The Sweetest Thing (2 page)

‘Adam, I thought you were cool with it,’ I say. ‘That’s what you said.’

‘That was ages ago and before I saw this dump.’

I can hear the bitterness rising in his voice.

‘We’ll make it our own,’ I say, suppressing a flicker of worry over his state of mind. ‘We’ll decorate your room how you want it, and of course there’s plenty of space for the dog.’

We don’t have a dog yet, but Adam’s always wanted one, and I can see from the way his expression softens that he’s feeling a little better about the move already. It’ll be all right, I tell myself. He’ll soon settle. He’ll have to because there’s no going back. This move has to work for all of us. The children might not appreciate it yet, but what I’ve done, I’ve done for them.

‘What do you think, Georgia?’ I ask, turning to my middle child who takes after me, being petite and brunette. She has her hair tied back in a ponytail and wears a thin black cardigan over a white vest and blue jeggings. She’s ten next birthday and very much a tomboy.

‘You didn’t say it was falling down, Mummy,’ she says, keeping her hand tucked into her sleeve as she points towards the sloping lintel of the doorway that leads through into what the estate agent called the drawing room. The whole house slopes in all directions, floors, walls and ceilings, but that’s part of its charm.

‘I think it’s always been like that.’ I feel my youngest reach out for my hand and link her small, slightly sweaty fingers through mine. ‘What do you think, Sophie?’ I look down, awaiting her answer while she looks around, her blond curls bobbing around her shoulders, her eyes wide and blue, and her rosebud lips pursed in thought. She’s eight and far more girlie than her sister – she’s wearing a pink summer dress and has a smear of my mother’s lippy on her cheek.

‘It’s a witch’s house.’ She shudders. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I say, disappointed and slightly panicky that none of the children share my enthusiasm for our new home. It’s been a wrench for them, leaving London, but I’d hoped they’d love Uphill House when they saw it. I wish that they could see its potential, like the estate agent who’d showed me round several months ago.

‘Mum, can I have something to eat?’ Adam says from beside me.

‘I thought you might run off to explore,’ I say, hopeful of having the house to myself for a few minutes, time to gather my thoughts before my parents and the removal people turn up.

‘I need food first,’ Adam insists.

‘There’s food in the cool bag,’ I say. ‘Georgia, can you pass the bag to Adam, please?’

Georgia drops it at her brother’s feet, size nines in
skate shoes with fluorescent laces, and Adam rifles through, coming out with the tub of chocolate brownies I baked last night when we were over at my parents’, keeping out of the way of the removal people who were packing the last of our things into boxes and crates. When the going gets tough, the tough get going – whereas I just get baking.

‘Not those,’ I say quickly. ‘They’re for later.’

‘But I’m starving.’ Adam examines a second container. ‘What about the cherry cake? Don’t tell me you’re saving that too …’

I was, but I’m feeling guilty for dragging him away from his friends and the skate park so I give in.

‘Just make sure you save a piece for Granddad then.’ Unfortunately for my dad, the baking gene skipped a generation. My mum’s mum baked and so do I, but Mum gave up trying years ago, her rock buns turning out like granite and her coconut cones collapsing into what our family folklore calls coconut flatties, rather than rising up perkily like Madonna’s bras in the eighties.

‘I wanna piece of cake else it’s not fair,’ says Sophie from behind me, the very arbiter of fairness. ‘Adam, pass the box over.’

‘I don’t want any, thank you,’ says Georgia politely, and I smile to myself.

They’re so different yet I love each of them unconditionally even after three hours on the road, and that’s saying something. There can be no harsher test of a mother’s love than a one-hundred-and-fifty-mile car journey on a hot summer’s day.

Georgia is the quiet, sensible one whereas Sophie takes after her father’s side of the family: outgoing and self-righteous. Adam’s personality lies somewhere
between the two. He wasn’t planned, but he was the best mistake I ever made. Georgia came along a little later than intended, and Sophie was conceived on impulse. Her arrival should have been the icing on the cake, but was more like the jam through a Victoria sponge, sticking the layers of our marriage back together after one of David’s affairs. It didn’t last, which is how we ended up here, I suppose.

It’s too late for regrets though. The deal is done. The money – David’s divorce settlement was generous as it should have been, since he didn’t show much in the way of remorse for what happened – has changed hands and there’s no going back. Today, I locked the door on my old life and left it all behind … all of it apart from the children, of course, and the car, and the removal lorry. Oh, and my parents who followed on behind in their own car. They’ve insisted on coming along to help with the move and I’m grateful because I don’t think I could have got this far without them.

‘Jennie, we’re here!’ My mother joins us in the hall, greeting me with a hug as she always does, as if she hasn’t seen me for weeks. She’s sixty-six but could easily pass for ten years younger. Her hair is short and sculpted, and she tells the children that she irons her face to keep the wrinkles at bay. She’s wearing cropped trousers, a cotton top and flat sandals, and Adam towers above her.

‘How’s my gorgeous grandson?’ Mum grins as Adam retreats rapidly out of touching distance. ‘It’s all right. I shan’t kiss you. And you and Sophie?’ she adds, turning to Georgia.

‘I was sick in the car,’ Georgia says.

‘I expect it was because of those wiggly lanes,’ Mum says.

‘Yes, what kept you?’ I say.

‘We took the scenic route.’ Mum rests her hands on her hips and tips her head to one side. ‘Actually, your granddad got lost. But you know what he’s like. He won’t admit it.’

‘Neither will Mum,’ Adam mutters.

‘Mummy was in such a hurry to get here that she ran straight into a tractor,’ says Sophie, wiping sticky crumbs from her face with the back of her hand.

‘Almost ran into a tractor,’ Georgia corrects her as Mum raises one eyebrow.

It’s true. I was whizzing along, a bit miffed because the SatNav had lost the signal and stopped speaking to me, and wondering how one tree could look so much like another, which only goes to show how out of touch I am with the natural world, something I intend to change very soon. That’s right. I wasn’t concentrating, which is why the tractor came upon me more quickly than I expected as I negotiated a sharp right-hand bend.

Unsure I was going to stop in time, I screamed, ‘Hold on tight!’, slammed on the brakes and waited for the bump.

‘We were this far –’ Georgia holds up her hand, demonstrating a gap of about a centimetre between her finger and thumb ‘– from this great big –’ she struggles to find words adequate to describe the monstrous machine ‘– huge tractor.’

‘It was enormous,’ I agree, smiling.

‘And it was blue,’ says Sophie. ‘And Mummy went very red.’

‘I don’t know about that.’ All I know is that it was the first time in ages that my heart’s beaten faster. I lowered the window as the driver jumped down and approached.

‘I think that man wants to speak to you,’ Sophie said, somewhat unnecessarily.

I wasn’t so sure I wanted to speak to him, I thought, when this face appeared, an unfriendly face, the forehead furrowed, the eyes cool grey-blue and staring, and the mouth set in a stubborn line. My first thought was that it could be a handsome face in a rugged kind of way, the complexion tanned, the jaw-line square, but then its owner began to speak in a voice as deep and dark as burned sugar.

‘What do you think you’re doing? This isn’t a bloody racetrack.’

‘I know … I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. I was speeding. I admit it.

‘You could have been killed. And your children.’

His eyes drilled into mine. I looked away, the irresponsible mother, concentrating instead on what I could see of the rest of him, the muscular torso partially hidden by a tatty grey vest, the hairs in his armpit as he leaned against my car. He had a musky, animal smell – not unpleasant – and his jeans looked as if they had never been through a wash, but he had something about him, the confidence of someone happy in his own skin.

‘Look, I’ve said I’m sorry,’ I began when he didn’t seem in a hurry to get back to his tractor.

‘You don’t come from round here, do you?’ he said slowly, in a West Country accent as thick as clotted cream. He paused to flick a wave of light brown, almost blond hair from his eyes. ‘I can give you directions back to town, if that’s where you’re heading.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, refusing to be helped in any way, no matter how well intentioned the offer might have been.
Since David left me, I’ve had to do virtually everything myself, and I don’t intend for that to change. Although I doubted it at first, I’ve discovered that I like my independence.

‘Mum!’ Georgia said at the same time as Sophie aimed a kick at the back of my seat.

‘I know where I’m going,’ I said adamantly.

‘Ah, but do you know where you are?’ the man said, with a spark of humour, and in spite of my embarrassment at being caught out, driving like a maniac, I smiled back.

‘Would you mind getting out of my way so we can get on?’ I said, quickly sobering up. I refrained from adding that we had a house to move into.

‘You’ll have to reverse.’ He grinned as if he could read my panic. The brambles in the hedges were touching both sides of the car, and there was the hint of a ditch, hidden by long grass and wildflowers, running alongside the lane. ‘The nearest passing place is about half a mile back,’ he added.

I reversed until my neck cricked and my brain almost melted, while the man in the tractor nodded and waved me on back condescendingly, until I reached a gateway and pulled in to let him squeeze past. I could feel myself shrinking, making myself small as if that was going to spare my paintwork, although I don’t know why I was worrying about something so trivial when, with one wrong turn of those massive wheels, we could all have been crushed to death.

‘Why didn’t you let the man tell us how to get there?’ Georgia complained when I was watching the tractor rolling on down the hill behind us. ‘Why did you pretend you know where we’re going?’

‘Because I don’t expect he knows. He’s just some old country bumpkin.’ I don’t know why I said ‘old’ because I reckon he could have been a few years younger than me.

‘What’s one of those – a bum-kin?’ asked Sophie.

I thought Adam couldn’t possibly hear anything over his music, but he switched off his iPod and joined in.

‘It’s someone who looks like a scarecrow and goes round wearing a battered hat with a feather sticking out of it. And they usually have a piece of straw in their mouth and speak like this.’ At which Adam launched into a fair imitation of a West Country accent, which made Sophie laugh, and brought a smile to Georgia’s face.

I wasn’t lost after all, just temporarily disorientated, I thought triumphantly as we reached the brow of the hill where the lane divided into two. The left-hand branch was signposted Uphill Farm and Uphill House, the sign itself leaning against a churn on a stone platform by the hedge. There was a board too with ‘Potatoe’s’ and ‘Cider’ chalked on it, in amongst the milkmaids, red campions and wild strawberry plants. I turned past them and bumped up the rutted track for another half a mile and here we were …

‘The driver got out to speak to Mummy, and Granny, I didn’t like him,’ says Sophie. ‘He said “bloody” and that isn’t allowed, is it? I think he’s a very rude person.’

‘Oh, let’s forget about that now,’ I say. ‘We’re here. We made it.’

‘The removal people are here too.’ Mum glances towards the front door, where a lorry is drawing up. ‘We’d better get the kettle on. Where is the kettle?’

‘It’s in the boot of my car.’ It was the last thing we packed. I send Adam out to fetch it.

‘Jennie,’ my dad interrupts. He’s seventy now, recently retired from his job as director of an engineering company. He’s tall and slim, and plays golf as much as he can, although I suspect he spends just as much time at the nineteenth hole as he does on the course proper. Even today, he’s wearing a burgundy polo-shirt with the golf-club logo.

‘Yes, Dad?’

‘The driver wants to know if he can park the lorry in the yard and take the furniture through the back door.’

‘I don’t see why not.’ Just between the house itself and a tumbledown barn is a five-bar gate which gives access to a yard bordered by a row of three stables and a post-and-rail fence with a gate on to the paddock.

‘He isn’t at all sure about the sofas,’ Dad goes on, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and using it to wipe his glasses.

‘What do you mean? He hasn’t left them behind?’

‘No.’ Dad slips his glasses back on. ‘It’s just that the doors on this house are rather narrow and your sofas are rather large.’

‘Can we take a window out or something?’ I seem to remember having seen this done on TV before.

‘The windows are rather dinky too,’ Dad says. ‘I doubt we can dismantle the sofas, so the only option left is to put them in the barn, covered up, and buy another suite.’