Chapter Nineteen
Fern
Fern emerged from her bedroom wrapped in her quilt as usual. With only three sets of silk nightwear to choose from and the house holding onto the winter chill the best it could, perhaps having Everett here would at least keep her warm. Everett and the boys were scheduled to arrive on Christmas Eve and Fern had begun to get strangely anxious about seeing them.
‘Where’s Daisy?’she asked her mum as she joined her in the kitchen and nodded to the offer of a cup of tea.
‘She’s out walking Busker.’ Loretta put the kettle on. ‘How are Everett and the boys?’ She must’ve heard Fern talking on the phone already this morning.
Fern recapped on their news, school wrapping up, Everett looking forward to time off, and told her mum they seemed to be coping absolutely fine.
Thekettle had boiled and Loretta filled the mugs before bringing them over to the sofa at the end of the kitchen past the table. ‘What did you expect them to do, fall apart?’
‘No …’ Fern reached out to take a cup of tea and then, noticing her mum looking down at her over her glasses, smiled. ‘Well yes, a bit.’
Loretta sat down beside her. ‘Everett is a grown man. And your boys are growing up too,they’ll be men before you know it.’
‘Time goes way too fast.’ Fern blew across her tea.
‘I can’t wait to see them all again.’
‘Me too,’ smiled Fern. ‘But I’ve needed this time away. Does that make sense?’
‘Perfect sense and don’t feel guilty for admitting it. Motherhood is hard. Add in work and running a household and it’s a recipe for exhaustion.’ She paused. ‘I should’ve taken a break backwhen you were little, never mind now. I never did, but it was a mistake.’
Fern let the warmth of her tea slide down her throat, comforting in its ritual as much as the taste. ‘I’m glad you had us come home for longer.’
‘You are?’
‘I am, but I get the feeling this visit isn’t just about Grandad.’
Loretta, dressed in jeans and a soft plum-coloured cashmere jumper, pulled a section of Fern’squilt across her knees too. ‘No, it’s not.’ She reached out and toyed with a lock of Fern’s hair, loose rather than in its usual efficient ponytail. ‘I’ve been worried about you three.’
‘We’re grown women.’
Loretta’s head tilted to one side. ‘And you’ll forever be my three little girls. You’ve all been through so much but you’ve drifted apart.’
‘So throwing us together in the house is an attemptto get us back to who we once were?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. Years of problems lacing themselves together, layering up bit by bit, miscommunications for years, they’re not simple to sort through.’ She set her mug down on the side table. ‘I need to apologise to each of you. I should’ve done it a long time ago.’
‘Apologise. What for?’
Loretta took a deep breath. Whatever she had to say wasn’tcoming easily. ‘When your dad died I fell apart and my role as mother was somewhat blurred.’ She shook her head, frustrated with herself. ‘I didn’t have the strength back then and I should’ve found it from somewhere. But before I knew it Daisy had settled into the shop, Ginny was off travelling, you’d gone back to work. I let everything evolve, move forwards.’
‘And that’s a bad thing?’
‘It was,because you three were never the same again.’
‘We’re doing all right, Mum.’
Loretta smiled. ‘You seem to be.’
Fern sipped her tea. ‘You had a lot to cope with when Dad died. You were only in your late forties … I can’t imagine what it would do to me and the boys if we ever lost Everett.’ A shiver ran through her at the very contemplation.
‘I lost my husband too soon.’ She put a hand on herdaughter’s. ‘And you lost your father, yet you scraped me off the floor when he died.’ Fern’s eyes pricked with tears because her mum was right. ‘It was you who comforted both of your sisters and had them cry all over you, it was you who closed the shop for a couple of weeks but made sure it was ready for me to get going with after the funeral. You did the funeral arrangements pretty much on yourown, chose the hymns, the poetry, you left me list after list to help me function. You had the control I’d always had but lost when Harry died.’
‘You needed help.’ Her voice caught.
