Anything but Vanilla... (14 page)

‘What about Nancy?’

‘She doesn’t have the business qualifications.’

‘Maybe she should go back to school and get them. Knickerbocker Gloria could sponsor her.’

‘You are unbelievable, do you know that?’ She gave him a hug. ‘The loveliest man in the world.’

‘On the subject of lovely men,’ he said, ‘when will Alexander be back from the States?’

‘He won’t be.’ She turned away, so that he wouldn’t see how hard it was to say that. ‘He needs to get back to work and he’s travelling straight on to Pantabalik from San Francisco.’

‘Well, I suppose that makes sense. But Graeme is history?’ She nodded. ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose. I’ve nothing against him,’ he added quickly. ‘I’ll miss his advice. But he was never right for you.’

‘You didn’t say anything.’

‘Some things you have to find out for yourself.’

‘I must be a slow learner.’

‘No, my dear. There was no one else to show you how it should be.’

‘No...’ She swallowed, rather afraid that there would be no one else now she knew... ‘I suggested he take Ria to the opera,’ she said.

‘Did you now?’ He laughed. ‘Well, she’ll certainly shake the creases out of his pants. How’s the ice cream coming along?’

‘It’s just about perfect,’ she replied, offering him a taste.

‘That’ll put some heat into their tango.’

‘You think? Great.’ She swallowed. ‘And I’ve created an ice of my own to go with it.’ She took a fresh spoon and offered it to him. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, watching nervously as he tasted it.

‘Oh, well, that’s fun. What did you put in it?’

‘Popping candy,’ she said.

* * *

Alexander would have loved to find and name an orchid for Sorrel. But he wasn’t in South America so he was searching the Internet for
Cattleya walkeriana ‘Blue Moon’,
a rare, delicate pale blue orchid.

At the checkout he was asked if he wanted to add a message and typed, ‘I saw this and thought of you.’

A few days later he received a text from her. ‘Thanks, it’s beautiful. Did you know that the next blue moon is only a year away? Or three, depending on how you define it.’

‘Let’s go with the first definition,’ he suggested. ‘How’s the new project?’

‘Keeping me busy, but I thought of you and made this. I think it needs something else—any ideas?’

It was an ice-cream recipe. Milk, cream, sugar, popping candy...

He pulled out the T-shirt she’d been wearing that last night and held it to his face. Grass, fresh air, vanilla, strawberries swamped him with an overload of ideas, none of which he was prepared to commit to the Internet.

‘Passion fruit.’ He added a photograph of a huge blue butterfly sipping nectar from a tropical bloom and tapped, ‘Just so you know that it’s not all mosquitoes.’

* * *

Sorrel spread out Geli’s designs for the new retro-look Knickerbocker Gloria.

‘I’ve gone for classic nineteen-fifties Americana styling,’ she said. ‘Apparently they are the new “cool” in the States. I’ve sent you some URLs to check out.’

She’d put her phone on the table and when it pinged to alert her to an incoming message she stared at it.

‘Do you want to get that?’ Geli asked.

Yes, yes, yes... ‘It will keep,’ she said, turning to her laptop and clicking on the URL to a restored soda bar in New York.

‘They do alcoholic ones?’ she asked, a whole new level of opportunities opening up before her.

‘When I was in Italy last year I was taken to an ice-cream parlour that served up seriously adults-only ices.’

‘If we could get a licence, it would make a great venue for hen nights,’ Elle chipped in.

‘I’ll check it out.’

Once they’d gone, Sorrel read Alexander’s message, touched a silky blue petal on her orchid, held his T-shirt to her face.

She made herself wait two days before she replied. ‘The passion fruit was perfect. How do you do that, Postcard Man? Great butterfly, by the way. If the moths are that big, I’m amazed you have any clothes left.’

‘Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to grow cabbages around here. How is the franchise plan coming along?’

‘That’s for the long term. We have to prove the idea first.’ She attached Geli’s design. ‘This is the image we’re going for.’

‘Pure Norman Rockwell. Does Ria approve?’

‘We’re working on her.’

Alexander eased off his backpack, stretched his muscles, turned on his phone hoping for a message from Sorrel. After a long hard trek, it was like coming home to a kiss...

We’re working on her?

‘Who is we?’ he dashed off and then wished he hadn’t. He sounded jealous. Hell, he
was
jealous of anyone who was with her. Could Graeme be back on the scene?

He had to wait a day for her reply— ‘Michael came back with her. He wants to see where he came from. Where you come from. He looks a lot like you, only less battered.’

‘The knocks are collisions with experience. Michael is still a baby.’

‘Keep away from experience, Alexander, it’s bad for your health and rots your clothes. Any closer to finding the elusive plant?’

‘Not yet, but there are plenty of others with potential. I sent a package of specimens back to the lab last week.’

‘That’s the way it goes. You’re saving lives, I’m making ice cream.’

‘Every life needs ice cream, Sorrel.’

And so it continued. Every day there was some small thing to make him think, make him smile, make him wish he could reach out and gather her in. Feel her in his arms, smell her hair, her skin, taste her strawberry lips.

He sent her photographs of the plants he’d found, the shy people who lived in the forest, a shack by the river where he’d made camp, the perfect white postcard curve of beach he’d found when they’d been near the coast.

‘Swam, baked a fish I caught over a fire and slept beneath the stars.’ And, instead of simply enjoying the moment as he would have done before he met her, he longel for Sorrel to be there to share it with him.

‘It looks blissful. I’m glad you had a few days out to rest. Michael has taken Ria back to the States for a couple of weeks, lucky thing. It’s raining cats and dogs, here. Very bad for business.’

Julia had only ever asked when he was coming home. Ria only sent him messages when she needed something. Sorrel was different.

She asked what he was doing, what he’d found, how he’d managed to dry out his socks after heavy rain. He’d begun to rely on that moment at the end of a gruelling day when he could put his feet up and be with her for a moment.

‘Make the most of it,’ he suggested. ‘Have a puddle-jumping moment.’ He grinned as he hit send, hoping that she’d send a picture. He’d bet the farm that she wore pink wellington boots.

There was no picture. For the first time in weeks there was no message from Sorrel waiting for him at the end of the day.

It was some hang-up in cyberspace, he knew, and yet the absence of that moment of warmth, of connection when he returned to camp, left him feeling strangely empty. Cold despite the steamy heat...

As if a goose had walked over his grave.

He shook off the feeling. She was busy. KG was being refitted. She had a business to run, a million more important things to do than keep him amused, but sleep, normally not a problem, eluded him.

When there was no message the following day the cold intensified to a small freezing spot deep inside him and he began to imagine every kind of disaster.

He knew it was stupid.

She lived in a quiet village in the softest of English countryside. She wasn’t going to find herself face-to-face with a poisonous snake in Longbourne. The only plant life that could cause her pain would be a brush with a stinging nettle and the mosquitoes weren’t carrying malaria.

She could have had an accident, his subconscious prodded, refusing to be quieted. A multi-car pile-up in bad weather on the ring road—she’d said it had been raining hard.

She could be in a coma in Intensive Care and why would anyone bother to call him?

He tapped in, ‘Missing your messages. Everything okay?’ Then hesitated. He was overreacting. If anything was wrong, Ria would let him know.

Maybe.

But no one knew how he felt about her. He hadn’t known himself until the possibility that she might not be waiting for him when he eventually turned up hit him like a hurricane.

No...

He deleted the message unsent; she was probably taking his advice and making the most of the moment. He hadn’t asked her to wait for him. He hadn’t wanted her to. He couldn’t handle the burden of expectation that involved.

He hit the sack, but didn’t sleep and after an hour he checked his inbox, again. Around one in the morning—lunchtime in Longbourne—he gave up and rang her mobile, telling himself that he just wanted to be sure that she was okay.

His call went straight to voicemail and the moment he heard her voice telling him she couldn’t answer right now but if he left a message she’d get back to him, he knew he was kidding himself.

He wanted to hold her, wanted to be with her, wanted to talk to her but he was cut off, disconnected, out on a limb. It was the place he’d chosen to be. Right now, though, it felt as if someone were sawing through the branch and he were falling...

Sorrel had become part of his life and, without noticing, he’d begun to take it for granted that she always would be. The truth, hitting him up the side of the head, was that he couldn’t imagine a day passing without her being a part of it. Couldn’t imagine his life without her...

‘Alex...’ his research assistant, an Aussie PhD student taking a year out to do field work, stuck his head around the hut door ‘...one of the runners has brought in something you’ll want to see.’

It was a leaf from the plant he’d been hunting for three years.

‘It’s not a myth,’ he said, touching it briefly. Then he looked up. ‘Go with him, Peter. You know what to do.’

‘Me? This is your big moment, man!’

‘It doesn’t matter who brings it in,’ he said, throwing his things into a bag. ‘I’m going home.’

‘You’ve got a family emergency?’

‘Something like that.’

* * *

‘I can’t believe you’ve been working here on your own all weekend, Sorrel. What happened to the Jackson brothers?’

Sorrel eased her aching shoulder.

‘Their mother was rushed into hospital on Thursday and I didn’t have anything to do.’ Well, apart from puddle-jumping and that was no fun on your own. ‘It was just the finishing touches.’

She stood back, rubbing the inside of her arm against her cheek. It came away smeared with paint and she used the hem of Alexander’s T-shirt to wipe it off her face. She’d worn it on purpose, wanting the paint to obliterate his scent.

She had to stop sleeping with it tucked under her pillow so that she could catch his scent. Had to stop sending him little texts to keep him close and had to stop checking her inbox every five minutes, stop living for his replies.

She had to stop kidding herself that he would expect her to be waiting for him when he came back. He’d never even hinted that he wanted her to wait. On the contrary, he’d made it plain that he wasn’t interested in that kind of commitment and his last message had been a wake up call.

He’d been honest with her. The least she could do was be honest with herself.

She had to live now, not for some fleeting blue moon moment that might never happen.

‘Are you okay, Sorrel? You look...’ Elle hesitated. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll clean up here and then I’m going to walk home.’

‘Walk?’

‘It’s stopped raining. The fresh air will blow away the cobwebs.’

‘And the smell of paint.’

‘That, too.’

* * *

It was late afternoon when the taxi pulled up in front of Gable End. Alexander paid the driver and walked around to the rear of the house. Midge greeted him with enthusiasm. The new puppy attacked his boots. He picked him up, tucked him under his arm and walked into the kitchen.

Basil looked round from the stove and beamed with pleasure. ‘Alexander! Sorrel didn’t say you were coming.’

‘It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Is she here?’

‘She’s been working at KG’s all weekend. Putting the finishing touches.’

‘On her own?’

‘That’s what she wanted. Elle just dropped in to see how she was doing. Apparently she’s decided to walk home. Needs the fresh air.’

‘I’ll go and meet her.’

* * *

The river was running fast, the ducks had taken to the bank and there was no one out on the water. She had the towpath puddles to herself.

She hadn’t replied to Alexander’s suggestion she jump in one and he hadn’t sent another. Clearly he’d felt obliged to respond to hers and she had been making more of it than it was.

It was time to send him one that would let him off the hook, one that conveyed the message that she’d enjoyed chatting with him long distance but she had to get on with the life she had, not the one that shimmered in the distance like a mirage.

It was time to seize the fish.

* * *

Alexander rounded the bend of the towpath and saw Sorrel standing fifty or so yards ahead, looking down at the phone in her hand.

She was wearing an old pair of paint-splattered jeans and one of his T-shirts, her hair was tied up in a scarf, there was a streak of blue paint on her cheek and he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

He’d covered half the ground between them before she looked up and in that second, before she could hide behind the killer smile, he knew that nothing could ever beat this. This coming home to the woman he loved, who loved him...

‘Alexander...’ Now the smile was back. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I hated to think of you puddle-jumping on your own.’

‘You flew halfway round the world to jump in a puddle?’

‘No, I flew halfway round the world to jump in a puddle with you—’

And there it was again, a fleeting moment when she was emotionally naked and this time he didn’t wait for her to fix the smile back in place but reached out for her, sliding his fingers through her hair, drawing her close to him.