Page 5 of Forgive Me Not
Andrea turned away. Bligh and Gail appeared. Gently he manoeuvred her around Dash. Gail went to the cutlery drawer and set the table for two people, putting out spoons instead of knives and forks. Then she sat down and busied herself folding and unfolding a napkin.
‘Just go, Emma,’ said Bligh.
Emma hovered for a moment. Swallowed. He was right. Her return was just making things worse. She wanted to kiss her mother but didn’t want to add to her confusion. Instead, she gently squeezed the hand that had once mucked out the pigsty, picked and scrubbed fruit and sewn clothes. Gail looked up. Nothing registered. Emma glanced at Andrea’s back, wanted to rub those stiff shoulders until they relaxed. Instead she walked back through the dining room into the lounge and picked up her rucksack. She coiled her fingers around the handle of her case and headed outside, accompanied by Dash.
She gazed across the farmland towards an ellipsis of clouds in the blue sky. In the distance, a weeping willow cried leaves into the small pond. In front of it was a bench, and the pasture for the few sheep and goats. To the left, the vegetable and fruit garden. To the right, the big chicken coop, where a hen clucked whilst taking a dust bath. Next to that was the pigsty, the sheds and the old barn.
Foxglove Farm produced jams and chutneys as well as fresh eggs and vegetables. They sold home-made fruit cake, and with a little persuasion, Andrea would hang her latest paintings in the shop. Or she used to. Emma didn’t know if she did any more. She was self-taught, but she was good, and loved creating imagined exotic scenes from abroad.
Granny and Gramps had died in a car crash when Emma was little. The money they’d left had been used to give the three of them a fresh start up north. Gail had always fancied living near the Peaks, away from London. They never visited the capital again. She liked the wilder landscape. Undomesticated, she called it – unlike the animals she took in, which soon became pets.
Emma and Andrea had often giggled and said that Mum had to be the only vegetarian farmer in England. A centre for waifs and strays rather than a farm was probably a better description of the place. Two pigs had come with the smallholding. The previous owner was going to put them down but Mum persuaded him not to. They both died within five years, after a very happy life embellished with many biscuit treats.
The first sheep came from a big farm in the next town. Gail had heard the owner talking in the Badger Inn one day, saying how for a farm his size, emotions couldn’t come into the shearing process. Targets had to be met and some sheep found the handling traumatic. He had one at the moment who was so jumpy he would sell her early for meat. Gail had interrupted. Said she’d pay him the going rate. Asked him to always send her the sensitive animals. She also rescued battery farm hens, and once a donkey destined for the foreign meat trade.
Emma’s eyes narrowed. Currently there were two sheep, two goats, three pigs, hens and rabbits. Her mouth went dry as she walked over to look at them. The water bowls looked grubby. Fences and shelters needed repairing. The animals stood bored, with no items to encourage play or foraging. Her gaze moved to the vegetable patch. Wanton carrot tops dirty-danced with the breeze. A disapproving regiment of raspberry canes stood with plump, reliable lettuces at its feet.
She squinted in the evening sunlight and enjoyed the countryside soundtrack. If only she could record all the noises she used to find so pedestrian.
She spotted tomatoes growing in the greenhouse. From a trellis across the ceiling, cucumbers dangled like diving Zeppelins. A nose nudged her leg. She crouched and gave Dash a hug, then wandered across to the barn, which now had cracked windows and holes in the roof. Inside, it hadn’t changed much. There were still the haystacks and bits of farm equipment, plus the sink they’d had plumbed in years ago so that they could prepare animal feed out here. Also a pen with dirty hay scattered across the ground, and in the corner, a scratched rocking chair Mum had bought years ago but never got round to renovating.
Emma looked at her watch. She could catch a train back to Manchester but she didn’t have much money for a hotel. It was too late to get anywhere else. She collapsed onto one of the haystacks. Tomorrow was a new day. She’d work it out. Aunt Thelma’s money would help, although she’d give it all away in a second to have just one lucid moment with Mum.
‘She doesn’t know who I am, Dash,’ she said, and put her arms around his neck again. Her mum used to say that animals only judged you on the present. They didn’t care about mistakes from your past and had no expectations about your future. Their behaviour around you – calm or on edge – reflected the person you truly were.
She closed her eyes and meditated for a few minutes. She opened her suitcase and took out her nightly readings. Then she filled her gratitude journal. Routine. Routine. Routine. Things she was grateful for today? Seeing her family. Acting like a grown-up and accepting the situation. Not shouting, swearing, making her mum cry – all the things she used to do.
She got a fleece out of her suitcase, wrapped it around her shoulders and lay down, finding comfort in the familiar hard ground. Dash snuggled up. Emma would get up early and leave without causing further upset. No one would know she’d slept here. In fact, she’d get up as soon as the sun rose and see what she could do to help improve the animals’ situation before she left. She could at least clean out the water bowls and drag an old bench she’d noticed into the goats’ enclosure. They’d love having something to jump onto.
She stroked Dash and with heavy eyes recalled once again the very last day she’d been able to call Healdbury home. How she’d woken up in that upmarket hotel. Seen the blood. Hurriedly driven to the farm and faced Bligh’s fury when he discovered what she’d done. And then run.
17 months before going back
Emma stared at the dingy ceiling inhabited by her familiar eight-legged housemates. As a child, she’d imagined spiders to be the weavers of sparkly princess dresses that would entrap princes instead of snacks. She moved her focus to the walls and their nicotine stains the colour of overripe banana. Here, one day passed much the same as another.
A grunt sounded from her left. She rolled over, nose pinching in the winter morning air, and scanned the sparsely clothed male torso in the grubby blue sleeping bag on the stone floor. She shivered and studied the familiar dirty-blonde hair.
‘Surprised we didn’t freeze solid overnight,’ she said, and shuffled over to him. She tucked her head under his chin and felt comforted by his warm breath. He hugged her back loosely and Emma clung on tight, tilting her face hopefully, but he pulled away. These days, Joe was always the first to break contact.
Unlike the weeks when they’d first met. The friendship had soon become affectionate. Joe would slip his arm around her waist and tuck his fingers in her back pocket. Emma would rest her head on his shoulder as they sat next to each other on the pavement at various locations in Manchester city centre. Being with Joe made this derelict building feel more like a home than just a place to sleep in.
Yet somehow they’d lost that natural ease and Emma was determined to get it back. She had plans. Their relationship was the way out of this mess. Since meeting Joe, an unfamiliar sensation had stirred deep within her chest. Was it hope? The desire to change? All she knew was that for the first time in months, a different kind of future seemed possible.
She turned back to the ceiling and reached out her right arm. Sight was not required to curl her fingers around the bottle she knew was there.
‘Happy New Year,’ she whispered.
She sat upright and as a treat allowed herself to think back to happier times at Foxglove Farm. Mum making strawberry jam. Andrea in the vegetable garden, as busy as a worker ant. Blue skies. Fragrant honeysuckle. Carefree pigs snuffling for imaginary truffles. And capable Bligh.
Sounded like the narrative of a children’s story, didn’t it? Of a book that no longer belonged to her.
‘Joe,’ she whispered, ‘let’s go out. Head down to the canal. There’s some bread in my rucksack. I bet the ducks are as hungry as us.’
‘Not possible,’ he muttered. ‘We’ve hardly eaten in two days.’
‘I did say to go to the soup kitchen,’ she said, half-heartedly. It wasn’t her favourite place – cliquey at the best of times.
‘What, with all that forced festive jollity?’ He leant up on one elbow. ‘No thanks. I’d rather keep it real.’
