‘We were just catching up on old times, really,’ Nina said.
Faye nodded. ‘Don’t forget your vow.’
Nina frowned. ‘My vow?’
‘To avoid men,’ Faye reminded her.
‘But I’m not seeing Alex,’ Nina said quickly.
‘Well, you might think that but Alex probably thinks you’re an item now.’
‘Oh, that’s ridiculous.’
Faye’s eyebrows rose a fraction. ‘I’d just recommend caution when it comes to Alex,’ she said.
Nina chewed her lip. ‘Faye?’
‘Yes?’
‘Has he ever made a play for you?’
‘Alex?’
Nina nodded.
‘Of course he has!’ Faye said. ‘He’s Alex. He makes a play for every girl!’
Nina grinned and was just about to ask more when she heard somebody knocking on the study door. She wondered who it could be this time and realised she’d never get any work done if the daily intrusion rate was so high.
‘Come in!’ Nina sang. The door creaked open slowly and Dominic appeared.
‘Hello,’ Nina said.
He entered the room and then clocked Faye. ‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Hello, Dom,’ Faye said, her face flushing at coming face-to-face with her ex.
Nina stood between them avidly watching, the air positively crackling with awkwardness. But there was definitely something else there besides the awkwardness, she thought. If she wasn’t mistaken, the blushes that coloured the cheeks of the distraught couple told of an affection that hadn’t been completely forgotten. Maybe it was still there, Nina mused, bubbling away under the surface and just needing a little bit of help – a gentle push in the right direction from a well-meaning intermediary – in order for it to make a resurgence.
‘Hi,’ Dominic said, his voice sounding small and odd. ‘You okay?’
Faye nodded. ‘You?’
‘Good.’
‘Good,’ Faye echoed.
Nina blinked at the stunted monosyllables that passed between them and wondered if she should intervene, but Faye got there first.
‘I should get back,’ she said. ‘There’s a rambling rector that desperately needs my attention.’
‘A what?’
‘It’s a rose,’ she said with a little smile, before leaving.
Nina turned back to Dominic. He was watching Faye as she crossed the lawn, a pained look on his face. She watched him for a moment and wondered what thoughts were cascading around his brain.
‘Are you all right? You look a bit shell-shocked.’ Nina said at last, looking at his face – as pale as a Romantic poet’s – and saw the uneasy look in his dark eyes.
‘I am,’ he said, walking into the room properly now that Faye had gone, a scowl darkening his face. ‘Mum’s just told me the news about the portrait painting.’ He sighed and sat down in his father’s chair on the other side of the room.
‘Oh – I see.’
‘You know about it?’ he asked, not sounding surprised.
‘Yes,’ Nina confessed, ‘she did mention it.’
Dominic threw his head back to the ceiling and closed his eyes. Nina looked across at him, noticing the stubble on his face and under his chin. His shirt was open at the collar and she could see where he’d caught the sun.
She blinked and looked away. ‘Aren’t you pleased about it?’
He stretched his arms and sat up in the chair, looking across at Nina. ‘It’s good of Mum, I know, and I should be grateful,’ he started. ‘She’s always doing her best to help – she really is.’
‘But?’
‘But – it isn’t really what I want to be doing. For one thing, there’s this exhibition I’m meant to be preparing for.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘And I know it sounds ungrateful but the idea of painting a succession of elderly ladies in twinsets and pearls doesn’t really appeal to me.’
Nina smiled, catching his eye. He smiled back. ‘I had a feeling that might be the case,’ she said.
‘You did?’
‘Well, from what I’ve seen and heard about your painting.’
He nodded. ‘Well, you’re right.’
‘But won’t it be good money? Didn’t you say you wanted to save a bit?’
‘Oh yes, of course, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to stoop to conveyor-belt art.’
‘Well, we all occasionally have to do things that we’d really rather not be doing,’ Nina said. ‘We can’t always be living the dream. I’m afraid reality steps in from time to time and makes slaves of us all.’
‘You mean you’d rather not be here?’ he said, looking at her from across the room, an expression of disappointment on his face.
‘Oh, no!’ Nina said quickly. ‘I love it here! But I can’t grow too fond of it because I don’t think it’s going to last forever.’
‘Is that why you’ve got the local paper permanently glued to your face?’ Dominic motioned to the corner of her desk.
Nina nodded. ‘I’m being more select in what I choose nowadays because I’ve had my fill of rotten jobs, but everyone has to go through them. I know that now.’
Dominic stroked the stubble on his chin. ‘I guess,’ he said. ‘I just wish mine wasn’t in the middle of the summer holidays when I want to be in the fields with my easel, not stuck indoors with some seventy-year-old lady.’
‘But it won’t last forever, will it? It might even lead to other things?’ she said encouragingly.
He grinned. ‘You’re amazing,’ he said. ‘There isn’t an ounce of woe in you, is there?’
Nina shook her head, ‘You didn’t see me in my last job.’
‘What happened?’ Dominic leant forward in his father’s chair.
‘Well, in essence, I told my boss what I thought of her and walked out,’ she said, smiling. It sounded quite good when she put it like that. ‘I’d never done anything like that before in my life but I’d decided that enough was enough, you know?’
‘Really? Wow!’ Dominic looked suitably impressed. ‘That’s amazing. I really admire you – but I hope you don’t do that to us because it looks like I’m going to need your help as much as Dad does.’
Nina looked into his brown eyes; as dark and beautiful as his brother’s, although missing the naughty sparkle that Alex’s had. Dominic’s were more thoughtful, more soulful.
Nina bit her lip. She hadn’t seen Alex since they’d got home last night, and his car hadn’t been in the drive that morning.
‘So how did last night go?’ Dominic asked, as if reading her mind.
‘Oh, it was nice,’ Nina smiled, feeling herself blush.
‘Where did you end up?’
‘The Bittern?’ she said, not knowing if Dominic knew of it.
‘Right. Should have guessed,’ Dominic’s brow developed a very deep scowl. ‘It’s where he usually goes.’
‘You mean it’s where he takes all his women?’ Nina remarked, not sounding surprised, but feeling a little disappointed all the same.
An expression of guilt suddenly chased the scowl away from Dominic’s face. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Don’t worry about it. It was just a friendly meal,’ Nina said, trying not to think of how Alex had looked at her and how her pulse had reacted. ‘Listen,’ she began, ‘I’m sorry I let you down like that – I mean – I should have given you an answer instead of swanning off as I did.’
‘I would have liked one,’ Dominic said quietly.
Nina gulped. She shouldn’t have brought it up. She should have kept quiet and pretended that she’d forgotten about his invitation to The Folly, but she wasn’t made like that. She felt awful about what she’d done, and she just had to apologise.
‘Are you going to give me one, then?’ Dominic asked.
‘What?’ Nina looked at his expectant face, his eyes so wide that his forehead was beginning to crinkle again.
‘An answer,’ he smiled, making her smile too. ‘You’ve already had dinne
r with my big brother, so what about having dinner with me? I wouldn’t say I’m the world’s best cook, but at least I can cook,’ he said.
Nina felt her smile widening, ‘Yes. That would be nice.’
‘Good!’ he said, leaping out of the chair, ‘Mum’s cooking for us all tonight so we’d better make it tomorrow. I’ll meet you here. About seven?’ And, if this sun holds out, we can take that walk along the river.’
Nina nodded. ‘Seven o’clock,’ she said to Dominic as he left the room, a sunbeam smile warming his face.
Later that morning, Dudley looked up from the neat pile of typescript that Nina had printed out for him. She had learnt that he would often lift his head in a manner suggesting that he was about to say something momentous but that he was, in fact, only in deep thought about his story.
She watched him for a moment, her eyes resting on his red lambswool V-neck. He always seemed to be wearing it, despite the heat. It was as much a part of him as his white eyebrows and gravelly voice, but she couldn’t help wondering if he owned just one pullover, or if he had a drawer chockfull of identical tops.
He exhaled a deep, dragon-like breath that startled Nina, his white eyebrows shooting into the bridge of his nose.
‘I’m not happy,’ he said in a quiet but, nevertheless, rather frightening voice.
‘No?’ Nina piped. What on earth could be wrong, she panicked? Had her fingers been on the wrong keys and she’d typed a load of gobbledegook? Had she misread all his corrections and made a mockery of his story?
‘No,’ Dudley resonated, ‘it’s Caroline. There’s something wrong with Caroline. She’s not real. She’s two-dimensional. Didn’t you feel that?’
‘No!’ Nina said, thankful that it wasn’t herself that was at fault but Dudley’s romantic heroine. ‘But then again, I’m no writer,’ she said.
‘No, but you read, don’t you?’ he asked, sounding like a schoolmaster who only wanted to hear answers with the word ‘yes’ in them.
‘Yes,’ Nina obliged.
‘But you felt that she was real enough, did you?’
Nina bit her lip. She’d never been asked her opinion when she’d worked for Hilary Jackson and she’d had no idea that she’d been employed as a literary critic by the Miltons. She didn’t know what to say. She only knew that she was no expert when it came to analysing novels; she read a novel and either enjoyed it and put it in her bookcase or hated it and gave it to the local charity shop.
‘Perhaps she could be a bit more energetic,’ Nina hesitated, not quite knowing where that idea had come from.
‘Energetic?’ Dudley asked, his eyebrows forming question marks.
‘Yes,’ Nina said, ‘at the moment, I feel she’s a bit passive – do you know what I mean? When she first arrives at Caldour, for instance. I know she’s young and is stunned with her new surroundings but she seems rather …’ Nina paused, searching desperately for the right word.
Dudley leant forward slightly, ‘Rather what?’
‘Wimpy,’ Nina said, and then blushed. Had she been too forward? She looked at her boss who was chewing the inside of his cheeks, quite sure he would erupt at any moment.
‘Yes,’ he said at last, rubbing his chin in a gesture that reminded her at once of Dominic, ‘you’re right. She’s wimpy!’
Nina gave a half-smile of relief. ‘What I mean is, perhaps you could make her a little less—’
‘Wimpy!’ Dudley said and suddenly burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, which was very deep and very loud and rather contagious, because it started Nina off, too, and they probably wouldn’t have stopped for a good long time if it hadn’t been for a knock on the study door.
‘Dudley?’ It was Olivia. ‘What on earth is going on in here?’
Dudley sniffed loudly and tried to assemble his features into some sort of order. Nina, too, wiped her eyes and stopped laughing as she turned around.
‘Nothing! Nothing!’ he said quickly.
‘Well,’ Olivia said, ‘I’m hoping you’ll let me borrow Nina. Ziggy is going absolutely bonkers in the kitchen and is in dire need of a walk and I’m sure Nina could do with some time away from her desk.’
‘Well, just don’t monopolise her,’ Dudley said with a warning snort. ‘I need her here. She’s a marvel – an absolute marvel.’
‘Didn’t I tell you that?’ Olivia said, smiling at Nina as they left the room together. ‘It must be so wonderful to be needed,’ she said.
Ziggy was in fighting mood when Nina left the house with him, tugging at the lead in an attempt to be five minutes ahead of himself at any given moment. Each time he tugged, Nina stopped walking, but as soon as she started moving again Ziggy would lunge forwards as if in an attempt to make up for lost time. In the end, Nina found it easier to be dragged than to keep on stopping and starting and so flew along the river bank towards the fields. It would at least get the whole experience over and done with as quickly as possible.
It was as she was approaching the barley field that she remembered the encounter the day before with Justin and Bess. She looked at her watch. She was earlier today. Not that she was hoping to meet him or anything. She had to get back to her duties with Dudley and didn’t have time to be talking to strangers on footpaths – no matter how handsome they might be.
‘Heel, Ziggy,’ she said, doing her best to rein the dog in as he tried to dive into a patch of brambles, nose-first. ‘Come on, now,’ she said, doing her best to make an effort with the out-of-control animal. ‘You’re going to walk nicely!’ she told him. ‘Like a polite dog who respects his human companion and not like a wild beast who’s only interested in the next good sniff.’
They walked in tandem for a few minutes, Nina keeping a tight hold of the lead and stopping each time Ziggy pulled. It was frustrating and exhausting, but it did seem to be working and, after a while, Nina felt confident enough to slacken her hold on the lead. It was a mistake. Ziggy immediately felt his handler relax and took full advantage of it, springing forward with a wild look in his eye as if he’d been held captive for a decade.
‘No! Ziggy!’ Nina cried but the dog was firmly in charge now and wasn’t going to relinquish that power without a struggle. Nina felt herself being dragged along, the path flying under her feet as the dog picked up speed.
If the man hadn’t been walking just around the corner to stop Ziggy’s progress, Nina might have been flying across the Norfolk landscape for hours. But there he was, with Bess by his side.
‘Nina!’
‘Justin?’
‘Hey!’ he said, a smile stretching across his face. ‘Are you okay?’
Was she forever destined to have him ask that question of her whenever they met, she wondered?
‘I’m fine,’ she said, trying desperately to recover her balance whilst keeping a firm hold of Ziggy’s lead.
‘How’s he been behaving?’
‘Like a stroppy teenager,’ Nina said with a laugh.
‘Oh, dear,’ Justin said.
‘And I’ve been stopping and starting just like you said, only the very second I gave him some slack he—’
‘Took off like a rocket?’
‘Exactly!’ Nina said, nodding her head enthusiastically.
‘Well, he’s a young dog, full of energy. You’d probably be disappointed if he didn’t try things on every now and then.’
‘Believe me – I would not be disappointed!’ Nina said, recovering her breath.
He smiled at her and Nina looked up at him. He was over six feet tall and had a look of a movie star she’d once seen in an old black and white film. Was it Errol Flynn? And did that bode well? Probably not.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘allow me?’ He held his hand out for the lead and Nina gave it to him. ‘Yep, he’s strong all right,’ he said a moment later, ‘so it’s really important you nip this behaviour in the bud because you’ve got to maintain control. Remember that dogs are pack animals and are used to having a leader and being told what to do. Well, you’ve
got to be that leader. You’ve got to show him that you know how to control him and then he’ll feel safe.’
‘That’s all very well,’ Nina said, ‘but how do I do that?’ She watched as Justin walked Ziggy along the footpath, stopping whenever he tugged on the lead and starting again when he was calm.
‘It’s just a case of being consistent. That’s all. And not just when out walking either. You’ve got to be the boss at home, too.’
‘But it’s not really my home,’ Nina said.
Justin turned to look at her.
‘I’m just working there over the summer. I don’t really live there and Ziggy isn’t my dog.’
‘But you’re the one I see walking him,’ Justin pointed out.
‘Yes,’ Nina said with a laugh. ‘That task does seem to have fallen to me.’
‘So, you’ve got to be the boss of him.’
‘Right,’ she said, nodding her head with determination but still feeling hopelessly lost.
‘Don’t look so worried!’ Justin said. ‘Just focus on one or two things to get right every day and you’ll make excellent progress.’
‘Is it really that simple?’
‘It really is,’ he said.
‘I’m glad you think so,’ she said, taking the lead back from him. ‘How did you get to be so knowledgeable anyway? Are you a dog whisperer or something?’ she asked.
Justin smiled and shook his head. ‘No, just a dog owner who wanted to keep his collie under control. I kind of inherited her and she was in a bit of a state when I got her.’
‘Really?’
He nodded again. ‘Her previous owner had mistreated her and she was terrified of men. I think she was hit or something awful, and I really thought I was fighting a losing battle. She was so painfully shy and I couldn’t get near her for weeks – but time and patience won through and she’s the best friend I have in the world now.’
Nina’s heart melted at the confession and she watched as he stroked the soft head of the dog.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I seem to know more about Ziggy than you at the moment.’
Nina looked surprised. ‘Well, there’s not much to tell,’ she said.
‘I don’t believe that for a minute,’ he said, his blue eyes bright and inquisitive.
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