The crisp autumn air slapped me hard in the face as I set off, desperate to put as much distance between myself and the pub as I could in the shortest time possible. As I stuffed my arms into the sleeves of my coat, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.
I ignored it.
I had no intention of going back and listening to Gavin’s pathetic justification for having his sausage battered by the chippy girl on what was supposed to be our special night, but I couldn’t walk the streets all night, either.
Relenting, I pulled out my phone so I could scroll through my contacts and decide who to call in my moment of need. However, it wasn’t Gavin who had been ringing me. According to the log, he hadn’t been in touch at all, but I had a fair few missed calls from the hall and half a dozen text messages from Anna explaining why she and the others hadn’t made it to the party yet.
Mick was dealing with a flat battery on the Land Rover, and the planned conference call was taking far longer than expected, thanks to the ropey rural internet connection. I thanked my lucky stars that efficient wireless still wasn’t a thing at Wynthorpe. I don’t think I could have coped with Anna and Dorothy’s kind words, and Jamie and Mick’s wrath, had they witnessed my humiliation first-hand.
Shivering, I pulled my coat tighter around me and stepped off the kerb thinking I could grab a taxi at the market square and go to the hall. Just until I’d decided what to do next.
A piercing blast from a horn brought me back to the present far faster than the fresh air, and I leapt back up on to the pavement, my heart heaving in my chest as I shielded my eyes against the dazzling headlights as a truck screamed to a halt next to me.
‘You again!’ called a man’s voice from the driver’s side. ‘You’re the girl from the pub, aren’t you? I’m not apologising this time. You stepped straight out in front of me.’
‘Sorry,’ I relented, knowing I’d had a very lucky escape.
The wheels on the lumberjack’s truck could have squashed me as flat as a pancake without feeling a thing. Suddenly, I found I wasn’t shivering anymore.
‘I didn’t see you,’ I said feebly, my voice wobbling a little, no doubt from the shock.
‘You are all right, though?’
‘Yes,’ I said, breathing out. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’
I felt far warmer than I had been just a few seconds before, that was certain. The effect a decent dose of adrenalin could have on a person’s nervous system was amazing.
‘Well, if you’re sure?’
‘I am.’
‘In that case,’ he said, leaning further across the seat, ‘you don’t happen to know the way to Wynthorpe Hall, do you?’
‘Yes,’ I told him, reaching for the truck door handle. ‘You’re in luck. I happen to be heading that way myself.’
I heaved myself into the passenger seat, dumped my bag in the footwell and secured my seatbelt.
‘All right?’ I asked, when he didn’t say anything.
‘I don’t know,’ he frowned. ‘Do you normally jump into strangers’ trucks?’
I still wasn’t convinced this guy was a stranger. He might not have been a local, but I knew him from somewhere. Hopefully not a wanted poster.
‘It’d be pretty bad luck if I turned out to be an axe-wielding murderer or something, wouldn’t it?’ he went on, confirming we were on the same wavelength.
‘Oh, believe me,’ I told him with a sniff, ‘the way my luck’s going tonight, nothing would surprise me.’
‘Fair enough,’ he shrugged, putting the truck back into gear as I pointed out the way he needed to go.
‘So, tell me,’ I said, keen to establish that he really wasn’t an axe-wielding murderer before we had gone too far out of town, ‘why do you need to get to Wynthorpe Hall?’
‘I’m going to work there,’ he explained. ‘My mate Jamie Connelly has offered me a job.’
‘You’re the new outdoor activities guy,’ I nodded as the penny dropped. ‘Jamie’s pal from his time working on the African kids’ project.’
‘That’s me,’ he confirmed, ‘although we knew each other long before Africa.’
So, if he was taking charge of the woods, along with their maintenance and management, then he was a lumberjack of sorts. I awarded myself ten out of ten for my shrewd observation and thought back over what little Jamie had said about him.
‘I’m Gabriel,’ he said, ‘but my friends call me Gabe.’
I suddenly felt a little less sure that my decision to hitch a ride with this guy was a good one. Jamie had said his friend had been to the hall before, but if that were the case, surely he’d know how to get there already, wouldn’t he? Had I unwittingly just fallen into the clutches of an impostor?
‘I can’t wait to see Catherine and Angus again,’ he went on when I didn’t say anything. ‘It’s years since I’ve visited – getting on for a decade – and I didn’t drive then, which is why I can’t remember the way.’
That was music to my ears. There was no satnav in sight and finding your way around the Fen droves and lanes, which were sketchily signposted at best, wasn’t easy in the cold light of day, but at night would be nigh on impossible if you didn’t already know the area.
‘I did write to Jamie to say I was going to be arriving early so I hope he’s expecting me.’
‘Couldn’t you have rung the hall?’ I suggested, ‘or sent a text? The internet is pretty rubbish, but messages mostly get through all right.’
I was certain Jamie wasn’t expecting him yet, given what he’d said earlier, and annoyingly, I hadn’t had a chance to get Gatekeeper’s sorted out yet.
‘I’ve been travelling around,’ he shrugged. ‘And I don’t have a mobile.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t have a phone.’
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ he said, laughing when he caught sight of my shocked expression. ‘So, I popped a letter in the post just before I began to make my way back across the globe and hoped for the best.’
‘Well,’ I told him, ‘I’m fairly certain your letter never arrived and, consequently, your accommodation isn’t quite ready yet.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘Because I’m the hall housekeeper,’ I told him proudly. ‘The cottage was supposed to be aired and warmed through before you arrived. You’ll just have to make the best of it for tonight, but I can at least bring your linen and towels over from the hall.’
I didn’t much like that he was moving into somewhere I hadn’t given the once over. Had he been staying in the hall, that would have been fine, but the cottage hadn’t been lived in for months.
‘Are you Hayley by any chance?’ he frowned.
‘Yes,’ I said, feeling even more shocked than when he announced he had no mobile. ‘But how do you know that?’
‘I remember you,’ he said, narrowing his eyes. ‘You were staying at the hall the last time I visited, but you were too young to be working then, surely?’
I didn’t answer. He had obviously been a visitor around the time I parted company with school.
‘You look different,’ he said.
‘The passing of time has that sort of impact,’ I told him shortly. ‘You need to turn left here.’
We drove a little further in silence. It was typical that the only person Jamie had appointed to work for the charity already had an insight into my beginnings at the hall. I supposed there was no chance I would ever wipe my slate clean if I chose to stay put rather than move miles away from my past, and now I had the added humiliation of what Gavin had done on top of everything else. Perhaps I should take a leaf out of Anna, Jamie and this chap’s books and spend some time away in pastures new.
‘What did you say your name was, again?’ I asked, when I realised I hadn’t really been paying attention the first time he told me.
‘Gabriel,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Or Gabe, for short.’
‘Like the angel?’
‘Just like the angel,’ he smiled.
There was a certain irony that he had landed in my life just when I needed rescuing, even if he had lit me up with his truck headlights rather than a celestial beam from above.
‘And just in time for Christmas,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘I suppose I am.’
‘Well, I hope you’ll be very happy at the hall,’ I told him. ‘We’re a pretty easy-going bunch . . .’
Out of the corner of my eye, something on the back seat began to move around and take shape. It was growing, filling the space and I was all set to leap out of the truck and run back to town.
‘Shit,’ I gasped, ‘what the hell is that?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Gabe softly, ‘don’t panic. It’s just my dog.’
‘That’s not a dog,’ I croaked, curling in on myself. ‘It’s a fricking giant.’
‘You’re almost right,’ Gabe laughed. ‘He’s an Irish wolfhound.’
The dog’s wiry grey head slowly appeared and he rested it on the back of the seat between us, staring out through the windscreen into the unlit Fenland darkness. He didn’t take any notice of me. Thankfully.
‘His name’s Bran.’
‘Bran?’ I repeated, but not too loudly in case the beast heard me.
‘After the giant ancient god.’
‘Oh yeah, of course . . .’ Molly was going to absolutely love this guy and his hound the size of a Shetland pony. ‘Have you had him long?’
I couldn’t imagine an Irish wolfhound was an ideal travelling companion. It wasn’t as if you could fit him in your backpack or pop him in your pocket. He’d be able to swallow Suki, the hall’s diminutive chihuahua, without her even touching the sides.
‘Three days,’ said Gabe, twisting around to give the dog’s head a friendly rub.
Bran took absolutely no notice at all.
‘Three days?’
‘I took him off a bloke in a pub.’
‘Took him?’
‘I won’t bore you with the details,’ Gabe said darkly. ‘Let’s just say the bloke was a knob and he needed relieving of this poor chap.’
‘You’ll never get him into Gatekeeper’s Cottage,’ I said aloud. ‘More to the point, you’ll never get into Gatekeeper’s Cottage.’
The place really was tiny and this pair were supersized and then some.
‘We’ll be fine,’ Gabe shrugged. ‘I travel light.’
With a dog the size of a baby elephant in the back, I wasn’t so sure about that.
‘Anyway,’ he went on. ‘Talking of knobs in pubs. I have to ask: did you know that couple back in the gents?’
I swallowed and looked out of the window. I could feel Bran’s warm breath on my neck as I thought about how I could answer Gabe’s question.
There was nothing else for it. I took a deep breath and began to reattach my emotional armour. I was going to have to ask the old Hayley for some help to get me through this.
The impenetrable forcefield fitted me as snugly as Ironman’s suit and I actually felt better for pulling it back on. Perhaps I should never have hung it up in the first place. Had I kept all of my sass and swag in situ, my relationship with Gavin would have halted at amazing sex rather than escalating to something serious.
‘He was my fiancé,’ I began, my eyes swivelling from the non-existent view back to Gabe. ‘Sorry. No. Wait. My ex-fiancé.’
I could do this. I felt fine. I wasn’t so sure about my chauffeur, though.
‘Oh my god, Hayley,’ he yelped, almost making Bran move, but not quite. ‘Shit. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s fine,’ I told him with a smile, ‘I was only in it for the jewellery.’
I waved the tiny diamond vaguely in his direction thinking thank goodness that wasn’t true because I definitely would have drawn the short straw.
Gabe looked at me, his expression suggesting he didn’t believe a word.
‘I mean it,’ I told him. ‘That mortifying little scene back there has no doubt saved me a whole heap of heartache. Better to have seen him for what he is at the engagement party rather than the wedding reception, right?’
‘Well, I guess . . .’
I dreaded to think what Mick was going to say. Having heard the rumours for himself – including the one about the lap dancer during a particularly infamous stag weekend – he was bound to feel almost as angry as I did.
‘Give it a couple of weeks and I daresay I’ll be thinking I’ve had a lucky escape,’ I said, perhaps a little too brightly. ‘Good riddance—’
‘To bad rubbish,’ Gabe cut in.
‘Exactly,’ I said, flashing him a smile. ‘So please don’t waste time worrying about me, because I’m fine. You need to turn left again here.’