‘Yes.’ He looked rueful. ‘That was me too. Julie’s way of letting me know she was aware of what I’d been getting up to while she was away.’
Rosa sent up a prayer of thanks that Julie was no longer around to portray the town’s ongoing secrets; imagine if she were to find herself immortalised in the mural, guiltily skulking in the furthest corner of the garden of Compton House.
With Shay’s assistance, she settled down in her red velvet armchair next to the fireplace. She carefully flexed her knee, then cleaned away the dried blood with warm water and tissues. The swelling wasn’t too bad and the pain was beginning to ease. With a bit of luck and a pressure bandage, she’d soon be on the mend.
‘Anyway, enough of my shady past.’ Red’s attention had been drawn to the items on the dining table over by the window. ‘What’s all this about? Sorry . . .’
When he’d stopped coughing, Rosa said, ‘If you don’t need to rush off, why don’t you sit down? I can make us a pot of tea.’
‘Hey, you two invalids stay where you are.’ Shay put out a hand to stop her before she could haul herself upright once more. ‘I can make the tea.’
He disappeared into the tiny kitchen. Red collected two of the dolls from the table and carried them over with him before taking the blue armchair opposite her. ‘Did you make these?’
‘I did. I do.’
‘And people buy them?’
She smiled. ‘That’s the general idea, what with having to earn a living and pay the bills.’
‘I was so sorry to hear about Joe. He was a great guy.’
Rosa nodded, glancing down at the wedding ring she hadn’t yet felt able to take off. The emptiness never lessened; she missed Joe as much as ever, but as time passed, she had grown more proficient at navigating the void. ‘He really was. I was so lucky.’
‘I haven’t heard what happened,’ Red’s tone was sympathetic, ‘but it can’t have been easy, having to move out of that big house.’
Compared with having to carry on living without the man she’d loved with all her heart, moving out of Compton House and into Frog Cottage hadn’t been hard at all. But the practically overnight reversal of fortune had obviously not been ideal. It wouldn’t be at the top of any newly bereaved widow’s wish list.
‘I’m getting used to it.’ Not feeling up to the full explanation, Rosa simply shrugged. ‘But yes, the reason I started the doll thing was to try and make some money. A friend of mine had a granddaughter with a port-wine birthmark on her face and neck, and she asked why none of her dolls looked like her, so I made one that did. And she loved it. That was what gave me the idea to set up a website so people could request dolls to be customised with the exact features they asked for.’
She pointed to the boy doll with spiky blonde hair and glasses, and an above-the-left-knee amputation. Wearing a stripy blue and white top with red shorts, he had freckles and a lopsided grin. ‘This one’s for a four-year-old called Robbie, who lives in New Zealand and lost his leg in an accident. And the other doll is for a little girl called Jade who lives in London. She has vitiligo, and her mum sent me a photo so I could get the patterns of de-pigmentation to exactly match the ones on her face and body.’
Red marvelled at the detail on the dolls. ‘They’re brilliant.’
‘It’s a lovely thing to be able to do. I often get sent photos of the children with their new dolls. And last week I was emailed a link to a video of a five-year-old being given the parcel with her doll inside. She had an arm and a foot amputated after a bout of meningitis. When she opened the parcel, she couldn’t stop hugging it and shouting, ‘My dolly’s just like me!’ She didn’t tell him she’d watched the video clip over and over again and had welled up every time.
When they’d drunk their tea, Shay said, ‘How’s the knee feeling now?’
Rosa flexed it this way and that. ‘Much better, thanks. Nothing broken.’ Although it was going to be a little while before she clambered over a high wall and jumped down into someone else’s garden.
‘Well that’s good. Dad, we need to head back to Birmingham or you’re going to miss your flight.’
Red nodded. He was looking weary now as he levered himself to his feet, but whilst his face might be thinner than it had once been, his smile was as disarming as ever. ‘Yes, we must go. It’s been wonderful to see you again, Rosa. And thanks so much for showing me the mural.’ His eyes glinted with mischief. ‘Happy memories of times past. Take care of yourself,’ he added, bending to plant a brief kiss on her cheek. ‘Mind that knee of yours and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’
It was almost as if he knew what she’d been up to. In addition, this was someone clearly very unwell, yet here he was urging her to look after her dodgy knee. Feeling like a complete fraud by comparison, Rosa said, ‘It’s lovely to see you again too.’
His father slept in the passenger seat all the way back to the airport on the outskirts of Birmingham. Having parked the car and woken him, Shay said, ‘So what do you think, now you’ve seen the house?’
‘Whose house? Rosa’s?’
‘Your house, the one you wanted to move into. The one that’s completely uninhabitable.’
‘But it’s the only place I want to be. We were happy there,’ said Red. ‘It’s where I want to spend however long I have left.’
Shay suppressed a sigh. He knew from experience that once his father set his mind to something, there’d be no changing it, regardless of whether the plan made an iota of sense.
‘OK, well I’ll speak to a few local builders and see what they have to say.’
‘I want you to do it.’
‘That’s not practical. I can’t do everything myself.’
‘But you can do some of it. And you can be there and project-manage the whole thing, oversee the rest of the work.’
‘I was going to take a holiday,’ Shay reminded him. ‘I was due a break, remember? After working non-stop for the last few years.’
‘I’m dying.’
‘Oh, so now we’re on to the emotional blackmail, are we?’
‘Now?’ A glimmer of a smile. ‘It’s been that way ever since I first thought of it.’
Of course it had. If imminent death didn’t allow you to play your trump card, what did?
‘Wouldn’t you rather stick with Angela in Edinburgh?’ Although Shay already knew the answer.
‘No. Every time she looks at me, she starts crying. I can’t spend the rest of my life comforting her because she’s upset about losing me.’ His father shook his head resignedly. ‘And I don’t want her coming down here either. Easier if we call it a day. All I want to do now is go home to Elliscombe, back to our place. And spend more time with my boy, to make up for all those months we missed out on.’
Months? Years more like. Shay said drily, ‘It’s not my fault you kept getting slung back in jail.’
‘And I know that only too well. Which is why I can’t make you agree to do this. It’s your choice, Shay. If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. You’re allowed to say no.’ He coughed gently. ‘God knows, it’s not as if I can force you.’