Page 16 of The Christmas Retreat
‘Or just let the removal firm pack everything for you after you’ve gone. That neighbour of yours could take the keys, couldn’t he?’
‘Eli? Yes, he’d do that, but I think I want to pack everything myself,’ I said. ‘And … I won’t ever come back again.’
‘A clean break will be much less painful,’ Evie agreed. ‘Perhaps you’ll fall in love with Wales and rent a cottage there while you look around for somewhere to buy.’
‘It’s a thought,’ I said. ‘It’s probably time I got in touch with my Welsh heritage, now I know I’ve got one through my great-grandfather.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ she approved. ‘I’ll email you the details of the retreat they’ve sent me. Will you drive there? I don’t think I’ll have room for you in my car, because I’ll have all my research materials with me. I’ve discovered another female artist who was working in Seren Bach at the same time Arwen was there and she sounds worth looking into as well.’
I shuddered at the thought of being driven anywhere by Evie, who talked non-stop as if addressing one of her lecture audiences and frequently took both hands off the wheel to gesticulate.
‘I’ll drive myself because I’ll have a car full of stuff, too.’
‘I don’t suppose it would be full if you had a decent car instead of that ridiculous little Fiat,’ she said, then rang off.
As so often when I had finally fallen in with some plan of Evie’s, I felt as if I had been steamrollered into it, although this time there was also a sense of relief. A way out of a now intolerable situation had been opened to me and I’d have too much to occupy me till then to panic about going there, or to think about the future beyond it.
*
Evie pinged over the information about the retreat as soon as she rang off, and I discovered Triskelion to be a large, rambling white-painted stone house, set among trees.
There was a potted history of the retreats, which had been going now for many years, and the information, which I already knew, that Triskelion had once been the home of renowned artist Cosmo Caradoc.
The retreats were still a family affair, led by the well-known painter Nerys Matthews, a descendant of Caradoc’s, and her husband, the ceramic artist Timon Matthews, who also ran the nearby Triskelion Pottery.
The number of guests to the Christmas retreat was limited to only six, so Evie had clearly been lucky to secure places.
I was not sure she had bothered scrolling down and reading all the details, however, because I saw that guests lived as part of the family and were invited not only to celebrate Christmas with them, but also take part in traditional local ceremonies to celebrate the season.
That sounded intriguing, but I wondered how Evie wouldreact to the idea that she might be expected to join in with all those Christmas festivities that she had always deplored.
*
I suppose my feelings of panic at the prospect of being catapulted from my hermit-like existence into a full-blown festive house party full of strangers worked on my subconscious and triggered The Nightmare.
While I’d still been getting occasional flashbacks to the night of that dreadful car accident I’d witnessed just before lockdown, it was some months since I’d been visited by the ghastly and graphic nightmare that transported me back to the terrible moment when I had been driving along a narrow country lane at night and, after hearing a horrific bang, had rounded the bend to see a car smashed up against a large tree.
But once again, in my dream, I was right there, crouched in the road by the open, crumpled door of the crashed car, the scene eerily illuminated by my own headlights and those of a car that had been coming the other way. I could hear a man’s voice phoning for an ambulance, for help, but all my attention was focused on the pale, beautiful, strangely familiar face of the dying woman in the driver’s seat.
I was struggling to hear her whispering voice over the blare of her jammed car horn.
When I’d first reached her, she’d murmured something about hares running in circles – and I’d had a glimpse of the rabbit on the road she must have swerved to avoid.
After that, I’d tried to keep her conscious by asking her questions, as if the frail thread of speech could bind her to life until help arrived.
Her voice had a faint Welsh lilt and there were a few disjointed words, slow and halting, which I’d struggled to catch.
‘I’m Annie … Tell Rhys … all … very … sorry … cariad.’
In that moment, I realized who she was and that Welsh endearment, the last word she spoke, was almost unbearably moving.
Then her hand went limp in mine and I saw her eyes go blank. I’d had no previous experience of death, but it was unmistakable: she had gone and I was sure, even as the siren of an ambulance came closer, that nothing could bring her back again.
*
I woke from the nightmare in the dark early hours with a convulsive shudder, feeling cold, clammy and disorientated, and only when my heart rate had slowed did I get up and go downstairs to sit over a comforting mug of hot chocolate until I was ready to give up on the idea of sleep and face the day.
*
