Chapter 33
‘Come on, relax,’ Lois urged. ‘Get it down you! We’re celebrating you being home and me having my friend back at last.’
But there was no way Mimi could relax, nor did she trust herself to have any more of the Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc, even though it was crazily expensive and tasted like angels dancing on her tongue.
‘I’m fine, honestly. I have to start work early tomorrow.’ She covered her glass before Lois could top it up, then gestured around the sitting room. ‘Isn’t this place great? Does it feel weird, living here on your own?’ Was she sounding normal? To her own ears it felt as if everything she said held a subtext. At the same time, the house Lois was minding for Nancy and Simon Latimer was large and undoubtedly beautiful, but she now understood why Lois and Cal would choose to hold their secret trysts in the studio tucked away in Cal’s back garden. This house, here on Church Lane overlooking the village green, simply wasn’t somewhere you could sneak into unnoticed.
‘It does feel weird, but it was just something I needed to do. And like I said, it’s bliss not having Henrietta sticking her nose in and being disapproving of pretty much everything I do, including breathing.’ Lois plonked the bottle of Cloudy Bay back in the ice bucket and tore open a packet of cashews. ‘Although she still has her personal private detective keeping an eye on me.’
‘Really?’ Jolted, Mimi wondered if Henrietta already knew about Lois and Cal’s clandestine get-togethers. But how could a private detective possibly blend in here, in a village the size of Goosebrook?
‘Oh yes. In fact he’s watching us right now.’
What? The next moment, Mimi realised Lois was indicating the small window over to the left of the fireplace, and saw that Truman was sitting on the narrow windowsill gazing in at them with his unblinking, implacable stare.
‘Got you.’ Entertained, Lois added, ‘Not that I wouldn’t put it past Henrietta to hire someone, but it hasn’t happened yet.’
‘Unless it has and you just haven’t noticed.’
Lois laughed and Mimi wondered if there was a smidgeon of guilt buried in the laughter before being hastily smothered by a handful of cashews.
‘So, any other news since you moved in here?’ Did that sound casual enough?
‘Nothing to report so far. But it’s only been a fortnight, so give me a chance.’ Lois looked rueful and ran the flat of her hand over the scars across her throat and upper chest. ‘Although it’s all very well being single and ready to mingle, but who says anyone would want to mingle with me?’
Unless, of course, it was someone who already knew about the self-consciousness and the scars, and who wasn’t shallow enough to be put off by them. Someone who was kind, fully grounded and a genuinely good person.
Was Lois’s self-deprecating comment in fact a form of double bluff?
‘Plenty of men would want to mingle with you.’ As Mimi said it, a vision of the future ran through her mind and a shiver of dismay simultaneously crawled over her skin. Because up until now she’d been concentrating on Cora’s dilemma. But Cora was an eleven-year-old child who might easily change her mind, just as her one-time passion for zebras had bloomed and faded and been replaced by a series of other fads. Who was to say that in weeks to come she might not decide that Lois was a brilliant person and a perfect match for her dad after all? And that the relationship between Lois, Cal and Cora might not flourish and grow? Six months from now, they could be the happiest family unit imaginable, with Cora finding it impossible to believe that she’d ever had her doubts about Lois coming into their lives.
And who wouldn’t wish for this to come true, for Cora to end up with a wonderful stepmother to love and be loved by in return? She’d been through so much and it was what she deserved. Mimi swallowed, realising that if that were to happen, she would have to get over her own hidden feelings for Cal once and for all, plaster on a bright smile and make herself be delighted for them.
Would she really be able to manage that?
Then again, like it or not, she’d just have to. Since he’d never been hers in the first place, it was a matter of not having any other choice.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Marcus was about to leave for work the next morning. ‘You don’t have to do it, you know. I can get someone in.’ Except they both knew he wouldn’t, not until the situation was desperate and completely out of hand. Bay Cottage itself might be immaculate, but gardening was low on Marcus’s list of priorities. When her dad had been alive, the garden had been entirely his domain. After his death, an elderly man from the next village had been hired to keep it in order, but since his retirement last September, nothing more had been done.
Until this morning. Spring was here, the sun was shining in a washed-blue sky, and Mimi had decided that the time had come to seize the day.
‘Off you go.’ She shooed Marcus, in his smart suit, out of the front door. ‘I’m looking forward to this. By the time you get home, this place is going to look like Chelsea Flower Show.’
Well, it would look better than it did now, with all the new green shoots and unfurling petals struggling to be seen as they battled their way up through the winter detritus of dried leaves and weeds and drastically overgrown hedges.
Having waved Marcus off in his car, Mimi braved the musty, cobwebby depths of the garden shed and dragged out everything she needed to tackle the job. A startled spider ran across the wooden handle of the spade and galloped up her arm, and she had to force herself to be brave by pretending it was a task on I’m a Celebrity.
Right, time to get going. She was going to cut down everything that was dead, clear up as many weeds as possible and heap everything into a big pile at the far end of the garden.
Two hours later, the pile was growing, perspiration was trickling down Mimi’s spine, and she was about to give her aching back a rest when the sound of footsteps on the pavement made her look up. From here at the side of the house she glimpsed Cal making his way with Otto along the high street.
As he turned his head in her direction, Mimi hastily jerked her face away and, heart clamouring, pretended to be thoroughly occupied with an overgrown bramble.
Of course it had to happen sooner or later. But please, not just yet.
The bramble was longer than expected, and over the course of the winter had woven itself into the lawn. Thank goodness there’d been heavy-duty gardening gloves in the shed. Grasping it in both securely protected hands at the halfway point, Mimi began to tear it away from its mesh of grass and weeds, then tugged with all her might.
The unexpected brush of a wagging tail against her bare ankle caused her to lose her balance just as the bramble freed itself. The thin, wiry end sprang up and came whipping through the air, and Mimi only managed to jerk her head back and squeeze her eyes shut in the nick of time.
She also just about managed not to land on Otto and squash him flat.
‘Aaaaarrrgh . . .’
‘Woof!’ Still wagging his tail in delight, Otto did a little dance on his hind legs and scrabbled his front paws against her knees.
Was it ridiculous to be wincing with pain yet at the same time secretly thrilled that he was so pleased to see her?
‘Hi. Sorry, I didn’t have him on a lead,’ said Cal, behind them. ‘He just took off like a mad thing and came racing over to see you . . . Oh God.’
Having turned and dropped her hand from her face, Mimi saw his look of alarm and glanced down at the smears of blood on her gloved fingers. She shook her head. ‘No problem, it’s fine.’
‘You haven’t seen it. Stand still and let me take a proper look. Otto, leave her alone. Sit down. Not you,’ Cal added as Mimi began to edge towards the wooden seat on the patio. ‘Unless you’re feeling faint. Are you going to faint?’
‘Of course I’m not going to faint.’ Honestly, how much of a wimp did he think she was? ‘It’s only a couple of scratches.’ If anything, at least the mishap had created a diversion from the awkwardness of seeing him again for the first time since Della’s warning to her in the pub. Plus, thanks to two hours of energetic gardening, her face was already pink.
‘Are you up to date with your tetanus jabs?’
Mimi nodded. ‘I am.’
‘We still need to get you cleaned up, though. You don’t want it getting infected.’
Upstairs in the bathroom, Cal opened the cabinet and took out antiseptic cream and cotton wool pads.
‘Sit,’ he instructed once more, addressing Mimi this time and pointing to the rolltop edge of the bath.
‘I can do it myself,’ she protested, but he shook his head.
‘I feel guilty. It was Otto’s fault. Yes, you,’ Cal added sternly as Otto’s ears pricked up. ‘You caused all this damage.’
Mimi perched and said with a twinge of alarm, ‘How much damage?’ Oh God, was it worse than it felt?
‘Don’t worry, it’s only surface scratches. Nothing major.’
Entirely unrepentant, Otto leapt onto her lap and made himself comfortable, and Mimi’s spirits lifted in an unattractively competitive way. Had he always been this affectionate with Della?
‘Right, close your eyes.’ Cal had run a couple of the cotton wool pads under the cold tap.
‘Hang on, I don’t even know what I look like.’ Reaching to one side, Mimi grabbed the magnifying mirror from the windowsill then recoiled at the sight that greeted her. The way the bramble had whipped across her face meant the tiny, razor-sharp thorns had dragged through her skin from up in her hairline all the way down the side of her face to her chin. The blood was beading and dripping down her cheek. Putting the mirror back, she said, ‘I look as if I’ve had a fight with a tiny chainsaw.’
Cal nodded in agreement. ‘That’s why I asked you to close your eyes.’
She remained perched on the side of the bath and stroked Otto’s warm, curled-up body while Cal painstakingly cleaned her face and applied the antiseptic cream.
‘You’re good at this,’ said Mimi.
‘I’m a dad.’ His tone was wry. ‘I’ve had plenty of practice. There, all done. And sorry again about Otto.’
‘You don’t have to apologise.’
‘If I’d had him on a lead, he wouldn’t have been able to catch you by surprise. So it is actually my fault. But there won’t be any scars,’ Cal assured her. ‘You’ll be as good as new in a week.’
‘Well, thanks for cleaning me up.’
‘My pleasure. And it’s good to see you again.’
If he only knew how fast her heart was beating. Mimi nodded awkwardly and they headed downstairs, so much still unsaid. She knew what he must be thinking and it was agonisingly embarrassing that he was thinking it. But raising the subject would be even worse. If not mentioning her crush on him was the way Cal wanted to deal with it, she was more than happy to go along with that. Oh, but there were so many questions she was longing to ask him – about Della, about Cora, and most of all about whatever was going on between him and Lois.
‘I’d better be getting back to the garden. I’m blitzing it while Marcus is out at work.’ As they made their way outside, Mimi said, ‘I want it to look fifty times better by the time he gets home.’ She paused on the small patio and surveyed the amount of work still needing to be done. ‘Well let’s say a bit better.’
‘You’ve made a start.’ Next to her, Cal nodded. ‘I could give you a hand if you like.’
‘Really?’ Her heart thud-thudded.
‘Why not? My next project doesn’t start till tomorrow, so I’m free for the rest of the day.’ He shrugged casually. ‘Let’s do it.’
Mimi swallowed; he was so nice.
Oh God, why does he have to be so nice? It doesn’t help.