Page 50 of A Year at Appleyard Farm
Freya smiled. ‘It’s all very exciting. Come on, show me what else you found.’
Merry led Freya through to the dining room where the table was covered in a layer of papers and notebooks. ‘These are the latest things,’ she said. ‘They were stuffed into the drawer of an old desk we found but look at the colours on them. They’ll make gorgeous posters.’
Freya picked one from the pile closest to her. ‘What are they?’
‘We think they’re printer’s samples. I’ve looked up some of the designs, and they were all used for wallpaper.’ She shuddered. ‘I’m not sure I would ever be up for that amount of colour in a room, but I think these are lovely. I’m guessing they were printed from Christopher’s original designs, perhaps to check the colours, or the detail maybe. Once all was okay, they’d go on to run the rolls of wallpaper.’
‘And you’re going to use all these in the shop?’
‘Hmm.’ Merry nodded. ‘In fact, we’ve just had some drawings back from the architect, do you want to have a look? Tom’s in there now.’
A fire was roaring in the grate in the study as Tom sat working at the computer. He smiled a greeting, immediately vacating his seat so that Merry could sit down.
‘Here, I’ll let Merry show you round,’ he said. ‘I’ll just pop and check on Robyn.’
Merry rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t you dare wake her up,’ she said, clicking on a file on the screen in front of her. ‘She’s been a right grumpy mare this morning,’ she added to Freya. ‘Cora’s been taking her out for a walk most mornings, and I think she’s rather got used to it. With all this rain she hasn’t been out for the last few days. Do babies get cabin fever? I dunno. Anyway, she refused point blank to go to sleep this morning and consequently didn’t know where to put herself this afternoon…Right, here we are.’
Freya looked at the screen as directed. A bright image had appeared, that even to her untrained eye, clearly showed the shop space, now transformed from an empty dilapidated shell to an impression of what it might look like once open for business.
‘We want to use as much of the salvaged furniture as we can, but as space is at a premium, Nigel did a survey for us, showing the best fit to maximise the selling area. Bless him, I didn’t ask him to, but I’d emailed photos of some of Christopher’s work to give him an idea of the look we wanted and he’s incorporated those too.’
‘He knows you too well,’ stated Freya, knowing that Merry’s relationship with the architect they had used so often at the hotel went back years. ‘It’s really good, though, it gives you a much better idea of how it will look.’
‘It will also save us no end of time. We were going to have the walls a soft green, you know a bit heritage Farrow & Ball, but when you look at this, it wouldn’t work at all. We can also see exactly how the units will look, and what we might display where. I don’t want to spend hours renovating the furniture, only to hate it when it’s all in position.’
Freya nodded at her, seeing the truth in her words. She was just about to ask about the extraordinary collection of groceries they had found when she became aware that Tom had returned to the room, standing in the doorway. His face was ashen in the dim light.
‘Merry,’ he began, but he needed to go no further. One look at his face, and she was out of the chair and crossing the room. Freya raced upstairs after them.
‘I thought she was sort of snoring at first, and I nearly left her to come back downstairs. Merry, I nearly left her, I could have walked away…’
Merry lifted Robyn from the cot, her daughter’s head flopping backwards, her breaths coming in short fast puffs.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Tom’s voice was an anxious whisper. His hands were shaking, Freya noticed.
She crossed to take his arm, while Merry laid Robyn down on the changing station, the back of her hand resting gently against her daughter’s forehead. ‘She’s burning up.’
Merry lifted up her little pinafore, smoothing the skin on her belly and quickly pulled down the top of her woolly tights. ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ she muttered. ‘Please no.’
The skin was mottled and blotchy, and even Freya could see that Robyn’s responses were low. Merry looked straight up into her eyes, her own wide with panic and fear.
‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ said Freya.
The waiting room was like any other, full of hunched nervous people. Freya’s eyes scanned the doors at either end of the room, hoping for a glimpse of Merry or Tom through one, and Sam through the other.
She had followed the ambulance as it pulled out of the village, the siren setting her heart pounding as she wove through the lanes after it, praying that the roads were clear, willing it onwards. They had caught it early said the paramedic. They had done the right thing. But it was still Robyn’s tiny body inside the ambulance, a place she had no right to be, and Freya drove, forcing all thoughts from her mind, save getting to the hospital. The rain lashed at the windscreen, the car buffeted by the wind as they turned onto the main road. The wipers screeched across the screen as they fought the weather, but Freya remembered nothing of the journey.
Only now, alone in a room full of other people did it all come flooding in. What would have happened if Tom had thought his daughter was merely sleeping? What if he hadn’t been there at all, as she and Merry chatted away without a care in the world. What if Merry hadn’t recognised the signs; how did she even know? A singular moment of responsibility that Merry had reacted to by instinct, some innate maternal guide giving her the sixth sense she needed, right at the crucial time. Freya had never felt so helpless. She wanted to hug her friend, and hold her, to tell her everything would be all right, but that reassurance was not hers to give. Only time would offer it, if they were lucky.
She had no idea how long she had sat there until she became aware of Sam by her side.
‘I came as soon as I got your message,’ he murmured. ‘Where is she, is she okay?’ He grasped Freya’s pale hand, warming it between his own.
‘I don’t know, Sam. I haven’t seen anyone.’ Her eyes began to fill with tears. ‘She looked so poorly…’
Sam pulled her into him, and they sat unspeaking as the minutes stretched out. The door opened several times as people came and went, but nothing changed.
Freya was thinking about Amos. She knew it was daft, but she couldn’t help it. He would have known what to say, or what to do, and she missed his gentle words of encouragement and wisdom. He had come into her head a few times over recent months, usually when she’d been out in the fields, or walking the lanes by their house. She had no idea where he had gone, but she knew he would have found his way to somewhere he was needed; that’s the way his life worked. She felt Sam’s warm body against hers, and gave an inward smile as the realisation hit her that it was not Amos she needed at all. Everything she required was deep inside her; the courage to say those things that needed to be said, and to fight for those things she knew to be true. That was the real wisdom that Amos had brought to her, and to Sam.
