by Erica James
Clarissa smiled, then remembering something that had been bothering her for some days, she said, ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘You may.’
‘What should I call you? Lavinia, as I have done so far, or—’
‘Lavinia will suffice in the circumstances,’ the woman said, resorting once again to rigid formality, ‘unless you feel uncomfortable with that?’
‘No, no, that’s fine. I just want to do what feels right for you.’
‘Well then,’ the woman added in a warmer tone of voice, ‘if there’s nothing else, I shall go and see cook and discover what new horror awaits us for lunch. Is there anything I can bring you?’
‘No, I have everything I need, thank you.’
It was after lunch that a boy from the village arrived on a bicycle with a telegram for Clarissa from Grandma Ethel.
Duty-bound to keep her grandmother in America in the picture, Clarissa had written to say she’d been involved in an accident, but there was nothing to worry about as she was in good hands and staying with her grandparents in Suffolk.
‘You are to come home as soon as you are well enough to travel,’ was the stern instruction. ‘You are needed here.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
At the intrusively loud noise of a strimmer starting up nearby, Mrs Dallimore’s unfolding story came to a stop. ‘I think, my dear, we’ll have to leave it there; my voice is no match to Jed’s horticultural administrations, and apart from that, I’ve rattled on quite long enough.’
Disappointed, Lizzie looked over to where Jed was neatening the edges of a flowerbed. Concentrating on what he was doing, a pair of ear defenders clamped on over a red and white bandanna tied around his head, he gave the impression of being blissfully unaware of the racket he was causing; he seemed in a world of his own. Just as Lizzie had been. She had been listening so intently to Mrs Dallimore, she had lost track of time and where she was. But Jed had brought her back down to earth with an almighty thump, she thought irritably. What was more, during the spell cast by Mrs Dallimore, Curt had not featured in her thoughts, but now he probably would again. Unless she could keep herself fully occupied. Reluctantly, she stood up. ‘Would you like me to take you inside, or fetch a drink for you?’ she asked Mrs Dallimore.
‘No, I’m quite content to sit here, thank you. I’m sorry if I’ve bored you.’
‘You haven’t at all,’ said Lizzie, quick to dismiss such a thought, ‘you truly haven’t. You did what nobody else has managed to do: you took my mind off the mess I’ve made of my life, and I couldn’t be more grateful to you.’
The old lady looked at her sternly, her silvery-white brows drawn together. ‘Whatever mess you think you’ve made of your life, I assure you it’s no more than a temporary hiccup. Now run along and see to somebody more in need than me.’
With Jed and the strimmer getting nearer, Lizzie had to raise her voice. ‘Will you carry on where you left off another time, please? Tomorrow, perhaps?’
Her reply lost in the din, Mrs Dallimore nodded.
As she walked past him, Jed looked up at Lizzie and raised his hand in a mock salute. Be nice, she told herself, it’s not his fault he has a knack for popping up at the least convenient of moments. She flashed him a salute in return and hurried on up to the house where the smell of lunch cooking made her queasy stomach flip. That was something else that had been calmed while sitting with Mrs Dallimore; the butterflies that had taken up residence in her stomach had settled, not a flicker had they given her. Until now. It was stress; she knew that. She’d experienced something similar years ago at university when she’d realised she was doing the wrong course. For weeks she’d stuck with it, hoping that the course would suddenly fall into place for her. It hadn’t. It had got worse and worse, and she’d grown miserable figuring out how to extricate herself without looking like she had once again failed. With that misery came the queasy stomach and the loss of appetite. It was perhaps only her pride that had stopped her from giving up and walking away, and yet again admitting defeat.
Failing seemed to be her speciality. Here was something in which she could claim to be an expert. Here was her great achievement in life, the one thing she could do to the highest standard. Come to think of it, she could write a self-help manual How to Succeed at Being a Spectacular Failure. Except she couldn’t even do that because she didn’t know why she kept messing up, it just seemed to happen to her. Wrong choices, she supposed. Like Curt. He could not have been a more wrong choice.
When it was time for her to go home she went in search of Mrs Dallimore to say goodbye and to tell her that she would see her again tomorrow, and that she hoped to hear what the old lady had done all those years ago when she’d been summoned back to America by Grandma Ethel. Did she disobey the summons and stay on at Shillingbury Grange, or do as she was told? Lizzie reckoned the smart money was on her staying right where she was.
It was difficult to think of Mrs Dallimore, with all her frailty and loss of independence, being the same person as the young, headstrong Clarissa. Lizzie wondered if the woman herself felt the same way.
She found the old lady in the sitting room where she was fast asleep, a cup of tea untouched on the table at her side. In the chair opposite, Mr Sheridan was also sleeping soundly. Their heads inclined towards each other, they could have been an elderly married couple sitting companionably by the fireside in their twilight years.
Quietly taking away the cups and saucers, Lizzie placed them in the dishwasher in the kitchen and went to the staff room to remove her tabard. She then signed out and went to collect her bike, thinking as she unlocked it that she was in no hurry to go home. Not because she didn’t want to be with her parents, but because she knew that with nothing constructive to do she would end up thinking about Curt.
She had got as far as the end of the drive when she saw a familiar figure leaning against one of the gateposts, a bike propped against the opposite post. It was Jed, the red and white bandanna from his head now tied around his neck.
‘Fancy going for a drink?’ he asked, stepping out and blocking her way.
She braked hard and came to a stop just inches from his feet. ‘You’ll get yourself run over doing things like that,’ she said.
‘I’ll take my chances. How about you? Fancy taking a chance on accepting my invitation?’
‘If that was some kind of gauntlet thrown down to challenge me, you’ll have to do better than that.’
‘Always happy to raise my game,’ he said, ‘especially if I can learn something. So what’s it to be? Stand here for a game of verbal ping-pong, or do the same over a drink in some enticing beer garden? If you’re nice I might even throw in some crisps.’
‘I don’t do nice.’
He smiled. ‘Yeah, I thought that might be the case.’
What did she have to lose? Lizzie asked herself when, half an hour later, and after she’d texted home to say she would be late, she was settled at a table in the garden of the Riverside pub while Jed was buying their drinks.
When he returned from the bar with their beers, he also had a copy of a broadsheet tucked under his arm. Hmm, so he was anticipating such a boring time with her, he’d grabbed a newspaper to read, had he?
‘Any good at crosswords?’ he asked when he was sitting on the wooden seat next to her and folding the paper into the desired shape.
‘Do I look that kind of a girl?’ she replied.
‘You look the kind of girl who could do anything she wanted. Got a pencil in that bag of yours?’
After a rummage, she found an old work biro with the words Starlight Radio stamped in black along the length of it. ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking it from her. He clicked it a couple of times, then took a mouthful of his beer. ‘Here we go then, first clue: intriguing girl who scowls a lot. Five letters.’
‘Not funny.’
‘No, that wou
ld be three followed by five.’ He tapped the pen against his mouth. ‘Yes, I reckon I know what it is.’ He clicked the pen and began filling in a row of squares. ‘There,’ he said, showing her what he’d written. It was her name.
‘All right, I get the message,’ she said irritably. ‘But just because I agreed to have a drink with you, it doesn’t mean I have to be the life and soul of the party.’
‘Did I say that’s what I expected?’
‘No, but you probably think your special brand of charm will disarm me. But you’ve picked the wrong girl. Right now I’m off men.’
‘Nice to know I have a special brand of charm, I must remember that.’ He put the newspaper down, laid the pen on top of it. ‘I’m glad we’re sitting here being civil.’
‘Your standards must be pretty low if you settle for civil.’
‘Quite the reverse, I’m too choosy for my own good. So I’m told. Personally I prefer to call it discernment.’
Lizzie took a long sip of her beer. Followed by another. And another, all the while keeping her gaze on the river and studying the reflection of the willow trees and the sky in the still surface of the water.
‘I’m perfectly happy to sit here in silence, if that’s what you want,’ Jed said, lifting his right leg up onto his left knee, then flicking at some dried grass stuck on the hem of his jeans, ‘but I do so hate a lost opportunity.’
She turned to look directly at him. ‘By that you mean to intend digging away until you’ve learnt all you think there is to know about me? Is that it?’
‘Wow, a real live person who believes the world really does revolve around her; I’m impressed. But I’m prepared to talk about anything, and anyone, other than you, if you’d rather. For instance, I’ve noticed you spending a lot of time with Mrs Dallimore. What do you reckon to her? Harmless old lady, or sagacious wit?’
‘My, my, that’s a big word for a gardener.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘And that’s a very prejudiced thing to say, if you don’t mind me saying. Because I cut lawns, you’ve got me down as a thicko, is that it?’
Lizzie had shocked herself. She put down her glass and briefly covered her face with her hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, ‘that was a pretty low shot. Maybe I should just go, before I say anything worse.’
‘No, don’t go, I’m curious to see just how rude you really could be if you tried. I suspect we’ve only tickled the top of the iceberg so far.’
She frowned. ‘Why are you so determined to get to know me?’
‘Maybe I fancy you.’ He smiled. ‘But there again, maybe I don’t.’
‘You’re just a little mad, aren’t you?’
‘That’s the cross I have to bear in life, not to be taken seriously.’
‘If you behaved with a bit more gravitas, then people might take you seriously.’
‘And I’d die of utter boredom in the process. Is that what you want for me?’
‘Right now I’d settle for—’
‘Back to settling again!’ he interrupted her, his voice breaching the quiet of the beer garden and causing a few people to look their way. ‘I want none of it, I want to sing and dance on the tables of life!’
Oh hell, he was a full-on crazy! ‘I’m warning you,’ she hissed, ‘if you start dancing on the tables here, I’m off.’
Quick as a flash, he banged his glass down on the table and stood up.
She groaned. ‘Please don’t!’
As quickly as he’d leapt to his feet, he sat down again. ‘Had you going there for a moment, didn’t I?’ To those around them who were still looking, but pretending they weren’t, he said, ‘Nothing to see here, move along, please.’
In spite of everything, Lizzie smiled.
‘Finally, at long last, I’ve made you smile.’
‘It won’t happen again. Now, please, will you try and behave yourself and let me enjoy my drink without having to worry that you’re about to do something crazy? You’re worse than my two-year-old nephew.’
‘I wouldn’t have had you down as the easily embarrassed sort.’
‘How could you possibly have any idea of what I’m like?’
He shrugged. ‘Instinct, I guess.’ After a small pause, he said, ‘And what does your instinct tell you about me?’
She looked him dead in the eye. ‘It tells me there’s something fake about you.’
He nodded. ‘Interesting. In what way?’
‘Well, you’re certainly not fooling anyone with your simple gardener routine. You’re a posh boy who for some reason is deliberately choosing to underachieve. What did you do, go on an extended gap year and never quite get it together again?’
‘And if I did, would that be such a crime?’
‘The crime is … is that …’ Her voice trailed away. She was firing off salvos for no real reason, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to say anything pleasant. ‘Forget I said anything,’ she muttered.
‘Sorry, no can do. You’ve got some injustice buzzing around inside your head and right now I seem to be on the receiving end of your anger and resentment.’
She frowned. ‘You do know you speak a lot of nonsense, don’t you?’
‘Fair maiden,’ he said, raising his glass to her, ‘I am the pedlar of bombast, the jester of jocularity, the nonny of nonsense, hyperbole is my game! So come on, get it off your chest, whatever it is that’s giving you cause to hate me.’
‘I don’t hate you.’
‘Yeah, you do. You took one look at me and decided I had all the charisma of a cockroach.’
‘I wouldn’t rate you that poorly.’
‘A rat, then?’
She rolled her eyes and drank some of her beer. ‘Funny you should have chosen that particular animal, because love rat is my most hated species at the moment.’
‘Ah, so you’ve had man trouble recently, have you?’
‘You could say that.’
‘What did the swine do?’
‘Lied. Cheated. Betrayed. You name it, he did it.’
‘He sounds a sweetheart.’
‘Do you take anything seriously?’
‘Only the serious stuff.’
‘And having your heart broken isn’t serious?’
He stared at her hard. ‘You look fine to me. Your heart isn’t broken. Not by a long way. Besides, do you want him to have that honour? Was he worth it? Nah, he was a tosser. You’re better off without him.’
‘Is life always that simple in your world?’
‘Life is as simple as you want it to be,’ he said with a shrug.
‘So that’s why you’re working as a gardener?’
He frowned. ‘What is it with you and denigrating what I do?’
Lizzie let out a long sigh of resignation. Or more precisely, surrender. The fight had gone out of her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said gloomily. ‘But the truth is, I’m tired of people not being who they say they are, and with everything that’s gone wrong for me recently, I guess you’re an easy target. It’s nothing personal.’
‘Glad to be of use, in that case. So what else has gone wrong for you? Anything I can help you with?’
‘If you could wave a magic wand and find me a proper job like the one I used to have, that would be a good start.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dusk was settling when Lizzie cycled home through the village, the cool evening air scented with honeysuckle and freshly mown grass. All the way from the pub she had warned herself not to get her hopes up. Jed was probably exaggerating the strength of his relationship with the friend who worked at Skylark Radio, a commercial radio station that covered East Anglia and which Mum occasionally listened to. He was probably just trying to impress her, because frankly, it was too much of a coincidence that he should know somebody who might be in a position to offer her a job. She couldn’t
be that lucky.
Not so long ago she would have laughed at the pitiful prospect of working for a commercial radio station outside of London – the backwater of radio doom – but now here she was, hoping against hope that there might be an opening for her. Even if she had to make do with making tea and running errands, she would do it just to get herself back in the game. She needed to be out there again in the real world before she became as institutionalised as some of the residents at Woodside had become.
She was passing the church when she did a double take. Driving towards her was a Mini Cooper, and at the sight of the familiar charcoal-grey car with black trim her immediate thought was to hide. But there was nowhere to hide, no convenient tree or car to slip behind. As thoroughly exposed as she was, all she could do was hope that her cycling helmet was sufficient disguise for Simon not to recognise her. Lowering her head with all the focused intent of a Tour de France cyclist, she pedalled on, her gaze fixed determinedly on the pavement to her left. It meant she had no way of knowing if Simon had spotted her, and while she knew he wasn’t the sort to revel in another’s misfortune, there was no getting around the fact that he had told his mother the real reason for her being sacked. And, let’s face it, he wouldn’t be human if he wasn’t just a little bit pleased to know she had fallen from grace so spectacularly. Who didn’t like to see the villain get their comeuppance? But what concerned her most was, what if word had gone round that she had been royally dumped by Curt? How satisfying would that be to Simon? Yet surely, unless Curt blabbed, nobody in London would know about that. But really, what did any of it matter? Her shame was complete whichever way she looked at it.
Earlier that afternoon Mrs Dallimore had advised her to use her anger in a constructive manner, that she shouldn’t let it rule her. In view of how vile she’d been to Jed, she could safely say she hadn’t heeded that advice in the slightest. She had said some terrible things to him, all of which reflected her own pathetic self-judgement. How many times had she been told by Mum that judging others always said more about oneself than the person being judged? She had, after a second drink, apologised unreservedly to Jed for her rudeness and tried to explain why she was acting the way she was. She told him about losing her job and being forced to return home to her parents, and that being dumped was the last straw. ‘None of which excuses my being so nasty to you,’ she’d said, ‘but I am sorry I’ve been so horrible.’
