Page 2 of The Fall I Fell

If I get out now, that will make all of this real. As soon as I put my shoes onto the gravel of Grandad’s driveway, it will all hit me: that we left Dad behind in London, that our lives have to start over again, that this place of summer holidays is now our new home.

‘I know this isn’t what you wanted, Ava, but I’ve told you why it is the way it is. Your dad’s job is too demanding to look after you and your brother, and now that I’ve quit mine, I can’t afford for us to stay in London. I know it’s not ideal … but that’s how it’s going to be.’

She used to be some high-up exec in some fancy company with an office in a building with too many floors. I imagine she had to be ruthless there too, smashing all the glass ceilings and whatnot, but Mum and Dad’s divorce doesn’t feel like business to me – it’s not like a dissolution of a contract with no emotions. Everything I have ever known is being tossed in the blades of a combine, and I’m just supposed to collect the scraps as if nothing has happened.

Mum is good at switching off her feelings. She’s always been the tough one, as though she’s afraid to show any weakness. Maybe that’s why we have never been close; I have too much heart, while she is all brain.

‘I can’t do it,’ I say weakly. ‘I can’t just start again.’

‘Well, you have no other choice, Ava. None of us have a choice.’ She huffs. ‘This is our fresh start.’

You had a choice, I want to scream at her. Could you not have just got on for one more year? Let me finish school? Let me go to university? Not disrupt my life at its most important point? No, you were only thinking about yourself, weren’t you.

The words I long to say out loud get stuck before they can reach Mum, but they do enough damage in my mind to send angry tears running down my face. Sighing again, she turns away from the car for a moment before she spins back around to look at me with sad eyes. ‘This was the right choice for our family, Ava. I hope one day you’ll be able to see that.’ And she strides away before I can fight back any more.

The only thing that pulls me out of my own head is my phone as it buzzes aggressively on my lap. Freya’s name illuminates the screen, her little round profile picture glowing with her wide smile and bouncing coils of hair. It’s from our photoshoot at college, where she agreed to model some of my designs as long as I promised to set her up with Ash in the year above. They’ve been together ever since, and I still like to take all of the credit for that.

Did you see him yet? x

Him. We both know who she’s talking about: Jacob Thorogood. The boy who lives on the next farm over. The boy who has filled my summers my whole childhood. The boy that once felt like my whole world. But this time, I closed my eyes as we drove through the village, just so I’d have no chance of spotting him.

I reply:

Who?

Sweat pools in my palms at the thought of him and I slide my phone back into my pocket before she can reply. I don’t want to think about him any more. I will myself to get out of the car and take my suitcase out of the boot.

Callum and Grandad are standing in the doorway when I reach them, discussing the weather from the last few weeks. Callum enquires about how ‘his’ chickens have been in the months without him.

‘Hello Ava, love.’ Grandad interrupts the conversation to address me. He isn’t the hugging type, so he taps my arm with his swollen hands that are permanently stained with tractor engine oil. ‘I was starting to worry that they’d left you behind.’

I smile, and this time it’s genuine. No matter how I feel – about the divorce, about the move, about how much pain I feel standing here without Granny – Grandad always gets a smile from me. He’s the only one I actually got in the car for.

‘They couldn’t keep me away,’ I reply. We both know it’s a lie. I kept myself away for two years, but it’s enough to make Grandad tap me again on the arm and try his best to hide a grin.

Seeing this house – its red gables, its wisteria-covered brick work, and its assembly of roses lining the driveway – was always the treasure at the end of what felt like an epic voyage when I was younger. Granny and Grandad would always be waiting at the door with smiles. As a kid, I always thought they had been standing out there all day just waiting for us to arrive. Granny would be wearing her apron and a silk scarf around her neck. Grandad would always have a tool or a knick-knack of some kind in hand that he was in the middle of tinkering with.

The roses have wilted early this year, and the flower beds are knotted with weeds. This was always Granny’s patch. Whatever the weather, she’d be out here, kneeling on her little floral cushion, tending to her flowers as though they too were her grandchildren. Grandad had other, more important parts of the farm he needed to look after. Granny did too, but she always made time for her garden. We’d sit along here for hours, pruning, watering, admiring. Sometimes we’d talk, about school, about boys, the future, but other times, we were happy with the silence. Just knowing she was beside me, with the rhythmic slicing of the secateurs and her quiet humming, was more than enough.

‘Now, I’ve made up your rooms,’ Grandad says. ‘But I couldn’t remember which of you had which duvet cover, so for now, Ava you’ve got that Pepe Le Pig one.’ He means Peppa Pig. ‘Cal, you’ve got the one with them big bears on it.’

It’s clear he’s been struggling without Granny too, so I don’t mention that she bought us new ones five years ago, and neither does Callum.

‘Thank you, Grandad.’ I kiss the top of his head as I slide past him through the front door, dragging my suitcase behind me. I’ve grown a little in the last couple of years, and Grandad seems to have shrunk. Either that, or his shoulders are a little more slumped than the last time I saw him.

The inside of the house is similar to the outside. It’s clear that Grandad has tried to keep up with all of the little things Granny did to make it homely. Her doilies are out on the sideboard, but they’re dusty. The potted plants are just sticks in soil. And the photos lining the walls are perfectly straight, but covered in a thick layer of dust.

I park my suitcase in a corner, find the feather duster in the cupboard under the stairs and run it over a few of the frames and shelves. They’re mostly family photos, and almost all of them have Dad in. The family seems to shrink every time I’m here. Seeing him in the photos, smiling away, I wonder what he’s doing now. Sitting alone in our old house with the TV on low because now it echoes around the empty room? Thinking of a way to win Mum back and come and save his family? Or maybe nothing has changed for him at all. He’ll be working, he won’t be home until late, and it will be no different crawling into bed in an empty house than to a sleeping one.

Another picture makes me stop in my tracks: it’s Jacob and me a few summers ago, back when I still had braces and he was still shorter than me. I have my arm slung around his neck, grinning at the camera, he’s looking at me, his smile sneaking through, though he still tries to hide behind some of his fringe. We’re both dressed in our best. That was always rare for him – you always knew it was something special when Jacob left his shorts at home and actually ran a comb through his feral mane.

Placing the feather duster back, I risk another peek at my phone. Freya has replied, and I can practically see her eyes rolling through her message.

Oh shush. Things might be different this time round x

Abandoning Mum and Callum to unload the rest of the car by themselves, I sneak through to the back door, unhook the latch and slip into the back garden. Sheds and timber frames of old barns are strewn across the landscape, but as I scramble over the few fallen beams and hop over one of the crumbling dry stone walls, I see it.

The old weeping willow still stands strong, with a trunk as wide as Callum, Jacob and me all standing shoulder to shoulder. Its branches curve over so low that the bottom leaves skim the floor, and behind the curtain of greenery lies the treehouse. It’s exactly half way between Grandad’s farm and Hope Farm next door and so much time has passed, I’ve forgotten who built it. It’s been there so long that the willow’s branches have begun to grow around the slats of wood, swallowing the joints of the structure so it’s almost as if it grew like that, with a paned window and pointed roof.