Chapter Twenty-Three
The group of elegant trees that I am seeking refuge behind are big and very old cedar trees. Their trunks are so wide that
I could not put my arms around even one-third. Their bark is reddish brown and sweet-smelling, sticky with sap, and the grass
underfoot is covered with needles that collect in amongst the gnarled and twisted feet of their roots.
As soon as I walk under the all-encompassing spread of their branches, the sound of the kids yelling and laughing on the lawn
drops away along with the chatter of the adults on the terrace. Instead, a crow caws to its mate in the treetops and the soft
touch of a faint breeze brushes my bare skin.
Breathing in the scent of pine, I enjoy the crunch in the rusty fallen needles beneath my feet and the gentle creak and nods
of the downward-sweeping boughs. I might not go outside all that much, but when I do, I love to find a good tree to hang out
with. There’s something so reassuring about an ancient tree, to know it has stood in that spot for a century or more, like
a silent witness, stalwart and firm. I press my hand against the rough bark and take a deep breath. It almost feels as if
the tree is breathing with me.
Then I notice something I hadn’t seen before.
Tucked away behind a wall of huge rhododendron bushes in full bloom is what has to be another folly, although it seems a bit too well hidden to play a major part in the fairy-tale landscape created when the castle was first built three hundred years ago.
Not a medieval tower or Greek temple, but a tiny chapel, with the remains of arched Gothic windows at either end, though neither
one has glass, and the roof is entirely gone. Then from inside I hear the laughter of a little girl.
At once I think of Eliza and how I lost her on the stairs, leaving her all alone in the dark. But when I run in through the
chapel door I am amazed by what I see. The entire footprint of the chapel is filled with wildflowers of every conceivable
colour, exploding into life amongst long, lush soft green grass. And the laughter I heard doesn’t belong to a lost ghost child
but to Artie, who is standing in the centre of the flowers, twisting and twirling and letting the long grass graze the palms
of her hands.
“Ava!” she says when she sees me. “Come on!”
Her invitation is impossible to resist, and before I know it I’m twisting, twisting on my heels, alongside Artie, laughing
as butterflies flutter upwards, like fairies taking flight.
“No, come back,” I call to them. “I’m sorry, come back!”
Artie and I laugh and twirl, and twirl and laugh until I stop spinning and the world doesn’t. For one delicious moment I feel
like I might fall off the face of the planet and into the sky, and then I collapse into the long grass in a fit of giggles
alongside Artie.
“We were butterflies,” she tells me, her eyes bright with mirth, “and now we are worms!”
For some reason that is the most hilarious thing I have ever heard, and we are off again, borne along on a renewed gale of laughter. Then a face appears over us, Forrest. He’s wearing a quizzical expression caught somewhere between confusion and delight.
“I had no idea,” he says, looking down at me. Feeling as if I’ve been caught out or exposed somehow, I scramble to my feet,
followed at a far more leisurely pace by Artie.
“No idea about what?” I say, brushing grass seeds off my presentation skirt, which had ridden up quite a bit to reveal my
thighs. Hastily I smooth it back down to its usual respectable knee-grazing length.
“That you were so whimsical,” he said. “Then again, I suppose you do believe in ghosts and love looking at the stars with
a passion. The signs were all there, Ava. You might be a scientist, but you’re a creative too.”
“Of course I am,” I tell him. “All scientists are.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Artie says, displaying excellent early signs of having a girl’s back.
“Well, Artie, it was very nice twirling with you, but I’d better be going.”
“Please don’t go,” Forrest says, with more intensity than either of us was expecting. Artie looks from her dad’s face to me
and back again. “I mean not on my account. It’s fun to watch you and Artie twirl.”
“Yeah, stay and play!” Artie says, grabbing my hand. “Daddy doesn’t twirl.”
“The thing is I only came here to hide,” I confess to her. “I should probably go back out there.”
“Hide-and-seek!” Artie claps her hands. “I’m the best at hiding. I hid under the couch once and I was so still and quiet that Daddy called the cops!”
“Yeah, well,” Forrest says. “You could have given me a clue on that one, nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“I do like the idea of hiding with you in this folly, Artie,” I tell her.
“Oh no, this isn’t a folly,” Forrest says, looking around. “This is a memorial that Lord Beaumont built for his daughter Eliza.
It’s not finished because her life was unfinished, and it’s full of flowers on his instruction, because she loved to watch
the butterflies. It’s a place for her to come and play.”
“Oh, Eliza,” I say, pressing my palm to my heart as I think of that white face pressed between the banisters of the staircase.
What if the shadow of that little girl has no idea that this garden is waiting here just for her.
“Yes,” Forrest says, scooping a delighted Artie up and tossing her squealing over his shoulder. “It’s hard enough losing one
person that you love. The thought of . . .”
“Hi, you guys!” The beautiful woman that arrived with Artie appears in the doorway. “Don’t you want lunch, Artie?”
“Lunch, I’m starving!” Artie leaps out of Forrest’s arms, races to the woman’s side, and, grabbing her hand, starts to drag
her back towards the castle with speed, shouting over her shoulder, “Hurry up, Daddy!”
“Artie is brilliant,” I tell him with a smile. “Such a happy, confident kid. She obviously gets on really well with . . .”
I don’t know what to call the beautiful woman.
“River,” he says. “Yes, we are both so lucky to have her in our lives. Speaking of which, I better catch up with them . . .”
“Look.” I stop him as he’s about to leave. “I know you and I are about as different as chalk and cheese, but I am never afraid of admitting when I’ve been wrong about something. So, for what’s it worth, I thought what you did with Megan today was really great.”
There are a host of other words that are queuing up to be spoken aloud, “moving,” “important,” and “brave” among them. But
I keep my mouth closed.
“Really?” Forrest asks. “I’m surprised you think so. It wasn’t groundbreaking or world-changing, like your stuff.”
“It might have been for her,” I acknowledge. “I know a bit about being an angry, scared kid, and I think maybe if I’d had
something like your program to turn to, it might have made my life a bit . . . less lonely. So there.”
Forrest takes a couple of steps through the wildflowers towards me, his dark eyes searching out my gaze. And for a moment
I think of the scene in A Room with a View and wonder if he might scoop me into his arms and kiss me before I have time to think about it. He doesn’t though, and I’m
not sure if my heart is racing so fast from relief or anger.
“Can I ask you a question, Ava?” Forrest tilts his head inquisitively.
“Yeah.” I shrug.
“Why am I your nemesis?” He shakes his head, bemused. “What did I do to you? I know it’s not just because you’re science and
I’m arts, I know you’re not that kind of person. So, what did I do?”
“Let’s just put it down to a bad joke,” I say, turning away from him. I don’t want to show Forrest any more pieces of myself.
I don’t want him to know any more of me. It feels like I’ve already given away enough to be dangerous.
“But you aren’t joking.” Forrest catches the lie right away.
Rani always said I didn’t have a poker face.
“Look, I’m not the sort of insecure guy that needs everyone to like me.
That you of all people told me that you saw merit in my work is maybe the greatest compliment I have ever received.
But if I have nemesis status in your head, I think I have the right to know why, and I know you think I should know, but well, I guess I’m that stupid. ”
Maybe it’s that precise word, or the way he squares his shoulders and lifts his chin a little, that rubs me up the wrong way,
or maybe it’s that he combs his tumble of dark curls off his tanned face every other breath, but mostly it’s that it hurts
all over again. Not just the time Forrest put me down, but all the dozens of times I heard that same insult over and over
again, growing up.
“You called me stupid,” I said. “Twice. In front of other people.”
“I most certainly didn’t,” Forrest protests. “I would never . . .”
His refusal to admit his crime is infuriating.
“You most certainly did, and I have a witness,” I insist. “Right after I spilt my wine on you, you said, and I quote, ‘How could you be so stupid?’
When your mic was switched on.”
Forrest claps his hand over his face for a second before pushing his fingers into his hair.
“To me!” he says. “I was saying that to me! I’d had second thoughts about wearing it, because who wears a Renaissance-style
silk shirt to that kind of event, right? But I wanted to honour Gem. So I wore it. And it was a big mistake. Look, I know
I was rude and grumpy, and that was out of order. But I was telling myself that I was stupid, Ava, not you.”
“Oh,” I say, and then after another second, “Well.”
A familiar queasy feeling, the kind I get when I have completely misunderstood a situation, is forming in my gut. But Rani was there too, and she heard what I heard. We both had it all wrong.
“The wine was cold,” Forrest says, “my shirt was ruined, and I was really nervous. It never occurred to me that you’d think
I was talking to you!”
“A lot of people have called me stupid a lot of times,” I tell him. “It’s a word that brings up most of the difficult times
in my life. I react hard to it.”
“I don’t know how anyone could ever call you stupid,” Forrest says. “But I do know that I am really sorry to have caused you
that pain.”
He offers me a conciliatory smile, as I continue to frown at him.
“It’s going to take me a minute to change gears,” I say. “It’s hard to explain, but imagine if that had been Megan that had
walked into you and accidentally got some fizzy orange on you. Imagine that she heard you call her stupid, and it stayed with
her for days, weeks, maybe even forever. And every time she heard those words in her head, she’d feel like a failure all over
again. And that casual hurt might mean she never tries. She never goes to Denmark. She never believes she is worth anything.
Because if a kid hears that enough times, they start to believe it. I know I did.”
Forrest’s face falls.
“Ava . . .”
“There you are.” Hal arrives with a plate laden with sandwiches in one hand and an ice bucket containing soda in the other.
“How brilliant. This is the perfect spot for lunch. Hello, Forrest. Will you be joining us?”
“I won’t.” Forrest looks from Hal to me. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Hal sets the plate down on the ledge in the wall and smiles at me.
“I cut the crusts off, just how you like them. And I made sure there is no tomato in any of them. I know that squishy cold tomato gives you the ick.”
“Thanks, Hal,” I say, suddenly famished and relieved that Forrest has gone.
“Anything for you, Ava,” he says. “Always. So, will you come out for dinner with me tonight? I found an Italian restaurant
that is famous for its generosity with Parmesan.”
I know Hal set out to make himself the perfect man for me, but reader, I think maybe he succeeded.