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“There’s no need—”
“I want to,” she cut him off, her voice firm but gentle, or so she hoped. “I haven’t been around as much as I could have been, these last twelve years. Maybe it’s time I was.” She’d meant to speak lightly but as the words came, she realised just how much she felt them, a river of regret running through her centre that she’d always pretended hadn’t existed, hadn’t overflowed into every other aspect of her life.
“Harrumph,” her dad replied, and Rachel had no idea if he was pleased or unimpressed, or something else entirely. He didn’t say anything more and they went inside.
Harriet was dishing out the stew and dumplings as they came in, her father stooping at the sink to wash his hands. There was a piquant normalcy to the scene that Rachel couldn’t remember feeling in about forever. When had things started to go sour with her mum, she wondered? When she was ten, eleven, maybe? And how had they been before that?
She remembered being happy as a small child, at least shethoughtshe did, but it felt like looking at a photograph of someone else, half-forgotten, sepia-tinted with age. How had itreallybeen? Did Harriet remember more than she did? Why did it feel as if there were swathes of her life that had faded or blurred or been blocked out completely?
“Are you going to sit down?” Harriet asked, sounding bemused and maybe even a bit annoyed, and Rachel realised she had been simply staring into space.
“Yes, sorry,” she said, and she hurried to sit down in the same seat she’d always had at their kitchen table—second on the right.
They ate in silence, as they always ate in silence—had there been laughter and chatter when she’d been a child? Again, Rachel struggled to remember. All right, her dad had never been a bundle of laughs, that was for certain, but she had an image of his mouth twitching in a smile, the corner kicking up the same way Ben’s did, both Yorkshiremen through and through.
Or was that just wishful thinking? She’d read about false memories, the way you could think something had happened simply because you’d wanted it to so much. And yet, she acknowledged, for years she’d assumed ithadn’t. She’d assumed that her family had always been unhappy, that she’d always been desperate to get away, from the year dot.
What if that wasn’t exactly true?
Her mind was still spinning with questions as they finished the meal, and Rachel began to stack plates by the sink, where Harriet was rinsing them. Their dad had gone off to the sitting room to read the newspaper, which is what he’d done every night after tea, ever since Rachel could remember. He was not a modern man, by any means; Rachel doubted he had ever cleared a plate or changed a dirty nappy in his entire experience of fatherhood.
When they’d finished the dishes, Rachel knew, Harriet would bring him a cup of tea; if she was lucky, he might mumble thanks. It was ridiculously old-fashioned and frankly sexist, but that’s the way it always had been, and perhaps the way it always would be.
“Harriet,” Rachel said slowly, as she brought another plate to the counter, “do you remember much about our childhood?”
“What?” Harriet looked taken aback by the question. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’ve forgotten things.” Years of blank space that she’d filled in later, like completing old pictures in a colouring book, thinking you remembered the exact shades. What if she hadn’t? Why was she even wondering that, now?
Harriet had a curious look on her face now, rather than her usual suspicious frown. “What kind of things?”
“Just how we all were,” Rachel said. She didn’t know how better to explain. “Were we…were we happy, do you think?”
“Were wehappy?” Harriet looked at her in surprise. “What kind of question is that? Of course we were. At least, I think we were.”
“How do you remember it?” she asked curiously.
“What do you mean?” There was an impatient, irritable note to Harriet’s voice as she stacked a plate in the dishwasher with a clatter. “When we were little? I remember us being happy. We played in the woods, we went to school, we got along.Ithought we were happy.”
“And Mum and Dad?” Rachel asked after a pause.
Harriet scrubbed another plate before slotting it in the dishwasher. “Well Dad’s always been your classic quiet farmer, hasn’t he, not much for words or emotions, but they still loved each other. Dad used to pull Mum on his lap—don’t you remember that?”
A sudden memory slotted into place—her mother giggling, her cheek pressed to her dad’s shoulder as he gave that quirky little smile. She would have been little, maybe seven or eight…
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I do. But…”
“But what?”
“Mum left,” Rachel pointed out quietly, and Harriet rolled her eyes before averting her face, hiding her expression, her body taut as she grabbed another plate.
“I’m aware.”
“I just mean…they couldn’t have been very happy, if she did that?”
“She just got tired of the farming life.” Harriet sounded firm, and very sure, determinedly so, although Rachel didn’t think it was quite that cut and dried. “It wasn’t about Dad.”
“Wasn’t it?” she asked sceptically. They both had to know their father was, if not a difficult man, then at least a fairly ornery one.
