Innes paced up and down, then glanced at Flora.
Flora had never looked after her niece before. Agot had been a baby at the funeral. Quickly she banished all thoughts of the funeral from her head. She didn’t really get children per se; they seemed nice enough, if a bit demanding, if her friends who’d had kids were to be believed. Unfortunately, once they had them it was a bit hard to keep up, as they immediately moved out of London, and if you made it out there for a pint, they tended to fall asleep after half an hour or so.
Eck looked up from his scraped-clean plate.
“Our Flora could look after her, couldn’t you?” he said, pushing his glasses up. “You’re not doing much else.”
“Oh, Dad, you know she has a Terribly Important High-Profile Job as a Lawyer,” snarked Fintan, and Flora flashed him a cross look. It wasn’t her fault that she had to wait on a billionaire. But it was aggravating that they obviously thought she basically did nothing, just as they’d always expected, particularly when she knew that back in London there was a huge load of paperwork piling up for her.
And actually, slightly encouraged by her success in cleaning up the kitchen, Flora had considered tackling the biggest, most horrible job of all: her mother’s wardrobe. She had hoped against hope that her dad might have taken it on himself to do it, but he hadn’t. She wasn’t going to get rid of anything if he didn’t want her to, but it needed a little sorting out.
“I’ve got plenty to do,” she sniffed.
“Yeah, injuring the dogs,” said Fintan.
“SHUT UP, FINTAN!” she yelled.
He stuck his tongue out at her.
All eyes were on her. They were, Flora reflected, the only two girls left in the family.
“Is she toilet trained?”
“Yes,” lied Innes.
Flora sighed.
“All right then.”
Chapter Seventeen
Once upon a time there was a ship. And a girl was stolen away.”
“Where?”
“Oh, from far up north where the castles are, to be taken a long way away across the sea. And she did not want to go.”
“Why not? Why not?”
But the rustling skirts had gone and the love and the comfort had vanished and she was cold and alone and . . .
Flora woke crossly in the little single bed, the sun already high across the counterpane although it was only 6:30, her hair rumpled and her eyes sticky. It took her a while to remember where she was. And there was still no word from London.
Agot turned up at 8:30, deposited by an unsmiling Eilidh, who nodded briefly at Flora and said she’d heard she was “popping in,” as if “popping in” was the worst insult she could devise.
Little Agot was three, and surprisingly formidable for such a small person.
“It’s your auntie Flora,” Eilidh said, and if Flora detected some sarcasm in it, well, she was in a sensitive mood.
“HEYO, AUNTIE FLOWA,” came an unusually loud and deep voice, even muffled by the thumb stuck firmly in her mouth.
“You two are going to play and have a wonderful time.”
Nobody in the kitchen looked particularly confident at this analysis. Eilidh handed Flora a huge backpack containing nine Tupperware boxes full of food, various packets of wipes, and, ominously, two spare pairs of underpants.
“Can you feed her?” said Eilidh.
“Of course!” said Flora, bristling.
“Sorry, it’s just . . . I heard you were working.”
“I can multitask,” said Flora through gritted teeth.
“Great, great,” said Eilidh vaguely, kissing her daughter—without, Flora noticed, telling her she had to be good or anything—and heading out.
It was a bright, brisk, breezy morning—rather lovely, in fact, as long as you were wearing a sweater—and normally Flora would have suggested walking Bramble, but he was still a little wobbly on his paw. Instead, she and Agot regarded each other carefully.
“THIS GRANMA’S HOUSE,” said Agot eventually. Her hair was white-blond, just like her grandmother’s had been. According to Eck, they were the spitting image of each other. It hung long and made her look somewhat otherworldly, like a sprite, swept in on the northern waves from who knew where. Innes kept grumbling that it got in the way and was going to get caught in the farm machinery, and Agot herself complained that raccoons didn’t have long hair, no way, but her mother—whose own hair was a light mouse—was far too proud of her daughter’s crowning glory to have it cut; it never had been, in fact, and the ends were tiny white baby ringlets. Flora expected it to be subject to a few covetous looks from other parents; there were a lot of fair babies up here, but most deepened to red eventually. It looked like Agot would be a sprite all her life.
“What do you want to do this morning?” she said. Agot looked at her askance, and Flora felt, obscurely, that this was something she ought to know, that she needed some kind of plan.
“BUT!” said Agot.
“Yes?”
“THIS GRANMA’S HOUSE!”
“I know,” said Flora. She led Agot outside, and they sat down on one of the rocky outcrops at the front of the farmhouse. Out of the wind, the sun suddenly felt hot on her face, and she made a note to put sunscreen on the little girl, whose skin was white as milk.
“But your grandma, she was my mummy.”
Agot pondered that.
“SHE DADDY’S MUMMY.”
“She was. And she was my mummy too. Daddy and I are brother and sister.”
“YIKE GEORGE AND PEPPA?”
Flora blinked and decided it was best to agree with this statement.
“Yes,” she said. “Just like them.”
Agot swung her legs against the warm rock.
“SHE NOT HERE?”
Flora shook her head.
“AUN’ FLOWA SAD NO MUMMY?” She asked it entirely conversationally.
Flora watched the tide beating against the rocks below the lower field.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Very sad.”
Agot’s face started to crumple.
“WAN’ MUMMY,” she said in a low voice. You didn’t have to be a child expert to realize that trouble was brewing.
“It’s okay,” said Flora quickly. “Your mummy is fine. I’m just old.”
“I’S THREE,” said Agot.
“That’s right. But it’s okay. I’m a grown-up. I’m . . . much older than three. So. You see. It’s okay.”
Agot’s thumb was finding her mouth again. Flora cast around quickly for something to distract her.
“Um . . . do you want to go throw stones?”
Agot shook her head dismissively.
“Look at the cows?”
“I YIKE PIGS.”
“We don’t have any pigs.”
Agot’s lip started to tremble once more.
“Ah. Well . . .”
“DADDY SAID GRANMA MAKE CAKES,” announced Agot, as if the thought had just suddenly struck her. She looked at Flora craftily. “I YIKE CAKES.”
“Have you been hanging out with your uncle Hamish?” said Flora.
And then she thought of her mother’s light lemon cakes, her tiny little fairy cakes, and the heavy fruitcake always sitting on the shelf in the larder.
She wondered, suddenly, if there was a recipe in her mother’s book.
“We could go and have a look,” she said, and beaming, Agot jumped up and grabbed her hand in a way Flora found unexpectedly gratifying.