Page 65 of The Beekeeper's Cottage
Maria wiped under her eyes. ‘No, you mustn’t be sorry, Grace. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to hear you say that. And you haven’t upset me, you’ve offered me the greatest kindness anyone has shown me in five long years. You’ve understood me, Grace, you’ve finally confirmed that what I did was right, when everyone else has spent that entire time telling me how wrong I was. It sounds silly, but you’ve made me feel whole again.’
Grace was shocked to see how affected Maria had been by her words. The young woman had shown Grace such kindness since she had arrived and, naively, she had assumed that everything was perfect in Maria’s life. She lived in this beautiful cottage, surrounded by a beautiful garden, making beautiful things for a living. And yet now that Grace really opened her eyes, she saw the truth of the situation – a young woman, clearly living alone, in a house that belonged to someone else and who had made the best of what she found around her, probably because she’d had no choice. And she was a friend of Amos too, which was particularly telling because Grace knew full well how that happened… usually when someone had need of help. Suddenly she understood.
‘So what was it that you forgave Amos for?’ she asked gently.
Maria looked up, a tender expression on her face. ‘Oh, Grace. I wasn’t sure I should be the person to tell you any of this, but now I think perhaps I should. It might help you to understand what Amos has been running from all these years, but also why he might finally be ready to stop.’
Grace swallowed a slug of wine, feeling as if a thousand butterflies had suddenly taken flight in her stomach. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she whispered.
‘You’re right when you said that I forgave Amos, I did. Although, in truth there wasn’t really anything to forgive. He was as much a victim in what happened as the person who…’ She broke off, pouring herself another glass of wine and taking a long swallow. ‘As the person who died,’ she finished. ‘Her name was Bethany, and she was my sister.’
The breath caught in Grace’s throat, a sudden lump of emotion forming, and she reached out her hand in comfort. Maria took it, giving it a squeeze.
‘Amos was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and I truly think that if it had been anyone else driving that day, they all would have died. It’s just that Beth was in the wrong place at the wrong time as well, and whatever Amos did he knew he couldn’t save her too. He had a split second to make a decision, and I absolutely believe he made the right one, but it’s a question he has asked himself every day of his life since then.’
‘Go on…’
‘It was a day in the middle of January, five years ago, a beautiful, bright, but bitterly cold morning. I’ve often thought over the years that this was why it happened at all; the sunshine belying the freezing temperatures, making it seem warmer than it was, and the driver therefore heedless of the icy road. His name was Maurice Green and he got in his car in the morning to pay a visit to the post office, a journey into the local town which took all of ten minutes. Except that this morning he was rushing to get back home to wait for the engineer who was coming to mend his boiler. He shot around the bend at the top of the hill into town, braked rather sharply and, instead of slowing down, skidded on some black ice. He went straight down the hill, gathering speed, until he ploughed into the back of Amos’s stationary car, sitting in the road as he waited to turn right.
‘At that moment Amos became a lethal weapon and there was only one possible outcome. As Amos’s car shot forward towards the pavement he was faced with an impossible choice – hit the group of young mums with their pushchairs, or try and steer in the other direction, pushing him into the path of the single pedestrian who was just crossing the road. He had a split second to make his choice and there was no guarantee that he would even be able to bring the car under any kind of control, but he had to try. The rear end of his car missed the mothers by inches as he swung around, but Beth was hit head on. There was nothing anyone could have done.’
A single tear rolled down Maria’s face as she stared out across the darkening garden. The birds were still singing and the scent of flowers warmed by the sun still hung in the air, but it seemed to Grace as if the world was frozen in time, holding its breath. Her own cheeks were wet, as she concentrated on getting breath in and out of her body; the ability to do so naturally seemed to have totally deserted her.
And then, suddenly it all made sense – why Amos had felt the need to leave his home, why he always looked for the person who needed saving, why he constantly denied himself comfort as if punishment was all he deserved. The guilt he had carried with him ever since that horrific day had dictated his every move. Amos was a hero and yet someone had died. No, not someone, Maria’s sister had died, and Amos had killed her. How on earth did you ever move on from that? But then Grace realised she knew the answer to that too.
‘And you forgave him?’ she whispered.
‘Yes, when no one else around me could. Least of all Amos himself. My family hated him for what he did, still do. They made his life a misery, and mine for sticking up for him, and yet even though he saved the lives of three women, three toddlers and a baby of just seven weeks old, all they could see was the life of the one he killed.’
Grace was still holding her wine glass and she put it down gently, her hand trembling as she did so.
‘But how did you end up here?’
‘Because I couldn’t stay at home listening to my parents’ raging, and their grief, which was so different from mine. I loved Beth with all my heart and there isn’t a single day that goes by when I don’t think of her, but I grieved for Amos too, whose life had ended just as surely as Beth’s. In the end I couldn’t stand being there for any length of time and I began to visit Amos a couple of times a week. Inexplicably I felt lighter when I was with him, as if, even though it was so different in texture, we were able to share our grief. I think it helped Amos too, to start with anyway. There was a storm of publicity immediately after the accident, most of it portraying him as a hero and, as you can imagine, while this didn’t sit well with him either, at least it helped him to focus on the good that had been done. But, as with all things, people move on. The kind comments stopped, the women he had saved got on with their lives and the contact they had with him initially dwindled to nothing, until all he was left with was the fact that Beth had died.’
‘I can’t imagine what you both must have been going through. I am so, so sorry, for your loss, Maria, but also so very glad that you were there for Amos. I can’t bear the thought that he could have been on his own.’
‘In the end Amos decided to take a break for a few days and I offered to look after his house while he was away. When he came back he seemed lighter – the local pub in the village where he stayed had just been taken over by a young couple who were in the throes of renovation. A chance conversation with them revealed that they’d just been let down by their builder and so Amos offered to give them a hand in return for a meal and a pint each evening. He was gone three weeks altogether.’ Maria smiled. ‘You can imagine what happened after that…’
Grace nodded. ‘And he’s been travelling ever since.’
‘He sold his business and—’
‘Wait, I didn’t know he’d had his own business. What did he do?’
‘Build houses…’
Grace looked heavenward. When Amos had arrived at the farm he had produced a bunch of references for Fraser and Hannah, mentioning nothing about his past. They didn’t know the half of it. ‘Well that explains a lot of things.’
‘Yes, I thought it might.’
‘And so, you stayed to look after things here for him?’
‘I did. Things had become unbearable at home. It was probably about the right time for me to move out anyway, but with everything that had happened, naturally my parents decided I must be having an affair with Amos. There could be no other reason for my scandalous behaviour and it didn’t matter what I said, they didn’t believe me. We had a furious row one evening, and I moved out. I’ve been here ever since. Amos put things on a proper legal footing so that I am officially his tenant, and the rest, as they say, is history.’
Maria took another swallow of wine, her words swirling around them as Grace sat quietly trying to take in everything. She felt utterly humbled to be in the company of this young woman who had shown so much courage and dignity, even when she herself had suffered enormously; it made Grace feel quite ashamed to have been so fixated with the material things in her life. And, as for Amos, Grace couldn’t even begin to piece together all the different emotions she was feeling about him.
The minutes ticked by until Grace became aware that Maria was watching her. The young woman smiled. ‘It’s a bit of a conversation killer, isn’t it?’ she said.
