for liquid, the apple press itself. It was totally ridiculous to think of Barney giving up and instead of harvesting his own fruit, buying it at the shops. He’d always loved to pluck the fruit as it ripened, he did it year after year as soon as the time was right.
He wondered what Melissa made of all this, he wished he could talk to her. But how could he ask about this when there was so much more to say?
Harvey looked around the barn. He peered up at the beams that were more secure than they’d been years ago when he and Melissa had climbed up onto them so often, using the hay bales to get enough height before they were told immediately to come down before they broke their necks. They’d lurked up there when the annual summer Wedding Dress Ball took place, they’d watched the sea of white dresses, dark suits, wishing they would be a part of it eventually.
Ridding himself of his nostalgia, Harvey packed away his tools, closed the doors to the barn and secured them before making his way quietly into the house. There didn’t seem much point in trying to talk to Barney about the recommended exercises to get him on the road to recovery, he was sound asleep, so Harvey left him to it.
He’d try again later.
*
Seeing Barney yesterday had filled Melissa with more joy than she felt possible. But it had filled her with sadness too, disappointment in herself that she hadn’t been strong enough or brave enough to come back sooner. She could only be thankful that she hadn’t left it too late, that he was going to be just fine. She’d be able to return to her life, the job she loved, the man she was engaged to, and know that life in Heritage Cove went on.
Dinner at The Copper Plough had been far less daunting than Melissa expected. She was used to dining alone anyway, she did it often enough when she needed a break to do her own thing during a stopover for work, and yesterday she’d maintained surprising anonymity with most customers in the pub. It was early, dinner service had only just begun, which meant it was quiet. The owners, Terry and Nola, weren’t around and only two bar staff Melissa didn’t recognise were working a shift. Benjamin was still the chef and, rather than be standoffish with her for not keeping in touch with Barney, which was going to be the reason for others’ hostility, he’d come over the second he saw her.
‘You’re back!’ He’d squeezed her into a bear hug. ‘It’s been too long.’
He had the same long mousy hair, tinged with a bit more grey than last time and tied back into a ponytail, the same cheeky grin he’d had since the day he started at the same school as Melissa. He filled her in on the menu and how he’d changed it for the better. ‘There’s plenty to choose from,’ he said.
‘Please don’t tell me the fish curry has been replaced by something else.’
‘You were the only one who ever ate it.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’ She looked at the choices on this new and improved menu.
‘I can recommend the Moroccan chicken, served with seasonal vegetables and chat potatoes.’
‘That sounds a good enough alternative to me.’
