‘Pansy, this isn’t our home, and Mummy said she wanted it to be our home when we put her ashes in the ground.’
‘But I love Clara.’ Pansy’s voice broke a little and she felt deep love for the child.
‘I know, I love Clara too but we can’t stay here forever.’
Clara held the linen to her face, knowing it was red and her eyes were brimming with tears.
What did he mean? Did he love her? In what way? Was he trying to make Pansy feel better?
The sound of the deliverymen’s feet on the stairs pushed her away from where she was eavesdropping.
‘We’re all done, Miss,’ said one of the men.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said as Pansy came out of the kitchen at the sound of the voices.
‘Want to come and help me make up the beds?’ she asked Pansy who immediately ran upstairs.
Henry stood in the doorway looking at her and she looked back at him.
‘Did you hear us talking?’ he asked.
She thought about lying but she couldn’t lie anymore. Her whole life she had lied to protect others but mostly to protect herself. If she was going to live a new life at Acorn Cottage, then she had to be truthful from the start.
She nodded. ‘I did.’
Henry shuffled his feet, as though he was kicking the dirt, and he put his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
‘I don’t know how to be with anyone but Naomi.’
She said nothing.
‘I have avoided everything, dragging Pansy around the place, not sending her to school, looking for Naomi in every place, avoiding the feelings. When I cried on the steps of the van it was the first time I cried since she died. I mean, it’s been three years. I have just avoided feeling everything, but I can’t avoid you. I don’t want to avoid you. I just don’t know how to do it.’
Clara sighed. ‘Well, I don’t know either, but I’m not pushing you to be with me or away from me. I’m not going anywhere. This isn’t a test or a demand. There are things I have to tell you one day, and you might not want to be with me after that, so we all have risks to take.’
Henry smiled. ‘Did you murder someone?’
Clara looked him in the eye and paused.
‘Clara,’ came Pansy’s voice from upstairs and saved her from answering.
‘Gotta go, my queen is calling me.’
Henry walked towards her and she felt her stomach fall away as he was so close. He kissed her on the forehead. Lingering and soft, and he smiled down at her.
‘Then why are you still wearing your crown?’ he asked and then walked outside. Clara realised that whole time she had been wearing her daisy crown and somehow it all just felt so right.
28
Clara – aged 13
Clara could hear Dad taking off his boots by the front door. His words were slurred and she knew what would be coming next.
He called for her and she froze at her desk. She was working on her maths homework, trying to win the maths prize for the year. It was worth twenty pounds, and she would save it for when she and Mum escaped.
They had tried to leave again after Dad found them at the bus stop when she was younger. He’d dragged Mum home by her hair, huge handfuls of it coming out as Clara ran screaming abuse at him.
Nobody came to help them. Nobody called the police. They had nobody to help them, but Clara had found her grandmother’s phone number and called her when Mum wasn’t home.
Dad had told Mum she wasn’t to call her mum or even see her because she hadn’t wanted Mum to marry him. But Mum had secretly been sending her pictures of Clara for years and when Clara was a baby, she had seen her grandmother, not that she remembered.
Gran was nice and said she understood and that they could come whenever they wanted to live with her. But Clara wondered if her mother would take up Gran on the offer and let them go and live there.
But the older Clara got, the more complicated she understood her home life was.
Nothing had worked to make Dad stop drinking and hurting Mum or Clara, and even through she got excellent marks at school and didn’t do anything to worry her mum, she still felt like she was failing her mum by not protecting her from him.
They left him again when Clara was fourteen, and went to a refuge for women and children, but they couldn’t sleep and at night some of the men came and yelled abuse at the women through the letter box of the door.
Dad turned up all shaved and in a fresh shirt and said he was sorry to Mum but Clara didn’t believe him. She tried to get Mum to understand it would start again but Mum said she didn’t have a choice, and she was sure he had changed this time.
It took three days and a bottle of brandy to show he hadn’t changed and the next day, nursing a broken collarbone, Clara went to school and told her teachers and her principal and asked for help for the first time in her life.
29
Rachel had closed the shop and was waiting for Clara upstairs.
Alice had been paid and promised to come back tomorrow and Joe had called her and told her how much it meant to Alice to have a little job over summer and that he had a lovely new cut of topside she might like and would she like to go to see a film with him in Chippenham.
Rachel said she was happy to help Alice, and yes she would like the topside and would like to see a movie with Joe on Friday night.
That had been the best day they’d had in the tearooms, and so many of the villagers told her that her hair looked like something a French girl
