Page 24 of Sunset at Embthwaite Farm
“Oh, Jane—”
“Sorry,sorry,” Jane moaned, taking a crumpled tissue from her pocket and trying her best to wipe her face. “Sorry. It’s just been such a day. And night. And week. And month.” She let out a ragged laugh that turned into a sob.
“Let’s go back to the beginning,” Anna replied. She switched Henry to her other hip as she guided Jane to a seat at the table. “And let me get you a cup of tea. Have you eaten?” The poor woman looked as if she hadn’t showered or slept in some time.
“I made some toast,” Jane replied vaguely, casting her gaze around the kitchen before it rested on the toaster, where a single piece of toast had popped up what looked like hours ago. Anna went to touch it, and it was stone cold and stale. Poor, poor Jane.
“Tea,” she said firmly, and she managed to fill the kettle while Henry clawed at her, tugging experimentally on her hair and making her wince. Never mind.
“You must think I’m a terrible mother,” Jane murmured wretchedly as she sat slumped at the table, her head bowed against her arms. “How could I leave my baby alone like that?”
“I don’t think you’re a terrible mother,” Anna replied, deliberately keeping her tone brisk. “I think you’re a very normal, and I suspect, a very tired one, at the moment. Were you in the garden?” Miserably Jane nodded. “That’s hardly leaving him alone, then. In my mother’s day, you left the baby in the pram at the bottom of the garden for atleasttwo hours every day. For the fresh air, apparently.”
Jane lifted her head to gaze blearily at Anna, and the ghost of a smile flickered across her face and then died. “Did they really do that?” she murmured doubtfully.
“They did,” Anna affirmed. “My own mother swore by it. Anyway,” she finished as she put a cup of tea in front of Jane, “I imagine you just needed a bit of a break. Has Henry been rather whingy today?”
“He’s been amonster,” Jane confirmed, murmuring her thanks for the tea. “Not that you’d know it to look at him now.” As if to prove his mother wrong, Henry gave a little gurgle of delight and pulled Anna’s hair again. Anna wrapped her hand around the baby’s and gently but firmly pulled his chubby fingers away from her hair.
“Well, then,” she said, as if Jane’s confirmation had proved her point, which it more or less had. “You’ve done what a million or more mothers have done before you and stepped out for a moment to pull yourself together. There’s no shame in it, Jane.”
“Didyouever do that?” Jane asked in challenge, and Anna almost smiled. She’d stepped out for twelve years! Somehow, Jane had got into her head that Anna had been some sort of paragon of a mother, and she needed to disabuse her of that very erroneous notion.
“Yes, most certainly,” she replied. “Once I locked my two out of the house so I could have a moment’s peace from their bickering.” She smiled faintly. “Why should I be the one to have to go outside?”
“I don’t believe it,” Jane replied, but she was smiling, at least for a moment, before she once again had to blink back tears. “I’m just sotired,” she told Anna with a catch in her voice. “Henry hasn’t been sleeping because of his teeth, and Eric has been workingallthe time—some pressure at the office. Last night he didn’t come home until nine. And Dad tries to help, but to be honest, he’s a bit useless with babies. Maybe all men are,” she added with a grimace. “Sometimes it feels that way.”
“It’s hard,” Anna murmured. She wished she’d realised just how much Jane was struggling; she could have helped earlier. But at least, she told herself, she could help now. “Look,” she told Jane once she’d finished her tea, “why don’t you have a shower or a bath and get some fresh clothes on? It can do wonders for your mood, especially when some days you don’t even have time to brush your teeth.”
Jane put her hand up to her mouth. “Oh, my goodness,” she exclaimed, “how did youknow? Can you tell?”
“No, no,” Anna assured her with a laugh. “I’m only saying that’s how I was. Henry’s happy here with me. Take half an hour, or an hour even, for yourself.”
Jane stared at her in incredulity, as if Anna had just offered her the moon. “Do you really mean that?” she breathed, and again Anna felt a rush of reproach. She should have offered more, and sooner.
“Yes, I absolutely do.”
Slowly Jane shook her head. “I haven’t had anyone to help since we moved here,” she told Anna. “Dad tries, I know, and he’s very good at the practical things, or doing a bit of shopping for me, or what have you. ButIwant to do the shopping sometimes, you know? I wanthimto be the one to hold the baby.”
“Have you told him that?” Anna asked seriously, and Jane shrugged.
“Maybe not in so many words, but…he should take the hint, surely!”
“Men can be a bit dim when it comes to that sort of thing,” Anna told her with a smile. “You might need to take a more direct approach.”
Jane grimaced. “Maybe, although…I don’t want to hurt his feelings.” At Anna’s raised eyebrows, she continued haltingly, “I suppose I feel a bit protective of him. My mum died when I was seventeen and he’s been on his own that whole time.”
And so then must have Jane, Anna surmised with a rush of sympathy. Having a baby when you were motherless yourself was hard; Anna remembered how hard it had been for her. Her mother had been alive, yes, but she had not been very interested. She’d come to Mathering to visit only once in fifteen years.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your mum,” she told Jane. “That must have been very hard.”
“Yeah, it was.” Jane blinked rapidly. “She was amazing. So much fun. She had this incredible laugh…” She trailed away with a sigh. “Anyway, Dad’s done the job of both mother and father since then, and I don’t want him to think for a second that he’s let me down somehow, because he hasn’t.” She looked at Anna with a fierce expression in her blue eyes as Anna hoisted Henry to her other hip. Hewasa little monster, she thought affectionately. He was certainly heavy. “He absolutely hasn’t,” Jane insisted, and Anna nodded her acceptance.
“Still,” she replied gently, “I think he could probably take the truth from you. And maybe he needs to hear it. He sounds like he wants to be a help, and he needs to know how.”
“I didn’t really think about it like that,” Jane replied slowly. “Still, I don’t know how I would tell him. He can be a bit sensitive—not in a bad way, though!” She looked alarmed at the possibility that Anna might think badly of this paragon of paternity for so much as a millisecond.
“He sounds like a wonderful father,” she told her, meaning it. The man had moved to Mathering for his daughter, and clearly wanted to support her in every way that he could. He reallywasa paragon, or close enough. “And like I said,” she finished, “I think he can probably take it.”
