Chapter 6
The same thing happens the next day, but this time I came prepared. I go downstairs to the empty kitchen and clear away the breakfast things before eating my sandwich at the table overlooking the back garden. At least I’m not missing out on sunshine. The sky is completely overcast.
What I previously thought of as a bit of a dumping ground, I now realise is some sort of outdoor workshop. The trampled grass is carpeted with sawdust and wood chippings and there are workbenches peppered with tools and wooden planks lined up on the ground. Charlie was sanding a branch again this morning and there are several smooth, finished branches lying under the veranda. I wonder what he’s making.
When he comes back at the slightly earlier time of three forty-five that afternoon, I go downstairs to make a coffee and to ask him.
‘Some recreation equipment for a local primary school,’ he tells me, popping April into her pen. She immediately squawks and hauls herself up to a standing position, her chubby fingers clutching onto the side of the pen as support. ‘Play with your toys for a bit,’ he says to her.
She cries out with annoyance, but he ignores her, opening the dishwasher.
‘You set it going,’ he says to me, seeming almost perplexed by the sight of clean dishes.
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t have to tidy up after us.’
‘I don’t mind. I needed a break from staring at a computer screen.’
He’s oblivious to my pointed statement.
He starts to unload the dishwasher while I make myself a coffee, trying to take a leaf out of his book and ignore April’s insistent cries. Eventually, Charlie gives up and lifts her out of her playpen, sitting her on her nappy-clad bottom on the floor with a saucepan and a wooden spoon to play with. She bashes the utensil against the pan. Ow, my ears!
I walk over to the French doors and look out while waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘Is that what you do?’ I call over my shoulder. ‘Make stuff out of wood?’
‘Yep.’
‘Like what?’
‘Play kitchens, houses, tree houses, that sort of thing.’ He has to raise his voice over the racket April is making.
I’m always impressed by people who can make things with their hands. I turn away from the doors. ‘Do you always work when April is asleep?’
‘Yep. But how much time I get varies.’ He casts a wry look at his daughter. She gazes up at him and he narrows his eyes at her.
Whack, whack, whack.
‘Water’s boiled,’ he notes absently, glancing my way.
I get on with my task and leave them to it.
‘Tell him to give you a key!’ my friend Marty exclaims the following evening when I call her from up on the field. I’ve come here to catch up on my emails and check the comments on my blog, but I got bored after a while and decided to call my best mate instead.
Marty and I were introduced in our early twenties by a colleague who worked at the same travel magazine as me – Marty, herself, is a travel agent.
I’d just broken up with my boyfriend, Vince, and we clicked straightaway. We flat-shared for three years, although I lived with her only on and off, as, once I went freelance, I travelled around quite a bit. We’ve been great friends ever since.
‘I can’t ask for a key,’ I reply. ‘Not yet. He barely knows me. I don’t want to go to him with a list of requirements.’
‘A key is hardly unreasonable, especially as he asked you to work from his house.’
‘I will ask him for one, just not yet. Maybe next week.’ I smile at a woman as she trundles down the steep hill towards the toilet block with her onesie-clad daughter, before returning my gaze to the estuary. The tide is on its way back in. ‘I sat out on his front wall for a bit today. It was really hot.’
‘What’s wrong with his back garden?’ she asks, so I explain.
Charlie was hammering earlier, as well as sanding. He seems to be making basic structures out of wooden planks – at the moment he’s working on a play kitchen. I don’t know where the branches will come in.
‘Is he shaggable?’ she asks suddenly.
‘Highly,’ I reply with a smirk, then immediately feel guilty for being so flippant considering the circumstances that brought me here.
‘Does he look anything like Ross Poldark?’ Marty asks eagerly, blissfully unaware of my altered mood.
‘No,’ I reply firmly. ‘You’re obsessed with that series!’
Poldark is set in Cornwall, so she does have a reason for bringing it into our conversation.
‘Yeah, I am. Aidan Turner is insanely lickable.’
‘Lickable?’ I ask with a laugh, as our conversation goes off on a bizarre tangent. Nothing new, when it comes to Marty.
‘Don’t you just want to climb through the TV screen and lick his face?’
‘Can’t say I’ve ever wanted to do that,’ I reply, presuming she’s talking about the guy who plays the lead character. ‘How did we get onto this?’
‘You were saying Charlie is as fit as fuck and I asked—’
‘Stop!’ I cut her off. ‘I did not say that! You’re making me feel bad. The poor guy only lost his wife last October.’
‘That really is properly shitty, isn’t it?’
‘I’d say that’s putting it mildly.’ I sigh heavily.
‘Are you all right?’ she asks. ‘You don’t sound like your usual chirpy self. Is it depressing, being there?’
‘Not as depressing as it could be, but I do feel a bit like I’m intruding,’ I admit. ‘Yes, even though he wanted me here,’ I say before she can chip in. ‘He only really talks to me if it’s about his daughter. I’ve tried to make conversation about his work, but he’s not what you’d call chatty. I guess it’s only early days. It’ll be fine. I’ll perk up. Hang on a sec.’ I place the phone down on the grass and crack open a mini-bottle of Prosecco before putting the phone back to my ear. ‘Cheers,’ I say, taking a swig. The bubbles fizz right up my nostrils and make me cough.
‘Are you drinking on your own?’ Marty asks with alarm.
‘No, I’m talking to you. I consider that company.’
‘When you said you were going to perk up, I didn’t realise you meant you were going to get shitfaced on the phone to me.’
I burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Marty, do you really have to go on holiday to Greece for two weeks with that boyfriend of yours? Can’t you come and see me instead?’
‘I promise I’ll come and see you when the lovely Ted and I get back,’ she assures me.
‘You really do love him, don’t you?’ I say wistfully.
‘I really, really do,’ she replies even more wistfully.
‘All right, now you’re making me want to throw up.’
We’re still giggling when we ring off.
I take a deep breath of the damp, salty air, inhaling the scent of seawater and long, summer grass. The sun is setting and the sky is a canvas of mauve, orange, rose and blue brush-strokes. I stay up on the hill until the first star comes out and then I return to Hermie, climbing into bed without bothering to take off my make-up.