‘Just the two of us?’ asked Helena.
‘I think we can manage.’
Although it took longer than Helena had hoped, they did get the loom moved. But by the time she’d bought fish and chips for them both it was too late to go and see her mother.
Helena had appreciated the distraction. The loom had to be partly dismantled to move it and while she was taking photos of how various intimate bits of it looked before it was taken apart, she wasn’t thinking about the shattering information she felt obliged to tell Gilly.
She had wondered briefly if she actually needed to tell her but soon realised she couldn’t risk a manshe saw as practically a murderer becoming permanently attached to her mother. And Jago had been quite sure he felt her mother should be warned.
She decided to invite herself for lunch. It would give them plenty of time to talk. She didn’t want to drop a bombshell and run, much as she might have liked to.
Chapter Fourteen
Gilly was a bit surprised when Helena rang to say she wanted to come for soup and a sandwich. Helena had told her she’d moved the loom and Gilly would have thought she’d want to get it set up so she could press on with some work. But as Gilly had a butternut squash to hand she set about making soup. Pre-roasted with chilli oil and made creamy with coconut milk, it was Helena’s favourite.
As she hacked at the squash and made cheese scones to accompany the soup, Gilly wondered what was on her daughter’s mind. She couldn’t help remembering that she’d been a bit twitchy at the Sunday lunch when she’d brought Jago to meet her. Since then she’d seemed fine, although Gilly realised she hadn’t seen much of her. They’d been in regular contact and with Helena helping to get the barn ready for her loom and trying to get as much done for her wool fair, all had seemed normal.
Maybe the poor girl just wanted some of her mum’s soup, Gilly concluded, giving it a stir andtasting it. Not everything everyone did had an ulterior motive.
‘Hi, Mummy!’ said Helena quietly as she let herself in through the back door and Gilly’s heart sank. Helena hadn’t called her ‘Mummy’ since she was in primary school: there was definitely something wrong.
‘What’s up?’ said Gilly. She watched as her daughter tried to pretend there wasn’t anything but she’d always been an awful liar.
‘Let’s have lunch first,’ said Helena, taking a cheese scone from the cooling rack and breaking off a bit. ‘I’m starving!’
‘OK,’ said Gilly, ‘but promise me it’s nothing health-related, or something really ghastly.’
‘Nothing health-related,’ Helena said quickly. ‘Let’s have lunch.’
Gilly found bowls, plates and knives and put them on the table. The butter was already there. ‘Do you want a sandwich or will the scones do?’
‘They’re my favourite! Of course they’ll do.’
Gilly relaxed a bit. But as Helena sipped the soup Gilly noticed she was only nibbling her scone and was spending quite a lot of time fiddling with her knife, slicing off slivers of butter; she wasn’t actually eating much.
‘What’s wrong, darling?’ Gilly said. ‘I wish you’d tell me. Have you broken up with Jago?’
Helena put down her spoon. ‘Jago and I are just friends, Mum.’
‘So what is it?’ Seeing the anguish on her daughter’s face was killing her.
‘Mum, it’s about Leo.’
‘Leo?’ This was the last thing Gilly would have thought of. ‘What about him?’
‘It’s not easy to say.’
‘Oh, please, Helly! Just tell me! If it’s not health-related what on earth can it be?’ The thought that Leo might turn out to be married with a family did now cross her mind. ‘Is he married?’
‘OK, Mum. Do you remember that time we were going to visit Martin at uni and there was a car on the wrong side of the road, coming at us full pelt, and you had to swerve into the ditch to stop us getting killed?’
Gilly thought, then nodded. ‘Yes. It was terrifying. And afterwards I never thought I’d get the car out of the ditch.’
‘Leo was driving the car.’
‘What do you mean? How can you possibly know?’ Then Gilly began to realise what had happened. ‘You recognised him?’
‘As soon as I saw him, when we all had lunch. I got a very good look at him at the time of the accident.’
