Where there's a Will, there's a Tiara | Complete (ONC 2021 Longlister)

5. Something in Common

I was crammed into the passenger seat of the car with everything I'd been carrying on the plane and my grandmother's purse. We spent the first hour and a half of the drive in near perfect silence, only breaking it occasionally to discuss some landmark or other. Probably for that reason, Nora appeared shocked when I broke the relative silence.

"So, do you live in a town or a city?"

She paused for a moment, taking a breath before she answered me. "Your mother never told you about where she grew up?"

"I--" and only in that moment did it first occur to me that we had something in common. We'd both lost my mom. "She did tell me a bit, when I was younger. But we haven't been really close since I was ten or eleven. Plus, a lot can change in twenty years."

"Yes," she smiled but kept her eyes firmly on the road. "Yes, a great many things can change."

"So," I prodded again, "what's your house like?"

"I'm afraid it's quite old, Adelaide. We're trying to get it fixed up, but there's a lot of work to be done. As you know I haven't lived there for many years. I've only been back a few years now, once I retired."

Just as we turned off onto another street, a small sign out my window welcomed us to Kendal. "It's bigger than I thought it would be," I said without thinking.

"Kendal is quite large compared to what it used to be," she chuckled. "But the house isn't technically in Kendal."

"So..." We were reaching the other edge of the town and returning to countryside. "Where exactly do you live, then?"

"The small farmhouse is just past the edge of town. It used to be we couldn't even see Kendall from the house but it creeps up on us every day now."

"You live in a small farmhouse?" I raised my eyebrow. "That doesn't exactly sound like the house my mother described."

A smile pulled at the corner of her lips and she turned off the main road before speaking. "Perhaps it is not so little. I guess that will be for you to decide."

This woman is playing me, I thought to myself when she finally stopped the car and the whole house was in view.

"This is what you call tiny?" I turned to face her, trying to judge her attitude from her facial expressions. The small glint in her eye made me suspect she knew what she was doing.

"So, in this tiny house, how many of us refugees do you keep?"

"I have you and three others," she stated simply, not bothering to reply to my implied question of who they all were. "I expect you will see them all at dinner on any normal day. Today, of course, is not a normal day, so I can guarantee they will attend dinner to greet you."

She opened the trunk of the car and walked around it. "I'll meet you inside once you've got all your bags in," she said matter-of-fact. "I expect you'll want to change out of that American contraption."

I looked down at the very casual outfit I was wearing. Jeans and a hoodie was an American contraption? I'm not even American!

I managed to lug my stuff into the house and to the foot of the stairs before Nora, I mean my grandmother, reappeared. Sweat was now mixed with the humid English air, causing my curls to cling to my cheeks like leeches. Using the back of my sleeve as a towel, I managed to push most of it out of my eyes, but was certainly not a pretty sight to see.

"Well, let's get you up to your room, then." Her arm swept in the direction of the stairs, as if inviting me to go before her.

"I don't think I can carry all of this up the stairs at once." I looked at the seemingly growing pile at my feet. Was it possible my stuff was expanding? Or was the space that contained it simply getting smaller?