Page 6 of The Secret House of Honey and Hope

PAUL: We’ve been on the waiting list for this Finland winter experience. They’ve had a cancellation, so we got in.

Paul and his wife are all aboutexperience holidaysand educational event for their kids. Ski holidays, visits to Mesopotamian temples, or organic tree planting.

“You know you can get a meal deal with this,” the cashier tells me. “Starter, main and a bottle of wine for £20”

I smile. “Thank you, I need a clear head tonight.”

My phone dings again

PAUL: You don’t mind, do you? We thought since you and Andrew broke up you might not enjoy a dinner with a married couple anyway.

ME: Don’t worry. Have a nice holiday. Give my love to Marina and the kids.

My phone rings as I’m crossing the road, so I let it go to voicemail. It rings twice more as I’m going up the stairs to my bedsit, but my hands are full. Once inside, I switch on the small electric heater, toe off my shoes and put on warm slipper socks. Then with the microwave humming as it heats my birthday lasagne, I curl up in the armchair and check my phone. There are three missed calls from the same unknown number, there are also three voice messages.

“Hello?” a gruff man’s voice demands.

It’s Grandad Hedge.

“Hello? Elodie? Where did you go?”

“Elodie is this you? Where did you go? Hello! HELLO!” he shouts before giving up and calling again.

My grandfather, who is ninety-something, has never understood technology. My own outgoing message, one recorded on a drunken night when I was feeling silly, says, “Elodie LeFevre speaksbeforethe beep, you speakafterthe beep.”

“Elodie? This you, or is someone playing silly buggers? Hello?” There is silence, then, “Where are you. Can’t you hear me? ELODIE? HELLO? THIS IS YOUR GRANDAD WISHING YOU HAPPY BIRTHDAY…. Hello?” then he says as if talking to himself, “bugger this for a game o’ soldiers.” He finishes and hangs up.

I haven’t seen Grandad for years, the last time we visited La Canette was ten years ago, when I went with my dad and even then, we only stayed for two weeks. But since then, Grandad and I talk on the phone every year, he always rings on my birthday, and I give him news of the family.

I still remember the old farmhouse where we all lived long ago, the honey Grandad made and the island which always seemed sunny and warm and full of trees.

I glance at the number again; it’s definitely a La Canette dialling code. I ring back, but it’s answered by a woman who says her name is Pierre and that she’d been visiting Grandad’s honey shop and let him use her phone to call me. She promises to give him my love when she sees him next.

Grandad is the only one who remembered to wish me a happy birthday.

Chapter Four

Elodie

I’ve forgotten how cold it gets on La Canette. Mum used to call it the needle because the island crams all its winter into a thin sharp season. Christmas to Valentines. So, today, the 30thof January, is still icy.

Pierre, the woman who helped grandad call me on my birthday, rang me last week to tell me he’d had an accident. A fall in his shop almost a month ago but he’d refused to let the family know. Pierre had finally decided to call me because she said he needed someone to check on him.

The news had come just after the company had upheld my complaint against Steve. They agreed to pay for a place on a new training course and Steve had been made to promise to promote me as soon as I’d completed the course.

But since no one in my family could go to La Canette – Sophie is too far away in New Zealand and Paul; well Paul is always busy – there was only me. Paul offered to pay for my travel and a bit towards my expenses, and I had to defer my place on the course for a few days.

“Of course, you can go, family comes first,” Steve surprisingly agreed before I’d even finished asking. “Take as much time as you need.” Obviously, his generosity is tempered by the fact that it’s unpaid leave.

I didn’t have time to argue; what’s a savings account for, if not for emergencies like this?

So here I am, walking down towards Catcher Lane for the first time in ten years. My own memories go back much longer. Paul, Sophie, and I running over green grass, splashing in and out of streams, and collecting apples and blackberries. Home was a magical sunny place where we were always happy. Except it wasn’t enough for mum and dad who wanted to travel. So, my dad left his job as head teacher at the local school, and they took us away with them to every continent and every kind of climate and landscape. We never stayed anywhere longer than two years and we forgot about La Canette.

When dad passed, Mum, like Queen Victoria, lost her interest in the world and said she’d had enough of airports. She now lives with Sophie in New Zealand where my sister has made her home. Paul is so busy, he feels even farther away than New Zealand. Our family has drifted so far apart, it’s hard to call us a family.

So, coming to La Canette feels familiar and strange at the same time. Over the stone bridge and into Catcher Hill, the road forks, to the right is Nutters Lane – how we used to laugh about that. To the left is Catcher Lane which will take me to Grandad, and that’s when the changes hit me.

First, it’s Hawthorn Gate. The wall of bushes, thick with red and orange berries, that come together over the lane and make a sort of arch, like a gate to walk through. It’s now nothing but tangled, leafless branches, all overgrown and blocking out the light.

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