Falling For You (9 page)

‘Perhaps you are one of those who’d do as well to stay clear of it, after all.’

‘I’m sorry, all right?’ Pilgrim is still on his knees in the snow, begging me to get him some help. ‘I didn’t mean nothing by what I just said. Just … phone someone. I’m in pain, woman.’

‘Phone who?’  I can’t see an ambulance coming up here under these conditions. Besides, from his voice he doesn’t sound so much hurt as he does angry and scared. I stand back for a minute, considering; what the hell am I supposed to do now? I’ve no inclination to waste time rescuing this obnoxious git, but if he really is in medical difficulties then I can’t just leave him, can I? Even Tosser the dog has run off. Dammit. Though if he calls me
woman
one more time he really is going to have to take his chances alone …

‘Well, will you
look
where the man’s got to?’ Two well-muffled figures come up the path behind us now - a large man and a girl. The feeling of dread that they might be more Macraes dissolves instantly as I recognise Shona’s red bobble hat that I gave her last Christmas.

‘I have never, ever in my life been so glad to see anyone …’ I tell her feelingly as she comes up for a frozen hug.

‘Dad needed to come up here to borrow a specialist wrench from Mr Macrae.’ My old friend explains. ‘Some posh guy in a Bentley broke down with all the family in the car and they begged Dad to get some emergency repairs done. Pilgrim was supposed to bring the wrench down and meet us on the hill …’ she’s still looking at me in frank bewilderment, ‘Otherwise there’s no way we’d have been up here, Rose.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ she nods her head in Pilgrim’s direction and pulls an unsympathetic face. She’s already heard enough expletives to realise he’s more furious than in real agony. I pull her a little further out of earshot.

‘Christ knows. I only met him ten minutes ago and he suddenly started writhing in pain. He’s
mad
. He seems to think I’ve put some sort of hex on him.’

‘Oh, Rose …’ she looks at me sympathetically.

‘He brought up my Mum, too. How unnecessary was that?  He said he’d heard things about her and that I must be like her and …’ I look at her painfully. I’m suddenly aware of a sick feeling in my stomach. Shona shakes her head.

‘You’re not a witch, Rose. Don’t let anybody put you into that box. Just because your Mum was a pagan - that’s just stupid and superstitious to put that on you. Those Macraes are all idiots anyway, you know that.’

‘I know ...’

‘He only said it to make you feel bad, Rose. Don’t let him get to you.’

‘He
said
it because he believes it,’ I tell her uncomfortably. I saw that look on his face a moment ago. He wasn’t faking that. He might be superstitious and stupid, but that’s what he believes. That’s what all the Macraes believe, no doubt.  We aren’t living in sixteenth century anymore but it’s still horrible. 

‘Who cares what he believes?’ she shrugs. ‘Look. My mum always said if you’d had any powers you’d have used them years ago to make all those Macraes jump off a cliff!’

‘True. I don’t know if I’d have had the self-restraint to deploy her abilities so wisely. Maybe that’s why I never wanted to be like her.’

‘Well. You aren’t, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Well then.’

We glance over to the others 

‘He’s been lifting those weights again, haven’t you, lad?’ Shona’s dad Matt Dougal is a gentle giant. He lifts my tormentor up from the snow now. ‘You were warned you’d rupture something sooner or later.’

‘Ouch,
Fuck!
Take it easy Dougal. Take it … ow!’

‘You’ll be all right, lad. Just got to get you back inside. You’ve probably torn a ligament …’

‘He likes to keep fit,’ Shona says cynically. She pulls me to the side now, walks me back towards the main
road
, her arm locked comfortingly in mine.

‘What are you even doing up here, Rose?’ She pauses.  She knows my history. We’ve been friends since the age of four, and there’s no way I’m pulling the wool over her eyes.

‘I thought you Clares didn’t have any truck with this lot?’

‘We don’t,’ I shake my head miserably. ‘But there’s a letter of mine that’s gone astray. It’s at Macrae Farm. I
have
to get hold of it, Shona.’

‘You
have
to? And in this?’ She opens up her hands and her gloves are immediately encrusted in white. ‘An important one, I take it?’ her eyebrows arch curiously.

‘I’m hoping it’s my Uni offer. So, yes. Really important.’

‘OMG! Your Uni offer?’ she grips my arm in excitement. ‘You won’t be able to reach the Macraes this way today, though. The hill’s already iced up. We had to come the long way round through the village to come up your side of the path and we’ll have to go back the same way. God knows how
he’s
getting back up. His Dad will have to send a tractor!’

‘Bummer
,
’ I look at her in dismay. ‘I really need to get hold of …’

‘But hey,’ she rattles on, ‘you never said you were re-applying for next year, you dark horse.
Can
you go, then?’ her dark eyes are shining with joy for me. ‘I mean, your Dad … is it sorted?’

I stop, deflated at her news that there’s no mileage in continuing up this way. I’m going to have to go back the way I came, there’s nothing for it. I shake my head at her abruptly. It isn’t sorted. Nothing is sorted. I haven’t even got proof of an offer.

‘I’m mad, aren’t I? Here I am, prepared to go over to the bloody Macraes who bear us nothing but ill-will, in
horrible
weather conditions all in the forlorn hope that they’ll let me have the letter, all assuming it’s the one I’m longing for and … and what for?’

‘What do you mean,
what for
?’ She turns to frown at me now. ‘You know what for.’ She grips tighter onto my arm as I nearly go down on a large icy patch.

‘You’ve got a vision in your head, haven’t you?’ she turns to laugh at me suddenly. ‘Of a tall, handsome guy who’s punting down the river Cam on a wooden boat. It’s a sunny day in
s
pring and all the bluebells are out under the trees and everything’s fresh and new. He catches the eye of a seventeen-year-old interviewee who’s sitting on the river bank and he smiles and winks at her and that’s it - she’s smitten forever.’

For goodness’ sake. I can’t believe she still remembers me telling her that. I give her a rueful grin. Shona knows me too well. We were best friends, once – from our first meeting at Merry Ditton infants all the way up to secondary school when I passed for the Grammar and she didn’t. Leaving her behind then was one of the first real shocks of my life …

‘That was over a year ago,’ I flush. Shona smiles.

‘You want Downing College because it fits your idea of somewhere safe and it’s the place where you’re going to find your prince. And why shouldn’t you dream of it?’

‘Because - I’m probably never going to get out of here, Shona. You’ve just said it yourself. My dad needs me here. And
he
certainly wouldn’t want to go anywhere. He would see us moving out as some sort of victory for the Macraes - and that’s how they’d see it too.’

‘Look. The Macraes cheated your dad of his land, everyone knows that.’ She stops in the middle of the icy path and turns to me suddenly. ‘Afterwards, he got hurt while on their property. Coincidence? The Macraes say it was nothing to do with them,’ she gives a half-glance backwards, then turns to me again. ‘You believe otherwise, and you already know how much everyone in Merry Ditton was divided on it at the time. Nothing was ever proved either way, Rose. If you stay or you go … nothing’s ever going to bring your dad back to full health now.’

‘On the other hand,’ she adds when I don’t reply. ‘It’s not so bad this place, is it? I know at one time you kept moaning that everyone had left but … I’m still here, aren’t I?’

‘You are,’ I pat her hand.

‘And personally, I don’t know why anyone would
want
to leave this village.’ She’s got her head down now, taking great care where she puts her feet in the snow. ‘We’ve got everything here that we need.’

‘I guess,’ I mutter quietly.

‘I mean
, I
found a job and a boyfriend. You could have those too you know.’

I look at her in surprise. Here? A job… what, in the hairdressers? That’s where Shona works and I know she loves it but it’d kill me. She’s left out the baby, she’s expecting. I don’t want one of those, either. She’s only eighteen but she’ll be getting married in the spring.

‘Maybe in a bank somewhere locally?’ she’s saying now. ‘You’d make manager in no time at all, with your brains.’

I shrug. The image of an entire lifetime spent living and working around Merry Ditton has just reminded me of why I was so desperate to get up that hill. 

As for the kind of boyfriend I’d attract around here … we both glance back towards her
d
ad who’s still half- supporting, half-carrying my tormentor.

‘On the other hand - if you really think you need to stay here - all you’ve got to do is make sure you stay well enough away from the Macraes.’ The solution seems simple enough to Shona. ‘Don’t go walking on their land and they won’t bother you, will they?’

‘That’s what I’ve spent the last five years doing!’ I turn and pull out of her linked arm.  ‘But I’m tired of living in a place where I have to be careful to avoid my neighbours all the time? I don’t
want
to do that.’

‘So you run away from them instead?’ she asks innocently.

‘No, that’s not it. It’s precisely because I won’t spend my life running away from people like them that I want to study Law. You may think that Mum had all these mysterious and wonderful powers but none of that’s any good in the real world, is it? None of that’s ever going to give Dad back the peace of mind he lost the night he was attacked. He still wakes in the night, you know. He still wakes up at times calling out for me, worried to death I’ll be the next victim because his own experience was so senseless and unprovoked he’s become frightened of the whole world. And I won’t be that, Shona.’

‘I’m so sorry, Rose …’ she’s looking at me now with quiet admiration in her eyes.  

‘I have to go away if I’m going to prove to him that I can stand on my own two feet. And that the world still makes sense out there. I just don’t know how else I can ever make things better - for him or for me.’

‘I know you have to go,’ she says quietly now. ‘I was only kidding about the bank. You’re like that blue butterfly we once found on the school wall, remember? It kept trying to fly off but it ...’ It couldn’t fly. I kept trying to pick it up, I remember. I wanted to help it on its way.
I’m not like that butterfly, though
, I think suddenly.
Because I am going to get out of here
...