Page 28 of A Year at Appleyard Farm
There was an answering silence. That grew longer. ‘Merry?’ whispered Freya. ‘Are you still there?’
Merry drew in a sharp intake of breath that was readily audible this time. ‘Freya…I think my waters just broke…Oh God, my waters just broke, Freya, I’m going to be a mummy!’ Her voice rose with excitement mixed with pain. ‘I’ve got to go, Freya, sorry…I’ll ring you, okay?’
‘Yes, go, go!’ replied Freya urgently.
‘Listen, just one thing, Freya Sherbourne, and you damn well listen this time,’ she panted. ‘My whole life is going to change today, nothing will ever be the same again, but it’s a good thing. It’s the right time for me and if you let it, it can be the right time for you too. Promise me you won’t fight what you’re scared of, Freya. Breathe through the pain and at the end of it, well you just might have yourself a miracle.’
‘Okay.’ She nodded. ‘I will, I promise.’
She could almost hear her friend nodding, words temporarily deserting her until she got her breath back. ‘Good, don’t let me down, will you? Okay, I’m going now. Wish me luck…’
‘Merry Mistletoe!’ shouted Freya against the wind, but her friend had already gone. She slipped her phone back into her pocket and, wiping her eyes, set out from the shelter of the porch into the whirling storm. If she was lucky, she would find someone who could take her home.
The church was in the very centre of the village, but even so by the time she had navigated the village green and emerged onto the high street, she was exhausted. The little row of shops huddled together, their twinkly lights shining bravely out into the dimming light, but this was the only sign of the season. The place was deserted; even the butcher’s which would usually have a good-natured crowd spilling out onto the street as people queued to collect their turkeys, was eerily quiet. She thought of her own warm house, with its homely kitchen, and roaring fire, fragrant from the apple wood they burned, and her stomach turned over with a tiny shiver of fear. She was finding walking increasingly difficult, her arm still in its sling throwing her off balance, and her wellies, although waterproof, with next to no grip on the snow.
In desperation, she walked towards the baker’s at the far end of the street. Millie’s husband was a farmer, and it was just possible he might be able to come and collect her. As she walked, she heard a light tinkling noise and then, ‘Freya?’
She turned to see the door of the off-licence closing. Stephen stood on the pavement, a carrier bag in his hand. He looked as surprised to see her as she him.
‘What are you doing here, Freya? Jesus, you look cold.’
To her further surprise and humiliation, she burst into noisy tears, all her pent-up emotion finally catching up with her.
‘You bastard!’ she shouted, flailing her arm at him. ‘This is all your fault. Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?’
Stephen put down his bag on the pavement with a clank, and tried as best he could to get both arms around her as she struggled against him. He said nothing, just tried to calm her, his natural height and build giving him the advantage, and after a while, although the whimpering accusations continued, she eventually stopped wriggling and sagged against him.
‘Come on,’ he said gently. ‘Let’s get you home.’ He picked up his bag again, and still holding onto her as best he could, moved her slowly down the street to where his car was parked.
‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ she sniffed, eyeing his car warily. ‘Not if you’ve been drinking.’
He drew a slow breath in. ‘Jesus Freya,’ he said, studying her for a moment, her face a picture of abject misery. ‘You really do hate me, don’t you? No, don’t answer that. I haven’t been drinking, not yet anyway. You’ll be perfectly safe. Come on, get in.’
He folded her inside, and then set about clearing the windscreen, which even in the short time he had been shopping had been completely covered in snow. After a few minutes, he climbed in beside her, and started the Range Rover, turning the heaters up to full.
He was about to put the car into gear, when he suddenly stopped and looked at her.
‘Not that it will make any difference to you, but for what it’s worth I wanted to say that you’re quite right. I am a bastard, and it is all my fault.’
Freya turned to look at him, sniffing gently, her eyes still full of tears. ‘Stop playing games, Stephen, enough is enough.’
‘You know, I don’t blame you for not believing me, but actually this time, I mean it, Freya, I’m telling the truth. I should never have done what I did. You were young, and I took advantage of that. I knew exactly what I was doing.’
‘So why did you then?’
Stephen toyed with the air freshener on the dashboard. ‘Because I’ve always been jealous of Sam, right from when we were children; of the way he made friends when we were young, of the way he made people laugh. Stupid and irrational I know, but there you are. I can’t think of one single reason why I should have felt like that, but I did, and anything he had, I set out to take from him…including you.’
Freya’s lip trembled. ‘And I let you take me,’ she said sadly. ‘I’m just as much to blame.’
Stephen reached for her hand, even now feeling her flinch as he took it. ‘No, it wasn’t your fault, Freya. I pursued you like a hunter stalks a lion. I showered you with compliments and presents, planted dreams of what our life could be like if we were together, of the riches we would have, the places we would travel to.’
‘Empty promises…’
‘Yes, but you weren’t to know that. You were eighteen, not old enough to know what you wanted.’
A tear trickled down Freya’s cheek. ‘But I did know what I wanted…and I let him go.’
The silence stretched out between them for a few minutes, both lost in a time over 15 years ago. ‘He wanted to go after you that day, after the wedding, did you know that? But I stopped him. Even then, after all that had happened, he would still have gone after you, but I punched him and knocked him to the ground.’
