Page 6 of Carry Me Home

Dot doesn’t answer immediately. She adjusts Gerald, who seems to sigh.

‘She will be,’ she says finally. ‘She always is. She’ll come back when she’s ready, Tom. She always does.’

I pay for the oatcakes. Say goodbye to Gerald. The bell above the door chimes as I leave. It’s the same bell that’s been there since Dot took over from her mother, who took over from her mother, who took over from her mother, who apparently used to be involved with smugglers and all sorts of dark and illicit dealings. The bell is the same bright sound that’s marked every arrival and departure in this shop for longer than I’ve been alive.

She’ll come back when she’s ready.

She always does.

Chapter Two

TOM

Iintend to go straight to the surgery. My intentions on this score last approximately as far as the top of the hill, where my parents’ house sits back from the lane with the front door open, as it always is, and the sound of lunch in full swing audible from the gate.

I pause, hesitating. The Treloar farm is at two and I have seventeen different things to prepare.

But lunch, Mum’s lunch… I look at the oatcake packet and open the gate, head up the path, push through the ajar front door, and duck so I don’t headbutt the low beam on the cottage hallway ceiling. Twenty-three times I’ve forgotten about that beam since I turned eighteen and reached my full height. Yes, I’m counting.

The kitchen is full of chaos. Mum is at the Aga stirring one pot, while peering into another. Dad is at the table reading, his long Darcy legs stretched out under the table, the Farming Life magazine held at full arm’s length because he’s forgotten that his glasses are perched on top of his white springy hair. Again. Hayley, my youngest sister, is telling a story that involves both hands and appears to have been going on for some time. She’s all Mum’s colouring, strawberry blonde and freckles. Meg – the middle of the Darcy siblings and undoubtedly the most annoying of us – spots me in the doorway and points with a cocky smirk. The smirk tells me she is one hundred per cent judging me for being an independent bachelor but still turning up for my mother’s lunch more frequently than I should.

‘Tom.’ Mum doesn’t turn around. ‘Sit down. There’s quiche.’

‘I just came from Dot’s—’ I sit down anyway, on the wooden kitchen chair that I’m pretty sure has been curved to the shape of my arse.

‘Dot’s not ordering enough stock, we all know it,’ she says. A slice of quiche slaps down on the plate. ‘Sit down. Tomatoes? Sainsbury’s, I’m afraid – our crop is still green.’

Dad looks up from his magazine, takes in my face, and returns to his page. This is his primary parenting contribution and it is, in its way, faultless. He’s retiring from our family practice at some point this year, stepping back, taking it easy.

Thursday morning is when he does the early shift, and somehow, somehow, he always manages to have an empty enough schedule to be home in time for Mum’s homemade quiche. Which makes me think things are being planned to be ‘easy’ or just ignored. I really should have gone straight to the practice to see what sort of mess he left it in this morning. Mum’s quiche, though, smells amazing.

‘—and then she said,’ Hayley continues, picking up mid-sentence after my arrival has interrupted her flow, ‘that if we were going to Truro on Saturday, we should make a whole day of it, go to that new place on the quay, and Tom’—she turns to me—‘you should come. When did you last have a day off that was actually a day off?’

I take a bite of quiche, knowing full well it’s considerably better than Dot’s oatcakes that not even the tourists want. ‘Can’t. Treloars on Saturday.’

‘Sunday then.’

‘Maybe. And for the record I had time off for that wedding.’ My stomach lurches again at the memory.

‘Oooh,’ says Meg from the counter, where she is doing absolutely nothing productive, drawing the word out across three syllables before leaving a pause so theatrical it should have its own lighting rig. ‘But, Tom, you should definitely come to Truroooo. We could pop in and say hello to Niiiiina.’

The table goes into one of those pretend quiets.

Dad turns a page.

Mum moves something on the Aga that doesn’t need moving.

Hayley examines her lunch with sudden and intense interest.

‘You know where her mum’s new café is,’ Meg adds, entirely unrepentant. ‘Which I know because Brynn told Jude and Jude told me. Friendly visit. Very casual. We could all go. Nina’s mum does make the second-best cake in the West Country, second only to Nina’s.’

Damn, I miss that cake. The shortbread, the… No. I slam the door on that thought. Tom Darcy is moving on.

Tom Darcy is moving on.

Tom Darcy is moving on.

‘Meg,’ I say, voice flat.