Left alone once again in the shop Loretta felt a sense of peace descend and for the next hour until the Oldies in Stitches were collected and ferried homeagain, she finished off the tidying, served a handful of customers and exchanged brief snippets about their days, she discussed a pattern for a baby blanket on the phone with a customer who requested she post out some items, and even had a chance to flip through the catalogue that had come in the post that morning and choose some exquisite fat quarters of material to add to her own personal collection.
An hour or so later and six of the residents had been collected by Maggie, but Ivor stayed behind. He often did this and it meant he and Loretta got to stroll through Butterbury, take in the countryside surrounds, make their way down to Lantern Square before heading on up the hill and back to the lodge. Bundled up in their coats, scarves and gloves, Ivor with a hat Daisy had made him last Christmasin a cherry red he said was just his colour, they nipped home first and collected Busker, the golden retriever Daisy had adopted when a friend of hers left for university and her parents, who worked in London full-time, realised they wouldn’t be home enough to look after it. Loretta linked her dad’s arm all the way, a steady stroll, time together that was always precious.
It was still cold butthe wind had died down a bit and its direction was in their favour as Busker, despite his advancing age, insisted on darting into any bushes they passed, sniffing his way around. Ivor adjusted his hat, pulling it further over his ears to cover the back of his grey hair completely, careful not to dislodge his wire-framed glasses. ‘Daisy had the group very well organised today. She’s efficient, andthey all adore her.’
‘I love that she spends so much time up at the lodge with you.’ Hearing that Daisy really was up there and not off doing something secretive was quite a relief to Loretta. ‘I just wish—’
‘She’d hang out with people her own age?’
‘I don’t know, Dad. Sometimes I wonder how she’s ever going to meet anyone stuck in a sewing shop with her mother and spending the rest of hertime hanging out with the Oldies in Stitches.’
‘You worry a lot about her.’
‘I worry about all my girls.’
‘Have you phoned Fern and Ginny yet?’ When she shook her head he said, ‘You’re putting it off.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
His long sigh said that he wouldn’t. He’d never been one to back away from a challenge, no matter how hard it was. ‘You’ve always valued honesty above all else, Loretta. AndI admire that.’
‘I wonder where I learned it from.’
They took a detour into one of the fields to give Busker a bit of a run and when they emerged into the open space Ivor tried to bend down for the stick Busker dropped at his feet. But he only got halfway. ‘Do the honours?’
Loretta put a reassuring hand on her dad’s arm and bent down, picked up the stick and threw it for Busker. Ivor was slowingdown, it was life, but it didn’t mean to say she wanted to think about him ever leaving this world and her behind.
Busker retrieved the stick and seemed happy enough to trot along the dirt track carrying it between his jaws as if to say, ‘I’ve got the prize, I’m the winner’. They came to an uneven part of the path and Ivor gripped tighter onto Loretta’s arm until they were back on even ground.Butterbury was beautiful in any season and a frost still lingered on the uppermost branches of the nearby oak tree and fell as though it was snowing when they passed beneath.
‘Did you see the photograph Daisy took of this field?’ Loretta asked her dad. ‘She captured the frost just right.’
‘She’s a talented young lady.’ He paused. ‘You need to call Fern and Ginny. They won’t thank you for keepingthis from them, not in the long run. Do what you have to do, tell a lie just to get them here if you have to, but don’t leave it until it’s too late.’
‘I don’t know what to say to them. Would you?’
He shook his head.
But his understanding didn’t make it any easier. Loretta knew what she had to do. If she wanted her family to get through this then she needed to get her girls together and seeif they could be those three sisters who’d once shared everything, who’d once joked that they were sewn together as well as their gran’s best quilts. It had never mattered back then that there was ten years difference between Fern and Daisy, there’d been something for each of them to learn, to embrace, to enjoy. They’d pull together scraps of material from wherever they liked, each girl would rummagein the plastic tubs Loretta had filled with offcuts. There was no end of colour to choose from, a vast array of designs, they could be as eccentric or conservative as they liked. The girls had loved getting crazy with spots, stripes, clashing colours.Anything goes!had been Harry’s way of describing it as he’d watch them all working away before he and the girls would sit down to watch a movie.He always chose family movies that would be appropriate for all three, Fern and Ginny watching films they’d already seen but that they loved and Daisy seeing them for the first time.
Quilting had brought Fern, Ginny and Daisy together as kids, it had brought her joy too. And Loretta wondered, could it be that in order to bring her girls together and make them strong enough for what was aboutto come their way, they would have to go back to where it all began?
