‘Hey,’ I say to George when we finally arrive at the overhang. I’ve carried Ashlee the last part of the way and now I put her down with a groan and hunch over, huffing and puffing. She mimics me, which is hilarious – even George can’t help laughing.
‘What are you up to?’ I ask him.
‘Writing.’ The pages of his notepad flutter in the wind.
‘Homework?’
‘No, a letter.’
‘Oh. Who to?’
‘Sophie.’
‘I didn’t know you wrote to her.’
He looks down at his pad. ‘Often. Hopefully one day she’ll read them.’ He lifts his head and nods towards Ashlee. ‘I thought Nia had a visit this morning.’
‘She does.’ I explain Mum’s plan.
‘So she wants me to come and play happy families?’
His tone is neutral, but I have no idea if he minds.
‘Exactly,’ I reply truthfully.
‘Okay.’ He sighs and gets up.
‘Really? Thank you.’
‘Anything to help,’ he says drily.
I look past him to see a car coming along the lane. ‘Oh no, they’re early! Quick!’ I pick up Ashlee and scramble down the rocks.
‘Careful!’ George calls out, sounding panicked. ‘Let me take her.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure. Is that okay, Ashlee?’ he asks. ‘You want a piggyback?’
‘A piggyback!’ I exclaim, trying to get her excited.
Ashlee smiles shyly and I put her down on the edge of a rock, while George passes me his notepad and faces away.
‘One, two, three, UP!’ I lift her onto George’s back.
‘Let’s go!’ he yells, and my heart swells as he jogs off down the path.
I don’t mean to look, but I can’t help noticing the words written across the top page of George’s notepad:
Dear Sophie,
I miss you, little one.
My eyes fill with tears. The wind carries them away, along with the sound of Ashlee giggling.
Chapter 17 Now
It’s late Wednesday afternoon, a few days after my evening out with Becky and my late-night conversation with George. I’ve been thinking about what George said.
I stare down at the notepad in my hands. A blank page, except for two words: Dear Theo.
When Theo went back to boarding school, I wrote to him all the time, but now there’s so much to say that I don’t know where to start. Maybe that’s my opening.
Dear Theo,
We used to write all the time, but now there’s so much to say that I don’t know where to start. I guess I’ll start with here and now.
I’m up at Hare Heads, sitting on our rock with my legs dangling over the edge. The grassy paddocks of the farms are spread out before me, but behind me and all around, the heather is out, a rolling sea of pinky purple amongst the vivid green fern fronds. It’s the middle of August and I wish you were here.
I saw Katy the other day – it was a shock. I can’t stop thinking about where we’d be and what we’d be doing if she had simply sent us a message to let us know she was safe. Would we be sitting on a sandy white beach in Brisbane, building sandcastles with Emilie? Would you be creating a masterpiece with fortress walls and seashell towers and letting her knock it down? I bet that you would.
It feels so surreal to think that we should be on the other side of the world right now. But instead, she and I are here at my childhood home in North Yorkshire, and oddly, it doesn’t feel wrong at all.
I wish you could see Emilie. She loves it here. She collects the chicken eggs every day along with as many stray feathers as she can lay her hands on. Mum’s going to teach her how to knit a mini cushion for one of her teddy bears. Emilie is loving spending more time with her. I think it’s really helped Mum to have the diversion since Dad’s death too. She’d probably go back to fostering, given half the chance…
As I write, the subject of George presses down heavily on me. I have no idea how to put into words that the boy I loved is back in my life when the man I married is agonisingly absent.
It doesn’t help that I saw George drive in a while ago. I’ve been half watching from up here as he’s loaded gear from the back of his truck onto the quad bike. Now he’s standing in the lower part of the paddock adjacent to the girls, staring up at a big horse chestnut tree. The underside of the tree is dead straight and perfectly manicured, thanks to the girls sometimes being allowed into that paddock to graze.
George walks over to the quad bike and pulls on a helmet, then grabs some equipment before disappearing under the tree. Soon afterwards, the sound of a chainsaw carries towards me on the breeze.
I sit up straighter with alarm.
Dad rarely used a chainsaw himself, and he wouldn’t let Jamie anywhere near one. Tree work is for tree surgeons, not for amateurs.
I quickly sign off my letter to Theo, telling him that I love him and that I’ll write again soon. Stuffing the pages into an envelope, I scribble his name across the front, then hurry back down to the farm, feeling bad about not managing to give my husband my full attention.
George is halfway up the tree when I reach him and my heart is in my throat as I watch him carving his way through a branch. He appears to be wearing a safety harness, although where that came from, I have no idea. I don’t want to distract him and risk causing him harm, but I’m not sure how to get his attention without shouting. Thankfully he saves me from my dilemma and the chainsaw splutters to a silence.
‘George!’
His face appears around the side of the bough he’s sitting on. ‘Hello.’
‘What are you up to?’ I don’t mean to sound cross – he’s only trying to help.
‘I’m taking off some of the dead branches. They’re a hazard to the girls if they graze in here.’
‘I’m worried you’re going to chop a limb off.’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ he replies patiently, disappearing back behind the branch.
‘We can call tree surgeons in! Please come down.’
I hear his low deep chuckle. ‘Leah. I really do know what I’m doing.’ He sounds amused. ‘I’m a trained forester.’
‘You’re what?’
‘I worked for Forestry England before I came here.’
Excuse me while I scrape my jaw off the ground.
His face reappears. ‘You thought I’d been stuck behind a bar all this time?’
Yes, I did. Not that it mattered, but I had assumed…
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
He shrugs. ‘It hasn’t come up.’
‘Did you work there for long?’
‘About five years.’ He glances down at me. ‘Shall we talk about this later? I’d like to crack on before the wind picks up again.’
‘Oh, sure.’ I walk away, my cheeks flushed.
The chainsaw restarts.
Mum will be gone for at least another hour so I get on with feeding the herd. We have thirty-seven alpacas now – twenty-four girls and thirteen boys – but we’d probably have double that if my parents had stuck to only selling yarn and alpaca products. They had to accept that they wouldn’t always be able to cope with the size of their growing herd, so their main income in recent years has come from breeding and selling cria. I know it pained Dad and will continue to sadden Mum to say goodbye to any of the animals, but they go to good homes – my parents have always made sure of it.