Peg nodded at the wisdom of her words, and she reached out to take Phoebe’s hand. ‘I’m beginning to realise that. But sadly, none of it takes away from the situation I’m in now. I’m well aware how much this house means to you. The thought of leaving it is unbearable…’ She swallowed. ‘But there are times in your life when you have to make some very difficult decisions, and this is one of them.’
‘So what do we do now?’ asked Izzy, always the more pragmatic of the two.
‘Nothing for the time being,’ said Peg. ‘I just wanted you to be aware what might be ahead of us, that’s all. I’m not going to do anything rash, and I promise you that, just as I will do my utmost to do the right thing for Mim, I will also do everything in my power to keep this place. It’s always been your home, and whatever happens in the future I’d like it to be yours. Some day.A long way off in the future. A long, long way off in the future.’ She smiled and claimed a chocolate biscuit from the packet. ‘So I suggest we work on Mim a little and try to ensure she stays under my roof for a few more weeks yet. And, in the meantime, we enjoy what timewestill have left together before I lose you again.’
Izzy nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I can do that. Pheebes?’
Her sister nodded, slowly, and with sadness still evident in her eyes, but Peg knew she could count on them both. She always had.
Izzy swallowed a mouthful of coffee, eyeing up the biscuits as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether to have one or not.
‘Just a thought,’ she said, ‘but I wondered whether perhaps Blanche might be able to help. She and Mim have really hit it off.’
Peg nodded. ‘Mmm, kindred spirits, I think. And I had thought of that myself, but with Henry out of danger now I guess she’ll want to go home. I haven’t heard from Adam or Sofia yet, but I’m assuming they’ll be visiting Henry at some point today. He’s due to be discharged tomorrow, all being well, although he won’t be going home, of course, not for a while yet. Which is something else to think about. There are a lot of arrangements which will need to be made.’
Izzy leaned forward, deciding to take a biscuit after all. She gave Peg a very direct look, her eyebrows arched in perfect symmetry.
‘Is this the part where you also tell us you’re going to offer for Henry to stay here?’
Peg closed her eyes. A moment to pause, to think about what she was going to say.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Part of me thinks I should, because it’s the obvious solution, especially given that Mim will already be here. Adam and Sofia will be back at work next week, and I can’t see either of them wanting, or being able, to changethat. Henry might be convalescing for weeks. They haven’t actually floated the suggestion yet, but I can see it coming.’
Izzy nodded, sliding her sister an amused glance. ‘And the other part?’
Peg sighed. ‘The other part thinks I must be stark raving mad.’
18
28 DECEMBER
The worst thing was the tiredness. Not the pain, or the worry about what might happen to him in the future, but the all-consuming exhaustion which came over him in waves. Even brushing his teeth seemed to require superhuman effort.
And along with the tiredness, right up there near the top of the list, next to his feelings about Adam, and to a lesser extent Sofia, were his feelings about Peg. Despite what he’d been told – that he’d crashed his car on Christmas morning, just outside her village – that sequence of events didn’t marry with his recollection of what had happened on that day at all. And yet his car was a wreck and currently residing at a local garage. Trying to resolve that conundrum made his head hurt more than ever.
And now he was on his way to Peg’s house, to ‘recuperate’, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that either. He’d been discharged from the hospital with a long list of things he could and couldn’t do – the couldn’t do side of things very much longer than the positive one – and an array of outpatient appointments for various checks and follow-ups. Being logical about the situation, he could see that going home to Stoke wasn’t an immediate option, but he was sitting in the passenger seatof his son’s car with Sofia in the back, and given that they were his family, he had thought he’d be going back to their house. Evidently, this was not to be.
Henry stared out of the window at the passing scenery. There was much to think about, but he closed his eyes briefly before taking in a deep, slow breath. All that could come later. For now he would marvel that the sun was still shining, just as it had been on Christmas morning…
They were only a couple of minutes away from Peg’s house now, the road beginning to look increasingly familiar, and he realised he’d been scanning the tree-lined hedges for any signs of where he’d come to such an abrupt halt. He found it, less than a minute later – a straggly end of blue police tape fluttering in the breeze all that was left to mark the spot where his car had veered off the road. He turned his gaze away. That there was proof of what had happened still didn’t make it feel real.
Peg must have been waiting by the door, because she opened it seconds after Adam knocked. And then there she was, just as Henry remembered. It seemed as if several months had gone by since he’d last seen her when, in fact, it had only been…He tried to count the number of days in his head but he couldn’t. Her hair was still in plaits and he smiled at the memory of her sitting opposite him beside the fire on Christmas Day, one plait hanging down over her shoulder and the other, flung backwards. She had on a different dress today though. Similar style…He wasn’t sure what you called them – a smock, maybe? – with a rounded neck, loose waist and a long, wide skirt beneath. Pink fluffy socks poked out of the bottom.
‘Henry…’ said Peg, holding him lightly by the arms to kiss his cheek. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’
Henry nodded.
‘Come in, all of you, there’s a bitter wind today.’
Henry stepped inside, directly into her kitchen, a warm and welcoming space, although darker than he remembered.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yes, it’s just…’ He looked around him again. Everything was the same, yet different. Therewasa pine table in the middle of the kitchen, but it was a different-coloured wood than he’d remembered. Therewerebeams running in parallel lines across the ceiling but although some holly hung there, there wasn’t nearly as much of it as he thought there would be. And the Aga…There was some sort of cooker against one wall, but it was green, not blue. He swallowed. ‘You had a shelf across the window there,’ he said, pointing. ‘Filled with coloured glass.’
‘Did I?’ Peg smiled. ‘Shall I take your coat, Henry?’
Henry laid a hand against the table to steady himself. ‘Thank you, I…’ But he didn’t finish the sentence; he didn’t know what to say.
