Rachel was bringing her meals now instead of meals on wheels, so Clara knew she was getting proper nutrition. Henry had helped in the garden and put in smoke alarms in the house, after a horrified Clara had learned there were none.
‘You could die in a fire,’ she admonished Tassie.
‘I could also die being run over by one of those tour buses that come for Rachel’s cream puffs and rabbit pies,’ Tassie had answered back but she seemed very intrigued when Henry came on his ladder and put them on the ceiling. ‘Sometimes accidents happen. I once read about a man who was hit by a falling turtle that an eagle high above him was carrying home for supper. A tragic accident.’
There were many arguments Clara could have given to dispute Tassie’s reasoning and story but then she heard her own mum’s voice in her head.
‘Sometimes it is better to be kind than right.’ So she said nothing; besides, who was she to say why things worked out the way they did.
‘There are no accidents,’ Mum used to say, which didn’t make what happened any easier. She should have never said what happened to her father was an accident – no one would have believed it, certainly not a jury.
Clara pushed the thoughts of her father away as she tried to focus on her knitting but she had lost her place.
‘In through the front door
Around the back
Out through the window
And off jumps jack.’
She heard Tassie remind her and she reworked the line until she had the rhythm again.
‘It’s harder than it looks,’ she said.
‘What is?’
‘The knitting,’ said Clara, trying not to put her tongue out the side of her mouth as she worked.
‘Everything is hard to start but eventually you find your own way,’ Tassie said as she pulled more yarn from the ball and kept going.
‘Can you sew?’ asked Clara as she worked slowly, stopping after every row to check her work.
‘Naturally, all women my age and from my background can sew but don’t ask me to show you because I couldn’t even thread a needle now.’
Tassie had whizzed through her first dishcloth and cast it off and patted it flat on her knee. ‘There you go, first one down.’
Clara looked at the neat stiches compared to hers, with a few missing ones and sighed.
‘Don’t compare,’ said Tassie, putting down her knitting needles and pushing herself to standing. ‘Now I will put the kettle on. Rachel has left us some lovely Monte Carlo biscuits with blackberry jam from Joe’s garden.’
‘I can do that,’ said Clara. Tassie seemed so frail at times, she worried she would fall and break a hip or worse. If it could happen to Moira, it could easily happen to Tassie. Then at other times she seemed fitter and faster than Clara, especially when Pansy was around. When Clara had commented on it, Tassie had laughed. ‘I am taking some of her energy, because she has yards and yards of it to spare.’
It was true, Clara thought, Pansy’s energy was contagious and most nights she and Henry were in fits of laughter at Pansy’s antics.
Clara made to turn on the kettle but Tassie was up before her, waving her hand at her.
‘No, dear, stay there – it’s good for me to move about. Before you came and before I was friendly with Rachel, I would never move about. Never felt better since I have some reason to potter about.’
Clara finished off the row and then followed Tassie into the kitchen, where she was carefully putting the Monte Carlos onto a pretty plate decorated with violets.
‘Do you think Joe and Rachel might become an item?’ Clara asked, as she pulled out Tassie’s cups and saucers.
‘Oh, I can’t say yet,’ said Tassie vaguely. ‘Could be. I saw a little heart in my cup this morning.’
‘Perhaps we should seek out a Wise Woman in Chippenham and see if we can’t make a spell for them to fall in love,’ said Clara with a cheeky smile at Tassie.
‘Oh no, dear, you can never do a love spell for someone else, because it comes back to you.’
Clara wasn’t sure if Tassie was serious. ‘What do you mean?’
‘If we do a love spell for Joe to fall in love with Rachel, then he might fall in love with us, and the last thing I need is a man hanging about my garden with a hangdog face. I have already had a litter of rescue dogs in my lifetime to care for.’
Clara laughed. ‘I love that! Well, if he fell for you, it would be because you’re amazing and you are the brightest, smartest woman I know, so he’s only human if he does.’
Tassie reached over and patted Clara’s hand.
‘The best thing we can do is make the conditions right for Joe and Rachel to find the way to each other. Clear the path for them to see each other. Moira was the first obstacle and since there are no accidents, then we have to believe that they will find their way to each other.’
Clara looked out Tassie’s kitchen window at a group of crows on the fence, as Tassie came to her side to warm the teapot with hot water from the tap and also looked out at the birds.
‘One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret, never to be told, eight for a wish, nine for a kiss, ten for a time of joyous bliss.’
Clara counted the birds on the fence. Seven for a secret, never to be told.
She felt shiver run up her back and a sound in her ears like fingernails on a blackboard and she wondered if she could ever talk about what happened to her that night and who would ever understand.
