bare floors and exposed woodwork was a statement that said, ‘I can afford to cover all this area in lavish carpeting and internal walling, but I am carefully choosing not to.’ In the cottage, bare floors were necessary until we got the damp under control and exposed woodwork was what was left where the paint had flaked off. It was very different. Two of the brambles from the orchard had climbed in through the pantry window and, despite my regularly cutting them off with the scissors, kept infiltrating the shelving, and every time I opened the door it was like The Day of the Triffids. I couldn’t wait for autumn to really get under way and stop the relentless growth.
Patrick was still in the orchard. Apart from one brief text from Gabriel Hunter checking up on him and telling me that the cottage was ‘a possible’ for location work, I’d not heard from him. Poppy continued to hate her new school, doing homework intermittently and, according to the notes in her planner, not really applying herself to any of the subjects she’d chosen to study.
‘I chose last year!’ My accusations that she wasn’t working hard enough were not warmly received. ‘Pasty Greggs was really cool! Now I’ve got Miss Thompson for music and she makes us listen to Beethoven! That’s, like, against my human rights and stuff.’
Poppy had no idea what she wanted to do when she left school. Apart from being a YouTube star, or a vlogger/influencer, there weren’t many careers that interested her, and her monied father’s attitude to life being ‘you can just float around doing what interests you, making little bits here and there and being largely supported by your family’ really wasn’t going to take her very far, unless she was going to specialise in following bands across the country and take A levels in ‘interesting hair colours’.
‘Got an A in French though,’ she pointed out, thrusting a pile of notes under my nose. ‘So, there’s that.’
‘You’ve been bilingual since you could talk – it’s hardly an achievement!’
Poppy sighed. ‘Don’t take it out on me that you’re stuck here all day. I didn’t ask to move to the Depths of Despair, did I? We could have still been in London, you’d have your teaching and I’d be getting all As and still going out with Damien!’
The door refused to slam. It was slightly too big for the frame and had to be dragged across the floor in order to close, but the slam was implicit. ‘And it’s not hormones!’ was her passing shot as she stomped upstairs to a more satisfactorily slam of her bedroom door. ‘You’ve ruined my life!’
I stood under the bare bulb in the living room and took several deep breaths. I’d already had a lengthy phone conversation with a couple of old friends back in town, who had only managed a small amount of sympathy with me; their jobs were over-pressured and fraught and they clearly imagined life in the countryside to be very different from the reality. I really couldn’t ring them back to complain about my teenage daughter. My best friend, Lottie, was struggling with nursery school placements for her small son and juggling her teaching job on top, Arlene was dealing with a sick mother and resentful husband and Basia was on stress leave and contemplating a return to Poland. Here I stood amid the silence of my bought-and-paid-for cottage – a wailing daughter didn’t really score that highly in the tension stakes.
But I wanted to talk to somebody. Apart from some exchanges about the weather in the supermarket in Bridport, and the encounter with Gabriel, I’d barely spoken to a soul since we moved in. Patrick was not a great conversationalist, and had nudged me hard enough to spill my tea when I’d sat on the van steps and tried to interest him in the trials and tribulations of life. So, when my phone rang, I grabbed it with an out-of-proportion gratitude.
‘Ah, there you are.’
The gratitude dissipated quickly in the face of my mother’s disapproving tone.
‘Hello, Ma.’ A long pause. ‘How are you?’
‘I am well.’ Another pause. ‘And you? Are you safely moved to… Dorset?’ The slight gap told me that she’d had to look up my new location, probably in her little red book. ‘I’m just telephoning to tell you that I’m off to Sydney next week, probably won’t be back until Christmas. You know, in case you needed me.’
I perched on the arm of the sofa, the velvety fabric catching at my jeans like tiny fists. ‘Well, thank you for letting me know. Have a good time with Aunt Christie, won’t you?’
These conversations with my mother were so underrun with currents of tension that they practically stood up on their own. Our relationship was cool, practical, distant; she sent presents for Poppy and saw her once or twice a year, always let me know of her own whereabouts. In return, I sent flowers for her birthday and Mothers’ Day, a personalised gift for Christmas, and the approved condolence cards when one of her circle died. All our interactions were very much based in the present; we had erased our past and it was never spoken of.
‘I will. Goodbye, Katherine.’
And that was it.
Other women, I knew, could have told their mothers about the isolation, the loneliness, the fear of failure. The cold dampness at night, when I lay awake listening to the distant sea or the rain against the windows, worrying about never working again at the grand old age of thirty-four. About my ultimately unsuccessful marriage, the lack of local jobs, the crumbliness of the cottage and the fourteen-plus hands of piebald squatter in the orchard. But not me. And the gap between the relationship I wanted with my mother and the one I had, and the currently strained relationship I had with my daughter, made me sit for longer than I should have done under that bare, swinging bulb.
I was eventually brought out of my dark thoughts by the fact that my phone was buzzing an incoming text against the palm of my hand. Maybe my mother had thought of something to add? I was about to lay it down without looking, when I saw the name on the screen.
G Hunter:
Sorry I’ve not been in touch. We’ve had a meeting and I’d like another chat about using your place as a location. Any chance we could meet up? There’s a really nice pub just outside Steepleton if you’re free this evening…
I didn’t even think twice. I texted back.
What time and what’s the name of the pub?
PS Patrick is fine, but needs to move.
G Hunter:
It’s The Grapes, up on the Bridport road. Eight o clock?
We can talk about Patrick too.
I’d been hoping for plans to move the pony, even the promise of an immediate single-horse trailer on the road. As it was, Patrick was running out of grazing in the orchard, and some recent rain had caused him to form a mud trail from the back of the field to the kitchen door, where he often stood disconcertingly staring in at me through the rattling glazing.
‘I’m going out for a while later,’ I called up the stairs, although Poppy probably had her earphones in and music blasting from her phone.
There was a moment of quiet and then her door opened a crack. ‘What?’
I repeated myself. It wasn’t an unusual experience. ‘I’m going to meet up with the man who might use the cottage for a location.’ Why I had to justify myself, I wasn’t sure.
‘Oh. Oh! Is this the bloke that knows Davin? Only, this boy on my bus, Rory, he’s in Year Twelve, he’s a bit of
