The Children of Hare Hill

The Children of Hare Hill

by Scott McKenzie

Published by *.fiction

Copyright © 2015 Scott McKenzie

First Edition (Kindle)

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The Children of Hare Hill was edited by Rebecca Hoffman. Read her blog, Rebecca’s Red Pen, at

http://rebeccamhoffman.blogspot.com

Also by this author

Novels

Rebirth

The Rising

One Day in Gitmo Nation

A Gitmo Nation Christmas Carol

Drawing Dead

Short Stories

The Foot on the Shore

Death by Autopen

The Ninety-Year-Old Assassin

Perp Walk

Conscience For Sale

For children, with Phil Ives

Krampus: A Christmas Tale

About the author

Scott McKenzie lives in Cheshire, UK with his wife and children. With no education in storytelling other than a healthy appetite for fiction in all forms, Scott simply thought he’d see if he could write a novel, then wrote and self-published three in five years. Balancing family, work and a love of sport and movies, Scott writes his fast-paced stories in short sharp bursts.

Introduction

The Children of Hare Hill is a work of fiction, but it is set in a real location, one of my favourite places in the whole world.

Hare Hill Garden is a public park in Cheshire. The park is maintained by the National Trust and one of the main attractions is the trail for children and adults alike to follow, which is inhabited by thirteen wooden hare sculptures. At the entrance to the park, a wooden hare greets all visitors and a sign reads, "There are 12 more hares in the garden. Can you spot them all?"

The adventures I’ve had with our children in Hare Hill Garden are the inspiration for this book.

SM, August 2015

Prologue

"Go!"

They run as fast as they can. Charlotte darts in one direction, her brother Ben in another.

"Ten." The two children stop for a second. Their eyes meet and they laugh. Broad smiles beam on their faces.

"Nine." They scan their surroundings. The garden is bathed in bright, warm sunshine. The well-kept lawn is dry and even beneath their bare feet.

"Eight." Charlotte points at a statue and shouts, "You go that way, Ben."

"Seven." He runs towards the statue and shouts back, "Where are you going?"

"Six." "Over there," she says, pointing to a second statue on the opposite side of the garden.

"Five." They both run—still giggling—to the statues, dodging in and out of other families playing together around them.

"Four." Crouched behind the statues, they look at each other and hold their hands over their mouths, trying to stifle their laughter.

"Three." They can't make a sound. If he hears them, he'll find them.

"Two." Neither of them wants this to end. This is the most fun they've had in years, playing together as if—

"One. Coming, ready or not!"

Part One

Scattering the Ashes

Chapter 1

Two years had passed since their last visit to Hare Hill. Charlotte and Ben sat in silence, staring out of the window of their mother's car as it rattled along the bumpy gravel drive and pulled to a stop on the fenced-off section of grass that was used as a car park. The park had just opened for the morning and there was just one other car, belonging to the member of National Trust staff who was manning the hut at the park gates.

Their mother stopped the engine and sat still for a moment. Charlotte heard her whisper "Come on, Alison, you can do this," to herself and looked at Ben. He hadn't heard her.

"Hey," Ben remarked as he craned his neck to look at their surroundings, "we've been here before, haven't we?"

Alison turned to look at them; her eyes were sad and red. She gave Charlotte a knowing smile. Her daughter was only eight, but she was three years older than her brother and she remembered so much more about what happened two years ago, and all the good times that had gone before.

"That's right," Alison said. "We used to come here with Daddy."

She watched the eyes of her children fill with warm sadness as she spoke those words. "And we've come here with him one last time."

Alison got out of the car and helped Ben down from his seat; Charlotte had long since insisted on getting out by herself. She opened the boot and they all grabbed their bags. The kids grabbed their backpacks—pink for Charlotte, blue for Ben—and Alison threw a bag over each shoulder—a picnic bag with a rolled-up mat sitting on top and a smaller shoulder bag. She had considered strapping the shoulder bag into the passenger seat, but had decided it would make her feel uncomfortable on the ten-minute journey from their home in the nearby town of Wilmslow.

Charlotte strode ahead, leading her family up the hill to the entrance. Her long golden hair shone in the sunlight. She was wearing her favourite flower-patterned shorts and pink t-shirt. Alison had struggled to get her to wear anything else ever since the sunny weather had rolled in. Ben had his mother’s hair—dark brown to match their eyes—and he had recently started being picky with the clothes he wore too. Convincing him to stop wearing an old tattered jumper two sizes too small for him had been Alison's most recent challenge.

At the entrance, a lady in her sixties greeted them with a warm smile.

"Good morning,” the lady said. “Are you National Trust members?"

"We used to be," Alison said, then paid their entrance fee.

"Have you been here before?" the lady asked.

"We used to come here all the time," Alison said.

"Our daddy used to bring us here," Charlotte said, and Ben nodded. "He used to draw maps of the wooden hares and—"

"That's enough, Charlotte," Alison said. "The nice lady doesn't want to hear our life story."

"No, that's fine," the lady said. "And where is your daddy today? Is he at work?"

Charlotte and Ben stared at the floor and the lady knew she had crossed a line.

"He's not with us any more," Alison said, gripping the strap of her shoulder bag.

"Oh dear, I'm so sorry," the lady said as she shifted awkwardly on the spot.

"It's fine," their mother said. "It's been two years."

"Oh, okay," the lady said, then broke an uncomfortable silence by saying, "I hope you three have a lovely time here today. It's supposed to be sunny all day, but with it being the middle of the week, I'm not expecting it to be too busy."

"Thank you,” Alison said. “Do you still have the wooden hares?"

"Yes, all thirteen of them," the lady said, turning to Charlotte and Ben. "Are you going to find them all?"

They both smiled and nodded.

"Well, have a good time. It's a wonderful day for a picnic!"

Charlotte, Ben, and Alison thanked the lady and walked up the gravel path into the park.

Chapter 2

Charlotte and Ben walked down the narrow path leading into the park, their mother in between them, holding their hands. This had been a common formation in the last two years, ever since the family of four had become three.

Until that day, Charlotte and Ben had been the best of friends, but the combined events of losing their father and Charlotte starting school had only served to distance them from each other. Now they bickered more than they played together, and it broke Alison's heart to see two beautiful children, who were once part of a strong family unit, drifting away into their own worlds.

Alison felt her pace quicken as they wound their way along the path surrounded by blooming azaleas, rhododendrons, and plantain lilies, and saw a wooden statue of a hare at a fork in the path. They all stopped and stared as memories—long forgotten, or maybe suppressed—came flooding back. The wooden ornament before them was one of thirteen hares dotted around the gardens of Hare Hill. They had always lent any visit the air of magic and adventure, something their father had fostered on their expeditions through the garden. This was something that had been missing from their lives these last two years.

They had come to Hare Hill for the first time when Charlotte was just taking her first steps. They were trying to encourage her to walk and visited all the National Trust parks in the surrounding area, but when Charlotte discovered the wooden hares, she never wanted to sit in her pushchair; she wanted to find every wooden hare and say hello to them. They returned many times, taking the opportunity to search the gardens for wooden hares whenever the sun came out. As the years passed and Charlotte's imagination grew, her mother and father made up stories and puzzles to turn every visit into an adventure, and their father even drew maps for them to follow together once Ben had been old enough to walk hand-in-hand with Charlotte.

But they didn't walk hand-in-hand any more. Now their mother stood between them by default, putting herself in the middle as a blocker to the shouting, pushing, and crying that felt like an inevitability whenever they were together. She looked down at both of them and thought,
So far so good today
.

Charlotte let go of her mother's hand and walked over to the hare. Dry dirt and twigs crunched underfoot. She looked into its wooden eyes and patted it on the head, the way she had so many times before when they had been a family of four. Ben looked up at Alison, as if he was seeking permission, and she nodded.

"Do you remember coming here with Daddy?" she asked as Ben joined Charlotte to pat the hare on the head.

"Yes," Ben said. "Daddy said the hares had been turned into wooden statues by a wicked witch."

Charlotte's eyes brightened with the return of a cherished memory. "And he said that if we solved the puzzles, they would turn back into real hares after we went home. That's why we had to keep coming back—to break the wicked witch's spell every time."

All three of them smiled, then their gazes shifted to Alison's bag. She sighed and took it off her shoulder, knelt down, and set it carefully on the ground. Charlotte and Ben approached as she unzipped it. Inside was a silver urn, polished to such a brilliant shine that all three of them could see their faces in its warped reflection. She looked over to the entrance to the park, but no one was coming and she couldn't hear any footsteps on the gravel path. Then she gripped the heavy urn and lifted it out of the bag.

"Why did you bring Daddy?" Ben asked. She gave her son a sad smile and placed the urn on the grass next to the wooden hare, then took her children's hands in hers.

"This is what Daddy wanted. Before we lost your father, he and I wrote a will. A will tells the people you leave behind what you want to happen after you die—things like who should have your money and who should look after your pets. We also wrote down what we wanted to happen to our ashes."

Charlotte and Ben's gaze dropped to their feet and Alison pulled them in close for a hug as she continued.

"This was one of daddy’s favourite places in the whole world and he loved coming here with you. He worked very hard and bringing you both here at weekends made him very happy. He never had any brothers or sisters and was always a little bit lonely when he was a little boy, and that's why he loved setting up puzzles and adventures for you—he wanted you to be friends forever, to have the kind of close friendship he never had. And that's why he wanted us to scatter his ashes at the feet of the hares, because he was never happier than when he was here with you."

She struggled to get her last words out and a tear trickled down her cheek. Charlotte's bottom lip wobbled, telling Alison that she was fighting back the tears, but Ben's face told her that he didn't quite understand the situation. He was still very young, and he had been even younger when he had lost his father.

Alison’s heart was breaking. It was the first time she had been back to Hare Hill and the memories of the good times were still fresh in her mind, but she knew that whatever memories remained in Ben's young mind were fading quickly. In her own mind, she wasn't ready for today; it had been two years and she didn't want to say goodbye to the love of her life yet, the man who had given her these two beautiful children. Charlotte was a strong girl, and she had memories of her father that would stay with her forever, but Ben was different. She knew that if she didn't do something, Ben might not remember his father at all and, in the years to come, it could drive him and his sister further apart.

Alison dug into her shoulder bag and pulled out a photo album. She'd prepared it for this day and the children eyed it curiously as she opened the leather-bound cover. On the first page were two pictures: one of their father holding a newborn Charlotte in a hospital ward and a similar picture of him holding the newborn Ben. As babies, the brother and sister looked identical, and on his face in each picture was an identical beaming smile of unbridled joy.

"It's Daddy!" Charlotte and Ben both exclaimed. Alison set the photo album down on the grass and they sat down together to look at it. They leafed through the pages, talking animatedly about the times they remembered and asking each other about the times they didn't.

As Charlotte and Ben talked together, Alison quietly got to her feet and approached the urn sitting next to the wooden hare. She lifted it with both hands and cradled it in her arms. Then she removed the lid and looked inside for the first time since she had been handed the urn at the crematorium two years ago. Had this pile of grey ash really been her husband, the father of her children? She found it difficult to believe that a living, breathing, loving person could be broken down to such a small, inanimate, and purposeless pile.

Very carefully, she knelt down and shook a small amount of ash from the urn onto the grass at the foot of the wooden hare, then resealed the urn, stood up, and took a step back to take in the scene before her. At that moment, she realised that Charlotte and Ben had stopped talking. She turned around and saw them staring at their father's ashes. Charlotte was sobbing. Alison dropped to her knees and gave them a group hug.

"Was that Daddy?" Ben asked.

"It's a little bit of Daddy, sweetheart."

"Is the rest still in there?" Ben asked, pointing at the urn.

"Yes, but we're going to take it round with us. Daddy's wish was to have his ashes scattered at the feet of all the hares."

"So we're going on another adventure?" Charlotte said, her red eyes sparkling through the tears.

"That's right. We're going to find them all and scatter your daddy's ashes, so he will be here forever and you can come here and be with him whenever you want."