Page 92 of A Year at Appleyard Farm
Laura held her look for a moment, and Freya could see the turmoil reflected in her face. She was glancing about her as if checking she had everything she had brought with her, swapping the bag into her other hand.
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Laura. ‘But I’m not very good with people since…’ She stopped abruptly. ‘I’ll think it about it,’ she repeated, with the ghost of a smile. ‘Thank you.’ And she turned to go.
Freya watched her making her way to the stile and back to the fields. ‘It was nice to meet you,’ she called after Laura’s retreating back; but there was no reply.
It wasn’t until she had said goodbye to her dad and collected her stool that the penny dropped. It suddenly came to her why Laura hadn’t appeared to hear her at times, why she wore a slightly intense expression whenever Freya was speaking, how she studied her face, and how her replies were not as quick as they might have been. She was lip-reading. Laura was deaf.
Freya thought of the last conversation she’d had with her future brother-in-law. Now what were the chances of that?
50
Stephen had apples to harvest, he shouldn’t still be sitting in his kitchen, but unaccountably he couldn’t move from his laptop. He had never felt this way before, but now that he did, he was revelling in the experience. He was also beginning to realise that if this was how he felt, then this ‘thing’, which he had hitherto believed to be a made-up, or certainly overrated, emotion must be true. It suddenly made him understand people a whole lot better.
Take his brother for example. Sam had been head over heels in love with Freya since the minute they clapped eyes on one another at primary school. Of course, back then, Sam hadn’t recognised what love was; he and Freya were simply good friends until his hormones kicked in, and Freya’s too for that matter. Stephen had watched them over the years, from his vantage point of superior age, and thought them soppy and foolish with their plans and declarations. It hadn’t stopped him feeling jealous, though, of the affection that Sam received, and of the easy relationship he shared with a woman instead of the furtive fumblings that Stephen managed. And because he couldn’t understand it, because he could never have it, he set out to take what was not rightfully his.
He had wooed Freya and seduced her with make-believe affection and lies; promises he never intended to keep. Everything bigger and better than his brother could ever hope to give her. She had fallen for it too, right up to the point where they were about to walk down the aisle, Sam long since fallen by the wayside. But something had made Freya stop, and when she stopped, she started running.
It had taken a very long time, right up until a year ago in fact for Stephen to be forgiven, and for Freya and Sam to finally get back to where they were always meant to be: together. Stephen had begun to acknowledge a different way of living since then. He’d had a great many lessons to learn, but slowly he was beginning to understand that things happened to other people not because they were favoured, or lucky, but because they worked for them. He realised, in fact, just how much of a prat he’d been in his life, giving in to jealousy and sullen, petty anger when he should have been forging his own future. For much of it, his had been a wasted life, but Stephen was determined to do better from now on, and two days ago, he had come across the most perfect, and most beautiful incentive.
It wasn’t a very promising start, Stephen would be the first to admit, but really, if you looked at it from a slightly different point of view, he had saved the woman’s life. Perhaps, in time, she would see it that way too, and they would laugh about how they had both behaved badly, saying things they hadn’t meant, jumping to the wrong conclusions. There was no possibility that Stephen could have known she was deaf, but now that he did, he was determined to make up for it. He just needed a way to impress her somehow. That and hope that fate would allow them to meet up again, and she would stay in the same room with him for long enough to make it count.
He opened a new internet tab on his laptop and typed ‘British Sign Language courses’ into the search engine. So far that morning he had watched about thirty YouTube clips, searching for some simple words or phrases that might be relatively easy to learn. Even just ‘hello’ or ‘thank you’ would be a start, anything that might let her know that he wasn’t a hot-headed idiot all the time…
* * *
‘I should never have gone,’ said Freya, as she and Sam sipped a welcome cup of tea. They’d been hard at it since early morning, but several hours’ work had resulted in an enormous pile of perfect apples, ready for pressing. The afternoon, if they were lucky, would see the bright crisp juice, bottled and ready to be collected.
‘It was a rotten thing to come out with when I didn’t even know the girl. She must have been petrified having me throw that at her.’
Sam looked at Freya over the rim of his mug. ‘And did she seem petrified?’
‘Not exactly, but she didn’t seem that happy either. She was obviously really shy, and now I know why. I’d never have asked her if I’d known.’
‘Why would her being deaf make any difference?’
‘Well because…imagine how she must feel?’
‘Chuffed to know how much you liked her work?’
Freya gave an exasperated tut. ‘Honestly, Sam. I was obviously making her very uncomfortable. I mean, she spends her days talking to dead people for God’s sake, probably so that she doesn’t have to hold embarrassing conversations with complete strangers who don’t know a thing about her, and yet make wild suggestions at the drop of a hat.’
Sam merely smiled. ‘Or,’ he said pointedly, ‘she could be very lonely but unsure about how to make things any different. It must be quite isolating being deaf; think about that for a minute. And now here you are, the first person in ages who’s taken any notice of her, and not only that but showered her with compliments, and made her what could be a very exciting offer. Have you thought of it that way?’
He took hold of her hand. ‘I’m wondering who’s the more embarrassed here, Freya; are you sure it’s Laura? Don’t treat her any differently just because she’s deaf, that’s possibly the real reason she shies away from people; because she’s so fed up with people treating her that way.’
Freya sighed. ‘How did you get to be so wise, Sam Henderson?’
‘Probably because I’m getting married to you, Freya Sherbourne. Isn’t that why we’re having this conversation? To convince you of something you already know is true. Don’t give up on her, Freya, maybe she needs you more than you know.’
‘But she didn’t come to the churchyard today.’
‘Perhaps she was busy. You could always try again tomorrow.’
Freya flashed him a huge smile before leaning over and kissing him deeply. ‘I love you,’ she said.
* * *
Two miles away Laura was having the exact same argument with herself, and with Boris when he could be bothered to listen. The dog’s head was resting on the table as he sat beside it, his eyes swivelling to the left and then the right as he watched Laura pacing back and forth across the kitchen.
