Summer at the Little Cottage on the Hill_An utterly uplifting holiday romance to escape with

by Emma Davies

  It was clear that enough had been said on the subject. She took a sip of her tea.

  ‘I’m sure you will have told me, but I’m sorry, I can’t remember what you said you play yourself?’

  ‘Selective memory?’

  ‘Very.’ She gave a slight smile. ‘And I probably made that obvious.’

  Tom ignored the comment. ‘I’ve never actually told you what I play.’

  There were sudden creases at the corners of her eyes. ‘So?’ she asked.

  ‘Guitar, ukulele, banjo, violin – very badly – and accordion.’

  She stared at him. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. I play in a folk band, pubs mostly.’ He shrugged at her expression. ‘Yes, I’m one of those musicians…’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean—’ Her hand fluttered to her throat.

  ‘Oh, yes you did! Don’t try and deny it.’ But he smiled back.

  ‘I heard it said somewhere that folk music gets everyone in the end, but…’

  ‘You’d rather be ritually disembowelled?’

  ‘I didn’t actually say that.’

  Tom grinned. ‘It’s okay. I won’t take it personally.’

  ‘But yet you’ve been to more than one classical recital by the sound of it. How come?’

  ‘Middle-class parents with aspirations,’ he said. ‘Ones who thought that if their layabout son was going to become a musician then he should at least be one of note, and not some two-chord-nobody in a band.’

  Isobel was about to pick up her mug again, but she stopped midway, stiffening.

  ‘How old were you?’ she asked.

  ‘Mid-teens, I guess. Young enough that they were still paying for my music lessons anyway.’

  ‘So did you fulfil their dreams for you?’

  ‘Nope. Despite their ambitions I still ended up playing in a band, although that came much later of course, just after I gave up on trying to find a respectable career and became a thatcher instead. That really pissed them off.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  Tom looked surprised. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘Good for you? Most people look vaguely affronted when I tell them things like that.’

  She dropped her eyes as she finally placed her mug back on the table. ‘Thatching suits you, that’s all. I can’t see you as a doctor or a banker.’ She paused for a moment. ‘So what did you play back then, as a child?’

  He smiled, watching her from across the table.

  She groaned, cupping her head in a hand. ‘Violin, of course. How could it be anything else?’

  ‘Well, you did ask… And it’s now my least favourite instrument, to play I mean,’ he corrected himself. ‘I could listen to it all day.’ He saw her blush slightly as he realised what he’d said. ‘Much though it pains me to say it, I think being taken to all those concerts time and time again as a child must have rubbed off on me. It was twenty or so years ago, and although at the time I tried to deny that I enjoyed them, the music sort of snuck up on me in my old age.’

  Isobel snorted. ‘You’re just scared to admit you like classical music because it doesn’t really fit your image.’

  Tom looked taken aback. ‘Do I have an image?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, you know that whole—’ She stopped suddenly, looking down at her hands.

  ‘Seriously though,’ he said. ‘My parents and I had rather a falling-out. And while that led to my rebelling against playing the instrument of their choice, I hope I know enough about the violin to hear when it’s being played exceptionally well, and I haven’t heard anyone play to your standard for a very long time.’

  Isobel dipped her head, blushing. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ve played since I was a child too, from a very early age, so I get what that whole parental pressure thing feels like.’

  Tom lifted his head and was about to say something when she suddenly picked up her mug and drained the contents; a very obvious full stop if ever he saw one.

  He glanced at his watch. ‘I should get back to work,’ he said.

  She nodded gratefully. ‘Yes, me too. Lots to do.’

  The conversation felt suddenly awkward again. ‘Well, thanks for the coffee – hopefully the forty winks and the caffeine will have done the trick. I’m going to be in all sorts of trouble if I don’t get a few more hours in today. Deadlines and all that.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Far too much slacking going on today, although at least I wasn’t asleep on the job.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep on the job, chance would have been a fine thing. Some bloody woman was playing the violin, sounded like a cat being strangled.’

  Chapter 6

  Tom woke with a start and lurched from the chair, groaning when he caught sight of the clock on the wall. His head was still reeling and he had to grasp the side of the table to stop from falling, kicking the bottle at his feet as he did so. It skittered across the floor, spinning. Staggering to the sink, he filled a mug with water, and drained it in one long series of swallows. Belching loudly as he finished, he wiped a hand across the back of his mouth.

  Swaying slightly, he tried to muster himself for the journey upstairs. He needed to get to bed, and soon, or Seth would have his guts for garters. He let go of the sink and began to pick his way across the room, holding onto the bannisters in a well-worn routine when he reached the stairs. And then he began to climb.

  His last thought as he crashed onto the bed was of Isobel.

  Not nearly enough hours later, Tom gritted his teeth and flicked the shower onto cold, flinching as the icy water cascaded over him. He stood for as long as he could bear it before turning the shower back to its original setting, almost slumping against the wall in relief. Two minutes later he did it again. After quarter of an hour of alternating between hot and cold water, Tom decided things were as good as they were going to get and turned off the water, wrapping a towel around his waist.

  He had sworn to himself over and over that he was never going to do this again. It was too easy to hide behind the comforting numbness that booze brought rather than face up to the things which tormented him and so, two weeks ago, he had removed every bottle of alcohol he had from the house. Except that last night, as he’d sat at the kitchen table replaying thoughts of his meeting with Kate, he had remembered the present he’d been given by a grateful couple whose wedding he had played at recently. The bottle of whisky they had brought him back from their honeymoon was still in the boot of his car, and it had taunted him endlessly until he had gone to fetch it. Even then, he hadn’t opened it straight away. He had sat looking at it, telling himself that it was not the answer, but as the night wore on, the quietness had seeped into the corners of his mind and he knew he had nowhere to hide. He vividly remembered the feeling of release his first drink had given him, but not the last.

  So far that morning he had managed to avoid every mirror in the house, but as he collected his car keys from the hall table half an hour later, he accidentally glanced at his reflection. He stared at himself for a couple of minutes, trying to find the image of a person he recognised behind the dark shadows under his eyes and the heavier than usual beard line.

  Seth was already waiting for him when he arrived at Joy’s Acre. Not in an obvious way of course, he was too good a friend for that, but nonetheless Tom spotted him loitering in the garden as he neared the cottage he was working on.

  ‘Morning,’ said Seth, coming over. ‘Everything okay?’

  Tom ignored his question. ‘I know, I’m late, I’m sorry.’

  ‘No problem. It’s just I said I’d give you a hand this morning, that’s all, but I’m only free until one o’clock.’

  Tom looked at his watch. It was a little after ten; he’d already lost two hours’ work. ‘I remember, and like I said, I’m sorry.’ He glanced up at the ladder in front of him. ‘Still, I’m here now, so let’s get on, shall we?… And yeah, before you ask, I’m fine to be doing this.’

  Seth raised an eyebrow, but Tom looked away and started to climb.

 
It was a good ten minutes before Seth spoke again. ‘The thatch is looking good, are you happy with how things are going?’

  ‘Happy enough,’ muttered Tom. ‘Just not enough bloody hours in the day.’ He was well aware that this would probably invite comment, but even if his work pattern wasn’t always regular, he’d been putting the time in one way or another, and the thatch was progressing well.

  Seth was about to answer when Tom suddenly held up his hand to prevent him from saying anything further. He was listening. The opening bars of a Tchaikovsky violin concerto were wafting across the garden.

  After a few more seconds he turned to look back at Seth, waiting for the inevitable comment about his timekeeping. Instead he was surprised to see an amused expression on Seth’s face. He frowned, his brain slow to process what he was seeing, but eventually the penny dropped.

  ‘And no, it’s not what you’re thinking, so you can take that smirk off your face. I am categorically not interested in Isobel.’ He turned back to the task in hand, well aware that Seth was staring at him. ‘I like her music, that’s all.’

  The warning note to Tom’s voice would have been enough to put most people off pursuing the conversation, but he and Seth went too far back for that.

  ‘You like her music,’ Seth intoned. ‘And you’re sure that’s all…? You haven’t noticed her stunning looks then? Those deep dark eyes you could drown in…’

  Tom looked up, glaring. ‘Drop it, Seth,’ he warned. ‘Yes, I’ve noticed the way she looks. I’ve also noticed the way she talks to people; the woman nearly bit my head clean off yesterday when I’d done nothing wrong. Besides which, do you really think someone like Isobel would ever be interested in someone like me? She’s nice to look at, but that’s it.’

  ‘And?’

  Tom couldn’t respond. Seth knew him too well and behind the supposedly glib comment was a very well-aimed hook designed to draw him out the water like a fish wriggling on a line.

  The two men stared at one another for a moment, but Tom wasn’t about to be drawn in. ‘I need to work,’ he said instead.

  Seth sighed. ‘Fair enough… And so, on to matters of a more practical nature: have you had any breakfast?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘Didn’t seem like a very good idea first thing…’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ Tom knew he was referring to a bacon sandwich, and he watched while Seth took off his kneelers and made his way back down the ladder. He inhaled a deep breath and picked up his mallet, forcing all thoughts from his brain beyond the straw he was working with.

  He felt better after he’d eaten and the two of them worked solidly for an hour or so with little need for conversation. The music continued, but for the most part Tom was able to block it out. It was only when he stopped to assess the section he’d been working on that the melody swam back into his consciousness. He wiped a hand over his face; the heat was already building.

  ‘Jesus, she doesn’t ever bloody shut up, does she?’ Seth had done the same as him, pausing for a moment to wipe the sweat from his face, and he was now staring over at Isobel’s cottage. ‘The same thing, over and over. Doesn’t she know anything else?’

  Tom looked up. ‘She’s practising, that’s what you do. It’s the second movement she’s having trouble with, not that she is really, I mean she’s playing it pretty much flawlessly from what I can tell, but she’s obviously not happy.’

  Just as he said it, a raucous screech rang out, the sound of strings being tortured in anger.

  ‘Ouch…’ said Tom. ‘Told you she wasn’t happy.’

  Almost immediately the music started up again, from the beginning this time.

  ‘She’s got stamina,’ said Seth, ‘I’ll give her that.’

  The same thing was just occurring to Tom, and he wondered if that was the real reason why he had never continued playing at that level. ‘Yep, she probably does several hours’ practice like that every day, and I mean every day, weekends, holidays… every day.’

  ‘So what is she then, some sort of starlet in the music world? Should we have heard of her?’

  Tom pulled out his set pin, Seth’s words striking a distant chord. He struggled to grasp his thoughts.

  ‘I don’t think so… I’ve never heard of her. She’s been playing since she was a child, she told me that yesterday—’ He stopped, thinking for a moment before shaking his head and carrying on. ‘But that’s what you have to do to get that good. I guess she’s probably played in orchestras before, that kind of thing. But it’s like a muscle, you know, if you don’t use it, you lose it.’ He replaced the set pin a little distance from where it had sat before so he could measure the depth of the thatch.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you managed to have a chat yesterday. She seemed a bit quiet when we were having lunch and she didn’t stay for long, did she?’

  Seth was fishing again.

  ‘No, we talked later in the afternoon…’ He measured his words carefully. ‘I was having a break, and we… came across each other.’

  ‘That’s when she took your head off, was it?’ Seth let the sentence dangle.

  Tom stared at the sheaf of straw in his hands and let out a loud breath. ‘Okay, I’d gone to have a kip in the field behind the cottage if you must know. Isobel came in, didn’t see me until she was about to leave, and then blew her top because I’d overheard her playing. It wasn’t my fault she didn’t see me, and honestly, you should have heard her, a right bloody prima donna. Saying I had no right to hear her music – when she was playing in the middle of a field!’

  ‘So that’s when she told you about how she played as a child?’

  ‘Not exactly, no…’

  Seth remained silent.

  ‘I sort of calmed her down a bit and she invited me back for a cup of tea… Well I could hardly say no, could I? She’s our first guest, Seth, I didn’t want to leave her angry because of something I’d done, that would have gone down really well.’

  ‘I see, so you went to try and make amends, that kind of thing?’ There was a slightly amused tone to Seth’s voice that Tom didn’t like the sound of. He could see exactly where the conversation was headed.

  ‘I agreed to have tea, yes, but it’s not what you think. Then Kate and Lily turned up and—’

  ‘Ah…’ There was a huge weight behind the word.

  Tom sagged against his ladder. ‘Kate’s got a boyfriend, Seth…’

  Seth didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to.

  ‘And that’s fine. I mean, I knew she wouldn’t stay on her own forever, and she’d looked really well, gorgeous actually, but it’s just that…’

  ‘She’s moving on from Matt…?’

  ‘Yeah… I wasn’t expecting it now, that’s all.’

  Seth held a sympathetic hand against Tom’s shoulder. ‘It had to happen sometime, mate. Your brother’s been gone a while, and for Lily’s sake as much as anything, perhaps it’s for the best.’

  Tom’s eyes lit up. ‘Lily looked so grown up, Seth, so beautiful. You’d hardly have recognised her. And she’s been learning the flute – in fact they came to invite me to a concert. She looked really happy.’

  ‘Then that’s all you need to think about.’

  Tom looked across at him and nodded. ‘I know, but…’

  Seth held his look and Tom could see him struggling for an opening. He might as well come clean – Seth had pretty much worked it out, after all.

  ‘So, yeah, last night… that’s what it was all about. I did what I usually do whenever that subject comes up; I went home, thought about it on repeat, totally screwed myself up, and got completely off my face on cheap whisky. Only in this case it was the best part of a spectacularly fine bottle of Lagavulin. I’d already got rid of all the other booze. I don’t know why I do it, Seth. It never helps.’

  He wasn’t looking for an answer. Seth and he had turned the subject inside out over the last couple of years, less times in the last few months admittedly, but there really
wasn’t anything to add.

  His friend considered his question nonetheless. ‘Perhaps,’ he said slowly, ‘because now you recognise that you’re saying goodbye to what’s in the past.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And maybe now is the right time to do exactly that.’

  Tom gave a wry smile. ‘That’s the stupid thing. I already know that. I decided a couple of weeks back to clean up my act. No more booze, no more chasing every girl I see, thinking it will help. It’s not a quick fix I need, Seth, no more trying to paper over the cracks. This time I need a proper renovation job.’

  Seth suddenly grinned. ‘Welcome to Joy’s Acre.’

  ‘It’s also why I need nothing whatsoever to do with our resident musician.’ He groaned. ‘Jesus, I even invited her along to Lily’s concert after we got talking about parents – that was a really smart move – and then I made it even worse by making some flippant comment about her playing sounding like a strangled cat. What was I thinking? I mean it, Seth, if you so much as catch me looking in her direction, I give you absolute permission to punch my lights out.’

  Isobel couldn’t ignore them for much longer – the missed calls stacking up on her mobile were becoming harder and harder to dismiss. Eventually at five o’clock she made herself a cup of tea and sat down on the sofa to prepare herself. There was nothing they could do about her being here – she was a grown adult, not a child any longer, and all Isobel had to do was stay calm and be firm about her intentions. She picked up her phone and made the call.

  ‘Darling, thank heavens you’re all right, where are you?’

  Isobel ignored her mother’s question. ‘I’m absolutely fine, Mum. I just decided to go away for a few days, that’s all. Somewhere nice and peaceful where I can work without interruption.’

  ‘But darling, you have all that here. Don’t be so ridiculous.’

  Isobel drew in a breath. ‘You say that. You say it all the time, but you check in on me every five minutes to see how things are going. You ask me constantly if I’ve done my exercises. You force food down me when I’m not even hungry. I can’t think when you’re always watching me, it’s so claustrophobic.’