‘I’ve never seen someone look as shocked as you did when you realised it was me.’
‘Well, can you blame me? It’s been years. University feels like a lifetime ago,’ I replied. We had been a couple for three years at St Andrews, and I hadn’t seen or heard from him since.
‘It’s been too long, hasn’t it?’ He gazed into my eyes, and my cheeks grew hot under his scrutiny. I wondered what he was thinking. ‘I want to know everything… What have you been doing for the past few years? And how am I finding you living on a farm, quite possibly the last place I expected to ever find you?’
I let out a little laugh. Stewart had always been direct. ‘Well, I fell in love with a farmer, Rory – he owns the farm, so I live with him now and our son Harry, who’s almost two.’
‘Wow. You’re a mother, and a farmer?! I’ve missed so much,’ he said, shaking his head a little. ‘Is Harry here? I’d love to meet him.’
‘He’s out with my dad in the village. And Rory is at an auction.’ I showed him a picture of Harry on my phone. ‘He has hair just like his father.’
‘But he has your smile,’ Stewart said, looking from the picture to me. I was pleased he had noticed. ‘I know you always wanted children, I mean we always said…’ he trailed off, coughing a little as if he was embarrassed. I put my phone down, knowing that he was remembering how we had talked about having a family together one day. It was strange to think how close we had once been, and now I had no idea what his life was like. ‘But I must admit I’m surprised to find you doing something so outdoorsy. Whenever I thought about you over the years, I thought maybe you were doing something in publishing or illustrating, I don’t know, but a farmer…’
I couldn’t help but wonder how often he had thought about me. I thought back to our conversations about what we wanted to do with our lives. He was right, of course, I could never have imagined back then how my life would have turned out. ‘I actually was a librarian first, after I came back to Glendale I got a job there and stayed until I had Harry. And then it got too difficult juggling everything so now I help out here, and also with our farm shop in the village. But what about you? Did you become an architect?’
‘I did,’ he said, sipping his coffee. ‘Just how I like it. Always amazes me how few people can get coffee right. But you were the one who hooked me on to it,’ he said, smiling down at his cup.
‘God, yes, I can’t believe you’d never even tried it until you met me,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I think I drink even more now than I did during exams thanks to having to get up so early here.’
‘I have to ask, now that you live and work on this farm… what’s happened to your beloved heels?’
‘I know, ugh. I miss them so much – I wore a pair to my friend’s wedding the other day and that was the first time in like six months, I think. Felt like I was in heaven. But completely unpractical around here.’ I nodded at him. ‘What about you though, I thought you were always destined to wear a suit?’
Stewart chuckled. ‘You’re right, and I do wear one for work. I run my own development company now with… a partner. I do the designing, he does the building. It works well,’ he said. ‘So, yes, I followed through with my plan.’
‘Was there any doubt?’ I sipped my coffee. Stewart was always driven. He aced all his exams, and didn’t even need to put in that much effort, whereas I’d had to spend days in the library to get my 2:1.
‘Maybe a little after all the nights out you took me on,’ he replied with a smirk I knew well.
‘Me!’ I spluttered my coffee. ‘You were the one who always made me stay out all night at the Union bar, not to mention the times we went to that club in town. I think that’s the only reason I didn’t fall apart when I got no sleep after Harry was born. I had already had sleep-deprivation training.’
‘We had some good times though, didn’t we?’ he asked with a grin. ‘What about that party we had at Halls, they made us spend the whole next day cleaning up. Completely worth it though.’
‘I still remember that hangover,’ I said with a shudder.
‘There are some great bars in Edinburgh, I went to one recently that was in a bookshop. You would have loved it.’
‘I really would,’ I agreed, a little wistfully. ‘I don’t get much time to go out nowadays especially not to fancy bars. The local village pub quiz night is the highlight of the month to be honest.’
‘Well, you have a lot of responsibilities now. I still can’t believe you’re a mother. You’re so grown up, Heather,’ he said then in wonder.
‘Harry really is wonderful. I had planned on waiting a few more years though…’ I shrugged that thought off. ‘Anyway, you still haven’t told me how you’re in Glendale right now. I didn’t even think you knew where this place was,’ I said, pointedly. He had never come to see me in Glendale, he was a city boy through and through, and in holidays from university, I had visited him at his parents’ house in Edinburgh.
‘I’m in Glendale on business, actually.’ He glanced at me. ‘I thought you might be still here but I wasn’t sure. I’ll be honest, I asked around about you, and was pretty stunned to find out you were living here. Right next to where I was the other day.’
So, the men I saw from the top of the hill – one of them had been Stewart. I was glad I hadn’t alerted Rory to their presence after all. I thought about how I had begged Stewart to come here after my mother died and I had told him I couldn’t leave my dad, but he had stayed in Edinburgh. It was utterly surreal to see him now in my kitchen.
‘I wanted to get in touch through the years, I really did, but I wasn’t sure you wanted me to, to be honest,’ he said.
It was hard to know how to answer that. I didn’t know if I would have wanted him to either. I had been head over heels in love with Stewart. And my heart had broken when we spilt up. I wasn’t sure how you ever stayed in touch after that. ‘So, why now?’ I asked instead, swallowing hard. The smell of his musky aftershave hit me. It was the scent I had bought him. He still wore it. It was making me feel light-headed. Reminding me of all those years I had spent with him. It was so strange. How he had disappeared from my life as if our relationship had never happened. But now he was suddenly back in my life again. ‘Why are you in Glendale?’ I repeated my earlier question, confused as to why he had come to find me.
Years too late.
Chapter Ten
‘How about you give me a tour of the farm, and I’ll explain everything? I’d like to see where you’ve been hiding yourself these past few years,’ Stewart replied. ‘Please?’ he added as I hesitated.
‘Okay, I’ll just grab a coat.’ I walked out into the hall, glancing at the mirror as I went to the coat rack. My cheeks were bright pink. As I slipped on my parka, I couldn’t stop myself from remembering the first time I met Stewart, eight years ago now, when I was just eighteen.
* * *
I’d just said goodbye to my parents and was trying not to cry as I walked back to my tiny room in halls. ‘Be careful, those are my favourite books,’ I heard a male voice say. A couple of rooms away from mine, he stood in the doorway in a long, dark coat, arms folded as a younger boy carried a box in. I couldn’t help but take a peek when I heard him mention books. ‘When your younger brother has no respect for Fitzgerald,’ he said when he caught my eye.
‘I was furious when I found out we only got one shelf for books, took me a week to pick which books to bring, and then I realised I had forgotten to pack clothes until last night,’ I replied, hovering in the doorway to my room. ‘Luckily, my mum is as much of a bookworm as me so she understood why we left two hours late to get here,’ I added with a chuckle. My dad had been less impressed but he’d always been the organised one of the family.
The boy strode over and stuck out his hand. ‘Stewart. How about we go for a drink and you tell me which books you chose to bring? If we picked more than five the same, then we definitely belong together,’ he said, his lips curling up into a smirk.
I
laughed as I shook his hand, firm and warm, and took a quick look at him. ‘I’m Heather.’ He was incredibly good-looking, and I’d never met someone so confident. It was really attractive to me, someone who had never been confident. He was looking at me in a way that suggested he knew exactly what I was thinking. I felt myself blush annoyingly. ‘Belong together? What are we swans, about to mate for life?’
‘Let’s have that drink and see, shall we, Heather?’ he asked, still holding my hand in his. I had no power to resist, and he knew it.
We stayed out until the early hours talking about books and drinking, and it turned out we had chosen ten of the same books to bring with us.
When he kissed me goodnight, I found myself for the first time wondering if I might finally get a love story like the ones I enjoyed reading about so much.
* * *
‘Ready?’ Stewart said, startling me out of the past as he appeared behind me in the hall. I shrugged my coat on, slipped into my boots and nodded. I wondered if he was remembering our time at university together too as I led the way out of the farmhouse. We had been a couple from that first day until I had received that phone call from my father asking me to come home. I had just finished my final exam so I had rushed back to Glendale to be with my mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer at such a late stage, she had only lasted another six weeks. Stewart had still had exams to finish, his final one on the day of my mother’s funeral so I’d had to face that alone, and when I had said I couldn’t leave my dad alone, Stewart had chosen to follow through with the offer of an apprenticeship in Edinburgh without me, refusing to join me in Glendale. I had been gutted.
I showed him around the yard first, taking him to the horse’s paddock, and into the stables, the chicken coop, the pig enclosure, and then around to where the goats were, glancing at Angus’s cottage, hoping he wasn’t looking out of the window. He usually retreated in there for tea and biscuits at this time. I didn’t think I should feel guilty as I hadn’t invited Stewart here, but it was strange showing him around without Rory knowing, as if my past and present were colliding. I planned, of course, to tell Rory about it but it was a lot easier not having to go through any awkward introductions.
‘Mainly we are a cattle farm, the herd are in the lower field at the moment in case of snow, usually they are up on the hill,’ I explained to Stewart as we reached the front of the farmhouse. I pointed up to the hill in the distance.
‘I’d love to see up there,’ he said, looking across at me as he put his hands in his pockets, a sharp wind blowing through the air. ‘I still can’t believe you live out here. Don’t you miss civilisation?’ he asked as we walked towards the fields where the cows were grazing.
‘Sometimes. But we’re not that far from the village, and my sister-in-law… well, Rory and I aren’t married… anyway, she lives at Glendale Hall which is a short drive away. It does feel more isolated in winter especially if it snows, but it’s really beautiful on a summer’s day. I don’t know. I’m getting used to it, I suppose. Still very much on a learning curve though. Rory has lived here all his life so it’s instinctive for him, a way of life. But I’m a townie, after all.’
Stewart smiled. ‘Well, I admire you for doing something so different. I couldn’t live without my daily Starbucks fix, or eating out at my favourite restaurant in the city. And wandering around the bookshops, of course. You must miss bookshops?’
‘Well, we have the library in the village, and it’s pretty well-stocked, I made sure of that when I worked there. To be honest, I order pretty much everything online nowadays apart from trips to the supermarket, and we’re not that far from Inverness if I do want to go shopping.’ Although I hadn’t been in months. I thought about how if I also lived in Edinburgh, I would enjoy exactly what Stewart enjoyed there, and I felt a little envious of him. But I breathed in the brisk fresh air as I opened the gate to the field and tried to focus on the wild beauty we were walking into. A very different world.
‘And here are the cows,’ I said rather lamely as we walked past the grazing Highlands. They looked at us with interest, a couple wandering over hoping we had brought food no doubt.
‘Do you really help out with farming work then?’ Stewart asked as we kept on walking up the hill. He sounded a little breathless from the steep climb. I was used to the incline now so I slowed my pace for him.
‘I really do. I won’t pretend it’s easy or comes naturally though. Rory is trying to teach me to ride, and I’m no natural horsewoman, that’s for sure.’ I smiled, ruefully.
‘So, what’s this Rory like? I’m trying to picture the man who managed to get you living out here?’ he asked with a chuckle. ‘I assume he loves books as much as you do?’
‘Actually, not really. If he reads anything, it’s a farming book. I never knew there was that much to know about cows, but there is,’ I replied, shaking my head. ‘He’s really practical. He can fix anything. He loves being outdoors. He’s funny and kind, he’ll help anyone who needs it, and he really looks after me and Harry.’ My heart swelled a little at the thought of Rory, and how he managed to keep this farm running all on his own. I felt Stewart watching me intently. ‘I actually knew him growing up but we didn’t get close until my childhood friend Beth came back to Glendale. She’s married to Rory’s brother now.’
‘But you haven’t got married?’ he asked, glancing at me quickly.
Of course that had to come up. ‘No, I guess we haven’t had the time, with Harry and all this…’ I trailed off. I really didn’t want to explain how I felt about marriage to Stewart. He just nodded thoughtfully. I wished I knew what was going through this head. My own was full of confusion about him being in Glendale after not having seen him for so long.
We reached the top of the hill then and fell silent as we stopped to take in the view. ‘Well, I can’t deny that this is stunning,’ Stewart said. ‘It’s a special view.’
‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘So, now you’ve seen the farm, are you going to finally tell me why you’re here?’
Stewart turned to me. ‘See that farmhouse over there?’ He pointed down the other side of the hill to the abandoned building below us.
‘Hilltop Farm,’ I said with a nod. It had stood empty for two years after the farmer there, old Sam, died and passed it to his nephew, William, who lived in London. It had been up for sale ever since.
‘I’m here to look over the land there. We are considering buying it and developing it into a hotel and golf course. It’s been empty for a long time so they’re willing to sell for a very good price.’
‘Oh,’ I said, taken aback. I looked down at the rolling fields and couldn’t imagine a resort standing there instead. Alarm ran through me at how close it would be to our farm, how much the landscape could change. ‘Would you get planning permission for something like that?’ Surely land like this was protected?
Stewart turned to me and shrugged. ‘We’re waiting to see… We’ve put in a planning proposal to the council. So,’ he said with a smile, ‘we might be neighbours soon.’
I had no idea how to respond to that. Hilltop Farm had been in the same family for generations, like Rory’s, but when old Sam died William hadn’t wanted to take the farm over and had been trying to sell it ever since. Rory had said he wished we could afford to buy it and join up the two properties, but it was impossible financially. And now Stewart wanted to develop it all. I knew Rory would not like the idea. ‘Is there enough land for such a resort?’ The farm was slightly smaller than ours, which ran to five hundred acres of land, and I imagined you’d need a lot of space for a golf course.
‘Just enough, we think. It would be our most ambitious project to date. There isn’t a golf hotel for miles around so it would be a great spot,’ Stewart said. His eyes were bright at the thought of it. ‘We’d turn the farmhouse into the hotel, of course, and the golf course would need to run along this side,’ he said, pointing. ‘The other side has protected land because of the trees growing there. We’d never get
permission to cut those down, but that would be a draw for guests too, I think.’
I followed his gaze and frowned. The golf course would be on the side closest to our farm. I wondered if it would disrupt our cows once they were back grazing up here. ‘How far would the course come up to?’
Stewart pointed. ‘Up to where that land rises there, I think.’
‘But that’s part of our lower field,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Our land boundary runs up to that patch of heather down there,’ I told him. Rory’s father and grandfather before him had grazed sheep down there where the land was flatter, and more sheltered, but after foot and mouth reduced the herd, and harsh winters meant the sheep had to be grazed elsewhere, Rory’s father decided to focus on Highland cattle and all sheep left Fraser Farm. Rory often talked now about re-introducing them in the future.
‘Not according to the boundary map we have from William, Hilltop’s owner, that clearly shows this area as belonging to Hilltop Farm.’ He faced me. ‘I can show you. I don’t have the plans with me though…’
‘I’m certain that is Fraser land as sheep used to be grazed there. I’d have to get our deeds out.’ If I was wrong than the hotel and golf course would impact us at the farm, that was for sure, but if I was right then it would be at least further away, and might even mean they couldn’t fit a full golf course there. Stewart had realised that too, I could see by the look on his face.
‘If the land does belong to Rory then maybe he would sell it to us instead?’ Stewart asked, unable to hide the hope in his voice.
Hopeful Hearts at Glendale Hall Page 8