Chapter Eighteen #2
‘Stupid dog, I’ve only been gone for an hour.
Poor old George is looking much better. He says you can have a big bone because you saved him.
Clever girl. Although I might never leave the house again.
It’s too damn dangerous. Let me at least have a cup of coffee and do some work.
Bets is coming over soon with Dex and then we’ll go out for a nice long walk. ’
Now that she was a lot fitter, she rather enjoyed their joint walks. The lure of spring sunshine was an added incentive. These bright sunny days lifted her mood.
Taking a steaming mug upstairs, she went up to her studio and quickly reviewed the week’s progress.
She could get an hour’s work done before Bets arrived.
For once she was actually well ahead and had enough ideas for the next book and possibly a series about her little alien characters. Her publisher would be pleased.
With a smile she surveyed the mice. Perhaps she should .
. . flamenco. That was it. Grabbing a pencil, she started to sketch.
Cuthbert would love one of those Cordoban flat black-brimmed hats and his sister Catherine would look rather swish in a bright red frilled and flounced dress and little red Latin dancing shoes.
Dropping her pencil, she ran back downstairs, scooped up the shoe box and taking the stairs two at a time hurried back.
Latin shoes with socks looked quite odd but they were perfect and they twinkled as she swivelled her foot at the ankle to let the light catch the diamonds. They’d been diamonds in her head at fifteen and they were still diamonds now, she decided with a happy nod of defiance.
She needed music. A quick YouTube search and she had the Gipsy Kings playing. Yes. With her shoulders rocking and her feet tapping to the music, she added a guitar-playing Englebert.
‘Bamboleeeeo, bamboleeeea, lalalala.’
Her fingers flashed across the page, the drawings flowing from her fingers.
When the music stopped abruptly, she clicked to play the track again but this time stood up.
Shoes like these needed trying out. Up here in the attic with the skylights facing to the brilliant blue sky, no one could see her.
With a wry smile at her own silliness, she stood up and started to dance.
Tess thought it was a great game and as Ella swivelled her hips and raised her hands above her head, she tried to join in, weaving in and out of Ella’s legs and jumping up and down.
‘Crazy dog.’ Ella laughed. They probably looked totally ridiculous but no one could see her.
When was the last time she’d danced? When she was in her early teens she’d done Latin and Modern.
At college, she’d gone regularly to a local salsa club.
With a sudden sense of sadness, she realised it was another thing she’d got out of the habit of doing. Patrick wasn’t much of a dancer.
This time when the music stopped, another track began before she could get to her iPhone.
‘Baila, baila, baila, me.’ She joined in the refrain, making up the words she didn’t know.
Whirling around the room, her heart full of lightness and joy, she danced through several tracks.
Eventually Tess got bored, the initial excitement wearing off, and she wandered out of the room but Ella, relishing the feeling of her heart pounding and her pulse beating furiously, carried on dancing.
‘Er, excuse me.’
Startled, she whirled round to find Devon standing in the doorway at the head of the stairs to the loft conversion, an apologetic smile full of sympathy on his face and right on cue the music stopped.
A fierce blush fired up her cheekbones.
‘Crikey, you scared the life out of me,’ she said. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ The aftershock of fear made her sharp. Tess bounded over to him and gave his hand a welcoming lick.
‘Great guard dog, you are,’ she snapped, irritated by the dog’s complete lack of loyalty. ‘You do remember that this is the man who called you fat?’
Devon rolled his eyes. ‘I’m sure I didn’t use the word “fat”. Although she is looking much better.’ His eyes slid to Ella’s waist where her shirt had become untucked.
‘Don’t you dare say it.’ Ella gave him a mock glare and shook her head in warning.
‘Nice shoes.’
Automatically she went to cross her feet at her ankles as if that might hide them and then thought better of it, lifting her head to say with a regal nod, ‘Thanks,’ as if they were her finest footwear.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.’ He gave her an unrepentant grin.
‘Well, what did you mean to do?’ She put her hands on her hips, a smile playing at her lips. There was a sense of freedom in talking to him today. The shared misery of the other day on the Beacon had seeded a tentative friendship. ‘Do you make a habit of breaking and entering?’
‘The door was open and I could hear the music – I did call up several times.’ His eyes sparkled with wicked humour. ‘Bets said you might be working.’ He looked around. ‘This is a great room.’
‘Yes.’ She ran a hand through her hair. What on earth did she look like?
Slight sweaty and a bit breathless and very scruffy, apart from the shiny new shoes.
He was used to super-sophisticated Marina with her immaculate white coat, perfect tanned legs and trim ankles.
He probably thought Ella was a lunatic. Deranged.
So uncool. And terminally clumsy. ‘The light’s good. ’
‘I imagine it is. So this is where you work.’
‘Yes.’
Now she sounded stupid but she couldn’t think of anything to say.
In jeans and a big navy sweater, he made a larger than life contrast to the stark white brightness of the room.
His dark curly hair was a little too long for her taste and his clothes too casual but something about his confident stance made her heart jump and her mouth go dry.
He looked solid and reliable. All man. More masculine than she was used to.
It made her feel small and the strangest thought popped into her head.
How lovely it would be to be encircled in his arms. Like she’d been when he’d comforted her on the Beacon yesterday.
Shaking her head as if to dislodge the unwelcome thought, she folded her arms as if that might keep any further fanciful notions at bay. ‘Did you want something?’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’ He nodded towards her drawing table. ‘Bets is tied up and asked me to come instead. I assumed you’d be working, not . . . dancing.’ His mouth twisted with a wry smile. Ella blushed again. There was an awkward silence as she tried to gather her thoughts.
Ignoring her discomposure, he moved across to her drawing table.
‘Mind if I take a look? I’ve never seen a real artist at work.’
‘Then you’ll be disappointed.’
He raised one eyebrow and she couldn’t decide whether to be grateful or irritated as he took a measured, assessing look at her drawings.
‘These are really good.’ He sounded genuinely impressed but then most people thought a picture was good if things were in perspective.
He continued to study the pictures with a thoroughness that Ella hadn’t expected.
‘I feel as if I could touch them and they’d spring to life.
’ He smiled, a half-hearted thing of a smile, as if surprised by his own fancifulness.
‘In fact I expect them to move at any second. It must take real skill to draw like this.’
Seeing the pictures with new eyes, she gave a hesitant answering nod. Gentle pride bubbling up for the first time in a very long time. ‘Thank you.’
‘Now I understand the music.’ He pointed to the female mouse in her red flamenco dress. ‘Cute.’
He turned another page and burst out laughing, a wholehearted uninhibited gale of laughter she hadn’t thought him capable of.
He shook his head in amusement. ‘Priceless.’ With a broad gin, he pointed to the picture of Englebert clutching his Spanish guitar, an expression of extreme seriousness on his whiskered face. ‘Do I recognise him?’
Ella’s eyes widened and she put a hand over her mouth. ‘Oh Lord, do you?’
With dancing eyes, Devon nodded. ‘Yes, I think I do. If I’m not mistaken, he bears a decided likeness to our esteemed vicar.’ Devon flicked through a few more of the pages lying on the table, his lips pinched together, cheeks dimpling as if trying to hold back his amusement.
Ella ran over and put a hand on the pages. ‘Damn. I thought no one else would notice. Is it really that obvious?’
‘Probably not. It’s only because I saw the sketch you did in the pub.’
‘Do you think it’s . . . too much? I’m going to have to change him. Shame, Englebert, that’s the character’s name, has only just come into his own.’
Devon shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t worry. I doubt anyone else would pick it up. Besides, Richard would probably think it’s quite flattering. It’s not as if it’s a malicious or unkind representation.’
‘Yes, but people might laugh at him.’
‘I think to be a vicar these days you have to be fairly thick-skinned and I’m sure Richard would see the funny side of it.’
‘All the same.’
‘People will laugh with him, not at him and if they’re laughing at him, that says more about them.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ella couldn’t comprehend his view.
Being laughed at was horrible. When he’d said laughing was his way of coping with things at work, it was different.
They were situations that were beyond his control.
She lived in dread of people laughing at her work.
Ridiculing the things that she’d put her heart and soul into.
Perhaps that’s why in recent years, she’d held back.
Fear had a great way of stifling things.
‘Don’t you think that if someone laughs unkindly, it means they’re mean-spirited? It’s deliberate. Small-minded.’
‘I guess. I’d never thought of it like that.’
It came to her with a sudden rush of freedom, like a lance bursting a boil, releasing the poison. No wonder she hadn’t been able to do anything truly creative, she’d been bound by fear of what others would think.