Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER TWENTY
I got you some bike gear today. Can you come up to the cabin to try it on?
It’s Wednesday afternoon and this is the first I’ve heard from Ash since Saturday night, so the sight of his name on my phone makes me feel a rush of anticipation.
When? I reply.
Anytime from now.
I’ll set off shortly.
You want a ride?
No, I’m happy to walk. It’s beautiful today.
Go down past the orangery and skirt round the right-hand side of the lake. If you head into the woods from there, it’s nicer than the farm track .
OK , I tap back, smiling.
Sian hasn’t got home from work yet, so I leave a note to tell her I’ve gone for a wander.
Sunshine hits my back as I walk out from the shade of the walled garden and set off along the road leading to the car park, stepping onto the grassy verge as the last of the day’s visitors drive slowly towards the exit.
It’s early June and I think Sian might be right about this being the start of a long, hot summer. The watering alone will keep our volunteers occupied.
Cutting through the formal rose gardens, I breathe in deeply as the scents of Rosa ‘Cornelia’, ‘Abraham Darby’ and ‘Goldfinch’ fill my nostrils, and then get a tissue out of my pocket in preparation for the approaching sneezing fit.
Ash said that my sneezes sound as cute as my sniggles. I love that he remembers the name he gave my laughter all those years ago.
I have a flashback to the way he covered his face with his palm when we sat up on the hill by his cabin – I’d just laughed at our exchange about the moon and he looked like he was in pain. Shortly afterwards he told me that he missed me.
I don’t know why I think of this memory now, or why I suddenly know that his pain was related more to me than to Beca in that moment.
Heading past the sundial sculpture that’s set into the lawn and down the steps leading to the Georgian garden, I walk past the rainbow of lupins. At the bottom of the hill, the orangery’s windows glint in the late-afternoon sunshine. I pass it and Maple Garden, which is the last of the garden rooms that Owain, Evan, Bethan, Harri and I are responsible for, and carry on into ranger territory. Celyn and Dylan are the bosses out here.
Skirting the glittering lake, I smile as a duck flies out of the reeds, quacking wildly with fright, and then I pause to watch as ten tiny ducklings zoom through the water after their mother.
Up ahead, the woods are bathed in sunlight. A flock of birds fly through the blue sky overhead, and I turn around and look back at the house, sitting pretty on higher ground. Sun shines on the crenellated roofline – the notches look like battlements, but they’re more decorative. The simpler arched windows of the eighteenth-century section contrast with the opulence of the cream stone gatehouse in the middle. My eyes are drawn to the Tudor wing. I can’t believe it was built at a time when Henry VIII was on the throne.
I’m struck by the realisation that Ash’s family owns that house, that it’s been in his family for five hundred years. The enormity of it still hasn’t sunk in. I think of his parents and his grandparents and his great-grandparents and his great-great-grandparents and my head begins to swim at the notion of an incredible twenty-one generations of his family living there one after the other. And he will inherit it one day, and he’ll have to keep it safe for future generations of Berkeleys. That responsibility must feel huge.
I think back to how Ash said the house had frightened him when he was little. He never elaborated, but my heartstrings twang at the thought of a young Ash feeling scared as he walked down long corridors and turned into old rooms, fearful of what might lie around the corner. I can imagine it, and I know that I’d hate it too. It would feel scary, being in a big old house like that.
My mood dips as I carry on past the lake and into the woods, but then the sounds of the forest pull me out of my slump. Birdsong rings out from high branches as I walk over the spongy earth, the crackle of twigs filling my ears.
‘Hello.’
The sound of Ash’s voice doesn’t startle me. It’s almost as though I knew he would be here.
‘Hello,’ I reply, smiling at him as I approach.
He’s leaning against the wide trunk of a giant oak tree, his mouth curved up at the corners. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a grey T-shirt with a pair of green Vans that have seen better days.
‘Thought I’d walk with you the rest of the way,’ he says.
‘You look as though you’ve been waiting for me.’
‘I have. I saw you coming down through the Georgian garden.’
‘You were watching me?’
‘Yes. And that sounds very, very creepy,’ he adds impishly. ‘But your hair was glinting in the sunlight and you just looked so …’
So fucking pretty.
His compliment from almost six years ago zips through my mind, but whatever words he was going to say hang in the air unsaid.
I look back towards the house. ‘I can’t believe you own that.’
‘I don’t.’
I glance over my shoulder at him. ‘No, I mean your parents.’
‘They don’t really own it either,’ he says seriously, pushing off from the tree trunk and coming to stand beside me. ‘We’re just custodians.’
‘Yeah, but if you sold it, you’d get the money from it.’
He huffs out a laugh at my bluntness. ‘Technically, yes. But who’s going to sell it? Every parent has a responsibility to pass it on to their children. Imagine being the arsehole to take it away from future generations.’
‘What if you ran into financial difficulties, though? Don’t these old properties cost a bomb to maintain?’ A memory slams into my mind. ‘Oh my God!’ I exclaim before he can answer me. ‘We had a whole conversation about this at the park in Lisbon! I’ve just remembered!’ I sound accusatory, but I’m only a bit piqued. I’ve given up holding his caginess against him.
‘I thought you remembered everything,’ he says drily, looking down at me.
I remember the details of our time on the beach with breathtaking clarity, but I admit this particular conversation didn’t have a lasting impact.
‘I take it you remember,’ I say.
‘I do,’ he confirms. ‘You think we should donate it to charity, but it’s not that simple when you have the weight of your forebears pressing down on you.’ He nods pointedly into the woods. ‘We have run into financial difficulties, plenty of times,’ he confides as we continue walking. ‘We’ve had to sell off parcels of land to farmers and developers. My grandfather drove himself into the ground with the stress of it. I sometimes think my father will do the same.’
I’m glad that he’s opening up to me, but it’s hard to hear.
‘I don’t want that for you, Ash,’ I can’t stop myself from saying.
He sighs. ‘The pressure of keeping this place up and running already feels immense. My father sometimes talks about selling off the woodland, cottages and sawmill to developers. I’ve had so many sleepless nights thinking about my friends losing their homes and jobs and all this being razed to the ground.’ He looks around at the trees and shudders. ‘I’ll do everything I can to ensure that doesn’t happen. We don’t only have a duty to future generations, we have a duty to everyone who lives and works here. One day that responsibility will be mine to shoulder and I just have to hope that I’ll be up to the job. I couldn’t live with myself if I screwed it up. Hugo was so much better at the business side of things than I am – my father thinks I’m out of my depth, but my mother seems to believe in me. I hope I don’t let her down.’
It hurts to hear him speaking about himself like this. ‘I’m sure Beca believed in you too, right?’ I glance at him.
He looks pained and it’s a moment before he nods. ‘Yeah. She did.’
‘Did she ever feel daunted by it all?’
He slides his gaze towards me before averting it and shaking his head.
We walk on in silence for a while before I ask something I’ve been wondering.
‘How did you and she come to be such good friends? Before you got together, I mean.’
‘Her parents are my parents’ closest friends. Our fathers go way back – they went to school together – and our mothers fell pregnant with us at the same time. I’ve literally known her since the day she was born. I’m only three weeks older.’
‘And it was genuinely platonic between you until last Christmas?’ I’m so curious as to how two such stunning humans could be friends with each other and nothing more.
‘Completely. I mean, okay, not for her. Things started to change when we went to university. That separation enabled her to think of me differently, she said. But she always felt like a sister to me. We grew up seeing each other warts and all. Snotty noses, grazed knees. Fuck, the tantrums she used to throw …’ He shakes his head with amusement and then his expression sobers, probably as he remembers the current state of their relationship.
‘Does she know Celyn and Sian very well, and all the other workers?’ I ask.
‘No, not really.’ He frowns. ‘It’s not that she doesn’t want to get to know them, I just think she doesn’t feel like she fits in.’
He’s defending her and it’s with love.
I come to a stop.
Ash hesitates and looks back at me, puzzled. ‘Are you okay?’
‘No,’ I confess.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘What are we doing?’ I ask.
He turns around to face me properly. ‘I just want to spend some time with you.’
‘Why?’ I stare up at him. ‘So you can be crystal clear about how unsuited we are?’
He recoils. ‘No.’
‘So I can be crystal clear about how unsuited we are? I already know it.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘I’m just an ordinary girl, Ash!’ I exclaim. ‘You and Beca were brought up the same way. She gets all this. She wants it. I don’t know why you’re not down in London right now, trying to win her back.’
He sighs and meets my eyes. ‘It’s hard for me to talk about her to you. I feel disloyal.’
‘I need to understand, though, Ash.’
He looks resigned. ‘She and I are not that well suited, not really.’
‘That’s not true. She’s so well suited to this life.’
‘That life maybe,’ he says, pointing back at the house. ‘Not this one.’
He looks around the woods and meets my eyes again.
‘But that’s your life, Ash,’ I say meaningfully, nodding at the house. ‘That’s the life you were born into. That’s the life your children will be born into. That’s the life you need your partner to want. Beca’s perfect for you.’
‘Technically, I wasn’t born into that life,’ he says jadedly. ‘Hugo was. I grew up thinking I could pretty much make my own choices, live where I liked, do what I wanted, but then we lost him. It took me a long time to get my head around everything that had changed. Beca helped with that – she’s been so supportive – but even though I’ve accepted that my future looks different to how I imagined it, I’m not totally okay with it.’ His voice sounds laboured. ‘I have no intention of shirking my responsibilities. I will do what’s expected of me. But I at least want to be with someone who understands.’
‘Do you think you’ll ever find that person?’
There’s a gravity in the look he gives me.
‘You know I could never live this life,’ I say seriously.
He breathes in sharply, staring at me. ‘You are so much more straight-talking than you were when I last knew you.’
‘Yeah, when I say something now, I tend to mean it.’
Six years ago, I was still insecure and dependent on my parents. But in the wake of Lisbon and Madrid, I had to develop a thick skin – I was suffering and I had no one to lean on – and the inner strength I found eventually helped me to break free of my parents. Doing well at Knap, designing ranges that got featured in style magazines, making money for the business and earning myself a degree of respect from both my parents and my colleagues, that helped too. Now I’m standing on my own two feet, doing what I love, and I never want to feel dependent on or beholden to anyone ever again.
‘Well, that’s good,’ Ash says sardonically. ‘I hated having to second-guess you.’
I scoff. ‘When did you have to do that?’
‘The whole time we were in Lisbon and for a long time afterwards. I really had no idea if you’d turned up in Madrid or not. The not knowing was probably the hardest part about it.’
‘Why wouldn’t I have turned up?’
‘You were so worried about telling your parents you were going to continue interrailing. How could I know for sure that you’d follow through with it?’
‘I told you that I’d meet you in Madrid.’
‘Yeah, but you might have changed your mind. You’d only known me for three days. I knew what a hold your mum and dad had over you. I wasn’t sure any feelings you had for me could compete.’
‘Come on. It was obvious how into you I was,’ I snap, stalking off.
The cabin appears amongst the trees, a wisp of smoke trailing from the chimney.
He jogs to catch up with me and when he’s at my side he slows to match my pace, throwing me a grin. He looks pleased with himself.
I roll my eyes.
He reaches over and gives my shoulder a little push, hard enough to make me stagger one step to my left. I laugh and go to push him back, but he hooks his arm around my neck and presses a quick kiss to my temple before letting me go and opening the door.
My heart skips and skitters. This is such a bad idea.
‘Why don’t Celyn and Catrin live up here?’ I ask as he steps back to allow me to walk inside.
‘They prefer it at the cottages. It was offered to Celyn when his dad retired, but he didn’t want it. Too many memories, I think.’
‘Does the estate own it?’
There’s a fire in the grate, but it’s burned down to embers. I don’t think there’s any central heating so I imagine it’s necessary to take the chill off, even in summer.
‘Yeah. Dylan was also given the option of living out here, but he finds it too isolating,’ he says as he closes the door.
‘But you don’t?’
‘Are you kidding? I’d give anything to be able to camp out in the woods forever, stay off-grid, like a hermit.’
‘Rubbish. You’d get lonely.’
He grins at me as he walks into the kitchen and switches on the light. ‘Yeah, I probably would. But it’s what I dream about sometimes. Do you want a drink? Wine? Beer? Soft drink?’
‘Something soft would be good. How many bedrooms does this place have?’ I ask, looking around the kitchen. It looks clean, but it hasn’t been updated in years – it’s probably about as old as the 1970s kitchen in the Great Hall.
‘Three bedrooms, one bathroom. The bedrooms are upstairs, bathroom’s just through there.’
‘Ooh, I wouldn’t like that,’ I say as he grabs a couple of cans of lemonade from the fridge.
‘Why not?’
‘Getting up in the middle of the night to go downstairs to the loo?’ I take a can from him before he can decant it into a glass. ‘No, I’d want an en suite.’
‘If I ever build you a cabin in the woods, I’ll take that into account.’
‘I’ll have a hot tub too, please.’
He chuckles and cracks open his can.
‘So is this place yours now? Permanently?’
‘I wish. I wanted my father to sign it over to me after I agreed not to do my master’s—’
‘Wait. You didn’t do your master’s?’ I ask with surprise.
He was set to study astrophysics that September.
He shakes his head and nods towards the living room. ‘There wasn’t much point. I’d already delayed a year at my father’s request after we lost Hugo. Running the estate is a full-time job, and he wanted me to be prepared to take over if anything happened to him. I had to learn everything he’d been teaching my brother for years.’
‘So you never went to work in the space sector?’
‘No.’
I’m taken aback by how much it pains me to hear that.
‘Oh, Ash.’
He looks at me, regret in his eyes. ‘It’s okay. I’m just doing what I have to.’ He sounds accepting. He takes a sip of his lemonade before saying, ‘Anyway, the cabin was a consolation prize, although my father could still sell it out from under my feet if he wanted to. I’d love to own it outright – along with the cottages, sawmill and workshop – but he likes to hold them over me in case I go off the rails again.’
‘What do you mean, go off the rails?’
He sighs. ‘This conversation is taking a dark turn.’
‘Ash,’ I implore.
‘A couple of years after Hugo died, I took my bike and just left. I had to get away.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Back to Europe. Spent some time in Romania. Camped out under the stars in the Carpathian Mountains and had a couple of close calls with brown bears.’ His gaze looks faraway as he remembers. ‘I just needed a break from it all, some space to get my head around everything. And then my father started talking about selling off the cottages and the sawmill and suggested I come home to take up my place at his side so we could work out a solution.’
My stomach drops. ‘He emotionally blackmailed you?’
He huffs out a dark laugh. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’ He shakes his head and asks, ‘Where did you go after Madrid?’ I feel as though he wants to move away from the topic of his father.
‘Home. Well, I stayed there for over a week, first, trying to find you. But then I went back to start work at Knap.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispers, his eyes beginning to shine.
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘If it makes you feel better, I was a total wreck myself.’
‘I felt like I’d been smashed into a million little pieces.’
He drags his hand over his face, suddenly seeming devastated.
‘It was only three days,’ I say in a small voice as he turns to stare starkly out the window. ‘Are we looking back at that time through rose-tinted glasses? Was any of it real?’
He meets my eyes, and then says, with absolute conviction: ‘It was real.’