Page 79 of New Beginnings At Pencarrow Bay
‘So Ori Tafa?’
Lindy looked surprised. ‘You found him then. That was clever. He was part of my IT team at Tamco and, before that, at Redmayne Capital.’
Struggling to find words that fitted the unparalleled situation she found herself in, Peggy felt an uncontrollable anger mounting. The words poured up from her throat in a torrent, settled on the tip of her tongue, a splurge of rage and resentment waiting to be unleashed. She heard the beat of her pulse in her ears, felt her heart pounding. But something was stopping her speaking, holding her back. It was a very strange feeling, as if a restraining hand rested on her shoulder, an actual voice whispering urgently in her ear.Be kind, Peggy. Don’t say something you’ll later regret, it seemed to say. Involuntarily, she glanced to her shoulder– where Sienna had seen the pisky. Was she being helped, somehow, in her hour of need? The idea didn’t seem so stupid.
Taking a deep breath as she eyed the jittery, crumpled figure across the table, remembering the strong, charming, impressive woman she used to be, Peggy, as the voice had suggested, curbed her rage, put aside her resentment… and found her pity once more.
There was a long moment of silence.
Then Peggy said gently, ‘Let’s draw a line, Lindy.’
She watched Lindy’s eyes spark up in what looked like hope. She didn’t speak, but Peggy saw her blinking as if to repel tears.
Getting up from the table, Peggy said, ‘Look after yourself. I hope things go well and that you get better soon.’
Lindy merely nodded, perhaps too stunned by Peggy’s response. Maybe she’d braced herself for an onslaught of fury and blame.
It was only when Peggy had said goodbye and reached the door to the kitchen, that she heard a small voice behind her enquire, ‘How’s Ted?’
She spun round, instantly wary. Lindy was staring up at her, her expression hard to read.
Peggy felt a spike of unease. ‘He’s fine,’ she said shortly, and hurried out of the house. Luckily there was no sign of Kim. Peggy had been so tense during the exchange with Lindy that now she felt worn out– as if she’d been battered– and not in the mood for a chat with her daughter.
Later, when Peggy was recounting the meeting to Ted, she found herself leaving out Lindy’s final question… and the look she couldn’t identify when she’d asked after him. Ted was disturbed enough about the whole saga as it was.
‘I can’t believe you actually met up. That was brave, Pegs.’
‘Well, it was going to happen sometime.’
Ted harrumphed. ‘Yeah. What the hell am I supposed to do whenIsee her?’
‘You won’t have to yet, with a bit of luck. Kim says she’s going to her sister in Wales for the rest of the summer.’
Ted let out a relieved sigh. ‘Thank goodness. Gives us a bit of time to recover, I suppose.’ He was silent briefly. ‘What if she starts it up again when she gets back, though? Sheliveshere. We’ll see each other all over the place, even if she doesn’t come up to the stall.’
‘I doubt she will. She’s broken, Ted. It was pretty horrible to see, however ghastly her behaviour in the past. You can ultimately only feel sorry for her now.’
‘Feeling sorry for her was what got me into this mess in the first place,’ he commented drily. Then he squeezed her hand. ‘You’re a lot more forgiving than me, Pegs. I still get the collywobbles when I think about what she put us through.’
Peggy didn’t reply immediately as she played the earlier visit over in her mind. ‘Lindy’s not a monster. Just a very sick woman.’ She was grateful to the unseen pisky for pointing this out in such a timely fashion and defusing her anger.
37
‘How can I choose what to wear, if you won’t tell me where we’re going?’ Peggy wailed theatrically when Ted declared he was taking her out for supper but refused point blank to tell her the venue. She was excited, though. There was something in the air today.
It was her sixty-third birthday, a hot, sunny Saturday at the end of August, the village alive and buzzing with holidaymakers, the sea aquamarine, the sky cloudless. They’d been on the beach most of the day, Henri manned by Shona. Liam and Dan had been in touch that morning, a joint FaceTime, supplemented by a large bunch of fragrant, blush-pink roses from them both. And she’d chatted at length to Annie. Jamie had sent exploding fireworks and popping balloons in a loving birthday message. Even her brother Tom had managed to call her from his kindly neighbours’ phone. He’d sounded a lot more cheerful than usual, she thought. It had lifted her spirits still further to hear from him.
Peggy, too, was feeling happier than she had in a long while. The lethargy, post Lindy’s meltdown, had vanished. In its place was a fizzing excitement about her life in the bay. She and Sienna were getting together regularly now, Peggy helping her future boss with the education and curriculum side of the forest school: behind schedule, due to open in January now. She would almost say they were friends. Thewoman could be vague and rude, fey on occasion, but she was also passionate and intelligent when she met Peggy for coffee– choosing Ted’s van, these days, instead of the planet-wasting services of the Samson George. The piskies were often wheeled out. But, since the moment at Lindy’s, Peggy had become rather enamoured of the fairy folk. She’d decided– against her more rational judgement– they might be a real force for good in the natural environment of the school, convincing herself they would help look after the troubled children. Although she didn’t share this opinion with Ted or anyone else.
And then there was her clarinet…
A couple of days after her encounter with Lindy, Peggy had waited till Ted went off to the van, then quickly run upstairs– before she changed her mind– and pulled down the clanking metal ladder that led to the loft, situated on the landing outside the office.
Gingerly stepping on the dusty rungs, she had pushed open the hatch and heaved herself up into the shadowy space, lit only by a small, mossy skylight and a weak, bare bulb swinging from the central rafter. She knew what she was looking for and where to find it. The loft was Ted’s domain. He wasn’t a hoarder, and the place was neat, the boxes and odd items not in a container– a side table belonging to Peggy’s grandmother, a lamp without a shade, some of Lois’s unframed paintings– stacked neatly against the sloping wall. She went straight to a small, battered canvas trunk in the corner– it had belonged to her father. Cobwebs ran from the lid to the wool insulation lining the roof and she brushed them off, kneeling on the gritty floorboards and twisting up the rusting metal hasp.
Taking a deep breath, she raised the cover. Her clarinet case lay on top of two large piles of sheet music, seemingly unaffected by the years of neglect. For a moment she gazed at it but didn’t touch it. This instrument had meant so much to her. It was a powerful link to her musical mother, and a weapon with which to manipulate and hurt her.
If Peggy didn’t practise, Celia would be incandescent, then pleading and tearful. If she did practise, her mother would be all smiles and praise. It was like a push-me-pull-you, a guaranteed method of getting attention. But although Peggy, at the time, had thought she was the one in control, her mother had finally been the more skilful at the game. Peggy desperately sought her mother’s love and approval through her music. In the end, though, Celia had had other priorities.
