Chapter 22 #2
‘Is she giving you a hard time?’ I asked quietly, in case she was in the vicinity.
‘You could say that,’ he said, as his gaze flicked towards the sunroom. ‘She’s in fine spirits and I blame you for that.’
‘Me,’ I frowned. ‘But I haven’t talked to her about our… situation. I told you I wouldn’t.’
James shook his head. ‘I know that,’ he said quickly. ‘I was trying to be funny. What I meant was you’ve aided her recovery so well that she’s ready to step into the ring with me.’
‘Oh.’ I smiled sheepishly. ‘I see. Sorry.’
‘A bit of nail polish seems to have given her a new lease of life.’
‘Shush,’ I grinned. ‘She might hear you and then you’ll be in for even more of a battering.’
‘I’ll be all right.’ He laughed quietly and I wished we could always be like this. ‘I’m sure I’ll survive long enough for us to meet later.’
Buddy bounded up and I bent down to give him a fuss and kissed the top of his smooth, domed head.
‘Do you want to come here when you’re done?’ I suggested, as I straightened up again. ‘We’ll be out of earshot inside.’
‘I was thinking we could meet at the woods,’ James proposed instead, and it was a total surprise. ‘Given that it’s the place that’s the cause of all our problems, it should be the woods, shouldn’t it? And we’ll definitely be out of earshot there.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed, but I wasn’t sure my heart was going to be able to cope with the combination of him and the place I’d come to love as the setting for our talk.
‘I’ll see if I can find the key to the cabin,’ James leant in and whispered as we heard the sunroom door open. ‘And we can talk in there.’
‘Your aunt has already given me the key,’ I whispered back, and his face changed.
I wasn’t sure how to read his expression. Obviously, he was relieved that he wouldn’t have to sneakily look for the key, but he didn’t appear thrilled that I already had it.
‘That makes life easier then,’ he said. ‘Shall we say seven or thereabouts?’
‘James!’ came Constance’s voice, making us both jump. ‘Are you coming or not?’
‘I’ll meet you there at seven,’ I told him.
He whistled for Buddy, who had run off again, and then headed back to the house for round two.
I had been sitting down by the river when I heard James and Buddy leaving Fernside and checked the time on my phone.
It was only a little after five, so I guessed he must have had things to do before we met at the woods.
Either that, or he was making a bid for freedom to escape Constance.
I snuck back up to the apartment hoping she wouldn’t now come and find me.
She didn’t, and a few minutes before the agreed time, I set off for the woods.
My heart felt heavy as I pulled up next to James’s car. I hadn’t visited the woods since he’d told me they were off the market, and I knew this could well be the very last time I saw them. I spotted James and Buddy on the other side of the gate and climbed out of my car.
‘I came down early so we could have a look around,’ James beamed at me and roughed up Buddy’s coat.
They both looked thrilled to be there, and the tiredness James had carried with him back from Cambridge seemed to have all but disappeared.
‘Are you making up for all the indoor hours this week?’ I swallowed and tried to match his enthusiasm. ‘You’ve come to the right place if you are.’
‘Exactly that!’ he nodded eagerly. ‘Isn’t it glorious here?’
The temptation to tell him that the feeling he was experiencing was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to offer to others as part of my business was almost overwhelming, but I reined myself in.
These were James’s family woods, so he should have the opportunity to tell me why he didn’t want his aunt to part with them before I told him what I wanted to do with them.
‘Utterly,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll just get my jumper and climb over.’
I had my notebook in the car too, but I hadn’t yet decided whether to take that.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘but I need to climb back over first, because there’s some things I need to get out of my car.’
‘What things?’ I asked.
‘You’ll see,’ he smiled. ‘Just a few essentials.’
The essentials turned out to be a blanket and some cushions I recognised from the Fernside supper parties, and a box full of picnic food and some elderflower fizz.
‘I went to the store,’ he said, and I wondered who had served him. ‘I thought we could have a picnic in the cabin like Mum and I used to when the nursery was closed. What do you think? Are you up for that?’
‘Beats sitting in my car,’ I said, over the lump in my throat as I imagined him and his mum sharing simple but special moments together.
In my experience, it was the little things that made for the happiest and most treasured memories.
I could still remember the upsurge of joy I had felt during a school Christmas performance when I spotted Mum sitting in the third row of the audience.
Seeing her face smiling up at me and looking so proud gave me the confidence I needed to belt out my single line in the play, and I could still recall the blissful sensation of seeing her there, even after all these years.
‘A definite upgrade,’ he said and practically sprang over the gate while Buddy belly crawled back underneath. ‘I take it the padlock’s rusted shut. I’ll get that sorted.’
I began to feel torn in two. It was wonderful to see the version of James I’d started to fall in love with putting in an appearance again, but the fact that the change in him was the result of time spent in Willowell Woods didn’t bode well for me. I decided my notebook should stay in the car.
‘I have been back to the woods quite recently,’ James told me as I fumbled with the key in the cabin lock and wondered when exactly, ‘but I haven’t been in here because I haven’t got my own key.’
‘Well,’ I said as I finally got the lock to turn, ‘obviously, I haven’t done anything in here other than have a look around.’
I shoved the door, which seemed to finally be getting used to being opened again. It barely protested and Buddy shot in ahead of us and began doing laps, his claws scrabbling for purchase on the wooden floor.
‘Feel familiar, Buddy?’ James laughed, as he followed me inside. ‘Can you close the door again, Tilly? Just in case he decides to run off and we have to go and find him.’
I closed the door, spread out the blanket and cushions, which Buddy then ruffled up, then pretended to be engrossed in something on my phone while James reacquainted himself with the cabin.
‘It smells just the same,’ he said, when he came out of the office holding a plant catalogue with curled up pages. ‘I can’t remember the last time the fire was lit, but it made it so cosy in here in the winter.’
‘I bet,’ I smiled.
I hadn’t thought about the cabin decorated for Christmas, and now, imagining how perfect it could be, didn’t really want to.
‘Shall we eat?’ James asked. ‘I’m starving. Arguments always give me an appetite.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said, as I joined him on the blanket. ‘Was it really bad?’
‘Yeah,’ he said and looked far less happy than he had been. ‘It was really bad.’
We sat close together and again my mind kept doing that annoying thing where it veered off and imagined that James and I were just a regular couple without this nightmare of a situation hanging over us.
Consequently, I didn’t eat much, even though the spread was wonderful and I knew it was tasty because Melody had baked much of it.
‘Are you not hungry?’ James asked as he wolfed down a sausage roll and shared a little of the filling with Buddy.
‘Not really,’ I confessed.
He looked at me for a moment, and his brow furrowed.
‘Oh my god, I’m a total pig!’ he then proclaimed loudly and I laughed in spite of myself. ‘I’m so sorry, Tilly.’
‘What for?’
‘For being so excited to be back here, even though Aunt Constance has been chewing my backside off about it for the last few hours. I didn’t consider for one second that this is the last place you would want to be when I suggested it. I’m an idiot!’
‘At least you’re self-aware,’ I said teasingly, and he shook his head. ‘In spite of the fact that you’ve been rowing with your aunt, does your excitement and happiness to be here mean that she’s changed her mind about selling?’
‘No,’ he huffed. ‘Not yet.’
Given his obvious pleasure to be back and the happiness the woods had evoked in him, Constance digging her heels in didn’t make me as happy as it might have done if he’d been a stranger whom I knew nothing about.
‘In that case,’ I said, as I shifted my position to get more comfortable and pushed my plate of food away, ‘I think it’s time for you to tell me why you want her to back down.’
‘Well,’ James sighed softly and I sensed a change in him, ‘I get the feeling that you’ve guessed most of it.’
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘I think I have, but I would like to hear the whole of it from you.’
‘Okay,’ he said and ran his hands through his hair. ‘So, as you know, the cabin is here because my mum ran a woodland nursery from this site.’
‘Yes, I have heard a little about that.’
‘And Willowell Woods is the place that she instilled in me this passionate love to be outdoors that I’ve never set aside, not even when I’ve been in the city for weeks on end.’
He sounded as if he’d done far better than I had in the past at maintaining the connection.
‘And this place is full of memories,’ he continued.
‘Such happy ones. All the best times Mum and I had together, we had here. Even when she got sick, we used to come here and walk among the trees and pretend she wasn’t ill.
I think the woods actually did stop her feeling poorly for a while.
It felt magical then and it still does now, our own little bubble where time stood still and nothing could hurt us… ’
His words trailed off, and I could see he was close to tears.
‘Oh James.’ I swallowed.