Chapter 8
“Hold it still,” I yell down at Rachel from my perch on the top of the wonky ladder. The cobbled courtyard of the stable block looks unforgiving from this distance; one slip and I’d break my bloody neck.
“I am holding it still,” she calls back, her eyes focused on her phone screen, not my safety.
“Tell me again why you chose to decorate the stable block?” As winners of the first challenge, we got first pick of location for this Christmas lighting round. We could have had something easy—like the front door or a ground-floor window—but no, I let Rachel decide, and now I’m up here.
“Because my idea is bloody brilliant,” she says, still scrolling. “You’ll thank me later when we win.”
I’m still trying to work out how I—the one who confessed straight up I’m shit-scared of heights—ended up attempting to weave a star shape from a tangled strand of Christmas lights at barn-roof level.
Meanwhile, Rachel pretends to steady the ladder with one hand while pissing about on her phone with the other.
This isn’t how I’d choose to spend my Sunday, though the longer this stupid challenge drags on, the more time I get to spend with her. If I die in the process, at least it’ll be for a few extra hours in her company.
Rachel’s phone screen lights up as the sound of “500 Miles” pours from it.
“Fuck!” I gasp when she takes her hand off the ladder and it wobbles precariously. I drop the strand of lights clutched in one hand, and the cable ties in the other. They shower down on her like snowflakes. My bellow echoes round the stable yard, bouncing off the stone walls.
“It’s Geordie.” Rachel, oblivious to my distress, waves her phone enthusiastically as the ladder sways beneath me. “Come down and talk to him.”
I make my way down with wary steps. Each rung bows under my weight, creaking ominously.
By the time I’m standing at the foot, her screen is lit up by the face of a blonde-haired guy with a mop of untidy curls.
The resemblance between the two is unmistakable.
Same wild hair, same heart-shaped face, same intense eyes, though his are soft blue, while Rachel’s are sapphire-bright and full of excitement as she flips the screen to me.
“Geordie, this is—” she starts.
“The guy you’ve trapped on a ladder,” the man interrupts with a grin. “I’m Geordie, Rachel’s brother.”
“Teddy,” I say, swallowing hard. “Rachel’s…partner.”
The word hangs in the air. Geordie’s eyebrows inch up; Rachel stiffens beside me, her shoulder rigid against mine.
“In the wedding party,” I add hastily, heat crawling up my neck. “And in this stupid Christmas competition.”
Geordie’s expression relaxes into an amused smile. “Right. The bridesmaid and groomsman duo. She mentioned she’d been paired up with one of the band. Guess plenty of girls would kill to be in her shoes.”
Rachel shoots him a look I can’t quite decipher. “Can we get back to the frigging lights before Teddy has to climb that death trap again?”
“One rickety ladder and zero adult supervision? Should I alert A the idea is perfect, but the sad disaster dangling over our heads is anything but. My impatience plus no skill has led us here. Time to suck it up and let Geordie take over.
A deep sigh drifts from the phone. “Yeah, and why am I not surprised? Trust you to want something flash instead of a simple waterfall of lights above the door.”
“A simple waterfall won’t cut it, Geordie.” She stamps her booted foot in frustration. “We need to win.”
Geordie continues, undeterred by her little tantrum. “For a star that size—and I presume you’ll want some strands trailing out behind it, to be really effective—you’ll need to secure it to a frame first. Got any battens?”
I glance at the thin wooden strips scattered like pick-up sticks across the cobblestones, casualties of earlier frustrations.
“So that’s what they’re for.” Rachel brandishes a couple.
“Yeah, perfect. Build the frame on the ground, attach the lights, then mount the lot.”
As he talks through each step, I watch Rachel nodding along. Her fingers occasionally brush mine as we sort through the jumble of supplies. The casual contact is enough to convince me this challenge isn’t such a bad way to spend a Sunday after all.
“Right, I’ll leave you to it,” Geordie says. “Text me a picture when you’re done, okay?”
“Okay,” she murmurs. “Thanks Geordie. Love you.”
Those last two words come out quietly, as if she’s trying to hide this glimpse of her soft inner.
I have a feeling she doesn’t show it often.
I’m realising the vulnerable things she shared with me last night in the library were a rare gift.
Not everyone gets to see that part of Rachel MacDonald, and I wonder why she let me in.
Maybe I caught her off guard. Or maybe beyond the fact she looks at me like I’m her next meal, she actually likes me.
“You two close?” I ask as I begin laying out the battens in a neat lattice on the ground.
“Yeah,” she replies, tongue between her teeth as she jerks a cable tie into place with a snap. “I guess we are. We learned to stick together as kids. Had each other’s backs. We needed to.” She lets out a bitter laugh.
“Your father?” Her eyes slice around to me. “It’s just you’ve mentioned him a few times.”
“I have?” She shoots me a puzzled look. I nod. “Yeah, I suppose I have,” she concedes.
“Tough on you?” I keep my eyes on the job, not wanting to make her feel too scrutinised. I have a feeling that bastard Pierre might not be the only one to have hurt Rachel.
“That’s putting it mildly. Demanding. Exacting. A bully, really. Geordie copped the worst. I suppose it made us protective of each other.”
She pauses, testing the neat rows of battens connected in front of her with a jiggle, and deflects.
“How about you? Tell me some more, since you diverted our game of twenty questions last night.” She gives me a seductive wink. The playful gesture doesn’t mask the fact she’s the one dodging questions now, but I let it go, grateful she’s given me another snippet about her to file away.
“Not much to tell. You know most of it from Wikipedia anyway, don’t you?” I say, grinning.
On the ride this morning, she let it slip; she knows I went to her uni.
She came out with a fancy law degree, first-class honours; I scraped through a BA in not-much-use.
I catch myself picturing her there at eighteen—sharp, sorted, already aiming high—while I was nine, feral and barefoot, climbing fences.
Yeah, it made me think about the gap. Not because her age bothers me.
I’ve had older women throw themselves at me, and I never went there, only because there was no spark.
That’s the line for me. With Rachel there’s spark, and then some.
So when I heard her tell Haley I’m just ‘a bit of fun’, yeah, that stung.
But I’ll own it—I built that reputation.
Doesn’t change a thing: I’m not backing off. There’s more to us than chemistry.
She laughs. “Wikipedia doesn’t include the real stuff. Come on, spill Teddy.”
I suck in a breath. She’s been real with me. This is a woman I need to be real with, too. If I want to change the picture she has of me, the fun, short-term option, not someone she can imagine going the distance with her, I have to show her the man the cameras never catch.
“Well, like I said, I’ve got three older sisters.
Juniper’s married and tucked away in a small country town, Rowan’s married out in the London suburbs.
Pretty standard lives: steady jobs, mortgages, school runs.
Four kids between them. Elodie’s the eldest—the one who had cancer.
” She smiles, weaving two more battens together, and I go on.
“Then there’s Briar. Closest to me, maybe because we’re close in age, definitely because we’re similar. ”
“In what way?”
“Lots of ways. Both of us went for careers in music. Briar’s in musical theatre. She’s in a show in the West End right now—Spark and Shadow?”