by Heidi Swain
I followed his line of sight, but everything looked fine to me.
*
Clearly, Joe had a far more experienced weather eye than I did, because within an hour the weather had changed completely. Where there had been blue sky, there were now rolling dark clouds which threatened rain, thunder and hail, and they had been quickly blown in by a roaring wind.
‘Do you think we should at least try to get the dog out from under here?’ Joe asked Charlie as he set the table in the kitchen for what I considered a very early dinner. When I mentioned it, the brothers had responded that it wasn’t all that early when you’d been on the go since dawn.
The farmhouse was absolutely beautiful, although a little run down, and the kitchen was an interesting mix of magazine-style country touches combined with practical functionality. The large scrubbed pine table looked as though it had been in situ for as long as the house had stood and it was that which Bruce was cowering under with his tail between his legs and his muzzle between his front paws.
‘No,’ said Charlie as a flash lit up the room and what sounded like a handful of gravel was dashed against the window. ‘He’s fine where he is.’
Joe didn’t look impressed, so I slipped off the sofa on to the floor where I was level with the dog. He might have been a pain in the backside, but I hated seeing him so cowed. Spotting me, he slid out on his belly and thrust his nose in my lap. The poor thing was shaking like a leaf.
‘I’ll keep him over here if you like,’ I said, trying to dissipate the tension I could feel building and which wouldn’t help Bruce’s nerves at all.
Neither brother answered and I wondered if the pair bickered a lot. I know Joe wasn’t happy that Charlie wouldn’t take on board any of his suggestions for the farm and I wondered if the elder brother resented what he might consider interference from the sibling who was rarely around.
By the time dinner was served Bruce was practically sitting on my lap and when I took my seat at the table and accepted the glass of red Joe offered, he somehow squeezed himself under my seat and rested his heavy head on my feet.
‘I did wonder,’ said Joe as he lifted a gargantuan pie out of the Aga, ‘if it was going to be too hot for this today.’
‘So did I, to be honest,’ said Charlie, as he deposited three large tureens of vegetables down the middle of the table.
He sounded far happier now he was faced with a plate the size of a platter.
‘Did you make this?’ I asked Joe, eyeing the crisply baked pie which was decorated with golden pastry leaves.
‘I did,’ he said proudly, then added with a frown, ‘oh god, you aren’t vegan or vegetarian, are you?’
‘No,’ I laughed, ‘I’m not. I thought you’d remember that from the afternoon tea we shared and the fish and chips we ate at the seaside.’
‘Oh yeah, of course,’ he said, sounding relieved. ‘This isn’t really as fancy as it looks.’ He added, with a self-deprecating nod to the table.
‘It looks pretty fancy to me,’ I told him.
‘You haven’t tasted it yet,’ said Charlie with a wry smile as he dug in.
Joe ignored him.
‘It’s one of Mum’s recipes,’ he said to me instead. ‘The filling is cooked in the slow cooker all day and then it’s a quick assembly job with a packet of shop-bought puff pastry, before finishing off in the oven.’
My stomach grumbled loudly in response and we all laughed, except for Bruce, who was still shaking under the table.
The meal tasted every bit as delicious as it looked and accompanied with the fruity, warm wine I was left feeling replete, relaxed and a little sleepy, in spite of the storm outside raging louder than ever.
‘You stay where you are,’ Joe insisted, as I made a move to gather the empty plates. ‘Charlie and I are used to clearing up.’
‘We’ll get washed up and then I’ll go back out to check the yard,’ said Charlie.
I didn’t much like the thought of him going out into the storm and I wasn’t much looking forward to the journey back to Wynmouth either. That said, if I couldn’t prise Bruce off me, I wouldn’t be going anywhere anyway.
‘I’m not sure . . .’ Joe started to say but stopped as a crack of thunder seemed to suck in the walls of the room before releasing them and taking the electricity away with it. ‘Bugger.’
Clearly, the boys were prepared for such eventualities and within minutes the room was bathed in candlelight and Joe was cranking the handle on a wind-up radio while Charlie ran the water to wash up.
‘I was going to say, Tess,’ said Joe, setting the radio down on the table and picking up a tea towel, ‘that if this carries on, I might not be able to get you home tonight.’
‘Are you thinking of those two oaks before the bend?’ Charlie asked.
‘I am,’ Joe confirmed.
‘They should have been felled long before now,’ Charlie tutted.
‘If this wind keeps up,’ said Joe, ‘that might not be an issue.’
‘If either of those are down, you won’t be able to get through at all,’ Charlie pointed out.
‘I don’t mind staying,’ I told them, thinking I didn’t much fancy heading out with the threat of falling oak trees hampering our journey back to Wynmouth. ‘As long as you’ve got a bed and a spare toothbrush I can borrow.’
‘I can manage the toothbrush,’ said Joe, ‘but there’s no bed, I’m afraid. No one sleeps in Mum and Dad’s room.’
‘And Jack’s room is still like a bloody shrine,’ Charlie tutted.
His tone was disapproving and, even by candlelight, I could see how red Joe had turned.
‘Sofa then,’ I said quickly, ‘makes no difference to me. Besides, if this racket keeps up, we won’t any of us be getting much sleep anyway, will we?’
That turned out to be not strictly true. Once the kitchen was set to rights, Joe, Bruce and I moved through to the sitting room, taking the candles and the radio with us, and Charlie said he’d changed his mind about going out and was going to have a bath and turn in. He hadn’t been gone all that long before we heard him snoring somewhere above us.
‘He had an early start,’ Joe grinned, reaching to turn the radio up a bit. ‘And he’s not used to relaxing in the tub. He’s a two-minute shower type of guy as a rule.’
I smiled back.
‘I wonder if it had bubbles,’ I giggled.
‘Or a bath bomb,’ Joe suggested.
I was about to throw essential oils into the mix but was pulled up short by the radio.
‘Whatever is it?’ said Joe, reaching for my arm which was resting along the back of the sofa. ‘You’ve gone as white as anything and you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘This song,’ I stammered, feeling a little dizzy again.
Joe listened for a moment.
‘It’s “Perfect”, by Ed Sheeran,’ he said, ‘it has the loveliest video. Not that I’m much of a fan of romantic rolls in the snow. It’s too cold for a start.’
It wasn’t the official video that I was concerned with, it was the far more intimate showreel running through my head. As I listened to the lyrics about a hundred things rushed into my formerly befuddled brain and none of them made much sense.
‘What is it, Tess?’ Joe asked again.
If my memory served, I had kissed Sam on the beach, under the stars and behind Hope’s back. And, worse than that, I’d absolutely loved doing it, so much so that it felt as good as my first time. In fact, I now knew with the utmost certainty that Sam had been my first time.
‘Tess,’ said Joe, now squeezing my hand and sounding even more concerned. ‘Talk to me, for god’s sake.’
What could I tell him? Certainly, none of what I had just remembered. He hadn’t been my first fabulous kiss – Sam had – but what had happened down at the beach huts all those years ago to prompt them to swap places? And, more to the point, why hadn’t I understood this after the kiss at the party? Or maybe I had?
It must have been the effect of
all that rum which made me forget again. I had no doubt been punch-drunk, literally, all week. Perhaps I had realized the truth before I drank myself into oblivion and had felt so felt guilt-ridden for going behind Hope’s back and so deeply shocked that I had let my cup be topped up in order to forget again.
Then my thoughts flicked to Sam. He’d been the archetypal bear with a sore head all week but surely he should have been on cloud nine. My memory loss had ensured I had been oblivious to what had gone on and consequently I hadn’t breathed a word to his girlfriend. We might have kissed, but I certainly hadn’t told and that should have put him in a half-decent mood at least. Unless he had been too busy worrying that I would remember and then drop him in it? And what about that first time? Never mind Joe simply remembering me, did he remember what he and Sam had done from way back then?
‘Tess!’ said Joe again, much louder this time.
‘Oh god, sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I was miles away.’
‘No shit,’ he frowned. ‘Whatever is it?’
I shook my head, freeing it of the dizziness, but still not knowing what to say.
‘It’s not my cooking, is it?’ Joe demanded. ‘You don’t feel ill, do you?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘of course not.’
‘That’s all right then,’ he said, sounding relieved as he released my arm.
‘Although I do think that wine was pretty strong.’
‘You’re right, it was,’ he said, ‘and we drank the lot once we’d decided you were staying over.’
‘No wonder I’m whacked,’ I yawned, ‘I feel as though I could sleep for a week.’
‘It’s all this fresh, country air,’ he smiled, accepting my explanation. ‘Do you want to turn in? I can get you a sleeping bag and that toothbrush, if you like?’
‘Would you mind?’ I asked.
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Come on, Bruce,’ he added, nudging the dog off the sofa. ‘You best sleep in my room tonight, my lad.’
‘You can leave him here with me, if you like,’ I said, looking at Bruce’s martyred expression and thinking that I wouldn’t mind the company. ‘There’s just about enough room for two.’
‘No, best not,’ Joe laughed. ‘Once this storm blows itself out later, he’ll be back to his bouncy and mischievous self in no time, and he’ll be up and about long before you’ll want to be. I can guarantee it!’
It turned out he was spot on about that.
Chapter 23
Just as Joe had predicted, Bruce was up early the next morning. However, I had heard someone, presumably Charlie given where the snores had emanated from the night before, moving about overheard even earlier and then slamming the outside door. Turning over, I’d disregarded the rumpus because it still felt like the middle of the night but when Bruce came bounding in a little later it was considerably lighter and his exuberance was impossible to ignore.
‘For pity’s sake, Bruce,’ I groaned, trying to push him away, which wasn’t easy because I was bound up in the sleeping bag. ‘Get off.’
The action of giving him a shove only served to further excite him and it wasn’t many seconds before the inevitable happened and his tail brushed the coffee table completely free of the piles of paperwork, folded-up newspapers and remote controls which had been quite happily settled there, completely minding their own business.
‘You,’ I said, as I struggled to sit up, ‘are a total pain in the butt.’
He cocked his head to one side, as if weighing the accusation up, then rushed out of the room again, his claws scrabbling on the tiled floor, before he reappeared with a tea towel which he dropped on my lap.
Clearly, it was time to face the day, but first I had to corral the mess on the floor into a heap so I could put it back on the table – although how long it would stay there with Bruce’s rapidly rotating rudder still in the vicinity was anyone’s guess.
‘Why don’t you go and wag somewhere else?’ I asked him, adding the last of the papers to the pile as the sound of Joe’s voice drifted through from the kitchen.
He didn’t sound particularly happy.
‘So, what you’re telling me,’ I heard him say, ‘is that it could be another week before this is sorted?’
He was quiet for a second and as I didn’t hear an answer, I guessed he was on the phone rather than chatting to an early visitor.
‘Two,’ he almost shouted, ‘you’re kidding?’
I didn’t mean to pry, but my eyes caught the words ‘land sale’ at the top of one of the sheets of paper and I picked it up. I remembered how Joe had mentioned that saving the farm meant selling off some of the land. Having been given the grand tour yesterday, I very much hoped the proposed sale didn’t include the field we had picnicked in. It would be a shame if they lost that magnificent sea view as well as the acreage.
‘Sunny Shores,’ I whispered, spotting the company name.
‘But Sunny Shores were saying last week,’ came Joe’s voice again, his words echoing those printed in front of me, ‘that they wanted to finalize before that.’
Unfortunately, I knew all about Sunny Shores and not because I had had ‘the holiday of a lifetime’ at one of their mammoth developments, as their advertising tagline promised, but because Dad had set up a campaign for them.
They were one of the largest holiday village companies in the country now and Dad’s clever strategy had quelled some of the controversy which followed them taking over an area of land which local residents had hoped would be sold to the Woodland Trust. The campaign had been a success, but it hadn’t completely drowned out the local element. I remembered I had secretly felt rather pleased about that, although it didn’t make any difference to the outcome.
‘Remind me again why I’m paying you such an exorbitant amount?’ Joe demanded. ‘I want it all wrapped up in half that time.’
My eyes quickly scanned the rest of the page. I had always assumed the plan was to sell a field or two to a near neighbour, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. If my understanding of the land mass mentioned was right, then Sunny Shores would be taking over a whole lot more than that. Practically the whole farm looked earmarked to be swallowed up by a brand-new holiday village, complete with its own avenue of shops, Sun Splash pool complex and at least three restaurants to cater for all appetites and tastes.
How was it possible that this had all got so far and no one in the village knew about it? Surely there should have been some sort of public consultation by now? Hope and I might have figured out that Joe and Sam were holding something back, but it obviously wasn’t the same thing after all and to think I’d been sucked in by Joe’s suggestions that he still felt a connection to Home Farm, when in reality he wanted to be free of it. No wonder Charlie was so against his ideas and shut his suggestions down! Clearly the youngest Upton brother was still a rebel, and now he’d found himself a very lucrative cause.
‘Do you want tea, Tess?’ he called from the kitchen, making my heart leap into my mouth.
I had been so absorbed in the paperwork I hadn’t heard him end the call.
‘Yes, please,’ I swallowed, hastily rearranging the pile with a magazine on top, ‘that would be great.’
Now I was harbouring two bits of bad news for Hope. Not only had I kissed her boyfriend, but her ex was set to change the face of the landscape that she, and everyone else living in Wynmouth, loved so much. Joe might have told me that his being back in the area was difficult, and that driving by the crash site was painful, but obliterating it all – because having seen Sunny Shores handiwork I knew that’s what would happen – was extreme. Was he really that desperate?
‘How’d you sleep?’ he asked as he appeared in the doorway with mussed-up hair and a tray holding mugs of tea and slightly overdone toast.
‘Badly,’ I said, sitting back down again. ‘But given how long the storm raged and how early Charlie got up, that was only to be expected.’
I felt a whole jumbled-up mix of emotions as I watched him arrange the
tray. I was still frustrated that he couldn’t remember me from former holidays and desperate to find out why he and Sam had swapped places when it came to my first kiss, but I couldn’t ask because then they’d know I had lied about visiting before. And now, as if that wasn’t enough to contend with, my head was full of the farm situation too.
I knew the finances needed fixing, but to go to such lengths, for Joe to turn up and set about selling off everything his father had worked to create, especially when he had presented it to me so proudly yesterday, just didn’t make sense.
‘It hung around for a while, didn’t it?’ he said. ‘You often find that here. Bad weather can hug the coast for hours.’
I wondered if the Sunny Shores team had factored that into their plans.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘at least it’s moved off now and the power’s back on,’ I added, holding up my steaming mug of hot tea. ‘No harm done.’
‘If only,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I dread to think how many acres of crops have been flattened and right before we’re due to gather them in. It couldn’t have been worse timing as far as the harvest’s concerned.’
I hadn’t thought of that. Farming was certainly a precarious business. A whole year’s profits at the mercy of Mother Nature.
‘Is that why Charlie went out so early?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Joe, offering me a slice of toast, ‘he wanted to assess the damage.’
‘Do you think it will be that bad?’
‘It might be,’ he explained. ‘Low yields and high drying costs can have a huge impact on the bank balance and if the quality isn’t there this year and it all has to go for feed, well . . .’ he said, swallowing hard, ‘it doesn’t bear thinking about. This is exactly why I want to diversify a bit more.’
Sunny Shores didn’t seem like your everyday farm diver-sification project to me, but I was beginning to understand the temptation of it when faced with odds you had absolutely no way of tipping in your favour.
We both jumped as the back door flew open and then banged shut.
‘Joe!’ Charlie roared and Bruce scuttled out of the kitchen and back to the sofa.