A Home From Home Read online

  Praise for A Home From Home

  ‘Veronica Henry is in sun-drenched, apple-scented top form with a lovely story of families, love and loyalty’ Milly Johnson

  ‘A gorgeous read. I loved the warmth and depth of all the characters … but particularly the overarching loveliness of Dragonfly Farm, which seemed to perfectly personify generations of love and family and survival’ Hilary Boyd

  Praise for Veronica Henry

  ‘An utter delight’ Jill Mansell

  ‘Truly blissful escapism’ Lucy Diamond

  ‘A heart-warming, triumphant story combined with Veronica’s sublime writing – the perfect mix!’ Cathy Bramley

  ‘A beautiful book. Warm, emotional and full of hope’ Sarah Morgan

  ‘Veronica has such a deft hand with families and their complications’ Katie Fforde

  Veronica Henry

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Family Tree

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PART TWO

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  PART THREE

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  PART FIVE

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  PART SIX

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Acknowledgements

  Credits

  About Veronica Henry

  Adverts

  Also by Veronica Henry

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  And pluck till time and times are done

  The silver apples of the moon,

  The golden apples of the sun

  W B YEATS

  PART ONE

  1

  Crack!

  There was nothing more satisfying than the sound of an axe splitting a log. Tabitha had spent all morning getting her swing just right, like a golfer, and now she had the perfect rhythm. It was better than any workout, and she was stripped down to a camisole and shorts, dripping with sweat. Not a ladylike glow, but good honest salty sweat, running in rivulets down her face, her back, everywhere …

  She’d finally accepted that the tree wasn’t going to survive. It had shown signs of disinterest in life some time ago. She had done what she could to mollycoddle it over the heat of the summer, but now there was nothing for it but to chop it down and use it for firewood. Often, they would keep fallen trees, and sometimes these would continue to bear fruit, but this was blocking the way so now, instead of an ancient apple tree, she had a beautiful pile of logs waiting to be stacked in the wood-store for drying.

  She wasn’t sentimental. She would replace it, get a new tree tucked safely into the orchard so it would get strong before the first frost and the onset of winter, which would be upon them before they were ready. It was always so hard to believe cold weather was on its way in the soft warmth of early autumn, with the trees and bushes and hedgerows heavy with fruit, gold and purple and deep red and orange.

  She gathered up the last few logs, flung them in her wheelbarrow and laid her axe on top. She gave a loud whistle, and Poe – named by her cousin Georgia after Edgar Allan Poe, because his shiny coat was as black as a raven’s wing – bounded back to her. He was a formidable ratter. Even though Dragonfly Farm wasn’t a proper working farm – no cattle or sheep; no grain to store – the outhouses were still a draw for vermin.

  She calculated there was enough time for her to go and have a long bath with a dose of Epsom salts to soothe her muscles before heading to the Swan. She’d worked there for seven years and she wouldn’t give it up for anything. On the banks of the river Rushbrook that gave the village its name, the pub was unspoilt, cosy but comfy, with a good mix of locals and people from further afield who popped in regularly for one of her famous pies. She was part of the fixtures and fittings. She belonged there as much as the flagstone floors and the cases full of fish that had been caught in the river and the photographs of the Rushbrook cricket team going back to the 1800s.

  The pie-making had started when the chef had gone off sick and Tabitha had stepped in: she didn’t have the skills to cook to order, so she had taken the contents of the fridge and made a selection of pies. They had gone down a storm and were now the pub’s speciality. Chicken and mushroom, steak and Stilton, venison, fish, spinach and feta, rabbit and mustard – she changed them according to the season. They were all topped with her shiny pastry, hand-decorated with lattice work and leaves and finally monogrammed with an entwined TM for Tabitha Melchior.

  Today, she was spending the afternoon making pies before her shift behind the bar, which would finish about midnight. Then she would be up at the crack of dawn the next morning to exercise racehorses for Jimmy O’Gowan. It was hard work and not nearly as glamorous as it sounded, but she loved it: she was light but strong, and a fearless rider. Every week Jimmy would plead with her to come and work for him full time. ‘Ah, come on now, Miss Melchior,’ he’d say, his voice syrupy with Galway charm. ‘You’re the only person who never lets me down. I need you to run the yard. We’d win the Gold Cup every year with you at the helm.’

  But she would laugh her refusal.

  When people asked Tabitha what she did for a living, she was always amused by the look on their faces when she recited the list. She’d worked out a long time ago that she wasn’t a career girl. She didn’t want to be answerable to anyone. She was a pie-making/racehorse-exercising/cider-making/anything-else-that-came-her-way barmaid who by and large chose exactly how to live her life.

  OK, so she didn’t get sick pay or have much of a pension, and even lumped together her income wasn’t huge, but she did what she loved with people she loved and she never got bored, and what could be better than that?

  It was flexible too: if she wanted to disappear off to Glastonbury for a week, she could. When she needed to take time off for the apple harvest and annual cider making, she could. And she was able to be spontaneous and indulge in passion projects.

  The week before, the whole of Year 7 from Nettleford Community College had come to Dragonfly Farm for the day – a field trip for all the new children to get to know each other and have a riverside picnic. The ritual had been established by Tabitha’s great-aunt, Joy. As a health visitor, community had been important to Joy, and Tabitha wanted to keep the tradition going.

  The coach had arrived and the children tumbled out, prepubescent and unruly, oozing ennui yet secretly glad not to be shut
up in the classroom but instead to frolic in the orchards and enjoy the last of the Indian summer. She’d taken them into the barn to make some juice using the first of the early apples and gave them all a taste.

  ‘Can’t we have some proper cider, miss?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Tabitha grinned.

  ‘My dad loves your cider. He asked me to bring some home.’

  ‘I’m afraid last year’s has run out. And we haven’t started this year’s yet. Not till next month at least.’

  She felt a little glow at the recognition. Melchior Cider might only have a product reach of about three miles, but it had almost cult status. Some people had been drinking it for more than thirty years, from when Joy first began making it as a hobby, selling it at the farm gate. It was said that if you drank it during the full moon, you could make anyone you wanted fall in love with you. Tabitha had never tested the theory, but there had been several Melchior Cider weddings to her knowledge: couples who had met while under its influence and had ordered it to be drunk at the reception. It had given her an idea – something she was working on in secret: to produce a sparkling cider, a light, delicious, celebratory fizz filled with West Country sunshine.

  Afterwards, the children had done a few worksheets, grumbling, then she had taken them down to the river. The autumn sun filtered through the trees over their heads as they sat on the grassy bank where the river widened out into a large pool and became still, and the weeping willows trailed their branches on the surface. They listened, wide-eyed, as she told them the dramatic history of Dragonfly Farm.

  ‘This farm once belonged to the Culbones. That’s their house you can see on the other side of the valley.’

  They all craned their necks to peep over the tops of the trees. They could just glimpse the grey slates of Rushbrook House and a pair of tall chimneys.

  ‘One night, my great-great-great-grandfather, Joseph Melchior, won the farm off Casper Culbone in a game of cards at the Swan. They’d been drinking cider all evening and were three sheets to the wind.’

  The children were all agog. Even though they were bursting with hormones and their heads were filled with selfies and Snapchat, the magic of storytelling still worked on them.

  ‘Next morning, when they’d sobered up, Joseph made Casper honour his gambling debt. There’d been plenty of witnesses in the pub. He moved into the farm that very day.’

  There was a communal nod. The children all understood the etiquette of gambling, it seemed.

  ‘The Culbones were furious but there was nothing they could do. And even now,’ Tabitha finished, ‘Melchiors and Culbones still don’t speak. They cross the road if they see each other.’

  She was exaggerating slightly. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a Culbone, as Rushbrook House was rented out. But she had been livid when the Culbones’ solicitor sent a letter to her great-uncle just after Joy had died, offering to buy the farm back. Over a hundred years on and they were still sore losers.

  She didn’t tell them the rest of the story either. How Casper Culbone had taken his revenge by stealing the love of Joseph’s life. The unhappy ending was a little too graphic for eleven-year-olds, she thought, although she suspected they might relish the ghoulish detail.

  She looked at the still water of Eleanor’s Pool, as it was known locally, and as always, her heart ached with sorrow for the lovesick girl who had taken her own life. Tabitha had vowed never to let any man manipulate her in the way Eleanor had been by Casper Culbone, nor lose her heart to someone who would drive her to madness. Tabitha still put flowers on Eleanor’s grave sometimes, when she went to tend her great-aunt’s memorial in the churchyard.

  Afterwards, she gave the children a picnic of craggy cheese and sourdough bread she’d made that morning, and slabs of cake thick with sultanas. They’d been wary at first. She could see them wrinkling their noses and looking at each other doubtfully. They were used to plastic bread and processed cheese and bags of crisps and additive-filled chocolate bars washed down with fizzy pop. But every crumb was gone.

  It had been the warmest of September afternoons, when the sunlight trickles like honey onto your skin, a gentler warmth than the harsh glare of high summer. Tabitha wished she could let the children jump into the river, but there hadn’t been a risk assessment so the teacher was reluctant.

  She strode back through the orchard now, smiling at the memory of sixty eleven-year-olds shouting their thanks as they climbed back on the bus. The long grass swished at her legs as she pushed her barrow through the apple trees. She reached up to tug at an apple overhead – it was still slightly reluctant to come away, but she pulled it off then twisted it in half. Inside, the flesh was smooth and creamy, and the musty apple scent made her stomach flicker with anticipation. But the pips in the core were too pale: not the chestnut brown they needed to be. Not time to harvest yet.

  She reached the sprawling courtyard of outbuildings at the back of the farmhouse. She emptied the logs into the stone store that was easy to get to when Gum, her great-uncle, needed to nip outside for a fresh supply on a dark night. It was his nightly ritual, to set the fire in the living room. She stacked the logs neatly at the very back to dry out. They wouldn’t be ready for a year at least.

  Then she pushed her barrow over to the tool shed, leaned it against the wall, wiped her axe carefully and hung it back up. In here were tools that went back generations, and she knew she would always find whatever she needed. Loppers and secateurs, shovels, forks, long poles for knocking the apples from the highest branches, pruning knives. They were all kept immaculate, the blades oiled, the handles smooth, and hung up on hooks in their own particular place. She loved the smell in here. Slightly damp, with a base note of oil and a top note of wood, the smell of centuries of toil.

  She locked the shed up and dropped the key in her pocket. They might live in the depths of the Somerset countryside, but you never knew when a light-fingered opportunist might wander by and help themselves. And to Tabitha these items were irreplaceable. The handles had been worn down by generations of Melchiors. No insurance claim could make up for their loss if they went missing.

  The sun was high in the sky, burning rose-gold. She stood still for a moment to enjoy the peace and remember the people who had been in and out of this yard throughout her life – the ones who were still here, and the ones who weren’t. She still expected to see Joy bowling round the corner with a basket of eggs or an armful of cabbages, her cheeks pink and her hair wild. She had left Tabitha and Georgia a little bit of money when she’d gone. Tabitha had planted the field that ran down to the river with fifty new apple trees. Not the kind of apples destined for the fruit bowl, but small, tannic and bittersweet – the best variety for sparkling cider.

  ‘That money was supposed to be spent on you,’ Gum had chided her.

  ‘This is for me,’ said Tabitha, who loved the orchards more than anything.

  Georgia had bought a top-of-the-range MacBook, which made perfect sense, as writing was her life. Tabitha sighed, thinking of her cousin, and wondered if their feud had gone on long enough.

  She missed Joy and she missed Georgia. Only one of those things could she do anything about. But what? Perhaps she should swallow her pride and pick up the phone. Not now, though. There were pies to be made.

  She slipped inside the back door, ran through the kitchen and up the narrow, winding back staircase to the bathroom, where she turned the hot tap on to full blast, stripped off her clothes and watched the mirror over the sink steam up and her reflection disappear.

  2

  The knife fitted into his palm perfectly, his fingers curled round the satin-smooth walnut handle. It was just the right weight: not too heavy, but solid enough to have authority, and perfectly balanced. Nothing could argue with a knife like this. The blade would slice through almost everything. He imagined it plunging through flesh and fat and sinew without ef
fort. It would meet no resistance.

  He held it up under the lamp which swung from the ceiling of the railway arch. A tiny stamp near the handle made him smile, as it always did: an angel with a halo. And underneath were his initials: GC.

  He wondered where the knife would end up. He always felt a protective fatherliness towards his handiwork. He shuddered to think of it being misused: thrust into a dishwasher or left at the bottom of a sink of dirty water.

  Some of his knives were bespoke, the size and shape of the blade made to the customer’s exacting requirements, the wood of the handle carefully chosen for the way it felt against their skin. Knives were very personal. Everyone had their own preference, moulded to their habits and their environment. A chef in a busy restaurant kitchen had different needs from a keen home cook. But one thing was certain. Interest in bespoke knives had rocketed; knife makers were heroes. And Gabriel Culbone was gradually becoming a brand.

  He laid his latest specimen down gently and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm. He flicked a glance at the clock: he should crack on with the next, he thought, and get as much as he could done.

  Before he could begin a sudden coldness stopped him, a chill that made every hair on his body ripple. He stood still as it ran from his head to his toes, accompanied by the strangest sensation of loss. He frowned. He wasn’t a fanciful man, but he felt as if he had been standing under a tap, or dipped into an icy lake in the depths of winter. Rather than feeling adrenaline, he felt as if his heart was slowing; as if his system was closing down.

  As quickly as the sensation had arrived, it had gone.

  He looked at the temperature gauge on the wall. It was no colder than usual in the workshop. It could be arctic in here in the depths of winter, before he stoked up the wood-burning stove, but it was only autumn.

  He shivered as he looked around for an explanation – an open door, perhaps – but there was none. Unsettled, he analysed the feeling of emptiness he was left with now the coldness had gone. It was more emotional than physical, although he couldn’t have described it. He tried to shake the feeling away.