Reluctantly Home(2)

She heard a door creak open and then the soft pad of footsteps on the landing.

‘Pip? Are you okay?’ her mother asked in hushed tones through her closed door. ‘Can I get you anything?’

Pip cursed under her breath. Why couldn’t her nightmares be silent so she could keep them to herself? She imagined her mother lying awake in the dark next door, just waiting for her terrors to make their nightly visit, her father snoring gently next to her, oblivious.

‘I’m fine, Mum,’ she said, trying to sound reassuring and not irritated. ‘Go back to bed.’

She heard her mother creep away, the bedroom door opening and then not quite closing behind her. Was this what her future looked like now, with her unable to make it through a night without reliving every moment of the accident, and her mother watching over her like a hawk? How was that a future?

But what did she expect? Pip had taken a life, and for that it was only right she should forfeit her own. The inquest had found her to have no legal responsibility for the boy’s death; it had simply been a tragic accident, but that made no difference. She knew what had happened was her fault, and she couldn’t imagine ever being able to forgive herself. Guilt was her constant companion, never once leaving her side, so she couldn’t forget, even for a second, what she had done. And her life, destroyed by panic and guilt, seemed a fair price to pay. A life for a life.

She settled herself back into the cold, damp sheets, ready to lie awake until morning.

Pip must have dropped off to sleep at some point, because she woke to the smell of burning. The acrid air stole into her nostrils and her eyes snapped open. What was on fire? Should she run? Then she remembered where she was. Her parents’ house. The smell currently filling her room would be the toast her mother was making for breakfast. Some things never changed. The ancient Aga that sat in the farmhouse kitchen had been there since Pip was a baby and making toast on it was simply a question of timing, but somehow it always burned.

She got up, threw a dressing gown around her shoulders and headed downstairs, the smell getting stronger the closer she got to the kitchen. Once there, the air was thick with smoke and her mother was standing over the bin trying to scrape the worst of the charring off with a knife. Her father and his farmhand, Jez, were tucking into their breakfasts at the scrubbed pine table and barely seemed to have noticed.

‘Morning,’ said Pip.

Her mother looked up and then back down at the blackened piece of bread in her hand.

‘I burned the blessed toast,’ she said. ‘The cat brought a mouse in and . . .’ She shrugged sadly by way of further explanation. ‘It was the last of the bread, too, until I get to the shops.’

‘Nothing changes, eh, Pip?’ her father said, cheerfully biting into his sausage. ‘There’s plenty of bacon left. Sit down and have a bite with us before we head out.’

Jez was wiping the remains of his egg yolk up with a piece of bread, but he looked up and then shuffled his chair across a little to make room for her to sit down. He gave her a smile, wide and friendly, but Pip ignored him, or rather, pretended she hadn’t noticed. The two of them had been close when they were kids, and he kept trying to talk to her, but she didn’t have the strength for conversation and, if she was honest, she wasn’t that interested in rekindling their friendship. Jez was part of her past, and she didn’t need him in her present. What would be the point? She wasn’t planning on being around for long enough to get to know him again, and anyway, they’d have nothing to talk about. They might have been close as teenagers, but she doubted they had much in common now. He was still here, for a start, content to work on a farm a few miles from where he’d grown up, whereas she had built a fabulous life for herself in London, and although she liked him well enough, investing time in their erstwhile friendship would take more than she had to give.

‘Never mind,’ she said to her mother. ‘I’m not that hungry. I’ll just have a cup of tea.’

What she really wanted was coffee, decent coffee made with hand-ground beans and filtered to a rich smoothness, but all her mother could offer was an old jar of instant that had lost any tempting aroma it might once have held through sitting on the window sill for months, possibly years. No one drank coffee here and so this jar was reserved for visitors. After two or three cups of the filthy stuff, Pip had resorted to drinking tea instead.

‘Oh, Pip,’ her mother replied, and in those two words Pip could hear the worry that was so clearly etched into her face. Pip was tired of being the cause of so much heartache, but she couldn’t summon the energy to change that, either.

‘You can’t go to the shop on an empty stomach,’ her mother continued to object. ‘Let me make you some porridge. Or a boiled egg at the very least. . .’ She looked at the charred slice of bread in her hand and then opened her fingers and let it fall into the bin. ‘But there’s no toast for soldiers,’ she added, her mouth twisted into a wry smile.

‘Honestly, Mum,’ Pip said, filling the kettle and setting it to boil on the hot plate. ‘There’s no need. Tea is fine.’

Her mother made a noise somewhere between a tut and a harrumph, but she didn’t push the point.

‘I thought we weren’t calling you Pip any more,’ her father chipped in, and Pip cringed.

‘Have you heard this one, Jez?’ he continued. ‘Our Pip’s only gone and changed her name to Rose. We didn’t know a thing about it until her chap Dominic came to stay. When he called her Rose, I was looking round to see who he was talking to.’