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Even the dog beds you buy are fancy.
In Yorkshire, that was definitely not a compliment.
Slowly Rachel walked down the hall, the floor’s flagstones worn down in some places to match the tread of farmers’ footsteps through the centuries. The house was two hundred years old, bought by her great-great-great-great-grandfather after he’d worked as manager for the big manor house on the other side of Mathering. It had been a proud day when the Mowbrays had become landowners, her father had liked to say, as if he’d been alive in 1819, or whenever Albert Mowbray had taken up residence here. There was a needlepoint sampler hanging over the hall table that had been made by his wife, Jane—the alphabet laid out in neat stitches, with a Bible verse beneath:In His hands are the deep places of the earth; the strength of the hills is His also.Psalm 95, verse four. Rachel had read it every time she’d put on her shoes.
She continued past it to the doorway at the back of the hall that led to the kitchen, the true heart of the house, if this house even had a heart. There had been times when Rachel had wondered.
The room, large and square, was empty now, and the same as it ever was. The ancient, rattling Rayburn taking up one wall, the deep farmhouse sink and the countertop another, a Welsh dresser on the third, filled with dusty bits of china no one ever used. A big rectangular table of scarred oak in the middle, where she’d eaten every meal as a child. A memory came, sudden and sharp, of her mother flinging a pan of toad-in-the-hole onto the centre of the table, where it had clanged and bounced, both Rachel and Harriet drawing away in fearful surprise.
“I can’t do this anymore,” her mother had said, bent over the kitchen sink, her head in her hands, her body shaking with sobs. The emotion Rachel remembered feeling the most had been annoyance, underlaid by a terrible fear she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.Mums aren’t meant to do that,she recalled thinking, and it had felt like the world had tilted on its axis, because you were meant to rely on your mum, but she knew in that moment that she hadn’t been.
She hadn’t said anything, though. She’d just taken the oven mitt her mother had hurled onto the floor and righted their supper. Then she’d cut large slices of toad-in-the-hole and put them on her and Harriet’s plates. While she’d begun to eat in silent defiance, Harriet had run to their mother and wrapped her arms around her waist.
“Don’t cry, Mummy, don’t cry,” she’d pleaded.
While their mother had put her arms around her youngest daughter, Rachel had stolidly eaten her way through a large helping of toad-in-the-hole, and then taken a second, simply to make a point, although in retrospect she wasn’t even sure what that point had been. She didn’t think her mother had even noticed, anyway.
Letting out a weary sigh, she leaned over the table to inspect it; yes, the scorch mark from that sorry episode was still there, faded but visible. How old had she been then? Ten, maybe? It had been another seven years before her mother had finally left, but in retrospect Rachel had realised she’d been working up to it the whole time.
She straightened just as the back door opened and Harriet came clomping in, wearing a pair of muddy boots and holding a basket of eggs. Her eyes widened in surprise for a second; Rachel realised she hadn’t actually told her sister she was coming, so taken up had she been with her dad’s potential illness. She supposed she’d assumed Ben would have, but he clearly hadn’t.
“Hi, Harriet—” she began, only to have her sister cut across her flatly.
“So, you’re back.” She deposited the basket of eggs on the counter next to the sink, not looking at her. The tentative smile that had been curling the edges of Rachel’s mouth flickered and died like old ash.
“Yes,” she agreed, just as flatly. “I’m back.”
Chapter Two
Well, this wasfun. And typical. Harriet stared at Rachel without speaking and Rachel stared back. Yay for family bonding times. Then Harriet broke the silence.
“What are you doing here?”
What a welcome, as usual. “I’m here,” she replied evenly, “because I was asked to come.”
Harriet’s dark brows snapped together. She and Rachel shared the same colouring—hair and eyes like dark chocolate, olive skin, the same as their mother’s. But that, Rachel thought, was where the resemblance ended. Harriet’s hair was a frizzy halo, her face scattered with golden freckles, her figure curvy and generous. Rachel, on the other hand, had stick-straight hair, a lanky body without any real womanly curves, and no freckles. With only fifteen months between them in age, their mother had used to call them the twins-that-aren’t.
They certainlyweren’tnow.
“Who asked you?” Harriet demanded, sounding sceptical. “Dad?”
As if. Rachel couldn’t remember the last time she’d exchanged more than three words with her father. “Ben,” she replied, and Harriet scowled.
“He had no right.”
“Dad has an appointment tomorrow?” Rachel cut across her futile fuming. When it came to her family, it was better to stick to basics, get to the point, and then hopefully move on.
“There’s one scheduled, but he doesn’t want to go.”
“Which I suppose,” Rachel filled in, trying not to sound reasonable and not sarcastic, “was why Ben rang me.”
“Because you can bully Dad into it?” Harriet retorted, her hands on her hips. “Rachel, he’s a grown man. He can make his own medical decisions.”
“Can he? Because the fact that he has an appointment at a memory clinic suggests otherwise.” She turned away, knowing there was no point in talking about it any longer because they would just argue. Her sister never wanted her to come home, but then seemed mad when she didn’t. She could never win, and so she’d stopped trying a long time ago. Except it seemed she hadn’t, because here she was. “Where is he, anyway?”
“Out in the barn.”
Where as far as Rachel could tell, their father spent most of his life. She’d seen him in there many times, sitting on a milking stool, reading the paper, happy as Larry to be on his own. When they’d been little, he often wouldn’t have come back into the house until after she and Harriet were in bed.
