only wan catch, though,’ added David.
‘Aye?’ Sandy raised his eyebrows.
‘Well, Maggie was a bit o a hoarder, du sees. And since she didna plan ta be dyin quite sae soon, shu’s left aa o it fir wis ta clear up. I could dae wi a haand.’ He smiled, then tightened his lips. ‘Actually, I could dae wi a lot o haands. It’ll tak wis a while.’
‘Is her family no wantin some of it?’
‘I spak ta Ina, her sister, an shu’s asked fir een or twa things. But whit use wid maist o yon shite be ta her in New Zealand? I think shu was juist relieved at Maggie didna leave da hoose fir her ta sort oot.’
‘Okay, well I’ll hae a think aboot it,’ said Sandy. ‘It’s a bit o a surprise. I wasna thinkin to take on a croft. Certainly no by myself.’ He paused. ‘But I can help dee clear the hoose anyway. When was du plannin to start?’
‘Mebbie da moarn, or da day eftir.’ David took the last swig of his coffee. ‘If du sees da pickup doon dere, juist come alang if du’s able, an we’ll see whit’s needin don. Hit’s gonna be a hell o a job, I think. Ah’m ordered a skip, and we’ll need ta hae a bonfire or twa as well, I doot.’
Sandy nodded his head but was looking away again, distracted.
‘Well, Ah’ll laeve dee wi dat thocht,’ David said, standing up and setting his mug in the sink. He said goodbye and walked out of the house, leaving Sandy behind at the kitchen table.
SUNDAY,
24TH JANUARY
As she passed the hall mirror, on her way to the kitchen, Mary caught sight of herself and paused. She looked tired, and a shadow lay over the side of her face like a birthmark. She ran a hand through her short grey hair, neatened it, then rubbed her eyes. She turned away from the mirror.
Today was a difficult day. Weekends, always, were the worst. Emma’s leaving had been hard for her – harder, it seemed, than the last time her daughter had moved away, as a teenager, to university. Then, the loneliness had been offset by busyness, by pride and by hope. Now, it was offset only by routine. When there was nothing else that needed her focus, Emma’s absence would gnaw at her, nagging for attention like a puppy. She had got used to her daughter as a neighbour, got used to her dropping in without warning, and to her presence in the valley, her proximity. She would get used to this distance, too, but not quickly.
This morning she had called Emma, eager to hear her voice, but knowing, also, that it would not be an easy conversation. David had texted her after breakfast to say he’d offered the croft to Sandy. ‘Juist ta let her ken,’ that’s what he’d said, as though it were a minor piece of news. Mary waited until he went out to the shed, then she picked up the phone. Her job was to listen to the things she already knew that Emma would say. She already knew because she understood why her daughter would feel the way she was feeling, why she would flinch at the thought of Sandy moving to Gardie, of him becoming, without her, permanent.
David didn’t understand these feelings. Or at least he would not admit to understanding them. What he had done was the practical solution in the current circumstances. It was right for him, for the croft, for the valley, and hopefully for Sandy too. And that rightness would last longer than any hurt Emma might feel just now. After all, they had asked her first if she wanted it, and she had not. Mary knew that’s what her husband was thinking, and she knew that in essence he was correct. She didn’t disagree. She was just less able to weigh that rightness over their daughter’s immediate anxieties.
A photograph framed on the hall table showed Emma and Kate aged eight and ten, both wrapped in winter coats, scarves flailing in the wind. The picture used to hang on the living-room wall, until the colours faded in the sunlight, the girls’ red jackets paling into ochre. Mary had brought it through to the windowless corridor, fearing the image might disappear altogether. Looking at it now, the day came back to her, as it often did – a day not unlike other days except that it was caught and held by the camera. The two girls were laughing, fooling around down at the beach, on a morning when the waves pawed noisily at the stones.
Back then, the sisters had been as cheerful, as content, as quick to smile as each other. Emma used to follow Kate around, she used to idolise her, and wanted, always, to wear what Kate was wearing, to do what Kate was doing. They were close. They shared friends, even after Kate went to junior high school, leaving Emma behind at the primary school closer to home. Mary never would have guessed, back then, that the two would turn out so differently.
One of the hardest things about being a parent, she thought, was to watch discontent grow in your children. When they were young, their needs and desires could always be met by a mother or a father. There was food when they were hungry; there was a bed when they were tired; there were distractions from boredom. And then, without warning, would come a question for which neither mother nor father could provide an answer. ‘Why does Sarah not like me any more?’ Mary could still remember when Kate asked her that, aged five or six, after school one day, eyes polished with tears over a friendship temporarily lost. And she could still remember being struck, in those few pained words, by the realisation that her daughters would not always be cheerful and content, that the world would disappoint them, that friends, family, would let them down.
As they both went on to junior high school, the parts of their lives that were beyond Mary’s control continued to grow. Then, it was not just other people who caused them consternation, it was their own bodies. They seemed sometimes confused by themselves, by the changes they were going through, by the new pressures under which they found themselves. Mary did her best to reassure, to be open to questions and to offer what advice she could. But her advice wasn’t always welcome.
That was the point at which her daughters went in different directions. Whereas Kate, as school went on, seemed to settle into herself, Emma never quite did. Kate, it turned out, took after her father. Her desires were well defined, and never beyond her ability to achieve them. But Emma was different. She seemed always uncertain of exactly what she wanted, uncertain of how to get it, uncertain of who or where she wanted to be. That was hardly unusual these days, but it meant that Emma and David increasingly struggled to understand each other. They were always close, always sought each other’s company, but they argued often.
Kate left school, got a job, met a man, got married, had children – one, then another. Mary worried about her, in that unavoidable way. She found reasons to worry even when there were none, and mostly there was no reason. Kate’s husband was good to her, they seemed happy together, the children were healthy, bright. But Emma . . . always Emma. She went to university, studied history and politics, and they thought perhaps she’d be a teacher in the end. But that wasn’t what she wanted. She graduated without a plan or a fixed intention. Mary could see that lack of direction weighing on her daughter, but she could do nothing to lift that weight, except to insist to David that he never ask Emma what she was going to do next. And he never did. He asked his wife instead. He sought reassurance from Mary, and Mary tried, when she could, to offer it.
They had both been delighted when Emma came home three years ago. Not just to have their daughter so close but to see her happy, to imagine her settled. Everything she had done up to that point had felt temporary, as if she were always in the process of deciding her next step. But moving home, that was different. Home was a destination. It was where you ended up. That’s what they thought.
When she’d spoken to Emma on the phone earlier, Mary had sat in the hall looking up at that photograph of her young daughters. She saw the face of a girl and heard the voice of a woman. What a distance lay between those two Emmas – the
