Phinn tried hard to look on the bright side—but could
not find one. There was not so much as a glimmer of a hint
of a silver lining to the dark cloud hanging over her.
She stared absently out of the window of her flat above the
stables, barely noticing that Geraldine Walton, the new
owner of the riding school, while somehow managing to look
elegant even in jeans and a tee shirt, was already busy
organising the day's activities.
Phinn had been up early herself, and had already been down
to check on her elderly mare Ruby. Phinn swallowed down a
hard lump in her throat and came away from the window,
recalling the conversation she'd had with Kit Peverill
yesterday. Kit was Ruby's vet, and he had been as kind as he
could be. But, however kind he had been, he could not
minimise the harshness that had to be faced when he told her
that fragile Ruby would not see the year out.
Phinn was quite well aware that Ruby had quite a few health
problems, but even so she had been very shaken. It was
already the end of April. But, however shaken she had been,
her response had been sharp when he had suggested that she
might want to consider allowing him to put Ruby down.
'No!' she had said straight away, the idea not needing to be
considered. Then, as she'd got herself more collected,
'She's not in great pain, is she? I mean, I know you give
her a painkilling injection occasionally, but…'
'Her medication is keeping her relatively pain-free,' Kit
had informed her. And Phinn had not needed to hear any more.
She had thanked him for his visit and had stayed with Ruby
for some while, reflecting how Ruby had been her best friend
since her father had rescued the mare from being ill treated
thirteen years ago, and had brought her home.
But, while they had plenty of space at Honeysuckle Farm in
which to keep a horse, there had been no way they could
afford to keep one as a pet.
Her mother, already the breadwinner in the family, had hit
the roof. But equally there had been no way that Ewart
Hawkins was going to let the emaciated mare go back to the
people he had rescued her from. And since he had
threatened—and had meant it—to have them
prosecuted if they tried to get her back, her owners had
moved on without her.
'Please, Mummy,' Phinn remembered pleading, and her mother
had looked into her pleading blue eyes, so like her own, and
had drawn a long sigh.
'You'll have to feed and water her, and clean up
after her,' she had said severely. 'Daily!'
And Ewart, the battle over, had given his wife a delighted
kiss, and Phinn had exchanged happy grins with her father.
She had been ten years old then, and life had been
wonderful. She had been born on the farm to the best parents
in the world. Her childhood, given the occasional volcanic
explosions from her mother when Ewart had been particularly
outrageous about something, had been little short of
idyllic. Any major rows between her parents, she'd later
realised had, in the main, been kept from her.
Her father had adored her from the word go. Because of some
sort of complication at her birth, her mother had had to
stay in bed, and it had been left to Ewart to look after the
newborn. They had lived in one of the farm cottages then,
only moving to the big farmhouse when Grandfather and then
Grandmother Hawkins had died. Phinn's father had bonded with
his baby daughter immediately, and, entirely uninterested in
farming, he had spent hour after hour with his little girl.
It had been he who, advised by his wife, Hester, that the
child had to be registered with the authorities within
forty-two days of her birth, had gone along to the register
office with strict instructions to name her Elizabeth
Maud—Maud after Hester's mother.
He had never liked his mother-in-law, and had returned home
to have to explain himself to his wife.
'You've called her—what?' Hester had
apparently hit a C above top C.
'Calm down, my love,' he had attempted to soothe, and had
gone on to explain that with a plain name like Hawkins, he
had thought the baby had better have a pretty name to go in
front.
'Delphinium!'
'I'm not having my beautiful daughter called plain Lizzie
Hawkins,' he'd answered, further explaining, 'To be a bit
different I've named her Delphinnium, with an extra
"n" in the middle.' And, to charm his still not
mollified wife, 'I'm rather hoping little Phinn will have
your gorgeous delphinium-blue eyes. Did you know,' he went
on, 'that your beautiful eyes go all dark purple, like the
Black Knight delphinium, when you're all emotional?'
'Ewart Hawkins,' she had threatened, refusing to be charmed.
'And I brought you a cabbage,' he'd said winningly.
The fact that he had brought it, not bought it, had told her
that he had nipped over some farmer's hedge and helped himself.
'Ewart Hawkins!' she'd said again, but he had the smile he
had wanted.
Hester Rainsworth, as she had been prior to her marriage,
had been brought up most conventionally in a workaholic
family. Impractical dreamer, talented pianist, sometime poet
and would-be mechanical engineer Ewart Hawkins could not
have been more of an opposite. They had fallen in
love—and for some years had been blissfully happy.
Given a few ups and downs, it had been happiness all round
in Phinn's childhood. Grandfather Hawkins had been the
tenant of the farm, and on his death the tenancy had passed
to her father. The farm had then been her father's
responsibility, but after one year of appalling freak
weather, when they had spent more than they had earned,
Hester had declared that, with money tight, Ewart could be
farmer and house-husband too, while she went out and found a
job and brought some money in.
Unlike his hard-working practical father, Ewart had had
little interest in arable farming, and had seen absolutely
no point in labouring night and day only to see his crops
flattened by storms. Besides, there'd been other things he'd
preferred to do. Teach his daughter to sketch, to fish, to
play the piano and to swim just for starters. There was a
pool down at Broadlands, the estate that owned both
Honeysuckle Farm and the neighbouring Yew Tree Farm. They
hadn't been supposed to swim in the pool, but in return for
her father going up to the Hall occasionally, and playing
the grand piano for music-lover Mr Caldicott, old Mr
Caldicott had turned a blind eye.
So it was in the shallows there that her father had taught
her to dive and to swim. If they hadn't taken swimwear it
had been quite all right with him if she swam in her
underwear— and should his wife be home when they
returned, he'd borne her wrath with fortitude.
There was a trout stream too, belonging to the Broadlands
estate, and they hadn't been supposed to fish there either.
But her father had called that a load of nonsense, so fish
they had. Though, for all Phinn had learned to cast a fine
line, she could never kill a fish and her fish had always
been put back. Afterwards they might stop at the Cat and
Drum, where her father would sit her outside with a lemonade
while he went inside to pass time with his friends.
Sometimes he would bring his pint outside. He would let her
have a sip of his beer and, although she thought it tasted
horrible, she had pretended to like it.
Phinn gave a shaky sigh as she thought of her dreamer
father. It had been he and not her mother who had decorated
her Easter bonnet for the village parade. How proud she had
been of that hat—complete with a robin that he had
very artistically made.
'A robin!' her mother had exclaimed. 'You do know
it's Easter?'
'There won't be another bonnet like it,' he had assured her.
'You can say that again!' Hester had retorted.
Phinn had not won the competition. She had not wanted to.
Though she had drawn one or two stares, it had not mattered.
Her father had decorated her hat, and that had been plenty
good enough for her.
Phinn wondered, not for the first time, when it had all
started to go so badly wrong. Had it been before old Mr
Caldicott had decided to sell the estate? Before Ty
Allardyce had come to Bishops Thornby, taken a look around
and decided to buy the place—thereby making himself
their landlord? Or…?
In all fairness, Phinn knew that it must have been long
before then. Though he, more recently, had not helped. Her
beautiful blue eyes darkened in sadness as she thought back
to a time five, maybe six years ago. Had that been when
things had started to go awry? She had come home after
having been out for a ride with Ruby, and after attending to
Ruby's needs she had gone into the big old farmhouse kitchen
to find her parents in the middle of a blazing row.
Knowing that she could not take sides, she had been about to
back out again when her mother had taken her eyes from the
centre of her wrath—Ewart—to tell her, 'This
concerns you too, Phinn.'
'Oh,' she had murmured non-committally.
'We're broke. I'm bringing in as much as I can.' Her mother
worked in Gloucester as a legal assistant.
'I'll get a job,' Phinn had offered. 'I'll—'
'You will. But first you'll have some decent training. I've
arranged for you to have an interview at secretarial
college. You—'
'She won't like it!' Ewart had objected.
'We all of us—or most of us,' she'd inserted, with a
sarcastic glance at him, 'have to do things we don't want to
do or like to do!'
The argument, with Phinn playing very little part, had raged
on until Hester Hawkins had brought out her trump card.
'Either Phinn goes to college or that horse goes to somebody
who can afford her feed, her vet and her farrier!'
'I'll sell something,' Ewart had decided, already not liking
that his daughter, his pal, would not be around so much. He
had a good brain for anything mechanical, and the farmyard
was littered with odds and ends that he would sometimes make
good and sell on.
But Hester had grown weary of him. 'Grow up, Ewart,' she had
snapped bluntly.
But that was the trouble. Her father had never grown up, and
had seen no reason why he should attempt it. On thinking
about it, Phinn could not see any particular reason why he
should have either. Tears stung her eyes. Though it had been
the essential Peter Pan in her fifty-four-year-old father
that had ultimately been the cause of his death.
But she did not want to dwell on that happening seven months
ago. She had shed enough tears since then.
Phinn made herself think back to happier times, though she
had not been too happy to be away from the farm for such
long hours while she did her training. For her mother's sake
she had applied herself to that training, and afterwards,
with her eye more on the salary she would earn than with any
particular interest in making a career as a PA, she had got
herself a job with an accountancy firm, with her mother
driving her into Gloucester each day.
Each evening Phinn had got home as soon as she could to see
Ruby and her father. Her father had taught her to drive, but
when her mother had started working late, putting in extra
hours at her office, it was he who had suggested that Phinn
should have a car of her own.
Her mother had agreed, but had insisted she would
look into it. She was not having her daughter driving around
in any bone-rattling contraption he'd patched up.
Phinn had an idea that Grandmother Rainsworth had made a
contribution to her vehicle, and guessed that her mother's
parents might well have helped out financially in her
growing years.
But all that had stopped a few months later when her mother,
having sat her down and said that she wanted to talk to her,
had announced to Phinn's utter amazement that she was moving
out. Shocked, open-mouthed, Phinn had barely taken in that
her mother intended leaving them when she'd further revealed
that she had met someone else.
'You mean—some—other man?' Phinn had gasped, it
still not fully sinking in.
'Clive. His name's Clive.'
'But—but what about Dad?'
'I've discussed this fully with your father.
Things—er— haven't been right between us for
some while. I'll start divorce proceedings as soon as
everything settles…'
Divorce! Phinn had been aware that her mother had grown more
impatient and short-tempered with her father just lately.
But—divorce!
'But what—'
'I'm not going to change my mind, Phinn. I've tried. Lord
knows I've tried! But I'm tired of the constant struggle.
Your father lives in his own little dream world and…'
She halted at the look of protest on her daughter's face.
'No, I'm not going to run him down. I know how devoted you
are to him. But just try to understand, Phinn. I'm tired of
the struggle. And I've decided I'm not too old to make a
fresh start. To make a new life for myself. A better life.'
'Th-this Clive. He's part of your fresh start—this
better life?'
'Yes, he is. In due time I'll marry him—though I'm not
in any great hurry about that.'
'You—just want your—freedom?'
'Yes, I do. You're working now, Phinn. You have your own
money—though no doubt your father will want some of
it. But…' Hester looked at her daughter, wanting
understanding. 'I've found myself a small flat in
Gloucester. I'll write down the address. I'm leaving your
father, darling, not you. You're welcome to come and live
with me whenever you want.'
To leave her father had been something Phinn had not even
thought about. Her home had been there, with him and Ruby.
It was around then, Phinn suddenly saw, that everything had
started to go wrong.
First Ruby had had a cough, and when that cleared she'd
picked up a viral infection. Her father had been marvelous,
in that he'd spent all of his days looking after Ruby for
her until Phinn was able to speed home from the office to
take over.
The vet's bill had started to mount, but old Mr Duke had
obligingly told them to pay what they could when they could.
Phinn's days had become full. She'd had no idea of the
amount of work her mother had done when she was home. Phinn
had always helped out when requested, but once she was sole
carer she'd seemed to spend a lot of her time picking up and
clearing up after her father.
And time had gone by. Phinn had met Clive Gillam and,
contrary to her belief, had liked him. And a couple of years
later, with her father's approval, she had attended their
wedding.