Winter's End
Authors: Clarissa Cartharn
CLARISSA CARTHARN
Winter’s End
Winter’s End
Copyright © 2013 Clarissa
Cartharn
The moral right of
the author has been asserted.
All characters and
events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain, are
fictitious and any resemblance to real persons living or dead, is purely
coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this
publication may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the
publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Thank you Cyma
Rizwaan
Khan for your continual friendship and support.
Winter’s End
Contents
Chapter 1
She was once told a
good life almost always kept wrinkles at bay.
She caught her
reflection in her hallway mirror and momentarily paused at her task, assessing
herself and the relevance of the proverb in her life. The tautness in her face
successfully disguised her thirty-four years, making her appear much younger
than she really was. However she would have to attribute it to good genes rather.
Although some good
life, she had had also. Twelve good years with her husband, Robert. He was the
kind of man every woman dreamt of. Tall, handsome, dark-haired with an adorable
cuteness that agreed tremendously with the fairer sex.
As she returned to
the past, her memory drawing in the small coffee shop next to the town library,
it still felt all too surreal that he could have fallen for a girl like her.
Her long, red curly
hair was strewn haphazardly over her shoulders. They were layered at odd
lengths, the best she could do with a pair of sewing scissors. Her glasses were
plopped at the end of her nose as she flipped through another page of her
renaissance romance novel.
“Hi,” said a voice.
She looked up to meet
the most charming blue eyes she had ever seen.
“Hi,” she returned
almost inaudibly.
“Is this chair taken?”
he asked.
“
Ummm
…no,”
she said hesitantly, her only hint of surprise visible in her own brown eyes.
“Great,” he
concluded. “Then you don’t mind if I join you.” And without waiting for an
answer, he pulled out a chair and slumped into it.
She blushed as she
realised he was intending to share her table. And as for company?
“I’m Robert,” he
said.
“
I’mmmm
sssorry
,” she mumbled, her demure becoming even more
apparent.
“Robert,” he repeated
with a smile. “My name.”
She quickly composed
herself before she could cause any further embarrassment to herself. “Emma,”
she whipped out.
“Emma,” he repeated
softly, tasting the sound of her name on his lips. “Emma, just Emma?”
She smiled. “For
now,” she thought.
*****
She took a brief
glance at what she was wearing. A long, plain dark skirt with an earth coloured
tee shirt. Her once red hair was now darkened to an auburn and held back into a
pony tail with a few strands flying loose around her face. The box she held up
in her arms did nothing to help alleviate her poor impression of herself. She
sighed. Did Robert really fall in love with this? What had he seen in her to
have chosen her over all the women who relentlessly stalked him?
“I suppose I’m attracted
to you because you don
’t,”
she remembered him say. “You don’t seem to
care less of what I do. And I guess that’s kind of attractive. Don’t you think?”
She smiled. She did
care but she was far too shy to let him onto it. Instead she entwined her
fingers with his as they strolled through the park by the riverside.
She looked away in
the hope he didn’t see how much she loved him. She focused on the robin tweeting
in the tree above them, chiming his last hours for the day and on the toddlers babbling
nonsensically in their adorable prams as their physically overdriven parents
took their routine jog through the park lanes.
“In fact, there has
been something I have been meaning to ask you.” His voice carried elements of
seriousness which she had not anticipated.
“What is it, Robert?”
she asked equally concerned. She noticed he carried the same frown he usually
wore during his architectural exams.
He had an ardent
passion for architecture. He would walk with her through town, pointing out various
buildings and proudly reciting their history.
“Gap House,” he had once
said as they stood before the building in Bayswater. “Designed by Luke
Tozer
. It’s only 2.4 metres wide really. He built it for
his family. Must have been ridiculed whilst doing it. Instead won the RIBA
Manser
Medal for residential architecture. He saw something
in it which others didn’t and he went for it.” He had looked down at her, his
eyes swelled with desire.
That same desire had
returned once more to his deep sea blue eyes as they stood now in the middle of
the park, surrounded by energy driven mothers, babies and birds.
“What is it, Robert?”
she repeated.
“Emma…,” he
stammered. “Emma…”
“Yes, Robert,” she
attempted to remain calm. There was very little that shook Robert and so his wavering
stamina was becoming quite concerning.
“Emma,” he said
softly. “We…we’ve been seeing each other for what? Almost two years now?”
“One year, eight
months and two days,” she thought. But she was darned if she was going to say
it aloud. “Yes, two years about.”
“And I now have a
good architectural position with Cunningham & Price. And you are a…a…”
“An English teacher
at Carlingford High,” she completed for him. “Yes.”
“Yes, yes,” he
babbled. “I know I’m not making much at C & P but I definitely intend to
find something much better. Much, much better.”
“Robert, I know that.
You don’t have to…”
“Emma?” interrupted a
voice, not at all like Robert’s.
She turned
immediately. “Richard.”
“Emma.”
*****
“Mummy,” said a voice breaking into her
thoughts. She saw a reflection of a ten year old boy standing behind her,
observing her curiously. “You okay?”
She bounced the box
she was carrying and turned to him. “Yes, of course Jai. Now have you finished
setting up your room.”
“I have. I thought
you might need some help with yours. It's hardly even close to finishing.” He
took a turn about the lounge room still filled with boxes of all their odds and
ends. Their brown couch was pushed far back to the wall to make room for all
the cardboard boxes and their television set which sat on the floor, unplugged,
its wires dangling over the top of its huge screen.
“What about Hannah?
Where is she?” she asked suddenly noticing that the five year old was nowhere
to be seen. It was unusual given that Hannah was always bound with so much
energy, she hardly could keep her feet at the same place for too long.
“Up in her room.”
“In her room? What is
she doing there? She can
’t be
fixing it up. She’ll get hurt.” Emma immediately swung to the staircase to
charge up.
“Stop worrying, Mum,”
said Jai as he opened another box to inspect its contents. “I’ve already
checked up on her. She’s playing with her dolls.”
She looked up
hesitantly. She wondered if she shouldn’t call her down. Hannah could be a
handful once she was fired up and she really didn’t need that now of all times.
“Probably, I’ll check
on her later then,” she contemplated. She needed to finish with the kitchen
above all things. That’s where everyone called in when the hunger bugs bit
them.
“When are you going
to finish with your bedroom?” Jai asked following her into the kitchen.
“Once I set up the
kitchen. In the meantime, you could help Hannah set up hers. You might strike
being more useful there instead of chasing me up on my bedroom.”
“I’m just wondering
where you would be sleeping tonight if you don’t get it done. It is getting
dark, you know.”
“I know. Hannah and I
will manage on our mattresses by the fire in the lounge. We’ll be camping.
Perhaps even a picnic. Just us two women,” she teased.
Jai scowled. “Well,
I’m in. Like it or not.”
She ruffled his hair
adoringly before he could race-up to Hannah’s room.
“Order us some pizza
tonight?” he said as he walked out of the kitchen
*****
The firewood spit in
the flames dancing in the small walled cove. Emma looked at the dark figures of
her children laying next to her. Pizza boxes were piled one on-top another,
evidence of their late night feast. Crumbs of their meal were still visible in
the now empty boxes. Her mind instinctively turned to the possibility of rats
and cockroaches. She sighed. If there were any, they would probably be the more
established residents of the old house than she.
Her eyes roamed over
its beige walls and white ceiling, the shadows of the flames of her stone
fireplace dancing on them. There were cracks in the corners of the ceilings,
revealing the age of the building. She had been told by the realtor that it was
a period home, built in the early 1900s. It contained four bedrooms, quite
generous in size but in essence it was much smaller than the seven bedroom
mansion she shared with Robert in London.
Her eyes scanned
lower down to the pile of cardboard boxes stacked in the corner of her lounge
room. In the dim light, she made out one that appeared to be almost spilling
over with books. She smiled. Jai loved his books. She remembered how he had
bickered with her when she alluded to donating some of them. There were just
too many.
She crawled over to
the box and began to sift through the upper pile, arranging them in a neat
stack on the carpet floor. She had better. There was a good chance the box
would topple over. She had to admit that despite his love of books, Jai had
simply thrown the books in the box without a thought.