Beneath the Moon and the Stars (11 page)

‘You might want to put that somewhere safe.’

He stared at the key for a moment and then slid it back under the pot. ‘It’s been safe there for eleven years, so I imagine it’s still safe there now.’

He hesitated then turned towards the house. ‘Shall we?’

She nodded and followed him.

‘So… you’re an artist?’ She knew he was trying to distract her. Although she was willing to grasp any subject now that wasn’t about the farm, what she did for a living was a tricky subject.

‘Sort of,’ she answered deliberately being vague.

They were heading towards the front door. She had always used the back door, so it felt weird to be entering the house this way. The front door was now painted red, which was different to the green door she remembered. Red did look smart though. The wooden windows had recently been replaced with PVC ones but in a similar style to the windows that had been there before. Other than that, the outside looked the same.

He opened the front door and let her walk in ahead of him. But if she was waiting for all those childhood memories to come flooding back, she would have been disappointed. Standing in the hall, there was no semblance at all of the home she remembered. Her heart started pounding. The staircase was the first thing she noticed, that had changed completely. Instead of straight up at the side of the hall, it now curved outwards from the top floor so the bottom stairs were much wider than the top. It had been made into a feature of the room and the curvy black wrought iron rail was much more interesting than the plain wooden one. The stone floor, where she had fallen and broken her arm at the age of six had been replaced by soft, cream carpets. There was a large window half way up the stairs that had not been there before, it made the whole room lighter.

‘Would you like to do downstairs first?’ he asked quietly, his eyes filled with concern. He knew how hard this was for her and she felt touched by his compassion.

She nodded, unable to speak, a slow feeling of panic starting to clutch at her gut.

‘There’s just two rooms now.’ He opened the nearest door to his left.

Two rooms? There had been a lounge, dining room, study, kitchen and conservatory downstairs, how could there only be two rooms now? She followed him into what used to be the lounge and felt her mouth fall open.

‘This is the family room.’

It was the lounge, dining room and study all knocked into one great big room. The chimney was the first thing she noticed. In her time it had been in the middle of the joining wall between the lounge and dining room, but as that wall was now gone it stood alone in the middle of the room, so you could walk all the way round it. It was a beautiful stone column tapering to a smaller circumference near the ceiling.

There was a large brown leather sofa that took up the entire end of the room, stretching out in a horse shoe shape round the three sides and facing a huge widescreen TV, fixed to one side of the chimney.

In the middle, across one wall there was a huge bookcase and several brown leather armchairs, perfect for curling up in and reading one of the hundreds of books that were on offer, everything from the classics – Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, the works of Shakespeare – to James Bond books, a huge Tolkien collection and the entire Harry Potter series.

Next to where she stood in stunned silence was a huge pool table and a large black piano. Gone was the white walls of her childhood, it was replaced with the warm autumn colours of red, gold and rich creams. The doorway between the dining room and study had also been removed – it was here that her dad had marked her and Alex’s height every year on their birthdays.

Finn moved towards a door at the end and waited for her there. On shaky legs she followed him.

‘This is the kitchen.’ He pushed the door open.

But it wasn’t her kitchen that met her, in fact there was nothing recognisable about it at all. It had been incorporated into the conservatory. The wicker chairs and flowered walls she remembered were also gone. The whole of the back wall of the house was now glass, there was also three large sky lights making the room bright. The wooden kitchen units had been replaced with sleek cream ones, with black granite surfaces. There was a breakfast bar with bar stools in the middle and a vast dining table with eight black leather chairs up one end.

She wandered over to the window that had views of the back garden, and in the distance the river that curled through the surrounding fields and woods like a silver ribbon. The back garden had just been a patch of grass with the large oak tree on one side – now it had shape, flowers and plants spilt over from borders that had never been there before. There were huge pots that held more plants on the wooden decking. There was stepping stones, leading to several benches that were dotted round the sides. And up in the oak tree was a great tree house, complete with curtained windows and a little front door.

Finn opened the back door, letting the heat spill onto the warm terracotta tiles.

‘Are you ok? Do you want to sit down for a minute?’

Had he asked that because she’d gone pale, because her breathing was erratic, because her eyes were wide with panic? Her heart was racing, her brain was buzzing, she felt numb.

‘I just need a few minutes,’ she said as she walked out into the garden, hoping that he wouldn’t follow her. She walked up to one of the furthest benches and sat down staring back at the house.

It was no longer her home, that was the problem. In her rose-tinted view of the world, the farmhouse would still be there waiting for her, exactly as she had left it eleven years before. She had mentally prepared herself that the décor would be different but nothing had prepared her for the completely different house that she had just walked round. There had been nothing of her childhood home left, that home now only existed in her memories. She felt an enormous sense of loss all of a sudden.

Finn approached with a glass of water. He slowed warily as he drew nearer; eyeing her like she was a wild animal. He passed her the glass and sat down next to her. He didn’t speak though; probably thinking she was a right nut job.

‘All this time I’ve been searching for a place that I could call home, but I never found it. I realise now that I wasn’t waiting for that special something, that secret missing ingredient that I just couldn’t put my finger on. Nowhere matched up because I didn’t want anywhere else, the only home I wanted was this place. I knew that one day I would come home and subconsciously anything in between was just a stopgap so I never allowed myself to fall in love with it. Beautiful houses, perfect towns and villages and I turned my back on all of them because it wasn’t here. And now I find that the home I was longing to return to has gone. There’s nothing for me here either.’

She looked down to see her hand in his again.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. It’s a beautiful house; you’ve done an amazing job with it. It’s a proper home now and one day you will fill it with a wife and children. That’s how it should be.’

She passed him back the glass and stood up but he caught her hand.

‘You still have your memories Joy, no matter where you live you will always have them. Being physically closer to them won’t make those memories more real. You keep them alive by remembering them, by talking about them.’

‘You’re right.’ It had been silly to hold out for this place. As Alex had said, the memories were in her heart not the four walls of her childhood home. ‘I guess I was just scared that the memories were fading and I was trying to cling onto them in any way I could.’

‘Well if you want to come up here, any time, if you want to make mud pies in the garden or play in the barn, you’re more than welcome.’

She smiled, her heart swelling a little bit more for him.

‘I’m glad you bought it. It’s good to know it’s in safe hands. And Mum would have loved what you’ve done to the place.’

He stood up. ‘Shall I take you home?’

‘No I’m fine, I’d like to walk.’ She reached up and Finn obliged by bending his head down. She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thanks for taking care of it.’

With that she walked back round the side of the house, whistling for Darcy as she went. Though the loss hurt, it was now tinged with a sense of relief. She could never go back home now, so she could stop waiting. She could finally draw a line under that part of her life and make a real effort to settle in one place. It was time to stop running.

She had the housewarming barbeque that night. Maybe she could make some real friends here in Bramble Hill, maybe her house could finally be the home she had been searching for.

*

When she got home she phoned Alex. He had been worried by her plans to buy the farm. It was a cathartic release to be able to honestly tell him she no longer wanted to live there, that for the first time in her life she was looking to the future. Alex couldn’t disguise the relief from his voice; he had been concerned that she couldn’t let go of the past.

They chatted for a while and then she remembered Rose.

‘Alex, do you remember a lady called Rose, a friend of Mum’s?’

There was silence for a moment. ‘Rosie, yes I do. I haven’t seen her since I was about eight, she just stopped coming round. She had two boys, I remember Caz but I can’t remember the little one’s name.’

‘Zach, he vandalised the side of our barn with a can of spray paint. Mum smacked his bum. She and Rose had a big row over it and never spoke since.’

‘Oh, that explains a lot. Wow, Mum never hit us, she must have been really mad. I was gutted, when they stopped coming. Caz was brilliant, so funny and cute.’

She smiled, hugely. ‘Caz as in Casey, Casey Fallowfield?’

‘Caz Fallowfield, that’s it.’ Alex gasped. ‘Oh my god, is that the Casey that text me the other day?’

‘Yes, small world or what?’

‘I guess it was bound to happen, you living so close to where we grew up.’

‘Look, I better go, my barbeque is supposed to start shortly.’

‘Have fun kid, I better go to sleep. We’re kidnapping the prime minister at midnight.’

‘Well that sounds like much more fun than my little barbeque.’

‘I don’t know, I’d rather be there with you.’

She smiled, her heart aching a little bit. ‘Love you Al.’

‘Love you too, always.’

*

It was late by the time Finn got back from the wedding rehearsal. Zach and Casey had stayed up at their mum’s house chatting and socialising with the elite. He had no part in that world and didn’t want to. He loved Casey’s mum dearly, as much as he loved his own parents, but the dinner parties and balls that she continually invited him to held no interest for him.

He went up to his room, determined to be out of his suit and tie as quick as he could. As he slid the tie off his neck, he noticed the fairy lights strung across the trees next door. He stepped closer to the window and saw twinkling decorations adorning every fence, tree and bush and around the roof of the summer house. Candles were in jam jars and dotted periodically throughout the garden. It looked beautiful. The embers on the barbeque seemed to be dying out, and a table covered in plates and bowls of food seemed to have been demolished. It looked like the end of a good party. Just then a whoosh of light exploded from the garden, shattering glittering gold stars into the night sky. Fireworks. So the party must still be in full swing.

He turned to go down and join her, then stopped himself. Just because he had taken her to the farm earlier, it didn’t make them friends. He didn’t want to be friends with her, because as her brother so wisely said, men and women couldn’t be friends. It would soon develop into something more and he didn’t want something more. He never wanted to be hurt again like Pippa had hurt him. He turned back to the window then, cursing himself, he stormed down the stairs. He did say he would go when he came back after all.

He let himself through the connecting gate and watched what was obviously a slightly tipsy Joy light another firework and then run quickly away from it before it exploded. She was wearing a long black floaty dress that clung at the breast and floated down to her ankles – she was barefoot, her long hair trailing down her back. The firework lit up the garden for a moment, sending silvery shadows across the lawn, long enough for Finn to see Joy was completely alone. There was music playing on a nearby stereo, The Killers’ Mr Brightside, which Joy was cheerily singing along to, as she poured herself a glass of dubious looking brown liquid from a punch bowl.

‘Joy?’

She whirled around spilling most of the brown liquid on the floor.

‘Finn! You came!’ A huge smile split her face from ear to ear. ‘Would you like a drink? I have alcoholic punch, which tastes like shit, and non-alcoholic punch which also tastes like shit, or I’ve got a beer which might be a bit warm as it’s been outside for a while.’

‘Warm beer is fine.’

‘Good cos I’m not really sure which is the alcoholic punch anymore.’

She passed him a beer and skipped across the lawn to light another firework. It boomed blue lightning across the sky.

He sipped his beer and watched her.

‘Good party?’

‘I had a great time. The burgers tasted great, I made them myself, the salad didn’t get eaten, but then it never does at barbeques. I have danced for most of the night and I might be a tiny bit tipsy. So yep a bloody great party.’ She took another swig from her dubious punch, and he smiled for her. Maybe the villagers had been persuaded by her note, or at least some of her friends had obviously been and gone. ‘No one came,’ she said, as she lit another firework. ‘But it was still a great party.’

‘What do you mean no one came, you mean none of the villagers?’

She ran as fast as she could away from the firework, covering her ears, grinning, hugely. ‘This one’s a big one. The Finale.’

He waited. She waited. But there was nothing.

‘Stupid thing,’ she muttered, moving to go back to it. He caught her arm and pulled her back.

‘Have you never heard of the old adage; never go back to a firework once it’s been lit?’

‘That’s just an old wives’ tale, like don’t go swimming after you’ve eaten or don’t eat yellow snow.’