The Things I Know(8)

‘I can, Mum,’ Hitch said, nodding, then set about scrubbing the pan in her hand. Cworfee . . . Dawtah . . . she smiled and practised the sounds of New York in her head.

I know that I’m lonely.

I know that the years slip by more quickly each year.

I know that I’m fed up with living on this treadmill.

I know spending time with my chickens is the best part of my day.

I know that I hate Emery.

I know that I’m stuck.

I know that no one will ever love me.





THREE

Hitch cleaned the downstairs of the farmhouse, scrubbing the flagstone floors on her hands and knees with a stiff wooden-backed brush and a bucket of hot, soapy water. Breaking from the rhythm of her scratchy chore, she glanced at the ebonised clock on the mantelpiece. It was a little after three o’clock and she knew she should start thinking about tea and cake in a bit, another food marker that punctuated her day. She’d read once that an army marched on its stomach and she understood – it was the same for farmers.

She rose and rubbed her aching knees before making her way into the yard to tip the bucketful of grubby water on to the flower beds. She then polished the brass grate of the fireplace and quickly dusted the ornaments on the mantelpiece, returning them to the exact same spots where Grandma Elsie and possibly even Great-Grandma Mimi had placed them all those years ago. Running her finger over the once-grand oil painting over the fireplace, which now bore a sooty echo around its slightly battered gilt frame, she smiled at how her family wasn’t exactly big on replacing anything, or on change in general. Hence the same furnishings, the same food, the same routine, the same life handed down from one generation to the next, a rural baton greased by the hardship of farming life that made it harder and harder to grip with every passing year.

Lucky Jonathan . . .

She swallowed the thought and the associated spike of envy as soon as it flared. There was no time to think on things too much. Not today, not any day. There was too much work to do.

Always too much work to do.

After feeding Buddy, she browned the lamb in a pan on the stove and lobbed in chunks of onion, carrot, turnip and potato. Along with a handful of herbs and a jug full of stock, she then sprinkled the whole thing with ground pepper and left the stew in the oven to simmer nicely. Next she wheeled the trundle bed from the big closet on the landing into one of the two guest bedrooms. Mr and Mrs Silvioni had seemed like nice people and Hitch wasn’t in the least bit surprised to see that they had stripped the bed and folded the linen for her to collect easily. They had also left the bathroom neat and tidy, without damp towels thrown hither and thither, as some were wont to do. This behaviour angered her; she guessed the perpetrators were unlikely to do such things in their own home. The Silvionis had even opened the bedroom window, ridding the room of that morning smell, which wasn’t particularly pleasant when it was your own; even less so when it was someone else’s.

She took pleasure, as always, in pummelling the pillows; it warmed her, bunching her fists as she knocked the feathers nice and plump, ready for the clean pillow protector and slip. She always thought that pillows deserved special treatment – the things that cradled a person’s head and took pride of place on the freshly laundered antique brass bed with its comforting dip in the middle. She ran her fingers over their surface, newly encased in starched white cotton, and smiled. Having straightened the curtains, dusted every surface and made the bed, paying particular attention to the crisp white duvet cover, so that it lay taut and wrinkle free, she placed the vase with the single marigold bloom she had picked earlier on the nightstand.

Hitch made the bathroom shine as best she could. It was easy to achieve an immaculate finish on the mirrors and new copper pipework, but on the Victorian enamelled bath, where the surface had thinned in places, and on the old, dulled brass taps, it was easier said than done. She ran the ancient, clunking vacuum cleaner over the floral-patterned rug, replenished the tea and coffee tray and stood back to admire her efforts.

‘Can you get my dawtah some cworfee?’ she asked out loud.

‘Who in God’s name are you talking to?’ her mum called from the landing.

‘Myself.’ A little embarrassed, she swallowed and tucked stray wisps of hair behind her ears.

‘Thought you might have a visitor! Frightened the life out of me!’ her mum said, chuckling.

‘Who’d visit me, Mum?’

Her mother sighed and gave the embarrassed quick shake of her head that she’d been giving for some years now when she was stumped for an answer. ‘This room done, love?’

‘Yep.’ Hitch stood back to allow her a clear view.

‘Good, that’s one job out of the way.’

‘I thought I’d go and clean the girls out, change their bedding. Have a little chat.’

Again the sigh and short shake of her mum’s ageing grey head. ‘The girls? You do know they’re chickens, don’t you?’ she offered softly.

I had noticed, yes, mainly because of the feathers and beak thing. That, and they had no opinion on Game of Thrones when I asked them . . .

‘I just call them that,’ Hitch said, staring down at the duster in her hand.

‘I know,’ her mum said, crinkling her eyes. ‘Everything is okay, my love, everything is okay.’ She walked over and smoothed the hair from her daughter’s forehead, the way she had been doing ever since Hitch was little.