‘I’m feeling cold,’ Susan continued. Both hands were at her waist now, thumbs forward, fingers flexing, working her lower back. ‘I feel like I’m lying on something cold. And hard.’ Her eyes, crystalline blue, widened. ‘Why do I keep seeing a refrigerator?’
‘Jesus!’ I blurted. I couldn’t help it. My mother had died in a Baltimore hospital, but the heart attack that killed her had happened in my kitchen, during a knock-down, drag-out screaming match with my sister Georgina. When I could breathe again, I said, ‘You’re freaking me out.’
‘It’s OK to freak out.’ Susan smiled. ‘Do you want me to go on?’
I clutched the shopping bag from Simon Drew to my chest, wrinkling the heck out of the caricature of Rabbit printed on its side, and considered Susan’s question for maybe two and a half seconds. ‘Yes,’ I said, blinking back tears.
‘Your mother’s saying she’s fine, she’s not in pain anymore…’ Susan paused for a moment, just long enough that I began to worry. ‘There must be another sister.’
Oh. My. God. Susan Parker knew about Ruth, too. I’d walked out of the fanciful world of Simon Drew and straight into the Twilight Zone. ‘Uh huh,’ I croaked, trying to swallow the lump that was suddenly taking up too much space in my throat.
Susan laid a gentle hand on my arm. ‘Your mother wants you and your sisters to know that she loves you very much.’
‘Uh huh,’ I sniffed.
‘Do you need a tissue?’
‘Thanks.’ While I wiped my eyes and blew my nose with the tissue thoughtfully produced from the depths of Susan’s leather handbag, I tried to make sense out of what had just happened.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked.
‘How…?’ I began.
Susan shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I honestly don’t know. It just happens.’
As if to punctuate her comment, the bells of St Saviour’s Church began to chime the hour. Susan jumped as if she’d been shot. ‘Sorry, I’ve got an appointment. Have to run. Are you going to be all right?’
‘I think so,’ I said, tucking the soggy tissue into my shopping bag. ‘It’s just a lot to take in all at once.’
‘It was lovely to meet you,’ Susan said, extending her hand, smiling. ‘And your mother!’
Rabbit appeared just then, checking out the shoppers, no doubt, snuffling noisily around my ankles as if I’d recently misted them with Eau de Boeuf. I bent to give the dog a pat. By the time I’d ordered Rabbit not to be such a beggar and sent him back to his owner, the embroidered sunflower on the back of Susan Parker’s jacket was disappearing around the corner of Union Street.
‘Wait a minute! There’s something I want to ask you!’ Gathering my wits about me once more, I set off at a trot in the direction of Market Square searching for Susan, but she had vanished into the crowds that clustered around the market stalls selling everything from fresh raspberries to ‘designer’ handbags.
Still in a fog, I made my way to the market tea room where I bought a cup of cappuccino, sat down at a table by myself and sipped it very, very slowly, feeling sorry for myself.
I was sprinkling a second packet of demerara sugar over the foam when it occurred to me. Susan Parker sounded exactly like Sue Scott playing the Lutheran Lunch Lady on Prairie Home Companion. She was an American.
TWO
‘Horn Hill House is a fully restored Grade II listed Georgian townhouse perched on a hill overlooking the River Dart. Four en-suite bedrooms are offered, each with a colour television, a mini-cooler and a hair dryer. Fresh milk, leaf tea, ground coffee, and tea cakes are also provided. Natural cotton bedding and non-allergenic pillows have been specifically chosen to ensure each guest a good night’s sleep. Special diets are catered for using, when available, organic produce.’www.DiscoverDartmouth.com
I honestly don’t remember how I got back to our B &B on Horn Hill, but I must have made the right turn on to Anzac Street, skirted St Saviour’s Church, and passed right by the Singing Kettle without even thinking about stopping for tea, which only goes to show how preoccupied I was because a cream tea at the Singing Kettle is a near religious experience, even if you’ve just finished a cappuccino.
Somehow, I made my way into Higher Street and turned right for the long climb up Horn Hill, one of the many stepped thoroughfares for which Dartmouth is famous. Horn Hill House was near the top, on the left, through a gate and up five additional steps along a narrow alleyway that opened into a well-tended garden.
When I snapped out of my daze, I found myself standing on the doorstep of Horn Hill House, fumbling in my handbag for the old-fashioned key with its unusual Buddha-shaped fob. Unlocking the door required two hands, so I tucked my packages under my arm, slotted the key into the lock, and turned both the key and the doorknob at the same time.
The door swung open on noisy hinges, and I stumbled into the tiny vestibule. I’d taken two steps in the direction of the narrow, twisting staircase that led to our room on the floor above when a door opened to my right. ‘Hannah?’
It was Janet Brelsford, our proprietress, looking super smart in a fuchsia scoop-neck T-shirt tucked into fashionably faded jeans with a razor-sharp crease.
‘Sorry, Janet. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’ I jingled the key. ‘I’ll get the hang of the door eventually!’
Janet laughed. ‘I have no doubt of that. Can you come in for a moment? I’ve got something to show you.’
Paul and I had been in Dartmouth only a few days, but Janet and I had already become friends. From the minute we stepped over the threshold of Horn Hill House, Janet Brelsford and her husband, Alan, had made us feel like family. Janet cooked for us like family, too, if your family includes a Paris-trained Cordon Bleu chef among its members. Alan, a Francophile himself, managed to complement every meal with a fine Savigny Les Beaune Cuvee, a Sauvignon de Saint Bris or some other nearly unpronounceable vin extraordinaire, produced with a flourish from the depths of a wine cellar he kept locked with a key the size of a handgun.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Janet continued, easing the door to their sitting room a bit wider, ‘but when I was changing the linen in your room just now, I noticed your knitting.’
I had been contemplating a hot bath – a long, brain-sorting think in the claw-foot tub tucked into an alcove of our comfortable en suite – but suddenly, talking about knitting seemed a pleasant distraction. I dropped the keys into my bag. ‘It’s not a particularly ambitious project,’ I told her. ‘Slip one, knit one, pass stitch over on the even rows. It’s called a healing shawl. I knit them for cancer survivors. Almost as good as a hug.’
‘We make them here, too,’ Janet said. ‘Comfort shawls we call them.’ She waved a hand toward a flowered chintz-covered sofa. ‘Speaking of which, make yourself comfortable. I’ve just put the kettle on. Would you care to join me?’
After all the coffee I’d had at the market, my eyeballs were floating, but I found I was craving company, so I caved. ‘Tea would be perfect. Lady Gray, if you have it.’
Janet smiled. ‘My favorite, too. Just a tick!’
While Janet bustled around in the kitchen of the ground floor apartment she shared with her husband and two young daughters, I sank gratefully into the sofa, rested my head against the upholstery and stared at the coffered ceiling, embossed with curling vines. What had happened only minutes before already seemed like a dream. Still, it unnerved me. I should tell Paul, of course, but he’d groan, roll his eyes and make Twilight Zone noises. Ruth would be right on board, of course, but my older sister was back in Maryland, probably feng shui-ing the heck out of somebody’s house. For a woman who believed that mirrors could repel evil spirits, talking to ghosts wasn’t a huge leap.