Chapter 7 Tilda
TILDA
The coffee table in the cottage sitting room is strewn with paper and coloured pencils I’ve bought from the village shop, and Flora’s lying upside down on the sofa sleeping off her dinner. I’m still in my gardening things, with leaves in my hair.
How’s it going?
I look at Poppy’s text and can’t work out how to answer.
I’ve signed up for a job working for a distillery when I hate whisky and what it did to my dad, the boss is a dickhead with a rod up his arse, I’ve got no money, and I’m trapped here on the island because I can’t admit to you that I’ve fucked up again because of some sense of probably misplaced pride.
I hit the delete button and replace it with an anodyne response.
Good! Doing boring paperwork stuff. Kisses xx
Gardening, I can do. Give me a wilderness, a set of secateurs, and I’ll create beauty out of a jungle. But I work by eye and instinct. Practicalities and plans were always Jack’s side of the business, that and sleeping with the clients, of course.
It might sound weird, but it doesn’t hurt in the slightest. That’s got to be a sign, right?
If I was heartbroken, I’d be crying into a tub of ice cream and listening to sad music, not making plans and daydreaming about a future without him in it.
And I definitely wouldn’t be thinking about the arrogant anti-social tosser that is my brand-new boss.
The new boss who wants a plan from me, the queen of winging it. I need to prove him wrong, and I have no idea how to start.
I’ve downloaded a template, and I’ve Googled until I’m blue in the face.
RAMS are the backbone of any respectable workplace. I have to set out in painstaking detail everything that might go wrong. Then I have to write my method statement or in other words – how to avoid any of the above.
By 3 a.m. I’ve covered everything from tripping over ivy roots to accidental brush-cutter decapitation. I even specify which end of the chainsaw to hold. If he wants nit-picking detail, he’s got it.
I don’t own a printer, of course. The only paper I had in the cottage besides the notebook I bought from the village shop is an ancient pad of paper with Benruar Distillery printed across the top.
So, I bash out an email to Georgia at seven, and bleary eyed after five hours’ sleep, climb into the shower.
By the time I get out and head downstairs to the kitchen to make the coffee that’s going to have to work miracles, my phone pings with a notification.
Printed and ready for you in the kitchen. Pop in whenever you’re ready – G
Flora and I trot over to the house. Georgia’s inside, halfway through a mug of coffee, with Finn’s two spaniels lying on their bed by the foot of the Aga. Flora stumps over to sniff hello and the spaniels leap up, tails wagging enthusiastically.
She wipes her mouth and gestures to the table. “Here we are. I’m impressed. It all looks very technical.”
I grimace. “Let’s hope it does the job.” I pick it up, feeling a strange fluttering in my stomach. Maybe it’s nerves, or perhaps it’s lack of sleep.
“He’s in the office,” Georgia says. She shuffles along the bench that she’s sitting on and picks up the papers, swiping them into a neater pile. “There you are,” she says, squaring the edges and picking them up. “Knock him out.”
My stomach dips. “Where’s the office?”
“Oh, I forgot you haven’t been in. It’s before the stillroom, the little white building on the left. You can’t miss it.”
She said that about the green gates, I think to myself as I pick up the papers and head out across the courtyard. I’m bracing myself for another door hiding behind a trailing overhang of greenery when I spot the building just ahead. Flora’s a few steps ahead, tail swinging in a jaunty manner.
The door is heavier than it looks. I give it a shove with my shoulder and the papers slip out of my grip and skitter across the floor like playing cards.
“Shit,” I mutter, dropping to my knees.
I bend to scoop them up, muttering under my breath.
All you had to do was hand them over.
A pair of leather boots appear in my eyeline, and I look up, and up. Past long legs in dark jeans, past a flannel shirt rolled to the elbows showing those muscled forearms, past the broad chest and shoulders, until I meet Finn’s eyes looking down at me.
Heat floods my face. Of course. Of course he had to witness this.
I grab the last piece of paper and stand up so fast the blood rushes to my head, and I have to blink hard to gather myself. When I open my eyes, Finn is standing there – closer than expected – with an unreadable expression on his face.
“The RAMs,” I say and my voice comes out breathier than I’d like.
I stalk across the room to plonk them on his desk, needing distance.
The pile is slightly crumpled now and looks out of place on his desk, which is completely empty, apart from a huge Apple monitor and one expensive looking pen on a blotter, which I’ve knocked out of place.
It rolls slowly across the tabletop and lands on the wooden floor with a heavy clonk.
Finn raises a brow so minutely, I’m not sure if I’m imagining it.
“I—” I begin, making to bend down.
He raises a hand. “Allow me.”
He moves close enough that the air shifts around me and I catch the scent of soap and cedarwood from his aftershave.
My skin prickles with awareness. He’s so close I can feel the heat radiating from his body as he crouches beside me.
His bare forearm brushes the side of my leg and every nerve ending fires off at once.
I take a step back, straightening the papers with a tap of my finger.
He straightens, putting the pen back on the table in perfect alignment with the green blotter, and I force myself to breathe normally.
“That should be everything,” I say, then correct myself. “That is everything.” I take a breath in and look at him with what I hope is a confident expression, and his eyes meet mine, holding them for a beat too long. Something flickers in their dark depths before he looks away.
It’s only then, I notice Flora is lying on top of page twelve.
“Shift your bum,” I hiss, tugging it free. “This is important.”
I’m acutely aware of Finn watching me as I leaf through the pages and shove page twelve into position. His presence seems enormous in the small office space.
He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t even look at me. He nudges the pile back into perfect symmetry with the edge of the desk. One tap. Two. Three.
I watch his hands – broad, capable, precise – and something low in my belly tightens.
“If this is your version of meticulous,” he says, at last, in his deep voice. “One wonders what state you are going to leave the gardens.”
“I’ve never had any complaints.” I lift my chin in defiance, even as my pulse is hammering in my throat.
“Really.”
He picks up the pile and flicks through it, his expression stony.
“That is the most comprehensive set of RAMS in the history of RAMS.” I’m babbling now. “It covers everything from falling over your completely neglected and overgrown wisteria, to falling into the pond that’s a safety hazard, or death by hostile spaniel.”
“My spaniels are not hostile.” There’s a hint of a curve at the corner of his mouth, or am I imagining it?
He flicks through the pages some more. “The formatting is inconsistent.”
“Are you serious?”
“And humour” – he looks at the joke I made on page twenty-seven, and for a split second his eyes meet mine again – “is rarely an asset in a health and safety document.”
“I thought it might lighten the mood.” I wrote that bit at one in the morning when I was high on caffeine drinks and Haribo bears.
“Precision matters,” he says, tone completely flat. “I don’t tolerate carelessness. You might consider yourself a shoo-in for this job, but if I consider you to be inadequate, I will have no problem whatsoever with hiring someone from off-island to do the job. Properly.”
The word inadequate stings more than it should.
There’s a long, uncomfortable silence. I’m intensely aware of the distance between us or lack of it.
Flora breaks the tension with a hefty sigh.
“You really know how to make a girl feel welcome.”
“I didn’t invite you here.” He’s turned away, taking the printed pages and sliding them into a drawer, dismissing me. Dismissing the work I stayed up all night to complete.
Humiliation, hot and furious, rises in my chest, mixing dangerously with the attraction I’m trying desperately to ignore.
I open my mouth to protest. I worked on that all bloody night, and he’s not even going to read it properly?
“Close the door behind you,” he says, not looking up.
I close it behind me with a little more force than necessary and march back up towards the house, my face burning, and my hands shaking slightly. What a dickhead.
The courtyard is shaded from the morning sunlight, and I take a cool breath, letting the damp air fill my lungs as I try to gather my thoughts.
The planters are a mess – a mixture of old stone troughs and sun-bleached whisky barrels choked with a mixture of last season’s weeds and the new growth that’s already fighting its way through, making the most of the tired, dried-out compost that fills them.
I’m too furious and humiliated to be tired any more. I roll my sleeves up and grab the wheelbarrow and some tools from the stone barn. If I want these to look half decent in six weeks’ time, I need to get them cleared out, scrubbed and replanted asap.
It feels good to be getting my hands dirty.
I dig and scrape, emptying each planter and filling the barrow with the contents.
By the time I stop for a lunch break, one bay of the compost heap is filling up, and I’m buzzing with that strange mix of physical tiredness and excitement that I get on a job.
I perch on the edge of the stone wall that looks down towards the old walled garden, sipping coffee and eating a sandwich with muddy hands.
Malcolm stops to say a gruff hello, nodding with approval.