‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said, ‘but I have to be at work early in the morning, so I need to get home.’
‘At least let me drive you.’
‘It’s a ten-minute walk! Do you have any idea how much fuel you’ll use up in that huge thing doing a completely pointless journey?’
In the light from the door, she saw Jack roll his eyes. ‘I am not going back inside and leaving you out here,’ he said. ‘Either you come in with me, or you let me drive you home.’
She wondered briefly whether, if she was to take him up on his offer, she’d find Flick Hunter sitting on his sofa. She almost said that he could walk her home if he was that bothered, and then she realized that would involve spending more time with him, and also that she would worry about him getting back safely when he was such a city boy and couldn’t even cope with a few pheasants.
‘Fine’ she said, sighing heavily. ‘You can drop me at home. Thank you.’
‘Good. Arm?’ He held his hand out, and she reluctantly let him take her arm. It was a few short steps to the Range Rover, and her ankle was barely bruised, and yet she found herself leaning into him, feeling the solid weight of his support. He pointed his fob at the car to unlock it, opened the passenger door and waited while she climbed into the seat. It was even more luxurious than it had looked, and she sank into the soft leather, smelt its creaminess, felt sleep tugging at her instantly so she had to pinch her arm to stay awake.
Jack hopped into the driver’s seat, started the engine, which was much quieter than she had expected, and reversed expertly out of the driveway. She held her breath, waiting for the telltale crunch that meant there was a stray piece of torch she’d failed to pick up, then relaxed when none came. Jack drove slowly, turning left as she instructed when they reached the junction with the main village road, and then round, past the darkened walls enclosing Swallowtail House, the silent building and whatever ghosts inhabited it beyond, then turned right into Warbler Cottages.
It took no more than three minutes, but Abby spent that time studying Jack’s profile, the straight, proud nose, the high forehead partly obscured by his thick, untidy hair. His fingers on the wheel were long and slender, he wore no jewellery, no rings, but a plain, white-faced wristwatch with a gold surround and tan leather strap. It looked classic, expensive.
‘This one?’ he asked, cutting the engine.
‘Yes, this is it.’ Abby looked at her terraced house. It wasn’t remotely cottagey, not in the way Peacock Cottage was, but it was snug, it was her home, and she could see Raffle, his nose pressed up to the glass of the downstairs window, waiting for her as if he could sense when she was on her way back to him.
‘Is that a husky?’ Jack asked, peering over her shoulder.
‘That’s Raffle. He’s my rescue husky. Do you want to come in and meet him?’ The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. She looked back at Jack, frozen mid-breath, hoping with equal measure that he would say yes, and also no.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘I’d love to, but perhaps not now. It’s late, as you say, and I … sure you’ll be OK?’ He gestured towards her hands.
‘They’re just grazes, fine once I give them a good clean. Thank you for the lift, and for … coming to look for me. It was brave.’
Jack frowned and ran a hand over his jaw. ‘Brave?’
‘Your cottage is in the middle of the woods,’ she clarified. ‘I’m a fan of nature, as you know, but if I lived somewhere like that, there is no way I’d step outside after dark in response to a noise, not unless I had a weapon with me, not even if it sounded like there was a fairground starting up right outside the front door. I was only there because I had no choice. If we were in opposite places, I wouldn’t have come to your rescue, I would have left you to get eaten by bears, or make your own way home, whatever.’
‘Which, I seem to recall, is pretty much what you wanted me to do when I found you.’
Abby felt the flush creep up her neck and was glad of the darkness. ‘Sorry about that. I was flustered, annoyed with myself for getting scared, and—’
‘I was the last person you hoped to see?’
‘You were inevitable, considering where I tripped.’
Jack laughed, the sound loud inside the confines of the car. ‘I was inevitable?’
‘God, that came out wrong! I just meant nobody else would be around, only you.’ The words somehow had more weight than she had intended, and she scrabbled to change the subject. ‘I saw you venturing out into the village today.’
He nodded, not quite meeting her eye. ‘I know Flick Hunter from a charity event we did a couple of years ago,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize she was here, but it was good to see her. A friendly face amongst, well—’ he gestured around him. ‘I’m new here, as you know.’
‘She’s anchoring the television show at the nature reserve on the other side of the marsh,’ Abby said quietly.
‘She was telling me about it. Has it affected things at Meadowsweet?’
‘Not really,’ Abby admitted. ‘Not that noticeably, anyway. We need to be more proactive about drawing in visitors regardless, so in some ways the push has been good.’
Jack stared out of the windscreen. ‘That’s often the way, getting forced in a direction you never intended, finding out that it was the right move all along.’ He faced her again. ‘Let’s hope it works out for both of us.’
Abby wanted to ask more, to connect the dots between his words and what Rosa and Octavia had told her about him, but she didn’t want to seem nosy, and now, with Raffle waiting inside and her bed calling to her weary bones, wasn’t the time. ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed,’ she said. ‘Thanks again for rescuing me. Your car’s comfortable, by the way.’
‘Noted.’ He nodded, suppressing a smile, his lips lifting at the corners. Abby wondered if she’d conjured them up right in her fantasy, how the lips she was staring at would feel if they were pressed against hers.
‘Right then,’ she said, her voice paper-thin. ‘Night.’
‘Goodnight, Abby.’ He waited until she’d closed the door, walked up the front path and put her key in the lock. She stepped into her warm, vanilla-scented hallway and turned. He made a gesture that was half wave, half salute, and pulled away from the curb.
When she fell into a fitful, broken sleep that night, the memory of her fall enhanced by the smarting of her palms, all she could think about was Jack running his hands up her arms, and the concern in his eyes when he’d knelt beside her in the mud.
When she woke the following morning, Abby felt like she hadn’t had any sleep at all. She took a longer route to work, walking along the brick wall around Swallowtail House, getting that extra peek of the building that intrigued and calmed her. The wind was still raging, low clouds racing across the sky so the sun had no chance to break through, but it never stopped the wildlife, and Abby paused to watch a pair of goldfinches, their regally coloured feathers flashes of bright in the grey. They bobbed along the high wall then disappeared over it, into a place she longed to explore.
She wasn’t the only one who wondered why, if the reserve was in trouble, and Penelope no longer wanted to live in the grand mansion, she didn’t sell it. Did she really hold onto it simply because it was a reminder of her and Al’s life together? And if that was the case, then why wasn’t she looking after it? The longer it was left, the less likely it was to survive at all. If Penelope wanted to preserve it then handing it over to someone else, and making a profit in the process, would surely be for the best.
But she couldn’t suggest it. The older woman would have considered it, would have her own reasons for handling things the way she did, and wouldn’t have listened to Abby in any case. Perhaps selling the house had some implications for the reserve, as it was all part of the same estate. She turned away from it and fought her way through the fallen elder to get back onto Meadowsweet’s woodland track.
She didn’t know why she wanted to avoid the s
ight of last night’s fall, but she felt off kilter, uncomfortable despite the success of the previous day’s event. She was gratified that the only disaster had come at her own hands, had harmed nobody but herself, but still she wished that, if there had to have been a witness, it could have been anyone but Jack. And yet, in some ways, she was glad it had happened. She couldn’t help but replay their encounter, the softening between them in his car a reconciliation of sorts. There had been no sign of Flick Hunter at Peacock Cottage, and he’d offered up the information about her freely, as if Abby deserved an explanation. She felt as if she was at the edge of a tunnel, knowing she should turn back but desperate to see where it led.
When she arrived at the visitor centre, she had a welcoming committee.
Penelope was standing at the reception desk, her arms folded accusingly, and Rosa and Stephan were in the shop, pretending to rearrange the display of Halloween chocolates but obviously waiting for whatever dressing-down was about to be handed out. Gavin, never one for subtlety, was leaning against the wall, a piece of grass in his mouth in place of a cigarette. When she caught his eye, he winced sympathetically.
Abby slowed, putting her hands behind her back, suddenly conscious of the grazes on her palms even though, now they were clean, they were hardly visible.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘Is there – did something happen, yesterday?’
‘I don’t know,’ Penelope said. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’
She put the emphasis on the last word, glaring at Stephan, Rosa and then Gavin, reminding them this wasn’t a spectacle, but none of them budged and Abby was thankful. She knew that, as embarrassing as it was to be reprimanded in front of her friends, they would also back her up if they could. The only thing was, Abby couldn’t think what this could possibly be about. The event had gone smoothly. Unless Gavin had let those boys go too far with the apple bobbing and failed to tell her about it.
‘I’m not sure what there is to say,’ she said slowly, casting around for anything that might help her understand what had happened.
‘Well, would you like to explain this?’ Penelope put something down on the desk. It was an envelope. White, pristine and, when Abby looked closely, sealed.
‘You haven’t opened it?’
‘Of course not,’ Penelope said. ‘It’s addressed to you. But I doubt whatever is inside will be particularly complimentary, going by the last one we received.’
Her insides suddenly churning, Abby turned the envelope over. In the slanting, elegant script she now recognized as Jack’s, was her name. Abby Field. They had come a long way from bee Post-it Notes, at least. A hundred things went through her mind – was he going to complain about the event after all, the swathes of people it had brought to the reserve? Had he meant to do it all along, and only failed to say anything last night because Abby was there alone, and he’d seen her as vulnerable? Or was this because she’d insulted him by saying he was inevitable? She had been encouraged by the thaw between them, but maybe she’d misinterpreted it.
They were all looking at her now, even Stephan and Rosa abandoning their pretence of display reorganization. Penelope’s politeness at not opening other people’s mail didn’t extend to letting them read it in peace, she noticed. She didn’t want to open it in front of anyone; she wanted to take the blow in private because, she realized with startling clarity, it would be a blow, to see harsh words from Jack aimed at the reserve, aimed at her.
‘Come on then,’ Gavin said. ‘We’re all dying of curiosity here. What has Mr Snooty got to say for himself now?’
She took a deep breath and ripped open the envelope, sliding out the folded piece of A4 paper and laying it out flat on the table before she lost her nerve. She skimmed over the words, then read them again more slowly, clamping her jaw shut to stop her emotion from showing.
Dear Abby,
How are your hands this morning, and your ankle? I hope they’re suitably recovered and not suffering too much from passing up the chance of being tended to by me. When is your next guided walk? I’ve been wondering if I should take you up on the kind offer you spat at me several weeks ago.
Yours, JW
PS. Glad the squashed frog met with your approval.
‘What is this?’ Penelope asked, her brows furrowing. ‘What does this mean? Squashed frog? Has he been hurting the wildlife?’ She levelled Abby with a piercing, unsympathetic gaze, waiting for full disclosure.
‘No no,’ Abby said quickly. ‘It’s a conversation we had, a little while ago. He hasn’t harmed anything. But he’s not angry, see – he’s even considering coming on one of our walks. We’ve turned things around.’
‘What is this business with your hands and ankle? Just what have you been doing with my tenant?’
‘Nothing,’ Abby said. ‘Nothing at all, Penelope. There’s really no reason to worry; everything’s good.’
She folded the note and put it back in the envelope, then her handbag, and hurried to the storeroom to take off her coat. She should be mad with Jack – there was no way she wanted Penelope, Gavin or Stephan to know about her ridiculous accident the previous evening, and as much as she would have been happy to tell Rosa, and Rosa, by her keen look, would be more than happy to find out, she didn’t want to risk it spreading.
Her feelings for Jack Westcoat, as conflicted as they were, were her business alone, a tempting fantasy to fill her idle moments. They would come to nothing, would fade out as quickly as they had arrived. It was good he was no longer against her or the reserve, and hadn’t once mentioned the extra traffic passing by his cottage during the Halloween event, but that was as far as it went. He was a writer, a disgraced one, and obviously as keen on his privacy as she was. She wondered if he would have written the note at all if he’d known that Penelope would force her to open it in front of everyone. They were destined to bump into each other occasionally, but so what? It didn’t mean anything.
As she hung her coat up and slipped the note into the inner, zipped compartment of her bag, she found that she was smiling, almost tempted to take it out and reread it, study the slopes and curves that his long fingers, pen held between them, had produced. But that would be taking it too far. She hadn’t delved into the background behind the scandalous events Octavia had taken much delight in telling them about, and she didn’t want to, even though she knew they would be readily available online. She didn’t want to know what had happened, discover something that would damage her view of him, just as, conversely, she didn’t want to make him a bigger part of her life than he was.
Jack Westcoat was a mirage in her mind, almost as much a work of fiction as the books he wrote, and that was where he needed to stay. The spark between them couldn’t be healthy; she knew that from personal experience, could easily replay the memories of verbal arguments between her mum and dad that had started on the right side of cheeky and ended with slammed doors, thrown crockery, and then, towards the end of their relationship, the abuse her mother had faced at her father’s hands. Her own escape, as a child, had been the fields behind her house, the calm and quiet, the colourful flutter of the butterflies and the high, unconcerned trill of warblers.
And yet, in her adult life, she had begun to repeat the pattern, drawn towards men whose passion started out as attractive but became dangerous. Jack was obviously next on her list of hopeless decisions, and she needed to stay away from him, even if the pull to see him got stronger.
There was just the small matter of his proximity to the reserve and her journey home, and the fact that now, it seemed, he wanted to come on one of her guided walks, was actively showing an interest in the nature reserve and the wildlife he’d been so against. She couldn’t allow that opportunity to pass by, however complicated it made things. Getting people inspired by nature was her job, after all.
She took up her post behind the reception desk and busied herself straightening the already neat maps, spotter books and day passes, ignoring the curious, almost knowing look Rosa was giv
ing her.
Chapter Seven
Barn owls are like ghosts in the dusk. Graceful, honey-and-white birds with heart-shaped faces, they glide through the countryside looking for food. They are not the same type of owl as Hedwig in Harry Potter, which is a snowy owl, but I think they’re just as beautiful.
— Note from Abby’s notebook.
With Halloween and bonfire night out of the way, Christmas seemed to hurtle towards them, and Abby and Rosa agreed to meet early in the visitor centre one mid-November morning to adorn the space with decorations. As Abby left her house and locked the door she found Octavia at her side, wearing a bright green coat with white fur trim which, on top of her red hair, made her look like a large Christmas elf.
‘You’re decorating the reserve this morning, aren’t you?’
Abby had a brief vision of trying to hang paper chains from the trees. ‘The visitor centre,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’
‘Oh, something I overheard. I’ve been busy.’ She thrust forward bulging carrier bags, and Abby saw they were full of glittering decorations; baubles, strings of tinsel and birds made out of gold, silver, blue and purple wire. They looked homemade.
Abby stopped worrying about where Octavia had overheard her and Rosa discussing their plans, and whether she had started to bug their phones, because she was too distracted by the beautiful decorations.
‘These are … did you make these? For the reserve?’
‘There are some up in the library too, though book themed rather than avian. I thought it would be nice if Meadowgreen had continuity to its festiveness, and was seen as one, harmonious village. I’m hoping to convince Ryan to hang up the offerings I’ve made him in the pub, too.’
‘But how much time did it take you to make all these? And what if it’s all wasted, and Ryan says no? I’m not going to, of course, and Penelope has got more important things to worry about than Christmas decorations, but … won’t you be upset if he rejects them?’
‘Not a worry, pet,’ Octavia said, patting her shoulder. ‘I’ll bring him round.’
Lovebirds: The Dawn Chorus Page 9