Page 53 of A Year at Appleyard Farm
‘Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I sat in the hospital on that first evening, watching Robyn sleep. I felt so peaceful. I felt like I was watching her through somebody else’s eyes, but they were kind eyes, Cora. They cried when I cried, and in the morning when I knew that Robyn would be okay, when I looked in the mirror I saw my own relief, but I saw another’s there too, mirroring my own. All I wanted to do was to get home.’
Cora nodded. ‘And home you most certainly are.’ She smiled. ‘Although it’s unfortunate that the weather chose this particular moment to spring a surprise all of its own.’
‘Do you know, I don’t think I even mind about that too much now. The rain worries me, though. I noticed how high the river was when we drove through the village, and I have friends who run an orchard; this rain will be wreaking havoc with the apple blossom.’
‘Then we must hope that this temporary break brings a welcome respite to all.’ She patted Rupert’s head once more. ‘Now, we must go and leave you three to settle back in. You both need your rest, and on a day like today, it’s the perfect excuse not to venture out very far.’
There was the sound of a door closing in the hallway. ‘You didn’t answer my question, Cora,’ said Merry.
Her smile was immediate. ‘Oh, I think you’ll find I did,’ she replied. ‘Maybe not the one you asked, but most certainly the one you wanted answered.’ She leaned over and kissed Merry’s cheek. ‘And one day, a little while from now, I shall tell you more, but today is not the time…Now, you know where I am if you need anything, and if Brian doesn’t appear to sort out your tree, you give me a ring. He’s a good man, but a bit forgetful at times.’
Merry stood to escort Cora to the door. ‘You go safely home now too,’ she said. ‘Get out of this weather yourself.’
‘I have an excellent puzzle to finish, which I’m rather looking forward to,’ she said. ‘So I shall be absolutely fine.’ She had one hand on the handle before she turned back towards Merry. ‘Just one more thing before I go. It suits you perfectly, but yours is such an unusual name. Is it short for something?’
Of all the things that Cora could have asked her, this was certainly not what Merry had expected. She laughed and pulled a face. ‘It’s Merrilees of all things,’ she said.
‘Of course,’ Cora replied. ‘I rather thought it might be.’
‘There’s not much else it can be I suppose, except perhaps Meredith.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I still don’t know what on earth possessed my mother to give me such an unusual name. It’s handy at Christmas, but—’
‘Well, my dear,’ interrupted Cora. ‘I know what the name Merrilees means, and like I said…it suits you.’
Merry looked puzzled.
‘Apart from the more obvious joyful, it can also mean someone with a strong will or spirit, even someone with psychic powers. Quite appropriate, don’t you think?’
26
Freya bit her lip for the umpteenth time that day. She knew that Sam’s mood was symptomatic of how he was feeling about Stephen’s continuing silence, but even so he was skating perilously close to the wind. She picked up the discarded brochure that lay on the kitchen table and sat down for a moment, flicking through the same pages that Sam’s fingers had lingered over only minutes before. She really didn’t need the thoughtfully turned down corners of the pages to know where Sam had been looking, nor to confirm her suspicions: the guilty look on his face had been enough. The trouble was that Freya wasn’t sure whether it was guilt at daring to think of taking Appleyard in a direction that she didn’t want it to go in, or simply guilt at having been found out. She laid the brochure back down on the table and collected the two mugs that sat there. Ordinarily, she would have been quite happy to leave them there until the next cup of tea was due, but today, washing them up gave her the opportunity to stall for time.
It was only a few short months ago that she had sat in this very kitchen and listened to Gareth’s dreams of their future together. A future that didn’t include Appleyard at all, but instead suburban bliss in a two-up, two-down and a tiny garden, thank you very much. She reminded herself that her relationship with her old boyfriend was nothing like the one she now had with Sam. She and Sam were a partnership, and had been since they were small, playing games in the school holidays with their friends long before their relationship was anything other than friendship. Even her old friend, Willow, had once told her she thought them destined to be a couple. If Merry thought about it in a level-headed way she knew that the complexities of Sam’s relationship with his brother were such that they could never be resolved in just a matter of weeks. The trouble was that today’s conversation had rung the same warning bells in her head that the conversation with Gareth had all those months ago, and Freya didn’t like that one little bit.
It had started out as a perfectly reasoned argument. Decisions needed to be made soon over what equipment to buy if they were ever going to produce anything from the apples that they hoped would soon be growing in abundance. But Freya’s natural inclination towards prudence meant that she found this difficult. Neither did it agree with her independent spirit, one founded out of necessity over the last few years. Everything that they needed to buy seemed to cost such a huge amount of money and, as the conversation progressed, it became increasingly obvious to Freya that money was the one thing that Sam was at pains to dismiss. She knew that in part it was only because he was trying to be generous, to help her bury the fears she’d once had for her future; but the more he talked, the more she heard something in his voice that she didn’t think was Sam at all.
She returned to the table once more, Sam’s head still bent over the laptop.
‘Did you have these at Braeburn?’ she asked, looking over his shoulder.
‘Something like it, yes. Although Stephen could never see the point in shelling out for these.’
Freya looked at the face she loved, the gentle green eyes and the soft curl of the hair above his ears. She knew how hard it must be for him even to be here. To have moved out of the house he had lived in since childhood, and now be taking his place by her side on land that wasn’t his, in a house that wasn’t his, and to put his heart and soul into a business that wasn’t his. They weren’t yet married, and even when they were, she couldn’t help but wonder how it would all feel to Sam. But the generous mouth she had covered so many times with her own was pulled into a pout that said more than words ever could. She needed to tread gently.
She leaned forward, trying to attract his attention.
‘I’m not sure that I can see the point either, to be honest,’ she said. ‘They’re far too big for what we need. Couldn’t we manage with something a bit more modest?’
‘But it gives us no room to manoeuvre, Freya. As we expand, we’ll only have to replace them, so where’s the logic in that?’
Freya had a feeling they were going to go round in circles, and much though she didn’t want to raise her head above the parapet, another part recognised the need to take the conversation to another level. She decided to bite the bullet.
‘Are you sure you’re not just going with these because they’re bigger and better than what Stephen has?’
Sam’s head swivelled around immediately, and Freya heard his sharply inhaled breath.
‘Is that what you think?’ He glared. ‘That this is all some game to get back at Stephen? Has it never occurred to you that I might want what’s best for us?’
Freya refused to take the bait. She considered her next words carefully. ‘I think you believe that these things are what’s best for us,’ she said, ‘at the moment. But I also think you’re fooling yourself, telling yourself what you want to hear, and I think that has everything to do with Stephen. If you were thinking straight, and Stephen wasn’t around, I think your decisions would be different, and those are the ones that would be best for us.’ She picked up the brochure, looking straight at Sam. ‘Because they would be decisions made by the two of us, together, with no third-party involvement.’
