Page 47 of It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square
‘You can’t end it there!’ I cry out as Estelle begins to hobble over to her chair, as always never as sprightly as she appears during one of her stories. ‘I want to know what happened.’
Estelle lowers herself down into her chair.
‘Was your mother all right?’ Ben asks gently. ‘She fell foul of the Spanish flu pandemic, didn’t she?’
Estelle nods. ‘Yes, like millions of others she caught influenza that year and she was quite ill with it, I’m told. But mercifully she survived, unlike Ivy, who as you’ve probably guessed also had it, but sadly passed away.’
‘Oh no.’ I’m genuinely sorry to hear this. ‘Poor Ivy. She said she had children too. What happened to them?’
‘They went to Ivy’s sister, Mary. She also worked here for a while. You’ll hear more about them in a future story.’
‘Tabitha was very good, though, wasn’t she?’ Angela prompts, slightly changing the subject. ‘Didn’t she stay and nurse them all and look after you too?’
‘Yes.’ Estelle nods. ‘Thank you for reminding me, Angela. Tabitha, Mother’s midwife, had already had influenza that year. So she stayed with us and helped take care of everyone until my mother was well enough to look after me again. I say well enough – my mother never fully recovered. She developed a condition we would know today as post-viral fatigue, but back then they did not know of this type of illness, and could not diagnose anything wrong with her. My early memories are always of her sitting up in bed in a nightgown. She was always pale and tired, but she always tried to be a good mother to me as best she could.’
‘I’ve read about Spanish flu,’ I say. ‘It was awful and it killed so many people. Thank goodness medicine is so advanced now, and we know so much about how contagious disease spreads. Hopefully another worldwide pandemic will never happen again on such a scale.’
Estelle and Angela exchange an uneasy look, and I wonder why.
‘You didn’t catch it though, Estelle?’ Ben asks.
‘No, I think they removed me pretty quickly from my mother just in case, and my father didn’t catch it either – more’s the pity.’
‘Estelle,’ Angela chastises her. ‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I know what I mean.’ Estelle folds her hands in her lap purposefully. ‘My poor mother suffered terribly, and he didn’t lift a finger to help her. However, that story is for another time. I think it’s time for me to rest now. Seeing all that again has quite exhausted me. Angela?’
Angela comes over and helps her to her feet.
‘I shall see you both tomorrow morning – yes? Ben, please feel free to move your things in tonight. Angela will make a bed up for you.’
‘If you’re sure that’s okay?’ Ben says. ‘I’m very grateful. These old houses can be very cold with no central heating. I don’t know how they managed years ago with just a fire for warmth.’
‘It will be our pleasure,’ Estelle says. ‘Besides, it will be nice for Elle to have someone her own age to chat to.’
I smile at Ben and he grins back.
‘Well, no time like the present,’ he says, standing up. ‘I’ll pop back and get a few bits now if that’s all right?’
‘See you in a while,’ I say as Angela and Estelle leave the room with Ben, and I begin scribbling yet more notes in my book about our latest trip with Estelle into the house’s past.
‘Estelle made us sound like two teenagers earlier,’ I say to Ben when he’s returned from next door, after packing a bag and leaving it on one of the beds upstairs. Angela has also taken her leave for the night, so now it’s just me and Ben again in the chairs next to the fire.
‘You mean when she said you’d have someone to chat to your own age?’ Ben grins as he sips on one of the mugs of cocoa Angela insisted on making for us before she went up to her bedroom. ‘Yes, I thought that too. I guess we must be nearly the same sort of age, though, aren’t we? I don’t want to be rude, but I kind of thought we might be.’
‘I was born on Christmas Eve 1984,’ I say honestly. ‘So I’m thirty-four years old in a few days. How about you?’
‘Amazingly, the exact same.’
‘Yes, I know you were born on Christmas Eve, but what year?’
‘That’s what I said – exactly the same. Christmas Eve 1984!’
‘No way!’ I exclaim. ‘That’s crazy!’
‘Don’t I look thirty-four then?’ Ben grins. ‘Please say younger.’
‘No, I mean it’s crazy we were born not only on the same day, but in the same year too.’
