Tesni was just cleaning the boys’ toilet for them. In a helpful sort of way. Being such a nice girl and all that. That’s why she was in their bathroom. No other reason at all, dear me, no.
Then Eugenio got a good look at his hair afterwards. Sadly for him – but luckily for Tesni – she was safely at school by then!
Uiara was out doing a load of things – she missed hearing his yells. The laundry first - and the sooner they could afford to finish kitting out the utility room, the better! But Tesni’s bakery came first, before the rent on it went up.
Next stop, Tesni’s bakery. The legal stuff was all-but-finished, and they could start cleaning up, painting and refurbishing very soon. One more year at school, and Tesni would be old enough to leave. Leave, and start running her bakery. That would just leave Charlie and Henrietta at school.I wonder what they want to do once they leave school? Uiara thought. Maybe Tesni would know – she and Henrietta were very close.
Next stop, the comic book shop.
“So,” Uiara said to Kory, who ran The Marvellous Bulk, “We’re going to be opening up a bakery next door. What do you think about running a discount promotion for a month? Half price cookie with every purchase?”Kory thought it over. “That might work well for both of us. Yeah, why not?”
Sitting watching the clothes dry, Uiara thought of Reggie coming to the laundrette in the middle of the night, with two tiny babies, just to keep the family in clean-ish clothes.“She thinks she did so badly back then. But I think she was amazing. How can I show her that? What can I give her? She’s given so much to all of us.”
There was a full-on working party at the bakery. Every weekend!“Marcus, you can’t help while you’re wearing your school uniform!” Charlie knew just what Marcus’s mother would say about that! Reggie would say the same.
“I know. I’m just on my way back from orchestra – we were playing at the town hall today - and I thought I’d drop in.”
That wasn’t actually on Marcus’s way home, Regina thought, but never mind. “I’ll just go and mix up some more paste, and then we’ll get the rest of that wall papered today, Eugenio. Get mopping, you two! Tesni’s outside somewhere, Marcus.”
Tesni was outside, getting ready to attack some more of the dead weeds and brambles, and wondering if wearing jeans would have been smarter (though hotter!) than shorts.
Marcus came over. “I think it’s going to look great, Tesni.”“Want a Saturday job?” she teased him. She knew his parents would throw fifty fits if he gave up on orchestra and his other musical commitments while he was still at school. He was the best first violin the orchestra had had in ages.
“Just wait until next summer. I will be leaving, and you can leave. Then we can really make plans for this business, and the future.” Marcus sidled a bit closer to the gorgeous redhead who never ceased to amaze him.
Autumn, and Fern was away on the mainland, at one of the big teaching hospitals, doing a very specific refresher course. And with her away, inevitably Viriato’s relationships with her siblings deepened. He did like being part of a large family, found it easy to be among a lot of other people.
“This is harder than it looks!”Fawn left her own easel and came to look at Viriato’s effort. “I think you’re right,” she said, muffling her giggles. “I think Eugenio’s the one with the artistic talent – not you. I think he got your share as well. And everyone else’s!”
“You think he’s good?” Viriato asked, surprised.
“I know he’s good!” It was Fawn’s turn to be surprised. “Everyone does. He’s better than I am.”
Viriato went over to look at Fawn’s artwork. “Yours looks much better to me.”“No,” Fawn said simply. “Technically, I am very good, but Eugenio has an originality, an imagination, that I don’t have. That’s the difference between us. I could be a great forger. He could be a great painter.”
Fawn must know what she was talking about. But really? Eugenio could be a great painter? Viriato had always just thought of it as a messing around after work thing.
Viriato sometimes found his sessions with Finn painful, but always, afterwards, he could see that it had been worth it. Today, unusually, Finn sat down next to him.“Have you seen this article? – here it is.” He spread out the paper so that Viriato could read it too.
And there it was – a rather blurry and not-very-like-her photo of Uiara, and an article all about her – and Desmond, and Queen’s Hope and what a promising team Desmond and Uiara were, and how she was the only female trainer on the island but she was doing very well. Viriato’s mouth dropped open as he read on.“There’ll certainly be a queue of buyer for her foals, once Uiara has a yard of her own and also any yearlings…”
Finn folded the paper neatly, put it on the table, changed chairs, to give Viriato time to get his head around another new idea.“But this article – it’s like, they’re really serious about how good Desmond and Uiara are?”
“Yes. They are. Do you know why you find that so hard to take in?”
And Viriato answered as he’d once answered Desmond and Uiara. “But – well – they’re still children.”
To Finn, it was obvious. Viriato was stuck in a time-warp inside his own mind. But: how to help him get out of it? Finn knew where they needed to go next, but it would hurt.
Some riders had proper jumping courses. Desmond was still on a couple of fences on their smallholding! But Queen’s Hope was developing a nice neat jumping style despite that – or maybe because of it! She was winning advanced competitions and doing well in the smaller international ones that came to the island.“After she’s foaled – we could think about the big international ones?” There were three a year on the island – they’d stopped while the bridge was down, obviously, but were running again now.
“Yes. I think so too. And if she wins any of them – or even gets placed – those foals will fetch more!”
And they’d done it – forked out the stud fees for the best looking sire they could afford, and now it was just about the waiting. Desmond was missing the junping with her, but Uiara had something new for him to think about.“So the Major wrote to me – he’d seen that article about me, he gets the local paper sent to him still! – and asked me if we’d be interested in buying this place. After the fire, he moved to his son’s stables on the mainland. And took his horses with him – it was rescuing those horses that meant the house burnt down. He chose the horses over the house.”
“Wise guy,” Desmond agreed.
“So he was asking, did we want to buy it? A mainland property company is sniffing at it, for building holiday homes, but I think the Major would secretly love it to be a stables still.”
“Let’s look round.”
Where the house had been was a heap of rubble, charred and twisted beams and weeds. Nothing remained.“Let’s check out the stables.”
They picked their way gingerly through the debris. Some of the stabling still had its roof. At the end nearest the house, the soot-blackened bricks told the story of how close the fire had come to the horses.
“Desmond, come and look!” Uiara was peering through the mesh security fence at a set of jumps.“A proper course – we could really take Queen’s Hope’s training to another level. And there’s space enough here to set up a beginner schooling yard as well. What do you think?”
“We’d be starting with next to nothing in the way of a home," Desmond said, but not as if that was an insurmountable problem. "I’ve checked out the room at the end of the stables – if we put a roof on it, we could sleep there, put a stove in, it’s got basic plumbing: we could make a kitchen. And there’s an outside loo and shower at the back.”“We’ve roughed it before. As long as the horses are okay…Shall I write back to the Major and tell him we’re interested?”
“Yes. And see if we can part-pay in stock, or shares in a good stallion if Queen’s Hope drops one.”
Tesni was baking. Incessantly. The shop had opened – Eugenio was running it during the week – as much as anything to get people used to its presence. He was also was painting and sketching in his spare time and displaying his smaller pictures for sale. If you’re just going for cookies, Tesni had said, you’re not going to buy a large picture as well. But you might spot a small one and think: that’d be the perfect birthday present for so-and-so.
Tesni’s biggest challenge was keeping on top of her schoolwork as well! By the time she was doing it, the stars were normally shining outside the windows.“I don’t see the point of it,” she grumbled to Henrietta.
“Me neither,” said Henrietta, surprising Tesni.
“But you always do yours straight away, and get such good marks for it too. Why you neither?”
“Just because,” said Henrietta, and shrugged the question off.
Tesni’s bakery, however, was getting customers! She’d been right about people coming in from the gym or after a swim. And the introductory half-price cookie offer from the comic shop had worked too. They now had a steady trickle of regulars from there as well. Some of them were very pretty too, Eugenio thought. Well, one of them in particular.
Queen’s Hope had her foal! A colt. Uiara and Desmond named him Espoir – because he was, really, the foundation for all their hopes. He was brave, like his sire, and fast like his mother. And untrained at the moment, but Uiara was going to remedy that! Everyone loved him. They’d built a small stable too – it would be winter very soon now…
Grief. It had all been about grief – buried, suppressed and ignored for far too long, and trapping Viriato at the age he’d been when his parents had so suddenly died. A lot of tears, a lot of anger; but Finn, and Fern also, had helped him both release the pent-up waters of his hurt and navigate the rapids of its outflowing.“I still can’t stop crying.” Christmas was – always had been – a hard time for Viriato.
“It’s okay.” Fern reached out for his hands. “You’ve got years of this stored up.”“But why am I such a mess? Why aren’t the others like this?”
Fern had actually talked to Uiara about that, and Uiara’s answers had been illuminating. Maybe now was the time to share some of that light.
She put her arms round him – physical closeness always helped.“Eugenio and Tesni – they were too young to be hurt like you were. Desmond and Uiara had each other to talk to. But also – they talked to other people as well. People at school, neighbours…I remember you from school and you froze everyone out, didn’t want any help.”
She was right. He hadn’t talked to anyone. Suddenly, he was a teenager again, fiercely determined to Do It All Himself. Only this time he could see how immature that attitude had been.
“Thank you darling.” That was all he said, but Fern knew what lay behind the words. Come the spring, maybe, he’d be ready hear about her dreams, her hopes for the future they could have together. The grief would remain, but lessen with time, and he’d no longer be ruled by it.Fern wasn’t sure, though, how he’d react to what she wanted to do with her life.
The decorating things are by Sandy at ATS3. I loved them!
The kitchen units are by pyszny16 for TSR
