Eden's Garden (4 page)

‘I’ll think about it,’ she conceded. ‘I need to talk it over with Joe, and see if I can arrange things with work and college.’

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she felt her sisters relax.

‘Good for you,’ said Gwenan.

‘You’re such a star,’ murmured Nia.

‘There’s only so much I can do over the Internet,’ said Carys, sharply. ‘I’d still need to go back to Chester for meetings. Plus I can’t just completely abandon Joe, you know.’

‘We’ll make a rota,’ said Gwenan. ‘Nia and I will come and take over for a couple of days when you need it. That’s fair.’

Nia nodded vigorously. ‘Oh, yes of course. We’ll do all we can to help, Cari.’

Spots of rain had begun hurling themselves against the window, sending the last remaining families on the beach scurrying for shelter. Within minutes, an entire throng, complete with sandy feet and buckets and spades, made their way in through the café door with the exasperated nagging of parents and the loud shrieks of a small child deprived of the sea.

Gwenan finished her tea and began stacking the mugs neatly on the tray. ‘We’ll go back and tell Mam, then.’

‘She’ll be so pleased,’ smiled Nia.

‘Mmm,’ said Carys, wondering if it was still not too late to run away. Of course, Mam
would
be pleased. No, not just that: relieved. The fear would fade from the back of her eyes. She would protest that there was no need for any of her girls to do such a thing, she could manage very well and Carys was young and had a life to lead.

But the fear would have gone, all the same.

Bill split and duly paid, Carys followed her sisters outside into the car park. Salt brushed her lips. The air was cool, edged with the damp scents of grass and the sharpness of seafood. And in truth, thought Carys, suddenly, she was doing this for Mam, but maybe she was also doing it for herself.

‘The past is always with you, until you turn round and face it, and then move on again,’ her best friend Poppy, who had a philosophical streak, was fond of saying. In recent months, Carys had come to agree with her.

Poppy’s past was a troubled one, that had ended up in a children’s home and then foster care. Carys’ past was here, amongst the mountains rising up behind the shabby little seaside town. And in the smaller – and even shabbier –
time-passed-
by village in the hills, where every road and path led towards the rambling grounds of Plas Eden.

‘Ready?’ called Gwenan, pressing her key fob, sending her Volvo into a paroxysm of flashing lights and clicking locks.

Carys nodded, and hurried through the sun-streaked rain to join her sisters.

 ‘But I really don’t see why it has to be down to you,’ said Joe, just slightly plaintively, stacking the dishwasher in his usual methodical fashion.

Carys took a deep breath. ‘I can’t just abandon her. She’s my Mam.’

‘I thought you didn’t get on with her. You were always telling me how you couldn’t wait to get out of there, once your dad died.’

‘But she’s still my mother. Family, you know? Messy things. Don’t always go to plan. They’re very nice at the Home, and it’s lovely. But you can tell she hates it. She hates being dependent, and she hates having no control over her life. You should have seen her, Joe. She looked so scared. Not like Mam at all. At least if we can get her back home, she has a chance of being able to fight for her independence. Even if that means having carers coming in every day for the rest of her life, and us spending more time visiting her. Me and Gwenan and Nia, I mean,’ she added, as he looked up, his dark eyes wide with alarm.

‘Well, I still don’t see why you’ve ended up with it all.’ He straightened, pushing the dishwasher door shut and setting the cycle churning. ‘I don’t see why you let Gwenan and Nia get away with things like that. You really ought to stand up to them more.’

‘That’s all very well in theory. But the reality is that they both live miles away and they have children settled with school and friends, and exams coming up. So what am I supposed to do? Punish Mam?’

‘Surely there has to be somebody else. Some aunt, or something.’

Carys finished sorting the baskets of laundry and began feeding the washing machine with last week’s whites. ‘It’s not like that anymore,’ she replied, doing her best to keep the irritation out of her voice. ‘There aren’t just loads of old aunts stashed away looking for something to do. Not even in
Pont-ar-
Eden. Everybody works. Even pensioners, nowadays. Haven’t you been into B&Q lately?’

‘Then maybe she would be better off in a Home.’

She was tired. Her shoulders ached from days of tension and the strange bed of the B&B, followed by the drive back to Chester. She had a hundred and one things to do before work tomorrow morning, and her emotions were a rollercoaster, rendering her patience more than usually thin.

‘Is that what you’d do, if it was
your
mother?’ she snapped. He frowned at her, as if affronted by the suggestion. ‘Elaine isn’t that much younger than Mam,’ she added for good measure, feeling her temper dangerously close to getting out of hand. ‘And it could well be, one day.’

Except, of course, it wouldn’t. She saw his eyes slide from hers, as he turned to fill the kettle. Joe was a man. The one with the career. The one rising rapidly through the ranks of Morley and Westcott, on track to be partner before he was forty. Morley, Westcott and Young, Chartered Accountants. That was the future, written in stone.

It would be Joe’s sisters, Anna and Phyllis, mothers and career women both, who would step in, should anything happen to his parents. The assumption was there, unspoken.

So much for equality. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, stamp her feet, or burn any bra she could lay her hands on. You go through life thinking it’s all sorted. Equal opportunities. Equal status. Nothing to stand in your way. And, okay, you hear about the pay gap and the twenty hours or so the average full-time working woman spends on domestic chores, but that isn’t you. That’s not the way you live your life.

‘I thought we agreed…’ she began. His back was rigid as he turned the tap, shutting her out. Carys bit her lip. She could hear herself turning into some old nag going on endlessly about compromise and commitment. As if they hadn’t been through this before. As if they hadn’t worked this all out, once and for all, two years ago. Or so she’d believed.

Compromise and commitment. She would never have stayed with Joe if she hadn’t believed he’d seen her point of view. Joe always did what Joe wanted to do. She’d only understood this during the last few years, when – for her at least – spending every holiday rushing off to some
activity-packed
tour of India or Greece had finally began to pall. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to travel, just not all the time. She’d seen too many lost souls wandering from one exotic beach location to the next, in a rootless searching for some magical Nirvana that might be out there, somewhere.

She no longer wanted to work in a job that bored her senseless, desperately making up for the time lost inside the office with expensive meals and holidays. She needed a centre to her life. Something to build on for the future. She’d thought Joe had understood. A cold shiver snuck in through her tiredness. Had that, after all, been Joe agreeing with her simply to avoid a fight? Had he assumed, all this time, that it was just a phase, and that one day he could make her change her mind?

She pulled herself together. She was tired and stressed and not thinking straight. Hadn’t Joe proved enthusiastic about the idea of investing their money and their energies into escaping the rat race to a country cottage in Devon with a smallholding attached? He’d agreed that they would have a far better quality of life with a business of their own that they could run together.

It wasn’t as if she was asking him to give up his brilliant career. As long as she’d known him, Joe had been talking about setting up his own Accountancy Practice and – as he had agreed – where better than a small town within easy reach of the Devon countryside? Somewhere with lower costs than a big city and less competition. Plus sun, sea and surf, and a less frenetic pace of living. A kind of life where they might, after all, consider raising a family.

Far from driving them apart, the plan had pulled them back together again. She had financially supported them as Joe went through his final exams. Then he had taken over in his turn, enabling her to work part-time so that she could fulfil that dream of a horticultural course. Surely he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t meant it?

‘Coffee?’ said Joe, his back still turned.

‘Thanks,’ she returned, mechanically.

‘Or there’s some wine left in the fridge?’

She didn’t want to fight. And, above all, she didn’t want to fight with Joe. ‘Yes please,’ she whispered, finding herself struggling with tears.

‘Ah, come here.’ He turned round, gathering her into his arms. Cari snuffled ignominiously into his shoulder. ‘There’s no need to make a decision now. We can talk about it tomorrow.’

‘Joe…’

His lips brushed her hair gently. ‘Bath,’ he said. ‘With all those girly smelly things. And candles.’

‘I don’t want …’

He kissed her firmly on the mouth, silencing her protest. ‘There’s nothing we can’t discuss later.’ His eyes were soft on hers, his smile the boyish charm she could never quite resist, however cross he might make her. ‘Go on, off you go. Your waiter here will bring you a glass of the finest and then order the takeaway. What do you fancy: Indian or pizza?’

‘Pizza,’ said Carys, feeling herself relax and giving him a watery smile.

‘Excellent choice, Ms Evans. Good comfort food. Just what the doctor ordered. And I’m sure I can unearth a tub of Ben and Jerry’s in the freezer for afters…’

 

‘It’s a quite lot to ask of him,’ said Poppy, mildly, eying her friend with a thoughtful air.

Carys sighed. ‘Yes, I know. I’m sure the women at Tylers think I’m mad, even thinking of going off for a couple months like that without him, and they wouldn’t blame Joe if he just upped sticks and left me.’

They were sitting in the tiny conservatory that opened up into the neat rectangle of Poppy’s garden, and which was about the only baby-free space in the house. Unless you counted the eternal whirr of the washing machine stealing in from the kitchen, that is.

‘So,’ said Poppy, who never beat about the bush, not even in the throes of very new motherhood. ‘Just why do you want to do it?’

‘I don’t.’ Carys met the raised eyebrows of Poppy on bullshit alert. That’s what she loved about her friend. No getting away with anything with Poppy. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’ll sound silly.’

‘Try me.’

‘When I left Pont-ar-Eden village, all I could think about was getting away. You’re only thinking about the future, aren’t you, when you’re eighteen. I suppose now I’m older – and starting to think about maybe having children after all – I suppose I want to kind of lay it to rest. If that makes sense? I’m about to change my life. Maybe it’s time to put the past properly behind me, once and for all.’

‘Sounds reasonable to me,’ smiled Poppy. She sipped her tea for a minute. ‘There are no twins in Stuart’s family, you know. At least, not as far as we can make out.’

‘You mean, so it must come from your side?’

Poppy nodded. ‘Yeah. Weird, eh? I never thought about it, until they told us there were two in there, and that it tends to run in families.’ She frowned. ‘They were nice and tactful, and everything. But it just came up naturally while we were all chatting, and it felt horrible, the fact that I didn’t know. That I’ll probably never know. I might even have a twin out there, somewhere. So yes, I know exactly where you’re coming from.’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘And I suppose it’s a kind of test,’ said Carys, at last.

‘Ah,’ said Poppy, as if she had been waiting for this. ‘Joe.’

‘Yes.’ Carys sighed. ‘We’ve been together so long, and I still really love him. But he’s always had this idea he can sweet-talk me into doing what he wants to do. I thought after that time we nearly split up he’d changed. He seemed so shocked that I might actually leave, and so hurt. I thought he’d understood that I can’t always be the one that compromises, that I have my dreams, too. He’s been so understanding since then about me giving up a respectable career and going back to college, and the stuff about moving to Devon and setting up a business and starting a family. He’s been fine with the practical things. It’s just …’ She let the sentence trail away. She had always been able to say things to Poppy she could never say to anyone else. Not even Joe. But she couldn’t say this. Not even in front of Poppy, who’d seen more of the nastier side of life before she was five than most people would see in a lifetime.

Poppy cleared her throat. ‘Mmm,’ she said, with
un-Poppy
-like vagueness. ‘That’s the thing about having kids.’ She raised her head as the baby monitor on the sideboard crackled into life in agreement. Carys found herself holding her breath, too. There was a whimper, followed by the beginnings of a cry, which faded almost immediately away. Poppy began demolishing her piece of carrot cake with the urgency of an explorer who might be called upon to restart the trek at any moment. ‘They change things, however much you think they won’t. And once you’ve got them, there’s no going back. Stuart adores the girls, and he’s amazing. But I do have friends who feel abandoned, because their husbands still have their careers and their friends, and their lives have scarcely changed at all.’

‘I’ve thought about that,’ said Carys, the wobble back in her stomach. ‘I can’t help feeling that Joe still thinks that if he’s nice to me and cooks me meals he can get me to give up this idea of looking after Mam. That I’m not really serious and he can talk me round. And if he’s like this about a couple of months looking after my mother…’ She met Poppy’s eyes. ‘I really thought he wanted a different kind of life, too. You can’t force someone to change. Not without fighting them all the time. And that’s not the way –’

The whimper was back. More insistent, this time. ‘They’ll be awake soon,’ said Poppy. ‘Once one wakes up, they soon wake up the other. Two screaming babies for the price of one. Yummy.’

Carys laughed. Her friend might talk tough, but you only had to see Poppy with the twins to see that she adored them, and would fight to the death before anyone could harm them.

‘It’s fine, I’ll go,’ came a masculine voice, as the proud father himself – bleary-eyed and slightly dishevelled around the edges – returned from hanging out the morning’s washing on the line in the garden, just in time to hear the whimper swell to a cough, followed by a splutter, which merged into a definite wail. ‘Nice cake, Cari,’ he added, with a grin, cutting himself a slice with a practiced action, followed by a quick slurp from his wife’s tea. ‘See you in a minute, ladies.’