Page 29 of The Christmas Invitation
He certainly would, for Oshan seemed to have inherited genes for height from his strapping Ukrainian mother, even if he got his deep blue eyes and fine features from River.
River’s vaguely pagan ways had never quite added up to any kind of religion, so far as I could see, but by Goddess he always meant Gaia, the earth and all of nature. Gaia could apparently just shrug us all off the surface of the planet like annoying insects, if she felt like it, but I was so glad that to date she’d resisted the temptation.
I felt slightly soothed and comforted by the two emails: River and Oshan knew what kind of person I was and it definitely wasn’t the monstrous one Lex had created in his mind and shared with Al.
But I still felt an urgent need now to talk about it to the one person who knew the whole truth: Fliss.
When I glanced at my watch, it seemed a good time to try. She taught art in a private school in the mornings and should be home again, though I had no idea if her brand-new spouse would be or not, since Calum had to travel abroad a lot for business.
She was alone, however, and we had a good catch-up, including all the details of her wedding that she hadn’t had time to tell me during our brief meeting before I left.
‘We did miss you, though,’ she finished.
‘And I was really sorry not to be there … but maybe not sorry about wearing that terrible bridesmaid’s dress. It so wasn’t me.’
‘I don’t know what happened in the wedding shop,’ she confessed. ‘There’s a sort of Bridal Mania that sweeps over you and you just go with it.’
‘Well, the knot’s tied now,’ I said.
‘Yes, and we really need to getyouknotted next.’
‘I think Iamwell and truly knotted, just not in the way you mean,’ I said gloomily.
‘Is the family awful?’ she asked sympathetically.
‘No, it’s not that. They’ve made me very welcome, even if Clara Mayhem Doome is a bit … overbearing. I like her, but I don’t really know how to describe her, except that she assumes everyone will fall in with what she wants. And I suspect they all usually do. But her husband, Henry, is very kind … and paintable. I’ve really got my artistic mojo back.’
‘But that’s great, isn’t it?’
‘It is, and I’m really looking forward to starting Clara’s portrait tomorrow. I’ve already done a drawing.’
‘You’re a quick worker, I know, but won’t painting two portraits take you very close to Christmas?’
‘Yes, and they’ve invited me to stay on, but you know I don’t do Christmas. I always go home to the Farm instead, for the Solstice.’
‘You could do something entirely different for once: aren’t you tempted?’
‘I might have been, because it does sound fun. But, Fliss, something dreadful has happened! It’s made me wish I’d never come here at all and I’m leaving the moment I can possibly get away!’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘The first person I set eyes on when I arrived was Lex Mariner!’
‘Oh, hell!’ she exclaimed.
‘Precisely,’ I agreed drily.
Clara
As I look back at it, our childhood in Starstone seems a forgotten idyll – a village life that should have ended with the war, but instead was to be wiped out as if it had never been by the creation of a reservoir.
That last summer remains clear in my mind. On the surface we carried on doing what we had always done: messing about in the stream, riding Henry’s pony, lessons in history and ancient and modern languages with Father and Mother … generally just being the precocious and happy brats we were.
Of course we were aware of the dark cloud hanging over the valley, even though we tried to ignore the changes taking place around us, as if by doing so we could prevent the destruction of our lovely village and community.
But people were already moving out and building work was well advanced on the wall of the dam at the lower end of the valley, where the hillsides pinched in. Maps had been pinned up in the village hall, showing the upper limit of the waters. It would spare the manor house and the hamlet of Starstone Edge, but soon everything else, so loved and familiar, would be fathoms deep and lost for ever.
At the end of that summer, our belongings were packed into a large van and we left for a new parish in Devon.
