Willow Cottage, Part 3

by Bella Osborne

  ‘You can call your insurance company from my place, come on,’ he said, taking Leo from her arms and leading the way out of the cottage. Beth felt bereft; she’d worked so hard and now a big chunk of that had been undone.

  She had an instant headache thanks to the revelation that Nick had tracked them down and that the cottage was flooded and a large amount of her hard work had been for nothing. As she passed the living-room door she couldn’t bear to open it and see what had happened to the carpet. Feeling downcast she trudged back to Jack’s car, one soggy footstep at a time.

  She sat in the car fiddling with her phone for the short trip round the green to Jack’s cottage. There had been no update from Carly, which meant there was no change in Fergus. There had been nothing good about Good Friday. It would have been far more aptly named Crap Friday and she now appeared to be experiencing Shite Saturday. Jack opened her door for her.

  ‘At least it’s stopped raining,’ he said, his cheerfulness feeling rather misplaced to Beth.

  ‘A bit too late to save my kitchen though,’ said Beth.

  Leo squeezed her hand and made her feel a fraction better but he soon let go as soon as he saw Doris. Jack let her out of her cage and she and Leo started racing round the garden as if they hadn’t seen each other for ages.

  ‘How’s Fergus?’ asked Jack, his blue-grey eyes looking somehow greyer.

  Beth shrugged and shook her head at the same time. ‘Medically he appears to be okay but he’s not coming round. Apparently the brain can take its time to settle after it’s had a shock like that.’

  ‘How’s Carly?’

  Beth gave the same shrug and headshake. ‘She was on cloud nine one minute and then dumped on her backside the next. Fergus’s parents seem nice so at least she’s got some support.’

  Jack put a reassuring hand on Beth’s arm and gave it a brief squeeze. ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

  ‘Gin and tonic would be better.’

  Jack looked momentarily concerned until her saw the flicker of sarcasm in Beth’s face. ‘I can ask Shirley if she’s got something in her trolley. I don’t keep any alcohol in the house.’

  Beth looked round the kitchen as if to check. He was right; there was no wine rack. ‘But you do drink, I’ve seen you!’

  ‘Yes, but my girlfriend. My ex-girlfriend,’ he corrected, ‘she had a drink problem.’

  ‘Ahh,’ said Beth. ‘Is that what triggered the …’ Jack was already nodding so she didn’t have to finish the sentence. ‘I think I’ll skip anything out of Shirley’s trolley in case Mittens has added to it.’

  ‘Coffee it is then.’

  A phone call to the insurance company proved surprisingly helpful. They needed photographs and an assessor would be round after the bank holiday but otherwise it looked as if they would be paying out to replace anything that was damaged by the floodwater as well as providing machines to dry out the cottage.

  Beth left Leo with Jack and headed back to the cottage with her phone at the ready so that she could take pictures of the kitchen. There was a rustle in the budding willow tree as she approached and she was momentarily wary until Ernie sauntered out with a smile on his face.

  ‘Hello, Ernie, how are you?’ Ernie smiled and bobbed his head in reply. It was somehow nice to see him back in the tree again; she had missed him not being about during the cold weather. He followed her to the door.

  ‘Sorry Ernie, there’s been a flood so you’d better not come in or you’ll get wet feet.’

  ‘Brook flooded,’ said Ernie. Beth wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement.

  ‘Yes, the brook flooded and it’s flooded the kitchen. I need to take photographs so we can get it all fixed.’ She couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped.

  She went through the cottage and Ernie followed despite her warning. She took pictures from every angle as Ernie watched from the doorway.

  ‘Come up!’ said Ernie, emphasizing the expression with a sharp jab in the air with his middle finger. He was not aware of the meaning of the gesture and despite everything it made Beth chuckle.

  ‘I totally agree, Ernie. All the floor will need replacing.’ She said it more to herself than to Ernie.

  ‘Leave ’em be,’ said Ernie forcefully.

  ‘Who, Ernie?’ She instantly thought of Jack.

  ‘Boards.’ Ernie pointed to the puddle.

  ‘The floorboards?’ queried Beth, peering through the dirty water to where they were just visible. She could feel underfoot that they had warped.

  ‘Oak boards. Leave ’em be says Wilf.’ Ernie was frowning hard with the effort of getting his message across. Beth sloshed over to him.

  ‘This has happened before hasn’t it?’ said Beth and Ernie nodded vigorously. ‘And Wilf left them?’ Ernie was nodding so hard Beth was worried he would strain his neck. ‘Okay, so if we get the water up and we leave them, they return to how they were?’ Beth looked more than doubtful at her own words. Ernie nodded and grinned. ‘Well, I’m happy to give it a try, Ernie.’ She ushered him out of the cottage and went to check the damage in the living room.

  Beth opened the door very slowly and peeked through with one open eye. She wasn’t sure why but it made it all seem slightly more bearable. She needn’t have worried as the living room looked exactly as she’d left it. Keeping her wet feet in the hall Beth crouched down to touch the carpet; it was dry. The small step up from the kitchen had made all the difference and had protected the other ground-floor rooms. She was relieved. The kitchen she could cope with. It would mean a few weeks of inconvenience but she wasn’t looking at redoing the whole ground floor. She shut the living-room door and paused for a moment in the hall. The light shifted as something moved outside and reflected through the glass in the door panel. As she put her hand on the door latch she had a feeling – it was a sensation that left her cold.

  Carly was becoming increasingly frustrated with Rosemary, who sat at Fergus’s side reading to him out of the paper. Cormac was surreptitiously watching her.

  ‘I’ll be away to get a cup of tea now,’ he said, giving Carly a nudge. She glanced in his direction and he clumsily signalled to her with his eyes.

  ‘Oh, I’ll come with you … if you like?’ said Carly, her words jolty as if she was reading from an unfamiliar script.

  They silently left the unit and walked along the bland corridor, where it was hard to distinguish where floor met wall.

  ‘You see, our Rosemary, she needs to be doing something,’ explained Cormac. ‘She can’t sit in silence and watch our boy like that.’

  Carly’s shoulders sagged. ‘I know, I do understand, really I do, but talking to him is so pointless.’

  ‘Ah, now you don’t know that for sure,’ said Cormac, pulling his wallet out as they reached the coffee shop.

  ‘Cormac, he’s deaf. Even if he was awake he wouldn’t be able to hear a word she’s saying. Being unconscious won’t have improved that!’

  ‘No, but we humans, we have a sixth sense. So on some level he may know that she’s there.’ Carly went to speak and he halted her with a tilt of his head. ‘And even if he doesn’t it’s helping Rosemary.’

  ‘How so?’ said Carly, listening but at the same time scanning the drinks menu that she knew off by heart.

  ‘He’s our youngest, the babby of the family, and as his mother she cannot just sit by with her two arms the one length.’

  Carly turned to look at him. ‘But there is nothing else to do,’ she said flatly. The tiredness and the emotional exhaustion were draining her of her fight.

  ‘No, Carly, there is always something you can do. Always something.’

  Carly’s head felt like it had been plugged into the mains as she walked back carrying her hot drink. Cormac had annoyed her. She wasn’t sure if that had been his intention but it had certainly fired up her grey matter and as well as silently remonstrating with Cormac’s endless optimism and Rosemary’s futility she was also racking her brains for what she could do. Was there really somethin
g she or the hospital had overlooked?

  As they turned the corner the button for the door into ICU had just been pressed by Fergus’s doctor and he greeted them warmly.

  ‘Excuse me, Doctor, do you have a moment?’ asked Cormac.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ushering them into a small office.

  ‘I’ll deliver this and I’ll be back in a jiffy,’ said Cormac as he marched off with Rosemary’s tea. When he came back Carly and the doctor were half-heartedly discussing the weather. Cormac sat down and placed his tablet computer on his lap.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor, we were after an update really. Nothing seems to have changed since we got here,’ he said.

  ‘Well, no, I’d say he’s about the same,’ said the doctor, but when there was further expectation in Cormac’s eyes he added, ‘Fergus’s vital signs are still encouraging.’

  ‘I see. Well, I’ve been looking on the internet,’ said Cormac, holding up his tablet computer as evidence, ‘And it says patients usually come round within twenty-four hours, so why hasn’t our boy woken up yet?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say. Every patient is different and every head injury affects them in different ways,’ said the doctor.

  ‘What else could we all be doing to help him? Is there something you could do to speed him up a little?’ asked Cormac, snapping his tablet cover shut.

  ‘Unfortunately, there is no treatment we can use to bring a person round when they’re comatose. Likewise, there is no test to predict when they will come round,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Coma?’ said Carly, leaning forward in her seat, her face the picture of stunned.

  The doctor nodded. ‘He’s comatose and we’re monitoring him constantly.’

  ‘Since when was he comatose rather than being unconscious or just not come round yet?’ said Carly, her speech rapid.

  Cormac clutched her hand. ‘What we want to know is when did he deteriorate?’

  ‘He hasn’t deteriorated. He’s stable. It’s a way of categorizing his level of responsiveness,’ explained the doctor. ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you.’

  ‘Ah, but you did all the same,’ said Cormac, his voice curt despite the soft accent.

  As they left the office Cormac whispered to Carly, ‘Not a word to Rosemary.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Carly, thinking that despite the doctor’s protestations she did feel that Fergus had somehow taken a backwards step. They both gave Rosemary slightly exaggerated smiles as they sat down at the bedside.

  Rosemary paused mid-paragraph about the rugby. ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘No change,’ said Carly as she looked over her shoulder for Cormac’s concurrence.

  ‘He’s doing grand. Just grand,’ said Cormac and Rosemary smiled before adjusting her glasses and looking for her place on the page.

  Cormac opened up his tablet and started stabbing at the keys with his sausage-sized fingers.

  ‘Actually could I borrow that for a while please?’ asked Carly. She knew very little about computers and the internet but she figured now was as good a time as any to learn.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Beth knew there was someone on the other side of the front door. Her heart rate quickened as adrenalin coursed through her. She sidled over to the living-room door to peek through the gap but the angle was all wrong and all she could see was a slice of the inside of the room. If she went into the room anyone that came to look in the window would see her immediately.

  She crept upstairs and into her bedroom. Her head started to pound. She stood behind the scrunched-up curtains and peered down onto the front garden. There was a faint shadow being cast, which meant she wasn’t hallucinating. There was someone at her front door but they hadn’t knocked. Did that mean they had seen her go in and were waiting for her to come out? Or perhaps waiting for her to open the door before they rushed inside.

  Beth fumbled in her pocket for her mobile and gasped as she almost dropped it. Clutching it tightly she crafted a text to Jack.

  Think someone outside cottage can’t leave.

  Her thumb hovered over the send button. What was the point in sending that message? Apart from making her look, at best, a bit of a wimp and, at worst, a total head case what was she expecting Jack to do? He couldn’t come storming over because he had Leo with him and if it was Nick outside then the last thing Beth wanted was for Leo to have to face him again. She deleted the message and had another peek at the shadow. It had gone.

  Beth crept out of her bedroom and across the landing into Leo’s room. The bare walls reminding her that she really needed to get round to decorating his room. A cautionary peek out of the window showed no signs of anyone in the back garden and the horses were munching away in the field, which was a sure sign that there was nobody about as they were the first to investigate anyone’s presence in case it meant food.

  She took a deep breath and gave herself a mental shake. She must have imagined it. Her head was throbbing hard now and the nausea increasing. She came quietly down the stairs then sneaked into the living room just to be totally sure there was no one hanging about. Nobody was. She took a deep breath and went to the front door, undid the latch and opened it a fraction keeping her foot propped against it on the inside in case she needed to slam it shut in a hurry, but there was no need. There was no sign of anybody. She stepped out, shut and locked the door and had a good look round. Nope, it was her overactive imagination or perhaps it had just been Ernie?

  Beth kept an eye out as she walked across the green. But she was already feeling like a bit of a fool.

  ‘I thought you’d got lost,’ said Jack with a chuckle when she walked in.

  She gave him a look. She could bluff it out, make something up or she could be honest with him. The trouble with honest was that you could make yourself look like an even bigger idiot. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said, rubbing her forehead. ‘Have you got any tablets?’

  ‘Headache?’

  ‘Migraine I think. I’ve not had one before, so I’m not entirely sure,’ said Beth as she popped two tablets out of the packet Jack offered her and downed them with a glass of water.

  ‘Do you feel sick? Dizzy? Flashing lights?’

  ‘A bit sick, that’s all,’ said Beth.

  ‘Drink this,’ said Jack, handing her another tumbler of water. ‘Why don’t you go and have a lie-down upstairs?’

  ‘Ahh, I don’t know …’

  ‘Go on. Leo and I will take Doris out and they can play in your back garden while I take the foot boards off the cabinets so they don’t soak up any more water. Then perhaps when you wake up we could watch a film and order takeaway?’

  ‘Yay!’ came a shout from the garden.

  ‘That child’s hearing is awesome,’ said Jack. ‘Come on, the rest will do you good. I’ll bring you up a coffee in a couple of hours,’ he said as he shooed her to the stairs.

  ‘Thanks, Jack. This is really kind.’

  ‘I am,’ said Jack with a lopsided grin.

  He was actually starting to look even cuter now that he was taken. That grin had a boyish charm and coupled with his good looks and caring nature he really was a very good example of the male specimen. Oh well, thought Beth, he’s the one that got away but at least it was for mostly the right reasons.

  ‘Beth …’ Someone was whispering her name and it made her smile. She was dreaming about sleeping in a hammock and the voice grew louder and fainter as she swung. ‘Beth, cup of coffee here.’

  She opened her eyes and saw a very smiley Jack looking at her. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello. How’s the head?’

  She closed her eyes again and had a check. ‘It’s fine now.’

  ‘And the sickness?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Are you up for a Chinese then? That’s what Leo fancies, he’s chosen about eight dishes.’

  ‘As long as he has chicken chow mein on the list it’s all good with me.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Jack and he left her with her coffee.<
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  They sat surrounded by the debris of the Chinese meal and the remnants of a bottle of wine. Leo had taken himself to bed and with Jack’s help had set up camp in the spare room in Jack’s sleeping bag. Doris had sneaked up shortly afterwards and settled next to him in the hope of getting to sleep upstairs for a change. A film was on the television but neither of them were really watching it.

  ‘Don’t worry about your kitchen. It’ll be easy to sort out,’ said Jack.

  ‘Huh, you know I remembered something from the original auction details today that I thought was a typo when I read it. It said there was a stream running through the property. They weren’t joking were they?’

  Jack laughed a hearty laugh. ‘I thought the brook was the boundary but I guess it is on your land … and a bit under the cottage too!’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ said Beth. ‘Ernie seemed to think it happened a lot?’

  ‘From asking around we think it’s pretty rare, about eight years ago was the last time.’

  ‘That’s good, I won’t be here for the next one then,’ said Beth with a snort.

  Jack wasn’t laughing, his cheek twitched. ‘So what took you so long at the cottage?’ he asked, dividing out the rest of the wine between their two glasses.

  ‘Now don’t laugh!’ said Beth, which set the scene and Jack’s face was already trying to control a smirk. ‘It’s silly really but I thought there was someone outside the front door so I had to creep about and check out of all the windows before I’d dare open the door.’ She was smiling at her own stupidity but Jack’s smirk had faded.

  ‘Why did you think there was someone there?’

  She shrugged. ‘I got this feeling. It was horrible really but as I touched the door-latch I thought I saw a change in the light through the glass in the door but with the sun shining on it it’s difficult to tell. It was probably a cloud or something.’ She took a sip of wine and tried to look nonchalant.

  ‘But you thought it was Nick?’

  Beth nodded. ‘I know it sounds crazy.’

  ‘Why are you so scared of him?’ Jack’s gaze was intense.

  ‘Because he said if I left him he would find me and kill me.’