The first splat of a raindrop on my shoulder helped convince me.
I moved quickly through the trees – a little too quickly, perhaps, because before I’d made it halfway through I started feeling dizzy, so I stopped and briefly closed my eyes, recovering my balance. When I opened them again the woods became a blur of green and brown and quiet shadows. Damn the Scrumpy, I thought. It was muddling my thoughts, and confusing my vision.
A tree a short distance in front of me went all unfocused, dividing in two. And there suddenly seemed to be two paths as well, one I didn’t remember that angled away to the cliffs. I heard footsteps coming up behind me and I turned, expecting Mark, but there was no one there.
It must have been an echo, I decided, because here was Mark just coming into view now on the path and looking slightly blurred as well until I focused with an effort. Seeing me standing there seemed to surprise him. He turned his collar up against the damp wind shaking through the leaves and asked me, ‘Something wrong?’
‘No, not at all.’ I stood as steadily as I was able, not wanting to let on how much the Scrumpy had affected me. ‘It’s just that I couldn’t remember which path to take.’
He laughed at that – the first time I had heard him laugh since I’d been back, and turned me round so I could see with my own eyes the way through the trees. ‘There is only the one path, you know.’
There seemed little point in arguing. I simply let him take my hand as he had done when I was small, and as we came out of the woods the rain came on in earnest and we made a breathless run for it across the rising field towards the house.
The dogs had been out in the garden as well. They sat lined up like penitents in the back corridor while Claire, with mop in hand, dealt with the criss-crossing paw tracks that muddied the floor. The corridor smelt of stone and plaster, and the rubber of old boots left drying underneath the rows of hooks that held a heaped array of well-used coats and cardigans. As Mark and I came diving in the door, wet through and stamping mud from our own feet, Claire gave us both a look.
‘Not one more step,’ she warned us, ‘till you’ve taken off those boots. I’m nearly finished, I don’t want to have to do this over.’
As Mark bent to his laces the dogs swarmed him happily, pleased he’d come down to their level. He fended them off as he told Claire, ‘You don’t need to do it at all. I’ll take care of it.’
But there was no breaking the long years of habit. She twisted the mop in its bucket of hot water, wringing it out and then slapping it onto the flagstones in front of the dogs. ‘And you lot,’ she said, as she swished past them, ‘can stay where you are, till your feet dry.’
I could have sworn the dogs snickered, the way men will nudge one another and wink when their wives tell them off. Claire had noticed it, too, and she gave them a withering look that made the setter and the Labrador lie down, pretending submission. The cocker spaniel and the little mongrel, Samson, stayed near Mark, and would have followed him in defiance of Claire’s orders if he hadn’t told them both to stay. They whined a token protest, but they did as they’d been told.
Mark said, good-naturedly, ‘My feet wouldn’t be wet at all, if I hadn’t had to stop and close your windows.’
‘Did I leave them open? Sorry.’ Thanking him, she glanced towards the windows just behind him as he straightened, but they both were tightly shut.
This was the part of the house that we children had passed through most often – the workaday, less showy side of Trelowarth. The section we were in now jutted furthest back into the yard – on one side of the corridor two windows and the door faced out across the yard itself, while on the other side the laundry room and office nestled side by side, their doorways all but hidden in among the hanging coats.
I left my own boots with their heels lined up against the wall, the way Claire liked them, and led the way round past the narrow back staircase that dropped like a chute from the old servants’ quarters above, and then up the one uneven step to the kitchen.
Mark brought the box with him, and asked where I wanted it.
‘Anywhere’s fine.’ It was only a box now, with nothing inside.
Claire, who’d followed behind us, asked, ‘How did it go?’ in a tone that, to anyone else, might have sounded as though she were asking an everyday question.
I said, ‘It was perfect, thanks.’
Mark put in, ‘Eva got drunk.’
‘I did not.’
‘Get over it, you said yourself you were.’ His grin was, like his stepmother’s tone of voice, designed to even out the day’s emotions. ‘You still are. You ought to see your eyes.’
‘Well, if they’re anything like yours,’ I said, ‘I guess I’ll need some coffee.’
‘Guess you will. I’ll make some, shall I?’ And he headed for the kettle with an amiable purpose.
I was moving much more slowly, and Claire came to take my elbow. ‘What on earth were you two drinking?’
‘Scrumpy.’
‘Ah. Then you’ll be needing to sit down, darling.’
She took me through into the big front room that we had always called the library, because of all the bookshelves, and she saw me seated next to the piano, and then Mark came, with coffee for us all, and slouched into the sofa at my side. His hair was curling as it dried, and he looked so much like the boy he’d been once that it seemed incredible to me so many years had passed since I’d last sat in here, like this. With them.