Page 10 of The Last Casterglass
“No,” she said after a moment, her face to the window. “They weren’t. They left for boarding school before I was born.”
He hesitated, wondering if he should drop the subject, and then decided he wanted to know too much to do that, even if Seph was starting to sound pained. “Was that very hard?” he asked.
Another pause, her lips pressed together, her gaze on the heavy banks of drooping rhododendrons lining the drive. “It was lonely, sometimes.”
Getting anything from her was like blood from a stone, Oliver reflected wryly. He half-wondered why he was even trying, even as he acknowledged he knew the answer. Because, for some contrary reason, helikedher. Was it just that she was a challenge, or something more? Or was he just falling into the depressingly familiar pattern of people-pleasing, needing everyone to like him? Regardless, he was going to try with Seph, and he decided a little honesty himself might help grease the conversational wheels.
“I had a bit of a lonely childhood myself,” he told her as he turned onto the B road that wound its way through rolling hills, lush green even in November from all the rain, towards Broughton-in-Furness. “So I can relate, a little, although of course I don’t want to presume anything.”
She was silent for a few seconds, and then, finally, thankfully, she took his hint. “Why was your childhood lonely?”
“My mother left when I was five,” he said, keeping his tone conversational out of a deeply ingrained sense of self-protection. There was honesty and then there was pathetically milking the situation. He’d been explaining the rather bleak circumstances of his childhood to various people for nearly two decades, and he’d learned to treat it matter-of-factly, like it had never bothered him, which wasn’tmilesfrom the truth—not really. “I never knew my dad. Mum was a bit of a wanderer, wanted to see the world. She parked me with my uncle at Pembury Farm and then more or less never came back.” He gave a little shrug to keep from seeming too self-pitying.
“Never?” Seph sounded both curious and appalled. “Not even once?”
“Well, not quite never,” Oliver allowed, wishing he hadn’t exaggerated for effect. Did he actually want her to feel sorry for him? No, surely not. “There were a few visits over the years.” Visits that had been excruciating in their awkwardness, and yet devastating in their impossible hope. Every time he’d ached for her to stay, but of course she never had. Eventually he’d learned to stop wanting such a thing. “She ended up moving out to Australia, settling in Brisbane. She’s really happy there. We Skype sometimes, stuff like that.” Very rarely, but still, he supposed it was something. He now regarded her as something along the lines of a casual acquaintance or distant cousin, but that was okay. It was better than nothing.
“She didn’t want you to move out with her?” Seph asked.
Another shrug, for good measure. “I don’t know if she ever thought about that possibility seriously. By the time she’d settled down enough to consider it, I was in secondary school and my education would have been interrupted, so it was never even discussed.”
“As if that’s the worst thing,” Seph interjected, her voice filled with sudden scorn. “I think I would have rather had my education interrupted, thanks.”
Intrigued, Oliver remarked, “It sounds like you’re speaking from personal experience.”
“No, not really. I mean, I never had the option of moving anywhere. Casterglass has been it.” She turned to look out the window and he glanced at her, strangely moved by the smooth curve of her cheek, the paleness of her skin, the tiny blonde hairs on the nape of her neck. When she wasn’t scowling, there was something deeply and touchingly vulnerable about her. Or was that just his wishful thinking?
“What, then?” he asked, keeping his tone gentle.
She shrugged, just like he had. Her own form of self-protection? He had no idea how much he was projecting onto her. “I just think there are more important things,” she replied, her tone sounding deliberately dismissive.
“Such as?”
“The usual. Family. Friends. Feeling…” she blew out a breath “…supported.”
Which made him want to ask a million questions, but he decided to steer it back to his own experience, because he sensed she was getting pretty prickly. She’d folded her arms and jutted out her jaw, all the while still staring out the window as if her life depended on it.
“Well, that’s why I stayed at Pembury, actually. I had a few friends at school, and I was pretty well settled, with my aunt and uncle.” Even though that had, of course, had some downsides, especially after his aunt had moved to London. He didn’t want to get into all of that now, however, not on top of the stuff with his mum. Seph would think he was really pathetic, then. “I don’t think I would have been willing to go all the way to Australia,” he said instead, “and start over living with a woman I barely knew, even if she was my mother.”
“Do you ever wish you did?” she asked, finally turning to look at him, her eyes wide, her lips pursed, as if the question really mattered.
Oliver considered the idea. “No, I don’t think so,” he said at last, “because I love Pembury Farm.”
Her lips twisted. “What about your aunt and uncle?”
“I love them too.” Had he spoken a little too quickly? His relationship with his uncle Simon and aunt Penny was complicated, to say the least. And that wasn’t without considering his cousin Jack.
“But you love the farm more.” She sounded almost condemning—or was he just feeling sensitive, because he’d mentioned the farm before he’d mentioned his relatives? He could tie himself in knots, wondering what was going on inside her head. It was so very hard to know.
“Not more, just… The way you love a place is different than the way you love a person, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know that it is.” Her voice had turned hard, and she was looking out the window again.
“I wonder,” Oliver remarked, trying to inject some humour into his voice to lighten the mood, “are we talking about Pembury or Casterglass?”
She turned to give him a swift, haughty look. “Pembury, of course,” she replied, as if it were obvious. Maybe it had been.
“Your parents clearly love Casterglass,” Oliver replied, deciding to press a little, just in case. “And you must, as well. Your whole family does. It almost feels like another person in your family.”