‘Why did you choose Viv, Gerry?’ he said, as if he had been pondering the question for some time.
‘She answered the ad I placed in the paper. We weren’t exactly snowed under with applicants,’ Geraldine chuckled.
‘Why her?’ he pressed.
The smile faded from Geraldine’s mouth ‘Blackbirds,’ she replied.
Heath shook his head. He’d expected no less ridiculous an answer. Something ethereal and airy-fairy. ‘Blackbirds,’ he repeated.
‘Serendipity. She was a Blackbird and your name means blackbird. It was a connection I couldn’t ignore.’
Heath gave her an indulgent grin.
‘You can look at me like that all you like, Heath Merlo, but blackbirds are a symbol of determination and also gentleness. They are a good bird to associate yourself with in times of trouble. I think I made a good choice. We need all the spiritual help we can get.’
‘I wish I had your faith, Geraldine,’ he said.
‘I won’t give up hope, Heath,’ she replied. ‘I’ve always believed in old magic and forces of nature. Isme has never left this place, and she never will.’
Heath crossed to the sink to retrieve two cups from the draining board. Through the window, he spotted Viv walking towards the cottage carrying a basket of eggs. Pilot was strolling alongside her. There was a thicker than usual ground mist today and they appeared to be floating towards the cottage. The sun was high in the sky and pouring its light over the valley, picking out the golden threads in Viv’s hair. She looked like one of Geraldine’s faery folk.
She was a strange one with her fascination for scents and smells and her ridiculous fear of animals, thought Heath. Not someone he himself would have chosen to work in a sanctuary had he been the one doing the telephone interviewing. Then again, how much bravery had it taken her to capture the poor pink-painted rabbit. And then there was the connection she had with Ursula. The stroppy, bad-tempered snowy owl had chosen Viv to extend the claw of friendship to. He couldn’t ignore the intuition of animals. He only wished he’d been blessed with the same gift.
Geraldine watched him staring out of the window: whatever he was thinking about was making him smile. She hadn’t seen his features soften like that in a long time.
Chapter 49
The next day Viv cleaned all the aviaries out single-handed because Heath had taken Geraldine to the hospital for her check-up. And she’d even been in the feed store herself for the meat. She’d retched a bit but she’d done it.
It was the first time she had been properly up close and personal with Frank the vulture but she steeled herself before going in. Vultures were dominant – even playful Frank – so she needed to stand her ground and show him that she was going to clean his aviary and he’d better behave. She imagined how Antonia snotty-cow Leighton would do it. Even if her insides were rotting with fear, Antonia wouldn’t have let anyone see it.
I am a Leighton girl, I am a Leighton girl, Viv repeated to herself. She imagined that she had dark flowing locks and a minuscule bum. She imagined that she had long new-born-foal thin legs and she was so beautiful that Heath Merlot’s pupils dilated when he looked at her. And then she realised that she had imagined too far because she was straying into dangerous territory.
What must it be like to have his arms around her, she thought. What must it be like to breathe in the scent of his neck? What must it be like to know that she was on his mind? Well, if his type was Antonia Leighton, she would never get to find out because someone who liked skinny, leggy, dark-haired beauties was hardly likely to find her attractive.
Frank eyed her cautiously, but he was getting used to seeing her hanging around by now so he must have figured she passed muster. She moved slowly around his space, picking up his debris and, because there was no one around to hear her attempts, she made soft clucking noises which she hoped weren’t vulture for ‘Let’s fight.’ He pulled on the hosepipe whilst she was using it and it shot out of her hand and sprayed on them both before she picked it back up. Viv chuckled. He was playing with her.
She left Ursula till last. There was no hesitation on her part now as she slid open the latch and walked into the snowy owl’s aviary and was greeted with a soft chuck chuck chuck.
Viv hosed down the gravel, then took up position in the corner. She held out a rabbit’s foot in her glove; Ursula would have to work for this one. It didn’t take long for the hungry owl to be tempted. She flew down to the floor of the aviary on her gorgeous glider wings, not too close, then walked tentatively towards the food as if she was playing Grandmother’s Footsteps. Then Viv held tight as the bird started tugging on the meat. Ursula had a claw on her glove to get purchase on the snack. Then she placed the other one on it too. Viv lifted her hand ever so slightly to feel the weight of her. She was a fine lump of owl. Viv adjusted her position causing Ursula to fly off, but it didn’t matter because this was a game of little steps, for both of them. She was learning to trust Ursula just as Ursula was learning to trust her.
Chapter 50
It was Saturday before Hugo rang Viv. She had slept through her alarm due to go off at eight, and his call dragged her from the pit of an exhausted sleep at half-past.
‘Didn’t wake you did I, Viv darling?’ he said. ‘You sound a bit groggy.’
‘Yes you did,’ she replied, ‘but that’s okay because I’ve overslept.’
‘Overslept on a Saturday?’
‘It’s all hands on deck. We’re a man down,’ explained Viv. ‘Anyway, how was Iceland?’
‘Oh. My. God,’ began Hugo with drama. ‘You have to go and swim in the Blue Lagoon. It’s a must. We went whale watching and saw geysers and the Northern Lights. I thought we would be there too late for those but they honoured us. The scenery was fabulous and Icelandic men . . . oh so sexy. I have to go again. Next time you must come with us. I want to know what the Northern Lights smell like.’
Viv chuckled, but she could feel a nervous tension creeping up on her.
‘Darling, I just thought I’d ring and tell you that I’m back at work on Tuesday. I checked at the lab to see if your parcel had arrived and it has.’
‘Good.’ Or was it.
‘So how’s life with you?’ asked Hugo. ‘Have you made contact with Nicholas Leighton yet?’
Viv swallowed. ‘Oh yes.’
‘Fabulous. Tell me he’s asked to see your business plans and thinks you should hook up with Chanel.’
‘Well . . .’
‘I tell you, this guy will be running the country in five years. It’s totally fortuitous that he happens to live in the same place that you’re staying.’
Hugo would be very disappointed in her when she told him that Nicholas Leighton had considered suing her for assault. He was about as likely to champion her as Wonk was to win the Grand National.
‘I’m going to have a meeting with him soon,’ said Viv, glad they weren’t on Facetime and he could see her cringing.
‘Oh my God, that is brilliant. Well done you.’
‘Thanks.’ She’d burst his hope-filled bubble later. But for now, blissful ignorance would be best. ‘So, how long do you think it’ll take to . . .’
‘A few days. I’ll keep you totally up to speed. Promise.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Then it’s up to you, my lovely.’ She could hear his swallow at the end of the phone. ‘Look, Viv, I am so sorry if I pressurised you into this. I was thinking about you on the plane. What would have been right for me might not necessarily be good for you.’
‘No, it’s what I want,’ Viv said. And she had wanted it. Now she wasn’t so sure. ‘Talk soon, eh?’
Hugo blew her a kiss down the line. ‘And good luck with Nicholas Leighton. Let me know the moment you come out of the meeting. I bet he tells you to get your sweet arse down to London. I’ll have your room ready.’
Viv rested her phone on the table next to her bed where EBW, the knitted bee, sat upright and alert, looking at himself in the mirror opposite. F
ive years ago, when Viv first found the note with Elke Wilson’s details written on it, she had gone to see her. Elke was seventy and retired by then, but she remembered clearly the baby who’d weighed as much as a bag of sugar, the tiny girl with the deformed spine who fought for her right to breathe and grow and survive. Elke Wilson had a huge part to play in why Viv was now living at Ironmist.
*
The rabbit was doing better than expected. He was in a hutch in the kitchen and eating hay as if he were in training for a Man vs Food competition. Most of his hair had had to be shaved off in case he groomed himself and ate the paint, but it didn’t seem to be giving him a problem. Understandably though, he shied away from anyone touching his ears. Or lack of them. As expected, the police filed the case and liaised with the RSPCA but no one was holding their breath for a prosecution. Armstrong was back at work and loved the rabbit, whom he had named Jason Statham. Despite his large lumbering frame, Armstrong was incredibly gentle with small animals. The little fella was doing well and he wasn’t at all perturbed when Piccolo squawked at him. Bub didn’t deem a mere rabbit to be worthy of his interest and lovely old Pilot sniffed in the direction of the hutch every now and then, but that was the limit of his attention.
‘Aren’t you going back to see your mum this weekend, Viv?’ asked Geraldine, as Viv rustled up an egg salad for their lunch.
Viv hadn’t wanted to leave Geraldine in her incapacitated state, but there were also other reasons why she thought she’d stay at the sanctuary.
‘I thought I’d give Mum some space. She has this new man in her life and he’s taking her mind off me not being there,’ Viv said. ‘It’ll do her good not to miss me so much.’
She had rung Stel the previous night to find that she was just waiting for Ian to arrive. They were having a takeaway and watching a film. She sounded as fizzed as a teenager and Viv was glad for her.
Geraldine smiled fondly at Viv. She’d lost a daughter many years ago. She should have left him then but she was caught up in something so dark she couldn’t see any light to aim for. He’d taken away her chance to have a girl who might have grown up to be like Vivienne.
‘What will you do if the sanctuary closes, Geraldine? Will you go home?’ asked Viv, sprinkling some spring onions over her culinary creation.
‘This is my home, Viv. I have no ties to anywhere but here.’
Viv didn’t press her on what she might have to do if the bulldozers came trundling over the land. Geraldine was still clinging onto that eleventh-hour reprieve.
‘Do you think you’ll stay here, Viv? I bet this place doesn’t feature in your long-term plans but I’d like to think it did.’
‘My friend wants me to go and live in London.’ Viv cut some hunks of bread. ‘His parents have money and they’ve helped him buy a flat. He’s offered me a room in it.’
‘Oh Viv, I can’t see you in the big city somehow,’ said Geraldine, hobbling across to get the plates and cutlery. ‘I lived in a town in my old life but I was always a country girl at heart. I don’t know how I survived without the space and the quiet and the vast expanse of sky above me. Sometimes, when I’m up on the hill and look down across the valley, it’s like the whole focus of the sun is on Wildflower Cottage. It’s as if it’s been here forever, and the building has risen up from the mists and is part of the land. That’s why I know, I know, it will stay here.’
Viv brought the salad and bread over to the table. She didn’t reply. She couldn’t bring herself to puncture Geraldine’s hopes, all invested in smoke.
‘Oh that looks like a piece of artwork,’ said Geraldine, viewing her plate.
‘Ach, it’s hardly Jamie Oliver.’ Viv dismissed the praise.
‘Don’t bat back the compliment, young lady.’ Geraldine wagged her fork.
‘Well, thank you, then,’ smiled Viv and sat down to eat.
‘You were saying, about your friend in London. Will you go, do you think?’ asked Geraldine.
‘I don’t know,’ Viv replied. I’m not sure what I do want any more.
Later, as Geraldine watched Viv cleaning up the dishes, she wondered why she was really here, though she didn’t say it. She’d had time to think about many things since her accident, Viv’s presence here being one of them. Heath had been right when he said that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, but that’s all they’d been able to afford, so it was inevitable what sort of people would be attracted to the job. Then along comes a sharp, accomplished young woman with initiative and drive and no real plausible excuse why she had applied for a job which was now breaking her back for nothing extra in her wage packet. Geraldine knew about running. What was Viv running from?
Chapter 51
Heath watched as Viv held up her glove near to the branch on which Ursula was sitting. She had food in her hand, but it was out of the owl’s reach. Ursula leaned forward and nearly claimed it, so Viv inched back.
‘Steady,’ said Heath, advising from the sidelines. ‘Don’t go too far away. She needs to make just a little hop.’
They both watched in thrilled silence as Ursula’s claw lifted as if she was working out the possibility of her hooking the meat with her foot, before deciding that was a ludicrous idea. Then she flew from the branch, landed on the glove, considered it too scary and returned to her branch.
‘Did you see?’ shrieked Viv, then clamped her right hand over her mouth. ‘She came to me. Oh my God.’ Viv felt as exhilarated as she did when the examiner told her she’d passed her driving test. More so. She was shaking. Heath could see the glove quivering.
‘I never thought I’d see the day,’ said Heath, standing with his hands on his hips, moving his head slowly and incredulously from side to side.
Heath laughed with her and at her, but kindly. She looked ridiculous standing there grinning like a loon, wearing a glove that made her arm look like that of a Fiddler crab. She reminded him of someone, just for a moment, then it was gone before he could grab the name.
From what he could remember, his mother had long brown hair with streaks of sunshine and caramel. He would cry when she left and cry when she returned until he got used to the pain and it became part of him.
She blamed him for tying her to this place, he knew. The guilt at leaving him kept her springing back to this life that she hated. Why were you born? she had once screamed at him. Then she had kissed him and soothed him and said she was sorry but all the affection in the world couldn’t erase the words; they had been branded onto his brain. He knew that this template of a relationship had damaged him, made him love women destined to hurt him because that was all he knew. Sarah had made him love her and then left him forever. Antonia was haughty, unlikable, manipulative but there was a time when he would have pushed aside their family enmities to quench their obvious thirst for each other and damn the consequences. It had just been a narrow window, but it disturbed him that it might have happened, that he had been so messed up that he would have allowed it.
So why was his heart warming to Viv Blackbird if it had no sense? She was infuriating with her thousands of questions, arrogant with her suggestions that she could really find something they hadn’t tried to stop the closure of the sanctuary. And how idiotic was it to work in a place like this when you were afraid of animals? Not to mention that he often caught her lost in a moment when she was obviously smelling things, dissecting them in her head into a list of ingredients. Viv Blackbird was odd. But harmless. And Heath didn’t do harmless. It worried him that his heart knew something he didn’t. That Viv Blackbird could hurt him.
‘I think that’ll do for today,’ said Viv, cutting into his thoughts and taking off her glove. ‘I’ll feed her and then nip up the hill for some shopping. Anything you want me to pick up whilst I’m there?’
Generous, hard-working, she was too good to be true, thought Heath. Really she was. He couldn’t help but be suspicious.
Viv rang her mum before she set off to Ironmist Stores. It made her happy that Stel had a smile in her voi
ce. A smile that only a man could put there.
‘Well, how’s it going with Ian, then?’ asked Viv, after she had assured her mum that she was fine, happy, well-fed and not overworked.
‘Oh, it’s wonderful,’ gushed Stel. ‘We get on so well. We like all the same things. We had a lovely meal at the Star of India last night, he chose for me like they do on those romantic films and it was perfect. He’s even trimmed the privet in the garden to look like a snake.’
Viv stifled a giggle.
‘No one has ever done anything like that for me before,’ sighed Stel.
‘Well, that’s true,’ grinned Viv.
Stel opened her mouth to tell Viv so much more, then held it back. She didn’t want her daughter to think she had fallen head over heels so quickly, even though she had. She knew she had found her soul-mate; the big prize that had always eluded her. She’d thought that Darren had been the one, because they were so close that they could finish off each other’s sentences. But he’d turned out to be more arsehole than soul-mate.
It was only when Stel heard herself speaking aloud about how well suited Ian and she were together that she realised how many of her wants he met. She had told Ian about Darren, of course, and he’d been disgusted at how anyone could treat a woman with such disrespect. He told her that he would have looked after her, had he been her man at the time. His mother had had breast cancer years ago and he’d been there for her every step of the way. They both liked Indian and Chinese food, they liked the same type of films. They liked walks, drives in the countryside, lazy Sunday mornings and pub lunches. They liked cats and Greek holidays, even read the same newspaper. It was almost as if Ian Robson had been manufactured to a specification that Stel had supplied.
Chapter 52
‘Jesus, Stel. Is it trick or treat night already?’ Linda opened the door to the last-to-arrive Stel devoid of foundation, eyeshadow, extended lashes and that familiar red lipstick of hers.
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