Once Upon A Winter (36 page)

Nell glanced around the table at the animated, chattering company. At least no one seemed to expect her to be scintillating and talkative. They were mostly letting her get on with pushing her food around her plate, sipping her apple juice, and generally lurking rather than joining in.

She was convinced she was coming down with Joshua’s stomach bug now, and felt g
uilty at exposing everyone to her germs. Her tummy was cramping low down, and while it was terrible timing, she was near enough to the toilets if the need seized her.

At least Emma and Gareth seemed much more content and at ease together than they had of late. They were celebrating their own good news tonight, too. Gareth had been contracted to work with
Huw’s son-in-law. His skills with wood, much like Silas’s, had come in useful in completing the kitchen at the Gingerbread House. He had risen to the challenge, at Emma’s suggestion, and impressed everyone to such an extent, Huw had persuaded Pete to take him on. It was a risk, Emma had said. A leap in the dark. But the company had a long-standing, well-earned reputation, and never seemed short of work.

Nell co
uldn’t begrudge her sister one ounce of joy. There was so little of it to go around at times. And Daniel, too. Although Nell wouldn’t go as far as to call his ‘joy’. More ‘hope’. Hope in a future where he could reach out to another group of children, who might actually need him more than any others he had yet encountered. It wouldn’t be easy, he was the first to admit that; but he was champing at the bit for it.

Nell made an effort to perk up as Meryl and Calista carried out a huge, blackboard-themed birthday cake from the kitchen.
Freya, Joshua, Ivy and Rose whooped and cheered at the sight of thirty-six lit candles.

Beside her at the long table, Daniel balked. ‘I need
a fire extinguisher for all those. Have you got one handy, Calista?’

Nell forced herself to smile, but it died on her lips at the sight of a woman peering in through the window from the darkness outside. Automatically, Nell dug Daniel in the ribs.

He followed her gaze. ‘Crap,’ he muttered under his breath. He rose falteringly to his feet and rounded the table.

A hush fell on the assembled company.

Lauren Guthrie pushed open the café door and stalked in. Her long, black leather coat flapped, and her hair flicked like blades around her shoulders as she tossed her head.

‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ she said darkly. ‘Sorry if I’m late. Thanks for the invitation, Danny
. . .
Oh
’ - there was a pointed pause - ‘I was forgetting. I didn’t get one.’

‘Lauren,’ began Daniel, ‘I don’t think -’

‘No. You never do. You never bloody think of me.’

The woman had been drinking, and possibly driving, realised Nell. It was obvious from the way she was speaking, and the way she swayed precariously in her heels, that she wasn’t entirely sober.

Instinctively, Nell rose to her feet, too, and came round the table. She stood beside Daniel. ‘Lauren, I don’t think this is the time or the place -’

‘You what?’ Lauren turned to glare at her. ‘
You
don’t think? What gives you the bloody right to think anything when it comes to me or Daniel?’

Nell hesitated. ‘That’s true,’ she said at last, filling the awkward silence. ‘I don’t have any rights to him, except as a friend. And right now, you’re spoiling his birthday celebration. So, as his friend, I’m asking you to leave.’

‘Oh, la-de-da, listen to you!’ scoffed Lauren. ‘He shouldn’t have slapped it across the social networks then. Rubbing my face in it. “Party at Calista’s.” Blah, blah, blah.’

Daniel dragged a hand across his face and groaned. ‘I made one small status update.
One
. I thought you were in Chester, Lauren. We’ve sold the house. Why are you back here tonight? There’s nothing for you in Harreloe any more.’

‘Nothing?’ she spat. ‘Or no one?’

‘Lauren,’ said Nell, stepping closer, ‘there are children here. You’re making a scene. I’m asking you to leave.’

Before she knew it, Lauren had shoved her backwards. Nell teetered. She might have gone over, if it hadn’t been for Gareth jumping up and steadying her.

The cramps in her belly were growing worse. A dizzy sensation swept over her for a few seconds. Gareth held on to her, as Emma leaped to her feet, too.

‘Are y
ou all right, Nell? You’ve gone grey . . .’

‘Sit her down,’ said Calista anxiously, sweeping forward, in giant butterfly mode
again.

‘I’m fine,’ said Nell, refusing to be fussed over. ‘I don’t need to sit.’

‘There was no call for that.’ Daniel was scowling at his ex-wife. ‘Don’t do this. Not here. There’s no point. It’s not going to fix anything. I’m not going to change my mind about us. If anything, you’re making me certain there’s no going back. You’ve got issues, but I can’t help you any more. I’ve tried. But we’re not healthy together, Lauren. We don’t work.’

Lauren didn’t seem to be taking any of it in, realised Nell. Daniel might as well have been arguing with thin air.

‘But, Danny,’ she said beseechingly, ‘it was so lovely the other week . . .’

‘It was a mistake! I told you at the time. It should never have happened.’

‘But it did,’ said Lauren, with renewed harshness. ‘And you men, you’re all the same. Only after me for what you can get. You take it and then you sod off. All of you.’

‘All?’ said Nell perversely. ‘Even Silas?’

Lauren regarded her with blazing eyes for a moment. ‘Ooo, Mrs Smug. Just because your bloke was different. Well I don’t see him here now. Buggered off again, I heard, and I don’t blame him -’

‘Right.’ Emma stepped forward, grabbing Lauren’s arm and steering her towards the door. ‘I’ve had enough of you. Nothing gives you the right to come in here, mouthing off like this.’

Lauren shook her off. ‘And as for you, Mrs Bloody Bakewell Tart,’ she told Emma, poking her in the chest, ‘
you’ve
got no reason to be smug. It’s not as if your husband can resist dipping his wick in where it doesn’t belong.’

There was silence for a moment, as everyone seemed to digest this. Then Gareth stepped forward. For such a tall, broad man, Nell had never known him to look so pathetic, as if a feather might knock him over.

‘Lauren,’ he hissed. ‘
Don’t
.’

‘Don’t want?’ said Emma. Her voice sounded as if she were being strangled.

Nell turned helplessly to Daniel, who looked as taken aback as Emma. She turned to the table where Freya, Joshua, Rose and Ivy were all still gawping at the unfolding scene.

‘Meryl,’ called Calista sharply, ‘could you take the children upstairs for a few
minutes, please? And, Nell, I don’t think you need to hear this, either. You’re not well. Why don’t you go with them?’

The children p
rotested at being chivvied out.

Nell didn’t budge.
However nauseous she was beginning to feel, and however much she just wanted to crumple up in a chair, she wasn’t prepared to be treated like an invalid. ‘I’m fine,’ she told Calista.

‘You’re obviously not,’ frowned the olde
r woman.

‘It’s just a stomach bug. Joshua had it last week.’

Calista wet her lips. ‘Nell, I think it’s more than -’

‘What’s going on?’ Emma cut in. She was looking from Lauren to Gareth. ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’

‘It only happened a couple of times,’ Gareth was suddenly babbling. ‘It didn’t mean anything. I don’t know what came over me. Emma, you’ve got to believe me . . .’

‘That’s right, Gareth love,’ scoffed Lauren, ‘keep the clichés rolling.’

‘When?’ Daniel was demanding. ‘When did this happen, Lauren?’

‘When . . . ?’ she repeated, sounding as if she had every intention of playing this out all night.

‘Over a year ago, I think,’ said Nell, in an attempt not to prolong the torture. ‘Lauren confided in Silas about it. Apparently she felt guilty. It’s probably why she thought she had to get out of the marriage. She pressed the self-destruct button on it, and before she knew it, it was too late.’

Emma wheeled round on her. Nell felt hemmed in. The walls of the café seemed to be folding in on her.

‘Nell - you knew?’ gasped Emma. ‘You knew about this?’

Nell shook her head weakly. ‘I didn’t know it was Gareth. Honestly. Lauren didn’t tell Silas who it was with.’

‘But you knew she’d had an affair?’ Daniel’s face was ashen as he turned to confront her, too.

Nell opened and closed her mouth. Why was she suddenly the guilty party when Lauren was still here in the room? And why was the floor spinning? Someone clutched her as she sank back, and a chair was abruptly under her, breaking her descent. She wrapped her arms around her waist as she doubled over, the pain in her belly
excruciating now.

Calista was barking orders. ‘Give her some air . . . Emma, you might want to ring the doctor . . .’

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Daniel was demanding.

Nell could feel a hot dampness between her legs. She brushed a hand beneath the hem of her dress. When she pulled it away, her fingertips were
wet and red.

‘Oh my God,’ she heard her sister mutter. ‘I think it’s too late for just a home visit . . . We need to get her to a hospital . . . Gareth -’

‘I can take the Land Rover,’ said Daniel, sounding anxious but decisive. ‘You can come with me. Em - what’s happening? What’s wrong with her?’

‘I’ll have to drive, Dan,’ said Emma.
‘I wasn’t drinking. I went to check on Nana Gwen half-an-hour ago, remember? You’d be over the limit.’

‘OK.’ He nodded acquiescingly. ‘OK.
’

‘Nell?’ Emma held her face between her hands, looking her in the eye. ‘Nell, how far along are you?’

‘Far along?’ Nell didn’t understand.

Emma appealed to Daniel. ‘Do you know? Can you do the maths?’

‘What?’ Daniel sounded perplexed. ‘I don’t -’

‘He’s got nothing to do with it,’ Calista interrupted. ‘It’s Silas’s. Nell can’t be that far along. It must have happened just before he left. I don’t think it had dawned on her yet . . .’

‘Her periods have always been all over the place,’ murmured Emma, perturbed.

Some dim glimmer of comprehension settled over Nell. She stared at the blood on her hand, before someone grabbed a napkin and tried to smear it away. ‘It hurts,’ she moaned.

‘It might be ectopic.’ Emma sounded frightened. ‘I had a scare when I was carrying Rose . . . We need to get her to a hospital quickly . . .’

Nell looked up at everyone woozily. Their faces were swimming in and out of focus. ‘I can’t be. I just can’t,’ she told them, prattling like a small child. ‘It isn’t possible. You’ve got to understand. It
isn’t
. Silas can’t. Not any more. Not after Joshua and Freya. But Freya only because she was a twin. I was lucky to have her at all . . . Calista,’ she appealed to the giant aquamarine butterfly crouched at her side, ‘Calista, tell them. Tell them I can’t be.’

For some reason, tears were sliding like raindrops down the butterfly’s cheeks. ‘Oh, cariad . . . you can be. It’s possible. It was the perfect sign that things had changed . . . The perfect ending . . .’

Nell shut her eyes. The darkness was coming, sweeping in from all sides.

She heard the clattering of footsteps, and then children’s voices calling out, ‘Mum?
Mum
. . .’

The darkness was closing in fast.

‘Silas needs to know,’ she whispered. ‘Tell Silas . . .’

‘
Sshhh.’ Calista was smoothing back her hair. ‘Don’t fret about that now. You need to think about yourself, cariad. And Freya and Joshua. You need to get well again, for them.’

She felt herself scooped up by
strong, firm arms. ‘It’s OK, Nell,’ said Daniel, close to her ear. ‘It’ll be OK.’

‘Silas,’ she said
. ‘He needs to know. Daniel . . . promise me -’

‘I promise,’ he muttered
back.

Mollified by that,
when the darkness fell, Nell gave into it.

In the light of the small, crooked lamp, Abe Golding stared down at the man lying motionless on the bed. Abe had been sitting in this armchair all day, staring and waiting and gradually sinking further into despair.

He had sat like this once at his wife’s bedside in the hospice. Her body, wracked with pain, had wasted away over several weeks until the medication had possibly done more than ease her agony . . . it had put her fragile, exhausted heart to sleep. Abe took comfort from seeing it like that, from thinking it could have been that simple and peaceful.

So many times up to that point, Abe had thought of increasing the dose, of begging for help, of severing her from her misery. But Rebecca had clung to life the way she had always clung to him, loyally, steadfastly, hating to leave him on his own when he so obviously needed her. Serving out whatever sentence she felt she needed to for her sins while there was still breath in her body.

There was still breath in the body lying on the bed in the spare room of the old fisherman’s cottage. Th
e skin was pale and tight over the man’s cheekbones, but there was still a detectable heartbeat.

It was the spirit, the essence of the man, that Abe wondered at, and mourned over. The body might be refusing to die, refusing to acknowledge that this was how Silas had chosen it to be, but the soul was slipping into some other plane, and Abe could not sense the fullness of Silas any more. Not quite an empty shell, but all too close to it.

Where would he go? Abe wondered. This man who had been so alive once. So real. Was he simply fading into inexistence? A whisper on the wind. Reassigned to the world of myth and legend, of heroes and outlaws. The realm of the written and spoken word.

Abe wondered, but had no idea. This was not a death like any other. Not like his mother’s, or Rebecca’s. Could something real become something
un
real again? Could it work both ways?

From somewhere in the depths of the house, Abe could hear ringing. He lifted his head and frowned. A telephone? A glance at the small clock on the bedside table confirmed the lateness of the hour. But it was a persistent sound. Stiffly, Abe rose from
the chair and went to his own room. His phone was always lying on top of the chest of drawers, rarely used. It stopped ringing as he entered, but before he could reach it to check who had called, it started up again.

Since selling up and retiring to the south coast, Abe had changed his number, sending out his new contact details to only a select few. He had no desire for business calls or endless interruptions any more.

A name flashed blue-white across the dark screen of his phone.

‘
Ellena
’.

Abe felt his eyes widen and his heart race.

He had promised he would not make contact with Silas’s family. After weeks of hearing how Ellena might be put at risk, he had begun to believe it might not simply be the wild aberration of a desolate man. That, somehow, what Silas feared was true.

Abe had made no contact whatsoever; had not sought
Ellena’s help or guidance.

But now . . . Now she was calling
him
.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Abe accepted the call. His hand shook. ‘Hello?
Ellena?’

‘Abe?’ cried a young voice. ‘Abe, is that you?’

‘Joshua?’

‘Yes,’ said the child. ‘It’s me. Us. Freya’s here, too. I’ll put us on speaker . . . Hang on a minute. It’s Mum’s phone, I’m not sure how it works . . . Wait.’

‘Yes, yes fine, I’ll wait -’

‘Hello?’ came the girl’s voice, shrill and nervous. ‘Can you hear us all right, Abe?’

‘I can hear you, children. What’s wrong? Why are you calling so late?’

‘Mum’s not well. She’s in the hospital,’ said Freya. ‘I brought her bag home from the party, after Meryl drove us here with Calista. Her phone was still in the bag. I found your number in the contacts.’

Abe’s hand shook even more. Glancing across the landing, he made his decision swiftly. He put his own phone on speaker and carried it back to the room across from his.

‘What’s wrong with your mother?’ he asked. ‘Has there been an accident?’

‘No. Aunt Em rung a while ago from the hospital, and Mum’s going to be OK. But she’s very anaemic at the moment,’ said Freya.

‘That means her blood isn’t very strong,’ Joshua interjected. ‘There isn’t enough iron in it.’

‘And her blood pressure’s too low,’ Freya went on. ‘She passed out.’

‘I think her heart isn’t pumping quickly enough,’ said the boy. ‘Aunt
Em was telling Calista all this, but we overheard. Calista kept repeating stuff, as if she wasn’t understanding it first time round.’

Abe stared down at Silas. There was no movement from the man on the bed.
Can you hear this?
he wondered in anguish.
Wherever you are, can you hear your children?

‘She was asking for Dad,’ said Freya. ‘But no one knows where he is. Nana Gwen started going through the treasure box, she said there might be some clue, something we’d missed . . .’

‘Then I spotted it,’ said Joshua excitedly. ‘The picture of that little house on the end of a row of houses. There was a woman with a small boy, and a seagull out in the road in front. And I suddenly remembered where I’d seen that photo
before
, or one really like it. Except there was just the woman in it, on her own. And no seagull. But it was the same house, I’m sure. It was when we used to go to yours for tea sometimes. You had the picture framed on a shelf. You told me once the woman in it was your mother.’

‘Yes . . .’ Abe said faintly. ‘Your father took those pictures . . . Children, how much do you know about him? About who he really is?’

‘We know everything,’ said Freya. ‘And so does Mum. We all want him to come home, except we don’t know where he is. Do
you
know, Abe? Can you help us?’

‘I . . .’ Abe narrowed his eyes. Had he imagined it? Had Silas’s hand just twitched? Or was it merely wishful thinking? ‘You said your mother passed out?’ Abe went on loudly. ‘Was she alone? Were you with her? How long will she be in hospital?’

‘We were at Daniel’s birthday party at Calista’s. Didn’t I already say that?’ Freya was sounding impatient.

‘It was like the christening part in
Sleeping Beauty
,’ said Joshua. ‘This bad fairy in black came in, and started complaining she hadn’t been invited. It turned out she was Daniel’s old wife, the one he’d just divorced. It was as if she put some spell on Mum. Putting her to sleep, like the bad fairy. Except a policeman came along and took her away, because she tried to drive her car, and she’d been drinking wine or something.’

‘Aurora didn’t fall asleep until she pricked her finger on the spindle,’ said Freya
tetchily. ‘It’s been ages since you heard the story or watched the film.’

‘Well, I’m not a girl,’ said Joshua. ‘I don’t watch the same films as you, with the princesses and stuff.’

‘I used to,’ said Freya. ‘I’m too old for those now.’

‘Children,’ said Abe sharply, summoning back their attention. They seemed to have forgotten they were on the phone to him and why they were calling. ‘Your mother -’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Joshua. ‘They don’t know yet if the baby’s going to be OK. They were going to run tests.’

‘Baby?’ echoed Abe.

‘Calista told us about it,’ said Freya. ‘I don’t think Aunt Em would have wanted her to, but she did. She doesn’t treat us like kids. She said she guessed Mum was carrying a baby when she saw her tonight, a bit like she knew about Josh and me being different, like Dad. It can only be the size of a lentil, she said. If it’s still alive, and Mum hasn’t lost it.’ Freya’s strong voice seemed to falter. ‘There was a lot of blood,’ she added pensively. ‘But I would have liked a little sister . . . Boys can be too much hard work.’

‘No, we’re not,’ sniffed Joshua.

‘Mum wanted Dad to know,’ Freya continued, sounding as if she was running out of steam; as if the night was catching up with her. ‘But we don’t know how to get hold of him to tell him.’

Abe watched, holding his breath. A hand rose from the bed, as if some invisible puppeteer were lifting it.

‘Calista said the baby was another sign that things had changed,’ explained the girl on the phone. ‘That the old rules didn’t count any more. She said that Dad needed to know that, whether the baby lived or not.’ Freya’s voice cracked, and there was a scuffling sound, as the phone was possibly passed from one hand to another.

‘Freya’s crying,’ said Joshua. ‘It’s sad that babies have to die even when they’re the size of lentils.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Abe hoarsely, his heart swelling with grief. Rebecca had lost three early on, suffering more and more with each, both physically and mentally, before the doctors had advised her not to try again. ‘Be thankful, children, that your mother is young and strong.’

‘She’d be stronger if Dad was here with her,’ said Joshua. ‘She might not want to get
better after this. She hasn’t been well since he left.’

Abe moved closer to Silas, his gaze fixed on him, fear colliding with expectation. The hand of the man on the bed reached up tremulously to grip his arm.

‘Old friend, your family need you,’ said Abe, begging Silas to listen. ‘Can you hear how much they need you . . . ?’

With a stir of his head on the pillow, Silas opened his eyes.