Chapter 38
38
B ack at her flat, Caro threw her keys in the bowl on the hall table, slipped her shoes off and hurried into her living room. Standing by the window she could see the stream of red taillights heading out on the North circular, the flashing red sign of the Esso garage opposite. It was such a different view from Hollybrook Farm, all straight lines and angles, busy with cars, busy with people. Busy, busy, busy. She opened the window an inch and stood listening to the constant hum of traffic, an occasional distant shout.
It wasn’t so long ago that, from the moment she came home of an evening, to the moment she left again, this muted London soundscape had been her only accompaniment. Now she had an abundance of voices to keep her company. The low bleating of the sheep on the hills, the twit-twoo of the owls, and of course, Tomasz, everywhere. His tuneless singing in the shower, his rambled conversation with the chickens, even his whistling while he cooked. His arm around her shoulder while he slept: her bulwark against the world.
Turning away from the window she took her phone and settled herself on the sofa. The talk with Helen had left her feeling as if she had opened the curtains to see a ray of tentative sunshine, after a week of heavy rain. Helen was right. Helen had driven a nail through her little box of torture and prised it open to reveal that yes, what mattered in all of this, was if she thought she could be happy. And she did. She really did. More than that, she could put it behind her. She was certain of that now in a way she had not been before.
The few days and nights she had been away had given her space to fill her lungs and breathe again. But it was Helen who had brought the epiphany. Helen who had drawn back the veil she had been living under from the moment she had left Spencer Cooper’s hotel room. Tomasz never need know and together, they could be happy.
She’d done it before. Who hasn’t? No-one gets to middle-age not having put things behind them, things that in the moment of living them felt as if they would always be horribly close-up and forever real. Things like the loud sniggering when, in a crowded boardroom, a month after cosmetic surgery on her nose, a junior male colleague had called out That’s not Caro. Bring back Caroline Hooter Hardcastle. Things like the black, black eye of her unborn embryo. Things like Kay’s voice, as she’d struggled to explain her diagnosis, like Helen’s face emerging from the shadows the night she took Libby’s baby and walked too long and too far. All these things she had survived and moved forward from. As Helen had too. Because if Helen could put that night behind her, then she too could put this version of herself in the past: the shallow, needy woman of yesterday. It was the privilege and achievement of maturity. The understanding that when you are surrounded by white water, all that is necessary is to hold your chin high until it passes. Because it always passes. She took her phone and pressed Tomasz’s number, the warmth of a new beginning flooding her veins.
‘I was in the chicken village,’ Tomasz said, slightly breathless as he answered.
Caro smiled. She could picture it now. Him, standing in the kitchen, straw on his boots, the door open, a mauve twilight framing the hills behind. ‘This is what I want,’ she said. ‘I’m absolutely sure.’
‘OK.’ And although the pause Tomasz left was loud, Caro didn’t hear.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she continued. ‘After the wedding we should make an appointment with the solicitor. As soon as possible. Next week if we can. Definitely before we buy.’
‘Before we buy?’
‘Yes!’ Caro, shifted her weight, tucking her legs under her. ‘It will give us a much better bargaining position with Laura and Neil, if we know what we can do with the land. I’m really sure now, Tomasz. I know this is what I want.’
If she had expected an equally gushing response from him, she didn’t get it. ‘OK,’ he said again.
‘It might even be possible to be up and running for the autumn. People camp all year round now. If we can get the camping licence I mean.’
‘I know what you mean, Caro.’
‘I miss it,’ she said
He didn’t speak.
And into the silence she laughed. ‘I’m sat here with the flashing neon of the garage opposite, and I really miss it. I wanted to say that. I wanted you to hear me say that.’
‘I can hear you,’ he said, and that was all.