When she returned, minutes later, she had a few clothes over one arm, and two mugs of hot chocolate in the other hand.
‘My youngest one, Haleigh,’ she said, dropping a pink nightshirt with the words ‘Sex Bomb’ emblazoned across the front in glitter. ‘She’s on a gap year in Thailand, although don’t ask me what a gap year is, as if you get time off from having a proper life to mess around in a foreign country. Anyway, she’s only a slip of a thing, so about your size. And these belong to my grandson, my eldest’s boy. They’ve got Ben 10 on but I shouldn’t think she’ll mind.’ Jenny set down the mugs of chocolate on the bedside table. ‘She all right? Very quiet.’
‘Very tired,’ Rose said, stroking Maddie’s dark hair. ‘And confused.’
‘Right, well, breakfast’s between eight and eight thirty. I don’t take orders, you get what you’re given, and if you want coffee you’ll have to go to the shop and buy it. I don’t hold with the stuff. Unnatural. Oh, and here’s a key for the front door.
Do not lose it
.’
‘Thank you,’ Rose said, breathing a sigh of relief as Jenny gave her one more look of disapproval and then closed the door. Leaving Maddie sitting huddled on the bed for a moment, Rose went over and locked it, and then, turning back to her daughter, eased the little girl’s damp top off over her head.
Maddie squealed in protest, resolutely keeping her eyes closed, refusing to acknowledge her radical change in circumstances.
Change
was the very thing that Maddie hated the most, and yet a few hours ago Rose had decided to rip her out of her home, away from everything she knew, and bring her here. Had she done the right thing? At the time it had felt like the only thing she could do, but was that ever true?
‘Come on, darling, let’s get you changed and we can get some sleep,’ Rose said, doing her best to keep the tension and uncertainty out of her voice.
‘Where’s Bear?’ Maddie asked, opening one eye.
‘Bear’s here. We never go anywhere without Bear, do we?’ Bear was in fact a very flea-bitten rabbit that Maddie had been given as a baby, but Bear he had always been known as and Bear he would remain.
‘Where’s my book?’ Maddie was referring to her history book on Ancient Egypt, which she’d begged Rose to buy after a day trip to the British Museum. Maddie had become obsessed by mummies, pyramids and everything else Egyptian, poring over anything she could find on the subject, until she became almost as expert as any curator at the museum. She had read the book she was referring to literally hundreds of times and knew it off by heart, but still Rose knew she would read it hundreds of times more. It was just one of her myriad rituals that she had developed recently that Rose had scarcely had time to dwell on or worry about. Young children were eccentric, that’s what everyone said. This same everyone said that Maddie’s obsessive behaviour was nothing to worry about, and Rose chose to believe them, even though her instinct told her otherwise.
‘It’s here,’ Rose said, pulling the tatty book out of her bag. Thank God it had been in there already, from when she’d taken Maddie to have an asthma checkup that afternoon, otherwise
Rose
was sure she wouldn’t have remembered to take it with her, what with everything that had been going on.
Content for the book to lie unread on the pillow beside her head, Maddie let Rose pull off her crumpled and damp clothes and put on the pyjamas. ‘I don’t like Ben 10,’ she protested dimly, her lashes dropping with every rise and fall of her chest. Carefully Rose eased her daughter under the covers, turning off the overhead light that glared from beneath a pink fringed lampshade, and after waiting for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the lack of light, she slipped the package, still wrapped in its ancient blanket – one that had used to grace Rose’s cot when she was a very small child – under Maddie’s bed, took one lukewarm cup of chocolate and climbed into the other bed, the smooth cool sheets very welcome against her hot, aching skin. Hoping that sleep would come quickly, Rose closed her eyes, yet even though her body shuddered with exhaustion and her eyes screamed to be shut, sleep would not come. Wearily Rose leant back against the quilted-velour headboard, stared out of the window into the dense wet night and wondered, not for the first time since she’d started the ignition of the car and pulled away from home, what on earth she was doing.
A persistent knocking at the door finally forced Rose to drag her eyelids apart. She wasn’t sure when she had finally fallen asleep, but it felt like only a few seconds ago as she rubbed her eyes and looked around, her memory of where she was, and why, coming back to her in heavy persistent thuds, in time with the beat of her heart.
‘Hello?’ she called out, dragging herself up in bed.
‘Rose? Love, it’s Brian. It’s gone ten, darling. We didn’t like
to
wake you before. But Jenny’ll still do you a bit of bacon and toast if you’re hungry?’
‘Oh, sorry!’ Rose called back, climbing out of bed and looking around for her clothes.
‘I’ll tell her ten minutes, then?’ Brian checked, having obviously done some expert diplomatic work to secure her and Maddie breakfasts to go along with their beds.
‘We’ll be there in five!’ Rose called, pulling on her knickers and skirt. Maddie was regarding her from her position partially hidden by the bedspread, her large blue eyes peering out over the top.
‘Come on, darling, toast!’ Rose said, beaming at her daughter, hoping the promise of her favourite food would lure her out from under the covers.
‘It might not be my bread,’ Maddie said, pulling the cover below her chin. ‘What if it’s not my special bread? I like toast at home, not toast … here.’
‘Well, it might be a different, nicer sort of bread. You won’t know what you are missing unless you try it. Here, shall I help you put your dress on?’
‘I don’t want it if it isn’t my bread,’ Maddie said, referring to the only brand of sliced bread that she liked to eat.
Rose closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath. Really, when she’d decided to run away from her home and husband, she perhaps should have given more thought to Maddie’s very particular dietary requirements. ‘Fussy’ was how her teacher referred to her at school, but what she didn’t realise was that anything different on her plate caused Maddie real anxiety.
‘Just try it, for me. You never know, you might like it,’ Rose smiled encouragingly.
‘I won’t if it’s not my bread,’ Maddie said miserably, adding as she trailed after Rose down the stairs, ‘When will it be OK to go home again? Before school starts back, after the holidays?’
Rose didn’t have the heart to tell her the answer was never.
They discovered the dining room after opening a series of doors that led off the main hallway, finding first a guest sitting room, dominated by a huge doll’s house encased in glass, which Rose had to drag Maddie away from, and then an office containing a desk covered in piles of paper, with an ancient, almost historical PC sitting on top of it.
‘This isn’t a hotel, you know,’ Jenny greeted Rose and Maddie as they finally made it into the small dining room, with about six tables all neatly laid, despite the absence of other guests.
‘Well, it sort of is,’ Brian said, winking at Rose as he picked up his keys, and kissed Jenny goodbye, before heading for the door.
‘I’ve got too much to do without waiting around for people to deign to get up!’
‘We didn’t expect you to wait,’ Rose said. ‘I’d have just taken Maddie out for breakfast.’
‘You will not,’ Jenny said, pointing at the table next to the window in a clear command to sit. ‘Can you imagine? No, tea and toast will be through in a minute. And what about you, young lady? Would you like a glass of milk?’
‘I don’t like milk,’ Maddie said.
‘Well, orange juice then?’ Jenny asked her, and Maddie nodded.
‘Do you mean yes please?’ Jenny chided her. Maddie nodded again.
Rose rubbed her hands over her face, pushing her long hair back as she reached into her skirt pocket and took out the
postcard
. Pushing Maddie’s book across the table towards the little girl, hoping its contents would distract her from her toast, she let herself read the short message on the back for a moment, following the familiar swirls and loops of the handwriting that she had come to know by heart over the years. And then she turned it over and looked at the picture on the front, which had become just as familiar. A reproduction of an oil painting,
Millthwaite from a Distance
by John Jacobs. This small, slight piece of card with a neatly written note inscribed on the back of it was the only reason she had run away to here, which seemed crazy if she even thought it, let alone said it out loud, but it was true.
Frasier McCleod, the person who had written the note, was the reason that she had come to Millthwaite, although she had no idea where he was, or even who he was really. That card, this place, were the only links she had with him and the possibility that had been haunting her since she had met him once, more than seven years ago, for less than an hour: that he might, just might, feel the same way about her as she did about him. That in that one and only meeting of less than an hour, when Rose had been long married and very pregnant, she might just have met the love of her life.
Rose held her breath as Jenny plonked down a plate of toast, and Maddie picked it up, eyeing it suspiciously as she touched it to her lips, licked it, and then nibbled the tiniest crumb off the corner, before taking a full bite.
‘Delicious!’ Maddie said, nodding at Jenny, who also put down a small glass of juice. ‘Thank you very much, you are most kind.’
‘You are very welcome,’ Jenny said, a little put off by Maddie’s
sudden
burst of good manners, but that was Maddie. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to behave, it was just that most of the time she didn’t see the point.
‘Do you know this postcard?’ Rose plucked up the courage to ask Jenny before she bustled back to the kitchen to resentfully fry bacon. ‘The painting of the village?’
Jenny nodded and then pointed at the wall above Rose’s head, where an exact, but larger, reproduction of the same painting was hanging.
‘You’ll find one like that in most houses round here,’ Jenny said. ‘It’s the closest Millthwaite’s ever come to being famous – well, unless you count that one time we were on
Escape to the Country
. Still, it’s made Albie Simpson more money than he needs.’
‘How do you mean?’ Rose asked her, twisting in her chair to get a better look at the print. It was a bold and confident painting, almost as if the artist had been bored when he painted it, restless and eager to be onto the next thing, dashing it off as an afterthought, and yet, for all its carelessness, it was very beautiful.
‘The artist, John Jacobs, he was a heavy drinker, a real boozer, never sober. A few years back he turned up at the pub and offered Albie his painting of the village in exchange for a bottle of whisky. Albie – who’s no better than he should be, if you ask me – took it because he fancied the look of it over his bar. And that’s where it sat, until about four years ago. Then all of a sudden this fancy-looking feller from over the border turned up and offered Albie five thousand for it! Pounds!’
Jenny waited for Rose to be either scandalised or shocked, her face registering clear disappointment when she was neither.
‘Well, Albie turned him down, don’t know why – he must have been drunk as a dog. Or not, because the bloke doubles his offer on the spot without blinking an eye. And he said he’d throw in a print of it to replace the original if Albie shook on the deal there and then. So Albie did the deal, the man got the painting and Albie got his money.’ Jenny pressed her lips together, shaking her head.
Rose looked down from the painting, running the tips of her fingers over the writing. A well-dressed man with an interest in John Jacobs, willing to pay what it took to secure one. That could be him. That could be Frasier McCleod. All she had to do to be one step nearer to finding out where he was, was to talk to the landlord, who might still have a number or an address for him, and then … And then what?
Rose bit her lip as Jenny talked on over her head, entirely oblivious as to whether or not Rose was listening.
And then turn up on Frasier’s doorstep, and say, what? ‘Hello, remember me? You came to my house once, years ago, looking for some information. I was crying, you were kind to me. We talked for a while, and the only other thing I ever heard from you is written on the back of a postcard. A postcard that I have treasured every single day since. Oh, and by the way, I think I love you. You can take out a restraining order on me now, if you like.’
Rose blinked as the foolishness of what she was doing washed over her with a wave of icy-cold reality. This was madness, a crazy teenage wild-goose chase, in which she’d selfishly involved her daughter. Frasier McCleod hadn’t written her a coded love letter, he’d written her a thank-you note, a polite little formality that somehow she’d turned into some grand forbidden passion.
What
on earth was she doing here? And yet she couldn’t go home, she couldn’t take Maddie back to the home that she knew, where she could eat her favourite bread, or back to the nice teaching assistant in school who sat next to her and helped her keep up, and played with her at break time when no one else would. There was no way she could go home. A postcard, a painting of Millthwaite, might be why she was here, so far from home and following the thread of a fantasy that was bound to unravel to nothing as soon as it was pulled, but it was not the reason she’d run away.
‘Anyway, old Albie was laughing on the other side of his face when the painting sold for four times as much, a year or so later. Turned out that the man who sold it was some arty-farty type from Edinburgh. Made a packet on it, and has made a ton more besides since he started selling the old git’s other stuff. That bloody John Jacobs, sitting pretty on all that money. You know what I say? I say it’s a shame that he sobered up otherwise maybe we all would have had a chance of getting hold of one of his paintings. I know I’d have swapped him a full English for one.’