38
The Birds and the Bees
Next morning Sheila urged me to rest and get some fresh air, and somehow I found myself walking up the hill towards the Oldstone, hand in hand with a still slightly morose Nile, Honey pottering happily along behind us.
The weather had mercurially changed and there was a bright sun and only the hint of a breeze. Large clouds were slowly drifting across the light cerulean sky, stately as galleons.
There was no one else about and potentially we gave ourselves piles by sitting on one of the fallen monoliths to admire the view.
‘I wasn’t brought up in Yorkshire, but this area always feels like home,’ Nile said.
‘It did to me too, almost as soon as I’d arrived,’ I agreed. ‘I feel somehow rooted, even though I don’t know my past, and I certainly never want to leave.’
He turned his head and looked at me. ‘Edie told me how you became estranged from your adoptive mother after your father died, but never really settled anywhere.’
‘I almost did once,’ I said wryly. ‘I thought I was going to marry Dan, but I’m not sure that would have ever come off, even if he hadn’t been killed in that accident.’
‘Yes, Edie said he’d never got round to divorcing his wife. And I know you had a breakdown …’ He looked at me, his grey eyes serious. ‘She said you needed time to get over him and to learn to trust another man, but that you have a very loving heart.’
‘She reads too many romances,’ I said, looking away. ‘And I am over Dan – I won’t forget him, but I’ve moved on from grieving.’
‘She’s very shrewd – and she told me a couple of home truths, too!’
‘Like what?’ I asked, curiously.
‘I’m not saying, though she told me I was getting too old for gallivanting around, and then there was something about hummingbirds and flowers I never quite got my head round. Perhaps you could enlighten me?’
‘No idea,’ I said innocently, and he gave me a look, then got up and held out his hand. ‘Let’s flit off back to the car then, flower,’ he said in a passable local accent and called Honey away from an interesting burrow.
On the way down he said abruptly, ‘You don’t need to worry about Zelda. I hope we’ll always be friends, but I can’t do what she’s asking me. And she’s so strange lately that I’m starting to think I never really knew her at all!’
‘Why would I worry about Zelda? I’ve never even met the woman!’ I asked tartly, but he carried on as if I hadn’t spoken.
‘You may never meet her, because I definitely want out of the antiques stall now. I’m going to tell her that either we sell up, or she can buy me out, whichever she chooses.’
He sounded very determined and he still had my hand in a strong grip that now tightened. ‘From now on, I’ll want to spend as much time at home as I can.’
‘That’ll make a change.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to see more of me?’ One dark eyebrow rose quizzically.
There wasn’t really any answer to that: I’d like to see all of him … I went quite hot just thinking about it.
‘You’ll always have to travel quite a bit, for business, though, won’t you?’ I pointed out.
‘Well, you keep vanishing, too – into your writing,’ he said. ‘I suspect you’ll always do that.’
‘Yes. In fact, I’ll be vanishing into it the moment I get back to the flat this afternoon and I may be gone some time …’
Although I was so full of Sunday lunch that I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to eat again, Sheila sent us back to Haworth with enough soup and sandwiches to feed a small army and Nile insisted that I go over to his flat later so we could have supper together and he could be sure I’d eaten something that evening.
What with Sheila’s cooking and all that Edinburgh rock, I was hardly wasting away, but it was rather nice to have someone care enough to think about me.
First thing next morning I emailed the local newspaper, before I got cold feet about the idea, then for the next couple of days slithered off into the Once-upon-a-time, though of course there were interruptions.
On the Tuesday, Daisy, Tilda’s niece, called in to see me and she was exactly how Tilda had described her: dressed head to foot in black and very gloomy, with world-weary blue eyes ringed in smudgy dark eyeliner and an uncompromisingly straight-lipped mouth enhanced by deep plum lipstick. In fact, there was more than a hint of Morticia Addams about her.
She was evidently cut from the same terse, brusque mould as Tilda and Nell, and I suspected would have the same ideas about customer service. I asked her about her college course and her ambitions and it turned out she wanted to work in hospitality …
But anyway, I offered her the part-time job helping Tilda to clear and clean, and she accepted it, so that was another thing sorted.
When I let her out, I found a small package in the letter box: there was a note with it from Geeta, saying Teddy had asked her to drop it off while she was in town shopping, but she hadn’t wanted to disturb me.
It was the DNA test kit that we’d sent for, and when I took it up to the flat and read the instructions, I realized I was totally out of date with how these things were done.
It wasn’t a matter of simply swabbing the inside of my mouth with a cotton bud, but instead involved spitting into a test tube – yes, really.
Yuck.
By now I was totally convinced I’d wasted my money on it, but I did it, then put it in the enclosed pre-paid packaging and went out to pop it in the post box.
You know you’ve been cooped up writing for too many hours when the weak October sun seems unbearably bright and everything sort of shimmers.
But the pull of the story drew me right back – and just as well, because when I turned on the laptop again there was a message from Senga, reminding me, as if I needed it, that the book must be emailed to her on Friday.
Just before I flitted back into Fairyland, it occurred to me that it was ages since I’d heard from Robbie. Maybe he’d found another girlfriend in Australia and changed his mind about coming over? Or was still intending to come over, but had changed his mind about wanting to see me?
The Upvale and District Gazette was eager to interview me for an article and fell in with my suggestion that it should take place at Oldstone Farm on Saturday. By then I’d have finished and sent off my book and be back in what passed for my right mind.
They sent a photographer round to take some pictures of the teashop first, though since I wasn’t expecting him to take any of me, I probably looked like a loopy bag lady in them.
But apart from this slightly unsettling interlude, by Thursday afternoon my writing was flying along, my head full of evil fairies, stroppy princesses and the joyful exhilaration of dashing towards the finishing post.
Beauty kissed Kev again and this time he responded with such enthusiasm that buds broke out on the interlaced branches above their heads, bluebirds swooped across the sky and a unicorn appeared and began to crop the emerald-green turf …
They were too lost in the moment to notice the portal that had opened behind them, but Prince S’Hallow did.
‘Let us go back to my own world,’ he said, leading Shaz towards it. ‘Your lovely hair will be crowned with gold and your white throat encircled by diamonds no less sparkling than your eyes.’
‘What, real ones?’ she asked, as they stepped through and vanished into the Once-upon-a-time.
The mouse hastened to follow before the portal closed, carrying a half-eaten chocolate bar, purloined from Kev’s jacket pocket while he was otherwise occupied. It wasn’t the heavenly single estate Criollo chocolate he’d tasted on a previous trip, but it was better than nothing …
‘Alice, you’ve got a visitor,’ shouted Jack up the stairs, jerking me suddenly back to the Here-and-now, and then, before I’d completely registered what he was saying, there was a loud thundering of heavy feet and the next second Robbie was in the room.
‘What on earth …?’ I began, getting up, and then lost my breath as I was swept into a crushing bear hug.
‘Alice – beautiful as ever!’ he said, planting a kiss on my lips before I could take evasive action. I was a bit slow, because most of my head was still in Fairyland and I didn’t feel remotely pleased to be wrenched out of it.
I pushed him away and told him so in no uncertain terms, and he looked hurt.
‘But I’ve hired a car and driven all the way up here from London to see you – and that’s all the welcome I get!’
I softened slightly; he looked so big, so boyish and so very crestfallen! ‘Of course I’m pleased to see you, you daft lump, but I wish you’d warned me you were coming, because I’d no idea you were even in the country yet.’
‘I thought I had,’ he said, giving me that kicked-puppy look again. He didn’t seem to have changed much in the seven or so years since I’d last seen him, but I certainly had, and although I was still fond of him, I found him slightly exasperating, too.
‘Well, you didn’t,’ I said with some asperity, ‘and I’ve got to finish my new book and email it off to my agent tomorrow, so I simply don’t have time for a visitor right now.’
‘Oh, but you don’t need to worry about me,’ he said breezily, recovering his bounce. ‘I’ll bring my bag up and settle in and you’ll hardly know I’m here. Then we can spend the weekend together, can’t we?’
‘Look, Robbie, I can’t do with you or anyone else around until I’ve finished,’ I said bluntly.
‘Oh, come on, Alice,’ he coaxed, putting his arms around me again. ‘You know you’re glad to see me really, and I promise not to disturb you till tomorrow.’
He’d left the door open and Bel put her head in at this point. ‘Alice, are you there? I don’t want to interrupt but—’
Then she broke off, registering that I was clasped in the arms of a strange man and began to back out again, apologizing.
‘Sorry – I didn’t realize …’
‘Come in, Bel, you’re not interrupting anything – or not any more than Robbie has. He’s just unexpectedly arrived.’
‘Pleased to meet you. I’m the boyfriend,’ Robbie greeted her helpfully.
‘The long-ago ex-boyfriend,’ I amended. ‘I think I mentioned him to you, Bel – he’s over here from Australia.’
Robbie was wearing his deeply hurt expression again. ‘I dashed straight up here to see you, Alice, but you don’t seem at all pleased.’
‘It’s just bad timing,’ I explained. ‘Of course I’m pleased to see you, you should just have checked this was a good time, you great daft lump.’
He brightened up a bit. ‘Well. I suppose I could find somewhere to stay in Haworth till you’ve sent this important book off tomorrow,’ he conceded magnanimously. ‘It’s a bit far to return to Wimbledon and come back again.’
Bel, having had time to sum up the situation and my probably far-from-welcoming expression, said, ‘I’ve got a good idea, Robbie. My mother takes in paying guests at our house just outside the village and she’d be very happy to put you up. And Alice will be staying with us this weekend too – she needs to relax after all her hard work – so it would all fit in nicely, wouldn’t it?’
‘Great idea,’ I said gratefully. ‘Please do take him away!’
‘How about you just put me up for one night and then I come back here so Alice and I can have the weekend to ourselves and … catch up with each other,’ he suggested, a worryingly keen expression in his eyes.
‘Oh, no,’ I said quickly and emphatically, without thinking. Then I softened it by explaining, ‘I’ve promised Sheila, Bel’s mum, that I’d be there for dinner tomorrow and then I’ve got a reporter from the local newspaper coming to interview me on Saturday morning.’
‘Interview you?’ he echoed, looking baffled. ‘I don’t know what on earth’s happening any more!’
‘You should keep up with the plot,’ I said tartly. ‘I told you about my novels taking off and the teashop I’m opening.’
‘You’d better come with me and I’ll explain everything when we get to Oldstone Farm,’ Bel promised him. ‘We’ll leave Alice in peace and you can see her tomorrow evening.’
‘Bel, you’re an angel,’ I told her.
‘I only popped in because I’ve brought you the first batch of cake stands from Thom – I happened to be over there this morning,’ she said, slightly self-consciously. ‘They’re downstairs in the back kitchen and they look exactly what you wanted.’
Then she steered Robbie out and I could hear her asking him on the stairs whether he’d driven up and if so, where he’d parked.
Unsurprisingly, it took me a while to get back into the novel again after that, but once I was in, I flew on into the night, barely registering when the light across the way went out …
I swooped down and landed on the closing sentence in the early hours of the morning and sat there, slowly coming back to the Here-and-now.
‘Where’d the other two go?’ Kev asked, finally looking up and noticing they were alone … well, apart from a funny cow with one horn. He’d never been in the country but he’d seen cows on the TV and they hadn’t looked quite like that.
Suddenly the animal made a neighing noise, then cantered past him at speed before leaping into a curtain of shimmering haze.
‘The portal’s going to close and it’s pulling all the Fairyland creatures back to Once-upon-a-time,’ Beauty said. ‘See – there go our enemies,’ she added, as the depleted group of dryads were sucked through the hazy patch in their turn, snarling and struggling.
‘That’s it, it has no power over me now,’ Beauty said. ‘We can get married and live happily ever after in your kingdom.’
The blue-clad man staggered out of the bower, holding his head.
‘What happened?’ he groaned, looking about him fuzzily.
‘You fell down and knocked yourself out, Officer – don’t you remember?’ Kev said. ‘Me and my fiancée were just wondering whether to send for an ambulance or not – weren’t we, Beauty?’
The policeman narrowed his eyes. ‘Beauty? But you’ve been going out with that Shaz for years.’
‘Not any longer,’ Beauty told him. ‘She had too much fairy dust and she’s never going to come back.’
‘Like that, is it?’ he said, and then, his head throbbing, wound his way down the path between some bushes and found himself in the middle of the familiar estate of shabby, run-down houses.
Would the two mismatched couples live happily ever after? I wasn’t sure and I thought the story still had legs. There might be room for a sequel … but for the moment, I was empty as a shell scoured out by the sea and my ears were echoing with exhaustion.
When I opened the window for a moment, Haworth lay silently and deeply sleeping under a starry sky.
I flung myself into bed and followed suit.