Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage

by Milly Johnson

  ‘It doesn’t have a washing machine, but there’s one in the cottage,’ said Geraldine. ‘Obviously, you can use it whenever you want. There’s a washing line in the garden and a tumble drier in the cottage kitchen. Let me show you upstairs.’ Viv followed Geraldine up the narrow wooden staircase. There at the top of it was the prettiest bedroom ever with white-painted walls and another arched window. There was a three-quarter-sized bed, an old oak wardrobe and a long ornate mirror propped up at the side of a door which led to a very tiny bathroom. A faint smell of unlived-in damp and an artificial rose spray pervaded the air. Nothing that a good dose of fresh air from an open window wouldn’t kick into touch, thought Viv.

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ agreed Geraldine. ‘It was a ruin until three years ago. No one knows how long it’s been here or who built it. Heath and a couple of men from the village renovated it. It was my idea to turn it into a little house for whoever we got to help us run things. I thought it might help to attract someone decent because the money certainly wouldn’t. Present company excepted, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘Anyway, the design is very clever. The bed is high so you can store things underneath it and there are secret storage cupboards everywhere. Oh, and it does creak a bit at night as it cools, I do warn you, but it’s just house noises, not ghosts.’

  No ghost could be as scary as those birds, thought Viv.

  ‘When will he . . . Heath . . . be back so I can meet him?’ Viv had always preferred to run towards impending disasters rather than from them. That way they were over and done with sooner rather than later.

  ‘I was hoping tonight; tomorrow latest,’ replied Geraldine, worry again furrowing her brow. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. Goodness knows what a picture I’ve painted.’ She sighed as if the world and its brother were weighting down her shoulders. Viv put on her best ‘look, it’s all right’ smile.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll get on when we meet each other.’

  ‘Bless you for making me feel better,’ said Geraldine. ‘Words always sound fine in my head but there’s a filter in my mouth that makes them come out wrong.’ She absently nudged her hair back from the left side of her face and Viv noticed the silvery line of scar tissue crossing her eyebrow and curling towards her ear. ‘All I ask is, give us a chance. Now let me leave you to unpack and settle in. Come and have some supper with me when you’ve found your feet. Nothing flash, just some field mushroom broth but it’s a lovely recipe.’

  ‘Thank you, I will.’

  When Geraldine had gone, Viv rang her mother to let her know she had arrived safely. Stel picked up after one ring, as if she had been sitting by the phone waiting for the call.

  ‘Thank goodness you’ve arrived,’ she said, as concerned as if Viv had trekked to Base Camp on Everest. ‘How is it? What are the people like? Have you eaten?’

  ‘Mum, I am fine. I have a lovely little bijou house—’

  ‘Bijou?’ Stel interrupted. ‘Estate agents say bijou when they mean minuscule and poky.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’m not an estate agent and I mean bijou in the very nicest way. It’s tiny and sweet, like a miniature castle, and in the prettiest valley.’

  Stel opened her mouth to release so many things that were crowded in there, waiting to rush out: make sure you lock your door, don’t let them work you too hard, is your tetanus injection up to date? Her girl was a woman now and the apron strings were ripe for snapping. It didn’t make it any easier that Viv was far more sensible at her age than Stel had ever been. Funny how we’re so different, thought Stel. But then, it wasn’t, really.

  ‘Well, you keep in touch with me and let me know you’re doing okay,’ was all she allowed herself to say.

  ‘I will, Mum. Has Basil come back in yet?’

  ‘Oh yes, he came back about an hour ago. He’s scoffing his dinner now as if he hasn’t been fed for a week.’

  Stel looked down at the still-full cat food bowl. Basil, their lazy ginger tom, had been out all night, which was unheard of for him. She supposed a lie was forgiveable in the circumstances if it stopped her girl from worrying about him.

  ‘Wonderful. Give him a hug from me. Right, I’m off to unpack then. You take care, Mum.’

  ‘And you. Talk to you soon. Big kiss.’

  ‘Big kiss.’

  Stel put the phone down, sank onto the sofa and had a mini-sob. Such was the irony of life that you poured all your love into a child to make them ready for leaving you. With not even Basil to cuddle for comfort, she felt so very, very alone.

  Chapter 4

  Gaynor poured the last of the bottle of wine into her glass. She was crying. No one had seen her cry for years except the reflection in the mirror.

  Time was a great healer, was it? Bollocks. Mick had been gone for eleven months and thirteen days now and every morning when she woke up, she was freshly pierced by the hurt of his desertion, like that bloke in Greek mythology who had his liver ripped out every day. She knew that she would find more sympathy from her friends if she had cried in front of them, crumpled into herself instead of spitting and firing hate bombs; but anger was the only thing keeping her breathing.

  She looked around her at the immaculate front room with its palatial-chic furniture, its porcelain seated leopard sentinels either side of the baroque fireplace, its ridiculously priced sofa which looked like something out of Versailles. Mick had denounced it from day one as the most uncomfortable thing he had ever sat on in his life. That sofa summed up her whole marriage. It might have appeared grand, but it wasn’t inviting enough to come home to. Which is why Mick had buggered off to a big squashy sofa he could collapse into with a contented sigh.

  Gaynor wasn’t a stupid woman. She knew she had spent too much time tending to the accoutrements of her marriage rather than her marriage itself. Okay, Mick wasn’t perfect, but she hadn’t given him what he wanted and, as much as she hated to admit it to herself, he hadn’t asked for that much. He’d told her so many times that he wasn’t happy with this or that and she’d ignored him, telling herself he would come round to her way of thinking. It was always him who had to bend to her. Well, he hadn’t come around to her way of thinking on the chaise and it had been a hard lesson and one learned too late. She had begged him not to leave her, when he’d come back for some of his stuff, a month after his initial disappearance, but he was impenetrable. It was over. She had been convinced she could mend this. She had cried and crawled after him on her knees, promised to change, promised to mould herself into the sweet, pliant woman he wanted and wouldn’t that be easier than leaving and carving up their joint life? Then when that didn’t work she had attacked him and ripped into Danira Bellfield and he had walked out to his car, dragging her behind him down the path as she clung onto his calf.

  She never realised she had loved Mick as much as she did until he had gone. She missed seeing his shoes in the hallway, she missed him grousing about there being nothing on the TV worth watching, she missed him polishing off every meal she put in front of him because she really was a superb cook. She even missed all the things that used to drive her mad about him: his soft snuffly breathing in the middle of the night, the noisy way he rolled an ice-cube around in a whisky glass, what an unreadable mess he made of a newspaper when he’d read it. Inside she was in pieces; outside she remained upright and brittle, keeping up appearances despite the fact that her husband had left her for a Bellfield – a Bellfield – of all families. One who wore crop tops despite the fact she had a belly with more wobble than a half-set jelly. And tattoos. And piercings on her face and God knows where else. And, one day when Gaynor had been out spying on them in her car, she had seen Blobby de Niro and her own husband strolling down the street holding hands like lovestruck teenagers and he had been grinning in a way that she hadn’t seen him do for . . . well . . . ever.

  Gaynor threw the contents of her glass into her mouth to drown out all the torturing visions; but it seemed that those visions were wearing
rubber rings that could float in Shiraz.

  Chapter 5

  Stel stood on the back doorstep yet again and called out Basil’s name. She was getting worried now. Basil liked his home comforts too much to be out at night, or for long during the day. He was fat and lazy and hated the cold and couldn’t have found anything to eat to save his life, even if it had been dead, cooked in catnip and served up on a plate with a label reading ‘eat me’. He never usually went beyond the boundary of the garden fence, so she had begun to fear the worst.

  Stel had adopted him from the Maud Haworth Home for Cats when Viv had been fifteen. Viv had nagged for a kitten for her thirteenth birthday but Stel’s then partner Darren had been allergic to their fur. In retrospect, she should have thrown him out and let her daughter have the cat.

  ‘Not turned up, Stel?’

  ‘Oh Al, you scared me daft.’ Stel hadn’t realised her next-door neighbour was standing on his doorstep too.

  ‘Sorry, love. I’ve been out and had a look around, but I couldn’t see him. Do you want me to ring the council for you in the morning, to see if they’ve had a report of any animals being knocked down?’ Al heard Stel’s sharp intake of breath. ‘I’m sure they won’t have, but I don’t mind checking for you. Save you doing it. No news is good news, eh?’

  ‘Thanks, Al.’ She smiled at him and tried to will back the tears that threatened to flood out of her eyeballs. That was typically kind of Al; he was a good neighbour – and a very old friend. She and Al Thackray had been in the same class all the way through school and he’d lived at the bottom of her street when they were growing up. He’d bought the semi adjoining Stel’s fifteen years ago and transformed it from a neglected old person’s house into a palace. Some of the kids had been cruel to him when he was young because his mother was useless and had sent him to school in hand-me-down scruffy clothes. Stel’s own mum had marched down the street on many an occasion, found Al sitting on his doorstep and made him come to their house for something to eat. She’d also given Myra Thackray some right earfuls of vitriol in the street about it; not that Myra was shamed enough to resume her maternal duties.

  Stel knew that Al had always appreciated that she’d never ridiculed him nor made him feel like shit like those other kids – and some of the teachers – at their school had done, but he’d never treated her as anything else but a friend, which was a shame, because she’d always had a soft spot for him. He might not have been academic at school, but he was amazingly talented at making things with his hands. He’d left at fifteen to become an apprentice joiner with a firm that he now owned. He’d had a shouty and childless marriage, which had ended about seven years ago, and there’d been no romance since that she knew of. Al Thackray was a decent man, a good man, a kind man. The sort that never looked at her because the only men she attracted were total knobheads.

  When she looked at Al these days, she could barely equate him to the spotty, puny, undernourished boy whose legs were like strings with knots in them. Al was a big fellow now, with shoulders like an ox, a combination of building-site graft and using heavy weights at the gym. He looked after himself, did Al. And he looked after Stel too. If she ever needed anything, all she had to do was knock on the party wall between them and he’d be straight over for her, she knew.

  Al handed over a piece of paper with lots of his writing on it.

  ‘I made a list of all the stuff you can do when a cat goes missing,’ he said. ‘You know, who to leave your details with and all that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Stel didn’t want to cry again, not in front of anyone and he must have sensed that because he changed the subject.

  ‘Did Viv arrive safely then?’

  ‘Yes, she’s there now. She said it’s a lovely place.’

  Al’s mobile phone went off – its ring tone was the theme tune to Scooby Doo. For a few seconds she was back in her childhood house in Holton Road, watching that programme on the TV with him, the pair of them eating Birds Eye fish-finger sandwiches, and her mother looking up the road to try and spot Myra Thackray coming home so she could give her a piece of her mind for ‘leaving a bairn locked out in this weather’.

  Al took the call and waved a ‘bye’ at her. She waved back and called one last time for Basil, but there was no miaow of reply.

  *

  Viv unzipped the smaller of her two cases and took out the faded yellow and black striped knitted bee that was cushioned in the middle of her clothes. EBW went everywhere with her. It had been the first present she ever received, knitted by a nurse at the hospital where she was born. Elke Wilson had worked in the special care baby unit and had hidden a note inside the ‘teddy bee’; a note which Viv had found when she was eighteen. Viv had restitched the bee after she’d opened it up to extract the folded piece of paper she’d felt inside it, but the scar was still visible. Viv put EBW on the table at the side of her bed, tenderly as if the toy had feelings, then she unpacked the rest of her stuff; not that it took her long. Her clothes now hung in the wardrobe, her toiletries littered the surface of the dressing table and the deep stone windowsill of the bathroom. Her books and iPad were parked at the side of her bed and her caseful of oils took up the whole dining table. Once everything was out of her suitcases, she almost scooped it back up again and bolted home. She didn’t want to be here in this strange little folly in this strange little hamlet. She wanted to be sharing a bottle of wine with her mum, Basil a heavy furry weight on her knee. But she had to be here. She had a job to do which hopefully wouldn’t take too long; then she could leave this alien world of three-legged donkeys and mutually dependent owls. Only then.

  Chapter 6

  ‘You don’t have to knock, love,’ Geraldine chuckled, hearing the soft tap of knuckles on the door into the kitchen. Viv walked in to the most beautiful aroma of cooking coming from a black cauldron-type pot on the stove. Geraldine was standing at the work surface slicing a loaf of granary bread into thick wedges.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ she said, pointing to the chairs around the table. ‘All the animals have been fed and now it’s our turn.’ There was a half-filled glass of wine at her elbow and a slight slur to her words.

  ‘Can I help?’ Viv asked, not used to being waited on.

  ‘You can get a bottle out of the fridge,’ she said. ‘This is the potato wine but there’s beetroot and raspberry as well, if you prefer. Selwyn Stanbury, the barber, makes it. It’s the lightest of all his concoctions. I lost three days with his parsnip wine once. And as for his potato vodka . . .’ She raised her eyebrows and blew out her cheeks. ‘I swore I’d never drink again after that particular sampling session.’

  Viv opened the fridge and selected the potato wine from the three bottles that were in the door rack.

  ‘Glasses are in the cupboard above your head,’ Geraldine directed, moving over to the pot on the stove and ladling out some soup. It arrived at the table with a swirl of cream on it and a sprinkle of herbs and looked delicious.

  Geraldine sat down, then raised her glass.

  ‘Welcome, Viv,’ she said, clinking it against Viv’s as soon as she had lifted it. ‘I hope you’re happy here with us. I think Isme would approve of you.’

  ‘I hope I have better taste in men than she did,’ said Viv as she picked up her spoon and began to eat. The soup tasted wonderful.

  ‘Do you have a young man?’ asked Geraldine, ripping into the bread.

  ‘Not any more,’ replied Viv. She noticed Geraldine’s face fold in sympathy. ‘Oh it’s okay. We realised quite quickly we weren’t Mr and Mrs Right-for-each-other. I’m in no rush.’

  ‘That’s very sensible,’ said Geraldine. ‘Take your time. And don’t settle for anything less than the best just to stave off loneliness. Unless you’re ninety-seven and can have both parents at your wedding.’ She laughed and Viv decided she liked Geraldine, very much. And likewise, Geraldine thought she and Viv would get on very well and hoped she would stay. It would be lovely to have a friendly female to talk to.


  ‘Please tell me that I didn’t put you off with what I said about Heath earlier,’ said Geraldine.

  ‘I promise you that you didn’t.’ Viv reached for some bread and the butter fresh from the farm. She could have eaten the whole loaf. ‘You mentioned his father earlier on? Is this an old family concern?’

  ‘Yes, the Merlos have lived at Wildflower Cottage for a hundred and fifty years. Heath’s a vet by profession but when he lost his father four years ago, he came back to take over this place. He’s still registered, but the sanctuary takes up most of his time.’

  He was a vet and yet he chooses to work in the back of beyond, looking after a crippled donkey and a few owls? Surely not, thought Viv.

  ‘The Merlos are one of the three old families of this area.’ Geraldine checked off their names on her fingers. ‘The Merlos and the Leightons, of course. And the Cooper-Smiths, although their line ended two years ago with the death of poor dear Kate. She was the woman who bred Wonk. It’s thanks to her legacy that we’re surviving. Just.’

  Geraldine emptied more wine into her glass. It was loosening her tongue beautifully.

  ‘Their land adjoined the Leightons’, but the two families hated each other because Kate was jilted at the altar by Jasper Leighton, the present owner’s grandfather. Kate never recovered from the rejection, especially as Jasper married almost immediately afterwards and brought his new society bride to the family castle. Talk about rubbing her nose in it. So, when Kate became infirm and had to leave Cooper House, she refused to sell it to the Leightons.’ Geraldine suddenly realised she might have been talking too much. ‘I’m sorry, am I boring you with all this, Vivienne?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Viv protested. ‘I want to hear it. It’s interesting.’ The more she knew about the Leightons, the more it might help her in her quest. ‘And please, everyone just calls me Viv. Unless they’re annoyed with me, then I get the full three syllables.’