Page 17 of The Secret Mistletoe Promise
Her gran’s expression relaxed. ‘Oh, my dear. Did they want you to come back?’
‘I don’t think they really cared.’ She speared a potato. ‘It wouldn’t have hurt Edmund to show alittlebit of compassion, but he’s never been that great at feelings – other than self-righteousness.’
‘Is this an epiphany, darling?’
‘It might be,’ Imogen conceded. ‘I have got thissowrong, Gran. What I did on Friday is the rightest thing I’ve done for ages.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Can we change the subject now? This is delicious, by the way.’
‘Of course. And I’ve got something we can do after dinner. A deep breathing meditation, part of a healing ritual I use. It’ll do you the world of good.’
‘I would love that.’ Imogen usually did a ten-minute meditation through an app, but in the weeks leading up to the wedding, even that hadn’t been able to settle her anxiety. ‘I couldn’t have asked for anyone to look after me better than you are. Thanks, Gran.’
‘Having you here is a joy. Aside from anything else, it’s so nice to have someone else to cook for. Lucy and Dexter come round occasionally, but Lucy’s more of a pizza girl. Her dad isn’t exactly hopeless at baked goods,so it’s a wonder she doesn’t want a mound of vegetables when she’s here.’
‘She’s twelve?’ Imogen asked. ‘Surely at that age, pizza is the one staple food group.’
‘She’s ten,’ Birdie corrected. ‘How did you get on in the village, anyway? I saw you had one of Sophie’s paper bags.’ Imogen smiled. She would happily spend all evening regaling her gran with her escapades, now she’d got the necessary calls out of the way and had some chicken inside her.
After Imogen had devoured two helpings, and was so full she could barely stand, they moved to the living room and Birdie lit a fire. The flames flickered against the homely backdrop: the pale green wallpaper with gold filigree flowers, her gran’s eclectic mix of books and trinkets, the rugs that overlapped across the dark wooden floorboards. Birdie brought out meditation cushions from behind the sofa, and they sat facing each other, the fire crackling gently. Her gran’s low, soothing tones encouraged Imogen to breathe deeply, and she let the words sink into her, reminding her that mistakes were moments in time, feelings were transient, forgiveness was as important for yourself as for those you’d hurt.
By the end, Imogen was on the verge of dropping off, and it was because she felt so much calmer, not because she was full of food. She didn’t know if her gran was a genuine witch, but she would happily tell anyone that Birdie was, at the very least, a little bit magical.
‘That was wonderful,’ she said, as she snuggled into the lumpy sofa, a lamp above her illuminating the paperbackshe’d pulled off a shelf, while Birdie picked up a bundle of knitting that didn’t yet have a definite shape but was wintry colours – blue and white and silver.
‘We could meditate every day,’ Birdie said, ‘help you sort through your thoughts and emotions. Just a few minutes can be revelatory. There are so many things I can do for you.’ Imogen looked up, because her gran’s tone had changed. ‘Let me help you, darling.’
‘You’ve always looked after me, when I’ve let you. I’m the one who hasn’t been around the last few years.’
Birdie shook her head. ‘Stella had a lot to do with that. Once she and I were at war, you became collateral damage. She did everything she could to keep us apart.’
‘What happened between you?’ Imogen had never had a straight answer from her mum; she just knew she didn’t approve of Birdie, and thought Mistingham should be avoided at all costs. Stella Rowsell could never be accused of being undramatic.
Birdie put down her knitting. ‘She was forthright and inquisitive, even when she was little, and of course those are good qualities to have – I was glad I was raising a strong, curious young woman. But when she was a teenager, she decided that it wasn’t acceptable that I had never married her father, that we weren’t a proper family. She didn’t like that I was a hippy or that she was the result of a fling. She couldn’t understand that I was perfectly happy – and I thought, competent – raising her as a single mum.’
‘She missed having a father figure?’
‘It wasn’t even that,’ Birdie said. ‘She and her dad saw each other whenever he was in the country, and I encouraged them to spend time together. She thought it was improper,distasteful. You know how much tradition, family values, matter to her now.’
‘More than anything,’ Imogen agreed. ‘But she’s excluding you because you didn’t do the whole two-point-four kids thing with a loving husband? That’s so narrow-minded.’
‘It’s also because of this place. The way I live.’ She gestured around her, at the dreamcatchers and singing bowls, the mystical paraphernalia. ‘She thinks it’s all nonsense. The last time she came back here, we had a huge argument. She has never shied away from saying what she thinks, and I called her out on her priorities, and ever since—’
‘She’s cut you out,’ Imogen finished. She knew how rigid her mum was, how everything had to bejust so, but the fact that she’d applied those ideals to her own mother, and basically disowned her because of it, was mind-boggling. ‘I’m so sorry, Gran. I think you’rewonderful.’
‘Oh, Imogen, the feeling is very much mutual. And we can’t do anything about Stella, we can only control how we respond to her, and I don’t want to undo all the good we’ve done with our meditation.’
‘Can you imagine what she’d say if she knew I’d spent today talking to a goat, then hatching a plan about how to deal with a lorry-load of mistletoe?’
Birdie chuckled. ‘Are you going to spray-paint all of it?’
‘Not all of it, I don’t think, but some of it. We can gift it to the villagers, drape Mistingham in mistletoe the way some towns only allow white Christmas lights. It’ll tie in with Sophie and Harry’s wedding.’
‘How do you feel about staying in a village consumed by wedding fever?’
‘Harry didn’t seem feverish, just irritated,’ Imogen said with a smile. ‘But Sophie apologised for talking about it when she knew what I’d done, and I don’t want to dampen anyone’s spirits. Besides, a break from thinking about my own ruined wedding will do me good.’Especially after the way Edmund reacted, she thought, but didn’t say. ‘And I wonder if Lucy would like to help with the spray-painting? I’d check with Dexter first, of course.’
‘She would love that,’ Birdie said. ‘That girl is eager to try everything.’
‘She’s amazing, considering what she’s been through.’
