Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage (20 page)

Geraldine’s jaw was forced open by a weary yawn. ‘I think I might have to go to bed,’ she said.

‘Come on then, I’ll help you,’ said Viv, offering her arm.

In the flowery-scented room down the hallway, Viv turned back the bed cover and shook out Geraldine’s nightdress, whilst she went to the loo. Then Viv helped her undo her blouse and slip it off. She noticed immediately that Geraldine’s shoulders had crescent-shaped silvery scars on them.
Who did that to you, Geraldine
? she stopped herself from asking.

‘I’ll wear a vest tomorrow,’ said Geraldine with a small laugh. ‘I don’t really need a bra. I haven’t got anything to put in it. It’ll make life simpler for us all.’

‘Well, you just have to ask if you need any help,’ said Viv and with a goodnight, she retreated and left Geraldine to rest. She let Pilot out and when he had done what he had to, Viv locked up the house behind her and walked across to the folly. At her door, she turned to look back at Wildflower Cottage and thought that poor Cecilia Leighton would have loved it. She could imagine her excitedly planning her sanctuary, with young Alfred Merlo telling her what was possible and what was not. Could the kitchen catch all the sun in the morning and the flower garden be to the west? Could he make a large window in the gable end so she could view the expanse of the wildflowers? Every stone and brick would have been in place in her heart, even though she never took one real step inside the finished house.

It couldn’t be demolished. The animals couldn’t be sent away from their forever homes. It was wrong, wrong, wrong.

As Viv lay in her bed, her eyes fell on the fat knitted bee at her side. ‘What can I do, EBW? What can I do to stop this from happening?’ But it was a rhetorical question, because she knew.

Chapter 39

Maria had been on a long weekend break and so, that Tuesday morning, she couldn’t wait to catch up with what had been happening with Stel’s love-life. She forced her to have a tea-break before she started work and relished all the details. Stel had the time to do that because she’d come in to work half an hour early, keen to get in, keen to see Ian.

‘The thing with women,’ began Maria, talking between mouthfuls of chocolate digestives, ‘is that they obsess too much. They think that if a man doesn’t ring them straight away then he’s cooled off. They don’t think it might be because they’ve got stuff to do. We always have them buzzing around in the back of our minds whatever we’re doing and they don’t think like that. Men give all their attention to one thing, then they give all their attention to another thing. Women don’t do that, we like to juggle twenty balls in the air at any one time. You should read that book, that . . . you know . . . “Men are from Mars” thing. It tells you all about men being elastic bands and how woman have to back off whilst their fellas are out stretching. Makes a lot of sense.’

‘Anyway, all is well now.’ Stel let out a long, contented sigh of relief. ‘We’re having lunch together in the garden. I would have seen him last night had it not been his mother’s birthday and he was spending the evening with her.’

Maria scrunched down her eyebrows in confusion. ‘His mum’s dead, Stel. I remember him telling us at his interview. She died in a hospice last year.’

‘Are you sure?’ Though Stel knew that Maria had a memory like an elephant. She felt a cold prickle at the back of her head.

‘Absolutely.’ Then Maria clicked her fingers. ‘Maybe he meant he was going to put some flowers on her grave.’

Stel reached back into her memory trying to retrieve the conversation. He’d said he was going to spend some time with her. He didn’t say he was taking her out for a meal. The prickle subsided. He must have meant that he was paying his respects to her. Possible crisis averted. The warning flag dropped.

Maria’s pager started bleeping. ‘Right, I better get to it,’ she said, slotting her mug into the dishwasher. ‘Enjoy your lunch in the sunshine. Make sure you don’t sit too near to his peonies.’

‘You’re too dirty to be a head nurse,’ laughed Stel, checking her watch. From the expectancy frothing around inside her stomach, she might as well have been back at school again waiting for the school football captain to walk past her in the corridor.

Chapter 40

The morning didn’t start off very well for Viv. She walked into the cottage to find Heath stomping from one side of the room to the other with a letter clutched in his hand. He looked like a captive lion who couldn’t wait to break out between the bars and claw the zookeeper to death. Her breezy, ‘Good morning,’ did not go down well.

‘Trust me, this is not a good morning,’ he said.

At least Pilot was pleased to see her, she thought as the big dog pushed his nose into the hand she had already cupped for him, and Piccolo cawed enthusiastically at her from his stance on the bread board. She’d even have taken her chances with Bub this morning, more than she would with Heath.

Heath explained to her then, in words almost spat out, that a solicitor’s letter had arrived by Special Delivery outlining the recent case of assault which Mr Nicholas and Miss Antonia Leighton had suffered at the hands of a Wildflower Cottage employee. Luckily, no action would be taken on this particular occasion but the matter would be reported to the police and the incident would remain on record.

Viv tried to look suitably contrite, but the seriousness of the situation was having the opposite effect on her. She found that she had to work really hard at keeping her face straight.

‘You seem to think this is amusing, Miss Blackbird,’ Heath snapped at her.

‘I don’t,’ she protested and promptly burst into laughter. The fact that Heath was staring at her with his mouth open and eyes that said, ‘you’re mad’ just added fuel to the flames.

‘What on earth is wrong with you?’

Viv’s face was in her hands. She couldn’t control herself. Boy did she need this laughter. More than he could ever know. When she started drying her eyes she saw that his mouth was twitching. She had infected him, but he was fighting hard against it.

‘It’s like having a letter from the bank saying you’re a million pounds in debt when you haven’t got a bean,’ explained Viv. ‘Then just when you’ve got your head around that, you read that they’ve charged you twenty-five quid for telling you. There comes a point when things can’t get any worse.’

‘That’s so comforting,’ said Heath. ‘Remind me to recommend you as a therapist to the clinically depressed.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Viv, recovering. ‘I wasn’t trying to make light of anything.’

‘The Leightons can always make things worse, Vivienne,’ said Heath.

The vs were soft, the emphasis on the last syllable. Then Viv realised with some sort of horror she was actually analysing how he said her name. That was something her mother would have done.

Heath looked at the letter again. Viv saw his enchanted-forest eyes follow the words then he ripped the paper savagely.

‘Come on. Let’s get to work. We’ll start with the birds first this morning.’

She waited outside whilst he went to the feed store. Or rather stomped. He stomped in and stomped back out. He was in a very stompy mood, she thought, and because it was her that had put him in it, she would make a determined effort to keep a low profile from now on. She’d be obedient and not-nosy Viv. So she didn’t make a fuss about going into the aviaries and cleaning them. Not even scary Ursula’s. Viv hoped that Ursula would remember that she liked her. Although why a bird would take to her was anyone’s guess. Couldn’t it smell her fear a mile off?

Ursula gave Viv her chuck-chuck noise and nodded her head. It looked as if she was bowing in reverence. Heath looked impressed.

‘Snowy owls are really belligerent. Bowing her head means she has to take her eyes off you. It’s part of her mating ritual.’

‘Oh God forbid she wants to mate with me,’ said Viv. ‘Imagine what the children would look like.’

She had a moment of clarity as if she were viewing the scene from above.

I’m in a closed cage with a huge scary bird and it fancies me.

Heath opened the aviary door and handed her the large glove he’d brought with him.

‘Put this on. Left hand.’

‘What for?’

‘Just do it,’ Heath insisted. ‘I want to try something.’

He wanted to try and wreak his revenge for that solicitor’s letter, Viv considered. He was going to encourage Ursula to peck out her eyes.

Heath passed her a small piece of meat. ‘Just hold it towards her. She’s already shown you that she’s starting to trust you. No scary eye contact – from you, that is. She can do what she wants.’

Viv had a couple of false starts in extending her hand and keeping it there.

‘Good,’ called Heath. ‘She’s letting you get close.’

Viv stretched until she couldn’t reach any higher. Her hand was within the bird’s reach. Viv watched Ursula’s mist-white face lower to her glove, snatch the meat and swallow it and she felt far more moved than she had ever imagined she would, given that it had never been on her list of life’s to-dos to hand feed an owl a piece of dead animal.

‘Wow,’ she said, and the word carried true wonderment.

‘Well, I don’t know why Ursula has picked you to bestow her affections upon, but she has, so we have to use you,’ said Heath, rubbing his chin in amazement.

He hasn’t given up, thought Viv. If he had he wouldn’t think it worth wasting time on encouraging Ursula to bond with someone.

Wildflower Cottage was worth fighting for. Viv really wished she didn’t care about it as much as she was beginning to.

Chapter 41

No man had ever been to the trouble of making a picnic for Stel. She’d got to the stage in her life when she would have sworn that men weren’t capable of such thoughtfulness. Women were – her daughter searched high and low to find presents for her that she’d love and her friends were always there for her. Caro once brought her a home-made cake ‘for medicinal purposes’ when Viv was having another operation on her back. And Caro hated baking. But though she’d been thrilled and touched by it, it hadn’t sent cataclysmic pulses through her body the way that Ian Robson’s picnic basket did.

She’d been like a jelly when he called into the kitchen at twelve and asked if ‘madam was ready for her lunch’. He had crooked his arm for her taking and led her out to the bench in the far corner of the garden where a wicker basket sat. There, individually wrapped in cling film, was a selection of ham and pickle, egg mayo, cheese and tomato sandwiches, sausage rolls and mini-scotch eggs and a small cake that appeared not to have risen very well. He’d brought a couple of bottles of sparkling peach-flavoured water to wash it all down with. Stel hated peaches, but she didn’t say that. Actually, it tasted very nice, probably because it was ‘Ian’s peach-flavoured water’ and that seemed to alter her taste-buds so they accepted it.

‘Seems ages since we saw each other,’ said Ian, giving Stel a wide smile and an unblinking stare that made her cheeks start to heat up. ‘I missed you yesterday. It was pretty mad at work.’

It didn’t look very mad when you were flirting with Minging Meredith
, thought Stel. But then, maybe she had just happened to spot him having the only minute’s breather he had all day.
Still, it would only have taken a few seconds to pop in and say hello . . .
Stel forced that thought right out of her brain. It was as if a nasty little imp was trying to spoil things for her. That same imp led her to the subject that had nipped at her all morning.

‘Did . . . did last night go all right?’ asked Stel. ‘With your mum.’

‘Well, there wasn’t much conversation going on,’ said Ian, looking down sadly at his sandwich.

Stel felt ashamed that she’d brought it up to test him. She’d put him off, if she weren’t careful. ‘This is lovely,’ she said. ‘Cheese and tomato sandwiches are my favourite.’

‘I’m hardly Charlton Heston or whatever that chef’s called,’ grinned Ian.

‘Thank God for that,’ smiled Stel. ‘He’s not my type.’

Ian leaped on her answer. ‘Oh, so you’re saying I am, are you?’

Stel floundered on a response, not wanting to disagree, not wanting to give too much away. It made him laugh that she stuttered, like the ‘yes-no Jim’ on
The Vicar of Dibley
.

Ian tilted his head towards the sun. ‘I love the sun,’ he said, closing his eyes, letting the heat settle on his skin. Stel studied his profile and thought he was very good-looking from the side. If she could have drawn a picture of her ideal man, it wouldn’t have matched him, but it didn’t matter. Her ideal man wouldn’t have had such a thin mouth, and his eyes would have been bigger and not so close together. He would have had broader shoulders, protective arms, and chunkier thighs, but yet it was Ian who had occupied all her thoughts over the past days.

Without warning, or moving from his position, Ian said: ‘I can’t wait to kiss you, Stelly.’

He might as well have pressed a detonator for a pile of dynamite in Stel’s insides.

‘Wha . . . at?’

‘You heard,’ he said, opening one eye, giving her a glance and then resuming his sun-bathing position. ‘Now, when am I going to see you again after this?’

Tonight, tonight, tonight
. . . voices screamed inside her. No, she needed to think, to plan. She needed space to get her head together – and clean the house.

‘Erm . . .’ she pretended to be cool. ‘What about . . . tomorrow. I could cook something. Pasta? Or do you like risotto?’

Ian turned his face to her. ‘I love pasta,’ he said slowly and convincingly. ‘I’ll bring wine. Do you prefer white or red?’

‘Any. White, red, green, brown . . .’ Stel trilled a chuckle. Outside she was calm and smiling, inside she was a panicking mess with an overworking brain. Wine? Did that mean he wasn’t planning to drive home? Would he get a taxi? Would she let him stay?

Ian stole a glance at his watch.

‘I suppose I’d better get back to work,’ he said. ‘Have you finished?’ He picked up the two sandwiches which hadn’t been eaten. ‘Do you want a doggy bag?’

‘I’m full,’ said Stel. ‘That was lovely, Ian. A proper treat.’

‘A proper treat for a proper lady.’ Ian smiled.