‘Dad?’ Raising her voice, she ran upstairs and hammered on the bathroom door. Her father, with a casket to deliver, had finished work early in order to shower and change before driving over to Cheltenham.
Above the sound of gushing water, Jake shouted, ‘Yes?’
‘There’s a letter for Gran. I’m going to take it to her,’ Sophie yelled back. She was allowed to visit Marcella’s house on Holly Hill since there was no road-crossing involved.
‘What?’
She heard the shower door open inside the bathroom, enabling Jake to poke his head out and hear what she was saying.
‘ Me and Bean are going up to Gran’s,’ Sophie bellowed. ‘OK. I’ll be back by six,’ said Jake. ‘I’ll pick you up from there, then we’ll go and see Tiff at the hospital.’
‘OK, see you!’ Clapping her hands at Bean, Sophie galloped downstairs clutching the envelope.
Delivering letters was easy; maybe she’d be a postman when she grew up.
Marcella had been out in the garden doing a spot of gentle pruning when Sophie arrived.
Enveloping her beloved granddaughter in an enthusiastic hug, and feeling her heart expand with love, Marcella wondered if holding a child of her very own could possibly feel better than this.
‘Are those really sharp?’ Beadily, Sophie eyed the secateurs in Marcella’s hand. ‘Can I have a go?’
‘In your dreams, sweetheart.’ Tweaking the end of one of Sophie’s braids, Marcella spotted the envelope and said, ‘What’s that? Love letter from Tiff?’
‘It’s for you. See, it’s got your name on it. What are you going to call the baby if it’s a boy?’
Sophie was extremely keen to be involved in the decision-making process. ‘How about Malfoy?’
‘I thought we’d wait until it’s born, then see what it looks like.’ Taking the envelope, Marcella glanced at her name shakily inscribed on the front and headed over to the garden bench. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘On the floor at home. The toothmarks are Bean’s – I rescued it just in time. Can I have a biscuit’ " said Sophie, because nobody kept a better supply of biscui in their house than Marcella.
‘Hmm? OK, just the one.’ Having. opened the envelope, Marcella’s eye slid automatically to the name at the bottom ofthe letter. It was like bouncing along happily on a cloud, then all of a sudden landing on a tangle of barbed wire. Marcella’s breath caught in her throat and her heart began to race. She wondered if this was someone’s idea of a sick joke.
But the wording of the letter seemed honest enough.
Dear Marcella,
Please don’t ignore this letter. I have liver failure and very little time left to live. I need to speak to you before I die.
This is very important to me, and will be to you too. Please come to Dartington House on Friday afternoon. I’m so very sorry.
Once more, Marcella found herself gazing at the signature at the bottom of the page. It looked like the handwriting of someone hopelessly frail. Pauline McKinnon, no less. Close to death. Saying she was sorry. Well, that was a first.
Without even realising it, Marcella had risen from her seat and was busy deadheading roses.
Needing something to do with her hands she snipped away, doing her level best to block all thoughts of Pauline McKinnon from her
‘ Ouch.’ She snatched her left hand away as a thorn on one of the branches punctured her skin. A bead of blood welled up and Marcella sucked her finger, thinking that if she caught tetanus now, that would be the McKinnons’ fault too.
Why the bloody hell should she go over to Dartington House anyway? What had her doctor told her about avoiding stress? And if seeing that woman again wasn’t stressful, Marcella thought resentfully, she didn’t know what was.
Then again, the woman was dying. Pauline McKinnon had lost her son as a result of the accident, albeit in a less final way than April had been taken from her own family.
And she had just said sorry.
Marcella, barefoot and still sucking her index finger, gazed around the sundrenched garden she loved so much. Her hormones must be getting the better of her; at any other time she would have ripped Pauline McKinnon’s letter to shreds by now, and been stomping around the garden calling her the kind of names no granddaughter should ever overhear.
But as Sophie emerged from the kitchen and came racing across the grass towards her, Marcella found herself sliding the letter into the pocket of her white cotton shirt. Not that this meant she’d definitely be going along to the nursing home tomorrow; she simply hadn’t yet made up her mind.
‘I brought chocolate fingers and Hobnobs, so you can have some too.’ There were telltale chocolate marks around Sophie’s mouth as she generously offered the opened packets to Marcella.
Spotting the letter sticking out of her grandmother’s shirt pocket, and keen to avert attention from the number of biscuits missing from the chocolate finger packet, Sophie said brightly, ‘Was it a birthday card?’
Marcella smiled; as far as Sophie was concerned, post was either birthday cards or bills. ‘No, darling, it’s not my birthday until November.’
Breaking a Hobnob in half, Sophie surreptitiously fed it to Bean – who proceeded to chomp away in a very unsurreptitious manner. Rolling her eyes – and looking uncannily like Jake – she said sympathetically, ‘Another bill then, I suppose. Electricity?’
‘Something like that,’ said Marcella.
Maybe it hadn’t been electricity, but it had certainly given her a shock.
Chapter 57
‘I hope you didn’t mind me coming.’ Estelle dodged out of the way of a porter wheeling a patient past on a hospital trolley.
‘No, no. Jake said you wanted to pop over.’ Vigorously Juliet shook her head.
It was a toss up, Estelle realised, which of the two of them was more nervous.
‘I wanted to clear the air. Get everything sorted out,’
she plunged on. ‘It’s OK, that’s what I’m trying to say. You and Oliver, well, it all happened years ago. Of course it was a shock at first, but I’m used to the idea now, so—’
‘I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt you,’ Juliet blurted out, her cheeks pink with mortification. ‘I’m just so glad you and Oliver are back together.’
‘After me making the world’s biggest fool of myself.’
Estelle’s smile was rueful. ‘With Will Gifford.’
‘Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself,’ said Juliet. ‘If you ask me, it was the best thing you could have done. Made Oliver sit up and take notice, didn’t it?’
Estelle moved to one side to allow a group of medical students to pass. Out here in the hospital corridor, it struck her afresh how much she’d always liked Juliet Price. Rather more astonishing was the fact that Juliet had liked Oliver enough to have an affair with him. But now she and Jake had got it together — at last — and as a pairing they made so much more sense.
‘So anyway, we’re OK,’ Estelle said hurriedly. ‘You and me. No awkwardness, no hard feelings, everything’s fine as far as I’m concerned. And we’re just so glad Tiff’s better.’
‘We are too. He’s always said how nice you were.’
Touched, Estelle said, ‘Hopefully we’ll get to know each other even better now. I’ve never had any nephews or nieces. Maybe I can be a kind of informal auntie.’
‘He’d love that. We’d all love that.’ Juliet smiled automatically as the doors of the paediatric unit swung open, spitting out a doctor she recognised.