Chapter 13
‘Oh wow, that is quite the scene.’ Reaching the top of the hill, Scarlett paused next to Charlie and held her hand over her eyes to shield them against the low winter sun.
The fields below stretched into the distance before the cottages of Meadowfield punctuated the land.
It was beautiful; the thatched roofs looked the size of thimbles, and smoke snaked from the chimneys, dispersing into the crisp blue sky.
She could just imagine how stunning it would look at dusk with the glow of the Christmas lights illuminating the buildings.
‘It’s beautiful, right?’ Chalice grinned as he looked towards the village.
‘It really is.’ Scarlett held up her sketchbook. ‘Do you mind if I take a few sketches?’
‘Not at all. Take all the time you want to, I’ve done enough slacking off for the day, anyway.’ Charlie chuckled and turned back the way they’d come, holding his hand up in a wave. ‘Catch you later.’
‘Yes, see you.’ Flicking through to a blank page, Scarlett pulled the pencil from her messy bun and began to sketch.
She couldn’t wait to get this down on some cards and perhaps she’d even be able to find a printing shop around here and get a few printed onto mugs or tea towels, anything really she thought they’d sell at this time of the year, especially the scenes at dusk when she’d done them.
Lowering herself to the ground, she barely noticed how the cold, wet dew seeped through the seat of her skirt.
Sticking her tongue out to the side, as had always been her habit whilst concentrating, she put graphite to paper just as a loud shout sounded from behind her.
Twisting, she looked back in the direction she and Charlie had come, and it took her a moment to make some sort of sense of the scene unfolding in front of her.
A blurry flash of white sped past her, and Scarlett jumped up screeching.
Had that been what she thought it had? Was it a sheep?
No, not here. This was an agricultural farm; apart from the hens she’d spotted pecking in the yard, there wouldn’t be any other animals.
Charlie hadn’t shown her any on the tour of the farm, and she’d have definitely noticed if there had been any sheep, the evil nemeses of her nightmares.
Twisting around, she watched as Charlie ran towards her, his arms waving above his head.
‘Grab her, the fence down the bottom of the field is broken and she’ll be out.’
Grab her? Her, Scarlett? Dropping her sketchbook to the ground, she willed herself to move, willed herself to do as Charlie had asked, to run after the sheep, to ‘grab her’, but she just couldn’t. She was frozen to the spot.
As Charlie ran off down the hill, Scarlett felt something nudge her from behind and screamed.
Twisting on her feet, she came face to face with the fluffy, woolly creature who paused, seemingly oblivious to her fear – or not; maybe the thing was feeding off her terror – ducked its head and began eating the grass by her feet.
Scarlett stood there, hardly breathing for fear of breaking the spell of stillness, and kept her eyes focused on the animal as it smashed its teeth against the blades of grass. Her sketchbook was barely a few inches from its mouth, but she just couldn’t bring herself to bend and pick it up.
‘Well done.’ Having spotted the sheep, Charlie jogged back up the hill and slipped a halter over its neck before placing his hands on his knees and taking deep breaths in. ‘Thank you.’
Shaking herself, she backed away and shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Maybe not, but she loves people and so gravitated towards you.’ Charlie grinned. ‘Scarlett, meet Claudette, our resident sheep.’
Scarlett grimaced as bile formed in her throat. ‘She lives here?’
‘She sure does. The poor thing escaped from one of the local farms and was running around the village snatching people’s shopping and clearing out residents’ flowerbeds, believe it or not. So when she turned up here at Little Mead, I gave her a home.’
‘She was running around the village?’ So that’s what Rowan had been talking about when she’d first met him.
‘Yes, for months I believe. No one could catch her. She’s a proper little Houdini is our Claudette. Anyway, she has a home for life here now.’ Charlie leaned over and covered Claudette’s ears. ‘No premature ending for this one.’
‘Oh, that’s really sweet,’ Scarlett forced out before glancing behind her in the direction of the farmhouse.
If she’d known there was a sheep on the farm, she might have thought twice about taking up Nicola’s offer of staying here, and if she’d known the sheep was a ‘proper Houdini’ as Charlie put it, she most definitely wouldn’t have. ‘I should get going back to the house.’
‘Okay. Don’t forget this.’ Bending, Charlie picked up Scarlett’s sketchbook and held it out to her.
Taking a tentative step forward, Scarlett quickly snatched the sketchbook before tucking it under her arm. ‘Thanks.’
‘No worries.’ Charlie turned his attention back to Claudette. ‘Let’s get you back to your field and try to work out how you got out, shall we? We can’t have you terrorising the poor villagers again.’
Terrorising the villagers? Yes, that’s right, Rowan had told her a sheep had been causing chaos. She shuddered as she picked up her pace. There were sheep; sheep at Little Mead. Where she was staying!
The tune of her mobile pierced the calm country air around her, and she pulled it from her pocket, hitting the answer button as she glanced back over her shoulder towards Charlie and Claudette. ‘Hello?’
‘Finally. Hello, sweetheart.’ The once charming voice of Tyler met her ear, and she fought the urge to throw the phone to the ground.
Drat, she wouldn’t have picked up if she’d seen his name on the screen. Another reason to hate sheep, she supposed. Swallowing, she took a deep breath in, steadying her nerves after the encounter with Claudette before answering. ‘Tyler. What do you want?’
‘First of all, I want to know that you’re safe. Are you, Scarlett? Have you found somewhere to stay? I just keep thinking of you sleeping in that godawful van at the side of the road somewhere.’ His voice was laced with concern.
‘I’m fine. What do you want?’ She repeated her question.
She was pretty certain he knew she’d been living in her van, but it had been over four months now since she’d left the flat, so why was he suddenly pretending to be concerned about her living situation after all this time?
Had he and Donna finally split? Had his wife seen the light?
Realised he would not change? She thought back to the night she’d discovered that the secret life he was leading was a little more extreme than she’d first believed.
When she’d found the phone charger in his car, the phone charger which hadn’t fitted her or his mobiles, and she’d followed him, she assumed he’d been having an affair and she’d been absolutely devastated.
Little had she known when she’d barged into the house she’d followed him to that she’d find a wife and a child.
The cruel twist of fate had been that she’d been the mistress all along and however much he pretended to care for her or plead for her to come back to him, she had to remember what he’d done to her, how much he’d broken her, how he’d made her view herself and hate herself for something she’d had no control or knowledge over.
‘The sale of the flat goes through tomorrow. Come back and I can pull out of the sale, we can make it our home again.’
‘Tyler, it was never our home; it was only ever your dirty little secret from Donna.’ Looking down as the grass turned into the cracked slabs of the yard, she felt a stirring of pride that she’d kept her voice steady.
‘I’ll leave Donna. We can set up a proper home for us. Have those kids we were always talking about. Go on, come home. You know you want to, you know you miss me.’
As she pushed open the door to the farmhouse, she frowned.
How had she never heard it before? His voice wasn’t filled with charm, it was smarm.
And she’d fallen hook, line, and sinker for him for too long.
Now though, she’d seen him for who he really was, and however much it hurt, she wasn’t going to go back.
She’d never be able to trust him again. Heck, she wouldn’t be able to trust anyone.
How could she? ‘I’m not coming back. Ever, and please don’t call me again. ’
‘Scarlett, wait. In that case, I think you have something of mine.’
She closed the front door behind her, making sure it clicked into place so the sheep didn’t run inside on another of her escapades. ‘Nope. I don’t think so. I left everything at the flat. I only took what was mine.’
‘You do. You know you do, and I need it back.’
She frowned at the change of tone in his voice.
She’d only ever heard the smarm, the pretend charm, the lie of kindness, but this, now he sounded like a complete stranger, his tone was cold as though he’d simply shut all and any feelings he might ever have felt for her off and was talking to someone he’d passed in the street.
Or worse, someone he hated. She dropped to the bottom stair before answering, the shake in her voice audible.
‘No, I don’t. I even left the towels, and I’d bought them. ’
‘I’m not talking about the bloody towels, Scarlett, I’m talking about the damn guinea pig.’
‘Thelma?’
‘Who?’ he barked back, and she pulled the phone from her ear, looking at it as though half-expecting the name on the screen to have changed to something else, to realise this wasn’t actually the man she’d once so deeply loved. ‘I want the guinea pig back. Kimberly is heartbroken.’
She took a sharp breath in at the mention of his daughter’s name.
This wasn’t about Kimberly and her wishes; she doubted very much the kid had even noticed her pet had gone.
Heck, it had seemingly taken over a week for him to realise.
She shuddered as the realisation that poor Thelma wouldn’t have even been fed during that time entered her head.
If they’d only just noticed her absence, then that just showed how often she had been cared for. ‘You can’t have her.’
‘You what?’ With every word he spoke, the illusion of how she thought he had been shattered a little more. This wasn’t the man she’d fallen in love with, it wasn’t.
‘Kimberly is not upset because I have her guinea pig. If she is upset, then it’s likely down to Donna having found out about us.
’ She folded the hem of her skirt between her fingers.
She hated the fact that her actions had upset Donna – whether or not she was the clone of Cruella De Vil, she hadn’t deserved any of this – and that because of Tyler’s affair with her their family unit could have broken down.
Scarlett would never knowingly do anything like that.
She closed her eyes. That’s what was the hardest part of the whole sorry situation.
Not losing Tyler, but knowing she’d hurt others, knowing her getting together with him, making a home with him, believing every damn word out of his mouth, had upturned Donna and Kimberly’s whole lives.
It wasn’t who she was. She’d never have hurt anyone knowingly, and she hated him for putting her in that situation, for orchestrating her life so she was not only living a lie but creating a time bomb which would destroy other people’s.
‘I want the guinea pig back.’
Pulling the mobile from her ear again, Scarlett swallowed.
She’d lost everything in her life: her home, her job, the very future she’d imagined.
She wasn’t about to lose Thelma too. And she wasn’t about to give her up to a life of sitting in that damn tiny cage isolated at the back of a room nobody went into.
‘She is now living with me. I will not be giving her up, and I will not be answering your calls again.’
‘Sca—’
Hitting the End Call button, Scarlett lowered her phone to the step next to her, her hands shaking as she did so.
She glanced around the hallway, the silence suddenly pressing in on her, suffocating her.
She needed to speak to someone; she needed to speak to Laura.
She wouldn’t tell her the whole truth, she couldn’t, but she could talk to her about some of it.
She could tell her Tyler was trying to get Thelma back.
Pushing herself to standing, she swiped the back of her hand across her face, drying the tears which had begun to fall.
That was another reason she hated him, because she was alone in this.
She couldn’t tell anyone the whole truth, the fact he was married, the fact she had been too na?ve to even realise.
She hated him. She hated the fact he’d turned her life upside down, forcing her to start over again. But more than anything else, she hated what he’d turned her into.