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Calderdale was the wet watercolours of her girlhood, all ink and earth colours. This village was old stones stained green, crow caw and lapwing cry, the smell of coal fires and leaf mould, sodden moors on the skyline, and factory chimneys in the valley below. It was a place where the past always seemed to be looming darkly over the present, a landscape of ghost stories and standing stones, massive with forgotten meaning, a difficult silence hanging around the cenotaph, and the Roman roads over the moors shining like lead in the rain. It wasn't that Stella disliked Hatherstall it was a fundamental part of who she was and always would be, she knew that but she longed for lighter skies, brighter conversations and bed sheets that didn't always feel slightly damp.

She sat up in her chair now and pulled the handbrake on this chain of thought. Such thoughts did no good, she told herself in her most sensible magazine columnist's voice. Instead, she deliberately refocused her attention on the patterns of the Chinese shawls that she'd picked up in an antiques shop yesterday, their peonies, pagodas and birds with fantastical tail feathers. (The blue-green silk was the precise colour of Michael's eyes, but she shouldn't linger on that observation.) They were just the thing to hide Mr Outhwaite's upholstery, bringing a quirky, artistic touch to the room, and hadn't the man in the shop mentioned that he might be able to source some Kashmiri embroidered cushions too? Stella reminded herself that sometimes in life one just has to throw an interesting textile over inconvenient realities, put on a red lipstick, take a deep breath and look forwards.

CHAPTER THREE

Stella looked at the newspaper spread on the table, the pressed-glass sugar bowl, the sauce bottles and her father's reading glasses, and thought it might make an eloquent little composition in pastel crayons. She remembered how he used to like to set the table for breakfast before he went to bed at night, smoothing a clean tablecloth and putting the cutlery out. It had been a point of pride to him to lay an orderly table for the morning. What would her mother think of him setting his knife and fork out on a sheet of newspaper now? Was the world full of widowed men eating on their own over yesterday's headlines?

'Would you like me to mix up some mustard?' she asked, as she placed the pie down. She'd gone to the trouble of decorating the crust with a glazed pattern of pastry leaves (and pick off the smuts), and there wasn't anything here that might move him to tears, was there? Stella couldn't recall that her mother had been especially noted for her pork pies. 

'That was a kind thought. And I promise not to cry over it. I owe you an apology for Saturday.'

'Don't  be  silly.'  Stella  put  her  arms  around  him. 'Apologizing is the last thing you need to do.'

'No, I upset you. What must you have thought of me? I felt ashamed of myself after you'd left.'

'You loved Mummy. You miss her. I do too. You shouldn't feel ashamed of that.'

'I am a daft old fool.'

Stella placed a kiss on his cheek before she sat down. He smelled of shaving soap and peppermints. 'You're a lovely old fool, my old fool, and I wouldn't have you any other way.'

She nodded her head as her father raised the teapot. The winter sun dappled the leaves of the geraniums on the window ledge behind him and she couldn't help but think of her mother taking cuttings with her mother-of-pearl handled penknife. This room was all as it had been the potted ferns and dangling spider plants, the enamel tea caddies and brass toasting forks, and the mantle clock chiming on the quarter hour only her mother's absence now seemed to shadow everything. If she were here today, she'd be bustling around the table, buttering bread and complaining that her father had been mean with the tea leaves. It was too quiet in here now, too still. The silence seemed to be turned up to full volume and filled with static, like the crackling space between programmes on the wireless. Stella found herself waiting for the clock to chime.

'I worry that you're lonely, Daddy.' There, she'd said it. 'You wouldn't like me to move back in with you, would you?' 

'What, and have you under my feet all the time again? How can I be lonely when you're always here cadging a bacon sandwich?'

When he rolled his eyes she could tell that he was in better spirits today. He shook his head and spooned sugar into his tea. It would get easier with time, wouldn't it?

'I spoke to Michael on the telephone at the weekend. He asked to be remembered to you.'

'That was kind of him.' He passed her the milk jug. 'He's a good lad, Michael. You could do far worse for yourself, you know.'

'Daddy!'  Where  had  that  come  from?  'He's  a  friend. Platonic. Like brother and sister,' she added for emphasis. 'As you well know.'

'Aye, your mother was my friend. It's best if you are friends. I don't say it applies in every marriage, but I reckon it helps.'