Coming Home. Fern Britton
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we don’t. There’s only one reason she’d come back. Because Granny’s solicitor has told her that Granny is dead and that she is in for an inheritance. That’s all there is to it.’
Ella loved her brother very much, but she didn’t always agree with him. ‘It must have been a shock for her to hear that. Her mother dead, her father too.’
Henry snorted and ran his hands through his floppy blond hair. ‘Well, it was a bit of a shock for me too, you know, when I heard that my mum had run away. I was only two.’
‘I know.’ Ella looked at the garden she and Kit had started to plant. ‘I can’t imagine how she could leave you. She knew you. It was easier for me. I was just a baby. She didn’t have time to know me. I don’t have a clue what she was like … and that’s why I’d like to see her.’
Henry sat on the wall of the pub’s entrance, all the adrenalin leaving him. ‘I don’t know what to think. I was hoping they wouldn’t find her. Or if they did, that she had died.’
‘Don’t say that!’ Ella flopped into her squashy sofa. ‘Is Kit still with you?’
‘He’s inside. I saw the email and came out to tell you first. He doesn’t know.’
‘Come home. The pair of you. Come home now.’
Ella had been hugging herself with joy just ten minutes ago. How quickly everything can change for the worse.
Ella took Henry’s bag up to Kit’s small studio and put it next to the single bed. It was getting on for late afternoon and through the open window a blackbird was singing in the magnolia tree. Instantly anger rose in her. How dare the bloody birds be so happy while her world was turned upside down? She shut the window with a bang, making the bird fly off. Good riddance, she thought to herself.
Downstairs she heard Kit’s car pull up. She ran down and opened the front door.
Kit was looking serious, as if there had been a terrible accident and he now had the responsibility of the fallout. Which he had, she supposed.
Henry was pale and blowing out his cheeks in a childhood mannerism that always signalled upset.
‘Hi,’ she said softly.
Kit came to her immediately and put his arms around her. He felt the softness and sweetness of her incredible red curls then stood arm’s length from her, his hands on her shoulders. ‘You okay?’
She shook her head and at last felt hot tears springing to her eyes. ‘Not really.’
Kit shepherded brother and sister into the kitchen and made them sit down. ‘You both need a drink. Tea or alcohol?’
Ella settled for a cup of tea while Henry and Kit had large gin and tonics.
‘Right,’ said Kit, pulling out a chair from the table and sitting down. ‘Tell me exactly what has happened.’
Ella looked at Henry. ‘Do you want to tell him?’ she asked.
Henry shrugged in reply and looked at his hands clenching the icy glass.
She looked at Kit. ‘The solicitor has found our mother and she wants to see us.’
Kit was looking at her attentively. ‘What do you think she wants after all this time?’
‘Granny’s money,’ said Henry, flatly.
‘Or,’ said Kit trying to sound positive, ‘she might be coming because she wants to see you two, after all she hasn’t seen you for …’
‘Almost twenty-five years.’ Henry picked up his glass and drank.
Ella swallowed hard. ‘The thing is, Henry has memories of her. Nice ones, I think.’
Henry grunted.
‘They had had time to get to know each other. It was much more painful for him.’ She looked at her brother. ‘I should think.’
Henry said nothing but looked at the floor.
‘Whereas I don’t remember anything about her. I mean she left when I was only just over a year old,’ said Ella, still watching Henry. ‘That’s why I want to see her.’
Henry glared at her. ‘Really?’
Ella twiddled her fingers anxiously. ‘I want to know what she looks like. Do we look alike? What she’s been doing? Why did she leave us?’ She wiped her nose as a tear ran down her cheek. ‘Everything, really.’
Henry was angry. ‘She’s one selfish cow who doesn’t deserve to be listened to. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s lied through her teeth anyway. She might not even be our mother. Just some strange woman who thinks she could get lucky. I wouldn’t believe a word she said.’
‘But, Henry, we must try. Then decide whether we want to be friends or not.’
‘Friends? What are you talking about? She’s a madwoman. We don’t know anything about her. Correction, we know that she had two children by the time she was seventeen and she never told her own parents who the father – or fathers – were, and despite Granny and Grandad being kind and supportive to her, she ran away in the night and never looked back. What kind of person does that?’
‘A sad person?’ Ella said quietly. ‘A person who finds themselves in a really hard place at the start of their adult life and can’t cope. People run away all the time. Every day. She was not in her right mind.’
‘Why didn’t she come back?’ demanded Henry.
‘She was scared,’ Ella said. ‘Once you’ve done something like that, maybe there is no coming back.’
Henry gave a short laugh. ‘Really? Not to have any curiosity about how your children turned out? Not even to see your own parents? Who, in case you had forgotten, never recovered from the worry of what might have happened to her?’
Ella drained her cup of tea, gripped by a sudden anger at his unkindness. She scraped her chair back and took her cup to the sink. She kept her back to her brother. ‘Have you no empathy?’ There was a tea bag in the sink. She fished it out and put it into the food bin. ‘She was just a young girl, Henry. One who had got herself in a mess and she wanted to change that.’
‘By walking out and leaving her shit to be cleared up by her parents?’ sneered Henry. ‘Brilliant.’
Kit, who had been listening to all this quietly, now intervened. ‘You two getting angry with each other isn’t going to help.’
‘Oh, shut up. You know nothing about it,’ said Henry, waving his hand dismissively.
‘I know Ella,’ Kit replied calmly, ‘and I agree with her. You both need to meet this woman and find out who she really is. If you don’t like her after that, then fine. It’s over. You can all move on.’
Ella softened and, walking to Henry’s chair, put her arms around his neck and hugged him. ‘Kit’s right.’
Henry clasped his sister’s hands and pulled her closer to him. ‘It hurts …’ He spoke quietly.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘Was it me?’ His voice caught. ‘Was it my fault?’
Ella took her arms from his neck and knelt by his side. ‘How could it be your fault. You were only two. It might have been my fault. I was the final straw. A second mistake.’
Henry’s tears began to fall. He angrily wiped them away. ‘I hate her, Ellie. I don’t want to see her and I don’t want you to see her either.’ He took her upturned face in his hands. ‘Promise me you won’t see her? I couldn’t bear it.’
Ella saw the pain in her brother’s eyes and made her decision. ‘I promise I won’t see her for as long as you don’t want me too. But I can’t promise that I’ll never want to see her.’
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