Sadly, the campaign had worked. Though the new bypass announced later that year had cut right through that pasture anyway. It was a shame, aside from the woods by her cottage, it had been one of my aunt’s favourite places to forage for wild dyes for the wool she’d bought from local farms. I could still remember the smell of the blackberry dye, and the way it had stained my nail beds. Mum had despaired of it ever coming out. I still had a scarf Aunt Lou had made for me with that yarn. I didn’t dare wear it out in case it got lost. I kept it for when I was sick at home.
‘Still, we don’t get a lot of boats coming through,’ Emma said, tidying up the little baskets on the counter. ‘We’re not exactly a tourist hotspot.’
‘Maybe they’re just living on it. People do now – there was a bit about it onGardeners’ World. Someone with a roof garden on their narrowboat.’
Emma chuckled. ‘Since when do you watchGardeners’ World?’
‘I was at Mum and Dad’s for Sunday lunch a few weeks ago. Dad had it on in the shed – I think mostly for background noise, not because he suddenly has an interest in gardening. He paved ours over ten years ago and, as far as I know, he’s never looked back.’
It was admittedly meant to be a sort of minimalist, modern garden at the time. Stone slabs, gravel, a fountain and a grand total of three spiky plants in a triangle around the garden. Only said plants had perished in their first frosty English winter, and had never been replaced. So now the garden was giving less ‘zen’ and more ‘abandoned quarry’. Mum didn’t seem to mind, as long as she had access to the whirligig washing line and a place to tan or have barbecues in summer.
‘It’s like this new trendy thing, right?’ Emma said. ‘Like those people that spend half a million quid on a van with a king-size bed and a bidet and then try and park it down tiny lanes.’
‘I guess,’ I said. ‘Kind of cool, though. I mean, being able to travel around but always having your home with you.’
‘Like a snail,’ Emma said, pulling a face. ‘I mean, I love travelling but I know you’re more of a creature-comforts girl.’
‘I just like my own stuff, you know? Nothing like a cup of tea made in your own mug at the end of the day.’
Emma laughed. ‘Hint received, I’ll go and stick the kettle on.’
I chuckled as she went. I hadn’t been kidding, though. Not really. Leaford had been my home since birth. Mum and Dad lived just outside of it, in a 1950s prefab painted shell-pink and studded with plastic butterflies. I’d gone to school here and spent one or two school holidays a year living with Aunt Lou in her cottage on the outskirts. Mum liked to throw dinner parties and cocktail nights, and her sister was more than happy to babysit me on weekends too. Her house was my idea of heaven – full of books and craft projects and quiet evenings with just the radio on. Compared with the blaring TV at home, with Mum and Dad shouting questions to each other from different rooms and their friends and extended family stopping by to shout and laugh along with them, it was bliss.
If Aunt Lou had lived on a boat, I’d have asked her to trundle it off to Bristol, where I went to university. It would have been wonderful to be able to shut myself away in that haven of peace and quiet to escape from the city. Even if the idea of being a snail wasn’t exactly flattering, I couldn’t deny the idea had appeal. If home was where the heart was, why wouldn’t you want to take it with you wherever you went?
Chapter 4
Later that afternoon, Mumand Dad popped by to ‘see how we were getting on’. Even though the shop was quite busy by then – well, busy compared with that morning’s humbling lull – I still heard them coming.
‘… lived in this town my entire life and now they want me to pay for the privilege of spending money in the shops. Two pound ruddy fifty an hour! It’s not on. I mean…’
‘Mum, Dad!’ I called, cutting off the next part of Dad’s rant, which I knew from experience would involve the much-promised and never-delivered wheelie bins, the time Dad got a ticket for ‘just stopping to say hello to Stanley from the pub’ and the former dog warden who’d been ‘having it off’ with ‘her on the council’.
‘Hello sweetie,’ Mum beamed, air-kissing me on each cheek. She had to get up on her tiptoes to do it, despite her habitually high wedge sandals – worn in all weathers bar actual snow. I’ve been taller than her since I was fifteen – ‘that’s your father’s genes’, she used to say. My mother, who shopped the petite range until she was nine months pregnant and whose feet still fitted into children’s shoes, made me feel sometimes like a galumphing giant.
For years I had this little theory, brought on by too much Jacqueline Wilson andEastEnders, that I was actually Aunt Lou’s daughter and that Mum was raising me for her because Lou wasn’t married. Even though it was the late nineties and, honestly, who would have cared? Lou and I were both pale, turning pink instead of brown in the sun. We had the same reddish hair and she was tall and curvy like me. Mum was short, slim as a whippet and tanned to a crinkly mahogany. Her hair was chestnut brown and she’d worn the same shade of sticky cerise lipstick and nail polish my entire life. With her loud laugh and her clattering heels, Mum was tailor-made to be the ‘fun aunt’. It seemed wrong that she was my mother and quiet, bookish Lou was my aunt. I loved them both dearly, but sometimes I still wondered if there had been some kind of mistake. Cosmically speaking. Sometimes I suspected Mum felt the same.
‘All right, love? Looks very smart in here,’ Dad said, peering around cluelessly. Bless him, he didn’t know a crochet hook from a shoe horn but he always tried to show interest in me and my hobbies. He’d worn his sunhat too – one of the first things I’d ever made him, from a pattern that was quite floppy and atrocious really. A khaki creation in cotton yarn, but he’d had it for years and mostly wore it while sunbathing with Mum in the garden. Just the hat, a twenty-year-old pair of ‘designer sunglasses’ he’d bought in Crete and his alarmingly snug denim shorts, which now buttoned under his fish-white barrel of a stomach.
‘It’s been a day,’ I said, and hugged him. ‘But we’ve had quite a few people in.’
‘Including us now. Wow, look at all the diddy little… things!’ Mum said, using her inside voice, so probably only the next street heard her. I suppressed a smile as she looked over the unfamiliar collection of crafting items. She picked up a ball of fuchsia and violet marbled yarn. ‘I’ll take three of these.’
‘Mum, you don’t crochet. You don’t have to buy stuff,’ I laughed.
‘It’s for you – so you can make me another one of these fab tops.’ She did a twirl to show off the bust-hugging vest I’d made her. ‘Adriana from Pilates wants one too, so I’ll get you some more wool for that.’
It was pointless trying to fight it. I didn’t really mind making things for Mum’s friends but it did get a little overwhelming at times. Like when she’d planned that girls’ trip to Majorca and told fifteen of her friends that I’d make them all matching beach totes. I’d worked like a demon on those for weeks – Richard told me I was miming crochet while I slept. Then some of them hadn’t picked theirs up in time and three more had ditched them at the airport because of the baggage limit. Mum lost hers off a pedalo and someone else traded theirs for a jug of sangria from a stranger after the bars closed.
Mum pottered about gathering up ‘wool’ – I’d tried to teach her that not all yarn was wool but it landed on deaf ears – and Dad nudged my elbow.
‘Looks great, love. It really does. Richard did some bloody good work in here – I always said he was a good pick for you. Someone with a business head and hardworking hands. He’ll always be able to take care of you. Just like I do for your mum.’
I forced a smile. Dad was just a tad old-fashioned, at least where men were concerned. Possibly because he adored Mum down to his bones and moved heaven and earth to give her anything she wanted – from decking to yearly holidays in the sun. He’d been a big supporter of me going to university, working and living in my own place. And he’d taught me to use Rawlplugs, a spirit level and a circular saw (hazards of being a contractor’s daughter). He’d taught me car maintenance too. But he was still very much of the opinion that, even if I knew how to unclog a sink or tile a bathroom, I shouldn’t have to do so. I hadn’t the heart to tell him that Richard had corrected the sign placement and that was about it. Dad adored Richard and, anyway, what did it really matter who did what? The shop was up and running now and it looked great.
‘Tabby.’ Mum appeared at my elbow, carrying a large brown paper bag filled with skeins of yarn, which she handed off to me. ‘I’ve just had your father bring the patio heater out of storage. We’re having one last big bash before it gets too wet to use the garden bar. You must bring Richard over. It’s been ages since we had you both there for a real knees-up.’
‘We’d love to, I’ll check when he’s free,’ I said, privately thinking that her ‘luau’ had only been three weeks ago and I was still a little wary of downing any more of her ‘speciality drinks’ after whatever had been in that pineapple thing. Paint stripper and neat acetone was my best guess. Mum mixed drinks like a fresher at uni – everything went in, with unpredictable consequences.
