CHAPTER TWO
I surprise myself by laughing.
I almost wish there was someone here to take a photo, because it’s not often a person finds themselves sitting fully clothed in a freezing pond, fingers deep in silt, with the resident ducks squawking indignantly around them.
Heaving myself up, in a sloosh of swampy-smelling water, I grab my bag before it sinks, wincing at the feeling of my sodden jeans clinging to my legs. Staggering from the pond, I check inside the bag and find to my relief that my mobile phone and camera seem to have survived the ducking. No pun intended.
As I squelch along the path, walking like John Wayne just off his horse, I can’t help wondering bitterly if there are any more shocks in store for me.
Because the shocks have been coming with gut-wrenching regularity of late.
It started with the shock of finding out, three weeks ago, that my long-term boyfriend, Richard, had had a one-night stand (which he deeply regretted) with a girl who works at the local library. He told me her name but she’s just ‘Thing’ in my head now because I’m trying very hard to wipe all memory of her - and that’s not easy with a girl who goes by the impossibly glamorous name of Giselle. Devastated, I ordered Richard to pack his bags and he left.
This was closely followed by the shock of me deciding to give Richard another chance, only for him to say that actually, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to come home. Maybe, he said, we should continue living apart for a while until we were absolutely sure of our feelings. That really knocked me for six.
I didn’t think things could possibly get any worse, but I was wrong.
The most spectacular shock of them all exploded into my life without warning eight days ago. I still feel dazed at the news, unable to believe it, even though I know I have to. It’s the reason I’m here in Sunnybrook today taking all these photographs.
I suppose I just needed to do something – anything - that might help . . .
The route back to the village car park takes me past the door of The Little Duck Pond Café, and as I draw level, the woman I saw earlier emerges with a cloth.
We exchange a ‘good morning’. Then her eyes drop to my soggy lower half. ‘Good grief! What happened to you?’
I smile ruefully. ‘Tripped over a tree root and landed in the pond.’
She winces. ‘Oh, dear. That’s why most people use the pontoon bit on the other side.’ She points across the pond to where the bank has been landscaped with a wooden platform to make it safer, complete with a bench on which to sit and admire the view.
A young couple are sitting on the bench. She’s leaning into him, her head resting on his shoulder. As I watch, she turns her face up to him and he kisses her nose.
A lump appears in my throat from nowhere.
The events of the past few weeks have taken a big toll on my emotions. I’ve been trying hard to put on a brave face, but the slightest little thing can bring me to tears without warning.
The woman is studying me.
I swallow down my despair and force a grin. ‘It’s been that kind of month.’ I shrug. ‘The falling in the duck pond sort.’
‘Ah.’ She nods. ‘How about a dry off and a warm up? I’m Sylvia Symington, by the way. Owner of this slightly dilapidated establishment.’
‘Ellie Farmer.’ I hold out my hand but it’s covered in drying green slime so I quickly take it back.
Sylvia grins. Her short white hair is styled to stick up in little tufts. It suits her elfin features perfectly. ‘Coffee? On the house?’
I’m about to decline her generous offer but then she adds the magical words, ‘I’ve got a nice fleecy tracksuit you can borrow.’
I hesitate. The mention of ‘fleecy’ sounds downright luxurious when you’ve got rivulets of earthy pond water trickling down your thighs. (The last time my knickers clung so cold and wet was when I had an unfortunate accident on the way home from school in Primary One.)
I sniff and rub my nose, and the smell makes me grimace. ‘That’s so kind of you, Sylvia.’
‘Good. Follow me.’
From the outside, the place looks utterly charming. It’s a two-storey cottage with pretty whitewashed wooden shutters that remind me of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, with a perfect heart shape carved out of each, and a lovely red and white striped awning.
However, entering The Little Duck Pond Café is quite a revelation. There are ornaments everywhere. And I mean everywhere. It’s like stepping back in time to the Victorian era, or suddenly finding yourself slap bang in the middle of an episode of Bargain Hunt - the part where contestants trawl through the market, picking up all sorts of curios and looking for that perfect gem amongst all the tat.
Someone has helpfully put up some rather ugly dark wood shelves on three of the walls, and how they don’t fall off with the sheer weight of the bric-a-brac they’re laden with beats me entirely.
The tables and chairs for customers have been herded together into the middle of the space to make room for the assortment of antique coat stands, giant ceramic vases and the imposing grandfather clock in the far corner. There’s even an old fire surround lying against the wall by the counter.
I cast a quick glance at the sliver of space between the tables. One reckless flick of a scarf and it would likely end up trailing in someone else’s coffee. On the next table.
‘Do you live in Sunnybrook, Ellie?’ Sylvia is asking.
‘Er, no, I’m the other side of Guildford.’ I smile brightly, trying not to stare around me. My mouth might fall open without me realising it and that would be rude.
‘Ah. I thought I hadn’t seen you around the village. Are you a photographer?’
‘Oh, no. I was just – um - driving through and decided to stop. They’re for a project I’m doing.’ I bite my lip. At least that last bit is true.
‘Oh, marvellous.’ She nods as if she’s expecting me to say more but I turn to peer at a painting of a castle on the wall, and she says, ‘Okay, well, sit yourself down and I’ll go upstairs and fetch some dry clothes.’
I glance at the pretty padded cushions tied to the wooden chairs and feel my soggy bottom with a grimace. ‘I think I’d better stand.’
Sylvia smiles. ‘Good point. Just give me a minute,’ and she disappears through a door to my right.
I glance around me, eyes wide with amazement now that I no longer have to pretend that I find it quite normal to run a café stuffed with every object imaginable and more. It’s so gloomy in here. The room is probably a decent size but it’s hard to tell with all the clutter. And it doesn’t help that the walls have been painted the sort of sludgy brown colour that was popular in the Seventies. There is a silver lining, though. There’s not much of the brown sludge showing, since practically every inch of wall space is filled with old paintings of horses, castles and sheep grazing on the sides of heather-covered hills.
Sylvia returns and catches my mouth in an ‘o’ shape.
I snap it shut and she smiles ruefully. ‘It’s a bit busy. But I like it this way.’
I nod enthusiastically. ‘Wow, yes, it’s incredible. However long did it take you to collect all these – erm - treasures?’
Her face grows wistful. ‘Oh, many lovely years. Mr Snow and I enjoyed searching out antique bargains more than anything else. This is just part of our collection.’
‘Mr Snow?’ I ask, surprised at the quirky name. Didn’t she say she was called Sylvia Symington? She mustn’t be married, then. ‘Is he . . . ?’ I glance around me, expectantly.
‘Ah, no.’ Sylvia looks down, and although she’s smiling, I catch the gleam of moisture in her eyes. ‘My Snowy departed this world three years ago. Most inconsiderate of him, considering we were intending to go on cruises and end our days holding hands on park benches at the age of ninety-nine!’
She sniffs and hands me a lavender-scented bundle containing a pink bath towel, a navy blue tracksuit, and a pair of thick brown socks. Then she perches on the edge of a table and picks up the little blue and yellow vase in the centre that holds a single silk red rose. ‘By Clarice Clift,’ she says. ‘We found that in December 2012 in a little antiques shop on the south coast. There was snow on the ground that day.’
I maintain a respectful silence as she smiles at the vase, remembering.
‘Actually, he died three years, three months and seventeen days ago. Not that I’m counting, of course.’ She laughs at her foolishness. Then she stands up, briskly brushing down her apron. ‘Now, how about you go through there and change out of your wet things?’ She indicates a door with a sign saying WC. ‘And while you’re getting comfortable, I’ll make something special to warm you up.’ She frowns. ‘A tumble into the duck pond requires rather more than a latte, don’t you think? How about a piping hot mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles?’
‘That sounds like just what the doctor ordered,’ I say truthfully, as I squelch my way over to the WC. ‘I’ll try not to leak too much.’
As I’m peeling off my wet jeans in the toilet cubicle, there’s a rap on the door and Sylvia shouts, ‘Plastic bag for your wet things?’
Standing on one leg, jeans half-on half-off, I open the door a crack and a hand appears, holding a supermarket carrier bag. My eye is drawn to a large antique diamond ring sitting a little loosely alongside a plain gold wedding band. So she was married to Mr Snow.
‘Thank you!’ I grab the bag and overbalance, cannoning off the wall in the tight space.
‘Hot chocolate’s ready!’
‘Out in a sec!’
I check my reflection in the mirror. My curly honey blonde hair, which I blow-dried smooth this morning, now kinks in soggy rats’ tails around my shoulders and my mascara is smudged. The green eyes that stare back at me have lost their usual sparkle over recent weeks. They look sad and lacklustre.
Pulling on the warm, fleecy tracksuit makes me feel better.
I join Sylvia in the café where, true to her word, the hot chocolate is spectacular - almost like dessert in a mug, topped as it is with marshmallows and generous chocolate sprinkles. Sylvia is behind the counter, cleaning the coffee machine.
I cradle the toasty mug thankfully in my freezing hands. ‘This is amazing, thank you, Sylvia.’
‘A pleasure! We don’t get many customers on a Thursday morning, so it makes a lovely change to have company.’ She smiles ruefully. ‘Actually, who am I kidding? I don’t get many customers on any day during the week. Most of my business happens at weekends. Tourists, mainly. People on a trip out, bringing their children to feed the ducks and stretch their legs, that sort of thing. I’d probably do better if the café was on the high street.’
‘Well, people clearly don’t know what they’re missing here.’ I dip my spoon into the gooey, melting-marshmallow lusciousness and taste with my eyes closed. ‘Mm. Delicious. Great name, by the way. The Little Duck Pond Café. Have you tried spreading the word locally? Or on social media?’
Sylvia puts down her tea towel and squeezes through a gap in the furniture to sit down opposite me. ‘You mean that Twittery thing? Ooh, I’m too old for all of that nonsense.’
I laugh. ‘No you’re not. It’s really easy once you know how. I could show you if you like.’
She scrunches up her nose. ‘Maybe. But I’m seventy-three. And Snowy and I never even bothered learning how to text. We couldn’t see the point.’ She frowns. ‘I wish I had now.’
I shrug. ‘Age is just a number and anyway, you look at least a decade younger than that,’ I tell her truthfully. ‘I’m sure you could Tweet with the best of them.’
She sighs. ‘Maybe you’re right. But to be honest, I’m thinking of selling up, sad as it seems. I just can’t see how to make the café pay its way.’
Looking around, I can think of several ways, straight off, and they mostly involve a large skip. But I wouldn’t dream of hurting her feelings. It’s obvious all these antiques, collected during her travels with Mr Snow, mean the whole world to Sylvia.
She sighs. ‘Sometimes I think maybe I should just get away altogether. Pastures new, you know?’
‘Just what I’ve been thinking,’ I say wearily, thinking of Richard and Thing.
‘Really?’
I nod. And then because she’s waiting for me to expand, I sigh and say, ‘Boyfriend trouble. Richard. He doesn’t read at all. Well, except for car maintenance manuals. But he started bringing books home from the library. Literary stuff like Dickens and George Eliot. I thought he was just trying to improve himself, then I realised he wasn’t actually reading them. He’d just place the book on his bedside table and a couple of days later, there’d be a different one there.’
I swallow hard. ‘So I paid a visit to the library and as soon as I saw Thing, I just knew.’
‘Thing?’ Sylvia looks baffled.
‘Sorry, Giselle. She looks like her name, all willowy beauty and impossibly delicate bone-structure.’
Sylvia frowns. ‘I hate her already.’
‘So I tackled him – because apart from the weird book thing, he’d been doing other odd things, like wanting a lot more sex but not really looking at me while he was doing it.’ I glance at Sylvia. ‘Sorry, is this too much information?’
‘Not at all. The more information the merrier,’ she says, looking totally unabashed. ‘What did he say?’
I sigh and swirl my spoon in the dregs of my cup. ‘He said he’d slept with Thing once but he really regretted it and I was the one he loved.’
Sylvia considers. ‘It may well be true.’
‘Maybe. But I was so hurt, I told him to leave immediately and he did. But then I regretted acting so rashly and phoned him to say I was giving him another chance.’
‘So he came back?’
I shake my head. ‘He said he wasn’t sure he wanted to and maybe we should live apart for a while to work out how we really felt.’
‘Oh.’
I force a smile. ‘He will come back, though. I’m sure of it. We’ll laugh about it one day.’
‘When did this happen? You offering him another chance?’
‘Nearly three weeks ago.’
‘And has Richard been in touch, wanting to make things right?’
I swallow hard as hot tears well up. ‘Erm, not really. Well, no. But I think he’s just trying to make me suffer a little longer for ordering him out. Which is pretty rich, really, considering it was Richard who had the fling, not me.’ I attempt a laugh but it falls flat.
‘Has he – has he gone to live with this Thing person?’ She frowns, shaking her head. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t be asking all these questions. Sorry.’
‘It’s fine. No, it was just a one-night thing with um – Thing. He’s been staying at his mate’s.’
There’s a silence, broken only by the slow ticking of the grandfather clock.
‘It sounds as if getting away for a bit might be just what you need,’ Sylvia says at last.
‘Maybe.’
‘You know, when Snowy died, I was utterly heart-broken. My heart literally ached, from the moment I woke up to the moment I put my head on the pillow at night. I couldn’t get back to a “normal” sort of life for a long, long time. And then a year ago, a good friend staged an intervention. She ordered me into the shower, packed a bag for me and took me to Devon. After one night in a little cottage near the sea, she drove off and left me there.’
I stare at Sylvia in dismay. ‘She left you all alone? But how could she do that, knowing you were still grieving?’
‘Ah, well. It turned out to be the best thing she could have done. She admitted later that she had to steel herself to leave me there. But the miraculous thing was, the change of scene gave me a different perspective on what had happened. While I was stuck in my house – our house – I couldn’t get past Snowy’s death. But walking on that little beach I finally realised he wouldn’t want me to waste away without him. He’d want me to do something with my life. So I did.’
‘You opened a café?’
‘Yes.’ She smiles and looks around her. ‘I bought this place last year and I started living again.’
I nod, wondering if I could be so brave in her shoes. Starting a brand new business venture at the age of seventy-two!
‘Did you get all the photos you needed?’ Sylvia asks. ‘For your project.’
My heart lurches at the reminder of why I’m here. ‘Yes, I did. It went really well, apart from when I was shouted at by this horrible man. He was probably the reason I fell in the pond, actually. I was hurrying to get away from him.’
‘Horrible man?’ says Sylvia. ‘Who could that be, I wonder? It wasn’t old Mr Wheedon, was it? Did he brandish a walking stick at you? Apparently, he keeps one by the door to ward off cold callers.’
‘Oh no, he wasn’t old. He was quite young and – um – very fit, actually.’
A memory rushes into my mind - Zak Chamberlain catching the branch and swinging up in one easy movement, muscles flexing as he grabbed my camera case.
Very fit, as a matter of fact . . .
An odd little shiver traverses its way down my spine.
Sylvia looks intrigued. ‘Very fit but horrible?’ She stares away into the distance, frowning.
I swallow hard, pushing away the image of Zak Chamberlain’s tight buttocks in his jeans. ‘No, well, horrible is probably too strong a word. He was just very narky. But then I suppose I had climbed his tree to take a photo. Without permission.’
Sylvia laughs. ‘You did?’
I give a sheepish smile. ‘I did. Totally against character, I might add. I don’t normally do reckless things like that.’
‘Don’t you? Oh, I do.’ Sylvia beams. ‘I once pushed Snowy into the duck pond because he made fun of my cooking. That was in the early days of our marriage. It was shepherd’s pie and I’d thrown in quartered onions so they were completely raw.’
‘Ooh, lovely!’
‘I know.’ She grins. ‘I took things to heart then.’
‘He shouldn’t have been cheeky when you’d made such an effort.’
‘Well, precisely!’
I laugh. ‘At least there’s no chance of me running into that grumpy man again – not after I leave here today.’
After I leave here today . . .
I feel an odd little pang as I say this. Maybe Sunnybrook’s charm is rubbing off on me, despite my soaking.
I glance upwards. ‘Do you live here, above the café?’
Sylvia shakes her head. ‘I’ve got a little cottage on the main street. Just a one-bedroom place but it suited Mr Snow and me just fine. I’d never move out.’ She folds her arms and leans forward on the table. ‘No, when I bought this place and had the ground floor fashioned into a café, the builders turned the first floor into a self-contained flat at the same time. I keep meaning to give it a lick of paint and rent it out but the café has kept me so busy.’
She narrows her eyes as if something has occurred to her. ‘I’m going to be needing a tenant soon,’ she says thoughtfully.
‘I’m sure the flat will be perfect. For someone who wants to live in Sunnybrook.’
She nods. ‘Or someone who needs a bolthole for a while?’ She gets up and adjusts a painting on the wall nearby. ‘I was thinking of a six-month lease.’
I watch as she ‘straightens’ a frame, makes it wonky, then puts it back to where it was in the first place. Have I somehow given Sylvia the impression I’d like to ‘bolt’ to Sunnybrook? If I have, I wasn’t conscious of it. Although there is a great deal I’d be happy to run away from right now.
For a second, I think about what it would be like, living above The Little Duck Pond Café. Far too tempting, I imagine. I’d be the size of a house within a month with hot chocolate like this just a flight of stairs away! And all those luscious-looking muffins and cupcakes calling up to me.
Just for a second, my heart lifts at the thought.
Then I remember my commitments back home in Newtown. It’s been lovely to visit Sunnybrook for the day, but move here?
That would be completely out of the question.