‘I’ve always thought so. I’ve been coming here for years, since before Thomas died. It was a good place to hide from my mother-in-law, Agnes. She wouldn’t come near the place. Said it was full of fairies who’d reach up from the graves and pull you down to Hell for disturbing the dead.’
Sophie laughs. ‘They don’t sound like any kind of fairies I’ve ever heard of.’
‘Oh, yes. They all believed in fairies back then. Emmett still does. Agnes infected him with that when he was a boy, I’m afraid. They weren’t the nice fairies of England or Walt Disney, like Tinker Bell. These ones played tricks, and led little children into the woods with their fairy music, or hit you with a fairy blast when you were out in the woods or fields on your own.’
‘A fairy blast?’
‘Yes. Agnes swore she’d seen a boy with a fairy blast once. All sorts of nasty stuff came out of the wound – fish bones and sticks and insects.’
Sophie shudders. ‘That’s awful.’
‘I loved those fairies. I always had the cemetery all to myself.’ She points to an old wooden bench peeking out from behind a stunted cedar near the gate. ‘Come on. It’s where I always sit.’
They sit together on the bench and Ellie reaches into the bag, dispensing charcoal pencils, pastels the colours of ice cream and a drawing pad to each of them. ‘Let’s have a go at drawing the church.’
Sophie picks up a charcoal pencil and squints at the gleaming steeple. ‘I don’t know if I can remember how to do this. I only draw construction drawings now.’
‘Just trust your eyes and your hand. Don’t overthink it.’
‘All right. Here goes nothing.’
After a few tentative lines, and the conviction that any latent artistic talent has deserted her, Sophie turns over a fresh page. The sun kisses her face with a soft warmth, and a light breeze dances up the hill from the ocean, rustling the tufts of grass like a mother tousling her child’s hair. Taking a deep breath, she begins to draw, letting the pencil find its way across the rough white paper. She feels her way, increasing the pressure on the pencil for the thick line of the church’s walls, and lifting the pencil to a fine point for the window frames and the door. She shakes out the tension in her hand and leans over the drawing, shading in the shadows with a fine cross-hatching, frowning as she attempts to transfer the white puffs of clouds to the drawing.
As she draws, she finds her mind settling into a calmness she hasn’t felt since she was a teenager drawing their cat, Sopwith Pusskins, a puff of fur curled up in front of the fire, for her final art-class assignment. The memory settles into her mind as she draws the lines of the rocky spit of land where it meets the tickle. It had been a chilly December Sunday afternoon. Her face warm from the gas fire, and the radio was on, probably Sing Something Simple, which her father liked. Rattling sounds from the kitchen – her mother baking something for some Women’s Institute do. It had been … perfect. A moment of truce in her parents’ fractious relationship.
She flips over the page and starts another version of the church. Stronger lines this time as she draws the clapboard building. Softer on the waves slapping up against the rocks, looser on the tufts of long grass sprouting around the old headstones. Changing pressure on the charcoal pencil for the different effects. Remembering something she’d lost, something she hadn’t even realised she’d forgotten: the Sophie she once was, before she’d packed her away like an old coat. The Sophie who loved something.
***
‘What do you think?’ Sophie holds up her drawing to Ellie.
‘That’s lovely, Sophie. You have a wonderful sense of perspective. Why ever did you give up drawing?’
Sophie sighs as she closes the drawing pad, and rests it on her lap. ‘My mother wanted me to focus on a career. I think she resented having to give up her musical career when she married my father. Poor Dad … They used to argue. Or, she would argue, and he would just take it.’ Sophie looks at her aunt. ‘You know she was pregnant when they got married?’
Ellie nods. ‘Yes, I knew. You father wrote to me.’
‘She miscarried and then she was trapped. That’s the word she’d use with my father. Trapped. She wouldn’t divorce, being a Catholic. So, she decided to make Dad her project. Push him up the Norwich social ladder, but that only went so far. Then, out of the blue, after ten years of marriage, she gets pregnant. Shaking her head, Sophie smiles. ‘It must have happened during one of their truces. That was me, and I became her project.’
‘And, what about you? You never married?’
‘No. Why would I want to do that, after seeing how miserable Mum and Dad were? I wanted to be able to stand on my own two feet. Art, well, it wasn’t really a solid career choice. Dad thought I could give it a go, but Mum was dead against it. She wanted me to be financially secure. She said a “proper”—’ she tweaks her fingers to indicate quotation marks ‘—career would give me freedom. She was right.’
Ellie nods. ‘Marriage isn’t for everyone, I suppose. With Thomas there was never any question, once I’d got my head around leaving Britain. He proposed to me in a medieval tower in Norwich, did you know that? He gave me a lovely Art Deco ring. I don’t know whatever happened to it. I lost it years ago with my wedding band.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘Yes. I would have loved to have given them to Becca.’ Ellie flips over the page in her drawing pad and begins on a view out to sea. ‘You could have made an art career, Sophie. Many people do.’
Sophie shrugs. ‘Maybe. The idea just faded away. I didn’t want to be a doctor or a solicitor, but since I could draw, Mum and I agreed on architecture. The only problem was that I was terrible at calculus, and I needed it to study architecture. Poor Dad. I think I drained his bank account with all the summer calculus courses and tutors Mum made him pay for. I finally scraped through and got accepted to the University of Manchester to study architecture.’
‘Did that work for you? Did you enjoy it?’
‘It was fine. I worked hard and I did like parts of it quite a lot. The more creative elements. I graduated with first-class honours, found a good entry-level job in London and made my way up to senior architect at the firm. I went out on my own when I turned thirty. Six years ago I won the tender to design the Millennium Pavilion. It received a lot of publicity, and I had a call from a headhunting firm about a position at a leading architecture practice in New York. That’s where I was headed for an interview when my plane was diverted to Gander.’ She opens up her arms. ‘And, now, here I am.’
‘My heavens, Sophie! You’ve been busy. And you’re happy?’
‘I can’t complain.’
Ellie raises an eyebrow. ‘You can’t complain?’
‘No, I mean. Yes. I’m happy.’
Ellie nods. ‘Good. It’s important to be happy. Or, content, at least. I’m not sure I ever found out what happiness is.’
‘But weren’t you happy when you came to Newfoundland? Mum seemed to think you’d run off to dance through daisy fields here with your husband and your baby.’
Ellie laughs, the sound warm and husky. ‘Dancing through daisy fields? I certainly can’t imagine Emmy doing that!’