Page 11 of Autumn at the Willow River Guesthouse
‘What was number three?’
Pete frowned. ‘Your mother cooked that god-awful spinach pie for dinner.’
‘I thought you liked that?’
‘I liked it more than I like upsetting your mother.’ Pete shrugged. ‘It’s passable if you douse it with enough salad cream. Talking of food, this cheesecake is pretty top notch. Shall we go halves on another?’
‘Sure, why not?’
An hour later, after another quick walk around Stonehenge, they headed further southwest and down into Devon. Only as she started to see the old signs of home, a copse of familiar trees here, a distant manor house there, the sign for Exeter, and then the much smaller one to Brentwell and Willow River, did Lily realise how much she had missed it. Caught on the relentless treadmill of London life, she hadn’t been home in over two years, even skipping out a traditional family Christmas to let Steve take her off to Lapland for the holiday, one where her dreams of seeing the aurora had been dashed by relentless snow and finally by a power failure which had seen them evacuated from their glass ceilinged igloo hotel into a bland concrete monstrosity near the airport. And now, as they crossed the little bridge with its slightly wonky sign announcing
WILLOW RIVER
Twinned with Rivers Everywhere
Lily felt a weight lift off her heart. The memories came rushing back to greet her like old friends. The day Tim Johnson from the Sixth Year had sprayed “Except the Thames, because it’s polluted” on the sign and been given a police caution; the time when, a month after passing her driving test, she had driven her dad’s car too fast at the little humpback bridge and broken off the front bumper; the canoeing trip in the Fifth Year when the plan had been to canoe along Willow River right into Exeter, only for the teachers to pick drought season, meaning after carrying the canoes for half a mile along a river too shallow for them to float, they had given up, called up the bus, and gone to a museum instead.
‘What are you smiling about?’ Pete asked.
‘Nothing,’ Lily said. ‘Just glad to be home.’
They passed the church where she’d spent a summer painstakingly making sketches for a school project; the village green where she’d once won a trophy at the yearly carnival for winning the Under-14s skittles tournament; the leafy garden behind the Bennett’s place where she’d shared her first kiss with Simon Bennett, a boy two years older, and—the last she’d heard, at any rate—now serving in the RAF. Beyond that was a cul-de-sac down which her schooldays best friend Mary Wilson had lived, and possibly still did.
‘Got two kids now,’ Pete said, as though reading her mind, then sighed. ‘Didn’t call either of them Peter. Sliding down the league tables, now.’
‘If I ever have a boy, I’ll at least put it on my list,’ Lily said.
‘You’re a love.’
The road angled through the tiny village centre, past a pub where Lily had got drunk for the first time, and the beer garden at the back where she had first thrown up; down a gentle hill towards the Willow River valley and passed the turning to Uncle Gus’s guesthouse. They crossed the river again over a little bridge where Lily and her friends had once picked up great handfuls of frogspawn in the shallows, then up another gentle hill through meandering lanes. They passed a small car park with half a dozen cars parked against the hedge, then Pete turned them left down a narrow lane.
‘There’s the old girl,’ he said, pulling up outside a gate.
‘Still looking good, Dad,’ Lily said, smiling at the sight of Pete’s burger van, parked in a lay-by just outside their drive.
And then she was home, back to the quaint cottage that she had grown up in, with its three-hundred-and-sixty degree garden, its cob walls and thatched roof that was one of the last of its kind in the area. While Willow River, with its quaint shops and cycle path that led all the way to Exeter via Brentwell, grew more popular with tourists every year, Lily had seen more than the odd tourist taking photos from the end of their drive.
‘Is Mum at the shop?’
Pete glanced at his watch. ‘No, she should be back by now.’
Almost as if on cue, the front door opened and Sarah Markham appeared. Lily’s mother had dyed her hair again, with the original brown long gone, replaced by a slightly reddish auburn with a couple of strands of purple thrown in for good measure. Lily climbed out of the car and ran up the path, into her mother’s embrace.
‘So, my little girl needs a bit of a getaway,’ Sarah said. ‘Darling, it’s lovely to have you home.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘I’ve put the My Little Pony bedspread back on your bed to make you feel comfortable.’
‘Seriously?’
Sarah barked a laugh. ‘No, it went to the jumble sale years ago. But don’t worry, maybe I can paint you something on the wall if necessary.’
‘I think I’ll be all right.’
Sarah let go of Lily and opened the door. ‘Well, let’s get you inside. You’ve had a long journey and you must be starving. I didn’t have time to go to the supermarket, but I’ve managed to rustle something up.’
‘Oh, what?’
