Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage

by Milly Johnson

  *

  Gaynor noticed a slight shift in the shadows under one of the cubicle doors. Seconds later, that door opened and out walked Caro, who flinched.

  ‘Oh Gaynor, I thought you’d gone out,’ she said. She’d been trapped in the cubicle for the whole of that exchange between mother and daughter. She genuinely hadn’t wanted Gaynor to know she’d been party to it.

  Gaynor groaned. Of all the people to have heard. It would have to be her. Caro Richmond with her Mercedes-bloody-Benz, her successful business, A-star engineer son, perfect fucking husband, and her smartarse gorgeous daughter.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Caro went on. ‘I covered my ears so I wouldn’t hear . . .’

  ‘Yeah, course you did,’ laughed Gaynor dryly.

  ‘I really didn’t want to be in on that conversation, Gaynor.’

  ‘No doubt you found it all very amusing.’

  ‘Not at all.’ The sympathy in Caro’s voice was like a fork down the blackboard of Gaynor’s pride.

  ‘Of all people to hear first hand what a bitch of a daughter I’ve raised, it had to be you, didn’t it, Caro?’

  Gaynor’s hip bumped into the sink and the pain blossomed. Everything hurt. She felt pain in every part of her. She felt as if someone had flayed her and then thrown vinegar and salt on her.

  ‘Gaynor . . .’

  ‘Oh don’t Gaynor me,’ came the growled reply. ‘I bet you were thinking, “Oh I’m so glad my Marnie isn’t like that”.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking that at all, Gaynor. I was thinking what a shit day you were having—’

  ‘Oh please spare me the nicey nicey act,’ shrieked Gaynor. ‘Why do some people get all the luck and others don’t?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Caro. ‘It’s just life, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just life, you say.’ Gaynor gave a dry laugh. ‘Must be marvellous being you.’

  Caro knew that Gaynor was spoiling for a fight. She was upset and half-drunk and she needed something to pound.

  ‘I do know what today must be doing to you. I know you’re in pain, so please, let’s just leave it at that and go back out into the bar.’ She took her arm and pushed her gently forwards. Gaynor shrugged her off.

  ‘How the hell could you possibly know what I’m going through? You’ve never had a moment’s pain in your bloody golden life.’

  ‘Gaynor. Don’t. Really.’

  But Gaynor’s resentment was a springy jack clown that wasn’t yet ready to go back into its box. It was having too much of a good time, squeezing out all that built-up festering anger.

  ‘Pain? What do you know about pain? The only pain you know is when you break your frigging fingernail opening a tin of caviar.’

  Despite the humourless situation, Caro laughed and threw back her head as if addressing the ceiling. ‘What do I know, eh?’

  Gaynor stabbed her finger at Caro. ‘You’re the sort who’d win the lottery without buying a bloody ticket.’

  ‘Have you ever stopped to think, Gaynor, that some of us have had our shit early on?’

  ‘Shit, you? What, did you fail an A-level and your mother bought you a pony to compensate? That sort of shit?’ Gaynor was laughing hard now. This is what being mad must feel like, she suddenly thought. It was liberating not having a conscience, just hating and spitting.

  But Caro had had enough. Ever since Mick had run off with Danira, Gaynor had fermented this absurd resentment against her. She’d even started to feel guilty that she had all the things that Gaynor was missing out on. It was going to end today, she decided.

  ‘Grow up in a nice house, did you, Gaynor? With a nice loving mum and dad? Food in the cupboard, nice bed to have nice dreamy sleeps in?’

  ‘Lovely,’ smirked Gaynor. ‘Not by your standards though. I didn’t get foie gras in my lunchbox.’

  ‘What do you know about me, Gaynor? What do you really know about my life before I met you? I’ll tell you, shall I? You know nothing. You’ve presumed a lot, but you know nothing.’ Caro stared right into Gaynor’s brown eyes. ‘I’m a Bellfield, Gaynor. A fucking Bellfield.’

  The name was too big for Gaynor’s head to absorb it in one. It took a while for her brain to compute and then it consigned it to spam.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she humphed.

  ‘Oh, I’m a Bellfield all right. Scum of the earth. Father in prison, hardly knew him. Mother bringing back men at all hours. Try sleeping in a house where you pray that she doesn’t pass out and those men come into your room at night. Then imagine being dragged to a struck-off doctor paid extra to keep his gob shut because my dad would have killed her if he’d found out what she made me do. Knackered my insides. I could never have children of my own after that. When I met Eamonn he was a widower with two little kids. So don’t you tell me about pain, Gaynor Pollock. And don’t you tell me that I don’t deserve some love and security because I’m fucking well overdue.’

  Caro exhaled as if it were the breathy equivalent of a full-stop. Gaynor’s mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. But plenty was coming out of Caro now.

  ‘You’ve had plenty to say in the past, is that it now? Are you going to fucking shut up?’

  Caro sounded like a Bellfield. There wasn’t a trace of her usual refined accent.

  ‘I had no idea,’ said Gaynor then, numbed by shame.

  ‘I didn’t want you to have an idea,’ said Caro. ‘I don’t want anyone knowing what shit I came from. It’s not a badge of honour being a Bellfield.’

  Gaynor’s head fell into her hands and she sobbed. ‘I am so sorry. I’ve been such a cow. A jealous, nasty, horrible cow.’

  ‘Yeah, you have,’ said Caro, stepping forwards to put her arms around Gaynor. She felt the hold reciprocated. Gaynor had had an awful year where things just got a bit mad and distorted. A true friend could handle that but sometimes a hard word was the kindest one.

  Together they walked out of the toilet and back into their friendship.

  Chapter 85

  Stel was full of boozy bravado until Linda rounded the corner of her street and she saw Ian’s red car. Then any nerve she had built up toppled like a stack of fog cemented with dust. As she waved Linda off with a smile, inside she was screaming for her friend to turn back and help her. She had to persuade Ian to leave. The fact that she was shaking as she walked up the path because she hadn’t taken her make-up off told her everything that was wrong about this relationship.

  Ian didn’t look up as she walked meekly in to her lounge. He was studying something on his phone.

  ‘Had a good time?’ he asked.

  ‘Well. It was a funeral,’ she said. She mispronounced it foo-neral.

  ‘Had some wine, have we?’ he joked. He sounded normal and with some relief she felt her guard ratchet down a notch.

  ‘Just a couple. To be sociable.’

  ‘You know what happens when you have wine, Stelly,’ said Ian. ‘You do stuff like this.’

  He lifted up his phone and showed her a photo. It was her. And Ian.

  Stel’s whole body was overtaken by a shockwave of panic; it felt as if something nasty and harmful had been injected into her bloodstream.

  ‘It’s what you did the last time you were drunk. Your idea, not mine I hasten to add. Can’t you remember? Look, here’s another.’

  More pictures, each one more sordid than the last.

  She couldn’t remember any of it.

  ‘Delete them,’ a shock of tears blinded her. ‘Please.’

  ‘Ah ah,’ Ian laughed. ‘Don’t worry, they’re safe in the cloud.’ He looked up and rotated his head as if they were floating in the air above him.

  ‘Please,’ Stel begged him. ‘I don’t do that sort of thing.’

  ‘You did that night.’ And he laughed again.

  ‘No . . . no. That’s not me.’

  ‘Trust me, Stel, it’s you. You can tell it’s you.’ He enlarged the image so she could see a close-up of her face. ‘See?’ She looked totally out of it. He was grinning at her
terrified reaction. It was like being in a nightmare.

  She’d read about things like this in newspapers. Kids doing stupid things for sadists who controlled them like puppets using strings of their own shame. She knew now why some of the people in the reports ran straight to bridges and threw themselves off. Who could bear the horror of knowing that people you worked with, lived beside, your children, saw you doing that? She didn’t even have the excuse of being a young kid who should know better.

  ‘Look, don’t get upset,’ said Ian. ‘It’s not as if I’m going to do anything with them. They’re just for us to enjoy, Come on now, Stelly.’ He stood up and opened his arms and she walked into them hoping to appeal to him. ‘I love you. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.’

  ‘If you loved me, you’d get rid of those photos,’ sobbed Stel. ‘I look horrible on them.’ She thought of an idea. ‘Delete them and we’ll do some more.’

  He pulled her gently away and lifted up her chin with his finger and his deep crescent of a smile felt like a further assault as he said, ‘But I like these ones.’

  Chapter 86

  It was six o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. There were eighteen hours to go before the deadline. Nicholas Leighton was not giving up without a fight, thought Viv as she sat at her dining table in the folly. She was mixing oils, something that usually relaxed her, but her head felt like a jar of bees.

  Not hearing anything is good news. It means he hasn’t found a loophole.

  Ah, but it also means bad news because he still believes there might be one.

  Her mind strayed to Heath. The strain on him was telling today. She was sure there were more lines on his face than there were yesterday. Tomorrow, with any luck, they would smooth out like magic when Leighton arrived to deliver his proposal. Heath would be able to plan for the future and never have to worry about his, or the animals’, security again. She wanted him to be happy. She liked him so very much.

  Once the deeds were handed over, there was no reason for her to stay any more. She’d told Hugo that it was enough she knew for definite who her parents were and she wouldn’t approach them; it was the end of the story. He’d told her to get her ass down to London then, now that she’d done what she had to do on the ‘wild and spooky’ moors.

  But they weren’t spooky, they were beautiful and Viv had grown to love the sight of them dark and dramatic under glowering skies or bright and magnificent beneath the sunshine. She was not sure she could easily trade the caress of this valley for the assault of the city.

  The great expanse of sky over Wildflower Cottage was the bonniest shade of blue that early evening, with not a single wisp of cloud to blemish it. It would have been a perfect one for Viv to fly Ursula, thought Heath, imagining the white and speckled wings sailing across such a perfect backdrop. Neither of them were ready for that but this was to be the owl’s last evening at Wildflower Cottage.

  He knocked on the door of Viv’s folly. She opened it and escaping scents engulfed him.

  ‘“Dancing Sunshine”, in case you’re wondering,’ explained Viv. ‘Lovely scent – obviously – because I made it, but not my choice of name. Sounds more like a racehorse to me.’

  ‘Or a Native American,’ smiled Heath, resting his arm on the lintel. He was so tall and broad he filled the doorway. ‘Wife of “Dancing with Wolves”.’

  He was wearing a blue shirt. He looks as if he’s made of the sky, thought Viv, feeling her cheeks colour slightly. She couldn’t imagine him belonging anywhere else but in this valley. She hoped to God there was nothing Leighton had found that could prevent that.

  ‘I thought you might like to try and fly Ursula in the arena,’ he went on. He held up a cord. ‘She’ll be wearing this, so she can’t fly off more than twenty-five metres.’

  Viv didn’t need to be asked twice.

  ‘Just let me stick the bungs in the test tubes and wash my hands. Come in.’

  Heath walked into the folly. He watched Viv as she turned on the tap and soaped her hands. She was wearing a yellow shirt and the light from the stained-glass window cast a gilt glow over her and Heath thought, just for a silly moment, that she looked as if she were made of sunshine.

  They walked together down to the birds, passing Wonk who was standing asleep, her face to the last rays in the west, and the horses chewing contentedly on grass.

  ‘Isn’t it a gorgeous evening,’ said Viv, willing herself to pump out positive thoughts. An evening like this had to be a good portent. She wished she could tell Heath. Her secret felt so huge and heavy inside her.

  Heath didn’t answer. It would indeed have been a beautiful evening if he could have viewed it merely as artwork, but emotion was bleeding too much into the scene. This was the last night that the family of Wildflower Cottage would be complete, and he was the only one who knew that.

  They entered Ursula’s aviary.

  ‘When she comes to you, I will attempt, very quickly, to attach this cord,’ said Heath. ‘She might try to kill me. If she does, please do not alert the authorities. Being murdered by an owl would ruin the good name of the sanctuary.’

  He was trying too hard to be jovial, he knew.

  With Ursula eventually on her glove, Viv walked into the arena. Heath led her to a post and coaxed the owl over to perch on it. She turned her back on them as if in disgust. Heath led Viv halfway across the space.

  ‘Now this is going to be strange for her and she’s not hungry so don’t expect miracles. Glove out, meat proffered and call her.’

  To their joint surprise, Ursula responded immediately. She pushed off the post, her delicately-peppered wings moving as if in slow motion towards Viv and then she landed precisely on her glove.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ said Viv. ‘That was amazing. Can we do it again?’

  ‘Of course. I haven’t dragged you out just to do it once,’ he mock-barked at her.

  Heath watched the faultless repeat performance. The bird had absolutely bonded with Viv. And Viv’s face was lit up with so much joy that he knew he’d made a bad call. She was going to be even more devastated tomorrow when Ursula left.

  He had to turn away when Viv returned the bird to her aviary. Then he walked with her back to the folly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. Had she been taller she would have leaned forwards and kissed his cheek.

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ said Heath. He wanted to lean down and kiss her cheek but he stepped backwards out of her space because if he had done it, he would have felt like Judas Iscariot.

  *

  Whilst Ian was in the bath, Stel went outside to put the bin out. She opened the door and gulped at the air as if she’d been starved of oxygen. What was preventing her from walking out of the door, not stopping to look behind and starting a new life where no one knew her, like one of those people in witness protection on police dramas? she thought. It was the only way she could think of to escape the mental torture Ian Robson was putting her through.

  Al had just rolled his bin onto the pavement.

  ‘Stel,’ he said in stiff greeting as he passed her.

  ‘Al. Al, stop a minute, please,’ called Stel. ‘What have I done to upset you?’

  Al turned back to her in a slow half-circle.

  ‘I’ve always liked you, Stel. Always respected you but I never knew you had such a problem with that. You should have just told me to my face.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Stel.

  Al held his large hands up. ‘It’s okay, I got the message loud and clear. You want me to stay away from you and I will. I’m sorry if I have ever embarrassed you. I’m sorry that you felt the need to be polite to me when all I do is make you feel awkward. I’m sorry that you feel obliged to buy me a birthday present. You didn’t have to send your bloke round to do your dirty work, Stel.’

  ‘Al, I . . .’

  ‘Just leave it, will you.’

  As Al strode back into his house, he muttered loud enough for her to hear that he couldn’t wait to get out of this bloody
street.

  Chapter 87

  The last thing Viv remembered thinking at one in the morning was that she had about as much chance of sleep as growing an extra foot in height, but she did. A solid, dreamless sleep from which she snapped awake just before seven. She had a bath to try and quell the nervous tension that was inhabiting every capillary in her body, then she made herself some poached eggs for which she had no appetite in the end.

  The weather was odd this morning. She had opened the curtains to fog so thick, it appeared as if a layer of cotton wool had been glued over the windows. It felt clammy on her skin when she walked out into it and she had to turn back for a sweatshirt. There was no sunshine over Wildflower Cottage today.

  Through the thickness of the mist, Viv could just make out a ghostlike Heath loading two black boxes into the back of his pick-up. They looked like rectangular safes. She called out good morning.

  Heath returned the greeting but under his breath he was cursing. He had wanted to have left with the owls before Viv was up, but the fog was too thick to drive in. Occasionally the bowl of the valley filled up like this and cleared in a couple of hours, but the weather forecast had given an alert for the whole area. Freakish conditions, and drivers were advised not to make unnecessary journeys. There was nothing for it, he’d have to tell Viv where he was going.

  ‘Are those safes?’ she asked, trying to work out what they were. ‘Are they the ones that the ex-employee tried to jemmy out of the wall?’

  Oh God. ‘They’re bird carriers,’ said Heath.

  ‘Oh?’ said Viv, feeling a prickle of suspicion. ‘I hope they’re empty.’

  He had to tell her. He swallowed. ‘Look, Viv . . .’

  ‘Heath, there’s a call for you,’ called Geraldine from the door of the cottage. ‘Mr Wayne wants to ask you something about Douglas.’

  Heath was grateful for the temporary reprieve. ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘Morning, Geraldine,’ Viv called to the fuzzy shape, thinking it was odd that the fog had muted vision but sounds were clearer.