how Edward was coping with the lack of internet at Rosewood. Maybe I’d ask him later.
Picking up the picture frame, I studied the photo, finding familiar lines in the much younger face. She kept it up as a reminder, Therese always said. A reminder that she’d been beautiful once. Before life happened.
Turning to watch her potter around the tiny kitchen, filling the kettle and warming the pot, I knew that she was still beautiful. Why had she never remarried? “Once was enough,” she always said, but she’d only been forty-one when Great-Uncle George had died. Therese would have been quite a catch, with her perfectly pinned hair, slim waist, beautiful outfits, and her pale blue eyes. She and Isabelle together as young women must have been a formidable sight.
Great-Uncle George had always been a little bit of a mystery. He’d died before I was born, so all I really had to go on were occasional snatches of parental conversation, when the adults thought I wasn’t listening. I’d asked, once, but hadn’t really received any satisfactory answers.
As far as Ellie and I had been able to piece together, George had been some hotshot trader in the city when he met Therese and they’d fallen instantly in love. They’d married shortly after and gone to live in London, where he showered his new bride with lavish gifts of jewels and dresses. Isabelle, it seemed, was always a little sore on this point.
Still, and this was the part that didn’t make any sense, when George had suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of only forty-seven, creditors had swooped in and taken the house, the furniture, the cars, and most of the jewels. Therese had showed up at Rosewood with a suitcase of evening gowns, planning to stay only until she was back on her feet, and she had never left.
Isabelle mentioned that part often, pointedly, usually when Nathaniel and Therese had their heads together, laughing over some private, shared joke the way only siblings could. The way Ellie and I used to.
In fifteen years’ time, would I be back at Rosewood, begging asylum again? And if so, would Ellie resent my presence as obviously as Isabelle had always resented Therese’s? Probably.
“We’ll take tea in the garden,” Therese said decisively, smoothing a lace cloth over a plain silver tray, and laying out the china cups, sugar bowl, milk jug, and a plate of chocolate-covered ginger biscuits. “Will you bring the pot, Kia?”
Wrapping the handle of the delicate teapot with a clean tea towel, I did as I was told, and followed Therese out through the back door into her tiny, hedged garden.
Therese’s flower beds were tended and nurtured daily, and carefully trained to appear as a hodgepodge cottage garden. Lupins and delphiniums and foxgloves loomed over fuchsias and snapdragons; sweet peas clambered up canes set against the cottage wall, sending their familiar scent past me on the breeze.
In the middle was a small, circular patio, occupied by a wrought-iron bistro table and two chairs, glowing warm in the late afternoon sun.
Therese settled her tray down on the table, took the pot from me and motioned for me to sit down.
“So,” she said, pouring the first cup, “you’ve come home.” The ‘at last’ went unsaid.
I nodded, picking up a biscuit to nibble. “Nathaniel called and asked me to. Said he had plans for the Golden Wedding.”
“God save us from my brother’s plans.” Therese settled into her seat. “I’m glad he did, anyway. I was worried that your invitation might go mysteriously astray if it was left to Isabelle.”
I winced. “I never did actually receive an invitation.” Isabelle was always meticulous about sending invitations. I remember being made to handwrite invites for my eighth birthday party, not only to all my classmates, but also my own sister, even though she was sitting next to me as I wrote it. If Isabelle had wanted me there, I’d have been sent an invitation. And the fact I hadn’t… Well, it stung like a needle pressed up against my heart.
“Typical Isabelle,” Therese said, selecting the biscuit with the most chocolate coating. “They were hideous, anyway.”
“So Nathaniel said.” I sighed. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell anyone I was coming.”
“I imagine that you’re part of Nathaniel’s plan. You know how he likes surprising people,” Therese said. “More fun that way. Besides…” she laid a hand on mine “…this is your home. You have as much right to be here as anyone else.” Maybe I could just stay in Therese’s cottage for the duration, I thought.
Therese polished off the cookie and reached for her teacup. “Now, tell me about Scotland.”
So I did. I told her about my flat on the edge of Perth, and how it wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but I’d finally got the inside the way I wanted it – cosy and bright. I told her about the newspaper, about my job, and when she said, “But what are the prospects like? When are we going to read you in the Guardian?” I distracted her with a story about a police press conference on an operation to confiscate alcohol from teens in the local park that had to be curtailed when half the cans and bottles went missing.
Therese laughed in the right places, but somehow I still got the impression that she was just humouring me. And, as I finished my last story and my cup of tea, she pounced.
“So, tell me about your young man,” she said, picking up the pot and refilling my cup. “Because I can’t believe you haven’t got one, pretty girl like you.”
“Just one?” I laughed, hoping vainly to throw her off the scent. Yes, there was a man, of sorts. But Duncan and I were casual, fun… and just a little bit too complicated to explain to an elderly relative. Still, it might not be a bad idea to let everyone know that I’d moved on, that I had a new life, a new romance in Perth. Even if that wasn’t quite the truth.
“Only one that means something, I’m sure.” Her voice was placid and immovable. “So, tell me about him.”
“Well, his name’s Duncan,” I said, sifting through my mind for what could be considered safe to talk about, and how to say it without using the words ‘friends with benefits’. “He works with me – he’s our new editor, actually. Brought in from Edinburgh earlier this year.”
“Ah, so it’s all quite new, then?” Therese leant forward. “I understand. Still all flowers and romance and sex all day on Sundays. Still in that private, special world where there’s only the two of you.”
Quite aside from the fact that hearing my great-aunt talking about all-day sex sessions had rendered me incapable of speech, there was just no way I was going to explain to her that, actually, it was less flowers and romance and more the second part, so I just smiled weakly and nodded.
Therese patted my hand and said, “I understand,” again.
“Anyway,” I said, regaining my voice, just in time to change the subject. “I meant to ask – what’s with the clothes shop inside?”
Her face lit up with an excitement I’d only ever seen on her before at the Harrods sale. “So you noticed my little enterprise! Caro helped me set it up.”
I wasn’t quite sure when my baby sister had become an established business guru, but then, I still wasn’t entirely sure what the business was. “Really.”
“Oh yes. She figured out with me how to get an account on
