‘Not even a chocolate one?’
I’m halfway through telling her I still don’t feel all that festive, that there’s some kind of block spoiling it for me, making me numb, and she interrupts, offering me one of her calendars. She’s got four on the go, apparently.
‘You can’t be numb when there’s a tiny work of art behind a paper door every morning and a chocolate reindeer for breakfast,’ she insists. ‘Ah, here’s Lucy!’
Sure enough, plodding through the slanting rain beneath that golf umbrella I picked up in a charity shop is my niece, and sharing the brolly is the diminutive figure of Fern in a pair of moss-green corduroy dungarees, looking like a far sweeter, shrunken version of her dad. Now that I’ve noticed the family resemblance, it’s hard to unsee. Though I can’t picture Tommy Brash with frilly, lacy stuff clustered at his neck like Fern is wearing this morning. She’s in green wellies, also trimmed with lacy stuff, and a long, ivory-coloured padded coat with delicate embroidered flowers which I’m a hundred per cent sure began life as an Edwardian tablecloth.
‘How was her first shift in the cafe?’ I ask before they reach us.
‘She’s timid as a mouse with the customers,’ Izz replies. ‘I’m afraid of making any sudden movements in case she scurries away.’
‘Coffee’s up!’ Lucy shouts as they draw closer.
Lucy’s been doing a great job of pretending she’s fine, but when it came time for her to leave this morning she was pretty reluctant and she practically dived back under the blanket on my sofa when I asked if she fancied staying a few days more. She even offered to help out today, and her first job was accompanying Fern on the caffeine run.
‘She needs the practice on the espresso machine when nobody’s watching,’ Izz whispers with a fixed smile of welcome.
‘Not even you?’
‘Better off finding her feet without an audience, I reckon.’
‘Mine’s a tea, yeah?’ As I reach for my takeaway cup, I give Lucy a look that asks whether Fern got the cafe locked up properly. She nods discreetly.
‘Yep, and one for Patrick. Milk, no sugar, didn’t you say?’ she says.
‘He’s not coming this morning,’ Izz butts in, and I’m surprised how disappointed I am. ‘He texted to say he had something to do today out Dunham way.’
The prospect of opening up the hall is even more daunting now I know he’s not coming. Things are just easier with him around.
‘Izz said I can look around the hall,’ Fern all but whispers. ‘Is it all vintage inside?’
‘It’s all old and knackered,’ I tell her and immediately feel bad when her face falls. Like the other youngsters in Wheaton, she didn’t see it in its heyday, and I don’t recall Tommy Brash ever bringing her down to see Santa either. ‘All the original features are still there,’ I relent. ‘If we ever get the keys, we’ll show you.’
She can’t be expecting olde worlde Cotswold splendour. Even just a cursory glance at the outside tells a different story. The builders did make a nod to our village setting by using our lovely local stone all around the double doors and in the steps leading up to them, but the rest of the building is brick, and round the back where appearances didn’t matter so much in a post-war, money-saving world there’s quite a bit of prefab sheeting and pebble-dashed breeze block – the reason the place doesn’t have listed building status, poor thing. I still feel it deserves it for all the hundreds of whist drives and strawberry tea dances it’s hosted over the last eight decades.
Fern is gazing up through the rain at the tall windows either side of the oak doors. Both panes are topped with leaded sunbursts of yellow glass, two halves of the same shining sun, and an absolute pain to clean, they’re so delicate with age – it’s a lot easier when Patrick’s here with his ladders. Fern’s smiling at the sunburst windows like it’s her first time seeing them. Has she never left that farm until now, I wonder. How small has her world been?
Just as I’m cursing Councillor Scrimengor for forgetting about us, I spot one of the bakery vans trundling closer, backfiring and wheezing.
‘He’s never driving a delivery van?’ Izz gasps.
‘Not when he can lord it around the village in his shiny car,’ I agree. ‘Maybe he’s sent a minion? One of the delivery men?’
The van ploughs through the puddles along the kerbside, making us flatten ourselves against the hall doors to avoid the splash, and that’s when I turn to Lucy and flash her a grin that I’m sure will annoy her no end.
‘It’s the grandson,’ I announce meaningfully, and Lucy pretends not to understand what’s going on.
We make a pretty strange welcoming committee as he noisily applies the handbrake. He’s scowling and shaking his head at his vehicle, and when he steps out, dodging the puddled water, he looks like he’d rather be anywhere but Wheaton.
‘Are you waiting for keys?’ he asks, nipping under the porch.
‘Sullivan Scrimengor?’ Izz asks in reply.
He admits to it with a nod.
‘I remember you at my crossing, years ago,’ she tells him.
‘I know,’ he tells her reluctantly. ‘I remember.’
