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‘But they’ll be rubbing their hands soon,’ Shay gave a brittle laugh. ‘Balls will claim on his insurance and they’ll get the job of rebuilding the house.’
‘Maybe they don’t have insurance.’
‘They’ll definitely have insurance, Dagmara,’ replied Shay.
‘Maybe the renewal documents came to number 1 instead of 1A by mistake. Maybe someone told the insurance company that they didn’t want the renewal to go ahead this year, thank you, and cancelled the policy.’ Dagmara’s eyes were shining with mischief.
‘Dagmara,’ said Shay with a gasp.
‘A present for your mum,’ said Derrick. ‘We were nevergoing to let them get away with it, love. Not while there’s breath in our old bodies.’
‘Come in and have some tea with me, Shay,’ said Dagmara and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
‘You look tired, darling,’ she said, when Shay was seated in her cosy apple-scented kitchen drinking tea. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I think you’ve done enough,’ replied Shay, nudging her head in the direction of next door. ‘Mum will be laughing her socks off in heaven, if there is one.’
‘Of course there’s a heaven, I know it. And maybe your mama has found Ammon there, after all these years. What is troubling you, dear?’ She shifted in her seat and Shay didn’t know if the resounding creak came from her or the chair.
Shay groaned. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start, Dagmara. My whole world is in a worse state than the Balls’s bungalow. I don’t know what to do. I need to go somewhere, get out of the way for a bit.’ And then she told her all about Bruce and Les; it poured from her like a river bursting its banks. Dagmara listened silently until the end.
‘Ay, ay, you’ve had a lot to get your head round in a short time,’ said Dagmara. ‘I think your mama will not be lying still until you find your peace.’
Shay picked up the delicate china cup: the tea in it was rose-scented and it brought to mind the little café on the high street in Millspring, run by the woman who thought she was in charge of the Ritz. There were roses painted on the windows, white ones because it was called the Yorkshire Rose Tea Room.
‘I don’t know where I’ll find my peace. It’s all been so wrong for so long. I wish we’d never left Millspring,Dagmara. I wish Dad had won the case for staying put. It would have been hard, I know, and I understand what Mum wanted to save me from but by leaving, I didn’t get the chance to stand up to what happened, people would have taken us going as an admission and so I’ve never… never got over it.’ She saw it so clearly now, how the life that had been built on top of that time was destined to ultimately collapse because the foundations were weak, marred by lies. ‘And now it’s too late.’
‘Is it?’ asked Dagmara.
‘Even if I did go back, how would I change anything? It’s been twenty-nine years.’
‘It has also been twenty-nine years for the woman who lied. Maybe she hasn’t forgotten that either and it haunts her too.’
‘I don’t even know if she’s still alive, Dagmara. And if she isn’t, there’s no one else who could do anything to help me. Even if she is, she’ll hang on to the truth she’s made for herself. Why wouldn’t she?’
‘But, as you know, those fake truths, they break free of their chains eventually. Maybe it’s time you addressed the past, on your own terms.’ Dagmara gave her hand a squeeze. ‘Maybe, my darling girl, you need to go backwards in order to go forward.’
Rising
The Phoenix has to burn to the ground before she can rise from the ashes
LINDA FLOWERS
Chapter 27
After packing a case and a couple of boxes of essentials, Shay dropped a spare key off and a forwarding address with her neighbours Dave and Sylvia who promised to keep an eye on the place while she was away, and send on any mail until further notice. They didn’t ask any questions although they figured something was wrong, and Shay was touched by their concern that she take care of herself and to call them should she need anything and not to worry as they’d put the bins out for her. They’d been living there when she and Bruce moved in; Dave had often had a kickabout with baby Sunny in their garden – more than Bruce had ever done – and Sylvia had attempted to teach a young Courtney to knit. She’d made some bright green nunchucks and never another thing.
While she loaded up her car, Shay’s thoughts tried to drive her into reverse thrust.Why would you think of going back there after all this time? What if you’re recognised? What if you rake everything up again?She didn’t have answers, all she knew was that she needed to at least try and straighten out her life and for that she had to go back to the beginning ofwhen it all went wrong. Candlemas was empty and waiting like an open pair of arms to receive her. She had no idea what to do when she got there, but this was the first step and she’d suss out the next one when she was in situ.
As she was heading out of the door, she knocked over Bruce’s stompy wellington boots in the hallway and righted them. They stood next to her jolly red ones, Courtney’s pink ones with the flowers on them and the largest of them all, Sunny’s plain, sensible blue Hunters. The sight of all four pairs lined up together in their family formation made her eyes sting and she shifted her gaze away from them quickly. She had to concentrate on herself, for once, and she couldn’t do that while she was still the squashed flat middle of a sandwich. She was lost and she needed to find her place, anchor herself to where she belonged – if she could find it; she had to locate her future in her past.
She drove through Sheffield, avoided the motorway, took the scenic route. Millspring was just a hop away from Penistone where she picked up the key for the cottage from the estate agent. As she drove down the High Street, her eyes slid over the buildings and shop fronts she remembered and snagged on the new; a curious blend of recognisable and much changed, as if she’d been here before, only in a previous incarnation, which in a way she had.
Her mother had made a steady income, but not a massive profit, from the cottage rental because it was managed by the agent who was paid extra to oversee the deep clean upon vacation, look after the general maintenance and field any niggles from tenants, but the arrangement had worked well over many years. Candlemas was a dear little place, the end in a row of five cottages all of which her parents had ownedat one time: 1, Milk Lane. When she parked up in front of it, it looked smaller than she remembered, the strip of front garden longer. Time warped some memories, but not others which stayed forever in perfect form and dimension. Some in her mind were as sharp as the day they were made, which the years had not managed to soften or smooth.
Shay hefted a case out of the car and down the path. She dropped the key when trying to open the door, realised her hand was shaking and wasn’t sure if that was because she was nervous or had hardly eaten anything all day. Most likely it was a mixture of both. She had to push on the door with her shoulder because the wood had swollen in the jamb and if her dad had been with her, she knew he would be itching to get a plane to it. A rush of old cottage smell greeted her when it eventually gave and as she walked into her new temporary home she felt the years peel back to when she had been on course for a different future than the one she had ended up with.
She was a teenager the last time she’d been inside Candlemas, helping her mum to clean it in between tenants for extra pocket money. It never took very long. It only had two equal-sized downstairs rooms, the front one doubling up as both kitchen and lounge and the back one as a more formal sitting room with a desk under the window and a large leather Chesterfield sofa. There was a bijou toilet and handbasin under the steep staircase and a bathroom and two bedrooms on the first floor. She decided on the quieter back room with the views of the Pennines in the distance and closer, the edge of Millspring woods. It had a single bed in it which was better because anything larger felt terribly lonely at the moment, the space screaming that the husband who should be in it with her was sleeping with her best friend.
