She’d realised, later, as she lay in bed, that losing this house, in itself, wouldn’t be the end of the world, but she would need another. She would need a home to call her own and one that didn’t feel as if it might be snapped from beneath her at a moment’s notice.
She’d been surprised, a few days earlier, sitting in Jo’s cramped kitchen. It was neither glamorous nor particularly tasteful, but it was more modern than her own and it had a quality that the kitchen here had never managed. It was homely. It felt as if it had been filled with love and laughter and if you sat in silence, Elizabeth had a feeling that the walls would whisper back at you a message that you were always welcome and there, in its warmth, always safe.
The doorbell, when it rang, knocked her from her ruminations; it was not a bad thing, she considered. Too much thinking is not good for a woman on her own, particularly maudlin thoughts and that’s what she was verging on. If she wanted to get out of this mess that Eric had foisted upon her, feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to be the way to do it.
‘You’re really very good to come,’ Elizabeth said as she shepherded Lucy in through the hall. Lucy looked younger than she had expected; perhaps the bracing walk up from her mother’s house had washed a decade from her tired skin. She was a striking woman, not beautiful or delicately pretty as Elizabeth had once been, but she had well-defined features and an energy to her that probably came from working hard and living clean. She didn’t dress like a doctor either, and Elizabeth thought that was no bad thing.
‘It was the least I could do; your husband has been very good to people in the village. My mother can’t speak highly enough of him,’ Lucy said easily, and even if there was only a small grain of truth in the words, it was nice to hear them all the same.
‘Shall we have some tea?’ Elizabeth asked brightly as she showed the younger woman in to the drawing room.
‘Please, don’t go to any trouble for me. I’m only going to stay a few minutes. I’ve promised Mum I’ll take her across to the next town for a gander about the shops.’ Lucy stood in the doorway, only half committed to the drawing room. ‘Oh, what lovely flowers,’ she said then, making her way into the back of the house and towards the arrangement Elizabeth had placed haphazardly next to the kitchen sink. She bent to take in their scent. ‘Those are lovely. Will I pop them in the hall for you?’ she asked, perhaps assuming that the arrangement was too large and awkward for Elizabeth to carry.
‘Really, there’s no need…’ she said and regretted that there lingered in her voice a hint of dejection. She’d been so looking forward to sitting in the drawing room with Lucy Nolan and now, it seemed as if they would pass each other in the hall for a few minutes and that would be it. Suddenly, the afternoon and evening seemed to stretch out incessantly before her, endlessly and lonesome.
‘I’d love a mug of tea, if it was going,’ Lucy said softly then, spotting the tray Elizabeth had lain earlier with her best china cups and saucers and a round of biscuits and sweet bread. ‘You’ve really set out to spoil me with these.’ She nodded appreciatively at the tray.
‘Oh, it’s not much and I’m not exactly rushed off my feet since Eric passed away,’ Elizabeth managed softly as she flicked on the kettle.
‘Where will we sit?’ Lucy asked now, settling into the idea perhaps that this would not be such a flying visit after all.
‘Wherever you’d like. If you’re rushing off, don’t worry about the tray. I just thought…’ What had she thought? That Jo wouldn’t have already given the girl a good lunch? Nothing was less likely. Perhaps, she’d thought that things could be the same as they’d been when Eric was here, entertaining in the drawing room – pretending that everything was so very prim and proper.
‘Ah, I see you’re a twitcher,’ Lucy said bringing the tray across to the kitchen table and settling just opposite the window where there was a decent view of the fat balls Elizabeth had hung out for the birds against the wall opposite earlier.
‘Well, it passes the time, doesn’t it? My husband was never an animal lover, but our garden is such a wilderness; there have always been lots to watch out there.’ It was probably the thing she liked most about this house: the fact that they had a constant trail of foxes, hedgehogs, weasels and all sorts of birds passing through at different times of the year.
‘You’re lucky. My house in Dublin hardly sees daylight, never mind actually allowing a view of anything much more than a courtyard preened to within an inch of existence.’ Lucy laughed, but the sound was empty.