Free A Place in the Country by Elizabeth Adler

Jesus, said to Caroline, “I like this place. It speaks to me.”
    Caroline was thrilled. She asked him what it said.
    â€œIt says thanks Lord, I have good heart.” He thumped his chest with a hand big as a soup plate. Georgki must have weighed all of two hundred and fifty pounds and when he struck himself on the chest, it rattled. For a second, Caroline thought he was going to fall over in a heart attack, but he grinned and said, “Just some bits of stuff where they fixed my bones after the war.”
    â€œWhat war?”
    â€œOh, long ago now. In Serbia, when there was wars there. I am Russian, from Ukraine, but that’s where I ended up, in Serbian hospital. They very good to me. I like.”
    Serbia? A hospital? Metal bits rattling? A Russian stonemason, who was only the best in the area and who, it turned out, was booked into all eternity by those super-rich, newly-moved-to-the-Cotswolds international wives, who needed him to restore their enormous old country houses that made Caroline’s little barn look as though it belonged in a toy shop.
    â€œI come to you for good price,” he said, without even asking if she wanted him, or, as importantly, telling her what that price might be.
    Caroline was beyond caring. He was the best. He would create her new home. It was a done deal. She put her trust in him.
    Besides, she thought as they shook hands, or rather when Georgki covered her hand with his and squeezed so tightly she had to stop herself from gasping with pain; besides, it just might change her daughter’s mind when she told her it was all arranged and their barn would, before too long, become a proper home.

 
    chapter 15
    Issy decided not to go down for dinner. Caroline found her in her room, still in jeans and boots, and with Blind Brenda, her new love object, clutched to her chest.
    â€œWhat’s up, sweetheart?” she asked, knowing there was trouble.
    â€œI hate it.” Issy turned her face away.
    â€œYou hate our barn?”
    â€œIt’s not our barn. It’s yours, Mom. All yours. I’m never going to live there.”
    â€œOh?” Caroline kept her voice neutral. What was wrong with Issy? She’d just found a way to get them a home and now she was acting like she was being tortured.
    â€œAnd so where will you live then, Issy?”
    â€œAs soon as I’m sixteen, I’m off to boarding school.”
    Issy hugged the cat tighter, practically flattening it against her chest, trying to keep back the tears of anger, of frustration, of helplessness at not being old enough to run her own life, the way she wanted it. “In the breaks,” she said, “I’ll just get on a plane and go back to Singapore. You can bet when I show up my father will be so pleased to see me, we’ll be happy together. Without you.”
    â€œAnd if he isn’t?” Caroline felt her own anger rising.
    â€œThen I’ll just stay where I am. At my home. The Star & Plough in Upper Amberley.”
    Eyes locked, they stared silently at each other for a long moment, Issy seething with despair and anger and a loneliness she knew her mother could never understand. Only Sam really knew her, and maybe Lysander, the student she’d met in Oxford, and who lived in London and whose own parents had gone through a divorce when he was ten years old.
    â€œThe trouble with you,” she yelled, “is you still think I’m a little kid you can boss around, tell me what to do.”
    â€œI never ‘bossed’ you.” Caroline stopped herself just in time from yelling too. “I was a good mother,” she added quietly, wondering where she had gone wrong and become the “bad mother.”
    â€œYeah. Right. You always knew best. Mothers—as a breed—just don’t get it.”
    Issy was lying on her back with Blind Brenda still clutched to her chest.
    Caroline leaned over and shoved Issy’s booted feet off the