‘It’s teatime, Rex.’ He always had a cup of tea with her if he came in the afternoon. ‘Chloe’s made me a cake, I’m afraid she’ll want you to sing “Happy Birthday”.’
He laughed. ‘I do wish you a happy birthday and I’ll sing for hours for a piece of your cake.’
He had light brown hair that by the end of the summer would be bleached almost to blond. She thought him a serious young man, gentle, modest and unassuming. Together they walked back to the table and chairs Chloe had set out in the sun.
‘That pink aubretia is lovely and so are the forget-me-nots,’ Helen told him. ‘I love this time of the year. There’s so much more colour coming in the garden and you work so hard to make it beautiful.’
‘You do a lot here yourself, Helen. Can I go inside to wash my hands?’ They were green with grass stains.
‘Of course, you know the way.’
Chloe had covered the table with a white cloth to make it more festive and had finished setting out her feast of crab and cucumber sandwiches and gooseberry tartlets. They waited for Rex to come back.
Helen leaned back in her chair and felt the warmth of the sun on her face. ‘It’s heavenly here today, isn’t it?’
Rex returned and sat down between mother and daughter. Today Chloe was acting as hostess, pouring their tea and making sure they had all they needed. She was offering the plate of crab sandwiches round when her arm brushed his. It sent an electric shock coursing through his body that he had to hide. It took an effort to keep his voice steady and say, ‘You’ve even got birthday weather, Helen. Perfect for a tea party in the garden.’
‘It’s gorgeous when everything starts sprouting in the spring sun,’ Chloe said. ‘Mum, do we count the garden as finished now?’
‘Almost.’ Helen smiled. ‘I’ve been thinking about getting a summerhouse. It would look nice here on this very spot and we could use the garden for many more months of the year.’
‘Wow! A summerhouse?’
‘I’d like one of those you can push round so you can always be out of the wind and in the sun.’
They spent the next half-hour discussing summerhouses. ‘There’s a good selection in the garden centre at the moment,’ Rex told them. ‘You must come and see them. They’ve got the sort on a turntable base that can be swung round. You can have one side completely open or with glass panels that slide across.’
‘That sounds expensive.’
‘It is. Top of the market, but it makes a real garden room and you’d be able to use it for most of the year.’ Suddenly he smiled, ‘I hope I don’t sound like a salesman working hard for a sale?’
‘No,’ Helen said. ‘Go on, I want to hear about them. I’d really like one.’
‘There are more affordable designs. If you like, I’ll take you both to see them as soon as I’m finished here.’
‘I’d like to,’ Helen said, ‘but we haven’t time. As it’s my birthday, my cousin Joan has invited all the family to dinner tonight and we’ll need to get changed. I’ll pop in myself tomorrow.’
Rex was watching Chloe as she lit the four candles on the cake she’d made for her mother.
‘Now, Rex, I need you to sing for Mum,’ she said. He could see Helen trying not to laugh. ‘Full voice, please, as there’s just the two of us. Happy birthday . . .’
It gave him great pleasure to hear how well his deep voice mingled with her fluting soprano. But it brought an emotional onslaught, waking every nerve in his body. He’d told himself a hundred times that she was far too young for him. She was just a slip of a girl, as slender as a sapling; he didn’t understand how she’d come to mean so much to him.
‘Now, Mum,’ Chloe was all smiles as she set the cake in front of her, ‘one puff and blow them all out.’
Helen tried, but one flame continued to flutter. ‘In the bright sunlight I can hardly see whether they’re alight or not,’ she said. That she’d failed made them all laugh.
‘Sorry, Mum, it’s not a handsome cake.’ Chloe pulled a face. ‘The cream wasn’t stiff enough, I should have whipped it more.’ But she couldn’t hold back a giggle. The cream had completely swallowed the plastic disc with birthday wishes and was threatening to do the same with the candle holders.
Helen pulled them out. ‘At my age,’ she said, ‘I should be able to blow out forty-three candles, and I couldn’t even manage four.’ That made them laugh again.
As he took a bite from the generous slice in front of him, Rex said, ‘It tastes good. I knew it would, your cakes always do. Gorgeous sponge, absolutely luscious. Food for the gods.’
Chloe’s eyes sparkled up at him. ‘I wanted it to be a handsome birthday cake for Mum. It’s a bit of a disaster.’
‘No, Chloe,’ he told her. ‘It was a lovely way to mark a special day for your mother.’
He’d have liked to add that he wished she would do the same for him, but knew he mustn’t, not yet.
‘Absolutely lovely,’ Helen agreed. ‘And I’m thrilled with my presents. Thank you both.’
Rex went back to pull at the lawnmower until it burst into life. Over the years he’d known this family, he’d become very involved with them; now he wanted to think of them as his own.
Other family members seemed to live reasonably close and came to the house quite often. Helen had introduced him to her mother, Mrs Darty, an elderly lady, frail and ill-looking, and her sister Marigold, who seemed very much older than she was. When Helen made a cup of tea for them, she would invite Rex to join them. He hadn’t taken to Marigold; she was thin-lipped and wore her iron-grey hair in a severely mannish style.
From the moment he’d met them he’d thought they were not the sort of people to cheer Helen up. The old lady, poor soul, often dozed off, and there was something hostile, even steely about Marigold’s manner. She wouldn’t look him in the eye and made him feel he was intruding on their privacy.
Joan Bristow, he liked better. She was jolly, of matronly build, with a pale gold rinse on her immaculately waved grey hair. She shared Helen’s love of gardening and would come and spend the whole afternoon outside with her, always bringing a pair of gardening shoes to change into. She knew the Latin names of almost every plant, and quizzed Rex repeatedly on gardening matters.
Helen had said vaguely that Joan was a friend as well as a relation and it took Rex some time to work out that she was a first cousin to her and Marigold. She was about Marigold’s age, the daughter of Mrs Darty’s deceased sister, but a very different personality.
Joan had been married for only nine years or so to Walter Bristow, who had his own business in Bootle. Sometimes, when his office closed in the late afternoon, he’d come to pick his wife up. But first they would show him round the garden, pointing out all the improvements and the new plants, and Helen would serve them drinks. Joan was the sort of person who cheered everybody up.
Helen had told Rex almost as soon as they met that she had been recently widowed, but it had taken him a long time to see her dark moods. He’d recognised early on that she was looking for support in things unrelated to gardening – her daughter Chloe, for instance.
At that time, Chloe had been an awkward and lost-looking twelve-year-old; he could see she wasn’t happy. They’d both seemed vulnerable and in need of help.
It was only after he’d seen Chloe come hurtling out into the garden a few times, red-eyed and rebellious, that he realised she was more troubled than her mother. Rex was afraid they were having the sort of rows he’d had with his family when he’d been growing up, but he couldn’t imagine a problem that might cause them.
Rex felt sorry for Chloe, and knew that having a mother who suffered spells of depression must make it harder for her.
‘Is she still grieving for her father?’ he’d asked Helen. ‘Is that what is troubling her?’
‘It’s what’s troubling both of us, I suppose.’ Helen was staring past him into space. ‘We haven’t told you just how bad the accident was.’
He waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. ‘A climbing accident, you said?’ he prompted.
‘Yes.’ She looked at him then. ‘John’s hobby was rock-climbing. He was in North Wales with a group of climbers, practising before attempting one of the peaks in Switzerland. He took me and Chloe with him for a few days’ holiday. The idea was that we would go walking, but climbing fascinated Chloe. John took her along and gave her a first lesson or two. The other climbers made a big fuss of her and said she was a natural and had real ability. I was always scared for him, but he had no fear and neither had Chloe.
‘Then one morning, the climbers were planning to do a much harder climb. John wanted to take Chloe but I stopped him. Climbing scares me and I was afraid for her. I settled down outside with a book and Chloe was watching them through binoculars. I knew she’d gone but it never occurred to me that she’d get a lift over to the rock face and try to climb behind them.
‘It came on to rain, and that distracted her and made the rock slippy, and when she reached a more difficult spot she became scared and started calling for help. She’d climbed surprisingly high without help or supervision. Her father and one of his friends came reeling down to help her. She was panicking by this time, so John unfastened his own safety harness to put it on her. She was thrashing about and . . . Well, he slipped and fell . . .’
‘Oh God, Helen, to his death?’
She flinched. ‘Even worse, I think. He broke his back. His injuries were so bad he could never recover. He lingered . . .’
Rex shuddered. After that he understood Helen’s black moods and the clouded horror he saw in the girl’s wide eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
R
EX FINISHED CUTTING THE grass and was getting ready to go home; he was lifting the lawnmower back into his van when he saw Chloe running towards him. She’d changed into a smart red dress with matching red shoes. He’d never seen her wear high heels before.
His heart began to race. ‘Another new dress?’ he asked.
‘No, you’ve seen it before.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘I’ve cut six inches off the hem to bring it up to date. I had to, it’s no good having only one dress at a fashionable length. Mum said I was to give you a piece of her birthday cake to take home. She says it won’t keep because of all the fresh cream I put on.’
‘Thank you, that’s very kind.’
She giggled. ‘A bit like a children’s party, isn’t it, when you get a piece of birthday cake to take home?’
He smiled, ‘I’m not too grown up for that. I’ll enjoy it for my supper.’
She looked radiant. He noticed with pleasure that she was taking more interest in her appearance; she’d had her hair cut differently and tonight she was wearing a touch of lipstick. It made her look grown up.
‘I put it in a Pyrex dish, it’s too soft and squidgy to put in a bag.’
He could see it through the glass lid. ‘That’s a very generous piece. Can you spare all that?’
‘Yes, Mum says cake like this will make me fat.’
He laughed, ‘You don’t need to worry about that yet. I’ll bring the dish back next time I come.’
Helen came out and waved to him as he drove away. He felt excited. In six more weeks, Chloe would be seventeen, and now she was wearing make-up; clearly she was beginning to think of the opposite sex.
He could feel himself tingling as he decided he’d waited long enough. She was old enough to be told what was on his mind. He was nervous about doing it because he was afraid she might not feel that way about him. In all honesty, he’d seen no sign that she did. He’d like to start by inviting her to come out for a restaurant meal with him. On her own.
The difficulty was, he didn’t want to upset Helen by excluding her. He’d need to talk to her about it first, and just thinking about that made his toes curl with embarrassment. He’d have to tell her outright that he was in love with her daughter. And in view of Chloe’s youth and the difference in their ages, would she approve of that?
These days he saw much more of Helen than he did of Chloe. He’d have to wait for the right opportunity to say something like that, but if he looked out for one, sooner or later it would come.
‘Rex is nice, isn’t he?’ Chloe said to her mother as they drove off.
‘Very nice,’ she agreed. ‘A good friend to us both.’
They went first to pick up Gran and Marigold, as Joan and Walter had invited them all to have dinner at their house to celebrate Helen’s birthday. Chloe had been looking forward to it.
She was pleased to see her mother smiling and happy. She’d be on top of the world if Mum’s spells of black depression were really behind her. It had taken them a very long time to get this far.
Chloe, too, had had her nightmares and her black moods. Her father’s absence was a terrible ache and moving up to Liverpool and starting another new school two terms after everybody else had been hard. Mum had brought with her all the furniture and belongings that reminded them of Dad, and had placed photographs of him on show about their new home. She had a way of speaking about him frequently, as though he were still with them.
Auntie Joan and Uncle Walter had been very kind to both of them when they’d first come north. When Chloe’s twelfth birthday came round, Mum and Joan had taken her into town. She’d wanted a record player for her own room and they’d let her choose the one she wanted.
Then Uncle Walter had taken them all to the Adelphi Hotel for a special lunch and she’d had ice-cream cake. Before going back to his factory, he’d taken her to a record shop and bought her some of the latest records by Cliff Richard and Adam Faith. By the following year they’d had Beatlemania at school, as had half of England, and Chloe had played their records all the time. She still did, they were her favourites, and every birthday after that Uncle Walter gave her their latest album. ‘Love Me Do’ was her all-time favourite song.
Every month or so, Auntie Joan and Mum met for lunch in town, and they got together for family celebrations. Aunt Goldie had told Chloe that Joan had made her fortune by marrying Walter Bristow, and she should look out for a rich man too.
Walter Bristow was coming up to retirement age but he was still running the company he’d set up many years earlier. He’d trained as a vet and had very modern ideas about feeding animals. He thought many of the diseases suffered by pets were caused by giving them the wrong diet. He produced foods for dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits and guinea pigs, each designed to provide a balanced diet to keep the animal in good health. He believed that a dried crunch of ingredients was the easiest way for pet owners to buy and store it.