Chapter 36
In the event, Bella didn’t get any more time to brood about what had nearly happened over the kitchen table.
Monday morning rolled around quickly, and she was busy settling in yet another young female cat and her litter of kittens.
These ones were semi-feral, having been born in an ancient shed on some farmland, and hadn’t taken kindly to being trapped and rescued.
With time and a lot of patience they’d finally settled into their portion of the outdoor enclosure in the back garden of the sanctuary, which Mollie had constructed for feral rescues.
It was hoped, eventually, that they might find an outdoor home of their own.
In the afternoon, the electrician had come over to the cottage and taken a look at the fuse box.
Noah had warned her that a re-wiring project might cause some inconvenience, but Bella wasn’t concerned – she’d be out most of the time, and she’d make sure to have an extra cuppa at work if the power was going to be off for any duration.
It was generally just a case of letting him in and leaving him to it.
That evening at the pub, Jason, the Harry Styles lookalike, was playing again. Bella was getting used to the sound of his set, and she’d begun to tune him out, but when he broke into a different song to usual, her ears pricked up.
Heartbreaker,
You’re just a heaaaart-breaker!
Dream maker,
You’re still a heartbreaker…
Bella’s heart started to thump as she recognised her own hit song, and she buried her face in the beer pumps as the all-too-familiar melody echoed through the pub.
Jason’s voice was deeper than Harry Styles’s dulcet tones, and the slight gravel quality lent a distinctive patina to the lyrics that, much as Bella hated to admit it, gave a new dimension to the tune.
She couldn’t help but be as grudgingly impressed as she was embarrassed, and by the end of the song she could almost enjoy it as a piece in its own right, divorced from her own version.
As Jason finished his set and came to the bar for a drink, she handed him a pint of his usual.
‘Interesting song you did there,’ she said casually. ‘I don’t think I’ve heard that one before.’
‘Yeah,’ Jason replied, after taking a pull from his lager. ‘I’ve been listening to a lot of retro stuff on Spotify lately. This singer, Isabella something or other, popped up on my recommended list. She’s all right, basically a lot of Euro pop, but that song’s a banger.’
Bella tried to keep her expression neutral. ‘I haven’t heard of her before,’ she said.
Jason grinned. ‘I don’t think anyone this side of the North Sea has!
From the looks of it, she wasn’t exactly what you might call a success in the UK.
But, as I said, I thought that song was great, so I worked out the chord progressions and added a touch of the old Jason Flyte magic.
’ He gave her a wink. ‘Works every time.’
‘I’m sure,’ Bella said dryly.
‘So, fancy doing an encore with me, Bels?’
Bella laughed. ‘Not tonight.’
‘One day, you’ll get up there with me, and we’ll be dynamite.’
‘But not today.’
Jason gave her another wink and drained his glass. ‘See you next week.’
As Jason packed up his guitar and left, Bella shook her head.
It was a measure, perhaps, of how self-involved Jason was that he hadn’t twigged that ‘Isabella something or other’ was actually standing on the other side of the bar, but she was glad.
Having Noah discover her musical past was one thing – he wasn’t going to be around for long – but revealing it to Jason was quite something else.
She got the feeling that if he had made the connection, she’d never get away from his requests for a referral to her old record label.
‘Everything all right, Bels?’ Paddy broke into her reverie.
‘Fine.’ Bella turned to the landlord and smiled. ‘Only Jason up to his usual tricks.’
‘I don’t care how good a singer he is, if he’s pestering you, I can have him barred.
’ Paddy had taken on the role of surrogate father in the time Bella had worked at the pub, and when customers, usually tourists, got a little too friendly, Bella was glad of his imposing presence behind the bar.
But Jason fell into the flirtatious but harmless category, and his set brought in a few extra punters each week.
‘It’s fine, Paddy. Jason’s all right.’
‘Well, you let me know if he’s not.’
Bella smiled again. She was very fond of Jen and Paddy, who’d run the Star and Telescope for the past five years.
Her distant relationship with her own parents, who’d never forgiven her for her decision to pursue a music career over getting what they’d referred to as ‘qualifications and a sensible job’, was nothing to write home about these days, and so their benevolent eyes on her were very welcome when she felt she needed a bit of advice.
The same went for Mollie, who felt like the grandparent she’d never had.
Careful, she thought as she mulled all this over while performing closing out duty in the bar.
You sound like you’re actually planning on sticking around here!
She had to keep reminding herself that Jack’s cottage was temporary, and eventually she would need to get somewhere else sorted.
But, for the time being, while the summer evenings were sweet with the scent of honeysuckle and the stars above gradually appeared in the velvet night sky, it was tempting to forget that.
Walking back through the village after closing time, she wondered how Monty’s evening had been.
After forty-eight hours of house arrest in the cottage, he was beginning to climb the walls, not to mention the curtains, and Bella knew he was desperate to get outside.
She wondered if she could get away with unlocking the cat flap again, since he already knew where his home was.
As she approached the cottage, she felt a flicker of unease, as if someone or something was watching her.
Shrugging it off, she continued, opening the garden gate and heading up the garden path to the front door.
Plenty of foxes and badgers roamed the village at night, and it was probably just one of those in search of a late-night snack.
A rustling from the overgrown lawn to the left of the garden path made her jump.
Much like the back garden, the grass had returned to meadow in the months since the house had been unoccupied, and as Bella turned her head sharply to see what was making the noise, fearful that it might be a rat, she saw first one paw, then another, then a spotty head and body emerging like a miniature leopard.
‘Monty! How did you get out here?’ Bella bent down and stroked him from nose to tail, and his tail rose and curled around her hand in greeting. As he head-bumped her hand, he let out a smug-sounding yowl.
Then, Bella noticed the bedroom window, which she’d left open after she’d showered between jobs today and obviously forgotten to close. Monty must have scrambled up and then jumped from the window to the apple tree and gained his freedom.
‘You old bugger,’ she murmured. ‘There’s life in the old mog yet.’ And that, it seemed, was Monty’s answer to whether or not he should be granted the freedom of the garden again.
‘Come on, then,’ Bella said, smiling down at the cat. ‘I think the least you deserve is a Dreamie or two, since you went to all that effort.’
Monty chirped in approval and padded after her into the house.