Esterlita appears, holding a shopping bag. ‘Who’s this? Is this Maya? The pretty heart surgeon who has that on-again off-again boyfriend who’s no good for her?’
I redden. ‘Well, say-it-like-is Esterlita is here,’ I tell Maya, hoping she forgives me for sharing that little nugget of information. ‘This is the neighbour I was telling you about – what I didn’t say was that she has a no-filter approach to life. Secrets are not safe with her and she will drop you in it if there’s a man within a twenty-mile radius.’
Maya grins. ‘I love her already. And you’re right, he’s no good for me but isn’t that the fun part? The obligatory bad boy! Nice to meet you, Esterlita. By the sounds of it you’ve taken Orly under your wing and thank goodness for that. I expected the yoga pants, but I also thought she might have adopted a bunch of rescue pets and become addicted to Etsy. It’s good to see that’s not the case. Although she does have Yolko Ono the adorable little chicken, so that’s something.’
‘Well, I’m not ruling out a rescue dog … or cat. And that bloody psychopath chicken is not mine!’
‘It’s just misunderstood,’ Maya cries.
I cross my arms. ‘It’s mercenary, that’s what it is. Won’t stop until it takes over the bloody place.’
‘A teeny-weeny little chicken?’ Maya says, as if he’s a fluffy little chick just out of the nest.
‘Well, allow me to introduce you to him, Maya, and then you can form an opinion.’
‘Sure, animals love me.’
‘We’ll see about that!’
Esterlita chimes in, ‘She does have a little problem with the decorating. I don’t know if that’s a new thing or not but I think it says a lot about her frame of mind. Don’t you? It’s like she’s a hundred-year-old woman! Lace and velvet and all these fussy pastels. I just do not understand it.’
‘Same,’ Maya agrees, hiding a smile. The traitor.
‘How can pastels be fussy?’ I say, genuinely confused. They don’t hear me and continue highlighting all my so-called flaws.
‘And she likes hiding behind the ugliest clothes. The ugliest. Big baggy trousers and jumpers so big I think she’s going to take flight in high winds. It’s like she wants to be invisible.’
‘Right. I thought that might get worse here. Well, we could always ditch her loungewear?’
‘I’m right here, you know! And I love my loungewear, so you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead body.’
‘OK, it’s clear she’s not ready for that yet. Has she been sleeping OK? I bet she hasn’t.’
Esterlita shakes her head. ‘When I’ve gone home of a night and she thinks I’m asleep, she plays this ear-bleedingly awful music. It’s like nails down a chalkboard, like cats screaming, or banshees wailing …’
I stiffen. ‘Erm, that’s me singing on the karaoke machine you loaned me, Es.’ It’s just a little goodnight ritual I’ve begun to enjoy before bed. I’ve never had time to do things like that before and now I’m finding all these moments where I can snatch a bit of me-time. I didn’t realise though that Esterlita could hear me all the way across the green. I know I am a tad off-key, but I highly doubt I sound like a banshee wailing? Or a cat screaming? Can cats even scream? I make another mental note to check.
She raises a brow. ‘Well, hold off on the rescue pet, eh? Your caterwauling is enough to send them off running and we don’t need any more feral cats around here. Don’t even get me started on what she does at midnight … Let’s just say clothes are optional, no matter what the weather’s doing, as she runs around the yard waving her hands in some kind of supplication to the moon dance.’
‘Looks like I’m just in time.’ Maya sighs.
‘For what?’ I ask, but again I’m ignored by the duo.
‘You are.’ Esterlita nods. ‘I’ve done all I can but I know she spends a lot of time on that bleeping contraption looking up her ex, the pig. Then she searches for the celebrity who stole him away, the one with the big—’
‘How do you know that? That’s not true!’ OK, it is true but how …? I look up to see if she’s installed hidden cameras or something. So, my heart is broken and I still miss Harry, even if he is a horrible person. You can’t just switch those feelings off. It’s not like I’ll ever forgive him but I still wonder what he’s doing and if he thinks of me.
Esterlita pretends not to hear me. ‘The most delectable hunk of a man wandered in and she acted like some kind of disinterested robot.’ She promptly mimes an impression of me with puckered lips, holding a clipboard, talking mechanically: ‘Yes, Mr Carpenter, please consider the work. I can’t have fun, I’m in a relationship with my paint colour charts …’ She makes a real performance of it.
‘It’s worse than I thought,’ Maya says.
Esterlita puts her hands on her hips. ‘Much worse.’
‘I did not act like a disinterested robot, I was merely being professional. Now would you two stop it, or I’ll have to start … singing.’
Esterlita holds up her hands in surrender. ‘OK, OK, I’ll stop.’
Maya turns to me, her deep brown eyes twinkling with mirth but also a touch of concern. ‘Have you spoken to Harry since you’ve been here?’
I shake my head. ‘No, and I won’t either. It’s just some kind of self-sabotage that I like doing once I’ve had a few glasses of wine. You know, search their socials and then feel hideous about myself. Doesn’t everyone do that after a break-up?’
Maya flicks her long, black curls over a shoulder. ‘Yes, that’s totally normal. I’m glad you haven’t contacted the prig, that’s all. That schmoozy charmer has a way with words and I don’t trust him at all. But Esterlita says you haven’t spent much time in town, haven’t even tried the local pub for dinner. What’s that about? The Orly of before would have already networked her way around the village. She’d have all their numbers and have invited them all for drinks already.’
I cast my gaze to the floor. ‘I know, I just wanted some time to be invisible. It’s not like they don’t know there’s a new person, but I wanted a bit of space first. I’ve been shopping, I’ve met a heap of tradespeople, every second person has dropped in to say hi – that’s enough for now.’
She taps the empty stool next to her and motions for me to sit. ‘But, Orly, the success of the camp will come from word of mouth. I know you need some time to heal but you also need money.’
I let out a dramatic Esterlita-like sigh. ‘So?’
‘So … what?’
‘So what does it matter?’
‘You might not be able to see it but these are the classic signs of someone who is shutting off from the world, when in fact, you need to be doing the exact opposite. Strutting down the high street and making your presence known.’
I do my best impersonation of Esterlita and roll my eyes so dramatically I can almost see my brain and am rewarded with a dizzy spell for my efforts. ‘You sound like Es.’
‘Who has obviously been giving you good, solid advice.’ Maya gives me a half-smile.
OK, they might have some teeny, tiny valid concerns, but I’m still not ready to show my face at the pub in town. Local pubs are always a hotbed of gossip and I definitely don’t want to give Freya or the other jaw-flappers any ammunition.
What if someone recognises me from the horrendous photos in the Daily Sun, taken when I’d been looking anything but my best, with headlines screaming: The woman who drove Harry into the arms of Carly C! Like I’d been some kind of harridan and kept him locked in a basement until he made his timely escape into the loving arms of the saucy singer herself. They’ll judge yoga-pants-me on sight and I’m not ready for all that.
So far I’ve managed quite well here, casually seeing people who come to the hall and a few hair-raising expeditions with Esterlita to buy supplies, keeping under the radar, and all.
On the slow days it’s just me and my stamp collection and all is right with the world as I flick through them, wondering who owned each sheet before me, who designed them. And the o
nes soaked lovingly from envelopes, and sold as singles with all this mystery surrounding the little square – where did this singleton stamp ferry the letter to? What was it about – a love letter, a break-up letter, a letter from a mum to a daughter? There’s so much life in stamps, but it’s all about imagination. And I can easily waste hours sitting with them and doing just that. I’m not hiding per se, I’m hibernating, two very different things.
The very last thing I want is any scrutiny; I want to be normal for a bit. But I’m surprised that Maya has picked up on any of this all the way from London, unless … ‘You two have been in contact!’
Maya shrugs as if it’s nothing. ‘I rang one day and Esterlita answered. You were busy crying over the wild roses apparently.’
‘The wild roses?’ I think back. Oh, yes. ‘I’ve never seen such a pretty flower before – they stopped me in my tracks for a bit.’ Those escaped tendrils of loveliness, racing towards the sun as if they have somewhere important to be.
‘She says they’re her friends,’ Esterlita says, folding her arms.
‘Your friends. Roses? I’ll admit they can be mesmerising, but friends? Oh dear, this is more serious than I thought.’
I huff. ‘I didn’t say the roses were my friends, I just said, if roses could talk I wonder what they’d say. And I was feeling very lonely that afternoon and I thought I’d confide in the delicate stems as I viciously deadheaded them. It was more an apology, than anything.’
They exchange a worried glance and I hurry to reassure them. ‘You would have done the same. Am I right?’
Maya crinkles her nose. ‘Erm, yeah, I think gardening might best be left to the professionals, don’t you? Somehow I don’t think you wielding a pair of razor-sharp secateurs is a good idea at this point. You’re bound to cut off a pinkie or something.’
‘I guess. I did sustain a fair bit of damage from the thorns.’ I survey my hands, which now have a certain number of cuts, scratches, and an assortment of paint samples, and I feel quite proud of all I’ve accomplished.
‘What we need is a night out!’ Maya says. ‘And tomorrow we can get back to work. I want to help as much as I can.’
‘Can’t we have a night in?’ I grumble. ‘We’re up to a very important episode of The Real Housewives and I don’t want to miss it.’
‘It’s on Netflix – you can watch it any time.’
Esterlita does her usual push-me-in-the-back thing and fires out, ‘Come on, lady, get those glad rags on, something short and slippery should do it.’
‘Do I look like I own something short and slippery?’ I say, arching a brow as my heart beats a rhumba at the thought. I love my loungewear, and I can finally wear it here because I’m not Orly from Excès anymore. Every time I slip into my flat shoes, I smile.
But Esterlita shakes her head and her eyes light up as she reaches for the mysterious shopping bag, producing a tiny slash of bright red sequins. ‘I’m not wearing that top.’
‘It’s a dress, darling – don’t be so sarcastic.’
‘It is so not a dress. I have tank tops longer than that.’
‘And yet they haven’t got you a man yet, have they?’
‘This again, really?’ I look to Maya to be the voice of reason as she so usually is.
‘Red is your colour. With your lovely blonde locks and big blue eyes, you’ll set that little number off nicely.’ She hangs me out to dry, just like that.
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘We are.’ They speak in unison and I wonder just how many phone calls Esterlita has intercepted while I’ve been busy. And how on earth she’s convinced my usually responsible friend that this is the answer.
Knowing two against one is futile, I snatch the pitiful excuse for a dress and head into my bathroom. As soon as they see it on, they’ll realise their mistake. Untying my plaits, I wait for the bath to fill, adding half a bottle of bubbles, hoping they hide me from now to all eternity and I avoid having to go out wearing a dress more suited to an actual Barbie doll.
My ploy doesn’t work and soon enough Maya knocks and enters the small bathroom, uselessly waving the steam away. ‘Don’t think you can hide under all those bubbles.’
‘Damn it.’
She hands me a glass of real bubbles. ‘Don’t try and butter me up with French champagne, you traitor, you turncoat, you terrible friend.’
She goes to snatch the glass back.
I hastily bring it close. ‘Well, I’ve had a sip now, so I may as well drink it.’
‘Fine. Get that down you, and then get your make-up on. I’ll curl your hair and then we’re off out.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ I say with heavy sarcasm and take a big gulp of bubbles as Maya shuts the door behind her.
My phone pings just like bloody usual when I’m almost eyeball-deep in the bath. I ignore it but it continues so I force myself out and wrap myself in a towel, then find my phone, realising with a grin it’s not going to be an Excès drama that I have to sort out. There’s such a freedom in that, I’m still smiling when I swipe to see a bunch of comments on the new Honeysuckle Hall Facebook page.
I gasp when I see the comments: You better leave Carly C alone! This is her chance at real happiness and your opinion is not wanted! Be careful or you’ll have the #CarlyArmy after you!
Sometimes I despair for the human race. I haven’t contacted Carly C, nor will I, and who on God’s green earth are the Carly Army?
But they get worse: We know you’re hiding out at the hall, plotting revenge! We have spies everywhere! Watch your step! #CarlyArmyInFormation
Not only are these threats ludicrous, they’re also really bad for business. I go through and delete the lot of them and only hope by not engaging with these trolls they go away.
‘Are you out of the bath?’ Maya yells from the living room. I shut the page down quickly and put it out of my mind for the evening.
Chapter 12
‘I look like I’m on the prowl.’ I’ll definitely be unable to blend in when I flash and sparkle like a Christmas bauble, which is probably their plan. The minxes!
‘Aren’t you?’ Esterlita looks genuinely confused.
I stare her down, which only makes it worse as she scrutinises me up close; before long she’s directly under my chin like she’s looking for more of these wrinkles I’m allegedly growing at a rate of knots.
‘She needs more lipstick. Why you gotta wear that nude stuff for? Why can’t she wear pink, or purple? It’s your fear of bright colours again, isn’t it? This is the root of all her problems, mark my words.’
‘I didn’t realise you’d studied cosmetology, Es?’ I say with a scoff. ‘And I’m not wearing pink or purple lipstick and don’t start on the blue eyeshadow thing again. I’m going to freeze to death wearing this. If I don’t get picked up by the police first for suspected soliciting!’
Spritzing on spicy perfume, Maya ignores me and says, ‘You look ravishing!’
I roll my eyes. ‘Why do you get to wear clothing that covers your knees?’ She’s got a multitude of layers on like she’s trying to make up for the lack of mine.
She sighs as if I’m testing the limit of her patience. ‘I have a reputation to uphold as a very serious and together surgeon.’
I don’t know if it’s the amount of bubbles I’ve consumed, or I’m just over pleading my case, but I acquiesce. ‘Fine, let’s get this over with. I’m hungry.’
‘Let’s eat somewhere first,’ Maya says. ‘And then we can check out the nightlife.’
Esterlita grimaces. ‘There’s not much nightlife. It’s the Tipsy Tadpole and that’s it.’
‘The Tipsy Tadpole – is that the name of the pub?’ Maya asks laughing.
‘Yes,’ Esterlita says as if it’s obvious.
‘Well then, let’s do it.’ Maya saunters outside while I flick through the coat rail, hoping to find a light jacket that’s long enough to cover my derriere. And my pride.
‘No, no you don’t need that paint-splattered t
hing,’ Maya says. ‘Take a scarf instead.’
‘Fine.’
‘I’ll drive,’ Esterlita says.
‘Oh no no no,’ I panic. ‘Maya is a real walking nut.’ I send her a signal with my eyes alone and she catches on fast. ‘Loves a bit of one foot in front of the other action, she does.’
‘Yes, I’d love to walk, see a bit of the town.’
‘Youth of today. Always got the devices pressed into the palm of their hands but don’t like automobiles – I will never understand.’
‘It’s a health thing.’ As in staying alive.
‘Fine.’
I internally breathe a sigh of relief. Maya’s life is too precious to be put in the hands of Esterlita’s Formula One driving. The few times I’ve had to brave her van in order to pick up supplies my life has flashed before my eyes like a movie reel and I definitely don’t want it to end like this, not before I’ve at least made a success of the camp.
We totter into town and I’m surprised to find how pretty it looks lit up at night-time. Small shopfronts are locked up; warm lights highlight display windows. There’s a bakery, a café, and a bookshop. We continue on past a lolly shop, a chippy, and the antique emporium with a display of luscious ruby velvet furniture in the window. ‘Ooh, look at those chairs.’ I point. ‘They’d go nicely in the library room of the hall.’
‘We’re definitely coming back here tomorrow,’ Maya says.
‘Want me to help negotiate?’ Esterlita says.
I send her a weak smile. ‘We’re just going to window-shop, Es, but thank you.’ What I don’t say is I think poor Sebastian has suffered enough.
‘OK, but just say the word. Newcomers don’t always get the right prices.’
Escape to Honeysuckle Hall Page 12
