by Kate Hardy
‘Then find a way to tell her,’ Ruth said.
‘That’s the problem,’ Hugo pointed out. ‘She’s avoiding me. She doesn’t answer my calls—she just texts me to say she’s busy with a departmental thing, and I know it’s not true. What do I have to do to get her to talk to me? Dress up as a butterfly?’
Ruth’s mouth twitched at the corners. ‘That might be fun.’
‘But it wouldn’t get her to see that I lo—’ He stopped mid-word as it hit him.
He loved Alice.
And it felt as if he’d just fallen off a cliff, because he didn’t know how she felt about him. Only that she’d backed away, which made him think that maybe she didn’t feel the same way as him.
‘That you...?’ Ruth prompted.
He shook his head. ‘Sorry to be rude, but it’s something I want to talk to her about before I talk to anyone else.’ And that was the problem. Getting her to talk to him. ‘But I need to find a way to persuade her to talk to me.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ Ruth said, ‘I think you’re good for each other. She’s blossomed since she’s been with you.’
‘Thank you. I think. But I need more practical help, Ruth. I need to find out what really worries her, so I can talk it through with her and find a solution that works.’ He looked at her. ‘I won’t ask you to break her confidence, and to be honest I think she needs to tell me herself. Can you get her to talk to me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ruth admitted. ‘You need the equivalent of nectar guides.’
Nectar guides. The thing that attracted butterflies.
Alice wasn’t a butterfly, but there was something to do with butterflies that he knew—at least, hoped—would attract her and get her to talk to him. ‘Of course. You’re a genius.’ He hugged her. ‘Thank you.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Ruth asked.
‘Arrange nectar guides,’ he said. At her mystified expression, he added, ‘I’ll explain later.’
Alice was quietly polite for the rest of the evening, and Hugo excused himself early. As soon as he was out of earshot, he rang his mother.
‘Ma, where can I buy nettle seeds?’
‘Nettle seeds?’ Serena sounded surprised. ‘I have no idea. Who would want to buy nettle seeds?’
He did. Desperately. ‘If I can’t get seeds, where can I get the plants?’
‘Why?’
He explained the situation and what he planned to do.
‘That’s incredibly romantic,’ she said. ‘Leave it with me and I’ll talk to Jacob. Come down tomorrow for lunch and I’ll have it sorted.’
‘Thanks, Ma.’ He paused. ‘She’s important to me.’
‘I know. For what it’s worth, I think this is your best shot. If your father did something like that for me...’
‘Too much info, Ma,’ he said, smiling. ‘I love you. See you tomorrow.’
The next morning, he headed for Sussex. Last time he’d driven this way, he’d spent the day walking hand in hand with Alice on the Downs and on the beach. He’d kissed her. He’d introduced her to the people he loved most in the world, and they’d liked her. The sun had been shining, and life had felt so full of promise.
Today, it was raining. And that was oh, so appropriate.
Jacob was at the house when he arrived.
‘You can buy nettle seeds,’ he said. ‘They take fourteen days to germinate.’
‘I can’t wait that long,’ Hugo said.
‘So your ma told me. And there are no nettles in this garden.’
Hugo dug his nails into his palm to contain his impatience. ‘So where do I get them?’
‘I’ve got friends at the allotments who can’t stay on top of their weeds. If you want to come and take them, you’re welcome.’
‘We prepared seed trays for them this morning,’ Serena said. ‘So you’ll need to put the back seat down for them.’
‘Thanks, Ma.’
Hugo spent the day down at the allotments just outside the village, in the rain, weeding patches under Jacob’s watchful eye and transferring small nettle plants into the seed trays. Jacob donated his second-best garden fork, spade and trowel and gave him precise instructions on how to make a flowerbed and transfer the nettles. ‘I still think you’re crazy, mind. Any normal person would do that with flowers. Bedding plants.’
‘Trust me, she’d prefer these to bedding plants,’ Hugo said.
Sunday was also pouring with rain. Hugo really didn’t enjoy digging up a large corner of his lawn, or planting the tiny nettles. He was cold, wet and grumpy by the time he’d finished. And it really wasn’t butterfly weather. And it didn’t look quite as good as he’d hoped. In the end, he took a photograph from his bedroom window. At least from there you could see the message.
Maybe he’d miscalculated this. Big time.
Especially as now he had to talk Alice into coming here to see it. What if she said no? Then, he decided, he’d have to cheat massively and tell her it was a group thing—and swear Ruth, Andy, Kit and Jenny to secrecy and ask them to turn up an hour later than her, to give him enough time to talk to her.
A hot bath and two mugs of tea did nothing to improve his mood.
What if this wasn’t enough?
What if she didn’t believe him?
He was about to text her to suggest meeting up when his doorbell rang. He shoved the phone in his pocket and quelled the hope that it might be Alice. Of course it wouldn’t be Alice.
James, a friend from his university days who’d qualified as a surveyor and had promised to survey Rosemary’s house for nothing as a donation towards the project, was standing there. ‘Sorry, Hugo, I know it’s a Sunday, but I thought you’d want to know the results of the survey.’
From the expression on his friend’s face, it wasn’t good news. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Tea, coffee or a beer?’
‘Coffee, please. Though you might need gin,’ James warned, and proceeded to deliver the bad news.
When James had left, Hugo called Pavani. ‘Sorry to be pushy, Pav, and I know it’s Sunday, but we’ve got a problem with the house that means we need money. Have you heard back from any of the potential sponsors?’ he asked.
‘I’m glad you called—yes, I have,’ Pavani said. ‘Something came in on Friday, and I’ve only just had the chance to look at what they said. I’ll send the details over now so you can take a look. I can set up a meeting for whenever works for you.’
‘Thank you. You’re wonderful,’ he said.
And then he made the call he’d intended to make, except for very different reasons.
It went straight to voicemail; he sighed inwardly. ‘Alice, it’s Hugo. I need to talk to you about Rosemary’s house. We have good news and bad news, but we definitely need to discuss it. Please call me when you’re free.’
Half an hour later, she rang. ‘Hi. Sorry I didn’t pick up your call earlier. What’s happened?’
‘Good news or bad, first?’
‘Bad,’ she said.
‘The house has subsidence. James did the survey this morning; he hasn’t written it up yet, but he came to tell me what he’d found. It’s going to take time—and extra money—to fix.’
‘There isn’t any spare money,’ she said. ‘We’ve already allocated everything I crowdfunded and some of the grants won’t come through for months.’
‘That’s where the good news comes in. Pav said she’s found us a sponsor and she’s sending the details. Would you mind coming over so we can talk about how we move forward?’
She paused for so long that he thought she was going to say no. ‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll come over now.’
CHAPTER TEN
HUGO’S HOUSE. THE place where the dreams Alice had hardly dared admit to herself had popped, empty as a bubble.
But they needed each other to fin
alise the butterfly house project. And right now they needed to agree on a plan to move forward with Rosemary’s house.
She took the Tube over to Battersea and knocked on his door.
There were dark shadows under his eyes when he opened the door, and she felt guilty; had she done this to him, shoved him back into the shadows where he’d been for the last three years? Then again, she’d been selfish in dragging him into the light when he wasn’t really ready.
This was such a mess.
He looked as miserable as she felt. She wanted to put her arms round him and tell him everything was going to be all right; but right now she didn’t know if everything would be all right.
‘Thanks for coming,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome.’ And how horrible it was, being reduced to formality with him. Though this was her own doing. She’d been the one to walk away.
‘Coffee?’
It would be rude to refuse; plus it might help distract her from his nearness. Give her something to do with her hands. ‘Thank you.’
Once she was sitting at the table with a mug of coffee, he showed her the file James had given him. ‘It’s quite bad. The house needs underpinning. Although the house insurance will cover repairing the damage, it won’t cover preventing future subsidence.’
She looked at James’s figures and winced. ‘We don’t have that sort of money.’
‘Which is where Pav’s sponsor comes in. Apparently it’s a firm of stockbrokers who want to showcase their green credentials, and they think sponsoring us will help them do that. They get their name on our website and a “sponsored by” board in our reception area, and Pav’s suggested holding a special event once a quarter for their clients. I think we should accept.’
‘OK. So who are they?’
He opened the file Pav had sent over.
Alice looked at it, and her vision blurred.
Rutherford and Associates, Stockbrokers Managing partner: Barney Rutherford
No.
It couldn’t be.
She took a deep breath to calm herself. When she thought about it rationally, Barney wasn’t an uncommon first name and Rutherford wasn’t an uncommon surname.
All the same...
‘Can I just check something?’ she asked, picking up her phone.
‘Sure.’
She quickly flicked into the firm’s website, and clicked on the ‘about us’ section.
And there he was. Barney Rutherford. Expensive suit, handmade shirt, silk tie. Probably the same kind of shoes that Hugo wore. A little fatter, a little less hair, but still recognisable as the man who’d hurt her so much all those years ago.
‘No,’ she said.
Hugo frowned. ‘Sorry?’
‘No. We’re not taking that man’s money. We’ll have to find another way.’
His frown deepened. ‘I don’t understand. Do you know him or something?’
‘Yes, and he has no moral compass whatsoever. He’s not having anything to do with the butterfly house.’
‘He’s offering us enough to fix the house. Otherwise we might be held up for months and months.’
‘I don’t care.’ Anger she’d suppressed for all these years felt as if it was bursting through her. ‘We’re not taking his money.’
‘OK,’ Hugo said carefully. ‘But, as I can’t see the problem, would you mind telling me why?’
She stared into her coffee. ‘He was at Oxford when I was there. I hated my first year. Maybe I picked the wrong college, but I didn’t fit in. I was the granddaughter of a coal miner and I had a funny accent. I came from a council estate instead of a country estate. I didn’t go to a posh school.’ She grimaced and shook her head. ‘So I just got on with my work, and showed my face where I had to, but social situations were horrible. There were all these invisible tests I kept failing.
‘I told myself it would be better in the second year, but it wasn’t. And then Barney came up to me one day in the library. He said he’d noticed me in the quad. He wanted to go out with me. I thought it was probably some sort of joke, so I said no. But he persisted, and eventually I agreed.’ She looked up at Hugo. ‘And it was amazing. He made me feel as if I was special. All these girls from his background were just queuing up to date him, but he’d chosen me. I didn’t like the people he mixed with very much, but he kind of protected me from them, and he taught me all the little social things that never occurred to me. He got me to change the way I wore my hair, the way I dressed, so I fitted in.’
It was all horribly clear to Hugo, now. He understood why Alice had been twitchy about meeting his parents, about wearing the right things. Especially as it sounded as if his background was similar to Barney’s. She must’ve been terrified that they’d find her lacking.
‘You didn’t need to change who you were,’ he said softly. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you at all.’
‘I changed,’ she said. ‘I fitted in. And it was wonderful. I’d never been happier. I adored Barney. I really thought he was the one, and he dropped so many hints that I thought he was going to ask me to marry him at the Commemoration Ball. I got this really special dress. I actually used my overdraft, because I wanted it to be special in case he really did propose—it was something I wanted to remember for ever. It started out as the perfect evening, and even the bitchier girls in his set were nice to me.’
Hugo had a feeling that there was a ‘but’ coming. A seriously nasty ‘but’.
‘And then I overhead them talking in the toilets. They didn’t know I was there. They were saying how Barney was going to win his bet; he was going to win a lot of money from his pals, that night, because he’d managed to turn the oik into one of them. I couldn’t believe it. I honestly thought he loved me—but it turned out that he was mocking me as much as the others did. He was only going out with me for a bet. It was a weird kind of Eliza Doolittle thing. Make the girl from t’pit into a toff.’
She dragged in a breath. ‘When I walked out of the toilet and washed my hands, the other girls were still there and they looked horrified. I could see them mouthing frantically to each other, wondering if I’d overheard. I just ignored them and walked back into the ballroom. Barney was talking to his friends and he didn’t see me come up behind him. But I heard what they said. It was all “tonight’s the night”. Earlier, I would’ve thought that they knew he was going to propose to me, but after what I’d just heard I knew it had a different meaning.’
Hugo was shocked by how unkind Barney and his friends had been, but he wasn’t going to interrupt Alice now. She needed to get this out of her head, once and for all.
‘I asked Barney to come outside with me—I wasn’t going to have this conversation in front of his mates. Then I said I’d heard that he was dating me for a bet. He blustered, but I could see the truth in his eyes. I asked him if tonight was the deadline for his bet. And then he said yes. I asked how much he was going to win. He wouldn’t tell me, and I said if he had a shred of decency he’d donate that money to a shelter for the homeless. That I never wanted to see him again. And then I walked out.’ She bit her lip. ‘I felt so stupid. So used. I thought he loved me. And all along I’d just been a joke to him. Free sex, because I was stupid enough to think he mattered and I gave him my virginity—and no doubt he boasted about that to all his mates, too.’ She shrugged.
‘The last week of term was awful. Everyone was laughing at me, at how stupid I’d been to think that someone like Barney Rutherford would ever be serious about someone like me. I thought about just leaving Oxford so I didn’t have to face any of them again, but that would’ve meant they’d won. So instead I went to see my personal tutor and asked if I could move college. I said it was awkward because I’d split up with Barney, and I wanted to concentrate on my studies and not get distracted by anything else. My tutor was lovely and told me to stay at college, and he helped me find somewhere else t
o live for the third year. I didn’t socialise much in my last year, just focused on my work.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I graduated top of my year and scooped a couple of awards. But best of all I got my place to do my MA and then my PhD in London. And it was a lot better—people actually liked me for myself, here. It didn’t matter where I came from.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘And that is why I’m not taking anything from Barney Rutherford.’
He took her hand. ‘First off, that was a really horrible thing to do to you. I don’t understand the kind of man who’d behave like that, and you really didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Secondly, I think you’re amazing because you rose above it all and didn’t let them drive you out.’
‘But did I?’ she asked. ‘I seem to be completely useless at picking Mr Right. Every man I’ve dated since then—well, except you—has wanted to change me. It always starts off all right, but then he wants me to dress differently or do my hair differently or speak differently, or do something more girly and less scientific, or...’ She shook her head. ‘I think there’s something wrong with me. I can’t move on from being the oik who doesn’t quite fit in.’
‘You’re not an oik,’ he said.
‘No? Barney and his lot were right. Appearances matter.’
‘Only on a very superficial level,’ he said.
‘Come off it, Hugo. Look at your industry. It’s about beautiful buildings.’
‘But if they’re beautiful and don’t do their job, they’re a failure,’ he pointed out.
‘Everyone dresses in posh suits.’
‘It’s a convention,’ he said. ‘Though, actually, if you’re a really brilliant architect, you can wear odd socks and crumpled clothes and everyone will just think you’re quirky.’
‘Even if you’ve got the wrong accent and the wrong background?’
‘There’s no such thing as a wrong accent and a wrong background. It’s what you do that matters,’ he said. ‘What’s in your head and what’s in your heart.’
Why couldn’t she believe him? Why couldn’t she move on?
