Starting Over (22 page)

‘Anyway, the joiner got her sorted. “I don’t do bodged jobs, duck.” Brilliant! Mind that cow-do, Princess.’

She could hardly reply for the furious pace, but at least they were swinging downhill now, towards a stream. She’d never struck out across the farmland since the early run-in with Simeon, always keeping carefully to footpaths. Ratty had no such qualms. ‘Have you got permission to replace the windows, then?’ she gasped.

‘Bureaucratic Bitch has gone away to consider but I think she’s run out of steam. The man from the council was told-you-so-ing, he’s got no more patience with impractical idealism than me. The Commuters got your windows replaced. I only want to do the same.’

Good job it was The Commuters who’d modernised Honeybun Cottage. Though if they hadn’t, they might not have sunk in financial sewage and wouldn’t have sold and she’d be living in a different house in a different village with a whole load of different friends. Different shop, different pub ...

‘Can you manage eight steps across this tree, Princess, or shall I whistle up an alabaster-white winged horse to purvey your delicateness?’

‘I think I can manage.’ She achieved the necessary steps across the fallen tree over the stream, pausing to watch the water rush in paw-prints across the shale bed, an excuse to get her breath. Her hand was still in Ratty’s. It was warm, so she left it there.

He seemed to have rushed some of the frustrations from his system and they strolled the bank, snapping twigs, looking out where the land rolled away from them combed in brown furrows. She shivered in the uninterrupted wind and he pulled half his fleece jacket across her back as they moved on, away from the sharp smell of nettles.

Crossing the second of two lanes, he remarked, ‘Carlysle land from here. If you cross the stream and go right through the coppice you’ll find the stile and the footpaths back to the village.’

The memory of being shown off Carlysle land halted her. ‘Should we go back by the lane then?’

Ratty shouldered his way through the hawthorn, the thorns catching in his curls. ‘They won’t mind. My father and Carlysle are matey. Used to want me to be friends with Simeon when we were little.’

‘And were you?’ Cautiously, she followed.

‘Sometimes. Their chauffeur used to let me wash their cars, a black BMW and a red Mini Cooper.’ They followed the stream to a bridge, sturdy, functional oak, grey with age and green with algae, climbed two steps and paused to watch the water. Clearer here, it had a bed of rounded rocks and last year’s leaves. The wind scuttled along with the stream, funnelled between the coppice and the hawthorn hedge.

Tess sank her head to huddle deeper into her jumper, turning her back to the breeze.

‘Is lickle Princess still cold?’ Ratty stretched his fleece jacket a bit further, trying to get the other side around her as well, shuffling closer.

‘That’s better.’ She looked up to joke about him behaving himself, but she saw such desire flare in the brightness of his blue eyes that the words died in her throat. For a long second she was transfixed, washed by flashes of want and half-understood expectation.

Her hair writhed about them both in the breeze.

Then his arms tightened, his head dropped. And he kissed her.

A hard, hot kiss, his wind-roughened lips scalding her as his body pressed hers back against the handrail. Questing, his tongue tip caressing, promising, making her think of things she usually tried not to. Lovemaking. Wanting. Pleasure.

Slowly, he lifted his head. Slackened the clinch. Waited for her reaction.

She took a long shaky breath and slid from his embrace, four measured, backward steps towards Carlysle’s coppice.

His eyes followed. Waiting.

She licked her lips, remembering where his had been. How his kiss had felt. Had made her feel. ‘I thought ...’

He was very still.

Thoughtfully, she licked her lips again. ‘I thought ... it was the
princess
who did the kissing. Not the frog.’

He gasped. His blazing glare of incredulous outrage rewarded her. ‘You bitch!’ He threw himself. She ran.

Leaping, two steps, racing from his pursuing footsteps, his curses. Dodging through the birches and conifers, shrieking and panting with laughter, one bare stride ahead, ducking, zigzagging, to avoid his grasping hands. Sideways to slide by the fence he had to jump, glancing back and laughing harder to see him trip.

Exploding through the tree line, yelping as she heard him gain on clearer ground, swinging right with bursting heart up the greensward, away from the little lake the stream widened into, aware of a large gazebo ahead. Right with her! Jump left, stop dead, double back, belt downhill.

Then she was yanked back mid-stride and spun against his chest, his arms clamping hers by her side. Chests heaving together as they crowed for breath.

Her laughter faded. The maleness of him, the overwhelming maleness, the plaster dust smell, his heat.

The whisper, ‘Bitch!’ His head dipping, lips hovering; her heart jumping in anticipation.

The round of applause from the gazebo.

Heads up.

‘Oh, hullo Mother,’ said Ratty.

Through a slither of anticlimax Tess heard him sigh, ‘An audience!’ Saw him pushing back the black curls from his eyes, felt his hand guiding her up the slope, ignoring her reluctance.

God, she must look like a tramp in her enormous jumper. She pushed her hair back over her shoulders, trying to sort out which bit went which side of her parting. She felt caught out, like Toby when she’d found him pinching Jenna’s chocolate.

‘There’s no telling where you’ll turn up, Miles,’ remarked Elisabeth Arnott-Rattenbury. Her hair was dark steel-grey, but her face beneath contrastingly smooth and youthful. She accepted Ratty’s peck on her cheek.

‘I’m sure you had that all arse about face,’ Lester rocked his brandy balloon gravely. ‘Far better to let her do the chasing.’

‘Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to catch me.’

Hot and confused, Tess shook hands with Lester and Elisabeth, glared at Simeon who looked injured, and was introduced to his parents, Christopher and Cassie Carlysle.

Christopher had a bone-shaped head and a lugubrious face beneath sparse brown hair. ‘Our local artist! Nice to meet you. Shouldn’t have left it this long to call!’

Wrong-footed, she felt resentful and difficult. Her face stiffened. ‘Oh? I didn’t mean to be rude. Simeon threw me off the first time I wandered onto your property. I did attend the bonfire party on your farm but
that’s
best forgotten.’

Christopher looked nonplussed. Cassie shrieked and raised plucked eyebrows into blonde streaks, clutching a thin chest dramatically. ‘Don’t tell me! Simeon has gone that colour that tells a mother that her child is in the wrong!’ She laughed a tinkly laugh, louder than anyone else’s. Tess didn’t laugh, but inspected the interior of the gazebo.

Like a stubby bandstand, open all round in summer, it was made usable in the chillier weather by being glassed in. How pleasant to dine in one’s gabled manor house then stroll across one’s park for brandy and coffee in the gazebo, to be out of the wind, with the weak sun magnified through the panes. Civilised.

For a family with a son who used his size and weight to crush a girl against the side of a van and force his kisses on her. She shuddered to remember the beery smell, the scary suffocation, the intrusion.

She was passed both brandy and coffee by Ratty, chatting to his parents as if he’d arranged the meeting rather than just happening across them. The only seat free was a fixed wooden one somewhere between a big armchair and small bench. Ratty squashed in beside her, clutching his brandy, talking about Pennybun, the garage, Pete and Angel.

Tess was silent.

The transition from a hot kiss and a crazy game to this social supping and the animosity that automatically reared near Simeon, unsettled her. Ratty’s thigh was hard against hers, his arm moving with his gestures. She watched his mother watching him and wondered. Did Elisabeth feel hurt that they rarely met? That her son didn’t go home for Christmas? Or had she come to terms somehow with their tepid relationship? Immaculate from her sleek hair through the golden silk shirt and trousers to soft leather moccasins, she made Cassie’s mint-green short-skirted outfit look overstated yet ordinary, Tess’s knotted mane and paint-spotted khakis feel wild and scruffy.

Simeon topped up her coffee. ‘I didn’t know you two had a thing.’

‘We
don’t
.’

Silence at her sharp reply.

Then Ratty, smooth, suddenly cold. ‘Violate Princess Tess?
You
ought to know better. If you remember the bonfire –’

Cassie again affected shrieking protest. ‘No, no, I believe we’re back on the misdeeds of my offspring, change the subject quickly!’ Another plinking laugh.

Simeon leaned closer and whispered, ‘I
did
try to apologise ...’

‘Piffle!’ She turned away, letting the conversation go on without her, about the Village Feast, which was looming.

Christopher seemed OK, exhibiting a dry sense of humour and not much patience with his son. Cassie was silly and just the opposite.

‘I’d lend a hand with the Feast, myself,’ Cassie pointed to herself with every long, scarlet-nailed finger on her left hand. ‘And I know the upkeep of the village hall is the responsibility of us all. But I just
can’t
envisage working with that formidable woman!’

‘Carola,’ Ratty supplied. ‘We’ve been summoned to her house tomorrow evening to be given our instructions.’

Tess roused herself. ‘Is that what Angel’s roped me into?’

‘’Fraid so, Angel’s involved every year, she says you’ll love it. Everyone’s very keen on the village hall and it being available for all of us. The Feast attracts people from miles around and raises funds to support the hall for the next year.’

‘And is Carola that really tiny, really blonde woman who’s always shoving charity envelopes through my door?’

‘That’s her.’

Tess longed suddenly to be at home instead of here, talking about a meeting she knew she wasn’t going to want to attend. Suddenly she was exhausted by the hike, the chase, the listening. Marvellous if she could click her fingers and summon the winged horse Ratty mentioned and be swept home for a hot bath. Bed seemed very attractive. Of course, she still slept alone.

And had done for such a long time.

The walk home was serene. Ratty took her hand casually to help her over the fence and the tree-bridge. ‘You’ll go to Carola’s meeting tomorrow, won’t you? She’s a pain but the Feast is important to the village and she’s dying to involve you.’

‘I suppose so.’

He provided his cupped hands to vault her to the top of the wall behind Honeybun.

Tess paused on the top, groaning in disgust. ‘Oh no, Guy’s waiting for me!’

Immediately, Ratty backed away. ‘Lucky ol’ you. Tomorrow evening, then, Princess.’

‘Bloody Guy! What a bloody day!’ This was what having friends was about, this walking together to Carola’s house and not wanting to. Up Main Road past The Three Fishes, left into Great Hill Road and left again into New Street and Bankside, which must be referred to as the ‘new village’, not ‘an estate’, where the houses were large but too close, drives were long enough for two or three cars and four standard house designs were varied only cosmetically.

She’d wandered through Bankside once or twice before but found nothing in the newness to make her linger. The ‘proper village’ was more to her taste, where the ironstone cottages had stood for a couple of centuries.

‘Guy turned up yesterday. His wife has discovered his affair, inevitably, and flung all his stuff on the lawn. So Guy makes a beeline for Honeybun Cottage, complete with boot full of muddy clothes!’

Arm round Pete, hand tucked chummily in his back pocket, Jenna on her hip, Angel grinned. ‘Did you take him in?’

‘’Course, that’s what I’m for, so far as Guy can see. Then I spent all evening listening to his problems – mainly how expensive it’s been to have a long-standing mistress and a non-earning wife!’

‘Where did he sleep?’ Ratty allowed Toby to hang onto his belt and take giant strides behind him.

‘Sitting-room floor.
Not
up to his standards, apparently. And first thing this morning, up pops Lynette!’

Absurd, the day, and though she was making them laugh about it now, pulling her jacket tight against the dusky chill, she’d been infuriated at the time. Guy, typically, had been safe in the shower when Lynette rapped hard on the back door.

‘Don’t let on I’m here!’ He had sounded apprehensive over the gargling water.

Tess sighed. ‘And your car just drove itself into the drive, did it?’

‘Shit. Tell her I’ve gone for a long walk.’

‘She won’t believe that!’ She hadn’t, but pushed past with a snort and a sneer, dark hair yanked back into a ball, lips pinched to stop them trembling. ‘I suppose I’d better sort the silly bastard out. It’s not you he’s humping?’