Chapter Three
With her groceries stashed in the front basket, Imogen cycled slowly back along the lane. She felt strangely leaden again—an
odd and profound fatigue that had made a habit of enveloping her with little warning.
Pedaling idly to save her strength, she basked in the sunshine. There was a fresh breeze and a soapy, washing-day smell from
the cow parsley that foamed over the bank to her left. She was dimly aware of the rushing brook beside the road, the sound
of the water getting louder and louder until eventually it was a roar, filling her ears and blocking out her thoughts.
Then she caught the sound of someone shouting through the din.
“Move, you stupid woman, for God’s sake... Move!”
The sun went in. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the reason. Just feet away was a huge tractor, its massive wheels towering above her. One more half turn, and she would be dragged underneath them. Instinctively, she threw herself sideways into the cow parsley, landing with a thud that emptied the air from her lungs. Dazed, and with her bike and shopping piled on top of her, she lay on the bank, looking up at the sky. Suddenly, the sun was blocked out again, this time by an unshaven, dark-tanned face contorted with rage.
“What-the-bloody-hell-in-the-name-of-God-do-you-think-you-were-doing?” he bellowed in a continuous roar of fury, pulling the
bike off her and flinging it into the hedgerow. She cowered, speechless and terrified. He crouched and ran his hands over
her limbs gently, assessing, like she had seen people do with horses’ legs.
“Are you hurt?” He didn’t stop for a reply. “You bloody should be—it might teach you a lesson. Jesus Christ, have you got
some sort of death wish?”
A thought obviously struck him.
“Are. You. Deaf?” he mouthed emphatically at her, looking intently at her face for signs of comprehension.
“No. I. Am. Not,” she replied crossly, pushing him off and scrambling to her feet, relieved to discover that life and limb
were still intact.
“Okay. You’re not deaf. That leaves me with no clue at all why you didn’t get the hell out of the way,” he said, slightly
less furiously than before.
“That’s rich!” Imogen said, irritated at the hysterical squeak in her voice. She drew herself up to her full height and was
even more irritated to find herself still only addressing the third button of the man’s shirt. Tilting her head back to look
him in the eye, she said, with an attempt at dignity, “I think I am perfectly entitled to ride my bike along a perfectly...
perfectly...”
Horrified, Imogen realized she was going to cry; even worse, her legs seemed to have suddenly turned to liquid and she was on the verge of slumping humiliatingly to the ground.
Clearly realizing this, the man grabbed her again, this time firmly around the waist, with both hands. She gasped and looked
up into his face, her eyes swimming. For an insane moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. For an even more insane moment,
she wanted him to. Very much. They stared into each other’s eyes until Imogen, blinking back the tears, looked away, blushing.
“Come on,” he said, giving his head a little shake as if to empty it of an unwelcome thought. “I’ll take you home.”
Without warning, he swung her off her feet and hoisted her into the tractor cab towering above them, seemingly without any
effort at all. She scrambled away from him onto the far end of the bench seat and sat, sniffing and mortified, as he gathered
up her shopping for her and then walked around to the other side and pulled himself up beside her. Wordlessly, he passed her
the repacked shopping bag, followed by a surprisingly pristine cotton handkerchief.
“Not far to go,” he said.
“How do you know?” she said, wiping her eyes. “I haven’t told you where I live.”
“I’m assuming it’s Storybook Cottage,” he replied. “I recognized the bicycle. Talking of which, I’ll pick it up later and
drop it back to you.”
She sneaked a glance at him as they trundled the short distance to the house. He was tall—at least six foot two inches—and long-limbed. Late thirties, Imogen guessed, with dark brown wavy hair curling onto the collar of his frayed cotton shirt, sleeves rolled up to reveal surprisingly muscular forearms, out of scale with the rest of his lean body. He had heavy eyebrows and deep-set brown eyes and was still scowling thunderously. She didn’t want to kiss him anymore, she decided.
Drawing up outside the house, and leaving the tractor blocking the lane, he took Imogen’s groceries from her and, without
glancing back, walked in through the unlocked front door, leaving Imogen to scramble down, which was fortunately easier than
climbing up. Following him into the house, Imogen saw him disappear into the kitchen, where he dumped the bag on the table.
“You had better have a hot bath,” he said. “You’ll be good and stiff in a few hours if you don’t.”
“Fat chance with no hot water,” she blurted, thrown by his familiarity with her and, obviously, with the house.
“What’s the matter with the immersion heater?” he asked.
“What immersion heater?” said Imogen, feeling silly yet again. “I only moved in last night. I haven’t really had a chance
to get things sorted out.”
“Right—well,” he replied, with barely concealed impatience, “there’s an immersion heater for the hot water in the bathroom
cupboard. Mind you, you will need to switch it on,” he said, giving her a scathing look. “Obviously that’s just for the summer,”
he went on. “In the winter you’ll probably be using the range,” he said, indicating the hulk of black metal that Imogen had
been regarding so dubiously that morning.
Like hell I will, she thought.
“It does the heating and the hot water,” he explained. “You can cook on it too, of course. You’ll probably need to get in some more coal, but there’s no rush. Anyway, if you’re okay, I’ll go. And for God’s sake, keep your wits about you in future. By the way, my name’s Gabriel—from Middlemass Hall.”
With these words, he was gone, leaving Imogen feeling inefficient, foolish, and generally a bit dim. Had he realized she had
wanted him to kiss her? Hopefully not. How embarrassing! What on earth was the matter with her? With that, she went upstairs
with visions of long soaks in steaming hot baths, all thoughts of breakfast temporarily forgotten.
The still-packed boxes in every room seemed to multiply rather than diminish. Weeks after moving in, there was still a pile
of them in the hallway that Imogen stubbed her toe on with monotonous regularity. One morning, Imogen had a word with herself
and rolled up her sleeves. After two hours spent unpacking boxes, she looked a mess and itched with dirt. Her hair was escaping
in corkscrew tendrils from its hasty ponytail, and her hands were filthy with newsprint from the old papers she had used for
wrapping all the china and glass.
Nigel’s Villeroy here, I’ve written it on a card for you. Is that all right?”
The nurse took samples and asked questions with brisk efficiency. By the time Imogen got back to the house, it was just after five o’clock, the sun was low, slanting in through the high windows and flooding the house with golden light. After a cup of tea and some toast, Imogen, relieved at putting some responsibility for herself into the hands of someone else, felt overwhelmingly relaxed and even sleepy. She trailed up to her attic bedroom for a brief rest before supper, fell asleep immediately, and did not wake until the following morning.