Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

‘And in the meantime you can mother-hen the girls to your heart’s content.’

We are alerted by a commotion among the young, who have decided to make a move. The hugging happens all over again, Milo and Fergus come to hug Eve, looming over her in their lanky adolescent way, and then they lope off, holdalls hiked over their shoulders.

On the way to the car park, I manage a quick word with Freda.

‘Are you all right?’ I ask.

‘Except for Mum,’ she says. ‘She’s driving me nuts.’

‘She had a bad shock.’

‘So did I. So did Grace and Ruby. So did you. But we’re over it.’

‘I think it’s worse worrying about someone you love.’

‘Well she doesn’t act as though she loves me. I think she’d like to put one of those ankle tags on me.’

I laugh.

‘And she hates you,’ she says.

‘I’m afraid she does.’

‘And I’m beginning to hate her.’

‘Well don’t, because she loves you more than anything in the world. That’s why she’s so angry.’

‘She’s being ridiculous.’

‘Then you’re going to have to be the grown-up, aren’t you? Try to be understanding. Being a mother is a rotten job. No-one gets it right even half the time.’

Chapter Twenty-One IF YOU PARDON WE WILL MEND

December

I feel I have to apologise for this epilogue because it has nothing to offer in the way of surprises or revelations, but I feel that I left a lot of loose ends in my telling of this story and, like Puck, I need to restore amends. So here is what I know now, in case you are asking yourself what happens next.

Ellie’s malaise does not abate. Call it PTS if you like, or vendetta, or punishment for damage, real or imagined, I inflicted on her in her childhood. Whatever it is, I can’t budge it. I have reasoned, I have grovelled, I have mea culpaed, and now I am just pissed off. And I am inclined to blame the Brexit war – excessive overreaction, hysterical rhetoric, entrenched attitude, emotion trumping reason, refusal to compromise – who can blame Ellie for lapsing into unreason when all about her are losing their heads. And I suspect Annie of fanning the embers of resentment, but Ben, I know, has tried to make peace, and Freda, I suspect, has sulked and slammed doors a lot, but the bottom line is that Freda and I have not seen each other since early August. The proposed week in London at the end of the school holiday didn’t happen: they stayed on in Italy and then Ellie claimed that they had too much to do getting ready for the start of term, though this seemed to boil down to buying a new school skirt and a few files. Then at half-term they went off to a Center Parcs (why is it spelt like that?) for a week, though they have never done anything of that kind before, and Freda, who can’t at least be prevented from communicating with me by phone, sent me a text which read:

‘Trapped with my family in the middle of a forest in the rain. Imprisonment without trial. What happened to my human rights?’

In early November Ellie phoned me, which I took as a good sign until she announced that they were going to Italy for Christmas, so the family Christmas would not be en famille with me. I said that was perfectly fine as David and I had been thinking of going away somewhere for the festive season, then put down the phone and threw some plates at the kitchen wall. Over the next few weeks I was well over the tops of my wellies in the Slough of Despond, until Eve rang. She listened patiently when her routine, ‘How are you?’ elicited a torrent of misery and fury, and said, ‘I think I have a plan.’

Susan Buxton, out of hospital and recovering nicely, though still with some paralysis down one side, had invited Freda to come up to stay after Christmas. After their shared ordeal, her two girls had been in regular contact with Freda and they were dying to see each other. Appealed to, Ellie had no objection except that she wasn’t going to let Freda travel from Kent to Cumbria on her own. Eve had been enlisted to talk to Ellie – to suggest that if she or Ben escorted Freda to London and put her on the Penrith train no harm could come to her. Her arguments failed to persuade, but having learnt in passing that I was being excluded from the family Christmas, she proposed a Plan B. How would I like to come up and spend a few days with her after Christmas? And then how could Ellie refuse to let me travel on the train with Freda? I embraced the idea, of course, but felt certain that Ellie would refuse to allow me to pollute any railway carriage in which Freda travelled. I was not hopeful, heard nothing from Eve and was up to my thighs in Despond by the time she eventually called back.

‘We’ve done it,’ she said. ‘I had to get the combined forces of Ben for sweet reason, Susan for the sympathy card, and Laura for robust common sense, but she finally agreed. Ellie will bring Freda to Euston and meet you there, and the reverse on the way home. Susan had to assure Ellie that Freda will be spending all her time with them while she’s up here, and barely get a glimpse of you, but at least you’ll get two long train journeys with her – and I shall like having you here too.’

‘And I shall like it. Eve, you are a love. Thank you. I think I may be going to cry.’

‘Not you,’ she said. ‘Balls of steel, you.’

*

So here I am. David and I didn’t go away but we did spend Christmas Day together and managed not to argue even about television programmes. I was determined to be able to say defiantly that