Morgan took charge of pulling boxes out of Elaina’s wardrobe. ‘It was a wonder she could fit any clothes in here.’ She’d already folded those and taken four bags’ worth to the charity shop as well as getting rid of anything too old that they probably wouldn’t want anyway.
When she opened up the first box, she began to smile and pulled out the first of a collection of books. Enid Blyton’sFirst Term at Malory Towers.‘Do you remember reading these by torchlight in this wardrobe?’
Tegan giggled. ‘I’d forgotten we did that. We took all of Mum’s clothes out and piled them on the bed and laid sleeping bags down as if we were on a sleepover. She brought us snacks too, I remember that.’
‘Popcorn,’ Morgan recalled. ‘And then complained that she was finding it around her bedroom for weeks afterwards.’
‘Oh, we loved those books. Would you mind if I borrowed some?’
‘Of course not, we’ll share them. Lily might like them when she’s older.’ Morgan pulled out a few more from the same series, some of theFaraway Treecollection, andThe Twins at St Clare’s.
As they went through boxes, Morgan started to think about the furniture, some of the more sentimental pieces. ‘Mum loved this bed frame.’ She ran her hand along the bed head, cast iron and perfectly in character for the cottage. ‘We’ll need to sort out who’s having what. If either of us decide to keep anything, that is.’
‘All in good time,’ Tegan suggested. ‘I think the sorting out is plenty for now, and the house full of furniture if we’re getting valuations is much better anyway; it’ll look like a home. I think as much as it would be nice to get sorted quickly, it might be better to take our time.’
‘You mean in case I change my mind.’
‘Busted,’ smiled Tegan. ‘But honestly, it’s a lot to do at once and I know you’re exhausted, me too. Why don’t we make a list of everything and then eventually, we can think about what we want to each keep, what can be sold. I can do it before I go if you like.’
‘You’ve got enough with the kids and the farm, it won’t take me long and I’m here all the time. I’ll do it gradually.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘I really am. And you’re right: if we start getting rid of furniture now, the cottage won’t look as cosy when it’s valued or viewed.’
Tegan sighed as she took out another box. Lily was happily playing on her own again. Putting it onto the bed they’d covered with an old sheet, she said, ‘It doesn’t feel real yet: Mum not being here.’
‘Sometimes it doesn’t,’ Morgan agreed. Although she only had to think back to the day she’d called the ambulance and the paramedics trying in vain to help Elaina to be reminded that it was very real.
They moved to the downstairs next and with Jaimie disinterested in the television and back to his cars, Lily doing her best to join in, much to his disapproval, Tegan took in the boxes piled in the corner of the lounge. ‘Is that all stock for the market stall?’
‘It is, and there’s more too. There’s a big stack of boxes beneath the stairs, and don’t forget the lot in your old bedroom in the wardrobe, bits in the dining room.’
Elaina and Morgan had shopped solely online for the last couple of months, picking up job lots of bargains, items that could be cleaned up or repaired, things that some would call junk but that their mum would call treasure and vintage. Amazing how an alternative description could make you look at an item in a totally different light.Her last delivery before the heart attack had been a pair of moss-green, lotus flower, glass candle holders. When Morgan had opened the box – even that was too much for Elaina sometimes, with the constant worry about fractures in every part of her body – Elaina had burst out laughing at the sight of her daughter’s face lined with distaste. But Morgan had taken those candle holders to the market stall that day and when she came home, gave her mother the news that the pair had sold for twenty pounds! Morgan had set them out and not even put a price on them before a customer approached her, gasped in delight and immediately held out a twenty-pound note. Morgan was going to price them at three pounds each or a fiver for the pair.Told you, I’ve got an eye,Elaina had said when her daughter gave her the news. And Morgan had to admit she clearly did.
‘I’m sometimes tempted to put it as a job lot on eBay.’ Morgan echoed Ronan’s original suggestion that she’d totally ignored, although on some days now saw the value in. ‘But Mum would hate that. She bought these things thinking others would get pleasure out of them; it feels right to sell them at the market.’
‘It’s a big ask for you to do it,’ said Tegan.
‘I’d been helping her anyway; a few more pushes to clear the stock and that’ll be all it should need.’ She’d give Jasper the market manager a call soon. She hadn’t been up to a day at the markets after Elaina died, then she’d gone away after the funeral, then she’d had to catch up with her own job as well as get things sorted out, and she’d had another trip to Scotland, but perhaps it was time now.
‘She was proud of her market stall,’ Tegan smiled. ‘The kids used to love visiting her there. She’d always have tales of who had bought what, the items she’d found, the little treasures she had to pass on to others.’
A knock at the door grabbed Morgan’s attention. And when she opened it to Jasper, she had to laugh.
‘Not the reaction I usually get,’ he told her.
‘I’m only laughing because we were just talking about the markets. It’s as though we conjured you up.’
‘I had lunch at the pub with my husband, thought I’d check in on you. I promised your mother I would if ever she wasn’t around.’ He cleared his throat.
‘Why don’t you come in,’ she suggested, ‘have a cup of tea.’
‘I appreciate the offer, but I can’t stop for long.’
Elaina had run the vintage stall at the Snowdrop Lane markets for around eight years. Most of the regular stallholders had come to Elaina’s funeral and it warmed Morgan to know that while her mother had lived alone for a long time, she hadn’t been without friends and acquaintances. Jasper, in particular, had been a very good friend to her mother. Apart from Morgan and Tegan, Jasper was the only person in whom Elaina had confided the entire truth about her disease. He had to know when she was at the markets and Morgan doing so much at the stall or attending as a replacement when Elaina couldn’t make it because the pain was too much. And he was a stickler for health and safety too, Elaina hadn’t wanted to upset him or put him in an awkward position.
‘I appreciate you checking up on me, Jasper. Thank you. And Tegan is here, we’re sorting through things.’
