All the Flowers of all the Tomorrows
“When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden.”. – Minnie Aumonier.
The gates were locked, and from the look of the rusty chain and padlock that had been twisted around in lieu of the old ring latch, it had been so for some considerable time. They had once been black and shiny, but the paint was peeling now, and dark green ivy was threaded through the wrought iron scrolls and curls.
They looked smaller than he remembered them. Not because he was grown now, and he was recalling some childish memory. No. He had last seen them when he was seventeen and already over six foot. They just didn’t have the same sense of… oppressiveness, yes, that was the word. He had lived a lot in the past fifteen years. The gates, this land, this house… his father…their power had diminished in stature as his universe had broadened and expanded.
Jared got out of the car. His long legs burned with the pain of being pleated into an unnaturally small space for so many hours. Perhaps he should have asked Curtis to drive him rather than hire a car. But then, he would never have escaped London unnoticed and unscathed. He walked up to the gates looking at the chain. He hadn’t considered that he would find his own gates locked against him.
Through the rusting metal and twisted vines, he could see the drive curving away from the gate. Here too were signs of neglect. Nature had started to take a stroll across the gravel. He frowned. There was a caretaker. Wasn’t there? Or had the place just been closed after his father had died? He remembered some paperwork arriving from the old family solicitor, but he hadn’t been in any mood to read it through. Probably drunk.
With some uncertainty, he turned to the grey stone lodge to his right.
This building didn’t look deserted. The door, squatting in between two bow windows, keeping a careful guard on the gate, was green and freshly painted. The weeds, so prevalent about the gate and across the drive, had been banished from the small garden which curled around the side of the building, and was neat and cultivated. So someone was living in the lodge.
And there was a face peering out of the left-hand window, pale and ghost-like. Jared took a step back, heart suddenly drumming. It was just a flash of an image, but enough to startle him. Of course, the inhabitant would check out who had stopped outside. So little traffic passed down this road that any vehicle loitering would be big news. He laughed at his fright, but the laughter felt a little hollow. For a moment he’d thought…
Jared hesitated for a moment. He didn’t want anyone to know where he was, but that was unrealistic. And he had no choice if he couldn’t even get beyond his own front gates without help. He started towards the front door of the lodge, but the occupant had already opened it and was standing there, also looking a little shocked, a little overawed.
“Bloody hell! You’re Tris Galloway,” the spectre exclaimed. He was young, maybe middle teens with a head of obviously dyed black hair and wide green eyes ringed with an uneven, and overly heavy, line of black kohl. The splatter of sandy freckles across the nose looked incongruous and had barely been hidden by a layer of pale foundation.
Jared stared for a moment, cataloguing all the similarities between this lad and the memory of someone he had once known.
The kid was already grabbing his mobile from a back pocket. Jared’s permanent feeling of weariness deepened. There was no chance that he was going to get away with this.
Raising a hand, almost in supplication, Jared gave a quiet cry.
“Please, I just want to get into my house.”
“You’re supposed to be missing,” Goth Boy stated but the phone remained at his side.
Jared hadn’t thought of it in those terms, but he supposed he was ‘missing’. Stupid to think that the news wouldn’t have reached here. It was Dumfries and Galloway, after all, not entirely the back of beyond. Still, Jared had hoped for some anonymity, and, right from the start, here was a fan. Jared would put money on it.
“Is… is your… f… father here?” Jared asked. “Or… perhaps your grandmother?” It was a guess but not such a wild one considering the splash of freckles and the fresh green eyes.
The kid looked puzzled for a moment, then his face cleared.
“Oh, you’ll want Granny. She’s at home.”
Jared nodded and the boy smiled.
He looked so much like Jensen that Jared forgot to breathe.
The kid’s smile turned anxious, and Jared realised he was behaving strangely. Staring too much. Turning up unannounced.
“Doesn’t your Granny live here?” Jared asked eventually.
“No… of course not.” The boy scoffed as if Jared should know his grandmother’s whereabouts. As if there was no reason why she should be here… in the lodge. “Shall I give her a ring?”
Jared swallowed and nodded again. This wasn’t a good idea. Running away from one thing, back to the place from where he had originally escaped, was surely madness. But he hadn’t really given it much thought. He had passed Carlisle and then Dumfries before he had even acknowledged the direction he was travelling. He hadn’t even considered what, and who, he might find.
The boy turned away, finally plastering the phone to his ear. Jared didn’t hear much of the following conversation except his name expressed in a tone of disbelief and then finally some reassuring words. Jared paced a little in front of the gates trying to decide if it were too late to just drive off and leave the house behind.
“She’s on her way.” The boy was clutching his phone, shining eyes chasing the anxiety away, just excited that he had a real live rock star standing in front of him.
“The back gates are always open this time of day; I’m pretty sure these gates are welded shut. Granny’ll bring the keys to the house,” his soft Scottish burr jarred with Jared’s memories of a different teenager but shy smile was the same. And the wide, intense eyes.
“Will you be all right?” the kid asked concerned.
Jesus, did he look so bad? Was he behaving so strangely?
“Of course, thank you,” he responded, though he wasn’t all right, not really. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t say anything… you know… about… about me being here? To your mates?” The plea was evident in his tone.
The boy nodded dumbly. Then he grinned.
“Granny would bloody kill me if I did. You know the way?”
Jared nodded and was very aware of the young boy watching him as he folded himself back into the car.
He was fucking stupid. Why hadn’t he thought about the estate gate? He turned the key and revved the car. Pulling out, he glanced both ways, but knew that there would be nothing coming. Nothing ever had, and, he supposed, nothing ever would.
He drove slowly with the dry-stone wall on his right, round several bends until a there was a turning off the lane, the stone wall diverting sharply right alongside a track which hugged the rise of land that climbed behind it. Jared turned into it, surprised at the lack of the deep ruts he remembered but grateful for a smoother ride than he expected. Half a mile down, was another gate between two smart posts. The lane continued forwards towards Home Farm. But he halted here. This gate was as degraded as the front one but it still had its ring latch, not padlocked. It was also wide open.
The drive beyond it, though, was cleared and tidy. It looked well kept, although much of the land on either side was dark like a jungle. This wasn’t as he remembered. The back of the house had been somewhat dilapidated but the park had been looked after. Could it have only taken a few years for nature to reclaim its territory so completely?
As he neared the house, the high expanse of the walled garden loomed into view on his left.
He almost stopped before the final bend. He knew what to expect, what he would see, and he suddenly couldn’t face it. But he knew he couldn’t go back now either, so taking a big breath, he pushed down on the accelerator and allowed Kilcowen House to come fully into view, just as the main drive swept in from the right.
This was the back of the house, but the main porch faced this way. The Tradesmen entrance was around the side. A muddy Land Rover was parked at an angle beside the old stable building, a building unused even when Jared had lived here but now seemingly in a parlous state.
Jared looked up at the house, car still inching forward.
There was a tumble of gables and a spray of chimneys. The house looked as though each room had been tacked on as and when it was needed and only the lintels above the windows and the expanse of grey, dreary stone gave it any sense of homogeneity. Jared had always enjoyed its gothic horror and it inspired a small, but brief smile. This could be the location of a thousand H. P. Lovecraft stories.
Jared pulled up in front of a wide garage that stood apart – it was empty, and its doors were wide open. He didn’t drive in. He had the strangest sensation that if he did, the doors would slam shut and trap him forever. He turned off the car lights, and pulled the keys out of the ignition, stalling for time. But after a few moments, he got out of the car and approached the house. He stopped for a moment looking up at the blank windows and then made his way round to the side.
The white-painted kitchen hall door was locked. He knew it would be. The windows were shuttered and the glass insert in both sides of the double door only revealed a heavy cloth hanging behind the doorway inside. He fidgeted for a while in front of it. There was some evidence of decay in some of the stonework around the door but the ground had been swept and the weeds kept from the doorstep.
He scuffed at the gravel aimlessly, at a loss, until he found himself taking the path that continued down the side of the house towards the front. Although the path was cleared, the garden had been conquered by nature. He remembered a narrow lawn and a long bed of flowers and shrubs had once bordered the house here. Now, it was a tangle of brambles and wild rhododendrons. Whoever was looking after the kitchen entrance obviously hadn’t wanted, or didn’t have the resources, to manage the rest of the grounds. That would mean… he didn’t want to think about that… but he found his long legs striding towards the front any way.
As he turned the corner, the view opened in front of him. The forest on either side widened as the ground fell away down to green, to silver and to glittering blue a mile or two into the distance. Slithering towards it, Jared could see the silver river snaking through the fields until it widened out into the estuary far below him. The terrace that fronted the whole house was almost overrun with weeds, but it still stood proud over the rest of the grounds, and over this vista. He fought back tears because this view, so familiar, suddenly felt like home in a way that nothing else had done for years. He caught the scents of the salt marsh, dark green bordering the meandering river, and the fresh, clean smell of the sea.
This had been the right thing to do, he decided. Something settled inside of him. Whatever demons might assail him, whatever ghosts might be waiting, he had needed to do this. He had needed to come home.
He spent so long looking beyond the estate, drinking in the light, that it was a while before he caught sight of the colour. A central set of stone steps led down from the terrace into a round garden. Jared stared in astonishment. The circular bed was just as it was when his mother had been alive. Her rose garden. Predominately white, with her favourite pale lemons, peaches, pinks; mulched and pruned and obviously still loved. He stepped down into it and was instantly a child again, hiding behind her skirts as she quietly worked between the bushes. His eyes stung and his throat tightened.
“Jay, love.”
The voice wasn’t the soft tones of his mother, but deep and rich, heavy with Scots. It was more than familiar though.
The woman looking down at him from the terrace was heavier than she had been, but then she had always been substantial to him, able to weather everything, a haven. Her hair was now almost grey but still with some dark brown streaks. It was tied back into a messy bun. Her face was round, and rosy, as if she had just made some great exertion, and little more wrinkled than he recalled but her eyes, wide, an almost impossible green, intense, were as he remembered, matching the ones he had seen in a young boy’s face only thirty minutes ago, and identical to the ones he often saw in his dreams.
“Jay?” She spoke again, her voice dropping further in concern. Jared wondered what she saw as she gazed at him. Perhaps she saw the gangly teenager he had been, just as he saw the woman who had cared for him after the death of his mother – perhaps they both had been transported to a past time. But probably not. Fran wasn’t the fanciful type. She would be looking on him as he was - the man, pale, drawn, and maybe a little sad.
“Oh, Jay, love,” she said again but this time she was standing in front of him, in his mother’s rose garden, eyes searching, eyes anxious. Jared was unable to utter a word.
***
Jared couldn’t have been more grateful. There was no stream of questions or recriminations. At least not at that moment. She had held him for a while, gripping him tightly, until he remembered the many years since he had last seen her and had pulled back, suddenly embarrassed.
She smiled and quietly led him back round to the side door. A large key had opened it, and she had pulled the curtain aside. She smiled again and led him into the kitchen hall. There was a dusky light, and a choked, airless atmosphere. It was obvious that no-one had entered the house for some time.
“I get a team of girls in once a year to do a thorough clean,” she said. “But ye cannae fight against the dust.”
The hall was thick with it despite the covers over the furniture.
“I don’t know what you’re intending, laddie… but you cannae stay here at the moment. Not until I’ve got it all sorted for you. A couple of days, I reckon will do it and then…”
Jared just shrugged. He wasn’t going to stay anywhere but here. He didn’t want to argue with her just now either.
“I’ll call round and see who I can muster, and we can get started as soon as, but you could have called us and given us a heads up.”
Yes, he should have but since he hadn’t known he was coming back to Kilcowen House when he had driven out of London as quickly as he could, he hadn’t had the wherewithal or the thought to warn anyone. He hadn’t even known that there would still be someone here that he could call.
She stopped in the middle of the hall and turned to him. He hadn’t got far, just standing by the door, almost afraid of taking a step further in.
Her eyes were dark in the gloom and anxious. Jared still hadn’t said a word to her, but then what could you say to the woman who had been a surrogate mother to you, and had then failed to contact for fifteen years?
“Isn’t there someone who should know you are here, love?” she said eventually, accepting his previous silence.
Jared shook his head. “No, no, and I don’t want anyone to know. Not yet. Please, Fran?”
“Hmm…” It was obvious she didn’t like that, but she had always had that prescient understanding of what was running through her children’s heads and perhaps that hadn’t changed. He had decided to make a complete break. And if he hadn’t, he would never have found his way here. She must understand that.
“You’ve given everyone a scare. Three days, they were saying on the news this morning. You just disappeared.” She wasn’t accusing him, just stating the facts. “We were worried.”
Of course, she was worried. She hadn’t seen him for fifteen years and still she would be worried for him. He wondered whether she had followed his career since he had gone - if she had scrap books of every cutting from the newspapers that mentioned him, good and bad. He had been one of her ‘wee chicks’ even if he wasn’t of her blood, and time would never change that because time would never have interfered with Fran Ackles. It wouldn’t dare.
He felt ashamed. How he must have hurt her.
“Well,” she seemed to have made a decision about something, “it’s been about five months since I was last here so let’s have a look and see what state the place has gotten into, shall we?”
The first door on the right was the kitchen. Jared heard her footsteps against the stone flags and then the sound of shutters opening. Cautiously, he padded forward, and thrust his head around the door. The sunlight streamed in, casting rays of sunbeams across the wide wooden table that occupied the centre of the room. It still had the air of the Victorian kitchen it had once been. His father had never felt the need to spend money he didn’t need to and since he had so rarely ever stepped inside of the room, updating it would never have been his priority. Perhaps that should change, Jared pondered, curiosity spurring him to take a step or two inside. It felt empty and the shelves of the pantry, just to his left, were devoid of anything but the thick layer of dust, but he could visualise how it might look updated and alive with activity again.
“Just a bit o’dust and that’s easily mended. One year I came in and the place was thick with mouse droppings. That was no’ pleasant as you can imagine,” Fran said. She moved through the door on the far side still talking. “I’m guessing you’ll want to use your mammie’s room and your bedroom. If we open up the shutters and the windows it’ll soon be a different place. It’s horrible to see such a beautiful house all locked up and dark.”
Jared followed her slowly, but less reluctantly now as she passed back out into the hall and down towards the family rooms at the further end of the house. The breakfast room with the sheeted chairs upside down on the sheeted table, the main hall and porch with black and white tiles echoing their footsteps and then into the room furthest away, a sitting room, his mother’s, although the spirit of her had faded from this room long ago. As Fran opened up the windows in the circular nook, Jared looked around him at a lunar landscape, the worn, comfortable sofas, that he knew had been those he had left behind, were covered in dust sheets, all white hills and troughs. This was another room his father had never entered. First his mother’s and then his own. By the time Fran had opened all the shutters on three sides of the room, the concealed furniture began to look incongruous against the pretty wallpaper covered with forget-me-nots and the soft, gentle landscapes his mother had collected.
Still giving him careful glances, Fran bustled past him out of the room and to the next door. It was opposite the main hall and hidden under grand staircase. He called her to stop.
“No, not that one.” She gave him another measured look and didn’t say a word.
The silent scrutiny was beginning to be oppressive.
The last main room was back towards the kitchen and overlooked the garden. He hadn’t realised it on his perambulation to the front of the house earlier but there were no shutters here, although the chairs were still hidden beneath their protectors. This was the garden room, a stretch of window overlooking the slopes down to the sea.
Fran harrumphed in some satisfaction and left him staring out the window. She was talking to someone on the phone out in the hall but he didn’t catch the words.
“I’ve got someone coming by in an hour or so to help me open up the rooms.” He heard eventually.
“I can do that,” Jared muttered, eliciting a doubtful stare. He was getting the full catalogue of Fran’s looks today. He didn’t blame her. He suspected that there were many questions she wanted to ask, but she hadn’t. She had merely accepted his presence here.
“Jay? You can’t stay here.”
Jared tightened his jaw and raised his chin, preparing for battle, but Fran backed down almost as soon as she had gathered the courage to fight.
“I’ll get the kitchen and your room opened today. We’ll sort the rest out later,” she sighed.
Jared nodded again and she was off, back across the hall towards the kitchen. He took one more lingering look out of the window and trailed behind her.
“You live at the lodge?” he finally asked.
“No, dear, I’m in Newton Stewart these days, got one of the council places in Minnigaff. It’s okay. Nearer the shops – there’s a Sainsbury’s and Aldi now. I do for a couple of families in the area but your father left me enough to retire on quite nicely – and, of course, there’s Will – you’ve met him. Good lad, mostly…” Fran seemed to be trying to cover Jared’s silence with her own chatter, as she threw open cupboards under the sink. “Aha! I knew I’d left some… he’s into that Goth stuff – big fan of yours, though I’m not sure that black hair suits him much. Looks a bit daft, a goth with freckles – you should hear how he moans and moans about them, but I tell him they are in the family, and he’ll just have to suck it up… Ahh… we have water, good…” she carried on her inconsequential noise as she filled a bucket with disinfectant and water. Jared let it wash over him before he started to realise what she was saying.
“Wait, what? Why are you in Newton Stewart?”
“Your Dad wanted to close the house when he moved into Beeches.”
“You mean he chucked you out? Fuck, the bastard!”
“Watch your language, laddie, but don’t you worry. He looked after us, made sure we had somewhere to go…” But Jared wasn’t listening now, just fulminating against his father, then at himself, because he remembered that letter that told him his father was ill and moving into a Nursing home in Stranraer, and if he had even thought about it a little more, he should have realised what that meant for Fran and the family. He grabbed one of the cloths that Fran fished out of a drawer and drowned it in the bucket viciously.
“You had to move out of your home!”
“Didn’t matter, Jay, love. Didn’t want to be living here in this old pile of rocks when you had all gone, anyway. It’s much better in Newton.”
Jared found that difficult to believe. He started rubbing down the long granite worksurface under the window.
“No need to wear a hole in it,” Fran commented. There was small smirk in the corner of her mouth but her eyes still worried.
“So, who’s the caretaker then? I was thinking it might be you…”
“Ah love, well, I’m a bit too old for doing caretaking… I just keep an eye on the place for you. Coming in occasionally to keep on top o’ the dust…”
Jared knew exactly what she was going to say next. He knew who owned the Land Rover, who was keeping the back drive open and tidy, who was keeping the way clear to the Kitchen Hall door, and who was living in the Lodge at the end of his drive.
He hadn’t considered it – not once in the long and winding journey from London to this house. Although he should have guessed, should have known.
“Where is he?” Fran didn’t need Jared to say his name.
“The walled garden, love, but…” her words were lost to Jared, as he bolted out of the kitchen and out of the side door. He didn’t run across the courtyard, but it was a close thing. He didn’t get all the way across.
Jared lurched to a stop, every cell in his body freezing cold in an instant, breath and heart interrupted.
The sun was shining fully on a tall figure who stood facing Jared from the doorway of the walled garden. His eyes were wide and, in this light, mossy green. There was dark stubble framing the strong jaw gripped tightly shut, and a flush that couldn’t hide the spray of freckles.
Jensen.
Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke.
There had been something going on.
Frannie had been holed up in his father’s office several times over the last few weeks. There had been some loud words on occasions, and a couple of times, Jared had caught her racing out with a blotchy red face and knew she had been crying. He wasn’t surprised. People often cried when they went to speak to his father, but the inevitability of it still didn’t reconcile him to the obvious pain that Frannie was going through.
She seemed quiet for several days and disinclined for her usual chatter. Jared’s breakfast was on the table every morning, she asked him how school was when he returned in the evening, but she no long hummed her silly tunes, she no longer indulged him with her inconsequential stories about the local goings on, and she no longer seemed interested in the gossip he brought her. That had been their thing, you see, telling each other stories – Jared would tell her how Stacey MacDonald had come to school in a new bright green Audi and with a stranger driving (“that’ll be Spencer – I heard he’d moved in with Missy. Poor Stacey. She must be missing her dad”) and Fran would whisper about how Mr Crudgington had upturned his boat on the salt flats and nearly drowned (“and that would probably have served him right, mean old man, after shouting and threatening you for no reasons!). But she was silent now. Quieter even than after Mammie had died.
A couple of times Jared felt she was about to tell him something. She sat down with him at tea-time and opened her mouth as if to speak a couple of times, but nothing would be said. She would shut her mouth again, sigh and then get up, busying herself around him. Unnecessarily, he thought. But he wondered and worried.
Then one Friday morning, she wasn’t there. Instead, his father, a lean shadow, was stood awkwardly in the kitchen. He barely turned towards Jared but waved a hand.
“I guess there is cereal for you.”
Jared, never comfortable with his father, was dumbfounded at seeing him at breakfast time, and in the kitchen. It was even a school day! He didn’t say a word to his father but could feel his eyes widening impossibly until he considered it likely his eyeballs would pop out in surprise.
“I suppose you know how to get yourself sorted for school?” His father continued brusquely. “Frances has had to go away for the day.”
Good. That sounded as though his father was anticipating Frannie’s return. Jared was relieved having had some awful prescient that his father’s improbable foray into the kitchen might presage another major absence in his life but was still puzzling over what it all could mean as he dumped his breakfast bowl into the wide sink. He was still considering the puzzle as he nearly missed the school bus because getting dressed seemed to take a lot longer when Frannie wasn’t there to harass him into moving at speed, And his mind continued to turn it over then throughout the day, leading to his class teacher declaring that he “was away with the fairies even more today than he usually was and that he’d better buckle under or suffer a missed playtime”.
Despite his curiosity, Jared knew better than to disturb his father on his return at the end of the day, so he decided to dampen down his inquisitiveness and sneak through the kitchen hall door. He didn’t much like change. Change always seemed a precursor to something unpleasant. His Mammie had died the last time.
He carefully placed his school bag on the floor behind the coat rack, knowing full well his father would never see it there so wouldn’t yell at him for making a mess, but hoping that Frannie would and tell him off. He just wanted something normal and the abnormality of the day so far, coupled with the strangeness of the last few weeks, were beginning to freak him out in a very, very unpleasant way.
He stopped when he heard voices coming from the kitchen. He was relieved to hear Frannie’s warm, soft tones but there was another voice, a little higher pitched but questioning.
Jared considered running straight upstairs to his room and hiding forever, or at least until that strange voice had gone home, but he also desperately needed to see Frannie and put some order back into his life.
Frannie looked up as he pushed the door open slowly. She was sat at the table with a mug in front of her and a plate of biscuits. She looked anxious. Jared didn’t come any further into the room.
“Hello, Jay,” she said softly. “Come in, sweet. I have someone I want you to meet.”
Jared felt, at nine years old, he should be brave enough to face someone that Frannie wanted him to know, and so he unclenched the fist clutching the brass doorknob and stepped into the room.
Sitting opposite to his Frannie, was a boy. Not much older than him. He had brown hair. And bright green eyes. Just like Frannie’s eyes. And a spray of freckles across his cheeks. He grinned at Jared, a little uncertainly.
Jared was mesmerised.
“Jay, I would like you to meet my son. He can’t live with his father anymore, so he has come to live with us. Son, this is Jared. Jay, this is Jensen.”
***
The kitchen was cleaned in no time at all. Jared worked with a dedication and energy that surprised even him. The couple of town girls that Fran had called in were busy somewhere else in the house – he could hear their light laughter and talk, but once the kitchen was done, he sat down heavily at the old table, head against the cool wood, exhausted. He could hear Fran filling the kettle behind him.
“You ought to speak to Mr. Lewis,” she said eventually, carefully putting the mug of tea beside his head. “He knows all the agreements that your Father made.”
Jared looked up.
“It’s alright, Frannie,” he said, “I won’t change anything.”
She sat down heavily in the chair next to him.
“I don’t think any of us were expecting you to come back. Including your father.” There was anxiety in her eyes, and a wariness that Jared hated. As he if he could somehow destroy the lives that she and her family had built here. He’d been thinking about how she was the one person who knew him so well, but after fifteen years perhaps that just wasn’t true anymore.
“I wasn’t expecting…”
“No?”
“… he had plans to leave too.”
“Maybe…” Fran didn’t sound so sure. Jared let his head fall back onto the table. He shouldn’t be surprised. He really shouldn’t have been.
“There never was much money, was there?” Fran began. “But things got increasingly difficult when your father got ill. He closed the house down, and asked Jensen to look after your mother’s garden and the grounds. There’s a a small retainer for that. And then he allowed Jensen use of the walled garden in lieu of a proper salary. Jensen’s not been able to do much on the main gardens on his own, but he works hard there.”
Jared wanted her to be quiet, to stop talking about Jensen, but at the same time wanted to hear more, to hear everything.
“He’s been doing really well; the Kitchen Garden is a success. Your Father was happy for him to do that, helped him set it up…”
“My father?” Jared questioned, looking up once again.
“Yes! Your father…!” She was a little exasperated. Jared was contrite. “Oh, Jared, I don’t know what happened between you boys and I cannae know what you are planning on doing here, but, please, this has been Jensen’s life, please don’t destroy it all because of something that happened so long ago.”
Jared was horrified. There was a sickening pleading in Fran’s eyes, a plaintive cry for mercy in her rising tears. Did she think he was so changed? He sat and grabbed at her hand that was tentatively reaching out to him.
“Never, Frannie,” his voice was hoarse. “I couldn’t do that.” He couldn’t but he also couldn’t conceive of staying at Kilcowen House with Jensen working and living just over the way.
She looked doubtful and he realised that, whilst he was looking at the woman who had raised him after his mother died, she was looking at a stranger, albeit one who may bare the faint resemblance to a young, shy boy she once knew.
“I promise you, Frannie,” Jared nodded, almost to himself, “I won’t hurt you or your family.” When she looked down, he suddenly had a clarity of thought. He already had. He had hurt her fifteen years ago when he ran out of the house and had never looked back. He couldn’t understand how she could even be in his company.
Jensen, obviously, couldn’t.
He had seen Jared out in the courtyard, glared at him for a long moment and then turned away, scuttling back into the walled garden.
Jared hadn’t been able to follow him. Didn’t even know if he wanted to, and, at the same time, desperately wanted nothing more.
He had returned to the kitchen, where Fran was waiting for him, making him a cup of tea, ready for the fallout, supportive, loving and kind. Jared felt so ashamed of himself.
“Now don you go thinking like that,” She rapped his hand with the sugar spoon, reading his thoughts as accurately and as ably as she had when he was a child. “What’s done is done, but you’re home now. It’ll sort itself out.”
Jared wasn’t so optimistic.
Anyway, laddie,” Frannie continued, “if you’re dead set on staying here tonight, we’ll have to sort out getting you some supplies in. I’ll get Jensen to pick you up some shoppin’ before it gets dark. I take it you’ll not wanting a trip into town just yet?”
***
Fran wasn’t happy at leaving him on his own in a house still largely shrouded and closed. But the kitchen was sparkling and she had already inspected his old room and found the girls had done an ‘adequate’ job. She finally departed with the promise that she would be back in the morning, and with the girls still in tow. She would get the whole house habitable again as soon as possible.
Jared spent the first few moments, as the house quietened, standing in the hallway. He expected ghosts but sensed nothing.
For the first time in several days, he felt hungry, and returning to the kitchen, he rifled through the shopping bags that Jensen had bought by earlier. He still hadn’t said anything to Jared, just grunted monosyllables to his mother as he had barged into the Kitchen and had almost thrown the full carrier bags on the now wiped-clean work surface. Jared tried opening his mouth to speak a couple of times, but his words had all fled. He listened miserably to Frannie’s thanks, and Jensen’s returning grunts and watched uselessly as Jensen had stomped back out without even looking in Jared’s direction.
But now Jared did have bread, butter, milk, and a couple of ready meals for the microwave. He looked around to check there was still a microwave… yes, an old monstrosity that looked like it ran on coal, but it would do. Then at the bottom of the bag, he found the Twix. Overwhelmed, he stood looking at it for several moments, and knew he wouldn’t be able to eat it. He put it to one side and could have cried for the children they had both once been. Could have cried, but he didn’t.
Shaking it off, he pulled open the packaging of a spaghetti Bolognese and then argued with the microwave until it did what he wanted it to. It seemed hot enough, but the meal looked very small. On the spur of the moment, he threw the other meal, a chilli con carne, into the machine too, then practically inhaled both. Feeling greedy, he wondered what he was going to eat tomorrow, but laughed to himself. Jensen had bought two because he knew that Jared would never be satisfied with just one. Tomorrow’s provision would have be foraged in the morning.
Without even thinking, he picked up the piece of paper that Fran had thrown on the work top before leaving.
“If you need anything,” she had said, “this is Jensen’s number. Just call him, Jay, if you need him. He’s just down the end the drive.”
Jared had kept his rueful smile to himself. He didn’t think he would ever be able to call Jensen if he needed him, and, he suspected, that Jensen wouldn’t pick up if he did.
Ah, the irony… Jared had needed Jensen every single day of his life since he was nine years old.
He dialled the number and then was shocked to find he had done so.
“Jared,” came the toe-curlingly rich tones at the other end of the phone. Jared had such a visceral reaction that he couldn’t reply.
“Jared?” there was a hint of impatience now, a clearer sense of the anger and hardness that Jensen had shown earlier that day.
“I’ve got a Twix that needs sharing,” Jared eventually croaked out. There was a long silence. Then Jared hoped that he didn’t imagine the slightly softer voice.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Jay…Jared.”
Jared’s room was just as he had left it all that time ago. Some of the posters had come down, but his CDs and LPS were still stacked up against the walls, and his old guitar stood in the corner. He wasn’t sure why he had decided to use his childhood room again, particularly as he eyed the shortness of the twin bed, except that he knew there would be no ghosts here at all, except the ones that came from good memories.
In the corner of the room was the turret. It ran from the top to the bottom of the house and had inspired his childhood imagination. He still liked the view from the turret – it made him feel as though he was captain of a large ship sailing across the world. At night he could see the lights of Creetown on the estuary, the lights of the ships that were sailing up towards the Solway Firth, and the blackness of the sea. It was clear tonight, and the Milky Way scattered the stars like a Jackson Pollack. He has missed this, the dark skies that showed him a galaxy of treasures. His telescope had obviously missed the room cleanse and was still dusty. He smiled as he remembered the arguments that he and Jensen used to have in sharing turns… or not. It had been his telescope.
Finally putting his back to the view, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. It shocked him. He expected to see Tris Galloway looking back out him, forgetting that he had shed that character back in London. He looked like Jared – long, drawn face, sure, with the dark shadows still dragging his eyes, his dark hair lank and falling lifeless about his cheeks – but still Jared.
It was unexpected but strangely comforting.
He nodded to himself.
He hadn’t been sure what he was doing. And there were times today where he thought he had made a massive mistake, walking away from one difficult situation to find himself immersed in a long overdue drama , but, looking at himself, the real Jared, properly after all this time, reassured him. Coming home was a good idea. He’d deal with all the crap that was going to come along because of that decision as and when.
He collapsed onto the bed, the bottom half of his legs hanging over the end. He would be buying a new bed as soon as he possibly could too. And just as he convinced himself it was going to be impossible, he fell asleep.