Chapter Twenty-One
No amount of wine would shift Bella’s nan’s resolve that she had already stepped far too close to telling her granddaughter what to do and was going to say no more, but there was no pretending she didn’t think that going back to Lowbridge and at least talking things through was the better choice. And part of Bella, the part that had said yes to Adam’s proposal, the part that had let herself get excited about the cookery school, the part that had even thought Veronica might have been softening to her, knew her nan was right.
But the other part of Bella was giving as good as she got. She could totally get closure via text message. Lowbridge was a really long way away. She’d only just got here. It would take her a full day to get back.
Bella’s credit card had just about enough wiggle room on it to override the practical considerations, and she knew that Nina or Jill would be happy to put her up if whatever went down with Adam meant spending the night at Lowbridge Castle wasn’t an option. The practical objections were no more than the opening act.
Next came petulance. Adam was the one who’d kicked off this fight. Why should Bella be the one to go all the way back there to make things right? She was the one in the right. He should be begging her to come back.
It wasn’t only him she’d run away from though, was it? It was Flinty and Darcy and Jill and the whole village. It was the cookery school students. It was all the promises she’d made, not just the one when she’d said yes to Adam’s proposal. That promise was the big one though. She hadn’t said yes to the village or to the estate or the cookery school. She’d said yes to him. Yes to the way he looked at her like nothing else mattered. Yes to how much he cared, about her but also about everything around him. Yes to how he saw beauty in things she would otherwise pass by without notice. Yes to how hard he tried to be a good man. And she’d run away from all of those yeses.
Her brain still had one more card to play. And it was a good one. It was the trump card to beat all trumps. It was the royal flush of objections. Fear. What if the whole community blamed her for running away?
And then the even bigger fear, the deepest terror. What if Bella went back and Adam didn’t want to see her at all?
Bella drew herself up to her full height and glared at herself in the mirror. ‘Then at least you’ll know,’ she told herself. She could do this. She could go back and look Adam in the eye and know whether he was her future.
‘What time’s your train?’ Her nan was in the bedroom doorway.
‘Half past.’
‘So you’ll be going for the quarter to bus?’
Bella nodded.
‘Right then. Well I’ll be on my way over to Manchester tomorrow, for Bob’s living funeral thing.’
‘He’s having another one?’
Her nan nodded. ‘Bad bout of flu last month. Convinced himself he weren’t much longer for this world.’
‘But he’s better now?’
‘Completely, but why cancel a party?’
Bella shook her head, gathered up her rucksack, and pulled her nan into a hug.
‘If it doesn’t go how you’re hoping you can come down to Bob’s thing,’ her nan reminded her. ‘And call me if you need me.’
Normally Bella would wave away that instruction with a cheery reassurance that all would be well. Today she nodded.
Her nan squeezed her hand. ‘Tomorrow the world pet.’
‘Tomorrow the world.’
Bella hauled her rucksack down the stairwell, across the square of concrete at the centre of the group of flats and out to the bus stop on the main road. The bus from the station ran out to here, did a loop around the big roundabout at the top of the estate and then headed back into the city centre.
She leaned against the weird half-seat thing along the wall of the bus shelter and checked the time on her phone. Three minutes to wait. The digital display board, installed at great expense to inform travellers of the precise location of the next bus, told her brightly that no information was available at this time. She glanced down the road. The expanse of concrete and tarmac almost startled her. She was an animal of the city, but part of her brain was screaming for wide open skies and deep sparkling sea.
She blocked out the view and scrolled through her phone, not really taking in what she was reading, thinking instead about what exactly she was going to say to Adam when she made it back to Lowbridge. If she hadn’t been so absorbed she might have noticed the vehicle pulling into the bus stop. She might have heard the door opening and slamming closed. She might have been less shocked when she looked up.
Adam.
He was standing next to the estate’s antique Land Rover, parked entirely illegally in the bus stop. His hair was messed up and his face etched with tiredness. She moved to him without thinking, her body responding to his presence.
‘You’re going somewhere?’ His eyes were fixed on the stuffed rucksack that was still in her hand.
‘I was going to go and see you.’
He half-smiled, the same half-smile that had melted her the first time she’d seen it. ‘I’m not there.’
‘Clearly.’
They stood opposite one another in silence for a second. Bella needed to say something. She’d thought she had hours on trains and buses to pin down the details. ‘Adam—’
‘Bel—’
They both stopped.
‘Can I go first?’ Adam asked.
‘OK.’
‘I’m sorry.’
The knot in her stomach unclenched a notch. She let herself press her body against his and wrap her arms around his neck. For a moment he responded, pulling her closer and burying his face in her hair.
And then he pulled away. ‘Please. I’ve been planning this the whole way here. I’m sorry. I…’ His voiced tailed off. ‘I’m sorry. I’m going to be a coward and do this bit first.’
‘What?’
‘Look, I wasn’t going to show you these. I didn’t want to put pressure on you but, I’ve got some letters from people.’
‘What do you mean?’
He pulled a handful of papers from his jacket pocket. There were notes from everyone. Flinty. Darcy. Pavel. Jill. Anna and Hugh. Cath and Claire. Molly and Katy. Nina and the parents and toddlers, complete with handprint artwork from the kids. All asking her to come back, all telling her how much more alive Lowbridge had become since she’d been there and how much they missed having her around.
The final letter was in a sealed envelope addressed to Miss Bella Smith in neat cursive writing. Bella slit it open.
Dear Miss Smith,
I believe I might owe you both an explanation and an apology. I have come to see that I did not always make your time at Lowbridge easy and I fear that you might have come to the conclusion that this was a result of some antipathy towards you on my part.
On the contrary, I sought – misguidedly perhaps – only to protect you. I know, better than most, what can happen to young women full of life who give their futures to Lowbridge. I was once one myself, and everyone said how very lucky I was that the laird would choose to court a butcher’s daughter from the village. And I was lucky. My husband was kind and took care of me and our son very well, but I closed off a part of myself when I married him and took on the role of his wife. I still wonder what that girl I used to be would make of me now. I fear I would be the most awful disappointment to her.
And then when my son married Adam’s mother and she couldn’t bear the role that was thrust on her, to the point that she ran away from her own child, and then he brought Darcy back from America, it felt as though the story was constantly repeating itself. Yet another fiery, lively, woman closed up inside the castle.
Perhaps I couldn’t bear to see you trapped in the same way. It has been pointed out to me that I might have read these other people’s stories through the tinted lenses of my own. Darcy assures me that she never felt for one moment trapped but loved, not only by my son, but also Lowbridge itself. I wonder whether I should allow you and Adam the space to write your own story and not impose my own upon you.
In short, then, I apologise for any coolness you might have felt. I do hope you will come back to Lowbridge. You brought a certain light and vigour that we have, I now see, been missing. If you choose not to return, then I hope you make that decision for the best possible reasons and will find happiness wherever your life might take you.
Yours,
Veronica, Lady Lowbridge
‘Did you read this?’
Adam shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’
She handed the sheet of paper across and waited while he scanned his grandmother’s lines. ‘Oh, my poor grandmother.’ He frowned. ‘Did you feel like that?’
‘No. I felt like you’d abandoned me. And like I’d done everything I could think of to make things better but it wasn’t working.’
‘All the stuff you did worked brilliantly though.’
She shook her head. ‘It didn’t make you happy.’
‘Oh my God. No. I’m grieving. I was lost in my own sadness. You did nothing wrong. It was never up to you to make me better. It’s only up to you to be there with me. If you want to be.’
The flicker of hope that had sparked when Adam appeared in the middle of the sprawl of tarmac and concrete ignited into a flame.
‘I let everything get on top of me,’ he continued. ‘And I was so caught up in how awful I was feeling that I didn’t think about you. And… I’m so sorry. That’s the most important thing. I got caught up in myself, and I lost sight of you – no, of us – and I’m sorry. If it’s unforgivable, I understand, but I want you to know that I know I screwed up. And if you give me a chance we can do it all differently. I’ll be there next to you, no matter what.’
He was right, but also not right at all. ‘No. You were grieving. I freaked out and ran away.’
‘Why were you coming to see me, Bel?’
‘To say…’ To say what? She glanced up the road. ‘We should move. The bus will be here soon, and you’re parked in the way.’
He nodded. ‘Where to, then?’
Bella hopped in the car and directed him towards the parking bays at the foot of her nan’s block. ‘Why didn’t you bring your car?’
Adam shook his head. ‘I let Flinty drive it to the village once and now I can’t get her out of the thing. She’s seen how the other half live. Or how they drive anyway.’
‘You drove all the way down here in this thing to avoid an argument?’
‘Not just that.’ He patted the steering wheel with one finger and the corner of his lip twitched up. ‘Perfectly good car this. You just have to know how to treat her.’
They fell into a silence that seemed to be waiting for big meaningful words. Bella filled the quiet with chit chat, narrating the short journey. ‘So that’s where I fell off my bike and broke my wrist. And the bus stop where you found me, that’s where you get the bus into town. Well really it’s the one on the other side, but then you have to cross the dual carriageway so it’s easier to just get it there and…’
Adam cleared his throat. ‘Bel.’
‘Yeah.’
‘We’re here.’
She stared at the grey building in front of her. ‘So this is my estate. Bit different to yours.’
‘A bit. Fewer ghosts maybe?’
‘Probably. Nan reckons Mr Herbert next door still bangs on the wall when she makes too much noise though, but it’s more likely just that she pisses the new people off too and…’
‘Bel, why were you coming to see me?’
The things she could say flew through her mind. She’d been angry and sad and confused. But sitting next to him now there was only one thing that felt right. ‘I’m sorry, too.’
‘What for?’
‘I thought being on the same team meant working towards the same thing, but it’s more than that.’
He unclipped his seatbelt and twisted to look at her.
‘You were right that I got caught up in Lowbridge and forgot a little bit about you.’
‘Right.’
‘But you were wrong about that meaning it wasn’t you that I was in love with.’ Bella swallowed hard. Bella was not a weeping person. ‘It was all for you, really…’ This next part was hard. ‘I think my mum wasn’t really around and dad not at all, and I know my nan loves me and I adore her but she was all about teaching me to find my own way and be independent and fly free, and I’m not sure I know how to be on the same team as someone.’
‘Do you want to learn?’
‘I…’
‘Simple question. Yes or no?’
‘I feel like we’ve been here before.’
He glanced out of the window across the expanse of grey. ‘Well not here exactly.’
‘Orange grove in the Spanish sun. Car park on a Yorkshire housing estate. It’s all the same.’ Bella half-laughed.
‘Is your answer the same?’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’
He closed the gap between them in an instant, leaning awkwardly over the gearstick, pulling her into his arms and pressing his lips to hers. She sank uncomfortably into the embrace for a second. It would be so easy to let this play out. Being in Adam’s arms felt right. It had always felt right, but they’d rushed back from Spain with so much unsaid. And her nan was right. Bella was someone who ran towards things. She placed her hand on his chest and pulled back. She asked him the question she should have asked weeks ago. ‘But what do you want?’
‘I want you.’
That was the right answer. She believed it was true, but they both needed more. She leaned away from him, turning to stare out of the windscreen at the bins behind the flats. ‘What do you want your life to be? Where do you want to live? What do you want to do with Lowbridge?’
‘So long as it’s with you, I don’t care.’
‘Yes. You do.’ Rushing towards the ‘yes’ would be easy, but ‘yes’ wasn’t a life. Yes was a good intention. A marriage started from that, but if she wanted the forever, rather than just the next three-month stopgap, it needed something more. ‘You decided you were going to sell the whole place without talking to me about it.’
‘I know.’ He leaned forward putting his head into his hands. ‘I should have talked to you weeks ago. I hate being the laird.’
‘What?’ How could you hate something like that? Adam was the kingpin.
‘I’m awful at it. I keep messing stuff up in the office and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. You’re great. You have all these ideas and plans and I felt like I was drowning and I couldn’t say anything because everyone was expecting me to be in control of everything.’
‘You could have talked to me,’ she insisted.
‘I thought I had to be able to do it all on my own.’
‘You don’t.’
‘I know. Darcy thinks I’ve been too hung up on duty and trying to be the sort of laird I think my father would be proud of.’
Bella hadn’t thought of it that way. ‘Is she right?’
Adam nodded. ‘It’s more than that though. My father was there for me when mum went. It’s hard to explain, but when your own mum goes… I don’t know. Mums are supposed to be there no matter what, aren’t they? That’s what everyone assumes, and when she’s not it leaves this sort of…’ He jabbed his hand against his gut. ‘Hole.’
‘I know.’ Of course she knew. ‘I think a bit of me never quite lets me feel safe anywhere, because I don’t quite believe it won’t get ripped away.’
He buried his head into his hands. ‘And then you started to feel safe and I ripped it away. I’m so sorry.’
‘No. You should have talked to me.’ She wasn’t letting that go. ‘But I need to find a better way of dealing with problems than just packing a bag.’
‘I do the opposite. I try to hold everything together and be the person everyone else needs me to be.’
‘Until you can’t any longer?’
He nodded.
‘I think we’ve both learned not to rely on other people,’ she suggested.
‘But the people were there. My dad. Your nan.’
‘Even your nan.’
He smiled ever so slightly. ‘Each other?’
And that was what she truly wanted. ‘Each other,’ she confirmed.
‘So what now?’
‘What do you want?’
What did Bella want? ‘Before I came to Lowbridge I’d never really thought I would ever put down roots, you know.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m nothing but roots.’
‘But it was starting to feel like home,’ Bella admitted. ‘I let myself get excited about our lives there.’
‘It’s going to be so much work to make the estate work, and I don’t know how much help I can be,’ Adam countered. ‘I’m useless in the office. It’s embarrassing. I can barely even check a bank statement without wanting to scream. The numbers don’t sit still for me.’
Another thing slotted into place. ‘Like number dyslexia.’
‘Is that a thing?’
Bella nodded. ‘There’s a proper name for it.’ She reached for her phone.
He stopped her. ‘We can look it up later.’
‘Sorry. Yeah.’ That mattered, but it wasn’t what they were supposed to be dealing with right now. Right now was about him and her and whether the crazy promise they’d made on a hot afternoon in Spain meant something in their real lives. The last thing Bella wanted to do was force Adam into a life that made him miserable. ‘If you don’t want to stay at Lowbridge, I won’t try to make you.’
‘I actually think I might not hate it, but we would need to find a way that works for us, and I don’t want to give up my business in Edinburgh. They only really need me for the design stuff, so if I went over maybe one week a month and then worked remotely, that would keep things going and maybe bring in a bit of money. If I stayed with Ravi and Sam, we could even rent out my flat.’
‘So no big city bolt hole if we wanted to run?’ she pointed out.
He shook his head. ‘And at Lowbridge I need to be more honest about what I can do. The gardens. The land. Not sitting in an office.’
‘What about the inheritance tax though?’
‘We don’t even have the final bill yet. Maybe the insurance will cover it. Maybe we can make enough to set up a payment plan.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe I don’t have to have all the answers worked out straight away.’
‘But we’d commit to staying and working them out together?’
He paused. ‘I can’t be the sort of laird my father was, or my grandfather.’
‘You don’t have to be,’ she reassured him.
‘I might need you to remind me of that.’
‘And if I promised to do that?’
‘Then I think Lowbridge could work.’ He leaned forward and angled his body towards her. ‘So you can see yourself doing this in another five or ten or thirty years’ time?’
‘Well I do think the cookery school could work, and maybe we could do a tearoom in summer, and…’
Adam was shaking his head. He still wasn’t convinced, was he?
‘What?’
‘I meant doing this ?’ He pointed from her to him and back again. ‘This. Not the estate. Not the cookery school. Nor Darcy or Flinty or the Crazy Women’s Tea Club.’
‘That’s not what it’s called.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Not any of those things. Us?’
The two of them. Together. Not a passing romance. Not the next stop on the adventure. A team for good or ill for as long as they had. Bella nodded. ‘Us.’
Finally she did close the space between them, wriggling and half crawling across the seats to press her lips to his. Bella’s safe harbour was here, where it had always been, with Adam.
They stayed like that for a long time, gearstick digging into her thigh, shoulder pressed up against the steering wheel, before Bella finally pulled away. ‘So we’re going back to Lowbridge? Together?’
‘If you want to.’
Absolutely she wanted to. ‘All those things I planned. I want to make them work.’
‘OK.’
She grinned. ‘But mostly, I want to marry you. If you’ll still have me. Do you still want to be my husband?’
‘Yes, Bella Smith. I would like that very much, so long as you promise that I never have to look at an account book again.’
‘Deal.’
She bent her head for another kiss, and then paused. ‘So are we going to need to hire an administrator or something?’
He laughed. ‘Apparently Darcy is an admin wizard, and is pretty much chomping at the bit to take over the accounts.’
‘Like Veronica would ever let that happen.’
Adam laughed again, a proper rumbling chuckle that went all the way through his body. ‘Actually, that’s something else I need to tell you about.’