The Various Read Free

doormat, just inside the threshold, and she caught a glimpse of a tiny kitten – far too young to be out by itself – playing in a tipped-up Wellington boot that lay on the front path (where it may well have been lying for weeks, judging by the state of it). The whole place looked derelict, disused – and entirely delightful. Midge just loved it instantly. She had never been here in her life before, to her knowledge, and yet she felt somehow as if she had come home. Home to Mill Farm.

    ‘And of course, my time’s pretty well my own,’ said Uncle Brian. He had not spoken for half an hour, but was obviously still continuing their earlier conversation. ‘So if you
should
want to pop over to Taunton, to the library or whatever, then you just say so. Always best to go in the morning though. Don’t do much in the afternoons usually.’
    ‘Don’t you have to work then?’ said Midge, curious to find herself in the company of an adult who was not forever frantically busy.
    ‘No,’ said Uncle Brian, standing in the cobbled yard, hands in his yellow corduroy trouser pockets, and staring up at the rooks in the cedar trees. ‘Not any more I don’t. Coming into a bit of money, old girl. Or at least I hope to be by the end of the holidays. I’ve got the land up for sale – some of it anyway. Come and have some soup.’
    The soup was homemade leek and potato, and very good it was too.
    ‘Used to be a chef,’ said Uncle Brian, ‘for a while.’
    There were not many things, Midge was beginning to learn, which Uncle Brian had
not
been ‘for a while’. He talked, as they ate their soup, of the numerous ideas he’d had for Mill Farm, cheerfully acknowledging his failures and seemingly not embarrassed to confess to his twelve-year-old niece that he was pretty hopeless as a businessman. He was interested in her too, and what life was like for her in London, not asking too many questions about school, and occasionally remembering bits of her past that she had forgotten or hadn’t known about – telling her at one point that he had some snaps of her with his own children, Kate and George, taken when they were tiny and on an outing to Bournemouth.
    ‘Or maybe it was Sidmouth. Or Exmouth. I’ve still got them somewhere. I’ll hunt them out later. You loved the sea, I remember. Kate could take it or leave it, George – poor George – was absolutely terrified, wouldn’t go anywhere near it. But you were in there like a shot.’
    Midge took a tangerine from the bowl of fruit on the table and dug her thumbnail into the soft spongy peel. ‘How old were we?’ she said. She suddenly felt comfortable. This was family. Uncle Brian’s children were her cousins. He was her mum’s older brother, and best of all, she realized – she liked him. He was cheerful and easy to talk to. Her mother could be difficult to talk to. She often seemed preoccupied, even in the middle of a conversation, on edge – and snappy. Uncle Brian was more relaxed. He didn’t appear to be continually wishing he were somewhere else.
    ‘Happy in his own skin’ – it was a phrase she had once heard Mr Powers, the oboist, use. He was talking to her mum about such and such a conductor. The words had struck her as being curious at the time and she had wondered what he meant. But now she thought she knew. Uncle Brian was someone who was happy in his own skin. Was she happy in hers? She looked at her freckled arms and thought about it.
    The kitchen where they sat to eat was a large room, and typical of the house generally in that it hadn’t been altered or redecorated in years. The doors and all the woodwork, including the great table at the centre and the tall Welsh dresser that held the crockery, were painted cream – or at least they may have originally been white, but cream they now certainly were. The floor was red-brick and worn into dips where the traffic of heavy boots had passed most often – at the threshold of the main door, in front of the