Page 31 of Sunset at Embthwaite Farm
“It came and went, a bit, I think,” she told Harriet. “Sometimes he was too busy to go to Selby. Sometimes I was too unhappy, and I think he felt guilty about that. But whenever he went to Selby…well, I knew. I could tell he’d been with her.”
Rachel grimaced. “And afterwards? When you left him?”
Anna shook her head. “I don’t know. I suppose I thought he might make more room in his life for her, but the impression I got was that she was as happy with the way things had been as he was. She had her own…” She paused and then shook her head. She couldn’t tell Harriet and Rachel the rest. She feared it might devastate them, and in any case, it didn’t feel like her part of the story to tell. It was Peter’s, or maybe it was Ruth’s. “She had her own life,” she finished.
“Why did you leave when you did?” Harriet asked abruptly, clearly still processing all she’d heard. “If you’d been putting up with it for years, why then? Why was that the breaking point?”
Anna hesitated.Shouldshe explain? But no. She didn’t have the strength for that conversation, not then, anyway, and she still wasn’t sure it was her place. “I don’t know, exactly,” she said quietly. “To be honest with you, that day is something of a blur. I remember standing in the middle of the kitchen, and then I remember walking out to my car. The next moment it felt as if I’d blinked and arrived in Reading. I know I drove there, obviously, but I can’t remember a single minute of that journey.” She gave them both an apologetic smile; she knew it wasn’t a very satisfactory answer.
“Where did you go, Mum?” Rachel asked. “Your parents were gone by then…”
“To my aunt’s. She was the only person I could think of, and she’d always tried to stay in touch with letters. She used to send you two hand-knit booties when you were babies, and then jumpers when you were older. They had sheep on the front. She knit them every year.”
“I remember those,” Harriet recalled, her eyes lighting up. “They were darling. Did we visit her? I can’t remember…”
“When you were little. Then she became a bit frail, and couldn’t travel, and going all the way down to Reading was harder. I think you must have been twelve or so the last time we went.”
Harriet nodded slowly. “I think I remember that, actually. She used to give us toffee that just about broke your teeth.”
“That’s right.” Anna smiled. Aunt Pauline had been, in her fusty, no-nonsense way, exactly what she’d needed at that time. “Anyway,” she resumed, determined to say it all now, “I went to her. And after about twenty-four hours she realised I wasn’t coping very well at all, and she called the GP, who referred me to the psychiatric intensive care ward at Prospect Park Hospital. I was there for two weeks, and then in an inpatient ward for another two months.”
This statement had the effect of making Anna feel as if they’d all become frozen in pools of silence. Despite her having told them she’d been sectioned earlier, Harriet and Rachel were looking shell-shocked by the specifics.
“Psychiatric intensive care…” Rachel repeated faintly. “Mum, what do you mean, you weren’t coping? How bad was it?”
Anna sighed, briefly closing her eyes as she remembered—or tried to—that awful time. It felt like a blankness in her life, a dark space where memory should be. “Honestly, I don’t entirely remember how I was. I shut down in a lot of ways—wouldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, could barely talk. It was as if…” She paused, reflecting. “It was as if my body was finally responding to twenty years of trauma. Not physical,” she clarified quickly. “I told you before your father never hurt me that way, and he didn’t, not ever. But emotionally…there was a lot to deal with, and for some reason, it hit me all at once. I’m sorry, though,” she said quietly, as she glanced between them both. “I wish I’d been able to handle it. I wish I’d been a better, more present mother for you. I know sometimes when you were younger, I let the sadness get the better of me. And of course, leaving the way I did…well, that was very hurtful. I’ve always understood that.”
Slowly Harriet shook her head. “Mum…” she began, and with a jolt, Anna realised it was the first time Harriet had called her mum in…years. “I wish you’d told us this before, but I understand why you didn’t. Why you couldn’t, I mean, and maybe I wouldn’t have been able to listen. Maybe we both needed…to go through some things.” She drew a shuddery breath and reached for her mother’s hand. “I’m just sorry you had to go through it all, and alone, too.”
“So am I, Mum,” Rachel said softly, and she put her hand on top of Harriet and Anna’s. “Really sorry.”
They all sat there for a moment, their hands on top of one another, absorbing the significance of the moment. Was there anything more than this? Anna wondered, a sob caught in her throat. Her daughters’ understanding. Their forgiveness. It had taken a long time to get here, but oh my goodness, it was so worth it. She was so grateful.
“Thank you both,” she said quietly, “for understanding. It means…it means the world to me.” They were all silent for a moment, giving each other watery smiles and struggling not to cry.
It felt, Anna thought, like the best thing in the world.
Chapter Thirteen
The moors werecloaked in darkness when, three days later, Anna followed James’s texted directions to his house on the other side of Mathering. The last few days had been good—wonderful, really—but also hard in their own way. Harriet and Rachel were clearly absorbing everything Anna had told then, and that was an emotional process.
In the meantime, Peter was continuing to decline, and Anna feared he didn’t have very long left at all. Time was measured in days and maybe weeks, certainly not months and years. Soon, she suspected, it would be in just hours and days, and the thought filled her with sorrow. She wanted her daughters to reconcile with their father, to make peace with him, and she feared what she’d told them would make it impossible.
Had she been wrong to admit the truth, and tell them about Peter’s affair? It was something she continued to wrestle with, all the while glad that she had, because it meant she was closer to her daughters than ever. Things weren’t perfect, and everyone could still feel and act a little spiky, but there had been progress. A lot of progress. And Anna found she could not regret that.
But now she had something exciting and more than a little nerve-racking to think about—her drink with James. He’d texted her twice since inviting her, once with directions and once, just an hour ago, to say he was looking forward to it and asking her to bring her bottle of Bombay Sapphire, accompanied by a wink emoji so she wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. She’d brought it just in case, but the whole thing was making her rather nervous.
She hadn’t done the dating thing pretty much ever; her relationship with Peter, whirlwind that it had been, couldn’t really count and in the last twelve years she’d gone on exactly two dates, neither of which she cared to remember. But maybe, she reminded herself, this wasn’t a date.
It had taken her an hour to choose what to wear for this was-it-or-wasn’t-it-a-date, and she’d finally settled on a pair of wide-legged black wool trousers and a cowl-necked top in deep blue cashmere—elegant and understated, she hoped. She hardly ever wore make-up except the prerequisite lotions and potions to smooth away fine lines, but she’d dared to add a bit of mascara and subtle lipstick just in case it really was a date. Her hair was in its usual sleek, silver bob, nothing much to change there. She’d gone completely grey in her early forties, when she’d first left Peter, and she’d never bothered to dye it since.
The sat nav directed her to a lonely looking farm track that cut through the moors, the twinkling lights of a house barely visible in the distance. The man clearly enjoyed his space, Anna thought, bemused, as she started down the track, passing over two cattle grids before she finally pulled up into the courtyard of a very impressive barn conversion.
When Jane had told her that her father lived in a barn conversion, Anna had pictured something simpler and more, well, barn-like. The house in front of her was something else entirely—sprawling, with huge glass skylights and a wraparound deck that took in the spectacular view of the moors, now cloaked in darkness, stretching endlessly in every direction.Wow.Anna felt impressed and intimidated and more than a little out of her depth all at once.
James came to the door before she was halfway across the slate-tiled courtyard, throwing it open wide.
“Welcome!” he called, and his enthusiasm made her smile.
