Wedding Tiers. Trisha Ashley

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СКАЧАТЬ you two are going to be friends, I don’t think Ben’s parents, especially his mum, will be too pleased about it.’

      ‘I’ve heard she’s a snob, Granny. Do you know her?’

      ‘Oh, yes. Many’s the time Nell Slattery’s sat here in the kitchen with your mother,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘They did their nursing training together and started working at the same hospital together too, and they were quite good friends in those days.’

      Josie frowned. ‘So why won’t she be pleased if me and Ben are…’ she blushed, ‘friends?’

      ‘Well, flower, for one thing her husband is a consultant pathologist and the very instant the ring was on her finger she chucked the nursing and most of her old friends with it, and got Ideas. And for another—well, her husband fell for your mother first, you see, and Nell got him on the rebound.’

      ‘Ben’s father once went out with Mum?’ Josie said, amazed.

      ‘No, she didn’t have any fancy for him, but he pestered her until she met your father and they got married—then he turned and wed Nell instead. Since then she pretends she’s never met me if we pass in the village. Cleaners are below her notice. Though I suppose,’ she added with humour, ‘if she really didn’t, she’d be trying to employ me!’

      ‘There’s nothing wrong with having been a cleaner,’ Josie said loyally.

      ‘No, I’m not ashamed of having done good honest work, but I was proud of your mother, getting her nursing qualifications. And she was so pretty too. You look just like her at that age, Josie.’

      ‘But I’m not pretty,’ she said, surprised.

      ‘Of course you are.’

      Josie shook her head definitely. ‘No, I’m not. Libby Martin, my new friend at school, said she thought I was unusual. Libby really is pretty—small and blonde and slim.’

      ‘Isn’t she Gloria Martin’s younger daughter? The talk of the village, that one is!’

      ‘Libby isn’t like her mother,’ Josie said definitely.

      ‘I don’t suppose she is. Neither of the two girls has had a bad word said about them,’ agreed Granny fairly. ‘The older one is apprenticed to a hairdresser and doing well. What’s she called? Some flower name.’

      ‘Daisy, I think,’ Josie said. ‘So, can I invite Libby to come round here sometimes?’

      ‘Yes, of course you can.’

      ‘Cool!’

      ‘I’m glad to see you making friends already, though I didn’t think you’d be starting with the boys quite so quickly!’

      Josie blushed. ‘Ben’s just being nice. I mean, it’s not like he’s asked me out. He did ask Libby out once but she turned him down.’

      ‘Quite right too. At your age, friendship is better,’ Granny said firmly. ‘I don’t mind him coming here to see you, but no goings-on.’

      Josie blushed furiously. ‘Granny!’

      Later, in her room, she took the framed photograph of her parents out of the drawer where she’d hidden it away and looked from her mother’s smiling face to her own serious one in the dressing table mirror. Her mother was pretty, even with laughter lines and a bit of extra weight plumping up her cheeks, but Granny was just being kind, for surely her eyes had been bluer and her skin less sallow than Josie’s own?

      Then she tried to remember what colour her father’s eyes had been, but already the memories were fading, along with the first sharp edge of pain and anger.

      As the years passed, she forged a bond of hopes, dreams and laughter with Libby and moved seamlessly from friendship into love with Ben. But, deep down, she never quite lost that slight feeling of insecurity, the fear that those she loved might just be snatched away from her at any moment.

      And she always hated the cry of peacocks.

       Chapter One Cakes and Ale

       The Artist has gone off to London again, for the opening night of an exhibition that includes his work. The source of his inspiration may come from the countryside, but these increasingly frequent trips to the metropolis are yet another necessary compromise to our way of life.

      We aim to be as self-sufficient as possible—and still the twenty-first century constantly intrudes. Realistically, we’re doing well if we can strike an eighty/twenty balance! Even this diary is now written directly onto a laptop and emailed straight off to the editor of Skint Old Northern Woman magazine, just one example of the constant contradictions involved. And, of course, many of you now subscribe to the online version.

       But it has to be admitted that the Artist has a weakness for all kinds of gadgets and bits of technological wizardry that I don’t share even when, with the best of intentions, he presents me with something like a breadmaking machine, which he is sure will make my life easier…

      ‘Cakes and Ale: the musings of a backyard good-lifer’

      The sun was making a brave attempt to warm a dank and fuzzy mid-October morning when Ben, looking as big, tousled and wholesomely delectable as always, turned on the doorstep to say goodbye.

      ‘Oh, I wish you didn’t have to go,’ I said, putting my arms around his neck to pull him down to kissing level. Honestly, you’d think he was going on some exotic foreign trek into uncharted territory, rather than to stay with old friends in London for a couple of days. I really must get a grip! But these moments do sweep over me occasionally, because when you’ve been orphaned as a child and then lost the grandmother who brought you up, it’s hard not to be afraid that fate might also decide to snatch away the person you love most in the whole wide world.

      ‘You know I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to, darling.’ Ben enfolded me in a reassuring if asphyxiating hug, like a good-natured grizzly bear.

      ‘Liar, liar, your bum’s on fire!’ I chanted rudely. ‘You’re loving your bit of fame, admit it. These days there’s a glint in your eye and a spring in your step every time you set off for London.’

      He grinned, though guiltily, his fair skin flushing slightly. ‘Perhaps—but aren’t I always more than happy to be back home again, with you?’

      ‘Maybe,’ I conceded, because it was true that he always came back exhausted and more than ready to slip back into the old, familiar rut as if he’d never been away—until the next time. ‘But then, maybe you’re just missing your home comforts?’

      ‘You’re one of my home comforts,’ he said, squeezing me again and then letting me go. ‘I’ll ring you as soon as I get to Russell and Mary’s flat—promise.’

      ‘That’s OK, I don’t really think anything awful will happen to you between here and Camden, unless things have changed radically since I last came with you.’ I paused reflectively, trying to remember when СКАЧАТЬ