Annalee tried to talk, tried to sit up, but Tawrie pushed her back down. ‘You need to lie still, Mum. You don’t know if you’ve broken anything. You need to stay still.’
‘We’ve called an ambulance!’ Calvin yelled.
‘Yes, nice one, Cal,’ Sten said.
Annalee reached out and gripped Tawrie’s arm with a bloody hand – one of her false nails had been ripped off and taken her original with it. Injuries to her body were not uncommon – nothing like this, of course – but always, it seemed, alcohol anaesthetised her against the pain. Tawrie bent low so she could hear her mother’s words, whispered from a mouth disfigured by swelling and clotted with blood.
‘Smshhhhhhtuuuuummn.’
‘I don’t know what you’re saying, Mum.’ It was a nonsensical ramble and Tawrie was none the wiser. She looked at Freda with the hope that she might have more of an idea but her nan shrugged.
‘Smshhahahhhtuuuuummn,’ Annalee tried again.
Tawrie sat up a little and held her mother’s eyeline. ‘You can tell me later. Don’t try and talk now. The ambulance is coming and you’re going to be okay. I’ll stay with you, I promise. Nan’s right here too.’ She spoke as gently as she was able, not wanting others to hear her mother’s incoherent speech, and wary of getting too close to her mouth where the foulest stench of wine and vodka-infused breath was enough to make her want to vomit. Any remaining lumps of her heart were now pulverised. This was her mother, hermummy... She felt protective, distressed, concerned, and this was all underpinned with fury at the fact that Annalee’s wounds were effectively self-inflicted. She had fallen publicly while inebriated and the whole town would be talking about it. It wasn’t so much that the gossip bothered her, but rather that it was her mother’s reputation, or what remained of it, that was to be brutally dissected, or worse, made the butt of jokes from Barnstaple to Croyde. It was heartbreaking.
‘Are you all right, little one?’ Her nan reached out and ran her palm over her arm.
‘Yep.’
‘You’ve had better days though.’
‘I have.’ Keeping her eyes low, she didn’t want to acknowledge the gawpers and gossips who gathered around, drawn to witness the misery of a fellow human. She wondered what it must have been like on the day her dad died. The spectacle ...
Sten’s shout brought her back to the present. ‘It’s here! I can hear it!’
The sound of the ambulance siren seemed to cause greater interest and the crowd at the top of the steps had grown. Tawrie hated how exposed her mother was and felt torn up inside at how many bore witness to her frailty, her disease.
Annalee lay back with her eyes closed and Tawrie again whispered to her, ‘It’s going to be okay, Mum. The ambulance is here and they’ll get you sorted. I won’t leave you. I’ll be right by your side.’
The paramedics pushed the crowd out of the way and were swift in their actions, checking Annalee over, giving her a jab for pain relief and putting her on the stretcher and into the back of the ambulance.
‘I’ll go with her.’ She followed the stretcher and climbed up into the high vehicle as her mother was secured with straps.
‘I’ll drive and meet you at the hospital, so we’ve got a car there!’ Uncle Sten yelled, heading to his truck.
‘Please let me know how she is and what she needs and what’s happening.’
She raised her hand in acknowledgment of Freda’s yelled request and welcomed the kiss her wonderful nan blew in her direction.
‘And don’t leave Tawrie on her own!’ This time Freda pointed at her son.
‘As if I would!’ Sten shouted over his shoulder.
As the doors of the ambulance closed, Tawrie’s pulse raced.
Her nan was right. She’d had far, far better days.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HARRIETWENTWORTH
AUGUST2024
Harriet Wentworth was scrubbing the bath. Bent over with the sponge in her hand, her back twinged as she completed the hated chore. Despite her best efforts, and even having resorted to bribery in the past, her teenage sons Louis and Rafe seemed immune to the desire to clean the dark ring of dirt that gathered in the tub. Not that her husband was much better! Thankfully, they were all barred from the en-suite shower room she claimed as her own. The only person allowed to use that was Dilly, her darling daughter, when she came to stay, which was a rare occurrence now she was joined at the hip to Parker, her beloved. Harriet smiled. She really liked Parker and hoped his family were welcoming Dilly in Boston. Her daughter had followed her English professor over there for love and was now about to give birth to Harriet’s first grandchild. It hardly seemed possible! It was difficult to picture Dilly as anything other than her little bookworm. Her boys found it hilarious that their mum was also going to be a grandma, and Charles too had voicedhis concern on what it might be like to sleep with a gran – she’d chased him out of the bedroom with a raised slipper. She might be a grandmother-in-waiting but she was still rather nifty on her feet.
‘Harry!’ Charles bellowed up the stairs as was his custom, using the nickname he’d given her shortly after they’d met. ‘Bear’s here!’
‘Oh fab! Coming!’ Her face broke into a smile as it did whenever her eldest child returned home. He’d texted to say he was inbound, hence the emergency tub scrub in his honour. Not that she was short of kids – when the twins weren’t playing rugby, talking about rugby, watching rugby, or checking stats on their various devices about rugby, her house was full of the actual rugby team, muddy knees and all. The fact that they didn’t live in the largest or grandest of houses was neither here nor there; her house was, apparently, the one people liked to congregate in. Not that she minded. In fact, she loved the chaos, the chatter, the laughter. It meant life! A quick glance in the mirror on the landing confirmed her rather dishevelled appearance, hair grey at the temples – not that she had time to fix it and not that Bear would give a fig either way.
