Chapter 7 #3
“Probably ran into something. They get dopey after bad weather.” She gestured for me to come closer. “You ever nursed a bee back to health?”
“Not unless you count pulling one out of a lemonade once,” I said, approaching. “It didn’t end well.”
Teddy grunted, then tipped her hand so I could see the tiny, frantic creature. “He just needs some sugar water. There’s a bottle in the barn next to the spare suits. Could you grab it?”
I was glad for the assignment. I jogged to the barn, found the bottle where she said, and hustled back. When I handed it over, Teddy gently set the bee on the biggest daffodil in the border, then twisted off the cap and dripped a clear bead onto a petal.
“There you go, little guy,” she murmured, and the bee’s tongue snapped out, impossibly fast, lapping up the sugar.
I watched the bee drink, its little legs steadying on the flower. Teddy crouched in the wet grass, the mesh veil obscuring her face, but I could still tell her eyes were fixed on the creature with an intensity that made me feel, for just a second, like I was spying on something private.
But then I remembered the phone. I pulled it out and zoomed in on the bee; the camera was wobbly zoomed in this far, and the lighting was bad, but I caught the way her thumb stroked the edge of the bee’s thorax, careful not to hurt it.
Then I pulled back, framing Teddy’s face as well.
She looked up and caught me, but she didn’t bother to scold me this time.
Instead, she reached up and tugged the veil off, shaking her hair loose.
“You always record everything?” she asked, wiping a bit of sugar water on her jeans.
“Not everything,” I said, putting the phone away. “But this was … really nice.”
She shrugged. “Part of the job. They just need a little help sometimes.”
“Will it be okay?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “But if I hadn’t found it, the answer would almost certainly have been no.”
The bee finished its drink, flexed its legs, and tried to fly. The wing still wouldn’t work, but it toddled down the stem and found another flower, determined to keep moving.
Teddy stood up, brushing off her knees, and for a moment, we just watched the bee together.
“Thanks for getting the sugar,” she said, then, almost as an afterthought, “The path looks good. You did better than I expected you to.”
I grinned, pride welling up. “What’s next, boss?” I joked, but she didn’t even crack a smile.
“I need you to fold some labels for me.”
I frowned. “Labels for what? I thought the honey and mead were bottled and labelled off-site.”
“They are. This is for something else.”
She took me into the warehouse, into the back corner, where there was a stainless-steel workstation that was so full, I could barely see any of the surface. There were wooden crates of golden bars, stacks of paper, and spools of string.
“What is all this?” I picked up one of the golden bars; it was waxy to the touch.
“Soap,” Teddy said, moving around to the other side of the workbench. “I make it from the honey and beeswax.”
“And you sell it? I didn’t know that.”
She shook her head. “We never have, but I want to. It’s really good soap. It’s naturally antibacterial, and it helps with inflammation.”
“Very cool,” I said, placing the bar back in the crate. “And these are the labels?”
Teddy nodded. “They’re already cut to size, you just need to fold them around the bars and then tie them with the string. They’re going to be tested, so you need to be precise.”
I ignored the insinuation that I wouldn’t have been precise without her reminding me. I frowned down at the labels, imagining what she was saying. Something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t want her to think I was being critical.
“What?” she asked, sounding annoyed, but when I looked up at her, she looked genuinely worried. “Is something wrong with them?”
“The labels look really good,” I said, and they did. The minimalist, serif font she’d chosen was really nice, and the colour splash behind the words looked almost like one of Jen’s paintings in the studio. “But the string will cover the words.”
Teddy’s face fell. “Oh.”
“But I have an idea,” I said, even though the idea only came to me as I was saying it.
She perked up slightly. “Yeah?”
“Do you have any extra wax?” I asked. “Something that’ll harden well.”
She nodded and held up one finger, then turned around and walked away, disappearing behind a fermentation tank. I took one of the labels and folded it on the lines, wrapping it around one of the bars, hoping my idea would actually work.
Teddy came back a moment later with a crate of wax offcuts. “Will this do?” she asked, setting it down on the workbench.
“Honestly?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I hope so.”
“What are you thinking?” She looked impatiently between me and the bar of soap in my hand.
“Wax seal,” I said. “We’ll need to be careful so we don’t melt the soap, and we’ll need to trim a bit of the paper. And it’ll take longer than tying them.”
“I need to send some of these off for testing tomorrow.”
I nodded. “Okay, well, we’d better get started.”
Teddy left to find something suitable for sealing, whilst I started wrapping the soaps and trimming the labels so they had just the right amount of overlap. Eventually, Teddy came back with a candle, a spoon, a tea towel, and a short wooden rod.
“What’s that?” I asked, reaching out for it. She handed it to me, and I turned the wood over to see that there was a metal coin glued to the end, with a bee in the middle and a wreath of laurel surrounding it. There was a hole in the top, just above the bee’s antennae.
“A pendant,” she said. “From a necklace.”
Sure enough, when I looked up, her neck was bare.
“It’s perfect,” I said, holding it up to the back of the label. It would be a bit big, but as long as the bee turned out, that was fine.
It took us some trial and error, but luckily the seals were easy to peel off if we made a mistake, and eventually, we got the hang of it.
Teddy would heat and pour the wax, and I’d press it and leave it to set whilst I got the next bar ready.
We didn’t talk as we worked, but it was a surprisingly companionable silence.
I wasn’t sure if the temporary truce was because I was helping her or because she needed me, but I was grateful for it nonetheless.
Willow trotted in and out, returning time and time again for bum scritches, and I happily complied, even if I did have to wipe my hands off thoroughly each time to avoid getting golden fur in the wax.
Teddy even made me some food – or, well, she cut her own sandwich in half and poured out some of her crisps onto a second plate and offered it to me.
Which was helpful, since I hadn’t actually thought about how I would eat out here in the middle of nowhere.
One good thing about the rescue had been its proximity to several places to scrounge up a meal deal.
By the time we got through all three crates of soap, having burned through two votive candles, my back was killing me from leaning over.
We stood up and stretched our arms out at the same time, and I chuckled at the symmetry of it.
Teddy didn’t, but she also seemed a bit less tense than she had around me thus far.
“Thanks,” she said. “You should start late tomorrow since you stayed so late today.”
I pulled out my phone to check the time, and, sure enough, it was gone six.
“Shit,” I said, heading immediately for the door at the front of the warehouse. “Do you know what time the last train leaves Abergavenny?”
Now Teddy laughed. “You’re not really planning to walk all the way to Abergavenny, right?”
I didn’t stop walking, and she didn’t stop following; I could hear her heavy footsteps getting closer to me from behind. “How else am I meant to get home?”
“I don’t know, the bus?”
“By the time I get to the main road, the last one of the day will be long gone.”
“Wait, what main road?” She stepped in front of me before I reached the door, and I nearly ran into her.
I froze for a moment, looking up at her concerned expression.
God, I really could not get a read on this woman.
“Show me,” she said, reaching down to take my phone from my hand, her fingers brushing mine as she did.
She held it out to me, so I took it from her, opening the walking route from the farm to the closest bus stop.
“Fuck,” she said, her voice raspy. “I thought the bus at least came closer than that.”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“So you’ve been walking all this way?”
I nodded.
“And you plan to every day?”
Another nod.
“At night, in the dark?”
“Yep. And it’s getting darker by the moment,” I said, exasperated.
“Does Jen know about this?” she asked, and I narrowed my eyes at her.
“As long as I get here, what does it matter?”
Teddy looked at me, confused for a moment, then rolled her eyes.
“Not like that, dipshit. I’m not trying to get you in trouble.
I just mean that one of us could have picked you up from the bus stop if we’d known.
It’s like a three minute drive. Jen would never want you walking that route, especially in the dark and rain. ”
“Oh,” I said, pocketing my phone. I wasn’t sure why she wanted to help me after everything she’d said. “Well, like I said, I think the bus is long gone. So maybe she can take me to the train station instead?”
She nodded. “Yeah, okay, let me go find out,” she said, stepping aside and motioning for me to leave through the door. She jogged over to the house in the half-light, then came back almost immediately – not with Jen, but with keys jangling in her hand.
“I forgot, Jen’s out at some charity meeting,” she said, pointing to the spot where the van was usually parked. “You’re stuck with me. Sorry.”
I frowned. “Are you even allowed to drive in this country?”
Teddy shrugged as she climbed into the driver side of the Subaru. “Do you have another choice?”
She wasn’t wrong – she was my only option. So I opened the passenger side door and climbed in. Teddy started moving before I’d even shut it.
“Easy!” I yelped. “I’ve not even got my belt on.”
“You said you were in a hurry!” she countered as she reversed.
I was sure I could come up with a retort – something about how being on time didn’t matter if I died on the way – but then she hooked her left arm around the back of my seat to turn around, looking out of the back window as she reversed, the scent of honey and sweat wafting over me, and any witty retort I’d had evaporated.
She was a very competent driver, I begrudgingly admitted – to myself, of course, not to her – and we made it to the train station in one piece with about twenty minutes to spare. I definitely wouldn’t have made it if I’d walked, so I thanked her as pleasantly as I could manage.
“When are you back at the farm?” she asked as I got out.
“Why, so you can torture me with more ‘weed-whacking’?”
“So I can pick you up from the bus stop. Jesus.” She sounded exasperated, but was that a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth?
“Not until Monday,” I said. “And then Thursday again after that. Try not to miss me.”
“However will I cope?” She held her hands up to her heart and smiled sarcastically.
I wasn’t sure why the thought crossed my mind, but I decided to voice it before I could back down. Before our dynamic froze over again.
“Are you free next Thursday evening, actually?” I asked, and she dropped her smile immediately, making me regret opening my mouth. She stared at me for a moment, as if she were trying to solve a puzzle tattooed on my forehead, and I was just about to take it back when she surprised me again.
“Yeah, I am,” she said. “Why?”
“Then it looks like you’re driving me all the way home,” I said.
She tilted her head, looking less annoyed than I’d have thought. “Why’s that?”
I took a deep breath and pushed down the part of me that thought this was a terrible idea before it could stop me. Maybe it was a bad idea, but a little chaos wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, right?
I smiled sweetly. “Have you ever played Dungeons & Dragons?”