Page 9 of Sunset at Embthwaite Farm
“And is that so hard to believe?” she countered, her voice rising. “You and Rachel have made me feel like a positivepariahsince I’ve come back. I know there’s water under the bridge as you’ve said, but I came back to try to deal with it, and all I’ve been getting is a lot of passive-aggressive attitude and hostility.”
“Well, you know where the door is,” Harriet snapped, colour flaring in her cheeks.
Their friendly little chat, Anna acknowledged wretchedly, was not going as she’d hoped. She wasn’t acting like a mother; she was behaving like a wounded harpy, which was basically how she felt.
Briefly she closed her eyes while Harriet gave a snort as if to saydrama queen.
“Harriet, I don’t want to leave,” Anna said as she opened her eyes. “I want to stay here and work things out with you. I want to be helpful with your father, and I want to make amends. I know you’re hurt, as well as angry. I know my leaving all those years ago is still incomprehensible to you. But does staying angry help either of us in the end? I want us to have a relationship—”
“Really?” Harriet drawled, although her voice was shaking. “Because you haven’t seemed to have wanted much of a relationship for the last thirteen years.”
“You didn’t, either,” Anna reminded her quietly. “I did try—”
“A couple of voicemails isn’t exactly making much of an effort.”
“What would you have liked me to do?” Anna challenged. “Would you have accepted any peace offering? Would you have liked me to show up at your front door like I did two weeks ago? Because I have a feeling I would have received the same sort of reception—”
“Don’t make this my fault!” The words came out in an ear-splitting shriek, startling them both. Harriet pointed a shaking finger at her. “This is not about me doing the wrong thing,” she continued. “Istayed. I stayed and took care ofyourhusband because you couldn’t cut it. You got bored or annoyed or whatever, and you just left without a care in the world—”
“That’s not true.” Anna’s voice caught jaggedly. She understood why Harriet had framed the narrative that way, but it was so far from what had really happened it was laughable…except it utterly wasn’t. There was nothing funny about this awful situation at all.
“Well, that’s how it looked from here,” Harriet tossed back, turning away. “And it still does.”
She started to walk out of the kitchen and Anna’s fists clenched. “Harriet Emily Mowbray,” she snapped out, “do not turn your back on me in the middle of this conversation!”
Slowly Harriet turned around, a stunned look on her face. “Excuseme?”
Anna’s lips twitched in the most unlikely smile. For the first time in over a decade, she’d sounded like a mother. It had, she realised, felt good. “You heard me,” she told her daughter. “It’s rude to walk out on someone, as you very well know.AndI’ve made you lunch, and it would be both spiteful and stupid to refuse to eat it simply because you’re annoyed with me. You’re not a child, Harriet, so don’t behave like one.”
Harriet’s mouth opened and closed like a fish as her eyes bulged. Anna moved to the Rayburn and started ladling out soup. While Harriet mutely watched, still gaping, she put a bowl on the table and nodded to it. “Don’t let it get cold.”
Anna more than half expected her daughter to storm out of the kitchen, but amazingly, Harriet didn’t. She walked to the table and pulled out a chair, then sat down. She picked up a spoon, then laid it down again. Anna met her sullen gaze with a cool stare of her own.
“Thank you,” Harriet said, not particularly graciously, but still.
Quietly Anna breathed out. “You’re welcome,” she replied.
Anna was ladling out a second bowl of soup just as Rachel came into the room. She stopped at the door, glancing between the two of them. “What’s going on here?” she asked, and Anna realised the tension in the room was palpable, like an electrical storm, a current in the air, sparking and buzzing.
“Mum’s just going off on one,” Harriet replied, but she sounded so much like a sulky teenager that, improbably, Rachel smiled.
“Isshe?” she asked with a curious glance for Anna.
“Soup,” Anna replied, and handed her a bowl.
Soon they were all three of them sat down at the table, spooning soup into their mouths, the silence so thick it felt like something to saw through. Finally, after several mouthfuls, Anna decided to try.
“I was telling Harriet that I came back to help with your father,” she stated, keeping her tone briskly practical. “But also to make amends. I know I can’t make up for being mostly absent for the last—”
“Mostly?” Harriet cut across her, her tone witheringly incredulous.
“Harriet,” Rachel murmured.
“All right, completely,” Anna replied, determined to remain unfazed. “Completely absent for the last thirteen years. Iwas. But I’m here now and having the pair of you treat me like some unwanted stranger barging into your lives is…unhelpful, for all of us.” She paused to take a breath, and neither of them so much as twitched an eyebrow. “That might be what you feel I am,” she continued, “but this was my home once. I lived here for twenty years, I made all the meals, I mothered you until adulthood…” Anna trailed off at the stony looks on both their faces. Somehow, when it came out of her mouth, it didn’t sound the way it had coming out of Diana’s. She sounded, Anna realised, as if she were whinging.
“So, what do you want?” Harriet asked dryly. “An award? ‘Mother-of-the-Year Until You Turn Eighteen’. Except, you weren’t eventhat.”
“Harriet,” Rachel said again. “Come on.”
