Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
W e end up throwing my bike into the back of his jeep, which is huge, black, and smells of animals. I immediately like it, and think it possibly smells even better than the jacket I am still wearing. As he hoists it effortlessly into the big boot, poor Loo-ise rolls out of my basket.
He pauses and stares at it in confusion. Possibly horror.
‘What the hell is that?’ he asks, picking her up and peeking beneath her crocheted skirt to find the toilet roll she came with. ‘Some kind of English voodoo doll?’
‘Yes,’ I reply, raising my eyebrows. ‘Whenever I want to make someone in a purple ball dress and matching bonnet suffer horrendous pain, I stick a pin into this. I don’t have much call to use it, there being a distinct shortage of women who dress like this in the twenty-first century.’
‘Ha. Well, that’s a pity– I’d like to bring back hoops and bustles.’
‘I’m not sure they’d suit you.’
‘That, m’lady, is where you’re wrong,’ he says, grinning at me as he closes the boot. ‘I’d look hot as Hades.’
‘What’s with the m’lady thing?’ I ask as I fasten my seatbelt. He flicks the heating on, and I see that the car is actually quite luxurious, despite the smell. ‘I know I’m old enough to be your mother, but really, it makes me feel ancient!’
He glances across at me, and for once looks quite serious. ‘I’m thirty-three. There’s no way you’re old enough to be my mother.’
Thirty-three. Good lord, he’s a baby really. Not that it matters.
‘Well, I’m forty-nine, so technically I could be. If I was an early starter.’
Which, of course, I very much was not. I was so shy as a teenager that there was no chance of me even going on a date, never mind actually having sex.
It took me until I was twenty-one to down a bottle of tequila and seduce one of Sally’s medical student pals.
Well, I suppose it was less of a seduction, more of a drunken encounter that neither of us could clearly remember in the morning.
I just wanted to get it over with so I wouldn’t end up as the world’s oldest virgin– or at the very least Essex’s oldest virgin.
‘Well, you know what they say,’ he replies, easing the car onto the road, ‘age is just a number. And believe me, when I look at you, I very much do not see a mother figure. M’lady is…
Well, look, I don’t know what it is. Other than it’s classy, like you, and it was the name of Rebecca De Mornay’s character in The Three Musketeers , and I watched it as a kid and really liked her… ’
‘Oh lord. It’s worse than I thought then. We’re separated by different versions of The Three Musketeers . Mine will always be the seventies one with Oliver Reed in it. This is a huge issue. What will we find to talk about?’
He navigates the car down the now completely dark country lanes, and I’m glad I’m in this beast of a jeep instead of cycling. I’d have made it home, I’m sure, but it would have been hairy.
‘I don’t know. Maybe we could watch the one Eva Green made a few years ago and see if we can find common ground?’
He slows down as a small, furry creature scurries across the road, and waits until it is safely on the other side. I see him smiling as he watches it go, his face lit up by the dashboard lights.
‘Fox cub,’ he says. ‘Or juvenile, I suppose, at this time of year.’
‘Really? Why this time of year?’
‘Because they’re born around March, and tend to get kicked out into the big wide world about seven months later. That was a young animal, possibly on his first foray into independence.’
‘Poor thing,’ I reply, staring off into the field behind the hedgerow but seeing no sign of it. ‘How do you know so much about foxes? Can I tell the café ladies that you’re a werefox?’
‘You can if you like,’ he replies, pulling up outside an old pub with a thatched roof and a sign that tells us it’s called the Blue Bottle. ‘As long as they don’t expect to see my bushy tail.’
I let out a deeply attractive snort of laughter at that, and he winks at me before turning the engine off.
The pub is all dark wood and cosy corners, a fire blazing in the hearth. It’s busy, but we find a corner table, and settle down with our drinks. A ginger beer for him, and a cranberry juice for me. We are wild and crazy folk, and no mistake.
‘I’m not drinking because I have to drive,’ he says. ‘What’s your excuse?’
‘I’m worried that if I have a gin and tonic, I might end up at a karaoke bar doing my trademark version of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”.’
‘Really?’
‘No,’ I say, laughing gently at how absurd an idea it is. ‘I’ve never done karaoke in my life. I’m too shy. I’ve just got a lot of work to do tomorrow.’
Plus, I think but don’t say, I do not want to be the drunk woman to his sober man. It’s all very well telling myself that I’m old enough to be his mother, but I still can’t deny how attractive he is. Getting tipsy communally with the ladies is one thing. This is entirely another.
‘What do you do? For work?’
‘I’m a writer,’ I reply, which is my standard answer. Sometimes people leave it at that, because it covers a multitude of sins. It could be anything from writing the warnings that go on the back of bleach bottles through to technical manuals for Skodas.
‘A writer of what?’ he persists. Damn him.
‘Books, actually. You might not have ever seen one at your age. They’re made of paper, with words printed on them. Very popular before information was downloaded directly into your brain.’
He tilts his head to one side and gives me a knowing smile. ‘You’re really keen on stressing this age difference thing, aren’t you? Why? What are you scared of? We’re just two strangers, new in town, having a drink…’
I meet his eyes, but quickly glance away.
They’re too bright, and I get the feeling they see too much.
I’m suddenly very hot, and tug at the neck of my sweater.
What am I scared of? Good question. Pretty much everything, as it turns out.
I wish I was more like Sally. She’d take one look at Aidan and devour him verbally.
She would flirt him to within an inch of his life.
‘How are you finding it?’ I ask, changing the subject. ‘Life in Budbury? It’s got to be very different from New York.’
‘It is, and that is precisely why I love it. My mom is British, my dad American. I grew up in New York and worked there for most of my adult life.’
‘And your work was?’
‘Finance,’ he says simply. There’s a slight smile flickering on his wide lips, and I realise he’s played me at my own game.
Finance. That could mean anything from processing loan applications through to running Goldman Sachs.
I’m curious, of course I am, but I refuse to be drawn.
I just nod, and sip my drink, and wait to see if he has anything to add. He doesn’t, at least not about that.
‘And as for how I’m finding life here… well, so far I love it. My nearest neighbour is four miles away. Nobody pukes on the street or tries to steal your watch. The views are stunning, the air is clear, and this really interesting new chick just moved into the neighbourhood…’
I widen my eyes. ‘Really? You should probably be having a drink with her then, instead of me. I’m very, very dull.’
His eyes roam my face, his smile slowly grows, and my cheeks redden in a way that seems to delight him. FFS, as my nieces might say.
‘Somehow, I don’t believe that for a second, Sarah. What kind of books do you write?’
I’m half tempted to say erotica, or steamy Regency romance, but he’d undoubtedly love that a bit too much. ‘Books about the dark side of life,’ I say simply. ‘Crime, a hint of the strange. Mysteries, basically.’
‘Right. Maybe you can set something around the hill. There’s definitely a mystical quality to the place, isn’t there? It feels like the whole area is so old. Makes you aware that we’re just visitors, temporary blinks of an eye intruding on the landscape. Nature is in charge here.’
I nod, because he has explained it perfectly.
In big cities like London and New York, you can forget that– you can be fooled by the tall buildings and clever technology and the rumbling sound of underground trains running through tunnels bored into the earth.
There, it feels like we’ve wrangled the world into a shape we like. Out here, it’s very different.
‘Yes. I know exactly what you mean. And maybe I will. Most of my books are set in London, but maybe it’s time for one of my detectives to retire to a sleepy coastal town, where they will, of course, be plunged into a world of murder and mayhem…’
‘And maybe, if your detective is female and straight, she could hook up with a lusty farmhand? Or an intriguing stranger with green eyes and a habit of running around without his top on…’
I laugh out loud, because he actually looks slightly intrigued by the idea.
He shrugs, looks slightly sheepish, and says: ‘What can I say? I read a lot of romance when I was growing up. I was close to my British grandmother, and she had shelves full of them. Garish covers with dudes like Fabio on the front. Mills I was rich; I was trained from childhood to step into his shoes when the time came. ’
‘But you didn’t,’ I reply, absolutely fascinated now. ‘Youmoved to rural England, of all places. Or do you, Idon’t know, run your evil global business empire from Dorset?’
He laughs again, and it eases the tension that had started to creep into his face while he talked about his background.
‘No. I do run my own business empire from Dorset, which is a lot less evil and mainly involves me monitoring my investments and making sure enough money is coming in to pay my bills. I may have turned my back on that world as the heir apparent, but I still learned a lot, and I still kind of enjoy it. The moving, the shaking, the shuffling. The sense of competition. But these days, it’s all just for personal use. I have no interest in legacy .’
Legacy. That’s one of those words that normal people don’t use, isn’t it?
Most of us are just trying to muddle our way through our own lives, without worrying too much about what we leave behind.
My books are global best-sellers and have been turned into movies and TV shows, so I suppose they will live on for a little while, but I prefer the context of Eggardon Hill.
Blinks of an eye. None of it matters at all when you look at it through that lens.
‘Are you still close to your mum?’ I ask, as ever consumed by a need to understand.
He nods. ‘Yeah, sure. She lives in London now, so I get to see her. My sister too. There was a schism in the family, and the ones I care about are all on this side of the pond. It’s nice being on the same continent as them, but I also needed to strike out alone for a while and figure it all out.
I had my own place, near the New Forest, and I adopted a dog.
Then another dog. And… well, let’s just say I’m a dog person.
You’ve heard that saying, the more I learn about people, the more I prefer dogs? ’
I nod. I have, and I agree. Though sometimes I feel like it would also work with ‘the more I learn about people, the more I prefer earwigs.’
‘Then I needed even more space,’ he continues. ‘And that’s why we ended up here. I’d never even visited the property and land I bought. I just saw it online for sale, and something about it, I don’t know, called to me? Does that sound insane?’
‘Totally insane,’ I reply, deadpan. ‘And I did exactly the same. I was looking for a change, and I saw my little house on a website. I put in an offer without even seeing it in person.’
He raises his glass and grins at me. ‘Well, we must both be crazy– or maybe it’s fate. Here’s to fresh starts!’