‘Ooh I do LOVE mysteries!’ Kate smiled at Annie, then glanced at the time again. ‘This is Daddy’s watch! Oh dear, I’ve got to dash. Excuse me, won’t you? It’s been lovely meeting you. Thank you for showing me this – I know we’re going to be good friends, aren’t we?’
To Annie’s surprise, Kate leaned over impulsively and gave her a warm sweet kiss on the cheek. Then she whirled out of the shop and went running down the hill to the station, her red shoes clopping and her hair bouncing as she ran. Annie was left at the shop door, staring after her, a lump in her throat, her cheek glowing. No one had given her a sweet kiss for years and years, she thought, not since her girls were little.
She couldn’t wait for Freddie to come home.
‘Guess who came here?’ she’d say tantalisingly, and when he asked ‘Who?’ she wouldn’t say ‘that Loxley girl’ she’d say, ‘Kate’ as nicely as she could manage.
‘That’s a good ’un,’ said Herbie, smoothing the chunk of freshly quarried alabaster Freddie had loaded onto the back of the lorry. ‘Got plenty of pink in it. That’s what you want, that deep rose pink, ’tis hard to find in a stone. Want a fag?’
‘No thanks.’ Freddie took off his cap, rolled up his shirtsleeves and plunged his face into the stone trough of clear spring water that welled up from the hillside. He cupped his hands and drank, then splashed it over his hair. ‘Beautiful water this,’ he said. ‘’Tis a mystery where it comes from.’
‘An underground lake,’ said Herbie, lighting up his fag and sitting up on the back of the lorry. ‘Look at yer shirt – soaking wet. My missus’d be after me if I did that!’
Freddie didn’t care. It was steaming hot in the alabaster quarry, a suntrap deep in the hills where the rare translucent stone was being hacked out by teams of men, and hauled away down the wooded lanes, covering the trees in dust. At the end of the day the workers were stacking their picks in the long shed, and leaving on an assortment of bicycles or hitching rides on the stone carts drawn by heavy Shire horses.
‘You’re steaming like a pudding now,’ laughed Herbie as Freddie sat beside him on the lorry.
‘I gotta get back,’ said Freddie.
‘Ah – you gonna write that letter?’ Herbie wagged a finger and looked under his heavy brows at Freddie. ‘You do it, lad, or you’ll lose her. ’Tis like fishing – always the best ones get away and you end up wishing you’d hauled ’em in while you got ’em.’
‘I don’t want to make the same mistake again,’ said Freddie.
‘Pah! Mistakes,’ said Herbie fiercely. ‘I made plenty of they. And if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have learned nothing. You gotta give love a chance, lad. You win some, you lose some. Don’t you let mistakes stop you.’ He ground his fag end into the dust.
Freddie looked at him gratefully, thinking that Herbie’s rather brusque friendship had done more for him than any of his family. He’d helped him discover his gift for stone carving. Every time he needed a push, Herbie seemed to be there, encouraging him, and now he was reinforcing what Freddie knew in his heart. He had to respond to Kate’s letter. Forget Ian Tillerman, and give love a chance. But first there was something he needed to do.
At the end of the hot afternoon he stood outside the pawnbroker’s shop looking in the window, searching for something he couldn’t see there. He pushed the door open and went in. A woman was in there haggling over the price of a silver teapot she was pawning. Freddie padded around, waiting and thinking about Herbie’s advice. He hadn’t yet replied to Kate’s letter. It needed thought, and he was being cautious, holding back his feelings. He didn’t want to upset Kate any more, and he didn’t want to make the same mistake again. Until he knew about Ian Tillerman, he wasn’t going to bare his soul.
He was busy, helping Annie with the bread in the early mornings, then doing as many haulage trips as he could with the lorry, and working far into the night on the stone carving. The statue of St Peter was nearly finished, and then he had to start on Joan’s commission, two stone eagles for her gateposts.
Intuition had brought him back to the pawnbroker’s. He watched with empathy as the woman left her silver teapot in the shop and departed with a meagre amount of cash in her hand, her eyes downcast. Back in January he’d stood there, miserable and penniless, and pawned the diamond ring he’d bought with such hope and joy.
‘Have you still got the ring?’ he asked, pushing the receipt across the counter. The pawnbroker peered at the receipt and opened a slim drawer in the cabinet.
‘’Tis that one,’ said Freddie, his heart soaring as he spotted the black velvet box, and he felt proud of the way it stood out, brand new amongst the collection of scruffy ring boxes. The pawnbroker seemed to enjoy creating suspense by pretending to search through the boxes, turning them over to look at numbers.
‘Have you got the money?’ he asked, finally putting the box on the counter, keeping his hand on it.
‘Would you open it, please – check the ring is in there,’ Freddie asked, and the box was opened. Both men gazed in silence at the sparkling diamond.
‘It’s a beauty. Got a bluish quality to it,’ said the pawnbroker. ‘I hope she’s worth it.’
‘She is.’
Freddie handed over the money and left, jubilant, with the box safe in his heart pocket again. It had survived his long wet journey, his accident and his illness, and its time in the pawnbroker’s shop. A symbol of hope, he thought, feeling that he could now try to answer Kate’s sad letter. And he still had money in his pocket.
‘I promise you, you won’t die of fright, Annie,’ said Joan as the two women stood on the pavement outside the bakery. Annie was clutching a willow basket filled with flowers in one hand and Levi’s walking stick in the other. Her eyes were dark with fear and the pulse was racing in her temples.
‘I can see how afraid you are,’ Joan said kindly. She looked into Annie’s eyes. ‘The fear isn’t going to go away. It’s like childbirth, Annie. The only way out of it is through it.’
Annie looked at her gratefully. She hung on to those words like a mantra. ‘The only way out of it is through it.’
‘Don’t fight it,’ said Joan, ‘let the fear come, you can’t stop it. Let it come and let it go. It will take about ten minutes. My husband says these attacks of fear only ever last for ten minutes because the body can’t sustain that level of fast breathing and racing heartbeat. The body will calm itself down, Annie, if you let it. And use the stick. If you get that giddiness, push the stick into the ground, and it will anchor you.’
‘But what will people think of me? Using a stick like an old woman?’
‘Does it matter?’ asked Joan. ‘Does that really matter MORE than you getting better?’
‘I suppose not. No.’
‘Every step you take is one step towards your freedom.’
Annie was quaking inside and she could feel the sweat prickling in her hair, but she started to do what Joan had taught her in the garden. Three steps, breathe in, three steps, breathe out.
‘Well done,’ cried Joan.
‘Shh! I don’t want the whole town to know.’
‘Keep going,’ said Joan in a gentler voice. ‘I’m with you but if I hold you it doesn’t count. You have to do it on your own.’
Annie kept going doggedly, walking and breathing as Joan minced along beside her.
‘I don’t want Freddie to know,’ she said. ‘Not until I’m sure I can do this.’
‘That’s fine. I won’t say anything,’ Joan promised. ‘Look, we’re nearly there, Annie.’
It was about a hundred yards to the church, and Annie was surprised to find herself standing in the porch.
‘There!’ said Joan triumphantly. ‘Do you want to sit down?’
‘No.’ Annie smiled and her soft eyes twinkled. ‘I want to dance!’
She put some flowers on Levi’s grave, and then the two women spent a happy hour inside the church arranging the tall spikes of larkspur, lilies and marigolds from Annie’s garden. Joan had brought a bunch of antirrhinums and some foliage.
‘That looks beautiful, doesn’t it?’ she enthused when they had finished. ‘You’ve done that pedestal very cleverly, Annie, I’d never have thought of doing it like that.’
‘I wanted to be a florist,’ Annie said, gathering up the stray leaves and stems from the floor. ‘I enjoyed doing that.’
Joan gave one of her shrieks, ‘Look at the clock! I can’t believe it’s ten past three. I promised to drive Susan to an interview for a job. I’ll have to dash. You go home on your own, Annie. You can do it. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
She ran down the church path, leaving Annie standing at the door, a look of horror on her face. Joan had abandoned her. Or was it deliberate? She’d never trusted that Joan Jarvis in the first place. Annie sat down on the porch, hoping the vicar wouldn’t turn up and find her there, hoping Freddie might come past in his lorry and see her. Then she remembered he wouldn’t be home until late. She couldn’t sit there for hours.
Trembling with anger and nervousness, Annie took her basket and Levi’s stick and set off down the path, counting her steps and chanting the mantra in her mind.
But when she went through the gate into the street, her throat closed up, her heart raced like galloping hoof-beats, and the whole street rocked and swayed, the buildings toppling, the pavement gyrating around her.
Annie was terrified.
‘I’m going to die, here on the street,’ she thought. But Joan’s words rang in her head. ‘The only way out is through it.’
‘Are you all right, Mrs Barcussy?’
Annie looked up and saw the vicar looking down at her like an inquisitive heron. She stood up straight and puffed herself up proudly. ‘I’m very well, thank you. Just on my way home. Good afternoon.’ And she walked on, her head held high. One, two, three, breathe in. Four, five, six, breathe out.
She arrived home in a state of utter exhaustion and despair. She collapsed into the old rocking chair where she rocked and cried and rocked and cried until she fell into a deep sleep with one thought blazing in her mind.
‘I’m never, EVER going out again.’