Chapter Twelve
Ginny
‘Don’t be such a wimp.’ Ginny peered down at Fern after she stepped off the top of the ladder and into the loft space at the family home in an attempt to find the quilted advent calendar Grandad had reminded them about and that Loretta said was likely up here.
‘I’m not being a wimp,’ Fern bit back. ‘You know I hate spiders.’ And then more gently she asked, ‘Check for me,would you?’
Ginny rolled her eyes but did the honours anyway. As she performed her spider inspection she realised that as well as the stilted, polite conversations she and her sisters had had since they all congregated in Butterbury, they’d also begun to do a few things together. Granted Daisy flitted off to walk the dog or visit the lodge whenever she had a spare moment, and Fern disappearedinto her room with her laptop when Ginny was pretty sure she didn’t have to, but apart from that they’d been up to see Grandad together and now, they were doing something else as a trio. It felt, to Ginny, like a step in the right direction.
‘Found anything?’ came Fern’s voice. Daisy came up the ladder, tutting at Fern for making a fuss.
‘All clear,’ Ginny called down to Fern.
‘You wouldn’tbe much good camping,’ said Daisy when Fern’s head tentatively poked up from the loft hatch and she gingerly climbed off the top of the ladder. ‘Creepy crawlies get everywhere, some even get into your sleeping bag.’
The look of horror on Fern’s face had Ginny laughing but not as much as when Daisy crept her fingers over Fern’s shoulder and tickled her neck.
Fern jumped a mile. ‘Don’t mess about,it’s dangerous.’
‘She’s right.’ Ginny stopped grinning, although it was nice to see the teasing between the two of them. It felt like they were really sisters again and Ginny swallowed a lump in her throat. She hadn’t expected to feel so emotional, she’d expected this visit home would be something to endure rather than enjoy, but here they were actually managing to have a bit of a laugh. There’dbeen tension between all three of them for years, with Daisy putting so much strain on the family when it seemed she had no interest in getting her life on track. Fern came home to help out with funeral arrangements and anything else that needed organising – Ginny couldn’t remember a lot of it, it was all a blur of grief – but she did remember Fern being there for Ginny to talk to, a shoulderto cry on, and for Daisy, although she hadn’t always wanted her sister’s help. Fern had a way of organising people that didn’t always go down well. Ginny had spent many a day waiting for the rows to explode, on tenterhooks anticipating raised voices and arguments. And since then, things had got progressively worse. There hadn’t been anything specific to trigger it, it was just that over time theyall moved on with their lives and never really found that same bond they’d once had.
Ginny shone her torch into the storage areas in the search for the advent calendar. The boxes up here in the loft were stacked around the outer edges, some haphazardly, others neatly enough. Some were labelled, with others your only hope was opening them up and rifling through.
Daisy pulled a box into the centreof the loft which had enough space for them to undo and shuffle through a couple of boxes before they had to be returned to their side storage spaces so they could check more. They found packed-away board games, Fern’s old school books she set to one side to go through and either take home with her or get rid of. Daisy’s camping gear was neatly stacked to one side and Fern marvelled when sheopened up a box to see what Daisy used to cook her food when she was away. Ginny knew Fern’s kitchen was immaculate and organised, a pan or implement to suit every possible culinary need. To Fern, Daisy’s ability to survive with this equipment and live that way as a chosen holiday was probably hard to fathom. They were such different girls. Fern was decisive, strong, never wavered off course.Daisy was adventurous, you never knew what she might want to do next, and Ginny often wondered whether she was happy living that way, whether she was content in the shop and being the one to stay here in the village.
Ginny found that she fell somewhere in the middle of the personality types, like she’d taken part of her character from her older sister and part from Daisy. She was independentlike Fern, she didn’t waver too much off course and had built a solid career that was nothing to do with the family business. On the flip side she threw caution to the wind, travelling and seeing the world, gaining new experiences, being unpredictable much like Daisy had been over the years. As far as her sisters knew she was calm, collected and didn’t question much. Yet she felt out of all threeof them she was the most lost. Finding out that Lucas had returned to Butterbury had shocked Ginny more than she would ever admit to anyone else. He’d been so sure of following a different path, she’d assumed he’d stay in America, settle down into a new life. But somewhere deep down his heart had always been here in Butterbury and knowing that about him, seeing how happy he was to be working in thefamily business with his life here for good, had made Ginny question whether her heart had really ever left the village either.
Fern undid another box and lifted out a faded pink sewing machine. ‘I haven’t seen this in years, Ginny.’ It’d been a gift from her parents for Ginny’s ninth birthday.
Ginny gave a tight smile before moving on to another box and when she opened it, slitting the Sellotapewith scissors before pulling back the folds of cardboard, inside was a soft quilted material placed in a plastic vacuum storage bag. ‘Bingo!’ She pulled apart the plastic seals and took out the quilted advent calendar.
Daisy stood up, took one end of the material and between them they opened it out. ‘Mum was pleased with the chocolate advent calendar, Ginny, but Grandad was right. There’s noway any chocolate could ever match up to this.’
‘It’s a classic all right,’ Ginny agreed as memories of this hanging in the hallway, of each of them taking out another material ornament and hanging it, wrapped around her.
‘I’m so pleased Mum kept it.’ Fern was looking at the quilt rather than her sisters, her fingers touching the material as they all felt the nostalgia of childhood fill thespace at the top of the family home.
‘Me too,’ said Daisy.
Loretta had made the quilted advent calendar when chocolate advent calendars weren’t really a thing. Even if they had been, Ginny suspected they would’ve still bucked the trend in favour of this unique way to count down to Christmas. The calendar had white snowflakes on a red rectangular background measuring around a metre in length.A rich green Christmas tree had been sewn on top of that with white snowflake buttons and below it, twenty-four pockets had been intricately sewn onto the surface. The pockets all had an embroidered number on the front and a hand-sewn ornament inside each with a loop of ribbon so they could be hung on the protruding buttons on the tree above. Ginny remembered they’d take turns with the calendar –with twenty-four days between them, Fern, age fourteen and already showing an aptitude and, moreover, a passion for anything maths related, had announced that it worked perfectly because it was divisible by three so there wouldn’t be any squabbling over who got to hang the most ornaments. Ginny could remember lifting Daisy, who was only four at the time, up so that she could hang an ornament forherself when she struggled to reach.
‘They’re all there.’ Fern had a tear in her eye as she observed that not a single one of the ornaments had gone missing from the pockets over the years.
‘I’d be gutted if we lost any,’ said Ginny. ‘Memories like this should be looked after and treasured forever.’
‘Too right,’ agreed Fern. ‘We were lucky our parents invested time in projects that meant somuch.’
Ginny realised Daisy wasn’t saying anything and a bad feeling glided through her whenshe saw Daisy’s expression, like she was about to explode. ‘Daisy, are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ she said curtly, suggesting she was anything but.
‘You’re clearly not,’ said Fern.
‘The hint wasn’t very subtle, that’s all,’ Daisy complained.
‘What hint?’ Fern sounded exasperated, as though she’d hadenough of treading carefully around their younger sister.
‘The hint at how special those memories are, another subtle reference to the quilt that was special to all of us before it was lost. And of course that’s my fault too because if I hadn’t been in such a mess the quilt wouldn’t have been out of the house, and if it wasn’t out of the house—’
