Chapter Twenty
Loretta
Loretta arrived home from the shop to find her three girls not only together, but laughing. She lingered in the hallway for a few minutes longer than it took to remove her coat because the sound was something she’d yearned to hear once again. A few more minutes listening to her beautiful girls was to be savoured.
When she opened the door to the sitting room they were allon their hands and knees. And Carrie had joined them.
Carrie stood up. ‘I hope this is all right.’ She had a tub of pins resting in her palm.
Loretta’s eyes misted but she managed to get out the words that it was fine, the more the merrier.
The coffee table had been moved out of the way, the sofa and armchairs pushed back as far as they would go, the rug rolled up and leaned against the wallin the corner. Each block of the quilt that they’d worked tirelessly on was on the floor in the pattern they were currently debating, with Ginny running the show talking about colours complementing one another and shuffling things around in a way she hadn’t ever done before. Loretta spotted the pink sewing machine set up in the corner too and when she spoke she fought to keep the emotion from hervoice. All day she’d been itching to pick up the phone and check on them, expecting one of them to at least appear any moment and insist they had to have a break. She’d never expected this, all of them along with Carrie working away as though they’d been born to do it.
‘What do you think of the layout, Mum?’ Ginny stood back, hands on hips.
‘It looks like a fine quilt to me.’
‘Just wait untilwe piece it together and add the sashing, the backing and the batting,’ Ginny enthused as she directed Carrie over to the section in the corner of the design ready for pinning.
Loretta pointed to the pink machine. ‘Does that thing even work?’
‘Tried and tested,’ said Fern, looking up from the gingerbread block she was pinning against another colour. ‘Almost ready to use it to piece the quilttogether.’
Carrie finished helping Ginny pin the blocks at the corner. ‘I need to get going, up to the lodge.’
‘So soon?’ Fern asked. ‘You’re such a help, you really can’t stay?’
Carrie looked at Daisy. ‘I said I’d help Victor.’
Daisy seemed to know what she meant. ‘Yes, off you go, don’t keep him waiting. I’ll see you later, yeah?’
Loretta presumed they saw one another at the lodge often,given Carrie sung with the choir and had begun to volunteer to keep residents company. ‘I’ll show you out,’ she told Carrie, ‘you girls keep working.’ She ushered them on with a wave of her hands and closed the sitting room door behind her.
‘Loretta, I—’
She put her hands on Carrie’s shoulders. ‘Don’t apologise, you’ve nothing to be sorry for.’
‘You’re not angry I ended up helping? That I’vecome here to the house?’
‘Not at all.’ She had never been angry. Worried perhaps, but never annoyed.
Should she tell Carrie she was going to talk to the girls now? She hadn’t intended it to be tonight but seeing Carrie here with them all, hearing the laughter and chatter when she came through the door and the warmth in the atmosphere when she saw them all working together, she knew it was time.
But when Carrie gave her a hug goodbye, Loretta said nothing. She’d talk to the girls first, then take it from there. And she didn’t want Carrie worrying herself silly. She seemed to have a habit of doing so and Loretta couldn’t stand the thought of her in turmoil. It was bad enough when it was her struggling with what to do, what to say, how to handle this.
Loretta took a deep breath. She openedthe sitting room door and as Ginny finished pinning two blocks, Fern another and Daisy got up from the floor, she asked, ‘Could you all come into the kitchen please?’
‘What is it?’ Daisy was alert to something off.
But Loretta had already disappeared back along the hallway calling over her shoulder, ‘I’ll make us some tea.’
Loretta’s hands shook as she took out the mugs, her mouth went dry.She must’ve looked so worried that Fern took over making the tea.
Ginny was the last to come in but once they were all there, all with a cup of tea in front of them, it was time to tell them the real reason she had wanted them home in Butterbury. She only hoped her thoughts and words wouldn’t be too muddled as they tumbled out and that they would understand why she hadn’t told them straight away.
‘Mum, what’s going on?’ Ginny prompted. ‘Is this about Grandad?’
Loretta realised they all looked worried and likely for the same reason. ‘Your grandad is absolutely fine, I promise.’
