by Jenny Oliver
Olive glanced surreptitiously across at him now. His face relaxed, lacking in bravado. And she suddenly kicked herself for ever letting him go.
Ruben leant forward, swirled the whisky in his glass. ‘I’m sad that I lost you as a friend,’ he said.
Olive felt her whole body tense. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘When I’m here, now, I don’t only see the bad times.’
Olive pressed her lips together. She took a sip of her drink and it burnt her throat, made her wince. When she glanced up, he was still looking at her.
‘I’m starting to see other stuff,’ he said. ‘I’m seeing everything I’d forgotten. My life here wasn’t just about my hideous parents, it was … I don’t know. I see myself with you—’
Olive felt a flicker in her chest. ‘I see myself with you, too.’
Ruben kept looking at her. ‘I really loved you, Olive.’
She felt her breath catch. She looked at him and remembered what it was like to really feel. To be in a place where someone could reach in and take your heart and wring it out. To be that vulnerable. She thought of all the years she’d spent with Mark and knew in that moment she had never been madly in love with him. She had sedately, safely, cared for him but they had called it love because that was the next logical relationship step.
She smiled a little shyly across at Ruben. ‘I loved you, too.’
He said, ‘You’re right you know, we never could have made it.’
Olive felt her mouth open in surprise. ‘Now who’s being the pessimist!’ she said, stupidly disappointed by his change of heart.
‘It’s not that.’ He sat back in his chair, seemingly surveying her. ‘It’s because – whatever Dolly’s saying now about things you did wrong – you were never the kind of person who would have left her. That’s what I loved about you. Olive, nearly everything you did was to make sure they were all OK. If you’d left with me, you wouldn’t have been you.’
Olive felt her whole body tingle. It was possibly the nicest thing anyone had said to her. ‘Thanks, Ruben,’ she said.
His eyes creased with a smile. ‘You’re welcome.’
Neither of them said anything. The dark sky encroached.
‘So go on then,’ he said, ‘tell me about the clothes I’m going to buy that don’t crease.’
She rolled her eyes, unable not to smile. ‘You don’t have to buy them because of me.’
‘Of course I do.’ Then he grinned. ‘Actually, I’ll let you into a secret. I already have the cashmere jumper.’
‘You don’t!’ Olive couldn’t believe how much the fact pleased her.
‘I do.’
‘And you like it?’
‘It’s a favourite,’ he said.
She felt a bubble of pride join her unexpected pleasure. ‘I actually think it might be time for me to move on from them. Do something new.’
‘Sounds good,’ he said, like it was as easy as that. She thought how with Mark the comment would have elicited a sucked-in breath, an expression of concern. ‘Like what?’ Ruben asked.
‘Have you heard of eco nylon?’
Ruben laughed. ‘Does that sound like something I would have heard of?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s fabric made of ocean plastic. It’s generally turned into technical sportswear. I’ve got an idea for a range of athleisure and swimsuits and stuff. All ethical, all recycled.’
‘Sounds amazing,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some contacts actually in the athleisure market.’
‘I wouldn’t want to sell my idea this time, though,’ she said quickly.
Ruben made a face; she expected him to retaliate with the practicalities of big corporate investment. But instead he said, ‘Absolutely not. You’re the brand, Olive. You’re the brains. You don’t give that away. You need to learn your value.’
The words stopped her short. Her brain falling over itself at something so simple as someone’s confidence in her. She found herself staring. Remembering what it was like to have a cheerleader in life.
His mouth tipped up in a smile of recognition. Then he drained his glass and said, ‘Do you think we’ll ever have our time again, Olive?’
Olive was taken aback; he said it so casually that she felt confused as to what he was proposing – a quick fling or picking up where they left off, which in itself felt impossible. ‘I have no idea,’ she said, a little wary.
He nodded, then seemingly confirming asked, ‘You don’t think it’s now though?’
She laughed at the prospect, imagining him quite happy with a quick shag for old time’s sake. ‘I don’t think so, Ruben,’ she said, serious Olive back in place, ‘now you have to get to know your daughter and I have to sort my life out.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded, cocky, cool Ruben back in place. ‘I completely agree.’
There was silence. Out in the far distance the sea glistened. The black cat stalked over and to its pleasure, Ruben reached down and gave it a scratch under its chin. When he glanced up at Olive, he was grinning. ‘It wasn’t a no, though.’
Olive rolled her eyes.
‘That look, you see, that look has haunted me my whole life,’ he laughed, gesturing to Olive’s expression. The awkward, bittersweet tension broken. ‘That look has guided most of my decisions, did you know that? It’s why I bought the Aston Martin rather than a Porsche. Because of what you’d think.’
‘I think they’re both dreadful,’ Olive replied.
Ruben laughed, loud and hearty. ‘Yeah, I thought you might say that. Bit of artistic licence on that one. But admit that you’d think the Porsche was worse?’
‘Without a shadow of a doubt,’ she said, lips twitching into a grin.
Ruben sat back in his chair, pleased with himself. The cat stretched out by his feet. Olive sat back too, looking out at the dark silhouettes of the trees, still smiling.
She could sense Ruben glancing over occasionally to check she was still amused. It felt like old times. And with it came the forgotten feeling of never wanting something to end.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Fox cooked scrambled eggs for breakfast. They all sat round the large wooden table in the kitchen and drank coffee and orange juice, the sun streaming in through unpolished windows. The journey felt like it was reaching its end and none of them really wanted to leave. All of them united suddenly as a team. Knowing that when the hunt ended, this would end. They would be closer but never this close. Never all eating together in this big house, searching for something, bonded by their exposed vulnerabilities.
Marge put her knife and fork together, dabbed her mouth with her napkin and said, ‘Fabulous eggs, Badger.’
‘Fox.’
‘Of course it is, sorry, darling!’ Marge laid a ring-clad hand on his in apology.
Fox gestured it was nothing. ‘What’s a mammal between friends?’
Marge guffawed. ‘Oh Dolly, you have done well with this one!’
To which everyone round the table paused their eating and Dolly felt herself go all-over crimson. ‘Marge!’ she hissed, like she was a teenager.
‘What?’ Marge asked, unable to see what she could have possibly done wrong.
Fox chuckled.
Dolly refused to look at him. Instead she went, ‘So come on, this clue? “I am not gas but I have the power to burn. I am not liquid but I glisten like water. I am not solid but I crack under pressure. Find me and strike gold!” What do we think? What’s not a liquid, solid or a gas?’ The subject hadn’t been broached, almost because of its finality.
Ruben put down his coffee. ‘I’ve got an idea what it is.’
Across the table, Olive frowned. ‘What is it? Why haven’t you said anything?’
He paused, seemed to think before going ahead. ‘Glass is neither a liquid nor a solid. It remains part liquid even when cooled. I remember having to draw the molecules in physics.’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose boarding school was good for something.’
Dolly felt her face mirror Olive�
��s. ‘Glass,’ she said quietly. ‘A greenhouse. The orangery.’ The one place they’d all avoided. Dolly shuddered internally. The vast, echoing orangery and all its snaking vines and secret hideaways encroached on her memory. The idea of her mother and Lord de Lacy somewhere entwined in the dark recesses. The scrambled eggs rose in her belly. She wondered if she might be sick.
But then Marge looked at them all, rolled up her sleeves and said sternly, ‘Well, that’s it then. What are we waiting for? Face it head-on. That’s what we need to do. That’s what they do in the military, isn’t it, Fox? None of us here are afraid of ghosts, are we?’
Zadie said, ‘I am a bit.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Marge. ‘En masse we’ll be fine. We’re a team. We’ve got gold to find.’
Brambles and bindweed tangled round their ankles. Midges circled in clouds. The sun scorched as they traipsed through undergrowth in the direction of the now derelict hothouse.
They were all sweating. The heat was intensifying, the sun fierce overhead. Zadie trod in poo. Ruben got stung by something. Marge ruined her pristine pumps. A beetle got caught in Olive’s hair. Dolly just felt her heart rate rise as they got closer to the looming glass structure.
Closer and closer they got. Ruben directing them to the shade of the trees. The undergrowth thick beneath their feet. And then as the sun sparkled like stars through the thick canopy, she saw it. There standing broken and dejected, much smaller than she had remembered, the ruined glasshouse. Tangled with creepers and ivy, reclaimed, barely recognisable.
Dolly was the first to walk into the space. The glass all smashed to the ground, the shelves for pots rotten and collapsed, the floor littered with kernels left by mice.
She turned to look at Olive and Ruben, who seemed equally lost for words. She could feel Fox watching her.
Olive said, ‘It’s nothing like I remember.’
Dolly shook her head. ‘Me neither.’ She almost wanted to laugh as the fear that had clutched at her loosened its grip.
Fox stood next to her and said under his breath, ‘The more honest and open you are the less fear you’ll have.’
To his surprise, Dolly thwacked him in the belly. ‘You are so smug! Can you give me this one thing without some bloody quote?’
Fox doubled over at the unexpected hit, laughing now. ‘It’s true though, isn’t it?’
She mimicked him childishly, ‘It’s true though, isn’t it?’
‘Dolly, you really need to move on from that kind of insult,’ he said, but Dolly didn’t reply. She found she had to walk away. Stalk off in mock rebuke to hide the fact her cheeks were pinking because when she’d punched Fox, her brain, for the first time, had noted the rock-hardness of his stomach, the dimple in his left cheek when he smiled and the unexpected pleasure she’d felt having him whisper insights so on point they nailed her emotions in one fell swoop.
Zadie, who was balancing on a low wall held together with moss and vine, said, ‘It’s fine here. I can’t feel any ghosts.’
‘No,’ said Ruben, ‘maybe they’ve all been put to rest.’
And Marge said, ‘About bloody time.’ Then turning away went to sit on the fallen log under the shade of a nearby oak tree. ‘I need a little rest.’
Fox said, ‘So shall we start looking?’
Dolly nodded, ‘Let’s go round the back.’
Olive and Ruben investigated the further reaches inside the building. Glass crunched underfoot. Ruben tried to jimmy up a flagstone with an old spade.
‘Be careful,’ Zadie called, balancing along the wall, then clearly got spooked and ran after them not wanting to be left alone.
Dolly and Fox circled the perimeter of the stone ruins. Vines matted like hair over the walls. A buzzing inferno of wasps fed off the rotting grapes.
They ripped down creepers, searching the ground for any clues or trap doors, anything where another clue or the treasure might be hidden. Dolly scratched in some disturbed earth but came away with nothing.
From over the wall Olive shouted, ‘Have you found anything?’
‘No!’ Dolly called back. ‘Have you?’
‘Nothing.’
Dolly kicked a bit of old wood in frustration. Then she froze with the sharp shock of pain. ‘I’ve been stung!’ She winced, clutching her ankle.
Fox looked where she’d kicked. ‘Bloody Hell, Dolly, it’s a wasps’ nest!’ He dragged her away round the corner of the orangery while she tried to breathe through the burning sensation in her leg.
Fox bent down to have a proper look. ‘Ouch.’ Then he said, ‘I’ve got some stuff for stings in the van.’
‘’Course you have,’ said Dolly drily.
Fox said, ‘If you don’t want it, you don’t have to have—’
‘No, no, I want it,’ said Dolly.
He started to walk away down the stony incline towards the house. Dolly limped behind, calling to Marge that they’d be back in a second.
‘What are you doing?’ Fox asked as he noticed her behind him.
‘Coming with you,’ she said.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t want you to get lost or something to happen to you.’
Fox frowned. ‘Really?’
‘I know. Weird, huh.’ They carried on a bit. ‘I think it’s because we’re a team, you know? Aren’t we? We’ve done everything together.’
‘Dolly, you don’t have to justify wanting to hang out with me,’ Fox laughed, brazenly self-assured.
‘You’re the one who asked.’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t need an essay.’
Dolly bashed him on the back.
‘Ow!’ he laughed again.
Dolly laughed. She realised that somewhere along the line they had passed a point into the ease of friendship. She wondered if, had it not been this specific journey, whether she would ever have allowed it. How many people did she feel at ease with? Her mum. Marge. A couple of her friends. Maybe Olive after all this.
She paused to get her balance when some stones rolled under her feet. ‘What do you think it will be like back at work?’ she asked.
‘If they take you back,’ Fox replied.
‘Oh thanks!’
He looked over his shoulder and winked. ‘I’ll put in a good word for you.’
Dolly rolled her eyes.
Fox saw. ‘You can not deny that being with me has helped you.’
‘I can deny it,’ said Dolly as she shimmied down a slope of rubble, catching a frond of ivy to steady herself. Fox reached out to offer her a hand. She waved it away.
It was his turn to roll his eyes.
Then he stopped and turned so he was facing her. Hands on his hips, he said, ‘Look me in the eye and say that your altercation with Olive yesterday wasn’t better because of the time you’ve spent with me.’
Dolly looked him in the eye and said, ‘My altercation with Olive wasn’t better because of the time I’ve spent with you.’ She tried not to smile. She’d told him about it when she’d got back to the house mainly because she’d wanted to prove to him that she could get control over her temper.
Fox sighed. ‘You’re so annoying. Without my influence, you’d have gone headlong into that argument and never calmed down for a second.’
Dolly tipped her head from side to side considering the fact. She knew he was right, she would never have paused. She would never have listened. But he was far too smug for her to admit it.
He was still watching her.
Dolly winced. ‘I’m torn between not wanting to boost your ego and being grateful.’
‘I’ll take that as a thank you,’ said Fox and carried on across the grass to where the van was parked up ahead.
Dolly followed on behind him. ‘There’s probably a Buddhist proverb for it. “Pride be the enemy of gratitude.”’ Dolly paused. ‘Or “Shame on the person who is too proud to see the truth”. Hey, I’m quite good at this.’
‘You’re terrible at it,’ said Fox without t
urning round.
Dolly snorted the ugliest laugh through her nose.
‘What was that laugh?’
She shook her head, refusing to let her smile out. ‘Nothing.’
He made a face, very dubious.
She had that same weightlessness she’d had when they’d returned from the waterfall. She felt like when she was a kid. Her laughs came easier. Her limbs – the ones that weren’t recovering from dislocation – swung freer. When she prodded her mind for her anger she couldn’t remember what it was for.
They reached the van. Fox opened the door and reached into one of his rucksack pockets for some sting relief cream.
‘You don’t carry that in your rucksack all the time, do you?’ Dolly leant against the side of the hot metal van, thinking how she hadn’t thought about the sting on her ankle once.
‘Always be prepared, Dolly,’ he said, very pleased with himself as he also had some natty little tool with a sharp knife and scissors that could cut through the orangery vines.
Dolly watched him gathering his survival bits together as she rubbed the cream into her leg, his big hands unzipping various pockets in his rucksack, rooting around for other items of use, and she felt a sudden, uncontrollable urge to throw her arms around him. To hug him tight to herself and claim him as her own. She didn’t want anyone else to have this special, kind, funny person who carried After Bite and a snazzy souped-up penknife with him everywhere he went. She wanted to box him up and keep him for herself.
‘What?’ asked Fox.
Dolly stood up straight, handing him the tube of cream. ‘Nothing,’ she said, and they walked back across the park to the orangery.
There was a haze in the air. A midmorning light that felt it would never dim. That evening would never come. The heather was alive with bees. The cerulean sky echoed the sea. The luminescent clouds drifted like grazing sheep.
Dolly distracted herself with the task of yanking down vines.
Don’t think about him, she warned herself, hauling a matted section away from one corner of the property to reveal even more densely criss-crossed roots and tendrils. Fox was up at the entrance working on a mass of ivy. Across from her, Ruben and Zadie were lifting flagstones, one after the other, finding ants’ nests and fat worms.