A Heartbeat Away

He strode toward me with a worried smile on his big, kind face.

“Whatever are you doing out on your own, Miss Lucy?” he asked.

I liked the way he always called me Miss Lucy, and I rolled the word around inside my mouth, feeling special.

“Where’s your mom, lass?”

I remembered, and my bottom lip started to tremble.

“She’s…she’s…”

He took my small plump hand in his large, calloused palm and lifted me high into the air.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go and find Mother Brown.”

I felt so safe riding high on Mr. Brown’s shoulders that I began to feel better. I clung to his forehead as he marched us across the lane and through the orchard toward the house.

“My mom’s very sad,” I told him, and I felt him nod.

“She said that my dad has des—des…Has lost our house,” I added.

He halted and swung me down onto the ground. “And where is she now?” he asked me in a low voice.

I gazed into his kind face and I thought it was just like Daniel’s—except that his eyes were a pale blue and Daniel’s were brown—so I smiled at him and answered his question.

“She was crying and crying and crying, and I was frightened, so I’ve come to see Daniel.”

A funny expression passed over Mr. Brown’s face then and he put his rough hands around my face and looked me in the eye.

“Well, don’t you be worrying yourself, little miss,” he told me. “Mrs. Brown will go make sure that your mom is alright, and you can stay here and play with Daniel. In fact…” He lifted his head and pretended to sniff the air. “I think I can smell biscuits fresh from the oven, so we’d better hurry before they’re all gone.”

That was the start of some of the best weeks of my life. The Browns didn’t tell me much about my mom except that she was ill and the doctor said she had to go to the hospital for a while to get better. I was sad at first, until Mrs. Brown said that I could stay with them and have my own room and everything. Then I felt as though I had come home.

“Can I stay here forever?” I asked her.

She laughed.

“Just until your mom gets well again, then you’ll have a new house to live in.”

My heart started to beat rapidly and I clutched at her sleeve.

“Will my dad be there?”

A frown darkened her plump, homely features, and when she leaned over to give me a quick hug, I could smell violets on her skin.

“I don’t know, love,” she told me.

That summer passed in a haze. I had to work, as did Daniel, feeding hens, sweeping up, helping Mrs. Brown in the huge, warm, lovely smelling kitchen. At night I fell into bed with aching legs and eyes so tired that they were shut before my head hit the soft feather pillow. But there was still time for play. On occasion Mrs. Brown would stop what she was doing and say, “Off you go now, lass. Find Daniel and get yourselves away to play.” And off we would go to spend hours trying to catch fish in the beck at the bottom of the far meadow, or grooming Daniel’s fat bay pony, Chocolate. We didn’t ride him much because he had something that Mr. Brown said was laminitis and his feet kept getting sore, but Daniel told me what to do and we used to put the saddle on a big log at the bottom of the orchard and pretend to trot and canter. I was determined that one day I really was going to ride.

Now and then I would wake in the night and lie in the darkness, thinking of my merry bright-eyed dad and my poor sad mom, and then a kind of guilt would creep over me as I imagined her, all alone somewhere, trying to get well while I hardly spared her a thought my life was so full. In the morning I would go straightaway to find Mrs. Brown and ask her when my mom was coming home, and deep inside, almost hidden even from myself, a part of me would dread her answer, knowing that it might spell the end of my days at Homewood.

My thoughts on my father were worrying. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss because his larger-than-life personality had ruled my world for so long—had been my world. Yet there was also anger—anger that he had let me down and betrayed my trust. And then the image of his handsome face would flash into my mind, and as the memory of his laughter echoed around the room, I would climb down from my high bed by the window to reach for my scuffed red shoes, remembering the day he gave them to me—the day he went away. And when I awoke in the morning thereafter, my pillow would always be damp beneath my cheek, soaked with the tears I had shed in my sleep.

Mrs. Brown never made a comment, but when I would go back to my room the following evening, my pillow would always have been changed for a clean dry one, and sometimes she would look at me with a worried expression in her deep brown eyes.

Summer was over on the morning that she inquired about a visit to my mom. The apples in Mr. Brown’s orchard had all been picked, the trees had turned from green to golden-brown and Chocolate’s coat had thickened so much in readiness for winter that I needed all my strength to brush out the mud when he came in from the paddock. His feet were much better, so Mr. Brown said we could ride him, and Daniel gave me lessons in the orchard. Around and around and around we would go, up and down, up and down in the trot until my legs began to ache. Then Daniel would get on, and suddenly Chocolate could do all the things he wouldn’t do for me, and I would groan and laugh and try again.

Mrs. Brown was leaning over the breakfast table, pouring tea from the big brown pot, and she asked it almost casually.

“Would you like to go to see your mother today, Lucy?”

The almost hidden feeling of dread began to churn inside my stomach, and I stared hard at the clear amber liquid gushing from the spout in a perfect arc to fall noisily into Mr. Brown’s flowered cup.

“To see your mother,” she repeated in a matter-of-fact voice. “She’s so much better now, and she’d love to see you.”

The teapot clunked back down onto the table with a thud that reverberated around the sunny kitchen and she looked at me pointedly.

“Can Daniel come?” I asked.

For just a moment her neat white teeth took hold of her bottom lip, and a frown flitted across her face, then her usual soft smile slipped back into place.

“I don’t think that is a good idea this time,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be nice for it to be, you know, just you and your mom?”

I nodded halfheartedly, and the almost hidden feeling of dread spread from my stomach to my heart.

“But you’ll be there?”

Mrs. Brown exchanged a glance with her husband and he gave a slight nod.

“Of course,” she answered quickly. “We’ll set off after lunch, shall we?”

I wanted to say no—I wanted to shout no—I wanted to scream no. But I nodded politely and tried to remember my mother’s sad gray face.

Daniel was sitting on the other side of the table from me, and I glanced across at him, knowing that he would understand, for he didn’t want me to leave Homewood any more than I wanted to go.

He was staring into his bowl of coco pops, stirring the chocolate-colored milk so fast that it spilled onto the brightly checkered tablecloth.

“Daniel!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown.

He put down his spoon and gazed at me. I could see my own fears reflected in his deep-brown eyes, fears that our idyllic summer was about to end. The same disappointment that clouded my thoughts was mirrored on his face. He eyed at me fiercely for a moment, then he jumped up and walked out the back door into the crisp autumn air, leaving his jacket on the peg.

“Daniel!” called Mrs. Brown again. but her husband took hold of her arm and shook his head.

“Let him be,” he told her. “He’ll be back when he’s cold enough.”

And in that moment I closed my eyes and wished with all my heart that Mr. Brown could be my dad. The guilt that washed over me at the disloyal thought made me feel really bad, though, so when I went to get ready to go visit my mom, I pulled the red shoes from underneath my high, wooden-legged bed and looked at them. They didn’t fit me at all anymore, but I knew that I would keep them forever, or at least until my dad returned.

My mom arrived home just after my seventh birthday, and my birthday was about the last day I spent at Homewood. Mr. and Mrs. Brown bought me a lovely red bike, so that I could visit them often, they said, which made me feel just a tiny bit better. Then Daniel handed me a card with a pony on the front. Inside it, he had written, “Happy Birthday and I promise to give you 100 riding lessons on Chocolate.” That was my best present of all because it meant that I could come to Homewood Farm a hundred times more and maybe even learn to ride as well as he did, or almost as well.

On my very last night, Mrs. Brown came to my room to tuck me in. She hugged me and made loud sniffing noises into her hanky.

“Everything will be all right, lovey, you’ll see,” she told me. I hugged her back and breathed in the scent of violets as hard as I could, right down into my lungs so that her fragrance would become a part of me forever.

When her gentle footsteps faded down the stairs, I curled up into a tight little ball, wrapping my arms around my pillow and trying to remember about my mom and my dad, and how things used to be before he went away. But I couldn’t get past the memory of my mom’s wild eyes, blazing like coals amid the dead pallor of her face. All I could recall were the bad times, and I quaked in fear of the tomorrows. And then I heard a knock, just the gentlest tap, and a shadow fell across the beam of light from the half-open doorway, Daniel’s shadow.

“You okay?” he whispered. I uncurled myself and smiled through my tears.

“I am now,” I told him.

For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, then he tiptoed over and perched on the side of my bed, saying nothing, not needing words. And when I awoke next morning, he was gone. But it didn’t matter, because I knew that he had been there, and always would be there when I needed him. It made me feel safe again, I suppose.

CHAPTER 5

Christmas. It figured higher on my undulating tide of memories than any other time. It was almost Christmas when my mom arrived home, a poor sad shadow of the person who’d gone away, and it was Christmas when my dad returned to haunt her.

We lived just down the lane from the Browns now, at Box Tree Cottage. My mom had said that we had to move because my dad lost our other house, but that can’t have been true because it was still there; I saw it every morning on my way to school. I liked Box Tree Cottage, though. You could see the fells from my bedroom window.

I had only one present on our first Christmas there. It was from my mom, and it lay beneath the tree that Mr. Brown had brought us. Mrs. Brown and Daniel had helped decorate it on Christmas Eve. While we two children hung baubles on its spiky branches and breathed in the scent of fresh pine, the excitement that only Christmas can kindle bubbled up inside us, turning the sparkling decorations into something truly magical.

Mrs. Brown stood on a wooden chair to put tinsel right at the top of the tree, then she jumped down, rummaged in the big box of decorations and withdrew a small figure all dressed in silvery white, with gossamer wings and golden hair.

“Come on, Mary,” she insisted, holding the decoration out toward my mom. “Why don’t you put the fairy on the top.”

My mom was sitting in her high-backed chair, staring into the crackling flames of the fire with a distant expression in her eyes. It was nothing, though, compared with the pinched anger they had used to show, and anything was better than the wild desperation that had been so frightening just before she went away. So I didn’t mind a bit—at least she didn’t shout at me anymore—and sometimes I almost felt sorry for her she looked so sad and gray.

Mrs. Brown had arrived with Daniel shortly after the lunchtime program on TV finished, to find my mom sitting in the cold dark living room while I galloped around the house in my bare feet, on a broom that I pretended was Chocolate. Her voice was quiet and calm, but I could see the dismay in her eyes as she took in the clutter of our living room. She ordered me upstairs to get dressed and sent Daniel outside to fetch coal for the fire.

By the time I came back down the steep narrow staircase, flames were roaring up the chimney and my mom was settled in front of their cozy glow with a mug of tea. I smiled gratefully at Mrs. Brown when she handed me a piece of thickly buttered toast with strawberry jam. As I nibbled it contentedly, she and Daniel unpacked the box of goodies they had brought us.

Sparkling tinsel, gaudy baubles, a present for me that Mrs. Brown said she had collected for my mom and a beautiful Christmas cake with an angel on it, just like the one she was trying to get her to place on the tree.

“Come on, Mary,” she pleaded with her lovely voice.

I felt angry when my mom just sat with that vacant look in her eyes, staring into the fire, so I set down my plate and ran across to shake her arm. “Put it on,” I yelled. It mattered so much to me that my mom join in our excitement.

But Mrs. Brown took a gentle hold of my shoulders and pulled me toward her. “It’s all right, Lucy,” she said quietly. “The doctor told us that your mother would need to rest, and Daniel and I are here to keep an eye on you both, so just leave her be and she’ll come around…you’ll see.”

I relaxed against the warmth of her pale blue woolen sweater, clinging to the comfort she offered and smiling contentedly, knowing I was safe within her violet scent. It made me feel good inside to know that I was safe.

“I’ll keep an eye on her, as well, shall I?” I offered gravely.

She nodded in agreement. “Good idea, for she’ll be well again in no time if we both watch out for her.”

I believed then that Mrs. Brown’s magic was working already, for my mom slipped into one of her more lucid periods. Sometimes they only lasted minutes before she drifted back into her cloudy-eyed apathy, but this time her lucidity went on and on and she gazed at Mrs. Brown with real emotion in her gray eyes.

“Edna,” my mother suddenly said. “Whatever am I going to do?”

I hadn’t known that Mrs. Brown was named Edna until that moment. Mr. Brown called her Mother, Daniel called her Mom, and I just called her Mrs. Brown, so hearing her first name made me stand and gawk for a moment, until Daniel grabbed my arm.

“Can we go outside for a bit?” he asked. Mrs. Brown smiled and made a shooing motion.

“Make sure you put your coats on and don’t go out of the garden,” she yelled after us as we raced into the tiny kitchen to get our boots.

We built a den in the shed that day, Daniel and I. He said it was our headquarters and we had to sit at the pretend table and make our plans, but we couldn’t think what to plan. Then he had one of his good ideas.

He screwed up his face, just as he always did when he was thinking, and ran his fingers through his tufty blond hair, which I liked so much.

“We’ll plan a trip,” he said. “A trip to the…to the circus. I’ll be a lion tamer and you can—”

“I’ll ride the horses,” I cut in, excitement buzzing through me.

Daniel was always contriving crazy things to do. We spent hours making plans that amounted to nothing, but we both understood that it was just a matter of time. One day, once we were grown up, we would fulfill all our dreams.

When we went back into the cozy warmth of the house, the living room seemed taken up by the tree. The gaudy baubles sparkled in the light from the fire, and its golden glow turned the silver tinsel to flickering orange. The bowl on our small scratched coffee table was filled with fruit and two brightly colored presents now lay beneath the canopy of green branches. One had no name on it, and Mrs. Brown said that she had bought it for me to give to my mom, so I filled in the card she handed me, meticulously writing my name in big letters and putting lots of kisses at the bottom, before arranging it carefully underneath the tree, next to the one from my mom to me. In that moment my world seemed complete and I turned to look at Mrs. Brown with tears of happiness in my eyes.

“It really is Christmas, isn’t it!” I exclaimed.

She laughed. “It certainly is,” she agreed. “And we’ll expect you and your mother for lunch tomorrow at twelve-thirty prompt.”

“At Homewood?” I cried, clapping my chubby hands.

“At Homewood,” she said. “Now, come on, Daniel. There are all the chores waiting for us at home.”

I stood in the front door and watched Mrs. Brown and Daniel drive away in their blue car. I watched until the car disappeared around a corner in the lane, and when I went back inside, hugging my warm glow of happiness, I realized that my mom’s lucid period had slipped again. She was sitting very quietly in her chair, just staring, I didn’t mind, though, because tomorrow we were going to have Christmas lunch at Homewood Farm.

It was after dark when a knock sounded on the door. My mom had fallen asleep in her chair, the fire had died to a red glow in the grate and I was curled up on the floor in front of it, dreaming about tomorrow and imagining Father Christmas hurtling through the sky in his sleigh. The knock made me jump, and for just a moment I thought that he was here already, before I had even gone to bed, so I ran and hid behind my mom’s chair. When the knock sounded again, more urgently, I shook her shoulder hard, calling her name. To my relief, she opened her eyes, but she stared at me vacantly, holding her hand against her forehead as if she had a headache. The knocking came yet again, and she pushed me toward the door.

“Go and see who it is, Lucy,” she groaned.

I was terrified in case it was Father Christmas and he wouldn’t leave me any presents because I was still awake, but the knocking was so loud that in the end I wriggled at the bolt until it slid back and the door burst open.

The man on the step was thinner than I recalled. His cheekbones seemed to push against his skin and his dark hair curled down over his collar, but there was no mistaking those twinkling blue eyes.

“Hello, princess,” he cried with a flourish. “I thought I’d find you here when I saw Mrs. Brown leave. Now, give your dad a kiss, since he’s come home for Christmas.”

I gawked at him for a moment, caught between fear and joy, and then I remembered his horse.

“Have you brought the horse?” I asked him.

He stepped inside and leaned down to look into my eyes.

“Now, what horse would that be?” he inquired in a serious voice.

“The one that all your money went on,” I replied, clenching my hands to help contain my excitement.

For a moment he eyed me curiously. His forehead puckered into lines and his eyes narrowed as he tapped his chin with one long forefinger. Then suddenly he raised his hands in the air and let out a great guffaw.

“I’m afraid that particular horse galloped off a long time ago, princess,” he told me. “And it wasn’t to the winning post.”

I felt tears well in my eyes, and my bottom lip started to tremble. I was so sure that one day my dad would bring the horse home, and now I would never be able to show it to Daniel. It wasn’t fair—

“Who is it?”

My mother’s voice floated through from the living room, thin and reedy as it always was nowadays. My dad took hold of my hand and led me through the door with determined strides.

“Hello, Mary,” he said. “Your old man’s here to see you on Christmas Eve.”

My mom lifted herself slowly from her chair. She was trembling all over, and there was more emotion on her face than I had seen her show since before she went away, as if she had all of a sudden managed to shed her protective coat of apathy.

“Get out!” she yelled. “Get out of my house.”

My dad just grinned, unconcerned by her ferocity, and turned to me.

“Not wearing your red shoes, princess?” he asked. I gazed up at him, confusion flooding my brain.

“They don’t fit,” I mumbled.

He grabbed me beneath the armpits and swung me around and around, so that the blood rushed to my head. When he put me down, I felt sick and faint.

“Well, in that case we’ll have to buy you others, won’t we,” he exclaimed.

He was like that, my dad. First he made you sad and then he made you smile. But my mom wasn’t smiling. Her face was all white and her eyes were open very wide.

“Get out!” she yelled again.

My dad looked at her for a minute, then he turned to me.

“Lucy,” he said, pointing to the door. “Time for bed.”

I stood my ground, setting my legs ready for a fight.

“I’m hungry,” I cried, clutching my stomach.

A dark shadow passed across his handsome features and he glanced around the room. Then his eyes brightened and he reached across to where a mound of multicolored fruits spilled from the bowl that Mrs. Brown had put together for us. His fingers paused above a yellow banana, plucked a purple grape and popped it into his mouth, then settled over a large red apple.

“Here,” he said, handing the apple to me. “This’ll fill you up. Now, go to your bed.”

I made a parting shot, anything that would keep me there for just a bit longer.

“We’re going to Homewood Farm for Christmas lunch tomorrow,” I announced, and when he scowled and turned back toward my mother, unimpressed by the information, I scuttled up the stairs, clutching my apple.

I had been waiting forever for my dad to come home, but now that he was here, it didn’t feel right. I lay in my bed, trying to keep warm, nibbling on the apple and listening to the voices downstairs. At first I heard my mom shouting again, but then she went quiet and I thought I heard her cry. Then there was silence, and the next thing I knew it was pitch-dark. I sat up, fear coursing through me as a shadow rippled across the ceiling. When I remembered my dad had returned, I lay back down again, listening to the silence and wondering if I dared to go and find my mom.

A clock ticked in the hallway, and I blinked in time with the sound until I heard an owl hooting in the darkness. Too wit, too woo, too wit, too woo, too wit, too woo, it called. I mouthed its cries, curious what it would be like to be an owl. When it fell silent, I became aware of another sound. It came from my mom’s room next door, and it was a kind of thumping, an urgent rhythmic banging, followed by a moaning gasping cry. So I pulled the covers over my head, and when I woke up again, daylight was streaming though my window and hunger pains were clawing at my stomach.

My mom, who had only been home for a short time, rarely got up until midday. It didn’t matter to me, though, as I had become used to fending for myself. Usually I would go and find some cereal or bread to eat and then play in the cold living room until she came downstairs, but this morning was different. This morning was Christmas Day.

In my eagerness to get downstairs, I fell from my bed onto the brightly colored mat that covered the floorboards, scuffing my elbow and hurting my head, but I didn’t care. I scrambled down the steep narrow stairs and burst through the living-room door. The Christmas tree was still there in all its gaudy finery, the presents bought by Mrs. Brown lying beneath it. With a flicker of disappointment, I saw that Santa hadn’t eaten the mince pie I’d left him, nor had his reindeer even nibbled on the carrot, so I ate the pie myself and wondered why he had forgotten to call at my house.

My present was wrapped in bright shiny red paper covered in tiny Christmas trees. It looked so good that I hardly dared to tear the paper. I unwrapped it carefully, wanting the anticipation to last as long as possible.

“Love from Mom,” said the label. When I saw what was inside the parcel, I began tearing at the rest of the paper with eager hands. Jodhpurs! She had bought me jodhpurs to wear when I rode Chocolate.

Dragging them on, I stumbled up the stairs and burst into my mom’s bedroom, eager to share my excitement. I froze in the doorway, though, when I remembered that my dad was home.