Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage

by Milly Johnson

  ‘We swapped numbers last night and he sent me a text this morning to say that he’d enjoyed my company and he was looking forward to seeing me at work.’ Stel’s smile was as wide as Linda’s party room.

  ‘You might have got a decent fella this time then, instead of a twerp,’ said Iris, before slurping out of her cup.

  ‘Oh, I do hope so,’ said Stel. ‘But I’ll take it steady.’ She didn’t tell the others that the vision of a wedding in Gretna Green had already flitted across her mind. ‘Viv came back on Friday night for a flying visit. Oh, it was lovely to see her.’ Stel’s eyes suddenly blurred with tears. ‘Sorry. Hormones,’ she excused herself, reaching into her bag for a tissue.

  ‘I was terrible when I went through the Change,’ said Iris. ‘I was either wailing like a banshee or wanting to murder someone. I once had the window cleaner by the throat for missing my corners.’

  No one was surprised by that admission.

  ‘What’s your news this week then, Caro?’ asked Linda.

  ‘Not much,’ replied Caro, uncrossing and crossing her long legs. ‘Apart from Marnie’s boyfriend finishing with her by fucking text on Thursday.’

  She even makes the F-word sound elegant, thought Gaynor.

  ‘Two years they’ve been together and that’s how much he respects her. Poor kid is devastated. He was her first love.’

  A mean little part of Gaynor’s brain felt a sudden thrill that Marnie Richmond’s world had been rocked for once, only for that thought to be immediately driven out by one of shame. God, what is happening to me? I’m becoming the worst bitch in the world. Marnie Richmond was a lovely girl. Gaynor stuck her nail into her hand as a punishment.

  ‘What a git,’ said Linda. ‘Mind you, everything kids and young people do now is via their phones. They don’t look up any more, they’ve always got their eyes glued to a screen. I’d hate to be young today.’

  ‘When my first love finished with me, I thought I’d never get over him,’ said Stel. ‘I adored him. Can’t even remember what his bloody surname was now.’

  ‘Seeing your child go through it is awful,’ said Caro. ‘They never stop being your babies, do they?’

  ‘No, they don’t. That’s true, lass,’ said Iris, whose heart was breaking for what Linda was going through with the Pawson family. ‘Plenty more fish in the sea for Marnie though. I hope you’ve told her that.’

  ‘She doesn’t want any other fish though, Iris. She wants that one. Even if he is a . . . dirt-sucking guppy.’

  ‘A prime bit of halibut, that’s what she wants,’ said Iris, going off on a piscine tangent then. ‘In my day the fish was all cod and haddock and lovely and white. These days they try to fob you off with all sorts of rubbish and tell you that it’s just the same. It’s not – it’s grey. Coley? I ask you. And Pollock. It doesn’t even sound as if it would taste nice.’

  Linda jumped up. ‘Quiche anyone?’ She thrust the platter into her mother’s face, even though there wasn’t enough quiche in the whole of the Waitrose distribution centre to shut Iris up.

  ‘Oh, pollock.’ Iris realised her faux pas and pointed over at the grim-faced Gaynor. ‘Anyway, I should think you’ll be glad to get rid of that name when you get divorced.’

  ‘Will you go back to your maiden name?’ asked Stel, softening her voice to sound as sympathetic as possible.

  Gaynor’s lips stretched into a smile-shape, but there was nothing friendly about it. ‘I’m not getting a divorce,’ she replied, coldly and precisely, with a smile that was more barracuda than pollock.

  ‘How’s Leanne doing these days? Has she had any good jobs recently?’ said Caro, steering the conversation to safe waters as she knew that Gaynor would jump at the chance to brag.

  Gaynor brightened instantly. ‘She was at a party with Simon Cowell last week. She had her picture taken with him and put it on Twitter.’

  ‘He follows my friend Doreen Turbot on Twitter, you know,’ said Iris, then she grinned smugly. ‘We’ve got a competition at Golden Surfers to see who can hook the biggest-name follower. She might have him, but I’ve got Ant and Dec. Vernon Turbot’s got Fidel Castro, but we think that might be a fake account.’

  ‘Anyway, you were saying,’ said Linda, looping back to Gaynor before she took umbrage at having her moment hijacked.

  ‘She’s doing very well. I’m hoping she’ll be up for her birthday in July. It will be nice to see her. And on the subject of celebrations, did Dino have a good birthday, Linda?’

  Gaynor turned to her friend then realised immediately that she had said the wrong thing as Linda’s eyes flooded with tears. ‘Oh God, what’s up, Lind?’

  ‘That bloody Rebecca. That’s what’s up,’ snarled Iris.

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ replied Linda, wiping her eyes with one hand whilst waving the other as if to waft away any fuss.

  ‘She said she’d let Freddie see his grandad for five minutes and drop off a card. We waited in all night, on edge, but she never turned up,’ explained Iris.

  The others shook their heads in sympathy, but couldn’t offer up anything to say that might help. Together they had explored every avenue and, unless there was a change in the law – or Rebecca had a frontal lobotomy that rendered her a decent human being – there was nothing that could be done.

  *

  The clock on the wall made the first of seven chimes.

  ‘Right then,’ Linda sniffed, plastered a smile on her face and raised her cup of tea in the air ready to make her usual toast. ‘I hope to see you all back here next week safe and well and full of beans. Have a good week, ladies.’

  ‘Chin up, girl,’ said Stel, giving Linda a wink.

  ‘Chins you mean,’ replied Linda.

  ‘I want all five of yours off the ground this week,’ grinned Stel.

  ‘Cheeky cow,’ smiled Linda. This Sunday afternoon meeting kept her sane. She loved Dino and she could talk to him, but never with the open heart with which she could talk to the Old Spice Girls.

  Gaynor picked up her handbag and fumbled inside it for her house keys. It overbalanced on her knee and Caro reached out and stopped it falling to the floor.

  ‘You should come to the salon, Gaynor,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a stress-busting massage and a facial.’

  ‘Thanks but I don’t do all that indulgent stuff,’ Gaynor replied stiffly and shuddered at the thought of it.

  Caro shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘Maybe you should start, then.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Gaynor, annoyed with herself for sounding so brittle. She didn’t want to shut out her friends but she appeared to have built a too-strong protective wall around herself. It had sealed her inside a room of poison.

  Caro didn’t take offence. She knew that Gaynor was an overly proud woman who was finding this public humiliation hard to deal with. Gaynor’s problem was that she had spent too much time on her house, her husband and her daughter and not much on herself. She wasn’t used to taking. She’d learn in time. Just like I did, thought Caro.

  Chapter 29

  Hours had passed and Viv still hadn’t heard anything about Geraldine because Heath hadn’t come back or phoned. She found some pastry sheets in the freezer and killed some time by making her signature cheese and onion pie. That was the least she could do before leaving. She wasn’t making it for him. In fact, she hoped he was allergic to cheese and couldn’t have any.

  She fed Pilot, hoping she had judged the quantity right, and Bub, who rubbed affectionately against her leg and purred like a machine the whole time she was washing out his bowl and tearing open the pouch of food. Then she made herself a cup of coffee and sat at the dining table. Her mind drifted to Heath Merlo and that morning’s exchange. How dare he sack me because I stood in a flipping stable for five minutes, she thought, becoming angrier by the second. No wonder past workers left after such a short time. Maybe they’d been thoroughly decent people who deserved better. Maybe the person he’d accused of stealing the safe
had been as innocent as she was, too.

  Well . . .

  Pilot butted against her leg, nearly upsetting her coffee, his way of telling her that he wanted to go out. Viv opened the door so he could wander into the yard. On warm days such as this, he liked to sit on the path, close his eyes and go to sleep. Bub was chasing a butterfly, leaping into the air and darting maniacally. At full stretch he was as long as the draught excluder her mum kept behind the front door. Piccolo was staring into an upturned boot by the kitchen door. The place was mad. Still, none of it would be her concern any more. As soon as Heath Merlo came back, she would be off. Back home. Away from the angry aggressive git with the personality disorder.

  She looked at the clock on the wall and hoped he wouldn’t be much longer. She was fed up waiting for him. He could have rung and given her an estimated time of arrival at least. She bet he wouldn’t have been so inconsiderate had she been Antonia Leighton. What was it about her that softened him, Viv thought, pondering whether the girl had a cousin called Tybalt. Two households both alike in dignity . . . Except there was nothing dignified about the Leightons. Or Heath Merlo. If they were a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, then they’d make a very dysfunctional brace of lovers. Viv wondered if Antonia’s parents knew about their ‘friendship’.

  Antonia Leighton was the daughter of his sworn enemy, for goodness sake, and he looked at her with big moony eyes; yet the person who had sorted out his mess of an office and was working for a wage that wouldn’t keep her in cup-a-soups for a week, he looked at as if she were something that had just fallen out of Wonk’s bottom.

  She picked up the tall glass pepper pot and walked it across the table. ‘I am Heath Merlo,’ she said, in a deep voice. ‘I am full of peppercorns as black as my soul.’ She tipped it towards her mug. ‘And you are Viv Blackbird, a spy. Get off my property.’

  The mug waggled back at the pepper. ‘No, I am pure and true in heart. You are a nutter.’

  ‘You accosted Mrs Leighton-Snobbery in the stable with the intent of causing evil and nicking a horse,’ the pepper accused the mug.

  ‘And how did you find out about it? I suppose it was that lanky, rich Antonia Leighton-Stuckup, dobbing me in.’

  She brought the pot full of white salt into play and gave it a posh voice full of plums.

  ‘Yars. Mummy told me over dinner.’

  ‘I bet you were having caviar,’ the mug levelled at the salt pot.

  ‘Lobster actually. Daddy wanted to chop off your head but I thought I’d crawl up Heath’s bum and stitch you up like a kipper. For then I will get major brownie points from him and we can be married.’

  The salt pot was advancing on the mug, trying to drive it off the edge of the table.

  ‘You’ll get another mop bucket over you, if you don’t watch it,’ the mug came back at the salt.

  ‘Oh no, please. You’ll ruin my Chanel blouse. Help, help.’

  Viv’s nose caught a scent. His scent. She spun around in her chair. Oh God, how long had he been standing there listening to her improvised script? Still, on the bright side he was now back and she could be on her way and never see him again.

  ‘I didn’t hear your car,’ she said. She had been so caught up in her re-enactment that she hadn’t heard anything.

  ‘Well, it’s there. I didn’t fly home,’ said Heath, pinching the top of his nose and blinking. He looks tired out, thought Viv. Totally shattered. The weariness of many months of worry was showing. Not that she cared.

  Pilot, who had followed Heath in, wandered over to his basket and flumped down with a groan of contentment.

  ‘How’s Geraldine?’ Viv asked, with chilly politeness.

  ‘She has a badly sprained ankle and a broken wrist. She’s staying there for the night to be on the safe side as she gave her head quite a bump on the way down the stairs. She was out cold when I found her.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Viv and picked up her mug. She crossed to the sink and swilled it out before she left. She didn’t want him accusing her of being a slattern. ‘Well, do give her my love and tell her I hope she gets better soon.’

  ‘Vivienne . . .’ Heath’s hand shot out as if to touch her arm, but stopped short of it. ‘I’m sorry for what I said. Will you stay?’

  The cheek of it, thought Viv. She should have walked out with her head held high, past him and back to the folly to pick up her suitcase, but she made the mistake of glancing at Pilot. His great sad eyes looked up at her through his shaggy fringe and seemed to echo Heath’s entreaty. He looked so happy, so settled and yet he would have to get used to another home with nowhere near as much space to wander safely. He wouldn’t see Roger and Keith or Wonk or Bertie any more. They’d all be split up, dispersed around the country. They’d fret without the dear familiarity of this which should have been their forever home. Some of the birds were too old to get used to new surroundings.

  You can’t get involved. That voice again. She should go. Right now. Her affections were already sprouting shoots, reaching out to bind herself to the inhabitants of Wildflower Cottage, give or take a stroppy vet. If she didn’t go now, she was going to find it harder with every passing day. Damn him. Damn them all. Birds and cats and doe-eyed dogs.

  ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ Viv said, suddenly cross. ‘You accuse me of all sorts, throw me out and then ask me to stay just because you haven’t got anyone else to turn to, which says volumes about how desperate you must be.’

  ‘Doesn’t it just,’ replied Heath, then held up his hands. ‘I didn’t quite mean for that to come out the way it did.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you did, Mr Merlo. First you think I’m a journalist, then some sort of spy or thief—’

  Heath cut her off. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time sitting by a hospital bed today speaking to Geraldine and she thinks very highly of you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. I’ve been rude and thoughtless.’ His eyes were beautiful. Like waxy dark green leaves, Viv thought.

  She wasn’t done with him yet though, despite the genuine-sounding apology. ‘How could you think that I was so underhand? If I was working for the Leightons, why did I throw a bucket of water over them?’

  ‘Double-bluff?’ Heath suggested, again raising his hands to fend off any advancing aggression. ‘Not that I’m accusing you of that. I was just saying that if I was, that would be the conclusion I’d draw. But I’m not.’

  ‘You were doing so well too, Mr Merlo.’ Viv crossed her arms, enjoying this feeling of him being in her debt.

  ‘I have absolutely no right to ask you to help me, but I am going to anyway,’ said Heath. ‘For the animals, if not for me.’

  Her thoughts were at either end of a tug-of-war rope.

  Go, said a voice. Go now. This is going to get really messy if you don’t. You have no reason to hang around now.

  But what if you need more? Until you know for sure . . . you should stay. You can’t leave them like this, Vivienne Blackbird. That’s not who you are.

  ‘Okay,’ said Viv, dropping a sigh of resignation. ‘I’m not used to animals, whatever Geraldine told you. So you might have to bite your tongue occasionally. But I’ll do my best.’

  She watched a long breath of relief escape from Heath’s lips. Heath’s really kissable lips. She ripped her eyes away from them quickly.

  ‘There’s a pie in the oven if you haven’t eaten,’ said Viv. ‘Twenty-five minutes should do it. Cheese and onion. I’ve fed the house animals but I didn’t know what to do about the others.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Heath. ‘I’ll see to them.’

  ‘Do you want me to start earlier in the morning than I usually do then?’

  ‘Eight?’ He gave her a small expectant smile. ‘I’ll be up before that but I don’t expect you to be.’

  She was under no illusion that he wouldn’t be so accommodating if there had been anyone else he could have asked. It wasn’t as if he was talking to her nicely because he genuinely valued her and wanted to spend time with her. As he did Ant
onia Leighton. She wished that didn’t needle her as much as it did.

  ‘I’ll be here on time,’ said Viv, walking out of the kitchen and across to the folly to unpack her suitcase for the second time in a week.

  Chapter 30

  Just before she went to bed that night, Stel rang Viv. She tried very hard not to scream down the phone: I THINK I’VE FOUND YOUR NEW STEPFATHER.

  ‘So, how did your date go then?’ Viv asked, although she could guess. Worryingly, she recognised that familiar giddy tone in her mother’s voice, however much she tried to mask it. Viv knew that her mother was already half in love with Ian Robson and no amount of telling her to slow down would do any good. Viv really hoped that this time her mum had found a diamond; she was overdue a bit of luck in that department and Ian had already earned major brownie points for finding Basil.

  When the call had ended, Viv went back to reading about Nicholas Leighton on her laptop. She’d found an article about him that she hadn’t seen before, dated a month ago. His star was certainly in the ascendancy. As well as his ‘Youth of Yorkshire’ business project, intended to cultivate and promote young business people of the county, he had just been made Patron of a children’s charity along with a royal Princess and some very high-profile celebrities and – ironically enough – he was in the process of setting up a charity with an international rock-star who, though now at bus-pass age, was still very active in animal welfare issues. The charity was called ‘Rockin’ Horses’ and looked after retired racehorses. Not only that, Nicholas Leighton’s fledgling political career was taking off big-time. The new party leader was having a reshuffle and Leighton was about to be appointed as a government Special Adviser to the new ministerial department for Pastoral Care. He was passionate and committed to making a difference for the youth of today, he said in the article. Nicholas Leighton seemed to be everyone’s darling – not least the banks who were minding his conservatively estimated wealth of seventy million.

  Nicholas Leighton was groomed and handsome in the pictures, on horseback, seated with his family in their baroque drawing room in their ‘ancient and atmospheric gothic castle home’. There was a photograph of father and elder daughter standing by a massive stone fireplace. ‘Nicholas Leighton, pictured with elder daughter Antonia (22) who helps run Ironmist estate. Antonia was born exactly nine months to the day after Nicholas and Victoria were married.’ Antonia looked beautiful, like the human version of an Arabian horse – all legs and swishy hair. She was gazing at her father affectionately, with a smile, as if the cameraman had captured them seconds after one of them had told the other a joke. Viv had never had that relationship with a father. She felt a prickle of tears behind her eyes and willed them back to where they came from, reprimanding herself for being so pathetic. There was a picture of Antonia with her mother Victoria – ‘who was born in Kramburg Castle in Germany’. Victoria had spent the first thirteen years of her life there, then her English mother had divorced her German father and returned to her home county of Herefordshire.