She floated away and, like an observer, saw herself standing in a beautiful garden, which she instinctively knew was Huw’s garden in full bloom. It was the way the light fell and the sound of the river burbling in the distance. She was wearing dungarees that were taut over her pregnant stomach. She stood in the garden, inhaling the intoxicating scent of a plant she couldn’t quite identify. She felt happy, light, as if the wearying yoke of grief had been lifted. Grace could sense that her mother was not very far away; her reading glasses and an open novel lay abandoned on a table behind her, but where was Mac? She couldn’t see him. Try as she might, she could not locate her dad. Unaccustomed to seeing Olive without Mac, and vice-versa, it felt most odd. Suddenly, her husband’s arms were around her. She knew with absolute certainty that this was her husband, could even feel her wedding band pressing against his, and yet she felt an overwhelming joy, a feeling that she hadn’t associated with Tom for a long time. She smiled, relishing the happiness, the contentment. It felt wonderful. Maybe there was hope for her and Tom after all. She tried to turn around but was stuck fast, unable to look into the face of the man who held her.
She awoke with a start and found herself anchored by the duvet, which had twisted around her form. No wonder she hadn’t been able to turn around. Huw had gone, and Monty too. The dull light meant that dawn was but a breath away; even so, there was time for more sleep, thankfully. Repositioning her body in the middle of the bed, she quickly slipped into a deeper sleep – without the dreams but just as blissful.
A while later she woke again, to find Huw standing at the foot of the bed. Rather than feel alarmed, she welcomed his presence, not least because he was bearing coffee and several huge, warm, plump, almond croissants.
‘Good morning, Grace.’
She smiled; she liked the way he spoke her name. ‘Good morning, Huw.’
‘You slept well?’
‘Yes, yes I did. Thank you for holding me last night. It felt so lovely. It’s been a long time since someone did something so wonderful just for me.’ She was sincere in her gratitude; there was none of the anticipated awkwardness.
‘You are very welcome. It was good for me too. It’s been a long time since I felt another person so close. I liked it very much.’ He smiled.
They were both quiet as they recollected the previous evening. To have described it to an outsider would have made it sound tawdry, wanton, but it had been neither of those things. It was as if they had transcended the physical and formed a strong spiritual bond; in the short space of a couple of weeks, they’d built trust and deep mutual affection.
Huw placed the coffee and croissants on the breakfast bar. Grace clambered out of bed and ambled over, taking a large gulp of the restorative liquid and a bite of one of the croissants.
‘Ooh, delicious, thank you!’
She had done it without thinking – welcomed the sweet, sugary pastry into her mouth and let her tastebuds feel the joy! She stood still for a second, chewing slowly and trying to gauge the significance of this small thing, which felt like a very big thing, a step towards recovery. But it was laced with guilt. She had enjoyed food in a world where her little girl would never eat again.
Huw had noted her expression. ‘You okay?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded and gave a small, cautious smile. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ She spoke through her mouthful.
‘Yes, of course. You can ask me anything.’
‘Did you ever want children?’
Huw took a bite from his croissant and looked at her. ‘I did. We did. I guess we were waiting for the right time. And then…’ He shrugged.
‘I think you’d have been a great dad.’ She spoke softly and considered his gentle, patient, caring nature, applying sutures and swabbing her cut in her hour of need. She pressed croissant crumbs into the pad of her index finger and transferred them to her mouth. When she looked up, she was aghast to see Huw’s face contorted with tears. ‘Oh God! Huw, I’m so sorry! I should never have asked.’
‘I thought I would be a dad and I know she would have made the best mum. She’d have taught our little one about the plants and they’d have grown vegetables together. Our plan was to end up here eventually. It would have been perfect.’ He exhaled, wiped his nose and eyes on the long sleeve of his shirt and faked a smile.
‘It would have been.’ She squeezed his hand.
‘Well, this is a turn-up for the books, eh?’ He laughed. ‘Me falling apart and you keeping strong.’
Grace nodded. ‘Reckon that bump on the head did me a bit of good.’ Monty barked from the deck as if in agreement.
‘Right – come on, I’m taking you out to lunch!’ He slapped the countertop and sniffed, taking deep breaths.
‘We’re only just having breakfast,’ she pointed out.
‘No matter. You need feeding up and I can eat any time. Be ready to go in ten minutes.’ He jumped from the bar stool and left, whistling for Monty as he went.
Ten minutes later, Huw was standing at the door of The Old Sheep Shed dressed in clean dark jeans and a pale blue denim shirt.
‘You look smart,’ she commented as she grabbed her rucksack.
‘Hardly.’ Huw blushed, rubbing his beard. ‘But smarter, possibly. In fact, probably just clean.’
‘Have you always had a beard?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘No. I couldn’t be bothered to shave when I first lost Leanne and this just grew.’ He tugged at his chin. ‘I trim it occasionally, but I’ve kind of made a pact that I will only be clean-shaven when I feel I’m ready to face the world properly, when I make a fresh start. I guess then I’ll feel able to remove my mask.’
Grace shut the door and hiked up the field towards the workshop. ‘Oh my word!’ Huw had parked the car outside the cottage: a vintage Mercedes 230SL. Its paintwork was the original colour, a glorious burnished gold.
‘Oh, Huw, she is really beautiful.’
‘Yes, she is.’ He looked at the car with pride. ‘It was my grandad’s. He loved her very much and I told him I would look after her.’
‘Well, you’ve kept your word.’
Huw opened the passenger door and she slid onto the cracked leather seat, its scent evocative of a bygone era, cigar smoke and musky aftershave.
‘It’ll do her good to have a run,’ Huw said as the engine purred.
‘Where are we going?’ Grace asked, only mildly curious.
‘The Saracens Head at Symonds Yat.’ Huw pumped the accelerator and smiled at the sound. ‘Best lunch in a top spot – you’ll love it. It’ll make a change from bread and cheese.’
They navigated the winding lanes, which quickly gave way to wider country roads, passing signs for enticing-sounding villages like Mansell Gamage and Stretton Sugwas. Broad, sweeping fields bordered the meandering river and every so often they’d see a clearing peppered with a cluster of huge trees and a deer or two grazing nearby.
They drove in amiable silence with the windows rolled down and the radio dipping in and out of various different music channels. Grace thought about her drive home from the train station that Friday evening not so long ago, before her whole world had unravelled. She saw herself zipping down the high-hedged lanes to Nettlecombe, singing along to Ryan Adams and then arriving home, dipping the headlights and watching Chloe and Tom together in the kitchen for a bit. She hadn’t realised that she had it all, had not fully appreciated that she was staring at perfection.
She took a deep breath. ‘You know, Huw, I keep thinking that if I’d read up properly about all the possible complications, or if I’d known what to look out for, things might have turned out differently. Tom blames me. He kind of said so.’ She toyed with the hem of her sweatshirt. ‘And I keep thinking that perhaps he’s right. It was me that assured everyone that the procedure was nothing – I even told Chloe it’d make her better. We used to joke about her terrible snoring. I understand that he blames me.’
‘He doesn’t blame you, Grace, he blames himself.’
She sighed. ‘Oh, I’m not so sure, I think he does blame me. I didn’t know about sepsis. I didn’t know what to look for, but the signs were there: her confusion, diarrhoea, slurred speech and flu-like symptoms, and she hadn’t done a wee in a long while. All the things you should be looking out for, especially if there’s a risk of infection.’
Huw worked his way down the gears, slowing the car as he looked at her. ‘I think a lot of people would struggle to identify it.’
‘Well they should be bloody taught. Everyone should know what to look for – it kills over thirty-five thousand people a year in this country alone! That’s about a hundred a day, every day! Why didn’t I know about it? No wonder he blames me…’
‘Trust me, no matter what he says, he blames himself. It was the same for me, when Leanne was killed.’ He paused, struggling to find the vocabulary. ‘I kept thinking that if only I’d met her from town like I used to sometimes, walked her home, then that car might have seen me walking by her side and swerved, or it would have hit me and that would have been preferable. Why didn’t I make her wear a high-vis vest? Why didn’t I insist on her getting a cab in the rain? Why didn’t I go and pick her up? I have a million questions that all lead back to me and things I could have or should have done.’
‘It doesn’t work like that though, does it?’ She stared ahead as her eyes blurred behind a curtain of tears, a sensation that was now as familiar to her as breathing.
Huw hadn’t finished. ‘You know, Grace, I have a head-start on you. I’ve had a long time to think about everything and ponder the reasons why. And I’m sure these terrible things that almost destroy us, they are decisions made by something or someone bigger than us, and we can’t understand it, and we are certainly not meant to change it…’
‘Decisions made by who or what, Huw? Do you mean a god?’ Her tone was a little sharper than intended.
‘If you like.’ He focused on the lane ahead.
Grace could see the comfort in the abdication of responsibility and blame, in acting as if there were some omnipotent being playing chess with her life so that no matter what she did, said or thought, it was all scripted and decided. That might work for some people, might even work for Huw, but it wasn’t how she saw the world.
They continued the drive in silence, each playing out the scenario in which things had happened differently. Then the car rounded a bend and an owl swooped overhead.
‘Wow!’ Huw yelled. ‘Did you see that?’
Grace nodded. ‘Beautiful.’
‘Is it one of yours, sent from Hogwarts with your post?’
Grace touched her fingers to the scar on her forehead and let out a burst of laughter. She immediately felt a pang of guilt – how could she be laughing? How could she be feeling a moment of happiness? It was wrong and it was too soon. She had a very real fear that it would always be ‘too soon’. The image of Chloe’s coffin being carried into the church instantly filled her mind. She shook her head and placed her hand over her eyes.
Huw looked at her and allowed her a moment of reflection.
‘Obviously I never knew Chloe, but I can bet that she wouldn’t want her beautiful mum to be sad, not forever…’
Grace didn’t trust herself to speak, not knowing what was going to pop out of her mouth next. It was as though he had insight into her mind and it both frightened and comforted her.
He spoke to ease the silence, trying to comfort her with his own experience. ‘I cried every day for a whole year after I lost Leanne and I still cry now. I think of her maybe once or twice a day. It’s the small things that remind me the most – a song on the radio or if I see her favourite programme – but thinking of her once or twice a day is a good thing. It’s a good thing because I used to only be able to think of her twenty-four/seven. She filled up all of the space in my head.’
Grace smiled at his expression; it was literally perfect and a feeling she knew only too well. ‘I feel guilty if I don’t think about Chloe, I feel guilty if I do, but most of all I miss her. I miss her now and I miss what she will never become. Does that make sense?’
He nodded; it made absolute sense. He too missed the child that was never going to be born and the wife who never got the chance to be a mum. He mourned the missed opportunities.
His understanding gave her the confidence to continue.
‘I feel as if I’m mourning what I will never have. And…’ She hesitated, having never spoken these thoughts aloud and anxious as to how they might be interpreted. ‘I keep thinking of the times I was less than patient with her. Like when I hoped she would just go back to sleep so I didn’t have to get up for her, or when I was working and just wished she would be quiet so I could crack on. I wish I’d played with her more, talked to her more, held her…’ She swallowed the bitter-tasting words. ‘I can hear her little voice saying, “Mummy do this” and “Mummy do that” and how sometimes I would be so exhausted I would feel like shouting, “For God’s sake, just leave me alone! Just for a minute, please let me think!” And I want to say sorry to her for that, I want her to know that I would give anything for one minute to hold her and hear her voice again.’
‘You can’t beat yourself up forever about being a normal, busy mum. A mum who was working hard and doing her best to give her daughter a lovely life.’
‘Can’t I?’ She sniffed.
Huw indicated and pulled into a lay-by. ‘Shall we turn around, go back to Gael Ffydd?’
Grace nodded. ‘Yes. Sorry, Huw. I don’t feel up to lunch. I don’t want to see anyone.’
‘You don’t have to say sorry to me, remember?’ He smiled and swung the car round.
Back at the cottages, Monty came running up to greet Grace as she climbed out of the car. ‘Hello, Mont.’ She smoothed his coat and scratched at his neck, which he seemed to love.
‘You’ve got a fan there.’
‘Think I’ve won him over. He wasn’t too keen on me when I arrived.’
‘That makes two of us.’ Huw laughed.
‘Charming! Grace smiled. ‘Thanks for taking me out today. Sorry we didn’t make the pub, but it was lovely to be out in your car.’
‘Any excuse! I love driving her. Tell you what, I’ve got a few chores to do this afternoon, but how about I grab a couple of ciders a bit later and we sit on the deck?’