‘That’s nice, that she liked watching you work. Bit like Mum and me at the markets.’
‘It was special, really special. She liked the smell of the wood. She’d close her eyes and listen to the tap tap of a hammer as I finished working,’ he said with a smile. ‘She was fascinated at how a piece of raw material could be turned into something completely different and she watched in awe as though I was the only one capable of such a feat.’
‘She was proud.’
‘She was.’ He swallowed, hard. ‘One day it was freezing cold but I desperately wanted to work on something special I was making for her. It was too cold for her to sit out here, she was better tucked up inside, so I left her and came in here on my own. I checked on her every hour. I made her lunch and took it to her. We argued over whether my scrambled eggs were better than hers or not.
‘I came back out here to carry on and after another hour, went inside. She’d fallen down the stairs.’ He looked down at the concrete floor, the wood shavings coating it like a fresh carpet. ‘She was gone, just like that.’ His hands tensed against the workbench and through gritted teeth he blurted out, ‘And I wasn’t there. I was supposed to be looking after her. And I was out here, enjoying myself. For a long time, the guilt almost finished me off. I thought Dad would blame me.’
‘He wouldn’t.’
He shook his head. ‘Didn’t stop me blaming myself.’
Morgan let him have the time to process, and when he opened his eyes, he realised her hand had covered his. He could feel the warmth of it, the softness of her skin. He looked heavenward to stem the tears threatening to make him look like a wimp in front of this woman who was the first person other than his dad that he’d shared his honest feelings with.
‘I haven’t cried in a long time,’ he said.
‘Remember I told you I felt guilty too?’
‘For the relief,’ he said, recalling their conversation about it a while ago.
She nodded, took her hand back as if she didn’t deserve the comfort. ‘I was glad that Mum died quickly. I hated seeing her in pain, seeing the look in her eyes at the thought of losing her independence, her dignity. She went without a long, strung-out, miserable ending. Some might think that makes me a terrible person.’
‘I don’t.’
‘And I don’t think you are either. You aren’t terrible for being in here doing what you loved, because you weren’t with her every second. You did your best.’
‘After Mum’s funeral, I was watching Dad pottering around the kitchen, devastated at our loss, and I thought how he’d got to remember his wife looking and being more or less the same woman he’d always known. She’d had her moments of distress, we could see physical changes, but they weren’t as bad as they would’ve been if she’d carried on. She could still talk to us easily enough, she sounded like herself; we had that comfort. I feel guilty because her life was cut short, but I’m glad that’s how Dad got to remember her. I’m glad he didn’t see her at the bottom of the stairs like I did. Dad remembers her sitting up in bed that morning next to him, where he’d left her when he went to church and on to do the weekly shop.’
‘Do you ever…’
He knew what she was about to ask. ‘Wonder if I’ll get Parkinson’s too?’ He shrugged. ‘They think it’s a combination of genes, environment, lifestyle.’
‘Same with me; there’s a chance I’m more likely to get osteoporosis with a family history, but there’s a lot I can do to protect myself.’
‘I’m glad.’ The words came out with more feeling than he’d intended to share. But she seemed to have that effect on him. The effect of making him confess his deepest, darkest secrets. ‘You know when losing Mum really hit me all over again? It was the year after it happened and I took Branston for a long walk with Dad and when we passed Snowdrop Cottage. All the snowdrops were out; it was like a blanket of white and I had this powerful image of Mum’s smile. I must have been about thirteen years old and we’d been walking our old dog, Rocky, and me being a teenage boy, I’d been tearing about and trampled on the edge of the snowdrop clusters. She got so mad at me.’ He shook his head smiling at the memory. ‘She bent down, straightened up the little heads of the flowers the best she could and told me they were nature’s gift. She told me so was I, gave me a hug and I never trod on a snowdrop again after that.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ she nudged him.
‘Remembering the day with Mum, it was as though someone had turned up the gas on a pot of water and sent it boiling over the edge. Dad and I stood there, eyes glistening, watching the heads of the snowdrops in the breeze. Both of us silent, the world around us noisy and carrying on. I missed the snowdrops this year but next year, I’ll come back for them.’
‘They don’t have snowdrops in Wales?’
‘Course they do,’ he grinned, ‘but there’s nowhere quite like Snowdrop Cottage to see them.’
‘Sebastian should hand out tickets for people to come from far and wide.’
‘Maybe he should,’ he agreed. ‘There’s a place in Snowdrop Woods too with clusters of buttercups. Mum loved those as well. Dad and I saw them the other day but this time, it didn’t floor us but rather made us remember the happier times.’
They were still standing side by side at the workbench, their arms close but not touching, their fingers only inches apart.
‘The markets are helping me cope with losing Mum more than I ever thought they would.’ A soft look came over her face. ‘My intention was to use them to get rid of everything she’d bought and collected, to honour her in a way. I thought it was one last thing I could do for her as I suspect it’s what she would’ve wanted. Being amongst all those people she was so friendly with has been a real gift. Like she gave me something from beyond.’ She laughed at her own dramatism. ‘Perhaps that’s why Mum dropped little hints here and there about me having to know how the stall worked so that should I need to, I could run it by myself without any of her input. I know she thought she had a lot longer, but perhaps that was her way of asking me to do it.’ She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Not being able to ask questions is horrible.’
She looked him right in the eye. ‘Nobody tells you that, do they? I hate that I can’t ask Mum things. And it’s not the big things necessarily, is it? Not long after Mum died, I got a craving for her homemade cauliflower cheese and so of course, I got all the ingredients and had a go myself. But it didn’t taste the same at all. I looked up recipes online, I asked my sister if she could remember how Mum made it. It sounds silly but I was devastated that I couldn’t recreate it.’
‘Doesn’t sound silly at all.’
