by Heidi Swain
‘What do you mean by that?’ he said between mouthfuls, frowning.
‘Well, you obviously knew who Luke was when his name was mentioned the day I moved in,’ I said, watching him closely, ‘and you apparently have a way with words, or storytelling at least. You aren’t a journalist by any chance, are you?’
‘God no!’ he laughed, making us all jump.
His eyes crinkled at the corners but I couldn’t enjoy the change in his demeanour because I felt, knew in fact, that he was laughing at me rather than with me. My suggestion must have been wide of the mark.
‘He’s a teacher, Poppy,’ said Kate. ‘A primary teacher.’
Okay, very wide of the mark.
‘And he recognised my name because I was a part of the school panel who interviewed him for a job a couple of weeks ago,’ said Luke.
So, that’ll be me not just wide of the aforementioned mark but in a completely different time zone to it, then.
‘He’s going to be Jasmine’s new teacher,’ joined in Lisa. ‘Sorry,’ she added, shaking her head, ‘I should have said.’
Yes, that might have quelled my suspicions before I made a total arse of myself. Again.
‘I only found out just before you and Harold arrived,’ she went on.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I see.’
‘No wonder you looked a bit weirded out when I said he’d come in and started telling the kids a story.’
‘Did you think I was an impostor?’ asked Jacob.
He was laughing at me again.
‘I didn’t know who you were,’ I said haughtily as I began clearing plates.
So much for my chilled attitude and c’est la vie approach to life. He’d got me well and truly rattled now. ‘I still don’t, but so long as everyone else does, that’s fine,’ I continued.
An awkward silence descended and I looked to Carole for some support.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, finally catching on, ‘now, who fancies some of this delicious crumble and cream?’
Chapter 6
Carole’s delicious crumble was the perfect antidote to the earlier awkwardness and the adults sat replete and relaxed while the kids, those who were old enough, tore about burning off the calories they had just ingested seeking out the dozens of foil-wrapped eggs we had hidden earlier.
‘So, what does everyone have planned for tomorrow then?’ Harold asked.
‘We’re off to Wynbridge,’ said Kate. ‘Mum’s been asking us to go for ages, so we’re heading there for a couple of days. Jasmine is back to school on Tuesday so we’ll be home some time Monday afternoon.’
‘I’m guessing Tuesday will be your first day in your new job then, Jacob?’ asked Neil.
‘It will,’ said Jacob.
‘And we’ve got my family coming over,’ said Glen when Jacob didn’t add anything else. ‘We told them it would be easier if they came to visit us this year.’
‘And you’re cooking for them all?’ I asked, the thought distracting me from Jacob’s monosyllabic response.
I knew Glen had a large family – Heather was a real-life Wonder Woman, but cooking a meal for so many with the three little ones to tend to was surely too much.
‘No way,’ said Heather, as she burped one of the boys over her shoulder. ‘The food is coming with the guests. We’re simply providing the location.’
That sounded like a far more sensible proposition.
‘I’m spending the day with Carole and Graham,’ announced Harold.
‘And we’re off to your parents,’ said Lisa, nudging her softly snoring husband to bring him back into the conversation. ‘Aren’t we, John?’
‘I’m not asleep,’ he mumbled, ‘and yes, we are.’
‘What about you guys?’ I asked Mark and Neil.
‘We’re seeing friends,’ said Neil.
Mark flushed and squeezed Neil’s hand.
‘Our friends Toby and Matt have just adopted a little girl, Leila. We’re going to meet her tomorrow.’
‘You sound broody, Mark,’ said Heather with a smile, handing over her freshly burped baby.
‘You have no idea,’ he sighed happily.
‘I’ll be a surrogate for you if you like,’ jumped in Lisa. ‘We won’t be having more of our own, but I’ll happily hatch one for you guys.’
Suddenly John was all ears again.
‘And what about you, Poppy,’ asked Kate, before Lisa got carried away with the idea and swept Mark along with her. ‘What are you up to? Any plans to see your family?’
Had she known anything about my family dynamics she wouldn’t have asked that.
‘No,’ I said lightly, ‘nothing like that for me. We don’t really get along.’
I thought sadly of the massive chocolate egg I’d splashed out on for Ryan that was never going to fulfil its Easter destiny. I had planned to give it to him in person but he’d cancelled on me again and it was too late to post it now.
‘But that’s fine,’ I hastily added, ‘friends are the family you choose and I’m spending the day with my mate, Lou.’
‘And Jacob, what about you?’
‘Oh, I’m the same as Poppy,’ he said dismissively.
I didn’t know if he was referring to having family he didn’t get along with or being happier in the company of friends. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure his family weren’t better off without his grumpy presence and I couldn’t imagine he had many friends.
‘What a shame,’ cried Lisa. ‘I think it’s sad the pair of you won’t be with relatives.’
‘Well, obviously I can’t vouch for Poppy,’ muttered Jacob, ‘but you wouldn’t be saying that if you knew anything about my family, Lisa.’
We might not have shared the same happy-go-lucky attitude towards life, but apparently my neighbour and I did have something in common after all. I watched as Lisa shifted a little closer to the edge of her seat, no doubt in the hope that he was about to explain why he and his family didn’t hang out, but he clamped his mouth shut and went back to swigging the beer John had handed him earlier.
‘You’d be more than welcome to come to us if you’d like to, Jacob,’ offered Graham. ‘Even if you just popped in for lunch.’
‘That’s kind of you, Graham, but I’ll pass,’ he replied. ‘I’ve still got a mountain of planning to do so I need to get on with that, but thanks for the offer.’
He still wasn’t the conversational life and soul, but at least he’d stopped biting everyone’s heads off.
‘It can’t be easy moving schools at this point in the academic year,’ I commented. ‘It’s quite unusual, isn’t it?’
‘Not really,’ he snapped. ‘It just depends when vacancies come up. I’d taken a few months off and then this job happened to become available. Nothing unusual about that.’
Apparently I’d hit a nerve and his snappy ceasefire was abandoned as quickly as it had been instated. It hadn’t been my intention to rile him again.
‘Well,’ said Lisa, as my face flushed with embarrassment, ‘I do hope you’ll consider coming back over here to help out now you’ve seen how beautiful it is, Jacob.’
‘I doubt I’ll have the time,’ he told her.
‘But teachers have loads of holiday,’ I butted in, determined not to let him get the better of me again. ‘I’d imagine you’ll have more time than the rest of us put together, especially during the summer.’
‘She’s got you there, lad,’ chuckled Harold.
‘I’m going to be volunteering at the youth centre whenever I can,’ Jacob told me tersely. ‘The place is falling apart and I’ve been asked to help out.’
No doubt that was where Colin’s books from the young adult section were destined to end up, then. If the place really was in a mess it could be the perfect project to benefit from the competition prize money. It was ironic that Jacob wouldn’t be part of the gang working towards turning the garden into a winner and therefore – if we did pull it off – potentially helping the centre, but I thought it best not to say as m
uch.
‘But even so,’ said Carole, ‘surely you could spare us just a few hours?’
‘Yes,’ joined in Lisa. ‘It’ll keep your mind off whatever it is you moved here and took some time out to forget.’
Jacob looked as if he wanted to crawl under the table and I realised that Lisa’s astute observations were about to slip to the unsavoury side of meddlesome. Clearly the bear amongst us was on the run from something and I wasn’t the only one who’d picked up on it.
Something had happened in his life, something monumental that had forced him to hide out in Nightingale Square, but he really didn’t seem like the type of guy who would be up for baring his soul to a table full of strangers – and who could blame him? Had I been in his position, had anyone asked me about my unpleasant past, I was sure I would have been sporting exactly the same closed expression as him.
‘Do you know,’ I said, jumping up, ‘I’ve gone and forgotten the biscuits I got for the children. Jacob, would you mind coming back and helping me with them? There’s rather a lot to carry.’
*
We walked back over to the square in silence. I didn’t feel I could bring myself to open my mouth for fear of saying the wrong thing again. Where Jacob was concerned that seemed to be a habit.
‘I’m just going to nip in for a sec,’ he told me when we reached his gate.
‘You are coming back though, aren’t you?’
‘Of course,’ he tutted. ‘You just get these biscuits you can’t manage to carry and I’ll come over to yours in a minute.’
He didn’t seem to have any idea that I had been trying to free him from Lisa’s clutches.
Thankfully there really were biscuits to take back to the party. Stacks of them, but they weren’t home-made. I was something of a failure when it came to baked goods. These were undecorated vanilla Easter egg-shaped biscuits from Blossom’s. I had planned to embellish them that evening and then deliver them, Easter-bunny style, early the next morning. However, going out of my way to prise an oblivious Jacob from Lisa’s prying had denied me the little project and I figured the children might enjoy decorating them themselves anyway.
‘So, you really do have biscuits,’ said Jacob as I loaded him up with a variety of tubs containing icing ingredients and natural coloured gels.
‘Of course,’ I snapped. ‘Didn’t you believe me?’
‘I wasn’t sure,’ he said. ‘I just thought maybe you were looking for an excuse to leave.’
He really was dense. My motivation for leaving was to save him, but he was still completely clueless about that.
‘But why would I?’ I asked.
I hoped he didn’t think I was trying to get him all to myself!
‘Because it’s a bit full-on over there, isn’t it?’ he grumbled. ‘Everyone knowing everyone’s business’ – he shuddered – ‘and Lisa’s the worst—’
‘I think you’ll find,’ I interrupted before he had a chance to say something that would really make my blood boil, ‘that actually she’s the best, even if it might not always be obvious. Everyone looks out for each other around here and for those of us who aren’t close to family,’ I added pointedly, ‘that’s no bad thing.’
Jacob snorted and I set off after him at a brisk pace around the green.
‘If you hate it so much,’ I asked, staring up at him, ‘then why are you bothering to come back with me?’
‘Because either you or Lisa, or both of you, will keep trying to drag me over there if I don’t give it a decent go today.’
I wasn’t sure I would.
‘Look,’ he said, as he stopped dead in front of me, ‘I didn’t move here to join in.’
That much was obvious. He’d managed to stay home alone for months.
‘I didn’t move here to make friends or get to know my neighbours.’
Funnily enough, that was exactly the attitude Kate had initially moved to the square with, but somehow I couldn’t imagine Lisa was going to find Jacob as easy a nut to crack. I certainly wouldn’t be going out of my way to try to smash through his emotional armour.
‘I don’t want to grow my own row of radishes in the hope that it will make me feel better,’ he went on.
‘About what?’ I cut in.
Apparently, my curiosity wasn’t as easy to switch off as I would have liked.
‘And I certainly don’t want to enter some busybody, let’s all pull together, community competition. That’s not why I moved here.’
‘So, why did you move here then?’
Jacob looked down at me and bit his lip.
‘Come on, you two!’ Lisa called from the garden gate before he had a chance to form an answer. ‘We’re waiting to go through these entry papers.’
*
Predictably, my neighbour refused to have anything to do with the competition details, so he was left in charge of the children, who were decorating the Easter biscuits with the bits and pieces I had supplied.
As I watched him from afar, I thought he looked like a completely different beast in the company of kids. He was helpful, patient, tender and kind. He was also covered in a rainbow of icing and he didn’t seem to mind at all. I was in no doubt that he was a great teacher. He just wasn’t a great adult, not around other adults anyway. I wondered if he would prove to be as capable with the teens at the youth centre as he was with the littlies. Given his comments about his own relatives I didn’t think family mediation would be his forte.
‘He is a dish, isn’t he?’ said Lisa, sidling up and following my gaze.
‘Who?’
‘Mr Grizzle, of course.’ She grinned and gave a nod in Jacob’s direction.
I was pretty certain she wouldn’t still be thinking that if she was aware of how he had spoken about her. Although in assigning him the new name of ‘Grizzle’ she was pretty accurate, even though Mr Grumpy had been fitting as well.
‘You can’t call him that,’ I hissed back. ‘He might hear you.’
‘So,’ Lisa frowned. ‘Why should that matter, it’s his name, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ I gasped. ‘He’s actually called Jacob Grizzle? I don’t believe it.’
‘He is,’ Lisa giggled, plucking at my elbow like a silly schoolgirl. ‘It’s too perfect, isn’t it? He’s just like a bear emerging from its cave in the spring!’
‘He certainly has the temperament of one,’ I said, taking a deep breath to stave off the unexpected giggle I could feel rising. It was uncanny and really rather hilarious that her thoughts about him had matched mine.
‘How are you getting on, Mr Grizzle?’ Lisa called in his direction.
He looked up and stared at us from beneath his fringe and I tried to arrange my features into something that resembled serious.
‘I’ll have to go over now,’ I told Lisa out of the corner of my mouth, ‘otherwise he’ll think we’re taking the mick.’
‘Go on then,’ she said, shoving me along. ‘I’m sure he’d love to talk to you of all people.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I frowned.
‘Well,’ she said, grinning. ‘We’ve all been trying to get him over here for months with no success and then you move in and here he is.’
‘Oh, be quiet,’ I tutted.
I knew for a fact that Mr Grizzle was no more interested in me than I was in him.
‘But don’t be long,’ she added. ‘I want you to read the last of these forms.’
Thankfully, Jacob didn’t watch me walk over – that would have turned my face an even brighter shade of giveaway red than it already was – but instead went back to helping Jasmine place the eyes on her bunny biscuit.
‘What do you think?’ She beamed, holding it up for me to admire.
‘I think she’s beautiful,’ I told her seriously.
‘It’s a he,’ she said, sounding a little disappointed.
‘Sorry,’ I apologised. ‘I thought because he was wearing a pink ribbon . . .’
‘Boys can like pink as well you know,’
she told me, ‘it’s only a colour. Isn’t that right, Mr Grizzle?’
‘Absolutely,’ he agreed, ‘I happen to be wearing a pink T-shirt myself today.’
Jasmine didn’t look as though she believed him, so he lifted the bottom of his shirt to reveal the hem of a bright pink T-shirt.
‘See,’ she said to me, before rushing off to show everyone else what she had created.
‘I can operate a washing machine, but a very red sock got mixed with my whites,’ Jacob confided, with a shy grin that took me aback. ‘I have a whole drawer full of pink clothes now.’
It was the most amusing thing he’d ever said and I wasn’t sure how to react. Having a sense of humour didn’t fit in with everything else I had worked out about him.
‘Are you still pissed off with me?’ he asked, lowering his voice so the children couldn’t hear.
‘Well, you were mean about Lisa.’
‘I was talking about during lunch,’ he elaborated, ‘when we were all at the table. I know you were annoyed, although I was impressed that you were so on the ball and had the kids’ backs, just in case I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.’
I wasn’t sure if he was laughing at me again or not.
‘I am sorry I’ve been so rude,’ he continued. ‘But it’s hard to be civil when you’re living through the worst time of your life.’
Perhaps he was being serious after all.
‘Do you think it might help to talk about it?’
‘No,’ he said, almost reverting back to his gruff self. ‘Definitely not. I’m just apologising for being a prick. I haven’t always been like this.’
I was relieved to hear it.
‘And as I’ve done what you asked by coming here today, I hope you’ll forgive me.’
He didn’t add that he had done it to get me off his back, but that was the implication again.
‘But have you enjoyed it?’ I asked.
He shrugged, not looking overly impressed.
‘Well, don’t go mad,’ I said.
‘I’m not going to lie,’ he told me, ‘or pretend. I’ve already told you I’m not into this whole communal vibe thing you guys have got going on here, Poppy.’
‘And there’s absolutely nothing I can do or say that will make you change your mind about joining in?’
