Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
I found myself looking forward to summer at Stonemore. As the days grew longer, Fi and I took to eating lunch on a picnic blanket near Belheddonbrae when it was sunny, taking it in turns to create elaborate salads with increasingly outlandish ingredients. In the evenings, I walked across the deer park and down the lane to the cottage whatever the weather. By the time I got home, I’d usually forgotten any stress from the day (Sean had been texting but as he was probably trying to recover more lost CDs, I ignored him). If my mind kept returning to the weird moment between me and Jamie, the day job on his estate was an excellent distraction. Out on the hillside of the Stonemore Estate, things were much simpler. The air was so pure and clear, limpid as spring water from one of the estate’s streams, but scented too, carrying with it faint traces of forest and newly turned soil. Along with Belheddonbrae there was always plenty to do outside, whether supervising the work of volunteers or taking water samples from the estate’s streams. Once a week, I toured the whole estate with Callum, and we discussed new initiatives and recent work that had been done, checking that all was as it should be.
The section of ancient forest, and its soft, lower light, was a haven. Spruce and fir had been carefully thinned to increase light levels and allow native species to recover. I’d worked alongside a team of contractors who were far more efficient than me, but nonetheless appreciated my efforts. With every small increment of change on the estate, I could feel my body and mind gradually strengthening.
I showed Callum what had been done in the forest. I wondered if he would try and dismiss it, or even say he couldn’t see any difference, but he nodded gently as I spoke to him about it. ‘It’s grand,’ he said softly.
‘And some other good news,’ I said, as Callum swept his gaze around the area, taking it all in. ‘The beaver pair are being introduced to an area by the Claybeck stream next week. We’ve been surveying for the right spot, and all the experts are satisfied. The charity confirmed this morning.’
Callum said nothing. I gave a satisfied sigh and glanced back at him, then did a double-take. ‘Are those… tears in your eyes?’ I said.
‘No!’ he said, and sniffed. ‘Sharp wind up here today, that’s all.’
I nodded and looked away. No point in arguing with a man who said he wasn’t crying. Then I felt him tap my shoulder. ‘Sure, Anna. It’s a beautiful thing.’
I nodded back, and found the sharp breeze had got to my eyes too.
He put an arm around me and gave me a squeeze, and I looked up at him. Slowly, he began to drift towards me, and I found I was bracing myself. This was what I had wanted, wasn’t it? A bit of fun with Callum?
We managed a proper kiss this time, but my mind was scrambling, and not in the way it had with Jamie. I mean, Callum was very attractive, sure he was, but for some reason I could note this dispassionately. With Jamie, my reaction had been immediate, intense and physical. Undeniable.
Callum tilted his head and looked at me shyly. ‘Do you fancy a drink tonight? At the Rising Sun?’
‘Er, yes,’ I said. ‘That would be nice.’
He smiled, and nodded. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Great.’
Back at the house, the aftermath of the fair was still being ‘processed’. Tally had been reined in from giving ‘feedback’ (criticism) to the volunteers and was raging that sticky fingerprints had been found on a Boulle cabinet, thus necessitating more restoration. ‘From Darren?’ asked Fi.
‘No! He’s paintings!’ cried Tally. ‘And if that ice-cream man calls me again, I shall go mad. He wants to set up here every weekend.’
‘I’ll mention it to Jamie,’ said Fi, drifting out the room with a dreamy smile on her face. ‘Get the restoration quote to me when you can, Tally. I need to assign it to the correct budget line.’
‘You’re very cheerful,’ I said to Fi later, as I supervised a harried furniture conservator who had been summoned urgently from Newcastle in the pouring rain, only to find Tally was on the longest lunch break of her life.
She blushed. ‘Things are so good with me and Richard. It’s like we’re on honeymoon again.’
‘Spare me the details,’ I said, with a grin. The furniture conservator had a gloomy look on his face as he inspected the sticky fingerprints on the black and gold cabinet and muttered to himself about ‘little blighters’ as he unpacked his kit on the polished floorboards.
‘Have you,’ Fi glanced over her shoulder, ‘spoken to Jamie recently? He seems a bit down. He’s been spending most of his time on long walks with Hugo.’
‘Well, dogs are better than people,’ I said, ‘so I don’t blame him. Also, we don’t speak to each other, remember? Everything has to go through Callum.’
‘Mmm.’ Fi narrowed her eyes at me. ‘No more arguments with him?’
‘Nope,’ I said, managing to combine looking innocent with feeling guilty as Fi looked at me suspiciously. Let’s have a girlie night soon,’ I said. ‘Wine, takeaway, film?’
‘How many children did you let loose on this cabinet?’ piped up the conservator.
I began my long explanation about the fete, and the involvement of candy floss and ice cream. Fi received a call about a malfunctioning till and disappeared in the direction of the gift shop.
When the conservator had been pacified, I returned to my desk and switched on Forestcam for a quick hit of serenity. The faint scent of cherry informed me that Callum was vaping in his office as he answered emails. I was texting Keith about an upcoming delivery of lavender when an email from Callum landed in my inbox with the title: ‘This is unusual!!!!’. It was so unlike Callum to use exclamation marks that I opened it immediately.
It was my proposal to establish a beehive near Belheddonbrae; Jamie’s response to Callum’s request for clearance. It had been sent at 5am that morning.
Hi Callum: tell Anna she can have whatever she wants. J
I sat very still and observed the faint thud of my own pulse in my ears. Why did that one-line email feel like something more than a work email?
Because I was crazy, that’s why. It was simply the meanderings of my crazed brain.
Tally breezed in. ‘Pat says you let the conservator in to look at the Boulle? I hope you supervised him properly.’
‘Oh, knob off !’ I said, digging through my bag for my pasta salad and a box of painkillers. I had a headache and I needed carbs, pronto.
‘Someone’s hangry,’ said Tally, wandering back in the direction of the photocopier.
I was wolfing down my lunch in the niche, waiting for the kettle to boil, when Tally reappeared and gave a shriek, and I looked up.
Hugo.
He was sitting in my chair. Sitting up cheerfully, like a soldier about to salute.
‘Oh God, I left some chewing gum on my desk – he hasn’t eaten it, has he?’ wailed Tally, dredging through her customary piles of paper. ‘Jamie loves that flea-bitten idiot. I can’t be responsible for—Phew! It’s here.’
‘Hello you,’ I said to Hugo, leaving my lunch on the counter.
Hugo gave a single, low bark. But his tail thumped, to show friendly intent.
‘Down,’ I said, looking around to see if there was a spare dog lead anywhere. ‘You have to go back to the flat, mister.’
Hugo looked at me.
‘He won’t listen to you. He never listens to anyone. Bloody beagle,’ muttered Tally.
I tried perking up my tone a bit. ‘Come on! Hugo! Hugues! Huggy bear!’
‘You sound like an idiot. I’m going to record you for TikTok,’ said Tally.
I held up a reproving finger. ‘You don’t have my permission.’
She slammed her phone down on the desk.
‘Please, Hugo,’ I said. He tilted his head and gazed at me with his oil-black eyes.
A sharp whistle sounded across the office. Hugo jumped down and galloped to the feet of Callum.
‘Good boy.’ He rubbed Hugo’s sides. ‘Sorry about that, Anna. Hugo’s going to be an office dog for the next few days. If we could all keep an eye out when we’re going in and out, so he doesn’t disappear off exploring. Jamie’s gone to London and Hugo’s staying with me.’
‘To London?’ My stomach dropped. How long was he going to be gone for?
‘Yep,’ said Callum. ‘He said, though, could you put some content together on the beavers? We need a short clip for social media.’
‘The charity will share all their footage of the release. I’ll ensure we get a social-ready clip.’ I made a show of writing this down carefully. Tally was already batting away Hugo, who had decided that she was a food source of some kind. ‘Callum, get him out of here!’ she called.
Hugo cast me a melancholy look as Callum clipped a lead on him and led him to his office.
Callum and I had our date at the Rising Sun that night, and Hugo came along too. I decided not to try too hard with my outfit, and winged it with a pair of (clean) jeans and a nice jumper, which Callum complimented as being ‘very holey’.
‘It was made by a lady in the village,’ I said. ‘She has all kinds of looms and knitting machines.’
‘Oh, Sandra?’ he said, as Hugo pawed at my leg.
I fed the beagle a crisp. ‘Yes, I think she’s fabulous.’
‘It is mainly hole though, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I’m not sure she should charge too much for materials. Not that I mind looking at your skin.’
‘Er, thanks,’ I said. This was way too weird. He’d paid me a compliment and all I could do was cringe. When he got up, I asked for another Jack Daniel’s and coke, even though I had only just begun my second. Perhaps Rose was right. More drink was needed.
The thing was, I couldn’t stop myself from being detached from the situation. Oh look , my brain said, Callum is gazing at you. Oh look, he has put his hand on your knee. Oh look…
Meanwhile, it felt as though I was on a date with two men rather than one. Hugo kept prodding me for bar snacks and when I tried to ignore him, focused on me with his seal-pup eyes, glinting in the half-light, so that Callum remarked that I was ‘looking at the dog more than you are at me’.
We managed a kiss or two – clearly noted by the regulars – then we headed out into the night. Walking alongside each other, brushing against each other as Hugo sniffed trails on the pavement, I felt calmer. I can do this , I thought. So when Callum’s hand brushed mine, I slotted my fingers into his, and was delighted to feel him squeeze my hand.
‘Callum!’
The squeal sounded from far behind us, high-pitched and almost childlike, and I turned to see a woman running towards us. When she neared us, she picked up speed, then literally leapt into Callum’s arms and wrapped her legs around his waist as he struggled not to drop her. Ten out of ten for athleticism, but I have to admit I felt slightly peeved at her clinging to him like a koala on a eucalyptus tree.
‘Cassie!’ he was saying, as he gently lowered her to the ground. ‘Good to see you.’
‘Long time no see,’ she said, and glanced at me with a wrinkled nose. ‘Er, hi.’
‘Hi,’ I said, as Callum handed Hugo’s lead to me and the beagle attempted to drag me away from the squealing being, ears down.
‘Anna, this is Cassie, Cassie, Anna,’ said Callum, before embarking on a brief amount of small talk which covered stuff I didn’t understand, such as ‘did you know Mikey and Jolls were getting married’.
After she’d disentangled herself and headed off in another direction, we continued our wander home, but the rosy glow had worn off and I didn’t attempt to take his hand again.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Callum. ‘I didn’t want to be rude to her. There’s some history.’
‘Mmm,’ I said, nodding, ‘I thought there might be.’
‘Anna?’ he said. ‘You’re not annoyed, are you?’
We’d stopped and I managed to hold his gaze. ‘Of course not,’ I said. The truth being: I have no idea if I am or not. And although I’ve just watched a woman wrap her legs around your waist, I’m not entirely sure I want to do the same at the moment .
Luckily, as we stood looking at each other awkwardly, Hugo lost all patience with our slowness and started barking, then baying, with a note of manufactured hysteria.
‘Look, I’ll let you go,’ I said. ‘I’d forgotten, I said I’d call a friend tonight.’ I kissed him on the cheek. ‘See you tomorrow, yeah?’
He shrugged, and smiled. ‘Sure.’
That was the excellent thing about Callum. So easy-going. Perhaps, I thought, as I walked home, some of that easy-going attitude might eventually rub off on our grumpy boss, and make our lives so much easier. Bloody typical that I was thinking about him, when I should have been rolling around in bed with my lazily handsome, utterly available colleague.
‘I did say before, Callum’s not a good idea, Anna.’
Fi and I were eating noodles and discussing my love life, the film we’d chosen paused on the opening credits.
‘Nnngh,’ I said, levering a chopstick’s worth of tofu into my mouth. ‘Why?’
She sighed. ‘Because he’s a massive tart!’
Chewing, I attempted to process this information. ‘But he’s not chasing after people.’
‘He doesn’t have to, sweet. They’re queuing up. He’s got that whole oh-I’m-so-scruffy-and-helpless thing going on,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen the appeal of it myself but other people certainly do. There’s barely a woman under fifty in the village who wouldn’t crawl over broken glass to get to him.’ She put her arm around me and squeezed. ‘I’m sorry. I know I sound like the fun police.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. She looked at me as though I was being brave. ‘No, really. I couldn’t quite get into the swing of it. In fact, maybe it will help, knowing that it doesn’t mean anything at all.’
‘You keep saying that, but it’s not really you.’
Gloomily, I helped myself to a spring roll or three. ‘I’m trying to be a new me. And I’m not going to get attached to the first man I sleep with.’
‘The real you is already wonderful. Stop trying to be something different. I’ve seen you get attached to a spider that’s taken up residence in your bathroom. It’s what you do.’
I shook my head. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I can name one person who is definitely not crawling over broken glass to get to Callum, and that’s Lucinda.’
Fi sighed. ‘Oh yes. She does seem to be still keen on Jamie, doesn’t she?’
‘What happened with them?’ I topped up our glasses with elderflower.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He’s very private about that kind of thing. But it always seemed to me that he was holding back, in some way. Lucinda was always very bubbly with him, very affectionate. And he seemed, well, happy, I suppose, but also – not.’
‘I suppose we never know what’s going on between two people,’ I said. Jamie was an equation I couldn’t quite solve. That was obviously why my mind kept returning to him .
She nodded. ‘Look, back to you. Hear me out when I say this?’
I paused in the act of spooning more noodles onto my plate.
‘Why don’t you give internet dating a chance? One of those apps?’
‘Oh come on!’ I said.
‘There are lots of perfectly decent-looking, absolutely normal blokes out there,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with giving real life a try again?’
I gazed at her dumbly.
‘Because,’ she said, ‘all this dancing around after Callum suggests one thing to me. You seem to have a penchant for emotionally unavailable men, Anna.’
‘No, I don’t!’ I said indignantly.
‘Come off it,’ she said. ‘Sean was always blowing hot and cold on you at the beginning.’
I opened my mouth to say that he wasn’t, but then closed it again. ‘We can’t all meet the love of our lives at eighteen,’ I said huffily. ‘Sometimes you have to compromise.’
‘Exactly,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Shall we raise a glass to swiping right?’
After Fi had gone, I went and got my self-help books, my coloured pens and my journal. Feeling a bit like a teenager, I sat cross-legged in my pyjamas, opened the front page, and looked at the cheerfully decorated word: No.
I flicked through the pages, looking at the word maps where I’d tried to examine my feelings, to chip away at the grief about losing Sean and my dream of having a family with him.
Then I turned to a blank page, and wrote in gold:
Self-Sabotage .
It was time, again, to start digging around in my mind. To work out the many ways in which I’d tripped myself up. Starting, perhaps, with Callum. But as I jotted down thoughts, I couldn’t think of my crush on him as a hindrance. He was calm, he was kind, and I wanted someone like him in my life. And it was strange that I always fancied him most when he wasn’t there. I thought of him squinting against the sunlight as we looked at the woods together, and that slow easy smile beneath the thatch of unkempt hair.
And of Jamie, staring into my eyes in the orangery.
Second goal of the week , I noted. Stop thinking about Jamie in that way .
Maybe Fi was right. Even that weird moment I’d had with Jamie might just be me, attracting inappropriate men like a magnet attracting iron filings.
Gerald the mouse raced past, and I threw a book at him, half-heartedly.