Appleby Farm (16 page)

Mum jumped out of her seat, rattling her cup and saucer as she placed it on the tray and excused herself.

I felt drained all of a sudden. I’d failed in my mission and now all I wanted to do was get back to the farm, crawl into my ‘Princess and the Pea’ bed and sleep. Maybe tomorrow I’d come up with some other cunning plan to turn Appleby Farm into a gold mine. But this one had failed dismally. I wanted to go home. To my proper home.

I set my cup down slowly and deliberately, and wearily got to my feet.

I met my dad’s critical gaze and we stared at each other for a few seconds. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so dejected in my life. Finally he sighed.

‘I’ve lived all over the world, Freya, but Appleby Farm takes some beating, so I do understand why you want to come to your aunt and uncle’s rescue. Your intentions are admirable, and I can’t say I’m not impressed. But I really can’t invest in farming. I might as well set fire to a pile of notes.’

‘That’s not true!’ I gasped.

He shook his head. ‘Arthur is an old man. He’s ten years older than me and he should seriously think of retiring. Focus on his health, not on the endless problems that farming brings.’

I exhaled sadly. It was always about the money with Dad. Where was his compassion?

‘Dad, I’m not asking for investment. This is family. Your brother needs your help. I need your help. If I can only get Appleby Farm into profit, then who knows, maybe next year—’

‘Next year,’ Dad interrupted, getting to his feet, ‘there’ll be another crisis, and another. I don’t want to see you get sucked into farming.’

He held out his hands, expecting me to hold them. But I turned to the door so that he didn’t see my tears.

‘Then don’t watch,’ I said and stormed out of the door.

I was halfway down the stairs when I heard Mum shouting. ‘Freya, Freya, wait!’

She had left the room quickly enough when the going had got a bit tough, I noticed. I rubbed my tears away with my sleeve while I waited in the stairwell for her to catch up.

‘You’re leaving already?’ she gasped, pressing a hand to her bosom. ‘Gosh, I’m so unfit.’

I nodded. ‘I don’t think there’s anything left to say.’

‘Oh, Freya, there’s plenty to say.’

Her face drooped and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. I wanted to reach out and hug her, but I couldn’t. I wanted to ask why I could be so loving to everyone else in my life and yet I struggled even to touch my own mother.

She looked at me and her gaze seemed to carry a message that I couldn’t read. I stared back and held my breath, hoping that she had the answers to at least some of my questions.

Finally she nodded and held out her hand to me. I looked down and saw a wad of notes and a small padded envelope. ‘Some money for a taxi,’ she whispered.

Money. Her answer to everything. I watched her turn away and jog back up the stairs.

I sighed, a great shuddering breath.

Well, that went well.

Back out on the Rue de Rivoli there were more people milling about and quite a bit of traffic. Taxis were few and far between, though, and it took me some time to flag one down.

I instructed the driver to take me to Charles de Gaulle airport and turned my attention to the little envelope. It had my name written in Mum’s graceful writing on the front. I squeezed it: a bit lumpy and not very thick. Not stuffed with twenty-five grand, then.

I slid my finger under the flap. Out fell a note and a familiar item that I hadn’t set eyes on in years. It was a keyring with a tiny little book attached to it. The rubbery cover had the words ‘The World According to Freya’ embossed on the front.

I laughed softly to myself, intrigued. I remembered the keyring really clearly; it had been one of my prize possessions for years.

The letter was written on an ordinary sheet of paper, torn from a notepad as if done in haste, which, judging by the way Mum had left the living room so suddenly, it probably was.

Even before I got to the end of the first line my eyes were blurred with tears and my throat was throbbing. Everything I thought I knew about her shifted.

I tore my eyes away from the letter, rubbed the tears from my cheeks and lifted the plastic cover of the keyring to reveal several tiny pages. I read the words on the front page.

Freya
You are a natural leader, headstrong and stubborn, efficient and determined. You have a wealth of creative ideas, you are proud and need to feel appreciated.

My skin tingled with goosebumps. Was that how she saw me? I’d had no idea. I was just Freya, the girl with no life plan, no career. I closed my fingers around the keyring and turned back to Mum’s letter.

She was proud of me? I’d never known any of this; I’d no idea that she felt this way. Tears streamed down my face and I lunged forward and banged on the glass screen separating me from the taxi driver.

‘Monsieur, turn around! Rue de Rivoli,
s’il vous plait
!’

Five minutes later I was back outside the
Honoré Appartements
, handing a twenty-euro note to a bemused taxi driver, not least because the fare had only cost eight euros. I was still trying to persuade him with my limited vocabulary to keep the change, when the glass door to the apartments swung open. A familiar elegant woman with glossy hair, wearing a camel-coloured trench coat stepped out into the street and strode away purposefully.

‘
Zut alors, au revoir!
’ I cried, not sure what else I could say to get him to unlock the door. Finally, the door-release light came on and I leaped out of the car.

‘Mum!’

She stopped in her tracks and turned towards me. Seconds later we were in each other’s arms. This time our hug was real. She held on to me so tightly that I couldn’t breathe and I cried big fat tears and left mascara tracks on the lapels of her smart coat. But I don’t think either of us minded. Because for the first time in nearly twenty years we had shown each other what was really in our hearts.

‘I can’t believe you came back.’ She pressed a hand over her mouth, her eyes glistening with tears.

‘I read your note, I …’ I swallowed. My heart was racing and suddenly I wanted to talk and to listen and to really get to know my mum. ‘It was so beautiful. I had to come back. I wanted to hear more.’ I shrugged self-consciously and we both smiled.

‘Let’s go into the park,’ said Mum, tucking her hand through my arm.

We headed for Café Renard, just off the Allée Centrale within the Jardin des Tuileries, and chose a table underneath the red awning, surrounded by sycamore trees. My head was in a whirl. I was arm in arm with my mum – something I wasn’t sure we’d done for twenty years – the sun was shining and I was in Paris. Even the air smelled French: an exciting mix of fresh coffee, strong cigarettes and delicious pastries. Even though I was dying to have the proper talk that Mum had mentioned in her letter, for the moment I was happy just to soak everything in.

A rather aloof French waiter presented us with huge cappuccinos and for a few moments we sat quietly, simply watching the world go by, both of us content in each other’s presence for the first time I could remember in so long.

I watched a young couple with a pram, arms entwined around each other’s waist, both unable to drag their eyes away from their baby, and my heart twisted as an image of the unused cot at the farmhouse flashed into my head.

‘Auntie Sue took me up to the nursery at Appleby Farm,’ I began, peering over the rim of my cup. ‘It must have been heartbreaking for them not to have children if that was what they wanted.’

Mum sipped her cappuccino and pressed a napkin to her lips. ‘She lost the babies very late on in the pregnancy each time, I think. Before your father and I even got married. But in those days you just got on with it. Such a shame. In some ways I think it made them stronger; they’ve always been such a loving couple.’

My face softened. ‘And they spoilt me rotten!’

Our eyes met and Mum placed her cup down gently in its saucer.

‘You were happy with them, weren’t you?’

It was a question, but at the same time it wasn’t. She was justifying her actions and as much as I was enjoying this new intimacy, I needed to get to the truth.

‘Yes, Mum, I was eventually. But I’d been happy with you before you sent me away.’

She winced and gave her head a tiny shake as if she wasn’t sure where to begin.

‘When you were seven several things happened. Your father was offered a new post in Kuala Lumpur. It was a fabulous opportunity for him but when we arrived we found out that the nearest school to the house was fifteen miles away. And on top of that, it didn’t have the best reputation.’

I remembered that house. It had been a sprawling, single-storey thing, surrounded by masses of tall trees with rubbery leaves. The maid had spotted a huge snake slithering across the road once, screamed her head off and the gardener had leaped out and sliced through its body with a machete.

My pulse raced and I stared down at the dusty ground. ‘Closer than England, though.’

‘True.’ Mum nodded. She reached for my hand and squeezed it. ‘Your father was very focused on his career; he’s never been what you might call a “people person”.’

We exchanged knowing glances at that. Understatement of the year!

‘But back then,’ she continued, ‘he was even more single-minded. If it wasn’t about making money, Dad wasn’t interested. And I had my role, too: holding the best dinner parties, making connections with the managers’ wives, organizing our social calendar to ensure we were seen in the right places. Status became everything.’

‘And there was no room in this social whirl for a little girl?’ I asked, working really hard to keep the resentment out of my voice.

She sighed and patted my hand. ‘Of course there was, but I already felt that I’d failed your brother …’

Mum began to explain how Julian had been overlooked by his father, the man he idolized, until he finally unlocked the key to gaining Dad’s attention: money. My brother had started to become more and more interested in making a profit, even asking Dad to invest his pocket money in the stock market so that he could have his own little share portfolio.

‘By the time Julian came back from university that summer, aged twenty-one, he’d turned into a younger and even more extreme version of your father. Only interested in what he could get out of others, judging people’s value by how much they were worth in monetary terms. I blame myself, of course, and your father. We were caught up with the lifestyle and it rubbed off on him. He was obsessed with status and possessions, and he treated our staff so badly that our maid left. I was at my wits’ end. Our social circle revolved around the bank, we mixed with wealthy, money-orientated people. I felt as if it was inevitable that you would turn out the same way.’

I shook my head. ‘But I’ve never been like that. I mean, look at me …’ I plucked at my skinny jeans and T-shirt. ‘Hardly the look for someone besotted with finery, is it?’

Her lips twitched at that. ‘You’re beautiful, darling, and that smile is worth a million dollars, believe me. Sue and Arthur have very little and yet they radiate happiness, and that was the sort of environment I wanted for you. When I suggested to your father that we send you to boarding school in England and ask your aunt and uncle to look after you in the holidays, I half expected him to say no. But Kuala Lumpur wasn’t the safest of places back then and we both agreed you would be better off in their care. On the day Julian accompanied you to Heathrow on that flight, my heart broke into a million tiny pieces. From that day on I felt like I’d lost my little girl for good.’

I tried to lift my cup but my hands were trembling. I remembered that day so clearly: I had been terrified at the airport and convinced that I must have done something terrible to warrant being sent away from my mum.

‘Why did you never tell me any of this?’ I asked shakily.

Her eyes met mine. ‘Because I’ve been a terrible mother. I made very selfish choices. Because I felt guilty and sad. I still do.’

‘Oh, Mum.’

I leaned forward and hugged her, inhaling her delicate scent of fresh laundry, shampoo and vanilla.