*
When the final tourist had left, and Rachel had cleaned up the tearooms and the bakery and put whatever hadn’t sold in the fridge, she went upstairs and took off her ugly shoes and put on her slippers, her toes curling with relief.
‘Are you finished downstairs?’
The voice made her eyes shut, and she squeezed them tight, as though summoning up courage or a spirit to take her far away from where she was now.
‘Nearly, a few things to sell still,’ she answered.
‘Did you put everything away?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did the tour come in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you buy a rabbit from Joe and make pies?’
She paused.
‘I sold them all. More than usual beef pies.’
‘Are you saying my beef pie recipe isn’t as good as your fancy French rabbit pie recipe?’
Rachel sighed. ‘No, I am not saying that. Joe said the rabbit was good and it was cheaper than the beef.’
There was silence. Money was always good to use in these sorts of negotiations. The tearooms and bakery weren’t exactly thriving and even the tours were slowing down in recent months. There were other villages with more active communities or money or tourist attractions. Merryknowe wasn’t much of a drawcard, despite the flowing creek and bridge, and cottages lining the streets.
‘You should have told me about the rabbit.’
‘I was planning to,’ Rachel lied.
‘Come and run me a bath and help me get into it. I’m tired from seeing the hairdresser today.’
Rachel blinked back tears. She was so tired and there was still work to be done.
‘Hurry up.’ There was a tone, a warning, one that Rachel knew too well.
‘Yes, Mother,’ she answered and set to her task before the other cheek started to change into the colours of the rainbow.
4
To start your day properly, you had to pour yourself good China tea into a fine bone china teacup.
Tassie McIver drank hers from a Wedgewood cup and saucer with a faded pattern of green trailing ivy that had belonged to her great-grandmother. It was a peony-shaped cup that allowed the right amount of depth and width for the leaves that she read every morning.
While the tea was important, it was the tea leaves that set the tone for the day.
The tea must be drunk with the left hand as that was closest to the heart, which suited Tassie as she read the paper, first checking for her own death notice, because, as her own mother said, if her name wasn’t in the paper, she was still free to live another day. She then moved to the crossword before moving to the weather forecast.
Leaving half a teaspoon of tea in the cup, she turned the cup three times on the saucer, from left to right. Tassie moved the cup swiftly and then she slowly turned it over onto the saucer, with its bottom in the air, letting the tea drain away and the tea leaves settle with the news of the day.
Tassie checked on the weather for the day as she waited for the fate of the tea leaves to settle. She saw no difference between the forecast for the weather and the forecast for her day from a teacup. The weather people were more often wrong about the rain and sunshine than she was about what was coming and going in the village and her life.
Turning the cup over, Tassie peered inside.
The handle was pointing to her. Interesting, she thought. Something was coming that would involve her. This was already unusual. All the leaves were near the rim. The events would happen soon, she noted. A ladybird symbol showed herself inside the cup. Betoken visitors, Tassie thought. A visitor for her.
The sound of knocking on the front door made her jump.
‘Mrs McIver, it’s the nurse,’ called the woman from outside the small house.
Tassie McIver sighed. The cup was playing with her, she thought, as the district nurse was not a wanted or welcome visitor. It took her some time to stand up, and sometimes the new nurses left before she managed to shuffle to the front door, but this nurse had too much bonhomie in her voice to be going anywhere soon.
Today the air felt warm, and Tassie’s arthritis was behaving but even so, she felt every step in every bone, as she managed to get to the door.
She opened it to find a cheerful nurse whose condescending smile put Tassie immediately into a bad mood.
What did she have to be so cheery about? Sponge-bathing old men and changing dressings on ancient skin like Tassie’s was not living her best life.
Tassie had watched The Oprah Winfrey Show in the hospital and learned about living her best life, and she wondered if she had, at eighty-nine years old, lived her best life.
Eight-nine years living in one place – Merryknowe village. Nothing happened in Merryknowe without Tassie knowing, even if the villagers didn’t know she knew – she knew all but she kept it quiet.
It wasn’t that Tassie was a witch, or even vaguely religious, but she understood the rhythms and cycles of life, and believed that at the bottom of the deepest rut lay jewels if you were prepared to be patient and dig down inside yourself a little further to draw them out.
‘Morning, Mrs McIver, how are you today?’ asked the overly cheerful nurse.
‘Not as good as you,’ she said to the nurse, but it was not meant to be mean. It was a statement of fact. She doubted that anyone in the world was as cheerful as this nurse was about her life.
‘I had a wonderful night’s sleep,’ said the nurse, but Tassie looked at her and hid a little knowing smile. That nurse was not sleeping alone, but Tassie couldn’t see a wedding ring – not that it mattered anymore.
Tassie was never one to live by convention anyway. How could you live your best life if you were so busy being what other people wanted, that you forgot what you really wanted?
The nurse changed the dressing
