A Taste of Home by Heidi Swain (the beginning after the end read novel TXT) 📕

‘And I want to keep it that way,’ I said, sounding fiercer than I perhaps intended to.

‘That’s your call,’ she nodded. ‘I just want to talk to you for a few minutes.’

‘And then you’ll drive me to Wynbridge?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It is.’

‘All right then. We’ll have some lunch and a chat and then I’ll take you to town.’

Back at the farm, Eliot had set out more mugs, refreshed the pot and made a plateful of chunky cheese and ham sandwiches.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said to me while glaring at his mum the second we walked back into the kitchen. ‘It just sort of…’

‘Slipped out?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, running a hand through his already mussed up hair.

‘It’s okay,’ I shrugged. ‘No harm done, I suppose.’

‘What with that and pointing out that you don’t look like a Brown,’ he said, evidently still feeling bad, ‘you must have a pretty low opinion of me, right now.’

‘What on earth made you say that?’ Louise tutted at him.

Eliot and I looked at each other and exchanged a smile. Surely it was more than obvious?

‘I think it was something to do with the fact that I look more Italian than East Anglian,’ I told Louise, pulling my thick, dark ponytail over my shoulder.

‘But your father was Italian,’ she said, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

This inability to keep quiet was catching. Everyone seemed to have a dose.

‘You knew Jennifer was pregnant when she ran off?’ Eliot glowered.

Louise pulled out a chair and sat down heavily on it.

‘Yes,’ she said, as her face and neck flushed scarlet. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Why didn’t you tell Bill?’

‘And further add to his misery?’ Louise shot back without hesitation. ‘Not likely.’

I joined her at the table wondering what else she knew that my grandfather and I didn’t.

‘Was this letter you received from Mum a few weeks ago a one-off?’ I asked her. ‘Or had she been in touch before?’

‘And she wrote to you?’ Eliot flared again.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Louise said, jerking her head towards the door which led to the room where my grandfather was sleeping. Eliot rushed to close it. ‘Apart from the brief note she left when she ran away, it was a one-off,’ she then said to me. ‘And it was a shock to get it, I can tell you.’

Given what it no doubt said, I’m sure it was. ‘I can imagine,’ I breathed, feeling another rush of grief.

Eliot stopped in his tracks, but this time didn’t say anything.

‘She told me she had cancer and that she hadn’t long to live,’ Louise softly said. ‘She also said that she’d left you a letter about this place, that she felt ashamed for not telling you about it before and that you might make up your mind to come here when you read it after…’

She pulled a tissue out from her sleeve and wiped her eyes.

‘So, your being here,’ she asked between sobs, ‘means she’s gone, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, as tears slid down my face. ‘She’s gone.’

Eliot passed me a box of tissues from the dresser.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise.’

‘I didn’t tell you,’ I told him, ‘because I didn’t want to burden you with knowing about that as well as me and not being able to say anything.’

‘You don’t have to explain,’ he kindly said.

‘And I didn’t tell you about the letter for the same reason,’ Louise told her son. ‘You’re so close to Bill, it wouldn’t have been fair. I thought it best to bide my time and see if Felicity turned up and then decide what to do.’

‘And here she is,’ Eliot smiled down at me. ‘I wish it was under different circumstances, but I’m glad you came.’

‘I’m not sure I am,’ I sniffed. ‘I don’t know what to do now.’

We all sat together and, over the tea and sandwiches, I told them about the colourful and often nomadic life Mum had lived. About the travelling and the adventures and how even though she’d been let down by my father, she’d found a refuge at the Rossis’ and established a base with them in Puglia.

‘We did come to the UK sometimes,’ I explained. ‘But never near here.’

‘You travelled with her?’ Eliot asked.

‘Not so much recently, but when I was growing up, she took me everywhere with her then.’

Eliot was agog.

‘She sounds amazing,’ he dreamily said.

‘She had her moments,’ I smiled, this time through happier tears.

‘But she never mentioned the farm or her father?’ Louise wanted to know. ‘Or the fact that she’d named you after her very own mother?’

‘Never.’

‘She might have been amazing, but that sounds like her too,’ Louise sniffed. ‘I don’t mean to speak ill, but even as a young woman, she had a tendency to live her life exactly how she wanted to.’

I couldn’t deny that she was right about that but given that it had been a life cut so short, I felt happy that Mum had pleased herself when it came to living it. Although not that she had left her father to endure a lifetime of worry about what had happened to her when she took off, of course.

‘And you never thought to ask about what her life was like before you were born?’ Eliot asked.

‘No,’ I flushed. ‘I didn’t. I know that was stupid now, but I never had any reason to give it a thought.’

‘It wasn’t stupid,’ said Louise, reaching for my hand. ‘You no doubt trusted her. Even though you weren’t consciously aware of it, deep down you probably thought that if there was anything worth knowing then she would have told you about it.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘You must have been very happy living with this family to think of them as your own,’ she added.

‘I was,’ I said. ‘I am.’

‘And besides, we all have our secrets, don’t we?’

‘Some more than others,’ Eliot remarked.

He was obviously still smarting over the fact that his mum had known my mum was pregnant when she disappeared and never said anything, but I could completely understand Louise’s