Larkrigg Fell Read Free Page A

from her denims. ‘I’m tired.’
    ‘The exercise will do you good after all that travelling. Best thing for jet-lag. Two miles by road, Mom said, but we can take a short cut over by Brockbarrow Wood and on past the tarn. Maybe it’ll all come back to us and we’ll remember the way. Experience a deja-vu.’
    ‘I remember so little of our visits here as children.’
    Beth set off up the sheep trod in her sister’s wake. What would it be like? Damp and filthy as Sarah predicted? Or beautiful and serene as she’d always imagined in her dreams. And how would seeing it in the flesh, or rather bricks and mortar, affect their lives? Would they find happiness there? A shiver ran down her spine but Beth told herself it was only because the sun had slipped behind a cloud and the blueness was now washed with grey, like a water colour. A breeze buffeted them, less kindly.
    ‘It might rain.’ she warned.
    ‘Rubbish,’ Sarah said, now so far up the track that Beth had to run to catch up.
    When the yellow mini careered into the yard there was nothing to show of the twins’ presence but two suitcases and several bags crowding the small porch. ‘Oh drat. Not again.’
     
    Tessa Forbes glared at the two suitcases and experienced an overwhelming desire to kick one. She’d never seen any quite so big in her entire life. Plus two flight bags, shoulder bags, coats and all the detritus of travel. Then she considered her mini. How many elephants can you get in a mini? Wasn’t that the old schoolroom joke? Answer, one grizzling infant, mouth covered in the remains of chocolate buttons, strapped into a car seat. One roll of chicken wire to block up holes in the fence to stop the hens escaping, and possibly, if she ever caught up with them, two travel-weary females. The luggage wouldn’t fit. That’d have to be collected later.
    Why hadn’t she borrowed Meg’s van? Even if she’d got to the station on time she couldn’t have fitted them all in her ancient tub. What had she been thinking of? Tessa clasped her fingers into the spiky tufts of her hair and gave an anguished scream. The wind brushed it away as if it were of no significance.
    ‘Why do I volunteer to do favours when I am so entirely scatter brained? And why can’t people sit still for half an hour?’ she groaned. Tessa went and gazed up towards Larkrigg Fell, certain she could see a blob of colour moving on the hillside.
    Mind you, this had been a particularly trying day. Two and a half hour’s queuing in the Social Security office, an hour’s grilling in a pea-green cell by a fish-faced official. Her bank accounts, or lack of them, tutted over, her sex life investigated in excruciating detail. Guilt and humiliation heaped upon her by the spadeful, as if it had been she who’d walked out, or rather driven off, with the TV, stereo, and most of the furniture and not that useless lump, Paul, her unbeloved husband.
    They must have set off up to the house, she decided. Where else could they be? If she hurried, she might catch them before they’d gone too far. Tessa glanced up at the sky. ‘Or before that ominous grey cloud empties itself of rain.’ You couldn’t rely on anything. Not husbands, not visitors, not even the weather.
    With a heavy sigh she rammed the two suitcases into the small storm porch and flung everything else beside James in the back seat, the small boot already being full to bursting. He beamed at her and offered a button in a chocolate-smeared fist. Tessa declined and scrambling back into the driving seat, crashed every gear as she tore off up a bumpy track, cursing every time she had to climb out to open or shut a gate. She’d better find them soon or Meg would have her guts for garters.
     
    ‘I love it here already, don’t you?’ Beth said, as they strode out across the heaf. ‘I feel as if I’ve come home.’
    ‘It’s that deja vu thing.’
    ‘No, it’s more than that.’ She felt at peace for the first time in weeks. ‘It’s