But I was still Caro’s big sister. And that was a relationship I could strengthen, right now.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I said, getting to my feet. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
“Wow!” Caro’s eyes widened as we reached the ladder at the bottom of the tree house. “How did I not know this was here?”
I grinned. “It’s a secret. Nobody knew about it except me and Nathaniel. And now you.”
“Can we go up?” Caro asked, turning to me with a bright, excited grin.
“Of course! That’s why we came here. Go on. You first.” I watched her disappear up the ladder, her glittery shoes gripping tight to the wood, before I followed.
It felt strange, watching Caro flit around the inside of the tree house, discovering all the treasures I’d left there over the years – and one of Nathaniel’s old pipes, too. She handed that to me, and I held it in both hands, as if it might carry answers from my grandfather from beyond the grave.
It didn’t.
“Who made the house?” Caro perched on a small stool pulling her feet up onto it and hugging her knees. “Was it the fairies?”
I tried to imagine Graham the Assistant as a fairy, and failed. “Probably,” I said. “I used to play here when I was younger. I figured that you might like to, now.”
Caro frowned. “Don’t you still want it?”
“I’ll be going back to Perth soon.” Although, honestly, camping out in the tree house seemed like a viable alternative at the moment.
“I wish you didn’t have to,” Caro said.
“So do I.” If I said no to the memoirs, would I be able to stay at Rosewood? Maybe. But then, maybe not. Making the decision my family wanted this time didn’t undo the harm I’d done before. And could I really stay, knowing I’d let my grandfather down at the last? I wasn’t sure.
I had a life in Perth. It might not be the one Nathaniel had planned for me, but it was mine. And I couldn’t just give that up. Could I?
“So, what do you want to play?” Caro asked. “Elves and fairies? Ghost hunters?”
I smiled across the small wooden room at her. Whatever happened next, right now I had Caro beside me, and games to play. “Why don’t you tell me about how your paranormal research is going.”
Caro’s face lit up again, as she jumped up and pulled a pink notebook from her pocket. “Do you want to go alphabetically or in the order I discovered them?”
“Whichever you like,” I told her, and settled back against the wooden wall to listen.
By the time Caro and I made it back up to the house, Dad was waiting with a bowl of buttercream icing, and the news that Mr Norris had declared he had a long drive back to the coast, and sitting there listening to everyone arguing wasn’t getting him there any sooner. Therese, meanwhile, was waiting for me. It was around this time that Isabelle realised that Edward still had the key to the study, and I could hear her demanding to know where he was from behind me as Therese dragged me out of the front door and down the path that led to her cottage. As Ellie and Edward still hadn’t returned, there wasn’t much I could say to help, anyway.
My great-aunt clearly wasn’t in the mood for conversation, so I allowed myself to be taken down to the cottage, where Therese set about making tea with the maximum possible amount of clashing of crockery and clanging silverware.
“Can I help with anything?” I asked, finally, as Therese spilt milk all over the tea tray.
“No,” she bit out, mopping it up with a tea towel. “Go have a seat in the sitting room. We’re going to have tea.”
It seemed safest to do as I was told.
“Did you all get anything sorted out?” I asked, when we were finally seated and Therese had slopped tea into both my cup and saucer.
“Yes,” Therese said, snatching up a chocolate biscuit. “I decided that your entire family are self-absorbed fools, who are interested in nothing beyond their own petty secrets.”
Which seemed a little harsh, but not entirely untrue.
“And they are most certainly not interested in mourning my brother or making his dying wish a reality,” she went on, spraying biscuit crumbs. I’d never seen Therese eat with her mouth full before. It was certainly an experience.
“I thought you didn’t want the memoirs to be published, either?” It was dodgy territory, I know, but I figured that if I were going to make a decision about what to do next, I would need all the information I could get. Once that information could be conveyed at a reasonable decibel, and one piece at a time.
“I want the story it tells to be true and accurate,” Therese clarified. “And it’s not that I don’t trust you, dear, but you weren’t there. I’m not sure how you can recreate the childhood Nathaniel and I shared.”
“Edward says the early years are pretty much finished, actually,” I reassured her. “If we decide to go ahead, perhaps you’d like to read them through, see what you think.”
Even that was dangerous ground, I realised. After all, what two siblings have exactly the same memories of how they grew up? Everyone remembers things differently. On the other hand, if Therese was upset by what Nathaniel had written, would I want it published anyway?
Therese paused in her destruction of the chocolate biscuits. “Maybe I would like that,” she said, and returned her half-eaten biscuit to the plate. “We shouldn’t be eating these, you know. Your father will be cooking a three-course dinner. Stress cooking, as usual.”
I didn’t point out that none of us had eaten any lunch, given the lawyer baiting that had been going on at the time. I wished Therese had waited long enough for us to snag a couple of Caro’s cupcakes to go with the tea.
“Anyway,” Therese went on, pushing herself to her feet. “I have clothes for you.” Dad stressed cooked, Therese stress dressed, it seemed. Not that I was complaining, as the beneficiary of both.
I traipsed after her into her bedroom and discovered, inevitably, that these were no ordinary hand-me-down clothes.
“This outfit is for tonight,” she said, handing me a hanger weighed down with a grey and duck egg blue tea dress with vines and tiny cream flowers climbing up it. It was cut in a forties’ style, and Therese had hung a duck egg cardigan over it on the hanger. The matching cream handbag and string of pearls were wrapped around the hanger. “The earrings are in the bag,” she added, passing over the cream heels that went with it.
“Do you really think we’ll be dressing for dinner tonight?” I took the dress and considered it. It was sober enough to fit the mood at the house, but still far nicer than anything I’d brought with me.
“Why wouldn’t we? Nathaniel would expect nothing less.”
“Nathaniel would have shown up in his old orange jumper with the oil stains on and you know it.” I still couldn’t quite imagine that he wouldn’t. That he’d never wear that jumper again. Isabelle would probably dress him in some awful suit he’d have hated for the funeral.
Maybe she’d be distracted enough to let Therese choose his clothes for that. I could just see him dressed as a thirties’ film star for the occasion.
“Nathaniel was a law to himself,” Therese said. “No reason to let our standards slip.” She paused, her fingers brushing against a closed garment bag. “I’ll have an outfit for you for the funeral, too,” she said slowly. “But not just yet. I’ll bring it up to the house when it’s ready. I just want to make sure that it’s right.”
I hadn’t even thought about the funeral. I certainly hadn’t packed anything mourning appropriate when I came home for the Golden Wedding.
“You’re coming up for dinner?” I folded the evening’s outfit over my arm carefully.
“Of course,” Therese said, closing her wardrobe door. “Especially now we’ve established that Isabelle is definitely too angry with you and Edward to notice that I’m there at all.”
“Excellent,” I said, trying to imagine just how horrible dinner was going to be.
“Now go and get changed. I’ll see you u
p there.”
And with that, I was hustled back out onto the sunny path, clutching my new outfit close to my body, like some sort of shield. At least Therese’s outfits gave me an armour of sorts. Some protection against the fraught dinner ahead. As long as no one resorted to throwing food… Well, it should be fine.
Dad, obviously anticipating the general chaos that Mr Norris’s visit would bring to the day, had started preparing dinner much earlier that morning, and chosen something that was easy, liked by everyone, yet could sit in the oven for hours while the family bickered over inheritance matters.
By the time I made it down to dinner, dressed in Therese’s chosen outfit, the family were already sitting down at the dining table. Whether they’d skipped the pre-dinner drinks altogether, or if they’d all been steadily drinking since Mr Norris left, I had no way of knowing.