Unexpected things got to her. The absence of the radio humming in Archie’s workshop or the familiar groan as he tugged on his boots. Even his maddening habit of leaving mugs in the greenhouse. No more. All gone. Gone forever.
The farm had always beenhisdream.Shehad married into it.
And now, standing here with forty-five years on the life clock, what was she left with? Twenty-five acres of half-wild land, four goats, four chickens, a dilapidated farmhouse, twins (who’d already fled the nest), an eccentric mother-in-law (who wouldneverflee the nest), more sympathy cards in a drawer than money in the bank, a dog called Henry and Nigel the cockerel.
She took a sip of tea. Cold. Of course it was.
Rita’s dad had always believed that their lives had already been written. The night she met Archie Jory seemed to prove that.She, an impressionable young Londoner on a girls’ surfing holiday.He, the handsome, tall, broad-shouldered Cornish farmer, ten years her senior, out on the town with his mates.
Rita and her pals had originally planned to go to a live comedy night at the local cinema-cum-theatre that night, but when they arrived, there weren’t enough seats for all of them. The only appealing alternative was a fiddler playing sea shanties in the Winking Pilchard.
It had been lust at first sight and the rest, as they say, was history.
The honeymoon period had been dreamy. Due to Archie’s farm commitments, every other weekend, Rita had religiously commuted down to Seahaven Farm from her family home in Bethnal Green. But the travelling became too much to sustain, so on Archie’s insistence and without any regret, it hadn’t taken her long to throw her manic city marketing manager job to the wind and move down to the peace and beauty of Seahaven Bay. There, with love as her guide, she had easily adjusted to the smell of manure, the early mornings, and the endless small talk about milk and crop prices, because looking after the farm was his passion andhewas hers.
Oh, how she had adored big Archie Jory and his even larger infectious personality.
With a huge sigh, wishing she could get the big man out of her head, Rita tipped her cold tea onto the grass and looked out over the ever-changing vista which never once bored her.
Seahaven Bay truly was an idyllic setting, where countless visitors flocked for the wild beauty of the landscape, the crashing surf, and the kind of stillness that made you breathe a little deeper.
With its breathtaking view overlooking the bay, one of her daughter’s mates had described the farm’sHigh Meadow as ‘heaven on earth’. Rita had quietly agreed with Morag. This place always had been that. And now, more than ever, the meadow was her sanctuary for peaceful contemplation.
Many a night when Rita and Archie first got together, they had taken a picnic up there, occasionally even making love under the stars. Yes, this farm was an idyll, a safe haven that she had been lucky enough to live in for the past twenty-five years. The thought of imagining her life anywhere else was just too hard to bear. She’d never expected to have to imagine it – until Archie’s death she’d had no idea that the farm’s finances were in such a mess, and despite the hours she’d spent trawling through paperwork, she stillcouldn’t work out how Archie had managed to get them into quite so much debt.
Henry the labrador gently nudged at her knee. At eight years old, his once jet-black coat had softened to a gentle charcoal, with a distinguished smattering of grey around his muzzle. He followed Rita everywhere, his heavy paws padding softly behind her, dependable as the tide.
Leaning down, she gently scratched behind his soft ears. ‘What are we going to do, old boy? Just what are we going to do?’
The ageing canine let out a low and familiar reassuring sigh.
That evening, Rita set down a bowl of steaming vegetable soup onto the heavy wooden coffee table, its surface crowded with a stack of well-loved books, the one she had purchased earlier placed on top of the pile, waiting for when she was ready to pick it up and start reading again. She loved this little room. It had always been her sanctuary.The Den.Mum’s Den. A single round window looked out over the sea, framing the shifting colours and moods of the Cornish countryside and coast below. From the cushioned seat beneath it, she would sometimes sit for hours, reading or watching the weather roll in, wild and beautiful.
The house felt different, though, since Archie’s passing. The air stiller somehow, the quiet deafening. The marital bed still felt like a safe place to snuggle down in, but since the accident, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to sit in the big lounge, with its low-slung beams and vast inglenook fireplace. There were too many memories, not just in the many photographs of the family but also in her mind, of her and Archie spending cosy evenings in there, cuddled into the sofa side by side.
Shifting the lopsided pottery vase that her daughter had made in primary school out of the way of the television, Rita sank herself into the familiar, worn two-seater sofa and was just beginning to tuck into her soup when her mobile rang.
She groaned softly, set the bowl on the coffee table, and fumbled for the phone.
‘Hello, darling.’ Her voice was scratchy with tiredness.
‘Mum?’
‘Sennen, darling?’ Rita gave a weary laugh. ‘Not sure who else you thought might be picking up my phone at this hour.’
‘You sounded different.’ Her daughter’s voice lifted. ‘Are you OK? Just checking in as usual.’
‘Knackered, that’s all. But I’m fine, everything’s fine. Animals fed. Henry is asleep next to me.’ Rita gently played with the labrador’s soft ears. ‘He’s been noticeably quiet this evening.’
Sennen’s voice lowered. ‘Maybe he’s missing Dad, too.’
‘I’m sure he is, but we can’t change that, can we, Sen?’ Rita replied tightly.
‘Mum. Listen to me. The lady from the grief charity says that it will do us all good as a family to talk about it. We need to.’
Rita sighed. ‘Need, want, should, could. Not tonight, eh, love.’
On hearing her second-born take a deep intake of breath at the end of the phone, Rita twitched uncomfortably.
