The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [16]
Mum, a self-styled free spirit, was heavily into alternative remedies. Reflexology, aromatherapy, you name it, she'd tried it, her latest obsession being reiki, of which, after a startlingly brief training period, she claimed to be a qualified practitioner. The final straw for Dad had been her plan to set up a practice at the farm, transforming one of the barns – with a few pink towels and some womb music, he'd snort – into a holistic medical centre.
‘I'm not denying there's something in all this alternative bollocks,’ he'd roared. ‘What I am denying is that your mother is in any way, shape or form qualified to administer it!’
One unseasonably clement day in October, after just such a heated exchange, Mum took her beloved Cairn terrier, Bathsheba, and walked all the way into Oxford – no mean eight miles – to visit her sister. She telephoned Dad to say that since it was so far, she thought she'd stay the night. The following morning she rang to say she thought she'd stay a few days, because Cynthia, her sister, was under the weather. A few days had turned into a few weeks, and then a few months – and then she never came back. If Tim or I enquired, Dad would say vaguely, ‘Your mother? Oh, she's still at Cynthia's.’ And if we rang Mum and asked when she was thinking of returning, she'd say, ‘Oh, when Cynthia's a bit better, I expect.’
The truth was it suited them. Mum was back in the city where she belonged, and Dad was happy with the farm to himself, remote control in his hand of an evening and no frustrated housewife wanting him to light candles and sit cross-legged listening to his inner music. Dad lived like a slob, wore the same clothes every day, ate baked beans from the tin and left washing up in the sink in a tottering pagoda. Periodically I'd despair to Tim, who'd say – who cares? He's happy. Let him be. And he was. They both were, in fact, for the first time in years, and life became remarkably peaceful.
Inevitably, though, as time went by, they both became lonely and then came what Tim and I nervously referred to as ‘the courting phase’. Mum embarked on a series of jaw-droopingly unsuitable boyfriends – some half her age, one a student, for God's sake, one a busker she'd found in an underpass, all of whom predictably came to nothing – and Dad moved in Felicity.
I have to say, in the beginning Tim and I were slightly wary of Felicity, simply because she was so palpably not Dad's type. He'd met a few women through Rural Relations, a country dating agency – primarily rosy-cheeked women with trousers held up with binder twine but Felicity was tall, slim, ravishingly good-looking and highly intelligent.
‘What does she see in Dad?’ I wondered rather disloyally to Caro over a cup of tea in her bungalow. She'd bristled slightly, Tim being very like his father.
‘Well, he's tall, good-looking and not entirely impoverished, with a farm and three hundred acres – what's not to see?’
‘I suppose,’ I'd agreed, suitably rebuked.
Some weeks later Dad had invited us all to Sunday lunch, to meet Felicity properly. We'd tried not to boggle as we spotted napkins on the table and a vase of flowers in the middle, and then sat down to a starter – a starter! – with Dad at one end in a freshly laundered shirt, Felicity at the other, looking nervous. And actually, because of her slight unease, I'd warmed to her instantly. We all had, even Caro.
‘She's just what your father needs,’ she'd declared when she'd rung me later for a post-match analysis. ‘An intelligent woman with a no-nonsense approach to lick that farmhouse into shape.’
‘Mum was intelligent,’ I'd countered loyally, but I knew what she meant.
‘Yes, but she got so distracted. Felicity has such a clear vision of how that farm should be.’
It was true, Dad and Felicity were a brilliant team. In no time at all she'd cleared the house of clutter, redecorated, and even attacked the garden, so that