The Kendal waitress was anxious to sweep up the café floor and close up. Netta’s tea had gone cold while she fingered each of her precious photographs: staring sadly at the one of her stone cottage and thinking about that first lonely return there from Stratharvar. The nursery bedroom, smelling of paint and newness, looked accusing. The satin eiderdown quilt plumped up for its new occupant a haunting reminder. It quickly reverted to being Netta’s summer sewing room.

She smiled wistfully at a snap of Gus taken on his first day in the nursery class in Stratharvar. How silly she’d been to think she could whisk him away with no thought for his feelings and needs. He was not some plaything to toss about to distract her from her loneliness, even now when they’d grown to understand each other better. How that one miserable experience had sapped all her resolve. Somehow it’d never been the right time to ask for him again. Until now. The years had just rolled by. Mother and son in two different worlds, always running in parallel lines like ladders, with her making visits like rungs across the divide, to keep in touch with his growing up.

Why can’t you stand firm and rock solid when the panic waves come crashing over your head? Why do you waver like flotsam blown this way and that by the tidal forces around you? Why didn’t you stand up to Peg just one more time? How will you face yourself if you run away now from the young friends you’ve created for yourself, your adopted family in Griseley? When it comes to those children you can be as tough as leather in their defence, but did you find them or did they find you?

6

Jade

‘Colour of growth and cleansing,
The great harmoniser,
A resting point balancing
Past and future.’

Dancing on the Green, Summer 1948

What was the point of carrying on? Netta flung her sewing across the bedroom in frustration. Since her return from Stratharvar all the purpose of her work had evaporated in the summer heatwave. If she couldn’t have her son by her side why bother building up all her connections, why stay here? Why not move back to Dumfries and start all over again, closer to home and not so easily ignored? There was nothing to keep her here but a dreary, back-
aching job.

Suddenly her cottage felt dark and ice cold in the sunshine. She slumped into a lazy routine, shoving her appliqué work into the basket until Vida Bloom called in person to demand where all her trimmings for the bridal dresses were, catching Netta in her dressing gown.